What's up Slaya?

If you're a reader of Tipa's blog, you'll already be familiar with our Sunday night group's forays into Dungeons and Dragons Online. We have a very cool ragtag group that consists of me (a halfling sorcerer . . . lovingly called a "gnome" by the rest of the group--Gleek Wondertwin to you, thank you), Spode (the human paladin), Ophiga (the drow rogue), Ulan (the human Favored Soul), and now Shyadaren (new to the group cleric and still catching up).

Outside of Sundays we all dabble here and there and solo mostly or play together if one of us is online. nothing serious.

Our most recent adventures have been in 3-barrel cove, a wonderful pirate-laden expansion full of . . . pirates . . . AND PIRATE SHIPS! This sky pirate ship has got to be one of the coolest things I've seen in game yet.


I freaking love that ship. I can't get enough screenshots of it, actually.


Seriously, that's so beyond awesome . . . like more awesome than the mechanical spider in Wild Wild West. ;-)

And once you make you're way up to the sky pirate ship, there's always a good handful of pirates to soak with an acid blast or two or three or four.


Easy come, easy go, those pirates. And once you've off'd them all, you are given this most magnificent wallpaper shot of the ship as a kind of side reward . . . as long as you dare walk the plank and spin the camera to take it. :-)


Yes, my feather fall cloak was ready at a moment's notice.

All this pirate killing finally paid off this morning as I hit the max number of pirates you can kill for experience in the zone . . .


We have a saying in the group whenever you hit the next level of slayer in an adventure zone that definitely is apropos here: "WHAT'S UP SLAYA!"

DING, Level 7.

Looks like the joys of fireball are all mine now. From my initial casts of fireball I have to say THAT IT ROCKS! It's incredibly spendy and addictive. It eats through my mana like nothing. I'm definitely going to have to put my fireball in check on Sunday nights.

:-)

Catch you on the flip side.

Recent World of Warcraft Promotions (2010)

Just wanted to post a couple WoW things that caught my eye today.

1- I got a note that we should be watching the upcoming Dallas v. Vikings game. Here's the announcement from Blizzard:

"This Sunday, during the Dallas Cowboys versus Minnesota Vikings NFL game on Fox (starts at 4:15 PM EDT, 1:15 PM PDT), we are debuting a new television commercial for World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion. The commercial will feature the first look at cinematic footage from Cataclysm, so tune in to an exciting game this Sunday and catch the new commercial!"

Awesome. I can't wait to see that one! I'm not a big football fan, but I kind of wanted to see that game anyway (side bet going on with my Father-in-Law).

2- It just caught my eye that Tenacious D is going to be performing at Blizzcon. If you go to the main World of Warcraft site, you'll see a big huge-onic ad about it. Um, like this even:



Nice!

Fiesta, a genuine assault on cuteness

It’s a Fiesta!


No, not that kind of fiesta, kooky! This kind of Fiesta!


Yup, I’ve been playing another F2P MMO on the side these days (aside from the aside of DDO), called Fiesta! Check me out, I'm partying like it's 1999 at my groovy player housing.


What to say about Fiesta. Hmmm. So far (I've only been casually playing this now for about 3 weeks) Fiesta is this kind of assault on cuteness that’s, let’s just say it, a watered-down WoW Clone with a nod to Lineage II and some heavy heavy anime art stylings going on. That's about as best as I can describe it with my MMO knowledge.

Fiesta found me through an article in Beckett’s MMO Magazine where, aside from an article describing the fun community in Fiesta, they offered up a free piñata mount for 15 days. Oh heck YA, I was all over that!


I can’t tell you how heartbroken I am now that my little Fiesta mount is gone. T.T

Truth be known my wife teased me about him relentlessly, but then again, she teases me about my alternative mount (and pretty much every aspect of this game) anyway.


