So, I am taking a brief break from MMOs over the month of June. Over the weekend, I loaded up an older game that I always enjoy.. Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries. I added to it the Mekpak 3.02b from Mektek.net as well as the HiDef patch from MechStorm. Anyway, I got the Behemoth using the little hacky way to mekpak mechs in the campaign. This is me in the Grand Championship with a Behemoth running 3xCERPPCs and 1xCUltra-AC20.
Enjoy.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
WoW - Reckless Abandon. Taking Some Lumps and Dishing Some Out
Sorry for the delay in my blog entries. Memorial Day was a busy weekend and the week following was hectic. Well, you don't want to hear excuses.
This blog entry is dealing with my excursions into the World of Warcraft. Now, my quick opinion on WoW is this. They do a lot of things very very well. PVE is their forte and they provided a very polished experience in that regard. PVP and the PVP audience is not their main target and it shows. There are many many holes in how they handle PVP from class balance to absurb behaviour in handling arenas. Anyway, I will delve into PVP later I am sure.
Today, I want to showcase two raid boss encounters my guild attempted. The first is Morogrim Tidewalker in the SerpentShrine Caverns. We have defeated him once period. Our biggest issue is dealing with the murlocks that periodically spawn. Now in this fight, for the unfamiliar among you, Tidewalker is this beast of a ..well.. something that we have to kill. He will periodically do abotu 4k damage to everyone in the group. This is in addition to sending up to four people to a watery grave that will deal 5-6k damage to that person. Now, both of these are survivable. The big issue is that he summons about a dozen murlocs that run in from the two opposite ends of the room you are fighting in. If these get on a caster or healer or any non-tank, really, they will die quickly as they hit for 1.5-2k damage each. So, the trick is to get them on tank types. The way most guilds handle them is to use a protection pally spamming consecrates to gather and hold them. The problem is that often, the 4k earthquake thing happens right before the murloc spawn. So, you will either have people die from earthquake+watery grave, which degrades the raid's effectiveness over time, or you run the risk of healers pulling aggro from murlocs as they heal the raid up. This is still the problem we are struggling with. I think we need to have the healers throw out hots or small heals and make sure they are standing near the pallies. The pallies that are tanking should be doing a lot of healing as the murlocs run in so that they gain the most healing aggro. Combined with the consecrate, this should take care of the problem. On the other hand, I am not a healer, so what do I know. :)
Anyway, in the video, I show our best attempt. We get really close, but we do not avail. Notice me bandaging myself after the earthquakes as I can. Maybe that is the answer.
The other video is our attempt on Doomwalker right outside of Black Temple. This is really our first serious attempt on him that I have been part of. We do have more success here and take him down on our first attempt. This is a fun fight and not nearly as complex as the Tidewalker fight we struggled with. I do not have too much to say here, but the video will show us in action. This movie is slightly better quality, but is still not great from my side. I still need to find a better video edit tool as well as play with my Fraps settings. See my P.S. below.
P.S. Sorry about the quality. GameVee.com looks to have upped their quality, but my movie did not start that great to begin with. I recorded using Fraps, which is fine. But I edited with Windows Movie Maker the first video and Nero Editor for the second, neither of which is good. WMM did not even preserve the aspect ratio on one (though Nero did on the second) and WMM generates a WMV. Bleh. Well, what do I expect from a bundled Windows tool. I will be looking for better movie editing software. If anyone reads this and has a suggestion, post it for me. Free or relatively inexpensive is the way I want to go here.
P.S.S. I should be continuing my Age of Conan diary this week.
This blog entry is dealing with my excursions into the World of Warcraft. Now, my quick opinion on WoW is this. They do a lot of things very very well. PVE is their forte and they provided a very polished experience in that regard. PVP and the PVP audience is not their main target and it shows. There are many many holes in how they handle PVP from class balance to absurb behaviour in handling arenas. Anyway, I will delve into PVP later I am sure.
