Newbie Blogger Initiative

May is now the month of Newbie Blogger Initiative, which is an awesome program created by Syp, of Biobreak and Massively fame, to get new people to try blogging. There are over 70 "sponsor blogs" taking part in the NBI, Roll one hundred included, so expect to see a lot of NBI-related posts from several gaming bloggers during May. We'll be posting tips and tools and tricks to help people get started with blogging, find inspiration and get connected with other bloggers.


Where did Roll one hundred start from?

I think my very first blogging attempts were in 2003, when I was very active in the Finnish anime fandom. I remember I had just a little HTML and CSS skills and I was so proud of making my own blog layouts - for a very long time I just hated taking ready-made layouts and graphics, I thought I had to do everything myself to stand out. I think I was using a very early version of Wordpress back then, which I had just managed to install on my web hotel on my own. Good times.

Since then I've probably created and abandoned a dozen blog projects - mostly art and gaming blogs that I didn't have the energy or motivation to maintain. I often tend to go a bit over the top with my fandom projects, so I think I've had a Guild Wars blog, a Lotro blog and a zillion art/sketch blogs. However, around 2009-2009 I had some real-life issues that made it so I pretty much withdrew from the public internet, stopped posting on my Livejournal and deviantArt and dropped all blog projects. I'm a bit of a closet nerd, so the thought of relatives and people I didn't like reading my blogs and looking at my drawings really made me want to quit the internetz for a while.


I tried finding pictures of my ancient blog projects, but only found a Paintchat doodle of my Lotro Minstrel :)

Roll one hundred was born in February 2009, and it started as a screenshot blog for Lord of the Rings Online. I just wanted an easy way to publish screens from various guild activities, so I went with Blogger, which is nicely integrated to Google (easy access to Analytics), and comes with some nice premade layouts that also work great on mobiles. I didn't expect I'd stick with it, but here we are now, 3 years later, and my little roll100 has a nice steady stream of traffic. Sure I've had some quiet periods (I'm currently recovering from the longest one so far - I think Rift really swept me away and I didn't even have time to blog because it was so much fun), but now with the Newbie Blogger Initiative I really want to post more and also connect better with fellow bloggers.

Now in hindsight I think I put way too much pressure on myself in regards to blogging, and I think I've now found a platform and format that works for me - namely picture heavy, low maintenance. I'm a terrible writer, even in my native language, so I prefer to spam a ton of pictures and just add a lil flavour text — I think the only time I actually write something is when I have something to complain about – that's typical Finnish.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this exciting month and hope to see many new blogs soon! And if you already have a blog but haven't posted in a while... now's a good time to stop hibernating and get back to blogging!

Guild Wars 2 - first impressions

So, the first Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event has now started and the servers are mostly stable - last night I could only log in briefly to create one character and then the login servers went down, so I spent the rest of the evening playing KOTOR. Today morning I got in again and I've had a brief look at all the available races - Charr, Human and Norn.



The character creator is pretty neat, and gets a ton of bonus points for soothing background music - most MMOs have some terrible blaring fanfare playing while you'd just want to take your time and calmly look at each option. You can customise your character fairly well, there are some presets for body type and faces as well as sliders for fine-tuning some features. You also get to pick a personality type and background, such as commoner or noble.



I'm really liking the art style, and the way the intro videos are animated using concept art. It's worth rolling one character of each race just to see the introductions.

 


I rolled a male human Necromancer (which was my main back in the original Guild Wars). I've no idea yet which race and class I'd want to play at launch, but at least I've got plenty of time now to check each one out beforehand. I'm sad that there's no Ritualist or Dervish in GW2, but I guess I'll have to give the Guardian a spin (I've rolled a Charr one) since it seems to have some of the features of those classes.

I was really impressed by the environments, especially the city of Divinity's Reach - it's easily the biggest and most real city I've seen in an MMO so far, it's simply huge and there's an insane amount of details just waiting to be found. You can enter many of the buildings, which should be great for role-playing. Here are some assorted screenshots from my walk around the city:







I partied a bit with Neesa, that's me and her lil Necro. We got our butts handed to us soon after - GW2's combat system requires a bit getting used to. It's chaotic, but fun!

