I expected to get quite a lot of gaming in over the long weekend, and although things did not work out quite the way I expected, I did.
The Miscellaneous Other Games
For one, I bought Day of Defeat: Source from Steam, which I’d been eyeing in my search for a decent World War II shooter, and spent a couple of hours fooling with that – it’s on sale for $4.99 until July 10th. I also played quite a lot of Team Fortress 2 on Saturday night, to the point that my left wrist felt like it was about to fall off from working the WASD keys. The most amusing moment was when I, playing the Engineer, killed three heavies in rapid succession with a pistol.
I was playing quite a lot of TF2 during my semi-hiatus from MMOs early in the year, but I really hadn’t touched it for several months, and not at all since the Pyro update. Since the Pyro is one of the classes I like to play, I logged a lot of time on him, and set a lot of people on fire. I did get a couple of the new achievements, but not enough to unlock any of the new weapons… yet. I do plan to keep playing.
And I played a little bit of both EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies. Not a ton of time in either – I’m just fooling around. But I figure I may as well get the maximum possible use out of my StationPass, and although EQ is unlikely to go away any time soon, if Bioware’s new MMO does turn out to be some kind of Star Wars game, SWG will be on life support once that announcement is made, and that may happen fairly soon. So if I’m going to experience it, I may as well do it now. And I’m again reminded to wonder why EQ2’s version of the intro music sounds so much lamer than EQ’s.
Meanwhile, in Telon
I also played a great deal of Vanguard over the weekend, starting some Diplomacy with both Faroun and Llyrdwll, both of whom are up to level 3 in that sphere. But the big achievement was getting Ardwulf to level 23, and then to 24. This puts me at close to half the level cap, and probably more importantly, at a higher effective level (as a percentage of the cap,) than I’ve achieved in any MMO – except for WoW. Level 24 is pretty respectable in Vanguard, and I’m still fooling with stuff that the Ranger can do.
A nice fella who reads this blog sent me a tell, and we chatted for a bit. He asked me if I’d ever managed to get my level 20 mount, and I told him I hadn’t managed to put the necessary funds together yet. About three minutes later I got the “you’ve got mail!” message, and when I’d gotten to the nearest mailbox I found that I’d been sent 15 gold, which from where I’m at is an awful lot of money. With it I was not only able to get my higher-level mount, but also some new gear, bigger bags and better arrows, and even a sweet Diplomacy cloak, which doesn’t do anything but which looks terrific. So thanks a ton to those guys for their enormous generosity.
I also, thanks to the lead from Stargrace, went down to Mekalia to get the MEST quests and the huge harvesting tools/collectibles bag. I actually finished one of the quests, too, and got the three ancient platinum coins, although I’m still not sure what to do with them. The MEST fireworks are a good deal more impressive than the Veteran reward fireworks, that’s for sure.
I also did quite a lot of exploration, poking Ardwulf into various corners of Qalia, where he’s unlikely to spend much time. I’m about getting to the point where I’m seriously considering getting a house built, but I need to look at the requirements for getting the plot as well as getting the house built. My in-character goal for Ardwulf remains building his own ship, but I want to start crafting from the beginning with another character before getting back into it with Ardwulf. Same with Diplomacy, really, and I’m almost comfortable enough with that to restart Ard in that sphere as well.
The impeding release of the Isle of Dawn makes me want to kill off and restart certain alts who I have not touched since returning to the game, none of whom are all that far along and all of whom feel stuck in one way or another. So expect me to concentrate on about four established characters for the next couple of months: Ardwulf (ever my main,) Mnembao (my Mordebi Psionicist/Tailor, now a level 10 Crafter,) Faroun (my Qaliathari Blood Mage/budding Diplomat and eventual Mineralogist,) and Llyrdwll (High Elf Bard, also a starting Diplomat, and Leatherworker when I finally get him into Crafting.)
And the Producer’s Letter
We also got a new Producer’s Letter. We frankly don’t see enough of these, although the dev team has certainly been pretty visible lately, with several appearances on Voyages of Vanguard. An official Producer’s letter is probably even more visible, though; even aside from the fact that it’s likely to be seen by people who don’t listen to podcasts (I have to assume that there aren’t that many people not already playing the game who are listening to VoV,) such things typically get picked up as newsworthy items by the major MMO news sites, which gives them some publicity in the wider MMO community. This one doesn’t have anything entirely new in it (at least if you’ve been paying as much attention as I have to VoV and various dev chats,) but it does clarify and expand on a few things, and gives us a firmer timeline for the immediate future than I think we had before.
This one is interesting chiefly because there is apparently a concerted ‘win-back’ program going on, an effort to get the people that left back into the game. This can’t do anything but help – there was apparently a noticeable bump from the free time promotion that was held around the beginning of the year, and this one will probably be at least slightly more significant, since there’s a bunch more new stuff in the game.
Plus, we have the Isle of Dawn coming, which is likely to bring in some entirely new players. This will probably go live at or around the same time as Game Update 6 and the character model revamp, in late August or early September. Before that we should see a smallish update with some new factional armor and other things.
Game Update 6, especially if it actually includes both the Isle of Dawn and the character model upgrades, is looking like it’s going to be the game’s most substantive yet. In addition to more performance improvements and bug fixes, we’re going to get a new raid dungeon at the Pantheon of the Ancients (the group part of which is still going to be there, albeit revamped,) a new overland raid, class updates and the combat rebalance package. It’s going to be huge. I wonder if I can get Ardwulf up to 45 by the time it comes out…
