It's a Skyforge Thing!

The last few posts have all been about Marvel Heroes, a game that I love quite a bit. However, I have only played a total of three times since the release of Ant-Man. What could cause me to stop playing a game I love so much? Well it's a combination of working a new job and Skyforge. That's right, Skyforge.

Skyforge is a new free-to-play MMO from the Allods Team, the developers who made Allods Online oddly enough. Unlike games such as Everquest 2, Lord of the Rings Online or The Old Republic that started with a subscription model then moved to a f2p model, Skyforge was built from the ground up as f2p.

Why does that matter you might ask? Because those other sub to free games lock content behind a subscription; Skyforge instead goes the premium account route similar to what you find in World of Tanks, meaning players have access to all content all the time. It would be similar to The Secret World or Elder Scrolls Online, just without the initial purchase.

The difference didn't really sink in till I played TOR one afternoon after spending loads of time in Skyforge. The amount of stuff locked behind a sub or the Cartel Market is staggering. Don't get me wrong, I am not against TOR's f2p model, I was just surprised to notice the differences.

Well, that's enough about that. At some point I'll get back into Marvel Heroes, or some of the other games in my backlog. But until then, I am quite enjoying Skyforge.

New A.R.M.O.R. Incursion for Marvel Heroes!

It's another week and another event for Marvel Heroes. This week brings the revamped A.R.M.O.R. Incursion event. 

In the past you would get ARMOR drives as loot from bosses, random enemies and on daily mission. Those drives could then be exchanged for various items from the ARMOR vendor.

Here's a brief overview of what to expect with the new ARMOR Incursion event:

• A.R.M.O.R. Defender Mission - Completing this mission will grant an Ultimate Upgrade Token!
• A.R.M.O.R. Drives - Collect Intel Powerup buffs, defeat the specified boss, and earn A.R.M.O.R. drives
• New Items & Artifacts - Now you can use your A.R.M.O.R. drives to buy more items and artifacts, including Howard the Duck's Big Freaking Gun
• New Enchant Recipes - A.R.M.O.R. drives can get you all-new enchant recipes for slots 1 - 5, featuring the new Alternate Reality Rune
• A.R.M.O.R. Incursion Achievements - 7 new achievements are now available, exclusive to A.R.M.O.R. Incursion!

For even greater detail, click here to read the forum post on the ARMOR Incursion along with other changes in the patch.

What has me excited are the new items and artifacts. For me there wasn't anything useful to purchase with ARMOR drives which means I have quite a few saved up. I have probably about 3k worth of drives saved, but it's an event that I viewed as a time to take a break from the game. It's not that I dislike the event, I had no use for drives. Till now!

Don't forget, this event brings with it a 100% server side boost to XP!!! 

Beware The Power Of The Ant!

That's right, Marvel Heroes newest hero Ant-Man has been released! Hard to believe Marvel Heroes has 49 heroes, so much content. Speaking of content, the Story Revamp also comes with this patch. Before there were three difficulty levels related to the story missions - Normal, Heroic and Super Heroic. If you were willing to play through each difficulty you might make it to level 60, I honestly have no idea as I only finished the story once. With one character.

There no longer are three difficulties, instead a person should be able to level 1-60 by playing through just the story. I am going to test this out with Ant-Man, however, because I have a lot of level 60 heroes I have a permanent 200% XP bonus. But that's not a bad thing. I will be interested to see at what point in the story I reach level 60, that should give me a good indication if the XP is scaled well and if boosts are needed or not.

Also with this patch comes the Odin's Bounty event. For a three hour span, bosses in one of three game modes will drop Chests of Odin's Bounty. Every three hours the game mode rotates. For example, as of this post, all bosses in Red, Green or Cosmic terminals are boosted. Afterwards bosses in Industry City will be boosted, then Midtown, and so on and so forth. You can check out the rotation schedule here.

The Odin't Bounty event is one of my favorites in Marvel Heroes; it's a great way not only to level up but to gear up a hero as well.

Midtown Madness 7/13/15

It's Monday which means it's Midtown Madness in Marvel Heroes! It also means I got an unexpected day off so I need to figure out what I'm going to play.

