Author Archives: Self Similar

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Quick update

Here’s a quick update about what I’ve been up to lately… and a bunch of Warhammer Online screenshots because… why not?

First, starting with Warhammer Online since it is probably pretty apparent that I’ve been doing a lot of that.

I finally got to my main character to tier 4 despite being distracted by several new alts. All of the various tier 4 zones I’ve visited lately have been relatively awesome – Eataine with its super bright blue skies, lush green fields and orchards, and beautiful Elven towers, Praag with it’s massive city sprawl, Reikland with its centerpiece, Reik River Observatory, keeps, and walled towns galore, and Kadrin Valley with it’s scenic snowy mountains, valleys, and epic Dwarven structures.

“Checking out a cool tower in Dragonwake.”

I quickly made the most of my limited schedule and put my nose back to the PVE grind stone questing in the relatively boring Elf lands once again. After gauging how much experience I was gaining and the levels of the mobs in the adjacent zones I decided I’d break away from my original plan of sticking only to my racial lands for solo PVE and ended up completing (including grinding out chapter influence!) the first zones in Empire and Dwarven lands as well long with the beginning chapters and first 3 side zones of the next set of zones. I just finished wrapping up the second chapter of Dragonwake back over in the Elven lands and am currently sitting just another short sit-down away from dinging 40 – the end is almost here and still absolutely tons of potential PVE content to go through! Perhaps the most exciting part of my character advancement, until I get to 40 at least, has been qualifying to use all of the great gear that I’ve slowly been gathering from off the auction house. That doesn’t sound that great but I’ve already maxed out my chosen mastery and don’t see any major benefit in using the leftover points in other trees and I’ve also got my tactics pretty much locked in until I get my forth slot at level 40.

I did do my first couple of Tier 4 scenarios as well, though so far which was interesting to say the least. I, of course, played the current flavor of the month scenario in tier 4, Serpent’s Passage, which is thought was pretty bizarre. It seems to be one of those scenarios where it is either absolute chaos or an utter beat down and seldom anywhere in between. I also played Thunder Valley a few times which I enjoyed. The I think my policy of waiting until I was further along in the various tiers to PVP much has been a sound one. 🙂

“My Swordmaster alt posing in Nordenwatch.”

With the recent releases of World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, and Lord of The Rings Online expansions and Warhammer Online rapidly losing its “oooh, new, shiny game!” appeal for a lot of players we’re really seeing a lot of population drop off. Our server hasn’t suffered that badly, nor has my guild, but some have been utterly decimated. Still, my guild has it’s own problems – we’ve suffered plenty of membership attrition for a variety of reasons. With a mature focused guild like ours though they tends to be more because of various real life issues than game hopping or silly drama. This is all further hampered by the raging case of “altitus” everyone seems to have which included the establishment of a Destruction guild on a second server which has generated far more interested than I think any of us anticipated. I’m one of the few hold outs but it is pretty disappointing logging on to see no or few other guildmates online and no fun at all listening to my former allies talk smack about Order while cheerleading for Destruction on our voice server. We’ve taken some steps to help the situation out including having a serious discussing about the issue one night recently and looking seriously at joining an in-game guild alliance. Still, I sadly fear that my time in this guild may be nearing an end if things continue down their current course.

“A convoy of Imperial Steam Tanks escorted by Knights of The Blazing Sun.”

Speaking of those new expansions I’ve been resisting picking of Wrath of The Lich King as I don’t really feel like it offers me too much. I’m sure the 70-80 PVE content is great (if not more of the same) but the new class and other additions don’t do much for me. I’d definitely still like to check out EQ2 and return to LoTRO at some point though but neither idea seems feasible until I’m over WAR. Sadly one game that I had talked about here not too long ago including plans to return to it some day, Tabula Rasa, has announced that they’ll be closing their doors early next year. I’m pretty bummed by the news as the game had tons of potential and the development team seemed to be putting an outrageous amount of effort into updating the game post release. Respect to those on the TR live dev team and I hope they’re all able to find great jobs somewhere else if they aren’t reassigned to other NCSoft projects.

I finally managed to play my first couple of online matches of Warhammer: Battle March (Xbox 360) with my brother. They mostly consisted of me showing him how to do various things and some experimentation but it was fun none the less. I’ve instructed him to have a 15,000 point army of his choice ready to do battle for next time. I hope to get into the final chapter of the single player campaign which features Orcs and Dark Elves soon and finally get this game out of my 360 so I can move onto the next thing in my backlog. 🙂

“Sightseeing in Dwarf lands.”

