Lately, I've been restless with games.
I finally made level 60 in WoW and was sort of floating around, wondering what to do next. Between the lack of my friends noticing, and the feeling that I'd "done it all" (Alts used to keep me away from that, but that doesn't seem to be working at the moment.), ennui had set in.
The end game in WoW is supposed to be about raiding, but I'm really not interested in spending four or more hours with forty people chasing after the chance to roll on an item that'll maybe be better than what I'm using.
So, I started wandering...
I've spent a few weeks in EQ2, and I'm liking it much more than I did before. Soloing is possible, which is a big deal to me. They've changed the way some things are listed so that I can actually tell which ability is better in what situation, so I no longer feel like I'm blindly pounding on buttons, hoping the mob dies first. EQ2 will probably continue to get most of my MMORPG time, maybe most of my gaming time.
I also reactivated my accounts for two older games. I decided to give FFXI another try, mostly because I can play it on both the PS2 and the PC. That way, if J wants to play something on the PC for a while, I can play on the PS2, etc. That too, I'm liking a lot more than I did the first time. I stopped trying to expect the standard MMORPG fare, and looked at it as a hybrid based off of a console game (which it is). Suddenly, things started making a lot more sense to me (like how abilities are chosen and used during combat, what the classes different roles are, etc.). A fair amount of it translates, but if you just twist your perspective a little bit to one side, to see those console elements... it's good. Still, a lot of the little details of how you go about doing things are esoteric, and there's not much in the way of guides to help get a person going. It's a mature community already, so I feel a little lost, not really ever having been good at making friends on my own in these sorts of environments.
I also reactivated my Asheron's Call 2 account. They were offering a free month for coming back, and I remembered how beautiful I used to think it was (when I didn't have the hardware to run it well), so I thought I'd give it a look. Amazingly enough, for a couple year old game, it's still very pretty. I love watching my Tumerok cast -- she beats her drum and magic goes flying out of her drumming hands to the beastie. It's a nice little animation. I like smushing things just to watch her do that. They completely revamped the crafting system. I used to like scavenging materials from the items that dropped, but now you have to butcher corpses or mine for materials. It's probably a better way of doing things from a design perspective, but I liked the innovation of the old way.
I've also been spending a fair amount of time on Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life. I managed to get my little girl married, and her son is getting a little older. (I'm in the third chapter.) It's surprisingly soothing to run around and water crops or milk cows.
Craving some good old fashioned D&D style monster bashing, I tried installing Temple of Elemental Evil, but it wouldn't run after I patched it. I checked the message boards for a fix, an it looked like going to a no-cd crack was the only reliable way around the problem. Since I don't feel like putting any kind of hack on my machine, away the game went. I fiddled around with a couple of strategy games too, but nothing could keep my attention really.
A couple of days ago, I read an article in PC Gamer about a little downloadable game called Fate. I decided to give it a go (The first three levels of play are free and it's only $20 to purchase after, which is reasonable enough.) and it's been tons of fun. It's essentially the same basic game as your Diablo type things. You have a static village with merchants and a dungeon entrance. You keep smushing things, going deeper and deeper into the dungeon (portaling back to town to sell from time to time) until you get to the big bad boss. There are a few neat different things about it. For one, you have a companion -- a dog or a cat depending on what you choose at the start. You pet fights beside you, and it has its own inventory, so you can keep on fighting while you send it back to town to sell stuff. Also, you can catch fish and feed them to your pet. These fish turn your pet into all sorts of different mobs, with different resistances or stats. For example, I turned my cat into a unicorn and a beholder last night. Eventually, the pet turns back into itself, so part of the strategy of playing is deciding which fish to use and when, and keeping supplied with fish.
Mostly, I think I'm waiting for Dungeon Siege 2. Just one more week! I'm really looking forward to that, and maybe my impatience and anticipation are coloring my perspective on other games. None of them are quite that, and so they're not quite satisfying.
Then again, I do the game-restless thing every once in a while, so I imagine I'll settle into something soon.
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