 

My bf played a Norn Elementalist for a while, I can't say much about it but at least the starting area looked very atmospheric. Also, manly fishing:


(you can NOM NOM the fish and gain health)

I'm really impressed by what I've seen of GW2 so far and can't wait for the launch - and by that I mean I don't want to waste too much time playing betas, I want the real thing NAO. The UI is super slick and especially the maps are brilliant, but otherwise GW2 is pretty sluggish for me even with low settings - I seriously need to upgrade my PC, most of it is about 4 years old now and I just can't play games without the highest settings. Anyway, I'm really liking what I've seen so far and I think Guild Wars 2 could well become my next big thing.

Tonight we dine in TYRIA

W-what is this MADNESS? Guild Wars 2? I'm going to play Guild Wars 2, tonight?! B-but I've only been waiting for it since 2007, this came too quickly-- what am I gonna wear?

As a happy preorderer of the impressive Guild Wars 2 Collector's Edition, I'm going to take part in the first Beta Weekend Event that's about to start tonight. I'll try and get as many screenshots (and some video, if my PC can handle it) of the game to show you what it looks like and how it plays. If you have any questions or want me to inspect some specific aspect of the game, leave a comment here!

Are you taking part in the Beta Weekend Event? Have any plans? What are you most excited about?

(btw, you can download that awesome Mesmer wallpaper here)

Rift: FOR SCIENCE!

"damn, I broke a nail ~"

A week ago there was an open free trial in Rift, so I thought I'd give it a shot (esp. since I had just turned into a D&D widow for the weekend). I had tried the game briefly during beta, but didn't think I'd want to play it after launch since I was busy with work, travel and the new LotRO update. Luckily Rift was so easy to get into that I finished the trial (the cap was level 15) very quickly and wanted more, so after hunting around on the interwebz a little I found a site that sold the retail code for 25€. I grabbed the offer so I could continue leveling my little mage.



Yup, I rolled a Defiant mage. Usually in these types of games with two factions one of them is the "goodie type" and the other is "baddie/emo", and although the Kelari (Defiant elves) have quite convinving emo looks I think Trion did quite a good job making them more interesting than "hurrdurr we're just misunderstood". I actually tried rolling a couple Guardian characters (the "goodie" side) but my inner antitheist just couldn't tolerate any of that godtalk (and the angel-like npcs gave me bad memories from Aion). So I chose to support the Defiant cause and created a character called... Science. Because I'm cool and edgy like that.



So far Rift has been fun. I like playing it, although I'm not yet sure if I like the game itself and its world - it's as generic as you can get and doesn't seem to have the epic art direction of Guild Wars to make it stand out from the other generic fantasy mmos. The soul system is great fun though and I can't wait to try out all the different roles and combos I can come up with - I like the idea that I'm not locked into a single role (great cure for altitis!) and that I can swap complete builds anytime I want.

Tl;dr: playing a defiant mage called Tiede (Finnish for science) on Argent PVE-RP. Looking for friends and guilds and fun.

Mysterious Relics

Today a mysterious new deed was opened — and if one doesn't want to be spoiled about the theme of future content they should stop reading now.

Basically there was a mysterious "official message" both on the US and EU servers from a bewildered hobbit, and several people doing their dailies in Enedwaith spotted a new black rock that starts a new deed. The deed is called Mysterious Relics and it requires you to find five relics scattered around Eriador.

I'm certain the newly appeared mysterious relics are representing the five gaunt-lords, "embodying death, pestilence, famine, war, and purest evil". There was a thread on the US forums some time ago, speculating their involvement in future content, but right now I can't find it - however certain quests in Enedwaith revealed the last, previously unnamed Gaunt-lord, so it's all becoming quite clear now. If anyone has a link to that thread I'd surely appreciate it, since I'd like to add the Gaunt-lords' names to this post but can't find them at the moment.

So here are my conclusions:


Thror's Coomb is most likely "purest evil", and it's probably linked both to the last Gaunt-lord (which appeared briefly in a quest instance nearby) and also the closed-off castle in the same region.


Oatbarton is "famine", and fits with the whole hobbit&food theme (and the blighted pipeweed farm here could be a nod to Saruman buying pipeweed from the Shire). Also check out this official message: A Strongly-Worded Letter from Bungo Grubb.


