SWTOR: The Hunt for Gold

So... Star Wars The Old Republic has arrived. I missed launch week because of Xmas holidays, which was actually a good thing, as I skipped the initial bug/lag/queue fest.

My machine is holding up better than expected. Alone, it's quite playable with everything maxed up except shadows. RIFT was like that too. The problem comes when I enter a populated area, with NPC's and/or players. Then, it starts to get worse, below 20fps, ie, ugly.

I'm on target for a Core i5 2500K upgrade, but I'm still selecting components, PSU and stuff. Low noise is the culprit of my delay.

Back to gameplay. I joined forces with old Lords of Midnight guildies from Chromaggus server in WoW. They are going towards dps and tanking, so I'll go towards dps and healing, which is good.

After a long debate, I decided I won't be a bald man called Netcownt anymore. It was 5 years of looking at a bald head and neck, and it sucked. It's much nicer to watch a girl, so I went for a cyborg chick, human faced, called Netgold.

She rocks ! Well, she's a Bounty Hunter, so she better rock, and rock hard. Advantage ? I'm not a Sith at heart, and we started on the Sith side, so I couldn't see myself playing the "bad guy", although SWTOR allows Dark side and Light side decision making during quests. Bounty Hunters allow me to be mercenary, ie, do the good (or evil) because I'm paid for, not because of a Jedi or Sith mentality.

It makes a difference, LOL.

So, Netgold starts on Nal Hutta, and, as a Bounty Hunter, she quickly joins "The Big Hunt". Nesingwary keeps coming to my mind, I wonder why. If I could select a surname for my toon, she'd be Netgold Nesingwary, for sure.

Levels 1-10 are spent in Nal Hutta, preparing for the Hunt, doing shores here and there. Questing is fun, although a bit too easy, specially when I get a healing companion by level 8 or so.

There is a sense of "lots of new abilities for me to press keys, all seem to do about the same thing, ie, kill stuff".
But at the same time, some common things to other MMO show up, ie resource bar management (in my case it's called Heat, opposite to rage or.. whatever rogue had, I forgot, or hunter focus), AoE, crowd control, range abilities vs melee abilities, etc.

If I could match SWTOR with WoW, Bounty Hunter looks like a hunter. What else...

Tonight I'm leaving Nal Hutta and start exploring the outside world.

RIFT is dead, long live SWTOR

During this December , I subscribed RIFT and leveled a Mage (Warlock/Necromancer) up to level 50.

Why ? To be honest, I wanted to see the sights. Everyone kept telling me how it looked like another WoW, how irrelevant the game was, yadayada.

Well, as a lvl 50 (fresh one, for sure), I can tell it's not exactly true, RIFT is not WoW. It might be like WoW, yes, but a different WoW.

In WoW, you reach level 60,70,80,85, and all you can do is one thing: GEAR UP !

In RIFT, they understood their mistake, and changed things. Once you get to 50, you get a Planar development. Yes, it's more XP, you continue to get XP, but instead of leveling, you invest it in enhanced skills. Yes, there's also GEAR. Yes, there are dungeons, of different tiers and expertize required, there is PVP.

But there's also a thing that is dead with WoW. There's WORLD PVP. No you don't fly, you ride. You quest, you get ambushed, you get killed, ganked, all the funny stuff that makes you /yell "FILHO DA PUTA" from your grave.

So, I spent 7 free days, plus 30 (costing 5€!) plus 3 days of free game time (like SONY, Trion Worlds got hacked so they gave us complimentary game time). And in those 40 days, I reached 50, about 1 level/day, having fun.

I discovered nearly all the zones (only left a bit of Stillmoor), I participated in instant adventures ( a new RIFT feature, a bit like LOTRO skirmishes but in open world ), PVP battlegrounds (there are many), dungeons (many, too), I marvelled at some open air scenarios, and I took a lot of snapshots that I'll be sharing here. Most of all, I had fun, something I had not in WoW since my guild Arcadia split up.


So there you have it, December 2011, while waiting for SWTOR, I had a blast.

Now... talking about blasting things, SWTOR was released. So stay tuned, as I learn how to play a Bounty Hunter (currently level 10). Pictures coming right up.

