My GW2 Home: Sanctum of Rall

Posted on July 18, 2012 by

I’ve spoken on Twitter about how, on my return to Rift, I rejoined my old Rift guild, Gaiscioch. It’s been a blast being back with them, and even though they are a freakishly huge guild, they feel more like a “family” guild than many of the other smaller guilds I’ve been a part of. We’ve been running lowbie Instant Adventures for the lower-level folks, raid rifts and expert rifts and crafting rifts for the 50s, and they have a ton of dungeon and raid runs going on every night. It really and truly is an amazing group of people and a great guild to call home.

Despite the joy, there’s been some sadness in the guild since I last ran with them. One of the long-time members of the guild, Roger “Oldroar” Rall, passed away suddenly last fall. He just stopped appearing online abruptly, and after about two weeks, our GM and a couple of others started trying to track him down to check on him. They spoke to his wife, who said that he had quietly passed away one night. Of course, the news spread like wildfire in the guild, back to former members/alliance members that had played with him during Warhammer and DAoC, and everyone, even those who had never met him, felt a profound sense of loss.

Oldroar was the kind of guy that set the tone and example for the rest of the guild. In-game, he was a calm and collected PvP leader who led his teams to victory while always acting with honor towards the opposing teams. To the men, he was a mentor and an example of how to be a great husband & father, and how to balance those responsibilities with gaming. To the ladies, he was always a gentleman and treated us as equals, with respect and dignity. He was a grandfatherly figure to the kids in the guild, and he was someone that we all could go to for advice not just on game strategies and problems, but real life problems as well. He encouraged us to follow our dreams, to be better people, and to take the high road when others were not. He was our friend, in the truest sense of the word.

He was also the “Voice of Gaiscioch”… you couldn’t miss that radio voice on vent.

Guild Wars 2 was the game he was most excited about. Oldroar, along with many of the veteran players in Gaiscioch, was an avid PvPer, and after hearing about GW2′s WvW/PvP features, as well as all the other playstyles that would be supported, was leading the charge to get a Gaiscioch chapter opened in GW2, posting news and information as it came out and eventually convincing our leadership to open a branch within Guild Wars 2. More than anything, he was looking forward to playing Guild Wars 2 and to seeing our super-diverse family grow and thrive there.

It was decided that we would hold an in-game/ventrilo memorial for him, not in Rift, but in Guild Wars 2 when it opened – it only seemed appropriate. The date & time had been set, the only remaining question was what server to roll on. Our guild decided to start one final Call to Arms for Oldroar: to try to get a GW2 server named for the man that had been so passionate about the game and had done so much for the guild over the years. We wrote letters and sent emails to ArenaNet, telling them about the person he was, the legacy he has left with us, and how much he adored GW2. We asked them to consider naming a server for Roger, a server that we could call home and continue living out his legacy.

This morning, I heard the news that they are indeed implementing “Sanctum of Rall” as a server. I admit that I cried tears of happiness over this. THANK YOU ArenaNet, for being so awesome. You just made a whole lot of people ecstatically happy. We will do our best to make Sanctum of Rall an amazing home for all playstyles and all players that roll there, just as Oldroar would have wanted.

Posted in Guild Wars | 53 Comments

Decisions, Decisions

Posted on July 6, 2012 by

I’ve been trying to sort things out in my head regarding all the new MMOs and expansions that are going to be bombarding us this fall. There’s so many games on my radar and so little time.

The Secret World: Purchase Fee, Sub Fee. Has a unique modern-day horror concept, with great story and actual puzzles/riddles to solve. More of an MMO Adventure Game.

Rift Storm Legion: Purchase Fee, Sub Fee. Proper expansion, two new continents, more souls, player housing, among other things. Traditional MMO.

Guild Wars 2: Purchase Fee, No Sub Fee. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful game, with (from what I hear) a unique stumble-upon questing format and WvWvW. Oh yeah, and no sub fee. Traditional MMO with lots of twists.

