First impressions: Trove

The path up the trees leads to a boss.

Update (October 17, 2014): Trove is in closed beta and I have just posted a newer impressions piece. Please have a look at this one, too, if you want to know what I think about the game.

A few days ago, I was idling for a bit before it was time to leave and catch my bus to the doctor’s office. I had decided to check Twitter and saw a tweet by mmorpg.com which had been posted a few hours earlier announcing that they were giving away Trove Alpha Keys. Not really believing in my luck, I still went there to check if any keys were left and actually got one! I immediately made bookahnerk aware of it, so he could get one as well.

I have spent quite a few hours playing Trove now and – as a tl;dr version of what my first impression is: I also now spent 18,99€ on the adventurer pack, so obviously, I enjoyed my time playing the game enough to give them some of my money.

As usual, this “review” has “first impressions” written in front of it. It is going to be subjective and about my experiences within the first few hours of playing this game. Read the following post accordingly, please.

Trove is a sandbox game currently in alpha which will be free to play once it gets released. I haven’t followed it too closely lately, so I’m not sure which features will still be added in the future. I do remember that when Trion Worlds first announced the game, people called it a Cube World clone. I had never heard about Cube World, but it does sound like it belongs to the genre of Minecraft and Terraria – as does Trove now. As far as I can tell, Cube World is more about adventuring (and questing as the developer has added or is adding a questing system to the game) and not so much about crafting, creating and collecting resources. In Trove, you do adventure, kill mobs and collect better items to advance to more dangerous areas, but you’re also collecting various resources and will probably spend quite some time crafting, most of all items for your homeworld and your cornerstone – more on that later. Let’s just say: Trove has got housing! :D

After installing and launching the client, I had to name my character (“Paeroka” in case anybody wants to add me to their friends list) and that was all there was to the character creation. Off my little (male-looking) avatar went into the tutorial hub. This is just a very small region which introduces you to the very basics of the game like moving, switching between adventure and building mode, etc. After leaving the tutorial, I got thrown into another hub where I quickly found a barber shop. Here, I could finally change my look and make Paeroka female – as female as it gets with those avatars – with reddish hair and green eyes as most of my main characters have.

The class changer with the three classes currently in the game.

I had automatically become a Knight, but I knew the game has more classes than that. In fact, three are released already and there will be more. A quick internet search told me that I can change classes in the hub and that the Gunslinger is free now (this was added with a patch which also hints at how they’re handling classes in the future: Some will be free, some will require a purchase) while the Fae Trickster costs something (in-game currency or credits which are bought with real money). When I had created my character, I actually got some in-game currency. I am not sure if that is something like a daily login bonus or what triggers it. However, you can also earn more of this currency by playing the game and defeating bosses. I decided not to save the in-game currency for the Fae Trickster and bought myself a mount instead. After that, I rode through the hub to finally find the class changer. One click and I was a Gunslinger! You level each class separately, by the way. I got the Gunslinger to level 5 at which point bookahnerk suggested I should try the Knight because that’s usually what I enjoy more than a ranged class (but the dual pistols of the Gunslinger are quite awesome!). The Knight was still level 1 and she is now level 6. The current maximum level in the alpha is level 20 for each class, so I still have quite some content ahead of me.

Speaking of content: What is there to do in Trove? You start in a central hub where you and other players gather. From there, you can take one of several portals to the adventuring world. Those are divided into level brackets. You can go to a world that is higher than your level, but mobs will hurt you a lot more than if you were even level.

Once in such a zone, you can stroll through the world and will probably get attacked by mobs that roam around in the world. All mobs are hostile. There are no quests, but something like “events” in some areas. Sometimes, those are bosses, sometimes, those are waves of mobs spawning to attack you after you started the event. Some of these events have something like jumping puzzles to get to them. Nothing has been very challenging so far, but I’ve only gotten to level 6, after all. Bosses drop chests which give you loot (equipment) which makes your character stronger. Standard mobs can also drop such loot but this is rarer.

