Gaming by the Hour – week ending 6/3/2012

I was able to put in 11 hours of gaming this last week in Eve, Diablo, STO, and I actually threw in an hour of WoW, although that was a horrible nightmare.

In Eve, I flew in a couple of minor fleet engagements. No kills or losses though. I flew my scimitar on the first engagement and forgot, once again, that I could not use Warrior II drones on the character, no damage = no kill mails. I did manage to keep people alive and the fleet ‘won the ISK war’. There was not much of a fight though. The other fleet engagement was a frigate roam and I actually got to fly a Jaguar. It was a pretty fun ship for a little guy, but unfortunately, no one came out to fight.

In D3, I played both my Monk and my Wizard. I realized that as I got further with BruceLee – he is now level 13, I started wondering why I was playing a melee character. I hardly ever play a character where I have to walk up to things to hit them – I’m either a ranged dps or a healer.

I left Bruce in Act I and started working on my Wizard. With Lenora, I was able to finish act I and kill the Butcher with a few friends.

She sits at level 14 and I am really enjoying her talents.

My time in STO was fun this week, and I came to recognize that the ground combat that bothered me so much on the game’s launch was much better than it was. I can actually play it now without pulling my hair out. It may not be your standard MMO/RPG combat, but it actually works and does not just seem like an afterthought. Cassie made Lt. level 4 and I placed most of her skill points in space combat which I still really enjoy.

I am still confused about the ‘difficulty’ mechanic though. Apparently, there are 3 levels (normal, advanced, and elite) that you can set for difficulty of PvE. The normal level states that there is no chance for character injury, while the advanced level ‘introduces’ injuries as a result of defeat, and elite significantly increases difficulty and injury. From asking around ingame, there really does not seem to be much incentive to select a difficulty higher than Normal, and apparently the higher difficulties are really tougher – as in you die a lot. I think I will hold off playing with difficulty for now – perhaps later in my starfleet career.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have basically put my main in WoW on the shelf for a while. She had been trying for months to get a Maw from LFR, but has been unsuccessful. I decided to give her a spin this week, though, to see if I would get lucky. Unfortunately, with D3 out, I think everyone of skill has migrated to the new shiny leaving LFR with the dregs. As a healer, I have instant queues for pretty much anything, and I lucked out with 3 of 8 for the Fall of Deathwing so I got the exact part of the fight I wanted. The sad part was that the first attempt only saw 1 of the DPS characters rise above 40k, and I was far-and-away the top healer (12M total heals to 7M). The second try saw one of the tanks disappear into the water when trying to jump from island to island – never encountered that bug before. The final attempt I tried failed miserably as we hit the rage timer on the 4th island. I gave up. I really don’t think I will ever see a maw.

Bottom line this week: D3 – 5 hours; Eve – 3 hours; STO – 2 hours; WoW – 1 hour.

Total for May: D3 – 11h; Eve – 5h; Betas – 6h; STO – 3.5.

Total since start: D3 – 15h; Eve – 7h; various Betas – 6h; STO – 5.5h; WoW – 1h.