Bit of a Twist

WoW has been on hold a little bit, I am now trying to do a level a day with my priest, so far so good (currently 52).

Darkfall! What can I say… I rerolled. I know, I know, all that time AFK swimming/everything I ever did on him, gone. So the obvious question is why? Well, I will tell you! I was an Ork and I am now an Alfar. Do the hitboxes really matter and/or are they really different? No. I think I didn’t want to be that guy anymore, I just didn’t like him, dumb name, dumb face, looked big and felt tiny. It just wasn’t a good match. But now, I am tiny and I feel huge!

So what have I done on the new guy so far? Well I’m nearing 50 1 handed sword, 30ish Archery, 40ish Lesser Magic, 40ish Tailoring, and that is about it I think. My plan for this guy is to go full force into 1h/mounted combat, eventually rounding out with a 2hander and magic/archery skills as well.

I won my first fight in Darkfall already. I am currently 1-0 (on this guy) thanks to not getting ganked due to not running into to gankers, I got the shit scared out of me by some scary dudes who turned out to be friendly and familiar, but more on that later. So I’m killin goblins, right, and I’m not at the scouts only spawn so I need to stay on my toes due to shamans being buttholes (at the time) and kicking my ass. I’m fighting a Fighter and I see a figure with a shield in the distance, it looks very similar to a goblin so I don’t pay it much attention but keep it in mind. I kill the fighter soon after I skin it and as I am looting it I see this “other goblin” rushing me. Turns out this was no goblin but a red (alignment, so pk) Alfar coming to kick me while I have 50%hp. I switch to my sword/shield, unsheathe, and charge the guy hitting him before he hit me. We trade blows for a bit, one for one for the most part but I miss a couple so he got in 2 for my 1 a couple times. I am not winning and this is not cool. I start strafing like a mad man swinging my sword all over the place, doing this “swinging” like motion with my character and my sword swings (thats what it felt like – swinging) and before I know it I’ve hit him 7-8 times and he hasn’t hit me once. He ran behind some rubble (imagine a rock wall with the top broken off, one of us on each side) and I pulled out my bow. I drew my bow, this is when I heard his footsteps running away, I aim at the top of the rubble and see him jumping over the other side, I loose an arrow and hit him right in the back, reminded me of pulling some BS in cs. He keeps running and I keep shooting him, 2 more times in the back, he turns toward a hill and as he is about to go out of sight I loose one more arrow, knowing it will fall over the terrain and land in his ass, which is exactly what happened. I pulled out my sword, ran up, pressed x, and clicked for the gank. I looked at public chat and see that he let out a fuuck before he died.

So yeah, that was technically my first one on one victory against someone who wanted to fight me, and it felt real good.

I had completed the quests in my starter town and had one that sent me to the next place. This new place with a bank and two people feels pretty secluded and very unsafe. I get the quests to kill Hivekins, complete said quests, and then get the follow up quests to kill harder ones and the Queen. I venture out to the area marked on my map and discover the harder hivekin are fucking harder as shit, I also spot the queen aka that one dude in Blade that is fat as shit living in a basement. This is when I notice the other people with shinier armor. Shit! Hide! Did they see me? God I hope not. I begin moving to their side for a closer examination. I am pretty sure one of them sees me as he is facing in my direction and strafing left to right (I am hiding behind a thin pole so I am strafing slightly with him in an attempt to stay out of view). I come out from my hiding spot and put my xhair on him and shit a little bit more, this is Paragus, SynCaine’s guild leader. Shit now I’m going to die to him and maybe his friends and they’re gonna blog about it, damnit. There goes my e-rep…. But, that did not happen, he let me be. I begin killing a Queen when hell fire shit storms begin raining down on it from above. Then I got a pm from SynCaine himself asking me not to kill the Queen because Paragus is using it to skill up his big hellfire shitstorms. Pretty cool I thought.

I joined the clan NEW for some reason. I am pretty satisfied with this decision as I can get free shit if I like, which I haven’t, yet, and the NEW tag over my head makes people want to come and get some “easy pickins”, little do they know I’m not that new. So if I keep sticking to the newb areas while I skill up I hope to get attacked by more people like the one who I whooped.

That is it for now, time to play some games!

Darkfall Stats Update

Go go afk swimming! I am hearing conflicting reports that GMs kick for this and ban after multiple offenses, but I don’t get why that would be since numlock is the only thing I’m doing. I think most people who complain about it aren’t doing it in the open and are doing more borderline exploit shit to hide themselves and then afk swim. I get killed by people somewhat frequently so I’m not completely getting away with it, though my stats may say different. Shit, look at my xfire lol, big ol DF time.

