Sunny side

Today marks a momentous occasion.

Finally, finally, finally got to run an in character six man in Bastion Stair with my wonderful guild. It was admittedly short, we did the first PQ once and then ran into a rash of DCs and weird server lag that combined with my guild leader's short amount of playtime just lead to an all out bust. But it was the first time in the Stair for everyone there other than Calintz and I and the general sentiment seemed to be "I have so been missing a good dungeon crawl, we are so doing this again." That of course put Calintz into a state of pure glee as he's been going a little bit insane over the past two months trying to get pick up or alliance groups for dungeons runs on his 40 DoK.

On a high from getting to do something we've been looking forward to for three months we made a leveling push on Menkara (DoK) and Calintz (BG) in an effort to provide better main tanking and healing to our small all DE group tomorrow when we're suppose to try again. So we went to Praag, which is I admit, not my favorite zone. We had no in character reason to be there so we elected for a purely OOC grind fest and managed to go from 32 - 34 in about four hours. That's right folks, a level every two hours. Bow before our PvE might *pantpantpantfalloverdie*

We were joined toward the end of the night by Drakis, a magus guildmate, who seemed really exciting by the xp you can pound off in an AoE party. It was a lot of fun to level with him even OOCly because it's almost always just the two of us either because we're RPing as we go along in storyline that wouldn't invole others or because we're not RPing at all and so don't tend to invite the members of our 100% IC guild. It was a fest of spinning halberds, belching demons, floating humans and frantic party heals but we got a hefty chunk of xp together and a friend seemed to have fun.

So that brings me to one level 40 and a level 34. I feel like a certified hardcore gamer, which is laughable if you knew that it only took me five years to get a character to max level in FFXI and that was my first and last prior to WAR. Calintz and I have set the goal to grind to 35 because there's several nice pieces of gear for us there and from then on to just let xp come as it does. Getting to 40 twice while all but two members of the guild haven't gotten forty yet would be a bit ... boring as freaking crap frankly. Calintz does need to work on grinding off a ton of renown to get warded for city dungeons though which means that so do I ; ; My first forty isn't even warded yet. Getting me to grind scenarios in T4 is like pulling teeth, it hurts so damn much.

In the world of Ainilome, where roleplay fun beats the pants off of Fortress battles and zone flips, there's been a marked increase in WAR fun factor over the past week or so. Both Menkara and Calintz have managed to become involved in at least one storyline, have gotten some serious RP with someone other than each other and just generally became a lot more fun to play. I think my play time will continue to be reduced from what it was when I started, there is just not enough to do at 40 that doesn't involve being disabled, disarmed, rooted, knocked back/down/up/around until you're ready to pull out your hair. But there is enough to keep me going with hands down the best roleplay guild I've had the pleasure of being a member of in my six years of MMO gaming and probably the best group of roleplayers in twelve years of RPing. Mythic should give Arha Khaladh some cookies, because they're the reason that we're still giving them $30 a month.

Oh, which reminds me, Arha Khaladh gained Guild Rank 20 yesterday/today and we finally get to display our full heraldry. Woo for us!

It's suppose to be dragon eye, if I remember right. Our guild name roughly translates as Night of Dragons in Druhir.  But I'm pretty sure with the blood drops that it's actually Khaine's eye?I'm a bit off on my Druchii symbology.  Awesome either way. Great to no longer have that generic destro symbol on my back. 
(Again with the jagged edged in my screenshots when I have no AA issues in game :/)

I should have named the blog "Pointless Rambles".

First things first, a big welcome to the slew of new bloggers our WAR: Age of Blogging initiative have brought in. Cabal of War , Asuryan's Flames, Alt Much, Grumble and Mutter, From the Forging of Fire and Ice, The Rant, WAR! For Casual, The Tome of Gonna, In the XOne, Schlotzky's Game Blog, The Grumblings of Gorebash, WAR Addons Reviewed, Cry Moar Noob, One Side of the Fence and Rainbow's MMOs. Whew. 

And now for another pointless ramble. 

