Ping-Ponging My Way To Nightmare Tide

I took a little break from ArcheAge and it turned into an unintentional gaming ping-ping-a-thon. Don't worry, I still log into ArcheAge to gather the fruit from my trees a couple times a day. Also, I finally destroyed my Scarecrow Garden to make a Farmer's Workbench. I hated to do it, though. I wish I could rotate my house to face a different direction.

FFXIV

First I dropped back into Final Fantasy XIV again because I had an active subscription. I didn't really have a goal but it turned out that there was a Halloween event going on so I went through that quest line. Seasonal events in FFXIV are very quick and easy, so it didn’t take more than an hour and I ended up with some neat-looking scary barding for my Chocobo. (I think it's the only barding I've gotten so far.) The rewards this year were far better than the silly ghost costume we got last year.

Speaking of FFXIV, an upcoming expansion and nailing consistently high-quality content every quarter reaffirms my belief that FFXIV is the best subscription game to have right now, if you have to pick just one.

WoW

Then I went and got 3 months of subscription for WoW so I could take a look at 6.0.2 and be ready for Draenor. My night elf looked only slightly different, but when he runs around now he sort of hops spryly instead of what he used to do, which looked a bit like someone running with scuba flippers on their feet (or maybe clown shoes). If I hadn't known that they changed the models, I might not have even noticed it was different. It's too bad they couldn't up-res the textures on the armor, though.

My main hunter was 88 when I left him, so I quested around in Krasarang Wilds until I reached 89. (Not surprisingly, it didn't take long.) Right away I noticed that my Serpent Sting DoT was gone, which caused some confusion for a while. I didn’t realize they were making class changes in this patch. Not that it was a big deal or anything since I can still mow through anything while questing. (Usually I don't even have to do anything; my pet can handle everything by himself.) But I’m not sure what I’m supposed to use for a DoT now. I've never taken the time to "learn my rotations" with my hunter since it doesn't matter a whit while questing.

Anyway the point is that I only have one more level to go before I get my hunter to level 90. I still haven't bought the expansion yet, though. But I probably will. Probably.

Rift

Lastly, it came as a total surprise to me that Rift’s Nightmare Tide dropped! It shouldn’t have been a surprise, because I knew it was coming. It's just that I didn’t realize that The Day was actually upon us. October has been flying by apparently.

I panicked at first because I thought that I wouldn't be able to buy any of the Collector's Editions any more, but thankfully they were still available. I logged in first to verify that buying one would be a good decision (the items cost a ton of some currency I didn't have), then I went ahead and bought the $49 starter pack. I debated getting the $25 one, because I don't actually need an insta-60 boost (I already have two level 60s), but it might be handy to boost my alt rogue or cleric from 50 to 60, and anyway I wanted to reward Trion for making new content.

So far I'm enjoying it. It's nothing radically different, so if you didn't like Rift before, you probably still won't like it. I'm starting out with my Mage, who has always been my main, and I think I might create a new build with a mixture of Harbinger and Arbiter to see if I can make an even more indestructible soloing build. The mobs in the first new zone actually hit kind of hard compared to the level 60s in, say, Hailol, so it's a good thing they gave us more health.

The Minions are nothing like what I was expecting. Somehow I had it in my head they would be similar to Battle Pets, but it's not even close. It reminds me more of gathering resources in Star Wars The Old Republic. It's also like the adventures you can send your retainers on in FFXIV. That is, you task your minion to do stuff and then wait for him to complete it. When he gets back, he'll gain some experience and presumably he'll bring you cool stuff. (I haven't seen any yet, though.)

Now that Nightmare Tide is out, Rift is probably what I'll be playing for a couple weeks. It's too bad more people don't play it. A game like ArcheAge, to me, can be played with a basically empty server, but Rift is much better when there are a lot of people on the servers to gather together for Rifts and Instant Adventures and Zone Events. So all you people complaining about the ganking in ArcheAge, go play Rift!