Guild Wars 2: The first 2 weeks.

It's been about 2 weeks since the release of the greatest game ever. My guild is doing great. We have a little over 30 members now. If you'd like to join you can visit our website http://tyrianartistry.shivtr.com/ and apply.

There has been some shakiness in the launch of Guild Wars 2. I'd have to say it's probably the sloppiest launch I've ever been a part of. Other games had queues at launch where you couldn't even play though so I guess I'd take the bugs over not getting to play. GW2's overflow servers were great since I seemed to have picked one of the most populated servers. I already stopped getting sent to overflow servers in most zones and in the ones I do it's usually only minutes before I am tossed back to my home server.

One of the issues they had over the past 2 weeks was the Trade Post being offline for the majority of the first week and 1/2 which made it frustrating to make money and prevented any sort of economy from starting. It has been up for the past few days with only brief periods of down time.

The game has been restarted for patches several times but has had very little down time for maintenance. Forums were also down for the first week of the game. The wiki was down the first few days as well which was a hard thing for players because we're all noobs around here.

Guilds and Parties have had some hiccups too. In guilds there has been everything from invites not being able to be sent or accepted, entire guilds or individual guild features being invisible to some members, and guild upgrades and ranks being un-editable by the guild masters and officers. Party features have had some issues too. The feature to join other players in your party wasn't working when people were on different overflow servers.

And of course there were hackers and phishing and all that good stuff. So I'm sure the GW2 employees kept Advil in business over the past couple weeks with all the headaches they've had to deal with.

Most features are fixed now and they're starting to patch some fixes to class abilities, quests, and little things.

They did a great job keeping people informed of issues and fixes via reddit, wiki and the official site. I haven't been too affected by the problems the past couple weeks and have been having an amazing time in game. I hope you all get to try GW2 soon.

My Review of Guild Wars 2

Greatest Game EVER!

that is all.

Final Countdown!

After 5 years of waiting it's almost here. I might pee myself in excitement when the servers go live. 24 hours to go, maybe less if they bring them up early like they warned they might. It's been a long 5 years and it seems like this last week has been moving in slow motion. I did everything I could think of to pass the time and prepare. I have a list of names I'm hoping I'll be able to at least grab a few of to save for my characters, I have my main's appearance settings jotted down, and I am working on my grocery list for the week and hope to get to the store early tomorrow so I'll have to leave my house as little as possible once the game is live.

Some things you may like to know about Headstart and Launch:

You can skip to the end of character creation and quickly save a name you like and then delete that character and that name will be saved to your account for 24 hours. This allows you to quickly save names you like and then go back and delete them and make them all pretty without having to worry about someone taking your name while you create the perfect looking character.

Your Hall of Monument items that you've earned from original Guild Wars will be available to all your characters on the account linked to your GW2 account. More info on linking your accounts http://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9028. You will receive a portal stone on your characters that will port you to Eye of the North where you can speak to an NPC who will let you claim any of your earned items on any of your characters you create on that account. Visit https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/news/claiming-your-hall-of-monuments-rewards/ for more info.

There are overflow servers in GW2. If you choose a highly populated server don't worry about having to sit in queue and not getting to play. If your server is full you will be sent to an overflow server until you reach the front of the queue where you will then be able to go back over to your server. Any progress you make while on the overflow server will move with you to your home server.

Don't forget to eat, drink more than energy drinks (water is helpful) and get some rest. I know saying "game safely" may be silly to some, but people have died playing games and neglecting the most important thing in life, their health. A lot of us have been waiting a LONG time for this game but it's not going anywhere. Being world first to lvl 80 isn't something to get sick over.

Have fun everyone. I'll see you in Tyria. If you'd like to join me I'll be on Jade Quarry server in my little guild Tyrian Artistry. http://tyrianartistry.shivtr.com/

Guild Wars 2 Guild

I decided to start a Guild Wars 2 branch of the guild I ran in Rift. Here's a little about the guild and where to sign up to join me.

[Tyrian Artistry] is a Guild Wars 2 guild on the Jade Quarry server. TA was started back during the headstart of Rift as Telaran Artistry. It was a very popular guild on the Faeblight server that ran roleplaying events like craft fairs and story telling nights. I left Rift about a year ago and so left TA, but after waiting 5 years for the release of GW2 I wanted to start TA up again and bring the artistry to Tyria. Tyrian Artistry will not necessarily be a role playing guild but after feeling out the community in GW2 we may hold similar events to the ones we held in Rift.
Ages 18+, adult language and topics may be used in guild chat.

This is a very casual guild and we have players of all styles. Some who log in for several hours every day and others who only log in for a few hours each week.

All play styles are welcome. This is a great guild for soloers who just want to take their time, quest, and discover all Tyria has to offer without pressure while meeting new friends.

We are a zero tolerance guild. This means be nice or you are no longer welcome. Derogatory statements towards another player, joking or serious, are not tolerated. We welcome all genders, races and sexual preferences and never discriminate and do not allow any of our guild members to be disrespected or disrespect each other.

I hope you will join our quest in making Tyria a more beautiful place to live, work, and kill bad guys. Please visit http://tyrianartistry.shivtr.com/ to join us.