I've been concidering dusting off my sorceress. Lyst was my original character, thus the name of the blog being a Sorceress ability. I had even planned originally to focus a good portion of my content on the Sorceress class, from it's abilties to it's very awesome lore. But then along came the pokeypokey portable blender joy of Witch Elf and the launch of Blackgaurd and poor Lyst has been sitting at 24 for months. Teir 4 has instilled a deep hatered in me for MDPS (ok, annoyance. But I'm a Dark Elf, I can be emo if I like.) and while healing with my DoK is fun it doesn't satisify the blood lust so well. There's also the fact that she's been sitting at 140ish cultivating and apothocary for all those months with a vault and mail box bursting with supplies from my 200 scavanger and my boyfriends 200 butcher. I spent about an hour crafting a few days ago and she's now just below 175 in both. I do like the potions I can pump out, +70 to a stat for 10 mins is really awesome. I am wary of switching to another alt when my main isn't getting much play time and I have completely failed at getting my current alt into the rampant RP of my guild. Which brings me to my original point of posting.

I have no idea what my problem is. Perhaps it comes from years (yes, yeeeeeears) of really only roleplaying with my boyfriend's characters but I'm like an RP hermit. I created Menkara's character specifically so that I had the drive and means to get involved in multiple storylines. She's a seer, of the strict Druchii variety and based very heavily on the various seers and prophets of the Malus Darkblade novels. I've gone really in depth learning about how exactly the Druchii seers peer into the future, the tools they use, what they see, how concrete it is etc. I worked out a storyline for her entrence to the guild with my guild leader and she ended up being named High Priestess of the House. 

But she's hardly interacted with anyone. If I may be blunt and open, being that this is my personal blog, I and she was/is a bit off put by the fact that even though I had her character sheet up on the forums for months before she actually started being played within a week of her entrance to the guild there were two other seer or psycic characters created or joined. It sort of took the wind out of my sails. I had all these grandeous ideas of her established standing as a semi well known seer of Har Ganeth, infamous for the powerful people she has backed giving her a lot of "buisness". Of people coming to her to employ her talents. She's very cheap after all, she's made it clear she works for anyone and the only compensation she requires is that of flesh sent to her temple for sacrific. The average price is a dozen Asur or two dozen human. Affordable rates! But that fact is that no one seems to even remember that she's the High Priestess, much less that she's a seer. Is it my fault? Probably. As I said, I seem to be a hermit. I just can't manage to get myself involved, or in the right place at the right time, or not busy when events are going on or finding conversations that Menkara doesn't find insepid to take part in in guild chat.  I think my failure at this character that I had so many hopes for is contributing a lot to my lack luster drive to play WAR anymore.

She has an awesome, awesome storyline going with her leveling partner, Calintz. Their RP continues to be dynamic, unique, varied and highly emotional. But her relationship with the House is about nill. I log on, she greets the house, everyone says "Greetings, Menkara" and then I fall quiet.  A lot of time it's because I get swooped up into personal RP. It's very hard to chat idly in guild when Menkara and Calintz are busy argueing or some other drama. It goes back to what I said in a post months ago, RP is what you put into it. And I think that's where I fail :/ 

I promise to keep the ratio of emo to non-emo posts at a steady 1:2 ration by finishing my comments on the several totally usless abilities that DoK get or a run down of my biggest pet peeve in the Sorceress vs. Bright Wizard debate ... wait, would Sorc vs. BW count as an emo post? 

It always comes back to RP

I'm no Syp, that's for sure.

Today marks eight days since my last post and probably once or twice each of those days I started to say something and stopped. Maybe I'm winding down from my 40 push, maybe I'm distracted by the stress of finals week falling on the same week as "holy crap pay rent" week. Maybe a bit of both, I'm just never going to find as much to talk about as others I fear. Ah well.

1.6 has come and gone and in classic me style the most exciting things for me are the lamest for others. There is of course the release of BG which I'll get to in a minute, but for me the most exciting thing was:

Hide cloak and hide helm are working now and visable to other players.

Freak yeah! Now if sheath would work, and they'd finally add /sit and /walk I'd be nearly perfectly happy with the game. I really am that easy to please. 

I haven't rolled a blackgaurd myself (didn't even unlock it actually) but I've been caught up in the alt rush because my boyfriend has and I've rolled a DoK to pair with him. It's exciting to finally get to play these two as we've had their basic character and storyline written and waiting for a month and a half. And as is always the case, watching new characters grow and evolve unprompted as you play them is some of my biggest RP delights. 

