Random X

Is EQ2 Dying?

2011-01-11T10:19:00.000-08:00

Now before you say I'm just bashing EQ2, let me explain my headline.

Just before the new year we had some server merges, and some of those servers had a low population so I'm not arguing against them, now in January they announced another server merge, and thats Lucan D’Lere with Crushbone, a RP server merging with a nonRP server that has the second highest number of players after Antonia Bayle.

Now this move doesn't make a lot of scene to me, why do you want to increase the server load on a server that already has more than enough issues with lag? I play on Crushbone and see the lag issues first hand, and if SOE server population are to be believed, Crushbone has 252,013and Lucan D’Lere has 201,987 after the merger that would give Crushbone a population of 454,000 which would make it the largest population server.

So my first reason for my opinion is the server merges.

Next up is the expansion. According to SOE the next expansion for EQ2 is set to be released on February 8, 2011, however I have yet to see any advertising, or anything at all that EQ2 has an expansion coming out. Even EQ had emails going out well over a month before the expansion was set to be released. We don't even know if it will be download only or a retail version.

So my second reason, no real advertising for the next expansion of EQ2.

Last but not least is EQ2X. The free to play version of EQ2 has been out for a few months, but nothing has been said on how well it's actually doing, no press releases saying we seen this large an increase in subscribers or a huge influx of money from microtransactions.

We've seen Turbine announce increases for both DDO and LOTRO but nothing from SOE, it sort of makes you wonder if the F2P wasn't that succesful after all?

So my third reason, no announcement from SOE on how well EQ2X is doing.

So there are my reasons I think EQ2 is dying, it may be a slow death, but EQ2 is unlikely to last as long as EQ.

RGX

Do we need the box?

2010-09-21T19:56:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, September 22nd, is the release date for Final Fantasy XIV for those that bought the Collector's Edition. My question to everyone do we really need a box for MMO's anymore? The reason I ask is, when you get the box copy, install the game, you normally have to install a huge patch before you can start playing the game, sometimes it maybe even be the entire game.

Now my main MMO is EQ2, and every time an expansion is released all I do is insert the serial code and let the patcher do the rest.

So do we really need a box release any more, or should the box just contain the manual, serial code and a map, and maybe some extra stuff for the collectors edition?

RGX

My theory on why SOE announced a lifetime membership for Free Realms.

2010-07-22T18:09:00.000-07:00

As people have heard Free Realms is offering a Lifetime membership for $29.99us until Aug 2, 2010. Now I don't think this will be the last time we see a lifetime sub offered for Free Realms, but next time its offered I think its going to be higher, and the reason I think this is because of the PS3 release.

When Free Realms is released on the PS3 I believe its going to come out in a box for 50-60$ and thats going to include everything that's currently offered in the membership. This gets away from having to worry about having to sell memberships and having restrictions for people without, and eventually we may see memberships phased out for the PC as well. This will than also allow them to sell new areas in the marketplace, instead of adding more restrictions against non-membership players.

The other thing we may see with the release on the PS3, is Sony standardizing the payment methods used in all its games. Right now you can buy cards for the Playstation network and they are separate from the StationCash used in the Marketplace for SOE games. This will allow Sony to just sell one type of card, and its probably easier to release just one type internationally as well.

Living up in Canada I can't get StationCash cards, I can buy StationCash with my Credit Card, but I prefer buying the actual cards, since you can get a better deal when the have double StationCash weekends. I can however go to my local Walmart, Gamestop, etc and buy a Sony Network card, but Only in 20 and 50 denominations not the 5, 10 and 25 like SationCash. Having cards in smaller amounts also opens up more people buying items from the marketplace, since a 5$ card is much easier for people to buy.

Well that's my theory

RGX

Confesions of a single character player

2010-07-22T17:50:00.000-07:00

Hello My name is RGX and I am a single character player.
My current game of choice is Everquest II, where I currently play a Half-Elf Ranger.
Who is currently at max lvl (90) with a Maxed Tradeskill (Woodworker) and Maxed AA's Points (250) Tinkering and Adorning is also maxed (450).
But I can't switch to playing an Alt.