Altogether, you can roam the world to farm bosses and earn XP and loot to advance in levels and get stronger. However, the other part of Trove is what I enjoy much more: There are resources in the world. Some are, for example, tree stumps or mushrooms that you destroy to gather the resources. Then there is also ore. You need different kinds of ore to craft different items. And most of the world can be destroyed as well. It mostly consists of cubes which you can collect and use for building yourself.

This was the way my cornerstone looked before I destroyed the building on it. The glowy thing on the left lets you refill your healing potion.

When I first started playing, I found a cornerstone. If nobody else has claimed it, a simple click on “E” on your keyboard claims it for you. You can have one cornerstone in the world. It is basically a tiny piece of land that you can build on. It can also host different useful things like the healing potion refiller (your healing potion has 15 charges and can be refilled for free here). I had claimed a piece and then gotten attacked by a mob. I realized that there were two or three mob spawns right next to the cornerstone and I didn’t even have a calm minute before another of them showed up and attacked me. I was a bit upset because I hadn’t seen how I could switch the cornerstone yet. So, I left it and went to explore the world. The further away from it I got, the less I remembered where it actually was. So at that point, I wasn’t just disappointed about the location, I also had no idea where the location actually was (it shows up on your map, by the way. I’d just been too blind to see it!). However, by now I know that a cornerstone is not meant for you to claim a specific location in the world. You can do that, I guess, but that’s not using the cornerstone to its full potential.

There are lots of places in the world and in the different zones where you find empty cornerstones. As soon as you find one, you can click “E” and the cornerstone moves from the previous position to the current position. A cornerstone can house, as mentioned above, the healing potion refiller (handy to have in the world out there, right? ^^), crafting stations, a box where you can store some items, or even a crafted item that lets you destroy looted items (you can’t sell them anywhere but you can destroy them to get a resource that you need to upgrade your items). So, the cornerstone basically follows you wherever you go and lets you conveniently do whatever you want to do – as long as you have crafted the respective stations and put them on your cornerstone. You can also build on it, of course! And if you happen to die, you will get resurrected at your cornerstone (or the starting point for that world if you haven’t claimed a cornerstone).

A small part of my homeworld where I’ve started building a modest little house (with a garden, at least).

One bad thing is that the cornerstone is tiny. Your homeworld, on the other hand, is pretty big! And that’s where you can build to your heart’s content. But first, you need to build your homeworld portal which creates your homeworld. After that, you can jump to it from anywhere in the world (the homeworld is an instanced area). Since the cubes are pretty big, placing items in your homeworld isn’t rocket science (oh, the amount of rage items in Rift have already caused when I wasn’t able to align them properly …). One may argue that the graphics are ugly, too blocky or whatever. I guess this is a case of “either you like it, or you don’t”. I like the graphics and I think they’ve got a certain charm. It works for games like this one.

As mentioned above, I bought a supporter pack now. I like knowing that I support the development and that I spent about the same amount of money that I would have spent on the game had it not been “free to play”. It is not a required purchase, of course. The things I got as bonus items are things like a pet or cosmetic items. It doesn’t look like I’ll get anything that’ll give me an advantage and I hope that this is where the shop will also go. No f2p without an item shop, right? ;) At the moment, the shop mostly has mounts, pets and the Fae Trickster class (for credits or in-game currency) available. But the Knight and the Gunslinger are free, so you do not have to spend money on it.

So far, I would say that if you don’t mind the graphics and enjoy gathering resources, crafting and building on your homeworld, then Trove is a game to check out. If you’re into challenging fights, collecting items to make your character stronger, etc. – then I’m not sure if you’ll have tons of fun in the game or not, because I haven’t seen enough of the bosses yet to judge that part of the game properly. ;) One thing I do not like is that apparently, you don’t have a wardrobe or a cosmetic item system where you can choose a certain look but wear other items for their stats. With the amount of funny looking items, I would have assumed they have such a system in place!