North Downs (William Peake's farm) is "war"; the farm where this relic appeared has been burned down. Probably also linked to the new town just around the corner.


Forochel is "death", the dialogue speaks of "mounting sense of fear".


Trollshaws (Laenan Caves) is "disease" and linked to the mysterious door, which apparently leads to an underground passage to an ancient temple where men of Rhudaur worshipped evil spirits.

Here's the tl;dr:


After completing the deed you get a nice title: Calm Before the Storm. Sadly, this deed gives no TP. But the excitement was surely worth it!

---

UPDATE: Many thanks to Anuhart for finding the right link; this thread from July reveals both the 'domains' of the Gaunt-lords as well as some very interesting bits from the original Volume 1 storyline. These are, as far as we know now, the five Gaunt-lords and their respective domains:

Drugoth the Death-monger, DEATH (Minion of Shadow)
Ferndur the Virulent, PESTILENCE (Minion of Plague)
Thadur the Ravager, FAMINE (Minion of Misery)
Ivar the Bloodhand, WAR (Minion of Battle)
Gortheron the Doom-caller, PUREST EVIL (his title is Minion of Plague as well, either it's a bug or he's a minion of Ferndur and we've yet to see the BBEG!)

This is what Gortheron tells the player during a quest instance in Enedwaith:

Gortheron the Doom-caller says, "How dare you disturb my work here! My brother was felled by the Free Peoples of this world, and I sought to return him to his proper place."
Gortheron the Doom-caller says, "Now he lies waiting and in rest. You seem to have undone some of my work here, but my forces shall lay waste to this place."
Gortheron the Doom-caller says, "Now I shall depart, but I will have vengeance for my fallen brethren. You shall rue to the day that you crossed paths with Gortheron the Doom-caller!"

So I guess it's fairly certain that the upcoming instance/raid cluster will be about the return of the Gaunt-lords, and I'd guess that the instances will be spread around Eriador near the places where these relics now appeared (the new town in ND, the temple in TS, the Ironspan in Forochel are all pretty good candidates for instance entrances). The locations also coincide very well with the regions we visited in Volume 3 Book 1, when we were gathering the Rangers for the Grey Company. Now that they're gone it seems all sorts of nasty things are returning.

Interesting times ahead!

Happy New Year 2011!

♥ Thank you for reading, following and supporting roll100 ♥

November Store Shopping List

These are the new cloaks that are currently available in the store on Bullroarer, Turbine's test server. I'm assuming these cloaks will come with the next update which should be sometime during this month. All cloaks are available as hooded and hoodless versions.

Completionists and collectors should also rejoice; the rare cosmetics that were previously only available from GM events and the seldom-run Angmar battlegrounds will be available in the store, as well as the elusive Helm of Rohan!

As usual, click for full size! Green denotes dyeable areas.


Wood-wanderer's Cloak, Cloak of the Windsinger


Twilight Cloak, Cloak of the Silver Birch, Cloak of the Mallorn


Cloak of the Autumn Wood, Elf-lord's Cloak, Cloak of the Mountain Wolves (Middle-Earth version of those kitchy wolf t-shirts?)


Cloak of the Ibis, Cloak of the Dove


Cloak of the Fallen Leaves (last of the new ones, the rest here are the old event/battleground rewards), Cloak of Vigilance, Helm of Rohan, Cloak of the Steadfast, Campaign Backpack, Hauberk of Glory.


I want Cloak of the Windsinger. Nao!

That time of year again

Next Yule festival items as currently seen on Bullroarer - two cloaks, a tunic and a scarf. Green/red are dyeable.

And this post is here because we were collectively wallowing in our laziness so I thought I'd post something right now. Now the hot potato goes to Breggie and Erun to post something.

Dwarven Facelift

The next update, which is due somewhere in November, was recently added to Turbine's test server Bullroarer. Since I still had that client installed I though I might as well go and have a look at it, and after hearing some praise for the revamped Dwarf Intro I decided to check it out.

The updated intro instance marks some interesting changes that I hope will be made to the entire game sooner or later. Almost all of the NPCs have been completely remodeled and they're no longer just standing around waiting for someone to click on them (actually you can't even interact with most of the NPCs in the new intro, they're just decorations). Now they've got individual faces, clothes and animations, and it was fun just running from NPC group to another just to see what they were doing.