I do have a lvl 82 Dirge Alt, that I built up when I had some friends rejoin the game, but since the expansion was released he has been sitting on the sidelines, and only bringing him out to work on crafting.

However I'm not bored.

Currently I'm working on working on going thru and working on slayer achievements, trying to get all the Destroyer titles, and when I don't feel like slaying gray mobs, I run sets of writs, run BG's, Gray quests, and completing other achievements. I also raid at least 2 nights a week in an alliance and spend a number of hours setting up my house in Halas.

While most players would start working on an Alt at this point, I spend my time trying to improve my Ranger to get as much DPS from him as possible, (hoping to release a DPS AA guide in the next few days),

While many rangers betrayed over to assassins, that's not for me, I intend to make my Ranger the best he can possible be.

Now you'll excuse me I have to get back to grinding faction in the Hole, those quests wont do themselves.

RGX

Playing a single MMO for to long, or entering a new MMO for the first time, or Am I just a Newb?

2010-07-22T17:22:00.000-07:00

I started playing MMO's in April of 99 with EQ when a friend recommended it to me, a year later my friend left and I continued to play because of the people I met in EQ. Than when EQ2 was released I moved over to that along with a number of guildmates to form a guild in EQ2. In that time I've met a number of people, either thru pugs, raid alliances or crafting.

Now during this time I also tried a few other games WoW, Vanguard, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Star Wars Galaxies, Dark Age of Camalot, and out of those games, only two of them , WoW and DAoC, had people I know playing them. WoW I tried playing twice once with some friends and the second time with my sister who had taken over my old account, each time I was a subscriber for 4-5 months. With DAoC I played with some people I had met in EQ but than again I only played for a few months. The other games I played for a month or two basically because I had the Station Access Pass and was never really able to get into the game.

Now here it is, 11 years later and I'm still enjoying EQ2, however there are a number of MMO's coming out, and I have a number of them sitting on my shelf behind me, WAR, EVE, AoC, LoTRO and I'm not not sure how to approach them.

Entering a new MMO seems to be a very daunting experience, your entering the game with no connections and no real idea where to start building those connections. Joining a game when it's just been released seems to make it a little easier because everyone is starting of on the same foot, but coming into an established game seems to be even harder. As an experienced MMO player I have a basic idea on building these connections but it still a lot of work, going thru the forums, searching the net, and just paying attention to general chat. And as most people know going thru this stuff you will find a lot of garbage, official forums takes a lot of sorting to find anything actually useful, the same for just doing a google search, and as for general chat well I might as well just say barrens chat.

Now I've just started playing Global Agenda, I picked it up from steam when they had it on sale and now that is gone free to play so if I didn't enjoy it, I wasn't out that much and didn't have a time restriction. Now I'm really enjoying the game and the character intro is really nice, and i hope to post my impressions later on. However there are a number of things that intro didn't explain, and as for a manual, well I haven't found it yet, and actually had to do a google search to find a post called Global Agenda: The missing Manual. Even that didn't give me the answers I was looking for, so I tried asking in chat.

Well I got the replies I was expecting, the go back to Wow, the Chuck Norris, and you suck comments, and than eventually an actual answer. This made me wonder are MMO players so jaded that most of us can't be bothered to respond to a simple question with any sort of helpfulness? and if thats true, I have to feel sorry for anyone actually entering an MMO for the first time, if this is the type of responses a person gets from a simple question, why would you want to continue to play?

As for my self I'm going to stick it out, and if anyone has some suggestions for some of the other games I've listed I would really like to hear them. So this asks the question;

Am I hardcore for sticking with it or still just a newb?

RGX

Sparkle Pony vs the Sparkle Cat

2010-05-26T00:11:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this post partly after listing to MMOVoices podcast #34, and partly because of some of the other things I have read during the last week regarding SOE introducing the sparkle cat in EQ2 (kinda weird for me to defend SOE on this). Lots has been said that this is just SOE copying Blizzard with a 25$ mount, but I think people are not looking at it from the right angle, it really comes down to Blizzard copying SOE.

