Werit does GW2

When it comes to Guild Wars 2, I am not really on the bandwagon.  That doesn't mean I'm not interested in the game though.  It is a high quality effort with no subscription, so of course I am on board with that.  Since I pre-purchased, I was able to participated in this weekends beta event.

My primary interest in GW2 is their WvW (RvR) Pvp stuff, so that's where I headed first.  Once I finished the introduction mission, I was able to wisk myself off to the Mists.  I think I was around level 3 at this point.  I love being able to WvW from the start, so that's a big plus for GW2 in my book.

On my way to the Mists, I found myself in GW2's version of a scenario/battleground.   It was quite a jarring experience, since these instances basically give everyone a level 80 geared template.   I had no clue how to play my character at this level, so it did not go well.

After a couple matches, I made my way over to the real PvP in the Mists.  Now, I don't much much stock in these impressions since it is the first beta event.  Good or bad, the game will change as people figure out how it all works.

The WvW stat screen is pretty cool. It shows the scores and bonuses based on the status of the Mists.  My server, Eternal Grove, is not doing well at the moment but we are very close to getting a 2% critical crafting bonus for the server.

So what did I do in the Mists?  Pretty much the same thing I do in WAR.  Ran around, captured objectives, ran away from zergs and so on.  Sometimes, it was all too familiar like in the screenshot below.

My overall WvW experience was just ok.  There was a lot of 'ring around the objective' as groups avoided each other to capture undefended (or lightly defended) objectives. Performance was not very good at this point either, but it is the first beta so that is fine.  I did not experience much 3-way action this time around either.  I had fun though, so I'm looking forward to the next beta event.

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Beta Weekend, Firefall, and Tera

The long awaited Guild Wars 2 beta weekend is here.  It should be an interesting time, although I'm not expecting much more than lag and other troubles since it is the first event.  Server wise, I think I am going to roll on Anvil Rock with the other old CoW's ;)

We've got a few hours until the event starts, so how about some PvP videos?





Firefall, last I heard, was going for an e-sport sytle of PvP in their scenarios.  It looks pretty fun, although we will see if I have the reflexes to be useful.  I certainly don't in tribes, where I just brutalize the ground.  Overall, it is a pretty good video with decent music.





Next up is a Tera video.  Now I don't know very much about the game, except that the theme is really not my style.  That being said, this video is pretty cool.  It looks like you can set up open world team duels (deathmatches) and fight it out whenever.  This appears to be an 8 vs 8 match, with a bunch of people watching.

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Salem the Beta

Salem is an upcoming MMO in development by Paradox and the creators of Haven and Hearth.  What makes this game stand out is its focus on crafting, and the fact it is permadeath.  If you die, there will be no respawn at your local checkpoint.  I ended up getting a beta invite yesterday, so I checked it out for a few hours.

It is important to mention that this is still in beta.  And by beta, I think they really mean alpha.  It was very rough, especially when it came to the UI and feedback methods.  There was also no sounds or music in the game yet. On to my impressions, although it is more like a log of what I did.

Players start out in their own little instance where they setup their character.  This involves clicking on some NPC's and things like your gender and hair color changing.  Once finished, you'll need to right-click on the boat , which will transport you to Boston.

Boston is the major in-game city, I think.  It was packed with players, but not much else yet.

I decided to test my fortunes in the wilderness, and started to walk North.  Movement is click based, and you can get stuck on stuff a lot... so it took some getting used to.  I finally made it out of the city.  I kept walking, for a long time.  Eventually I found some stuff I could pick up.

The foliage is very nice, I was really missing having some sounds to go along with it though. Alright, so what am I doing out here?  Collect stuff, ???, Profit!  Of course.  I needed to obtain some skills to actually start making useful items though.  For that, I turned to youtube.

It turns out, I need to study in order to learn new skills.  In Salem, you Study objects to raise certain experience bars.  It's more complex than that, but it'll do for now.  The Smooth Stone is one of the first items you can find, which will allow you to learn Survival Skills.