It is fuckin early and I am off to school because gay buttsecks and all that. Then work. Then WEEKEND YAAAAAAAAY! I can’t wait to get tatered/r-tarded and make food with my baby and watch football, oh and play a shit ton of MMO.

Mission Status: Progressing Quite Nicely

I have been AFK swimming in DF and at the same time playing WoW using the new Dungeon Finder tool. My swimming is now 100, Quickness is nearing 40, and apparently swimming also raises Strength because that is almost 35. As for WoW, I’m not playing my level 80, due to being shamed in my first Dungeon Finder attempt. So embarrassing lol.

If you recall from my previous WoW adventures I began the Argent Tournament quests in an attempt to acquire heirloom items, but I gave up when the route proved to be long and probably involved grouping with strangers. Well I guess that opened up the Argent Tournament dungeon for me. So I wanted some of those Emblems of Triumph so I queued up for a random WoTLK dungeon (non heroic). Guess which dungeon was the random selection? Well once it started loading I alt tabbed back to Darkfall to quit because I didn’t want to mess this instance up with my lag. By the time I alt tab back, my whole group is on horses with polearms ready for some jousting. Okay, shit, what do I do. There’s a horse, I’ll go hop on it. Shit! No polearm equipped! Okay, it is okay, I have a polearm, I know I do, let me just find it on one of my hotbars, there it is! *Click* Nothing…. WTF, where the shit is my polearm? Ohhhh yeaaaaahhhh. I remember now, I banked it after I sold the gold farmers loot he left on me and got my reimbursed items out of the mail. Okay well, what do I do now, the fight is starting. Kill the bad guys on foot! Alright, I’m doing good, killing them no problem, but I’m not on a horse. The Gnomes of Gnomeragan cheer for Owndead! Too bad my group didn’t feel the same way. “WTF are you doing lock?”

Shit, they’re on to me! Should I ask questions? Explain I left my polearm in the bank? How the fuck do I get out of here?!?! Teleport out of instance….. not working!!! Leave party! Yes! Whew, that was a terrible experience. Alright, what now? I know, let’s quit.

As I stare at my character selection screen I ponder what to do. The only way I can see myself succeeding random dungeon selection is if I practice them one at a time, specifically selecting each dungeon then reading up on the encounters and queuing. Plus I had to respec from Demonology thanks to the gold farmers and I forgot my exact spec from before. I feel very out of my element on this character, as if I haven’t played him in some time….

My friend is currently leveling a Warrior on Drak’thul and is level 74ish, I have a 47 Priest there as well. So I log on him, he has fewer skills, thus I don’t have as many options for setting up my attack chain and it is easier to settle down with this guy. I am very close to leveling and kill a few mobs nearby in the hinterlands to ding 48. Once I feel a little comfortable with dealing damage (shadow priest, duh!) I queue up for Zul Farrak which cons green to me but I have never done it before.

So I have since completed ZF 2 more times in addition to my first run. I am now level 50 (running dungeons is pretty good leveling) and it feels a lot better than how leveling used to feel for me in this game. I used to have to kill kill kill turn in quest turn in quest turn in quest. Now it is just like a little co-op single player feeling where I have to complete a certain map level 3 times for 2 character levels. It is not bad by any means and I’m finally getting to experience the brunt of the game this way. Plus by leveling this guy I will learn my preferred chain of attacks, so far it is Mind Blast and Mind Flay with a side of Dispel for anyone who gets polymorphed. Dispel was a hard one to pick up as the first 2 tanks did not ask for it. It did cross my mind that it was possible but I just never tried it. So when the third runs tank kept saying dispel I figured it out and moved it to my E bind on the hotbar. My friend says I should get some nice addon thing to make that easier but I no longer like addons thanks to gold farming sons of bitches. That is like the only way they could’ve gotten to me and it is my fault for using old shitty pvp ones. Anyways I am now a dispelling machine!

My friend commented on Darkfall saying that “that sounds lame” when I mentioned that I was just swimming into a wall. I replied that every MMO has something tedious for you to do in order to be able to “compete” with your peers, and Darkfall is pretty much the only one I know of (besides Eve) where you can do some of that AFK. Whether or not having a part of your game that is required to compete being long and tedious enough for people to want to AFK it (whether they can [DF] or can’t [WoW]) is the right idea or not is another subject.