Why do I say that, well lets look back at RMT in both games. SOE introduced its Marketplace back on December 9, 2008 when it started they had a few items with the most expensive being 10$ for a set of appearance armor, time goes by they slowly add things to the marketplace including change name and change gender potions witch they sell for 25$ (which the reveal at FanFaire 2009 is there biggest seller), more time passes they add race change potion 25$ and character transfer also 25$, on December 22, 2009 they started selling backpacks for 25$, these are 44 slot backpacks tha would actually have an appearance on your character. Also during this time they have been creating lots of house items for people to buy, to the annoyance of the carpenters in EQ2, and they sell complete sets for 50$, yep thats right 50$.

Now we have Blizzard, on November 4, 2009 Blizzard announced it was selling 2 pets for 10$ each. Granted until Dec 31, 2009 50% of the Pandaren monk pet was going to the Make a wish Foundation (SOE also had a similar thing with donations going to Child's Play for the 2nd year). Now April 16, 2010 they now offer a new pet for 10$ and gasp a sparkle pony for 25$. That's 4 items that are offered in to WOW store (yes some of you may say what about the 2 stuffed pets you can buy that give you digital pets in game, and I say if your getting something thats real, its not the same thing)

Now comes May 20, 2010 and SOE anounces its sparkle cat for gasp 25$, now I will say here I think the sparkle pony in WoW is a better deal, I believe that SOE just had the bad luck of releasing this after Blizzard.

As for the price point being the same, well looking at the stuff that SOE has released, I'm surprised it wasn't more, and maybe we should be glad for Blizzard for releasing their mount first so that it wasn't.

So who is really copying who, well I think that's just what MMO's do.

RGX

The Sparkle Cat and why I'm going to buy one

2010-05-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

So SOE has followed in Blizzard's footsteps and have released the $25.00 mount, now yes this is a cat and it does have a few stats, but nothing that's really game breaking or that you cant get better in game, and I'm going to have to say the same thing I did when the WoW horse came out, if someone wants to spend $25 on a horse let them.

I do think the WoW horse is a better deal since you get it for all your alts, I think one thing that people are not looking at is the Station Cash itself. Now I've been playing the game for a long time and one thing I learned is to pay attention to things like twitter, facebook,ect, The reason I pay attention to these things is that you can find out when its advantageous to buy SC and when you can get SC for free.

When thy had the connecding promotion valid EQ2 subscribers got 1000SC, I also managed to pick up another 500SC when I attached my Pax Nora account to my Station account, also got another 500 from buying the expansion, I think i picked up some more SC thru some other promotions that I can't recall atm, but the most important thing I did was to redeem SC cards when they had double station cash promotions. So a 25$ card now gives you 5000SC, so its possible to get the mount for free or at the least $12.50.

So needless to say I have a little bit of SC and so far had nothing to spend in on, however one thing that nobody seems to have mentioned it the SC Store update is you can now buy LoN cards with Station, this could become a problem.

RGX

RPG - A controversial thought

2010-05-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

This post is a result of MMO Voices podcast 33. Where there was a discussion about a comment from Bioware saying that J-RPG are not RPG. I'm going to take a different tack at this discussion and what I really think people are not considering is why we consider games like FFXII and ME2, Dragon Age RPG's at all? Some people say its story, some say character development, some say choices, I'm going to say that none of that matters.

What I'm mean is the name RPG stand Role Playing Game, and it means you are playing a role, and this really describes any type of game. Every game you play you are playing a role no matter what, in a FPS you could be playing the role of a terrorist or counter-terrorist like in Counter-Strike, in an RTS you take the role of a commander of an army, I could go on but it would all lead back to the same you are still playing a role.

I believe what most people are forgetting is what the G stands for, and that's Game, at the end of the day if your having fun does it really matter the type of game it is?

RGX

Steam is my Dealer, and an EQ 2 Rant

2010-03-18T20:30:00.000-07:00

First Ill start off by saying that Steam has way to many sales during the holiday season and I picked up way to many games, also picked up a few thru D2D as well. So I have to say, to any blogger thats a gamer and managed to play and still write, your a better blogger than I.

But enough about what I've been up to, lets move on to the main part, and thats my EQ2 Rant.

EQ2 just released their sixth expansion "Sentinel's Fate" and I want to talk a little about it.

