Whirly: good to go

Well ToonTown was petering out so we gave it up. It’s not that there wasn’t more content. It’s just that the grind ramp was getting kind of steep. Do 20 of these then 100 then 1000. That ain’t no way to have fun. See ya.

We gave Wizard101 a moments time. When we all logged on together, we found it to be bleh. We weren’t even paying attention while fighting. We need a little more challenge than that.

We are off to EQ II for a month. I thought I’d just download the client, but after twelve hours I went to plan B. I tracked down my install CDs, renamed the folder I’d been downloading, installed from CD, copied the recently downloaded content to the new install and started it up again. It took another 12 hours to download /sigh. I guess I need more bandwidth.

We are playing on the Test Server of course. I had three toons there already. I deleted the lowest and created a new Guardian. It’s my turn to be tank. The newbie island experience has been greatly simplified and I got through in half an hour or so. I’m level eight in Qeyons waiting for the boys. Ehh, it’s something to do.

We’ve been working out of Daisy’s garden in ToonTown, doing three and four story buildings. We ran into a wall this weekend when we couldn’t get any quests until we took out the Factory Foreman in the Sellbot Factory. We’ve been in there a couple of times just wandering around. We had no idea what we were doing. Now we had to win. What pressure.

We did our homework, maps and such from the internet. I figured we’d fail a couple of times then go do more buildings on the street. It didn’t work like that at all. We took down the Foreman on our first attempt. I couldn’t have been more surprised. Now I’m wondering if it was a fluke. I guess we’ll find out. I received another quest requiring another Foreman.

I canceled my WoW & LotRO accounts. I’ve resubscribed to City of Heros. I’m not sure I’ll be playing that either. I don’t like pick up groups. No, I hate pick up groups. CoH kind of requires a group. The boys don’t seem very excited about returning to CoH. We’ll see what happens after ToonTown.

We’ve been playing ToonTown for a few weeks. It’s more than it seems. We run buildings mostly, at our level I guess it’s required. Having your own group makes a run much smoother, but it certainly not a sure thing. When it goes well, we squeeze all the experience from a building we can. When not, we visit the playground as very unhappy toons.

I keep expecting us to get better at the strategy. Much of the game is just random numbers. Will the Cog dodge? Often it simply comes down to that. If this pie hits we win, otherwise no. As we get better gags, we’ll have better options. Of course the fights will get harder as well.

It’s not a bad game solo. At least some times. If what you need can be accomplished in the streets, you can certainly solo, or sometimes pop into a higher population server and run the streets helping others. If you are trying to raise your toon-up skill, you can toon-up lower level players? They won’t mind.

And there is the challenge. How can I help in this situation without compromising the other players experience. It’s different in this game than usual. Maybe that other player needs to hit this cog with as many pies as possible. If you damage the cog, you detract from the other player’s goal. And what is the other player’s goal? You’ve got to intuit it most of the time. You can’t talk to them, well only on a basic level. Is your new found friend six years old, or an old MMO veteran like yourself? Are we attempting some brilliant attack or just clicking our favorite color?

I used to two-box back in EQ. I thought I’d give it a try in WoW. I have a MacBook Pro that I use for everything other than playing games. It had an old copy of WoW installed that took a day or so to patch and install expansions. It runs a bit hot while playing, so I reduced in-game graphics and desktop resolution as far as possible. I picked up a 10 day free trial for the experiment.

I use Synergy to control both my PC and Mac with the same keyboard and mouse. It worked well with the two WoWs except for an occasional problem when moving the mouse off the Mac while my toon is turning. The toon can start rotating, which is difficult to stop.

The whole point is to add a fourth to our regular group of three. I figure a hunter would be the perfect bot, so I created a Warrior / Hunter. It’s a quick killing machine at newbie levels, but the hunter seems to generate more aggro than the Warrior so far.

Next, I tried running two instances of WoW on my PC. I had to reduce the window size of both, which I didn’t like, but it might be better with a second monitor – my possible next attempt. The down side was having to click on each window to gain focus. I started alt-tabbing between the two then realized I could use my keyboard’s macro capabilities to automate the process. I created a macro that switches windows and tells the Hunter to /follow the Warrior, and another than has the Hunter /assist the Warrior. It works quite nicely.

