Just Duet

[WoW] Season 11 Disc Priest

2011-12-06T09:34:00.000-08:00

Time to organize a gearing plan for my priest since we're actually playing WoW for the next month or two (or more, depends). With the MS buff across the board (healing debuff up to 25% now, from 10%) a lot of priests are thinking about going mastery for their offstat (after getting a comfortable amount of spirit)... I think I will be following this path as well. To be honest, I am sorely missing the crit stacking disc did in wrath, that was always fun.

Stat priorities:

int > resil > spirit and mastery + hit cap obviously (4%)

Right now my priest is in full vicious except for a few ruthless pieces (dagger, shoulders, boots, ring).

2200 honor pieces (8,800 total)

Chest
Belt
Legs

1650 honor pieces (3,300 total)

Cloak
Ring

Conquest order:

Helm
Resil trinket

Etc:

PVE spirit trinket

I will either be getting conquest chest or legs first (perhaps even helm)...

I normally honor grind as shadow, this will suck when I get enough spr/mastery pieces because my damage output will be cut in like half as shadow ;_;

Hmmm...

2011-11-30T09:40:00.000-08:00

I'm still alive, planning to start this up again so I can chronicle my adventures in SWTOR.

If you've been following my twitter or my tumblr - I've joined a promising PVP guild called Solaris. We're actually still recruiting if anyone is interested in a hardcore-casual guild. All of our WoW players are over 2k rated (majority 2.2k+) and those who haven't played much WoW were in top guilds in other games. Cool group of players, a lot of us chill on vent even though the game isn't out yet. App process is pretty selective as the guild hopes to remain close-knit (quality > quantity too).

Since my last entry back in March, I've played a lot of League of Legends - I even went back to WoW for 2 months to check out what Cataclysm was like. LoL is doing really well on the esports scene, there are a lot more teams now (my favorites are Dignitas and EG) and Riot is doing a good job of pushing out competitive components for the game, like spectator mode and team rankings. The game is definitely worth checking out even if you've never played a moba before - and its worth checking out if you've already played DOTA (they play way different though!)

WoW is the same as ever except ranked BGs have kind of taken place over arenas, why arena (aside from Gladiator) when you can get geared 2x faster through rbgs? I personally still prefer arenas, although rbgs are fun in their own way. On the pve scene, my guild kindly took me along to Firelands after my mage dinged 85 and I got to watch all the bosses fall except Rag. Some of the encounters had interesting mechanics (the boss you had to steer by dpsing its legs, Alysrazor movement mechanics, etc) but overall I was not particularly impressed by the raid (I think Ulduar spoiled me too much). Cataclysm did a great job at revamping Azeroth however, I had a fun time leveling an alt for once.

There is a lot of information out for swtor already, but not enough, so just like Allods I'll be exploring options in the game, particularly involving my chosen class's mechanics + pvp + commentary on how the swtor community is reacting towards the game. I'll be playing a corruption Sorceror (it's a heal spec, plays like disc priest from WoW), so stay tuned. =D

[Lol] Introduction

2011-03-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

Since I'll be discussing LoL a lot for the upcoming days, I might as well introduce myself as a LoL player. My previous introduction was a pretty generic, over all introduction. This will be a summary of my (short) history in LoL.

Anyways, I started playing LoL last December when I was bored of waiting for Cataclysm for WoW. I had moved my priest to another realm to join a guild for rated BGs, however I was pretty disappointed in the caliber of their players. My friends on vent were always in a different channel playing LoL - my first reaction was to youtube some footage of the game, and let me tell you, I thought it was the dumbest looking game ever. Thanks to peer pressure I ended up downloading the game, and I've been hooked on it since. It has elements of games I really enjoy, which is semi-competitive PvP and team cooperation.

Currently my favorite role to play in the game is AP caster, I can't for the life of me get the hang of ranged AD! I'm definitely one of those people who, as soon as they pick up a new champ, end up playing that champ solely until I get good at them. I know some people are more like my friend Tom, who buys a champ every few days and plays a different champ in every single match. LoL is my first MOBA game, I had never played HoN or DotA before this, so I had quite the rocky start.

My champion "mains" went something like this as I leveled up: Cho'gath -> Vladimir (to level 20) -> Swain -> TF (hit 30). After that I expanded and picked up Xin Zhao, Malzahar, and a few other champs. Most notable are LeBlanc and Kassadin, whom I enjoy very much right now.

Luckily for me, when I was leveling up I had an awesome mentor (WodahsJ) and thus got caught to speed with the game fairly quickly (I'm a super fast learner). Since I'm naturally competitive, I had several bouts of self improvement with certain champs. I'm constantly trying to learn and I welcome constructive criticism. Right now I'm preparing for ranked ... so wish me luck! ;D

Revamping the Layout

2011-03-07T19:10:00.000-08:00

*breaks everything in process* o_O

Hey guys, not sure who still keeps up with this blog - but I'll be starting to blog (again) thanks to playing League of Legends excessively and feeling the need to talk about the game.

