Druids and WoW...

There are days I really miss playing my druids in World of Warcraft. So much so I remade one of my druids in Champions Online. I have to say he looks damn good compared to what he did in WoW. I only wish I could make my Tauren one as well. ;)

If anyone recognizes this Night Elf. This is exactly how I pictured him back in 2004 when I first signed on to WoW. Sadly he never got the bear shoulders (went to shamans and hunters as mail armor) and he never got the bear claw gloves (fist weapons druids couldn't use completely.)

Out of all the fancy armors Blizzard could ever make, all I asked for ultimately for Nim was something so simple and basic that he never got till the Champions game.

It's all fun and games....

Till one of the logs you are tossing in to the back of the pickup truck bounces and hits the rear window. Then it's *CRACK!* and you see the beauty that is a spiderweb start to go all over the back window. Oh well truck gets fixed tomorrow and nobody got hurt.

In other news I'm bouncing between games right now. I've been enjoying the customizations available in Champions Online but also found Star Trek Online to be appealing. It's seriously awesome to fly around the galaxy in my own ship like that and it's not as complicated or demanding as I heard other games like Eve Online are.

I can live with this. CO has some decent RP in it, I need to find some in STOL. I've been keeping an eye out at Deep Space 9 but so far Quarks has been rather empty. I found out one thing though, when you do make contacts and get in to social groups you can not only meet in public places but also your own ship as well.

I've been exploring my own ship a bit. It's not as vast as a full starship might be but there's a bridge, engineering deck, and a crew deck you can invite people to and hang out at. My ready room is a bit lavish but nice.

I've played some of the PvE dungeon queues. So far things aren't bad, I like the fleet engagements where you rescue star bases. The only down side is when everyone goes their own way all over the place and people get caught in the initial second wave of assault ships that come in on their own.

Nothing like having around eight torpedoes and several disruptor blast take your back shield from 100% to 0% and cut half your hull away in about a second. :) That was a fun first time when that happened, I now stick more to packs of ships when playing those instances.

My tactical captain is fun but my Vulcan science captain will be interesting to play as well. I'll have him in ships named after famous Astrophysics people.

One final thing for the gamer types. From sitting around and listening to chats it sounds like there's more of an end game progression in STOL then there is in CO. I'm still leveling my characters but I'm anxious to go on these Borg Queen encounters. :P

Fun with character creators..

I've been playing around with the Champions Online character creator as I unlocked more costume parts.



I can make a Forsaken look good in there and I never have to worry about horrible armor drops some Blizzard art designer thought was good.

I have totally reached a new conclusion...

I'm really enjoying Champions Online more then WoW game wise. My little comparison below wasn't too far off on how things work, I could refine it more but I'd just say go and play the game since it's free to play up to max level.

The best part about the whole game I found is the fact that all my characters look the way I want them to and I can find more costume pieces along with regular gear to use on existing or new characters. In World of Warcraft I hated how my night elf druid from 2004 never had the bear claw hands I wanted him to get. That bugged me every single day even when I played my Tauren and couldn't get him to look the way I wanted at all times of game play.

I still miss people from Feathermoon and would love to be able to gab with with them regularly. RP was always fun there and people came up with some fun and crazy characters. CO isn't bad either, I finally found an RP super group (guild) and things are going pretty good. I think I tapped in to the role play community on CO and it's pretty good.

I only have a few characters but here's the stable I got so far. It's amazing the diversity of looks you can come up with. From a regular grumpy old dwarf in plate to angels, demons, semi-modern soldiers, and even zombies! The random look generator is even more wild in the creations it sometimes comes up with.

I decided to be brave and follow the path of Grizz with some characters. Never really rolled female characters before but I've done an even mix as you can see.

Can't wait till they come out with secret lairs in CO. It'll be fun sticking my zombie guy in the "Parents Basement" themed secret lair.

Differences I noticed between WoW and Champions Online

I've been comparing the differences I've noticed between WoW and Champions Online. Both games are fun but here's the list of things I noticed coming from the "I played WoW for six years and just started Champions" perspective.

Characters

* WoW has two factions with multiple races on each faction. Neither faction has races from the other faction.

* Champions has only one faction and no real race concept. Characters can be made to look like different races.

* WoW has a fixed class base system.

* Champions offers arch types, like fire thrower, tech gadget dude, etc. Champions also lets you make hybrids with a mix of powers from any arch type. The down side to this is the more diverse the powers you have the less "Powerful" powers you can get. You can spread yourself out too thin.

* WoW lets you customize the base look of your character which can be hidden by the gear they obtain. Character looks are fixed and cannot be scaled or altered beyond the base body pieces. Hair and such can be changed.

* Champions lets you not only customize the basic body types but change individual body parts. Elongated arm(s), fat or thin, hooves or feet, almost anything you can imagine. You can also use a color pallet to change gear and body parts coloring.

Leveling

* Both are experience based.

* WoW has a talent tree system.

* Champions has a power point system similar to talents.

* New abilities level based.

* Both games abilities scale with level.

Gear

* WoW uses a paper doll system.

