Tales of the Aggronaut

Five Favorite MMOs

June 19, 2013 by Belghast

Tomorrow is going to end up being a super busy day for me, as I need to run a few errands for work… so I am doing this post a little differently. I don’t feel like I will have enough time tomorrow to bang out a post like normal, so I am working on this topic tonight. I thought it would be interesting to do a post about my top five favorite games and why I like them so much. I figured i would do this in count down style with fifth leading down to number one… of course you can just cut ahead but lets pretend it is a surprise!

#5- World of Warcraft

I went back and forth several times on what should be my 5th spot, but as I thought about it… for sheer longevity of me playing the game, I had to give a nod to World of Warcraft. I have essentially outgrown the game, but it does a lot of things well. I feel like WoW is the junkfood of MMOs… so long as you do not think about what you are doing… it is extremely enjoyable. I played WoW as my primary game for roughly 8 years, and during most of that was the leader of a large social guild. I have so many amazing memories and have met so many life long friends out of the game. All of these reasons are why it at least had to make my list.

Best Features

People – WoW is still the game that most of the people you know are playing.
Colorful and friendly graphics and a world that matches them.
Lots of systems that allow solo players to engage in group content.
Game overall is extremely polished, they provide a consistent experience.
Roughly a decade of content and a wide variety of activities to do.

#4 – Lord of the Rings Online

Lord of the Rings Online is one of those games that I really enjoy every time I get the bug to play it. It is extremely immersive and brings the player into the setting surrounding the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I love the way that you are set up in the game as characters that just happen to be in the background of the activities of the fellowship. Each step of the way you are doing events that are helping out the world, but also keeping tabs on the activity as the fellowship moves through the novels. They do an amazing job of bringing the world to life and filling it with copious amounts of LOTR lore.

Best Features

One of the best communities – Landroval is amazing
Music system… you can play instruments in game, and players give performances regularly
Simple instanced neighborhood housing system
Hands down the best horses in any MMO… they move right
Breathtaking landscapes straight out of the novels
Intricate system within system… I admit it… I love deeds
Subscribing for one month permanently unlocks most features

#3 – The Secret World

The Secret World is such a unique experience that I feel like everyone needs to play it at least once. Not only it is a unique system, but it also has extremely different game play mechanics. I have always been a fan of the whole occult and Cthulhu mythos, and this entire game is essentially a love song to H.P. Lovecraft. It also has some of the best writing and storytelling, and additionally some of the most imaginative quests. The only negative to me, is that it lends itself to very periodic and episodic gameplay. Each time new content is released, I run in like a locust and gobble it up. I believe enough in this game however that before its release I became a lifetime subscriber.

Best Features

Unique setting and amazing storytelling
Unique classless game play
All players can learn all abilities in the game
Nightmare modes are some of the most challenging content I have experienced in an MMO
Does not hold your hand… almost to a cruel end. Very difficult quests.
No Subscription Fee – buy the box play forever
Single Server Infrastructure – play with anyone on any dimension freely

#2 – Rift

Rift is likely going to be one of those games I always cycle back to playing. Essentially it is WoW, but improved in every conceivable way. That is probably a massive disservice to the game to say that… but unfortunately that is usually what I think of in my mind. Since the release on a monthly basis they have improved the gameplay so that it includes some extremely innovative features. It has really engaging content that varies from epic quests to quick fast food push a button and get into the action features. Additionally it just went free to play, and it feels like one of the better implementations. The cash shop has a truly staggering number of things to purchase, but all of it is completely optional. You can pretty much experience every bit of the content apart from the Storm Legion expansion… completely free.

Best Features

Most customizable out of the box UI that I have seen
Awesome non-intrusive add-on support
Awesome passive grouping content like Rifts and Instant Adventures
Most detailed housing system – you can literally build anything
Extremely flexible class system with ability to have more than 6 different specs
Great Wardrobe system allowing for tons of custom outfits
Extremely interesting and challenging raid encounters
Really fun holidays and in game events

#1 – Everquest II

The world I will always be the most nostalgic about is Norrath. Everquest was my first real MMO experience, and it bit me hard with a vengeance. The big negative however is it was very unfriendly to players, and caused a massive commitment of time to get anywhere. However with the release of Everquest II, it took the world I loved and brought it into a much more player friendly frame of mind. This is one of those games that I have played off and on since release.. and no matter where I am mentally… this is the one game I can always play even when I don’t really feel like playing anything. I feel like EQ2 is the most underappreciated game on the market and has so much to offer players. It just doesn’t look as shiny as other games, and the engine definitely feels dated at times. The game takes of commitment to understand its systems, but you will not find a more intricate and rewarding game on the market (except maybe Wurm Online).

