I’m going to blame the husband.  I mean after all, it’s normally his fault, right?

I am aware of the “rumor” that the longer people are married, the more they act, look and sound alike, but I had NO idea I would take a critical hit!!!

Innocently I watched Zeff’s ability to name off all his named loot, be hyper aware of all the gear on any one particular character and earlier this spring found a binder full of his spreadsheets which aggregated volumes of information about DDO.  I considered him a nut.  I mean who does that?

Apparently, as of yesterday, Rowan does

It started because I had all these extra weapons I was pulling on my cleric.  I couldn’t figure out who to send them to.  I innocently thought, well write them down.  I started a list.  A very very very smallish list.

It always begins that way, doesn’t it *sigh*

I have spent most of the past two days going over only two of my girls. Both Rowanheal and Rowanshadow have been inspected with a fine tooth comb.  My mule is overburdened with all the left over gear, feats have been exchanged, enhancements reset, toolbars retooled, armor crafted and as I log off tonight I am fairly beat.

I am also thinking about the all the other girls I will have to go through in the coming week.  Why in the world did I do this to myself?

MMM, btw, Rowanshadow was respeced for Two Weapon Fighting and took the Way of the Assassin Line.  I played around with her for a few minutes and I already like it.  Not sure how I am going to do with traps.  I left a few enhancement points free, so if I find a deficiency I can address it later.

Rowanheal made some Dragon Touched armor.  Color me frustrated, but finally, after 19 Eldtrich runes (I had been saving em up,) I got the Greater False life I wanted.  Now I need to run for Tempest and Sovereign runes until the end of time to get the rest of the armor  fixed.  And yes, now Zeff and I and everyone else look exactly alike.  (Ahem, Turbine… Halllllooooo… Armor Dyes!!!)

I also found out about the DM’s Vision set tonight from Zeff.  If you have the Voice of the Master from Delera’s and you pick the Mantle of the Worldshaper from Threnal, you are granted DM’s Vision.  True seeing all the time.  Neat little set with a nod to both Gary and Dave.  I love it.  Ok, so I can True Seeing on my myself all the time as a cleric, still I had to go see about the set

On other fronts, I love it when a log screen has a typo.  Couldn’t resist posting it here.

Of vs Or... oppsie LOL

Morah and Clankenbeard are running a new contest, MISS STORMREACH 2009.  Check out their thread for more info on how to enter.  (reminds herself to take her pink robe in to the dry cleaners)

It’s been a productive day with a side of fun.  I’m off to bed.  Zeff wants to try Perma death so we are over on Thelanis for Lessah’s Perma Death fun at 8 am est.  *blinks* I am gonna need coffee!

GAME ON!!!

My Static group normally runs on Tuesdays, but after playing together for almost 3 years, we have learned to be flexible.  With one of our players out of town on business Tuesday, we moved our game over to Thursday and figured, why not.  Our Guild is TnT… it could stand for Thursday

Tonight was the first time in months we’ve had all six of us live in game.  While Zeff, the hubby, has been home from deployment for a few, he’s had duty and other obligations that have kept him away from Static night fun.

We decided we would tackle a little more of the Reaver’s Refuge.  We still aren’t really well geared, but having only played these characters with this group, we know each others strengths and weaknesses well enough to pull almost any fat out of the fire

Tonight, we were robbed.  Screwed.  And well, in retrospect, really dead

We ran Prey of the Hunter.  Used to be, we would simply run past all those giants, but with the introduction of the “well thought out” Dungeon scaling system, we now have to stop and kill all those jerks.  Time consuming, resource draining, and overly annoying.

We had a fabulous almost wipe when we got to the barriers.  Our sorceress was lost and hide at the blue door, while the rest of the party went for the lever… the lever they couldn’t find.  As the ever directionally challenged sorceress, I listened to the “ding” your party member “insert name here” is dead… repeatedly LOL!

