Spreading 1, 10, 100 Lamthara(s)

Leaving wow gave Lamthara the occasion to try out a few games out there... so she transformed, she became other things but still keeping her name and the role she likes the most: healing ppl (and if possible kick mob's butts :)

Age of Conan

Lamthara became a Priest of Mitra... different from other games here every class has some melee abilities. The Priest of Mitra is the most powerful healing class of this game but at the level I arrived (34) she is quite strong. The spells have some nice uhm... aoe side effect. Which means that casting a spell to a mob that spell will "bounce"to the closest enemy (if close enough)... it's not a real aoe spell but it's confortable :) Sometimes if you finish your mana you take your mace and your shield and you start to break the other one's head.

Did i like Age of Conan? The answer is quite easy... yes i liked it. Most of the quests aren't about kill X mobs (you find them but i've met just a few of them) but are about kill THAT mob... which means going in a place... destroy all the living beings there just to kill the chief of that village or the boss of the monsters and so on. This is nice because you can decide how to face the problem. Will you go there with your shield and sword and destroy the mobs one by one opening a path to your objective? Will you hide (rogue-like) and reach the boss avoiding the others? Will you take the enemies in packs and aoeing them till death? Will you take a friend with you?

The quests are very funny in my opinion... and the scenarios are just wonderful. Never in a game i felt how beautiful the places i met were... really. 

There are a few things that i didn't like, anyway. First the monsters... When your enemies are humans they are well designed, they are realistic and everything is smooth and nice. But if they are "monsters" or animals they seems like they're made of wax or plastic :|

Same for the instances that seem a bit uhm... empty. I haven't dont too many of them... actually i have done only the Black Castle but actually the experience was so and so (and i sadly say this...) because as an healer i didn't have the real feeling i was healing my mates, i didn't have a proper feedback... sometimes the life of my mates didn't move at all... sometimes it fell down in 3 secs and i had no idea what to do because even if i were casting all the things i had... nothing happened. 

Conclusion... great game but i'll take another month of subscription maybe on september to see how this game is after lvl 40. For now i give up. 

Runes of Magic

Free World of Warcraft are on the rise :) This game is Wow 120%.. the classes, the mechanics, the locations. But there are some nice features like a real double spec (which means you can be a priest... and a warrior, you only have to respec), you have own an house. Actually i can't say too much how it is since this Lamthara has reached only lvl 14 but i guess if you played wow you'll find yourself confortable with Runes of Magic. Everything is more or less the same... even the quests.

I like it? Yep, a bit but i've seen too less of it to make a right description of my feelings. 

Anyway I feel I have left wow because i didn't have anything to offer to me anymore... doesn't sound too smart to start a game which is its copy :) Maybe i'll lvl up a bit and i'll check out how the instances are and the scenario as well... who knows...

Atlantica

This is a strange game... it's more like a Final Fantasy 7 mmo. The fights are turn based and you don't fight alone but you have to control a group of fighters that you train with your main. The concept is similar to Granado Espada only that the last one has a fast paced combat system while this one, being turned based, remembers me the old days of the superNES age.

Can't say anything special about it... i haven't played too much. For what i've seen so far it is nice even if quite grinding oriented. I'll try it more by the way :)

Eve Online

The cold of the universe against the warmth of fireball spells. Here there is a drama because this game is so much different from the others that it's difficult to compare... maybe the solution is just describe how it is to play Eve without trying to find out some relation with the other games (relations that for me are quite feeble...).

Lamthara of Eve (actually named Lamthara Lachesis) is an Amarr Khanid which is trying to understand how this game works.

You kill tons of spaceships but you gain no exp... you need to study you skills and you can do everything only that it takes times. Even if you will shoot a billion of times with your lasers you won't become better... you'll kick ass only if you'll study the proper skill to use the lasers in the proper way ("advanced lasers that kick ass" lvl5). 