I'm aware there is no comment button yet, working on it. In the meantime you'll have to comment by clicking on the entry title first (if you are reading my blog from its actual site). :D

Starcraft II

2010-08-12T06:32:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, I've joined the millions of people who have purchased Starcraft II lately and have not resurfaced... yet. Between trying to learn the game (first RTS game ever for me) and messing around with UMS/custom maps - my free time has been severely taken up. :P

That being said, I'm maybe a silver quality player in 1v1 but I don't really do 1v1 (I don't even do 2v2 haha). I'm still working on my midgame macro - I love micro but I've learned the hard way that having solid macro goes further than having solid micro. I mean, there is no use for the micro if you keep forgetting about upgrades and pushing more units out, right?

Anyways, I'm sticking to 3v3 and 4v4 until I get my build orders flawless + remembering to macro when I decide to tech and play micro-heavy units (aka void rays). I have a bad habit (as with any new player if I'm correct) of watching all the little fights that go on and then completely forget about the base haha...

Here's my profile, for US/NA players to add if you want to mess around with some games. :) Right now I'm dropping my fast-ray tactic and working on 4gate to improve my macro.

For people who are new to the game like me, I found it helpful to watch some of day9's shows, random diamond-level replays from teamliquid.net, and just observing some of my friends who are sc1 vets. I haven't completed campaign (1/3 of the way through) and I haven't finished all the single player challenges. So improving in multiplayer doesn't require any of single player parts of the game :P although I will agree that tactics in 1v1 vary greatly from 2v2, which then is quite different from 3v3 and 4v4.

Alien Swarm: Free Valve Co-op Game

2010-07-22T06:38:00.000-07:00

So this Monday (July 19th) Valve released a free (yes, free) game called Alien Swarm. It is a 4 person birds-eye view shooter that can be played solo, co-op, or multiplayer.

This mod was originally created by Black Cat Games for Unreal Tournament 2004 - the developers were hired by Valve (these devs have also been working on the Left 4 Dead series as well as Portal 2). Interesting that they only announced this game 3 days before launch.

Best news of all: this game comes with source files and a map editor so players can create maps and campaigns for the community!

Client size: ~2gb

Short clip of my crew playing the 2nd half of a level on hardest difficulty + AI director. Yeah we kind of make it seem easy (it kind of is, but still fun!)

Characters
There are 8 characters with their own specific stats - these stats are all "boosts" to certain areas, such as healing more or bigger explosions.

Classes
Officer
Special Weapons
Medic
Tech

Difficulties
Easy
Normal
Hard
Insane

I'll have a proper review later... when I'm not busy playing it. :)

TF2, D2, Massively

2010-07-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

Alright, so whenever I have free time at work (aka lunch break) I like to take some time and read Massively articles. Unfortunately I think most of their commenters are haters because finding a positive comment is like digging for a needle in a haystack. Seriously, since when have gamers become so whiny and ranty about games that aren't even released yet (such as SW:TOR)? I'll have to agree with them on Allods though - from what I've observed I might not even be trying out the new patch at all. Their rep as an mmo pretty much continues to sink, I've yet to see a single supportive comment, and many Massively readers aren't giving the game a chance.

This week was a bit rough for gaming - a storm caused my internet cable to fray and thus I didn't have stable internet from Tuesday until now. :P I've been playing a lot of Diablo 2 lately - mostly because I've never played it before (gasp, I know!). Just finished Act 1 of Nightmare mode... :)

I'll be hitting up Team Fortress 2 tonight, so add me on Steam if you have it... I'm a complete noob though, so be nice!

Transformice Guide

2010-07-09T20:36:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been playing a lot of Transformice... it has a silly name, and it's a silly game, but it's tons of fun and perfect for people who can only squeeze in a few minutes a day. Just imagine 20+ mice, 1 shaman who can create planks (and more) affected by physics, and a mad scramble to be first to return the cheese.

Basically you get to play a mouse, who wants to collect some cheese and return to your hole. Except... usually the cheese is placed in an unreachable area, and you need help from the shaman who has building powers. Now this can go either way, the (good) shamans can help you and keep everyone alive, while the (bad aka troll) shamans will abuse their power to kill you. Sometimes this creates hilarious circumstances.

It's a web browser Flash game, and you can play it here: http://www.transformice.com/en
Each round only takes a maximum of 2 minutes and the game keeps players coming back by implementing a store that sells hats and such (at the price of cheeeese *-*) aside from sheer fun factor. The 2 people who created this game are constantly adding updates and new servers! The latest update introduced several new maps, and now the game has a whopping 81 levels to play.

Continue reading...

CONTROLS
Chat
/friend [name] - Add someone to your friend's list.
/room [name] - Join a different room.
/ban [name] - Uses up 2 cheese to ban someone. Bans only go through by popular vote (of a room).
/c [name] - Whisper someone.

Mice
WASD or arrow keys for movement, including jump.

SCOREBOARD
To the right of the chat is a list of all the users in the room as well as a "score", this is only determined by how many rounds you've survived in your current session (it has no long term bearings). Once you reach the very top, you'll become the next shaman!