Contemplating World of Warcraft: Looking For BFF

As much as I've been enjoying TERA I haven't made up my mind if I'm going to stick with it and subscribe after my 30 free days. I'm coming up on the 6 month mark of my break from World of Warcraft and at the 6 month mark I always get the urge to go back. I'm guessing Mists of Pandaria will come out by the end of September. Before the expansion there should be a world event with the destruction of Theramore which starts the all out war between the 2 factions. I definitely want to be back playing WoW by the time this event happens.

I am able to put in a LOT of hours of game time each week but it's while I work and I get interrupted a lot. This makes it hard for me to group unless I have a tight schedule where I know a couple days a week for a set couple of hours I'm raiding or grouping. I can schedule work stuff around that. But doing more than one raid or dungeon a day is pretty much out for me. I'm primarily a soloer. I love leveling characters and working on crafting and achievements.

MoP seems like it will have a lot for the casual player to do, so as a soloer I'm looking very forward to it. There will be pet battles and tons of new daily quests (possible lifting of the daily quest cap), a train your own mount task, and farming which seems like it will be similar to Free Realms farming.

I really want to go back to WoW and have fun again so I'm willing to start over from scratch. Over the years I've server transferred multiple characters (PvP server> a different PvP server> PvE server), faction transferred them all once (Horde>Alliance), and race changed at least 3 of them (pretty much made every one of my characters Worgen).  I've landed on the Alexstrasza PvE server on the Alliance side. I've been here for a couple years with a couple breaks of several months to play other games like Rift for 5 months and my most recent break of 6 months for EQ2 and TERA. I was in a small guild with real life friends who no longer play. We merged our small guild with another small guild of real life friends and all were happy. Unfortunately 99% of the guild hasn't logged in since December. All the other people I knew on my server have done the same.

So here is my "proposal"... I'm placing a sort of looking for guild ad but even more than that it's sort of a personals ad. It will sound cheesy saying "Looking for friends to play WoW with" but that's exactly what I'm doing. I've decided rather then logging on my old server with the same old people and trying to make friends in game I would rather try to make friends out of game and I will go to them. I am willing to start over on a new server. I have no preference of faction or server type though I would probably prefer a PvE server since I'm fail at PvP but I did play on a PvP server for the first year and 1/2 of my wow "career" so I can probably deal with that again.

If you are a current active WoW player who will definitely be playing up to and during MoP and would like to be my new WoW BFF please let me know. Initially I'd make a new character on your server to make sure that all is good but then closer to MoP I would be willing to server and/or faction transfer some of my characters over to the server. If you are able to play a lot and are in a casual guild those are definitely bonuses. I think starting from scratch might give me that little jump start I need to love the game again. Please contact me by leaving a comment here or by messaging me on Twitter @Girlygamersite. Thanks!

My Tumblr

I decided to start up a Tumblr for TERA screenshots. The link is HERE. Feel free to follow me there. While I'm leveling up and learning the game I may not be posting very often to this blog so make sure you follow me on Twitter @Girlygamersite.

Level 30 and Counting

I've been playing TERA pretty much non-stop since Headstart began. It's a blast. The world is beautiful. My character is adorable. There's tons of quests. You get a new spell almost every 2 levels so you're constantly working in new abilities and figuring out what you like best. I wanted to share some new screenies of my little Twinklin. I'm loving Sorcerer but can't wait to get to 60 and start a brand new character.

TERA First Impressions

It took me a while to convince myself to participate in the TERA open beta this weekend. There was so much drama from the beginning about the ex NC Soft employees stealing trade secrets or whatever. I decided to put all that aside and try out the game. I've spent the majority of the past 2 days running around exploring, trying out classes, and crafting. For the most part I like the game, in fact I like it a lot. I'll do a rundown of my current pros and cons. Keep in mind I have only played a couple days and it is still in beta so there are things I may not have figured out and I have only explored a small percentage of the content the game offers.

Character creation is nice. I enjoy the races though I am sad that some of the races only have male OR female and not both. I love the Elin race even though a lot of people have been discussing how they are borderline creepy. I adore them. They remind me a little of Tarutaru from Final Fantasy though I've never played a FF game. There is only a female version of Elin and they look very much like children with big anime eyes and you get to choose a style of animal ears and tail for them. The reason there is discussion on them being creepy is that they have thick curvy woman type legs and wear very short dresses and high heels. I can see where looking at it from a certain perspective they can be a little creepy but I see them as super cute. The character feature choices are pretty good. It's no where near as detailed as Aion but there's enough variety in hairstyles and facial feature adjustments that everyone won't run around looking like carbon copies.

The prologue to the game is very cool. When you start a new character you begin questing as a level 20 version of the class you chose. You are given a handful of spells and are set out to kill some monsters with a group of NPCs. The reason I like this is because normally in order to get a glimpse at a class you need to level to 20 just to get enough spells to see what you can do. This prologue allows you to play around with the lvl 20 spells and see if you are interested in continuing. When you finish the prologue you are dumped in a newbie land just like every other game and you begin from level 1 with minimal spells. From what I saw once you have completed the prologue on a character any other characters you create on that server get the option to skip the prologue.

