State of the Games: MMOs
I've been ticking along on the MMO front for a while now, not getting heavily into anything. As autumn and winter approach, though, I'm reckoning on playing more. I want to record where I'm at now, and then I can look back in a while and see what's changed. I should probably do this more often...
World of Warcraft
I am not currently playing WoW, but davew (author of the awesome What To Do When You're Level 80 post) is, and I look over his shoulder on occasion. The rumoured Cataclysm expansion, if it is as rumoured, will bring me back to the game. Goblin PCs? Yes please. Worgen PCs? I'll roll Alliance for that. Revamping the Old World? Oh yeah.
EVE Online
I'm ramping up my EVE presence, with a view to going back to regular operations, possibly as early as next week. The skill queues are godly, and I had to do a clone upgrade last night having noticed that my 18-million-skill-point character had only a 12-million-skill-point clone.
I'm trading heavily, making lots of use of my new skill levels in Margin Trading. Last time I was engaged in trading, there was no money in small ships, and lots to be made on fittings, specifically turrets. Now that seems to have changed, and I'm making decent money on cruisers and frigates, and not even looking at guns, because the percentages just aren't there. Once I get enough cash together, I'm going to look at trading in bigger ships - battlecruisers and battleships - and possibly production again.
I reckon that the new rigs going in in today's patch will stir up considerable interest in the mid-level ships. Hitherto, trying to rig anything in T1 smaller than a battleship was an exercise in expenses, with the rig often costing more than the total of ship + fittings. The new rigs, however, come in medium and small sizes, with prices that will more or less match. This means that rigging battlecruisers, cruisers, and maybe even destroyers and frigates will be much cheaper.
Everquest 2
Everquest II is my main game at the minute. I got kinda stuck on the Betrayal quests for Ephrator (Kerra Necromancer), since I need to do dozens of quests to get to the point where people from Qeynos no longer kill me on sight, and poked a few alts instead. The Barbarian Fury, Arlynx, is being a lot of fun, and playing alongside Nina's Mystic is going very well - she tanks a bit, I heal a bit, and we both DPS.
For solo play, I have a Barbarian Monk, Shau, who's a LOT of fun. I'm going to have to gear him a bit better, though, or learn some new trick with his current powers, because he's getting killed a lot on blue quests, which I reckon shouldn't happen. Shau is also lucky - at level 11 or so, he has already looted two Legendary items, and often gets two rare gathers in a row. Indeed, he got three in a row the night before last. He's also the orginator of the "ding & dash" maneuver that's going to be all over the blogosphere in the next few weeks, according to Angela and Ysharros.
I've been enjoying the adventuring levels a lot, as well as the crafting, but I expect to get some serious crafting done in the next couple of weeks - I want to get my Sage and Tailor to the point where they can supply the others with useful stuff for a number of levels to come, and Ephrator's Carpentering needs more work too. As yet, Shau has no crafting skills at all, and I'm still debating what he's going to do when he grows up. The Monk skill enhancements would be an obvious one, I suppose...
Others
I am not currently playing Wizard 101, mostly because there are only so many hours in the week. I'm watching DDO's proposed free-to-play thing with interest, and have been looking at screenshots for Aion, but don't really anticipate playing either of them. I have some free time for LoTRO knocking around, but am not at all bothered about it.
Posted by Drew Shiel at August 20, 2009 11:24 AM