Best Features

25 unique classes
20 unique races
Massive scale zones, dungeons, and raids
More content than I have seen in any other game period
Massive epic quest lines… one I worked on off and on for 6 months
Extremely detailed housing system with the ability to have 10 per player
Extremely unique crafting system
Guild housing that actually supports guild activities
Antonia Bayle is one of the best RP communities – Tons of Live Events

The Runners Up

There were several games that almost made the list. I contemplated Star Wars: The Old Republic… because quite honestly it had some really engaging content. It however has probably the most egregious free to play conversion I have seen, so its exploitive nature knocked it off the list. I thought about Guild Wars 2, because there is something undeniably enjoying about the game. However there are an equal number of issues I just cannot get past to really find it something I want to play on a regular basis. Dragon’s Prophet is a game I am really enjoying these days, but I don’t feel like I have played it long enough to really give it a spot on the top five list. Additionally Vanguard is a pretty amazing game, but I just have not played it enough to really know its ins and outs.

Essentially I picked the five games that have shaped me the most as a player. I hope you enjoyed my little rundown and even more so I hope it inspires someone to give one of them a shot. Of my list only World of Warcraft lacks a free to play option. So I guess this is really telling about where we are currently in what is a viable payment model. I find myself cycling between the two four on a regular basis. Right now I am mostly in a Rift mode… but I am sure I will cycle back to the others before too much longer.

I hope you have a great day, and I hope you don’t mind the change in format. I wanted to create this post, and I knew I would not have enough time tomorrow morning to complete it all. Additionally I am busy tonight downloading things to load up my new laptop full of games. So essentially I had time to kill and devote to this. I hope I get all my errands in the morning done, and get to work on time.

Return of the Queen

June 19, 2013 by Belghast

Good morning you happy people… this is my first post without the aid of coffee. I am trying to taper back my caffeine intake because the whole heart fluttering/palpitations thing has been back with a vengeance over the last few days. I honestly figure it is mostly stress induced, but I am willing to cut back on a few things to help the process along. It is not exactly an enjoyable feeling, so if I can stop it from happening… I will be happier. As a result without aid of coffee, I may not be entirely cogent at 6 am.

Return of the Queen

So yesterday was my birthday, and I have to say I was overwhelmed by the birthday messages I go from all sources. Logging into twitter of G+ was like hitting a wall of happy birthday… it was pretty awesome. You guys made what would have been a pretty crappy day not one. Essentially my birthday was slotted to be pretty awesome. I had a replacement laptop arriving sometime midday, and my wife would be flying in at noonish and I would get the spend at least half the day chilling out with her.

I got up pretty early yesterday, and when I got upstairs to catch up with the world my wife had messaged me telling me that her flight had been cancelled. Apparently there was “weather” in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and they were re-routing all flights. So instead of her 7 am flight… she was being placed on a 3:30 flight… on standby. At this point she was not slotted to actually get back to Tulsa until 9:30 that evening. So that left her having to do the awkward chilling out at the airport thing, and me to be alone on my birthday.

I would have driven up to get her, since she was in Kansas City, and it is a roughly four hour drive from where we live to the airport… but with the laptop coming, neither of us wanted to leave that out on the porch. We have a little pack of hoodlums in the neighborhood, that have been suspected for the flurry of car break-ins that I wrote about awhile back. Mostly they are bored teenagers with no real parental guidance to give them a moral compass, but they have been known to have sticky fingers.

So it became a waiting game… if the package arrived quickly enough it would be possible to run up and back and get home before the flights would have. However since my laptop arrived at 1 pm, that slotted her still getting home around 9 after you factored in both directions of the drive… and a lot of unnecessary stress in the process. Somehow along the process she managed to get juggled to an earlier flight, and in the grand scheme of things landed last night in Tulsa around 8 pm. It is really awesome to have my wife back, but honestly the impact has not quite hit me yet. We got home in time for her to unpack and pretty much go to sleep, since she had been up since the crack of dawn.

Laptop Resolution

Yesterday I had regaled you with the tale of the guy flaking out on me yet again, and me giving up and just ordering online. As I said above, yesterday around 1 pm I had a doorbell ring and my laptop was there on the threshold. Since it was too late to try and drive to pick up my wife, I decided to unbox it and play with my new toy. First off, for having dual SLI cards the laptop is remarkably quiet and cool. There is heat emanating from the heat sinks on either side but it is no way as hot as previous laptops have been. I am guessing this is the massive air intake on the bottom of the laptop causing the thing to stay cool.

