Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Dungeon Maker (EQ2)





This week I've been working on finishing up my house in EQ2, I've still got two rooms left to finish. However, I did manage to complete my first player made dungeon! Since they were released I've wanted to make my own dungeon, I just never seemed to get around to it.

The tools are very easy to use, you also get some items to place about the dungeon but I went and sunk a small fortune of plat into mine, just to get the look I wanted. I also picked up some different monsters to throw into it. This is a wonderful tool for those who like to play dungeon master, there are even a few extras in the cash shop. I only grabbed the text for the screen addition but I do want to pick up the storytelling tool also-Which allows you to make a storytelling NPC that isn't combat oriented.

You can also run your own dungeon, I wasn't sure if you could. I'm pretty sure when the dungeon maker went live you could not, so that was a nice surprise. I wanted to run through it and make sure it was decent, which I think it was. Great aspect for endless content, sharing it and playing with friends would be a lot of fun too!

One of the cons is that the fast/easy/massive token runs with the entrance and exit next to each other get rated highest, which is a bit crummy. I've tried a few in the past and it isn't fun, then again I've never been on a mad rush to collect the tokens so maybe that would cause me to have a different outlook. But I do hate seeing some really fantastic dungeons have 0 likes and these 'throw' fifty mobs in one room for mass tokens' dungeons have quite a lot. But, what can you do?

I wanted my dungeon to have some humor, a variety of mobs, and a feeling of change around each corner, a real fun place to explore. I also did not want it to take ages to run. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, I even managed to complete the daily objective in there, which wasn't my intent when creating it!

Below are some pics of it, if you do play EQ2 and want to check it out I'm on Crushbone, the instance is called Stellar. I've never been great with names, and I tend to use Stellar for a lot of things... So, it ended up as that, lol. I'd love to make another with a different theme, one more uniform, but I'll probably wait a bit as it takes a lot of time and effort! Enjoy the pics :)



The final act, last boss.

Exit 'treasure room'.

Did I step into the shard of love?

Weirdos lurking in the corner... Hey, get a room you two!

Tomb raiders.

Frozen hallway.

Realm of the giants, everything is scaled up to make the player feel smaller. I left the room very much as it was, I wanted some of the original dungeon's beauty to show. 

Dead guys walking around, thought it would be funny to give them names from 'The Walking Dead.

Candy corner!

Clockwork station.

One of my favorite rooms, the Dr's office, ha!

Lots of creepy stuff going on in here!

Entrance. Which is mostly the same, I did add a lot of fish to the water which added up to a lot of plat! But it was aworth it, I had a lot of fun!



Tuesday, July 30, 2013

The Short & Lazy Post



I'm too tired to play.... (Salem) He has to be on my desk when I play, I hope this phase doesn't last too long, lol.



Last night I was exhausted and the most relaxing way to spend my gaming time was in my EQ2 house and just decorating. Which is pretty fun, relaxing and still I get to play, doing something 'trivial'. Maybe one day I'll add my house to the list and have people come visit it and vote, once I finally get it decorated how I want it. I've switched houses a lot but I think this time I am going to decorate many different ones with different themes. You are able to have many houses in EQ2,  so I think my next project is going to be a creepy haunted type house. 

On Thursday the next city festival hits EQ2 which means I also want to grab a few more items for the house project and maybe save up for the next few house projects. We'll see how it goes, sometimes it is slow going, but great for a session where you just want to relax and zone out. Between this, Tinkerfest and Chrono dungeons, I've had plenty to do. I still need to head back out to the Withered Lands. Oh! I also hit 91, sometime last week. Yay!

I keep wanting to spend more time in Rift but then I remember what a snore fest Storm Legion is. Today I'll do a little more with the festival and try to get some fluffy items. I think another thing that is bothering me would be how I heard that housing was getting some love, (did a dance for joy) something else to utilize the dimension aspect with. Turns out it is aimed at PvP, make your own arena (shakes fist with rage). Which was like.... Blah. I don't care about PvP in Rift. I occasionally do PvP, when I flag myself by accident, end up killing several people thinking they were NPC's... Oops. Sorry guys. But yeah, I hate when games mesh housing and PvP, they just don't get it. 