/beginRPramble

I tend to play romantic characters... ok, more than tend. I always play romantic characters. It's the girl in me, and I'm super blessed and lucky to have a boyfriend who enjoys that sort of RP as well. In the past we've made a lot of couples with tense relationships, those that didn't get along at first. I've always seen a clear path for how they would likely get from at each other's throats to the mushy stuff but that isn't the case for this go round.

He's managed to make a real and true freaking -bastard-. I absolutely hate his character, on an OOC standpoint as well. He does a wonderful job of being bull headed, bossy, egotistical, single minded, controlling, dominering and down right evil. So much so that he's blind sided both I and my character with his bastardness so much that I have to gap at my screen and take a few minutes to figure out how to respond at times. And I've managed to make a girl so set in her ways, so prideful and confident in herself that the two clash beautifully. If they're out on the battlefield he wins, as in the arguments go his way, he can push her around. If they're in camp, having a meal together or in any other social situation it's "her battlefield" and she's begining to learn how to handle him. But even on "her battlefield" he has the upper hand due to their storyline. But I can not for the life of me see how they're going to come close to a loving relationship, a lustful one perhaps, but not loving. I think she'll always hate him, and he will never love anyone other than himself. But in their own very Druchii way I know they'll eventually meet in the middle and care for each other. This game has really been an eye opener for me in playing evil characters, I'm having a blast.

/endRPramble

With the new alts and having reached 40 Sevren and Telvarian haven't been getting as much playtime. I kind of expected that honestly. There's very little to do at forty other than RvR and it's probably no secret to anyone that I'm not a crazy RvR fan. I like it sometimes, but it's something I tend to take in small doses. We're also the only 40s in our guild and there's only a handful of other t4s. We knew that would be the case though. I'm genuinly dreading grinding off the last few renown levels I need to equip all my Annhilator's set. Ugh, and poor Menkara and Calintz (the alts) have a terrible renown to base level ratio. I RvRed with her before BG came out and had a lot of fun with it, I tend to play healers a lot and this is my first in WAR. But good god, RvR in teir 1 and teir 2 SUCKS SO MUCH currently. I just can't take it. Nine blackgaurd versus eight KoTBS and their runepriest minions. I keep ending up being the only healer. And DoK is just not a healing powerhouse pre-20. I think I'll have fun with it once I get out of this weirdo tank heavy set up it's currently in, but I'm going to be ashamed when I get renown rank 10 at base rank 20 something -.- 

I have arrived!

9 days, 23 hours of playtime and roughly one month of being activly played (that ratio is SCARY):

Dun dun duuuuuuuuhn!



I have finally arrived. My second max level character in a game ever. (The first was FFXI. That's right folks, I only got to 59 in vanilla WoW before my boyfriend finally let me quit and I do not regret it) Just in time for my subscription to run out and my broke arse to be unable to pay it for a week or so ; ; And just in time to start it all over again with DoK when my BF rolls his blackgaurd. I don't really mind, I'm hella excited by their characters and storyline and look forward to playing them. But 958,000 xp from 39-40 was scary as crap and I don't feel like doing it again anytime soon. 

PS: Why are my screenshot always so jaggedy when I have no AA issues in game? Weird.

For the Record

I'd just like to say, in an effort to counter balance Syp's isistance that the WAR bloggers are all negative:

I love WAR.  Do I think that it has issues? Of course it does, it's a two month old game. I usually don't play MMOs at launch for that very reason but the boyfriend was threatening me with WoW torture. (That's sort of like water torture except more painful and more repetative. Plus more idiots jumping around everywhere.) I am level headed and experienced in MMOs enough to know that it will get better. I trust Mythic, just based on the amount of fixes and content added already, to continue to make things better. They're not Destination Games after all. So! For the record, Ainilome/Sevren is a happy WAR camper and not likely to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Sevren is now 38. The rate at which I've leveled has seriously blown my mind, I have put in a stupid amount of playtime in the past month. The sort of playtime that I'd be ashamed to tell my mother. But I'm nearly there and still loving the hell out of witch elf. I've done it mostly on PvE because ... brace yourselves now..

