Endgame Viable

Due to a heat pump failure, my normal schedule of writing scintillating posts (ha!) was totally borked. But lucky for you, I found some posts that I have previously rejected as being totally lame and irrelevant, pulled from the dregs of the barrel of mediocrity. My LoTRO Hunter reached level 48. Normally a level like “48” doesn’t seem like that much of an achievement, but in LoTRO I feel like it takes an eternity* to level, so each new number is a major milestone. Asian grindfests TERA and Aion are the only two games I can think of that level slower right now. (457 words.)

Apparently the NDA was lifted, so here’s my first impression of the game: It doesn’t have invert mouse yet, so it’s a major, major chore to play it. It literally boggles my mind that devs don’t include this in their alphas, or even their finished games. I mean, surely it must be a built-in feature of the game engine somewhere, right? Even if it’s a stupid registry key somewhere, show me where it is! (80 words.)

In another post I wrote about your basic objectives in FFXIV endgame and what there is to do, but in this post I’m going to talk more frankly about the more practical experience of what the endgame is like when you’re not in a big Free Company with lots of people available at your level. It’s like sitting around waiting in a queue for a long time. Again. And again. (372 words.)

I reached level 50 in Final Fantasy XIV and entered “the endgame,” that fabled zone where only the elites live. Now I can evaluate FFXIV’s version of what some vehemently insist is “the only real game.” As with any MMO (except GW2), the FFXIV endgame is a gear grind. Your basic goal is to increase the “average item level” of your gear. This in turn allows you to unlock more and more difficult instances, in which you can acquire gear with higher item levels. (735 words.)

I’m sure you’ve all heard the news about SOE closing down Vanguard, Wizardry Online, and two other MMOs. Vanguard is a game that I always wanted to play more, but I could never seem to keep it on any kind of daily schedule. I always thought of it as a “crutch” game - I knew if there was absolutely nothing else to do, and I didn’t want to spend any money, I could always fire up Vanguard and be entertained for a little while. It had its faults, though. Mostly I think it suffered a lot from a slow, laggy combat system. But one thing I will always credit Vanguard for is introducing me to those deck-building card game thingys that everyone but me seems to play. After playing with Vanguard’s Diplomacy, I suppose I now understand why people go nuts for games like Magic and Hearthstone and whatever fifty million other card games are out there. (227 words.)

I am blatantly stealing TAGN’s post subject here, which is the question of who to boost to 90 for Warlords of Draenor. My situation is a lot different than his though, because I only play WoW when I’m really bored with other games, and my highest-level character has only recently broken into the Wrath of the Lich King era of the game. Hunter? This was the second character I created when I started WoW in 2006, and my second-oldest surviving MMO character. (The first oldest is a warrior that I never play and should delete, but, well, he was my first WoW character.) He’s around level 72 now, having just left Outland for Northrend. It would be interesting to bump him up to 90, but then I would probably never experience any of that solo content between 72 and 90. I think I’ll pass on him. (508 words.)

I read Scree’s A Snapshot of Pantheon, an excellent summary of the things that Brad McQuaid wants to do with Kickstarter MMO Pantheon: Something of Something. I’ll save most of my comments on Brad’s game vision for another post, or never, because I don’t think it will get funded. The part about changing the Holy Trinity model is what stood out to me today. Apologies for quoting so much of this: (914 words.)

Due to a devastating blizzard of perhaps a half an inch of fine powdery snow, I had 2 extra hours one morning to look at The Origins of Madness, the new Living Story content for Guild Wars 2. I patch up, log into my Necro, and I have mail telling me to go to Lornar’s Pass. Naturally it’s one of the places my Necro hasn’t been so I can’t fast-travel there, so I get out my Norn Ranger, who has been all through those wintry mountains. I go to lookup the location in Lornar’s Pass again, only to find that the mail was not sent to my Ranger. Nice. (1056 words.)

I read a fluff article on MMORPG.com about 5 Things Rift Must Do In 2014, which got me thinking. What would it take to get me to play Rift again on a daily basis again in 2014? Well, the answer is pretty simple: Give me an expansion with new zones and more levels. (Alternately, if I totally ran out of stuff to do in other MMOs I’m playing, I would probably play Rift.) (497 words.)

My Miqo’te archer is closing in on 50. With the crazy ridiculous bonus experience gained from a Low-Level Duty Roulette, she should get there tonight, Friday the 17th. (I write most posts in advance, by the way.) My archer has been going through some seriously odd fashion phases in the last ten levels. Everything was fine at first. She had a suitable outfit that reflected her spunky, squirrel-tailed, no-nonsense, tomboy attitude through most of her leveling. (189 words.)