I don’t know when I will have my next actual play session in DF but I do like that my STR and QUI are raising while I’m doing nothing. I just hope that the next time I go and actually hit things that I hurt em real good, that sure would be nice.

Until next time enjoy your carebear game or your pkpkpk game, because I will certainly be enjoying both.

I got somethin to say

It’s better to burn out, than fade away.

I consider myself an MMO enthusiast. Let us use Merriam Webster to help us define enthusiast: a person filled with enthusiasm: as a : one who is ardently attached to a cause, object, or pursuit b : one who tends to become ardently absorbed in an interest.

I play MMOs to have fun and spend my time. You may have noticed that I don’t stick with them for very long and that sometimes I play games that you wouldn’t think I would want to play (FreeRealms anyone?). I did this before and after WoW.

Being an enthusiast is a good reason to play many different MMOs just like it is a good reason to know as much as you can about cars if you are a car enthusiast. The problem is that not everyone who plays all of the MMOs is an enthusiast, they don’t care about the history of it all, they had a good couple year run in one MMO and have since jumped on and off that boat with their friends. The problem is, their boat is a big fucking cruise liner and the boats they keep jumping on are little dingys which are promptly crippled under the massive weight of the cruise line passengers.

Why do people go on cruises? So they don’t have to do the dishes for a week, to get away from it all, no laundry, no cooking, just having fun while other people do all the hard stuff.

Why do people go out on little dingys (or sail boats, pontoons, regular boats, etc)? Because they love the ocean, love catching their own food, they love being out on their own and firmly in control of their life. They love running into others like themselves just drifting out at sea. Discovering shipping routes and knowing where all of the buoys are located, where the sandbars are, the good fishing spots, all of these things that you don’t get on a cruise ship. Everything available to you was brought by you and no one is handing you anything.

Imagine you were one of those dingy riders who had been around for years before the cruise ships showed up. Their boats were small and the boats were few so it was easy for them all to view the ocean as their home. One day the cruise ship is announced and even dingy riders buy a ticket just to check it out. Unfortunately the dingy riders miss the ocean that they knew. Sure some of the elements that made their dingy adventures so great were there, but it just wasn’t the same.

Moving down the road some more and we have cruise ships pulling up next to dingys. The cruise ships passengers jump onto the dingy all at once and push the little boat to it’s limits. The boat doesn’t stop rocking as more people keep jumping on, the water is rising, the wood is creaking, and the cruise ship passengers are getting worried because they’re about to get a taste of the vast ocean. So they all pile back onto their cruise ship leaving the dingy a ragged little mess in the water just waiting for one tough wave to knock it over. The cruise ship sails on and the passengers yell back to the dingy, “you should get a bigger boat because that little one looks pretty shitty!”

Have you figured out what I’m talking about yet?

Yes, Tourism! I know, dead horse, I get it. But I have to say something and I don’t know if it has been said before.

One of the big arguments these days mainly coming from the tourist crowd who may or may not see themselves as tourists is that it isn’t the player’s fault for not liking a game, it is the developer’s. On the surface I cannot disagree with that statement. However, below the surface I can whole heartedly disagree.

Before WoW it seemed everyone who played MMOs was an MMO enthusiast. The genre seemed to really be picking up speed and it was exciting times. Before any MMO would come out you would be aware of a closed beta (usually heard some info from a closed beta participant), an open beta (used primarily to stress test the servers), and it was assumed that there were probably several other closed betas and inhouse alphas. We knew what to expect. The game would have problems, but every game we could play had problems too, that was just the way these games worked. We didn’t care because we loved MMOs so much. We just couldn’t get enough of them, and developers started pumping them out as fast as they could, and we kept buying them up and downloading them and playing the shit out of them. They were all pretty buggy at first, because the developers were trying to supply enough MMOs to meet our demands, and we did not demand flawless MMOs because none of us knew what that looked like and neither did the developers.

This is why some of us can argue with the tourists about the game being good and not being a “buggy pos”. That is how they come off the assembly line in our head because our first boat ride was not a cruise ship, we grew up ridin dingies, bitch (tryin to catch me ridin dingy).

My point is, you will never have an MMO release that is as good as WoW is now. The only way that will be close to possible is if a big fucking company with tons of bread to toss around that doesn’t have to worry about investors pressuring the shit out of them decides to make a product that is being developed for over four years making zero fucking dollars the whole time. Then maybe you can say that it is the developer’s fault.

