Category: Games

Tera – Time for Class Hauls?

TERA-logo

Time for Some Tera Class Hauls

No, not Class Halls, but Class Overhauls. One of the things that impresses me about World of Warcraft is that they are willing to periodically change major aspects of their classes and supporting mechanisms as changing game requirements demand. Not only have they changed Talent trees multiple times, but Glyphs, and even Class Skill Trees have changed dramatically over past releases.

I think that it’s time for Tera to consider some major overhauls to the class skill trees and this document tries to lay out some ideas for those changes and rationale for them.

Let me say first of all that I’ve been playing Tera for over two years and that I’m a severe Altoholic. I’m not even going to say how many toons I have at this point, but suffice it to say that I’ve played all the classes in PvE and also done Corsairs with all the classes. I was around before the Avatar Weapon change and the changes that made enchantment easy with the introduction of Feedstock. Also I’ve done the PvE Story content for Fate of Arun and done a dungeon there. I’m not a dungeon raider expert, but I’ve done plenty of dungeons at all levels. So I think I have the experience to know what I’m talking about to suggest these changes.

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WildStar – Fun, Engaging, and Free to Play

Warrior with Attitude
Warrior with Attitude

WildStar has been out for some time, but in September, they changed to Free to Play. While they talk about being able to experience all the content, they have a long list of caveats on their Free to Play page. This is an interesting contrast with Tera, which is Free to Play with a Premium option which basically gives you an XP and Gold boost and a fancy mount. Tera’s list of caveats are the feature list for Premium which costs $15 / mo rather than a list of Don’t-Gets for the WildStar free-2-play choice. Anyway, with all that aside, I gave it a try and bottom line – I’m impressed. This is not a complete review, I’m sure you can find a ton of those out there, and since it’s F2P, you can try it yourself and see. I’ll do quick comparison with some observations compared with Wow, Tera and some other games I’ve played recently.

So what does WildStar have going for it? Yes, it’s a Wow Clone. No bones about it. Two factions vying for dominance on the ancient planet of Nexus and the technology of the Eldans who have disappeared. Well, its a start. But recall that Wow has had since 2004 to build their brand.

Not that Big Really

The first thing one notices about WildStar is the small size of the download – 12 GB. What! Only 12 GB?? Wow is 40GB and Tera is more than 30 GB. And you’d be right. WildStar is just starting out as a franchise and the size of the download shows it. The environments feel a little cramped and a little same ole same ole as you move around. But not claustrophobic, just not wide open like Wow or Tera. But the character models are detailed. So they are not going to have to backfill with new character models later like Wow has had to do. Update: Actually, the environments from level 6 or so on feel very spacious. There are long vistas and while the mountains and foliage is stylized, nothing feels cramped in those areas.

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Wow Legion Expansion Details

Boosted!
Boosted!

So, Blizzcon 2015 is underway and I tripped across the Youtube videos yesterday.  See below. They had lots of coverage of the coming Wow Expansion Legions.

Pretty exciting. And they have even leaked the release date of “before” 21 Sept 2016.

There are some other things that you may not have caught up on if, like me, you have been away from Wow for some time.  Here’s a catch-up guide in case you’ve been away:

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MMOs – Why Enjoy Playing Alts?

Some Alts
Some Alts

I enjoy playing Alts in MMOs. I find that leveling the Alts through the same old content provides new challenges if the Alts are of different classes, but also that I can hone the use and efficiency of traversing content the next time through even if the same classes are used. However, recently, over the last several months, some things have happened in Tera that have now reminded me how useful playing the same content over and over can be. One learns to do it better and better. Here is a short chronicle of my experiences in Tera since the Gunner and Fate of Arun expansion were released:

Fate of Arun

Tera at Enmasse released the Fate of Arun expansion in December 2014. This expansion provided a foothold on the as yet unoccupied content of Northern Arun and provided a path to level from 60 to 65. I did not rush into playing this expansion. I had some toons at nearly level 60, but didn’t have any that were ready to take on the new content.

I was struggling in Elenea with toons at level 58 or so that seemed to be under-powered and were not advancing beyond what looked like a strength valley in their ability to level up.

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Social Gaming – Fostering Friendships in Games?

AK_2015_08_23_13_29_49_874

What makes an MMO game social? It seems to me that there are a few ways to meet friends in games:

  1. Meet them out in the world, and join up with them to accomplish shared goals in the open world.
  2. Meet them waiting for, or matched for, an instance – dungeon or battleground – to accomplish the shared goal of that instance.
  3. Join a Guild, or whatever the game calls a group larger and more permanent than a party, and meet other folks in the guild that share the above goals.
  4. Meet them outside of the game, and come into the game together.

But once you bump into someone in the game, there are aspects of the game that encourage or discourage the formation of longer term Social Interactions in the game.

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Aura Kingdom – Thumbs Up

Navea City Square
Navea City Square

I give Aura Kingdom a big Thumbs Up. I’ve been playing for a few days now, and AK is a welcome relief from a lousy game like Allods. This is not an in-depth review, but some first interesting impressions that may cause you to seek a more in-depth review, of which there are plenty. One of the best reviews is the one on YouTube by MMO Grinder. But here are some of my thoughts. I may have covered some things that MMO Grinder didn’t talk about.

Low Stress Game to Play
Low Stress Game to Play

First of all, AK is a low stress game to play. You level quite quickly. In an hour or so you’ll be at level 10, if you read all the text of the quests, of which there is a lot, but the story is interesting. If you are an AltaHolic [ addicted to many toons ] then the next times through you can click Skip, but the first time though it’s best to slow down and read the dialog. There is almost no voice acting. So put on your reading glasses and settle back. The story is worth it.

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Allods – I’ll Give It a Pass – Again

Allods_2015_08_06_12_17_28_262
Allods Priden Race of Wolves

I played Allods back in 2011 when gPotato had it, and it was pretty clunky. Since then it has gotten much better. It no longer feels clunky. Let’s talk about the good news first. Here is an album of recent pictures from the game.

There is an interesting race that is unlike anything I’ve seen in other games. The Gibberlings are three characters, which you can design individually as you create them. But they act as one in the world. Here is a Gibberling family which are druids, with their pet squirrel.

Gibberlings are Three as One
Gibberlings are Three as One

Graphics

The graphics look better than Wow – at least better than the historic places of Wow. The character models are better than the old Wow models, but not as good as the new Wow character models.

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Windows 10 – Upgrading another system

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BTW, I have no idea why this system shows an Alienware Logo in the System Control Panel. I have completely swapped out the guts of this system and reinstalled a new copy of Windows 7.

I just upgraded this system to Windows 10 using the DVD burned last time and did the following steps:

  • Backup everything on the system drive from C:\Users\Yournamehere\My Documents etc., if not to another system, at least to one of the data drives.
  • Uninstall any crufty old programs that I’m not going to need in the new world.
  • Reboot
  • Make a record of all the things you have installed by taking screenshots of the “Programs and Features” control panel list.
  • Download the latest Nvidia drivers for the card for both Win 7 x64 and Win 10 x64.
  • Update the [Nvidia 560ti in this case] driver to the latest and greatest for Win 7 x64.
  • Reboot
  • Run setup from the Windows 10 DVD.

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