Aion is here!

It's here! It's finally here! As a player of both Lineage 1 and Lineage 2 I can say I am a huge fan of the team behind Aion. (perhaps I'm not such a big fan of NCSoft, but maybe they will do better with Aion, they seem to be doing OK so far)

And so here it begins. :) I start my journey on the Luminel server. Elyos side of course! I always liked the Elyos from the first time I saw them. Funny enough, I thought Elyos would be the most popular side. I guess I just wasn't thinking straight, because the Asmodians outnumber the Elyos by far. Which is fine to me, I don't mind being the underdog one bit!


The forests of Elyera are beautiful and mysterious.. filled with the power of Aion mixed with the light of a nearby star! A wise elder treant waits to help you on your journey.


Here I await, the battle within! (Hehe this game is so pretty)


A new shield I got... nothing too special. Hey I am only level 7!


And not to spoil anything, but I just wanted to share this glimps of the Abyss.


I know you might have seen this in other places but I love the little leaf-holding animation. And the rain sure is nice and refreshing.


Plenty of little runts to kill...


Mushroooooom! Oh yeah.. this is a great shot. And I shall leave you with this parting image while I go back for more Aion! :D

Cow Nose's Take on Darkfall, and A Farewell!

A yes, another MMO, come and gone in the life of Cow Nose the 50 Pound Cat! So here is my farwell post, and my little review of the game.


DarkFall is a beautiful world. It's strange and interesting and I was pleasantly surprised by the varied landscapes. DarkFall stretches it's engine to the limit and the game ends up looking great. I found myself looking around with true wonder at the different cities I came across and the strange sights.

Of course, death is a common experience in DarkFall! However, as an experienced Ultima Onlinen gamer, it never bothered me too much. OK let me explain, see in DarkFall when your character dies she leaves everything on her corpse. Any other player can walk up to your corpse and take everything you own! (Actually it's a gravestone in DarkFall, in Ultima Online it was the same thing but you left a body behind, and when looted completely you were left naked, and not to compeltely sidetrack but in Ultima Online you could also cut up your enemies body and take whatever parts you wanted as trophies)

I've talked about this in past posts, probably my Ultima Online posts. See, this kind of gameplay system makes DarkFall a completely different class of MMOs. It's a style of MMO forgotten to the average WoW gamer, but it's one familiar to many vets.

Everything changes in a free-loot based game. Epic swords are still epic, but common swords do great damage even compared to said epic swords. This is because gear MUST be expendable! So decent or even great gear is cheap to come by.

However gear is used up much more quickly, therefor a game like DarkFall has a GREAT crafting element. There is a huge place for crafters in DarkFall. (Even if it is not nearly as fun as PvP)

Plenty of interesting dungeons to explore in DarkFall! :)

So what is there to do in DarkFall? Well, PvP of course! And the PvP IS a lot of fun. You need to like ganking, and you need to like conflict. And conflict and ganking go so well hand in hand together. DarkFall is the ultima PvP MMO I've played, hands down. It has many of the great PvP elements of Lineage 2 without the awful asian grind that really ruined the game imo. Castle sieges, random PvP out in the world, and many skirmishes between cities is the best fun the game has to offer.

And believe me, there is NOTHING as satisfying as running along side your mates on your mounts heading towards the enemy for battle. It's a very very rewarding experience that no PvE MMO could ever offer. Just takes some stones and a lust for battle!


This is DarkFall's version of Bone Armor. It's great for mages because it has good armor but doesn't have a big impact on your magic skills.


So why am I leaving DarkFall, for now at least, if my review of it is so positive? Well the reasons are two fold.

The reason I am leaving, is because I can not afford it at this moment. I recently switched jobs and I just needed to conserve that $15 for other things untill I get back on top of bills and such.