In my exploration, I found stuff to study and stuff to eat.  You need to eat to fill up your resource pool (4 resources actually) which allow you to craft, study run etc.  When you start out, you have nothing and it can feel pretty slow.  As you unlock skills you start to get more ways of doing things, which really helps you feel like you are making progress.

I made a fire and am not at all creepy.

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XP Boost Giveaway

It has been a while since I've held a contest on this site.  Time to change that!  I happen to have a number of One Day 100% XP Boost codes to giveaway for Wrath of Heroes.  We'll make this nice and simple, just enter using the widget below, and in one week I'll choose the winners at random.

XP.  In WoH, experience points are how you unlock more mastery points.  There is no level cap, so you can never have too much!  This WILL stack with the Warhammer Online subscriber bonus too!

Bonus!

EA's Blog, The Beat, is giving away free Wooden Chests.  Head on over to http://www.ea.com/news/wrath-of-heroes-open-beta  for the code.

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To enter the contest, just enter your email address (or Facebook) and answer a quick WoH question.  That should be all there is to it!  This is my first time trying out Rafflecopter, so please let me know of any issues.

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1.4.6 Update #2

Warhammer Online's 1.4.6 patch is nearing release!  Last week, Keaven stopped by the forums to give us another update about the teams progress.  The Completed list has grown longer, and the to-do list is getting pretty short now.  Below is the latest update.


New items that have passed testing:

• Change how pets are resummoned by the system after players cross zones
• Increase max stack size for vendor purchases
• WAR Report no longer usable during combat
• Remove flight animations
• Check Mourkain Temple's chickening, updating areas as needed to make sure both Order and Destruction are equal
• Add Relic Barriers all the way around the Dark Elf Fortress
• Fix how Cloud of Corruption applies Inoculation
• Increase interact time for both stealing a Relic, and picking one up off the battlefield
• Change Tier 4 Lakes to bolster to 45
• Correct Quick Escape, rank 1, so it removes correctly when using other abilities
• Add Fortress Foreman inside Fortress Keep Armory when the Fortress is first claimed
• Check Skeetk's combat AI
• Check how Throt reacts to out-of-combat taunts
• Ensure Rams are not able to be staggered or knocked back
• Check WAR Report teleport locations

Still in testing, and new items now in testing:

• Add more titles for "Important Monsters"
• Change the way the MiniMap recieved updated for monster name changes
• Check all scenario guards, swapping out stationary ones for those that chase into the playing field
• New Scenario Brackets
• Change lockout on WAR Report usage
• Change player summoning to take you to the original location of the summoner, not their current location

What stands out to me most?  That would be the 'bolster to 45' change which will be coming in 1.4.6.  That means there will effectively be no more hidden levels, since everyone will be 45.  It's a big change which should bring more balance to the lakes.  

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Comments

A few weeks ago, I saw that Massively switch their comment system over to something called Livefyre.  It's a commenting system similar to Disqus, but with a few interesting features.  I figured I'd give it a shot on this site for a few days and see how it goes.  There are two main aspects of Livefyre which I am interested in:

Real-Time Commenting.  Basically, new comments will appear without reloading the page.  That sort of makes it like a chat room, instead of just a message board.

SocialSync.  Livefyre has put some effort into integrating related Twitter and Facebook comments so that they will also appear as a comment.  It sounds neat, we'll see how it works.

Another positive about Livefyre is that they support more login methods ( Google, Twitter, Facebook etc).  You can still post as a Guest, just say 'No Thanks' when they ask you to create an account.

If you can, please try it out, I'd like to know what you think.  If you cannot comment for some reason, feel free to let me know on twitter or send me an e-mail.  Thanks!

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Team Fight

This week, I have two different PvP videos for you guys.  The first comes from Wrath of Heroes.  What makes this one interesting is that it is three premades going up against each other in the Arena.  Since there is no custom matchmaking (yet?), it is a neat occurrence.



Watch live video from tarelther on TwitchTV
The match ends up being very conservative, as it should be in the Arena.  Your death gives other teams points, so you kind of want to avoid doing that.  It also goes to show how important it is to have Volrik on your side. That 100ft pull is just nasty.