Mists of Pandaria: Purchase Fee, Sub Fee. Pandas. Monks. Asian-themed continent. Pet pokemon. Traditional MMO.

Wurm Online: No Purchase Fee, Sub Fee. Sandbox playground of choice.

Last night my husband and I were talking about all of the options, and in an ideal world, we’d pick two of the above and stick it out. I just don’t think that’s going to work this time though.

Wurm: is a no-brainer, it’s a sandbox unlike the others on the list, and it’s the yin to the yang of every other MMO on this list. $12/month for the two of us just to keep the deed going, and make that $24/month if we’re actually playing and need premium time.

MoP: is looking less and less likely for us – we’re just not that interested in Pandas or the new continent, and other games are far more compelling. Our annual passes run out in October – that day can’t come fast enough.

GW2: we just pre-ordered so that we can check it out during the next BWE – to be honest, I know next to nothing about GW2 right now, and I’ve been avoiding as much hype as possible, but the lack of a sub fee is attractive. We’ve already paid for it, so it’s ours whether we actually play it or not.

Rift X-Pack: I’m totally hyped about – after getting back into Rift recently, I’ve completely fallen head over heels for it. It’s finally a fleshed-out, substantial, complete theme park game, and it’s tremendously fun. $30/month for the two of us.

TSW: Here’s where it gets tricky. We’ve already got Wurm and Rift as sub games, but TSW offers something different as well. Here’s the thing: Mr. Moxie adores paranormal stuff like Ghost Hunters and The Walking Dead, and he’s been declaring TSW as being “that Scooby-Doo MMO” – a big plus in his book. We also love puzzle/investigation movies like Sherlock Holmes, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or National Treasure. So the setting is right and the gameplay is compelling, but it’s another subscription-based game, and we’re not altogether sure that it is full enough or robust enough to hold us long-term. Then again, I felt that way about Rift last year, and after a year of development, it’s much-improved now.

All in all, if we played all four games that are catching our eye right now, we’d be shelling out about $320 in box fees, plus $85-$100 a month in subscription fees, unless we somehow stagger the games or alternate months. You have to consider play time as well -  cycling through 4 games at once is a terrifying proposition. I know, I know, first world problems.

Any way you slice it, this is a fantastic time to be an MMO gamer – there’s never been so many great new games on the market at the same time.

 

 

Posted in Guild Wars, Rift, The Secret World, WoW, Wurm | Leave a comment

Back Into the Rift

Posted on July 2, 2012 by

While it seems like most of the MMO bloggers were nomnomnoming their way through the TSW launch deliciousness this weekend, I decided to set aside some time to really dig into Rift and get re-acquainted with the game. As some of you know, I played Rift at launch for a while, eventually leaving because the game world just didn’t seem to stick with me. I can’t explain exactly why, although I know that I wasn’t completely alone – many others expressed the same feelings at the time. Still, I’ve been a bit of a Trion fangirl ever since. More than any other MMO company out there, I feel like they really listen to the players and are genuinely interested in developing a great gaming experience for their customers. Free server transfers? Free mobile app that lets you keep up with guild chat out-of-game? Putting out new patch content at a blistering pace that is unmatched by any other MMO? GMs hopping into general chat to answer questions and get feedback? Yes, that actually happened Friday night on the Faeblight server. Pretty freaking cool.

I was able to join my first Instant Adventure after the 1.9 patch hit last week, and it was super-fun rolling through an open-world zone with a raid full of people, completing objectives in rapid succession. Even better was that since IAs are open-world, if I was out questing and a IA group came rolling through the area, I could join them with the click of a button. It struck me over the weekend that Rift has been successful at doing one thing that World of Warcraft has talked a lot about but has yet to really execute sucessfully – getting people out into the world. I play on highly-populated RP servers in both games, and while I might be lucky to see one or two other players out & about while leveling in WoW, I see other players all the time in Rift, even in the mid-level zones with no Instant Adventures yet.

