Khajiit has wares….

So last night I’ve been still struggling to pick what characters to play in Legion. I think I will settle on my 4 alliance toons: Draenai hunter, gnome mage, pandaran priest and of course my human warlock. Seeing that classes matter more in the next expansion, it has actually given me an insentive to level every class. I say every class, but I won’t have a dk, rogue or monk. I just can’t get the hang of these classes.

Ofcourse WoW isn’t my only mmo, I mean this is me, the girl who is always undesisive about games etc. So what mmo’s have I been playing?

Guildwars 2: I have to admit that I really enjoy playing my necromancer, but I really am playing this game as if it was a single player. I’m not interested in the dungeons or pvp. I’ve just been focussing on her personal storyline and it’s really good. I don’t know if I’d want to get the expansion Heart of Thorns for this one as soon as it’s released though.

Elder Scrolls online: I adore this game! I am playing it on ps4 now and the quests are a lot of fun. As always it took me a while to settle on a character, but I now have a nightblade Khajiit and I really enjoy playing her.

I do feel that this game is just better on the ps4, it doesn’t feel so clunky when you play it with a controller. Also the Aldmeri Dominion (one of the factions you choose to join at the start of the game) has the most amazing NPC in the entire game: Razum-Dar

This Khajiit always makes me giggle when I have to help him with missions and it’s one of the reasons why I ditched my bosmer sorcerer for a Khajiit. Also Cats Rule!

If you’re thinking of picking up ESO I would say ‘yes, do it!’, but I do feel that it plays better on the ps4 personally. The storyline is great and the world is amazing. I love discovering tiny things that lead you to another quest or more lore.

So this is how I’ve been dividing my time on mmo’s lately.

Back into ESO

Today is the day that The Elder Scrolls Online is going free to play, or like the Guildwars system of buying the game but there are no subscription fees. I am extremely happy about this. When I first played this game in the beta, I was not impressed. The starting area was boring and the story just didn’t do it for me at all. I wasn’t expecting to get this game, but when I was off work due to my depression and I got extremely bored, I took the step and bought the game. Not only that, I actually purchased the Collectors Edition. I know right, that’s taking a huge risk for a game that I was not interested in at all when I had played it.

The one thing that the CE had going for it was the wonderful art book. Elder Scrolls always has gorgeous art books with their CE’s and the statue that came with it was extremely cool. All in all it was a good purchase. Then it came to the game and let me tell you I was pleasantly surprised. The first area was the same, but then I moved to an Island where my dark elf happily roamed around (it’s the Kajit and woodelf starting area, due to having a CE I can start anywhere and i’m not race tied to starting area’s) and explored for some treasure and quests and I loved it!

Now there is some bad stuff too, I wasn’t impressed with some of my skills as a rogue. She felt quite under powered when I got repeatedly killed by boss mobs my level. I am hoping that that will change with this new patch. I already got the warning that my talents have been changed and all my skill points returned to me.

So keep your fingers crossed that rogues will be awesome again!

So what am I playing?

As many people know who follow me on either the podcast, twitter or now this blog again, I do love mmo’s a lot. I think it has to do with the fact that you’re never truly alone in the game. It’s what attracts me most to mmo’s, the social aspect. If I want to have the experience of a solo game there are many other games out there, one of them is Dragon Age: Inquisition and I’m playing a lot of it, but I will give that game it’s own post.

Currently I’m still running around in WoW. I’ve levelled to 100 and tried a bit of LFR and trying to get my garrison to progress, but something is just not doing it for me any longer. I don’t know what it is, but I was often logging in, looking at my quest/chore list and just logging off again. Plain and simple: the game wasn’t any fun for me.

I tried to find out what I did like all those years ago. Sure, I loved raiding, but with my current working hours that is a nono and there is only so much LFR you can do before you go a bit silly. I took a brave step towards my old rp server and created a new human warlock. I thought well about her background story and the more I thought about it, the more enthusiastic I got about playing here. I actually created a role play character after many years.

Meet Zoellha, the clumsy warlock

So far, she has proven to be a lot of fun. I’m not very good at warlocking (yes that’s a verb now), but i will just level her slowly while trying to get more and more into rp. I even created a new dreanai paladin and a nightelf mage to get more rp stories. Tho in all honesty my knowledge about nelf mages is a bit lacking.

