A look back, a reflection and a 200th blog post oh my!

It's hard to imagine that this is my 200th blog post and also my last for this year. I have spent the better part of a week wondering what I was going to do and say for this occasion; was it going to be something thought provoking, tear jerking, or just to say 'Hey, it's my 200th post, yay me!'.

If there is one thing I have learned from the blogging community over the year, it's that it takes just one blogger's thought inducing post to start a spark amongst other bloggers to share thier thoughts on the same subject. While browsing through my reader I came across Petter's end of the year post, and as he says any self-respecting blog needs a year end summary post, and thus came my inspiration for my 200th post.

BTW, if you are looking for an unbiased non-angry vets view of Star Wars: Galaxies, give Petter's summary of the game a read, it's quite good.

Let me start by stating that I remembered little about what I was playing, what I had written about or what I was thinking till I started looking back on the posts from the year. I will try to not bore you with every little detail, but instead just point out a few highlights from the year, hope you enjoy.

The beginning of the year started with me cancelling WAR and playing WoW while waiting for my copy of LOTRO Mines of Moria to arrive in the mail. I kind of laughed when I read my first post of the year and reading my plans to go back to WAR eventually, something I haven't done yet and still think about to this day.

WoW became almost a seven month thing for me with some single player games like FEAR 2, Dawn of War II and Sins of a Solar Empire thrown in. And of course there was the occasional giving LOTRO another try.

By the time May had come around I was laid up with a broken foot that should have had surgery on it and was so burnt out from helping a friend with his website and had little energy left for blogging.

Of course the gaming didn't stop; in fact I remember vividly having mutliple MMO subs going just trying to find one that would grab my attention for longer than a few days. In June I had cancelled my WoW account and haven't looked back since and by the time I returned to work in July I was playing Age of Conan along with various other non-mmo games.

Thanks to Ysharros I discovered something called Google Reader, and my blog reading became easier and more frequent, as did my blog posting. For the months of August, September and October I would post over twenty times each month, something I hadn't done before.

In that three month time I wrote about my exploits in AoC, my adventures in Champions Online and subsequent review, a game review for for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising and Risen. I also talked about my fun times in Aion, the family trip to Disneyland, some hockey tidbits, and of course my hatred for Activision and my displeasure with Modern Warfare 2. Oh yeah, another post about why I should play WAR, but still am not for some reason.

Novemeber and December not only brought on the Holidays, but a slowing down of the blog posts as well. Not a bad thing really, I don't think I could have continued making stuff up on a daily basis. In those two months I had an Aion review, some LOTRO talk, the blog being Multiplaying.net's site of the week, and of course more Modern Warfare 2 hatred.

It has been an interesting year; my game playing has been all over the place and I feel that my writing has gotten somewhat better too. My reader has grown to large proportions and I still enjoy reading, the site also went through a face lift and I have met some really great bloggers.

Now that I have a Xbox 360 and a Playstation 3, I find that I have less time for MMO's so chances are I am sticking to one paid subscription, but that won't stop me from going back to games like AoC or WAR I'm sure. For the new year I am looking forward to a whole lot of game playing on the PS3 and of course Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Well, that's about it for the year in review, I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Years. And thank you to all those who have put my merger blog in their blogroll and to those who took the time to not only read but post as well!

Happy Holidays!

I know I haven't posted much this month, but once the holidays are over I hope to get back into writing more, cause I need all the practice I can get!

But regardless, I wanted to wish everyone Happy Holidays and hope all is well!!!

1.1.2

Just for the record, Vol. 1, Book 1, Chapter 2: Breeders of the Dead is NOT a solo quest, even if the quest log says so. As a level 33 Warden I am having a crap hard time just trying to finish this quest. I can deal with tough, I can deal with challenge, I cannot deal with a supposed solo quest being designed for a group.

Decision time.

With am increasing desire to play my Xbox 360, eagerly waiting to get my PS3, playing more Modern Warfare 2 than I wanted to with some friends and enjoying LOTRO, I am just not sure if I want or can manage my time for two MMO's.

There is a new patch for Fallen Earth today and I plan to play at least some of the game at some point. But my sub renews sometime in the early morning tomorrow so I need to decide if I am going to realistically play more than a few hours this next month or not.

Lost in Everquest 2

And when I say lost I don't mean that suddenly all I can play is EQ2, I mean that I am literally lost when I log in. I haven't played EQ2 since June so I have no idea what I was doing, where I am and what I am to do. This would be my one and only complaint about EQ2, it is very overwhelming because of it's plethora of content. At least it's overwhelming for me.