Yes, that is a hobby horse right there . . . I TOLD YOU THIS GAME IS AN ASSAULT ON CUTENESS! Case in point, here’s a battery of the monsters I’ve been up against so far: Slimes(with smiles), imps, mushrooms, wooden puppet men (and women), turtles, floating kitty things, pixies, and pirates. That’s just insane! I mean look at this fashion pirate here:


Ok, ok . . . there's also been ratmen, boarmen, lizardmen, crabs, and KING crabs for mean looking value, but I'd say I've been assaulting more cuteness than meanness. I love it though. I’m thinking back to my first 16 levels of Everquest back in the day and it was like rats, bats, orcs, and skeletons. BORING! This is where’s it’s at, yo!

Still, my wife does make fun of me for playing this. That's a big mental challenge there. I hate to be made fun of by the boss. When I play, sometimes she'll psychically summon up castanets out of the air and dance behind me with a clicking rhythm. It's a huge taunt. Thanks wife. Thanks for ruining the mood here. ;-)

So, hi, I'm stingite and this is my guy:


He's a mage. He rocks the big damage. Whereas the other classes might hack away at something, This mage here kills stuff in 2-4 spells. The only other class I've really played is a cleric and maybe just dabbled a bit with the fighter and archer. That's it though. There's only four classes. I imagine that the goal here is to one day look as cool as this guy, and I'm good with that:


Ok, so what do I really know know about this game so far (not much):

- Pro-Tip 1: Turn that music OFF! It immediately made my ears angry. Some of the funkier music in the later areas has been “ok,” but it did nothing for my immersion into the game.

- Pro-Tip 2: use the Home key to go into your home after every fight until your skills regenerate. I probably look pretty stupid to some popping into my house after every fight concludes, but it’s saved me on potions and stones. Word. I’m in no rush. And, in case you don't know, your home is a little mushroom hut that's an amazing assault on cuteness, yup.



- Pro-Tip 3: If you're a mage, pull with your ice spell. I chose a mage obviously. The ice spell snares the mob a touch, so it takes them just *that* much longer to get to me.

- Pro-Tip 4: quests don’t always neatly stack your scrolls into nice organized piles. You’ll want to look into your bags and click those scrolls and drop them into a nice pile every once in a while.

- Pro-Tip 5: Did I say scrolls? I did! There’s scrolls that will help you get back to town. It’s a time saver. There are also scrolls to boost your hitpoints and mana that you can get from quests. These can be incredibly helpful at early levels to have these “buffs” on you. Everybody does better when they’re fighting with buffs on. It’ll definitely help you survive when you have to fight higher level monsters.

- Pro-Tip 6: leave a finger over the potion button and the health stone. You can use these together if needed, just remember that the health potions you can gulp quickly in succession, but the stones take a couple seconds to regenerate.

- Pro-Tip 7: If you learn a new skill, be sure to dump the old skill from your quick slot bar and drag the new skill on to the bar. They made it so you can have varying power levels of spells at your fingertips for the truly anal player, but I’m just going to guess that most of us aren’t that anal. You don’t want to be casting a lower power spell when you really are thinking you have a new power spell inherently. It just doesn’t work like that.

- Pro-Tip 8: Power up your weapons! There’s this really kind of odd mechanic in game where you can power up your weapons through runes and badges. In a way you can create a completely customizable weapon. From everything the game seems to be telling me, you can’t really destroy a weapon with runes at early levels, so go crazy. But at later levels you could destroy your uber weapon by trying to “rune it up” with power too much. The badges are like customizing the weapon to be more deadly to certain types of mobs. This seems perfect for grinding runs. If you know you’re going to kill a bajillion pirates, you might as well make your weapon into a pirate killer by using a pirate badge.

- Pro-Tip 9: if you're riding a hobby horse, you make them go faster by buying floatation stones, which is an expendable power source that makes your horse go. You can buy it at the same place you bought your horse.

-Pro-Tip 10: There are raids for lower level characters!