Since it’s in Alpha currently, you either have to sign up and hope you get an invitation or buy your way into it (it starts with 18,99€) – or, as in my case, be lucky to win a key in some giveaway. If you’re patient, you can also just wait for beta to start (5€ gets you a guaranteed spot in the beta – yes, unfortunately, it seems that the best and easiest way to get your hands on the game in alpha or beta is to spend money) or even wait for the game’s launch since joining the game will be absolutely free then! We will also know a lot more about which features will be in the finished game then. And, of course, the whole experience will be more bug-free than it is now. I haven’t encountered a lot or anything game-breaking, but still. It’s not yet a finished product and you notice that, of course.

The Barbershop where you can choose a gender and your look.

Lots of cubes and you could collect them all!

Paeroka the Knight with Iron Will activated.

Fighting the Skeletal Viking!

That’s the central hub with players gathering in the middle.

I want to keep that item! It’s so cute.

There’s even water, but I haven’t found a way yet to collect it for my homeworld!

Those flames are moving fast and I had to fight waves of mobs in between them.

You can usually find lots of ore in mines or caves such as this one.

The crafting window. You need such a portal to create your homeworld.

WAR f2p… for a short time

When I wrote about the closure of Warhammer Online, I complained about them not doing anything to say goodbye to the players. As a goodbye, Mythic has now reactivated all accounts and Warhammer Online is free to play until they shut it down on December 18. This is definitely a nice gesture. According to the official announcement, they will also add NPCs that will “power you up”. This is good, since you can’t really join the endgame (T4) unless your character isn’t only max level but also has a high renown rank. At least, if you want to be any competition to the players who’ve been around for ages.

Of course, I haven’t been able yet to get into my old account which is a shame. I would love to say goodbye to my characters. :) I am currently logged in with an account, but I have no idea which one it is. It might be the one I used after cancelling my sub as for quite some time, they let players try the first 10 levels of the game for free.

Patching seems to be very slow. So if you want to have a look at the game, better be patient.

Bookahneer’s Geekwatch (“What to play until GW2 releases”-edition)

Before we start with today’s Geekwatch, there’s some news about ArenaNet’s community managers: We apparently now have community managers tweeting during EU time and Rubi Bayer has joined as new community manager (she was previously working for Massively). It’s great to see them “expanding” and hopefully this means that Guild Wars 2 is closer than we dare to hope at the moment! ;) The funny thing is that I haven’t really noticed not having CMs tweet or report during EU times because Seattle is conveniently located timezone-wise. Or they just waited for all their big announcement until us EU folks were up anyway. Because so far, announcements came at some point during our afternoon or evening. Still, now we get to hear from them during our morning hours as well, maybe? ;)

But let’s continue with the actual posting. Today’s Geekwatch is about “free” games. And with “free”, I mean games that used to cost a monthly fee and which don’t anymore… to a certain extent at least. More and more seem to be converting nowadays which is great if you just want to check out game or two or if you want to bridge the time until Guild Wars 2 comes out.

Let’s start with MMOs that went f2p some time ago. You can just go to their official website, download the client and start playing:

Lord of the Rings Online went f2p quite some time ago. I’d recommend this if you’re a Tolkien fan (or just liked the films ^^). You get the starting areas plus a few after that for free (I know Lone-Lands are free now but I’m not sure about others). All other areas won’t have quests for you unless you buy those quest packs. You can still grind your way up to max level, though. The game’s “real money shop” now also offers armour with stats which is one of several reasons why I’ve fallen out of love with the game recently. Still, it is a pretty game and I love looking at the game’s screenshots. They also have interesting classes with good and fun mechanics. And I love the cosmetic system which lets you dress your character in one way while the character wears ugly armor with good stats on it. ;) If you want to read more about the game, go to this entry where I’ve previously compared Rift, WoW and Lotro.

