Progress – Soa down!

So, I thought I'd like to see some SWTOR endgame on Imperial side as well, so I applied with my Agent to a small guild that had been making good progress in the Hard Mode operations. Tonight was raid ops night so first we cleared Eternity Vault in HM up to Soa the Infernal One, then went and cleared  the entire Karagga's Palace in HM, and after that returned to give Soa a good spanking – and got a nice first-time kill on the second (or was it third?) try.



I was caught in a Mind Trap when the boss went down so I didn't get the kill for the ops quest. Fail! And the loot was made of fail also, only Bounty Hunter and Inquisitor pieces, and those classes were already geared to the teeth. Better luck next week!


He's kinda big. And dead.


"and then he was like, ó-( . . )-ò"

Emergency butt-fixing

Thank goodness there's a /weld emote in case I accidentally LMAO.

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!

Fake Sith

I've been looking for a nicer-looking chestpiece for my Imperial Agent for some time now, since the Battlemaster chestpiece just doesn't suit her complexion at all. Today I found a customisable Sith Marauder Battlemaster chestpiece very cheap on the GTN and I just had to buy it to see how it'd look like.. and it looks great and now I'm in love! Sure it's not a proper [Augmented] chest but it'll do for now. I'm a mean ninja girl with a big gun!

 

Oh and I also rerolled my level 27 Jedi Guardian (didn't like the looks). For some reason every time I log my new Jediboy he's kneeling. Anyone know why?

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)

Now, back to the match

I had a tiny tiny break from SWTOR, since my SWTOR subscription ended on Monday and it took a few days for the free 30 days from the Legacy Promotion to apply. I've been slowly playing Knights of the Old Republic, a game that I somehow completely missed when it was first released back in 2003. I've been enjoying it immensely (especially since it's such a lore boost to SWTOR) and I really want to finish it soon.. but right now I need my quick SWTOR Warzone fix.

 

I've now managed to complete the Battlemaster armour set for my Imperial Agent (Operative), and I'm sitting at around 1000 expertise (the PVP stat in SWTOR). The difference to when I first started out in level 50 PVP is enormous, I no longer feel like a wet tissue, I can pump out some pretty sweet heals and even get a few kills every now and then. I'm also very happy that Bioware were quick to fix the issues I ranted about in my last PVP post - the Warzone atmosphere is much better again since people have an incentive to stay until the end.

 
Duel of the paint cans - a common sight when Operative healers are about

In a previous post, Cithryth asked me about how the healing feels like, so here's my 5 eurocents (we don't use the 1 or 2 cent coins here in Finland, the smallest is 5):

Operative healing is very powerful, and I really like the mobility of it - in Warzones I can even run like a headless chicken around my team, spam my AoE heal and my instant heal-over-time and my instant miniheal and get some crazy healing scores. I can usually survive for quite a long time - and even longer if I'm lucky enough to get Guard from a friendly tank. My strongest heal has a longer cast time so I have to stay still to use it, meaning I'll get focused very soon unless I position myself carefully. But if there are any Sorcerer healers around, enemies usually tend to focus more on those and ignore lil me... until I stab them gently between the ribs and sprint away while throwing stackable HoTs on myself and my team-mates.

I also like the resource mechanics of Operatives - instead of the huge "mana pool" that most healer classes have in other MMOs, I have a very small range of Energy that regenerates really fast (unless I spam my skills so that it goes close to 0 and then it regens super slow). But I really think it beats having a huge pool and then just slowly watch it go down and hoping the battle will end before you go OOM.

The only real downside is that Operative healing is pure Health Bar Whack-A-Mole. Sure it's hectic and fun, since I have to make quick decisions about which heal to use so I won't run out of Energy, but the reality is that I watch the red bars go down, I apply the appropriate heal skill and hope they go up. There's no shield, bubble, buffs or other utilites I'm used to having as a healer in other MMOs. I can crowd-control droids, but all my other CC abilities have a very short range and duration. But hey, at least I have stealth and I can Vanish if I get focused!