Discovering Dragon Age And eBook Readers

Post soundtrack: “My Favourite Waste of Time” by Owen Paul

Fortunately I didn’t rush into looking for a guild, as I discovered Dragon Age: Origins this week.  Needless to say, it’s taken a noticeable bite out of my WoW playing time.

Warhammer Online has been and gone (I’ve cancelled my sub), and while it was polished and fairly entertaining it was just too empty outside the free-to-play starting zones.  I only got to the first zone after the free-to-play trial areas on one character, and there was usually no-one else levelling, leaving the big-reward group quests impossible to do.  In other words, it’s a fun game but not fun for PvE-focussed players (such as myself) with the games’ current population.

Dragon Age, however, has proven much more appealing (and more importantly, less reliant on other players for progress –  although that is kind to be expected from a single-player rpg).  The combat, although the multiple-character micromanagement really isn’t my preference, is a little entertaining (although I’ve dropped the difficulty down to ‘easy’ after having my party repeatedly stomped into the ground too many times), but the real appeal of the game (at least for me) is in the plot and characters (most notably in the interactions of your party members).

I’m enjoying my first character (a dwarf commoner rogue), and if the other origin choices are as well put together I’ll likely have more play-throughs after I complete the game.  It won’t probably be for a while, however, as even with all the time I’ve invested in the game so far, I’m told I’m only 10% of the way through.

As far as WoW goes, I’m currently just logging in to do gem transmutes at the moment.  However, I’m beginning to consider the possibility of levelling up either a shaman or a mage in order to get a feel for the classes pre-cataclysm (because guess what classes dwarves will be able to roll then?).  I’m also tempted to put together more gear-lists along the lines of my Disc Priest PvP guide – I guess it will depend on whether or not the spirit moves me (or if I’m given encouragement).

In unrelated news, I was briefly really interested in the dedicated ebook reader (I quite enjoy a good book, and BBB’s recent book posts here and here have given me a great deal of new suggestions) being launched here in NZ, the Kobo.  However, it’s finally been unveiled at the annoyingly high price-point of NZ$295, which is especially irritating compared to the same product being available to our friends over the ditch for AU$199, which works out to be about NZ$248.  For further comparison/irritation, consider the upcoming US release of the Kobo, where it’s priced at US$150, or NZ$225.  Bah.

I guess that’s the downside of there not being an ebook reader market in NZ currently – it’s the first product to hit the market, so they can name their price.  However, I’m not impressed (or planning on buying one, now) – maybe there will be a new ipod touch to go with the new iphone expected in June.  But for the time being, I guess I’ll be sticking with my ipod touch and copy of Stanza.

Ah well, those darkspawn won’t kill themselves.

/wave

There’s No Server Like Home

Post soundtrack: “Sorry (I ran all the way home)” by The Impalas

Sometimes you just can’t fight the siren call of an old server – especially if you have a lot of characters there, as I have on Dath’Remar.  So I’m seriously considering leaving SAN (or at least putting it on the back burner) while I spend some time back on Dath and investigate future options.  (The fact I didn’t really start considering this until after reading Skeleton Jack’s post about his thoughts on Dath after moving there to join Insurrection is purely coincidental. Probably.)

I started back yesterday, doing a pug VoA with disc priest Mingle, and followed up with some time on rogues Pringle and Ringle (including the raid weekly on Ringle).  It felt oddly strange to be back on my dwarves after so much time invested in my gnome – I’m beginning to suspect it might be time to branch out into the other races, possibly even replacing a dwarf or two.

I’ve also been having a look on the official forums to see who’s recruiting – no-one seems to be after a disc priest, but I might be able to apply on Ringle.  It’s tricky though, as most guilds are well into ICC25, and I’ve so little experience with my rogue – when I went in, it was healing (either semi-effectively as disc or badly as holy) on Mingle.  Time to catch up on strategies, I guess.

