Holidays, Celebrations and Stuff!

What are you playing?

This week GW2 dropped a new season with the Living Story: Gates of Maguuma. I made sure to pop in and check it out, I definitely wanted to unlock it. So far it looks interesting and I am working my way through the new area, which looks nice, small but a nice change. Yep, a new area added to the game! Is it permanent? It seems to be the case! More of a desert looking zone. Is it worth the wait? Time will tell, I'm still working through it. I probably won't have a chance to check it out more until after the holiday weekend. But so far it has been fun,

I really like the new feel of the zone. The story mission has all our friends and the usual banter. "Stay close, Marjory!" and you know.... "Oh Cashmere, that's my line."  Pretty uninspiring, lets just start with the action and smashing faces. Get out your jumping skills, you're going to need them with the new map! Not the biggest fan of these but I suppose it is a change of pace? Something else to keep me occupied, as I detest jumping, I'm sorry I have to be honest. Really I miss the old Guild Wars, at times like these. Seriously. They took the "We want the option to have our characters jump!" request... and made a joke out of it. Oh you'll jump, you'll jump and jump and jump! There is a new costume in the shop, a neat assassin outfit, and the last costume which was Cantha themed, is still in there. I'd love to grab them soon, they are pretty snazzy.

EQ2 has a producer's letter out for July and August. It looks pretty exciting, always so happy to see this game get updates and new content! It seems we have new status items, I want to log in and check them out. Better hope to have some banked up or start working on status! Some are a bit pricey I hear. Nice to see new stuff added though, the status merchants were getting kind of dusty. Tinkerfest is around the corner, a chance at robot mercs with the story quest (they are pretty sweet looking), and also new holiday themed items which you can see here on EQ2 Trader's Corner. Looks to be a refreshing couple of months for EQ2!

The first EQ has a double XP weekend this weekend, woot! Dire and I returned last week, something for him and I to do together, so that will be awesome! We'll be soaking up the AA points in no time! It starts tomorrow!

While I don't play Wildstar I am pretty impressed with the amount of content they have already dropped in their first patch: Strain Ultradrop, after the first month of release! Keep up the good work guys, very impressive. Now if they can keep this pace up, there is going to be some real competition for a lot of games out there, stringing players along with tidbits through huge content droughts. *Looking at you World of Warcraft*.... I just wasn't drawn in because of the combat style enough to want to play, but I do have much respect for a company that tries to keep their players, as well as wanting to keep them interested and excited. I read that they had planned to roll with a heavy workload in order to keep up a swift release of content. It is good to see someone turn on the heat!

Champions Online has some goodies coming over the weekend, a patch today with some nice quest rewards, which last until July 8th. A free travel power, which is interesting for anyone who wants to look and feel patriotic. Plus, it's free. Subscribers also get a new costume item unlock from the vendor. Two special missions from today till the eighth.

Second Life is celebrating it's 11th Birthday: SL11B! It is still going strong. Check out a list of community booths, these always have some great freebies for the clebrations! I missed SL10B but I got some really awesome stuff for SL9B. I need to log in since my account was reinstated and taken off hold, yay! I just never have time anymore. You can also find a community website with information on events and times here. If you haven't ever checked out Second Life, a great time to take a look with some direction to check out events. The community is highly creative, some amazing talent out there!

Summerfest has returned to Rift, according to the forums. Yesterday when I logged in I didn't see anything and the website hasn't updated us, but it seems to be in swing currently. Lots of things to gab with this event, a great time to pop in and join in on the celebration!

And in WoW we have the Midsummer Festival. Nothing new this year. Get out your alts for the xp buff! Last week we were returning with the free seven days, this week we're back playing, Nelf and I that is. Also, I read another batch of WoD beta invites were going out today. Oh please pick me! The only beta I was in was the WoTLK, which was very, very exciting. I mostly want to look around, I want to see Garrisons, new models and the new areas. Good luck if you're trying for beta! More on our return in my next post.

Have a great holiday weekend to those here in the US of A! Happy Independence Day!