MMORGs and role playing discussion.

I found this very true when we were levelling a Conjurer and into White Mage.
Not so with the tank, though... gladiator and marauder seem to be able to hit the single-player content stuff right away.I think they slightly messed up some balancing issues there somewhere... too much focus on defense that tanks have and no one else does? Doesn't really matter, though, it's not too big of a deal. For sure. And as Tank/Healer sitting beside each other on the couch... we have total control over any 4-man dungeon."That guy looked at me funny... stop healing him and let just let him die."
"Okay."No, seriously... we've never had to actually use our power of control, but it's a nice thing that gives us confidence when playing with randoms. It's amazing how awesome some people are in the game vs. how shitty others can get.
Sometimes we just kinda watch the psychological experiment unfold on it's own... Doubt it... highly unlikely.
We even have some vial of something-magical that allows us to go back to the character creation screen and redo our character creation looks (once) if we ever feel like it. We got the advanced one.
Basic can only pay month-per-month, advanced can allow you to pay for up to six-months in one go.
If you take the six-month advanced option... it's the same price as basic month-per-month.So, that's what we did (advanced for the price of basic). But I doubt we'll ever use the additional character perk... which basically means we've locked ourselves into paying for 6 months when all we needed to do was pay each month individually But that's just not the way we roll with our budget... we tend to plan further ahead and then worry less about day-to-day finances.

Yeah, I started with Thaumaturge. All offense, no defense. It was brutal.I think I got to about the level 15 class quest and just could not beat it. I had to fight, omg, three guys at once Typically, when fighting one guy, you just gotta out DPS them so they die before you do. Well, come three guys there was no way.IIRC, I went and played the conjurer a bit so I could at least have a healing spell. I think they just know that some classes are harder to play than others. Hell yeah! You show 'em who's boss! I know. Man I hate those uber elite players. They're all:"Dude, how come you're not using the super duper staff, that'll increase your damage by another 0.8%. We could use the extra DPS newb."And I'm all: "because I don't play this game 8 hours a day like a total loser and I have better things to do"On the other hand, I've had tanks that had to be 12 year olds or something. Just totally do not know how to tank, and are completely stupid and just can't get it. That can be a little frustrating.Its like: "ya know, you can provoke those guys off the healer, yeah? We might be able to get past the first fight if you don't let the healer die" Ah, that seems worth it. You might want to log in to your account on their website and check, I think the default is to auto-renew after 6 months. You might want to change that to a manual renewal so they don't just bill you again after you forget about it.

Have you played the new nWoD? They've brought out Vampire: Blood and Smoke, which is a new version of Vampire: The Requiem (although the background and canon is quite different), and it's a bit more similar to the Masquerade and with much better mechanics than either.I had problems with both Requiem and Masquerade, but Blood and Smoke is very good.**Although I loved both, I just really love Blood and SmokeEdited by Son Goku, : Love

Haven't stopped playing FF14, definitely addicted.
Won't be playing GTAV, or any other game for a while... all gaming-time goes to FF14 for the foreseeable future! My dude: Cold Raven
Wife and I also run a (small) Free Company ("Guild"): Raven's NestApart from the addictive nature of it anyway, it's been making a great social-atmosphere for the wife to get into and still feel safe in her own home. We still both play, together, whenever we would otherwise be "just watching TV" or something like that.This is the only MMO I've ever played, so I'm not an expert by far. But we've met a few people who've come from WoW and such and if any game has a shot at it, I think FF14 has a decent chance at surpassing WoW. I think it's about to take off, in the next 6-months to a year, anyway. I've personally noticed a bunch of new-comers and it seems to be rising exponentially. But, well, that may just be our own server at this particular time...It's still an MMO, and as such it will always have issues and problems and things people complain about. But these are the main (general) positives:

• You can have all your different classes on one character. DPS, Healer, Tank, Crafter... all on one character. Swap between them as fast as you can unequip and re-equip your main weapon/tool.
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• There are many, many incentives for end-game players to redo content and help new players learn and get through everything so that they are also into end-game content. Things like daily roulettes that give the end-game player bonuses and extras they need for more/better end-game gear... they just have to run through a random newbie dungeon. Lots of things like this to keep older players and newer players working together so that any "gameplay content gates" aren't frozen due to no one running the content any more.
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• Multiple paths to progression. End-game raid content still gives the "best" gear, and there's no other way to get that. But there's really no significant difference going down to the next-to-best gear (unless you're doing that actual final raid-content... ), which can be obtained more casually, just sometimes more time-consuming/grindy. There's also isn't 2 options here... more like 3 or 4.
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• Lots of new content added very frequently. Since they started FF14, there has been 3 new dungeons and major content patches added every 3 months. Not sure if this will continue (it can get overwhelming sometimes...) but it's crazy awesome so far.
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• Lots of varied content. Don't want to raid? The crafting system is more strategy-based, no twitch-skill involved. Just want to mingle? They just added the Golden Saucer (casino-thing) where you can pretty much just hang out. Also, if you played FF8, FF14 now has Triple Triad (an in-game, digital collectible card-game). So many, many things to do in the game other than "raid all night long."

On a more personal note, our game-play has been fantastic.
Wife and I now have our mains geared up to end-level stuff. We don't have the best-in-the-game gear, because we don't have a static-group put together to attack the end-game raids (pretty much required for that stuff, but only that stuff...). Our FC is small, but that's the way we like it We'll eventually build our own static out of our folks and do all that end-game stuffs too.We've opened up every dungeon in the game and played them all at least once.
We've touched on pretty much every aspect in the game including non-progression things like minion and mount collecting.
We're really looking forward to Heavensward (the first real expansion, not just a major patch) that should be coming out this spring.
We love to run the Crystal Tower raids (24-man... largest raids in the game, there's 3 of them). Sometimes just to watch the social experiment of seeing 24 strangers attempt to work together We're currently into building up our Relic Weapon (a weapon you do long quests with to "level it up" as your character grows in end-game).
Ours are currently i100 (Item Level 100). It can currently be built up to i135 (matching the current best raid-gear available).
And into leveling up our other classes (DPS) for fun and to learn how they do.If anyone's looking for a WoW-like MMO, but they want better graphics and simply just a "more modern approach" to the whole MMO-system, I highly recommend FF14.We play on the Zalera server, which is housed on the Aether data centre.
Oh, and I can get a game-code that will get any new-player a few free items (recruit-a-friend campaign). The game-code is good for any server on any data centre. But, well, Zalera's the obvious best, anyway... Just have to pay for 4-months subscription to get the "free" items, though... (doesn't have to be done right away, just won't get the items 'till you do). I suppose that only makes them free if you were going to play for that long anyway... Edited by Stile, : Adding a bit more s p a c i n g.