I have not honestly had much time to really game on the laptop, I spent most of yesterday downloading stuff. I got in and played a little Dragon’s Prophet and it looked gorgeous. My previous laptop did not like that game at all, and this one funs it pretty much on high settings fluidly. Additionally I played a little Rift as it was patching and it also looked gorgeous and ran well on ultra settings. The sad thing about the digital age however is it still takes a long while to download multiple 16 gig game installations. For whatever reason League of Legends was taking the longest… which seems insane considering how simple a game it is… and how low tech the graphics are.

The keyboard is going to take some getting used to, but so far I really like it. Keyboards are a huge thing for me… and this is as best as I can describe it a mechanical chicklet keypad. It has the low key height of a chicklet style laptop keyboard, but you have the satisfying mechanical feedback of an old school keyboard. It reminds me a lot of a half height version of my Microsoft sidewinder keyboard that I use on my desktop. The important thing is it feels extremely responsive but like I said it will take some getting used to.

The biggest feature that is going to take awhile for me to adapt to is the fact that this laptop is Windows 8. I have to say, I still have no idea what Microsoft was thinking by defaulting a desktop operating system to the Metro interface. I realize that I likely use my computer differently than most people… I tend to do everything through the run prompt… but even for day to day use… the Metro interface seems worse than useless. The very first thing I did was download Stardock’s Start8 giving me back my start menu and run prompt. After that it feels much like using Windows 7 with a strange skin on it.

I will slowly get used to the forced minimalist interface elements… but I find the whole “we only use solid colors” movement of recent years a bit chafing. Our graphical designer at work seems to have been bitten by the same bug… and white frankly this whole only using bright solid colors thing looks a little “Fisher price” to me at times. All in all I am very happy however, I like the feel and form factor of the laptop, and what I have seen of its graphical powers are excellent as well.

Downtime Fiesta

While I was installing software yesterday, I had my PSP going and was playing through Final Fantasy 5. So far my biggest problem with this game is that it does a fairly poor job messaging what you are supposed to do next. There is always a certain element of roam around until you figure it out to every mission. Now that I am well past the point at which I had played previously… I am in virgin territory and often times struggle to follow the logic behind the game. Luckily I have veteran resources to rely upon if I get stuck, but for the most part I have figured out things.

I believe previously I had been just about to enter the moogle village after arriving at the second world. Yesterday I managed to play through Castle Bal, Quelb, Drakenvale, Ghido’s Island, Surgate Castle, Xezat’s Ship, the Barrier Tower thing, Forest of Moore, and am now just about to storm Exdeath’s castle. There were numerous difficult encounters along the way, but I managed through them and did not hit any major roadblocks like Soul Cannon was. Atomos was definitely a pain in the arse with his huge hitpoint pool, but I managed through it.

I feel like I have a super low maintenance party with Black Mage, Red Mage, Ranger and Samurai. My good friend Ash that talked me into this madness has a Blue Mage… so it seems like his entire play through is dictated by trying to get the right abilities off the right mobs. There was some madness last night about needing to have a level divisible by 3 to get some ability off some boss encounter. Right now the biggest thing I need to worry about is keeping my characters in the best gear (which I would have done already) and grinding mobs to get job levels ((which I would have done already). After making the swaps this party feels like my kind of party… simple and effective.

Wrapping Up

Well it is that time again, I need to wrap this up so I can finish getting ready and head on in to work. Going to pack up the laptop this morning and bring it for our noontime gaming excursions. It should be considerably lighter since it only weights 6 lbs. I hope you all have a great day, and I want to say again how much I appreciated getting all those birthday wishes yesterday. Now time to return to the real world and try and finish out this week.

Stressed

June 18, 2013 by Belghast

So I am getting a super late start this morning, as it is my birthday and I milled around the house rather than get ready and do my normal routine. I took the day off from work because the intent was to pick my wife up from the airport as she was flying in at noon. Unfortunately however that flight was cancelled due to weather… and she is not slotted to get into Tulsa until 9pm. This kind of puts a huge dent in the enjoyment of my birthday as I was expecting to get to spend at least half of it with her. However I got pinged over IM from a friend with this message… you think you get to take the day off from blogging just because its your birthday? So I guess I need to hustle along with my morning post.

