Skyrim Black Falls Barrow Tip

When I was adventuring in Black Falls Barrow, I came across a little problem when trying to use The Golden Claw to enter the Inner Sanctum.  None of the 3 rings were able to be interacted with and the door would not open.

To solve this, I left zone (not the whole dungeon, just the previous loading screen) and came back.  After that, it worked fine.  This was on the 360 version, not sure if it applies to the PC or PS3.

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Skyrim Plan

Today marks the much anticipated release of the latest in the Elder Scrolls series: Skyrim.  It just so happens today is a holiday for some of us in the US (Veterans Day), so much gaming should be had.  Well, probably not by me.  I ordered the 360 version and will be waiting for UPS.

Why not Digital Download the PC version?  I really just enjoy playing those games on my 360.  Plus, when I am at my computer I want to be playing other games.  So I have been thinking about what kind of character I will make in Skyrim.

Race.  You can toss out all of the Elf races cause that isn't going to happen. Imperial looks like the choice for me, I know... pretty plain choice.  But they have a skill bonus I am interested in.

Speaking of skills, in Skyrim you can get them all to 100.  The customization comes in the form of Perks, which you only have so many your able to choose.

Heavy Armor.  Maybe it is my Dwarven tendencies, but I can't resist Heavy Armor.  I think it is usually much more interesting looking than lighter armor, and just plain cooler.

Smithing.  If I am going Heavy Armor, then it makes since to have a way to forge the pieces.  Hopefully crafting isn't too tedious in the game.  Usually it does not interest me much when it comes to single player games.

Conjuration.  So this skill (and perks) let you summon creatures and raise the dead.  Yeah, that sounds like something I want to do.

So those are 3 main areas I am looking at for Skyrim.  I guess that makes me into a Battle Mage.  We'll see how it plays out when I finally get my hands on the game.

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Tier 7 Armor Sets - Round 6

It's time for another look at some of the upcoming armor sets for Warhammer Online.  We still don't know how we can get our grubby hands on these, but I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.  My money is still on them being a reward for successfully capturing a relic in the upcoming fortress revamp.

Magus

Ah, the Magus.  My arch-enemy.  This guy actually looks decent without his flying surf board.  I think it is the white which makes it stand out to me.

White Lion

Ok, settle down.  The White Lion is not becoming a dual wield career.  I don't know why the picture shows him as such, just one of those things.

Rune Priest

I just don't like the armor sets where the backpack puts something over their head.  I know there is only so much room to work with on a Dwarf, but it just doesn't appeal to me.



Tier 7 Armor Sets - Round 1 - Bright Wizard, Chosen, Engineer
Tier 7 Armor Sets - Round 2 - Disciple of Khain, Knight of the Blazing Sun, Slayer, Witch Elf
Tier 7 Armor Sets - Round 3 - Marauder, Squig Herder, Shadow Warrior
Tier 7 Armor Sets - Round 4 - With Hunter, Zealot, Blackguard
Tier 7 Armor Sets - Round 5 - Archmage, Black Orc, Ironbreaker
Tier 7 Armor Sets - Round 6 - Magus, White Lion, Rune Priest

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RvR in SWTOR?

This week, the SWTOR team at BioWare Austin invited a number of fansites down to check out the latest and greatest.  One of the big ticket items they got to see was PvP on Ilum.  This is the only announced world area dedicated to PvP.  Unless you roll on a PvP server, then you can get it on almost anywhere you want.

For the full details, head on over to Ask a Jedi.

Quick Summary. Basically, Ilum has a large RvR lake (in WAR terms).  There are 2 bases: one Republic, one Empire.  In between there will be 3 objectives to be captured. Capture them all and your faction wins.

Reward.  What do you get for winning?  It seems like a faction-wide buff to Valor gain.  Valor is basically Renown.  It is said that the buff stacks, so multiple captures increase the buff.  The lake will also contains rare crafting materials.

Cool Stuff.  The battlefield has Walkers (AT-AT kinda stuff), Bombers, Rocket launchers and who knows what else.  We saw some of it in a video they released a short while ago.

Thoughts.  It's nice that TOR is attempting to put some interesting PvP into the game.  I'm certainly going to check it out once I reach 50, I want to shoot some Walkers!  The rare crafting materials also seems like a great reason to visit the zone.