Yeah, from what we can tell, they've done a great job making it a loot-based game again.Blizzard fired the guy who used to run it (Jay Wilson? or something?).
The expansion is pretty cheap ($10 'murikan for Reaper of Souls).
Loot has been updated.Some big game-play changes: No such thing as Normal -> Nightmare -> Hell... progression.
Now they just allow you to "set the difficulty" when you begin your game-session (can change at any time, just not always in-session).
Normal - Hard - Expert - Master - Torment I - Torment II - Torment III - Torment IV (I think).
Each level comes with harder enemies (more health, more damage to you) and better loot (200% more gold and some level of magic find increase for Master is the one we're currently using). Adventure Mode
So what do you do now when you beat the campaign and there's no "next difficulty" to do it on?
There is a new Adventure Mode where they basically give you random stuff to do throughout the entire map (and give you all waypoints and stuff like that) and you follow the quests to get the big loots.
Also includes side-things like "Nephalem Rifts" which will portal you away (like a mini-side-dungeon thing) and you'll see enemies from across the game and a mini-boss-fight-thing and then get more big loots. Season Mode
Like Diablo II Ladder stuff.
Have to start from scratch, and each season has "season goals" you have to do (beat the campaign, do this many Nephalem Rifts...). If you do them, then when the season ends you'll be rewarded with some nice Set gear and a pet and stuff.
Seasons last about 3 months or so (I think?)
At end of season, your "Season" characters just move to your normal "non-Season" characters and you get to keep all the stuff you found/earned. Then the next Season starts...Also, wifey is using our desktop (gaming rig I built for her 4 years ago... still working pretty sweet).
And I'm currently using work-laptop (giant pile of gaming poop).But... we're currently in the works of buying and putting together another gaming rig for myself (we're also very casually playing some WoW too). Pumped about speccing-out and putting together another new system. Going to be awesome! Yes, pretty sure we're already Battle.net friends. I think I'm "Stile" on there too.
I've recently found myself with 2 Battle.net accounts. I'll sooner-or-later be merging them, but I'm not sure when I'll get the chance to do that.
Wifey and I started it up again after not playing for years and looked at all our old characters and were like wtf? Barbarian named MrBalls is hilarious but we have no recollection of where these names/characters came from... If you're starting fresh, I recommend starting fresh right inside Season 9. You'll start working towards the Season goals that way, and besides, at the end of the season it just all gets converted to normal anyway. No loss, possible gains... sounds like the way to go to me.Oh, and one more Diablo bonus if you like the general series:Apparently this year (or just past?) is the 20th anniversary of Diablo. Blizzard is re-making Diablo 1 in all it's glory and all owners of Diablo III will get it and be able to play for free. Something about even retaining 8-bit goodness and diagonal-only movement? Not sure... But I think they mentioned that there'll be a way to use your current D3 character-skin in the remake I did play Diablo 1... but I was too young to really understand/learn the "re-load your game and do it again to gain more experience/loot" feature at the time (no one around to explain it to me either) so the entire concept kinda went over my head. I didn't play it much. But I've heard lots of folks had many, many hours of fun in it.Have fun!

Yeah, I'll be getting that. All that sounds great, thanks for typing it up. I can't wait to start playing! Sweet, I thought we might be. I'll let you know if I can't find you. Sounds good to me... Are there any classes that you guys need to have with you? I don't really care which character I start with. I started on Diablo II with the expansion, and never played D1. But that sounds like fun and I'm totally down to try it.

I'm a Demon Hunter (bows 'n stuff)
Wifey is a Monk (melee with party-helping mantra-things)
Buddy is a Wizard (spells)I don't think any class is really "needed" but what's left is Barbarian, Witch Doctor or Crusader (new with Reaper of Souls - Crusader is sword-and-shield, kinda like D2 Paladin).
Might be nice to have a Crusader or Barbarian around, but Diablo isn't really balanced that way, so likely doesn't matter.But also, wifey is sometimes weirded-out by playing with people she doesn't know. So if you get the feeling of any stand-off-ish-ness, it's nothing personal... she just has her own social issues is all.We're almost level 60, I think... 70 is current cap, and then all this "Paragon" stuff starts kicking in... it's also been totally revamped. More specific-stat-picking involved for powering up. I'm not sure how it works with level-disparity in a party.Oh, I think I quickly read something about the next expansion (sometime in 2017, pretty sure). Remember Necromancer from D2? They're doing him again for D3. A "re-imagining" of the skeleton-summoning, corpse-exploding dude. Should be great! Would fry the integrated video on my laptop, but should have the new rig going in about a month or so anyway!And we might not be playing D3 for a few days or a week or so... FF14 just came out with their 3.5 expansion yesterday... so we're into the new content there for a bit. But we'll see you around when we can!

MMORG = Massively multiplayer online role-playing gameAnyone have any experience with Massively multiplayer online strategy type games?I've played a lot of them, but need something new. I've played Ikariam, KingsAge (was #1 there for a couple of years), Tribal Wars, Grepolis and several others less memorable, and most recently Eve Online. Those in the former group tend to wear thin after a couple of years, and Eve Online is way too complex for relaxing after work with a glass of the good stuff.Any suggestions? (No shoot-em-ups though, please.)

