Whirly: good to go

It turns out Mark has an unexpected tenacious streak. I thought we were done with Gnomeregan. Mark had other plans and dragged us back. It was challenging right from the start.

We entered via the back door. I suggested we could just run for it and not fight everybody between us and the door, we couldn’t. As ghosts we were able to bypass all those guys and get right to the door. It was a bit embarrassing.

Unknown to the rest of us, Mark was herding us towards Thermaplugg, the big bad dude in Gnomeregan. We didn’t make it. We were fighting our way down the ramp to his room when we ran into an impassable wall of mobs.

We were doing pairs made up of one guy riding a mechanical chicken and a second guy who drops a bomb. Mark pulled a chicken rider who came, but his pair did not. 30 seconds into the fight, a group of bomb droppers showed up. I didn’t get an accurate count, but it seemed like five or more. We died quickly. We came back and gave it another try. It ended exactly the same.

Saturday night, Mark and I went in with two 60s trying to figure a way past that spot. I don’t see how three 31s can pull it off. Plus, Thermaplugg won’t be all that easy either. We are thinking of trying again when we gain level 36. It won’t be easy.

I ran into a mission I couldn’t seem to get past as a Dominator. I died twice trying so I went with plan B - I put up my looking for group flag. Groups (teams) are the greatest fun and biggest frustration with CoX. So many seem to have no idea how to work as a team. The game has been out for a long time. They couldn’t all be new players. It’s a mystery to me.

Two large groups were pulled first thing. Most everybody went down including me. At level 5 and 6 nobody has rez so it’s a run back from the Hospital. It went better after that, though it was wild and crazy. I’m and ice/ice Dominator so I lock the mobs in blocks of ice. I have a single target and an AoE. Somebody else on the team had some kind of AoE fire spell. The two don’t stack it seems.

I tried to keep busy and useful. I’ve got a lot to remember-learn. CoX is a great game though it only has the one thing, fighting. The team broke up after that one mission. That was fine. I dinged and needed to train anyway. This is the level I’ve got to decide between speed, fly, jump or teleport. Fly seems the easiest though overdone. I’m thinking.

My career of evil has begun. Maybe not evil – misunderstood perhaps. Or, just unaware that my actions negatively affect others. I like that. My new City of Villains (CoV) toon is just dumb.

First thing after installation is to patch. 85 megs isn’t that large. I didn’t expect it to take almost 24 hours. I opened ports, tried finding alternative methods, everything, anything. 24 hours later I entered the game and created my new toon. I played through the tutorial before realizing it was exactly like City of Heroes. It was City of Heroes. While I had reopened my account, I hadn’t added CoV.

I created my new-new villain, he’s just dumb, and stumbled through a completely different tutorial. I’ve built an Ice/Ice Dominator. My dominate button took a long time to charge and I haven’t used it yet. I have only a vague idea what it does. Dominate I guess.

I’ve only reached level 3. To avoid mistakes I’ve been doing research before adding anything. I don’t want to make a major mistake with this build.

CoV uses the same engine as CoH, so the look, feel and controls are the same. The controls are a bit wrong. Mouse look is backwards, WAD controls are missconfigured from game standards, easily corrected with control options.

I would have stayed up too-late playing more, but I couldn’t log in. Maintenance, patch? Not being able to play is a deal breaker. The excitement is electric /shrug.