I love how different games are – despite the fact that the term “WoW Clone” gets used fairly often, I happen to think there are a lot less clones then we may think. I’ve been playing a lot of Vanguard, and that’s slightly on the back burner again as I dip my toes into World of Warcraft and EVE Online. Without getting into a lot of personal details, lets just say that I’m not exactly pleased with the approach that sony has taken concerning EQ2X and the decisions they’ve made that seem to bring it closer to that ‘WoW clone’ – if I wanted to play WoW, well. I would. So I am. I talk a lot about supporting the things you enjoy, and voting with your wallet. It pains me a little that I haven’t even really played EQ2 for a few months now. A game that I spent more then 5 years in and have met a lot of fantastic people. I just feel that the changes that have been happening don’t coincide with what I want from the game. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against RMT, or cash shops or F2P (though in most cases you almost always end up paying). What I am against is a game that I’ve been playing one way for so long suddenly changing and deciding they want to be a different game. Silly? Maybe. It’s just how I feel. Anyhow, enough of that rant.

In WoW I’m making the climb to 80, and managed to get my little warlock to 63 yesterday running dungeons with Toargo, a fantastic warrior. My rough ‘goal’ is a level a day until I hit 70, and then I know it will slow down and I’ll take it from there. I’ve also been working on a little crafting (engineering) and some cooking and first aid as well as fishing. In WoW these are skills that make my ‘toon’ feel more like a ‘character’ and give it life. In Eq2 it would be decorating a home, and working on achievements.

Like I mentioned above, I’ve also paired my WoW gaming with EVE Online, a drastically different type of game. I’ve been doing a LOT there, but I’m going to save it for another post (moahaha). What was everyone else up to this weekend? Let me know in comments! As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself.

It never fails. When I start playing an MMO I typically always role the same types of characters. Healers, or support classes. This would be why I have a plethora of healers on EQ2, EQ, LotRo, and yes, even WoW (80 priest). As it would happen though I learned an important lesson this week. It’s ok NOT to play your ‘usual’ class in a game. When I was playing WoW as my priest I was constantly stressed. I found healing people (mostly people who had no idea what they were doing and were very literally all over the place) difficult, I found myself questioning my ability as a healer because I would take the blame for everyone else’ actions. This is the wrong way to play WoW. If you play this way you will slowly drive yourself crazy (as I found out). It made LFD one of the single most stressful things I’d ever done. This week I decided ‘it’s a game.’ If you’re not having FUN playing a game, and it’s work – why are you playing it?!

I like WoW. I like how casual it can be while I’m playing other games like EVE. I like that I can log in and almost instantly be doing something instead of having to wait around for hours. What I didn’t like, was playing my priest. I decided to start over with a ‘new’ main since I was starting over on a new server already. I have played various characters through to the 20′s before, but had never gotten a warlock past that magical number, even though it was one class that I had the most interest in.

For the past three days I spent almost all of my in game time working on this warlock. She’s now level 61, and I have to admit – I simply love the class. I mean, in that WOW look how FUN the game can be way. It wasn’t WoW’s fault that I wasn’t enjoying my stay. It was all about me playing the wrong class.

I looked up some warlock mods. Necrosis is now my new best friend. I also got deadly boss mod, which I wonder how I survived without. Suddenly the game is not this stressful horrible place that I spend my time but it’s actually FUN. Who would have thought. In order to level the warlock so fast I decided to get a recruit-a-friend account between myself. I paid $20 for the base game and gained 10 days of burning crusade which allowed me to create a blood elf and level through the content quite fast. The benefit of a recruit-a-friend account (aside from the 300% bonus in experience which is simply insane) is that the RAF can ‘grant’ your main veteran account levels. For every 2 levels they gain, they can grant one (so long as the veteran character is not higher level). This works up to level 60. Not only do I have this new warlock that I enjoy very much, but I can level another character to 30 and grant them enough levels to reach 60. I haven’t decided what character I want to do this with yet. I’m thinking shaman or perhaps paladin.

It’s nice to know the game is still fun to me, now that I’m playing the right class.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

I’m a big fan of supporting the small guy. Local business? You bet. Farmers markets instead of superstores? I’m there. When it comes to video games there are LOTS of player run web sites and services offered and I love each and every one of them. One of the oldest from my own personal experiences has been Magelo. For those who are not familiar, Magelo was THE service to use when you were playing Eq1 and wanted to link your characters achievements. It came before the gaming companies started to offer profiles, and it was incredibly fun. You could (and still can) design your own themes, as well as link music to your profile.

