October PS+ Line-Up

Writers Block

I have to admit the last few mornings my blog post has been exceedingly difficult to write.  For whatever reason the words that generally flow so freely have been clogged up.  It feels like I just don’t have anything of any importance to talk about, which has never really stopped me in the past.  I guess I am writing this morning to show that even if I blog every single day…  I have days where I stare at the blank screen and can’t seem to figure out how to fill it.  Generally speaking if I poke around the internet for a bit and in that effort something pops into my head.  Today however all I really feel is tired.  I’ve been trying to come down with something, and yesterday I had all but lost my voice.  I keep thinking it is just allergies since I am not running a fever or anything, but not really sure at this point.  More than likely it is since I am struggling under a constant deluge of drainage.

I think part of what is making this morning such a struggle is that last night was one of those nights where I couldn’t quite get comfortable in any game I played.  I shifted between FFXIV, Dragon Age, Spunky, Destiny and even started Persona 4.  When my wife got home I packed up the upstairs and took my Vita downstairs and hung out playing from bed.  I have to say that is one of the coolest things about buying into the “Playstation” system is that everything interoperates so much better than the equivalent.  I am even considering picking up a Playstation TV to add another screen to the equation.  Right now pretty much anything I do on my PS4 I can do remotely, but my only desire is that the PS3 remote play worked better or more often.  There are still a ton of titles that I would like to play on that system as Playstation Plus keeps releasing more of them.

Drive Club Plus

Drive-Club And there we have it folks…  I have a topic to talk about.  There has been a bit of controversy over the last few days because due to consequences Sony has had to back away from one of the promised titles as part of the October Playstation Plus lineup.  Drive Club is a brand new game that is coming out for the PS4 and has been pretty hotly anticipated I might add.  Through some financial trickery they cut a deal to offer it for free as part of the Playstation Plus subscription through a special Drive Club Plus edition.  Granted this version did not include all of the tracks or cars, but was apparently otherwise fully functional.  I was somewhat shocked when I read about it, since in essence this free copy would allow you to join clubs and race with your friends just like if you had purchased the full version.  Additionally Plus members were going to be given the option to plunk down $50 to upgrade to the full fledged copy of the game and get all the bits and baubles they were missing.

Unfortunately as the game launched the servers being run for the game buckled under the weight.  I feel like Sony made the right call here to delay giving this title away in an effort to help stabilize the launch.  The truth is that folks plunked down money for the full priced version of the game, and they should come first.  Granted this is coming from someone who has been a long time subscriber to Playstation Plus.  The natives are restless however because a number of folks decided to pony up for Plus ONLY to get their free copy of Drive Club.  The thing is that they are still going to get it…  just not quite yet.  What frustrates me is listening to the folks Rage about what is already the best deal in gaming hands down.  Where else can you play $50 for an entire year and have six titles delivered to you every month.  Even if you don’t like a few titles here and there… it is still a phenomenal deal.

October PS+ Line-Up

One of the tricks I learned several months back from my good friend Ashgar is that you didn’t actually have to log into the Playstation Store from any of your devices.  There is one handy dandy web based interface where you can access all of your free monthly Playstation Plus titles, as well as queue them to download to any of your devices.  So if you are a Playstation Plus member I highly suggest “purchasing” everything each month regardless if you want to play it or own the device.  For ages I only has a PS3 and still found it a good deal… but all the while I was picking up titles for that console I was also picking them up for both PS4 and Vita knowing that someday I would end up picking up those consoles.  When I got my PS4 I had over a half dozen titles sitting there waiting on me, and when I got my Vita I had around 50 titles that I could play.  The subscription is a great deal but even more so when you have all of the consoles they are giving titles away for.  This month seems to be significantly better than most of the recent ones, so I thought I would go into the titles available right now.

Spelunky

spelunky Available for PS4, PS3, Vita

This is a title I have wanted to play for some time, but never ended up grabbing it.  The idea is that you are a cave explorer looking for treasure, and combating the traps you encounter along the way.  What the game is known for is for being extremely unforgiving in that when you die your game is over and you respawn at the beginning of the area with nothing to show for your accomplishment.  In that aspect it feels a little bit like Rogue Legacy without the whole generations aspect.  I played it for a bit last night on the PS4 and had fun.