Well well well WoW 4.3 looks funnier than expected

Yes, I'm teasing, this is RIFT.


Tonight I had insomnia, so I drifted towards WoW news, found out that 4.3 is coming to Europe next week, and found my old character has ALREADY got transmogrified.

Yes, Netcownt armory data features the T4 I used in the last days of my June playing, together with my purple 359 items. AH AH AH !

On a more serious tone, patch 4.3 looks fun.

. A new Dragon Soul raid will be able for randoms. I don't know if that will play well or not, but I'm willing to try and kill Deathwing.

. There's a promising legendary questline for rogues, so why not check it ?



. A new Darkmoon faire is coming, so may be I'll make a few more decks to get me to exalted !

. There's a void storage, finally the guys at Blizzard realized that a lot collectors like myself had their banks full of crap they wanted to keep, e.g. for vanity usage. Now, with transmogrification, it will pay off. A pity it's only 80 slots. I think I have the whole bank main slots + 5 x 16 bags full of that stuff.

. And last and best, three new dungeons to fool around and piss off those "I take it seriously FFS". That looks GOOD ! After all, when was the last time a new dungeon came up ? More than 1 year ago, for sure. ZG/ZA doesn't count !



Guess I'll have some fun December, alternating between WoW 4.3 and RIFT as I level up from 25 to 50 on my warlock-necromancer-chloromancer-mage.

D'rifting towards Star Wars

While waiting for SWTOR to get going by Christmas time and thanks to a promotion I decided to see Rift in full. 5 Eur for 30 days of discovery is cheap. Graphics for the 2nd zone 21-29 Gromwood are fantastic. It looks like Silverpine, it has pvp and the nightfall brings hostile undead like the village near SFK I used to have fun as a human lock during the day with pvp, before Blizzard ruined it.

D'rifting away

The last weeks I tried a few new MMORPGs, including (7-day free-to-play) Rift.

WoW.

Yes. it's WoW. A better Wow. It's Warhammer. A better Warhammer. It seems a bundle of all the MMORPG's since 2005, packed together.



Stunning graphics, fluidity is better than WoW. FPS ? Quite configurable, from 20-40 in my machine, depending of the settings. It uses DX11, and unlike WoW, you can see it. Quests ? Same as LOTRO or the first WoW quests, you level up fast, it has some escorts, some grind, some walk-to chains. A bit too repetitive, but that's the nature of these games, the designers are afraid to run away from what they know people like or are used to.



I leveled a Mage/Warlock up to level 20, did all the quests in the first Silverwood zone, I went for PVP in their Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin (better copies), went for an instance (forgot it's name), visited their main city, and played both factions (Ascent guardians and defiants)



There are Rifts all over. It has public quests like Warhammer. It's more unpredict
able than WoW.
It has professions, I leveled foraging, alchemy and runecrafting (WoW enchanting).
It has guilds, I joined one.
It has LFG and battleground(Warfront) queues, I joined them.
It even has a Prince like Arthas. It's called... Prince Hylas. Guess why ?
It has a lvl 50 cap.
It has achievemens. Lots of them.
It has artifacts.
It has triple talent trees up to 51 points, so called Soul Trees.
It has world events, it seems like father Snowfrost or something is coming. Ha !
It has addons. I'll try their DPS/HPS meters.

All in all...WoW universe seems bigger, but Rift is the absolute best copy of WoW I've ever seen. Honestly.

Needless to say, all the people I played with are old WoW players. And ofc, like WoW, it's not F2P.

That's the bad news.

First impressions

This is supposedly illegal at this beta point so..

Well, cinematics are absolutely GREAT. It beats Blizzard by the mile.
The game is heavy. On my machine, I get 17 fps average, sometimes goes 30, rarely, sometimes goes 5 fps, on Alliance or Sith (Bounty Hunter - Hutta) starter zones.

So unless you got a 3Ghz dual core or so, forget SWTOR.

As I expected, for a ranged player that shoots from afar, the playability and realism is nice, lasers go back and forth, explosions are fine, killing moves too.