Does Clash of Clans fit?It is "simple" in the sense that it's a mobile game. Your village is on one screen, and you build it and level up your offense/defense from there.It is "complex" in the sense of forming your army and strategy to attack other villages.It's half farming - using a cheap army to attack others for the purpose of gathering resources.
And half pvp - your "clan" (group of others on your team, if you join one) can go to war against another clan. With 10 v 10 all the way up to 40 v 40 or so. Each member gets 2 attacks. You try to take out the other clan, they try to take you out. When it's done and rated, the winner gets "more resources" as a reward.
You can balance these halves more to one side or the other depending on how you want to play.If you don't do the micro-transactions, it will take approximately 3-4 years to raise your village from Town Hall 1 to Town Hall 11 (current max).You can get to being a healthy Town Hall 9 (where the "end game" pretty much starts) without micro-transactions in about 6-months or so.It's no full-blown PC game, though.
But it is very entertaining, addictive, fun and heavy with strategy.

Saw you online last night, I think? Pretty sure your first name starts with a J. Mine starts with a G - if that helps identify.Our FF14 datacenter was down last night, so we played D3 instead.
We're in EST timezone - when we got offline, it was pretty much 10pm our time and I get up at 6am for work, we don't tend to play much later during the week.But we'll probably see you sometime this weekend.

Thanks! I'll try it.Edit to add: Hmmm. That works only on mobile devices, and my clamshell phone doesn't qualify.Anything that might work on a Macintosh desktop?Edited by Coyote, : No reason given.

Yeah, that was me, I saw you too. I got the expansion downloaded and started playing.I made a new guy in Season 9, a Crusader. And was re-learning how to play the game. I got to level 5 and then one of my RL friends jumped on with his his maxed-out guy and had me make an adventure game on Torment VI and then he took me to the cow level to power level my new guy. Then another friend jumped on with us and we ran a bunch of rifts until I got to level 70. It only took about a half-hour. Its like they have been sitting there waiting to join them.So now I have a Lvl 70 Crusader with mediocre gear that hasn't spent a skill point and I don't know how to play.Hooray, I guess. They assured me that this is where the game begins and next I need to figure out my build and start working on getting good gear. And that I'll just figure out how to play him along the way, "its real easy" they say.I'll be on later tonight for another hour or so, but I'll be figuring out my skills n'stuff. My work schedule is the same as yours, I'm just an hour behind you. I'll probably be ready to actually play over the weekend. Hopefully I'll see you on.

I wouldn't know, I gots no Macs, sorry Not sure if there's something that will go on Macs, but likely something similar if you look around:On a windows PC you can get a "mobile device emulator" software called "Bluestacks."
You can download this, install it, and then download Clash of Clans as an app through the Bluestacks emulator and play on your PC that way.I would guess Macs might have their own emulation software? Maybe even a Bluestacks-for-Mac thing?Also, SuperCell (company who owns Clash of Clans) monitors and kicks people who cheat/mod the game in any way.
This happens once every 6-8 months or so.
They have stated that "Bluestacks" is okay, and you won't get booted, but they also won't support you in any way if you have problems running anything.
For those who run mods, running them on an emulator (like Bluestacks) on a PC is the easiest way to install and run mods/cheats as well... so lots who get into such things get into eventual trouble and have their account disabled at some point. But if you make sure to stay away from any mods/cheats/3rd-party-enhancements... you should be just fine.To me, it sounds like a lot of work to play a mobile game... but thought I'd give you the information anyway.

Ha!
They're pretty much right... D3 certainly is made around it's "end-game" after hitting max level. Yeah, for sure, take your time to get acquainted with everything.As for "your build.." I wouldn't be too worried about it at this point.
I'm sure after playing for a while, you'll get an understanding and maybe want something specific, look up the 'best gear' for that... and then work towards getting it.I've noticed that as we've been leveling up, a bunch of gear has stuff on it like "+10% damage if you use this skill..." and things like that.
Right now, I've just been letting that dictate my own "build."Find something that does more damage if you use x skill? Okay, sounds like a good time to try out x skill! We're generally a bit slower. More mostly (or completely) clearing a zone just to explore and have fun before moving on.

Right on, sounds good.Hey, if you ever need some help power leveling; I know some guys