* Champions uses a checker board split between offense, defense, etc.

* WoW gear changes how your character looks.

* Champions gear has no effect on how your character looks.

* Champions has a costume system where you can purchase additional costume slots with a monthly stipend of Atari points. Stipend is for subscribed users only.

Quests

* WoW's quest system was revamped in Cataclysm. The transitions between quest hubs have been smoothed out very nicely. Quests are broken in to normal in game world quests and dungeons/raid quests.

* Champions has a decent quest system. Quests flow pretty well but there are some rare points where I have encountered a "Where do I go now?" moment. That isn't as bad as it sounds because you have random NPC's run up to you now and then with a randomly generated quest in other areas that leads you to find new quest hubs usually.

* WoW's quest system can let players of vastly different levels group together. The down side is players of lower level don't get as much XP from mob kills because the higher level player drains the amount rewarded.

* Champions has a feature called side kicking. This lets two players team up and the second player's level can be adjusted higher or lower to match the party leaders. That way both player can quest together and lower level players are rewarded fully while not having overpowered help. This also lets higher level players get some help from lower levels while rewarding the lower level players with proper XP for the help.

Dungeons

* WoW dungeons are fixed difficulties with normal/heroic (Heroic not available on all dungeons).

* WoW dungeons are also level fixed, lower level players can't help higher levels. Higher level players can help lower but the lower level player loses experience as a penalty with mob kills.

* Champion dungeons all appear to have several difficulty modes that can be adjusted like WoW's normal/heroic. There are three to four difficulty modes to play at which gives a little more flexibility in the challenge level you can take.

* Champion dungeons benefit from the side kicking feature so players of different levels can receive the maximum reward and quest experience while balancing things out so you don't blast through with a higher level. Higher level players can be scaled down to lower levels.

Raids and Looting

* WoW raids are fixed loot rewarding limited numbers of players in the group. They're also on lockout timers.

* I've only done limited raiding in Champions with a non-maxed level character. No single group can tag a boss in open world raid encounters. From what I can tell everyone that participates and gets on the aggro list gets rewarded. The reward isn't crazy powerful but it can still be useful.

Travel

* WoW offers four basic modes of travel. Run/walk of the character, a fixed flight taxi system, ground only mounts, and flying mounts. Ground mounts start out at 20, flight at 60, and taxi as you discover other taxi hubs.

* Champions offers travel powers to hero's. This means you can fly the minute you leave the start area if you want. You can fly, bounce, ride flying objects, web sling, speed run, tunnel, etc. Normal character run/walk is also available.

Quick note, while flying has been a grumbling point in WoW for PvP, Champions offers talents your character can take which will debuff enemy players of their travel powers. So you can ground a flyer quite easily for a brief period of time if they're in the air already.

****

I will say this about Champions, it isn't perfect but it's really nice to be playing a game where I have full control over how the character I make looks regardless of their gear and what they're doing.

Also if I really missed one of the races from WoW I could make most of them in Champions. Forsaken (zombie parts), Trolls (monster parts), orcs (humanoid body shaping), draenie (monster parts), elves (body shaping), dwarves or gnomes (body shaping). The only thing they don't have is cow people heads even though they got the legs/feet/hands/tails for em. :/

Edit: Champions also features a built in FlagRSP for your characters. See zombie guy in previous post. :D

More Outragous Character Fun

Behold Roadcone!



He has beastial powers which fit right along the zombie fighting style of clawing and such. His super travel power is digging in the ground like Bugs Bunny.

Games

So recently I stopped playing World of Warcraft. After six years of fantasy gaming wearing me down and losing my Dad in February I decided to try something completely different.

I tried the free to play Lord of the Rings but it was boring. I looked over some other games and they didn't perk my interest. Then I looked at super hero games like DC Universe and City of Heros but what I settled on was Champions Online. They have a free to play silver package that just beat out the other two.

Meet... the Negotiator!



He's one of my many little characters I spent lots of time on setting up since I decided to subscribe. I also have another guy which is a zombie from Plants vs. Zombies. He's got a road cone on his head.

The best part about the whole game is you can spend HOURS customizing the look of your character and no matter what gear you get they will retain their look unlike in World of Warcraft. You can also setup other RP clothing slot sets and have tons of outfits. It cost game tokens per set but it's nice not having to worry about crappy looking gear. :D

Old games gone new!

If you are a gamer of old, you'll remember such names as Quest for Glory and Kings Quest. Look no further old timers, Anonymous Game Developers Interactive has released Kings Quest 1-3 and Quest for Glory 2 FREE! These games are remade for newer versions of Windows while remaining true to the originals.

Check it out!

Things that make you go wow...

More Map Madness!

Check out this isometric view of my compound in the map I posted yesterday. Pretty fun stuff!



Top left side of the map has a small building that is the spawn area for the world. I made that safer to spawn in by building around it. Lower right by the water is the docks. Both spawn building and docks are linked by a service tunnel to the central compound.

