End of September

Due to some crazy events happening in life, this has been fairly sparse as of late! Rest assured I have still been gaming (I'm sure you were worried)!

I will now summarize.

MINECRAFT.

My sister, some friends and myself decided that we wanted to make our own server where we could build together unmolested by other random nubs and jerks. Since I'm the most experienced in computers, servers and such (not sure that's saying much) of the group, I decided that I would try my hand at setting up a server. They've made it fairly easy these days, with a wiki and all to help you set it up and configure. It was even quite easy to get it set up so that people outside my LAN could join! The only real downfall is that it's being run from an $80 refurbished Dell computer, so it can't really handle more than a handful of people at the best of times. In any event! This post will be rather image heavy, I do apologize.

We started off setting up a village around the spawn point with the intention of protecting any newcomers from the monsters outside, until they get their bearings and such!

We started off with an initial 'landing pad' (the black and red setup in the center) where players would exactly spawn in the first time, though later the game/server goofed and started spawning people into the ocean the first time instead. Still haven't fixed that quite yet.

After we created the landing pad, we branched out, leaving it as the city center as it were. We decided to create some 'temples' in the surrounding that would act as useful locations for newcomers. The first was a 'Temple of the Day' with a cute little galaxy/sun thing on the roof courtesy of yours truly. The inside is merely a gathering place with chairs and tables that you can't use but look nice anyway.

Next we created the 'Temple of the Night' in contrast! It's got a big glowing crescent moon on it. It also serves as a dormitory, which seemed appropriate. Beds do however serve a purpose in Minecraft and can be used. They help set your spawn point, so that even though the game likes to spawn people in the middle of nowhere under water, once we've got them to the city they can reset their spawn point to a safe location.

Next we decided to cater to the real purpose of the game- building! This often requires players to craft things however. So we created the 'Temple of Fire', which is really just a cool looking forge (with multiple furnaces for all your cooking/smelting/burning needs)! Look at all that lava! Must be toasty.

To go with this, we created a sister temple to house the crafting stations (on top) and chests of useful goods (inside). The last and largest of the temples, a giant tree house: The Temple of Forest.

We made sure to fill in the village space with other things like a farm and some giant mushrooms (one actually making up a house!) as well as a glowing lake that can be seen from a small viewing area.

Pretty!

Next we branched out, deciding to create even larger towns and villages further on from 'Newbville'. We created far-stretching roads lined with glowstone(to shed light on them) and lined with small canals to discourage certain monsters that can move blocks.

 

 The first road divides after a while to lead to two separate temples. The colours are meant to match the temple they are leading to appropriately. This road leads to the new Forest Temple and village (left) and the Desert Temple and village (right)

It seemed appropriate to make the desert temple a giant pyramid. On the inside will be ruins starting to be excavated, and we will create a village around the end of the road in time.

The other path lead to the Forest Temple, which we decided to make an even giant tree, one on a massive scale to match the pyramid. So far it's just a 'stump', but even that took a massive amount of work, several hours at least to excavate the inside and make the ground flat, as well as build the stump to such a height.

The surrounding village we decided would be a series of tree houses and platforms connected. It's still under construction as well but here's an example!

The original road we created was by far the longest, long enough that you couldn't see the city even with the farthest viewing distance selected in settings, not by a long shot. It was a pain in the butt to make, let me tell you, and I didn't even make it the first time! I merely helped my friend re-colour it when we decided it would lead to the Sky Temple (and village) and that more appropriate colours were needed.

 

At the end of the path was a giant floating island, as well as more in the distance that we decided will someday house a village of sky-island-houses. My sister had claimed this one though, wanting to build a giant tower that extended past the clouds. Unfortunately they changed the height limit so that you can't build past the clouds anymore, so until I find a mod to change that, my sister's poor little tower will be unfinished for now. But in lieu of that, we built an awesome and giant winding and glowing staircase that lead up to the island as well as cascading waterfalls leading off from it! Hopefully that makes up for it a bit.

We've also created little 'easter eggs' around our server world for anyone that comes to explore, like a mushroom village and a house in the middle of a lake. There's also secret rooms with special loot, but it would be cheating to show you those!

I hope you enjoyed this little 'tour' of our Minecraft server! Further bulletins as events warrant. Expect an update on Warhammer Online: The Reckoning next!

