End of an Era

Well, it finally happened.

After years of playing numerous MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games, I have finally managed to reach the level cap in one of them.  That’s right, today Tinius, my Witch Hunter in Warhammer Online, managed to reach level 40 while killing some demons.  It didn’t take nearly as long as I expected, and the last few levels really seemed to fly by.  Now I just need to help my wife get her character up and then there’s all the other things to do.

It has been a fun ride so far, and I’m certainly going to keep on playing.  This is not the end by any means.

What I’ve been up to…

It’s been a while.  I’ve had the last week and a half off from work, and I just haven’t made the time to post anything new.  I’ve been doing a lot of painting on my Eldar army.  There’s still a lot of work to do, especially since I just purchased a bunch more stuff.  It has been nice to get back into the swing of things, though I really need some better brushes.  Mine are in terrible condition.  I just posted a few pictures of the army up on my Flickr page, so if you look in the sidebar you can see them there.

I’ve also been playing a lot of Warhammer Online with my new guild.  It has been a lot of fun.  In fact, last night, my wife, some guildies and I went and did a low level dungeon that gave up minimal XP.  We did it just for the prospect of getting a silly title to wear on our characters.  No one in my old guild would have even thought of doing that, and it was a ton of fun.  I’m very glad I switched.  My wife and I are very close to hitting level 40, which will be a huge achievement for me, since I’ve never made it to the top level in any MMO game I’ve played.

As for the holidays, we spent some time with my family and had a great time.  It was great to see them all again, and can’t wait to see them again.

So to all of you, I hope you had a great Christmas and a happy new year.  See you in 2009!

What I've been up to…

It’s been a while.  I’ve had the last week and a half off from work, and I just haven’t made the time to post anything new.  I’ve been doing a lot of painting on my Eldar army.  There’s still a lot of work to do, especially since I just purchased a bunch more stuff.  It has been nice to get back into the swing of things, though I really need some better brushes.  Mine are in terrible condition.  I just posted a few pictures of the army up on my Flickr page, so if you look in the sidebar you can see them there.

I’ve also been playing a lot of Warhammer Online with my new guild.  It has been a lot of fun.  In fact, last night, my wife, some guildies and I went and did a low level dungeon that gave up minimal XP.  We did it just for the prospect of getting a silly title to wear on our characters.  No one in my old guild would have even thought of doing that, and it was a ton of fun.  I’m very glad I switched.  My wife and I are very close to hitting level 40, which will be a huge achievement for me, since I’ve never made it to the top level in any MMO game I’ve played.

As for the holidays, we spent some time with my family and had a great time.  It was great to see them all again, and can’t wait to see them again.

So to all of you, I hope you had a great Christmas and a happy new year.  See you in 2009!

New Faces

Over the weekend, while staying bundled up inside out of the -40 degree windchill, I made the decision to switch guilds in Warhammer Online.  It wasn’t a decision made lightly, because I do have some really good friends in The Phoenix Guard.  What ultimately made me do it, though, was just the fact that I wasn’t having fun.  They have a much different mindset on the game than I do.  For one, I am focussed on playing the game where I’m at and not rushing to get to the end.  It was depressing to never have anyone at my level to play with because they were all sitting at the end.

So on Friday morning, I let them know that my wife and I would be leaving, and then struck out to find a new guild.  The place I came upon is The Tome Raiders.  I had heard about them through fellow blogger Syp of Waaagh! fame, and so far they’ve been a lot of fun to hang out with.  They are a much more casual guild with only a few characters at level 40.  That said, they are well organized and really work together to have fun.  It’s been a blast so far, and I’m really looking forward to playing with them more in the future.

Weekend Update

I did a little of everything this weekend.

I played a lot of Warhammer Online as always and managed to pick up another rank and a renown rank.  The renown rank was nice, as now I can wear the full Devastator set that I have.  I also managed to help my wife get to 30 and started doing some Tier 4 stuff with her.  The bad thing is that her computer lags badly in some of the T4 scenarios, which is weird since she didn’t have much problems in open RvR stuff with lots of players.

The rest of the weekend was spent playing with my son, making some Christmas presents with him and trying to get back into painting my Warhammer 40k figures.  Having a 2.5-year-old around makes that much more difficult as he wants to help.  I did give him a brush and a figure to paint, so now I have a very beautiful green/blue Necron warrior and a pink/black Dark Eldar.  I wasn’t able to get much done, but I was at least able to get some stuff started.

Paid Powerleveling

I have recently found out that a couple people in my Warhammer online guild used various paid powerleveling services to get their characters to level 40.  Now I’m not usually one to judge, but I could never endorse that kind of thing personally, and I’m really disappointed that they felt it was necessary.

Apparently the reasons had to do with his computer being out of order and he didn’t want to get stuck behind all of the rest of the guild when he came back, which is understandable, but with the ease of leveling in the game and the fact that there are quite a few of use with alts or characters that aren’t at the cap yet, it just doesn’t seem necessary.

