Hard to believe that today is already December 15th – where does the time go! My apologies for those who may have been trying to access MmoQuests these past few days. My host was hacked and so the site has been less-than-stable while they resolved issues. It looks like everything is a-go now, so I should be able to get back to posting here on a regular basis, so long as something shiny doesn’t come along and distract me along the way.

There are numerous holiday festivals taking place in MMOs this time of year, and I love hearing about them all. A few of my favorites happen in Guild Wars, Wizard 101, EverQuest 2, Rift, and of course World of Warcraft. That by no means lists all of the events out there though, so make sure you take a peek into your GoC (game of choice) and take part in the yearly events (if there are any, not all games have these).

Dragon Flight (my Argent Dawn alliance based guild) managed to take down a few more encounters in some Outlands raids last week. This was quite a feat for us because we’re still only three people (actually, now we’re five, but two of them are too small to participate in these raids). We’ve been doing them for appearance gear and my shaman won herself a pair of neat shoulders that have a graphic of glowing broken up molten infused rocks.

Aside from that I’ve been working on leveling both a DeathKnight and a Druid. The druid managed to grasp on to level 62 tonight, and the DK is 61. I do have a recruit a friend account, so they’ve only got a few hours played if that. While getting to ‘end game’ is not everything, I’ve taken my time and enjoyed the ride on a handful of alts and this time I just wanted to get to Cataclysm content.

In true nomadic gamer style I haven’t really settled on a ‘main’ although I tend to play my shaman more than my other characters. I also spent some time playing Plants vs. Zombie, and Skyrim. The majority of my friends are all playing SWTOR – and it’s been really hard to hold out and not just pre-order the game for myself. In fact, there is a copy in the house, belongs to my other half. He’ll be playing and I can make a character on his account and play while he’s at work to see if the story actually does suck me in as everyone says it will. A few friends have pointed out that Star Wars has very little to do with ‘space’ and has far more to do with fantasy and magic, which is a big point in its favor (for me at least). I even sat down to try to watch the Star Wars movies today, so who knows, give it some time and perhaps that will be my GoC.

In sadder news, Beckett MOG shut its doors today. For those who don’t know I’ve been writing MMO related articles for them for a number of years now, as well as moderating their forums and writing news articles for the web site. They just weren’t pulling in enough money (or so I assume) and in this age of digital media, it’s not a big surprise. I hope that everyone who is now searching for new work (I’m looking at you, Jason) finds the job of their dreams, and I personally am incredibly thankful for the experience I’ve gained while working there.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

I mentioned over at Nomadic Gamer that KingsIsle has a fantastic charity drive going on right now where players can purchase a seed for 2500 crowns (approx $5 worth) and grow The Gift Giving Tree (pictured above). I love the idea of helping out a charity this way, and I’m anxious to see what my tree rewards me with. I’m only one day away from being able to harvest it finally. Feels like I’ve been waiting forever.

My little garden is composed of 6 plants total, which gives me enough to do that by the time I’m done I’m almost out of gardening points (I’m sure they have a specific name, I’m just not aware of what they’re called). Running out completely would be bad but this gives me a little boundary if I happen to accidentally pollinate when I should have played some music. This happens to me quite frequently because it takes time to switch between gardening spells and some times when I think I’ve switched I’m actually just using the same spell twice.

I’m almost rank 3, and I’ve enjoyed harvesting from my Dandelion and Boom Shroom plants. My Desparagus will be able to be harvested for the first time tomorrow, and I’ve been making sure I log in every day to take care of my plants, other wise they will wilt, and die. It’s nice to see that Wizard 101 has joined the ranks in ‘keeping players logging in’ on a daily basis with their daily quests. It’s actually gotten me playing a lot more than normal, which I love.

Has anyone else picked up a gift giving tree? Have you been able to harvest from it yet? What sort of rewards have you gotten? Let me know in comments!

It seems to be the time of year where we’re all waiting for things in our various games. The only exception (for me personally) at this time is EQ2, which has been abysmally quiet. The server merges have not taken place and aside from the push of the market place there wasn’t even a celebration in game for Thanksgiving. I suppose technically we are waiting on Frostfell to begin, but since this is a typical in game holiday I’m going to exclude it from the list. So. What are we waiting for?

LotRO – the November update which is (I believe) scheduled to take place today. This is going to introduce tasks, a whole slew of crafting changes (including farming), a barter wallet, class consumables, new mounts, new dye, and numerous other changes and goodies for players. Personally, I’m excited. I’m not a fan of the new shop window that will appear in the crafting panel and I’m not fond of how games are pushing their stores towards players who already pay the monthly subscription fee (it should be omitted if you have a subscription imo) but in F2P games this seems to be the new norm.