So then the second reason, is not why am I leaving, but why may I not return? Well, that is because DarkFall does not have the grab-and-go gameplay that I have kind of come to be used to and enjoy. It's the same thing that drove me from EvE. Yeah, it's fun and really exciting! But it can also be kind of empty and boring at the same time. Just you and your skills and your mates and your loot. Yeah, that really is all you need, that's why DarkFall is not a bad game by any stretch. But were are the quests? The story? I suppose perhaps I am maturing in my RL life and my MMO life. I no longer have the stamina (lie) to game for 8+ hr stretches. I prefer a MMO were I can be doing RL things and just jump in when I have an hour or two, have some fun, maybe even a PvP battle or two, and then go to bed or go to work.

That said... I am very much looking forward to Aion! So, stay tuned to Cow Nose the 50 Pound Cat's MMO Adventures and you just may see some great Aion action. :D

In the meantime.. stay tuned for some free MMO updates! Runes of Magic, and Wizard 101, wohoo! Two MMOs LONG overdue for an appearance on this blog.

DarkFall scenery and the all-might Clan Stone

I love our city. It's so defensible. You even need to take a flying boat just to get at some of the entrances, and being stuck in a small boat makes you very vulnerable! Here take a look!

Yeah just another foggy day in Dark Fall.


It sure can be beautiful though!


Ahh, and there is our mighty clanstone! Source of much power.

Cow Nose is back!

Hey guys! Thanks so much for your patience between posts. Here at Cow Nose the 50 Pound Cat's MMO Adventures things have been really busy. I've been working hard in the RL side of life, and to be honest I just needed to take a bit of a break from blogging.

But, I feel the creative spirit again, (and I'm playing a freakin' awesome game which must be documented) so lets get to the blogging! Remember, as usual, just click on the screenshots to make them bigger. My pictures are always available in a much larger size.



So, what would be the first things you see when you go to DarkFall? Well, goblins and newbie getting ganked of course, but for me, it is our city!

I say our, because I have joined a great clan by the name of FOUR TWENTY. Yes I know it's a silly (but awesome) name, and hey, it's a PvP MMO! I was lucky enough to meet up with these guys through a friend of mine, they have their own city and are very good at PvP.

The picture above is a shot of one of the walkways to our clan walls. Our city is an elf city so it is very nature themed.



Here you can see just how defensible our city is. It was not luck getting this city believe me! My clan knew what they were doing when they picked this city, and it is awesome. Definitely the best city in DarkFall I've seen yet, and VERY defensible.

Well, that's it for now. I thank you so much for returning to read Cow Nose the 50 Pound Cat's MMO Adventures and I can promise you many exciting DarkFall blog posts in the future. It's a very unique game and just the type of game for this blog! I just can't wait to see what kind of experiences and stories come from this one. :)

Thanks for your patience!

I apologize for the delay in getting the dark-fall-ness into this blog.

There are a few reasons to this delay: DarkFall does not have a working screenshot button, and I am trying to find a decent program to take screenshots for me externally.
If anyone is reading this and has a suggestion on that, that would be helpfull.

Additionally, DarkFall does not have a "hide-UI" button. Neither did Lineage 2 and I got used to that so I guess I can get past this... it doesn't make it VERY difficult for me to take the beautiful screenshots I want though, and it also adds a lot more work into the blogging process. That's OK though this is still something I want to do.

Also, I am getting deep into the PvP of DarkFall. I actually was really excited about blogging about the PvP aspect.. till I realized I might be giving our enemies a lot of insider information and that sort of thing. I'm not sure what to do about that.

How do you brag about your exploits and accomplishments without giving insider information to your enemies they can use against you, such as castle wall strength and other vital information. (Like what we plan on doing, and how we plan on doing it!)

Comments?

Cow Nose the 50 Pound Cat's to be re-amped soon!

Cow Nose the 50 Pound Cat's MMO Adventures will see a complete overhaul in the upcoming week. Please stay tuned for details! DarkFall is here!

The 50 Pound Cat's MMO Adventures Temporarily Delayed

Hi everyone! As you may have guessed, I have not been around recently. I recently have run into some real life troubles. I lost my job and thus have no internet, additionally I moved to a new apartment and haven't set up said internet there. Crummy, I lost my job just as I got a new place! Bad timing.

But, I will be back! You guys know that. So... people who have me in their feeds, please keep me there! People who just read the website manually... well check back in a couple months.