First mouse - 16 points
Second mouse - 14 points
Third mouse - 12 points
Everyone else - 10 points
Death - minus 1 point
No cheese - 0 points

For people who want to skip their shaman turn (like me haha) you can easily reset your score by switching rooms.

SHAMAN

All the available materials to build are in the bottom right corner, the UI will look different from a normal mouse.
You must click/drag the buildable somewhere near your mouse in order to build it.
To build you have to hold down left click.
The only shaman controls that are available regardless of position are Spirit (white spark looking thing) and Arrow (which usually, but not always, leads mice to a certain area).
Shamans cannot move while casting/building - so be careful if you're standing on a ramp or anything where you will slide.
Shamans cannot enter mouse holes until every mice on the map has entered, or if everyone else is dead.

Shaman Duels

Sometimes you'll notice there are not one, but two shamans. The 2 shaman colors are light blue and light pink, you want to get the mice to go to your color hole and not the other shaman's, as you'll only get cheese for yours.

Some maps are tailored for shaman dueling and other maps are tailored for 2 shamans working together (no colored holes).

Common tactics include blocking the opposing shaman's hole (large box + red anchor little board), spiriting or cannonballing them off a ledge, and well, just building a path to your hole faster than the other shaman.

Shaman buildables
Not all buildables will appear on every map, some maps are limited, and other maps don't even have anything (upside down maps). Most items are self explanatory! If you'd like to see the complete list, go to the wiki.

Anchoring boards
A lot of new shamans don't really know how to build things, and thus gets boo'd from the whole room. You can practice by yourself (or with other friends) by creating your own room. To do this just type /room [name] and you'll be all by yourself... unless you used the name of someone else's room.

Z and X - This rotates the planks.
C - This is a yellow anchor and probably one of the most used. It attaches itself to another item, and cannot stand freely on its own.
V - This is a teal anchor, it is unmovable and must be attached to another item. I've never really seen this used properly, so I'm not sure when is the best time.
B - The other most used anchor, this creates a red anchor that can stand freely on its own. However, if left alone and affected by any weight, it will start moving around (forced rotate).
N - This is a blue anchor with a circular arrow around it - this is the self-rotating anchor and must be attached to something else.
Spacebar - this turns the item invisible. The item will still affect / be affected by other items, but not by mice. Useful in many scenarios.

Pressing the anchor button repeatedly changes the place where it anchors, default is center and then it goes to the left and right.

TACTICS
Board and Build Tactics (click on images for larger pictures)

Elevator - Attached a rotating (blue) anchored large board to another large board will create a strange contraption people often call the "elevator".

Anvil God - Attach several anvils together, preferably with self-rotate (blue) so it will start moving by itself. Either used for trolling or at the end of a round when a shaman is bored.

Easy bridge - Common tactic to create a bridge. Involves a small board with red anchor attached vertically against a static object + a large yellow anchored board.

Reinforced bridge - Common tactic to create a longer bridge that is more sturdy. Starts off as easy bridge but attaches invisible red anchored reinforcement.

See-saw stabilizer - Simple way to keep those see-saw maps in check. Make sure you attach/create it when the see-saw is flat or else it will be stuck.

Invisible rotator - Rotates weight-triggered maps while allowing mice to pass through.

Invisible weight - Any weight (large box, anchor) set to invisible, attached or not.

When creating bridges or anything easily warped by weight - make sure you angle things correctly and account for the amount of mice clambering up - they are impatient and they want that cheese!!

Specific Map Tactics
I see people messing up on this every time, the "fan" rooms. Here's the very very simple and very easy solution:

Walljumping
I'm not a very good wall jumper - you do not need to know how to wall jump in order to play this game... however it can give you an edge on some maps.

Watch a video on wall jumping here.

General mouse tactics

Be patient. Unless you are vying for firsts or have an hungering need to be a shaman - just wait around. A lot of mice that run forward first end up dying (unless you are pro!). Some shamans will kill off mice who are too eager, some maps have mouse hit boxes so pushing too hard might actually push mice off ledges.
Understand how jump / the game's physics work. You don't need to jump as soon as you leave a platform, every mouse gets to jump once midair - anywhere in the air. You can time your jumps to travel further this way (for example, running of a ledge and jumping while you're falling). Game physics such as how their trampolines react will come with time played.

Find your room. If someone is bothering you or you just don't like the playstyle of a certain room - swap to another one until you find one you like. A lot of rooms have regulars who often hang out in that room.

Play a lot. Part of being good at this game is just playing a lot and learning from experience. The more you play the more often you'll repeat maps (and learn how they work) and the more exposure to different tactics. Observe and adapt. :D

For mice that like being in first - make sure you have a good connection, knowledge of all the maps, ability to wall jump, and of course... lots of luck!

Titles/Hats/Etc
Titles are given out depending on 3 things: how many cheese you've gathered in your transformice career, how many firsts you've gotten, and how many mice you've saved as a shaman. To see a complete list, go here.