Movement and targeting are interesting to get used to. I don't even know how to even describe it but movement is similar to DC Universe Online and combat is sort of like a 3rd person shooter with crosshairs to target mobs. You still get hotbars for spells but like in DCUO you don't have the ability to click with your mouse in normal gameplay mode. You do get a mouse cursor when you are in UI mode like when you open your bags or any other menu. It took me a bit of practice until I was comfortable with it but I'm already a pro. It's a new play style for me and I'm loving it. After 8 years of tab targeting and spamming hotkeys it's refreshing to say the least.

Armor is awesome. It's a sort of cross between Rift and Aion styles. Armor seems to vary in appearance depending on what race you are. The little Elin girls wouldn't be caught dead in some of the skimpy stuff the other female races wear. When I say skimpy I am NOT joking. I am all for sexy armor but some of these get ups might take it a little too far. The game IS rated M for mature.

You get a quest for a free mount at level 11. I LOVE that. From what I can see the world is HUGE and not having a mount from early on would take it's toll for sure. A feature I like about the mounts is that the "grown up lady races" (not the Elin) ride side saddle. One thing I dislike about mounts is that you need to dismount before you can enter combat or gather. Setting your mount to a hotkey makes this faster but it's still kinda annoying.

I spent a little bit of time crafting. It's a very simple minimal combine system and seems to go pretty quickly. I wish it was more detailed personally but it has it's nice features like that fact that you can choose to level up every craft if you want to and are not forced to specialize like most other games. I won't go into too much detail but the enchanting system is fun too. Many items you craft have special bonuses, in order to activate these bonuses you need to enchant the item. The more you enchant the item the higher the base stats go and you unlock the special bonuses.

When you kill a monster if it has loot for you it drops it on the ground. If the loot is coin it's a little pile of coins, if it's a potion it drops a little bottle, they also drop scrolls and little boxes for armor and weapons. It's a nice feature to see actual loot on the ground and not just a sparkling corpse. It's been a while but I believe Guild Wars is similar and actually went as far as to drop the actual weapons on the ground. I like little things like that.

There are PvP and PvE servers which I am very grateful for. Playing Aion I get frustrated because there's only PvP servers. I dislike PvP but I read up on it a little and found out that since there is no factions in the game (Horde/Alliance Good/Evil) the world PvP on the PvP servers is free for all.

One thing I am iffy about is the political system in the game. From what I've read and watched in videos there will be a sort of ruler of the world who is a player. In order to become this ruler you need to be a guild leader and have a guild who is willing to help you along the way. You can choose to fight your way to the top through arena type battles or by asking people to vote for you. The ruler person will get to change things like available merchants and portals and I think even taxes. The journey to the top won't be for everyone but this popularity contest doesn't seem like a very good idea to me. We'll see after release if it effects the general public of the game very much or if you can pretty much ignore the whole process and the "leader".

There's a lot of other little things that please me about the game and because of my participation in this beta I think I'll be jumping on the TERA bandwagon on May 1st or sooner if I preorder. I'm not sure why some game reviewers have such bad opinions of the game but I really enjoy it and my opinion is to try it for yourself. Even if you have to wait for a recruit a friend trial or whatever En Masse will offer to recruit new people after release. Don't let the negative people make up your mind for you. I almost did and I would have missed out on all the fun I've been having.

EQ2 Chronoportal Event, Moonlight Enchantments, and more

There's a few things going on in Everquest 2 this week. One is the annual Chronoportal Event which starts today and runs until the 28th. This event comes around during original Everquest's birthday. EQ is celebrating 13 years this year. During the event you can hop through portals in 8 different zones which take you to an instance that might bring back some memories of your EQ days. The instances are intended for groups but as an Illusionist I found all but the Lavastorm portals soloable when using a tank mercenary like the Shadowknight. Each instance is a different level and you are automatically mentored down to an appropriate level. You will not however have your level raised should you want to do an instance much higher than your actual adventure level. The instances have an 18 hour lock out after you kill a named. The final boss of each will drop a chest containing 2 platinum coins, an adornment and some gear that is appropriate to the level of the instance. From what I can tell all items are tradeable or heirloom so you can give the items from the lower level instances to your alts. You can spend the platinum coins at merchants in Antonica and Commonlands. They sell replicas of the bosses for your home, books, paintings and a harp. HERE is all the details over at ZAM.

Also today and tomorrow is Moonlight Enchantments. This is the monthly event where mushroom rings pop up in certain zones and you complete quests for tokens to buy house and vanity items. HERE's the post I have written about them in the past.

There will be a new backpack on the Marketplace soon. The devs couldn't keep the news to themselves so they gave us a preview. The backpack called the Heraldry Flag Backpack holds a flag which will display your guild's logo on it. No word on the price yet.

I also missed posting about the latest Marketplace items so here they are...

Shadowforged Cinder Gi- 1200SC

Guilded Vanity Set- 400SC

Dragon Fang- 500SC

WoW Mists of Pandaria News.

