The weekend that was..

Great weekend. I actually didn’t play EQ2 too much, instead spending quite a lot of time on Need for Speed:Undercover as I knew I was near to finishing the storyline and was excited to get it finished. Turned out to be not too bad at all as far as driving game plots go. Surprise, surprise the hot Fed woman who gave me all my jobs turned out to be a baddy, but through some aggressive driving I managed to pulp her car into a fiery ball of steel.

Overall, although the game play was good, I was a little disappointed with NFS:Undercover. The graphics were average at best, the car control excellent, the story line a little too cheesy at times and unclear . For example, I thought I was a suited and booted Fed guy until the end when I realised they were talking ‘to’ the camera, which was supposed to be ‘me’. All the way through it seemed that the guy who the Fed lass was giving instructions too was this dude, and I was left thinking, “How in the hell does a guy like that, balding, suit, tie..infiltrate a criminal car gang?”..Well it turns out I was being a doofus and that wasn’t me at all. Also on occasion some lass who is ‘involved’ in the gangs but keeps turning to me for help and protection, keeps phoning me on a pretty blatantly product placed mobile system courtesy of T mobile, that does actually serve no purpose other than giving you a bit of info...and placing the product. The involvement of the side storyline was pretty bland to be honest. All of these things are totally liveable with, seeing as it is a driving game and they got the important bit right, the driving is excellent fun and challenging too.

The one major gripe I have about the game is the speed with which you run out of jobs/races to compete in and how quickly the storyline is over. I barely managed to get enough money from winning races to purchase and kit out two top end motors. I had to sell my Porsche to buy my Nissan GTR (R35) for goodness sake!! Now that’s not cool.

Anyhow, now I have completed the game I can return to Mass Effect as my ‘offline’ game when I get bored with EQ2. I’m actually looking forward to getting back into ME as it’s been two or three weeks since I have played it seriously and fancy getting my teeth back into it. My Bro says the stage I am at is just before some of the best bits in the story, so it should be great fun.

Inevitably we move on to EQ2. Not a bad weekend in game really. As you can see from my previous post Adurj is now 90th and slowly getting his kit up to scratch for raiding again. I sat in on a couple of ‘Twisted Honor’s PuRs this weekend through Toxx and Labs. What a really nice bunch. But oh wow, man do my resists need looking at. One thing a Scout or Fighter class (aside from Crusaders) has to struggle with I have found when playing them, is resists. As they usually do not have a great Wisdom stat, the base resists are low with armour/jewellery being relied upon to boost that up to a reliable level. When I raided RoK and TSO resists tended to be high enough with just swapping out a couple of items depending on the raid mob. Now it seems it is back to the old school where full sets of resist gear are needed to boost that. To give you an example Adurj is wearing a combination of T3/T4 fabled with bits of lev 90 armour thrown in. Jewellery is 99% level 90 legendary or fabled. Yet my resists are still way way too low.

It reminds me of when I first started raiding in EQ2 back when the cap was 70 and KoS was the latest expansion. Way back then I recall having to re-kit my necro out as his resists were appalling. It is one part of the game I find annoying. If the devs at EQ2 are good enough to design some great kit that takes a lot of hard work to get, how come they fail on the resist section? Surely top end armour should have resists covered? Especially when that level of armour was quite clearly created to sustain you through that tiers raiding. I guess it just links in to all the stuff I keep reading on the forums about the kit being disproportionate. So until things are sorted in that department, I guess it’s back to creating macros to swap gear in and out. Oh well, I guess it will at least get me thinking about armour and kit and what purpose they serve.

Streiter and Starfeesh (really nice folks btw) at Twisted Honor asked if I wanted and was aiming to become a regular on their raids. I would like to but it was mentioned to me that they prefer to have people in their guild if raiding with them. I’m not sure it is in me to leave AoV again. I have been with that guild for so so many years and with me acknowledging that I really am only killing time until other MMO titles come out, I’m not sure I’m ready to up and leave my buddies in AoV for six months raiding gratification. Even if Twisted Honor do seem like a sterling bunch. I’ll have to think on it. In addition, what I would really like to do and am awaiting a reply to this, is rejoin the secret raiding group that are from all different guilds but meet regularly to raid at high level. I was previously a part of this force and have decided to reapply. Hopefully they are not swamped with Dirges, although I do know a certain Dirgey who they already have ;) I guess we’ll see what happens. Anyhow, until I can get my resists up, I reckon I am not going raiding anywhere! That needs to be sorted as a priority.

Until next time,

Be well.