Hats are stackable and sold in the store for cheese. Once you purchase something you can un/equip it whenever you want. To access the shop click on Menu -> Shop. Make sure you do this when you have time or you might miss out on cheese (or even die).

Hope that was helpful! I generally don't play shaman but I love observing others. I usually play on en2 in rooms 5 and 6 (usually 6) as Duet. Sometimes I will host private rooms - you'll have to watch my twitter for that if you want to join in. :)

Busy Busy

2010-07-09T07:50:00.000-07:00

For those of you checking out free to play mmos: Turbine is making Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) free to play soon! It just entered closed beta and you can sign up for it here. The client is 10gb and their downloader goes pretty slow... Is it worth it? We'll see either tonight or tomorrow when I get my hands on it!

I've got the latest Allods patch downloaded, but haven't had a chance to play. Seems like there is so much to do on my list - I've got art commissions to finish up and about 4 different games I want to finish.

Bioware announced that Dragon Age 2 will be released around March 2011. (I still haven't finished Dragon Age: Origins, and yes its on my to-do list!)

p.s. Excuse the random template changes, I'm seeking the best structure to tweak - a bit lazy/busy to start from scratch.

p.p.s. Don't forget I'll be undergoing a url change today. I still get a few hits from people searching up "Life in Tensess" on Google.

Allods: Raeg!

2010-07-08T07:01:00.000-07:00

So I didn't have the time last night to log on Allods (or even download the patch haha, gg me) but I'll definitely check in within the next day and have an "impressions" post sometime up this weekend. Perhaps it'll come earlier if the changes infuriate me as much as some of the posters are expressing on the forums. I know Allods gets a lot of flack when patches come, but the onslaught of negativity on the forums has me worried - generally there aren't SO many and usually there are a group of people diligently defending the game.

For people who have already experienced the new patch - what makes you go yay and what annoys you the most? So I can prepare myself...

I don't understand people who stick around the game complaining though, and predicting the game will die... I posted this on the forum yesterday (yes I'm lurking!) and I'll rewrite it here: Allods is more or less still a free to play game. I don't care how much you want to argue it, but without a subscription cost it can still technically be called that. People only predict doom and gloom for subscription games (like APB), when these games fail (Global Agenda) they hop on the free 2 play wagon. After that there is no real "death" to the game. Since Allods is already free, it will continue to attract random players... it won't die off for a long time. Yes the turnover rate will be extremely high (lack of substantial amount of long term players) but it won't die.

Some people are still keeping an eye on this game (Massively) hoping it will redeem itself from the very first cash shop fiasco to the last few patches, because (usually) the only thing to lose is time.

Speaking of BURNN 1up posted their APB review yesterday and the verdict was a D... Ouch! Several people who commented even went as far as an F! Personally I would give it a C+.

"A dev releases a mediocre game that is full of problems, yet many still play it. What incentive is there for a dev to do it properly?"

Something to think on!

Patch :O

2010-07-06T10:01:00.000-07:00

I'll be checking out the new patch with my psi (who still hasn't hit 40) - but since all my friends have also quit, I'll need to find a place to call home. With that being said, are there any casual guilds on Tensess recruiting? If not and if everyone is on Nezeb, I feel a reroll coming on... :P (I still have my healer on Nezeb!) With that said, any guilds that are recruiting - please leave your faction/server/contact info in a comment and I'll stop by later tonight or tomorrow. :D

I'm mostly looking forward to player addons. I saw a video on cursed items, and it looks like it doesn't occur that often so I'm not too bothered by them. There's a lot of random rage about them (like on Massively) but I guess we'll all get to see for ourselves tomorrow. I didn't read all the patch notes but.. disappoint @ lack of psi skill/ruby fixes.

Right now I'm playing the other acclaimed free2play mmo, Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO).. so once I reach (or almost reach) endgame there, I'll do a comparison of what works and what doesn't when it comes to cash shops.

Edit: Reading the forums makes me want to strangle people again, I think Allods has one of the less enjoyable mmo communities I've been in. Not sure if its because people are angry the game requires money (that they prob aren't paying anyways) or if its because there is a mass of younger players (free games tend to attract that group).

Name/URL Change Incoming

2010-07-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

Hey readers! Since I'm undergoing revamping of this blog, the name will no longer be "Life in Tensess" and the URL will no longer be "lunith.blogspot.com"

Instead, they will change to Just Duet and justduet.blogspot.com respectively. The name "just duet" is a play on my alias Duet and on the phrase "JUST DO IT!" I'll be changing the address on July 9th.

Speaking of names, what names do you typically use in games/forums/etc and why?

I've used the name Airu (or Eiru for male chars) for maybe 4-5 years now - in mmos this character is probably a healer. Duet is fairly recent, being only slightly over a year old. If those names are taken I use a variation of Aeso. I love short names (less than 5 characters) and none of them really have any special meanings. :) Where did Lunith come from? Well that's a really old name of mine, definitely over 6 years!

I'll be back on Allods for the July 7th patch, and as usual, I'll be uploading mirror patches!

