This is my week to be the “on call” developer at work, which means I carry the Pager of Doom and also have to go to bed early and get up early. PLUS, yesterday I had more dental work done and was in so much pain I drugged myself senseless and slept from the time I got home until 11PM. But there’s always casual MMOs to fill in the free hour here and there.
Ascarey has been working on Nexona still. We’re getting closer, but the whole encounter is a balancing act. You have to keep the DPS on Nexona within certain bounds. Too low and she regens to full health. Too high and she wipes the raid. The shinies that spawn must be popped and killed. Too slow and they kill the raid. Too fast and probably Nexona is not getting enough DPS. And then the drakes spawn at 40% and must be crowd-controlled.
It reminds me of one of my favorite fights in old EverQuest, the fight vs Vishimitar. That was a progression check in EQ; if you could beat Vishimitar, then the newer raids were probably within your grasp. Nexona looks to be the same sort of deal in EQ2’s Veeshan’s Peak. Beat Nexona, and the rest of VP probably will fall pretty quick.
We were to reset the instance and clear to Nexona again last night, and maybe we did, but I was unconscious on the couch.
I loaded up City of Villains a couple of weeks ago intending on playing a mission or two before unsubscribing to save some money. I surprised myself by getting totally hooked again. It is almost the perfect casual MMO — missions are so slowly paced that you can take all the breaks you want, travel time to one is practically nil, you can call up the mission giver on your cell phone so there’s no need to even travel back to visit them, and you get free XP just by logging off in a “day job” location. So, City of Villains kept its spot on my hard drive. When I have just half an hour to bust some heads, here’s where I go. I could spend half an hour in Lord of the Rings just running to a quest. LotRO is not a game that is kind to someone without a lot of time.
Whenever any blogger posts about the disappointments of MMOs in 2008, I get really tempted to leave comments about Wizard 101. NOT like WoW, strategic, fun, funny, can play it in small doses or take on long instances, it’s the best indie MMO to come out all last year and the latest expansion does what good expansions do. Dragonspyre extended the game world and made it better, plus added an entirely new system, the Arena PvP system, that adds wizard v wizard action for all levels.
I’m in no hurry to get through Dragonspyre. I’m still working through the steps to become admitted to Dragonspyre Academy. Last night before bed, I went to the Tower of War, a seemingly endless tower. At the bottom of it, no loot, just a tome explaining the philosophy of wizardly warfare. I wonder if Sun Tzu was a graduate of Dragonspyre Academy?
This weekend, I hope to delve into some more serious games, but it’s wonderful to have such great casual games to play when I just don’t have much time.
Oh for a second there I thought your post said “W101 delvling” I guess that wouldn’t make much sense… hehe good post and nice pics Tipa. I’m not much of a casual gamer these days (well I guess I never was) but as usual its always fun to read your blog and live vicariously through you! I hope you don’t mind. You can live vicariously through my blog too if you feel like killing people. >:D
Kinds funny. I have the same 3 games going atm.
For the past few years I’ve been playing EQ2/Lotro as my main game with CoV/TR as my backup.
TR is dead next month, and in EQ2 I’m starting to hit the raid ceiling so I am in the twilight of my gaming days there.
CoV is ok. I’ve got an 2nd account there and team up with my sons, at this point I am just trying to finally get a Villian to 50 so I can unlock an Epic. I’ve been playing it since beta, so at this point been in some of the missions maps hundreds of times.
I have to say I have the MMO malaise that’s been going around. Kind of bored of the fantasy pay $15/month genre so I installed Wizard 101 and started playing it yesterday. I loved the card game in vanguard, and was hoping for that level of complexity. I hate the LoN with it’s expansions every 3 months. In W101, I’m only level 4 atm and I have to say I’m not particularly impressed. I don’t like how another person(s) can just jump in to my combat. I also don’t like having to stop playing and do a minigame to get mana back. (I can rarely find the blue wisps). Also, the summoned pet effects while nice are already getting annoyingly repetitive. I’ll keep playing it for a bit to see if it changes, but I really not feeling love for their card mechanic.