OH MY GOODNESS, YES THERE IS! There's a King Slime quest you can go on. I have only managed to join in on one of these with my cleric so far, and it was . . . awesome. Pretty much all I did was sit back and heal people . . . a lot. The tanks were up front and that's where they should be. I took one hit during the raid, and i died. Somehow I managed to be rezzed or something, and I continued on. At the end of the lowbie raid there, I got a snazzy tuxedo for my efforts. This apparently only lasts 30 days. I'll take it! It just equips in a little appearance slot off to the side, and I don't have to worry about stitching it to clothing or anything.


And that’s about all I got on this game at this point. I’m only level 18 so far on my mage and level 8 on my cleric, so I’m very much a noob considering there are at least 100 levels to earn, but you’ll also be happy to know that I have yet to spend a dime (or a nickle or a penny) on this game! So far, it’s been absolutely free! That REALLY appeals to the 1/16 Scotch blood in me.

What concerns me though is that there was a review I read somewhere on the net (man I wish I could find this review to link you to it) where they cautioned many many many things about this game and pretty much thrashed it as hard as an MMO could be thrashed. It seemed jaded. I hate when people are like that, but from that review apparently Fiesta can get pretty addicting, and in the later levels the cash shop (where Outspark makes their money) almost becomes a necessity to survive. They actually made it sound like you could end up paying 1,000’s of dollars in cash shop items for this hobby. Hmm. I truly hope it isn’t like that, but I probably won't even make it that far in this game.

Stingite just wants to have a little Fiesta! That's all.

Snubbed in DDO!

You may have been reading Tipa’s DDO commentary (scroll about half-way down) over on West Karana . . . or not . . . but I just want to point out THAT SHE PRETTY MUCH ENTIRELY FAILS TO MENTION ME EVER! *snubbed*

Here I am trying to gain some quasi-fame through Tipa’s blog and all I get is like a line here and there every other MONTH. LAME! Most of her posts should read something like this.

“Stingite was doing these awesome jumps behind us that really made me hawt, but I was trying to concentrate on healing. I just love when Stingite unleashes five burning hands spells in a row, and I have to dump all my mana on him because it’s so worth it to keep him alive and that empty feeling I have when I’m done is the same kind of pit of love I fall into when I listen to Justin Beiber. Stingite, you complete me!”

Stuff like that. Stuff like these guys give me.


But do you know what I get instead? “Tony dinged 5 . . .” Yeah, right. “STINGITE dinged 5 . . .” She totally got that one wrong. AND to make things even more suspicious she keeps claiming that Tony (A Canadian mind you) sounds like me (from the western US) over vent. Yeah, it’s intentional snubbing. I don’t buy it.

It’s ok Tipa, I’ll still be jumping around and casting burning hands for you . . . just know that now I’m going to be counter-reporting your Sunday posts so as to tell THE TRUTH! (which of course is that without “me” this Sunday night game would just be “awe so” instead of “awesome.” Word.

/tries to target Tipa and fails

/hug



“Stingite hugs the air around him”

Tipa?

You there?

Nanovor have taken over the world

About three days ago the kids and I were watching Cartoon Network when a commercial for nanovor popped on.



I didn't think much about it until after the commercial when the kids literally jumped out of their seats and wanted to go check it out on the computer RIGHT NOW I MIGHT DIE!

So we went there.

Three days later I am 20 dollars poorer from buying two of these nanovor toys at Toys R Us, and a lot more educated about how a "red spike" move might be accomplished by a 2.0 evolved nanovor bug.



This is what I do. I teach my kids how to kick your butts and unleash them upon you. Sorry about that.

As a parent, I was glad to see there were some chat controls available to me, so I'm in!

Nanovor is a pvp-only online game where you pit your swarm of microscopic bugs against an opponent's swarm of microscopic bugs.



The above shot is the initial battle screen. What you see there is that my character has five bugs in his swarm and has chosen the Plasma Lash nanovor to begin his battle. The Plasma Lash bug (or at least this generation of the bug) has four options to choose from: head whip, electro-lite, yellow spike, and skip. The battle proceeds as I choose one of those and click on the opponent's location (unless I choose the spike), and then I finally click which bug to swap out on the next round and reclick on your opponent's location.

After the battle orders have been made, my bug and your bug go at it.