When I was playing EQ1, I subscribed to their premium service to keep my characters updated on a regular basis. I think that it’s incredibly important to support ‘the small guy’ like this especially if you enjoy their service. Low and behold, after having not been to their site in a number of years I received a newsletter from them talking about all of the new features that they’ve added. A service now 9 years in the making.

More than 9 years of service to the Everquest community… For sure, it has been quite a long road getting to where we are and we couldn?t have made it without your support. Thank you!
We are pleased to announce that we recently expanded our Premium offer with a new Inventory tool, Media hosting service and the introduction of new subscription plans.

New Inventory Tool

The Inventory tool is a new feature that helps you locate items from all your characters bags and bank. It summarizes the inventory of all your characters without the hassle of logging into the game or requiring you to open several different profile pages.
Browse through all the bags and bank space for every character on each server and quickly locate specific items by keywords with the search tool.

You can also find the storage location and amount carried on each character for every item and view plat and various alternate currencies for every character.

New Media Manager
Store up to 50 mb of images and music to customize easily your Magelo profiles, avatars and signatures! No need any more to go looking for image and music hosts elsewhere. You get now all the media storage space you’ll ever need to make your character identity unique!

New Premium subscription plans and 10-day free trial
The Premium subscription has just become more flexible. In addition to the 1 year plan, the option to subscribe for 3 or 6-month period is now available.

Adding game slots has also been made much simpler! Whenever you purchase 5 extra game slots for your account, the cost will be based on the remaining active subscription period.

By becoming a Premium member you will enjoy the best of Magelo and will contribute to maintain the many features you love and the new ones we will develop. Check out the Premium offer and give it a try now with the new 10-day free trial! Show your support to Magelo by getting Premium!
For each character you add on Magelo, you will get an avatar and a signature in 2 different sizes:

The regular Signature we currently use remains the best way to highlight any character you want.

The new Mini-sig, half as tall as the regular sig, is really convenient to display your many alternate characters in a single post without taking up too much space.

The new Avatar helps others recognize your posts anywhere!

The avatar and signatures will give others a quick preview of your characters, a link to your profiles and you can fully customize them with all the options available. Go to My characters and have fun!
Find the map of all zones from the game with the emplacement of vendors. You can zoom-in and out the map to see a specific location more closely. We use also the same coordinate system than in the game! Take a look at the Plane of Knowledge for example.

All NPC pages will also feature a new map with the NPC locations highlighted. Check a Broodlands basilisk for example! Don?t forget to run Magelo Sync while playing – it stays the only way to define accurately the location of the NPCs.

Finally you can visit the new Hot zones page available from the Tools section to view where you can quickly level up. The zones are sorted by level to let you decide easily where to go at any level range.

30 new background images have been added to our gallery, showing various interesting sights around Norrath. We also add 3 new backgrounds and a new decorator on the Premium theme!

With this latest addition, more than 100 background images are available to give you plenty of choice to decorate your profiles and signatures! So let’s have a look and find the one that fit the best your character!

Go to My characters now and customize your profiles, signatures, and mini-sigs!

Of course, now I’m going to have to subscribe for another month and see what all of the new changes are.. I do still play EQ, even if I don’t get to play nearly as often as I’d like. I’m incredibly happy to see services like these still being offered to players. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

There’s a reason I call myself the Nomadic Gamer. Chances are at any one time I’m subscribed to at least two games. Typically more. I bounce from game to game depending on my whims and I rarely stay settled in a game for longer then a month. I realize this is an incredibly frustrating method to play – especially for my dear friends who have had to put up with my play style for far longer then anyone should have to tolerate it. It’s also the way I’ve always played, ever since EQ2 came out (EQ1 being the only game I actually stuck with on its own). I blame this on a combination of things. The need to constantly be multi tasking, and the blunt fact that since playing video games (and writing about them) is my day time job, the more games I play the more insight I have and the more articles I can write and then (eventually) the more money I make.