It’s popular among some folks, particularly those who have played WoW, to say that Rift was and still is a WoW-clone (and boy do I detest that term). Rift certainly did take inspiration from WoW (and many other MMOs as well), but there are so many features that Rift has added over the past year that it’s really grown into being something very different. If anything I would argue that Rift is much like what WoW would have been had it taken a completely different approach to development over the years – essentially WoW in a different timeline. Rift has so many things that distinguish it from WoW other than just the rifts themselves… the Soul System, Chronicles, Instant Adventures, Mentoring, 3-Faction PvP, Artifact Collections, Puzzles, a Wardrobe (implemented long before and much better than WoW’s clunky Transmogrification feature), and coming with the expansion this fall, Dimensions, a type of player & guild housing. All this while still pushing out new raid and dungeon content, new zones for those at level cap, world events, and all the other things that you expect to see during the first year of an MMO, with a development speed and agility that Blizzard can only dream of.

All in all, I’m enjoying my time back in Telara so far. I still have yet to decide what guild to settle with for the long haul – most of the guilds that I was in at launch are gone now, and I’ve been guild hopping (which I detest, but sometimes that’s the only way to get to know a guild) between several guilds on various alts to find the guild that best fits – but I have it narrowed down to two, and one of those is looking far more likely than the other. That decision will likely be made tonight. I also really want to get a character to 50 so that I can participate in Conquest, Ember Isle, and other activities (not raiding! ew!) at level cap, and so that I’ll be ready once the expansion hits this fall, but that’s proving difficult because I’m bouncing between alts right now – I like them all! I really need to pick one and stay committed to it until 50 before alting it up.

Posted in Rift | 2 Comments

Show and Tell Time

Posted on June 20, 2012 by

The renovations to Avonlea Bay are coming along just swimmingly. My order of bricks, mortar, and fence bars was delivered on Sunday, which meant that I could finally rip the old buildings down and get started on the rebuilds. One nifty thing about Wurm is that the seasons change regularly now!

Winter:

Spring!

And since I just logged back into Wurm and the daylight is about to break, I think it’s time to take a tour!

The new “front entrance” to the deed. This is an almost exact copy of the old entrance to my former deed on Independence, Cherryglade Farm. It was my inspiration while doing the redesign of the deed – this isn’t Cherryglade Farm 2.0, but it does take a lot of the themes and elements of the old deed and mash them into something that works well in the existing area.

The new workshop, with a working well out front. Originally this was going to be the same level as everything else, but we ended up hitting rock from the mountain behind us and because of water level issues, couldn’t surface mine it down without dragging a boat inland. Instead, we just raised the workshop up, and I actually like it better this way.

The inside of the workshop is nowhere near done. It needs to be completely organized, new workstations need to be built, and the flooring needs to be completed. We’ll pretend we never saw this. Moving on…

Ahhh, The Wild Boar Inn from the bay side! Note the sun coming up over the trees. I took it’s design directly from World of Warcraft, complete with a mailbox out front, kitchen inside, and beds in the back. One day when Rolf gets multi-story buildings in, this will probably become a 2-story building. For now, I’m happy with this. Let’s go inside.

Public Kitchen area. Pretty standard, slightly messy still.

The back area which still needs a lot of work. These will be the inn rooms, with each tile being it’s own enclosed private room with a bed, a lamp, and nightstand. Yes, there is still grass in the inn for now, the floorboards that you see are what remains of the original inn and kitchen. Floorboards will likely be the last thing to get completed. ;)

The meditation garden, located right on the water. The two statues mark our Love and Knowledge meditation tiles. The bench is decorative. I really like this spot.