This repeats and repeats until one person either leaves the game in frustration or one person's swarm is obliterated.



SPLAT! like that.

There is progression in this game so far (I mean, we've only been playing the game for 3 days or so . . . we don't know how far this will go yet). After playing and winning a few battles, you'll eventually earn a few badges.

Badges in this game are awesome things. Some of them will result in a new nanovor being added to your swarm and perhaps a few EMs. EMs are the stuff of evolution--Primordial ooze in a microscopic test tube. If you get the right combination of EMs you can take your bugs and evolve them into tougher 2.0 (And on) versions.

Here's a picture of a tank walker bug we evolved into it's 2.0 version.



Evolved bugs are stronger and usually have either more deadly attacks or more beneficial overrides. ahhh! We'll get to overrides . . . be patient.

Now besides earning your bugs and EMs through badges, you can also buy nanocash. Nanocash is where the free game ends. Each of those two 10$ Nanovor toys up above came with 400 nanocash. With nanocash you can buy three things. 1) a bug and 3 EMs for around 65 nanocash or so, 2) 6 EMs for around 55 nanocash, or 3) a whopping 6 or 7 bugs (always guaranteed a rare bug in the bunch) for 275 nanocash.

Here's a picture of my daughter opting for the 6 EMs choice.



Many bugs evolved this day . . . many bugs.

So, as we were saying, What the heck is an override? Overrides are buffs that you can apply to your nanovor to make it stronger, faster, or more deadly. Some are single use buffs (the spikes specifically) and some stay with your swarm until you cast over the top of it or win the match. You can only have one override running at a time.

Here's my one and only tip for you guys on overrides. Don't waste your breath casting a spike if you don't have a 2.0 version of a bug in your swarm that can actually make use of it. Not every 2.0 bug can make use of a spike either . . . only specific ones.

I think you'll figure it out from there.

Now, do I have complaints about Nanovor? You bet I have complaints! Who the heck wants to battle in a black 2-D boring space? My kids and I came up with a very compelling background space out in the parking lot in about 5 seconds.





Come on (who makes these things?) Smith and Tinker, Inc! You can do better than a black background!! We've seen your cartoon episodes; we expect more awesome backgrounds! (How'd I do at my angry consumer voice? not good?)

word.

See you in the Nanovor space!

. . . but are you Dragon Blade tough?

Yeah, I've been playing this action game on the wii. I bought the game for ten bucks, and . . . I'm liking the change! haha.


Just to warn you up front, Dragon Blade gets ripped to shreds in two or three reviews over here at IGN and it is a couple years old, but there are also a few good reviews as well, so read on and let me add mine to the pile . . . I've so needed this game lately.

I like MMOs and I like playing "cute" games with my kids, but sometimes I need the difficulty to be raised a few notches, and Dragon Blade reminded me that games can be tuned a bit more difficult and be a bit more unforgiving. I NEEDED that.

What I like about this game is probably what most people hate . . . the graphics. They're "Everquest I" awful. You know when you see repeating textures forming an unintended pattern on the ground, that you're playing something that's going to remind me of everquest. I remember loading up Everquest back in the 2000's and thinking . . . you gotta be kidding me, these graphics are horrible. Then the social atmosphere of EQ overtook me.

So, because I think in terms of MMOs. This is like hack-n-slash meets a solo person "raid encounter" from Everquest. You grind on regular mobs and then you fight the raid boss for uber loot. Let me give you an example of game play here by talking through one of the encounters.

This is King Tyl (please excuse the poor quality graphics . . . it's a photograph of a television set showing a game with dated looking graphics as it is)


King Tyl is hear to kick your butt. He's bigger than you, and he has a massive arm that delivers a wicked punch--both to your face and to the ground to cause shockwaves. He's also fond of dashing at you and running you over . . . only to punch the ground when you get up.


The key to beating any boss in this game is to discover their pattern and exploit that in their weak moments.

So here's what I figured out on this particular fight, which I died on a number of times and had to restart . . . I'm guessing 15 times at least.

