Gamer's Ramblings

This is the end...

Last night we played our last Sundered Skies session. We have completed the campaign we began about two years ago. After many adventures and weirdness we have saved the Sundered Skies from certain doom.

Which is to say - yes we were successful. Though there was some sadness as well.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

We still had three magic items to get to their place in the demon heart.

The way to the next place was blocked by a demon dragon monster. Which tried very hard to kick our asses, Sadly the GMs die rolls didn't match that desire and Malachi pretty much wiped the floor with the poor beast.

So on the the next chamber were we were faced with an even bigger foe. And I mean HUGE. Like in argh... HUGE. 60 meters tall huge.

Now the fortune of die rolls were reversed. In the end it was once more Malachi who remained standing - or in this case floating. And once more he was the one to slay the monster.

And then we came to the final place. And that misbegotten bastard of a bitch soul we were to place refused to do its freaking job. While Malachi was wrestling with it and the demon lord was trying to finally tear a hole into reality and break through Misa made the decision that this soul could never be trusted to do whatit must.

So she sacrificed herself.

I have to say I have never sacrificed a character like this and it felt pretty epic. Of course I knew that we wouldn't have kept playing this group anyway but I would have done the same and made a new characater if we had planned to continue. It just felt so right for her to do this.

The tiny little wildling girl saving the world.

*sniff*

Understandably Malachi was incredibly angry and sad. Especially since she acted too quickly for him to stop her ot join him.

Poor elf. I really feel sorry for him.

Thus the Sundered Skies were saved.

Next up we plan to play a good old-fashioned Mage group. World of Darkness second edition Mage to be precise. Really looking forward to that!

Okay, this looks quite pretty.

Doesn't say nothing at all about whether the game will be any good, of course, but it is pretty.

Yesterday Guild Wars 2 had another 6 hour stress test to see how the improvements they have made since the first beta weekend hold up against an onslaught of players rushing the servers.

I have to say I'm impressed. Login problems were pretty much gone. There were still some crashed but from beta weekend to this test it was an awesome improvement, If they can keep login troubles and crashes to this minimum at launch we are looking at a freaking SMOOOOTH launch.

Sadly I didn't have a lot of time to actually play so I limited myself to fooling around a bit more with my Norn ranger.

Once more I was struck by how DAMN easy it is to hook up with other players. Within 2 minutes of logging in I was happily exploring a mine with a human engeneer who happened to be there as well. We didn't chat or team up, we just kind of clicked to together and spend a good 20 minutes playing side by side, guarding each others back.

In the end we managed to grab a skill challenge together and beat that.Then we headed off in different directions after a short emote nod to each other. Plain beautiful.

My time was running short then but I managed to stumble into one more event which was freaking hilarious.

There was Charr guarding a large herde of cows. He explained that the cows were more and more being attacked by roaming wolves. So he wanted to teach the cows to defend themselves. To do that he needed heroes to teach them proper fighting techniques. Which of course included doning a magical cow costume to show them how to fight as a cow.



There was several different stages to the event where the player cows got to demonstrate fighting maneuvers on test dummies and test wolves and the cows got to learn how to do it.

It was brilliantly funny and well animated too.

I don't even know if I leveled up while playing cause I payed zero attention to my xp bar the whole time. It was just that much fun.

Soooo looking forward to the next real beta weekend!

I have been waiting for Torchlight 2 pretty much since it was announced. I really enjoyed the first game but there were some things that it lacked. Namely above ground zones and multiplayer.

In rolls Torchlight 2 which features both.

I was lucky enough to snag a beta code on friday and pretty much spent the whole weekend playing.

YES! It is THAT good.

It is everything I hoped Diablo 3 would be and wasn't.

Each of the four classes plays very differently and each can in itself be again skilled very differently. I tested all of them and enjoyed 3 of them so much I can't wait to play them at release.

Combat can be quite tactical with dodging behind columns or rocks to avoid ranged damage, luring enemies into traps or getting lured into traps yourself.

The zones are not just filled with a great variety of monster (and DAMN what a variety of monsters they have!!) which will require different tactics to defeat them, they also have lots of mini events that you can trigger. Like a chest that remains spectral until you have defeated the ghosts guarding it. Or a shrine that spawns progressively harder monster until it summons a tough boss. It just never turns into boring, pure hack & slash, there is always some sort of surprise waiting around the next corner.

