h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I did the two festival events too and was also a bit underwhelmed by the rewards. At least in SWG you have a house you can display rewards in. Although, decorating in the NGE makes it almost impossible now as they changed the targeting system.

I realised over the last couple of days that I'm not having much fun in WoW. I miss the social aspect of SWG, there really isn't any where to just sit and chat in WoW. Yes, I know there are taverns, but they don't have the same 'atmosphere' as the cantinas in SWG. Also guilds in WoW don't have guild halls, so there is no focus for a guild and it lacks the sense of community that appealed so much in SWG.

As I am involved in a machina in SWG, I shall be logging back in occasionally for the filming schedule.

i do wonder if WoW will offer guild halls in the future - it seems like an obvious step, to have instanced halls. personally i am not in a guild and a lot of my time is spent doing PvP for some reason, so the social aspect is not an issue for me. in fact, i think there are two very different types of people (disregarding the role players) that play WoW - people who play because of the community, and people that play for the solo aspect.

after 3 years of FFXI, WoW is very refreshing just because not everything i do has to be done with 5-60 other people. there are very, very few things you can do alone in FFXI unless you are more than 30 levels above when you should be doing them.

of course, that might be why i'm dragging my feet, doing PvP instead of leveling, because i know once i hit 60 i'll only have PvP and instances left, until the expansion, or level up another alt.

i played guild wars for a while, still have my character there. they have guild halls but that was not a very sociable game either, at least from what i saw.

in FFXI there aren't guild halls at all, it's much the same as in WoW - you have a guild list and different ranks for members, all organization is done through linkshell messages or off-site. i imagine on a RP server in WoW that not having a guild hall would kind of ruin the whole idea of all these people getting together, or at least not be quite as enjoyable.

i keep wondering if i should roll on a PvP server or a RP server and give it a go...

the expansion for FFXi comes out in April, so i imagine i'll be playing that quite a bit when it comes out, but i have to say i'm enjoying my time in WoW right now.

Bah! That Escape Velocity thing is impossible for my computer to download. Between how long it takes and the frequent server resettings at Ambrosia Software, it's a wonder that anyone can download it!

Roll on an RP server, or an RPPvP. You don't have to be all frou-frou RP-ey, just as long as you don't be mean to the RPers, you'll find lots to hang out with.

On Shadow Council, there is a very rich and friendly RP community. Twisting Nether (RPPvP) is decent too, though not as good, because it hasn't been around as long as SC.

SC's Alliance characters usually hang out at the tavern in the Park past the mage quarter in Stormwind.

My guild is somewhat social and I do most of my questing with my friends at work. We are well organized due to our teamspeak server and long experience playing together.

Me? I have chars on three RP servers. I only played on a normal one briefly in the beginning. I find they are rather cliquey, even the newer ones like Moonglade and Steamwheedle Cartel. I like to play with friends, but they have begun to drift away.

Well, having found out that the "don't tell anyone" bit of the non-disclosure agreement was lifted a few months back I can tell everyone here that as of last Thursday I am an offical Beta tester for Dungeons and Dragons Online.

It was with some excitement that I downloaded the installer and then started playing the game... my head was spinning with thoughts of being able to see the game early *and* if I found any bugs that hadn't been reported I'd be able to help out too.

Unfortunately the game has too much that sucks.
The graphics are pretty and realistic rather than cartoony, the character creation is excellent (in that it fully replicates the D&D creation process, and all stats and starting skills are customisable), the fact that the game encourages people to work in groups is good as 'Dungeons and Dragons' and 'party of adventurers' are practically synonymous.

After that it falls down... the "authentic D&D" which Turbine/Codemasters have been touting pretty much stops at character creation as even though you get most of the abilities available in the table-top game the way xp is rewarded and the way combat is done are totally different. I won't go into specifics as I'm not sure how much I can legally reveal, but needless to say the combat and xp are *not* "authentic D&D" by a long shot.

One of our soc members in Entropia has decided to quit and spend more time playing Martial Heroes instead.

I tried it out - free to play, free download - but it wasn't quite my cup of . Someone here might find it interesting though - if you google for it, you'll get it among the top hits.