Now I'm a big fan of EQ2, I've played since the beta and played EQ since April of 99, and I have always enjoyed exploring, questing and leveling up my character. Now that the expansion is out and I've had a few days to play and I have really been enjoying it.

Now your saying to yourself, "I thought this was going to be a rant about EQ2, if your enjoying yourself why rant?". Well this rant is about EQ2 , just not the game, its about the players.

With the release of Sentinel's Fate the level cap was raised to 90 and more AA's, now some people have already gotten to level 90(myself included), and I have no problem with that. If you want to race to the level cap thats how you play. However don't immediately say that once you get to the cap, that there is no content and start complaining. In the few weeks that Sentinel's Fate has been out have you, ran every quest, defeated every named mob, cleared every dungeon grouped, x2 and x4? Have you explored the entire new continent, have you seen the changes to the old zones, have you maxed a crafting class, gotten all your AA's?

If your purpose is only to get to the level cap and than complain, I think you should cancel your account and move on, or shut up and stop complaining.

Also the expansion created a lt of new class changes. Now I know that that everyone won't agree with the changes and thats fair enough, and if you are going to complain, at least make it a rational complaint and be able to back it up with some research. If your just going to write "necros sux now" your just wasting everyones time. If you can post something something constructive and say why you think something is wrong with your character and have some data to back up your statement, a Dev may actually take a look at your info, but just saying your character sucks just wastes everyones time.

Personally I think that once people have gotten their max lvl and maxxed out their AA lines they will probably discover their character doesnt suck as much as they thought.

RGX

Is It just me or does this seem pointless......

2009-11-17T01:54:00.000-08:00

Last week the preorder for EverQuest II - Sentinel’s Fate was announced with 3 different versions availalbe: A Regular Edition for 39.99, a Colllectors edition for 69.99 and a digital version for 39.99.

Now I have no problems with the regular edition and collectors edition, and you know my thoughts on the digital download.

What bothers me is an item thats included in both box sets, and thats the $10.00 coupon for Digital Download at the Station Store.

You're probably asking yourself whats wrong with that, well i'll tell you.

The last time I checked there were only 5 games availalbe for digital download, EQ, EQ2, SWG, Pirates of the Burning Sea and Vanguard.

Now if your like me you probably played EQ, and if your care about this at all you probably play EQ2, and if your even more like me you may have even played the others, and even if you haven't bought them, you may have given their trials a go, and decided the game wasn't for you.

So for most people this coupon has no value, it also most likely will expire before the next expansion after Sentinel's Fate.

Now on the other hand if you could use it to buy LoN cards or Station Cash it would be usefully, but its just another piece of paper thats going into the recycle bin.

RGX

Guildwars - Blame Van Hemlock

2009-10-23T17:24:00.000-07:00

I recently went back to playing Guild Wars, which I haven't done since the original game came out, even thou I bought the Nightfall CE and Eye of the North I haven't installed them until just now.

I've really been enjoying the game and its a good break from my normal MMO grind.

I have even gone so far as ordering the Factions CE, from Sweden of all places, the game just arrived and I'm planning on installing it this weekend.

So if your looking for someone to blame because I'm not in EQ2, blame Van Hemlock.

RGX

An answer to perserve your character

2009-10-23T15:28:00.001-07:00

This is going to be a little different type of post for me

I listen to a number of gaming podcasts an one of the called Shut Up. We’re Talking. hit a nerve with their latest show #55. I actually had to go an listen to the show a second time just to go over everything again before I started writing this post.

The part that struck me was their first topic which was character deletion. Now like some of you, I started playing MMO’s back in EQ days, shortly after the game was released and continuously played up until the release of EQ2.

Now I currently have the all access pass so I can go back to EQ at anytime, I have even gone as far as keeping up to date with expansions, just call me crazy, but sometime I’ll have to face the fact that EQ may close (hopefully not for a long time).

This got me thinking, is there a way to preserve this data and in a way that a company will actually want to offer this service to people.

Now I’m going to talk from the EQ/EQ2 perspective(since it’s what I play the most), but this could probably be applied to any MMO.

When you start EQ or EQ2 one of the screens you have is the character select screen which displays your character in 3D with options of rotating your character and zooming in and out.

