Shades Of Twilight

FIRST POST!!

Ok this will probably have nothing to do with games. After all, I’m still kinda playing Dragon Age. I’m on my 4th run-through with a 2-handed warrior now, and this time around I’m trying to get in bed with Leliana first, dump her, then hook up with Morrigan. Yeah I’m a playboy

Anyway!

My previous webhost started to give a lot of problems, what with all the downtimes and such. Sometimes I can’t even log in to FTP to back the site up so I can move to a new host. However, today, I managed to!

So, now this blog is sitting on a new host, with the latest Wordpress 2.91, with all new plug-ins and what-nots.

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• Leliana Proves Bards Don’t Suck In Dragon Age (cinemablend.com)
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For anyone that’s actually following my Xfire Profile (and thus, my gaming hours and habits), you’ll notice that I’ve been spending a lot of time on Mass Effect. In fact, the amount of time I spend in it surprises even me. Normally I’d complete ONE playthrough of an RPG, and that’s it. It’s very rare that I play it again, and only a handful of titles have that honour – Morrowind, Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights (1 and 2).

The common denominator among the titles listed above is just this – depth. They all have a nice storyline, they have rich and interesting background of the world. That will prompt me to make an “alt” (in MMO-speak, an “alt” is an alternate character) and play through it again. In the cases of Morrowind and Oblivion, I’d probably run into other sidequests that I’ve missed with the first run through on the “main”.

In Neverwinter Nights though, the draw was the multiplayer. It’s very close to being an MMO if you join a “persistent world“.

Mass Effect, however, doesn’t exactly fall into this catergory. While the story is nice, and depth is pretty average, I spend alot of time making “alts” in this game, and I have no idea why.

So much so, that this is my 7th run-through, and I’m starting to feel burned out. Same feeling I get in an MMO when I’ve already hit level 50/60/70 and making alts to play with fellow guildies who are lower level than me. This time, the game is not an MMO and not multiplayer, but just me re-runnning through it with yet another character.

Gamers talk about “replayability”. We want to be able to play a game again. I think Mass Effect has achieved this quite nicely.  However, there’s always a limit to “replayability” if the game isn’t multiplayer, or at least, online-capable. Mass Effect should have included a multiplayer option, for people to have deathmatches or capture-the-flag games while waiting for the sequels to appear.

Right now though, I’m getting kinda burned out on Mass Effect. My current character is a Sentinel (finally!) and I’m playing him on Hardcore setting. So far it doesn’t feel any different from “Veteran” or “Normal”. Once I complete the story with this guy, I guess I’m putting Mass Effect aside till Mass Effect 2 comes out.

Yeah I’m starting to burn out on Mass Effect.

Yup, the past couple of days I have been back in London, fragging demons. This is due to a cople of reasons.

My fragging buddy is on vacation, so I’m playing another character and catching up to where I left the Single Player off. I gave up on Single Player due to the massive lag in some zones, isn’t there on Multiplayer (which is weird, isn’t it?)

Secondly, somehow my character in Entropia got stranded on a hostile and HIGH-LEVEL area and I can’t make it back to safety alone. I lost connection to the servers in the noob city of Port Atlantis, and I tried to reconnect. However, the client tells me it was unable to contact the server, and asked me if I wanted to try another server. I said YES and it dumped me on the other continent which is infested by huge Atroxes which kill me in 2 hits. The closest Teleporter to bring me back to the mainland is like a few hundred kilometres away, no way I can run through hostile Atroxes and reach the teleporters!

So, I opened a support ticket. So far, haven’t heard back from them.

In any case, this thing that happened to me might be a blessing in disguise though. Maybe it’s telling me to give up Entropia again, and play Tabula Rasa (which I have yet to buy).

So yeah, my “alt” in Hellgate is a Summoner. I created him a couple of days after I created my Marksman, which was to be played with my drinking/gaming buddy. Since my buddy’s outta town on vacation, I’m playing my Summoner.

Right now, my Summoner has overtaken my Marksman (my “main”) in levels – Marksman is lvl 16, Summoner is now lvl 21. My Summoner is also filthy rich too, last count about 70,000 Palladiums on him.

I think tonight I might actually catch up to the same place I left off in the story back in the Single Player. From here on out, I will have to read every quest dialog box carefully, because things are going to be new to me now.

Tomorrow, I think I’ll be back on my lowbie Marksman with my gaming buddy. He should be back by then.