Bosses can be quite hard and the story bosses are REALLY impressive. I had several HOLY FUCKING COW what the FRAG is THAT?! moments while playing.

I really like the look of the game - though that might not be everyone's cup of tea. Skill effects look really nice and fitting as well.



Even on low level I found some pretty cool looking armour pieces.

The story isn't incredibly new or exciting but it's well told and it is fun to meet characters from the first game again.



There is a host of tiny details that make the game pleasant to play, not least of which the pet you can again pick at character creation. It's so simply but still bloody amazingly convenient to be able to send the pet back to town with stuff to sell while you keep bashing monsters.

The beta covers the first act (I think) and the first 20something levels and after getting that taste I really, really want more.

Torchlight 2 has been on my to buy list anyway but it has jumped up to MUST HAVE for me and hubby to play together.

Sooo, the final battle has come. Either we win this or the world will end. Always nice to have such high expectation weigh you down...

We managed to sneak into the demon heart while the battle was raging between the fleet of the races of the Sundered Skies and the demon army.

Inside our mission was to get the items we had collected to certain places. Which of course wasn't as easy as it sounds.

The first one was simple enough and unguarded.

But the second spot was guarded by an evil spirit who kept possessing player characters in turn. So it felt like a match of "whack a mole" trying to get the item (in this case the hammer) to it's spot and at the same time dodge the attacks from quickly switching player characters and try not to hurt them.

It was actually pretty hilarious including lots of trying to throw the hammer to where it was supposed to go.

In the end we survived mostly unharmed and proceeded to the third spot.

This is guarded by a huge demon dragon monster which we will get to fight next time.

yay...

The second Player Summit of City of Heroes has come and gone and there were some nice little bits of news shared of course.

Now there is a preentation up that shows some of the "stuff to come".

I think the new summer event looks quite cool.

Not so amazed by the cyberpunk costume preview. Looks like just another robotic thingy to me. Where is the "punk" in that?

After some rough planning on what our heroic knights turned anti-corp terrorists want to accomplish they decided the first order of business is stetting up a secret base to work from and where they can train the resistance fighters and terrorists.

I gave them two options to pick from:
- an old sewer system including cistern where a local gang currently have their HQ
- a lab complex deep underground, where someone was researching something which apparently went wrong and resulted in the whole thing being sealed off about 15 years ago.

Being the heroes they are they of course went for the lab.

Jacob (NPC who is the leader of the resistance) owns an engeneering business and was able to help them restore access to the lab.

They picked up some combat gear from Max (NPC who is also with the resistance and works for corp security).

And then they climbed down the access shaft to the lab.

Of course everything was dark and veeeery creepy.

In the lobby they found the corpses of three security guards and several elevators leading further down. Only one of them stood open.

The one with the heavy armour plating and extra, extra security features. I feared they would recognize the trap there. I hoped  Vitus would send one of his knights in to investigate. Instead he walked right into it himself. Of course the door snapped shut at that moment and the elevator descended.

My players were... shocked... not amused. I can't believe they really didn't see that coming...

The rest of the knights - now rather frantic without their heroic leader - tried to pry open the elevator doors but had to give up after they realized they would only be able to force it open with an overwrite security card.

So they set out to find such a card.

The less secure elevators were easier to force open and they climbed down further into the facility. With a few mishaps in climbing...

The next floor they reached held the cafeteria. There were quite a few more corpses of scientists, but they also found a laptop which they were able to power up again, so they can now search that to try and find out what actually happened in the lab.

When the last one of them left the cafeteria again the huge screen at the back of it suddenly switched itself on, showing two huge yellow eyes, watching them. 

True to form that last knight emptied his machine gun into the screen in panic. Classic movie scene :D

Meanwhile First Knight Vitus arrived on a much lower floor where he was greeted by a pack of strange zombies with technical implants who managed to quickly subdue him.

The other will learn what has happened to him when they manage to find him.

For my first try at a creepy, "Resident Evil Flair" adventure I think this is going splendidly!

ROFL!

I have (actually WE have, hubby as well) spent the weekend playing the Guild Wars 2 beta.

I should be writing a nice, orderly review now but honestly, I can't cause it's all a jumbled mess of impressions and freaking awesome moments mixed with wanting to hit someone...