What is Midtown Madness you say? Glad you asked. All bosses in the Midtown Patrol zone will drop a Midtown Madness chest full of all sorts of goodies and a sizable XP orb. There's also a chance for a rare Midtown Fortune card to drop from all bosses as well. The Midtown Fortune cards are nice but I've never had them give me anything useful that I can remember.

Midtown on Monday's is great for leveling up and gearing heroes due to the nice XP orbs and cosmic and possible unique items from chests. Cosmic Chaos is still going on which means a 42% multiplicative XP boost as well!

Story Mode Revamp

Next week's Ant Man patch for Marvel Heroes is shaping up to be a significant game changer. Announced yesterday at the San Diego Comic Con was the difficulty mode consolidation change to the Marvel Heroes story mode. The complete FAQ can be read here.

There's some really nice information on the changes, but what caught my eye was the following three changes:

• Experience rewards for story mode have been greatly increased.
• Players can level from 1 to 60 in story mode alone, at a brisk pace if they wish.
• Several new optional story missions have been added in various chapters, with experience awards, to aid in leveling. More may be added in the future, as needed.

While I have played through the story once, I haven't touched it in ages since it's the least effective method for leveling a hero. I do love the change for a few reasons - it should help acclimate new players to the game and it gives an alternative to leveling instead of running constant terminals or patrol zones.

With these changes I plan to start leveling Ant Man through the story mode to test the new revamp. However, I have a feeling that I will eventually out level the story content due to my permanent 200% leveling bonus.

A few other changes in the FAQ that were of interest was the removal of the difficulty in the story mode (Normal, Heroic, & Super Heroic) to make grouping easier and a possible Mentor Mode to down scale one's level lower to group with friends to be implemented in the future.

Also announced were a slew of new and updated costumes which is always nice. I particularly like the new Jean Grey costume! All-in-all, the Ant Man patch is shaping up to be a nice one for everyone!

It's Cosmic Time!

It's Friday which means it would have been patch day for Marvel Heroes, but that was done on Tuesday due to Gazillion bringing Marvel Heroes goodness to the San Diego Comic Con this weekend.

However, that does mean a new event starts today, it's Cosmic Chaos time! What is Cosmic Chaos you may ask?  It means more cosmic loot from bosses in Cosmic Terminals, Cosmic Midtown and ICP and double leveling rate for Cosmic Prestige. For us average players it's about the multiplicative bonus to XP, Rare Item Find and Special Item find of 42%.

Cosmic Chaos is one of my least favorite events in Marvel Heroes because I generally don't run cosmic terminals or patrols and the multiplicative XP bonus is kind of meh unless you intend to use lots of boosts to level. You do collect cosmic worldstones from bosses and random enemies that you can use to purchase items from Moondragon in the Avengers Tower.

Moondragon does have a few items that are worthwhile picking up if you have the appropriate hero that can use the item, such as the Doop Ectoplasm artifact and the Power Cosmic legendary. She does sell two recipes which are nice as well, Doop Inspiration and Power Doop. Again, good for a few select heroes, but nice none the less.

I would, however, recommend the first purchase from Moondragon be the Upgrade Epic Insignia to Cosmic recipe first because that will benefit every hero. It requires a level 60 epic insignia and adds a +1 to all powers which all heroes can use. Since you have to use Cosmic Worldstones to buy the Cosmic Upgrade Tokens and most likely the Doop Runes needed for the recipe, I would suggest making sure you have the best insignia for your character because you'll run out of worldstones pretty quickly.

Good insignia's can be hard to come by and if you're leveling say Human Torch, Ghost Rider, Cable or Psylock for example, then purchasing the artifact or legendary isn't a bad idea till you do find a good insignia.

This even should run through next Thursday till the Ant-Man patch that will likely come on Friday morning just in time for the movie.

Dead?

So it has been brought to my attention that I might have a blog and that it's been almost a year since my last post. I am thinking that maybe I might start blogging again, maybe a post here or there about stuff. I'm pretty sure I can come up with some uninteresting material about things no one cares about!

Back in April I started a new job. For a couple of weeks I worked both, then I left my old job and started working full time, 40 hour work weeks. That has unfortunately eaten up precious time that I could be playing video games. Or so I thought.