Laptop Strikes Back

So when I last spoke about this yesterday, I was a bit chipper as the laptop guy had gotten back ahold of me and apologized for not responding. He said he had been selling his car and busy dealing with that, but would be able to meet up Monday after he got off work at 12:30. So we arranged a meeting and I took a late lunch to go meet him at 1:30. I was feeling kind of crappy yesterday… extremely dizzy but I drove out to meet him and upon pulling into the parking lot I feel my pocket buzz. When I pull out my phone I had received a message from him.

Hey man. I can’t sell the laptop anymore. Sorry for wasting your time.

So after all that hassle… the little fucker flakes out on me again. If you have been following me for a long time… or read the link I posted to an old blog post… I went through this exact same shit last time I tried to buy a laptop for myself on craigslist. However we can seem to buy stuff for my wife anytime we want without major issues. I feel like I am just cursed, and I have simply learned my lesson faster this time. I flipped a big finger to the process of buying a laptop for myself through craigslist and went searching online.

To be truthful I had done a bit of this already when I thought the guy had flaked out… and found a slightly better version of the Lenovo y500 for a bit more and yesterday after talking to my wife I went ahead and placed and order. The funny thing is… when you are spending $1000 on something… that $25 for over night shipping seems like a pittance. Based on UPS tracking it shows that my new laptop is out for delivery, which usually means it will show up on my doorstep around noonish.

Everything about the laptop looks to be something that will hold me for another 2-3 years. Honestly my Asus would have been just fine if it did not start having unexplained power issues. It looked like it was going to cost around $300 as it was going to be the motherboard, and it just seemed silly to throw that kind of money at a machine that was already 3 years old. Quite honestly the concept of SLI in a laptop blows my mind… I am so interested to crack it open and see what it can do. Having had SLI before, I know it is not always the best choice and some games perform better using only a single card… but the 650 is still an upgrade over any video card I currently have.

Stressed

I have been super stressed this past week for so many reasons. Work has been extremely wishy washy and uncertain, with our deadlines and goals changing on an almost hourly basis. Put on top of that all the technical issues I have had with computers malfunctioning, and the fact that the acquisition of a new laptop had been a drama filled mess. Compound all of that by the fact that I don’t really handle change well, and the absence of my wife has been probably the largest stress inducer, and I think my body is rebelling against me.

Yesterday I felt extremely horrible. I took my blood pressure at one point and it was extremely high, I was super dizzy… realized I had only had about 500 calories for the day… and also realized I had not actually had anything to drink since my early morning coffee. Instead of coming back to work after my late lunch meet up I drove to the house and remote in, so I could sit in my quiet serene office in the dark and try and calm the hell down. Additionally I drank about 32 oz of water and ate something for lunch.

So right now my goal for my birthday day… is to try and think as many calm thoughts as possible. This may or may not happen since my wife is essentially stranded at an airport right now. I am really hoping she ends up with an option to get home before 9pm. Honestly we don’t really know WHEN she will be home… since the 3:30 connecting fight is on “Stand by”. Again… I need to think happy non-rage-inducing thoughts. So the question is… what can I do that is super relaxing.

Leveling Crafting

So far my plan is to farm materials and finish leveling Foraging and Weapon Smithing in Rift. For whatever reason I find this activity calming. I have always liked riding around picking herbs, harvesting nodes and skinning bodies. There is just something serene about moving around a pretty landscape with a nice orchestral soundtrack.. and those little nodes on the map give you just enough of a reason to be there to keep it interesting. At this point I am in the level 50 zones working on Carmintium and the assorted herbs.

My problem is that I don’t quite remember what the sweet spot for ore and herbs was. I roamed around Iron Pine Peaks and it didn’t seem all that great, so I am thinking today I might go out to Ember Isle. At least there I have a shot at the various rare mobs that drop pets and such. Hopefully the activity will be just as calming as I seem to need it to be, and hopefully before long there will be a knock on my door with a new toy to set up.

I hope you all have a great day, and I want to thank everyone for the warm birthday wishes I have received over twitter and G+. I play a little game each birthday, to see who is the first automated bot to wish me a happy birthday. This year it was the WoWAce forum, which now that I think of it… might have been the winner last year as well. It is just interesting to log into email and see a flood of automated happy birthday messages. I have to say the experience of G+ and their birthday messages is a bit odd as well.. when you click the message saying you have birthday greetings it gives you a huge page of ALL the greetings. Surprise ninja greetings!! Anyways… maybe now Chuck will be satiated… I have blogged on my birthday.