We pulled that one off with some fancy footwork, but when they FOUND the lever to the barrier, somehow all the giants they had been running around FOUND me.  In my haste to firewall them to death I fell off the ledge into Rockslide :(  Yes, I died.  It was an especially hard death to take considering I had been holding my own against the hoard of monsters for a good 5 minutes!

We had a wipe after that, but we kept going, sure we would win the adventure and save the day.

The group had little trouble running through the maze, but we simply weren’t fast enough and the “Adventure Failed” message popped for us.

Two and a half hours later and no xp, no chest, but a lot of laughs.  I do love to run with my TnTers

In other news, I made the 2500 favor on Rowanheal today!  W00t.  Rowansoul the favored soul will be born soon

I also got flagged for the DQ raid and ran it tonight.  We 6 manned it with little issue, but nothing dropped

It simply wasn’t my loot day!

I have been meaning to mention a new Comic.  M3 as it is being called just put out its second strip.  Be sure to check out the site and register to leave comments

( I have them both inserted on my home blog Rowanheal, Girl Gamer, but Myddo says the pics are too big LOL)

I know most of you don’t agree, and that’s ok!  However, for now, I haven’t had a reason to use the DDO Store.  I am hoping something comes up in the future, like armor dyes :), but until then , I am leaving it alone.

So, since I may want in the future to run a favored soul, I need the favor.  I looked today to see how close I was.  It wasn’t as nice as I would have thought.  2187 :(  Bleh.

Hubby and I took the time to run my cleric through a bunch of the quests today and we log off tonight with Rowanheal having 2441 in favor.  Altogether not a bad favor day!

We also finally got the opportunity to run some of the higher level new content.

I reluctantly leveled Rowanheal to 17 to try and make her more viable out there.  Since Turbine rightly assumes that ever other player in the game is not as hung up on leveling as I am, they have the content out there pretty insanely inflated.

We ran Genesis Point and Sins of Attrition.  Overall I’ll give these two a thumbs up for being a challenge.  As far as being interesting, well they felt a little blah, but I am hoping as I understand more of the story, it’s going to feel more intriguing.

I don’t know yet if I am going to run a lot of the content out there over and over again.  I will admit, since Gianthold, I have found few reasons to re run content in The Vale, or Reaver’s Refuge, … I don’t speak of the Orchard… it’s a nasty place.

Gianthold is still my favorite mod they have put out in a long long time.  Not sure why the flavor of that one appeals to me so.  Maybe it was the different traps, or the size of the open area, ease with which I was able to learn the content well.  *shrugs*

I’ve decided to park all of my girls at 18.  Most of you will find this odd.  It’s ok.  We all have a different style of play.  I will be right in the middle of some good groups at 18 without a penalty and will still have 2 levels to look forward to down the road if I ever decide to cap the girls out.

Oh and don’t forget about the Turbine Points giveaway!!!

I think I am off to bed.  It’s been a good day of gaming and I am wiped.

Game On!!!

Rowanheal’s Quest List has been updated AGAIN.

The newly updated list has some major changes.

All quests through what we formally knew as Module 9, now Eberron Unlimited, have been added.  I am missing favor for some of the high level stuff and will add it in as I run the content.  As always, rss feed the list to keep updated.

I had major help from the hubby this time around again.  He helped color code the quest list so we could differentiate between Free to play quests and Premium content.

You will notice we have color coded and grouped the Premium quests and then added a tab to the far right with the Adventure Pack you will need to buy in order to run the content.

From working on the list, it looks like there are 80 or so free quests out of 220 plus quests in the game.  For those of you wanting numbers, that means, roughly 37% of the content in the game is Free!  Kinda eye opening.

I would like to give a shout out to Rowbie on the forums for his help in aggregating all of this information.  He and I chatted a bit in PM’s and he helped me get things sorted on the Free to Play versus Premium quests.

I am hoping this is going to prove useful to everyone and that you will let me know if you find any glaringly obvious mistakes and so forth.

In other news, I don’t want anyone to forget about the big DDOcast Radio show tomorrow.