For a melee/jedi player, it sucks. You have to run to people that is shooting at you, slicing them with a jedi sword that doesn't kill them immediately, and there they stand, on their feet, point at you with a gun and shooting. It's laughable. As a Jedi, I went up to 3 mobs and all 3 were shooting at me for 1 minute or so as I sliced them slowly. Not realistic at all.

Quest cinematics are nice, you can go at a slow pace and listen to all the conversation and choose which answer to give (weird, the written answer and what the toon says most times are quite different, sometimes with different meaning).

I'm level 2 atm, so I'm not exactly an expert.

PVP seems to open at lvl 10, hopefully I get there this weekend.

I saw some people flying around with bike. Looks fun.

Overall... I've got a problem: SWTOR requires me to buy a new PC and to move all my crap to it. Good thing I tested this before I bought it.

Pedro Lucas Goes to War of the Stars

Ooohooo I've been selected to (stress) test Bioware's SWTOR.

A new adventure awaits me.

First things first. Install and set it up ! And then... lets go to War.

Walclaft goes East.. and down

Funny old world of war... Blizzard figured that people are tired of western looking games, gothic stuff and all that crap, so they decided to march east towards the chinese borders and create a new Warcraft expansion called Mists of Pandaria.
It seems lvl 90 will be the new cap, and of course, the action will take place in another continent, so called Pandaria, a native race with panda bears standing on two paws, practicing martial arts and praying like monks, the new class.

It makes me laugh. Panda bears fighting ? I'm sure the new areas will be wonderful to see, and it's worthwhile playing for a while... but... bear monks with rice-farming/vietcong-like hats ? Ha. Haha. Hahahahahaha.

Warcraft goes Brazilian

I've just read the latest WoW news, and it seems there's a Brazilian version coming soon.

So, instead of Stormwind, there'll be Ventobravo. Instead of Ironforge, Forjadeferro. E Lua de Prata, etc.

Laughing out Loud.

PS: No WoW since July, 1, and happily living ever after. Well, playing LOTRO, actually. The Rise of Isengard expansion is up today.

PS2: Will I resist 4.3 ?

Ex-End: Can't get any worse can it

A friend showed me today the Wow Character of that slime that killed dozens in Norway.

Guess what ? His char was on Silvermoon EU, my server ! ARRGH !

And he was part of some guilds, one of them, a top guild.

This just shows how MMORPG are weird, you can be playing alongside a serial killer and never know.

This slime, I would personally kill myself, never mind about the Fylgies and other norwegian fairies. I hope someone does.

THE END (?)

I'm done with WoW.
Old friends gone or going.
Had no fun with Cata.
May be sometime in the future.
May be when the next expansion comes out.
May be never.

So, for me, casual LOTRO, SWTOR.

And Real Life gaming. Much better !

A nice raiding evening

A few more bosses down, on tonight's raid.

Funny how I'm so tired about WoW. I didn't even bother to read on the bosses lore, or to check on the entrances or even to remember the boss names As a result, it took me a while to figure out where BoT entrance was, after a wipe. But we killed Halfus for sure. Nuke each add, ignore whelps, nuke boss. Can't get much easier...but for sure this boss must be a healing check, with all the interrupts,knockbacks and the only-instant cast restrictions!

As to Blackwing Descent, we killed the first four bosses.
The first boss is easy with 3 ranged dps, last week was a breeze with lock,mage,hunter aoeing the lava parasites from the pillars. Tonight only a mage and warlock, so it was way messier, with adds all around. But we managed to 1-shot it.
The 2nd 4xbosses, 1-shot too, I forgot about the purple spots for dpsing, it costed me top dps ranking. But I didn't forget the oozes ;)
The 3rd boss... the vial one, was 1-shot last week, but this week was a bit messier and caused a few wipes, the last one because we had too much dps and got the boss to 20% before the 2nd green vial. But we did it after we paused dps at the right time ;)
Finally, the 4th/gong boss, last week we had a mage banging the gongs. This week I had to do it, and because of it I was chased and died (swiftness doesnt help when there's fire all around ;(), but was CR and we 1-shott'ed him.

All in all, a good raid, 5 bosses down, 2 of them new.
A very good raiding leader, good communication during the fight and tips.

Next Monday, the Valiona brothers.. and Nefarian is getting closer !