Pix the Cat

pixthecat Available for PS4, Vita

This title looks to be a frantic mix of Pac Man and the classic Snake game that we all played so damned much on our Nokia 5120 phones.  Look I am old… I had one of those phones and it was the only game available.  This game seems perfectly suited for the Vita but is also available on PS4, and as part of the whole Bragtoberfest event I believe it was Murf that proposed a challenge to see who could get the highest score on this game.  I have yet to crack it open but it is installed on both Vita and PS4 so I will get around to it eventually.

Dust: An Elysian Tail

dustAvailable for PS4

This is another game that I have wanted to play for some time.  Hell I even own it on steam thanks to one of the many “indie bundles” that I have picked up over the years.  The irony is that now that it is on a console I am actually far more likely to play it.  I really like the Dual Shock 4 controller… and until I pony up the $60 to buy one for my PC, I am likely going to favor playing certain kinds of games on the PS4.  Ultimately this is a really cool looking Metroidvania about a series of anthropomorphic animals as they go on a quest to do something or another.  I really don’t know much about the story, but supposedly it is actually rather good.  Looking forward to playing.

Rainbow Moon

rainbowmoon Available for PS3, Vita

This game looks really cool, and I am not sure how it was completely off my radar.  Essentially it looks like Final Fantasy Tactics by another developer to be truthful.  The gameplay looks really similar, and I am hoping it is just as detailed and in depth.  This will add yet another long form JRPG that I need to play on my Vita, as that device is quickly becoming almost exclusive for laying in bed and playing them.  Last night for example I started Persona 4 Golden.  The JRPG genre is really ideally suited for that handheld, and I am sure Rainbow Moon will be no different.

Dungeons and Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara

DandD Available for PS3

This game…  so much love for this game.  For me at least this is the pinnacle of the 90s era arcade beat-em-up games.  This is a collection of two arcade games, one of which was super rare here in the United States.  What made it so damned awesome at the time was that you would sit down at this rather imposing looking machine with three of your friends and play your way through a choose your adventure style quest.  At various points you are prompted for what exactly you are going to do… do you save the town or do you save the docks.  Each step moves you down a branching path towards the conclusion.  I loved this game so much that I ordered the import from Japan that was only available for the Sega Saturn.  What makes this version awesome is that it supports network multiplayer just like the Steam copy, so a perfect excuse to go smash some kobolds with friends.

Batman Arkham Asylum

batman Available for PS3

So here comes confession time…  I have never beaten this game or frankly made it terribly far into it.  I have had it on Steam for ages, but when I first tried to play it, I attempted to play it with a keyboard and mouse and found the overall experience frustrating.  I simply never went back and tried it again.  What I find most interesting about this is that ages ago Playstation Plus gave away the later games, but we had yet to receive the original until now.  As such I am looking forward to playing this as I didn’t want to jump in on the second or third game without playing the original.  Something about it being on a console makes it seem more appealing.

And there you have it… this months line up of games.  While don’t get Drive Club Plus yet, there is still a ton of awesome to be had there.  What I love the most is that when they give away a game they generally also give away the cross buy rights, meaning if something is available on multiple platforms you can play it on whichever one you choose.  Cross buy is one of those features that really endears me to the Playstation system of consoles, and especially since most of the newer titles also feature cross-save letting me start a game on my PS4 and then pick it up on the native vita client.  In any case I personally think it is a pretty damned good month that will only get better when they finally unlock the keys to the Drive Club kingdom in a few weeks.

#DriveClub #PlaystationPlus

Dragon Commander: Divinity

A Cursed Bread Maker

Last night we recorded our thirteenth episode of AggroChat.  In various cultures the number thirteen can be either a positive or a negative, and going into the show I was not quite certain how that would shake out.  Apparently for us however, thirteen is a very unlucky number.  Last week Ash, Kodra and Tam were off hanging out together, and one of the activities was to build Kodra a brand new machine.  All of this time we thought his intermittent problems were related to running on six year old hardware.  Apparently whatever demons infested his previous machine have jumped ship and are now residing in the new one.  We had trouble keeping him online and when he was online he seemed to have issues broadcasting.

All of that aside I think we had a pretty good show last night.  We talked about a hole bunch of topics including Tomb Raider and the fact that I maybe just maybe finally enjoy narrative gaming experiences.  We also talk quite about about Thomas Was Alone and how that game manages to get the player emotionally attached to a red colored rectangle.  We also talk about Rob Pardo leaving Blizzard and the potential effects, as well as the idea that no one person is really that responsible for anything in a game.  Additionally we talk about the Divinity series of games, and how the publisher seems to be able to stick to just one genre.  We did pure madness this time, due to some confusion on my part we ended up with five guests.