Any this is where my idea comes from, why couldn't SOE take your character data put it on a USB key and turn the character select screen into a screen saver type program that will display your character without needing to connect to the SOE servers.

You would be able to rotate and zoom in on your character, and you would also have the option to display the character creation date and number of hours played. Other things that should be included are a way to display character stats, a window that would allow the player to input a bio, plus and this is probably the most important part be able to access anything that was in your bank or that your character is carrying.

Now you may be thinking why is that important, well I’ll tell you if a person has access to what the character has in the bank and what they were carrying this gives them the option to change how their character looks, this in turn gives SOE a chance to sell you armor and weapon packs to use on your character, and the revenue stream for SOE doesn’t have to stop there other examples of content that SOE could sell is an Emote Pak which would allow the character to perform different emotes, or a spell pack allowing your character to cast their class spells, perhaps a pet pack, for people who like to collect pets, and so on and so on all little things that bring money into SOE.

But it doesn’t have to end there either, why not than add monster play, being able to fight a monster from EQ/EQ2 with your character, start off with a limited amount of monsters when the player buys the pack, and give the player an option of buying more monsters, and if you keep adding on you could eventually turn EQ/EQ2 into a single player game.

Now here your saying hang on, eventually players could want to add multiplayer option and wouldn’t that ruin the MMO version, I have to say no, because at this point the multiplay version would be the original game. The player could than go back to SOE and say ok I want to resubscribe and if SOE had deleted their character they would be able to reload it from the USB key.

Here you will probably say wait a moment what’s going to stop someone from hacking the usb key, and I would say that’s why SOE would have a way to Validate that key, and info has been changed and be able to reject it.

Another service they could add would be a way for you to update your character on the USB key if your still playing the game.

So here we are, a way for a company give players a way to preserve their character and to make some revenue at the same time.

RGX

Digital Distribution

2009-10-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

I'll be the first to admit, I love Steam its a great way to purchase PC games.

As most people will notice the PC section in your local EB or Gamestop has gotten noticeable smaller down to one shelf section on the wall or sometimes just an isle shelf stuck in the back.

More and more people are turning to digital distribution as a way to get the latest PC game and sometimes its the only option if you don't have a EB or Best Buy nearby.

In the last couple of years Ive probably bought 20+ titles from Steam and Direct2Drive, however if you look at the purchases I have made you will notice that they were all games that were on sale.

And why do you ask why do I only purchase games when they are on sale? The reason is Digital Distribution.

Now at this point some of you may be scratching your head and saying what? Let me explain.....

When a new game comes out, and lets say its the Dragon Age: Orgins which is available on both Steam and Direct2Drive for $49.99 for the regular edition or $64.99 for the deluxe collectors edition, now if we ordered it from EB and got the actual box we pay the same price, and that's where the problem is.

When you pay the same price for the digital copy as you do for the box copy, you are better off buying the box.

Now you might be asking yourself why do you say that? Well here's why...

When you buy the digital copy that's all you get, the game downloaded onto your PC, when you buy the box version you not only get the discs so that you can install right away, (means no waiting to download the game), you have a permanent backup if your computer crashes. Now you may be saying wait, you can make a backup with Steam and D2D as well, and I say yes you can, but there maybe sometime in the future that those services will be discontinued, (unlikely at this point of time, but its a possibility). But the real value you get from buying the box version over the digital comes down to whats inside the box.

In most boxed games you will normally have a printed manual, now i know people will say but there is a PDF version of the manual with the digital version. That's well and good most box games also include a PDF version on the disc as well, how ever its not something you can go thru quickly. When I need some info on the game I'm playing I find it easier to quickly thumb thru the manual than so tab out of the game load up a PDF reader and scroll thru the pages to try and find what i want.

Secondly there are the extras that maybe in the box this is especially true if it a collectors edition. Dragon Age: Orgins Deluxe edition contain a Steel Case, Cloth Map, Making of DVD, plus a number of added digital extras.
Now the digital copy only includes the digital extras, plus the Addon called Wardens Keep, which can be bought for 7$.

Even adding on an extra 7$ for the collectors edition the box version is just a way better deal than the digital version.

So until the price of the digital download becomes more reasonable I'll see you at the store

RGX

Well I said I would...........

