Endgame Viable

So, yeah, I changed my mind and subbed for one month of ESO. I did it after I played the Arbiter in Rift for a night, and realized to my horror that there was no way that I would be able to fill all of my gaming time between now and the WildStar launch with Rift tanking. I sort of forgot to factor in my terror of tanking high-level dungeons in PUGs. There are only a handful of low-level dungeons that I’m comfortable with, so it won’t be very long before tanking becomes a hellish, stressful nightmare, regardless of what I think of the soul. (210 words.)

I tried out the mage tanking soul Arbiter in Rift 2.7 on Thursday night. Overall I was pleased with its performance in Realm of the Fae, but I’m a bit worried that it will be “complicated” to play at higher levels. Take that with a big grain of salt though as I am far from an expert tank, and I have only seen low-level abilities. The "Arcanist" preset with the Arbiter, Stormcaller, and Warlock soul trees. (533 words.)

My gaming PC hasn’t been upgraded since mid-2012, so I thought it was time. The fact that the computer had a nagging USB mouse driver problem and has been crashing a lot in games also contributed significantly to my decision. And so another PC has been upgraded, and once again I make another vow not to do it myself any more. Pro installation work right there. Oh I wanted to order a pre-built PC. Imagine how awesome it would be to come home from work one day and find a brand new, completely built Alienware PC sitting on the front porch. (In a box, presumably.) (Hopefully in a box that isn’t stamped with Alienware all over it, so it won’t get stolen.) All you would have to do is open the box and plug it in, and you’re done. (539 words.)

I saw this excellent post from Belghast a while back: Thumper Logic. The first part of his post got me thinking about my own publishing schedule, and as it is NBI month I thought a meta-blogging post would be a good topic. I too have tried to write one post a day-in the past. I applaud the effort, and anyone who can do it is far better at this than I am. (494 words.)

When I first started playing ESO, I detested the idea that every barrel, box, and urn had something in it. That was one of my least favorite parts of Oblivion and Skyrim: Picking up cheese and vegetables in every barrel. You didn’t have to, but the healing from a big stack of corn could save you in a pinch, because it was too expensive to buy health potions. The possibilities are practically endless! (379 words.)

I went ahead and cancelled my ESO subscription. I’ve got a few more days left but I suspect my Templar will stay at level 36. I think I will wait two or three months and return to see what changes have been made. I like the direction I’m seeing in the roadmap; I’m just itching to do other things right now. Go to the light! In the meantime, I’m planning to play Rift 2.7 when it drops on May 7 until the WildStar head start. I have created a Defiant mage and leveled him up so that I can start him tanking in Realm of the Fae and Iron Tombs. I haven’t seen anything about how the mage tanking soul works yet so it should be interesting. (249 words.)

There’s a lot of great advice going around about blogging this month for the NBI, and if you are new to writing or blogging (or not), you should read all of it. Thankfully many of them are summarized in the Newbie Blogger Initiative Week #1 Roundup, so I don’t have to. The only thing I can add is my own personal philosophy on this blog. But first, if you want to start a blog, just start it, and do whatever you want, and to hell with everyone else and what they think. It’s your blog and nobody can tell you how to run it (unless you violate the terms of service, that is). I mention this only because a lot of “how to blog” guides tend to focus on the “business” aspects of blogging. They tend to assume you want to blog to make money through advertising. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s not the only reason to blog. (553 words.)

UPDATE: This post was written during the Alpha, and only applies to Humans and Elves. (I haven’t played any Eastern races yet.) As of the Western ArcheAge launch, the first trade run quest is no longer Strawberry Jam. It’s Solzreed Dried Food which requires 50 Trimmed Meat (made from e.g. butchering chickens) and 35 Grapes (made from e.g. harvesting grapevines). And the certificate, of course. The cash reward is apparently greater now, as shown below. (1185 words.)

Okay I’m just going to say it. ESO is not holding my attention. I keep logging in and thinking to myself, “You know, I don’t particularly feel like playing this.” I’ll go through a quest or two and then log out again. It’s a major factor in why I went ahead and dropped cough cough dollars on ArcheAge. And yet I can’t think of anything wrong with ESO (well, except for inventory management - it’s really a pain). (404 words.)

Massively wondered why public dungeon boss bots are so hard to stamp out in ESO. I thought I would answer this in a blog post, because any comment I posted would be lost in the noise. I don’t have any first-hand “inside baseball” knowledge but from what I’ve pieced together from years and years of developer posts about how bots are dealt with, this is my guess on why they can’t just snap their fingers and make all the bots in public dungeons disappear: (392 words.)