Ald Demo

Zenith Weapons

While i really haven't played much of GW2 for the past two months now, the Achievement rework patch had me back in for a bit. Anet decided to retroactively give out a bunch of stuff, including Zenith weapons skins, based on your total achievement points. This sounded great in theory until i logged in to see myself over 3000 points behind one of my friends. We sort of had a nice healthy competition going for a while, which was pretty back and forth and quite fun. Unfortunately now i see myself never catching up to him, which is perfectly fine, but also a real bummer.

Part of the problem i have with the game is this exact aspect. Those points can never be made up again with all of the temporary content being released every 2 weeks now. Sure this encourages players to log in more in fear of missing something, but it also punishes players for playing their way. Needless to say I'm not a fan of temporary content, especially when it rewards what could basically be called GW2's endgame equivalent in achievement points. The rewards looks pretty spiffy though!

Hammer

Greatsword

Sword

Daggers

Battlecrab

2:39 PM Battlecrab , Rift

With the Storm Legion expansion comes a new class; Battlecrab! This new rogue soul is exceptional at battling evil forces of the deep. This king of the crustaceans makes up for its slow movement speed with its devastating claw attacks that leaves complete chaos in its wake. While not as effective outside of its natural elements, I'm looking at you land lovers, I'm confident this new soul will rule the seas!

Just Deserts

1:03 PM Rift

I'm not sure what it is about desert maps in MMO's but i absolutely adore them. Maybe it's my absolute love of the film Lawrence of Arabia, but i always enjoy a good sand desert over a lush jungle. In fact, i absolutely hate jungle maps with a passion. They tend to be so over-saturated and packed with trees and brush that you can never get a sense of grandeur. That's never the case with deserts. They're built to be vast, grandiose, and epic in scale. Rift's new zones don't disappoint in this regard, well not the desert ones anyways.

Ding 60

9:53 PM Rift

Ding

Two years and 4 months after my initial level 50 ding in Rift, I've reached 60. I just love that word "ding", it just has a ring to it. Wow, that was terrible yet I'm going with it. I can't believe it's been so long honestly because it sure doesn't feel like Rift has been out that long. I'm sure it's due to my lengthy hiatus from the game because of GW2, among other things. Regardless, i decided to spend the week going 50-60 while i wait on phase 4 of FFXIV. Amazingly enough, it took me just that long for my initial 50 levels. I took my time this go around and avoided all dungeons and just focused on quests and exploring the new zones. What to do now? Probably uninstall for a while again!

The first thing i did upon my ding was spend all of my cash shop currency that i accumulated during my year as a member, which Trion graciously saved up for me. It's no surprise that i decided to go with an armor set for my rogue that looks like a cross between a space cowboy and bounty hunter. Those being my favorite two guilty pleasures in the fantasy/sci-fi realm.

My last purchase came in the name of convenience, which happened to be a mount. Not just any mount, but a freaking armored panda mount. Trion's obsessed with taking pokes at Blizzard i suppose. Anyways, the selections were limited in the 150% movement speed department, which is the current fastest speed. I went with the best looking one of course.

Rift Mount Check

9:23 PM Mounts , Rift

As i continue my week in Rift and my inevitable climb to 60 after over a year away, i decided to take some time between quests for some fun stuff. I love collective anything i can, as I'm sure many others do as well. This time i diverted my attention to my mount collection, which in this case is rather lacking. That's ok though as I'm not ready to blow my entire wallet on any more until i hit 60. That's when the 150% mount speed comes into play, and they can't get hear soon enough. For now, I'll just have to play with what i have.

Ancient Tartagon

Mossy Tartagon

Ash Strider

Nimble Gold Eldritch Steed

Loyal Armored War Horse

Swift Gold Armored War Horse

Swift Soulbound Charger

Swift Murdantix

Green Panda

Raptr Nerd Points

10:38 PM Raptr , Rift

Being a nerd and using their game tracking software finally payed off. Well, technically I've received tons of rewards from them in the past, but never anything of value. This time around i was rewarded with the Storm Legion expansion for free, which included four new souls, and an adorable Raptr mini-pet.

Wish i could rename him Snoopy

Having not really played the game since prior to GW2's launch, i was amazed to see the land mass almost tripled in size. As usual, this comes with ten more levels, but that's to be expected. Unfortunately this also means that my top tier Hammerknell gear is replaced by quest greens. I was shocked at the explosion in stats when i went to check out the current raid gear vendor. I thought it was bad going from River of Souls to Hammerknell, but this takes the cake. At the same time, it does make it easier to play catch up i suppose, but I'm not really interested in returning at this time with FFXIV around the corner.

It didn't take me long to figure out what that new back slot was for either. I fucking love capes and cloaks! I like seeing them in every MMO, especially if they're used for guild representation of some sort, complete with logos and art work. So naturally, the first thing i did was figure out how to get my first one from a quest, which didn't take long. They have a nice upgrade feature as well which i accidentally completed without looking.

Quest reward cape

Upgraded quest reward cape

The new rogue soul, Tactitian, is ridiculous. It's essentially a bazooka wielding, AoE death machine that can also drop heals. Similar in many ways to GW2's Engineer. So far it seems more like a solo farming soul for now but i haven't really dug into it yet. It does mow down lots of mobs at once at a rapid pace though.

Flame on

The first thing i thought of, when i loaded up Tactitian and headed out to quest on a map that looks like is from outer space mind you, is how much it reminded me of the alien bounty hunters from Critters! Toss in some Ghostbusters and you're ready to roll on to 60. I had to get an 80's movie reference in here somehow.

We're looking for crites

FFXIV Character Creation

8:29 PM A Realm Reborn , Character Creation , Final Fantasy XIV

Since I'm unable to create a character on a legacy server and play with my guild, i thought I'd spend most of my time going through the character creator. While the overall options are rather nice and seem plentiful at first glance, they rather lack where i believe it counts. That would of course be the hair style options. As someone who always hides my helmet option in game, this is the most important character creation option. Having less than 20 selections to chose from, when games like Aion have over 50, is a real bummer. Hell, some of the hair options are identical minus a different color hair accessory. How am i supposed to make my Han Solo without all the options to do so?! Despite those limitations, I'm rather pleased with the rest of the options.