I use a program called Raptr to track my game playing time. I have no way of explaining why other than I just like to know what I've played and for how long. I rarely use Raptr for anything else honestly. One feature is I get a weekly email that tally's up my total time played and which games I spent that time playing.

When I saw this past week's summary, I was kind of blown away at how many hours I spent gaming.To be fair I had an extra day off this week thanks to having to work six days a week for the next month. Total time spent playing was 51 hours and 8 minutes. If you are wondering, yes, that is almost twenty more hours gaming then I spent at work.

I went back to the second week in April when I started work both jobs and was kind of surprised at how much time I have blown playing games. The past three weeks are not ordinary because I have had a couple of extra days off from work and I had this obsession with Dragon Age Origins. But after looking at all the numbers I would say my average game time falls somewhere between 20-25 hours a week.

Again, that is quite surprising. What that is telling me is that I am playing way too much on my days off when I probably could be doing something a bit more constructive, like working on the honey-do list. But, from this time forward I will not complain about having no time to play games, because it's obviously not been the case!

It's A Cornucopia of Games.

Holy cow, this working full time is kicking the crap out of me. I work all day, go home and play games, then when I have a couple of days off I do whatever chores I need to and try to play as much on the computer as I can before having to go back to work. I really don't know how those of you who have full time jobs have been able to live like this for so long.

But like I said, I have been playing games in the evening when I get home from work. For most of June it has been Marvel Heroes, not only at night but on days off as well. I am really loving that game! I love the combat, I love the loot, and most of all I love how different each hero plays from one another. That is unless you play Taskmaster who plays like four different heroes! Oh yeah, I also love that there are soooooo many different heroes to play.

Before my massive ingestion of Marvel Heroes I decided that I wanted to play Splinter Cell Blacklist, but before I do that I wanted to play Splinter Cell Conviction again, a game that I think is underrated and really quite good.

It's not like I needed to play Conviction again, I had already finished the game twice before. No, it was the fact that Blacklist, a game I bought during the winter holiday on sale for about twenty-five bucks, was now on sale for a mere ten bucks. TEN BUCKS!!!! The game sat on a virtual shelf for nearly seven months. So after a couple more rounds with Conviction I finally moved on to Blacklist.

What a frustrating game for the first couple of hours. I'm pretty sure the A.I. is broke for the first couple of missions. That and the change in controls from one game to another really gave Blacklist this difficulty spike that I was not enjoying. But, once I finally got a grasp on the controls and picked up a few gadgets the game turned out to be really good. Not only does it look good, the story and voice acting are quite good as well. But once I finished that it was back to Marvel Heroes for more one year anniversary goodness.

That is till this past weekend. With Dragon Age Inquisition coming in October I had this crazy thought that maybe I'd play through Dragon Age 1 &2 again, especially DA2 since I love that game! Honestly I didn't think I would actually play DAO again; I find the combat to be tedious, it doesn't look all that great, and it's way too freaking long.

Yet after about an hour of checking out mods I fired up a new Human Noble and now I can't stop playing. I feel that DA2 has better combat, looks better, better characters and interactions, but the story in DAO is really good. Add in a few mods that improves the combat and speeds it up a bit and now I'm hooked!

This weekend will be all Marvel Heroes thanks to an increase in XP event, but I am eager to get back into DAO, because Ferelden needs its Grey Warden hero!

I Spread Butter Like Parkay...

Wow, I can't believe how long I've neglected the blog for, and only four posts all year, that's pretty bad. Well to everyone's dismay I am still around, I've just been too lazy to write anything.

So what's been going on lately you might ask? Back in April I started a new job. I went from working a 32 hr work week with three days off to a full time 40 hr, five days a week job with some crappy commuting on a few days. Needless to say it's been a challenge adjusting to not having so much free time. I still play games when I get home, just not for as long as I used too.

I've pretty much conceded to the fact that I have a difficult time using my free time wisely and now I have even less time to use. I feel the problem is World of Tanks. On most nights I still like the game. However, it's a time sink. Sure, you can play WoT casually, but if you want to get good and be competitive you need to invest the time and effort into it. Basically it's a game that takes time away from the myriad of games I wish I could or should be playing.