“DDOcast Live Show on Friday at FPS-Radio.com!!!

Yup.  DJDenial over at FPS-Radio.com is a DDO player who has a four hour DDOstravaganza set for Friday, September 18th from 7pm until 11pm Eastern time.  FPS-Radio is a streaming radio station that is adding all sorts of talk shows and the like in the coming months.

Friday’s show so far will include me, DJDenial, Ustice, Parvo and Lessah.  We’ll be talking DDO and taking your calls!  Yeah, that’s the really exciting part.  We’d love to hear from you!

Here’s the details:

I am DJDenial, owner and main net-host for FPS-Radio.com . We are going to be showcasing this new incarnation of Dungeons and Dragons Online in a feature show we call FPS-RADIO PRESENTS. What we will be discussing is anything and everything dealing with DDO and Turbine, from the downfalls of the old version, the additions to this new version, the pending litigation between Turbine and Atari. What we are looking for is a few individuals that have played the previous version and are playing the current. We are looking for both experienced DnD players in both the MMORPG and the pen and paper. If you are interested in doing this, please post here with some area of contact, or send me an email at admin@fps-radio.com , or at our sitehttp://www.fps-radio.com/ . We have the show planned for September 18th, 2009 starting at 7:00pm EST and running to 11:00pm EST. The only thing that we do ask is that if you are going to participate in the live show, you must be at least 18 years of age.

For those of you that want to tune in and listen or show support, we will be hosting a channel on the QuakeNet IRC Network at #fps-radio . We would love for anyone to participate.

Okay, a bit more info.  You can stream FPS Radio from their web site or from any web player like iTunes, Windows Media Player, Real Player, etc.

To call the show live on Friday, use Skype at Rocky.Battan or call FPS-Radio at 248-461-3159.

Now, it should be noted that Friday’s get-together will NOT be the regular weekly DDOcast, which will still go out on Saturday.  At this point this is just a one-off to have lots of fun on a Friday night, do some streaming Internet radio and finally have that live call-in show that’s been requested for years.  I’m really looking forward to it.  I’m not sure also if this will be recorded for future benefit, so if you can, make sure you check it out!

This could be the start of something awesome.”

Quoted from DDOcast.com

Be sure to call and say hi and discuss our favorite game with Jerry and friends.

GAME ON!!!

My fabulous static group ran some of the Reaver’s Refuge stuff tonight.  Hubby had to be elsewhere, so we were a man down, but we still decided to tool around in the open areas and pick up the rares and explorers.

We ran two of them, twice a piece.

Either we have the worst luck in Stormreach, or something is borked.  It’s the first time I have been out there since the new mod went up, but we didn’t get one single rare.  You read right, not a single one.

Left us feeling a little bit frustrated.

We ended up not going into the last one.  While it might have been some XP for the rares, we just were too depressed to go through another dry run.

We did give one of the quests a try.  About halfway through we all died, but it was a fun death and listening to the shocked gasps makes me giggle.  So glad the mic is on push to talk!  I try not to tell them about the content, since I have one or two who often haven’t run it before.  Leads to some spectacular wipes as we figure things out.

I can also say, I learn things about quests I normally zerg through.  When you have to take the time to run a dungeon slow and careful, you have time to see everything.  Plus, I love to watch them figure something out.

On another front I was talking to another DDO player tonight who brought up a good point concerning the DDO Store.  I had said on the Podcast that at the moment, I am boycotting it.  I just don’t see the point and have chosen not to participate.  However, a lot of you don’t feel that way.

I know some have bought Favored Soul, others have bought additional character slots and so forth.  The aesthetic and upgrade items don’t bother me, and I think if I were to use the Store they would be the items I would purchase.

However, I caught wind of a disturbing trend tonight.  It was reported to me that some people are using the Store for sloppy play.

Wiping on a simple quest and asking who has points to buy rezzes?  It’s just weaksauce.

Asking the cleric why they just don’t buy a mana pot, not your business.