This post is very image heavy and contains many spoilers! You have been warned!

FFXIV: Plans for the future

I managed to get into the Open Beta of Final Fantasy XIV, and I also succeeded in getting the client to work after a long struggle. I was feeling a bit worried at first, since the game was far from stable on my system and the controls felt really awkward, but after a while I found a good settings combo and got a hexbox controller working and so the game experience changed completely. All in all it doesn't seem like a bad game, just very very different from the current generation of PC MMOs (and XIV isn't really a PC game at all).

The head start should start next week, on 22nd of September. I've decided to roll on the Besaid server, which was named the unofficial RP server by the FFXIV Role-Play Coalition. If anyone else is joining at launch drop me a line and join me on Besaid!

F-f-f-fangirl squee

New Final Fantasy XIV pre-release trailer:


I haven't made much noise about it yet, but I have to admit I'm really really looking forward to Final Fantasy XIV. Not only because I liked Square's previous mmo, FFXI, but also because it speaks directly to the innocent adventure-lover in me. In films, literature and games I always have a soft spot for just pure heroic adventure, and that's what FFXIV seems to be all about. Forget EPIC FEUDS between TWO FACTIONS (cue world pvp), forget LOOMING APOCALYPSE (although, knowing the FF series, it's probably somewhere in there), forget.. well, can't quite come up with a good third punchline right now, but I'll tell you if I find one. What we've seen of FFXIV seems to indicate that we're all just aspiring nobodies looking to find some GOOD HONEST ADVENTURE.

I've already preordered the collector's edition of the game. I happened to win a gift voucher to a local game store in their Facebook lottery (lulz), so I thought I might as well shell out for the bigger package since I don't really buy any other games anymore. The lucky bit is that with the CE I'll be able to join the game earlier than those who buy the regular package, although I'll have to see how the dreaded EXP fatigue will turn out and whether or not the early access will be of any other use than for reserving names.

Which reminds me, I need to pick a name for my toon. I think I'm going to roll a catgirl just for the giggles and call her Tui. Seems that in FFXIV each toon has a 2-part name so I've got a month now to figure out a good surname for her.

Oh yes, also the game's lead art designer is Akihiko Yoshida, my favourite character designer of all time. *massive fangasm*

What are your thoughts on FFXIV? Anyone I know planning on playing when it launches?

Space Adventures!

I can see Finland from here!

It's the Star Trek Online open beta and I'm getting rather excited already. My bf showed me the new Trek film a couple weeks back, which happened to wake up the hibernating trekkie in me (used to watch TNG and DS9 as a kid), which in turn made me watch the Original Series and fall in love with Spock the whole series again. Some of the folks I know in LotRO have been going on about the upcoming ST Online and I managed to sneak myself in the open beta - and I'm having a good time.


I played around a little with the character creator, which allows you to make delightedly odd-looking aliens in addition to canon races. I rolled a wonderful motley-faced alien with the biggest ears ever, but the servers disconnected before I could save him/her/it and when I got back I just quickly rolled a Vulcan girl to get into the game before the next disconnect.



There are some nice little details here and there, like the floating dead borg dude outside the window.

I must say I really love the audio in STO. The sound effects are spot on and the music is very nice. Sadly that's not something I can convey through screenshots, but I can guarantee the atmosphere really feels like Trek :D.





Space combat was very difficult for me at first, since I've never actually played any kind of flying game (kept trying to strafe with Q and E all the time - which just caused my ship to slow to a crawl). I did get better at it after some practice, and had lots of fun when I warped to a certain system and found myself in a group with other players, trying to fight off tons of enemy ships.




U.S.S. Cheeseprobe, ready for action!

*waits for launch*

Aion Candy

Uhhh. Changing seasons in an MMO? Me likey.

Also, player housing? Yes please! I always thought Aion would be a pretty interesting platform for RP, and player-run neighbourhoods would be just perfect.

Complete graphical overhaul? Mmmm. As it is, Aion environments look like crap compared to too many other fantasy mmos, but with proper textures, better water and more frills it actually looks nice. On the video, anyway :D.

Oh well, one can always dream. Right now I'd be happy if they just upped group xp and fixed my class's problems, but until it happens I won't be resubbing.