The gear won't make too much the difference because (at least at the level i am) the gear is standard, the spaceship called Noname is just like the other Noname ships and you'll find a lot of them in the market. The difference is in the skill you have learnt and the way you "fit" your ship... which means which lasers or turrets you'll use, the special gizmo you'll use to survive (like shields or repairers...) and other stuff like drones useful to support you in combat, etc...

Well Eve isn't perfect... for instance i miss a bit the toons. Yeah they'll introduce them in the game in the future but for now using only ships could be strange above all because you'll cross a lot of ships that are just like you and you won't feel like you are your toon (like it could happen with other mmorpg)... i mean i spent a bit of time to create my portrait and now i can't see my khanid lady anymore. sic!

And another thing is that even if eve is very skill based... the skill are quite "passive" for the way the fights are. Usually a fight session is all about target an enemy, approach it an start to shoot in the meanwhile you use the gizmo (webifier lazers, energy sucker rays, armor repairers, etc...) to keep you alive and get an advantage to your enemy. 

If the fight would be more uhm... "arcade" it would be better in my opinion. I am thinking about something like Freespace, it would be nice to be able to shoot at the thing using your own skills and not only the books you've studied in the game. Nothing special and i don't think it would be that hard to implement... for the way it is now it is like to play chess more than a space ship combat :)

Then there are the other games like Floresia, Dream of mirror online, Archlord,  Granado Espada etc... but i've tried them just a bit to be able to comment their gameplay.

So i'll post something interesting about them in the next future ^^

Lamthara is discovering new worlds....

Well well well... I guess it's not a great discover that recently i was trying new path to play online. First a whole new class in WoW and second a trial of a different game.

Ehhh.... I've decided to try the big jump and so I've freezed my wow account and now i'm trying new mmorpg since it's the gaming genre i like the most :P

Right now, thanks to the 7 days trial i've decided to give Age of Conan a try and so Lamthara has changed race (aquilonian instead of night elf ^^ ) and passed to cut and colour her hair before stepping in the new world of Hyboria.

And so... here is the new Lamthara....

I've decided to be Priest of Mitra because... well... Lamthara is a priest after all ^^.

Now you see her sitting down on a rock in front of the beautiful see of Tortage waiting me to give are a go :P

By the way I'm thinking that after this i have to change the topic of this blog....

...actually i'm thinking to try out a lot of mmorpg since i'm curious to taste the different flavours of this genre. Age of Conan, Lord of the rings, EVE, free to play mmorpg, etc. etc. etc. 

I'll try to create a Lamthara in every of this games and let her run through the quests, instances and scenarios... and let's see what will happen.

Are you still with me :) ?

priest..... against.... druid

I am a bit annoyed... i guess you all understood it :P so i decided to change they way i play.

I have been an healer and a tank so far. My healer was Lamthara, an holy priest... and my tank is Lamshataar, a protection warrior.

But I don't know if i'm bored because in this expansion there are only a few raids to do, a few instances to do, and the place to discover has been discovered aeons ago... or because i know these classes so much that there is no more thrill to cast my Prayer of Healing for the one hundred time.

So i decided to try a different healer... the druid.

Here you can see Lamthara in all her beauty :)

As an holy priest i cast just a few instant spells and i fill the party health in no time with prayer of healing and circle of healing :) just a click and after a few seconds of casting (for PoH) and everyone is happy.

Here instead you see Lamu, my druid, i dinged friday so don't complain me because she's not that well dressed :)

I discovered a restoration druid is very different from a priest. If a priest would be a dps lamthara would be a mage.... the druid would be, instead, a warlock.

Lamu heals people with Healing of Time spells, most of her healing spells have an healing over time effect so that differently from a priest point of view you have to keep your HoT's up on the tank. In this way even if the boss lands a strike on him the wound will be repaired in a few seconds. A priest has more "oh---shhhit!" buttons :P i think about guardian spirit or PoM or Shield... if things are going wrong you have a few moves you can take to avoid the wipe.

