With the holiday season coming up, more and more of us will be staying up late at night playing video games. I want to take a moment and recommend a program called F.lux. It auto dims or brightens your computer screen according to the time of day it is. When it’s evening, it sets the display to appear indoorsy and when it’s daylight, it’ll return brightness to optimum levels. I highly recommend it.
The Old Republic
I received my early access today and spent a good part of my schedule playing and getting reaccustomed to the game. I rolled a Sith Inquisitor (Sorcerer). Just can’t stop healing. Level 13 after about 6 hours. SWTOR has been labelled as a WoW clone with Star Wars skins. I agree with this and I’m not opposed to it. It’s nice to have transferable knowledge and skills from one game to another. I compare it to how in FPS games, you don’t really need to re-learn how to find cover, strafe or aim. In SWTOR, it’s easy to break line of sight, kite and do other standard things. Those of you looking for a completely new gaming archetype won’t be satisfied with it.
Healing feels quite similar to WoW. The resources used though are the biggest changes. Having a healer that relies on energy or is a GCD healer is going to be interesting. If I wasn’t playing an Inquisitor, I would’ve played an Imperial Agent (Operative) instead. With so many instant cast heals, they felt like Resto Druids to me during the beta.
One thing I’ve noticed in SWTOR is that I’ve run into players who just plain aren’t familiar with the actual MMO genre or they’re just not very bright. I was speaking with a friend of mine who agreed. He shares with me a story of how he was running by a player who was dead on the ground. He resurrected him and that player proceeded to run into another pack of mobs. He took out two or three before he was overwhelmed. He didn’t release or let go. After a few more of these, my friend messaged him to try to find out what he was doing. It turns out he’s been at this for a while because he has no idea how to come back to life. He did not know about the button in the middle of the screen that can be pressed to trigger a med evac.
This whole time he had been relying on players running by him and resurrecting him.
My friend understandable became demoralized and just walked away while the player he was with decided to pull another 4 mobs.
So the dialog and choices stuff is cool. But I confess, I simply skip most of it. I end up reading faster than the actual dialog and conversations and automatically pick the choices that are the most negative. It’s neat with the interaction and all that, but I know I’ll get tired of it quick. This is especially true in instances because you may run into cases where someone takes a long time to make a selection or AFKs out or something. If you instance grind with a group of players you know who all space bar (or skip) their way through dialog, it feels like a quicker leveling experience. But once you’re on your 4th or 5th run through of Black Talon, it gets old fast. I suppose I’m not one for patience.
Conquest in SWTOR?
Speaking of the Old Republic, if you’ve got the game but are looking around for a guild to join, you’re welcome to join my crew and I. While I would love to be able to raid and try out their end game, the reality is that I would not be able to seriously commit to two end game raiding activities. I’d have to find another player willing to organize and handle that aspect of it. But it’s too early to worry about that. For now, if you’re looking for a home:
Server: Warriors of the Shadow
Faction: Empire
Just add Matticus to your friends list or post a comment here or use smoke signals to get a hold of me.
How’s WoW going?
We hit 6/8 normal mode last week. We ran out of time as players had to leave but there was enough for a 10 man to take a look at Spine of Deathwing. That fell over within 2 attempts. All that remains now is Madness of Deathwing. There’s been some debate between leaving Alexstrasza last or Kalecgos last. Personally, I’m in favor of leaving Alexstrasza last so that we don’t have to worry about those mini-tentacles and just DPS the claw down. Others say that the 25% damage increase is much more favorable. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer but I do believe one approach is better for our group than the other.
Still looking for Balance Druids, Shadow Priests, Warlocks, Mages.