I had forgotten that I had so many characters and that my highest actually made it to level 28. It's hard to believe that my account was created a couple of weeks after launch, and the highest level I have made is 28. But none of these characters are from that long ago, I deleted them after on of the GU's, not sure which.

Because I am terrible with my spare time I think that two MMO's are the most I can run at any one time. I just recently paid for a six month sub for LOTRO, so I am locked into that for awhile, but I don't know if having two fantasy MMO's is a good idea. I could see myself playing EQ2, there is a lot to do, but I wonder if I will burn out on the fantasy setting. There's always the Station Access which would allow me to play Pirates of the Burning Sea so that might be something I look into.

But if anyone playing EQ2 has any hints and tips to help with the overwhelmingness, if that's even a word, then I am all ears.

Lord of the RIngs skirmish initial thoughts.

Most I'm sure are aware that Siege of Mirkwood for Lord of the Rings Online released on Dec. 1st. But because of my addiction to Dragon Age, I haven't tried the new skirmishes that came with SoM.

So today I played the tutorial and then ran two skirmishes of the only skirmish I had available, Siege of Gondamon. I will be honest, I did not have much fun the first time I played the skirmish and I learned that I am the worst Warden on Landroval.

After my first successful but not so fun skirmish I did find out how to change my soldier to a herbalist and equip talents for her. And what a difference having a healer made for my second play through, now I was having fun! But I did change the level from 32 down to 30 so I could at least have a chance to learn how to play my Warden in a skirmish.

But it's true, I am the worst Warden on my server. I felt so lost and confused most of the time, so I am glad to have the skirmishes to use as a way to learn how to tank. I did however almost make a full level in my two skirmishes and accumulate a nice repair bill too!

Brendon Witt 1, Moving Vehicle 0!

Being a hockey fan I like the read hockey news, so it should be no surprise that this article caught my eye. The short version; Brendon Witt was struck by a SUV while going to Starbucks. He then claimed that he was ok and went on to play 17 minutes in a losing hockey game that night. There is a bit more to the story than that, but you get the idea. All I can say is Brendan Witt is all that is man, cause I would be looking to take a few days off of work if I was hit by a SUV.

Dragon Age finished!

Well I lied, I didn't play any LOTRO or Fallen Earth on Monday. Instead I played a load of Dragon Age and late last night, early this morning I finally completed the game. Of course reinstalling windows and then installing DAO first didn't hurt either.

I don't need to tell anyone that DAO is an awesome rpg, but it is. And I would like to say that Oghren is the best party member due to his great personality.

But now that I have completed one of the better rpg's in recent memory, I suddenly find myself with a load of free time for anything. I must have clocked something around 100hrs total gameplay time with all my characters.

I will be getting a PS3 for Christmas, so I may just play loads of LOTRO till I am able to get my PS3 virgin hands on my new console!

Fallen Earth falling off the map.

I have been so enthralled with Dragon Age that I have left little time for myself to play anything else. One game the has really suffered from my lack of time is Fallen Earth. I'm not ready to give up on the game just yet, but I haven't missed the game which is not a good thing.

Part of my problem is that FE is so open that I feel a tad overwhelmed. Another problem for me is that crafting is such a large aspect of the game and I am not a crafter by nature, I am about combat, exploration and for some reason I have this fascination with resource gathering.

I really like the combat mechanics; switching from a combat stance to a none combat stance, the ability to play in a third person or first person perspective is nice. But the area that I am in with one character has been experiencing some lag during combat, so the mobs tend to warp around making ranged combat a pain. One thing I did do was remap my key bindings for switching weapons, and that has helped out a lot. But at times the combat feels like Star Wars Galaxies. That's just a personal observation, every player's experience might be different.

I like how involved the crafting is and love scavenging and gathering. But to me the crafting is the focus of the game and combat is a means to getting the necessary components for recipes. That's where I think I am having the biggest problem, cause I do myself a huge disservice if I don't do any crafting. Actually it's probably more of a requirement to do crafting in FE than it is in any other MMO, but I don't know that for sure.

So what this boils down to is that I am on the fence as to whether or not I am going to renew for another month in FE. With Dragon Age eating my time, Siege of Mirkwood now released and my overwhelming desire to play all things LOTRO and my possible tour in EQ2 to check out some of those new features, I just don't know if there is a place for FE. What I plan to do is not play anything Dragon Age on Monday, and use my day off to spend large blocks of time playing both FE and LOTRO.

What I really need it a beginners guide or a road map for some progression ideas and hints for FE. But in the end the only way to learn is to play right?