King Tyl shoots streams of fire at you when you are away from him, so you need to dodge right and left as you get close to him. When you get close to him, he switches from streams of fire to ground shockwaves. To get him to perform a shockwave, you need to time it just right so that you run into his close range and then back out and then run back in again. Right after he does a shockwave to the ground he will be vulnerable for about a second.

After hitting him when he's vulnerable, King Tyl punches three times in his close vicinity and then braces to charge. You need to run slightly more than half way to the other side of the small small arena at that time. The moment after he charges is the moment he is vulnerable . . . that's when you break out the right dragon arm and just work him over with about four or five swipes with either your sword or your dragon arm.


If you get low on health (because you will make mistakes), you need to run to one of these "bells of health" (groan at the bad pun) and refuel.


Where it gets tricky is that when you defeat his "powerful" version, you need to have at least a good half bar of fire power left (there's a life bar and a fire power bar . . . you know, health and mana . . . just like in EQ) to finish off his "exposed" version. This is a common denominator in boss fights in Dragon Blade. You slash your way through a blue bar of life to expose a green bar of life. Once you get to the green bar of life, you have about 3 minutes or less to defeat your enemy or they heal themselves up to about a fifth of their blue bar.

The resulting fight is a weaving in and out and back and forth to finish this guy's complex pattern off. It's not an easy task, and when you defeat him after your 16th try, you . . . and your kids scream with delight. Not only because you *finally* beat this guy, but also because he drops the left arm of dragon killing awesomeness.


We had fun playing around with this new feature after the fight. When your character has his left arm drawn he slowly walks toward you with these ominous arms of fire. If you turn up the volume on this clip, you'll hear me saying in a funny accent, "where am I going?" while the character is walking away and then "I'm coming for you!" when I spin him around. hehe.


I gotta warn you though, your wrist and arm are going to be sore after playing this game. Since you use the wii remote to waggle your way through this game, it gets to be a bit painful.

Bottom line with this game for me is this: If you're looking for a challenge on your wii system, this might be a good game for you to pick up . . . especially if you can find it in a blockbuster for 10 bucks like I did.

Neosteam, is it for kids?

Repost from my Friendly Necromancer blog

Well, I started playing a new game called Neosteam about two weeks ago just to see how it was. I'd read a little bit about it in the latest Beckett's and thought I'd try my hand.

I'm now level 22 Lupine Strider, and I'm actually having a lot of fun playing this game. I mean, I'm basically a furry wolf guy brandishing a giant sword and towing around an animated golem pet I call gumby (whom I captured inside the belly of a land whale believe it or not).



I mean, yeah, that's fun right? It certainly looks like my kid would like that.

And yeah I stepped inside an AT-ST type of machine and blew away ten ant sized bad guys.



Of course that's fun! It's Star Wars! Kids love that stuff! I certainly did when I was a kid.

I mean, who wouldn't want to play a free (so far) game-that-shall-not-be-named-clone with more technology than a golem engineer in the aforementioned game can shake a stick at? Sure the soundtrack is horrible and the font is ugly, but it's free and looks awesome on my computer. Right?

ahem.

Excuse me while I take the subway train in neosteam to another train of thought.



Well, here's the deal, after watching the general chat fly by and having my eyes burned by what was being said and seeing that you can buy the female avatars bikinis with RMT . . . I figured this is a game that I'm really only going to be playing before the kids are up or after they go to bed for the most part. Or I may just have to play it real careful.

Here's something you can do as a parent if you're trying to filter out some text.



So luckily, by clicking those buttons you can turn off certain zones of chat (usually World Chat is where the majority of eye burn happens), but I don't think I can do anything to clothe the bikini-clad, which I've yet to run into. ;-) RUN AWAY FROM THE BIKINI CLAD!

General play seems safe enough so far, but I don't think I really want the kids to be playing this one a lot. As amber would call these elves on neosteam, they are "sexy ladies." LOL.

Just FYI, that's how I see it as of today . . .

Happy Dueling!