Speaking of the 360 the new “NXE” dashboard update was released last week. Personally, I’m pretty happy with it. First of all, although I didn’t get to see how/if it effects matchmaking, the new party system seems like a simple, logical evolution of the old chat features. The avatars are neat – we definitely need some more customization options, especially with clothes, but I was able to make my avatar look quite a bit like me according to a couple of people who have checked it out. They don’t really add much to the experience but I’m not necessarily bothered by them either. The new friends list, which shows each of your friend’s avatars in a room, or their party in a room, and what they’re doing is pretty neat but much less useable than the old one. Of course you can still access your friends list the old way via the guild button which I assume most people would be doing while gaming anyway.

“My Xbox Live facsimile. Yes, I really do have stupid sideburns.”

The dashboard itself is much more responsive and feels a lot less cluttered – I know some people have complained about the adds, but personally I feel having a few Xbox 360 related adds within each menu is much more tasteful and much less intrusive than having little blinking ads scattered all around the screen, blocking your wallpaper as with the old dashboard blades. Netflix streaming is great and we’ve already scoped out several shows and a movie on it since we’ve had it. The rollout itself seemed to be pretty trouble free. You always hear horror stories of freeze ups or entirely bricked systems during these things but, for the most part, it seemed to go extremely smooth. The update downloaded and installed very quickly and the whole process was quite painless for me.

“About to cook some smores in Isle of The Dead.”

Lastly, after the release of a couple of new game that interest me, the Castlevania and the DS version of Chrono Trigger, for instance, I’ve finally decided its time I upgrade from a GBA to a DS. Hopefully this’ll end up being a Christmas present – I’m actually pretty stoked about it. 🙂

The Tale of Garn Chapter 2

Hopefully this chapter will be a little more exciting now that I’m out of the tutorial dungeon. Even still it should take a while before I’m of appropriate level to do any of the real exciting dungeon hauls and quests and I’ll definitely be staying away from the main quest for a while.

“Garn’s first few minutes out of prison and already a murderer… great!”

From the journals of Garn:

As I step out of the sewers into the sunny wilderness I barely have enough time for the fresh air to fill my lungs before I realize that I am in the wrong place at the wrong time. Two bandits camping in the area attack me, unprovoked, and I have no choice but to defend myself. After a hard fought battle I emerge victorious. I search their camp site for supplies and valuables and exhausted from the day’s events decide to rest here myself. There is a little food, warm clothes, and relatively comfortable bedding. Concerned that other bandits may return from whatever expeditions they might be on I cannot fully enjoy my rest however.

Actually, killing bandits is completely legal.

“As it turns out killing bandits is completely legal.”

The camp is nestled next to some ancient ruins and later the next morning I decide to explore them as well. I find my way into a subterranean labyrinth and soon learn that there are many, many more bandits living within the ruins. I slay one who spots me but manage to use the cover of shadow to elude and observe the rest. They appear to be in the midst of some sort of pillaging expedition but whatever they are up to it is obvious that they greatly outnumber me and I quietly make my leave.

It should be obvious to most people who have played Oblivion that this is Vilverin. Unfortunately I didn’t feel like I could easily take the bandit in the main room of the first level due to my level, equipment, and rustiness with Oblivion’s combat so I gave exploring a miss for another day.

“…and usually profitable!”

Hungry and with little else but looted equipment I decide that I will hike around the perimeter of the nearby lake hunting mud crabs. The mud crabs pose little trouble, even in groups, and their meat is both delicious and in good demand amongst vendors and taverns so perhaps I can make a little gold in addition to feeding myself. I also occasionally manage to find the odd pearl bearing clam along the shore as well. From time to time I come across exotic looking herbs along the shore and harvest those as well. While I don’t believe I know much about alchemy, or perhaps I should say knew much about alchemy, I’m almost certain to find someone willing to purchase herbs and other alchemist reagents from me in the city.

“You’re kidding? The Emperor is dead?!”

Sometimes when the shore of the lake runs near to a road I run across an Imperial Guard patrol or some random traveler. Luckily as of yet my awkward interactions with them have not led to any trouble. Word has surely already spread about the Emperor’s murder and I am a little worried about the possibility of Baurus changing his mind and implicating me in the assassination plot.

“Shhh… I’m hunting goblins!”