I am hoping as the population gets used to the Store, we will see less and less of this type of behavior.  For now, I am just choosing to let it roll as it will.  We have a major change to the way the game operates, and its going to take a couple of months for everything to settle.

I am not sure they will ever get back to what I call “normal,” but I do think it will still be a fun and interesting game.

Game On!!!

Spent the day in Stormreach.  It’s the first long day I have had to just sit and play more than a couple of hours of the game since the relaunch.

One of my PnP players tried the game on her own the day it launched.  I had no idea, but when she sent me a text she liked DDO, I knew I had to find some time to sit down and show her the ropes.

A new character was born.  FruityLoop the Cereal Killer. She’s a pure Paladin who is only going to wear only Brigadine.  I figure she can get some of that really brightly colored Crayola box stuff and like up to her Fruityness

Rolling a new toon is always a little boring to me.  I’ve done the content 5 million times at this point.

Today was not boring.  It was down right maddening.

With the infux of new Free to Play players, the general chat was rife with immature jokes, pure outright lewd comments, language only a sailor should use (sorry baby) and a smattering of truly good people just looking to get some help.

I finally had to actually hit the report button on a couple of the people.  It made me sad.  I have only taken that action maybe once or twice in the 3 plus years I have been playing.

I have never been so embarrassed.  I think of DDO as my game.  I brag about it to friends, beg them to try it out, roll new toons when they do and generally want to give them a tour of what I think of as the best game on earth.

I hung my head this afternoon wondering what people must feel when they get to Korthos and see all the mayhem and foolishness.

I finally turned off chat entirely.

On the plus side, my friend is having a blast.  Hearing her ohhhs and awes at monsters, her pulling out her DnD background to make her character better, complimenting the graphics and her squeals of surprise at traps and monsters re lit a fire in me for a game that had been becoming to bland.

I did have a few surprises.  A free to play player has a cap on how much money they can have.  I went to give her 10,000 plat to go shopping with, and the system wouldn’t let her have it.

The restrictions on quests is going to get in the way a little.  She thinks she wants to subscribe.  After 2 or 3 days of play she is already level 3 and in the harbor.  I realized tonight the level cap is about to hit and we have yet to find one of those leveling sigils in a chest. 

She was unaware the game had voice chat, since until we grouped with her today, she had been soling.  When she heard or voices through our speakers it  made her jump LOL.  She immediately went out this afternoon and came home with a headset. We’ve got her set up and talking away

Overall, I can see where some of the players might get a little frustrated around level 4.  I am hoping I can keep her enthusiasm up and make DDO a place where she can spend a few hours here and there to relieve some stress and scratch her DnD list.

Free to play is an interesting option and being involved with someone who is using it has opened my eyes a little to the lock down Turbine put on the players.

While I am not a fan of this current structure of micro transactions, I am building up an extreme dislike for the advertising.  Hearing people ask about what they have to buy to be successful and why considering the game is now being marketed as a free to play MMO makes sense.

At this time, there sure isn’t much Unlimited in Eberron.

Game On!!!

P.S. There is a new Podcast up at  Episode 134… and yes I am actually on it again this week.

It’s been a long season.

While summer might be ending, I personally feel like it’s been one heck of a long time coming.

For those who weren’t aware, my husband serves in the United States Navy.  I don’t blog about overly personal stuff that often, but tonight I need to express some stuff.

This was a deployment year.  I wasn’t looking forward to it.  As a new wife, I knew going in he would leave a few months after we were married.  There is nothing romantic about it, so erase all those World War II pictures from your head.

When he finally left, I felt so very alone.  I had finally found someone I could connect with, uprooted my life to be with him, and he had the audacity to leave?

Needless to say, I learned to adapt very quickly.  Everyday that dragged by meant I was one day closer to having him home, every night was one less I would spend alone, every morning a chance to prove to myself I was stronger than I thought I was.

I survived with the help of friends all of whom I need to give a huge thank you.