The druid has only "Tranquility" that is a good move to heal everyone in critical situations... for the rest if the tank isn't that good you will start to spam nourish and swiftmend hoping the fight will be over soon :)

...but i like it. It's nice to play the same role with different spells. Even the same old instances are different when you have to learn what to do "again" :P 

Now i'm only worried because to replace a bit my warrior i'm lvling up the old tank, the paladin Lamnishaa.... and then i can only try the restoration shaman and i'm done :) 

Oh boy! Shame on me because i don't like to dps :|

Thinking about new stuff....

Usually i've always been optimistic about WoW but recently i think i miss something... 

I've done all the instances so many times that even if we want to we cannot wipe...  yesterday i've done Utgarde Pinnacle with a full blue tank and two dks dressed from the pvp reward.... well at the third boss (Skadi the Ruthless) i died and the group have been able to stay alive till i came back to the place, shoot the dragon five times (it was the first time they made that instance) and kill him... 

then keep on till the end.

I've seen all the raids (well they're not too many actually :/ ) and really i dont' know what to do. Lvl up an alt? Maybe but i all the classes till lvl 70, more or less, and even if i have another lvl 80... then what could i do that i can't do with my tank and my healer?

...I guess blizzard should open the window a bit and allow me to get a bit of fresh air :) If i weren't the GM of my guild i guess i would have quit a few weeks ago to try something else (and my interest in Eve Online if the proof i'm looking for something completely different i guess...

what do you suggest me to do :| ?

The EVE Online Project

Well, since i've seen all of the things i could see in WoW right now and i'm waiting to see the content that will be given in the next patch i've decided to try a new mmorpg... at least for its trial period.

And i've chosen Eve Online for a lot of reason but just to expain the main of them i'd say the reason is because is very different from WoW and every mmorpg i've seen around so far.

Eve Online is a sci-fi  mmorpg, you play the role of uhm... man or woman who live in a very far away future where the conquest of the space has been done and it's normally accepted just like breathing. The Earth conquered a distant portion of space that could be reached only by a wormhole. The human kind conquered a lot of planets, moons and built orbital stations... then the wormhole collapsed and all those pioneers had been cut out from the Earth, developing different cultures. Some of them became slavers of other races, some of them create a "democracy" based on corporations... and so on :P

Differently from other games out there you can't control your "toon". Actually you won't even be able to see him, the only thing you'll have to feel close to him is the little portrait on the top left corner of the screen. On the other side you'll have a lot (and with "lot" i mean "LOT!!!!") or spaceships that you'll drive to make your missions, to play pvp, to harvest gas and ore... they'll be the tool you will use to reach the goals you'll set in the game

So... what can i say? EVE Online isn't WoW in every aspect i've seen. Wow is much more easier to play, you are slowly introduced in the game mechanics and as the time has passed it has really become easier to play for people who don't want to "waste time". EVE, on the other side, wants you to know what you're doing and not always tell you "how to do things". In my experience it happened that i wasn't prepared to face what i did and i discovered what went wrong just talking with people that started to play this game a lot of time ago.  Oddly this is a good thing because the community is friendly and this is one of the way you can know more people and start to play with them instead of being alone all the time. Wow sometimes can be considered an online single player, in particular when you lvl up (i call him a single player with a chat), in this aspect wow is still funny... eve online, on the other side, becomes fastly boring after a bit if u play alone. 

But once you have someone to play with, do missions with or just chat with in the meanwhile you quest this game becomes a nice way to waste your time. Really it does :)

There are some con's.... the biggest of them is that rarely you'll feel really close to your avatar because you never see him. There are some pro's anyway.... the biggest of them is that your avatar is just you :)

If you want to try a game that has great potential to make you forget other mmorpg... try Eve. After all those raids it's refreshing to try something new. Trust me :)

p.s. no.. i won't leave WoW but at the same time i think i'll try to keep on playing eve for as long as i'll be able to... or at least i will re-play Eve with a subscription in the next future since the laptop i've used so far is quite sucky and my mac-ppc can't digest the version of the game the developers have done :)