Everquest II is a game I’ve just recently discovered for myself. And I was probably one of the last people to do so. ;) It’s definitely an “old game”. It was released in 2004 and it’s showing its age. Then again, the amount of stuff you get for free is great. The downside is that you can’t play all races or all classes for free. That’s kind of sad and made me actually spend money so I could play my cute little rat. But the housing in the game makes up for it. So much freedom (compared to Lotro which is the only other MMO I’ve ever really played that had housing) when it comes to how you want to decorate your house. Also, all quests are free. You just don’t get the last expansions – but you need to buy those in Lotro as well. ;)

Star Trek Online joined the f2p group this week. You get less character slots than subscribers (as in Lotro and EQ2 as well). STO is outstanding when it comes to the character creation (compared to Lotro an EQ2). Also, they have space combat which the other two, obviously, don’t have. As I said above with Lotro and Tolkien: If you’re a Star Trek fan, it’s worth checking out! The restrictions you get compared to subscribers also aren’t bad at all.

Champions Online, DCUO and City of Heroes: I’ll just throw those in because they’re all superhero MMOs and it seems they’re such a niche, they all go f2p one day. ;) City of Heroes is the oldest one, DCUO the newest. I liked the character creation in Champions Online the most (one thing Cryptic – the developers behind STO and Champions Online – can do very well is character customization, apparently ^^).

Aion EU will go free to play soonish. There’s no definite date yet as far as I know but it was said to become free to play in February. Once that happens, the game will not be published by NCSoft anymore. They will hand over the game to Gameforge. Important to note is that this is only the European version of Aion. The US American one stays with NCSoft (at least, as far as we know) and will still require a monthly sub. Still, if you’re interested in the game, why not check out the EU version once you can do so? As it’s not switched over to f2p, we can’t say much about the real money shop yet.

Guild Wars – Oh come on, you know I had to throw this in here now, didn’t you? ;) This is NOT a real free-to-play game. You actually have to buy the game first. But once you own it, you can play without any monthly subs. And I’ve seen all three campaigns plus the addon for 30€. So that’s not too bad. If you want to start playing the game and you don’t want to buy the complete edition (with all three campaigns – and either with or without the addon, depends on the version), I’d recommend “Nightfall” as I found this tutorial the best to follow. If you’re just interested in the world 250 years before Guild Wars 2, then you want to check out “Prophecies” (and later the addon “Eye of the North”). Stay away from Factions at the beginning because it’s not newbie-friendly (I felt lost in there and that was after I’d started a character in Nightfall and knew the basics ^^). It’s also not a real MMO. I guess “cooperative RPG” might fit better. Still, if you haven’t played it yet and are waiting for Guild Wars 2, why not check out its past? :)

World of Warcraft (European version), Warhammer Online and Rift Lite are still subscription-based. But all three games offer “unlimited trials”. Which means that you can play a portion of the game for free and don’t have a time limit. WoW and Rift both give you 20 levels of gameplay. Once you’ve reached level 20 with your character, you can’t advance it any further unless you pay. In WAR, it’s the first 10 levels, I think.

11 games to choose from. Even if each of those only entertained you for a month, this could last until the very end of 2012. And we know that GW2 will be released this year… ;)

Edit: I was just reminded that there’s also Fallen Earth. Now I know that I can’t list every single game that exists but this list should’ve been one of games that I at least tried out (and liked ^^) and I even played Fallen Earth for a few weeks (which is… well… a bit more than just trying it out)! The crafting is what makes this game stand out as the best items are craftable. Also, it’s set in a kind of post-apocalyptic USA (or very tiny parts of it). There also weren’t any bad restrictions. I just found the combat itself a bit clunky. Still, it’s nice to have a non-standard settings for once.

New home in EQ2

I’ve found a new home – for now. It’s been quite some time since a game caught my interest as much as Everquest 2 does right now. Yes, I know, it’s ooooold. And the graphics aren’t up-to-date anymore. And there are bugs… even though the game is ooooold. And while it is free to play now, the system still sucks at times (I can buy stuff from the AH but I have to pay real money for each item I want to sell on the AH. No, thanks).