Here is the new & improved entrance to our silver mine. When I first settled here, this was the first mine that I created, and at the time I was lazy and didn’t bother straightening the tile up before tunneling in, which meant it had been crooked for months. That always bothered me and my slightly OCD perfectionism, so this was a perfect chance to fix it. I learned a very valuable (and pricey) lesson though: When collapsing a mine entrance, you probably need to collapse both the entrance and the tile behind it, otherwise you won’t be able to surface-mine the top because it’ll see it as going “under” an existing tunnel. I ended up spending 5 silver on the inital collapse (that didn’t work), then had to tunnel it out again, shelled out another 10 silver to re-collapse the two tiles, made the fixes to the slopes, and re-tunneled in. Yeah, a Magranon priest would have done it for less. I was impatient.

The breeding horses in their new pens, plus one of the tower guards watching over them.

At some point last week or the week before, as I was lamenting the upcoming de-premiuming of my main, Moxie, Mayrin’s husband Bognus donned his signboard and began preaching about the benefits of being a Vynora priest instead of a Fo priest. He convinced me to give the priest thing one more shot, and as part of that he came over and build a gold altar of Vynora next to the token. Shiny! I’m still a Vynora follower and am trying to get my Faith up so that I can be converted into a priest, but so far I’m much happier – I really didn’t want to give up Moxie as a main.

The boardwalk to Trueknight Haven, Jewelspar, and Independent Settlers – this used to be right on the water, but I like this better. The depth of the water is deeper now compared to the land, so large boats can pull right up to the shore, no problem.

So that’s where we’re at today – everything is coming along great, all that’s left is finishing out the interiors of the buildings. I’m really, really loving the changes, it has completely transformed the feel of the deed and is just a happier and prettier place overall.

I’ve also taken this opportunity to add two new pages to the blog, under the Avonlea Bay header. One is a WurmPlanner map of the deed with a legend that explains all the different areas on the property. The other is our ordinance, or basically our rules while on-deed. I want to eventually add a mine map and maybe merchant/for sale page as well.

 

Posted in Wurm | 1 Comment

Schizophrenic Gaming

Posted on June 18, 2012 by

This weekend was all about schizophrenic gaming – during my downtime I managed to play 4 games, sometimes in tandem, in a mad rush to try to get stuff done in three games, while beta-testing another. At times it left my head spinning as I jumped from game to game, much like a kid on Christmas Day trying to play with all their new toys. Time for a gaming update!

World of Warcraft:

I spent the least amount of time here, and to be honest, I’ve spent very little time here over the past few weeks. It’s a combination of pre-expansion doldrums and good ol’fashioned burnout, as usual. Most nights I log on to chat with guildies, fly around Stormwind a bit, and maybe do a cooking or fishing daily. I’m still on the fence about Mists of Pandaria – on one hand I’m hopeful for what it may bring to the game and there are a few little things that I think are really neat – specific new mounts, account-wide mounts & achievements, the Tillers faction, and so on. On the other hand, there’s just so much more with MoP that I feel fairly indifferent to: the pandas, Pandaria itself, monks, new raids, the re-vamping of Scholomance and Stratholme, and so on. This is honestly the first WoW expansion that I haven’t been absolutely giddy with excitement over. My annual pass expires in October, so whether I’ll be investing in MoP remains to be seen.

Rift:

So this weekend I jumped back into Rift with the 3 Free Days that you get when you do the security update on your passwords, and it’s been a bit of an overwhelming experience. I jumped back on my little Rogue Bard on Faeblight, was immediately coin-locked (Yay! Thanks Trion!) and started trying to clean out my quest log & bags, getting re-acquainted with my abilities, trying to remember where certain important NPCs are, and generally wandering around with a confused look on my face. It’s been a solid year since I last played, so the amount of content and updates that have happened since then has been staggering – and that’s a good thing. I love how Trion has continued to plug away at pushing out updates so frequently this year and putting in features that encompass the entire spectrum of playstyles. I’m also super excited about the Storm Legion expansion – compared to the other expansions that are coming out this year, I’d say that Rift’s easily tops the others in terms of content and new features.

