I got a 2 month game card to WoW and the Pandaria expansion for my birthday. I was super excited and headed back to WoW after having spent the last couple months working on my new house and doing other real life stuff as well as playing Everquest2 here and there. I was having a lot of fun with the new content. Pet battles are a huge time sink but for a vanity pet collector like myself it's a fun way to waste time. Then began the Cogentco packet loss issue that causes extreme latency issues for a lot of players. I'm one of the lucky people who has Cox internet and is affected by this so my play time in WoW dropped little by little until I stopped playing altogether.
I headed back to Guild Wars 2 this week. They added a new currency called laurels. You earn them by completing your daily and monthly achievements. The laurels are account bound and can be spent on any of your characters. Unfortunately the achievements to earn them are also account wide so once you've completed your daily on one character you're done for the day. I really wish they would change this as I would like to be able to complete the daily on all of my alts if I choose to. They also added new instances that scale in difficulty called fractals. I'm not a dungeon goer so I was disappointed to see that fractals are a requirement for the monthly. The daily changes it's requirement every day so hopefully monthlies will as well and there will be a month where fractals aren't required for completion. Dailies give you 1 laurel while monthlies give 5. The laurels can be used to by high end gear including ascended gear.
All in all I'm enjoying GW2 again for the moment. Who knows where I'll hop to next.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Monday, September 10, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Friday, August 24, 2012
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/
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/
Monday, August 20, 2012
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.
[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.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
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!
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!
Monday, May 7, 2012
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.
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