Next video is of Tribes Ascend.  I thought about showing my own video, but that would mostly show how I can't hit much of anything except the ground.  So enjoy this more interesting video.  It's a fun game (and free) but my reflexes are just not where they need to be in order to play.

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Rakghoul Gripes

Right now in SWTOR, the Rakghoul Outbreak live event is taking place.  It is BioWare's first attempt at one of these, so it has been interesting to see how they have done it.  Even though it is still taking place, there are some definite ways they can improve for their next event.  There may be some spoilers in this post.

Hidden Quests.  I'm referring to the Tracking the Origin quest.  You obtain this quest by obtaining some buffs, which when combined end up unlocking a terminal that gives a mission.  I'm ok with hidden stuff, but what bothers me is there there is no 'in character' way to know that this mission exists.

I play SWTOR for the theme and immersion, having to visit a fan site to find out that a mission exists just bothers me.  We have cut scenes and gobs of audio, wouldn't it have been better to give clues about mission with those tools?  The 5th codex entry is also given by mission, so to finish the story you need to leave it.  Grrr.

SWTOR isn't the only one guilty of this of course, a lot of games do it.  I remember when WAR came out and I was checking out the lairs.  They had some nice Tome entries which gave a backstory.  Of course, the story often had nothing to do with the secret of the lair.

In the future, I'd love to see special quests like these have clues in the game world.  It doesn't have a mission indicator, but a realistic means to figure it out from inside the game.  Of course now that I wrote this, I expect to be told there were in-game clues and I just missed them.

Timing.  It seems to me that this live event should have been run prior to 1.2 launching.  One of the interesting tidbits we learn is that the infected animal came from Ord Mantell.  That would have been very interesting if we did not already know that the Explosive Conflict operation took place on that planet.  Since we did, it was not really all that surprising.

I know in this age of data mining that keeping secrets is difficult, but having something to reveal would have made the event more interesting.

I really enjoyed the event starting out with the news cut scenes, but sadly that narrative did not really continue.  Instead we were tossed a bunch of daily quests.  In future events, I'd like to see more focus on the story as it evolves along with the daily quests.

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WoH Bonus for WAR Subscribers

Back when Wrath of Heroes was announced, one of the big questions was whether Warhammer Online subscribers would receive any benefit.  Mythic said they were working on it, and it appears they have been.  Today they announced the details!

Today our two Warhammer Online games got even closer. Now every Wrath of Heroes player who has an active WAR subscription on the same EA account will benefit from a 50% boost to all gold and experience earned for the complete length of the subscription. 

Check out the whole post here.

The bonus boost will stack with ones you can purchase.

As for benefit versus subscription price, they come out to be around equal.  15 days of the 100% Gold Boost costs  $10.50 while 15 days of the 100% XP Boost costs  $5.25 for a total of $15.75.  EDIT:  As Kai mentioned, there is no XP cap, so it should always be useful.

As a WAR Subscriber, I like what I see so far... I'll have to think on it some more though.

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Keep Respawn Change

As mentioned last week, Mythic has been considering the respawn mechanics for the upcoming 1.4.6 patch.  Currently, when you die in a RvR lake you will respawn at your keep.  There are pros and cons to this approach but it sounds like many players wanted a change.

The verdict is in...

For 1.4.6 you will respawn back at the War Camp unless you died within the Keep Objective area.

I never did mind respawning at the keep, but it is not a big deal to me that it is limited now.

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Interviewed

Scary (or Scarybooster if you are cool) over at Scary Worlds sent out a fun little interview to a number of gaming bloggers.  I'm usually not one for writing about myself, but they were neat questions.  Today he posted the responses to the first question... What are you passionate about?

Head on over to his site to read all of the responses.  You can find it here http://www.scaryworlds.com/?p=302

Be sure to check back for the rest of the answers later.

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Anatomy of a Trade

While most of my time has been spent playing games lately, work has been continuing on Stellar Fortune.  When we last left it, I was revamping it to run using a command line interface for development efficiency.  So far, it has worked out well.  Let's take a look!