Today, I want to showcase two raid boss encounters my guild attempted. The first is Morogrim Tidewalker in the SerpentShrine Caverns. We have defeated him once period. Our biggest issue is dealing with the murlocks that periodically spawn. Now in this fight, for the unfamiliar among you, Tidewalker is this beast of a ..well.. something that we have to kill. He will periodically do abotu 4k damage to everyone in the group. This is in addition to sending up to four people to a watery grave that will deal 5-6k damage to that person. Now, both of these are survivable. The big issue is that he summons about a dozen murlocs that run in from the two opposite ends of the room you are fighting in. If these get on a caster or healer or any non-tank, really, they will die quickly as they hit for 1.5-2k damage each. So, the trick is to get them on tank types. The way most guilds handle them is to use a protection pally spamming consecrates to gather and hold them. The problem is that often, the 4k earthquake thing happens right before the murloc spawn. So, you will either have people die from earthquake+watery grave, which degrades the raid's effectiveness over time, or you run the risk of healers pulling aggro from murlocs as they heal the raid up. This is still the problem we are struggling with. I think we need to have the healers throw out hots or small heals and make sure they are standing near the pallies. The pallies that are tanking should be doing a lot of healing as the murlocs run in so that they gain the most healing aggro. Combined with the consecrate, this should take care of the problem. On the other hand, I am not a healer, so what do I know. :)
Anyway, in the video, I show our best attempt. We get really close, but we do not avail. Notice me bandaging myself after the earthquakes as I can. Maybe that is the answer.
The other video is our attempt on Doomwalker right outside of Black Temple. This is really our first serious attempt on him that I have been part of. We do have more success here and take him down on our first attempt. This is a fun fight and not nearly as complex as the Tidewalker fight we struggled with. I do not have too much to say here, but the video will show us in action. This movie is slightly better quality, but is still not great from my side. I still need to find a better video edit tool as well as play with my Fraps settings. See my P.S. below.
P.S. Sorry about the quality. GameVee.com looks to have upped their quality, but my movie did not start that great to begin with. I recorded using Fraps, which is fine. But I edited with Windows Movie Maker the first video and Nero Editor for the second, neither of which is good. WMM did not even preserve the aspect ratio on one (though Nero did on the second) and WMM generates a WMV. Bleh. Well, what do I expect from a bundled Windows tool. I will be looking for better movie editing software. If anyone reads this and has a suggestion, post it for me. Free or relatively inexpensive is the way I want to go here.
P.S.S. I should be continuing my Age of Conan diary this week.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
AOC - Part 1: Getting started with the Bear Shaman
Well, I started my Cimmerian Bear Shaman and went through the first basic quests. These seem to be the same for everyone so I will not go into details. The video portion of this does not include the first walk throughs. I made it to Tortage and started my questing there. Now, I did some minor quests and moved up to level 8 or 9. I basically noticed that in AoC, the mobs (things I fight and kill) are much tougher at the same level than in other MMOs I have played. This basically led to many deaths. In the video, the scene opens with a death. I thought that appropriate since I have spent many moments at the loading screen preceding resurrection.
I completed some initial quests for my class, again, a Bear Shaman. Why a Bear Shaman, you may ask? Well, ask away, I am happy to share. Since this is a PVP server, and I do have a group of people I will be playing with, I decided to roll a support class. This is one of three healer type classes in the game. Of the other two, one is heavy healer class that also appears to be very squishy. The second is more of a damage dealer caster healer, that also looks to be squishy. I chose the third. The Bear Shaman will have decent crowd control abilities, good healing, and will be able to take and dish out some melee justice. This appealed to me more than the other two.
Ok, back to the diary. The initial quests were nothing exciting to be honest. Go here, talk to this person, kill these things, get me X of this item. The one interesting thing so far is that I am completing many of these quests at 'night'. So, what is so special about the night? Well, it seems that you can adventure at 'night' in your own instance. So, I think I am able to complete many of the initial quests, at least, on my own. This actually seems to be a good way to get into the mechanics of the game without interference from my other servermates. This may be doubly good for me since I am on a PVP server.
