So, in the last couple of months since I last posted, what have I been up to?
I’ve played through both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 on Insanity difficulty. I’d been nagged to try them by pretty much every gamer friend who ever heard I’d not played them, and I’m glad I finally buckled. I’ll definitely be grabbing Mass Effect 3 when it materialises.
I have a terrible habit of insisting I play any game on the hardest possible difficulty level. It’s a tendency that bleeds over into my MMO behaviour, as Maltheas and my stable of odd DDO characters amply demonstrate. Getting through the Mass Effect saga on insanity (which involved a little shenanigans in order to get ME1 to let me even play at that difficulty on my first playthrough) has reaffirmed to myself my gamer credentials. Whether I’d still be as good at a game that does not let you pause to have a little think is another matter entirely!
From hardcore to the supposedly casual, I spent a few weeks playing Wizard 101. I found the pet breeding system somewhat fascinating, but it involves quite incredible amounts of grinding, while the rather random results can leave you with very little to show for it. Gardening too was quite fun, but you have to log in far too often to keep your plants alive. Not, to be honest, the sort of obsessive behaviour I would want to encourage in children.
I’ve been playing DDO for the last few days. I still had a bunch of Turbine points left over from the 6000 European players got when we merged Codemaster accounts into our Turbine ones. So I picked up the Artificer class. Wow, that’s a powerful class, though that might be more to do with their ability to use repeating crossbows , which any other class could do quite easily with the expenditure of a feat, than the rest of the class features. Repeating crossbows are the machine guns of the DDO world, putting out incredible amounts of ranged damage. I might be inspired to do a proper post on the Artificer, as it’s really rather fun.
Toying with making some DDO videos. Especially now that, after applying a year or so ago, Youtube has finally added me to their partner scheme, and Brell knows I could use the money. Will have to see how my energy and enthusiasm keeps up, as I’ve been having a very strange time of it recently, health-wise, with parts of me attaining never-before seen might, and other parts choosing my moment of triumph to quite literally self-destruct.
Not sure what sort of DDO videos might be most of interest, so if you have any ideas I’d love to hear them.
Oh, and I’ve pre-ordered the EQ2 expansion, Age of Discovery. I’ve not been playing EQ2 much, and didn’t even get the steam up to do the new Nights of the Dead quest with Maltheas. Largely I’m still rather annoyed about the whole stat/item revamp shenanigans, which has made everything feel a bit blander than it used to. But there’s a lot of cool new features in Age of Discovery, and I’m not going to deny myself the chance to pootle about with them!