APB at a Glance

2010-07-01T07:21:00.000-07:00

Alright! I'm finally posting!

Right now I seem to be in an MMO slump, over the past half year I've tried out the following games: Left 4 Dead 2, Allods Online, APB (beta), Aion, and now DDO. L4D2 was probably the longest lasting game, something I played almost every night for almost 2 months... However, unlike the first game (which lasted me almost half a year) I don't have a set versus team to run with all the time, and any MMO player knows that pugging = ultimate fail at times. It's not really an mmo, but a shooter - and its great to play for an hour or two.

All Points Bulletin
So I closed-beta tested this for over a month, playing every few days. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this title, it is more or less a GTA mmo. It's developed by Realtime Worlds, who are known for their console title, Crackdown. There are pve/rpg elements in this game (you do missions to progress) but the main gist is pvp pvp pvp. All of your missions are vs other players, there are no true pve encounters. Since its a pvp/shooter game, it relies heavily on having a good (aka not laggy) system and stable servers. Since I played on the EU servers I always had a ping above 200ms - so my views on server stability are probably skewed.

The customization this game offers is pretty amazing! Personally, I spent maybe 20 or so out of the 90 hours played in the social district just playing around with making new outfits and cool looking cars. I saw some really creative original designs, as well as almost-perfect replicas of well known idols. The game also rewards you for spending time customizing, as higher levels of "fashionista" and "tuner" unlock new clothes / car parts respectively + give you a lump of cash.

The game mechanics is where things fell short for me. I believe this is great casual game, almost like L4D2 where you only pop in for an hour or two a day. The more people you have in your group (cap is 4 players, there is a LFG tool) the more fun it is - as you can have a designated driver and 3 cronies hanging out of the windows shooting at others. But... that's about it. I did not have fun playing this game solo, and it wasn't incredibly interesting in a group of 2 either, as matchmaking is a bit wonky and will match you unfairly with no option for backup. VOIP is a must (in my opinion) in this game, so you can come up with strategies to keep your team's casualties low. Also, when the general population has time to progress (give it a month) and they have access to the best guns and upgrades - prepare to die (and be frustrated). A lot.

The biggest disappoint for me, during beta, was devs not communicating enough with beta testers. They posted infrequently and did not address obvious issues beta testers pointed out. Even our suggestions threads, where hundreds of posts were made supporting a change that just, well, NEEDED to happen. Unfortunately bugs also got fixed very late, and many performance issues were not even addressed. They do listen though, which is fortunate... as our pleas for removal of manufacture fees (if you wanted to sell your clothes/cars on the marketplace you had to pay RTW points, something alike cash points, to make it sell-able) were addressed. But since they did things so slowly, it makes me hesitant to trust where they will go with this game.

For people who love shooters (like me!) this game misses the niche - there is no location based damage, so shots that hit your hand = same damage as shots hitting your head. Game controls are a bit sluggish, for example hitting crouch usually has a delay no matter how low your ping. Cover is hit or miss, as some of the lower "cover" places are smaller than the character so people can skim your head and you'll die. Weapons progress vertically instead of horizontally, ie you can upgrade guns to hit harder and hit faster, instead of giving options to specialize in a certain weapon type. There are no real scopes on the guns, they just have a set effective range... sorry snipers! (Although I didn't find that too difficult when I played a sniper, just there are no head shots!)

And for people who are die hard mmorpg fans, this game also misses the niche - the world is not immersive enough (some people will disagree with me). It's very very repetitive, wait for mission, kill people, collect reward, rinse and repeat. Its true each encounter can be different, but when many people do the same things (camp high areas where they have an advantage, camp areas with only 1 entrance, drive around town in a high speed car so you'll never catch up, etc etc) it gets boring fast. The social district, where you customize, should just be renamed to "customizing booths" since there aren't any real social encounters or events present. There is no real background story of why you're running around town shooting random people, or why civilians still live in such a dangerous place.

Speaking of civilians... the AI for them is terrible. It's almost hilarious - you can beep at them to get out of the way and they run right into your car. Way to go, suicidal citizens of San Paro!

Overall, I would say that this game is worth keeping an eye on - but not worth buying and paying a subscription. Yes... this game is asking for either $7 for 20 hours of action district time (no time is wasted while in social) or $10 a month of unlimited hours. The box price is around $50 at the moment, and comes with 50 hours of action time. I would buy this in a heartbeat if subscription prices were lower - right now I can't justify a monthly fee! Perhaps further down the line when they get more content it might be worth it.

p.s. the game doesn't look as horrid as my screenshots look, beta was limited to low/med settings

Revamping the Blog

2010-06-21T11:36:00.000-07:00

Hey people, whoever is still left anyways, I'm revamping my blog to a general gaming and art blog. I'll admit I've missed this blog and I've missed writing articles, even though I'm not that good of a writer. :) I've been a fan of user generated guides since forever ago, and I love babbling on about whatever.

Since getting a job I've started running out of time to really game, but I still love to read about them when I have the time! Aside from guides I'm a big fan of discussing "balance" and trivial matters that people won't know unless they live on forums like I do... so expect a lot of that (and my heavily opinionated reviews). The blog layout will also be redone since I've become very familiar with CSS within the past few weeks.