Still, it’s not easy. Especially for those good friends who like to game WITH me. If you’re not used to this life style then I can see how it would be incredibly frustrating. I keep waiting for that single game that will pull me in and make me forget about all others, but it simply hasn’t happened. I want to apologize to those friends who are unable to understand why I play this way, or who are hurt by the fact that I may be there one week and not the next. I always return to a few ‘main’ games (EQ2, VG, WoW, EVE, EQ, W101, LotRO), but I hardly expect everyone I know to jump around from game to game with me. All I can ask is that they have some patience with me. There are other methods of contacting me if I don’t happen to be playing a particular game that month (you can find me on various forms of IM as well as twitter and email) and I’m never that out of reach.

I’ve tried to stop apologizing for my gaming habits. I’m pretty up front and anyone who has read this site (or my sister site, nomadicgamer.com) realizes that this is just how I happen to spend my time in game. It’s one of the things I love about knowing so many people who play video games – we don’t all play the same way. I’ve always cherished my friendships and been proud of the fact that they transcend any video game out there, that a true friendship won’t be lost based on the games I’m playing (or not playing) but lately it feels like perhaps that is not the case. Online friendships are fragile things, and it’s all to easy to go the rout of “out of sight out of mind”.

Anyhow, sorry for the ranting today but it was something I wanted to talk about. Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself.

If you play on Antonia Bayle (and these days it seems like almost everyone does) you’ve probably heard of two large player run festivals. One is the Festival of Unity, and the other is the Festival of Discord. This year, a third festival has made it into the play list. The Festival of the Sands. It takes place from August 15th to the 21st in Sinking Sands, and has even had some help with setting up thanks to one Gnobrin.

I decided to go to the opening ceremonies last night, and while there was not quite as large a turn out as I have seen for the previous festivals, it was still a sight. The week is split up into numerous events – and if you’re interested in meeting some fellow role players I highly suggest you check it out.

Sunday, August 15, 2010
Remembrance of the First Sultan and Founding of the City

Blessing of Ro and Opening Ceremony
Location: Fires of Ro
Sponsor: Rhana
4:00 CST

Battle of the Bards
Location: Poet’s View
Sponsor: Sihayya
5:00 CST

So You Think You Can Belly Dance
Location: Poet’s View
Sponsor: Hipolita and Meridyth
6:30 CST

Wishing Well
Sponsor: Tregarde
9:00 CST

You can find a calendar with a list of events, as well as a map of locations on their web site. Player run events like these take a lot of work to pull off, and I really appreciate the guilds that are working to put it together. If you’ve never attended a festival like this before I highly suggest you take a peek. They’re always a LOT of fun!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

While I didn’t spend a great deal of time in Vanguard this weekend, I did manage to ding 31 on the shaman by working on quests in both Cragwind and Wardship of the Sleeping Moon. It was nice to get out of Qalia. Not that I mind the desert sand but I was starting to get a little tired of it and wanted a change of scenery. That’s another great thing about Telon, you have three continents to choose from, so any time you’re bored of one chances are you can find a quest hub (minus Kojan) on the opposite one and do some questing there.

It was a nice relaxed time, and I’m looking forward to making my way through the 30′s and then FINALLY hitting the 40′s once more. So far leveling has been fairly painless, a few slow spots here and there but nothing really earth shattering.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself, I’ll see you in Telon!

Ah. The joys of having bags that are constantly filled with crafter supplies. This weekend I haven’t played a lot of Vanguard. Number one, I don’t want to burn out, and number two I’ve been involved in some pretty hefty real life crafting / adventuring lately which pulls me away (gasp) from the PC. If you thought this would be a post about Vanguard, well. You’ll just have to wait for tomorrow’s post instead.

I’ve been taking screen shots in games for as long as I can remember. I have literally thousands of screen shots stashed in various folders all over my computer. Since I can’t exactly hit a ‘print screen’ button in real life I’m typically dragging around my Olympus E410 with me which is an amazing camera that I got a few years ago as a Christmas present. I currently own three lens for it, including a 300mm zoom and a macro lens. Essentials for my ‘hobby’ as a photographer. This week there was not only the aurora borealis going on, but also a meteor shower. While I’ve always had a keen interest on all things sky (and sea) related, this heightened to an extreme that I could no longer ignore.