The Secret World (Beta):

There’s no NDA on the TSW beta, so I’ll go ahead and share my impressions here. I’m intrigued by the setting still – I love the modern conspiracy theory/paranormal theme they’ve got going on, and I love the non-traditional riddle and sabotage quests. Zombie-ridden Kingsmouth is about as close as you’ll ever get to playing The Walking Dead Online – shooting zombies and setting them on fire just doesn’t get old.

TSW feels like it’s been set up very well for future monetization. Given the lack of leveling and the way that skill advancement is set up, I could easily see them selling costume parts, new weapons/powersets, new zones/storylines, etc. My gut feeling is that TSW will be F2P in a year. It’s not a bad MMO by any means; it does have some rough edges but the setting and uniqueness of the game makes me think that it’ll have a small but loyal & dedicated following, and it’ll end up being a niche MMO. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, as long as Funcom has budgeted and forecasted correctly.

Will I be playing? Maybe later – probably not at launch. If it goes F2P, I’ll most definitely jump in.

Wurm Online:

And while I’ve been playing the games above, I’ve been running Wurm in the background, finishing up the landscaping and busily attaching bricks and mortar to my new workshop and inn. I’ll have a bigger update with pictures coming later!

Posted in Random, Rift, The Secret World, WoW, Wurm | 1 Comment

And the Beat (of work) Goes On

Posted on June 12, 2012 by

Another day, more improvements! The trees are growing and a couple have already sprouted up close to their full height – another day or two and there should be a little forest going on here. It feels good to restore the natural forest back into the area. I love the nature preserve/park theme that is developing here.

The new fencing has started going in – and no, I skipped the basic wood and stone options in favor of iron fence bars. Iron fence bars take forever to gather and make materials for, but they are class.

Our neighbor Xalorum came up from his Celebration deed today, and I was greatly pleased that he was able to pull his corbita right up to the shore of Avonlea Bay, something that wouldn’t have been possible before due to the shallow water of the old coastline. He also brought me a present.

A lovely champion rat corpse, right in front of the Wild Boar Inn. Gee, thanks Xalo. Guess we’ll be serving up rat stew for the next week. ;)

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Gettin’ Down & Dirty at the Bay

Posted on June 11, 2012 by

This weekend was insanely busy for me in Wurm. I got started on the first phase of renovations to Avonlea Bay, filling in the inlet. Which meant that of course I needed lots and lots of dirt. Thankfully my neighbor had oodles of dirt that she cheerfully volunteered to let me have, as long as I picked it up at her place. So began many, many trips back & forth between our two deeds, hauling dirt.

That was the epitome of excitement, I tell ya. At least I did get to finish the first season of Game of Thrones while I was doing this.

But, once it was all finished, I was super-pleased with just how much room it opened up. The next step was to cut down my 10 oak trees (I know, I know, I almost cried, but I did pluck several sprouts off of them before they came down) and destroy the old cobblestone paths to make way for the new traffic pattern. The last step (for now) was plucking & planting tons and tons of sprouts and flowers, and replanting that entire area.

Picture time!

Before:

And After:

Of course this is nowhere near finished yet. I still need to build fencing, finish planting, surface-mine part of the mountain next to the storehouse, tear down the old storehouse and build a bigger workshop, tear down the old inn and kitchen, and build a new-and-improved inn (bigger, with a built in kitchen and separate “rooms”). That’s Phase 1.

Phase 2 will be even more ambitious.

See the vertical line of buildings on the left? That’s on the mountainside, which means a LOT of surface mining before I can even get started on the actual construction. The large building at the bottom of the image will be the mountainside manor, overlooking the bay and the rest of the deed, and a little pen for animals – maybe some deer. The other little buildings will be guest homes, or homes for other citizens, should we start recruiting again at some point in the future. Also note the pier at the bottom right. That will extend all the way out to the clay pit in the bay – no more boating clay in, and it’ll give us more space to park the big ships that my husband and villagers are working on.

After all of this, my villagers have requested a colossus. We’ll see how it goes after finishing all these projects. ;)

Posted in Wurm | 3 Comments