Overall, I'm not sure how well it will work.  One area to fight in will get old fast for a lot of people.  They say that the zone does not reset (like Wintergrasp) which is a good thing, but then we get to the problem of unbalanced populations.

If the Republic is just more active (or more coordinated) they will gear up faster and be even stronger.  I'm not sure there is anyway to really solve this, especially with 2 sides and limited places to fight.

We still don't know all of the details, so I'll keep an open mind.  In the end, I'm playing TOR for the story so I am not very concerned with the PvP side of the game.  If it turns out to be good, it's a nice bonus.    Who am I kidding, I can't resist PvP.

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Overload!

Lately, I have just been overloaded with games to play and fun stuff to do.  It wouldn't be so bad if work insisted that I, well, work to get paid.  But they do, so that takes a big chunk of time that could be spent goofing off.  Here is what I have going on this month and next.

New Vegas.  I've had Fallout 3: New Vegas for close to a year now and am finally playing through it.  I like it quite a bit, but it is pretty lengthy.  Luckily, it is open enough that I can forge my own way to the end without doing every quest thrown at me.  For example, lets take the Boomers.  I ended up just wiping them out for that artillery nonsense.  Now I am loaded up with grenades :)

Skyrim.  This Friday, Skyrim is set to be unleashed upon the world.  I expect it to suck up a pretty good amount of time in the coming weeks.  I'll be getting it on the 360, although I'm tempted to go Steam just so I can have it when I wake up.

Revan.  The third Old Republic novel comes out on November 15th.  I've read Fatal Alliances and Deceived, so I'm pretty excited about this one.  If you have not read the Darth Bane books, also by Drew Karpyshyn, you should, they are awesome.

EVE Online.  I'm currently working on my goal of turning 250 million Isk into 1 billion.  Researching Planetary Interaction at the moment to see how profitable it can be.

Betas.  I'm in the SWTOR Beta, which I play sparingly just so I keep things fresh for launch.  Wrath of Heroes is currently between sessions, but I expect that to resume soon.

Fortresses.  Warhammer Online is set to bring back Forts pretty soon.  I hope to see them on PTS in the next few weeks.  It's a big feature, so who knows when we'll actually see it live.  I'd prefer they get it right rather than rush it.

The Old Republic.  In a little over a month, Star Wars: The Old Republic will launch.  Hopefully that will be December 15th for me, since I did get my pre-order in on the day it was available.

I left a few games off of the list, like League of Legends and Sword of the Stars 2.  I try to play those when the stuff above is not tickling my fancy.

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Money, Money, Money

This weekend turned out to be rather interesting.  I had to spend some money, which was not planned.  I also re-subbed to a game so I could make some money (virtual, sadly).  In both cases, I had some fun as a result.  Lets start with the spending.

I got up Saturday morning to find that my monitor no longer worked.  I had it for over three years, so I was sad to see it go. On the positive side, it means I get a new monitor!  A quick trip to Best Buy and I had an Acer S232.  It's a 23" LED monitor that has a resolution of 1920 x 1068.  Both stats are an improvement for me.  It also only cost ~$169.  It's cheap enough that I can still get a new monitor when I upgrade my system next year.

On Friday I re-subscribed to EVE Online.  I blame Social Media (twitter, blogs) pressure for my return to the game.  The main reason I did it was because I was in the mood for a challenge.  Specifically, I wanted to have to think and plan.  I also found out that my ship was no longer stranded in a wormhole.  I guess it gets moved if your account is inactive long enough.

I'm not sure how much time I'll spend in EVE, what with TOR coming out next month.  It was only $10 for the month, so I think I'll get my monies worth. So now the question is, what to do?

I have $250 million Isk in my bank account at the moment.  My Drake is T2 shield fitted, so has about 33,000 effective HP.  It was meant to take some abuse from Sleepers, and is probably just a bit overkill for my Level 2 Agent missions.I really don;t feel like grinding missions to get to Level 3.

My goal is to turn that 250 million into 1 billion Isk.  I have pretty good Manufacturing and Trading skills, so I'm leaning towards using those to accomplish my goal. I'm open to ideas though.  It should be pretty fun, I'm currently researching trade route and products to sell.

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Fallen Earth Brings the PvP

Fallen Earth is a game I have not played in a while, ever since they gutted a lot of their staff.  Recently, they have a couple things going on that makes me think about trying it out again.  First is the fact that they are now a Free to Play game.  By itself though, it is not enough to bring me back.

