First, let me start by wishing everyone a Happy Leap Year Day! I have absolutely no idea if that’s the proper phrase, but it sounds close enough.
February comes to a close seeing me bounce around from game to game (ie. my normal behavior) though I did get things accomplished in each.
MMORPG:
Vanguard: Dolndruth achieved level 29 and is currently working on the Coterie Infineum Sanctuary quest series. He’s in “Upper CIS” on the part where the group basically just goes in and grinds away until pieces of scavenged infineum armor which your character can actually use drop, along with a few type of energy gems. Once these are collected, they can be forged into infineum armor to better gear yourselves and to progress the quest chain. Dolndruth has been in twice so far, and only gotten a helmet half-prepared, and is waiting for a bigger piece to drop to complete the next quest. Oh, and the proper energy gem, which has yet to drop for anyone he’s grouped with so far. My friend Daniel rolled a cleric and is enjoying that more than his druid so I’m parking Dolndruth for a bit while Daniel gets his cleric up to where we can group together. He’s damn nearly there, running the Tomb of Lord Tsang several times, a few Hunter’s League quests, and ran with me to Donovan’s Roost to get the very first quest in the CIS chain.
DDO: As I’ve written about over the past few days, I made a return to DDO this month, and played my wizard, Koriander, to level 6! Actually, damn near level 7, which I will most likely achieve over the weekend, so I’m very excited about that. I also look forward to seeing my first-ever live event Sunday for DDO’s 2nd Anniversary.
LOTRO: I sorta-kinda started my return to LOTRO towards the end of the month. I created a monster, aka creep, to PvMP in the Ettenmoors, even got in my first monster raid which was a blast. My creep is an orc reaver, but I just realized today that in WoW, the hunter class was my absolute favorite to PvP with, so I rolled an Uruk this morning. Wow… I really wish the archer-type creeps were the orc archers I see running around. They look cool. My Uruk? Fugly. I don’t mean in a “well DUH, it’s a monster, they’re supposed to be ugly” kind of way, I mean in terms of the model and textures used to make the Uruk… just damn fugly. I’m tempted to whine that “the Uruk model breaks my immersion! QQ” but I won’t. 
This morning I decided to “actually” play LOTRO for a bit so I logged in Arwellyn and did a few solo quests, running back and forth between the Lone Lands and North Downs to do so. Itching for some real action, I finally found a fellowship working on Book 2, so I joined them and we completed the entire Book together! Doing so also completed all the Wight Slayer deeds in the Lone Lands, so… bonus! The final instance, The Red Pass, was very fun, challenging, and very immersive. I have to say, while I totally love the open, non-instanced world of Telon in Vanguard, when it comes to getting your emotions up, your adrenaline flowing, and pushing some cool scripted story-telling, LOTRO is where it’s at.
I was dismayed to see changes in the kinship I’m a member of, Exodus. The original leader is still around, but rarely due to real-life constraints. The kinship has been turned over to another long-time member, which is fine, and he’s doing a great job. However… apparently Exodus has been asked to merge with Swifty and Hammo, another popular and very well-known kinship on the server, famous for their role-playing events. I love S&H, and even planned to put my Hobbit minstrel in there — Swifty and Hammo was originally very Hobbit-heavy, almost to the point of being exclusively Hobbits — before I decided I didn’t want to have umpteen alts in LOTRO. I’m not quite certain how I feel just yet about merging though. I really dislike when the dreaded Guild Drama rears its ugly head for any reason. 
Side Note: Am I going out on a limb here mentioning the actual names of guilds I’m in? I typically don’t… not sure where that fine line in the sand is drawn when it comes to matters like this.
FPS:
Battlefield 2142: I’m semi-tempted to apply to a clan of some sort, provided I could find one that fit my preferences and also allowed me to play casually. I normally play the Assault class, though I have saved the last two unlocks just in case I decide to start trying out one of the others. I occasionally will do the Recon class if I know the other team is camping one of our bases with snipers, so I’ll try to snipe them back, then back to Assault. The Battlefield engine gets a bit “jumpy” when moving so sniping isn’t the easiest thing in the world for me in that game, though Daniel got a few unlocks to get the next sniper rifle and says it’s much, much smoother and easier, almost to the point of not being challenging at all. So I’ll give it some time and perhaps play with a few other classes before I decide where to put those unlocks. In the meantime, I am at Master Corporal Silver rank, with 329 points until Master Corporal Gold.
COD4: I don’t play COD4 heavily, so I’m still on Act 1. That’s fine by me, since the campaign is fairly short from what I’ve read. I’ve completed “War Pig” and next time I play, I’ll be on the “Shock and Awe” mission, which is nearly the end of Act 1. COD4 is hands-down easily the most immersive FPS I’ve played yet, in terms of the campaign, and I highly recommend it. I did play a handful of short multiplayer matches and, aside from being discouraged at being thoroughly (and I do mean thoroughly! schooled, spanked, and otherwise owned, I just don’t find the multiplayer aspect very compelling, and certainly not immersive. I’ve said before that it strikes me as same ‘ol, same ‘ol small skirmishes from 1998 only with better graphics, and I still feel that way after giving it a few more tries.
RTS:
World in Conflict: I used to really enjoy the RTS genre. I still have my CD’s of Warcraft III, Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, Age of Mythology, Total Annihilation (friggin awesome in its day!), Ground Control, and probably one or two others, though none are installed. WiC is the spiritual successor of the Ground Control series, and is an Action RTS, where you just jump right into the action, there’s no resource gathering and base building garbage here. Back when I did play RTS, back before I’d ever heard of MUD’s, MMO’s, or Richard Bartle, I suspect I’d have still ranked quite highly as an Explorer player type. I always spend too much time exploring the map, watching my little troops fight their little battles from interesting camera angles, and just having a good ol’ time. Unfortunately for my little troops, all those attention-grabbing diversions (have I mentioned my already-short attention span?) tend to mean I’m not micro-managing anything else, so while I can usually scrape by in campaign mode, if I dare go online I’m doing so with a huge red “spank me hard, daddy!” flag over my head. Even with the exceptionally minimal level of micro-managing in WiC, I dared to venture online for the second time ever this month, and yeah… it still hurts to sit down… On a positive note, watching all the explosions and other eye candy as my little troops died cursing their incompetent diety (that’d be me) was spectacularly impressive to behold! 
In closing, I’d like to thank everyone for the attention aimed in my general direction this month, I was humbled and honored to receive a few links and mentions out there. February kicked off with Darren naming it “blog of the week” in Shut Up, We’re Talking #19, which was truly shocking to hear since I had no idea it was coming. I was out walking listening to the show and suddenly he’s talking about this and I’m all “woot! That’s my blog they’re talking about!” while all the neighbors are looking at me strangely or rushing their children inside to safety from that crazy fool shouting outside… The Storytelling post was linked on several other sites, and somehow the First Guild post was mentioned on Massively! That was a huge honor (and shock) to get linked there. It’s funny, and amazing, the ways people stumble across your blog… I’m also noticing more and more interesting search terms that bring people here as well…
Tags: MMO, Whatever
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