So, I won't even try and just poiur out what comes to my mind.

The start on friday evening was... uh... messy. It was really hard to get in cause so many people were trying to log in at once. And once we were in it proved impossible to actually play together.

See, when a map is full you aren't placed in a queue but into what is called "overflow". So you can still play but what server you end up on for that period is really random so it's next to impossible to team up with mates. You still are in queue to play on your home server though so once that is ready you can transfer and team up. I expect this will be much easier to navigate oncethe "guesting" feature works which allows you to pick a low population server to play on at lock in, which would allow friends to play in the same place.

Luckily, saturday morning things were a lot more quiet. We locked in without trouble and played together for several hours. Hubby on a human thief and I on a Norn warrior - which I hated... that class really isn't my thing. So after breakfast I made a Norn ranger and had an absolutely blast with her.

So what is playing like?

Awesome.

Fast.

Chaotic, as soon as you start playing a public event.

Pretty dangerous too. I don't think I've ever died so much and had everyone else around me die so much and still had so much fun with it. The fact that everyone can rez each other and that you pretty much HAVE to do that if you want to succeed at events cause you'll need everyone alive works beautifully. I have never seen so much helpful cooperation as in this game. 

Events do an awesome job at showing clearly what you are supposed to do. There aren't those awkard moments of confusion when everyone is standing around and waiting for a big wig player who knows it all to exlain what to do. Everyone can just run in and PLAY!

Which for me pretty much sums up the game nicely. There is no down time when you just go from A to B or listen to explanations or get bored. It's none stop action and you better make bloody sure you park yourself in a safe spot or you could come back to your corpse lying in the middle of a suddenly spawned event.

Is the game pretty?

Hell, yes!

Is there stuff to explore? Hell, yes. There are plenty of places that are hidden away for you to find.

Here are hot springs I found tugged away in a remote corner of the Norn starter zone:



They even had Norn sitting in them, soaking.

How is crafting?

Complex. Haven't even started scratching the surface of it but it feels like it will be fun.

How are skill and traits?

Complex. There are so many different ways to skill a character and I'm rather sure a lot of ways to go wrong. Luckily there is an option to respec. I already know a few skills I took on my ranger I won't be taking after official launch. And YES, I'll definitely re-make that ranger girl. She is bloody awesome.

Does the game run smoothly?

It did for me. No lag at all. Now technical problems apart from the log in mess at the start which really was to be expected.

Bugs?

A few and some crashes. Nothing game breaking though. Incredibly polished already considering this was their first big beta event.

Is the world interesting and diverse?

It's lovely. It's amazing. There are so many different moments I just stood some place and went AWH! And I love being able to stand on top of a hill, look around, see something interesting in the distance and then just go there to see what it is and run across a dozen events and quests on the way there, get sidetracked, find a hidden entrace to a cave, make my way through that cave, fall into an underground stream, swim through it and emerge somewhere else entirely. It feels like an adventure.

Now some more screens.

Here's my ranger girl fighting in a HUGE event with portals spawning monsters on a frozen lake (level 12 event!! folks, no need to be high level to get to the awesome stuff in this game):



Here's prove that not all events end with a success for the players (which is fine cause that just spawns exciting new events):



And complete mayhem fighting a super hard fire shaman in a low level Charr event (with tiny new charr characters me and hubby made on sunday):



I CAN'T WAIT for the next beta weekend. Still so much stuff to test and try.

And I totally look forward to official launch.

Nothing amazingly amazing happened this time.

We traveled all over the place, convincing everyone to take part in the great end battle against the demon army.

Then had a meeting with the commanders of the different forces, talking strategy.

And then traveled a lot more. With the whole fleet in tow. Far, far away into the void to find that demon army.

Session ended with us facing off against the horde. And it's a huge horde.

The plan is that we will enter the demon heart and do what we are supposed to do (trying not to spoil everything here...)

We're all going to die...

I think...

KingsIsle (the makers of Wizard101) have at long last revealed their new game:

Pirate101

It will be set in the same universe as Wizard101 but explore the skies between the islands with floating pirate ships. Sounds great to me!

Where Wizard101's combat plays like a collectible card game, this one id supposed to feel more like a board game.

MMORPG.com has a series of reports on the game:

Overview

Character Classes

Combat

and some more details

Definitely a game I will keep my eyes on and try out as soon as it becomes available!