The economy, and trading, are the foundation of the game.  So my first task was to get that setup.

I'm using a basic buy and sell order system which you've seen in games like Eve Online.  As we can see, There is money to be made by taking Food from Prime to Alto.

Lets buy some of the Food.  It acquired some inventory space for us on Prime to hold our newly purchased Food.

Now that we have some stuff to sell, how do we get it to Alto?  Originally,  I had the player transporting it via ship.  That didn't mesh well with the executive role I wanted the player to take.  I don't want to heap mundane tasks on the player in this day and age.  That is where Agents come in.

I'll go more into Agents in another post, but here are two for hire.  They both are able to transport cargo, but lets take a closer look at them.

Agents can be thought of as party members, and what they can do for you depends on what they know and what they have.  This guy can fly a ship and has cargo space.  He should do just fine.

Ok, we hired him for a day.  This is just a contractor, players can actually put Agents on their payroll too (and contract them out to other players).  We also gave the agent a Transport order, which will take a few minutes.  He is actually travelling through the game world, so 'events' can happen.  Hopefully your agent is prepared.

And finally, now that the cargo is at its destination, we sell it.

The interface is pretty rough, but it is actually all JSON based so replacing it with something modern will not be too difficult.  The terminal look brings back a lot of good memories for me though :)

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Ornate Chests

A couple of weeks ago, Wrath of Heroes introduced a new item to their store: the Ornate Chest.  It's like the Wooden Chests, but fancier.  Much fancier, considering the cost.  So what do you get for 200 gems or 40,000 Gold?  Based on the description, there are 'epic tactics' inside.

Since I am saving all my money for new heroes, I went to the source and asked about these epic tactics.  Here are two examples.

Acceleration.  Increases your run speed by 10%.  (versus 3% on the tactic Rapidity).

Temerity.  Reduces all damage taken by 40% if you are below 40% health.  Compared to the Desperation tactic that is 35% at 25%.

Those are just a couple of examples of what you might find in an Ornate Chest.  They certainly look like substantial improvements over the normal versions of the tactics.  As far as I know, they are only available in these new chests.

Personally, I would wait for a sale to pick one of these up.  It's not a guarantee that you'll receive something useful for a Hero that you regularly play, but things like a 10% run speed buff might be useful for everybody.  If you've purchased an Ornate Chest and have other examples, please do leave them in a comment.

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Novare Coast Videos

With the release of their 1.2 patch, SWTOR released a new warzone called Novare Coast.  Basically, it is a 3 capture point map.   I didn't have a chance to play it yet, but it looks pretty neat setting wise.  As is becoming a Friday tradition, here are a couple of videos to watch.





Sadly, I could not find a decent video with the full intro.  It does have naval firepower, anti-air, explosion and so on.  It was pretty neat.  The setting is decent enough in this warzone, as is the voice work.





The Empire voice is quite a bit different.  As we can see, this warzone is same-faction enabled.  Maybe the voice is just for same faction matches?  It is a 'simulation' after all.  Overall, the graphics in 1.2 have looked very nice.

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Pathfinder Economy Detailed

If you have not been following the development of Pathfinder, you should be.  It's a MMO, early in development which is turning out to be quite the sandbox.  They regularly release blog entries discussing the systems of the game.  The latest entry details harvesting, processing and crafting.

Pathfinder Online is filled with characters that have a big impact on the world but are rarely (if ever) seen. These are the common folk. Think of them like the Sims in Sim City: you'll see the results of their actions, but you won't usually interact with them directly. Common folk live in and around a given hex, and are the source of labor used by player character activities in that area.

When you construct a camp, it will begin to attract common folk who will perform the work of harvesting the resource you've located. Keeping the common folk happy and productive is a big part of your job as a harvester. They need to be kept safe—if the camp comes under attack by monsters or by other player characters, the common folk will flee and no work will be undertaken until the area is again secure. Common folk extracting medium and higher level resources may also require you to keep them stocked with consumable tools and supplies.