Now, as I level up, I am gaining some type of attribute points. I really have done no research into these yet, so I am afraid to put my points anywhere. I really need to do some studying! My Shaman also made level 10. At this point, I can start choosing Feats. Well, again, there will be more on this later my understanding is really basic right now.
I have progressed my character into my priest quest chain. The video included shows one part of this chain where I am actually doing something related to my healer archetype. I am saving some refugees from inbound marauders. And my healing actually helps quite a bit. Unfortunately, many of the die, but I save enough to complete the quest. Notice in the video I start out dead. This happens a lot and I thought it appropriate. Hah! Notice the buffs I cast and some of the abilities I am using. The melee combos are interesting as well. You know I am using one when the icon pops up on the left hand side showing the combo and the attack direction I need to hit to complete it. Also, occasionally you will see a green aura surround everyone. This is a healing aura I have that activates when I am attacking. Pretty nifty. Should be good for pvp down the road.
In any case, enjoy. These vids and posts will get better as I learn more about the game and actually start to form real opinions. I plan on posting these every few days with AOC mixed in with WoW.
I completed some initial quests for my class, again, a Bear Shaman. Why a Bear Shaman, you may ask? Well, ask away, I am happy to share. Since this is a PVP server, and I do have a group of people I will be playing with, I decided to roll a support class. This is one of three healer type classes in the game. Of the other two, one is heavy healer class that also appears to be very squishy. The second is more of a damage dealer caster healer, that also looks to be squishy. I chose the third. The Bear Shaman will have decent crowd control abilities, good healing, and will be able to take and dish out some melee justice. This appealed to me more than the other two.
Ok, back to the diary. The initial quests were nothing exciting to be honest. Go here, talk to this person, kill these things, get me X of this item. The one interesting thing so far is that I am completing many of these quests at 'night'. So, what is so special about the night? Well, it seems that you can adventure at 'night' in your own instance. So, I think I am able to complete many of the initial quests, at least, on my own. This actually seems to be a good way to get into the mechanics of the game without interference from my other servermates. This may be doubly good for me since I am on a PVP server.
Now, as I level up, I am gaining some type of attribute points. I really have done no research into these yet, so I am afraid to put my points anywhere. I really need to do some studying! My Shaman also made level 10. At this point, I can start choosing Feats. Well, again, there will be more on this later my understanding is really basic right now.
I have progressed my character into my priest quest chain. The video included shows one part of this chain where I am actually doing something related to my healer archetype. I am saving some refugees from inbound marauders. And my healing actually helps quite a bit. Unfortunately, many of the die, but I save enough to complete the quest. Notice in the video I start out dead. This happens a lot and I thought it appropriate. Hah! Notice the buffs I cast and some of the abilities I am using. The melee combos are interesting as well. You know I am using one when the icon pops up on the left hand side showing the combo and the attack direction I need to hit to complete it. Also, occasionally you will see a green aura surround everyone. This is a healing aura I have that activates when I am attacking. Pretty nifty. Should be good for pvp down the road.
In any case, enjoy. These vids and posts will get better as I learn more about the game and actually start to form real opinions. I plan on posting these every few days with AOC mixed in with WoW.
The First
Well, another blog, just what the interwebs needs, right? Well, this may very well be just important to me, did you think of that?!?! That's what I thought.
Actually, this is simply a place for me to start keeping a diary of my time spent in various games, MMOs typically. I will be adding blogs to keep a diary of my time spent in the games that I am playing. Currently I am in World of Warcraft and have just started Age of Conan. I am also really interested in Warhammer Online for my upcoming addiction.
A little history, and I will keep it short to prevent boredom from setting in, if it has not already. Truthfully, if you are already bored, then.. wow.. get an attention span!! Seriously though, my gaming experience goes back to the early days with Pong (home version), Atari 2600, etc. Mainly over time I have been a computer gamer with dalliances in the console world. As far as MMOs are concerned, I spent quite a bit of time in Neverwinter Nights on AOL back in the day (not the newer games released in the past few years.) Ultima Online, Everquest 1 and 2, City of Heros, Star Wars Galaxies... tried them all. I spent a fair amount of time with Everquest, but work and travel killed that game for me.