2009-05-03T23:13:00.000-07:00

Yes I did say I would have a game review up this weekend, however some new shiney piece caught my eye instead........the new shiney being Free Realms.

Head on over to FreeRealms and check it out.

I ended up staying up till 5am one morning questing thru the game.

It's a free to play MMO with an optional 4.99$ a month subscrition and if your an SOE ALL ACCESS Member like myself membership is included.

The Game also includes RMT (real money transaction), I havent really looked at this yet, but mostley it looks more for cosmetic effect than to effect game play.

Hopefull I all more info as time goes by

RGX

It's Been a While.......

2009-04-28T02:02:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a while since I've written and I'm not going to bore you with all the reasons why.

All I'm going to say is I'm back and hopefully going to be posting every two weeks or so. cross my fingers.

I'm playing a few new games so I hope to have a review off them soon, maybe by the weekend

That's all for now

RGX

Everquest 2 - The Shadow Odyssey where for art thou

2008-11-19T08:59:00.000-08:00

Well I'm back from holidays, Europe was fantastic and very nice in October.

Today's date is November 19, 2008 exactly one day after the launch of The Shadow Odyssey for Everquest 2.

Now I did what every addicted EQ2 player does, I preordered the expansion with my local EBGames (Gamestop for US readers). Now you would think preordering a game would guarantee you a copy for launch date. Unfortunately I live in Canada and either SOE or EBGames seem to treat the Canadian market like some backwards country, personally I think its SOE. Now why you may ask do I say this, well the main reason is because I stil don't have my copy of TSO.

The reason I think it's SOE's fault is when I do a search on the the largest Canadian online retailers none of them even carry the game, Not BestBuy, Not Futureshop, Not even Amazon.ca even thou you can get the game the US, UK, Germany, and France sites.

Now your probably going to say why didn't you preorder thru SOE for digital download? The reason for that is cost. The game costs the same price if you by it retail or digital (which is stupid in my opinion, but that's a different blog post). Sure with digital there is the convince of having it right away but I would than be paying 39.99US for it instead of 39.99CND. If your like me you may have noticed the Canadian dollar has been dropping so instead of the game costing 39.99 it would cots me 48.00 and that's only if the credit card company give me the actually exchange rate, but that's unlikely.

That still does not change the fact that I can't find a copy of TSO in Canada.

RGX

Isn't it Monday?

2008-09-01T18:51:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed I hadn't posted anything as of yesterday, and I'm not going to give any lame excuse, all I will say is it's a long weekend, and I'm being lazy.

However don't worry I am currently writing two posts, one about a game I'm currently playing and the other about some statues I bought.

Told you it would be random.

RGX

Space Rangers 2 - Rise of the Dominators

2008-08-28T16:26:00.000-07:00

This game was released in North America in March of 2006 with reviewers giving it a 84/100, it can still be purchased thru Stardock.

This game is mostly a lot of fun.

Now what I mean by that is the part that I really enjoy is flying my ship around, fighting other ships, and doing some of the missions.

Now the flying part, its pretty simple, you have a 2D map and you just click where you want to go with in a system, you can also bring up your star map and fly between systems. The only thing you need to consider when flying between systems, is how far will my engine take me, and how much fuel do will I need. Even this is fairly simple to figure out, when your star map is open you will see a green ring, that will show you how far you can fly, and if you want to fly to a system beyond your reach, the game simply won't let you.

One thing to be careful of thou, if your trying to get all the way across the map, try not to do it in the largest jump as possible, you never know when a system will get attacked, and there is nothing worse than being stuck in the middle of a fight with no fuel and no way out. Two ways to avoid this is either take smaller system jumps, or carry extra fuel along. However if you do find yourself with no way out, either the closest systems are all under control of the dominators, or you are to far away, try and land on a unihabitanted planet. You can than wait till the dominators are defeated, or one of the closer systems is liberated so you can jump to safety. You may also want to lift off from the planet once in a while to see if there are fuel canisters from destroyed ships or help in mopping up the last of the dominators.

Now fighting other ships is also very simple, and a little annoying. It simple in all that you do is select your weapons and point at the ship you want to attack. It's annoying because that's all you do, you have no control over how your ship maneuvers or how it attacks, and sometimes you will wonder why is the ship doing that? So most battles come down to, do I have a better ship than he does.