There was a World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria press event and the Non disclosure agreement was lifted so we were flooded with news about MoP this morning. We had already heard about some features of the expansion like the pokemon style vanity pet fighting ring and scenarios.

One major point was that MoP is being set up to be the new vanilla WoW. If you're not familiar with the term, vanilla refers to the basic World of Warcraft game pre expansions. During this time there was no major bad guys that gave a goal to the overall game. You didn't know what was going to happen. In the last 3 expansions you pretty much knew what you were in for. There was a goal, Kill Kil'Jaeden, Kill Arthas, Kill Deathwing. Blizzard is making MoP like vanilla, there is no announced final encounter. This allows them to drop whatever they want on us at any time. There will just be general badness in the world that we have to fight until they say "time to kill a BIG baddie". I didn't have a chance to play vanilla WoW in it's most vanilla form. I wasn't introduced to the game until Burning Crusade had just come out so this will be an interesting change to the game for me and may even get me interested in raiding again.

Another thing being talked about today across the interwebs is that they once again have left the old character models...old. We didn't get upgraded character models for the original races like many of us hoped for. Kind of on this topic is reveal of the female Pandaren. She's super cute.

Some other things announced were changes to reputation grinding. From what it seems like you'll no longer be able to throw on a tabard and grind dungeons until you have the rep level you want. You will have to gain the trust of the factions in Pandaria. You'll probably have to grind out quests for them to prove yourself worthy. With this comes a new way to obtain a mount from the Pandaren factions. They will have serpent mounts you can purchase with a certain amount of faction. You will purchase an egg and have to do a series of daily quests revolved around your egg and it's hatchling until it grows into a mount. Starting as a baby which becomes a pet that will fight beside you and then into a ground mount (If you're familar with Everquest 2 think of the griffon quest line in Velious where you have to take your griffon to do certain dailies until it's grown.) To get your Pandaria serpent to fly you need to then obtain more faction. They also announced Challenge modes to dungeons in Pandaria. Similar to the old Zul'Aman timed run for the bear mount. As you run dungeons you will receive medals of bronze, silver or gold depending on how fast you complete the zone. You can receive achievement titles by obtaining medals. There's a ton of other news being thrown around so please go ahead and visit some of my favorite sites so I don't have to retype all of it.

• GamebreakerTV
• MMORPG.com 
• MMO-Champion.com
• WoWhead
• PC Gamer
• WoW Insider

Everquest goes Free to Play Today

About 6 years ago I did that Coke rewards points thing. I turned in my bottle caps all the time and eventually had enough points to get something cool. I decided to get an Everquest game. They had both original EQ and EQ2. I asked a friend for their opinion and they said since EQ2 was newer it had better graphics etc. so I should go with that. Because of this decision to skip the original and go right to the sequel I have no freakin' clue what is going on in EQ2. For 6 years I've done my best to enjoy the game ignoring lore for the most part. But today original EQ went F2P. I now have a chance to play the original game and maybe understand what the heck is going on in the world around me when I hop back over to EQ2. I have been playing Aion and just got Minecraft so not sure when I'll do it, but it's nice to know the option to play for free is there. http://www.everquest.com/free

Aion NA F2P and 3.0 April 11th

Aion's North American Free to Play model will launch on April 11th along with the release of Game Update 3.0. The game update will increase level cap, introduce mounts and player housing along with a ton of other stuff.

The F2P model for North America will be different than the current Euro F2P model. Instead of having different tiers of subscription level the game introduces C.U.B.E. Customizable User Bundling Experience. You will be able to purchase a C.U.B.E. from the Aion store. You fill your C.U.B.E. with the game features YOU want. You want more goodies? You buy a bigger more expensive C.U.B.E.. As of now I haven't found a list of the features that will be accessed through C.U.B.E. but I'll post more info when I do. C.U.B.E.s will be on the Aion store April 4th and available for use on the 11th. Purchasing a C.U.B.E. will get you bonus items as well, you get bigger and better bonuses with bigger cubes. I was personally hoping for the Euro Free to Play model. Hopefully we aren't forced to purchase too many features in this NA model like character slots or bag space.


Also announced is a new Atreian Atlas system. A sort of guide that will help you through the game. It will offer a customized gaming plan for your play style. It will offer maps, video guides, and extended quest information like difficulty. I'm really curious and excited to see how this works. Hopefully I can tell mine to avoid all group instances and PvP. *snicker*


You can read the full Massively article detailing these new features HERE. 

EQ2 Game Update 63 Skyshrine. New Level cap and content. April 17th

A lot of people were upset when they found out the latest Everquest 2 expansion, Age of Discovery had no new content. It implemented a lot of new features instead. The folks over at SOE explained that it was because new instances, zones and other playable content were now going to be added in game updates instead. So with the expansion came mercenaries, design your own dungeon, beastlords, and tradeskill apprentices and coming April 17th the next major game update will add all the content people have been waiting for.

If you have Destiny of Velious you will get...

• a new level cap of 92 (up from 90). 
• A new zone with over 100 quests. 
• Multi mode instances, so now if you can't find a group, heck, do the solo version. 
• Heroic group and raid instances. 
• Prestige class talents and all new tradeskill quests. 
• New drake mount

If you have the Age of Discovery expansion you will get...