But you can’t hop on a dingy expecting it to be a cruise ship when the company that made it is called Dingy Incorporated. It is going to be a fucking dingy, dingy companies dont make cruise ships, they make dingies.

If you want to keep riding on a cruise ship then you have to wait for Carnival Cruise Lines to make a new one because Sea Doo makes dingies.

You have unreasonable expectations of a small company with minimal funding, with said funding coming from someone who is aware of WoW’s success and is only hoping that they too will get a piece of the pie, said funder is not patient and does not understand a damn thing about MMOs nor does he care, so he sets deadlines and if he has to will cut his losses.

Do you really expect a game made in such a hostile environment to be completely devoid of bugs?

My question is, are you an MMO Enthusiast or do you just like riding on cruise ships?

Mission Impossible: The Best of Both Worlds

It took me some time this weekend to get back into DF, for some reason I just didn’t want to play it and I think it was because I was solo. So I joined Black Ork Assassins, an Ork only clan with some members who like to talk in Ork dialect, a bit wierd but I’ve seen way worse, plus it just adds more to the experience. We have a city, Zaghuroth (SP?), it is on the North Eastern corner of Agon, right next to the island Yssam (which I believe is where SynCaine’s alliance is based).

Upon arriving at the city I am greeted by a gate…and it is down. So there appears to be no way to enter this city lol, the gate won’t open for me as I am too low of a rank. I do some chatting in Clan and someone comes out to boost me over the wall. Now this is probably one of the coolest things I’ve recently encountered. I would run into a wall perpendicular to the city wall (so if the top of the T is the city wall, I am running into the side of the l in T) and a clan mate would come up from behind (very nice!) and either shoot me with a fireball (which would explode and launch me over the wall) or hit me with their weapons knockback style. I’ve since had this happen to me probably 5 more times and have even boosted a couple people over myself with my knockback style (which hits players a lot further than mobs, times 10 easily).

Once I arrived in the city I was taken back to EU release seeing the city buffs on me along with the master NPCs who sell/train practically anything you can possibly buy/train. By the bank was another familiar sight, sparring! I got in on some of this as it is a great way to practice your PvP skills as well as raise your actual skills (offensive and defensive). I noticed a clan mate practicing some uber magic on the afk people who died and respawned by the bindstone. It enticed me to raise my Greater Magic a little in hopes of eventually reaching his level of coolness (spell/skill wise). Once I get my Greater Magic to 50 I can buy a specialized magic class (fire, air, necromancy, ice, etc) which are the ones with the big boy spells. Specifically a launching spell so that I can get myself over the wall when no one is there to help me so I don’t have to bindstone recall. I could get the lesser magic spell Launch (requires 70 or so lesser magic, I’m currently around 65) but I don’t know how well it will work as I remember on EU release it didn’t seem to be very effective.

Another familiar sight was afk skilling. People running into walls while afk to raise their stats. Yesterday my swimming was around 20 and when I left this morning it was over 75. I have also gained 5 or so full points of quickness which feels fucking awesome. I plan on switching once my swimming reaches 100 to running into a wall, after that I’ll either balance something on my shift key for sprinting or set up a macro with a 3rd party app to sprint, rest, sprint, rest, etc. I do not know the rules exactly on such activities, I know it was a gray area on EU at release, so I don’t know where Aventurine now stands with this though I’m sure I’ll find out. After sprinting then I’ll go to crouch walking and after that then I’ll be done with the afk into a wall tactic. I’m hoping my stats will be real big by then.

Some people are fucking beasts. I had a clan member I was sparring with who I could barely dent even if I hit him 5 times to every 1 of his hits, I just couldn’t win. Which is why I’ve begun afking into walls. Two members of Nemesis (a clan in SynCaine’s alliance) launched over our wall into our city and raped the shit out of us twice yesterday. They had some pretty fucking big magic spells that melted my face off. Once they left this inspired me to work on my greater magic a bit more heh.

I’ve been working on raising my weaponsmithing to 25 so I can make some Rank 10 weapons (which do a little more damage than Rank 0 weapons though most people use Rank 0 to “skill up”) which means I have a plethora of Rank 0 Two Handed Swords that I rarely lose. I am currently at around 23 or so.

On to the point of the post’s title. Since I can see that I have much afking in my future I plan on resubbing my WoW account so I can try out raiding with that new LFG system. I’ve never done any high end raids in WoW and with this new system I don’t have to try at all in terms of waiting for people/mingling. I already know that I can run both at the same time so why not, you know? I just mute DF and I’m good to go. I’m actually quite excited about this.