But even with less time I have been able to play games. There's been quite a bit of WoT, but also Marvel Heroes. I am in love with this game! It's Diablo with super heroes, what's there not to love! Speaking of Diablo, I did beat D3 with a monk in preparation for Reaper of Souls, then promptly finished that as well. Let me tell you, Reaper is amazing! I love the changes the expansion brought with it, so good!

I did play some Elder Scrolls Online as well, but not very much. The game just hasn't grabbed me like I thought it would. It looks good, the combat is fun, but I just don't like the classes. I actually get annoyed when I think about ESO's classes. Maybe some day I'll be able to put into words exactly what I don't like about the classes.

So that's about it I guess, maybe I won't neglect the blog as much going forward.

Outdated Shadows

So a couple of weeks ago I decided impulsively to pre-order Thief 4 from Green Man Gaming. The game was already discounted by ten percent and GMG were kind enough to send me a coupon for another thirty percent on top of that! Why? I don't really know. I have a fondness for the franchise even though I've only played just a portion of one game out of the three. I guess it's my love of stealth games coupled with a nice heavy discount.

So in preparation for Thief 4 I decided to give Thief Deadly Shadows a spin, a game I've only played a few hours of back a number of years ago. The first thing after installing the game via Steam was look for John-P's Collective Texture Pack - a mod that replaces quite a few things, mainly up-scaling the textures in the game to look less better. Unfortunately I couldn't remember the name of the mod and after about an hour I was able to download, install and start playing.

Here's where things sort of fall off this Thief bus - the game is just butt ugly even with the mod. Honestly the graphics didn't bother me all that much, it's the awful controls that really ruined the game for me more. It's unfortunate that for me, TDS just doesn't hold up well in 2014. When you consider the more recent Splinter Cell games, Assassin's Creed and Dishonored, there are just better options to satiate one's need for stealth action over a game that is so dated.

Don't get me wrong, TDS isn't a bad game and I'm sure there are many who will not have any issues with the game like I do, after a few hours I just wasn't having much fun. At one point I went and searched out some old reviews to see how well the game was received back in 2004, and surprisingly they were pretty good. I seem to remember TDS not being as well received from gamers because it was consolized unlike the previous two games. Funny how after ten years people still use that argument for multiplatform games that release on the PC.

So in short, I've decided to forgo Thief Deadly Shadows and instead fill my time with a replay of Deus Ex Human Revolution Director's Cut till Thief 4 is released later this month.

AC4 Is Mine!

For someone who has wanted to curb his spending habit, I have sure been loose with the purse strings this month. First I bought Sim City, then I reserved Thief 4, and the other day I picked up Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. To be fair, each game was discounted quite substantially.

I don't have a clue as to when I'll get to AC4, I kind of want to marathon through all the previous games first, but I do know that I will curb my World of Tanks addiction enough to play Thief when that comes out at the end of the month. With Sim City I'm just waiting for the big patch that removes the online only aspect of the game, which is the only reason why I bought the game.

Add Two More To The Pile.

I don't know what was my first digital purchase nor when I began making digital my primary method for purchasing games. I do, however, know that I started saving my emails for digital purchases on 6/22/2010. After making my list of games purchased in the year 2013 I went back to look through 2012 and noticed that a lot of those games I have actually played and many of them I finished. That means nothing to anyone else, but does tell me that World of Tanks has eaten quite a bit of my gaming time this past year. I don't think that will change this year.

As for 2013 I noticed that I pre-purchased two games: Space Hulk and Shadow Run Returns. Why do I bring that up? Well because Green Man Gaming had a sweet deal on a pre-order for Thief which comes out in February. I was sent a code for 30% off of the game that was already discounted by 10%. I love stealth action games and was kind of interested in the new Thief so I decided to be impulsive and make the pre-order.

I also picked up Sim City on a nice discount from Amazon as well. And here I thought I was going to slow down on the impulse buys. Oh well, I love sales.

Have Game, Will Buy!

I've come to learn that I don't do well with resolutions for a new year. I really wanted to make more time for posting on my blog and here it's almost the end of January and I've done nothing. Personally I blame World of Tanks. But enough of that.

Game of the Year Awards are nothing new, every gaming website, publication and even blogs do something these days. I myself have considered doing some sort of GOTY post the past few years, but let's be honest, I've just been way too lazy when it comes to the blog.

