Gaming: Going Home

I’m one of those bitter, disillusioned players who still haven’t received a WildStar invite. I check mail every time an announcement goes out that they’ve sent out another 30k invites…and taste the tears of disappointment every time as I go uninvited. Damn you, Carbine.

Games I’m still playing:

The Secret World, which I play sporadically. I started to level a Templar alt and then couldn’t face throwing away the 49% completion that I have on my Dragon. Playing without a guild or friends, though, is getting boring and I don’t know anyone who is still playing that is both EU-based and also playing Dragon. *sigh* First world problems…

Rift, extremely sporadically, both because I don’t know anyone still playing and also because it is so damned painful trying to get past the huge cockblock of grind called Storm Legion. Phil and I had been playing a bit, and then lost momentum knowing that those alts we were levelling were going to have to face the SL content eventually. Bah.

Defiance, which is much better now than it was in beta – much more polished and less buggy. It is very much a console-type game, however, and I can only last for so long before I log in irritation at having to fight the UI to do anything. Transport especially – I’ve always sucked at driving games and I suck just as much at getting from Point A to Point B in Defiance. I run into trees, rocks, people, hellbugs and huge frickin’ elite Volge roadblocks. Arkfalls are a lot of fun – the few that I can actually get to before it is over, that is. Like I said, I suck at driving.

GW2 is still there, and I log in now and then. Same thing…I don’t know anyone who is still playing. Pfft.

I have been revisiting Warcraft and actually enjoying it a lot. Warcraft was my first MMO and going back to it always feels a lot like going home. You are very happy to be there at first, all warm-glowy with nostalgia, but if the visit lasts too long you start to get antsy and bored. Part of my problem with WoW is that it is very much a game geared around endgame gear-progression raiding, and I’m done with that. I spent over two years raiding heavily and I’ll never go back to doing that in any game. Five nights a week, 95% attendance in order to keep your spot? Not in a million years, baby.

I moved my 90 warlock to Argent Dawn, which is the server I would like to move all my characters to if they ever made it sensible financially to do so. My 90 hunter main and level 85 priest, paladin and shaman all still sit on the old server. I had a level 70 Horde hunter on Argent Dawn which I’m having fun playing, just dinking around and taming various rare pets. I must have spent an hour or so trying to get Spirit of the North on her: it flies out of taming range in the area outside of the Nexus which is patrolled by elite dragons.

Solution: there are other methods of doing this, but this is what worked for me. In front of the Nexus and a bit to one side is a building with an elevator that you can see from outside. To one side, on a front corner, is a very tall, spiky rock – fly up to the tip of this rock, positioned so that you can slide down the side when you are dismounted by casting. Shoot it when it gets within range, slide down the side of the rock, and enjoy an easy tame once you get to the bottom. :)

Some of the pets that I have on my main hunter are no longer available: the Oil Stained Wolf, the Grimtotem Spirit Guide, the Spirit of Atha hydra and so on. Looking forward to levelling her mainly just for the pets. :)

My gaming habits have changed a great deal with the influx of extremely high-quality free to play games – I’ve become an MMO nomad, a floozy who can’t commit. I stay for the night and leave in the wee hours, shoes in hand, tiptoeing in my socks. I’ll be back, but you’ll never be able to trust me to stay. And yet I dream of finding love. I miss that new relationship feeling, I miss wanting to spend every waking hour of the day in a new world.

So, WildStar, about that unrequited love…stop turning me down!