Another Day In Paradise

Another day in paradise. What game to play today? I keep hopping around from EQ2 and Rift. Weighing the options which I like best, I kind of want to settle down to one but I just keep hopping, it's compulsive.
Both have fantastic housing, EQ2 has more depth as far as the housing being integrated into the game and tons of items are easily accessible to players- without hurting much on your wallet in game. Rift doesn't have much depth as far as utility with housing, but it has gorgeous environments and a lot of depth with creation, especially when you add in the dreamweaver profession items you can add. Rift is beautiful with everything turned up, EQ2 still has a rustic charm I like, but my house designs seem to look much less impressive with the older graphics. Then again Rift is breaking my stash of platinum with the buying of housing items and I don't want to keep pumping real money in just to decorate.

Thus I am steadily working on leveling professions in Rift. I've come to enjoying crafting in my games a lot recently. Both games have neat crafting, though I do find EQ2 crafting tedious. In Rift I want to create dyes, because they sell so well. And they sell for a lot, so I plan on working on this the best I can. Some days I just gather mostly, trying to catch it up and do the crafting daily quests, and the guild crafting daily. I enjoy it, something else to work towards. Plus I like to mentor down, sometimes an event will spawn and that is pretty nice, especially the unstable artifact events. I just love those as a dreamweaver, TONS of crafting components! EQ2 has so many nodes everywhere that I seem to be gathering everything more than anything else just to keep up. And then I frown that I can't track them, then again they are everywhere so not much of a need.

I've actually been playing EQ2 on my older account that has the necro. In my last post I had made a new  necromancer on the other account but then I had gotten my six year veteran rewards on it. And you know what happens when you check one, you gotta check the other... Which has the seven year vet rewards. I got the Mistmoore Craig Estate, which I just had to decorate. There went all my plans! The necro is a lot of fun and I really don't even need a mercenary out, maybe in a dungeon, for the most part I annihilate everything in sight (forgot how dps felt, after playing a cleric for so long!) Which is a bit of a change with Rift's more slower pace combat.

Speaking of combat and spells, I really enjoy all the spells and abilities I get with these games. I like fluff spells, lots of hotbars for them, choices on what to use when. Some people prefer how GW2 or Wildstar deviates away from the 'standard rotation', but having five to eight abilities isn't a boring rotation? To me I like my tons of abilities. I especially like how EQ2 has cool stuff like illusions, ports, tons of mounts, pets, I like them all on my hotbars! I hate having to open my inventory in GW2 to pull our a pet or to use a fun item. I also like the classic MMO combat, more slower pace in some ways, thinking more about what to do next, not going on impulse.

In the end I dunno which one I like better, I love them both. But I don't want to keep bouncing back and forth because in the end I don't get a whole lot done in one, heh. Both games have really cool pets, I love pet classes. Both games have neat mounts, but EQ2 has flying. Then again I don't seem to really miss it much in Rift. Though it sure is nice to have sometimes! We'll see what I end up with.

A couple of friends offered me some free time codes for Wildstar and I ended up just taking one, don't ask me why. When I first started this blog I was really excited about the game upon reading about development, then I just got tired of reading about it if I couldn't play it. What worries me is that it sounds like endgame is pretty much raiding. Which I have zero interest in. One redeeming quality is that the housing looks amazing!! But the combat I never really liked. Maybe I didn't like my class, but I wanted to have bunny ears.... which limited my choices. I'll write more about it if I get past the tutorial. I played it some in closed beta, but not too far. I couldn't talk about it here either because of the NDA. So, that's downloading now. Not that excited, and the download is going S ..L...O...W. But I do want to take my chance at seeing it at release, no more impulse buys. I get to check it out for myself, might as well do it now.

I also downloaded Landmark again, which looks gorgeous on the new machine. I want to do some building and crafting but I wish they'd just go into open beta so I don't have to worry about doing things over and over after wipes. I didn't get too far yesterday. I did a lot of gathering but I didn't get everything I needed, lots of hopping around biomes I found out. I look forward to when the game has a little more depth and definitely a bit more staying power with playing/stability of working on things happens. It sure does look nice though!

Oh and before I tie this post up I wanted to comment on Mythic Entertainment shutting down. I really enjoyed my time that I spent in DAoC. That was such a neat game! I am very happy I had the chance to really play the game, years ago and meet some of, if not, the most helpful players I have ever met in the last 14 years I've played MMORPGs. Now that just made me feel old. I even had a go at Warhammer too, just wasn't my thing but it was a cool game. Thanks for the fun, Mythic! I really feel for the employees losing their jobs, I wish them all the best of luck!

That's it for today. Safe adventures!