Dragon Commander: Divinity

DCApp 2014-07-06 07-24-29-89 As has been the case so many times… I added a game to my wish list in part as a way of tracking to see if it goes on sale… and then another friend comes along and griefs me by adding it to the pile of unplayed games.  I say grief in the nicest possible sense of the word, because Ashgar has supported this thing I call Steampowered Sunday so many times in the past with an interesting game that he would like to see me play.  This time around he ended up purchasing a four game pack and decided he would not play Dragon Commander for some time.  As always I am extremely thankful of his generosity, and the fact that it pretty much determined what game I would be playing this week.  I am still pretty new to the Divinity setting, but so far I have to say I love the universe that it is set in.  I am glad that I played my way through Divinity II this week, otherwise I would have been completely clueless playing this title.

DCApp 2014-07-06 07-27-53-25 At face value this game is a rather pretty 4X title, and were it only for that the game would be forgettable.  The game is extremely confused as at times it is a Civilization clone, other times an RTS like Starcraft, and other times yet a flight simulator.  What makes the difference however is the narrative of the game and the lore of the franchise backing it up.  As a result the game takes you on this deep quest to win the hearts and minds of a kingdom and at the same time defend it from your mad half dragon brothers and sisters.  The game itself is set before the events of Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity and Divinity II: Ego Draconis.  As such you play out the events of your quest alongside Maxos the wizard that is spoken of in Divinity II in an attempt to liberate the world.

You’re Going to Need Friends

DCApp 2014-07-06 07-26-36-21 The storyline centers around your command carrier the raven, a ship that holds many dark secrets… not the least of which is the fact that the ship itself is a bound demon.  In order to power the infernal machine, Maxos has bound Corvus the Raven demon in a special chamber that eventually you can enter.  The rest of your ship is made up of ambassadors from each of the races of the games setting, as well as a number of gifted generals that you can call upon to guide your troops in battle.  At various points these ambassadors will want to meet with you, an the above picture shows a three way discussion happening between the generals Edmund and Catherine and the Dwarven ambassador Falstaff Silvervein.

DCApp 2014-07-06 07-42-10-10 On board your ship you have representatives of the Dwarves, Lizards, Elves, Undead and Imps…  and each time you do something that benefits one faction you inevitably piss off two others.  Like so many of these games it quickly becomes a juggling game to try and keep most of them happy in the process.  Making the advisors of the various races happy seems to earn you cards that you can play that can turn the tide of a battle.  These give you surprise troops, or a tactical advantage or even there is a card called “Genocide” that lowers the population of an area before attacking it.  I’ve not actually used this one, but had the enemy play it on me multiple times and it can be rather devastating.

Taking Territory

DCApp 2014-07-06 07-28-30-99 Through the bridge of your ship you have access to the map view of your territory.  From here you can assign one building per area be it a War Forge that allows you to build units, or one of many other buildings that gather some form of resource in a turn by turn basis.  From here you try and gain a foothold against your siblings that you are locked in a land war to control as much of the Rivellon heartland as you can.  Combat is resolved in one of three ways.  You can pay one of your generals to lead your forces for you, giving you some tactical advantage in the process.  You can let your army lead itself, which seems to only be advisable if you have an extremely superior tactical advantage, or you can take up the banner and lead your forces yourself.  The limitation is that you can personally lead only one battle per turn, and similarly you can only have a single general lead your forces per turn as well.  This means that you want to limit combat to as few volleys as you can per turn.

DCApp 2014-07-06 07-35-50-40 When you choose to lead your own forces the game changes yet again.  This time around you are presented a real-time strategy playing field where you conquer resources on the map and use them to churn out more troops to eventually overwhelm your opponent.  The interesting thing about this mode is that I tend to leave it in reserve for battles where I do not have a very obvious superior tactical advantage.  There have been fights that I came into the conflict with a single unit, but through the RTS game play get the best of my opponent and push forward with a victory.  If this were not enough, you also have the ability to quite literally manifest yourself on the battlefield and take your dragon form to attack the enemy.

DCApp 2014-07-06 07-38-09-29 When the map starts there is a counter in the center of the HUD counting down how long before you can take flight and join the fight as a dragon.  When you do, you become a nearly unstoppable killing machine with a series of dragon powers that either hurt enemies or help your fighters.  From the air you can wreak havoc on enemy buildings, or hover over your troops and heal them from above.  To make things feel even cooler…  you are a Dragon with a freaking jetpack.  Personally as enjoyable as this mode is…  I tend to try and RTS my way through combat as much as possible without taking to the skies.  There are moments where you think that this game is ultimately four different games that they built, but couldn’t really decide on which one to finish.  However each of these elements is integrated so well into the whole that it just feels natural.

