Token Female Gamer

Guild Wars 2 has proven to be a rather difficult game to get acquainted with. It has not really felt intuitive nor has information seem very accessible. Leveling in particular caused me quite a bit of confusion as I consistently found myself under leveled for the only quests I hadn’t completed. Turns out that there are far more ways to get experience in GW2 then simply questing, and the game really expects players to utilize all avenues of experience mining.

Here are some tips that really helped me with leveling.

(more…)

http://www.facebook.com/FeliciaDay

This Facebook Felicia Day post completely exemplifies how I have been feeling about games of late. Is there some sort of new holiday that I didn’t get the memo for, because games are coming out like its midwinter.

Borderlands 2 just released; I’m still deeply immersed in Skyrim (yes I know I’m just behind on that one); Guild Wars 2 is like a month old; Torchlight 2 is out next week, as is WoW: Mists of Pandaria; and the Marvel Heroes beta is going live any day now.

Its clear some of these will have to be relegated to the ‘will play in the future when I have time’ pile, which seems to just be growing and growing and growing. ~sigh~

Though I sound a bit whiny, I do think this is a wonderful conundrum to have, I guess I just wish I didn’t need so much sleep. Maybe no sleep at all. That would be a solid eight hours of gaming a day and awesome!

With Mists of Pandaria (MoP) about to go live, it’s clear that my blurb about Cataclysm is rather overdue. Not that much of it is relevant anymore, what with the recent MoP patch and all the changes to character classes. But there is plenty of time left to discuss (criticize?) MoP, onward to Cataclysm.

(more…)

I’m quite surprised to say that I’m enjoying the experience. I’m actually having fun. Which is saying a lot since I was determined to not like it. Frankly I dont really have time to like it, since I’m still not done with Skyrim and Mists of Pandaria is coming out, but I just cant bring myself to quit.

My Mesmer character is almost level 17. Was a bit of a rough start as I dont think its the most straight forward class to play. Some of the weapon builds seem to be underpowered. But this is certainly part of the games biggest drawbacks, its really hard to figure out. Maybe in six months when there are four hundred websites dedicated to explaining the game it will be better, but for now, there is so little information in the game. It gets a bit frustrating.

As a little side note, I found this website Guild Wars 2 Girls, which is a place for ladies playing GW2 to hang out and commune with other ladies. Turns out that while there are lots of us who play, we are a bit scattered. I think its an interesting idea and as I haven’t really played with many ladies online, I’m looking forward to having the option to play with some other women who enjoy GW2. =D

I have been fortunate enough to have my extended relationship with games be filled with many wonderful memories. These have only been enhanced by the great friends I have made playing games.

But that’s not what I’m going to share here today, because the memory that pops into my head when quizzed about most memorable is never any of the happy fuzzy bunny memories. Nope, it’s the traumatic ones. And this one is my favorite. =)

Back in the early days of EverQuest – yes this is an EQ story and anyone who played knows well how many traumatic stories were birthed from the torture trap that EQ was. So, back in the earlier days, raids consisted of up to 72 players. At one point in my illustrious EQ career, my quest for better loot brought me to join a high level raiding guild with my Enchanter. (Stupid idea, but a lesson I had to learn the hard way.)

Because all the high level boss mobs were randomly timed world spawns, it was a huge scramble to get the entire raid up and ready as fast as possible once the chosen boss spawned. Didn’t want anyone else to get the kill and the loot after all.

My story starts with a two am phone call that Emperor Ssraeshza had spawned and I needed to get online NOW. Yes 2 am, yes log in now. For anyone who doesn’t remember, this was an enchanter required raid.

So I log in and get summoned and all buffed and finally get my assigned target. Thankfully we didn’t have another guild to compete with as our guild was camping the guy. Oh the days of camping.

Anyway, I go to sit down. Yes, my character sat down to wait, old school! But instead of clicking my sit button, I fatfinger my Tash button, which was an incredibly fast cast debuff spell. Meaning I had no time to cancel the cast. Meaning I died very quickly due to a rather angry Emperor Sscraeshza and his eight minions barreling down on me (sitting in the middle of a large raid) to let me know how unhappy they were with my being there.

I wiped the entire fully buffed raid of 72 people at 3am in the morning. People were….upset.

It is certainly a moment I will never forget.

The list of games that I have played for over 100 hours isn’t very long. Animal Crossing and Diablo 2 are two of them. EverQuest, the biggest time suck of all time, will probably always remain my number one most played game. By the time I finally quit, I had played over 300 days. Yes, days not hours. It took forever to do anything in that game.

But, I’m not playing any of those games anymore, which is why none of them is my final choice. World of Warcraft on the other hand I still play.

How much have I played it? I logged in to check my four most played characters and it’s a bit over 120 days. I have two accounts with three level 85 characters, two of which have full raid gear.

Yup, WoW is currently my most time intensive game. Seems like the clear choice. =)

Yaaay Torchlight 2 Beta!! I know Diablo 3 will be released tomorrow, but I’m not expecting that to hold my interest for much longer then it takes to finish the game.

Can’t really say anything about Torchlight 2 yet since I can’t log into the game. My account seems to be bugged and doesn’t recognize the password no matter what I do. And I have been trying all morning. Let me play!!!! /sigh

(more…)

I didn’t know I had any firsts left in World of Warcraft. Then again I was pretty sure I was done raiding, so what the hell do I know. =P

Yup, for the first time ever, my warlock has her four piece tier set bonus. What makes this even more amazing is that it’s the current highest gear level. That’s right, tier 13.

The highest gear was only ever available to high end raiding groups, this means militaristic 25-40 people, methodically dying week after week, until the gear and learning curve were sufficient. Then it’s just grinding through the raid over and over. Sounds fun right?

Most like torture really. Loot hasn’t been much of a motivator to participate in such masochism, since the days of EverQuest anyway. And so I have forgone set piece completion in favor of sanity.

But with the latest patch, Looking for Raid (LFR) was added to the game. This is a cross server collection of 25 people, very much like the looking for group system. What makes this really work is that they dumbed down the encounters to such an extent that hardly any coordination is required and completing the event takes very little time.

So lots of success to be had in LFR, high end gear is finally available to all a wider range of players. But like all LF experiences you still have to deal with 24 other random people, replete with ninja looting, complaining, afk-ing, quitting, failing, and so forth.

Thankfully my warlock now has her 4 piece tier bonus, so I never have to LFR with her again. Sadly my druid isn’t quite as lucky.

SWTOR was released yesterday. The official ‘buy it in the store’ version; the beta has been floating around a while now. Never had the time to play it in beta, even though I got a few invites.

A new MMORG always has me hesitating. It’s a big commitment and most of them are just so disappointing, its better to set expectations low to avoid total heartbreak. But the husband wanted to try it, so I went out and picked up two copies yesterday.

(more…)

Ugh, I’ve come down with my seasonal cold and its sucky. Spent most of yesterday in bed, not so much sleeping as thrashing about trying desperately to sleep. Eventually I took some Tylenol, which did the trick.

I was trying to rest up for the raid I had that evening. Now that I’m back at my WoW job, there are expectations that I show. So I tried. I really tried.

This is what I learned. World of Warcraft is really hard when sick. Couldn’t concentrate on dpsing with spots in my vision and an inability to remain upright. Thankfully a friend took over for me and I returned to bed. But hey I tried.

Feeling somewhat better today (yaaay sleeping for 12 hours), but there is another raid tonight. Will just have to see how I manage that one. Oooh and I’m healing at tonights raid. Should be interesting.