ESO: Happy Launch Day

While those who preordered have been playing in headstart, today is the official launch day of Elder Scrolls Online for PC. If you’re already in the game, I hope you’ve been enjoying the experience as much as I have.

Despite some server down times which is to be expected, the game has nevertheless been always up during prime time evenings and nights which is when I usually game. I wouldn’t say launch has been perfect; there were a couple instances of major quests bugging out, but thus far ESO has been one of the smoothest launches I’ve personally experienced. Maybe it’s because it’s high time we’ve had another major MMO launch again, or the fact I refrained from going anywhere near beta in the weeks leading up to the release date, but starting out in ESO these past few days felt fresh, exciting, and even more fun than I anticipated.

I’ve rolled a Dragonknight, because for all the flexibility in the classes available in game, I always have a soft spot for the warrior archetype. Imperial race, Daggerfall faction. Perhaps not surprisingly, I’ve tentatively decided on a tanky-type route when it comes to leveling and allotting my points. At this time, House Stalwart the new guild I’ve joined is almost 90 members strong and it’s been kickin’ every night!

Things I’ve been enjoying so far: questing and exploring — now that the game is live, I’m taking my time to poke around in every nook and cranny, loot every crate or barrel, talk to every NPC. Barging into people’s houses and stealing all their crap has always been one of my favorite things to do in Elder Scrolls games (oh god, you should have seen the way I hoarded in Skyrim) and I won’t even go into how often I get distracted in my adventuring by a lone trunk or urn sitting by the side of the road that I just have to stop and check out. Even if all it holds is thin broth, pathetic drippings or a bunch of stupid grapes.

And another thing I love: CRAFTING! Who would have thought? ME! The person who has always thought crafting in games was a pain in the ass, who always leaves it until level cap because before that it’s just a hindrance to questing and progressing. I don’t know why, but there’s just something about the crafting in ESO that appeals to me. It’s so layered and complex, but not so challenging either that I couldn’t be bothered to gather materials and actually try my hand at all the professions.

I love that expression…

So, those are my opening thoughts. If you’re playing, how have you been feeling about it so far? I hope to get more time into the game later this month; because of my lack of time and my dawdling, I haven’t gotten very far yet. Currently my Dragonknight is at level 8 but I’m hoping to share more of my experiences as I progress further into the game and see more of its world.

Elder Scrolls Online Impressions: Characters

Inspired by some of the comments on my last Elder Scrolls Online post, I’ve decided to talk about my experiences with different classes in the game. I think I’ve mentioned before how I wasn’t initially that impressed by the game in this regard, though that definitely changed as I progressed through beta and leveled more characters.

The gameplay was by far the biggest surprise, I think. I liked being able to make my own class the way I liked, so that it fit my playstyle. It wasn’t like that at the beginning, when admittedly I was still stuck in the mindset that my Nightblade had to be more of a traditional-style dual wield rogue, or that my Templar had to be a heavy armored sword-and-board tanky type character. That was my mistake.

It turns out the classes are a lot more flexible than I could have ever imagined. What I discovered is that there is a lot more customization with classes, as well as weapons, armor, enchantments, and of course skill points and talents. There’s really no set-in-stone way to play your character. I learned that I could go in and make my class the way I wanted and play the way I most prefer.  And the moment I started to branch away from convention I started being able to dominate more fights, being able to survive better. More importantly, I started having more fun.

Now as promised, here’s a showcase of some of my characters from the different weekend betas and the test server beta, and the way they looked:

STO: New Expansion, New Captain

Here’s my new Romulan captain. I swear I did not actually try to make her look like an evil Natalie Portman, but that’s just what sort of happened.

D’Alana T’el Sindari

Anyway, I figure I’ll start writing this post now since I’m currently sitting in position six-thousand-and-something in queue waiting to get into Star Trek Online, which is something I haven’t seen since the early days of the original game’s launch. Seriously, a 6000+ queue in the middle of a week day? Congratulations STO for garnering the unprecedented level of interest for your new Legacy of Romulus expansion.