• a new dungeon map and items with a Poet's Palace theme. 
• New dungeon maker adventurers. 
• Tradeskill apprentices with new recipes including one ELITE recipe. 
• Elite Mercenary
• New warders for beastlords to tame.

Here's the whole scoop on Everquest2.com

Guild Wars 2 Pre Order Announced. SWTOR Free Trial Weekend.

Guild Wars 2 has announced that Pre-Orders will begin on April 10th. The standard game is $60, Delux Digital is $80, and Collectors is $150. All pre-orders will get access to the weekend beta events and a 3 day headstart. You can see all the other goodies that come with the pre-order packages HERE.

In other news Bioware is offering a free trial weekend for Star Wars: The Old Republic. The trial weekend begins Thursday, March 15th at 11am PST and ends Monday, March 19th at 1am PST. It does not apply to players who have a previously active account. The new players who sign up for this free weekend will have access to all 8 classes, the starting zones, the capital cities and PvP warzones and Flashpoints (instanced dungeons). Find out more info HERE.

World of Warcraft news. New resurrection scroll and Padaren female reveal date.

The moment I've been waiting for in Mists of Pandaria news is almost here. The reveal of the Pandaren female model is coming on March 19th. WoW posted a little teaser on their facebook page.

Also there is a new Scroll of Resurrection available. This one gives a flying mount to the person issuing the scroll if the friend you send it to resubscribes. Just for sending the scroll to a friend they will get 7 free days of play time, a free character transfer to the recruiters server, and an upgrade to cataclysm for free. For a limited time they also get the ability to jump a character straight to level 80. Here's all the details.

Rift offers FREE reactivation until March 14th

I haven't played Rift in some time but today I saw a Twitter post from them announcing that if you own the game you can play it for free from March 8th-14th. There seems to be some sort of in game carnival going on as well so it might be fun to pop in and see what's changed. I do have a lot going on in other games though so I might not make it back for this reactivation event. But if you are interested HERE's the link for more information.

EQ2 players pull together to cheer a terminally ill child.

A few days ago an Everquest 2 player posted on the Decorators forum on the EQ2 website, the Norrathian Homeshow, asking for some help. Here is her post...

This is a depressing post but I need some help.  My 6 yr old son has cancer and was recently given 6 - 12 weeks to live.

He has a frog that he likes to run around Tenebrous Tangle Island on; however, it is sparse and he has requested to add trees, fences, stairs, animals and all kinds of  other  items to make his  island fun and exciting.

Are there any decorators out there that would be willing to assist in adding these items (and any others their imagination poses) to help me make the island even more fun for him.  I don't know how much I'll be able to accomplish on my own while still providing him quality time to enjoy it.

The boy's in game name is Ribbitribbitt.

This post was not only read by people on her home server of Guk but also by players of other servers who wanted to help. Many of the Guk players donated items and their time. Players from other servers copied layout files of fun items they had built in their homes and made temporary characters on the Guk server to load those layouts onto the island home that belongs to the young boy. Within two days a whole playground has been erected complete with a tree house, carousel, games, forts, aquarium, rollercoaster and more.

Not only did tons of crafters and decorators help but Adventurers came to help as well. A guild was created for the boy and since yesterday Players of all types have been raiding, grinding writs and whatever else they can do to gain status to help level up the guild in hopes that on Saturday they'll have a Tier 3 guild hall to give to him.

On Saturday the guild hall as well as the island will be presented to him by his parents. They have promised to take pictures and video of his reaction to his incredible play island. At 4pm EST/1pm PST an event will be held on Ribbitribbitt's Tenebrous Island home. There will be donations and duel bets taken to help buy even more stuff for the island and guild hall.

I was happy to put in a few hours today building a rollercoaster on the island and I hope to make the event on Saturday. Please come out and show your support for Ribbitribbitt and his family. HERE is more info on Saturdays event.  If you'd like to read and/or get involved in the decorating aspect of the event please read  THIS thread to find out what's been going on and what items are still needed.

EQ2 Brewday starts today and Newest Marketplace Items include a new fish!

The Neriak City Festival ended yesterday in EQ2 and you'll have to wait 6 months for it to come back. Next month is Qeynos. If you weren't able to get your hands on enough of the blue marble building blocks during the festival and don't want to dish out the plat to buy them off the broker from people who put them up for sale, they have been added to the Station Cash Marketplace. Price is 50SC per item or you can purchase a set of 10 tiles or the set pictured below for 250SC.

Here's the other 2 items added yesterday to the Marketplace. One is a new fish. If you're a decorator like me fish are treasured items. Most of the ones in game are no-trade or can only be obtained one per character so building multiple fish tanks can become difficult unless you have a lot of alts to run the quests for more fish.

Luxurious Fur Cloak- 800SC

Piranah Plushie- 200SC

Also Brewday starts today. It's the celebration of the diety Brell. It's kind of like a St. Patrick's Day or Oktoberfest type event and of course is a favorite of dwarves. If there's ale, they will come. Here's the write ups on the event from 2 of our favorite sites, ZAM and EQ2traders. Although it's called Brew-DAY it does run from the 8th to the 19th of March. Hic!

