Back Into the Rift

I played Rift very briefly when it came out.  I think I didn’t get too far but had some real graphical problems with my old computer and it looked awful so I stopped playing.  After listening to (for the first time) the Too Long, Didn’t Listen Podcast   http://mmoreporter.com/2013/06/29/too-long-didnt-listen-episode-65/    wherein they talked about Rift’s re-emergence as a free to play game, I thought I’d tried it again.  (Plus my husband indicated I may have become a one trick pony only playing WOW, not his term).

I don’t understand the Souls thing at all. It seemed to be offering me in a tool tip to pick some Soul thing but then RED LETTERS appeared saying didn’t go with what I had already chosen.  Make up your minds beaners.

The setting is nice and not quite steam punkish, more Arkham Horror.  Lots of little plaques to read and books to collect.  My Pyromancer (I think) seemed to handle everything and her Rock Guy Elemental was most useful.

The general chat made Wow’s Moonguard jabberjaws look like babes in the woods.  Sheesh people.

I’ll see if I get farther along and we shall see.

Know Thy Enemy

Ha!  part of my problem with getting the Flame Thief is I don’t know the layouts of the Horde capital cities, because I haven’t really played any Horde characters.  Never fear, my spies are in place.  I’ve already walked the route into Silvermoon City with a spy Blood Elf.  Very doable as long as I can get past those two initial guards.  I have a brilliant plan for it.  I get an accomplice to lure the guards at the Shepherd’s Gate into combat and lure them away a bit from the gate, and I slink in stealthed.  The rest of the route is easily clear.  Ha ha!  Suckers.   I’ll let you know if it works.  Shhh don’t tell the Horde.

Midsummer Fire Festival

This World of Warcraft festival has you visiting so many horde locations I thought
“I’m getting tired of these festivals and I’m going to quit doing them”.   I respect that they have you visiting tons of locations throughout the world to get areas of the map clear that you don’t already have complete. However, my level 90 character does not have areas clear where she spent bundles of time and that is really annoying.

Every time you extinguish a Horde Bonfire, you get marked PVP for five minutes.  I learned something I hadn’t any idea of…and that is if you get marked and then fly or take a boat anywhere the PVP drops immediately.  Who knew?  No wonder the goons keep killing the flight master in Booty Bay, so you can’t escape PVP that way if you’re marked for whatever reason.

I used the Icy Veins guide and maps to get my honoring and extinguishing achievements.  With my new keen knowledge I flew in close to the Horde spot, grabbed the bonfire and zoomed back to fly calmly to the next location.  I must say there are Horde pinheads hanging around most bonfires just plain everywhere.  But, they can’t get you till you extinguish the flame, and they can’t fight you in the air (unless they can and I haven’t gotten nailed yet).  So stay flying.  Tip city.

I have all the accomplishments for the festival now except the Juggler, which sounds easy but no, and the Flame Thief.  You’re supposed to toss a torch in the air and run to where you see its shadow in order to catch it and toss it again.  Got to do it four times in a row, and then for the achievement catch and toss FORTY in a ROW for 15 seconds.  To the sickos who thought this up, whap!

The last part of the “holiday”  has you go into four enemy capital cities and steal their flames.  har har har.    Did you know you can’t fly in the area around Silvermoon City?  Try to walk in there, or even slink in.  Not only did I have the guards attack, but a level 90 bozo Horde fink got into the act and poof, dead little Night Elf.

WOW Insider on Virtual Realms

Here’s an interesting panel discussion on Virtual Realms featuring WOW Insider writers.  I wish they hadn’t been so reluctant to offer their opinions initially, as once they got talking it was quite interesting.  In a nutshell, they seemed to find the idea of Virtual Realms more workable than CRZ has been so far.

 

http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/06/21/wow-insider-round-table-virtual-realms/

 

Virtual Realms

Going live (most likely) in Patch 5.4 are “Virtual Realms”.

New Feature: Virtual Realms

• Virtual Realms are sets of realms that are fused together, and will behave exactly as if they were one cohesive realm. Players on the same Virtual Realm will be able to join guilds, access a single Auction House, join arena teams and raids, as well run dungeons or group up to complete quests.
• Players belonging to the same Virtual Realm will have a (#) symbol next to their name.    http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/10158897/54_PTR_Coming_Soon-6_11_2013#general

There is a nice long thread discussing it:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/9282218479?page=1

There is a community person from Blizzard in the thread interacting, which is a hopeful sign since they have been stone faced about the endless CRZ threads.  Maybe they’d like to see this go well. Maybe they care about that ongoing relationship with their players after all.