So when I began to think about doing a GOTY post I came to the realization that I couldn't remember what if any game I've played this year actually released in the 2013 calender year. I've become such a frugal game shopper that I have stopped make day one purchases almost entirely. There are a couple of reasons for this - I tend to impulse buy games and not play them and games tend to go on sale much quicker these days now that digital distribution has become so popular. Lucky for me I keep every email of all the digital purchases I make. I decided to write down the date and name of every game I made in the year 2013.

Here is a number that kind of surprised me: I've purchased 89 games and pieces of DLC in the year 2013. That sound you hear is my wallet that just cried out in sadness. 89 games? That is honestly way too many purchases. I also realized that only two games I purchased were day one releases: Shadow Run Returns and Space Hulk.

Back at the end of August I did make a conscious effort to curb my impulse buying and did pretty well if I do say so myself. Between September 1st and November 27th when I made my first purchase of the Autumn Steam sale, I bought only two games! That was NASCAR the Game and Ultima 7 Complete Edition which was less than a dollar, so it almost doesn't count. Of course the Autumn Sales and Winter Sales I went a bit bonkers.

So to reel this all back in, I may just have to do something like favorite game I played this year since I'm guessing that most the games I've played and finished this year were not actually released in 2013.

Sales Everywhere.

It's no secret that I like a video game sale. So much so that I've purchased a number of games over the years because they were on sale but have played little to none of said game(s). I chalk it up to having way too many interests and not enough time management skills to play those games.

Back at the end of August I made a conscious decision to not purchase a game on sale if I knew that I wasn't going to play it right away. Between the months of September to November I purchased a total of two games, a record for me. Those were Nascar on Steam which I did play but didn't like because of the bad controller support, and an Ultima game for less than a dollar on GoG.

I decided that I would loosen the purse strings for the Holiday sales come the end of November and into December. Honestly I think I bought more games this year between the Thanksgiving and Christmas sales than any other year. The Christmas holiday sale isn't quite over yet, and even thought I'm sure I've purchased all I want, I'm going to wait till the New Year to post a damage assessment. Should be interesting.

So Many Games, So Little Time Before ESO!

I find myself in an interesting predicament (at least to me) with my gaming hobby. See, now that I know when Elder Scrolls Online is launching I have this weird need to try and schedule what games I'm going to play until that day arrives.

I've really wanted to replay some of the awesome games I've already finished, yet with World of Tanks and some of the games I have yet to play I kind of feel like I'm in this state of flux. A couple of years ago I purchased Rift and was starting to get into that when the release date for The Old Republic was announced. At that point I just quit playing any and all MMO's cause I knew I wasn't going to play them once TOR was released. I'm in that position again.

The difference now as oppose to then is that so many games are now using the F2P model. Still, I purged my computer of a few of the MMO's that I haven't played in ages and with ESO around the corner I doubt I'll get to them any time soon.

I did keep a few games like STO cause I have a hankerin' for some ship combat, TSW is probably has the best f2p business model and it's my favorite MMO right now, Champions Online I have a lifetime sub and Defiance is more like a coop game anyways.

The odd one out is TOR. I've played not nearly as much this year as I did last year and only a couple of times since September. I continue to sub and support the game because it has the worse f2p model right now and I love Star Wars. Really not sure what I'm going to do with this one.

The backlog is not immune to this either, I continue to make some headway but my time is spent mostly in WoT which leaves little time for other games.

April is still a long ways off and honestly I have no idea what will be going on then gaming or personal, and even though I'm interested now in ESO that could all change by then. This is probably Much Ado About Nothing I'm just a lunatic with too much time on his hands to think about these things. Yeah, that seems about right!

It's Coming!

I haven't played much of The Secret World over the past three months and even less of Star Wars The Old Republic. Playing Hearthstone lately has given me the unfortunately desire to get back into World Of Warcraft again, but that changed when this happened.

I know little about the game, I've kept myself on a media blackout as to not get too overly excited and anxious for the release. I am, however, a fan of the previous Elder Scrolls games and I do love Bethesda as a developer so I am naturally interested in ESO. Personally I don't see the need for an 'online' version of The Edler Scrolls, instead I would have rather liked a new single-player TES. Still I can't help but be excited.