Aion 3.0 Crafting changes.

According to Massively there's some nice changes coming to crafting in Aion in 3.0 which is said to come out this spring along with the Free to Play conversion. Among the changes are the ability to spend a little kinah and end your current crafting mastery so you can pick up a different one. Also furniture recipes will be added to the game for the new player housing being added in the game update. Here's the whole story.

March Game Changes in EQ2

There's a few changes being added to EQ2. The much talked about removal of critical mitigation will be implemented. This will not effect PvP crit mit. Here's a forum conversation all about that.

Another change is to mob pathing code. Pathing is the path mobs and pets take when they walk.

There will be an addition to the Destiny of Velious signature quest line as well.

A MAJOR change for those who are dungeon grinders is that DoV dungeon timers will be reduced significantly from 18 hours to only 90 minutes.

Several of these changes are still on the Test server but hopefully they all make it in this month. A recent letter from the game's new producer said they're also working on that pesky bug that has been turning quest feathers and other items into white wisps.

There's also several in game events and holidays coming in March but I'll talk about them when they get closer.

Neriak City Festival this week in EQ2

The Neriak City Festival started at midnight and will continue until the 7th. There are some new items at the city fest this time around. Just like last month's Kelethin festival different shaped blocks and dividers have been added to match the Neriak blue marble theme. Along with the blocks there is also a new Neriak roof tile. The festival items are purchased with city tokens which can be earned in many ways. One way is available at any time by doing crafting or adventuring writs. A faster way is to wait until the festival comes around and pick up one of the repeatable quests at the festival. I find doing the crafting quest is the fastest way as I can place a portable stove and keg right at the quest giver. A final way to earn tokens is by doing the aether race. Doing these races in a certain amount of time will also give you a title. Each city has a different one. Here are some helpful links about City Festivals. Have fun.

• General City Festival Info
• Aether Race Info
• City Fest Items
• Neriak Specific Items (newest items not shown)

A Goodbye to Domino

Many players have met a wonderful lady named Emily or "Domino" as she is known to most in EQ2. Some have become very close to her over the years. I personally have only known her through forum posts, twitter updates and SOE videocasts, but I know of the wonderful work she's done.

Many years ago in EQ2 raiding was king. If you had an issue regarding house decorating or tradeskilling it was hard to get things changed and improvements made. Then along came Domino. When she became tradeskill developer, Norrath started to change for the better. She added tons of quests for tradeskillers so we no longer had to stand in front of a stove or loom from 1-90 we could now travel the world and explore like adventurers and it made the tradeskill grind a lot more tolerable. She also helped add more housing items and improve on the ones we had. From what I've heard she had a love of decorating so it was only natural she helped improve that aspect of game by getting us new and exciting items to work with like tiles and tons of other new furniture.

All her amazing work as tradeskill dev paid off as she was eventually promoted to a producer's position. As associate producer she continued to help EQ2 improve on an even larger scale.

This morning I was shocked to see facebook and twitter posts announcing that she has left the EQ2 team. It's a very sad day. As far as I know there's no official word on if she left SOE altogether but because of that I fear the worst. Hopefully we haven't seen the last of Domino.

Domino, Thanks for everything you've done in making Norrath a better place. We love you even if we might not have known you.
-Twinklin

PUG TV features one of my homes... Little Dahling's Carnival

PUG TV features a different Free to play game each night of the week Mon-Fri. Thursdays are EQ2 night. During their online show they tour player decorated homes and player created dungeons. They also have been offering challenges where they give a theme and restrictions to 2 decorators who then go head to head and do their best to complete the task. Players can then vote on which home they think best filled the requirements of the challenge.

Jaedrian does a great job narrating the tours with a little background help from his wife. They used to cram several things into each episode like a dungeon run and a house tour for example. They recently started splitting their episodes up to feature individual homes and dungeons. I saw Jaedrian post on the Homeshow forum not too long ago that he was looking for homes to tour. When I contacted him he informed me that they had been through my botanical garden home on a previous episode. You can see that tour HERE. The garden tour is towards the end of the video around the 1:10:00 mark. I invited them to tour any of my other homes if they wanted to and they chose to do a run through the carnival. You can watch the recorded video HERE. 

Thanks to PUG TV for taking the time to make these videos. They've been very enjoyable to watch. Follow Jaedrian on Twitter @Jaedrian01 or visit their website http://jaedrian.enjin.com/ and TwitchTV channel. 

EQ2 New Marketplace Items- tiara, Heartsfire, and faedrake petamorph wand.

Tiara of the Depths- 500SC

Heartsfire- 400SC

Everlasting Petamorph Wand: Faedrake- 100SC

(turns your combat pet into a faedrake for 2 hours or untl it's killed, wand has unlimited uses)

Also a new 100% XP bonus potion was added for 1800SC, the Extended Potion of the Advanced. It is one use, lasts four hours and grants the bonus to adventure, AA and tradeskill XP. 

Aion NA going F2P as well as 3.0 News!!

