Just haven't found anything interesting to write about apparently since I left WAR. I guess I could regale you all with tales of deck construction and synergy in Wizard 101 but I doubt that would excite many of you out there. Or how I fell in love again with the Phoenix Launcher and Gauss Rifle in Planetside. Yes, the Gauss Rifle. That much-maligned instrument of doom. Not as flashy as the Cycler or Pulsar but it gets the job done in the hands of a skilled user.
I had a very productive weekend on the Wizard 101 front. Dinged 35 and got to Mooshu with the help of some great friends, Suri Jadeshade and John Lifesinger. I know it's primarily a kid's game but soloing the instances you need to advance the storyline and move on to the next world is about as tough a challenge as any gaming achievement out there. Having them help me complete the last two instances I needed in Marleybone was a refreshing change of pace but the truth is I would've completed those instances solo if they weren't around and willing to lend a hand. I just wouldn't have blasted through them as fast as I did. Looking back at it, the gauntlet I had to run through would've been brutal to solo and any wrong decision on any single turn would easily have been fatal.
On the Planetside front, I hooked up with the RPS outfit and we went on our first major excursion as an outfit on Saturday. You can read about it here and I took a few screenshots of my own and placed them here. Dinged BR6 and got my first implant to be able to view the enemy's health finally. Juggling the certifications I needed for a viable skillset made me pine for my old BR20 CR5. So I put in a ticket to Sony thinking that they had deleted my old character but it turns out that the account I was using was not my old Planetside account. There are two accounts associated with an old email I was using at that time. Now I just need Sony to figure out which one of them has my old character in case I ever want to re-activate Planetside.
Speaking of which, SOE really needs a better pricing plan for PS. Bundling it up as part of a Station Access pass doesn't work for me as I'm not interested in any of their other games. And paying the normal $14.95 monthly fee for it alone doesn't work either. Sorry, but that's not a lot of value compared to what you can get elsewhere for the same amount. Judging from the player population the past week, Planetside is still a very popular niche game. I would imagine a more creative pricing plan would boost the paying population even more.
As for World of Warcraft, I have barely logged on since I bought the expansion. I just couldn't muster the minimum effort needed to even level my Paladin past 71. Not a good sign and one I took to heart as I cancelled my WoW account yet again. At least I'll have the expansion installed in case I ever decide to return to Azeroth.
As we've mentioned in passing, KingsIsle should quickly move to dispel the myth that this is primarily for children. I'm having an amazing time! You hit the nail on the head when you talked about the difficulty and challenge of some of the instances. Of course doing it solo is what elevates the challenge but even doing it duo is no cake-walk either.
ReplyDeleteI hope they find a way to make little tweaks here and there to improve the experience for adults, notably the chat filter. That alone would go a long way to increasing my satisfaction. Regardless, it's a great game and I'm glad I decided to give it a try.
You totally could have done it alone. I'd done Counter West solo it was just brutal is all. I made it thru with no deaths but it was a white knuckle ride for sure. As you know I thought a death in the tower would reset so I was terrified of making a mistake. By the time I was two or three floors from the final encounter I was so fear stricken that I'd come that far and how horrible it would be to die and reset the whole thing. Talk about nerve wracking. I don't remember being that excited and scared playing a game in a LONG TIME!
Oh well, at the rate you're going you will definitely pass me up. I guess I better get used to the idea now. *sigh* See you in Mooshu :-)
I did die during one of my Krokotopia solo runs, and when I went back into the Instance I discovered it had not reset. The mini-Bosses I'd already killed had stayed dead (I think this was The Emperor's Retreat), bit this was actually a bad thing. I'd died to the second mini-boss's guard but after killing the mini-boss himself. When I went back inside I still had the quest to kill both mini-bosses, but they were both dead, so my way to the final Boss was still blocked. I had to leave the Instance, logout, then log back in to reset it.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if this works for all Instances, but even if it does, it only appears to apply to Bosses and not Trash Mobs. So a death in the Counterweight Towers or Big Ben would still require working your way back up from the ground floor. But, any quests you've completed up to that point would (should) still be complete, so for Instances like The Ironworks where you have puzzles to solve and gates to unlock, those puzzles should still be done for that particular Instance.
Hmm... could you grab help on the way back to the instance, or would that reset it?
ReplyDeleteI would run back to the instance and see if it reset first. You can always ask for help if it didn't and they can just port to wherever you are currently in the instance.
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