The full entry can be found here:  https://goblinworks.com/blog/

It certainly is an ambitious plan, I hope they can pull it off.  The developers are really putting a lot of depth in there, I just hope they can climb out and release the game :)

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Legacy arrives today

Today marks the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic's 1.2 patch, or Legacy.  I have to say, I am pretty excited about it.  Although, there is no real reason I should be.  While this patch includes a ton of stuff, none of it really provides me any immediate benefit.  You can check out the patch notes here.

Right now I have 2 characters.  A level 32 Commando who just finished Chapter One and a level 18 Jedi Knight.  That puts me at a Legacy level of.... one.  So I don't think much is being added to the legacy system for me quite yet.  It is still my favorite part of the patch though because I know I will benefit from it eventually.

I don't really have an interest in the new Flashpoint or Operation, so I could take or leave them.  I should be interested in the new warzone, but I still don't find myself PvPing all that much in SWTOR.  I'm sure I'll try it out on my Commando though.

It turns out that Ranked Warzones were pulled from the 1.2 patch at the last minute.  Since I don't have a 50, it doesn't bother me but it sure looked like an interesting feature.  Let's hope they get it in the game within a few weeks.  I'm sure a lot of PvPers are bummed.

There is also the UI editor and crafting improvements which should be pretty neat.  Since I am slow playing SWTOR, these kind of updates do make me very happy.  I love to see the game grow around me, instead of just ahead or behind me.

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Drulg lumbers onto the scene

The newest hero to join the Wrath of Heroes lineup is Drulg the Ogre.   He is big and carries a large club... what more would you expect?  For the first week he is available, he can only be purchased with gems.  If you feel like smashing things, you may want to check him out.





We also saw a change-up of the free Hero lineup this week.  Glowgob, Felcia and Volrik are available to everyone.  Free Glowgob has definitely had an affect on the matches I have seen so far.   Two Shamans per team is nice and all, but you are going to need some damage or a lot of Volrik's to make a dent in the heals.  Sadly, free Felicia is not up to the task.

It makes me glad I purchased Ilayna.  While I do a ton of AoE damage with Felicia, it isn't until I break out the Sorceress that enemies starting dying.  I think Felicia will be much more effective if you can use her mastery tree.  She will be mine, someday (when she goes on sale).

Yesterday was a good day, not only did I get 2 free Wooden Chests, I got a third on the spinner!  That was a first for me, very nice :)

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Get TWO free Wooden Chests!

Want a free Wooden Chest for Wrath of Heroes?  MMORPG.com is giving a whole bunch away!  I got mine, and in it was a very nice tactic called Adaptation which provides some immunity from being crit for a short time.    You can also get some skills in the chest, so it is definitely worthwhile ... and it is free.

To get the key, just head over to: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/641/feature/5831

EDIT:

Double your pleasure! PcGamer is also offering keys, which are different so they both can be used.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/04/10/free-loot-for-your-free-game-as-warhammer-online-wrath-of-heroes-goes-into-open-beta/

Copy the key and paste it in the redeem window once you log into the game.

Oh, Wrath of Heroes is also now in Open Beta.  That means anyone can sign up and play.

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Where to Respawn?

Mythic is currently hard at work on Warhammer Online's 1.4.6 patch, but Keaven managed to break away and pose a question to the forums.  When the RvR revamp occurred, one of the major changes was where players respawned after they died in a RvR lake.  It went from the warcamp to the keep.  Keaven ponders if this is the best solution...

This is a Short Run discussion, meaning it will close at the end of the week, Friday, April 13th.

When we put a call out for bugs to fix in 1.4.6, one of the issues that came up time and again was how/when players respawned in their keeps. While not technically a bug, it was deemed an acceptable addition to the bug-fix list. We are looking at this issue, and want to get some focused feedback on it. We need to keep this somewhat brief, though, so we have time to get changes in and tested in a timely fashion. 

Currently, defenders will respawn inside their keep as long as one of the doors remains up. Once the inner doors have been breached, defenders are no longer able to respawn at the keep, and will respawn at the warcamp instead. There are pros and cons to this system, but as the cons were mostly against the attackers, it was felt acceptable since it facilitated additional combat by keeping the defenders at the keep, in a position to quickly get back into the defense.