What in the world does this have to do with gaming, you  might ask?

Well friendship comes in all shapes and sizes.

To my static group in DDO, who put up with my tears, wine soaked gaming sessions, surgery woes, questions about what to send in a box, and all other kinds of complaints, whines and queries, I say a thank you for sticking with it.  For making me laugh.   For being a constant in my life week after week for several years now.  I couldn’t do it without you.

To my DDOcast crew.  Thank you for the checking up on me emails, offers to join your server for game time, making arrangements to record a show when I had the time and energy, and never once telling me I was letting you down when I wasn’t up to getting a show in. Thank you.

To my guild in DDO, Chaosknights on Argonessen.  You gave me a place to spend a few hours and forget the quiet of my life.  You welcomed me into groups, chatted with me, PMed me on the forums to remind me to come out of hiding and visit Stormreach.  You made me feel like a member of the family.  Thank you.

So many out there may not understand the bonds that form in an online game.  I came to find them reassuring over these terrible few months.  I owe so many of you a thank you for being there in the still moments when there hadn’t been a phone call or an e-mail, when I cried over seeing a commercial for his favorite coffee creamer, or I just needed a quick reality check.

To all my other friends, and you know who you are, thank you for the late night phone calls, watching TV with me, taking me to dinner, movies, shopping and ferrying me to Dr appointments and so on.

Tonight as I take stock in blessings of my life, I am deeply humbled by each of you.

I am posting up a couple of pics.  To be honest, I was so darn happy to see his ship I barely remembered I had a camera!

The ship pulling in with the Battle flag waving!

Almost the first sighting I had of him.  He’s in the white hat

I don’t think there is much else I can say except, he’s home.

And now I get to game with him whenever I want to!  He loaded DDO his first day home and jumped in.  So very glad I married a gamer.

GAME ON!!!

Woke up this morning in a fairly grumpy mood.  I had Occupational Therapy for this injury of mine and then it was home for me to try and see what had happened in DDO.

It’s official launch day of DDO Unlimited and I held my breath waiting for the ruckus to begin.

DDO.com has a new look and even a new video. I will warn you now.  The video is complete cheese.  Funny to those of who have been playing long term.  I am not sure how the humor is being understood by the novice.  Go on over to DDO.com to view it.  Chicken sounds, a new slogan *barfs*, but some great cinematics.

I’d love to tell you it’s all been smooth, but this is a Turbine Game.  You know I shouldn’t pick on them nearly as much as I do.  Every game developer has its issues.  It’s just launch days for mods and now a re-release have been rife with fits and stutters.

Today the forums have been up and down like a yo-yo.  This apparently has also affected new downloads and accounts.  While there hasn’t been a HUGE push for DDO Unlimited since the last delay was announced, there has been a smattering of news coverage.  Not to mention the little banner ads many sites have been adding lately.  Heck I saw a DDO Unlimited blurb on my gmail the other morning

I will say Massively.com has a great round up on their site.  As does Jerry over on DDOcast.  Check both of them out for great links, screenshots and vids.

I logged into my server briefly this evening to take a look around.  The Harbor was filled with newbies.  Some of them old players returning since the game is now free, others are part of the flock of new players expected to flood the game servers in the next few months.

One thing DDO has never really had; a general world chat.  I should amend that and say while general chat has been available, it is not used by those of us who have been playing for the last 3 plus years unless we were in the rare live event.

Imagine my shock when I couldn’t read guild chatter for all the general chat busy scrolling through my screen. *sigh*  I can say most of it consisted of new players looking for advice on how to access spells, build a character and so forth.  There were a few immature comments, but they were few and far between.

Overall, I am going to give launch day a B+.  Ok, so some people are probably pretty frustrated that they couldn’t get logged in.  I don’t have any concept of what the download times may have been like today, but with the new Turbine Download Manager in place, it should have been minimal.  The game loads in pieces as you play through the tutorial and Harbor and so on.