Seems it's Corean in origin, and updates take a long time before they appear in the other language versions - I got disappointed that the only profession I can choose if I want a female avatar is assassin - I would have liked to try out the mage profession...

Reading this conversation really makes me want to try WoW.

I tried ffxi, but it was frustrating... there's nothing you can do by yourself, as sporky says, but I couldn't play in groups either because most players were in the US and I had to go to bed to get up for work the next day. I wish I had rl friends who play these types of games, but all my friends are pretty much computer phobic.

I may've asked this before, but in WoW, is it possible to play meaningfully by yourself? Also, how about crafting? I tried that in ffxi, but it was an endless frustration.

With the exception of Elite quests and some higher level dungeons WoW is fine for solo play.

Crafting is also a doddle, although some of the stuff you may need to use (such as leather and cloth) is only ever dropped by monsters rather than needing to be harvested.

I downloaded the beta of DDO too. PLayed for about ten minutes and haven't logged back in since.

I might think about giving WoW another bash if anyone wants to suggest a Euro server to create a new toon on. That's if I can bring myself to do all the noob quests again.

Create a character on Earthen Ring! Me and fords already have characters on there (although I'm thinking of starting a new char on Argent Dawn as apparently the quality of role-play on there is much better)

What the...

Is it just me or have a some posts just disappeared?

No, wait... it is just me. I got confused about which thread I was on.

Heh - something that happens to me in Entropia every now and then is posting in the wrong chat window. There are 4: general, events, society and team. Especially the team and soc windows get mixed up a lot - it's quite common to get the message 'oops, wrong chat' in the soc window!

about crafting in FFXI - i do clothcraft, which is basically tailoring in warcraft.

i'm not sure how much gets out, via word of mouth or whatever, about ffxi but to put it simply, inflation is through the roof. prices are absolutely rediculous due to an overwhelming population of gil (FF currency) buyers.

right now i have 4,785,000gil. that's quite a lot of money. a ton. or at least it should be. to put it in perspective, players start the game with 10 gil, their first "quest" gives them 100 gil and with that they're supposed to make their way in the world. only beastmen mobs (which is to say, humanoid-ish) drop money in the game, and this is usually no more than 800gil at the very highest levels. the entirety of the game economy is therefore based on item drops being sold on the auction house. now, to put the price of inflation into perspective, about a year after playing the game the price of a Vermillion Cloak was 249,000 gil. a rediculous price that only the richest of the rich could afford. now, some two years later, i made and sold a vermillion cloak for 17,800,000 gil (btw, i made this for just under 9m - the price jumped from 7m to nearly 18m in a matter of just over a month). perhaps that will give you a picture of the economy collapse we're currently experiencing. to add one more aspect, NPCs used to sell goods for rediculous amounts of money, prices nobody would pay - now they are in fact quite cheap indeed and everyone checks to buy from them first.

here's a little math i did yesterday, to get from my current level of 80 clothcraft to 88, making an item called arhat's hakama. it has various ingredients, which i talk about below, not including the cost of an item needed to make it (a crystal):

velvet cloths are 80k for 2, sheep leather i would have to make myself, silk cloth i would be buying for 120k a stack, silk thread is 30k a stack, maybe more now. so we're talking 80+10+2.5+10 which is 102k for something that sells for what? 10k at ah? if it sells?

if you give a generous amount of 20 synths to get a level (it often takes between 20 and 40) and say i can sell the synthed item back to vendor for 12k that's 14,800,000 gil in the hole. complete loss.


so yes, i can fully understand people not liking the crafting scene in FFXI.

I stopped by Wal*Mart's computer game rack yesterday...

There were no Adventure games.

No Zorks, Mysts, Crystal Keys or Starship Titanics could be found. Maybe Steve Meretzky was right when he said the Adventure genre was dead....

...I think I'm going to cry...

I have toons on Argent Dawn, but I migrated some, including my main to Steamwheedle. I recreated Caerwynn though, on AD. It's very very busy, though, the queues to get on could be over 400 people long which is why I moved to the other server.

Sounds like the Euro servers are loaded.

I am currently waiting for the download of the latest patch. It is taking forever.

i got 256kb and then it stopped - i ended up downloading it from filefront or planet or some such.