I waited 39 years to get over my fear of math and dice to finally attempt my very first Dungeons & Dragons game with internet friends I have known for ages. I have conquered part of my fears, but not all of them, as Roll20.net makes die rolls 100000% easier to beginners! Our DM decided since we were all practically new, we’d start out with level 10 characters because she decided to run City of the Spider Queen. She adjusted it for 5e as much as she could and also tossed in a lot of home brew elements too.
I have been having an absolute ball playing Anthracite Ironbelly, my cleric, with my husband, Shawn, who plays Boddlur’s the Germanic-sounding bard, our DM Lil, and our Rogue Zalima with the Paladin, Corvin. I sure hope this highlight of our game play amuses you too!
If you dig it, you can usually check us live streaming our D&D games every Saturday (when health and life participates) on my twitch channel found here: Pinkatron2000. You can also follow me on twitter here: Pinkatron2000, for live stream announcements and schedule updates. <3
In my life, there’s been a lot of games that I’ve beta tested for that had a lot of great focus in the first few levels and then…nothing later. There have been even more games that started well and turned into a festival of sad poop because of expectations. (Not naming any names.)
But one MMORPG that I have been beta testing the stuffing out of and eye-humping it since I’ve started has been Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I managed to get myself into Beta 2 and have been gleefully screaming down the fan-girl slide since. Oh–yes; there are issues they need to fix. There is balancing that will need to be done and this game is certainly not a very easy MMORPG. Hell, just figuring out how to do anything in your Square Enix account is a challenge and a half and I don’t even want to talk about the company’s idea of sharing information on the beta forums and in emails.
They screwed up with the last game and they know it. And they set out to fix it. And boy-oh-boy, have they did. Not only have they fixed it, they’ve given us a completely different game. It’s good. It’s very good. I recommend trying it when it goes open beta.
Quick and Dirty, ladies and gents–a why and why for, about Age of Wushu: a free to play world PVP kung-fu MMORPG. (Immature giggling goes here)
Does this dress make my flowers look big?
Why you should play Age of Wushu
If you are a fan of ancient china, chinese mythologies, the ancient kung-fu movies or wuxia dramas then you are going to enjoy looking at Age of Wushu.
Despite being run on a graphics engine a bit out of date enough to rely on bloom, it’s still gorgeous and many places feel as if they sprung out of painted scenes.
One of the better kung-fu/Martial arts F2P out there
World PVP (after a certain level) adding an edge to danger to everything
Crafting is a viable source of income and helpful to progress
Team Practice your Kung-Fu with fellow Kung-fu practicioneers to ‘speed’ the experience of your deadly arts
Belong to a school (Wudang, Emei, Shaolin, Beggars, Royal Guards and so on) and enjoy benefits from belonging to a group
Spy on enemy/different schools and earn rewards and experience.
Be evil: Kidnap people and sell them, all while maniacally laughing and stroking your whiskers.
Pay for being evil: repent your sins (if you are part of a good aligned school) at the temple or go to jail to pay for your crimes of PKing and kidnapping!
Pick up the arts: learn calligraphy, learn painting, learn chess, poetry or music
Protect and escort supplies between important families or individuals of import
Save the girl or guy
Win friends
Farm, mine, fish, chop wood, skin animals, cook food, make poisons, heal through herbs, weave clothe, make legendary weapons
Find a guild: go to war, make an alliance, group up and roll out
There is never nothing to do.
I could, like, sit here all day, man
Why you shouldn’t play Age of Wushu
It’s a free to play game and so some of the unique issues that always seem to crop up in f2p’s do.
Gold spam everywhere. In all the channels so far except school channels (as far as I have observed). You can put them on ignore (add them to blacklist) but that gets full in a day. That solution isn’t viable.
Punks everywhere: f2p seems to bring out the best and the worst more so than anything else. You will get punked at sometime, anytime, especially by yourself. There will always be those guys that smell new player from a mile away and swoop in on their epics and kill you in one click thinking they all that and a bag of tea.
With that in mind: if you get upset easily by being pk’ed by kids or people having a bad day, right off the bat “open pvp world,” should turn you away.
The cash shop isn’t pay to win–it’s pay to level faster basically. Mounts, bags, extra warehouse, all of this isn’t permanent. Mounts and bags last a set amount of days (100, for example.) Bags currently are purchased from players or picked up from drops only, mounts are cash shop or random quest rewards (as far as I can tell), and the only current way to get extra warehouse space (bank space) is to pay Snail Games real cash money dollar bills for in game gold to become a VIP member to expand it. Plus, as a VIP member, you “cultivate,” your Kung-fu off line and faster than those who play free. (Cultivate = experience = level it up, pretty much.) Right now, there aren’t any pills, buffs, exp medicines or the like in the shop either. So like I said, it’s not so much pay-to-win as it is pay-to-get-to-win-faster. (I could be wrong! Feel free to let me know in comments!)