Week 1 - Part 2

Continuing on as I explored 'Forsaken World' further. There's five races you can choose from; the typical Human, Elf, Dwarf fantasy options are available, as well as Stonemen (who are only male and only tank class), and Vampires (who are very Castlevania-esque but have more options at least). As I like to play pretty things and I hate tanking, I haven't looked at the Stonemen yet, but they seem to do their job well.

There are two things I noticed right away that are quite different from other MMO's, for better or for worse (or for little consequence!). The first is the inclusion of astrological signs. In character creation you select a birthdate for your character (and consequently a sign). There is a gauge at the top of the screen that shows which celestial sign is currently in swing. Each sign is lucky for anyone who was 'born' under it, as well as two other signs. It seems to cycle every hour or so. You can also pray every hour, and the gods may or may not answer you with material goods or buffs. It seems to work better when you're under a lucky sign. A neat little addition, though overall  not really that important to the game as a whole.

The second thing is that there is a dual-monetary system. There is a separate money system for interacting with NPCs; buying training or goods from merchants costs 'soul coins'. These coins are bound to you and can't be traded. Then there are normal coins that can be used to trade with other players and buy things off of the auction house and such. I'm not sure why there needs to be two separate systems, or if it's particularly useful. If I've been low on soul coins I've bought low-priced items off of the auction house with normal coins and then merely sold them to vendors for soul coins to buy my skills and such.

Dungeons (instanced locations where you can take a party for extra good gear and experience) are like pulling teeth in this game once you get past the first low-level noob dungeon. You can sign up and let the game put you with random people, and occasionally it will do so without bothering to assign an actual proper tank or healer, leaving you to struggle through and use your wits, though it somewhat defeats the purpose of having fun if even teamwork and clever play still leaves you feeling frustrated and unrewarded.

One of the first apparent ripoffs I noticed in game seemed to resemble the World of Warcraft kobold. I've seen many representations of kobolds, ranging from anywhere between vaguely dog-looking to mostly dragon-looking. Usually dragon or lizard-like seems to be the more 'canon' representation. I thought WoW's version was fairly unique. Now, Forsaken World doesn't call these kobolds, they're 'Ratkin', but they do still look suspiciously familiar...

You no take candle!!

Here's some more rip offs for your enjoyment!

Forsaken World caster and demon pony... and WoW caster and demon pony!!

WoW Mechanostrider ..... Forsaken World Mechanost- Mech.. Leaper

WoW ram mount .... Forsaken World ram mount!

Week 1 - Part 1

As it took me a bit to start this blog, I'll summarize what I've been up to this last week! I found a free-to-play game for the time being because I am a poor college student.

This is an MMO called 'Forsaken World'. I've never heard of it or it's other brothers and sisters, though the company seems to have quite a few free MMOs to play, seemingly making their money by offering glitzy armor and such you can purchase with real world gold!

My initial impression of Forsaken World was that it was Aion's 'special' little brother. At character creation I immediately recognized the art style. Some of the hairstyles seem to even be blatantly ripped off from Aion.

            Aion    ----------------------    Forsaken World

Ok, so maybe they're not exactly the same, but there's definitely a resemblance amirite? But that's not the only reason I'm referring to this as Aion's little brother. It's definitely a lesser version to be sure. Even in the character creation there's only very little customization. There's only about 6 hairstyles and face choices etc, as opposed to Aion's 1035532 bazillion choices. Aion wasn't much of a game other than the beautiful landscapes and flying though either I suppose. But Forsaken World doesn't even have that. Well, the landscapes are alright actually, but there's definitely no flying. But hey! It does have one thing above Aion! You can swim! And you don't drown! In fact, there isn't even a health bar or anything of the sort, so knock yourself out Josh! Just kidding. I'm sure he hasn't even heard of this game either. You're not missing much, but it does the job when you need to waste time.

Pros: Free, good way to waste a bit of time. Very interesting and pretty costume designs.
Cons: Female style options come in Skank or Skankier.

Welcome!

Welcome to my game journal! I am doing this for my 'History of Video Games' class that I am taking at the Coconino Community College in Flagstaff. This will be a record of games I am playing, my thoughts on them, and any other tidbits I feel are warranted at the time! :)

I haven't always been a gamer (though I've essentially loved them once I finally got my grubby little hands on one) but as you can see, I have always been a geek! (Evidence below)