I'll have articles up about TERA Online (very excited for this mmorpg) and Sims 3 Ambitions soon!

Goodbye!

2010-05-28T11:01:00.000-07:00

Hey all, I have not played Allods for 3+ weeks now. And have no motivation to do so as my friends have also quit - some to go as far as uninstalling. :P Perhaps I'll be back in the future when there is more content or what not, perhaps not. After 2 years of WoW and plenty of other misc mmorpgs, I think I may just be growing out of / getting bored of the genre... Right now I have far more fun logging in for 1-2 hours of FPS/TPS than several hours of mmorpg grinding.

So here's to wishing everyone a good summer and fun on Allods!

Hope this blog was interesting/useful to some people... bye for now! :D

Checking In

2010-05-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

Hey all, I haven't played Allods for about a whole week now - was preoccupied with the EU All Points Bulletin beta (which was pretty fun, but like many MMO betas: has its imba and glitch issues). So how is everyone with Allods? Still having fun? I have a lot to catch up with but we'll see if I'm even up for it... Just redownloaded a psx emulator so I might be MIA for a few more days. ;)

My most important question is: is endgame still boring as usual? Perhaps I'll spend some time with my league now...

Grinding Music + KOS Lists

2010-05-07T14:39:00.000-07:00

I seem to have a few returning readers - so I'd like to say... thanks for reading!

So does anyone else play without sounds and/or turns on their own tunes while playing? If so, what kind of music gets you leveling/pvping/grinding/etc? Youtube links are appreciated, as I'm looking for new music... ;) I find that I grind best to music that is repetitive... I'll admit I also like to sing along to songs while I level. When I'm doing anything super srs though, I'll turn it all off so I can concentrate.

With that being said, here's my rep grind music of the day (instrumental!):

For people who have leveled to (and past) AT, do you guys keep Kill-On-Sight lists? I know I do! Usually people won't make it to the list unless they've killed me multiple times (unfairly). Speaking of which, people who pop war banners, kill someone, then run straight back to safe zone = fail. I'm calling those people out! Although, I guess there is some satisfaction knowing that they know they can't face me in a fair 1v1.

Almost 40! And Tired of Forums

2010-05-06T15:39:00.000-07:00

As of this entry, I'm only 80% away from dinging 40. I'm not too fond of Dragon Ring, after dodging 2 geared 40s with warbanners patrolling the whole map for the entire banner duration... so I've decided to check out Yazes Shard. Fortunately that place has a lot more quests and the terrain is a bit easier to navigate... aka, not filled to the brim with 39 mobs that I can't kill without using spectral assassin.

Posted this screenie because I believe this is the official Xad psi cape! ;D I could be wrong, but it certainly matches the color/symbols from the character creation screen.

Pretty tired of browsing the forums because it seems like every other thread is raging about one thing or the other. I can't believe the "omg do something about teh AT ganking!!1" stuff is still going on. Come on people, this is a WORLD PVP game, what the heck are you expecting? How come I have a feeling most people who complain about that stuff have never experienced world pvp games? It's nothing new, world pvp is never fair and even I have come to accept that. When I was leveling up my priest during the release of TBC, I think I died like 13 times within an hour in hillsbrad. I died even more in STV, the AT of WoW. Except unlike Allods, you had no unflag option in contested areas in pvp realms and you had to run back to your body so level capped players could literally CAMP YOU FOR AN HOUR. Did we have the option to stand on a res pad and teleport out? NOPE! When I was leveling in outlands I was ganked from ABOVE - by players on flying mounts completely epic'd out. Did I go on the forums and cry that this was unfair and something needs to be done about it? No.

Now I'm ranting, but yeah... Really tired of seeing that issue keep popping up. I'm starting to believe the only way to make people happy is have PVE and PVP servers.

Crash Fixed - What About Heroics/Astral?

2010-05-05T08:48:00.000-07:00

Although it took them almost 5 days to fix the crash - at least its done. The latest patch has cleared majority of users from the annoying memory leak that made many aspects of the game unplayable (notably instances and astral). Even I got a taste of it - ran tt2 with a few new 40s and we wiped on a boss soley due to the fact that all 3 40s managed to crash during a boss encounter. That aside, I can't imagine doing tt2 with a legit group of 35s, it seems quite difficult.

There has been no word on whether or not fixes will go out to heroics and astral. From what I've read and heard ingame, new 40s will have an extremely hard time completing heroics because of aggro issues - it seems like aggro ranges have increased significantly along the 20% damage increase. As we all know, psi's spectral assassin has been nerfed for bosses so I'm a bit bummed since I'll be fairly useless dps-wise on red rings. As for astral, the drop decrease seems a bit dramatic... I will agree that previously it sounded way too easy, but now it seems like they went overboard with nerfs.

