Heavy Metal

My boyfriend is stupidly excited by the arrival of Black Gaurd and the live event leading up to it. He's going to be one of those maniacs doing every single task and being fanatical about getting the one week preview. Only one thing could make me excited about Black Gaurd. And that thing is ...

Pants.

For cripes freaking sake. Who's idea was it to stick EVERY male elf in a skirt? One skirt. Two skirts MAYBE. This is just dumb. There are no male elves who get to wear pants. Perhaps if it were just dark elf men I'd be slightly annoyed, but it's the same with high elves and I'm sure they'd like to see a bit of variety too. As a elfman fangirl I don't request getting to see a completely masculine silhouette. I demand it damnit. 

... please? ; ; 

If Malus Darkblade can do it, we can do it.

Witching Night!

I admit it, I'm a giant girl about holiday events. Honestly, holidays are probably one of my favorite parts of MMOs. I don't really know what it is but it probably centers around my well founded collector tendencies. I love limited edition things to collect. Things that you won't see till next year, or perhaps even never. I still have items on my very first MMO (FFXI) that I've kept for nearly six years and love to show off to newer players who ooo and ahh at them. This is why I should always be kept away from "free to play" mmos. Because I will so pay $5 for that stupid Valentine's Day sword if you tell me I can't only get it for a week.

Witching Night sounds really fun. Putting influence/PQs in the ORvR lakes has been suggested a few times as a way to boost action there and I really look forward to seeing how it works this time. Kudos to Mythic for finding a way to test the mechanic without actually launching it. I'm a bit annoyed at the time frames they suggest, hours between PQs, but not really for myself. School this week is pretty light so I'll have time to focus, but ugh how annoying would it be if the PQs never managed to happen during your play time? Or if you caught the tail end of one knowing that it wouldn't respawn for a long while. I guess that's what it takes to create both truely rare items and also concentrate slaughter.

But the highlight for me as I said... goodies!



While I want all of these masks the one I'm most after is the beautiful purple one. Both Sevren and Lyst would love one, Lyst especially. The masks are going to be available in several different ways but rare in all of them. I wonder if the masks will be enough to pull people to the RvR lakes or if the PQs there will hold regular loot as well. I admit I'm not in touch enough with the general PvP crowd to know if they give a flying fark about cute "useless stuff" or not. I'm counting on Phoenix Throne to be pretty hot after them though. Kudos again to Mythic for giving multiple ways to get the items, both PvP and PvE.  While I realize that WAR is an RvR game I really wouldn't be here if it was the only thing to do. What I love about WAR is the options available to gain items and advance your character. More options are always good. 

I'm less excited by these, I'm just not much of a cloak person. Even more so with the bug (or just plan bad decision I'm not sure which) that makes the "Hide cloak" option userside only. Both of my characters run around cloak-less unless in PvP. Girliness again I suppose, or perhaps just being an RPer. I care about what others see when they look at me and neither of my girls would wear cloaks unless cold. Lyst is annoyed enough by her heavy velvet skirts and Sevren refuses to hide the "asset" are armor puts on display so well. I'm curious if they can be dyed and if they can, will the pretty satin looking parts keep their texture? If so I'm a bit more interested.

I'm ten times more excited about Witching Night in WAR than I am about actual Halloween. Is that sad?

The Girls

Lyst is just about 24 now, I think about 15% short. I'm excited by my next level because I get a new moral ability that just seems evil,Scintillating Energy . Things have been going slow for her recently, both because quest xp seems to have dropped, Destruction sucks at Tor Anroc and because of the next girl you'll meet. All in all I still love Sorceress, and have fun playing her. Roleplay wise she's still pissed as hell at Itheleos for forcing her to disobey a direct order from her Matriarch that he didn't wish her to follow by cheap shotting her in the head with his staff. Hard to follow orders when crumbled in a heap on the floor of a tent I suppose. Jerk. 