Secondly, and the really tempting reason, is their latest dev blog about PvP.  Here's a blurb...

The Territory Control area has 13 control points that Factions can hold. These control points work a lot like the existing Faction Control system, but with some nice additions. Six of the points are out in the open and will be harder to defend and maintain control of. The other seven points are actually inside of keeps (including one bad-ass huge keep in the middle of the area) that will provide much better defense, as well as some other nice perks.

If I remember correctly, there are 6 factions in fallen Earth, that's even better than 3 :)  Stuff to fight over is an important part of any PvP system.  Now the question is why...

If your faction holds any of the 13 control points in the area, you'll get a nice buff that will improve based on the number of points you control. That improvement will max out at 4 control points. The buff will increase death toll, faction, and experience earnings and will also give a nice boost to the major offensive combat skills.

And then there's what you're all really fighting over: resources. When you control a point, you'll have the ability to create and place your own harvesters that will generate some nice resource nodes in the area surrounding your control point.

So you can get buffs and resource nodes, the latter of which is pretty important to crafting.  The control points themselves sound pretty varied.  There are some keep mechanics with some of them that have destructible doors and walls.

So yeah, that all sounds pretty good to me.

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Last Call for Beta 2

According to the Wrath of Heroes Facebook page, this weekends will be the last for this stage of the beta.  It went pretty quick, but a lot of progress was made between this stage and the last.  I really enjoy the new record keeping, tactics and heroes.  I wonder what beta 3 will have in store for us?

Time for this weekends test:

• Thursday, November 3rd – 4pm-8pm EDT (8pm-12am GMT)
• Friday, November 4th – 10am-10pm EDT (2pm-2am GMT)
• Saturday, November 5th – 12pm-6pm EDT (4pm-10pm GMT)

As far as I can tell, not much has changed between this weekends test and the last.  Zathis and Conrad are still around to be tried out.  

New Fansite.  For those of you that speak Portuguese (or use Google Translate), there is a new Wrath of Heroes Fansite.  It has forums, videos and a Mumble server.  

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Zathis and Conrad

During last weekends Wrath of Heroes beta test, we got to play two new Heroes. Zathis is a Dark Elf Assassin while Conrad is a Warrior Priest. These additions do bring some interesting abilities to the party.  I whipped up a short video to show off some of what they can do.

Zathis.  The Dark Elf Assassin is able to stealth for an unlimited amount of time.  However, he moves VERY slow while stealthed, I mean really really slow.  So you best wait to stealth until you get close to your enemy.  To go along with that ability, he is able to teleport to a target.  That was actually a lot of fun!

Conrad.  The Warrior priest is basically a melee healer.  When he hits with two of his abilities, the group (within range) gets healed.  It's nice to have an alternative to Glowgob the Shaman.  He also has a powerful silence ability which seemed very useful.

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Fortress Dev Discussion

Late last week, WAR Producer James Casey created a new Developer Discussion thread.  This time it is to discuss the re-introduction of fortresses and their effect on the overall campaign.  This is a follow-up to the Fortress Q&A which I posted a couple of weeks ago.

First up is how Fortresses will fit in T4.  Our goal is that they are an alternate way to RvR and help in the WAR.  However, by opening up those areas again and making them active, despite them not being gated by the campaign, there will still be some effect on the campaign.    

Currently thoughts are to make the relic raid require you to go through the front gate(s), then the front door, and then take out the lords to capture the relic; at which point you'd high tail it out of there.  The questions I have for this discussion is this. 

1. What positive effect for the campaign can you envision from having this alternate RvR up all the time? 

It seems to me it would give smaller groups an objective, for both attack and defense.  It really depends on implementation, it could end up just moving all the players there instead of the Keeps.

2. Is there a negative effect for the campaign that you can envision from having this alternate RvR up all the time?

Midnight and Early morning attacks would seem to be a negative, but again it provides something for players to do during off hours.

There is also the risk of the stronger realm just dominating all of the forts.  Keeping the battles smaller would be key in preventing this from happening.

3. Are there ways to mitigate said negative effect or a way to accentuate the positives that you'd like to suggest.  

I think that the Guild/Alliance claiming of Forts couple help keep the battle small, depending on the benefits of ownership. Allowing owners only quicker access (teleport) to the forts might help encourage them to come to its defense instead of the whole realm.

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