My whole life, I’ve never had a desktop computer to call my own. I got my first PC at 17, a Sony laptop that was to go away with me across the ocean when I went to college. Then with the switching of residences, going to grad school, moving around the city in general, I figured buying laptops just made sense for someone like me with my nomadic life. But now that I’ve finally settled down, I thought maybe investing in a good desktop may be in order, so I can finally enjoy the luxuries of having a nice big screen, and more importantly, be able to do my graphics work on a computer without worrying about it scorching the skin off my legs.
It’s not going to be all about work, obviously; I also made sure the new machine will be a decent gaming rig. The parts won’t be here for a while yet, but I’m already looking forward to setting it up and have been thinking about what MMOs I’ll be putting on it and also my gaming plans for the rest of 2010. World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online, the two games on my “Currently Playing” list, will definitely get installed, but then so might these:
1. Star Trek Online
I chose to sign up for my Twitter account right around the time the Season 2 Update started on the test server Tribble, so everyday I’ve been inundated with tweets from my fellow bloggers about how great it is. New additions to the game include diplomacy, mini-games, a level cap increase, and much more — it’s enough to bring me back to the game and I think I’m going to reactivate my subscription as soon as the update goes live on Holodeck…or maybe even sooner. It’ll make more sense to give myself some time to re-familiarize with the game controls, lest I get blown to bits by the Undine the first time I venture into their native fluidic space.
Seeing as STO is my perfect casual game, unless there will be a whole slew of new content available, I’ll probably only maintain an active account for a month or two and take a break from it again come fall.
By the way, is the Federation News Service fleet still there? Please say it is so.
2. Age of Conan
I haven’t been playing this game lately, mostly because of the number of technical problems I’ve encountered with the new Rise of the Godslayer expansion. Most of the issues are Funcom’s, but admittedly, some are mine. I had no problems playing my lower level characters, but memory leaks caused the client to crash to desktop as soon as my level 80 Priest of Mitra entered the new Khitai lands. Much of the expansion’s new features are tied up in the post-level cap content, so everything I had wanted to do, like explore the Alternate Advancement system or grind reputation with the new factions to get my Tiger or Wolf mount/pet, had to be put on hold.
Raids were also out of the question. My poor gaming laptop, which is a few years old, can run this game smoothly when I’m playing solo or in a six-man team, but big groups made my frame rates plummet. And when you’re the healer, that’s always bad news. I’m hoping the new computer will alleviate a lot of these problems, and that I’ll finally get to do all that I’d ever wanted in AoC. Now that I think about it, I might even have racked up enough offline levels by now to give to my Bear Shaman to make her my second level 80.
3. Final Fantasy XIV
Another game with beautiful graphics that I’m hoping the new computer will run more smoothly. To be honest, I was quite shocked to hear that FFXIV will be coming out this year, at the end of September, no less. I’ll probably end up giving this a try this fall, even though I haven’t really been buying into the hype. I’ve never been a rabid FF fan, never played FFXI, but I’m still quite interested in this, at least enough to keep a distant eye on the news coming out. This can either be a hit or miss for me, I really can’t tell yet.
4. DC Universe Online
If and only if FFXIV doesn’t work out, I’ll most likely be giving DCUO a look come winter. I like the DC universe okay, nowhere near as much as I love Marvel, but some of my all-time favorite comic book characters belong to DC (like Harley Quinn) and I know the heroes, the villains and the stories well enough to make me ooh and ahh over what I’ve seen so far. Looks like it’s been slated for a November release, but I might give it a month or so to see what others are saying about it before I take the plunge for myself (if it comes to that). By then, LOTRO should also have gone F2P, so I won’t have to juggle more than 2-3 subscriptions.
MMO Gamer Chick 