This is Sevren. The class I originally wanted to play was Witch Elf but driven but how much I sucked at Rogue PvP in WoW and expecting Witch Elf to be just as direction focus as that class I left her sitting at level five for weeks. (Remember how Rogue PvP in WoW was mostly about spinning in circles as fast as you could trying to get to something's back? Yeah. I suck at controlling a character that fast/well) However, when I finally came up with a definite character and background for her I started leveling her along with my boyfriend's DoK and have fallen in love. I adore getting to kill things without blowing myself up in the process. Coupled with having a healer in my pocket most all the time the survivability both in RvR and PvE compared to our sorc/sorc duo is just incomparable. She's currently level 16 and very quickly moving along, at this rate she'll catch up to Lyst in a few days. Sevren has been the reason that Lyst hasn't gotten to 24 yet. It helps that my boyfriend is really loving his Disciple. It's so rare for him to play the healing class, I'm loving it as well :P

Roleplay wise she's ran into an old friend she grew up in the Temple with (The DoK) who she hasn't seen in a few decades. She's a lot like a few other characters I've played; trouble making, greedy, thieving, quick to anger, blood thirsty. She's a riot. And playing along with her DoK friend who was like a brother to her growing up but now has this fully grown, fully err... featured woman on his hands makes for all sorts of fun RP. Plus, well... look at her. She's cute as hell ^^b

Of course ... I had to catch Sevren blinking. I thought that only happened when you were taking a picture, not a screenshot -.-

PQ Pass Rolls

This is a recipe for frustration:

Five people gather together to help a friend get their hands on a piece of equipment that comes from a blue colored bag. The group does a PQ four times before seeing that ellusive blue bag. Only one person of the group of five wants the bag, the other four are more than happy to pass it on to their friend. The dice rolls click by, the bonuses are added and lo and behold, the guy who wants it with his 1 in 5 chance of getting it doesn't. Friend number three does and takes the coin for the achievement before going back to more grinding.

After spending hours today helping my boyfriend do a rarely done PQ over and over on his alt with backup from my sorceress just to finally have a yellow bag drop and ME win the darn roll he had a suggestion that I thougth made a lot of sense.

Ability to pass on bags in public quests. I don't know how many people end up helping friends/guild mates do PQs for specific colored bags but I do fairly often.  Just the option to back out of the roll if you choose, no forced need vs greed or any such, just a way for organized groups to get the ellusive gear to the people who want it. That purple bag that would make our DoK a happy elf might contained a belt with massive willpow and initative (read: crap.) for the sorcerer. Colored bags are rare enough, adding the fickle dice to the matter when only one or two people are actually after the loot is just torture. 

Also useful for the times I'm out doing ToK unlocks and stop to help with a lower level PQ that lacks a tank or healer but could be swayed by the DPS of a nukeynuker. I'm happy to help, especially if it clearly wouldn't have happened without me, but I hate it when I accidentally take a bag that I don't even want from someone who could use it. I'd totally pass if I could. 

On the subject of suggestions, Risset at The Inevitable City had a great suggestion today about The Inevitable City: The feature I wish we had The ability to use the many voiced lines that your character spout when right clicked on command. Like voice emotes. I thought it was a great one and I'll add it in tonight along with my daily plee for them to fix my legs so that I can sit and walk. 

How WAR saved me from WoW

In August I was playing Lord of the Rings Online and pretty happy. I was excitingly looking forward to the expansion and gladly provided information, pictures and movies from PAX to my fellow LoTRO players.  In September I got into the Mines of Moria beta and also got my minstral to 45, five levels bellow cap.  I'm not sure what happened but I got bored. I think as much as I love Tolkien and his works, playing a character in his world is just a little ... bland. Perhaps it's my preference for a more sword and sorcery type of setting. Regardless I was playing way more Tales of Vesperia than I was LoTRO. 