I’ve also been exploring yet another MMO, having picked up a cheap copy of Warhammer Online while my interest in WoW was wandering.  Curiously enough, I was able to pick up a cheap copy of the collector’s edition for just over half the price of the (not currently on special) normal edition – it well worth the price of admission for the art book, but the accompanying hardcover graphic novel wasn’t quite as appealing for me, and the accompanying unassembled figure will remain unassembled.  (The main reason I bought a boxed copy was because the additional of 15gb of traffic to download the full client effectively killed any savings from buying a digital copy)

I have to say, the game is visually quite appealing, being both more stylised than WoW and yet less cartoon-ish.  It’s just a pity that for a PvP-based game that the player density is so low, even with the game reduced to a only four servers.  (I might write some more in another post, and maybe add some more shiny screenshots – feel free to encourage me)   Unfortunately it looks like I’ll have to cancel my sub after the 30 days ends – I’m saving for a new monitor, and my budget for the next few weeks will be challenged enough covering the cost of groceries without the extra expense of another MMO subs on top of that.

Anyway, that’s pretty much where I’m standing right now: pugging whatever I can find while I considering which guild to app to first.  (The tricky part, of course, is trying to accurately gauge whether I’m good enough to app to a progression guild, or if a more casual guild that just happens to raid would be a better fit – not an easy task with as much insecurity about my skills as I have)

And now that it’s nearing raid-time, it’s probably as good a time as any to see what’s happening.

/wave

Real ID? No Thank You.

Post soundtrack: “Close The Windows” by Subroc from the Flatout Soundtrack

Real ID has been turned on in the 3.3.5 PTR, and I’m beginning to wonder if Blizzard really likes things in binary – all or nothing seems to be a common theme in WotLK.

Consider previous examples: raid size for a start.  You could have it easy (10-man with at least some 25-man gear from running both versions, which leaves you over-geared for the instance) or hard (25-man, where you’re at the correct gear level for the difficulty level at which the content is tuned).  Raid difficulty:  normal modes (easy, once you’ve acquired gear from that tier) vs hard modes (aka the raidwide-who-stands-in-fire detector).

Just don’t get me started on the lack of a ‘medium’ difficulty setting for WotLK raids.  But I digress.

Continuing this philosophy with Real ID, you either share everything, including your real name from your account, or you don’t use it.  (Yes, I know it’s opt-in – shhhh, you’re ruining my rant.)

Now, I’d love to be able to allow ex-guildies to keep in touch this way, but I don’t use my real name in-game.  Ever.  (Even with online friends outside of WoW, only a couple of people know my RL name, so it’s not something specific to the game for me)  And regardless of the (substantial!) appeal of things like cross-realm and cross-faction chat, the price just isn’t acceptable.

I have a single identity I use with WoW (KiwiRed, the name I write this blog under), and if I was able to use that instead of my name from my account, I’d be fine with Real ID.  But until that is offered as an option, it’s just not a service I’m willing to use.

/wave

Gearing A Dual-purpose Rogue

Post soundtrack: “Yunowhatislifeez (jazz mix)” by Metropolitan Jazz Affair

Gnome rogue Pringle is gearing up nicely, and I’ve been experimenting with a different gear acquisition theory:  badges buy PvP gear first.

The theory is, starting with blue gear (crafted PvP items where possible), buy non-set items with honor and spend triumph badges on the arena PvP items (apart from the shoulders, which will be purchased with honor + arena points).

The reasoning for this is, the upgrade of blues => ilvl232 PvP epics is sufficient to give a rogue decent dps in heroics where most of the PvE upgrades will be coming from, while PvP survivability will be substantially greater given the extra resilience from the purchased items.  After enough upgrades, the LFD will start to offer the ICC heroics which will provided more PvE-specific upgrades.  And once all five emblem-PvP items have been purchased, badges are available to buy the T9 set.

Admittedly, the process would have been more realistic if I’d thought of this before buying the T9 gloves and shoulders, but…  well.  My timing often isn’t the best.

Also, I’ve been woefully distracted lately by numerous tower defense games on my ipod touch (Pew Pew Land is the latest) so by my reckoning my intermittent posting schedule is all Apple’s fault.

Oh, and who else is looking forward to racing along the Azshara highway that’s come to light in the Cataclysm leak?  Seriously, I’ve downloaded all the MMO-Champion screenshots and cycling through them as desktop wallpaper.  Impatient for Cataclysm?  Why, yes I am.

/wave