EVE – Incursion. While the really cool bits like the new character creator and sansha incursions won’t begin until January 2011, there are changes happening before then as well. (Scheduled at this time for November 30th). The learning skills are being removed and any points you’ve spent towards them are being reimbursed. There are new story line courier missions. There are numerous UI changes, camera changes, and ammo changes. New ships are being added. There is another patch coming just before Christmas which has very little details, and then the major incursion changes in January. Excited? Of course!

WoW – Cataclysm. Releasing December 7th we have already been privy to a whole bunch of changes. It would be impossible for me to list them all but a few that stand out are the class / race combo changes, hunters being able to tame foxes, lower level dungeons having the quest NPC’s added to the actual zones instead of you having to track them all down, of course there are the actual zone changes with the Shattering. Living through a cataclysm is great. It’s certainly not the first time one has taken place, but I do enjoy the entire world changing. There were new factions added and players have been busy dungeon grinding to raise them up. With those new factions came new mounts, and lets not forget the awesome Plants vs. Zombie tribute sunflower pet where you actually have to play a version of plants and zombies in game.

Wizard 101 – Gardening. Tipa has been posting her progress on the test server and I have to admit, it looks like fun. While I don’t play wizard 101 nearly as often as I’d like, I’m still a fan of the game and its unique combat style. I love seeing these types of updates, and I’m interested in diving right in and starting my own garden. I still haven’t even checked out Celestia, or any of the worlds after Krokotopia (Marleybone, Mooshu, Dragonspyre) but that is more of a lack of time then anything else.

The holidays are just around the corner and most of these games will also be adding some sort of winter update (including pretty much every single other MMO out there). I tend to avoid the real life holiday crowds as much as I can (I was diagnosed with  agoraphobia and it makes things difficult) and look forward to partaking in these virtual celebrations. Of course much of the month will also be taken up with family festivities so you may see a dip in posts, but I’ll do my best.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

After reading a number of early morning blog posts left over in my RSS reader from yesterday, I found myself wondering: Why do gamers put so much emphasis in what we and others are playing. Especially others. Why do we even care? Every day I read a post from one or more authors that includes some sort of semi derogatory remark condoning a group of players simply because of how they choose to spend their time. Or, to be more precise, where they choose to spend their time.

There are those who have made up their minds that everyone who plays a free to play game must be a certain ‘class’ of gamer. How dare they actually enjoy ‘the grind’ that comes with a lot of these games. Don’t they know that in the long run they’ll pay more for their “free” game then some people will pay for their monthly subscription?! Then there are the WoW gamers. Don’t even get me started on these people. I have heard everything from how close minded they are to how stupid they must be, simply because of where they choose to spend their time. It’s as though we as gamers have moved into certain categories and stereotypes not based on who we are, but because of where we play.You ask a fellow blogger their game of choice and suddenly your opinion of them shifts slightly.

So I ask again – why does this aspect of a person even matter. Why are we so keen to judge someone based on a persons decision to spend their free time where they wish. I have even heard people go so far as to say they do not like a particular person because they play certain games that they are not fond of. Really? Are we so shallow that we are now making character judgements based on video games?

I simply don’t understand it.

In my opinion it doesn’t matter where you play, so long as you have fun. In fact voicing my opinion about any other ‘type’ of gamer is a moot point because when it comes to how others are spending their time – my opinion doesn’t matter! It’s their time, their money, and what I think of the matter is completely irrelevant. I refuse to classify a person based on whether they’re playing EQ2, EQ, VG, LotRo, WoW, WAR, DDO, Darkfall, Wizard101, Runes of Magic, EVE, Alganon, Fallen Earth, Lineage II, Allods, Champions, STO, Free Realms, Aion, FFXIV, SWG, Guild Wars, AoC, or any other game.

Go play, and enjoy. Don’t like it? Move on and find something you DO enjoy. It’s a game. They’re supposed to be fun. There are SO many games out there and despite what others would say about them all cloning one another there are always unique factors to each and every game – you may be surprised at what you end up playing and enjoying. I implore gamers to make their own decisions about what they like and don’t like, and refuse to be classified into a category of gamer simply because of where they spend their time.

Wizard101 ran a contest not too long ago where if they met the goals of followers on Facebook, members who had also joined up with Wizard101 central would recieve a Danger Hound, as well as gold for additional members. Codes started being emailed out on the 21st of December, and this morning I logged in to find my own Danger Hound as well as 5500 gold!

Pictured above is my little Angela Ravendust, 27 life wizard (still trying to finish up Krokotopia, which has been slow going since I’ve been trying to get my 2nd account caught up).

This is my first pet that actually has a purpose aside from looking neat – it actually adds a card to my deck (which I of course forgot to get a screen shot of). Looking forward to testing it out though!

Hopefully since I’ll be away from the PC this holiday season I’ll be able to sneak in some Wizard 101 time while on my laptop at my parents place, I’m VERY eager to start exploring Marleybone and get away from all of this sand!