We are taking a break from WoW. Running instances, with just the three of us, was getting a bit boring. The whole burning crusades thing was the same and we felt the needed for a little break.

We are playing ToonTown. We were in beta some years back. It seemed funner then. There isn’t any grouping in TT and, so far, we are individually running streets looking for whatever our quests call for. Hopefully it will become interesting once our missions call for us to do buildings. That’s assuming we stay around long enough.

We are talking about starting over in WoW. I’m not sure we are going there. It seems crazy to abandon our mains at this point. Maybe a reduced play schedule or something is the way to go. There are no other games calling us at this time. We’ve been playing together since EQ. I would hate for us to bust up now.

The first time I ran a senario in Warhammer Online we won. My second try was a success as well. Not one since. I’ve done around ten, all losers. Doesn’t matter which side I play. I’m starting to think it’s me.

I’ve not done a lot of PvP, though I did get hooked on battle grounds in WoW for a little while. So I’m not a real expert or anything. I try to go-with-the-flow and contribute. It’s not working out. Today I tried something a little different. I chose the team mate who seemed the most experienced, a complete guess, and followed them. I assisted them with their target, helped kill whoever they were attacking. When I died, more than my share I think, I tracked down my partner and tried again. My side didn’t win, but it was the closest I’ve been for a while, and my battle stats after were better than usual. I may be on to something. If you’re going to lose, you might as well have a plan.

We are taking a short break from WoW, now that we’ve reached 70. I’ve read others say the game starts at 70. I don’t understand that. We’ve been able to do a few things at 70 we couldn’t do at 69, but we’ll be doing those things again, once the expansion comes out, for experience. What’s the point? We’ve tried dailies – they are geared to solo play. Daily dungeons are impossible for our small group. We’ve killed a few new bosses

I chipped in so everybody could get a flying mount. I don’t have enough gold for us all to get the fast flying mount. I got one though. I was kind of ashamed of myself. I don’t use it when we are together.

So we are playing Warhammer online. Not a bad game, though we are all still newbies, around 7. It’s good solo and with a friend. When the three of us are together, I always feel like we should be doing something. It remains to be seen if Warhammer has a something for three. LotRO didn’t. I’ve pre-ordered the WoW expansion – I’m not excited about it.

We all made level 70. It’s been a hard go since. We are struggling to find something productive to do. A couple of daily instances tried, but with only three of us we’ve had zero success. We’ve done a few regular dailies, but they are geared to solo play and aren’t challenging at all. We’ve only a few weeks before the scheduled release of the next expansion. I don’t know what we’ll do.

Back to Mana Tombs to see just how far we can go. We can go exactly as far as the second boss Tavarok, big guy he. We tried him cold, with no pre-knowledge. He spanked us so hard we decided there was no need to try him again. What should we do? Lets take another look at Auchrtnai Crypts.

Our previous visit to Aurchrtnai Crypts didn’t go well, or long. This time looked to be just as bad. The mobs spawn ghost pets and what not. They ran us off again, initially. We gave it another try, and darn if we didn’t work it out. What fun. We had a great time. Each fight required concentration and our ‘A’ game. We had, I had, a blast. We continued longer than our regular Friday fight night, one impossible fight after another. We made it to the threshold of the first boss Shirrak the Dead Watcher, but didn’t give him a try, next time perhaps. It was my best evening in WoW for a while, a long while.

Ha! Pandemonius went from impossible to farm status all of a sudden. We returned to his home, Mana Tomb, to see if our first Pande’ kill was a fluke. Nope. We own him now, the punk. Still a long fight, but certainly doable. I picked up a new wand.

We cleared most of the next room then decided to reset the instance and kill Pandemonius again just for the loot. Mark’s Warrior received a nice pair of gloves.

Oh, we all dinged 69. It looks like our goal, 70 by Christmas, is a happening thing. We’ll be the last folks, who have played WoW since release, to reach 70. What an honor. I’m so proud.