I decided after doing a lot of research that I want to get into astrophotography. I learned a few things. Number one: WOW is it an expensive hobby to get into. It’s also a LOT of fun, and a LOT of work. I wanted a telescope, and learned that in order to take semi decent pictures of the sky I would want one that has computerized tracking. That is so you can lock onto an object (or at least a section) in space and track it through the sky so that your camera doesn’t blur the image. In order to get good pictures of stars for example, you need to leave your cameras shutter open, allowing more light into it. If the sky is moving, the stars smudge. I’ll need a remote for my camera so that me holding down the shutter doesn’t blur things further. Also, I want a t-ring, these are camera specific, and allow you to attach your DSLR to a telescope using it as the actual lens of the camera. Sure, you can find items that will “hold” your camera up to the telescope, but these are not exactly ideal.

Telescopes are really expensive. Computerized ones even more. I found a Celestron NexStar 60 SLT Telescope for roughly $200 (Regular $500) and decided I was going to invest in it. The reviews are alright – apparently if I get really into this hobby I’m going to want to upgrade the lens, which is simple enough to do. This telescope is not the best out there by any means but the price was right and it does have computerized tracking. I should be able to get incredibly detailed shots of the moon, Saturn and it’s rings, Jupiter and other stuff. I won’t be seeing any nebula any time soon, but that doesn’t always have to be the case.

I am *incredibly* excited. Obviously, since I’m posting about it here on MmoQuests and I’ve done nothing but talk about telescopes for the last three days. Gaming is great, and the people I meet in games are fantastic, but when it comes right down to it it’s a combination of hobbies and interests that makes life so fantastic.

I hope everyone has had an amazing weekend! Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself – and I’ll see you in Telon.

The shaman managed to reach level 30 last night, after some very painful adventuring in River Valley. There is a significant lack of content from 25-30 or so, and I was incredibly happy to have hit this level. Now more quest areas open up, and some pretty neat quest chains. I was hoping we’d have another double experience weekend but so far that looks like it won’t be happening – at least not this weekend.Ah well, I’ll just have to level the ‘regular’ way!

I spent some time working on my harvesting skills which are far behind where they should be. That’s the only downside with my leveling, I’ve neglected other things like diplomacy and crafting. Not THAT big of a deal but a minor annoyance. I’m enjoying the shaman quite a bit although I also noticed there are a LOT of them in game, and I’m not quite sure why. Every zone I go to typically has a larger amount of shaman then any other class. When I reach the levels that my other characters are currently sitting at (47 for the blood mage for example) I may switch over. We’ll just have to see.

In the mean time, I expect a pretty fun weekend gaming. I have some regular chores to take care of but other then that it should be uneventful. Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself, and I’ll see you in Telon!

Since a lot of players are reluctant to spend any time reading through quests these days, it’s rare that we come across one that causes us to pause and go ‘woah, wait a second.’ – but there’s a few quests in Vanguard I’ve found that do just that. Pictured above is Velours, my innocent shaman. Well, she used to be innocent. See that rather shady looking peasant standing behind her? That is a dazed (and crazed) farmer. She lured him out of a field (filled with other farmers, and a few demon like creatures) and she’s taking him over to that innocent looking windmill up ahead. No doubt she promised him some better pants (his are quite obviously in rags) and maybe the chance to see his long lost relatives. Either way, the farmer didn’t put up any resistance at all.

Here we are inside of the windmill. See those chunks of meat on the ground? Yep. That’s our farmer. Not only did ‘innocent’ Velours have to lure the farmer to this windmill, but she had to hack him into four large pieces, and then stuff those pieces in the grinder that you see off to the left. Now, maybe you could excuse hacking up just one farmer. But no. I had to do this three times. Once I did it a third time, I had to gather all of the evidence inside that grinder (ew) and place it in a barrel (off to the right) so that I wouldn’t be caught.

Now of course there was a back story to this quest. I’m not evil after all but apparently the farmers were. I was saving a town by doing this (or so I was told) – and had to hide the evidence because of COURSE the towns people are not going to approve of this method of disposal. Why could I not just be rid of them the ‘regular’ way? Not sure, something about possessed minions and they’d probably just come back to life or some such.

This is a quest that I will not ever forget. It wasn’t particularly news worthy in the NPC dialog, but the actions of the quest were just so bizarre and so out there and weird compared to the usual “Kill X of Y creatures” and “Collect 10″ quests that I had been doing, that it made me stop and just crack up laughing (I never claimed that I was sane).

I doubt I’m the only person who has ever had this experience, and I doubt this is the only quest that has ever elicited that result. Are there any unforgettable quests that you’ve completed over your gaming life time? Let me know in comments!

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself – I’ll see you in Telon!