Flying missions is another almost fun part of the game, and when I say almost fun I mean that some of the mission are fun and interesting and some ore tedious and make no sense at all in a space sim. Missions like, we need you to track this ship down and destroy it, we need you to get this to planet x asap, those missions I enjoy especially the flavour text that goes along with them. However managing and building a ski resort, starting a band and the other nonspace missions are tedious at best and down right annoying at worst.

One other mission type is the where you have to fight the dominators in a rts type game, which while interesting after a while it becomes more and more frustrating. You can play this part as a traditional RTS or you can take control of the robots you build and play them like a FPS. I found this part annoying since it seems the computer can pump out as many robots as fast as possible that you may find yourself quickly overwhelmed.

Now there is one part that I haven't gotten to, and that's apparently a space battle between you and the Keller which is suppose to happen inside a black hole.

For now I'm just going to fly my ship around shoot down pirates and the dominators and just have fun.

RGX

Blog Graphic Title

2008-08-27T18:35:00.000-07:00

I would like to thank my sister for creating a great header graphic for me, you can see her web site at www.lizardgirl.com

EQ2 Drama

2008-08-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

Everquest II, for people that don't know is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game otherwise know as a MMORPG or MMO. This means that there can be hundreds if not thousands of people are playing at the same time, while this can be great for meeting new people, this can bring its own problems.

When you get lots of people playing together everyone bring with them their own personality quirks. Normally its not a problem, but when it is, enter the drama.

Drama happens when someone forgets that they are playing a game and lets their personality get the better of them, whether its complaining about some loot drops, whether its complaining about people in your guild, or just throwing a fit. All it does make other players not want to group with you.

People seem to forget they are playing a game, when something happens that annoys you, you can either choose to ignore it, (the ignore command works great for people who spam the channels), or you can just log off and quit playing for awhile.

But yelling a people just doesn't do any good, an you will probably come to regret it after you've been banned from the game.

RGX

Everquest 2 Instance Zones & Groupings

2008-08-22T16:42:00.000-07:00

Welcome again the first topic I want to talk about Everquest 2 instances and groups. Now for those that don't know what an instance is, it is basically a dungeon just for your group of up to 6 players. Now normally these can be done with any type of group, however lately the instances are now require more specialty classes to complete.

First a little background a group normally consists of 6 players. The two main requirements are a Tank, normally a fighter type that can take lots of damage, and the healer. The rest of the party can consist of a variety of other classes, scouts, mages, etc.

However lately the instances are now requiring you to have certain classes, such as an extra healer, a mezzer, mana regen, etc.

Now the problem arises when you can not find these classes you may be sitting around for hours on end hoping that one of these needed classes will log on, meanwhile there may be any number of players looking to join a group but are not the required classes.

SOE really needs to address this problem, making instances require certain classes to complete the zone is a huge waste of time for players, and makes the other classes that are not the required classes feel unwanted, and makes the wonder if they should role a new alt or betray to a class they may be more important to a group.

One of the ways that SOE could fix this would be to make a smart dungeon, one that would look at the makeup of the party and create a dungeon that while challenging for the party the party will still be able to finish it. The dungeon could also be set to either look at the levels or let the group going in select the level, so a group that consists of 70-80 level players can chose a level 70-79 dungeon, or they could choose a level 80 dungeon if they wanted more of a challenge, where a group consisting of all level 80's could only select the level 80 dungeon. Also the players could select the level of difficulty for the dungeon like they do with Poet's Palace you have the option to choose normal, hard, very hard.

This would also give the players a unique experience all the time, since they never know what monsters lurk in the dungeon and what loot would drop. For SOE this would give them a unique advantage in the world of MMO's.

Just my 2 cents

RGX

Welcome

2008-08-22T16:23:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my Blog. This blog is basically, to start with, going to be about anything and everything, but most of its going to be about games, and normally the ones that I am currently playing. I hope to update this site at least once a week every Sunday, but sometimes it may be more. Sometimes it will be me ranting sometimes it will be actually news and game play advice. So if your reading this I hope you find it interesting, and remember its just my own opinion.

RGX