I also have my time going to a sick little kitty who was an inch away from death due to starvation and dehydration. I've taken her in and we're nursing her back to health. She's doing very well. I don't need another cat but she is a little princess who needs someone to take care of her. She doesn't leave my sons room very often, she's attached herself to him, which means she is very easy compared to my other two. I just couldn't let her die, breaks my heart to see this, she is just one of those cats who can't function and hunt when thrown outside. My cat, Salem, was in bad shape when we found him, but he's now a spoiled fat cat, massive, that picture  up top doesn't do him justice!

I also read this neat little tidbit earlier, the Macabre Marionette pet is going to be a permanent pet this year in WoW! That is awesome. I've always wanted to be able to keep it!  I managed to get the hydra from the weekly quest (mojo turn in) also, but I got into a heroic scenario before I had a chance to even look at it or take a screenshot! I wanted to grab one this week because it will be implemented as a rare drop when 5.4 hits.  Anyhow that's it for today!


As you can see she was wasting away. We're working hard to put weight on this little girl! 

Hey..... I know you. Are you the Hamburgular? Since when does Freeport have a McDonald's? Shopping for a dps merc, he's actually quite decent. Plus I can dress him up, give him some style pointers. 

EQ2 makes it easy to check out houses before you make a purchase. I already have too many but it is nice to look!

Firiona Vie, I want her hair option >.>

Another flying pic, one can never take too many of these!

Messing around doing a chrono quest.



Monday, July 29, 2013

Eye Candy


Questing with my druid.

Necro and I, don't we look sharp!

Interesting effect I snapped a shot of, while in a heroic with Dire. 


Soaring through the sky with my Tinkerfest wings. 

Doing Tinkerfest quests, fun stuff!

More Tinkerfest. Big meanie computer I had to destroy, was nifty.

Giant genie bottle, a boss spawns from it.

Rift. My Summerfest clothing, love the look!! Aelfwar set.

Messing around in a chronicle- River of Souls.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

WoW- The Slow Bleed?




WoW doesn't have much going on besides on PTR. Neat things look to be in store, lots of cool glyphs are heading out, I like that. A new island with stuff to do, things to hunt for, a new currency it looks like- Timeless coins. Also lots of new pets and one kick ass mount for engineering! That would be the Sky Golem Mount, check out a great video here, from MMO Champion. Plenty of new stuff churning out at a dizzying pace, a refreshing change in direction after years lacking such additional content on such a regular/quick basis. But it is the right stuff?

I'm sure everyone, by now, has heard WoW is down to 7.7 mil subscribers now. That's roughly a 600,000 loss from last quarter. That, to me, is a huge amount in such a short period. It would kill any other MMO. Sure, we still have plenty more players left but I feel the change, look at scenarios, virtual realms, they all point to the signs.

It is an old game, old by today's standards, I read that somewhere recently. Odd thing is.... WoW IS the standard, the top dog. This old, aging, in need of new character models, ever changing game is still the industry standard. While some games are trying new things and keeping afloat, nothing still has a fraction of the player base. Which will change over time (maybe?!) but it hasn't yet, nobody is bleeding out WoW specifically, just a trickle to this or that game. The biggest WoW killer, I always say, will be WoW.

Why are people leaving? I'm sure most get bored. I think it is also a combination of things. I still play, I am here though because my family plays, I do have a few friends also, and I like my guild- But I feel many reasons why people would leave, many would have pushed me away (again), had I not family playing.

I think the game has a really toxic community. Just doing a heroic last night I noticed this mage going out of her way to pull mobs just to stay top on the DPS. She didn't try to work together with the group, all she cared about was DPS. The hunter would not turn taunt off the pet so the tank was busy trying to communicate this to him, thus seemed disconnected after this point, not paying attention to anything, most likely fuming over the pet. The only two working together were Dire and I. Nobody said thanks for the run, they just all left suddenly as soon as the last boss hit the floor. This isn't all the time but I have come to expect it. Groups and raids are full of competition, they are accessible, more so than ANY other game out there (at this point in time), though when I come to think about it, they are not very enjoyable. They are a race for DPS, a fast run for valor/justice points.

When I do my daily quests, call me crazy, but I feel like I've done my homework, give me a pat, I'm such a good little girl. When I accumulate better gear from raids, I finally feel like I am part of the game, like I'm playing it as it should be. Give me a gold star, I'm doing it right! New purple to replace the old purple, I'm doing it right! Running my little heart out on this giant gear treadmill. Sometimes I feel like I've stepped into the Stepford version of MMO games. This isn't what I log on for; To feel like I'm doing my homework, completing a job, competing. I log in to play in a fantasy game, explore, just have fun and relax. Which I can do, and I do, but I feel penalized, that there really are not too many alternatives that reward anything as much as those focused on endgame raiding. Give me FLEX scenarios, heroic ones! Let them scale from 2-5 people.

