Not evil enough

Gimme one dark side point, JUST ONE! GIMMEEEE!

Teatime in a galaxy far, far away

The reason for my long, long radio silence is... that I've been busy blowing stuff up in a galaxy far, far away. I started playing Star Wars - The Old Republic during the Christmas holidays, and – much to my surprise – I'm still subscribed and having a fairly good time. I won't say the game is perfect, or even very good (at least not if you compare it to other modern MMOs - so much is still lacking or broken), but during the first free 30 days SWTOR just grew on me and I learned to live with its shortcomings and enjoy what it has to offer.

So far I've mostly played SWTOR as a single-player game, only doing a few flashpoints (=dungeons) here and there and never touched PVP until, uh, yesterday? Playing solo you don't really notice the game's glaring flaws that much, which mostly lie in the user interface and social tools - for instance, you can't move UI elements around, you can't disable "smart camera", there is no combat log or target-of-target and the AH is next to unusable. But the class stories are good and I can imagine myself rolling all 8 classes (eventually) just to see each class story through.

Here are my dear little playthings:


Tua Teatime, Imperial Agent (Operative)
My very first character, currently stuck at level 42. Very fun to play though, and the class story is just pure gold. I need to get her to 50 some day so the guild will have a backup healer.


Teadus Teatime, Sith Inquisitor (Assassin)
My current "main", a tanky and sneaky Sith lord and my only level 50 character. I really enjoyed the Sith Inquisitor storyline, it had some very surprising (and funny) twists. Also the Assassin advanced class feels really strong and I have no trouble soloing group dailies. I'd love to try raids and hardmode flashpoints with this character, but diving into a tanking role in PuGs feels a little too scary right now.



Tuarn Teatime, Smuggler (Gunslinger)
My best effort at rolling a character on the Republic side - I just like the Imperial planets, classes and storylines more than Republic ones. This snarky Smuggler is the lovechild between my Agent and Inquisitor (he's got the same face and hair as his daddy... yeah, lame, but I like that face!). He's currently level 27 or 28, and I hope to level him up quickly now so I can join my friends on Rep side and try some raiding.

The server I play on is called The Progenitor (EN-PVE-RP), say hi if you're there! :)

Ressing Roll100

Hiiii, anyone still here? I know it's been months and months since my last update, sorry about that! I've got plenty of things I'd like to rant and ragewrite about, but I think I'll have to take it easy and not scare away any remaining readers with my massive turbine hate and anti-f2p hatespeech well-formulated arguments against a certain game that has been frequently featured on this blog... but not anymore, mwa-HA!

Well, to cut the long story short, I got finally fed up with the sub-par performance that Turbine has been delivering with Lord of the Rings Online, the unimpressive and unfinished Rise of Isengard expansion, the horribad LotRO community site, lack of targeted advertising (newsletters and loading screens with US-only competitions and WalMart ads) and the greedy and intrusive cancer that is the LotRO Store. Oh, and all the people who continue to spend 20 money on fugly mount that's unlocked for one character only. And I don't mean you, dear reader, but all the other tools that support a game that isn't worthy of its IP :).

Ohhh, feels so good to get that off my chest. Here's hugs to everyone! Happy gaming!

MEANWHILE, IN RIFT:

massive dragon invasion is massive

So, yeah, Rift has been good, but more on that later. The new region, Ember Isle, is calling →

End of the Horizon

I'm slowly closing in on level 50 in Rift. It's certainly bringing me back memories from 2008 when I was leveling up my first character in Lord of the Rings Online - when each new level felt like an achievement and one step closer to the mythical max level. Coincidentally the cap was also "just" 50 in LotRO back then, so it really feels like an eerie déjà-vu.



Since ~45 or so I've tagged along with my guild, doing some lv50 invasions and crafting rifts - I could hardly hit anything and kept dying all the time, but at least I got to see places and have fun!



I'm sitting at 48 now, and really can't be bothered to quest anymore. There are tons of quests spread over several areas, so there's plenty to choose from, but now I think I'll just take it easy and grab a bit of exp from a craft quest here, an invasion there, and the occasional expert rift done with the guild.