Honestly if it weren’t for the fact that my friends are in this guild (and they actually played their characters to 40), I would be very tempted to leave.

Goals Accomplished

Because of some questions and encouragement from my Warhammer Online guild (The Phoenix Guard), I had made myself a goal of getting Tinius to at least 30 by the end of last week.  I had been slacking on his progress because of Knob and Fallout 3.  Since my wife’s character was close enough in levels to play with Tinius, though, we were able to play together and we managed to play through the last parts of the Tier 3 human and dwarf content.  Between that and plenty of RvR, Tinius is now half way through level 31, and has also picked up the three of the pieces for the Devastator set.  I need to reach Renown Rank 26 to wear it all, and I’m about halfway through 24, so I need to work on that a bit more.

In other news, I was able to put up the Christmas lights on our house and only had a few sections of non-working lights that I need to take care of.  I had a wonderful time with my wife’s family on Thanksgiving.  There was some worries about excessive drama, but it turned out to be pretty calm and fun.  On Black Friday, we avoided the busy stores and just went to the specialty shops.  The comic shop was having a buy 2 get 1 free sale, so I picked up a couple new games to play with friends.

Overall, it was a very successful week at least in gaming terms.  I hope to get a bit more done around the house over Christmas, especially dealing with finishing up our bathroom that has been in work for about 2 years now.

Daily quests = FUN

Last night was one of the best half hours of WAR I have experienced.

I didn’t have a whole lot of time to play, so I just logged on with Knob to complete the Heavy Metal daily quest for the day.  When I checked the Tome, it told me that I needed to complete 3 stages of a Public Quest.  I immediately checked the Open Groups in the area and found, to my delite, that there were three decent sized groups running PQs in my area.  I jumped in with the closest one and got there in time to finish the first stage of the PQ.  As a group, we then managed to easily take down stages 2 through 4 and finished up the PQ.  The rewards weren’t great for me since I was a few levels over the intended, but it was the first time in months that I’ve completed a PQ.  I really miss the days of overly populated PQs in Tier 1, and it was a lot of fun being able to jump into a group and just blaze through a PQ.

I think Mythic has done a nice job so far with this latest event, and I really hope they can continue to provide this kind of incentive to get people interested in these kinds of things.

Altitus has struck…

…and I had been doing so well.

For quite a while there Tinius was my only character.  I still enjoy playing him, but he’s kind of reached a plateau.  He’s higher than all my friends’ alts, but he’s stuck lower than their mains, so I’m stuck soloing or PUG RvR-ing.  Then my wife started playing and so I’ve been playing Knob the Ironbreaker with her and it’s looking like he will take over as my highest level character pretty soon.

Last night, though, I decided to roll a warrior priest.  I got him up to level 7 and he’s a lot of fun.  I really enjoyed playing a cleric in Dungeons and Dragons, and a Paladin in WoW was one of my higher level characters.  The warrior priest fits in well with that kind of mentality of hitting things hard while keeping your friends alive.

So now I have three “mains” that will be splitting my time.  I’m sure Knob will get the bulk of my time, as I’m dedicated to get someone to 40 for guild play, but knowing the way my wife and I play, the others will get plenty of attention too.

WAR Witching Weekend

Thursday night I spent about 30 minutes out in BFP fighting until the PQ started.  It was nothing but a zerg with Destro pinning us in the warcamp.  As a Witch Hunter there wasn’t much I could do, so after gaining 25 influence I left.

Saturday I managed to grind out some Specters with my wife and got a few gobbo masks, which are great.  Still didn’t even get close to the first influence reward and didn’t really care enough to go for more.

Yesterday I managed to get into 2 of the PQs in BFP with my Witch Hunter.  Both were won by Order and the first one I actually got a few swings at the Lord before he was taken down.  Somehow I managed to place in the top ten for contribution and ended up with the second place roll netting me a purple bag.

The second PQ was a much more unorganized zerg, and I saw Syp running around shooting everything.  I was much less productive in that one, as anytime I got a little far away from the group I would get sucked in by a Magus and killed.  Order still managed to win, but I barely got within site of the Lord before it died, so no kill count for me.  And I ended up placing 38th in the roll.

Over the course of the weekend I managed to get about 5k influence on two characters.  So even together I wouldn’t have made it to the first reward.

High points:
– Interesting combat in the RvR lakes.  Sure it was like herding cats, but it was fun.
– The masks are great, and I’m glad I was able to get at least the one.

Low points:
– Small PQ area forcing a zerg.  A wider area, or at least an area farther from the warcamps would have been nicer.
– Limited PQ objectives.  I would have liked to see some sort of static objective so that if the other side doesn’t participate you could still win.
– Influence needs were way too high.  With the tiny about of influence gained in the PQ, and the limited number of spawns for the NPCs it took a huge amount of effort to even get the first level of contribution.

Overall, I had fun.  I think it was a successful test, but there are definitely things that Mythic could have done better.