...

The post was to long to fully re-post, so check out the thread for the rest.

I like the current system for 1 major reason, it makes it easier to get where the action is.  Marching across a zone just to get intercepted and sent back to the start can be rather frustrating.  Currently, if this happens you are sent to the keep which is likely under siege (fighting!).

However, I can see where this system causes problems for the attackers.  If it is a fairly even fight, it gives the defenders a rather large advantage since their numbers will really just keep increasing.  In an uneven fight, it is a plus since defenders can actually put up a fight.

My ideal solution would be to tie the ability to respawn in the keep to a Battlefield Objective.  If the attackers want to deny their enemies that bonus, they can actively go do it.  The defenders can then choose to take it back if they wish.

Another solution, which I saw in the thread, was to tie the ability to AAO.  That way, only an outmatched side would be able to respawn in the keep.  That sounds like a decent solution to me as well.

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The Smart Buy

With the recent release of Felicia to the Wrath of Heroes store, I have been very tempted to purchase her.  I found her to be very fun in previous beta tests, and it would be a change of pace from Ilanya.  I have not yet pulled the trigger, and I'm not sure I should.

While she is fun to play, she may not be the best choice.  That may actually be the Marauder, Volrik.  He brings so much to the table, especially when you consider Glowgob's importance on the battlefield.

Heal Debuff.  Blocking all of a Shaman's healing will effectively kill him with a little coordination.

Pull.  Ah, Terrible Embrace.... you have plagued me in WAR and now in WoH.  Once Volrik is purchased, you can upgrade this to 100ft.

Root.  Volrik also has a ranged root which is very handy for stopping things from running away... or staying with their group.

Lord of Change.  If Volrik gets 20 assists during a single life, he can tranform into the Lord of Change.  This is pretty awesome to see, but you don't want to be near him when he does it.

Volrik just brings so many tools to the table, the he is almost a must have in your stable of heroes.  Next time he goes on sale, I may have to make the buy.

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Watch Twitch.tv on your PS3

Yesterday, as I was watching IPL4 League of Legends, I thought to myself: "Why am I not watching this on my TV?"  Off to the Playstation 3 I went and tried to bring up the stream.  Of course, it could not be that simple and I ran into Flash not supported and a number of other errors.

Eventually, I found something that worked.

On a forum, I forget which, I learned that if you add '/popout' to the twitch.tv (or justin.tv) link it would work... and it did!  For example...

http://www.twitch.tv/ipllol/popout

Sometimes I had to refresh a few times, but in the end I was watching the stream through my PS3.

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Glowgob on sale

Everyone favorite ( to be or kill) hero, Glowgob, is currently on sale in Wrath of Heroes.  Thanks to a vote yesterday, he was chosen by a large majority for the honor of a sale.  I would not have voted for him, but that's because I am selfish and wanted Felicia.

Anyway, until Saturday at 9am (EST I assume) he will cost 124 Gems or 48,000 gold.  That's down from 155 and 60,000.  He is one of the most valuable Heroes at the moment, so if you have been on the fence it might be a good time to buy.

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Guild Wars 2 PvP

Since it is Friday, I thought I would take a peek at some PvP videos from Guild Wars 2.  I may not be the games biggest fan, but the more you know, right?  The pre-order starts next week, but I don't think there is a release date yet.





This one is just funny.  I do love games that have some physics involved.  And by physics, I mean things get tossed around the screen.





This one shows off a 1 vs 1 battle between a Guardian and an Elementalist.  Some interesting things I saw in this video....  the Guardian loads up some Caster stuff near the beginning of the fight, then switches back to sword and board.  Also, there seem to be a ton of self-heals going on.

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Prototyping

I have not talked about my side project, Stellar Fortune, lately.  It is still alive and kicking, albeit it in a little different form.  The last time I posted about it, I had converted it to be entirely web-based discarding those pesky graphics. Now I have gone a bit further.

