It’s working! They got me!
A couple of weeks ago, on a Thursday afternoon, while working at the office I had received a new email notification. Taking a short break from my task, I opened the unread message. This is what it stated:
This is not the first time that CCP tried to lure me back and bring an old pilot out of retirement. With each dangling carrot I would ignore their messages. This time, CCP’s offer was different. What piqued my interest was three full months for $24.95. That offer got my notice and I pondered whether I would accept their proposition.
As day turned to night, I was still on the fence on whether I’d reactivate an old account. The thing is, Anjo Ryker is one of my oldest accounts in the EVE universe. He was created back in 2006. While not my oldest character, Anjo is the oldest that’s associated with an email address that I actively monitor today. My history in the EVE universe actually goes back to 2004. Back then I’d play it in brief periods and walk away, perplexed as to what I had accomplished during my short stay. The universe of New Eden is immense, daunting and in some cases quite unfriendly. The depth of what one can do is extraordinary. The skill leveling system is, in my humble opinion, the best around. EVE is a game that rewards patience.
So, why shouldn’t I accept CCP’s offer to activate an old subscription. The thing is, following the lack of success that I had experienced with Anjo, that I can attribute to my ignorance of playing the game. He was left parked in a star base a ways into null sec. As an example of why I viewed Anjo as a failure was my poor choices in his skill leveling as well as the ship that I had him piloting. What that ship was I couldn’t recall, except that I remembered an ill fitted Thorax armed with lasers. That’s how much I sucked, you don’t arm that cruiser class ship with lasers. So I abandoned Anjo Ryker.
Although I had cancelled my subscription and left EVE, I can emphatically state that it’s a game that’ll forever be under my skin. On an annual basis I renew my subscription on the character that I view as my main, who at this time has over 29 million skill points. Last year I took advantage of CCP’s offer of The Power of Two, where you can create a second account for six months at a discount. So going into this past March I was playing two characters simultaneously and not even considering a third. Playing those two together only lasted through a seven month period after which I cancelled both subs. Recently I’ve re-subbed my main with the goal of getting all of his certificates to elite status. Currently he’s parked in high sec and I log in weekly to queue the next week-long training session for him to meet that goal.
So, the day after I had gotten CCP’s offer to bring back Anjo Ryker was on a Friday. That evening, after a date with my wife and spending time at home with her, she called it an early night and went to bed. I stayed up, logged onto my computer, wondering which game I should play. It was going to be either Guild Wars 2, or The Secret World. On the release of The Secret World I had gotten a lifetime sub, so had no pressure to play either game. The offer to bring back Anjo won out. So I reactivated his subscription.
Besides a monetary incentive the decision to do resub was for a few other reasons. Since CCP had revamped the new player tutorial I was curious to see what that was going to be like. I also wanted to rectify a wrong by giving Anjo a reboot on his progression. Once the account was reactivated, I logged on with a bit of excitement. It was like running into an old friend. Being the first character that galvanized my interest in EVE, I looked forward to see how Anjo had aged. This was done by the initial creation of his portrait as I slowly teased out the fine lines of age on an old warrior. Someone who has seen battles that he’d rather forget. Perhaps even losing a son too soon as they were both in a battle against pirates, and Anjo watched helplessly as his sons incursus exploded before him. What came from that mindset was a pilot that looked resolute and stoic, with a few battle scars to remind you that he’s a veteran. So, here I present you with Anjo Ryker, reborn.
Upon logging in with Anjo I found him still in the null sec star base. He wasn’t in a thorax though. I can’t recall which ship it was but I didn’t care as I had intended to sell it. After exiting the ship and repackaging it as well as the fitted modules I then sold what I can while trashing the rest. Once done I did a clone jump out to high sec and then destroyed the clone that was left behind. That final act severed Anjo’s ties to null sec as I looked to move him forward with no connections to his past. After purchasing a shuttle for quick transport, I then piloted Anjo to the new player tutorial agent.
In a nutshell, the new player experience is not bad. My only critique is that the tutorial instruction windows should be scripted to update automatically as you accomplish each step. Once completed I then moved Anjo to the career tutorial agents. So far he’s completed the business, industry and exploration. I’m nearly done with the military agent missions and will finish them all by going through the advanced military missions. Once those are all done I’ll then direct Anjo to The Sisters of Eve to complete their epic mission arc. For now that is my short term goal with Anjo. Afterward I don’t know what to do with him. I imagine once the first epic mission arc is completed I can then park Anjo in a high sec star base and cancel his subscription, satisfied that I had righted a wrong.