Aion Europe switched over to the F2P model not too long ago which left some North American players wondering if we'd be so lucky. Well the announcement has been made and coming with the release of 3.0 is the implementation of a F2P model for the NA servers. Here's the Linky Link to the F2P info website. Here also is the letter from NCSoft making the announcement that this spring we will not only be level 60, decorating player housing and running around on mounts but it will be FREE...

Aion: Ascension Debuts with Innovative Truly Free Business Model and Epic 3.0 Content Update
North American Players to Experience Full Game Features and 3.0 Content Free of Charge this Spring

Seattle, WA – February 21, 2012 – NCsoft®, the world's premier publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), today announces Aion: Ascension, the Truly Free evolution of Aion, the award–winning fantasy MMO that rivals other MMOs with its stunning graphics, fierce PvP and customization. Aion: Ascension brings players unrestricted access to a world filled with deep lore, exploration and epic faction battles free of charge. Coupled with the change in business model coming this Spring, players will experience everything in the highly anticipated 3.0 content update, including housing, mounts, increased level cap (60), new zones and instances.

Aion: Ascension's Truly Free business model gives players access to the entire game, including the two major expansions, 3,000+ quests, 30+ instances, 18 zones, three instanced PvP games, pets, classes and key social features like the auction house, chat, trade, crafting, gathering and forums. And with new content from the 3.0 update, which provide several new gameplay systems that Aion fans have been asking for, Aion: Ascension will be one of the most compelling MMOs on the market.

Players experiencing the world of Atreia for the first time will be welcomed into the game with a refined starting area with ample content engaging players from the beginning of their journey with guides designed to assist their current efforts and advise them on where to go next. Returning and current players will not only be able to jump back into the game for free, but will find the new content coming in Aion 3.0 a great addition to the already strong offering.

For players wanting a head start, NCsoft is hosting a "Rallying the Troops" event which will give new players an extended no time limit trial with an increased level cap to 40, whilst returning veterans will have their accounts reactivated free for 14 days. In addition, everyone will enjoy permanent increased XP as well as other boosts to help level and gear up to experience the new content faster.

A sample of features coming in the Aion 3.0 content update include:
Housing System – Everyone gets a home. Decorate and party in your new home.
Mount System – A new gameplay system which lets Daevas speed around the world of Atreia in style.
New Instances – Six new instances including a challenging 24-player raid.
New Zones – Two stunning new zones in the Balaur homeland.
New Level Cap – Five new levels bringing the max level to 60.

In addition to the new business model and Aion 3.0 content, NCsoft will implement new RMT countermeasures to ensure a safe and secure gaming experience for all of its players. These highly effective, proprietary methods will specifically target fraudulent transactions, bots and spammers and the confiscation of goods that have been acquired through RMT activities so that players can experience a no hassle/no harassment MMO experience.

Aion: Ascension with the innovative and improved Truly Free business model along with the 3.0 content update is scheduled to launch this Spring. More information can be found at na.aiononline.com.

Moonlight Enchantments 20th-21st

Erollisi Day celebrations are ending tonight but there's always something to do in EQ2 even though I'm a bit late in posting this since it already started, you still have another day left to get your Moonlighting on. If you're unfamiliar with Moonlight Enchantments here are more of those nifty guides on ZAM and EQ2traders.

The event occurs on the 20th and 21st of every month. During these 2 days in Antonica, Darklight Wood, Enchanted Lands, Nektulos Forest and Greater Faydark (exact locations can be found on the guide links) rings of tiny mushrooms spawn. Each ring can be clicked on which zones you into a small solo instance. Each zone's instance is different. There are 1-2 quests in each instance. One of the quests in the Darklight Wood instance requires you to have an artisan level of 2 and asks you to create rootbeer using supplies found in the instance. This quest is repeatable which comes in handy because each quest rewards a token. The tokens can be used to purchase items from merchants in each instance. You can grind out as many tokens as you wish to purchase items from the merchants until your time runs out on the 21st. Most of the items are nature themed house items like trees, grass tiles, flowers and animal plushies though there are a few appearance gear and mount items as well. Each instance also has 1 purple shiny located in it. Only one purple shiny will spawn per instance for each character that month. You can alt hop and get the purple shiny from each instance on all of your characters and hope to complete some of the collections but unless you have a TON of alts and a TON of time it might take the event coming around next month to complete them.

Well that's all I have to say about that.

Double XP, Marketplace Sale, and only a few more days of Erollisi

This weekend has plenty to do in EQ2. If you haven't finished up getting your Erollisi titles, stocking up on candy and love notes for crafting those E-day recipes year round or any other lovey type stuff you wanted to complete you only have a few more days. Erollisi Day celebrations are scheduled to end midnight on the 20th. I know I didn't make an official Erollisi Day blog post so if you want to see all that you can do and get your hands on during this holiday event, head on over to ZAM or EQ2Traders for the always awesome write ups.

Also this weekend will be a President's Day Double XP (17th-20th) and Station Marketplace rebate sale (18th only). The sale will work a bit differently than most SC sales. Instead of items being marked a % off you will purchase items at full price and receive 50+% SC back after you make the purchase. So if I understand the concept correctly, if a 1000SC item has a 60% rebate making the item 400SC and you only have 400SC in your account you will not be able to purchase it. You will have to buy more SC to purchase the item at 1000SC and then get your 600SC back.

