Guild Wars 2

I'm currently playing Guild Wars 2. The game was officially released on 28th August 2012. My first character was Ranger. Initially I joined the server Sea of Sorrows, and joined CCTV guild. Then I switched server between Henge of Denravi and Crystal Desert few times during the free transfer period, and I quitted CCTV and joined HAX in Crystal Desert. Just before Arena Net closed the free transfer, I moved to Kaineng and join Meow because WvW experience in Crystal Desert was not very encouraging, most of HAX member only go to WvW during weekend. I'm still a member of HAX though. Recently the high ranking member of Meow decided to move to Blackgate, and I moved with them and had my transfer partly sponsored by them.

Between launch and now I have created 7 characters, 5 of which are at level 80. The initial character slot was only 5, but I unlocked 2 more. I also unlocked all the personal bank slots. My level 80 characters are Ranger, Guardian, Elementalist, Mesmer and Thief.

More to come......

LOTRO and the new MMO : Guild Wars 2

My gaming life continues with LOTRO. Between last post and now I have levelled 3 characters altogether to level 75, bought new quest packs using Turbine Points, and doing raids with kin mate once in a while.

However, since early July, my LOTRO gaming has been sidetracked by the news of the release of a new Guild Wars game : Guild Wars 2. There has been 2 beta weekends before I joined the third one using a beta key given to me by a forum friend. I finally decided to buy the game after a new credit card billing cycle. A number of stress test have been announced and done by Arena Net in order to fine tune the game.

The game will be officially released on 28/8/2012. A pre-purchase account like mine will have 3-days headstart on 25/8/2012 which is just after Hari Raya holiday.

More news after the game release...

Friends In LOTRO

I have made quite a number of friends in LOTRO. Some of them still active, while few others have gone MIA. Those people in Lowyat.NET who played LOTRO mostly have been consumed by other games, presumably Skyrim.

I'm currently in contact with friends whom I helped acquiring the Rise of Isengard expansion. Their IGN are Souzin (LM) and Gedzza(GRD).

Souzin, from what I gather, is a guy from Terengganu, while Gedzza in the other hand is a guy from Kedah. Here is a screenshot of my hunter Farinas with Gedzz (alt of Gedzza)

I've also made quite a number of friends from Down Under, since I'm now in kin based in there, called Aurora Australis. Below are screenshot of the kin activity not long ago :

 

 

 

Below is screenshot of my minstrel Farimin beating Draigoch with Aurora Australis :

Back to Blogging My Gaming Life

Wow ! It's been a very long time. Very very very long time since I last wrote in this blog. In the previous blog I wrote how I got a new addiction in LOTRO. That time I just started playing the game. I guess it is time for me to write again.

A lot of thing has happened between now and then. New baby, a break from LOTRO for 6 months, playing FM2011, back to LOTRO again etc, etc.

To start off, let's just say I'm currently enjoying my LOTRO. I have 2 level 75 characters, a Minstrel and Hunter. I also have a Burglar at level 53 and a Guardian at level 25. Even though I started with the hunter, the minstrel is the first character I got to level 75. Doing group content at level 75 is very satisfying indeed. Getting there is quite a challenge since you'll have to solo mostly.

I'm currently in a Kinship called Aurora Australis. It is an Aussie based kinship. My hunter was initially in there, but then quitted because I wanted to be with my Malaysian friends in the same kin called Adventurers of Eriador. However that doesn't last very long when one by one my fellow Malaysian LOTRO friend left the game.

So I decided to go back to Aurora Australis and settle there. If any Malaysian want to play with me, I simply add them to the friends list.

Below are my characters at selection screen :

 

 

 

There are few other characters that I do not show them here because they are still in level 1.

Lord Of The Rings Online

Currently I'm focusing my game time on playing LOTRO since it turned to Free2Play. My character, a hunter, in now level 38. For initial few weeks I was on free account, grinding TP to buy quest packs and traits, then I turned to a premium account because there was offer on TP. I will update this blog with a screen shot of my character some time not far away in the future.

At least this gane will keep me busy while I'm waiting for Guild Wars 2.

New Game : Legendary Champions

Wow, it has been a long time. My gaming has been limited by my work commitment and my daughter who has taken over my PC, watching her favorite videos on YouTube. However I managed to try a new game called "Legendary Champions" by Aeriagames. It is a F2P game just finished their closed-beta, now on the phase of starting the open-beta very soon.

The game asks you to choose one of the warring faction to be in. For the level 30 and under, the quests are still PVEs, but once you reach level 30, all the quests from then on are in the open PVP areas, which means you are forced to do PVP if someone attack you. This is one aspect that I personally think a let down. I just can't accept that you are being forced to be a punchbag for the money spender in a F2P game.