From reading the description and the threads, it looks like a virtual server merger.  Theoretically, only low population servers will be melded together and nobody will be paired with high population, incredibly vile servers such as Moonguard.

In theory (my own personal), they used the Cross Realm zone match ups of high and low to get a gauge on what numbers of players are desirable for these merged realms.  Then they can look at server populations and match realms to get optimum players.

Advantages of this theory of Virtual Realms are that everyone gets to keep their name, you share an auction house, can group easily, join guilds with the other co-realmers, and let’s hope you can ignore currently horrid “non-existent players”.

Stormwind and Pandaria will no longer be a place of refuge where you are just with your own server people.

It would be nice if in advance of the virtual merge they put out a list of what they identify as low population servers so people know who is involved and who not.

More when they explain more of what they’re thinking.

Fun in the Blood Furnace

I love World of Warcraft Dungeons.  They are wildly variable depending on the group.  I know them well enough so I avoid some of them with my Priest because I know where the points are where everything can go south and you won’t be able to heal the tank or anyone else if you have a goofy group.

My favorite dungeons are The Burning Crusade dungeons.  I don’t think there’s a single one I don’t like. (my Priest isn’t quite up to them yet).  I like the Blood Furnace because it really is straightforward and little ever goes wrong.  The group just sails on through.

So I queued up my warrior Gnome who was sooo close to level 60 and this would do it.   I was in a good mood and asked the group if anyone else had the phrase “come at me bro” stuck in their head.  One guy said it was there all day yesterday.  Good sport.  Another guy starts in on the tank for not being in Blood spec.  And the Panda healer for not being in healing spec.

For some bizarro reason neither of them changed their spec.  The tank pulled a group or two poorly and he got the BOOT.  Luckily everyone loves the Furnace so we got a quick and fine replacement (as you know in some dungeons once the tank is out you wait and wait and wait.)

Soon, the Pathetic Panda healer is saying how HARD WE ARE TO KEEP HEALED.  Whoa lil’ bear, how about if you switch to a healer?  But no, another fool addicted to the spin move.  Probably just queued as a healer to get in faster but really wanted to be DPS.  He pulled his own furry self out all of a sudden.  Luckily we got a decent healer replacement in a trice.  Kudos to the Blood Furnace and its simplicity once again.

I do love a good dungeon.  Fig. “A”

Twitter Me This

I thought I’d use my old Starlight Sal Twitter account to keep up on gaming news.  Might be a quicker way to pass along the many FASCINATING tidbits I come across.

 

 

 

Dragon Age: Inquisition

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/12/e3-2013-dragon-age-3-inquisition-and-the-next-generation

Once of the best game world creations in recent times is Bioware’s Dragon Age series.  The trailer looks great, no surprise.  It does make me want to re-enter the world of Thedas once more and fight for what I think is right.  My only criticism of these games is the very instanced world, every area is a small gated place with invisible boundaries.  You shouldn’t create a world that people would die to explore, and make it impossible for them to do so.

http://www.dragonage.com/

Thief

 

A reboot of Thief: The Dark Project, that original game of utter sneakiness is in the works from Eidos Montreal.  It is being shown at E3, the gaming expo you and I will never get to see.

http://www.thiefgame.com/

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/11/e3-2013-thief-learning-from-a-master

 

 

Why don’t you noobs get some gear before you come and do bgs?

Well, honestly, that was next on my list.  I did want to go in and see if some of my new class skill gave me more survivability in a battleground.   (Warsong Gulch today)

I can say not much, but they were useful in fights, and I did annoy the Horde nasty boys enough so they kept seeking me out for quick death.

Someone noted the Horde players weren’t taking any damage.  I noticed all the ones I saw were level 19, higher than most of us.

The Horde play differently, in my observation.  They spend most of their time routing out and killing the Alliance, especially at the graveyard.  Alliance players in just about every instance are scattered and don’t work together at all.

We are doofs.

 

Edit:  Ha ha went back in with my uber level 10 Warlock, got a decent Alliance group, took out numerous bad guys!  Won VICTORY!!!!!!!