Sooo... I've played around with the beta some more, including testing the co-op mode with hubby.

As previously - I'll admit that it is fun in a limited sort of way. It's... I'm not even sure what to call it... one dimensional. There really is one thing to do - kill monsters. Lots and lots of monsters killed in slightly varying ways.

I have now tried all the classes and I have to say they don't play very differently despite the fact that each uses different machanics. Let's be honest - whether the barbarian build up rage with attacking or whether the monk builds up spirit are essentially the same thing in different colours with minute variations. Same goes for mana or arcane energy on witch doctor and wizard.

The skills I guess get a lot more diverse with more options to slot different runes into them. But that is not the same as building up a character to MY liking with attribute points, skill points and god knows what else kinds of customization.

Talking about customization - yeah, I get that it is pointless cause my character will be covered in armour. Still it feels completely outdated to not be able to customize ANYTHING at all about my character - apart from gender.

Most of the characters are incredibly ugly so this is the first game where I'd actually be thankful for a helmet covering their ugly mugs. And don't even get me started on the way they walk... SERIOUSLY! Some of them just need to be put out of their misery, judging from their walk...

Really the only thing that still works the same and is fun, is the mindless hacking and slashing and - I expect - on higher levels the item hunt.

I can so see myself getting this game and then get bored with it after 20 levels on the first toon...

Why is Guild Wars 2 not out yet?

As you may recall I was originally delighted when they announced that they would make a part 3 of Diablo. That was years ago. And with time passing and more news about the game and more videos I got less and less excited until I really wasn't sure anymore whether I would want to play it at all.

Fast forward to this weekend - which is open beta weekend for Dibalo 3. So a chance to take a look myself and finally make up my mind? Of course I had to do that.

Beta started last night so I tried to take a look.

No luck, endless string of error messages. Hmm... so they are having some trouble... I'm sure they will have worked them out by morning.

This morning - tried to log in. It took me 30 minutes and well over 50 log in attempts to get into the game.

Conclusion right then and there - even if the game turns out to be SUPER AWESOME there is no way in hell I'm going to buy it before 2-3 months have passed and they have had time to work this out cause frankly... it's a little more than 3 weeks to release - if this isn't working now it won't be stable then.

So - the game itself. Does it still feel like Diablo?

I would answer - yes, it does.

It looks dated already, although it's not even out yet.

The dumbed down attribute and skill version is... well... in all honesty there is nothing to decide or plan or strategise anymore. It's now nothing but hacking monster hordes. Don't get me wrong, hacking monster hordes is fun. I just feel doubtful that it will be fun for 100 levels.

To sum it up - there is a chance I would buy it some time around the end of June. But I won't because by then Guild Wars 2 will be out or very close to release and - let's face it - this cute little hole filler called Diablo 3 can't hold a candle to the full time entertainment storm that is Guild Wars 2.

Oh... and here's a screen of my barbarian. Goodness but he's ugly. Now I want to make a Norn warrior just to erase the bad aftertaste...

Last night we started with the new campaign for Necropolis.

After the amazing victory in New Budapest our heroes were given some time to recuperate, relax and work on their various severe mental health problems. Yep, there were quite a few fear rolls during that campaign which botched and resulted in them gathering some interesting phobias. Luckily their chaplain Barnabas has taken it upon himself to become their counsellor and try and help them get rid of said phobias again- Since he skill is still rather low that went... uh... let's say he didn't make it worse.

Then they were presented with their next mission.

Since they have gotten REALLY good I was hard pressed to come up with a challenge. I think it's rather boring to present them with ever bigger monsters so I had to either somehow weaken them or present them woth problems they can't simply hack to pieces. I decided to go for a combination of both.

They are sent to a corporation controlled city undercover to, because a religios underground movement there wants to topple the corp government and bring the city into the loving hands of the church. In other words: they get to work as religious terrorists.

As they are undercover that means they have to leave behind the big guns and heavy armor. Their first objectives are to train the existing underground and to recruit more. So they also actually have to talk to people.

Our first session was hilarious with the big mean war hero knights trying to normally communicate with very enthusiastic but ultimately clueless underground people. And also with them trying to cope with the many temptations of life off a battlefield - like beer or pretty barmaids.

They each have cover identities which will also add some nice personal problems to their work.