But… but… it’s fun! And there are things that I don’t get. And there’s stuff to explore. And there’s crafting. And then I saw the housing. And with that, it had sucked me into its world completely. ;) So here you go. I’ve said goodbye to Lotro (for the time being… I have no idea if I’ll go back or not) and am playing EQ2 (and STO) in my free time. Of course, this is also just me waiting for Guild Wars 2 to come out. But that one won’t have housing either which is a shame. I like decorating houses and collecting all the items that I could put into a house. That’s the main reason I ever started playing Restaurant City on Facebook. *cough* Decorating your restaurant is fun! ;)

In other news, up until now if you hadn’t been a wordpress user and logged into wordpress, you probably saw ads in our entries every now and then. I have no idea how often they appeared but I know that I saw them a few times when I wasn’t logged in and it always bugged me. When we started our blog, we decided that we’d never want to have ads in our blog. We don’t want to earn any money from it. Blogging and sharing our opinions about stuff is what we like doing. We don’t want to do it for any money. Now, of course, hosting the blog on wordpress means that they have expenses and thus, them putting ads on our blog is perfectly alright. But they also give you the option to disable them and that’s what we did now. ;) We enjoy the hosting service otherwise and want to keep our blog here. But we’re happier without ads even though we weren’t the ones seeing them. ;) So, happy ad-free reading! :oD

First Impressions: Hello Kitty Online

Here it is, the “special MMO” I’ve mentioned some time ago. I’d actually played the tutorial several months ago but recently went back and played through it again. This has a specific reason: My co-worker loves everything Hello Kitty and I was reminded of this MMO. So this “first impressions review” is dedicated to her because she’s awesome and working with her has so far been a lot of fun! :) (And when you consider her love for pink (rosa!) – and my love for dark colours, she brightens my life? ^^).

***

I first heard of Hello Kitty Online in Warhammer Online. It was mentioned in the same way that people called others “carebears”. “Go play Hello Kitty Online!” – I thought that was just a joke but decided to google it as some point and was… shocked to see that this game actually exists. ;) So of course, I had to check it out. I hadn’t taken any screenshots, though. So I went back on New Year’s Day (it was a boring and rainy day… ^^) and now I’m here with lots and lots of screenshots. Muahaha. ;)

But let’s start at the beginning: What is Hello Kitty Online? As I already said, it’s an MMO. You can find the website here where you can download the client (close to 4GB if you’re interested). The game is “free to play”, so you can jump right into the action. Of course, it comes with a shop (“item mall”). The good thing first: I didn’t notice its existence in the game at all! No huge button that you always stumble over, no big pop up window in your face, etc. Let’s get away from the “real money transactions”. That’s not what I tested, after all. I did actually manage to play through the tutorial and then walk around the Dream Carnival for a bit. Now what did I experience, you may ask yourself. Colours. Lots and lots of colours. Pink, most of all. I guess that’s the biggest difference between Hello Kitty Online and all those other MMOs that I’m playing or have played. HKO is pink. Not just pink… it’s PINK! With lots of other pastels in between.

What can you do in Hello Kitty Online? It seems to have what the other MMOs have as well. You have a world that you can walk around in (though I only saw the tutorial, the Dream Carnival and some other region whose name I don’t remember), you have items and an inventory. You apparently also have housing (I only met those Boa Constructors that told me about housssses, but haven’t seen anything else). And there is also combat! Yes, combat in Hello Kitty Online. But it’s not the way you might think. Again, I’ve only played the tutorial. But I got to whack some bad monster who wanted to drain my energy. It was actually just auto-attacking the monster (a star-shaped something) and then… it fell asleep. Yes, you read that right: You hit monsters until they fall asleep! Isn’t this cute? (^_^) By the way, the thumbnails of the screenshots might look identical but they’re not. The one on the left shows me right during the combat with the tutorial page saying what I need to do and the one on the right shows me right after combat (with the tutorial telling me how I lost lots of energy while I actually didn’t!).