So what else is there to play besides wow? Well actually this is a pretty good time to start dipping your toes into some of the non-sub mmo’s. I actually went back to my old time favourite:

The Secret World

It’s one of those mmo’s that’s more aimed towards a mature audience and because it’s set in the modern world, it gives you quite a unique experience. I love the stories by H.P. Lovecraft and this mmo is dark and disturbing. again I’m on a roleplay server and I’ve just created a Templar this time. Mostly because the Templars are being portrait as the super good guys and that will be a nice challenge from my neutral Dragon character. Also it will be interesting to see if the changes to the game have made it more friendly to players who just start out.

Creepy goat demon will probably want your soul in TSW

Guild Wars 2

I always loved the visuals in Guild Wars 2 and the storyline for Silvari is pretty interesting too, but for some reason I stopped playing. When I got told there was an expansion coming out, I figured it would be time again to jump back in and see what’s going on and you know what, it grabbed me immediatly. I kept on running through areas with my hunter and it was just so stunning seeing the landscape change. I’m not a big fan of the questing, but when there is a world event going on, I always participate and it’s fun seeing all these people try to take down this big monster. My bet is, I will be returning back to level my Silvari slowly.

Graphics wise Guild Wars 2 is pretty amazing!

 The Elder Scrolls Online

I’ve been incredibly harsh on this game when it was in Beta. I didn’t like the questing and the starting areas dragged so all in all I was not going to play this….. Ow how boredom can change things. I don’t know what came over me, but I decided to get this game when it was launched live, not only did I get a copy… I got the special deluxe edition. And let me tell you, it didn’t disappoint. I got a gorgeous statue and the art book is just amazing! Well worth the money.

Don’t judge this game too quickly!

I created a dark elf and joined a different faction than what she was meant for (I think I started at the woodelf and Kajit area) and after escaping a prison (spoiler I guess) I was pleasantly surprised by the new starting area. It really grabbed me and I just kept on running around hunting for treasure, doing quests, exploring the world. I loved it! Admittedly, there were some dodgy bugs in the game and I soon found out that my rogue wasn’t quite able to do certain quests on her own level just because the mobs were impossible to kill, but I still enjoyed it. It was like playing Skyrim, but there were more people, making the world feel more alive to me. The reason I stopped playing this game was purely because of the sub. I didn’t want to pay for another mmo, so the news that ESO is going to be buy to play like Guild Wars 2 in March is very good news to me. I already updated my game with the patcher so I can’t wait for March to roll around.

What mmo are you playing?

TSW is F2P?

So The Secret World is now Free 2 play? Well, guess what I’m doing *smirks*

I always loved this game, but I wasn’t willing to pay for two subs. You can understand how happy I am that TSW is now free 2 play. I’ll be leveling my Templar character to see the storylines from that perspective. Happy Days now that all my current mmo’s have gone free to play (well except for wow)

 

The Secret World or How I Love H.P. Lovecraft

I’ve been hanging around in the new mmo from Funcom: The Secret World. In the last month I already dabbled into the beta and decided I didn’t want to play any more then the first beta weekend. Not because it was bad, but because i didn’t want to get spoiled by it. That’s how much I loved it. So after playing for several days I’ll put down a short review on here.

Graphics:

The game looks good. There’s a lot of detail in the surrounding and once you find the first questing area (Innsmouth) you’ll be blown away with how much it looks like the real world. The monsters look amazing and very detailed. Every main quest has a little intro cinematic. Now I could be a nitpicker and say that it doesn’t always look great, but I love how ‘real’ the NPC’s are. They swear, they say things how it is and they look as if the shit just hit the fan.

Character creation:

I liked the engine to create my characters. You pick a faction; get an intro video and then you start making your character. There are a lot of options and I was happy to say that my characters looked semi-pretty.  I guess what I also really liked, was the fact that the clothes that you pick in the beginning, aren’t the only clothes options you have. During my time in the game I got more outfits to put on. This is not like your normal mmo though. The clothes are pure aesthetics and to me it feels like playing dress-up. I love it.

User interface:

I’m still having some issues with the ability wheel. You can only have 7 skills on your action bar and 7 passive ones. In a way I like that because you only have to focus on that, however other games work with talent trees and train their skills, in TSW it works a bit different.

