I’m Baaaack!

 

Ok, it was only 30 days, but it felt like the length of a “Twilight” movie. Gaming takes me away from the stresses of everyday life, job and family, included. Throw in the fact that we short-sold our home and moved the whole family into a rental home (it’s very nice, however) with all the baggage (pardon that pun) that comes along with it in the form of packing, losing stuff, large bills, paperwork, losing stuff, arguments, legal stress, losing stuff, and no time to game or have any “me” time, makes a sad man sad, indeed.

Well, things are settling down, the intertubes are open once again in our new home, and my daughter is making many new friends in this new neighborhood, which is much more family-friendly than our former abode in a golf club community with a bunch of stodgy people yelling at her to get off their lawn, quite literally.

I am, however, finding it difficult to get back in the swing of gaming. Other than my raid team that I re-joined this week to finally down Madness of Deathwing (we one-shot it, in fact, and it dropped double agility axes, WTF?!), my other games are collecting dust; and I don’t care. SWTOR is actually emailing me to come back to the game, and my subscription is still active! I haven’t unsheathed my consular’s lightsaber in 7 weeks. Apparently my companion is informing BioWare of this, and they are sending me the intergalactic holomessages to come back. Meh. Whatevs.

So, please tell me YOUR stories of “taking breaks,” and IF you came back to a game(s), how did you go about doing it? Post it here or send me an email at epicdiapers AT gmail DOT com.

Sihx

Vlog #2: My daughter is a ham, and go 49ers!

Vlog #2…my daughter loves this stuff

Episode 20: “Two MMOs at Once?!”

Answering to 2 masters at once...is it possible?

Click below for the audio segment:

Ok, I love WoW, and every other PC or console game has been relatively neglected for years now. My 2 raid nights a week were pretty much all the gaming time I can afford. But, now a second MMO is wooing me for my gaming time, just asking me to cheat on WoW.

So, how do you handle 2 MMOs, which of course are never “finished,” with such a limited schedule. My answer, if you really need to play both, you’re going to get half as much done in each game as you would in one. I’m still raiding in WoW, so my, “eh-em, force-user, is still a teenager.” But remember, you’re in these games for the long-haul. Be patient, enjoy the trip, enjoy the people you play with, it’s not a race. If you have a job or studies, or your family to take care of, that always takes priority, leveling those life aspects will reap greater rewards than any purple pixels.

Episode 19: “Moddable Gear”

Orange is purple, and purple is green, and well, I'm colorblind anyway

Click below for audio:

I think I was level 10 when I got my first orange item, and I thought I had to check my jedi sage’s robe for stains. Well, much to my initial consternation, which turned into understanding and appreciation, Bioware has introduced a very interesting system in The Old Republic, Custom Items that are fully moddable. Moddable gear is colored with an orange border, but don’t confuse the color with legendary items from other MMOs. Orange gear is actually quite common and can be acquired as early as level 8 via quest rewards, heroics, drops, craftable items, and even through underworld trading. What’s unique about this system is that it allows players to potentially acquire a look that they desire and wear it all the way up to end game. To scale an items stats and power, it has several slots that you can insert mods into and extract from. These mods are acquired through rewards, drops and professions, and crafters can even reverse engineer their older mods to create blue and purple mods. Some green gear is also partially moddable, and end game epic, or purple gear, is also partially moddable, but not fully like orange. This has to do with gear progression and balance.

Vlog #1: Sick Kid

I was half-way to work today when I got the call that my son was sick. There goes the day. Had to cancel everything and pick him up. So, I tried to make something productive out of it. Here’s the quick and dirty result: a horribly produced and on they fly vlog short.

 

 

Where’s Jar-Jar?

Me, my lightsaber, and my non-furry ugly companion who always wants to eat me.

Star Wars…with no Jar Jar…and pretty attractive 50’s pinups for the female toons makes for a pretty compelling start to “The Old Republic” MMO set to officially launch tonight. I happened to pre-order the game and got my early access invite on Dec. 14, but unfortunately haven’t been able to play it as quite as much as I had hoped. I have my two night committment to my raid team, and this week the family has had quite a few holiday and school activities.

That said, I did start a Sith Inquisitor (named Sihx on Keller’s Void) and have leveled him to 13 as of 6 hours prior to the official launch. My early impressions of the game are good. The quest dialogue has been superb, and graphics are very good, and the combat style is fluid. I acquired my first companion at level 9 (ugly SOB, btw), and fully functioning lightsaber, and left Korriban at 10. Many of my guildies have already unlocked their starship and droid, but I’ll have to get those later.

I also participated in my first flashpoint with 3 other guildies. It was very engaging, and I like the group dynamic where we each get to choose what we want on the dialogue wheel, and the most popular choice is what the group selects as a whole. Speaking of the dialogue wheel (or “choose your own adventure”), I’ve been trying to go fully dark side with my choices, but sometimes I fly through the quest text a little too fast and have found myself acquiring light side points from time to time.

Quests have not been quite as numerous and grouped as I would like them. I’ve found myself running for 3-5 minutes to a quest objective just to complete it and turn around and run back that same distance to the NPC who assigned it to me, then just as far in another direction to accomplish something else. I like exploration, but I’m surprised there aren’t more quests available. It seems like I only have 2-3 “active” in the same map at the same time. Leveling has been a little slower than I anticipated, although I’m used to the rapid leveling in WoW with heirlooms, recruit-a-friend, dual boxing, and leveling guides and addons.  I remember vanilla WoW leveling being quite tedious and lengthy.

I'm on a speeder! Where's my flippy-flops?

I have encountered a few bugs. Once my force lightning kept arcing continuously from me to a dead mob for more than 30 seconds, even after I engaged a new mob. I’ve seen this happen with a bounty hunter in a group as well (although his blasters were what were continuously shooting). Back on Korriban, I also had a quest that I had already turned in still show up as being active on the NPC on the map. Other than that, it’s been smooth.

Long-term I’m concerned about replayability. I know there are choices in the game which can direct players down different paths, but the starting areas won’t change much based on those choices. Also, the server queues have been a little long during early access. Considering the flood gates will open in a day or two, I anticipate queues of more than an hour for the first few months. This does not fit in with my schedule of limited playing time. I have short and infrequent windows that often can’t allow a wait.

End-game raiding is another concern of mine. I really do like the current tier 13 raiding in WoW, and my team. I’m not sure if I will get into raiding in SWTOR, as I can’t raid more than I already do in WoW, therefore one would have to drop. At least this is a couple of months away.

Alright, back to squeeze out another level or two before they shut down the servers in preparation for launch. Then let the queues really begin?!

-Sihx