There are also minigames that you can play. Nothing too exciting, though. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take screenshots while playing them. Anyway, this is just a very short “first impressions” review because while the game played flawlessly and I didn’t notice any bugs etc., it’s just really not my cup of tea. Hello Kitty is cute and all but that was way too much pink for my liking! ;) I probably wouldn’t have any problems letting my kid play that game once in a while though (if I had one… ^^). I now do understand, however, why people might use “Hello Kitty Online” as an equivalent to the all-too-common “carebear” (which I loved as a kid, by the way). There’s just no violence in Hello Kitty Online. We just love our colours and help others overcome their sleeping problems. ;)

Bookahneer’s Geekwatch (January 14, 2012)

Welcome to today’s Bookahneer’s Geekwatch! The place about miscellaneous interesting news related to gaming (will most likely include at least one piece about Guild Wars 2 ^^).The first Bookahneer’s Geekwatch this year starts with some Guild Wars 2 “news”. Tivac, a web developer at ArenaNet, answered a few questions in several forums. The summary can be found on Reddit. The first closed beta phase is over.

Then there was an interview with Angel Leigh McCoy who’s a writer and game designer for Guild Wars 2. I’ll just leave the most important quotation here although the rest of the interview is also interesting if you want to know more about her and her work.
“What I can tell you is that we’re currently in Closed Beta and planning has begun for an Open Beta. It’s all extremely exciting, and the game is coming along smashingly. It really is like magic when it all starts coming together and you see what an enormous accomplishment you’ve contributed to.”

Last but not least, GuildWars Insider has an interview with Ree Soesbee. I love seeing her talk about the game (though here, you either have a transcript of the interview or you can listen to it). Her eyes start to shine brighter than her hair (I love her hair colour ^^). It’s just great seeing people talk with such passion!

***

Now, on to something less fun. Turbine disappoints me once again. The story can be found on Massively: Lotro will soon start selling (low level) gear in their real-money-shop that has stats on it. Even though they said that they’re not going to do that! It’s the principle here more than anything that annoys me. And the explanation is that they had feedback from players saying that there’s not enough low level armor in the AH and they want more options. As I commented on Massively: Why not add more rewards for tasks, skirmishes, quests, etc.? Why not look at why the AH economy is the way it is and do something to promote it? Why is the only solution nowadays putting something into their shop? Ah yes, money. -.- If only I could see it getting reinvested into the game. I’d even have an idea: Hire more voice actors. ;) Casual Stroll to Mordor has a poll about the players’ reception. Participate if you care about this topic. Maybe Turbine will have a look at it.

***

SOE has partnered with ProSiebenSat.1 to distribute their games exclusively in Europe. “Their games” include Everquest, Everquest 2, the upcoming new Everquest, DCUO and others. But I didn’t see Vanguard in that list. Here is the announcement from the other side (that is, from ProSiebenSat.1). Not much is known so far. There are lots of questions and worries, of course. I also saw the rumour that this means IP bans for European players. We shouldn’t jump to any conclusions, obviously. But I really dislike the lack of answers and information here. You can’t make such an announcement and not have any more information ready for your players!

***

And the last things for today: Star Trek Online will officially go free to play on January 17. Here is the feature matrix. Former subscribers were already allowed back in. I created a new character and have been enjoying myself, even though I haven’t done much yet. Unfortunately, free players can’t access player-made missions (the foundry) at the moment. I hope they’ll fix this soon because I really liked those.

The European version of Aion will go free to play soon as well. For that, NCSoft gives the game to Gameforge. Look here for its feature matrix.

All in all, I guess we have lots of games to choose from without having to pay while waiting for Guild Wars 2. No need to play any other MMOs that still require you to pay every month. *coughcough* ;)

Bookahneer’s Geekwatch (December 12, 2011)

Welcome to today’s Bookahneer’s Geekwatch! The place about miscellaneous interesting news related to gaming (will most likely include at least one piece about Guild Wars 2 ^^).