After all, I’m here too, aren’t I? I’ve logged in a few times here and there, but I haven’t played STO in earnest since…summer of 2011?

Returning to the game has always been on my list of things to do, especially since it went free-to-play. In a way, STO has a special place in my heart because blogging about my shenanigans in it during the early days is what originally got this blog off the ground. It was always so tempting to jump back in.

After a point, however, a game simply matures and leaves you behind. It’s been almost two years since I was seriously active in STO, and so many things have changed — from the ground combat improvements to the Duty Officer system. Never mind that STO has one of the most unique gameplay mechanics out there in the MMO world when it comes to space combat, which takes time to get used to and master. That’s the feature I miss the most when I think about STO, but I knew if I went back now, I’d be eaten alive.

Which is why I figured this would be the perfect time to rediscover the game again — I’ll be rolling anew with a Romulan. New expansion, new race, new character, new ship, new everything — it’ll be my chance to relearn the ropes and start from scratch.

Who knows how much I’ll be able to play nowadays, but I’ll be taking it slow, approaching this game once more with fresh eyes. I’m a newcomer again, a cadet, a clueless noob. There are a couple decisions I’ll repeat this time around though, and that’s rolling a tactical officer in an escort ship. Sorry scientists and engineers, you guys are cool too but damage dealing is just so fun in this game, I don’t think I could go any other way.

Anyway, after writing this post and mucking about online and on Twitter, looks like I’m finally at the front of the queue. Wish me luck and see y’all in game!

In The Time Of Neverwinter

My decision to hop aboard the Neverwinter train came as a fairly recent one.

To understand how it came about, you have to know that in our family, I’m the one who keeps up with the news in the gaming industry, reads the reviews and blogs, researches the games and decides in the end whether to get them or not. So it’s not uncommon for my husband, even though he’s an avid gamer, to be completely clueless about what games are out there or what’s coming out, because he’s perfectly happy just letting me fill him in and playing anything that I play.

It definitely helps that we have very similar gaming tastes. I’d like to think I’ve always chosen well and that I know the kind of games he prefers and never had to push my luck or his self-respect with anything like Hello Kitty Online. The most important thing is that we get to play together, and bless him for trusting me enough to follow me into whatever MMO world I want to explore.

But still, I almost made a faux pas with Neverwinter. I’d gotten my hands on a beta key earlier this year, played a few days of the beta and liked what I saw, but when “soft launch” came this week I took one look at the sea of games we’re already swimming in and said to the mister, “Maybe we should pass on this, or at least wait until after the open beta when we can both play free at our leisure.” His answer: “But why?”

In retrospect, I suppose I should have foreseen this; that as someone who prides himself on having owned the original Dungeons and Dragons basic boxed set, my husband would be hard-pressed to pass up anything attached to the franchise, let alone an actual MMO based in the Forgotten Realms city of Neverwinter. So he promptly went ahead and bought us both each a Guardian pack, which is how I found myself in front of my computer Saturday morning downloading the client and trawling the multitudes of D&D name generator sites for ideas.

Ultimately, my husband ended up rolling what he calls a “classical cleric”, while I rolled a Wood Elf Great Weapon Fighter. Because if there’s one thing I like more than elves, it’s elves wielding big honking swords.

Alistara Arborshale

It was pretty much all we played this weekend. I can already tell Neverwinter is not going to be as deep as some of the more involved MMOs I’ve played, but it’s still very engaging for a story-based online game supported by lots of dungeons and opportunities to play with friends.

The important thing is, I’m enjoying it; but apparently Neverwinter has gotten its hooks even deeper into my husband — which is incredible, for he is usually so even-tempered and takes a judicious attitude towards new games. I’d say 60 bucks, which is the usual price I’m used to dropping for a brand new game anyway, was definitely worth it for the chance to see things a little early and play with the gang of usual suspects, not to mention the items and perks that come with the pack.

Anyway, it’s only been a couple days and I still feel so green, but I’m slowly discovering that there’s a lot more to Neverwinter. Every hour, I still get surprised when I stumble across new game mechanics or systems that I didn’t know existed, while continuing to be impressed by how much is already in place. I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface, or looked into the Foundry. As I only reached level 15 yesterday, I’m looking forward to a whole new world still waiting for me.