As much as I am all for "challenging" in a game, anything extremely time consuming that provides little rewards goes opposite of that belief. There is a difference between wasting time because the game mechanics said so, and wasting time because people in your group just don't know how to play. People should be able to finish heroics in a timely manner without needing to be already in epic gear... it kind of defeats the purpose of progression. I would say that a geared group should be able to clear all heroics for the day given 5 hours. Since this game does not have that many heroics yet, and 5 hours is quite a span of time, I think it's a good goal to shoot for. If it is taking people longer than this to clear, then something is wrong. (We aren't even counting the hours they need to do dailies + farm money + whatever)

I'm not far from 39, but I will probably get to 40 just doing my dailies every day... more or less postponing 40.

Customer Satisfaction

2010-05-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

I wanted to take this time to remind everyone to take Allods/Gala-net's customer satisfaction survey. This is probably a better way to make them notice that some people aren't happy. With that being said, please be extremely honest with your form so they get the right data. :D Who knows, you might even win some ingame goodies like incense and crystal chips!

Another way to get your opinions on the game across to AstrumNival is e-mailing the Gala-net Allods team at:

allods_suggestions@gala-net.com

I encourage this because, even though many suggestions are posted on the forums, they might be missed due to the fact that half the forum = random posts. Gala-net needs to compile all the user suggestions before they send it off to AN, and I don't blame them for not wanting to comb through messy forums to find valuable feedback.

With that being said, I am probably going to hold off endgame until the crashes are fixed. When my friends hit 40 and we get all our rep gear and start up heroics, we'll then decide if this game is worth hanging onto... Quite honestly, what the 40s are saying about heroics and astral post-patch has me worried. :P

Progress Report! (2)

2010-05-02T19:27:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to draw more art of my characters, but I never seem to get around to doing it. :P So here's a quick doodle of my league healer... Yup, I rolled a male elf! Although, if you ask me, it's not much different from rolling a female elf... just I don't have the flimsy Disney-like fairy wings. ;) He's only level 8 right now, but I'm out of fatigue for the day. If you see me on Tensess, be sure to say hi!

So far I'm not having too many problems with crashing. My psi (just dinged 37!) has arrived in Avilon and is actually almost done with it since the zone is so short... I'll probably hit 40 this weekend, and we'll see whether or not the QQing about heroics is justified!

Oh right, I wanted to mention it felt like the first few levels of League were more... finished. At least, I felt like it was more interesting than Empire's waddling around Nezebgrad. Granted, League side also felt longer since there was more travel time + actually completing a zone by level 6-7.

v6 Client Crashing

2010-05-01T13:12:00.000-07:00

As far as I know, there is currently no fix for this. The crashing is caused by a memory leak - the longer your client/game runs (AOgame.exe) the more memory it eats until it crashes. It seems like for most people this is somewhere around 1.5gb of memory. Basically, the game isn't crashing "randomly" and it only feels like its lagging because it's using up so much of your computer's resources.

I have actually not experienced any crashing because I restart my client when it hits the 1gb mark, and it takes approx. an hour of running before it gets that high. Now I've read on the forums that it crashes even faster (less than 30min) for some people, so keep an eye on your taskmanager (or whatever you use) and restart accordingly. Their latest patch (the 16mb one) seems to have done absolutely nothing to fix this error.

I'm not sure whether or not Gala-net really operates during the weekend - probably not - but they need to get a fix out for this as soon as possible. This is one of the few reasons why releasing patches late in the week is a horrible idea for a game prone to bugs and glitches, we usually end up having to wait a whole weekend before support resumes.

That aside, I'm liking the anonymous psionicist-only channel!

For people who need the 16mb patch (1.0.06.36.1 -> 1.0.06.37.1) due to peer searching issues, I've also uploaded that at this link:
Filefront: http://www.filefront.com/16321601/1.0.06.37.1_.zip
Megaupload: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9SJE7F1U

If you are getting the launcher corrupted error, don't forget to run this!
http://allods-ftp.gpotato.com/repair.exe

Forums are for QQ: Aftermath of v6

2010-04-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

I am pretty much busy with finals and projects until mid next week... so I probably won't have time to really write anything long and meaningful like I have planned. I still do check up on the forums whenever I'm taking a break though. :D

The forums are a mess and I'm tired of going in there and trying to sort things out. I'm in no way affiliated to Gala-net, so any of my "defending" posts I make on the forums are my own thinking. I criticize when it needs to be done, but I defend when too many people are being unreasonable.. which, right now, too many people are. (I have been called a "suck up to the GMs" on the forums now, that's pretty cute - ad hominem attacks are always nice) Sometimes I wonder if I'm digging myself into a hole acting like this... I have been more or less rejected by the 2 big empire guilds on Tensess - but I'm going to wave that around like a trophy.

Quite frankly I am sick of how entitled a lot of people think they are. They are playing a *free* to play game, with the bought items not having a timer until you activate it... or some items like bags will stay with your character forever. Now if it was a subscription-based model, and the servers were crashing and glitchy for several days - I would probably join the masses of unhappy people.. because you know, you're actually wasting money the more days you go without playing. But this isn't the case with Allods. Why do people feel like not playing a game for 1 day is the end of the world? Some people should probably step away from their computers for awhile...