Then along came Dark Age of Camelot. For those that missed this title or did not stick with it long enough to see the Realm vs Realm PVP combat, you really missed a good game. Now, if PVP is not for you, then I can see why you moved on. But, if you really enjoyed that type of game play, this was a great game. But even DAOC got old and I moved on to WoW, as 10 million other people did. WoW was and is amazing in many regards. The UI is very nice and moddable. The quests are thought out and there is pop culture humor everywhere. The art still looks fresh thanks to the cartoonish approach. And Blizzard is constantly adding content. If you are interested in checking out my WoW characters, I mainly play my mage Lilybottom and my warrior Wraath on the Arygos servers. Now, for me, where WoW falls apart is in the PVP. Everyone is not equal when it comes to PVP. Certain class/spec combinations are much better than others, and Blizzard does not try and hide this. But to be fair, PVP is of secondary importance to them, falling into a distant second to their PVP content and balance. Understandable, but it does leave me wanting a better PVP experience. One more balanced, more open, and more meaningful.
Enter Age of Conan. I honestly do not know if this is the answer to my quest for the next good MMO. I am trying it out, and will try and keep a diary here of the things I do. I will be making videos of my experience as I travel in the land of Arnold. I'll embed them here and host them at GameVee.com. I cannot promise the quality will be great, but you will get to see what I am talking about if this interests you at all. A Bear Shaman on the DeathWhisper PVP server is my starting point for my adventures in Hyboria.
Well, here we go!!
Actually, this is simply a place for me to start keeping a diary of my time spent in various games, MMOs typically. I will be adding blogs to keep a diary of my time spent in the games that I am playing. Currently I am in World of Warcraft and have just started Age of Conan. I am also really interested in Warhammer Online for my upcoming addiction.
A little history, and I will keep it short to prevent boredom from setting in, if it has not already. Truthfully, if you are already bored, then.. wow.. get an attention span!! Seriously though, my gaming experience goes back to the early days with Pong (home version), Atari 2600, etc. Mainly over time I have been a computer gamer with dalliances in the console world. As far as MMOs are concerned, I spent quite a bit of time in Neverwinter Nights on AOL back in the day (not the newer games released in the past few years.) Ultima Online, Everquest 1 and 2, City of Heros, Star Wars Galaxies... tried them all. I spent a fair amount of time with Everquest, but work and travel killed that game for me.
Then along came Dark Age of Camelot. For those that missed this title or did not stick with it long enough to see the Realm vs Realm PVP combat, you really missed a good game. Now, if PVP is not for you, then I can see why you moved on. But, if you really enjoyed that type of game play, this was a great game. But even DAOC got old and I moved on to WoW, as 10 million other people did. WoW was and is amazing in many regards. The UI is very nice and moddable. The quests are thought out and there is pop culture humor everywhere. The art still looks fresh thanks to the cartoonish approach. And Blizzard is constantly adding content. If you are interested in checking out my WoW characters, I mainly play my mage Lilybottom and my warrior Wraath on the Arygos servers. Now, for me, where WoW falls apart is in the PVP. Everyone is not equal when it comes to PVP. Certain class/spec combinations are much better than others, and Blizzard does not try and hide this. But to be fair, PVP is of secondary importance to them, falling into a distant second to their PVP content and balance. Understandable, but it does leave me wanting a better PVP experience. One more balanced, more open, and more meaningful.
Enter Age of Conan. I honestly do not know if this is the answer to my quest for the next good MMO. I am trying it out, and will try and keep a diary here of the things I do. I will be making videos of my experience as I travel in the land of Arnold. I'll embed them here and host them at GameVee.com. I cannot promise the quality will be great, but you will get to see what I am talking about if this interests you at all. A Bear Shaman on the DeathWhisper PVP server is my starting point for my adventures in Hyboria.
Well, here we go!!
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