I'm still waiting for the release of Guild Wars 2. I don't mind they take their time to release it actually, because that will buy me some time to get the money to upgrade my PC before i will be able to enjoy the game when it is released.

Gaming Time Out

It has been a while since I last wrote in this blog. It was due to me concentrating on my Microsoft Certification exam. Also partly because of Runes of Magic has temporarily blocked the sales of diamond via the Auction House, thus making the acquisition of diamonds for the F2P player impossible .

Recently my Guild Wars account was hacked by gold seller. Twice it was hacked. In the first hack, all my golds are gone and my equipment are salvaged, virtually left me with nothing . In the second hack, they get smarter; they deleted all my characters and replaced it with their own, making me impossible to log on to the gaming account. In both cases I had to contact the GW support for help. Nowadays I change my GW log in password every time after I play. Tedious, but that's the best I can do for now.

RoM : Upon Reaching 55/55

My Mage/Priest has finally reached the level limit of 55/55. At this level, it is pointless to do the normal quest as the character will not benefit from the experience gained from completing those quests. What I do nowadays is just the daily quest i.e. the "Hunter Raid" to farm TP for levelling up my skills. 10 daily quests per day will get me around 120k TP. Usually after doing the hunter daily I will kill the swallow walkers for the meat. They sell around 4.5k a piece. The only problem with swallow walker is that they are quite far apart, and they are not that many like the crab. Farming crabs at 55/55 is just pain because the spawn does not drop like they used to be at a lower level. I could kill 10 crabs and still get no drop of the spawn. That is not a very efficient way of farming.

Recently RoM has been updated to patch 2.1.6 . Came with that patch is a durability issue where casting a skill now will eat some of the weapon durability. My testing from doing hunter daily quest shows that weapon durability wear out very fast. After complaints from players across the game servers, I think the issue is now fixed for all, except knight. I read from the forum that knights are still facing this issue.

RoM : Wings & Black Pegasus Mount

My wish for a pair of wings has come true. Recently Frogster made an offer through the item mall a pair of Wings of Divine Incarnation, bundled together with a Black Pegasus mount, for 499 diamonds. It may sound a lot, but at the current price of diamond (6k per), the bundle cost must less than the cost of wings alone in the auction house, at around 6 million gold . Here is a screen shot of me sporting the wings and the Black Pegasus.

I also bought a couple of yellow statted mana stones, but with Intellect VI dirty to be used as stats for the wings. However after installing the Advanced Auction House AddOn for the game, I found that there is no more desirable yellow statted mana stone with such dirty. I found another dirty that gave 4 matching mana stones. I'll have to resell the mana stones i have before i can buy them. Lately my farming of gold has been distracted a bit due to the server instability.

Speaking of addon, I have also installed the ComeOnIn addon for party autoinvite. This is very useful for making daily quest raiding party.

RoM : Extra Firepower

After much farming of Ravenfell earth shell crab, I finally managed to buy myself a very good staff : A Tier 8 Overdura Staff of Admiration +6. The magic damage of this staff is 1391, enough for me to one shot a mob with Flame. It cost me 7.2 millions gold coin. Here is a picture of me holding the staff, skinned a sword.

Recently Frogster has introduced a new type of upgrading CS item : Attribute Purifying Stone. It serves to clear an equipment of it's unwanted stats so that it can be stats nicely later. However the cost for each stone is around 199 diamond. I may need to buy some of the stone later, as I foresee myself clearing up the dirties in my magic Vahtoh's set. some people do that, and are selling their overdura clean magic Vahtoh's accessories at a very high price, around 8 millions gold.

Currently I'm saving up my diamond for a pair of wings.

ROM Operation Upgrade Updates

Finally I have completed the upgrade of my armor. Basically I use the lvl 53 overdura white armors. Only the cape is lvl 49 but that does not matter, as long as it is overdura. Below is the screen shot of the resulting armor set. Each armor (not accessories) have the same stats as shown :

I also managed to refine all armor equipment to +6, thanks to the jewels sales in the item mall. All the diamonds used to buy item from the mall are obtained from auction house, using the money earned from selling the Meat of Earth Shell Crab .

The next in line for upgrading are the accessories, but before that, I think I want to get a Tier 7 Staff of Admiration +6. Extra firepower is good.

Runes Of Magic (US) : Cash Shoppe

One feature of the so- called "Free-to-Play" games is their Cash Shoppe aka Item Mall. Here you can buy game item that can enhance your experience of gaming. Runes of Magic is not excluded from such feature. To buy items in the Cash Shoppe (CS), you'll need to buy some sort of point that can be used to do the purchase of items. The purchase of the item mall point is usually done via game card or credit card payment.