Let’s start today’s Geekwatch with Lotro. We’ve just received update 5 which gives us the second half of the expansion that launched in September. Since I’m not playing Lotro much, I haven’t actually cared about what’s in the update too much. I know it’s new instances and a new raid. In case you’re interested and for some reason haven’t found them yet, here are the patch notes (and the known issues). An interesting bit of information is hidden inside and fortunately, Doc Holiday posted about it: The plugins finally got a plugin manager! That’s one thing I really wanted Turbine to add. It’s just not so nice to have to use a third party plugin for all that stuff. I’ve only tested it shortly and one plugin worked while another didn’t but I guess that’s because I haven’t updated them in quite some time. ;) I guess that also means that I’ll have to update my Lotro plugins guide. If you want to have a look, ignore the part about needing a plugin manager and ignore the part about the plugins leading to crashes. ;)

And finally, a giveaway posted at Casual Stroll to Mordor: Win Turbine Points! I am not going to participate because I don’t need any points. But I’m sure it’ll make a few players out there very happy. :)

Next on the list: Warhammer Online. Though the poor game isn’t getting any good news, I’m afraid. Or maybe they are good news for the remaining players. Mythic announced two more server merges on Wednesday. After that, we’ll have 1 US server, 1 European server, 1 German server (technically European as well but we do like our own language too much… ^^) and 1 Russian server (not operated by Mythic, I think). Werit has posted a bit more about WAR. Tobold also writes about this and poor SWG. I found this spot-on. SWTOR kills SWG and maybe even Warhammer Online. We’ll see in a month or two. ;)

Let’s switch over to Everquest 2. This game just went “free-er to play” after having had a f2p server for about a year or so. Now you can access all servers. I returned, especially because they made a few changes to their f2p-system. This now is the third try I’ve given EQ2, by the way (in case you remember me asking How many chances do you give a game? some time ago). I wasn’t too happy with any of the available free races but started playing one anyway. After Sony’s hacking fiasco, I’d gotten 400 Station Cash, though, and figured that I could upgrade to silver and buy myself the race pack that includes ratongas. I couldn’t find the silver pack anywhere in the shop and was disappointed only to find out that apparently, Sony had granted all accounts, including previous trial and f2p accounts, the upgrade to silver! So I already do have all those benefits. I quickly bought 500 more Station Cash and am now the happy owner of three races: ratonga, Iksar (lizard ladies! I already made my “Gechi” – and was very happy to see that this name wasn’t taken yet on Freeport and ogres. I was certain I wouldn’t care about the ogres at all but they do have a certain charme. I might make one later. So far, I have Tenedra (whom you can see on the picture on the right), a wizard ratonga and a ratonga swashbuckler. I also have said iksar (guardian) but haven’t played her yet. I’ll most likely continue playing Tenedra. If you’re curious about all the pros and cons of EQ2’s f2p version, head over to Player vs. Developer who wrote a great post about it. This is also the first f2p game that I ever spent money on, I think. And Guild Wars (though it doesn’t count because it’s not a real f2p game to begin with… ^^).

Last but not least: Guild Wars 2 and their lack of news. Sadly. Though I’m just impatiently shuffling my feet here. Hunters Insight reminded me of Eric Flannum’s post again:
“All that being said we’re definitely getting closer, we’ll be revealing the final profession before the end of the year, and we’ve got a few other things to talk about in the coming weeks as well.”

There aren’t too many days left and as Hunters Insight says, they probably (hopefully?) won’t want to tell us all about the last class during the holidays. I also got curious when I saw Massively announce the IRC chat with Jon Peters and Johnathan Sharp on Wednesday. Maybe there’ll be a lot of questions to ask then? Maybe we’ll finally get to hear something new about Guild Wars 2?

All I know is that I don’t care much about SWTOR. It’s not my kind of game. Instead, as you might have noticed, I got sucked into EQ2 and am now exploring this game while anxiously peeking at Twitter, waiting for some official tweet from GW2. ;)