Embracing Controversy

DCApp 2014-07-06 07-26-58-98 There are some really odd events that play out on board of your ship, and a number of conflicts that you will be called to resolve.  Early on you are chosen to pick from one of four princesses paraded before you, and I opted to go for the one that seemed the “sweetest” which oddly enough… was the undead princess Ophelia.  Moments after tying the knot she confides in you that she is wracked by a debilitating disease that will eventually eat her bones from the marrow outwards.  There is no known cure, and her father the Undead Advisor forbids her to research any of the options as such things are considered to be heretical.  However with your permission and the protection of your ship…  there are a number of increasingly twisted things that you can do to resolve the issue.  All of them with some pretty severe moral implications as you are tested to find out just how far you would go to save your bride.

DCApp 2014-07-06 08-13-32-84 Similarly you have to deal with all manner of moral and ethical decisions as you engage with your crew.  Some will attempt to bribe you to look the other way as various things happen.  There is one specific event where an undead artist is revealed to have been a lesbian, and after her death the undead have taken to the streets trying to purge all of her art as heretical.  Do you step in and preserve her works, or do you let the course of undead society go unimpeded.  Similarly there is a general who is by nature a very misandrist character.  She comes to you telling you that she and the other female general are not making near as much as their male counterparts.  Do you do the right thing and increase their pay, while at the same time angering all the males on your ship?  The game does not shy away from presenting issues pulled from our own times, including the ratification of gay marriage.  All of which gives the setting and lore that much more of a living feel.

Sum of All Parts

DCApp 2014-07-06 07-40-07-38 If you  were to take apart all of the different games that make up Dragon Commander, you would end up with a passable but uninspired civilization clone, a passable but uninspired starcraft clone, a political intrigue and romance sim, and a dragon flight combat game.  None of the parts is really that amazing on its own, but when combined together with the woven narrative of trying to save your kingdom from the hands of your insane siblings the game becomes extremely compelling.  This is a truly ambitious title, and it is carried out with such charm that you tend to overlook the rough spots here and there.  The hardest part honestly is the fact that the tutorial could use a bit of refinement.  It took me a couple of games before I felt like I was getting the hang of it enough to survive for long.  If you like Age of Wonders and Starcraft and have ever wanted to fly a dragon with jetpacks, I highly suggest you check this one out the next time it goes on sale over on steam.  It has definitely managed to eat the better part of two days for me, and as soon as I finish with this post I plan on going back to the game and playing some more.

#DragonCommander #SteampoweredSunday #AggroChat

Defiance

The Dream

It is now 4 am and my body has decided that I have slept enough for the night.  I ended up going to bed very early, so I guess in a way it makes sense as I normally only get 5/6 hours of sleep a night.  I had the most interesting dream, and since it is sort of game related I figure what the hell… might as well blog about it.  In the dream I was summoned to Blizzard HQ, but I have no real idea why I was asked to be there.   When I got there I was given a name badge and ushered into a room with a bunch of other people.  There were computers and a big table and folks were spread around the room working on various things.  It felt like a first day of work kind of scenario where people look to busy themselves until they are given real work to do.

Throughout next few hours people from various disciplines would come in and talk to us.  At this point it started to feel like a job interview.  I remember one of the guys was a quest designer and he started asking us questions about triggers and spawners, and it turned out that he was having a specific problem with a specific quest.  He ended up digging out a mockup of the zone and explained the problem.  I’ve had quite a bit of experience building zones in various emulator projects, and ended up redoing the entire Butcherblock > Greater Faydark > Crushbone sequence in one of my times playing with the Everquest emulator at home, so I figured what the hell.  Turned out there was a place on the map that the player had to move through that was an nice tight bottleneck and a trigger could be placed there that everyone would pass over.

At this point I am getting excited because I feel useful, and maybe have a shot at whatever this interview process happens to be.  But as the day goes on the reality sits in, that I am 37 and established in my career, with a wife who is very established in her career.  No matter how cool it would be to work at a place like Blizzard, there is no way I could uproot all of that on the shot at following my boyhood dream of working in the games industry.  Additionally there was the hard reality that I already make more than most of my friends in the industry, and where I am has a good pension system that I am already fully vested in.  Basically my chance at that dream died a long long time ago, and any desire to do it is just sort of an aftershock.  The weird thing is… I am realizing all of this while I am dreaming and while my dream self is at Blizzard HQ.