There is a way in Runes of Magic that enable you to play the game without spending a single cents of your hard earned money. However this will involve extensive farming of in game gold. The virtual point used by Runes of Magic in their CS is called diamonds. These diamonds are tradable via the in game Auction House. at the time of this writing, each diamond cost around 10k-12k gold. So by farming gold in the game, one should be able to then purchase the diamond via the auction house and then use it to buy the CS items.

Currently, the most effective way of farming gold in Runes of Magic is by farming daily quest items and then selling them via the auction house. I'm currently farming the Earth Shell Crab Meat . They sell for around 2.4k each. So for a stack of 100pcs, I can get around 224k gold (after deducting the Auction House admin fees, duh !) . I hope I can do this most of the time so that I can get as much diamond as I can .

Runes Of Magic (US) : Operation "Upgrade"

My main character on RoM (US) has now reach level 47/42 mage/priest. So to move on, I need to upgrade my armor to the ones that give me high defense and high HP. So I have started buying the Stats X and IX armor in the Auction House (AH) , and then transmuted it with purified fusion stones to make the clean Stats X (or IX) mana stones. The mana stones are then used on the armor I bought from AH to make a better armor.

The purified fusion stones are only available from the cash shop. Luckily I can use the phirius tokens obtained from doing daily quests to buy them. So, to make use of the game system, i created a couple of alternate characters to feed the main characters with the mana stones. So far I have created only 2. Later in the future I may need to create more to speed up the purified fusion stones supply.

In fact, i have a few option on how to get the Stat X mana stones. I could make them using the method above OR i could farm daily quests items and then sell them on the auction house to get the gold that i can use to buy the mana stones from the auction house itself. Of course, mana stones from the AH can be very costly....

Runes Of Magic (US)

I have found a new addiction. The Runes Of Magic. It's a new experience for me since the game concentrate on questing for you to gain experience and level up, unlike most MMORPG where you will normally grind killing monsters.

The game also urges people to party to achieve the common goal, especially towards the end of a series of quests. This is due to the Raid Boss having really insane health point (HP). There are raidable instances, where you can form a group of max 36 player to finish a series of quests.

The game looks and play like World Of Warcraft, except that it is a F2P game, though one must not be fooled by the word free since nothing is actually free. It is free to play, but to have a really nice experience of playing it, some purchase from the cash shop (CS) is required. I only bought the mount so far... lol .

I have now ditched the RoM MY-SG Server and move to US Artemis Server. Playing in the US server is really nice indeed. The community is very nice. That's one of the most important feature for a succesful MMORPG. The in-game event organised by the GMs are also enlightening the players.

Uninstallation of Games

In the recent weeks, I have uninstalled a few games, i.e. Last Chaos and Lineage2 SEA. There are few reasons :

1. The Last Chaos publisher here is closing down their servers, so no point of playing the game anymore.

2. A lot of people in the Lineage 2 SEA have moved on to playing Aion USA, and the game has turned to a ghost town, again no point of playing the game anymore.

A friend of mine has even resort to a greater extend; formatting his PC since his interest in MYLC has gone, lol.

Nowadays, I'm concentrating on playing Runes of Magic (USA) . I've even invited a friend to have a try at the game, and copied the installer DVDs for him.

MMORPG : USA/EU vs Localised Server

After playing various MMORPG for more than 2 years already, I can now make a few comparison between the servers located in the USA/EU and those located in SEA. Few games that I played in the SEA servers are dying, and one has already declared server shutdown .

Player Base :
1. Servers in the USA/EU are fairly populated and the population numbers last long.
2. Servers in the SEA are only populated at the beginning , but slowly dissipated in numbers.

GM Support/Event :
1. GM in the USA/EU servers very heavily involve themselves in the game and frequently conduct events that cheer up players every now and then.
2. GM in the SEA servers is almost non-existent. It seems like they throw servers at us, and leave it to ourselves how to make fun with the game.

Game Patch :
1. Servers in the USA/EU are always updated to the latest patch from the developer of the game. This make the game interesting as there are new things to do in the game.
2. Servers in the SEA are usually not up to date, lagging behind about 2/3 patches, and this makes the players become bored after a while. The reason could be on licensing etc, we don't know, but as a game publisher they should have expected that every game patch may/will require license payment to the original producer.

Community :
1. Players in the USA/EU servers are very helpful to the newbie, no matter where you are from. They just want to have fun playing the game with friends. They like to party when leveling up or doing quests. Botting players exist but not very serious, as the botters are usually killed by legit players.
2. Players in the SEA servers are not very kind, arrogant, and selfish. They don't like to help newbie . Bots are infesting the game. It seems like they are leveling a character with a view to sell them in the future.