Soul Cannon Sucks

June 17, 2013 by Belghast

It is a super rain morning here in Oklahoma, and I am shocked and amazed I am as cognitive as I am. The storms over night made the cats fairly crazy… and as a result they kept waking me up. I am sure at some point today the lack of solid sleep will hit me like a truck… but for now apparently I am mostly functional. At the very least I am “fixing to” get some coffee in me, which should stave off the eventual shutdown.

Laptop Redux

Most of yesterday, I had been reaching out to the community for feedback on the Lenovo y500 laptop, and I had gotten a few answers from folks that were actively using it. I began trying to figure out which site I would order it from, and had pretty much narrowed it down to Tiger Direct. They seemed to be able to get me the laptop quickest and for the cheapest. The absolute best deal is directly from Lenovo.com, however the estimated ship time… not arrival time… is 7/3/2013 which is way too long a wait for me. I am taking a trip in early July and really need a functional laptop by then.

After all this machination and preparation to just order the damned thing… about 7:00 pm last night I get a text back from the craigslist guy. He is rather apologetic and says that he has been dealing with trying to sell his car, and did not have his phone with him. He then proceeds to explain that email is the best means of contact for him, and gives me his address. This is one of those things that I wished he had put in the ad, because I would have preferred to have been dealing over email in the first place.

Ultimately after a few emails back and forth, we have agreed to meet today over the lunch hour and make the exchange. He will have the laptop back to factory specs as I requested, and for the price we originally agreed upon. So here is hoping this all actually happens as intended, and tonight I have a spiffy new laptop. I may seriously go postal if for whatever reason the guy flakes on me again. As of now I am just hoping everything goes as expected and I can get the swap and get back to work in a timely manner.

Soul Cannon Sucks

Yesterday I really did not play many games other than Final Fantasy Five as part of the Four Job Fiesta charity event. This whole thing kicked off Saturday, and there are already two people with confirmed kills of ExDeath. As for me I have just arrived on the second world, and am working my way to the Chocobo forest. The gods of randomization were really not smiling upon me as I hit each crystal and tweeted to get the next job. My originally doled out party was Black Mage, Red Mage, Geomancer, and Dragoon. But I decided that this was for charity anyways… so I exercised the “Job Fair” functionality to swap the Geomancer for Ranger and Dragoon for Samurai.

I decided that donating $9 to charity was so worth not hating my life for the rest of this game. I finally hit the first real stumbling block yesterday in the Soul Cannon fight. Please note… I was way too frustrated by the encounter to remember to take a picture… so I have subbed in some Google image search. I was attempting to tackle it with Black Mage, Red Mage, Ranger and Freelancer. Additionally I had somehow gotten confused since this is my first year doing the Fiesta… I mixed up Normal game from Natural game… in that I thought I could only use the job assigned to a specific crystal.

This meant I didn’t realize I could train everyone up in !Black so that I could have an army of Thundara firing badasses. This made the encounter super difficult, since Faris my freelancer was essentially dead weight. I managed to push through the fight by equipping my ranger with a lightning bow, and breaking thunder rods with my mages. But even at that… it was super close… and I managed to get down the cannon moments before the second beam attack. Once defeating it I honestly had a pretty easy time getting up to where I am right now, in the second world. Even the Gilgamesh fight was relatively simple to get through, but by that time I had my fourth job and had learned I could mix and match among those four jobs.

Tonight

I will probably play a bit tonight as well, but since I hope to have a new laptop to set up… I am sure I will be also playing various sundry things to test it out. However, Final Fantasy Five will be the perfect “waiting on shit to download and install” activity. I am really amped about getting the laptop, and again I really hope it does not fall through again. I have hated not being able to chill out on our new sofa and game this past week. Here is hoping this ends up as an awesome birthday present, since I am taking Tuesday off for my birthday and to pick my wife up from the airport.

I have to say that alone will be enough of a birthday present. For whatever reason I have really had a hard time with her being gone over a week this time. As I said yesterday, I think it is that always in the past I had so much guild based activity going on, trying to manage raids and grouping and various drama. I didn’t really have enough time to be lonely. This time… has definitely hit with a vengeance and I’ve not really known what to do with myself. The protracted drama with the laptop and my desktop misbehaving has definitely not helped the frustration.

Wrapping Up

I hope you all have a great day out there, and I hope that we all do not float away here in Oklahoma. The rain is still coming down furiously, and as a result the drive in will be very “hydro-planey”. That’s right… I totally invented that word. I hope the laptop guy does not flake out on me again, and that tonight I have a spiffy new machine to install stuff on. I am sure you all are more than happy to stop hearing about my laptop. Other positive news is I am done with another segment of NDA theatre… and can actually talk about whatever I end up playing this week!