At around lv30 I had to give up my beloved Stormcaller/Elementalist build, which had until that relied on the earth elemental pet to tank. Since I didnt' put many points into Ele the pet wouldn't have leveled up past that, so I changed my solo build to Necromancer/Warlock, which is an amazing soloing machine with decent damage and incredible survivability. I just miss the Stormcaller's skills since they have amazing sound effects - the zaps and roaring thunder from the lightning skills are just so immensely satisfying that the Necromancer's generic hissing sound effects are nothing in comparison.



Tonight we're going to try and create a guild in Rift with E Voronwë folks. No idea how I'll be able to juggle two guilds in Rift in addition to playing LotRO every now and then... but we'll see!

Oh yeah, and if you'd like to give Rift a try, please use this link to register: Rift Free Trial. I'm playing on PVE-RP Argent server, Defiant side, if you want to hook up.

Back to Rift

I was a bit pissed off at the start of the week because I hadn't got any response from the Rift customer service them to the ticket I sent on Saturday, until I got an email on Monday that my ticket had been closed because I hadn't replied in 48h... turns out there's a 3rd party customer service site where all the tickets are answered but I never got any email notification about it (and there was NO mention about the other site in the automated ticket response) so I couldn't have known. Meh. Oh well, I had to call their customer service in the US but luckily they could just remove the borked Mobile Authenticator from my account so everything's fine now. Yay!


I'm so going to need a beach holiday after these dark tunnels!

I continued working on my Mage, who is now 34 or so. I was also invited to a guild of old LotRO friends, so I hope to get my toon to 50 now and geared up so I could start running instances properly. I've only been to one instance so far (mostly I just overleveled them while questing), and it was fun to work in a group again - which reminds me that I'm constantly amazed at the level of maturity, politeness and friendliness on my server! Perhaps I've just been lucky, but pretty much everyone I've ran into or joined in a Public Group have been nice, helpful and, GASP, used proper punctuation and capitalisation! The make me feel like such a 1337 kiddie..

[me] yey thanks for the company :)
[random nice person] Likewise, safe travels.

Capital letters, baby. Capital letters.



Another thing I've enjoyed about Rift is the knowledge that with the monthly fee I get everything there is in the game. I think I'm pretty good at ignoring the tasteless Store advertisements in LotRO, but when playing another MMO the difference is pretty big — no tacky buttons, no annoying popups, no bypassing content by opening one's wallet. I'm happy to part with my money for another month's sub in Rift, and I'm even thinking of getting the Collector's Edition unlocked for my account for the lulz, because right now I'm having a good time and I want to see what's behind the next hill.

I'm also a bit lonely at times, so now that there's a Free Trial of seven days, you can join me in Rift for free!!1 And do note that this "free" doesn't come with the burden of fugly BUY NOW buttons...

Click here for a free 7-day Rift trial

↑ that link is my "refer a friend" link, so if you register from that page and decide to buy the game later (you can get it online for as little as 25€) we both can get some nice benefits in the game :)

Outfit #2: That Girl in Green

I guess I could call this my first 'signature' outfit, and probably one I've worn the most. I've still got all the original pieces, which I earned back in SoA times, stored in my vault. I like this outfit so much because it reminds me of places I've been to - the original Annúminas and Rift, my favourite places in the game.

.. that is also the reason I hardly ever make outfits from "mundane" items, because I want to show off that I've been there and done that! /vanity


Head: n/a
Back: Cloak of the West-Tower (Annúminas cloak), dyed green
Shoulders: Shoulders of Seven Stars (Annúminas light set), default dye
Chest: Robe of the Elder Days (LM Rift set), dyed green
Hands: Gloves of the Lady's Wisdom (LM DN set), dyed green
Legs: n/a
Feet: Boots of the Elder Days (LM Rift set), dyed green


Accessory: original Harvestmath steed (matches the character's name)

I'd love to make a real-life costume of this outfit, but it'd be pretty hard to make the robe NOT look like a bathrobe!

Rift: derp

← my face today Haha I fail so much. I had some troubles logging in to Rift (again!), so in my frustration I thought the mobile authenticator was borked (again!) and I uninstalled it from my Galaxy Tab. Which anyone who, uh, actually ever read what it says on the authenticator wouldn't do, since it basically locks your account and you have to contact their customer service for help. *twiddling thumbs* Let's see how long this takes...