We end up breaking for lunch, at which point the more dream like qualities start to sit in.  Like for some reason I managed to make it to Anaheim California… without my wallet.  I guess this is the new version of arriving at school in your underwear maybe?  It is around this point that I wake up, and am fully wide away with no hope of returning to sleep and attempting to continue where the dream left off.  I never really found out why I was there and what exactly they were doing.  The funny thing is, of all of the games companies my brain seemed to latch onto Blizzard.  Don’t get me wrong I would love to work at a place like that, and everything I have heard about the environment is that it is a great place to be.  But of all the games I have played, my relationship with World of Warcraft seems the most tumultuous.  I guess the dream is just a sign that no matter how many times I try and pack the dream of working in the industry away… it keeps rising back to the surface.

Defiance

Defiance 2014-05-28 04-36-53-073 It was a really odd evening last night, and I was in that odd place where I was really too tired to play much of anything.  It has been torrential raining here in Oklahoma over the last three days, and last night about 6 pm we noticed a potential break in the weather that would allow us to go out and get our walk in.  As a result by the time we had finished at 6:30 I had hit 11,000 steps and was just absolutely exhausted.  I crashed out on the couch which meant playing on my laptop, so continuing my Wolfenstein: New Order game was out of the question.  I ping ponged around a bunch of different games, the first of which was Defiance.  This is one of those games that I really want to like, but for whatever reason I seem to constantly spin my wheels in.  I guess in part I don’t know what exactly I am supposed to be doing.  I’ve literally been wandering around the Mount Tam zone since the game released, and there seems to be no real direction on how I get out of it.

As a result each time I do play, I end up wandering around and doing quests that I have probably completed a dozen other times.  The moment to moment game play is fun, as it always has been…  but I feel like I am missing some over arching narrative that I should be following.  For ages folks have talked about how much they liked the story content, but the one I tried didn’t seem terribly soloable.  I feel like this game would be so much better with other people playing it, yet each time I play it I am pretty much soloing because I literally know no one else that is regularly booting it up.  At the very least I doubt anyone is as low level as I am still.  I feel like there has to be some concept that I am just not catching.  I think next time I play I am just going to move out of Mount Tam and see what else I can find.  I have no clue what lies at the end of the zone, because I always end up logging out before I get there.

A New Idea

For a few days I have been thinking about starting a new feature.  The idea is to close out each post with a quick section about what I intend to do that night.  This is of course an intention, and lord knows what might occur between my post in the morning and that evening.  However the intent is two fold, firstly since I play so damned many games it will help to give me focus on an objective.  Secondly since I hang out with so many different people in those games, it gives folks warning about what I should be playing that evening.

Tonight I’m Playing Elder Scrolls Online.  Tonight is the semi-weekly event over there that we have been trying to pull together lately.  If you are interested in joining along in the fun, check out the Anook event.  The intent is to go from 9pm CST until whenever folks start losing consciousness… which usually means around 11pm CST.  Since we have done two weeks in Cyrodil, I was going to try and mix things up a bit.  I am sure everyone has dungeons that they need run, so my goal is to try and pair people up in groups relative to their level range.  If this doesn’t work, then we will fall back on another romp in Cyrodil.  We are going to play it by ear which way we end up going.  If you do intend to go please sign up on the event so I have an idea for what kind of numbers we are expecting.  The last few weeks we’ve had around a dozen people interested.

#ESO #ElderScrollsOnline #Defiance

Too Themepark

Crazy Fox-Wolf-Thingy

ARCHEAGE 2014-05-12 16-43-17-70 I find myself enjoying ArcheAge far more than I had really expected to.  I have not really even gotten to the “open world” aspect of the game, but I find the questing and combat systems really enjoyable.  At some point I managed to pick up the animal to the side of me that is some sort of a fox-wolf-thingy.  I am not sure if it was from a quest or if I looted it from a mob, but in any case I have a pet now.  My friend Errn informed me that this is my battle pet, but I had reasoned that much by noticing that it was fighting for other players.  Thing is… when I got it, it was already like level 30.  This means the thing probably kicks more ass than I do to be honest.  One of the weird things about the game is that you can either have a mount or a pet out, but not both.