I just think WoW lost a lot of it's fantasy and thrill, everything is formulated, keeping up the the Joneses. Let me look up my spec, gear, gems, enchants and rotation so I can make sure.... I'm doin' it right! Rotations, they make me want to freaking barf. I think that is a big draw to healing, you use things at the right time, you gauge when to do this or that. It is more of me thinking and reacting to the situation for myself! But the abuse tanks and healers get, no wonder the queues are so long. It is just easier to DPS and race against each other.

Class changes and tweaks confuse some players upon returning or just can turn them off totally. I cannot think of many classes that still have the same feeling they did back in classic. They have become smoother, sure but a whole lot different! That has to have some type of impact I'd imagine.

But I still do play, for reasons stated but another is probably nostalgia, there is also the smoothness of the game, it feels so polished. When it comes down to it, I hope WoW changes for the better as it ages, I'd like to see it keep going strong, though in multiple directions. It is still the standard, it still has a strong hold on the genre, but you can see the tiny cracks in the walls, the lines across the face of Azeroth, so to speak-  I think things will need to change because I think people are starting to tire of this formula.

That's it for today, have a great weekend! Some pics to prove, yes, I still do have fun in WoW :)


Standing at the summoning stone, I do miss the 'Have Group Will Travel' summon ability!

Heri and Necro took me to (finally) get my twilight drake!

My bro's and me doing a heroic scenario. Wish they scaled with more people!


Summer Fun!






This week brought in some fun events and interesting events across the games I'm playing. A good way to keep cool while it's so freaking hot outside (Houston... ugh).  EQ2 has Tinkerfest, which quietly slipped in. I only realized it was so close a day or two ago. This year has some of the coolest rewards yet! A new instance (soloable) quest for the choice of a healer or tank ROBOT mercenary, which look very awesome. That blew me away, they are so neat! What else? New appearance armor, different colored flying wings, GOGGLES and many housing items have been added. I love anything steam punk, snazzy goggles sitting on my character's forehead, you have my heart EverQuest2!

EQ2 is such a relaxing game, I've had people comment in the past they wouldn't go near it after playing the first (hardcore- back in the day- grind) EverQuest. But EQ2 is quite laid back, great for casual players as well as raiders, it is fantastic for groups or duo partners. That's what I love about it, it has changed a lot over the years, getting better with age. I log in daily to play, I probably enjoy it more than anything else at this point. It is good for people like me who hate all this new action crap they add to new games, thinking big red spots on the ground or glowing goo create immersion and exciting game play. No, rolling all over the screen and avoiding effects just makes my wrists hurt. Not to say there isn't that kind of stuff here and there, but it is more classic type combat, more tank and spank. Right up my alley. That is a big keeper, when I need something to relax to.

Rift has Summerfest going on. I was hyped about this event but the servers are getting hit by some major lag, which isn't all Trion's fault, it seems partly the fault of their ISP, Comcast. Sometimes I log on with no problems, other times I can't do anything and just get booted. I do feel for Trion, they are trying to get things sorted, trying to keep the players happy and touching base to let us know what is going on. They plan on giving everyone a pack of goodies as an apology, I think that is very nice of the team.

There was a really awesome appearance set from the event, I am not sure if it can be bought with in-game currencies but I did see it in the cash shop, as well as the new bathing suits. I don't really want to plunk down cash for it so I need to check again. Offer it in the shop for cash sure,  but don't make that the only way to get seasonal stuff. Lots of quests, some seem fun, some seem kind of vague (scavenger hunt weekly quests). Not all of it is aimed at everyone, many of these are for higher levels. I prefer events that aim at all levels to participate, even through most my characters in my games are at endgame or close.

All in all it looks like a neat event, I plan on taking par in it as much as I can with the connection issues, which I hope to seem diminish soon. I only had a short bit of time to participate since the other times I couldn't even play due to the latency. There are fishing quests, which was interesting. Squashing bugs, you jump up and down on them, took me a moment to figure that one out, lol. Lots of nifty cosmetic goodness.

Lots of good stuff to do and collect between these two events! Unfortunately I've not had a chance to snap any shots of Rift, hopefully I'll get some!



