(no subject)
I think I took away a few choice pieces of knowledge from this year's E3 coverage. Things like "yes, everyone sounds gay when they say 'Wii'"; and "the execs at Sony do smoke opium all the time." A few things really caught and held my attention though. One of those things was Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. This mega-multi-platform game from the folks who brought us the X-Men Legends series basically does its best to bring us as many playable heroes as possible. I believe the number is around 20. Which is insane. I don't believe I've ever played Dr. Strange in a video game before.
This weekend, we will be farmsitting. Farm. Like with horses and shit. Some people who know me might think that me + farm = wtf?! And normally they'd be mostly right. But I've spent a lot of time at this particular farm and I'm looking forward to some quiet, relaxing days. I'm hoping to get a lot of reading done.
On the Guild Wars front - my Assassin/Ranger is sitting pretty at level 20 and has started collecting some decent armor. I'm a little put off by her seeming inability to stay alive for any real duration. I have a feeling that my inherit impatience lends itself to playing tank characters. Fortunately, Guild Wars barely penalizes you for dying. When you do drop, you're given a -15% "death penalty" which applies to your maximum energy and health. Every time you die, you receive an additional -15% to a maximum of -16%. You can "work off" your death penalty by killing enemy bosses or finishing quests. Alternatively, you can just go back to town and immediately have the entire penalty removed. However, this usually means hiking back through all of the respawned mobs to try and finish a quest. So really - dying is more of a minor inconvenience than a real problem. But it gets frustrating when you are capped at 20 but still find yourself m00ked by a seemingly straightforward mob. The assassin is definitely balanced toward damage output and, as such, has very little in the way of defense. In many ways, I have a feeling the profession was designed to shine in PvP, a hypothesis that I have yet to test.
So I started a Monk. Probably going to go Monk/Warrior and see if I can't work her up to level 20 and keep her as a good PvE/Challenge character. I've done the Monk thing in Prophecies, but only hit level 11 (iirc). The Factions campaign is a veritable fast-track in comparison. I was able to get to 7th level in a single sitting.
The game at windsofwinter.org is into its 2nd turn, and things are moving along nicely. A few players have made some silly mistakes as they get a grasp on the rules, and I'm currently trying to wrap my head around how to deal with situations where two players have posted Muster orders to the same sea area (it never happened in the last game, but has happened twice in the first Muster of this game). I think I'll just have to notify the players, in turn order, that they can't muster in a given area. The question becomes - do I allow them to redo their entire muster or do they only get to reassign that one point? Thinking must occur.
Anyway - back to work.