Now I just have to wait for Blizzard to tell me my account is okay again since those fucking gold farmers stole my shit that just got restored, a-fucking-gain. I can’t find shit on my computer so I don’t know how they keep getting it, but before I scanned this time with my new programs I deleted all of my addons from Cursed. I hear that sometimes one slips through and I did have a few sketchy old addons that didn’t do much, so I’m hoping I didn’t detect anything because I deleted it (I did quarantine 6 files though I don’t think they were the problem).

Anyways, hopefully today I’ll be raiding it up in WoW on my Warlock like a big fag while swimming in DF to become a big stag! Har har, I so rhymeh!

I said good day!

Lewt, Stats, Skills

Short and Sweet

I’ve played a shit ton of DF. I have died like 4 times to players and killed 2 Harvesters by a player city (one was afk, both were naked). I have like 12+ suits of chainmail and can now make banded. I have 3 mounts that I made and lost 1 that I stole from a PK who got too close to a tower. I tried to jump a guy mining iron and he raped the shit out of me. I later ran into this guy and fought mounted for a minute, then realized he called in backup, got chased by 3 dudes, one jumped down the mountain to catch up (air acceleration like in CS) and got me.

My STR and WIS are both almost 30, at which point I will be buying some new skills (though I forget which ones exactly lol). My mining is over 75 with Mining Mastery at 30, Herb is almost 75. Lesser Magic is above 50, I have greater magic to almost 20 with rend a little above that.

Greatswords is almost 40 along with archery. I’m doing the big ass stat bonus quests where you have to kill 500 of a lot of shit. I’m almost ready to turn in the +2 wisdom one which requires 300 stone (have) 300 timber (have) 300 iron ore (dont have) and 300 fish (dont have). In return I get +2 wisdom, 2k gold, and 50 ingots (only thing that makes it almost worth it, I’m not mining that much for no crafting gain).

Shit is going good, I left murder herd mainly because they’re a bunch of paranoid r-tards. They think I’m going to spy on them or some shit because they don’t remember me from DF’s launch. Oh well, I heard they just lost a boat being dumb so, good riddance. Not sure where I am going but I am leaning towards the all Ork clan mainly just so I know my enemies (non orks) and have a city to farm mats and defend from fgts.

Looking to get STR and WIS to 30 today, buy the skills, finish the +2 WIS quest, get more steedgrass, farm more goblin scouts (for +STR quest), make more banded, kill more skeleton archers. Possibly find a selentine chest to use one of my 2 keys on. Etc.

I’d love to take the time to really put a lot of thought into my writing but, if I do that now then I lose precious play time! MFKERS!

Good day so far

MMOs are best played with lots of time, usually on a weekend

Which is why I didn’t do very much at all yesterday. I did manage to get enough gold (500) to buy Weaponsmithing. I then went and mined 50 iron ore which smelted into 16 ingots (1 fail I believe) and with some wood I turned it into 2 Ork 2 Hander Swords (1 fail). That was about it, there was a lot of just standing around and alt tabbing, I just didn’t really dive into it (I wanted to but I kept getting sidetracked). I did not play any other game, so, it’s not like that.

I decided to attempt a harder mob as I have heard they are a good step up from Goblins (I’m assuming Goblins includes Shamans, which I have not fought since EU), this new mob was a Swamp Hag. I started out with Mana Missiles and eventually it charged up to melee me, which is when I did 3/4 of the damage to it, killing it. It dropped about 22 gold, some bone, and something else. Skinned a Hag Heart off of it. Meh!

I raised my archery a little bit, I got a rank 40 bow out of a quest so I do more dmg with my bow than my sword.

I’m still not sure about my guild. All I want is access to our DF forums so I can decide whether or not I want to stay with them. I need to know the plan, what the shit are we doing? My requests have been falling on deaf ears which may be sign enough of what I should do. From what I can tell we just allied with some people and are moving out to Seelie which is a city on an island off of the West coast of Agon. Maybe I’ll truck it on over there (across the whole fucking world) but who fuckin knows.

Guess what I did?

I lied to you! Har har, how you like that shit bitches.

I did not get around to DF yesterday as I was waiting for muh weed man and if you’ve ever dealt with one before you know how they can be (late as bawls). I didn’t want to start my DFing until I was well supplied which was not the case until late in the evening. So instead I played CS:S for a bit, going from 15th to 20th because I sucked ass. Then I watched some TV.

So sowwy. More tomorrow is le plan (which means playin today)!