You get an ability wheel where you spend AP (which you earn by questing, killing, exploring, etc.). I specced my character into ‘swords’ because I love hacking at things. Now Funcom advices to take a second ability with it. I was really confused what would compliment it. Luckily, there are ‘decks’. It’s basically a pre-made build that you can follow. If you click it it will show you where to put your points and which abilities to have on your bars. Now the interesting thing for these decks is that you actually get the outfit associated with that build. I went for the ninja-deck! Luckily everything has a video tutorial to help you on your way.

Story and Lore:

I love the main story that’s running through the entire game. This is a game that has me thinking again. There are tiny little icons that represent lore-icons. Once you collect them, you get a tiny fragment of a story of what happened in the area that you are running around in. It’s really dragging me into the area and I’m running around trying to find them all.

The quests themselves are quite interesting too. You get a few of them that are the typical ‘kill 10 foozles and bring me their ears’, yet it doesn’t feel that way. All the quests have a certain kind of dread feeling about them or you start to think what has happened in the area to spawn certain ‘happenings’ or monsters.  I think that this is one of the strongest points in the game!

Game play:

The questing system is good. I like it that I can’t pick up loads of quests at once and I am actually forced to focus on the story behind one type of quest. I say type of quests because you pick up the storyline quest, one main or sabotage quest, one dungeon quest and three short pick up/deliver quests. I never thought I would like that kind of questing, but I guess because of their stories it is making it easier to deal with.

I am not a big fan of the combat. It feels clunky compared to other games I’ve played and I do hope it will improve in the future. I haven’t dabbled in pvp so it might be really annoying in that part of the game. During questing I got frustrated now and again, but not enough to make me want to stop playing.

Character Development:

Even though I see other people running around me, I do get the feeling that the story is about me. I’m getting pulled in and I get rewarded for sending the reports (finished quests) to the head of my faction. I get new outfits and stars next to my name that represent how higher up in the ranks of my faction I am. The same goes for titles.

Overall I love The Secret World. I doubt if it has a lot of reply value, but for now I am enjoying the story immensely. I did try to run around on two alts, but because I already figured out the puzzles and the quests it’s not pulling me in as much. I am surprised to see that the factions

 

are treating the quests (when it comes to giving you info about it) a tad different from each other. The Dragon (my main faction) is always very cryptic, where the Templars seem to be more practical and telling me in a far more clearer way what actually happened in their field report.

Would I suggest the game to my friends? It depends. If you love creepy games, adore H.P. Lovecraft, great storylines and don’t get frustrated with combat, try this. If you are the opposite, play Tera Online.

The Secret Worlder

This weekend was all about playing the beta for Funcom’s next mmo: The Secret World. It’s a modern day mmo that gets the player involved in the conspiracies and mysteries that exist in the world.

Ever since I heard about this mmo, I’ve been looking forward to it. When I saw some game play and screenshots a few months ago, I wasn’t too enthusiastic. It looked… well crap. The player characters looked a bit wooden and I wasn’t that impressed with the environment. I decided to give the game a chance though after hearing some of the press being impressed with the game. So when the chance was there to pre-order the game I did. That also gained me access to their first beta weekend.

I made my character and went into the first scene’s. It is a lot of movie-watching that you have to do and I wasn’t that excited for the first hour or so. That was until I got into the really creepy stuff. I was send to Kingsmouth. A little town that has been hit by a mysterious fog, turning people into flesh-eating zombies and it seems it brought some other creepy crawlies to the town too.

The atmosphere, the design of the town, the quests, the monsters… I am loving it. I am properly creeped out by things, but also engrossed enough to want to keep exploring and finding out what happened to this town, while fighting my way through hordes of zombies that want to nibble on my flesh.

The ability-wheel and non-levelling system is a bit different, but it’s not that difficult to figure out. It gives you a lot of freedom with how you want to play your character and I didn’t feel the rush to reach a certain level, simply since it’s not there.

I actually had to shut of the game, since I didn’t want to be spoiled for when it comes out on the 19^th of June. I will buy this game. Now some negative points: I think that I will feel the same way about this game, like I did with SWTOR after reaching level 50 and doing my final class-quest; not much re-play value. I think once I’ve figured out all the mysteries and battles, I’ll probably be done with this game or won’t want to create another character and I’m actually ok with that.

I am seeing this game more as an mmo with an amazing one time storyline I need to follow and I already wrote down a few things I came across in the game that I want to use for my pen and paper-rpg Hunter: the vigil. I can’t wait until the 19^th of June to get creeped out!