People who waste their items when they are fully aware of all the glitches only have themselves to blame. :P I will stand by this til the end of time, for whatever game I play. If it's broken, and you know its broken, don't try to use it like it's not broken! I can't tell if its because people are just dumb or if they are actually fishing for a way to complain more.

The immaturity is really high too. Is this because it is a free2play game? Aka more youngsters complaining because they don't need mom/dad's credit card to play? Or are they adults in disguise? With how long I've been on the internet, I could probably tell you it's both.

This isn't to say Gala-NET is free of blame. Because they retain so much information from the players, they really aren't helping the situation at all. While the forums exploded, I really couldn't help but wonder "where the heck are all the GMs?!" I think a lot of people still underestimate how important it is to keep things like that under check. Sure it might just be a lot of "chatter" as Chomp puts it, but that's not the point. The point is that the forums are one of the very few sources of information this game has, which means you'll probably have a lot of people reading them even if they aren't posting... who then can spread misinformation by word of mouth. I think anyone who has ever read anything about social media/marketing distribution will understand how devastating it can be if spread information is mostly negative.

I see that they made ingame announcements, and keep their facebook somewhat updated, but it's still no reason to ignore the forums. Actually I shouldn't say "ignore" because a lot of threads were locked and deleted... which raises even my own eyebrows. A few of the deleted/locked threads really weren't that bad, and it seems like some of the astral scholars are a bit delete-happy. I'm really not a big fan of deleting threads, because it usually shows one thing: that the company is afraid and/or can exercise their power. Now, obvious trolling threads should go out the window as fast as possible, but even negative threads can be turned around.

Typical GM responses have nothing to do with the patch, it's the generic "please be constructive" which really isn't what the majority of us want to hear. We just want to know is this intended or not? The worst thing to feel as a player is being ignored... which is what a lot of people probably feel (even if its not true). Allods doesn't have the convenience of running a PTR like WoW does, so this is probably the least they can do.

Basically, they need to think ahead and place damage-control measures before releasing something this glitchy. Even if its just 1 discussion thread where everyone posts the bugs they come across or 1 announcement that says "we're aware of these issues (include small list), and the ETA is....". It's really not up to the community to do these things for the game - everyone is pretty much left in the dark right now... I had to personally tweet at Chomp a few times to get some information to pass along to the forums about warden renew.

Now, I don't normally play F2P games because to me the customer support and development support has always felt sub-par, so my expectations from a F2P game are very very low. Not really sure what its like with other F2P games so... anyone can comment on their experiences with issues like this.

v6 Manual Patch Download

2010-04-29T10:30:00.000-07:00

Hello readers (whoever you are!), if you are looking for a faster way to get the latest patch without waiting for the launcher's torrent... look no further!

I have uploaded the patch on Filefront:
http://www.filefront.com/16303063/1.0.06.36.1_.zip
And Megaupload:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CW0IXX39

Includes files for:

1.0.05.45.1 -> 1.0.06.35.3

1.0.06.35.3 -> 1.0.06.36.1

Edit: If you get the launcher error, all you have to do is download and run the repair.exe, which you can download here (thanks Darren/Chomp!):
http://allods-ftp.gpotato.com/repair.exe

Also, I have enabled anonymous commenting on my blog, so people who are too lazy to create an account or sign into one, feel free to post whatever!

Chilling with GM Chomp

2010-04-29T08:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was able to talk to Darren Allarde, or GM Chomp, directly on ventrilo concerning the future of Allods. Darren is the associate producer of Allods, he works for Gala-net and you might have seen him ingame (or just on [world] chat) under the name "CHOMP_". Sometimes you'll also find him on the forums or posting on his developer blog. Novograd Times is doing an interview with him soon and is accepting questions from the players themselves - check it out.

It's always good to hear exactly what is going on from a reliable source, especially since what Allods is lacking most right now (as mentioned in several entries) is information. A lot of players feel like they don't know where the game is going - right now I can say that Gala-net/Gpotato is definitely trying hard to get all our suggestions across to AstrumNival, although I don't think I'm allowed to give out full details. ;) My original guess on why patches are slow wasn't too far from the truth.

One of my friends and I both gave a decent amount of feedback as well as suggestions to Darren, so hopefully our concerns will be heard by AstrumNival and will be acted on accordingly. I'll discuss more about whats in store for Allods NA and EU in another entry, as I also want to evaluate why Allods is viewed so negatively by other sites (I have been snooping around) and what everyone can do to make this a better experience. My previous entry is still worth a read if you want information on common concerns found on the official forums.

Patch v6 at a Glance

A lot of players on both the NA and EU forums were making quite a fuss about FoD being applied when players were resurrected by other players. People's reasons ranged anywhere from: "this is just another ploy to make us buy incense!" to "why bother getting a res skill?"

This has since been removed from the patch notes - I hope people will calm down now and realize that Gala-net doesn't want Allods to sink anymore than we do. The rest of the patch has mostly generated positive responses.