Since this is all still firm in the prototyping stage, I needed a more efficient way to develop it.  It turns out most of my time was being spent on interface development rather than shaking out the flaws with my game design.  As this is a hobby and my time is limited, that just wasn't going to work out in the long run.  So now I have a new plan.

1)  Offline, command line interface
2)  Online, database, command line interface
3)  Real interface, live

By using a command line interface, I can really concentrate on the game itself.  So far it has been going well, and progress has been made. I've been taking a lot of my web-based code and stripping it down to just the essentials.  Here is a peek at the agent detail information:

-------------------------------------------

--> agent info 3

Name: Xues Juterty
Status: Hired
------------------------
Skills

  Basic Starship Piloting

--------------------
Assets

  T1 Light Transport

---------------------
Cargo Capacity: 10 Tons (8 free)

Food            2

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If I ever get to Stage 3, and the project is worthwhile, I'll probably get a professional to do the interface.  This game would have a ton of data to be displayed, and I'd like it done right.  In the meantime though, I'll be plugging away at making sure the core game is fun.

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Unexpected

I've had some pretty good experiences in Star Wars: The Old Republic lately.  I still play pretty lightly, usually only doing a single step of my class quest during a play session.  Right now I am playing on my Jedi Knight, who is at level 18.  The rest of the post contains some minor spoilers about an early Jedi Knight.

When doing PvE content, it is pretty easy to zone out when doing mundane things like returning to a quest giver.  We've all done it way too much, and it is pretty standard stuff.  While doing a class quest on my Jedi Knight, I was heading back to my ship to give the quest giver a call when something strange happened.

I was going down a corridor and saw a bunch of people ahead of me.  I'm pretty sure they were not there before.  Hey, is that a red lightsaber being help to someone's throat?  Oh, that someone is my companion Kira.... this can't be good.  Of course, threats followed and then I beat up some Sith.

It was completely unexpected that something would happen on the way back to the quest giver.  It's those kind of moments which really make me enjoy SWTOR.  Their instance technology, which I love, makes that sort of thing possible.  It's nice to know questing does not have to be so cookie cutter.

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Mo' Money in Wrath of Heroes

Good news from the Wrath of Heroes front!  Late last week, Mythic announced they they are basically doubling the amount of gold players receive at the conclusion of a match.  Gone are the days of getting a whopping 15 gold, when you need 30,000 to purchase that shiny new hero.

In my matches since the change, I have not yet been rewarded less than 100 gold even for a loss.  This change makes the game MUCH more interesting since you can actually achieve something with the gold if you are so inclined.  It is, of course, easier just to buy stuff with gems.  That's where the choice comes in though, and choice is good.

To be honest, I was a bit surprised that they made the change.  I never had a problem with the potential gold a player could make.  If you unlocked 4+ spinners, you could pull in a decent reward.  It was the case where you only unlocked one or two spinners which I found lacking.

Now if you add in a Gold Boost, you can make some serious coin quickly.  Before the change, it hardly seemed worthwhile.  Now it is much more attractive and something I will buy more of.  As an example, I had 5 spinners unlocked and pulled in 375 gold.  If I had a gold boost active it would have been 750.

In other news, Nethys the Vampire Count is now on sale (for Gems only the first week).  I'm not a big fan of hers, but she can be an effective hero when used properly.

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GW2 Keep Siege

A week or two ago, one of my readers sent me a link to a video involving a keep siege in Guild Wars 2.  I'm never one to turn away some good PvP footage, so I gave it a watch.  Currently, GW2 is on my watch list but I'm not overly excited about it.  That said, come April 10th I will be pre-ordering the game.  Ok, back to the video...





I'm not sure I would go as far as saying the footage was 'awesome', but it was pretty good.  There is nothing really surprising about any of it though.  It just goes to show that there are really only so many ways to siege a keep.  What I saw was very reminiscent of WAR, which I like, so that means I'd probably like this too.

Things generally look good before the game is released, so we'll see how it actually goes once it goes live.  I'll be there though, can't keep me away from the pvp :)

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