I like PvE. I know! /gasp. Dark Elf lands at least have some really awesome and fun quests, some interesting storyline and great things to roleplay through. My only complaint is that even mixed with a scenerio every now and then there isn't enough content in DE lands to get me to 40. Every level since 31ish I've had to go somewhere else to finish half a level and unlock the quests at the next camp. I'd like either more quests or just a raise in XP given, or reduction in XP required. But it's minor in the end, I just put on my RP blinders and grind off quests in Greenskin lands out of character. Not nearly as fun as staying in my home zone though. 

My other complaint is one common to witch elves. Our itemization really, really, really sucks. And is quite buggy. Twice now in Bastian Stair I've won a purple bag with an awesome helm. Problem is, the "helm" is actually Chosen shoulders and hovers big WoW style shoulderpads four feet off my shoulders. Awsome! Only not. And the final influence reward from Bastian Stair? The shoes are actually gloves and the gloves are actually shoes and BOTH of them have Willpower as a main stat with not a drop of strength. Honestly, the poor guys at Mythic must have been pulling eighteen hour shifts near launch to manage goofs like that. 

Yesterday saw a day of questing for the the proc weapons and I am now the happy owner of Nightfall and Frenzy, smexy things that they are. I would hug them if they weren't so sharp. Varian got his proc weapons as well, going with Midnight and Cenbur.

Except Cenbur is a chalice that's actually a sword, or a sword that look like a chalice. 

Honestly now Mythic. 

Treadmill (Plus RP rambles)

I'm starting to feel the grind.

Sevren just hit 30, heck of a lot of levels in a week or two, for me at least. Varian (the boyfriend) plans on being 34 or so by the time we go back to school on Thursday but I think I'm going to die if we push for that. I understand the push, we're in a game we love, both playing classes with love and we're not the lowest level players in our guild. All of those things are EXTREMELY rare in the grand scheme of things. I don't have a problem putting the time in to level, it's just...

The grind. 

Yes yes, it's not -that- bad. I realize that. You're talking to a girl who's played Final Fantasy XI for five years. I know a grind when I see one, but regardless. I played for seven hours straight today, focusing on questing chapter 13 and 14 in greenskin lands while doing scenerios and it still took me that whole time to go from 40% to 100%. And now 523,170 experience from 30-31 makes me want to sit down and sob. Quests that give between 6,000 and 10,000 (the latter being very rare) exp plus Tor Anroc giving 3000-11,000 depending makes that five.hundred.thousand. experience points look gigantic. 

I concider myself a hardcore player in a lot of ways. Gaming is my main hobby (mostly, my only one). I live with my boyfriend who's just as big a gamer as I am. We're both full time students with plenty of free time and have no problem spending a whole day hanging out at our PCs smashing Order in the face together.  If I look at the required exp from 28ish to 40 and reel I can't imagine what a more casual player feels. 

I'm sure it only feels like a ton because I'm actually pushing for max level, something I don't usually do. I should take more breaks to roleplay with someone other than Varian (or just at all, grind grind grind the last few days). My guild obviously has a whole ton of storyline and interactions going on but being new and also being driven to level, I've not managed to even hear about them much less take part in them. Sevren's goals need a bit more hashing out I think. She's very selfish and very uninterested in pretty much anyone else. Her priorities are Khaine and the standing of the temple and helping Varian with the goals he holds centered around his own house. Re-reading that I see what my problem with her is. She's a servant type of character, a follower and her leader just wants to get to 40 tomorrow!  *flails* 

I also need to figure out how to get them involved in my personal RP. Crap on a stick, Varian -ran Sevren through and threatened to slit her throat- in a blind rage a few days ago and somehow I managed to communicate none of it to our guild.  (caused by Sevren making up the wrong story and claiming to have slept with his biggest enemy. Druchii wise, she asked for it.) It was such an awesome bit of unplanned RP as well. It certainly advanced and changed their relationship, but not a soul heard of it and probably never will. Sometimes, the hardest part of roleplaying isn't being in character or making up storyline, it's getting others involved... or getting yourself involved, depending on standing.

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 -.-