Solo play is going to be difficult. Without a guild to help you with instances or fighting off random player killing, the casual gamer or gamer who likes to explore all the areas and things might find it a challenge.
Grind fest. No matter how fun everything is–or how fun I find it–I know it’s going to be a grind to get it anywhere better. I know it, and the game doesn’t even bother to hide how many hours of repetition I’m gonna put into it to get it there. I guess it’s almost a positive the game doesn’t hide it?
Lost in translation: I believe that some of the better aspects of the game may have been lost in the translation from Chinese to English. Quest descriptions are abrupt and in some cases appear to have nothing to do with the quest they are giving you. Your quest tracker and the ability to click-auto-path is going to be awesome for some.
Within the school of Emei
So should I try it or not?
It’s a free game that despite it’s very real and very obvious flaws to an American market; is trying its best to carry its weight. And it’s doing okay. I think that Age of Wushu is one of those free-to-play games that fits a niche market and not a broad one to appeal to everyone. And that’s okay, I think that there needs be more games happier to cater to a wildly loyal few than try and appeal to a broad mass and fail. Whether Age of Wushu will collapse under it’s gold spam and free to play is something we will have to see. As it stands, I think it’s a remarkable game for free to play and Martial Arts and one that it cannot hurt to be tried.
Seven years ago Shawn and I beta tested a little game called Everquest 2. Years before that, Shawn had beta tested a game called Everquest and said to me, “I liked it–but at the time I felt like the game and what it was trying to do was limited by technology at that time, and thought that in a couple of years it would really shine.”
Well. Then they made EQ2. And we were hooked.
Purple angry unicorn with wings? HELL YEAH!
When we played, we were crafters by heart. Without a group, there was very little content that could be soloed for some of the classes–Of course, I was a Templar and he a conjurer. He had better luck at it than I would, so gathering and crafting called to us much stronger. We played before there was imbuing, gems, and during the time that any crafting station–the stove, forge, engravers table and so on could kill you if you screwed up. Crafters were entirely dependent on one another too. A carpenter couldn’t make certain things without nails and metal parts. These were made by armor or weapon smiths. Nobody could make anything without the help of an Alchemist–which is what my husband was.
Then EQ II changed that. For a while there, being an alchemist was worthless. Everyone could now make all the parts they needed for themselves and no longer did they need to depend on one another. They were phasing out the being-ship-wrecked-on-an-island-everyone starting as either warrior-mage-priest thing, and it was painful for us. We stopped for a while.
Then, of course, with age? Things, in my humble opinion, got better. Yes, even moving to F2P seemed like an improvement–for even though general chat was always a lot like Barrens chat–there are still people everywhere in that game, seven years later.
And that’s how long we’ve been playing, off and on, too. Though EQ II sweetened the deal for me by handing me an entire Mistmoore Estate for my 7 year anniversary. Let me tell you, there is nothing better to bribe me into coming back, or playing a game forever, than giving me something I can decorate myself, make unique. Housing, mounts, clothing, decorations….this is the way to worm money out of me. Pay attention games! I logged in, looked at my vet rewards, squealed like I’d just been given a unicorn and ran to claim it. Now I have a huge estate with nothing in it. Now I have to run around the game trying to find the just right things I want in it. Some of it I will craft myself (being a carpenter), others I will have to level in order to get it from certain quests and or as drops from dungeons.
See what u did thar, EQ II.
And, it worked.
Facing front door: Mistmoore Estate OH GOD HOW DO I DECORATE
I think that EQ2 finally found the perfect balance for all kinds of gamers finally. Do you want to craft? Great, go for it. Do you want to craft and solo adventure? No problem, there’s a quest for that. You want to ignore crafting and power level and just get All The Things? No problem. You want to do all of this, at any given time, and just spend a day collecting shiny things to play the market? Go for it. And now–you want to design your own in game object and earn real life cash money money dollar bills from it? Yep. Do that too.
So–I’ve been having fun with my Dirge, Ssinjin, and her guild since ’04 (Queens Guard, hoooo!) exploring new regions I never got around to, quests that are fun and frustrating. Gathering shinies and resources. And it’s funny, because, I have also had my time eaten up by searching for my own home. In real life. Yes–the husbanator 2000 (That’s Shawn, or bariguy, by the way) and I have finally decided that no better time than now to take advantage of things and try for a home. It is both awesome and frightening. Wish us luck.
P.S. If you know any epic quest lines that will help us furnish it….