Then that day came. The day I dread fairly often. My boyfriend, my gaming and roleplay partner, the love of my life said words that cut to my heart....

"I'm thinking about going back to WoW."

In a instant panic attack full of visions of duo farming SM for that dagger I never got my 40 rogue and countless hours of mind less gulch farming and a world full of men with shovels for hands and barrens chat my mind raced for a way out. The first thing I thought to say was "I won't love you anymore if you make me go back to WoW!" but I deemed the situation not quite at that level yet. Taking a sharp turn to the right my brain scrambled for something, anything to divert him from that terrible idea. "Sex!" There was a good idea. "I'll do you if you don't go back to WoW." I felt this was probably a short term solution and I was not ready for dedication it would take to make it a long term one. 

"We can play Warhammer Online!"

I said these words not a week after stating that Warhammer Online didn't interest me and that it seemed like a PvP centric gankfest. (Can you feel the carebear shining through there?) But faced with the threat of a return to the land of epic farming, faction farming and ... and ... Goldshire (!) I was desperate.  Blessedly, he said that would work.

I bought a copy of WAR the next day while my boyfriend was at work. Just one single copy. You see, I still wasn't sold. I'd read a review that stated very clearly "If you are not a fan of PvP this game is not for you." I am in fact, not a fan of PvP, so I was pretty sure the game was in fact not for me. 

By the time he got home a few hours later he had to nearly pry the mouse from my clutches and peel me away from the desk to get a chance to play. Even then I hovered over his shoulder, pointing out the Tome of Knowledge and how it was "a deed log on steroids" and shoving at him like an excited kid telling him to join a scenerio que and yammering about class combinations that would work well for us.  Needless to say, a second copy was in my hands the next day. 

Bug Fixes

I need to make a post with more substance, I know this. But I had a random thought:

Though Warhammer has some slight bugs, mostly of the graphical and animation sort, as any new MMO will have I really apprieciate the rate at which Mythic is releasing bug fix patches. Nearly every game I've played previously has seemed to follow the pattern of 'Only fix things that are major instantly. Everything else can wait to be applied in a giant bug fix patch a week or so from now" Even when whole quests lines were broken and unfinishable they'd remain so until the devs got around to their next weekly or bi-weekly patch.... if then (Hello, Vangaurd.) 

Neary every day I check the patch notes and find a small patch fixing a handful of bugs. And I wonder why more developers don't do that.  It seems a vastly superior way of doing things. Heck, last Thursday there was a scheduled maintence that applied a rather large patch including some crafting reworks. Shortly after the patch there were issues with the login servers and realms came down again for a few hours. When the servers came back up they'd taken the downtime as a chance to apply EVEN MORE bugs that they'd apparently finished off between 10am and 3pm that work day. I love that

Waaaaagh.

*sigh*

That's about all I really need to say. I never thought I'd be playing Warhammer Online, much less loving the hell out of it. I've never liked PvP ... but I'm having a ball with RvR. Not only that... I'm playing destruction! I'm beating up high elves and laughing maniacly. It's all the Dark Elf women's fault. Give me fantasy girls in skimpy clothing and I'm all over it. I was the same way with Dark Elves in Lineage 2. I'm a straight girl, I don't know what it is. But once I compaired Dark Elf outfits to High Elf outfits my side was chosen. 

The roleplay is a bit lacking, though I largely blame Mythic for that. How the hell do you release a modern MMO without basics like /sit, /walk and social gathering spots? Even more mind boggling given that they have flagged RP servers with a pop up explaining the rule set and letting you know it will be enforced. I joined an RP guild, and Brit and I are of course roleplaying with each other constantly as usual.

I'm also suprised by how well I do in PvP. I sucked so hard at it in WoW and avoided it like the plague in EVE and Lineage 2. I'm usually top ranked in scenarios I do, second only to Brit who's also a Sorcerer and of course better than me at it. 

Yeah. WAR. Rawr.

Sorry LoTRO.