There was much laughing and hair pulling and some intense planning of how best to topple a government with sword and fire. I think  this campaign if off to a great start.

The overview page for Issue 23 is now live over at the City of Heroes site.

There is some neat new stuff in there and stuff that sucks.

Like: The new Incarante slot can only be unlocked by doing the new trial and you have to do the trial 4-5 times to unlock it. Considering I have 25 level 50 characters that gives us a worst case scenario of having to run the same trial 125 time... that is soooooo entertaining... Luckily I don't plan on unlocking the slot on more than 2-3 characters.

BUT: I will have to actually find people on the deserted server they are on who will run it...

HURG!

The new costume options sound great though.

And the new zone sounds nice as well.

Okay... is it me or is Bioware getting really desperate to somehow fill their servers?

I mean, gifts are nice but this soon after launch such anxiety to get people to play? Hurm...

Anyway, I'm not going back for this offer. Having so much more fun in City of Heroes at the moment!

So today we had our great match against the orc priests to gain the attention of the war god.

It wasn't exactly a fair match, with them each having a priest casting protective spells on them and Misa nor being allowed to cast any of her offensive spells.

So instead she cast every protective spell she has on our team and basically spent the match running around the arena, trying not to get killed.

Lester and Tork did get done much, apart from keeping opponents busy so they didn't kill Misa.

And Malachi... oh my god... he really went to town on those poor orcs priests. He is such a killing machine now adays. It was quite immpressive.

So yeah, we won.

And the war god appeared. And we managed to pacify him with a gift from the mad god. And then he promised he would personally help us on our quest and bring all his orcs to the final battle.

GO US!

This is hilarious and what makes it even better, is that the guy is actually quite good with that sword:

PAX East has been happening and there are a few interesting bits from that.

One is a nice. long gameplay trailer for Torchlight 2:



This looks like fun. I have been playing a bit of the original Torchlight on my laptop while I was on vacation and it#s just a a plain simple fun game you really can't go wrong with the updated, everything bigger and better verion.

Then there is a new trailer for Neverwinter which doesn't look quite a horrible as the last one did:



There is also a combat gameplay trailer (which I can't seem to find again right now) which shows that combat is quite nice and fast and more Diablo style than classic MMO style. It's still a Cryptic game by Perfect World as publisher so I will stay wary of this one...

And then there is not PAX related news. Wizard101 will be adding another world soon, called Avalon and will also raise the level cap to 80. I haven't even played the last new world yet... It looks fun but at the moment I have no clue when I will get around to actually play it.

Right, that took a little longer than expected with vacation and some missed sessions but last night we finally got to finishing that fight in the cathedral AND the campaign.

We had lef off with Vitus and Elizabetta charging the front of the cathedral to try and kill the Rephaim master before he could finish opening the portal.

Thank god for modern digital cameras taking photos of the battle set up so we could recreate it easily after all that time!

While the other were still battling the flesh golems, Vitus went head to head with the Rephaim master and his two zombie lords while Elizabetta took out the zombie.

That finally stopped the zombie lords from healing the flesh golems so the others managed some progress there.

Vitus managed to wound Rephaim master but since I really, really wanted to get that portal open to bring the huge undead ddragon monster into play I let the master cast a spell to levitate him in the air, out of reach of Vitus.

Then Barnabas cast his new spell on the Rephaim master which negated his undead abilities so he became vunerable to normal attacks. So they started shooting at him. Which he survived just enough.

Then the undead dragon poked its head throiugh the portal in the very last round and they all started to panic and all seemed lost with each of their actions not slaying the Repahim master.

In the end only Lucky Mike, their trusty NPC soldier (controlled by Vitus player) had one action remaining. So he acted against all orders, grabbed the rocket launcher he was carryiing for one of the knights, aimed - and rolled one of the most critical success I have ever seen. He simply blew the Repahim master out of the air and to pieces.

So yeah - no undead monster dragon for me... it was sucked right back into the closing portal and my sweat drenched players were whooping with victory.

They sure had a ton of fun so I'll count that as an awesome gaming session.

To top things off they then stepped out of the cathedral where they were greeted by lots of church troops cheering for them.

Later they even got to attend a mass read by the pope himself in the restored cathedral and were presented with their very own banner to carry into battle from now on.

I've spent some time on our vacation thinking about what to do with them next so stay tuned for more battles and bloodshed.