Thursday, July 1, 2010

Canada Day Resolutions For 2010

It's Canada Day, when PVD traditionally honours the home and native land of Stargrace, the guys from LOTRO Reporter, and the moose that was promised to us by Ghostcrawler with a look back at the old New Year's Resolutions.

How have my goals from January worked out, and what am I expecting for the rest of the year?

Pre-Cataclysm WoW
1. Get Greenraven, my Horde Warrior, to level 80 and complete some key questlines that may not survive the Cataclysm (notably the Nagrand Thrall/Garrosh story and the Wrathgate).
2. Try to kill Malygos on my mage, to complete the Champion of the Frozen Wastes title.
3. Check out the pre-Cataclysm world events.

Step 1 is well underway, as Greenraven has moved from level 65 to level 77 and completed the Wrathgate. I still plan to hit 80 so I can solo the group portions of the Thrall/Nagrand storyline, and I will of course check out the pre-Cataclysm world events. Malygos may or may not happen, basically, he will have to come up as the weekly raid boss on a week when I happen to be subscribed to WoW so that I can attempt to PUG him.

Two new goals here:
- Northrend Dungeon Master on Greenraven, thanks to the magic of the random group finder (I'm already more than half done, and would like to complete this before 80 if possible)
- Outland Dungeon Hero on Greenwiz, soloing all of the dungeons just to say I did it

LOTRO
4. Finish the quests of Mirkwood on Allarond.
5. Complete as many of the game's epic books as possible. (The entirety of Volume 1, the pre-Moria epic books, are supposed to be soloable as of February's patch.)
6. Level a new Runekeeper alt through the re-vamped leveling content (currently through the Lone Lands, slowly expanding outward in each book patch).
I've done many, but not all, of the quests of Mirkwood, and I did complete the newly soloable portions of Volume 1.  Unfortunately, the surprise announcement that there will be no new content until the free to play revamp arrives is probably going to keep me away from Middle Earth for most of the rest of 2010. 

EQ2
7. Try to finish Lyriana's fabled epic weapon questline (that's the non-raid version).
8. Bring Lyriana from 80/80 to 90/90 with the new expansion.
9. Possibly mess with one or more alts.
Resolutions 7 and 8 have been completed, and 9 was nebulous enough that it too has technically been satisfied.

New resolution here is to complete the "Epic Repercussions" questline, which will grant Lyriana the previously raid-only buff from the Mythical upgrade to her epic weapon.  That aside, I generally haven't been big on setting specific benchmarks for success in EQ2 and I don't see any reason to start right now.  I've been happily wandering in and out of Norrath from time to time and doing whatever I feel like doing for over a year now, and I expect that to continue for the rest of 2010.  My specific goals might also get tweaked based on the expansion announcement coming up later this summer. 

Post-Cataclysm WoW
10. Get Greenwiz to level 85 with the new expansion.
11. At a minimum, try a Worgen Druid and a Goblin Shaman (the two classes I have the least experience with in retail WoW) through their new starter areas, which always tend to be well-polished.
12. Tourism on one or more other alts (either the new races, or perhaps Cheerydeth the third).
No updates here since Cataclysm has yet to launch.  With today's rollout of the closed beta, I'm guessing that a 2010 release, and resolution number 10, are nigh certain.  Anything else will have to wait and see.

Other Games
13. Watch for developments in FFXIV, possibly trying the game out if I like what I'm hearing.
14. Perhaps try one or more other games - Runes of Magic is probably the only one that jumps out at me, but we'll see.
15. My Christmas haul included a new PS3, and I intend to put it to good use this year. We also got the New Super Mario Bros for the Wii, and I'm having fun carving out some time to play that with my wife. Hopefully that, and/or some other joint gaming tradition (perhaps Rock Band), can continue.
My interest in FFXIV is greatly lessened by the revelation that it will barely run on my current machine.  In principle, I could attempt to play it on the PS3 instead, but this has definitely moved down to "wait and see" status. 

DDO, which was not on my watch-list, has managed to leapfrog its way to the front of the pack and is now my fourth major MMO.  I've had a lot of fun so far in Stormreach, though (for reasons that are long enough that I should make another post out of them), I might very easily have half a dozen characters halfway to the level cap before I have a single character to DDO's level cap.

