Random thoughts on what I’ve been playing lately:

World of Warcraft
My Warrior is now level 43 and I’ve run into “the wall”, much like my previous characters. It’s typically around this level where my motivation to play begins to dip. There’s not much driving me forward at this point, especially with Cataclysm looming on the horizon. With my other characters it was around level 50 that my interest began picking up again, as I like the zones relevant to that level, plus knowing that I’d be just 8 levels away from Outland acts as a motivating factor as well. I’ll continue to play, it’d be nice to have a third character hit the level cap, but my pace will be slowing down for the foreseeable future. (Oh yeah, my second child is due to arrive within a month as well, so that may put a bit of a damper on any time I have to dedicate to gaming).

EverQuest II Extended
I have actually been reminiscing a bit about EQII for the past while, thinking it might be neat to subscribe again for a month just to check things out, and then lo and behold, the free to play version gets released.  Perfect!  Of course, I don’t have access to my previous characters but that’s fine, as I really just want to pop into the world to check it out.

I created an Inquisitor, a class I have never played before, and started in Halas, a zone I’d never seen before.  After an hour or two, I’m level 8 and the nostalgia factor has certainly kicked in, but like I say every time I return to EQII, the world graphics are just a wee bit too ugly for me to really enjoy the game.  It’s amazing to me how aged the game looks.  I used to be wowed by these graphics, but now they’re just kind of… meh.  With my new gaming rig I can even play at “Extreme Quality” too, and the graphics just don’t do it for me.  But hey, the game is ‘free’, so I’ll kick the tires a little longer.   I can see though, just how limited the free client is.  Two bag slots?  I was always running into space issues back when I had access to all my inventory slots.

StarCraft II
I’m still plodding along the single-player campaign; I believe I have about seven missions to go until the final one.   I’m still really enjoying the campaign and I’m having a lot of fun.  I did pop into a 1v1 multi-player match against a friend and was destroyed in less than three minutes.  I’ll definitely be sticking to the single-player in this game… I’ve never been good against human opponents in RTS games.

Those three games are the ones that I’m ‘actively’ playing lately.  I recently purchased a couple games off of Xbox Live that I have yet to get to.  I got Catan, Limbo, and Lara Croft: Guardian of Light.  I have actually played a few games of Catan, and it is what it is… a nice version of the board game.  The other two I’ve downloaded but have yet to play.  I plan on checking them out tonight.

Still looming on the horizon… Dragon Age: Origins (I promise I’ll get to you one day soon!), Torchlight (gotta get my $5 worth!), Left 4 Dead 2 (No idea why I bought you), and Dead Space (great game, just needed a break from it).

My daughter is away this week, visiting her grandparents at their cabin on the lake, and my wife will be away in Vancouver for a few days for work.  That means I’ll be home by myself, with just my dog to take care of, which subsequently means I’ll be free to play whatever games I want, and be as irresponsible with my time as I choose to be.  Of course I miss my wife and daughter, that goes without saying, but still… guilt-free gaming baby!

I’ll be spending some quality time with StarCraft II tonight, no doubt.  I played the first three missions of the campaign last night and I like it so far.  I’ll hopefully have some more impressions of it at a later date.

What I really meant to post about was the news that EverQuest II was going to introduce a free-to-play server.  You can read all the details at the official site, here: http://everquest2.com/news/read/current/3630.

I’ve said it many times before, that I loved EverQuest II back when I played it, and hopefully this move does something to introduce the game to new players.  It used to drive me nuts to hear people put the game down without having tried it.  I’ll definitely be trying it out again myself.  It’s too bad I won’t have access to my existing characters, but they’ve been dormant long enough that I probably wouldn’t know how to play them anyway.

My only concern is that this move may prove to be too little too late.   The last time I was in EQII (free period just before the release of Sentinel’s Fate) it really showed its age and it couldn’t hook me in.  I can’t see anything having changed since then.  It’ll be nice to have the option of poking my head in now and then though.

I’m actually a little surprised that EQII was the game that SOE decided to try the free-to-play model on (aside from Free Realms of course).  I was hoping Vanguard would be the first to go that route.  I would love to play that game some more, I just can’t justify paying for it.

It’s been a month, an entire flippin’ month since my last post.  What the crap?  Seriously, where does the time go?  It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to learn that I got bonked on the head somewhere in mid-October and have just now woken up from a concussion-induced sleep, because October came and went as if it never existed at all.

Isn’t it always the way that when you go ahead and post a blog entry re-affirming that your blog isn’t dead that you follow that up with a month long absence?  Craziness.  Truth is, there hasn’t been a whole lot for me to talk about lately.  It appears, unfortunately, that I’m not the only one to think so either.  A quick run through my blog list reveals that a few other gaming bloggers have taken indefinite breaks or have shut down outright.  The gaming world just doesn’t seem as exciting any more.

PC Gaming has definitely changed, there’s no denying it.  The PC section in the EB Games across the street from my office has been reduced to less shelf space than that dedicated to used Xbox games.  I’m talking original Xbox here.  I can remember a time many years ago when I could stroll through four or five entire aisles filled to the brim with PC games at Future Shop.  Now, they have barely one aisle, most of which is occupied by World of Warcraft boxes and various budget titles.  What is this world coming to?

Fortunately, while perusing that one aisle at Future Shop, I stumbled upon a collector’s edition of Dragon Age: Origins which I picked up.  I was planning on holding off on buying the game to give myself some time to finish some others, like Fallout 3, but I decided not to pass up the opportunity to grab the collector’s edition, what with its cloth map and all.  I’ve gone so far as to install it on my aging PC to see if it ran, which it did, but I’d still like to delay playing it for when I get a new rig, sometime in the mid-distant future.

I’m interested in trying out Torchlight as well, given the great reviews I’ve read, but the more I thought about it, the more it sounded like the game Fate which I had started playing not so long ago.  That makes sense of course, given it’s done by some of the same developers, so I’ve loaded that up again and have been enjoying it periodically.

I’ve also taken on a renewed interest in Fallout 3 after a few weeks off to play NHL 10.  I have a feeling I’m approaching the end of the game, so I’ll try and get that finished up as soon as possible.  It’s still a great game, very enjoyable, but I’m about ready to leave the desolate waste lands for some greener environments.  I’m thinking of heading back to Oblivion to play through the Shivering Isles which I have yet to do, just so I can cross that game completely off my play list.

I received an email from the EverQuest II team, outlining all the lovely bonuses I could get for pre-ordering the upcoming expansion.  I checked out the trailer for Sentinel’s Fate and I’m sorry, but I have to say, as much as I loved EverQuest II, they’ve never been able to make a compelling trailer to save their lives.  The beholder-like monster looks pretty cool, but other than that, there’s nothing in there that makes me desperately want to play the game.  That said however, I am toying with the idea of checking it out in February.  It still eats away at me that I stopped playing with my Mystic sitting just six measly levels away from 80.  Of course, now I’d have to get him to 90, but, you know… whatever.

There’s a whole lot of post regurgitation for you, a rambling, incoherent post if I’ve ever seen one.  Cut me some slack though, I’ve been out of it for a month.  Don’t worry though, I’m not dead.