Thursday, April 8, 2010

5 times a day?

I haven’t been online playing games much recently. What with work being an enormous pest and time sink with projects needing to be done on my days off, I really haven’t had much time to myself to do anything on t’internet. This creates a problem in that it leaves me without material to blog with. Well not completely of course. Any writer can find inspiration from the smallest of things. But, what I mean is that it leaves me without ‘fresh’ MMORPG material to blog about.

So. Here is what I have decided. When I don’t have EQ2 or Lotro stuff to bore you guys with, I am still going to attempt to keep some time aside to keep the ole blogatron a rollin’and the content will find me I’m sure. I guess I’ll just see how that goes.

News from EQ2 and Lotro then, minimal though it is.  Adurj has hit 82nd level, [Wow, that’s some pretty damn slow levelling ye got going on there – Ed] and has been bumbling around the new expansion slowly doing quests and finding his feet. What else? Oh, yeah. Apologies to those on Saturday who were hoping to go to the Ward of Elements raid I was running. I had to cancel at the last minute due to a request from my boss at work to prepare a presentation. So, sorry to all those who missed that WoE run. I will be doing another this Saturday all being well.

As for Lotro, I have spent some more time messing around in the Spring Festival and finding out a bit more about it. I think I have that sussed out now. The quests I have been doing around the festival site reward you with ‘spring leaf’ tokens. Like in EQ2 these can be handed in and traded for items of appearance for both toon and player housing. I didn’t win it myself, but my Bro sent me a pretty cool pirate eye patch that he got as one such reward. I still have not found out how to take part in the horse race though! I will probably be playing Lotro on Friday night and plan to head away from the festival site and back to some questing. It is about time I started Caedluff on his journey to 30th again. I plan on heading to Trestlebridge as my Bro says there are some quests there that may be suitable and I may start to outlevel them if I’m not careful. I must say I am quite looking forward to that. I have visited Trestlebridge gate before (when I was way too low to quest there)and it seems like quite a cool place. I guess I’ll let you know.

Back to EQ2. I guess it’s time I gave you my impressions of Sentinel’s Fate now that I have been enjoying it for a couple of weeks. I ‘kind’ of like it. I have been having this discussion with a few of my friends and we all seem to feel differently about it. Some really like the new areas, some don’t. Some like the Hole, and some don’t. I think it has probably been the same with most of the expansions. My favourite expansion so far (RoK) is not favoured by all. Some of my friends seem to think that is the worst one. I suppose what I am getting at is that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and with so many different play styles and differing personalities out there, of course people are going to have different opinions on what they like and enjoy and what they don’t.

I say, “I ‘kind’ of like it”. By that I mean, I like the story lines and the quests I have done so far have ranged from the boring and mundane to the interesting. A lot do seem to be the standard, ‘go here, do this, come back’ format. I guess that it unavoidable, but luckily with some of the quests the story is funny or interesting, so you don’t mind so much. I have noticed that doing purely quests in this expansion that the levelling seems slower than previous quest lines in previous expansions. I think most people are doing a lot of their levelling in the Hole in grind groups. I don’t particularly mind this. I am in no rush to get to 90 [Bloody good job son! – Ed] and if I have to spend ages getting there with the slower quest exp and lack of time online, then so be it. The important thing to me is that I still have fun every time I log on.

Apart from the content used for levelling there is quite a lot I like about the new areas. I like the layout of the zones and the graphics aren’t too bad, although I still struggle to think of them as anything better than that  being a Lotro player. There is no getting away from it. SoE have tried hard to improve the looks of EQ2 and have done a sterling job but even so, EQ2 still doesn’t hold a candle to the scenery in Lotro. 

I am yet to try our Battlegrounds as I feel my time is better spent (when I actually get some that is) levelling Adurj and enjoying the PvE content. Ema has tried it though and is hooked! She can’t get enough of the stuff. Having watched her play I guess it is like playing Quake or Unreal Tournament but with EQ2 toons instead. The excitement Ema displays when about to zone in to a BG is quite palpable and uncontrolled giggling from the excitement has not been unknown. I  recall those adrenaline fuelled sessions way back when on Quake, it was a lot of fun. As such, I really am looking forward to playing in BGs but even so, this will not stop me concentrating on PvE first and foremost.

I am going to try and get my Bros computer up and running again tonight (I’m such a techno gimp) [Seconded! – Ed] so hopefully I may be able to play at the same time as Ema soon. We’ll see how that goes. It certainly would be great to get a bit more online time if I didn’t have to share it. I’ll let you know how I get on.
Until next time,

Be well.

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