Other MMO's on my watch list include Runes of Magic (I'll get to it eventually, really), Allods Online (the cash shop fiasco only mattered because people thought it was a good enough game to be upset over), and Star Trek Online (mostly because the prices on surplus retail boxes are bound to drop down to impulse buy levels eventually).  The Agency might get a look on the PS3, and perhaps I could take another crack at converting my wife to Free Realms if the game finally makes its long-overdue arrival on the console.

Upcoming MMO-watch aside, the PS3 has been a bit of a disappointment.  We did indeed get Rock Band, and it did indeed rock, but that hasn't turned into a weekly activity.  I never really got into Dragon Age, with DDO filling the niche I'd expected that game to occupy, and thus I haven't even really considered other PS3 RPG's like FFXIII.  I did enjoy Uncharted 2, and expect to play some other games in the cinematic action genre (e.g. Assassin's Creed, Arkham Asylum), but that's a comparatively expensive habit that I haven't had the time or money to budget for ($60 MSRP on a game that might run 10 hours at best). 


The Blog
16. Stick with a reachable goal of 250 posts in 2010. 17. Sadly, my work schedule has made it hard to keep up with my blogroll and commenters. I'd like to do a better job with this next year, but we'll see what time permits.
18. Once again thank all of my readers for putting up with me, and wish all of you the best for the new year.
Work situations have been busy, and 250 posts may or may not happen this year (I'm slightly behind pace, 116 at the halfway mark).  I never seem to have the time to be proactive about seeking out new blogs, answering comments, etc. 

That aside, I remain grateful as always to my readers for putting up with me, and adding insightful discussions that I don't always have enough time to acknowledge.  I've learned a fair amount from all of you over the years, and I think that it has helped me both with the blog and with writing in general (always a good skill to have).

Happy Canada Day and best of luck for the rest of the year!

8 comments:

  1. Heyo.

    I found the current recommended specs for Final Fantasy XIV if you want them. The benchmark appears to be somewhat of moodkiller so I never bothered with it, but the FFXIV system specs seem to fit with my computer. :)

    http://iamstillwater.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/final-fantasy-xiv-specs-release-date-and-pricing-detailed/

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  2. That's a lot of games you are keeping track of!

    I avoided FFXI because I could tell from the beginning that it was not going to be player friendly. That's just the way those games have always been. But there is a difference when paying a one-time fee of 40-50$ to be abused by it on a platform and the monthly fee to be abused on my PC.

    However, maybe they learned something positive from XI and have made XIV much more player-friendly, but I kind of doubt it. The designers behind the Final Fantasy games can't seem to help but punish the players. It seems to be in their blood.

    Following your experiences on DDO has made me consider picking that up. I would certainly like to read more about it first though. I am a little concerned about the cash store and paying for content as I use it, things like that can get out of hand very quickly, but it seems they have this one under some control.

    And thanks for sharing your experiences and thoughts, hope to be following all of your Cataclysm exploits this year.

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  3. In regards to cataclysmed quests, might I suggest Mankrik's Wife? I doubt her body will remain for long after the Barrens gets burned in half.

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  5. If I play FFXI, it likely will be on a PS3 from my couch. I've been wanting a decent couch based MMO for a while now any way.

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  6. Interesting that you seem to feel you owe a duty to commenters. I've never felt that myself. If the post is interesting enough then people will jump in on both sides of the argument. I had a great to and fro with Richard Bartle on Tobold's blog long after Tobold himself had lost interest.

    I do usually reply to comments but, ahem, that's because I don't get all that many. I don't feel you should feel obliged and if you'd rather play a game than write a reply that's what you should do.

    @ Kleps Manrik's wife is rather an uninteresting quest now. It was interesting when you had to explore to find her but now it's a quest to go talk to the huge yellow question mark you run past on your way to Camp T.

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  7. @Stillwater: If their own bench-marketing tool says that my computer can't handle their game, I'm prepared to believe them over the box specs. Let me know how it works out for you. :)

    And yes, guys, I did pay a visit to Mankrik's wife. I wonder if the guy is going to get re-married and re-widowed in Cataclysm?

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  8. I recommend staying away from Runes of Magic. Their cash shop appeared more obnoxious than DDO's, they roll out major new systems with show-stopping bugs, and your account is at risk of being mistakenly banned -- and the appeal process is glacially slow, if not nonexistent.

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