I do find myself waiting for the games of 2009. Free Realms, The Agency, DC Universe, Stargate worlds
@Cownose — I am a HUGE fan of your blog, but you knew that 🙂
@Isanox — You’ll soon hit instances (if you keep playing), which gives you as much alone time as you like, or you can bring friends — up to you. It’ll scale to handle who you bring. But the card game never really gets all THAT complex. You might try getting up to level 10 or so and then trying out the PvP — that might bring a more exciting kind of play.
Vanguard’s card game was cool. I thought at the time that they should have just built the entire game around that as opposed to the rather pedestrian psychokiller grind that every other MMO has. W101 is what it is. I’m hoping the super secret NEXT KI MMO takes the card game concept and moves it into a higher level.
Hey Tipa, if you don’t mind me asking, what are your characters names in LOTRO? I created a new character on Windfola and have found that I am having a lot of fun with hunter. As of right now I am level 13 I believe and I would love to join you and any of your friends in game. Is there a Nostalgia, LOTRO chapter?
Speaking of Nostalgia, I recently got in touch with a long lost friend and it turns out that he has rediscovered old school EQ as well, so I am likely going to start that up again and try to get him to come over to the Luclin server with all of us.
My 15 warden’s name is Ettie, but I have several other fairly low level characters — Dina, 15 minstrel; Dera, 19 guardian; and Eraindiel, 17 champion — that I could switch to, and one mid-level character — Lysistra, 33 captain. All but Ettie have completed Book 1 but could do it again. Lysistra has also completed books 2 and 3.
Feel free to add any or all as friends 🙂 I plan to play Ettie this weekend and finish the Shire and Bree quests I have. Not going to do any book quests (apart from the prologue) until there’s enough of us playing to do it as a group.
I’m not going to make a Nostalgia chapter for LotRO. I’ve come to realize that being a guild leader means playing the game every day and continually recruiting. The idea of a guild with a single group is fine until people stop playing, and then you’re stuck. Better to find a bigger guild that would allow us to group together but wouldn’t leave us faced with pickup groups if people stop playing.
I always wish I had a bit of extra time and money to play City of X once a week or so (if only MMO companies would let you subscribe for, like, six days a month or something!) — it is indeed a very relaxing, casual friendly game, and I’ve yet to experience combat that fun or satisfying.
Personally, I’m holding out for Champions Online for my superhero fix. I’m quite encouraged by everything I’ve seen so far — even if it was just a graphical overhaul of CoH with customizable powers, I’d probably sign up.
nexona…. 1 shiny up = 1% heal every 6 seconds
2 shinies = MT power drain i believe
3 shinies = raid wiping (usually) aoe
harvest them as fast as possible.
have a group (with a few extra if eneded) to keep damage incoming on nexona above 11k dps, should leave you PLENTY of people to kill the shinies as they come down to the middle of the room where you should be killing them, with nexona in the hallway next to the 2 shinies that spawn there.
Wow, thanks for the strat 🙂 I’ll definitely be passing this along to the raid leaders! We corner Nexona and have teams split up looking for shinies.
Great post. I’d like to find another game that is as casual friendly as W101. Though I must admit there are many times when I say I’m only going to play for an hour and several hours go by. But as you mentioned, I’m up and down, here and there doing other things too without impacting my game play – lots of opportunities for breaks. I wish I could find something comparable that has a bit of crafting.
@Isanox – W101 won’t be for everyone. It’s like playing in a cartoon or pop-up book. If you don’t like that feeling then it won’t be your thing. At level 39, I still get a kick out of animations I’ve seen a hundred times now. After the first lowbie zones of Wizard City, it’s very easy to avoid playing around others. First thing is to switch to a low population server. You can do that instantly via the main menu (Escape > look for globe tab along the right side of dialog box). There will also be plenty of instances and wonderful scripted series of encounters that you can do solo if you prefer. This provides nice challenges and strategy for more mature players. I’ve also found fewer young players as you progress thru the worlds. The difficulty of completing the content to access them escalates sharply and without adult supervision and assistance, young players can’t get there.
As usual, a great post with enough humor that people look at me weird as I cackle in public on my laptop.