A New Home

Lux Arcana has moved from the icy Frostbourne to the Andruk fortress. I haven't been around for long so I don't know the place so well. Nearby, there's Quarendel which I know better but I have never been around Andruk before so I don't know the mob spawns or anything else to be honest. I bet I still can get lost in the city. That's actually good news because getting to know the city is part of the fun of acquiring it.
This one was a trade but we had Zagenda visitors so it was not boring. I expect great things from this city, a lot of PvP among other things and for the time being, it seems it will deliver.
Unfortunately, I still have a lot of grinding to do before I can run into the heat of battle as I want to do and survive it, as I still don't do. I've survived the last battles, Velmuna siege and yesterday's trade, but only because I was very careful (two or three days ago I died three times in a row). That also meant nearly no action, only some long range combat, and it wasn't as fun as Darkfall's PvP can be. I guess I need to practice my position in the battlefield. Not too far, not too close. I also need to duel more to train my 1v1 rusty skills but I don't enjoy them much.

Siege Report: Velmuna 7-11-2010

Yesterday, we had Wicked sieging Velmuna for some good fights. JohnB even made a declaration on the forums. As it should be, Lux Arcana officers took it very seriously and we had a very nice strategy for the siege. For starters, a very nice amount of luxers rode in a great Blue Tail Runner pack (as shown in the picture, not my best pic anyway) to the point where we would do battle. It was kinda far from the siegestone but cannons could still hit it thanks to some clever tagging from one group who was close to the siegestone. Meanwhile we only needed to defend a single bridge to stop the enemies to getting close to the cannons while another group was protecting them and the shooters. It all went down pretty fast.
As always, winning or losing a siege is a matter of several factors. The amount of people is one important factor but strategy is aswell and in this siege, we had a very good one. I was in the group protecting the cannons so I didn't get many action but my FPS was very low so it's ok. I hope Av improves game performance and I'm surely gonna buy a better processor as soon as I can.
More action incoming!

How Aventurine works

In today's Activity Report, posted in the Darkfall Blog Tasos give us a peak into Aventurine work process. It's not like I know what Scrum or Agile Software Development exactly means but it seems Av is using some nice and advanced tools to improve our beloved Darkfall and that's also good news! Tasos has also posted the precise activity each of the 11 teams are working on. And now, the question is: Which is your favourite team? Mine is surely team 10. I'm eager to see Agon's lore fleshed out in lots of events. I'd like to see Agon's History being guided by us, players.
On the bad side, the offline skilling system seems to be still kinda far away but patience, my padawan, it shall come.

Toad's Tongue: So much anger

Right now or very soon there's a couple of sieges that have filled near 30 pages in two days. Those post are mainly written by Get Good, Zagenda and Sun members in a very unsettling fashion. In every competetitive game I've ever played there has been some name calling and swearing in its forums or ingame itself but I think I've never seen something like Eu1 Clan Discussion and, mind you, I played non-professional football in official leagues for 12 years and I thought I had seen everything.
These last days posts aren't specially worst than any other, threads like that are common on that sub-forum. Why there is so much hatred between opposed clans in this game? As they say, it's only pixels. Some little voice in my head tells me that all that anger is just a joke, that everybody is just trolling and enjoying it but, on the other side, it feels kinda real. When someone calls someone retard, it looks like he means it. There sure are people who just enjoy the dialectic e-brawl but I can't find any sense in that because one of the basic traits of ForumFall is that it barely matters what you say, it's always hard to have a decent, clean and interesting conversation. You need to sail through many rocks to find a nice place where you can have some precise stuff discussed. Those places exist, make no mistake, but they're rarely seen in Eu1 Clan Discussion.
One of the reasons behind me wanting more politics in the game also has something to do with this. Right now, wars are fought over some shittalk in forums and I just don't like it very much. Well, one can hope this will change over time and I'd really like to see heavier moderation.
Anyway, you don't need to read all the crap and most likely it won't affect your ingame time. I just wonder, you know?

Gameplay focus changing

These last few days I've barely been playing Darkfall due to Bad Company 2 but I'm already feeling inside the need for some PvP in Agon. That's right, PvP. Even if I still need to level a lot of stuff and the fact that I should do it on mobs for some effectiveness, I don't feel like doing PvE anymore. It's probably just a phase and I still want to find one of those damn treasure maps but right now, whenever I got online I just want to kill some other players.
Another thing I still would like to do and probably will tonight is to participate in clan events. As already stated, events are awesome sauce since most of the clan are ingame and playing with more people is what really makes the game fun.
I guess that soon I'll have all the weapons and upgrades unlocked in BC2 and the "game fever" will decrease a bit. It happened with Darkfall too, the first weeks I couldn't stop playing and all those sweet dings were more than a carrot to me. With time, the fever goes down and I could properly balance real life with ingame life. That's not an easy thing to do...

Nutcupping and stuff, you know...

Nutcup is another shiny MMORPG concept strongly tied to politics. In Clan Discussion sub-forum there's always a thread about some clans who have nutcupped and that, my friends, is one of the worst sins in the e-bible of videogaming. Why? Well, I guess people sometimes think that every videogame should be perfectly balanced in each and every aspect so it can be a nice e-sport where you can show your true gaming skills. In most sandbox MMORPG that's just not the case, mainly because players have more freedom and options. In Darkfall city A might be easier to defend than city B but you're free to bring as many soldiers as you want to conquer it and so can do the defending side.
A nutcup is just a bad word to say alliance. Unfortunately, clans doesn't have many tools to wage war on other clans so when your target allies with 5 other clans making the victory impossible, you can't sabotage those quick allies or compromise their trade routes or whatever, the only thing you can do is go to forums and call them cowards and nutcuppers for not giving you a fair fight when Darkfall IS NOT about fair fights.

Darkfall, I'm cheating on you...

Yup and the friend I tried to pull into Darkfall is to blame, great irony! These last few days I've been playing more Bad Company 2 than Darkfall. In games, like in life, there are times where you feel like killing people with swords and other times, you want put a bullet in their foreheads. It's going to be tough to do anything else besides playing with these two games in my hard drive and I'm talking about living the real life but I'll manage. Bad Company 2 is the new shiny game so I guess I'll spend some more hours on it than in Darkfall for the next week or so but I'm not abandoning Agon now that I am enjoying myself so much.
Also, I can't help myself but to think what kind of great game a mix between Darkfall and Bad Company 2 would be. I pray Cthulhu that Aventurine next project is an MMOFPS. Oh, it would be very nice.
Anyway, this blog is not dead even if its periodicity slows a bit down.