Posted with BlogsyWhere’s Rhalinur
Definitely absent but not completely afk. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been busy playing Tera and clearly I’ve been posting about it. A couple of nights ago I had gotten the itch to do something different so I got back into D3, leveled my witch doctor and recently defeated the skeleton king. This was a nice divergence from my focus on Tera. Tonight I’m tempted to jump back into D3 but this is my final weekend of playing Tera for a couple of weeks. This coming Monday my family and I will start our trip to Europe for a 2-week vacation in Italy. We’re very excited and preparing for that trip has had me busy. On top of that I’m taking care of our youngest son who is out of school for the summer. Anyhow, when we return in early July my goal is to not just jump back into games that I love but to continue posting on Aggrolicious. This is a long term project and I intend to be here for the long haul.
Tera and DPS meters
This is a polarizing feature that some players would like to be a part of Tera sometime in the near future. There are many arguments to be made on why it should or shouldn’t be a feature of the game. Of those arguments there are sufficient pros and cons as to why this should happen. On one hand having DPS meters will help the player identify that they are not doing enough to help the party/raid; on the other that same feature can be abused to where, due to low dps, a party/raid a member can be booted from the group or not allowed to join in the first place. There are more arguments why dps meters should be available to which I won’t get into here. Instead I’ll share my thoughts on having it.
Let me be clear that when dps meters are used correctly that they help the player identify where they are in the effectiveness of their gear/spec/skill rotation. However, let me also say that I’m against dps meters when they become a measuring stick to arbitrarily rank a player on how they perform to which that limitation inhibits their ability to become part of a group who can help them improve. To me the advent of dps meters was one of many reasons why my love for WoW started to wain over time. Too often I saw the negative aspects of dps meters being misused and the greater internet fuckwad theory in full effect.
Ultimately dps meters and gear score was a big factor of what ruined WoW for me. In the beginning it was a game that I loved to play and had incredible fun in. Where it was difficult to get into upper echelon guilds that were the best at end game raids they were not concerned with dps output or what gear you had but whether you were a good fit for the guild, that you showed up to raids on time and knew the boss fights. When the top guilds recruited new members they usually had an established web site with an application form, and you would be interviewed by an officer who would determine if you had the qualities that they were looking for. Guild invites were not random or given after a public channel recruitment post hooked an observer. Getting into a top level guild was a big deal.
So, in closing I’ll just say that I for one am hesitant in adding a dps meter to Tera but that doesn’t mean that I’m absolutely against it. Should EME include a dps meter my preference would be that the individual player sees only their dps output and no one else’s. Furthermore EME has been doing a bang-up job of providing dungeon guides to the community. As part of their guides they should include what dps output is recommended from the players to be a helpful contributor. Although this is not a perfect solution I think that it’s not a bad compromise to start with. Should other better ideas exist I would be open to suggestion.
Tera project continues and patch 17.29.03 released
While its been a week since I’ve last posted anything that doesn’t mean that I’m done with this blogging endeavor. Instead I’ve found my summer to be filled with a lot of business that I wasn’t expected. What I had hoped for was the free time to play Tera and be level 60 by now. Instead I’m now level 42 and still truly enjoying Tera.
What has kept me busy is having the summer off from work and spending that free time with my youngest son, who also has the summer off. While our oldest son is busy trying to establish his independence from us my wife is busy with an intense work project that she has to have completed prior to our Italy vacation later this month. To me that family time is much more important especially spending time with my youngest son, which is far more rewarding. That being said, let me share in brief some thoughts on Tera.
Path 17.29.03 was recently released. Let me summarize my thoughts on what has changed.
- Character transfer level requirement has been changed from 5 to level 10 with a 24-hour cool down is in place; also the amount of gold allowed to transfer was lowered from 100,000 to 30,000.
- I am not entirely sure why this would be implemented but I’m guessing that some players may have found some way to exploit the game with the previous less stringent transfer rules. Does it have to do with the recent Vanarch election process? I don’t know for certain and some brief google searches didn’t find a sufficient reason why this was included.
- Changed daily quest reset time from 7 p.m. PDT to 8 a.m. PDT
- This makes sense to change dailies reset at a more convenient time other than peak player hours
- Reduced the number of players needed to create a new zone channel
- Since I’ve never created a new zone channel I’m not sure what the necessity of this change was but can guess that it just makes custom chat channels easier to generate
- Saved the best for last: Changed the timer that one can post messages to the Looking for Group channel to one message per minute
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- I can see what they’re doing here. In the patch notes they included the snarky comment “Seriously, it’s not Barrens chat, people.”. For those who were not in vanilla WoW days this was a reference to the amount of chat that went on in the Barrens that if Obi Wan Kenobi had anything to say about Barrens chat it would be, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”.
- It was a lot of fun to be a lurker and watch the LFG posts that the players in Tera posted. Occasionally I’d chip in what I felt were helpful messages but would for the most part stay away. Now that there’s a 1 minute timer on the LFG channel it has changed the chat, but not much. What EME should to is up that timer to 2 minutes on all channels but include a global or out of character channel without that restriction so that the players who enjoy that social aspect of the game can chat there, and those who don’t want to participate can stay out of them.