I wonder if it's too early to ask for some time off at work......

Eye Of The Tiger 1

Haven't posted in a long while due in large part to my addiction to World of Tanks. But I thought I would share that I have completed my first goal and the reason why I started playing the game - I purchased my Tiger I tank tonight! Now let's hope I don't stink it up too bad.

Misogyny Bad, Violence OK.

I must admit that I am probably bothered by Gamespot's recent review of Grand Theft Auto V and the subsenquent response to the review and the comments it generated in the recent episode of Feedbackula more than I should be. To me it speaks of a massive double standard with these supposed professional game critics.

So the tl;dr goes like this: Carolyn Petit gave GTAV a score of 9 out of 10 with a criticism of the game being 'politically muddled and profoundly misogynistic'. She goes on to say'...these are exaggerations of misogynistic undercurrents in our own society, but not satirical ones. With nothing in the narrative to underscore how insane and wrong this is, all the game does is reinforce and celebrate sexism...'. I have a big problem with this.

I must stress before I go on that I don't believe it's ok to mistreat someone because of their gender, race, religion, etc. Also, I have not played GTAV as of yet, but if the game is as outlandishly misogynistic as she claims, then it's not ok to accept it on the grounds that we should expect this kind of behavior from a GTA game.

The reason I have an issue with Caro's (as she is often referred to on the Gamespot Gameplay podcast) review is with her focusing on only one of the many horrible things that go on in a GTA game. The politically muddled portion Caro is referring to is a sequence where you have to torture someone to get information, otherwise is seems ok that there is drug use, racism and rampant violence against mostly men in the game. This is the double standard with which I speak of that has permeated some of those who work for Gamespot.

I don't understand how it's acceptable to say one aspect of the game reflects our current society as a whole and be outraged but be ok with the rest of the game and pass it off as satire. On episode 15 of Gamespot Gameplay the hosts say that the violence in a GTA game is acceptable and ok because it's cartoony and within context of the game but then go to say that games like Call of Duty and Battlefield send a bad message that war is ok and that there's no repercussion for the violence.

There's a nice conversation about GTAV and the whole misogyny issue on episode 113 of Podcast Unlocked from IGN. One thing that is brought up is that there are no strong female characters within the game and that it would have been great if one of the three characters you play could have been female. I have yet to play the game so I can't say whether or not having a female protagonist would enhance the game or not, but I do think it would be interesting and maybe the next GTA game will do just that. What I do believe is that if GTAV had a murderous psychopath female protagonist, feminists would still not have been happy and complain about that.

I don't need a game to tell me that war is bad, that if you shoot someone they can die or that treating women poorly is wrong. Video games for me are entertainment and not a source of empowerment. Ok, so some days they are less entertaining than others.

Ultimately a review is the opinion of the person writing it and Caro felt strongly enough that the misogyny within the game was to the point that it needed to be addressed. I can't argue or fault her for this. It's not my place to tell her she's wrong, what to think or how she should have written her review, but I do believe she could have done a better job at presenting her objection to what offended her in GTAV. You wouldn't know it by reading the review that she gave the game a 9 out of 10.

A Little Bit On WAR.

I just wanted to give a couple of quick thoughts about the Warhammer Online closure. WAR released five years ago and it's safe to say it launched with huge expectations. Unfortunately WAR was never able to live up to the hype.

I will admit to being surprised when I read the article on Massively last night that WAR was permanently ending in December, yet I had been expecting this announcement for quite some time. I really liked WAR, it was the first MMO that I really wanted to get better at PvP since it was such a large part of the game. So much so that I purchased my first Razer Naga after using a trackball mouse for years.

It's sad to see a game that you once enjoyed end but I don't regret not playing WAR all these years as there have been other MMO's that I have enjoyed more. I'm sure we'll see a flood of blog posts doing some sort of post mortem which is fitting. It's unfortunate that use of the Warhammer license is such that going f2p can't keep WAR from shutting down. Reminds me of SOE and Matrix Online. Now that's a game I regret not playing more of.

So to sum up my few thoughts: I liked WAR, we'll probably never see another MMO using the Warhammer Fantasy setting, I'm sad to see it's closing down but it's probably for the best.