Flying disc like this are a reward for tinkerfest. The helm is a quest item- Gas Mask, lol. 

My mercenary giving the new ones the evil eye...

New tank merc. 

Gnomeland Security Headquarters. 



Thursday, July 25, 2013

Technical Difficulties




Just a quick post today about the blog. I've been pulling my hair out with my last layout trying to figure out exactly what broke but I've finally given up puttering around with blogger and it's layouts. It was what brought me to blogger to begin with, a little more customization, which evolved over time... Then it broke, for me at least.

Anyhow... If you've visited the site over the last week it might have taken on a few different looks, depending on when you visited, especially today. I did, briefly, go back to a more traditional look. The traditional blog just doesn't suit me any longer so I've been working hard to get something with a smoother, more 'professional' look. I did not expect to have to change the look so soon, I think I had the last look for a year or so. I miss it but for now what is up isn't too shabby. It is pretty easy on the eyes and even looks nice on mobile devices as well.

I still have a good bit of puttering around to do, my blogroll is gone and I need to get links back up, that will take some time. I'll get it tweaked out over the next few weeks, for now I feel it is fine to leave it be until I can get back working on it.

I was almost to the point of just closing up shop, ending the blog. This year makes four years, in another month to be exact. While my comments have dwindled down I do have a few readers left but the most important thing is that I still do enjoy writing even if it has slowed down. I'm not ready to end things just yet. I may give the blog another six months to a year, I just don't know some days. For now I still enjoy it when I can, I love to share things here.

Hope you enjoy the new look and continue to enjoy my ramblings as long as I continue to write.

- kaozz





Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Darkness Dawns (EQ2)







Yesterday EQ2 had a really neat update- Darkness Dawns. This update brought contested avatars, fabled dungeons, a new system to save your AA points and swap on the fly (CATs), and daily objectives. Being only level 90 on my inquisitor I'm most excited about the daily objectives.

Anyone can take part in these daily objectives. The rewards are really nice, while you gain one token a day (across the whole account you can mix and match who does what) the items are not where they feel out of reach. These work similarly to the daily quests in Guild Wars 2. They are very quick to do, and you'll most likely be doing them as you play. I grab the daily chrono quest and they are knocked out without even trying in most cases.  I already did the objective twice and got a fairy on a string, which is a four year vet reward, this being my newest EQ2 account, I'll get it this year but it sure is nice to get it a few months early!

Many are veteran rewards, which is nice to see. Especially for newer players, I don't mind if someone else has access to these earlier than I did. Hell, I wish I had access to some of these earlier, especially after swapping around on which account I wanted to play on. There are complaints on the forums because some veterans don't feel like special little snowflakes. I'm glad it gives players a reason to log in and head out to do something, gives me an alternate goal. I like it. There are houses, mounts, gear, all kinds of neat things.

Always lots to do in EQ2! I've been mentoring down and doing some fun quests I missed. I do blow through mobs as a mentored down battle cleric, it is still fun to be able to get some xp for doing so. I'm also slowly working on my house, not quite finished with it yet, waiting on the city festival to hit. It is a nice change, and dabbling with the dungeon maker, which I need more items inside before I will publish it.

There is just so much to do in EQ2, so many choices on what to do, that is what always feels different after playing WoW. While WoW has tons of daily quests and dungeons to run, EQ2 has a lot of adventuring and exploring. Apples and oranges.

Anyhow if you haven't checked out the notes on this patch, check them out here on the official page. Even if you're not at the cap there is something to look forward to jumping into, which is wonderful. If you are sitting at the cap, there is more to do, like checking out the new heritage quest!

Also something to note, for those fashion junkies like myself. If you are looking for some more appearance gear, maybe you have an older character who didn't save your starter gear or even get that snazzy new stuff all those newbies now get (like me), now is your chance to have it. The class trainers now sell two crates one with the old (legacy) set and another with the newer version. The new stuff is quite snazzy and I'm sporting (all but the chest) it currently!

That's it for today, sharing some pics on my way out ;)

A fae walks into a bar... Hey! She's missing her wings, lol. For some reason my shield bugs out my fae illusion wings. 

Exploring some old content, I like the feeling of the Moors. 

I love you mercenary man. Somehow I bugged and was knocked off my mount, Vanlorian to the rescue!

Taking a ride in a balloon flight path.
I discovered something ;) The inquisitor armor crate. 

My fairy on a string, isn't she so cute. She hovers over the shoulder.






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