Running to the left is the rail tracks for mine carts to my mine. In the compound itself is a Greenhouse in the upper left, house just under it, mine cart station below the house. On the right side of the compound is a workshop with about 10 ovens and a fountain down and to the right. Between the fountain and mine cart station is the monster pit which farms monsters. :P

Maps, maps, maps...

I found a program that lets me make maps of the areas discovered in Minecraft. It's a pretty slick little program and can do everything from general surface mapping to cave mapping based on the save file. The program is called Cartograph by someone named ZomBuster.

Check out this map of one of my saves below, you will have to zoom in to the pixel level in an image viewer to make out some really small details. Larger things like buildings and stuff shouldn't require as much zoom.



See if you can make out my settlement in the map. Should look like a goofy pipe with the tail going to a snowy peak near by. That tail is a dual mine cart track which allows me to ride a mine cart roller coaster of sorts over mobs safely as well as carry extra ore back in carts with trunks.

Minecraft Monster Grinder

So I've had an itching lately for blowing things up. I want to play with a TNT cannon that I've only been able to gather enough gunpowder for one shot in the past month. That means I need a LOT more gunpowder but I don't want to cheat to get it either.

So whats the best way to get gunpowder? Kill Creepers. What's the safest way to kill em? Drown em! So I did some research and came across this monster trap in these two videos. Props to Colbycheeze for the videos.

Video #1

Video #2

So now I have a basic blueprint, time to build! First I need a place to build my trap, hmmmm.. time to dig!



I won't go too deep for this.



The bottom of the trap, that is where I stand so all the drops float right to me.



As you can see, the monster will sink to where the glass is in the distance and drown. Their drops will float out from under the glass to me. Notice also how I have the ladder above the water so it doesn't interfere with the current?



The room above is the second safe zone, notice the cactus plants in the wall? They catch spiders since spiders are so big and can't fit down the drowning hole. Spider drops fall in to the hole as they die and float to me. I also made good use of lighting and storage chest placement so I don't hurt myself accidentally against the cactus.



It's hard to see in this shot, but notice how the water stop just at the edge of the drowning pool drop? That is a key thing about the whole water trap. Also those above floor glass walkways make a nice safe way to pull monsters from the back of the trap area.



This final shot is a view of what a monster would see if they spawned back against the far wall. The lights leading up to the water wouldn't normally be there so it'd be pitch black in this area with the exception of the center trap area shining the in the distance.



Notice my service tunnel in the ceiling near the edge of the water on the right? That lets me go out in the dark zone and mine the area surrounding the trap further back. I'm collecting a ton of gunpowder now and I've had some nice explosions along the back walls clearing out space. The more empty dark space you have the more monster spawn up to 200 I think.

So I ask you all that watch this blog...

What is a Gilligan without having a Skipper as well?

Preview



Skin

Skinning

I've come to realize Minecraft is like a survival game of sorts the way I play it. You're trapped with no phone, no light, no motor car, and not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe, it's primitive as can be.

So I made a Gilligan player skin with my lousy art skills. :)
(Version 2 with fixed hat)



Here is a preview screen shot.

More Minecraft Pics

Showing off my greenhouse second floor and someone I found in my mine!

Green House



The Blob!

Minecraft Pictures

Behold, ready for battle!


Defend the tower!


Spawn base in the distance!


Spawn base closer!


It's a long way down to China!


Mine command center!


Make sure the work area is safe. Did you hear something?!


Glad it's a game, I'd hate to have cleared all this by hand for real.


I've been really dig'n Minecraft!


I don't think I have enough stone.

Minecraft Addiction

I'm hooked, it's not as flexible as NWN was when making things but what it gives in return for that lack of flexibility makes it much more enjoyable. I remember posting earlier on this blog how I was looking for something to not only be fun but challenge me to think and be creative. Minecraft has accomplished this nicely.

I've been doing the single player survival game ever since I purchased the alpha. While I've not built anything massive except a mine shaft and a large mining area square shaped at the bedrock of the Earth. I'm slowly figuring things out and trying different things.

I'll post a screen shot of my mining project as well as other shots later on. :)

Playing with blocks...

Sometimes the simplest things are the best. With games that is no different and with Minecraft I've been playing with blocks. Now there is an online Alpha version at the main site and a first draft version here.

The alpha (main link) is a multiplayer version and has things like saving builds. The first draft is just a single player with no saving. It's been fun to mess around with since I'm waiting till the product is more finalized before deciding to buy.

The basic thing to do in the single player game is build things and explore. So far I've built three houses and have done some serious cave diving in to the earth to the point where I found lava. I also ended up flooding one cave with the water I captured for my swimming pool from the ocean.

NOTE: You will need Java installed to run the game in your web browser.

ASCII Portal

It may not have the fancy graphics, it may not have fancy sounds, but ASCII Portal is damn fun to play. The best part is it reminds me of the games I used to play when computers had up to 16k ram only. Ahh the good old days!

It's dark, I think I'll shine a Torchlight...

Sometimes a game comes along that is just really good. This is one of those times, like Plants vs. Zombies this game is the bees knees.

Check out a trailer for Torchlight here.

Check out the Torchlight game sight here.

And yes, it plays just like Diablo 1 only much more updated. :)