I am hoping there are a lot of people out there enjoying Stormreach and seeing the fantastic graphics, action based combat and powerful grouping system.  I know there will be complaints, and I may yet find some reason to make some of my own.

I am still not ready for all of this, but it’s here.

*raises her glass to DDO Unlimited*

Here’s to the new game.

Game On!!!

MYDDO.com beta launched.

I took some time after static group tonight to fiddle around with it. It’s running on Wordpress. Easy functionality (hahahahaha…not), mostly drag and drop.

Over all the site was rather easy for me to set up the way I wanted. I didn’t realize the unfunctionality of Wordpress until I started trying to add widgets in HTML code. Javascript is not supported in the build MyDDO is currently utilizing. I will have to find a work around for that when my eyes are a little less bleary.

My biggest and perhaps most ardent complaint? The character listing. ATM, I can’t seem to turn any characters anonymous. Aggravating, since I have 25 or so characters, some of which I play in guild where I don’t use voice and no one knows who I am. No, I am not spying. It’s called hiding And yes, I sometimes use the information I glean either here on the blog or on my podcast, but overall, I just like to be able to play without people associating me with “that pink girl!”

There are some people who don’t want things associated to them. Sometimes Guild Leaders have an alt they don’t guild, so they can get some peace and quiet on occasion I play in hiding. I know others do as well. While I suppose there might be something nefarious about it for some, for a lot of us we just like some downtime every once in a while from guild drama, pressures and the friends list.

I also noticed that in the Character Listing, it uses your original server. In my case, I moved my main from the Ghallanda to the Argonessen server a couple of years ago. Rowanheal is still being listed on MyDDO as being on Ghallanda. I tried logging her in and out of the gaming server to see if that would update the information, but it hasn’t.

The DDO.com forums already have some players screaming for the functionality of the Character Listing to get a review. Some complain more loudly than others with promises of canceled accounts while others simply are using this kind of technology for the first time and wondering if there is simply something they aren’t doing correctly.

Overall, its not a bad start. If you choose, you can load your characters, and be able to see basic stats and gear on your MyDDO page. Of course, this means everyone else can see as well. You can blog, put in some basic pictures and profile information.

As a gaming site its ok. I personally use Xfire to connect all my games into one program, plus xfire lets me talk to my PC gaming friends no matter what game they are in, or in DDO’s case which ever server they are on.

I am not sure how all of this will fair with the DnD crowd. I know Turbine Launched MyLOTRO first to seemingly great success. I can’t help but keep wondering if Turbine simply feels the age bracket of paying customers they had for DDO was simply too “old” and they needed to connect into the “tween” market with “Social” mumbo jumbo, Free to Play Microtransactions and other such nonsense.

In a time where other markets have worked to garner the interest of the ever aging baby boomers and their children, other industries have simply never really gotten it. Well, ok. There is the Wii. I think even my mother is interested in getting one. I am still not sure if I consider it gaming LOL!

In all honesty, my first reaction to MyDDO was as follows: *sigh* Oh joy. Yet another site to build and make sure feeds my blog, twitter, xfire, pictures and so forth.

Do you ever feel like you have more Web 2.0 than you can handle? I am in Web overload.

Keeping up with the blog, Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Netvibes, Yahoo, AIM, Gtalk, MSN, and so forth has aggregated my life into a real nice big stressball.

I try to get all the sites to update mostly on their own. I use Ping to update my twitter, facebook and myspace at one time whether hooked into my main computer or if I am out and about on my blackberry. I RSS my blog to facebook, and have a widget to RSS my blog into myspace. I use Meebo to collapse all my IM’s into one page on my web broswer, and use Jivetalk on my blackberry to achieve the same IM all in one result when I am mobile.

All this “Social Networking” is becoming like a second job.

Where does MyDDO fit for you? Are you using something like this for the first time, or do you maintain facebook or myspace pages? Have you found it easy to use? Does the character listing bother you at all?

Anyways its late. I am off to dream.

Game On!!!