#MMONBI completed
And the story continues…
Congratulations to all of the other members who have participated. Hopefully you have also enjoyed what you’ve contributed to our small community as I have. Please continue what you’ve started.
About a month ago while taking a few minutes to get caught up with my RSS feeds there were many posts mentioning the New Blogger Initiative. The idea to introduce new video game bloggers to the world had piqued my interest and I knew that I had to be a part of it largely because it’s something that I had attempted before. The experience from participating in the NBI has taught me that this is not as easy as I had envisioned the project to have been. Now that I’ve got plenty of posts there are a number of things that needs to be addressed. The design of my site, how I share my media, and more importantly how I represent myself to the public. Although the NBI has ended it is now my duty to continue what I’ve started and hopefully solidify my minor inclusion in the online gamer community as a casual observer.
RIFT: Storm Legion expansion
A very cool video, teasing the upcoming expansion for Rift. Two weeks before Tera’s release I had removed the authenticator from my Rift account because my intention was to resub shortly afterward. Clearly that hadn’t happened as I’m fully invested in seeing Tera through (I’m still incredibly excited about the game and nearly level 2/3 of the way to level 60).
With the announcement of Storm Legion and reading up the summary as to what to expect I have to say that my interest in Rift is once again piqued. Perhaps later on after summer I’ll revisit Telara; that is if I can pull myself away from Tera, The Secret World, Guild Wars 2, and who knows what else that has me captivated.
Forever alone
Not really forever alone actually and this afternoon I had taken the first step to address not being in a guild. Since launch day a RL friend and I have been playing Tera. Since then another friend had started playing this past Memorial weekend. While we have been content in playing as party members we have recently started chatting about being in a guild but haven’t invested the time to start looking. As of a short while ago that has changed as I’ve proactively posted a thread on the Dragonfall forums.
Now that the ball is rolling hopefully I’ll be able to share some additional tales of high adventure in Tera with guildmates.
I’m pretty sure that her armor provides optimal protection…
Looking fab-u-lous!
My current gear is a tad bit on the flamboyant side. Wouldn’t you agree? These games crack me up.
Tera – Sinestral Manor
Here’s an album that I’ve put together from my experiences in Sinestral Manor. The dungeon is laid out pretty well and has wonderful pacing. The significance with the second dungeon in Tera is that I’ve learned to follow the story quests that lead up to the dungeons. Doing this has opened my eyes on the lore of the world and gave me that sense that my role in this world is significant. In the previous mmo that I played, SWTOR, I didn’t have the same feeling, which is odd considering that Bioware is known for the stories of their games.
Click on the dungeon map below to see my web album hosted on Imgur. The link below the map is to the Tera website describing the story quests that lead up to the second dungeon in tera.
Under My Skin
For a week I was out of the loop and unable to play anything, even iPad games. So after returning home my first stop on the way home was to pick up Diablo 3. This post isn’t about D3, it’s about Tera. A game that initially I wasn’t too keen on and one that I was convinced that I would be ready to drop-kick to the curb and move on to the next new shiny. However, as I started to grasp the idiosyncrasies of the game something started to happen; I genuinely started to like Tera.
What is it about this game that has me so enthralled? To be honest, I don’t really know. The leveling and quest paths are such a grind-fest. They can be monotonous and rote with little to differentiate themselves from other contemporaries of the mmo genre. The zones are not as open and expansive as I would like and most of the time you get a feeling that you’re enclosed within a maze with no ability to diverge from the path to explore. The chat channels are filled with trolls lambasting on the failures of Tera and hyping the virtues of WoW, or they’re discussing the omnipotent abilities of Chuck Norris, or my favorite so far citing anything from reddit.
So what is it that keeps me logging back into Arborea? Perhaps it’s the discovery of something completely new. Of late I have been discovering the nuances that makes your character more unique by purchasing glyphs. This shouldn’t be a fresh idea since they are almost comparable to WoW’s glyph usage in that they modify and improve existing skills. For me to discover this at level 29 after they have been available since level 20 has been an eyeopener. However, more than anything it has been the story line quest chains that have me coming back for more. These story quests became apparent shortly after I had made level 20 and got into my first dungeon. Since then I’ve done the quest chain that led to the second available dungeon and am now on the chain for the third dungeon. What I’ve discovered in these story line chains is something far deeper than what I saw in SWTOR class quests and for me hearkened back to vanilla WoW when you would have to do quests to unlock your access to end-game dungeons. As I’ve done these quests I’m discovering more about the world that I’m a part of and my role within that world and for once in a long time I feel that my participation in this world matters. Whether that’s a sentiment that’ll stay with me until I reach max level remains to be seen, but it’s a journey that I really look forward to discovering.
This pose by the fire cracked me up. I don’t know what’s up with the semi-squat. 😛
Aggrolicious 