So enjoy the weekend in and out of MMOland.

EQ2 New Marketplace Items- High Elf Heritage Armor, Pretty Mirror and an Epee

3 new items on the EQ2 marketplace today.

High Elf Heritage Armor- 1750 SC

Vengeance (epee style sword)- 400 SC

Mahogany Vanity Set- 400 SC

SOGA vs. Original Models in EQ2

Most of the images from EQ2 I post are from the Everquest2 website and are taken using original character models. For those unfamiliar with EQ2's character model choices there are actually 2 different styles of most of the races. There is the original models and the SOGA models which were implemented in like 2006. I believe default character creation is now set to the newer SOGA models which upset some players because a lot of people still prefer the original models and it seems the EQ2 team does as well since they use original models in most of their promotional images and videos. Here's example images of my paladin, Valouria in SOGA and original models.

SOGA Model

Original Model

When you create a character for the first time you will most likely be making it in SOGA models. You can then camp back to the character select screen and select your character and on the bottom right of the screen you will see a button to customize your alternate appearance.

The two model types are available on the more humanoid races and you can switch between them as you wish. Switching between them only effects how YOU see your character. You can also decide which model type to view others as. For example you can have Female High-Elves set to Original models and Male High-Elves set to SOGA models. You will then view any player who has a High elf character in those specific model types. If you play a High Elf Female other players will view you as what they have chosen to view for that specific race. To select how you view each race you go to the EQ2 menu in game and select Alternate Models. You can then check and uncheck the boxes. Checked means SOGA model, unchecked will view the original model.

Some players are very finicky about how their characters are viewed. For roleplaying purposes I will sometimes put a note in my character's bio stating how I wish my character to be viewed or letting players know how I am viewing them. Hair styles and even things like glasses, hats, etc can change depending on the customization options in the 2 different character creations.

I am mixed and matched depending on the races. High elves I'm all SOGA, half-elves I prefer original models for females and SOGA for males, gnomes I prefer original models, same for dwarves. Barbarians I prefer SOGA for both, humans as well. Halflings I like SOGA for males but the females is a tossup. I like both female Halfling models but currently have them set to SOGA. Ogres I like original, Erudites are SOGA, Wood elves and Dark elves are also SOGA. I believe all the rest only have one type of model.

So what do you think about the two different models?

EQ2 New Marketplace Items- Misty Unicorn, Emerald Lichslayer sword and another home weapon display crate.

3 New Marketplace items came out today. Here they are...

Misty Unicorn- 1950 SC

Emerald Lichslayer- 500 SC

Stormcatcher's Weapon Home Display Crate- 100 SC

For more info on all 3 hop on over to the Everquest2 site.

EQ2 New Marketplace Items- new house, new plushie, display weapon crate

As I mentioned last night EQ2 had announced a few days ago the future addition of a stormy isle home. Well today is the day. It is now available on live servers for 1350 SC.

Also added today:

Loyal Wolf Pup Plushie- 300 SC

Earth Runed Weapon Home Display Crate- 100 SC

Too much to say...

I've been soooo busy recently. I totally let the blog die. Sorry about that. I hope to get back to daily posts now. I had a really busy holiday and hope you all had a safe and wonderful one. I also celebrated my birthday  during my break as well.

Ok now the important stuff. Games. I got a Kinect for the xbox 360 for X-mas. It's so much fun. I had played it in the past with my brother and friends and have wanted one of my own. Currently I'm using it for Zumba. Gotta get off my gaming chair once in a while and burn some calories. I also got SWTOR for my birthday.

I started playing SWTOR PvE on Republic side as a jedi consular but then found out I have some friends on a PvP server Empire side so I rerolled as a healy Bounty Hunter. She's only in the high teens as I've been busy in EQ2 this week.

EQ2 has added and announced for the near future lots of vanity and house type stuff that is or will be in the marketplace and also some that will be added to crafters' books. There were some more building block sets added to the marketplace and in the uproar from the Norratian homeshow patrons about their addition to game Domino (EQ2 producer) informed us that carpenters will be getting recipes for block sets that match many of the current tile and dividers. When? Dunno.

On the EQ2 Station Cash Marketplace wings were added, ones that actually fly this time. You can use them as an appearance to any ground or flying mount but only at 85 can you use them to fly. There are bat like wings and angel wings. I personally got myself a set of angel wings to put on my newly created high elf paladin. I also got her some white plate armor and a pretty sword so I could RP her as a valkyrie. She looks supah sweet. Here's a video posted by EQ2 of the new wings.

Also announced by Domino were 2 upcoming prestige houses to be added to the marketplace. HERE's the article. One home is a 2 room sanctum based off of Sullon Zek's Spire. The other is another empty island, this time with a stormy atmosphere and surrounded by a dark ocean. I took a tour of both and prefer the new island to the sanctum. You can swim out into the ocean but the water is fairly shallow the entire way and you eventually hit an invisible wall.

OK. That's it for now. I will update with more news, changes and upcoming events in the next week.