Along the way I encounter a goblin infested cave. Slaying these goblins, at first, seems to be no tall feat, though the further I venture into this cave the tougher the enemies get until I find myself struggling to stay alive. While I find much in the way of weapons, armor, and other loot the risk becomes too great for the rewards and I turn back around and decide to continue with my mud crab hunting plans for the time being.

This is Fatback Cave south of the Imperial City. For the most part I had no trouble exploring it though the Goblin Berserkers were tough fights. I got all the way to the bottom, even killing the Goblin Shaman via a cunning strategy of running away, screaming through the nearby trapped hallway. Still, after barely surviving that encounter I didn’t feel like I would be lucky enough to survive the rest of the monsters on the level and retreated.

“The last guy who explored Fatback Cave.”

There are numerous ruins and shrines scattered around these shores. Many of them host additional bandits not unlike the ones who attacked me when I first emerged from the sewers. For the most part they offer me little trouble but I can’t help feeling some odd connection to them. That is, despite having slain several so far in self defense I feel no real malice towards them. I wonder if perhaps I was a bandit myself in the past? I obviously did something to wind up in the Imperial Prison and banditry definitely appears to be a popular profession. Regardless I quickly learn not to explore too many ruins, at least not yet, as these bandits and highwaymen seem to often call them home. On the bright side if I turn out to be some sort of bandit myself I know where to find potential partners in crime in the future.

“Civilization at last!”

After a long day of circling the lake gathering crabs I arrive back at the original bandit camp that I nestled down in last night and begin to shell a few of the crabs I’ve captured. A fresh crab chowder hits the spot like nothing I ever remember having before yet it is obvious that I have prepared and eaten this meal before in my hazy past. With my expedition widely successful I gather up my looted equipment, my bundles of herbs, and my sack full of mud crabs and at last make my way to the city.

I was now ready to reach level 2 and finally empty out all of my loot bags. I should note that for some entirely unknown reason I totally forgot about starting out with a conjuration summon spell and never used my skelton minion in any of these fights, instead eager to reach the Imperial City to buy myself my would be first summon spells which I anticipated would be a big help… Doh.

Halloween

“My main, a High Elf White Lion, posing at rank 29.”

So, I’ve killed a lot of undead recently…

“Attempt number two after we managed to pull all 35 of them at one time.”

I spent a little while grinding on the first stage of a couple of public quests in the Empire zone in order to get some influence items I wanted and while doing so hooked up with an open party run by a guild I’d never run into before, Crimson Phoenix. A bunch of rowdy dwarves but seemingly pretty cool people. We ended up running through both of the nearby public quests a couple of times and had a lot of fun. Naturally, many zombies were slain.

“There’s Destruction around here somewhere!”

Later that week Mythic launched their Halloween related event, Witching Night. One part of it involved participating in a public quest to kill enemy players in the RvR zones while another consisted of killing some new, rare undead mobs that were spawning in pretty random patches all across the world. I first hooked up with an RvR warband which was pure, awesome chaos. There must have been somewhere between 4 and 6 warbands worth of people total all fighting in one spot. It was actually a lot less exciting than it sounds as the two sides held their lines resulting in a battle of attrition with all out combat being pretty sparse.

After hanging around there for 20 or 30 minutes I linked up with some of my guild mates and we decided to attempt some of the PvE parts of the influence quest. We wound up slaughtering Restless Spirits until each of us had at least one of their rare Witching Night mask drops. Between not being too into grinding annoying, hard to find mobs or participating in annoying, hard to fight RvR battles and my play schedule doing the limited time that the event was taking place that was about all of the Witching Night event I could manage.

I’d have to say the event was hit and miss. I thought the amount of content for a week long, seasonal event on short notice was good. The mechanics of the event itself left a little to be desired but I’m sure they’ve learned some lessons for next time.

“Over the hill!”

On Halloween night itself I ended up occupying myself for part of the evening by testing out some of my new AoE moves by grinding out a Bestial Token for killing 1000 zombies. It only took an hour or so but it was still pretty painful. At least I managed to leave the place with a backpack overflowing with loot and a shiny new trophy…

“I’m having Dead Rising flashbacks!”

That finally finishes off my back log of WAR screenshots. Well, that is until I procrastinate on posting any new ones I take. I’ll keep posting my interesting ones in the future but hopefully they’ll be a little less of them and a little more variety to my posts now. My main is currently rank 31 realm rank 24 and after I PvP my way up to rank 32 I will be putting his nose back down onto the PvE grindstone for a while. I’m almost to the end game… I can taste it! (It tastes kind of like stale vanilla waffers if you were wondering.)