RMT ( Real Money Trading)
1. RMT is definitely banned in the USA/EU servers. RMT shouters exist but immediately removed from the game by the active GMs . RMT is destroying a game as it will make price of items in game go sky high and uncontrolable .
2. RMT is having a field day in the SEA servers. With the help of botting software, the RMTer can stand in the crowded area and spam the RMT adverts for days without being removed by GMs.

Runes Of Magic : A WoW Clone ?

Recently I have been introduced to a brand new MMORPG that looks familiar , but with a different name. The first time I looked at it, my conscience says I have seen this game but cant remember where. Then quickly I remembered, World Of Warcraft.

Runes Of Magic certainly have the WoW look, and plays like WoW. The only advantage is that it is free to play. So for those who wanna try WoW, but dont want to pay over the nose, this game is certainly a nice option.

Below is the game login and character selection screen :

The following are the screenshots of the game user interface and character info:













Lastly, a screen shot of my character in a Town called Varanas :


I'm playing the game on Singapore-Malaysian server, just for the sake of trying the game. As usual, those looking for a a stable game server support and gameplay should try the American servers.

Guild Wars : Vanquishing Tyria

Vanquishing Tyria is continued eastward, starting from Deldrimor Bowl. The process was done non-stop, i.e. a 6-man caravan party moving eastward towards the Eastern Frontier. This had to be done so that the vanquishing of the areas normally done with 4-man party can be done with a 6-man party. The Eastern Frontier and neighbouring areas usually have groups of grawl with 2/3 Grawl Udolytes (monk). It is almost impossible to tackle the area using 4-man party. Even with 6-man party, my party experienced wipe-out and need to be resurrected at shrines few times.

The vanquishing was done with"Heroes & Henches" . My heroes are all necros with slight modification from the Sabway. They all spam spirits so that corpses can be generated early to be used to raise minions. Eventually all areas were vanquished. At the moment my Vanquishing of Tyria is at 25/54 . Below are the screenshots of area vanquished :

Meanwhile I received a news that Last Chaos MY servers will be closed down permanently on 31/10/2009 . It is a sad news for the Last Chaos MY community, especially to those who spent so much into the game . Lucky me, I sold my gears and pet in the game for RM230 early in the year. One player said on the game forum that he spent RM500 a month on the game. Not sure if there is any truth in it, but if it is true, what a waste ! For RM500 a month, it is better to play a game that has it's server based in the USA. More stable, less hack.

Shaiya : A New Adventure

Recently I tried a new MMORPG called Shaiya. It is a F2P game with item mall. I never played WoW but from the experience playing Shaiya, i believe it inherit the gameplay of WoW and Lineage2 .

The characters in Shaiya are typical MMORPG games where u have damage dealers, tankers, and healers. What interests me is that there are 2 opposing factions in Shaiya, each with 2 races, and each races can only be configured to play certain character type. Certain character in Shaiya can solo quickly, while certain others need a party setup to farm XP to level up .

There is also a feature that make Shaiya very interesting, the PvP field. The PvP is divided into level range i.e. 1-15 , 20-30 etc which means u can always PvP without feeling too weak as compare to the upper level character. It was fun too, I managed to joined 1-15 PvP.

I'm playing on USA version of Shaiya . There is a local Malaysian version of the game but from the forum , i learn that the gaming community is dying because on the imbalance between the opposing faction where not many people joining the Union of Fury (darkside) as compare to those joining Alliance of Light (lightside).

Lineage 2 : Manoring

Last week I discovered something quite useful in Lineage 2, and that is manoring. Basically manoring is where we plant a seed prior to killing a monster, and then use a harvester to harvest the fruit from the killed monster. The fruit can then be sold to a manor manager, and we can gain rewards in return, in the form of crafting materials. There are quite a few guides on the internet on "how to do manoring", but I'm not going to explain it in here. They can be referred to at l2stratic or l2vault or pmfun.

What is tricky about manoring is to get the seeds, and to sell the fruits. This is because, there is only a limited number of seeds sold in a day for a particular region, and they only restock at 8.00 pm. Not only that, the number of fruits bought back by the manor managers is also limited for a particular area, in a day , and also only renewed at 8.00 pm. So we basically need to be the first one to deal with the manor managers so that we can buys most seeds or sell the most fruits. For the time being I'm manoring just outside Goddard, killing bandersnatches and antelopes. I'm manoring "blue coba" in return for mold glue as the reward. My low level Scavenger is currently at level 50, and I'm thinking of using it to manor at the Oel Mahum area, and get the mold hardener as the rewards . I need to get the seeds first.

Meanwhile, in Guild Wars I continue my vanquishing . Below is a screenshot of my success in vanquishing North Kryta Province :