And people who have me on their blogrolls, you can take me off them if you wish. I will contact all bloggers when I return and ask you to add me again.

PS: And I'll be honest with you, there just isn't an MMO I'm terribly interested in at the moment. So when this blog comes back there might be some great new games to cover!

PPS: This is NOT goodbye or the end, I love The 50 Pound Cat's MMO Adventures and I will continue to post my adventures here as long as I am playing!

Kamolka

One of the recent additions to Lineage 2 is an instanced dungeon called Kamolka. There are different versions of the dungeon for different levels. You are limited to one run through the instance per day. I have found that the dungeon is a nice way to meet new people in Lineage 2, you can almost always find someone your level looking to do the instance.

The other day, I did the level 54 Kamolka with my clan SilverMoon. Here’s a few screenshots from the event!

Our tank, Bestregards, takes on the enemy.

Take him out!

Death comes to the enemy! And the rewards to the victorious.

Bot Killing, A Lineage 2 Past Time

One of my favorite activities in Lineage 2 is bot killing. This sport involves the finding and slaying of bots. They are pretty easy to find, just head to the nearest Catacomb or Necropolis and they will be there, grinding away and doing what automatons do.

Once found there are a number of ways to kill the bots. You could try to “train” them. This involves attacking a roomful of monsters, then running to the room with the bots in it. The monsters pursue you but then see their friends being killed by the bots, who they then attack. If the botter team is not too strong, then the monsters will kill them. This is a good tactic because it keeps your hands clean of any actual killing.

Another way to kill a team of botters is to just PK the healers. If the team isn’t smart, and they don’t resurrect their healers (and they often don’t), then the rest will die without their support! This is often the quickest way to kill a bot team, though it does come with Karma. Karma is an entirely different aspect of Lineage 2’s gameplay that I won’t get into here.

Alright, so with that said the following is a few screenshots of my Bot Killing exploits in the underworld of Lineage 2.







See, sometimes people see what you are doing and they either don’t kill you when you turn red from killing bots, or they jump in and help out! And in these screens you see the real fun of bot killing, when they fight back! When bots fight back it means you have a pissed off farmer (likely from China, or wherever else they have gold farming businesses) on the other end of the computer. And for me, that makes it all the more fun when I kill them.

PS: Speaking of killing bots, and therefore pissing off farmers in China, that brings up an interesting moral debate that has been kicking around in my head for the past week. Is it worse to kill a farmer, someone just trying to do their job and make ends meet, or to kill a real player (who is botting themselves)? OK I probably lost you there, let me set this up a bit: In Lineage 2, there are two different types of botters. There are the farmer-botters, people from very poor parts of the world just trying to feed themselves by farming gold and selling it to westerners. They are just doing their job day-in-day-out. Killing them is a frustration to them and may even be taking food out of their mouths. But the other type of botter is the player-botters. These are people who feel they must bot to succeed in Lineage 2. These people bot so that they can get to the high levels, and they bot for money. To kill these people is to take away their money their time, their fun essentially.

The killing of either botter, pisses off the person behind the screen. But which is the worse, or the better, to kill? I don’t know, but it’s something to think about.

Another Ding!

Ding! Level 51! This is a big level. B grade equipment is only two steps away from the best stuff in the game, S grade. Ahh, I love to bask in the sweet glow of that new level. OK check out some of the new equipment I can wear:



This is an almost full (I’m missing the gloves as you can see) set of Doom Light armor. It has good bonuses to your physical attack attribute as well as a bonus to your attack speed! I think it looks pretty good too. I get a little tired of the “panty”-ness of the armor, but it’s OK. Still, I would prefer some shorts.



Oh, and this is my new weapon, a Kris. This is a top B grade dagger, meaning it’s the best there is! Some people even use a heavily enchanted Kris ‘till S grade, so that gives you an idea just how close I am (or at least, feel) to end-game Lineage 2. Oh yeah, I know, I’m sure level 75 and higher is still a long ways off for me. But, this weapon is one step closer to that eventual goal.