My Panda Day

Happy pandas

Weeks even before World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria was released, I was already thinking about what I should be focusing on when the expansion went live. Should I jump right into pet battles? Should I start on leveling my main to level 90? Or should I roll a Pandaren and play around with a monk? As it turned out, I was able to fit in a bit of everything on the first day.

First things first — Pet. Battle. Trainer. Oh no, it’s all over, folks! All over! Pet battling is even more fun and addicting than I’d imagined! Within an hour I’d managed to add 25+ new pets to my collection, raised four or five different pets to level 6, and beat up several NPC pet battlemasters in the human area. And how do I feel about completely destroying a little girl and her pet rabbits, you ask? Pretty damn good, actually!

Next, I hopped onto my druid main for a couple hours of questing with my husband, heading into the Jade Forest to start on our journey to level 90. It is freakin’ gorgeous. I am also enjoying the MoP quests; so far, they feel a lot more robust than Cataclysm’s, in all sorts of different ways, e.g. story, content, impact, visuals, humor etc. (Socks!!! NOOOOO, SOCKS!)

At the end of the day, the Mercy Gaming guild got together and started Team Panda. I made my female red panda (tail and all) and named her Meilee, which is a bastardized spelling of Chinese pinyin characters for “Pretty” in Mandarin. How any and all variations of that name weren’t taken yet, I can’t imagine.

Together, we quested through the Pandaren starting area, and I finally had to put symbol markers on myself and my guildies to tell them apart from all the other big, fat, black and white pandas running all over the place. It also didn’t help that we were all monks wearing the same quest reward gear. Mint green dots everywhere on the mini-map!

I had myself a great time. While I can’t speak for my friends, I suspect they did too. The zone was visually stunning, the quests were fun and relatively unique. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who might be rolling their own Pandaren one day, but suffice to say I was quite impressed. In the end we chose to join the Horde, and our modest little guild Red Solstice on the server Silvermoon is now up and running.

The nice thing is, after yesterday’s experiences I’ve decided I’m not going to concern myself too much with “focusing” on any one thing in-game anymore. I’m not in any rush, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with sampling a little bit of everything — in fact, I quite liked it.

Screenshots Of The Day: TSW Extreme Make-Over

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of being on Vent at the same time as me while I’m playing The Secret World, then you’ll no doubt be familiar with my oft-recurring stupid rant about hair.

I know some gamers like to model their characters after their real-life look. Myself, I’ve rarely been able to do this because in real life I have long hair which goes way down almost to the small of my back. Ironically, the only character that I can think of right now which has allowed me to do this is my World of Warcraft night elf druid! Clearly, long hair options are rare to begin with, probably due to issues with graphical glitches and clipping, so people like me are already SOL. But then to add insult to injury, why in the name of all that is good and holy do most “long hair” options in MMOs stick you that “ZOMG I’ve just had the wildest night of sex in my life!” look?

TSW I’m looking at you! Since nearly the beginning, I’ve regretted that saucy, wind-tousled JBF look my character has sported, and had no idea how much I would grow to loathe having half my face constantly obscured. For this reason, I eagerly anticipated the Digging Deeper update which finally went live yesterday. I couldn’t stand it anymore, I had to hit the salon.

Time to insert mandatory unflattering, wild-eyed, deer-caught-in-the-headlights “Before” picture here:

And now, insert new-and-improved and glamor-shot worthy “After” picture here:

Laeyn didn’t exactly get the long, long hair she wished for, but the important thing is now you can view her entire face, which was what I really wanted. Many hairstyles and makeup options/facial decorations have been added to TSW, giving the game’s character creator a much needed boost. My trip to Ockham’s Razor left me very impressed.