As a result I tend to run around with my battle pet out, and then use the glider poorly to manage to get around quickly.  I really have no clue what I am doing when it comes to the glider.  No matter how I try and control the thing, it seems like I am just falling through the air gracefully.  I’ve watched various streamers be able to control where they want it to go, and I am completely in awe of their skill.  Right now the closest I can get is to hover over the area I want to go and then fold up the glider by hitting R, causing me to plummet through the air.  Obviously this works grand if you are close to the ground, but not so much when you have leapt off of a huge cliff with it.  In the later case, I end up cursing the screen as I seem to flail around in midair on the glider.

I feel bad that I have almost entirely ignored anything going on with any of the quests.  Since all of the cinematic are in Korean still I just end up skipping thing, which has lead me to feel like the quest dialog itself is completely meaningless as well.  So I have zero clue what is going on in the world other than I am helping a series of villages defend against all sorts of things, and I am perfectly fine with that.  The more killing I get to do in the course of the leveling the better, and right now I am really enjoying the “Over Achieve” and “Hidden Quest” options gained by going on a murderous rampage.  While I seem to be swapping out gear pretty frequently, it doesn’t really feel like I am progressing my character along that easily.  I’ve yet to figure out the rhyme or reason behind getting skill points, but I could really use a lot more of them.

Too Themepark

WildStar64 2014-05-12 22-29-17-945 Firstly I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression from this title.  I love Themepark MMOs, for what they give me…  a carefully curated trip through an interesting world.  I find that I enjoy both Sandbox and Themepark MMOs equally, at least generally speaking.  However there is just something about Wildstar that maybe takes it a step too far.  While playing this game, I literally feel like I am at Six Flags with so many things fighting desperately for my attention.  When I walk into an area that I just explored and hear the “Challenge!” sounder it reminds me too much of a midway barker trying to get my attention.  I’ve compared the visuals of the game to the Vegas Strip before, but really it reminds me a lot more of an actual real world Themepark.  Everything is bright and polished to a shine, with every single inch of space covered with something designed to get my eye to look there.  The above screenshot is of one of the rare sparse moments, and when the game is like this… I actually enjoy it.  However I had to wait for a few minutes to take this shot for various mobs and players to move out of the way.

I am basically in the same place I have been for a couple of months.  I recorded the above video on March 13th and I have had zero forward momentum since then.  I’ve gotten on each beta weekend so far to play for a bit, but just found the overall experience lacking.  There is a lot about the game that I think I would like, but something just doesn’t sit right with me each time I sit down to play it.  The last game I felt this conflicted about was Guild Wars 2, and the end result of that experience is a game that even though I have free access to play it… I never have any desire to do so.  With Wildstar I put in my pre-order in part to lock in my goodies for if I ever decided that I DID want to play it.  Each day I consider cancelling it, because I am just not “feeling” this title.  It isn’t the setting or the races or the goofy character models, but something more deeply set into the game itself.  The funny thing is, I have been back playing Star Wars: The Old Republic and enjoying the hell out of it…  but Wildstar that is a very similar experience just feels really odd to me.  Time will tell if I shun the internet zeitgeist and sit out of this one.

Blue Water Land

Screenshot_20140513_061222 I am still working my way through Coldharbor in Elder Scrolls Online, and last night I hit 48.  The quests out here feel more epic than the ones leading up to them, in part because everything in Coldharbor seems to be absolutely dripping in lore.  One of my joys in any Elder Scrolls title has been killing the various Daedra, and here I have an entire zone full of almost nothing but them.  What is interesting is finding all of the inhabitants of the zone that have been tricked into the service of Molag Bal in one fashion or another.  Last night I had a really cool moment where I helped out some Argonians and their Hist tree, and another where I gained the trust of a feral pack of Bosmer.  This section of the game feels very much like Mass Effect 3, where I am wandering around this zone building an army to fight the daedric prince.

I am trying to decide if I am going to hold out with my level 44 gear until I ding 50.  I have a really good daedric shield that just dropped, as well as my prismatic weapon that I am unlikely to replace until I leave cold harbor.  Wondering if I can limp along until 50 and then craft an entire set of nice gear then.  As of the close of the night I managed to make it roughly halfway to 49, and I still have large swaths of Coldharbor that have been completely unexplored.  Still very much loving the experience of the game, but I am definitely finding that I need breaks from playing it.  The gameplay towards the end of the game gets really intense, and if I am not feeling 100% I end up taking a lot of un-needed deaths.  As a result I have been perforating my long play sessions with trips into ArcheAge, SWTOR and now a little bit of Wildstar.  So far I really seem to be enjoying this mix.

#ESO #ElderScrollsOnline #ArcheAge #WildStar #Themepark