My options at the plastic surgeon’s, however, not so much. Unfortunately, though the update advertised new heads and facial features, I don’t think I noticed any when I went to visit the Modern Prometheus. Due to recent rough times over at Funcom and multiple delays, I’m guessing certain plans didn’t pan out like they were supposed to. Budget cuts, restructuring, and losing a bulk of your workforce tend to do that. But really, I sympathize. As far as I’m concerned, Funcom could have taken as much time as they needed with this update as long as it launched with everything in working order.

Gotta love that panicky, holy-crap-what-the-hell-have-I-gotten-myself-into look on my face.

Speaking of which, the overall quality of the update was fantastic. For instance, everything else about the Modern Prometheus was simply amazing. There’s Peter Stormare’s excellent voice performance as Dr. Anton Aldini, or the fact that he’s set up shop inside a filthy old abattoir located in an alleyway behind a dumpster. Then there’s the atmosphere, which sort of reminded me of Saw. As one of my guildies observed, the whole setting makes you kind of scared to even step in through the door.

Not that I really needed to go under the knife; other than the pesky ‘do, I was actually quite happy with my character’s look to begin with. Though, since it was free…I tweaked a few of my features, applied some extra mascara and treated myself to a healthier looking tan. Laeyn the Vain strikes again.

Oh, how convenient! You can pick up a slab of fly-ridden meat AND get a nose job at the same time!

I spent the rest of the night in TSW with some friends and was reminded of why I love this game, and I have to say yesterday’s return made me realize just how much I missed it. The Digging Deeper patch also added a whole bunch of new quests as well as a new auxiliary weapon in the form of a rocket launcher, which I hope to be checking out gradually in the coming weeks. Funcom will probably need some time to get back on track, but as long as they maintain their regular update schedule, I still plan on jumping in every month for the new content.

A guild that gets plastic surgery together, stays together.

GW2: Insert The Standard Launch Character Introductions Post Here

It’s inevitable, I’m writing a character intro post which must mean Guild Wars 2 headstart has kicked off and is live!

It’s also inevitable, that the very fact I’m not playing right now but am instead banging out this post means that we’re experiencing some hiccups at launch (it’s around 8am at the time of this writing). I just hope that most people will be patient and realize launch days are going to be full of unexpected downtimes like this. I was grateful that Arenanet decided to bring up the servers three hours early last night, allowing me to create my characters and sneak in some brief playtime which I otherwise thought I would not have, and for the most part my hour-to-two-hours played beautifully and without a single hitch. I even got the names I wanted, without having to give last names.

If you’d like to say hello, my ID is Caylinn.6459, my guild is Knights of Mercy, and the server is Fort Aspenwood. I think most people have committed to a home by now, but if you happen to be still looking or if in the future you’re looking to guest, ss my Asura would say, we’d be pleased and honored to play with you, bookah! Without further ado, let’s get on to the new additions of my MMO family.

Kilioe (pronounced Kee-lee-oh-eh) – Sylvari Guardian

Kilioe, or Embelia pacifica, is actually a plant native to Hawaii. Not only had I wanted a flora-related name for my Sylvari, as I looked upon my Guardian in the character creator I suddenly recalled this name from a college botany project and to me the the name just seemed to fit. The current plan is for her to be my main.

Moggsi – Asura Thief

I frequently go by the abbreviation MMOGC, which some people in the blogosphere/twittersphere have taken to pronouncing it “Mogsy.” While I admit to thinking it was the most unfortunate nickname at the time, since then it has grown on me. I “Asura’ed” it up a bit, doubling up the “G” and replacing the last letter with the more feminine “I” associated with female names in Asura culture (I’m such a lore nerd). You can’t really tell by her celebration hat and town clothes, but my Asura Thief is pretty much the splitting image of the one I made in beta.

Sooner or later, I’m sure their stories will take shape and develop. (One thing I do know though, is that my Asura will be getting a happy childhood and not the damaged past that some commenters seem so fond of bestowing upon their own Asuras 😉 )

One of these days I will also be making a Charr for our guild warband, a completely voluntary and fun project promoting camaraderie by KoM. Since the custom is to involve a common word in all our names (which as a guild we’ve chosen by popular vote as “Knight”), it’s going to take some idea brainstorming.