My Week in Gaming: September 2-8, 2018

This week included Labor Day so I got a little bit of extra time to play around in the various gaming worlds and it was a good thing since I started up 2 new games – Everquest 2 and Warframe. Actually, I played Warframe for 15 seconds a couple of years ago and it wasn’t a bad game. At the time, I wasn’t in the mood for the gear-grinding shooter type game so it didn’t stick, but I enjoyed the tutorial and a mission or two. EQ2 on the other hand is completely new to me and so far it really reminds me of Everquest and the fact that while they were the first big MMO, SOE never really seemed to understand some of the basic concepts of what players wanted.

New Player Experience

It’s kinda funny that I started 2 games this week and both are nearly the opposite when it comes to the new player experience. EQ2 lets you set up your look – to a degree – and layout your class and race selection pretty well but then they seem to forget that you might be new to the game. They pretty much say ‘OK, you made your character now go play…” There’s no real direction – you can start in a number of places but they don’t really seem to give you much guidance as to which ones are for beginners. On the other side of the coin, the non-MMO, Warframe, walks the new player through a nice tutorial to teach them the basics of combat and movement, wall running and weapon swapping and sets you up for a straightforward quest line. In EQ2 I did a couple things on a boat and they left me off on an island to figure out what to do next.

Regardless, being a veteran of MMOs, I knew what to do once EQ2 stopped holding my hand, 2 minutes into the game. I quickly leveled up and ran through the first starting zone but when I had to take care of some real life stuff – lunch was calling me – I hit my ‘hearthstone’ and logged out. Hmm…I could have sworn I was on an island when I logged out but when I came back, the ‘hearthstone’ had taken me somewhere completely new – not very user friendly. After running around in Qeynos for a while without any idea how to turn in what I expected was my last quest from the Queen’s Colony quest line, I googled how to get back to the island from Qeynos.

After all these years, you’d expect SOE/Daybreak games to know how to setup starting zones to make them accessible to new players. Oh well, I enjoyed my time in Norrath this week and actually leveled up to 13 without any real trouble – the inconveniences aside.

In Warframe I guess I’m rank 4 in my Excalibur frame. I’m not really sure how all the different numbers and rankings equate to level but I’m just starting out. It shows I’ve played the game for 2 days, and a total of 1 hour, 26 minutes, and 49 seconds so that should give an indication of where I’m at in terms of level. I’m also not too sure about classes/frames and such so this is definitely a learning experience. The best thing is that I can just jump in and play. The tutorial explained everything about how to play to me except the different frames and how to get them and the ranking system. I’ll look that up as I go though. Regardless, the game is fun and seems similar to Destiny 2 which was actually a game I reached max level in so there is hope.

The Rest

As for the other games I’ve been playing, I’m still siting at level 40 in Secret World Legends. I played through a few missions and took down some wendigo but didn’t come close to leveling up. I think I’m pretty close to finishing off Blue Mountain since I’ve been almost everywhere on the map but I can still see I have to finish off a bunch of missions before I’m done here. Technically, I can finish up the Dawning of an Endless Night main mission at any time and move on, but I want to get all the quests taken care of to get the full experience of the zone.

In Warcraft I left off at level 16 with my Orc Hunter, Rosehips. She’s cruising along well and I moved on to the Northern Barrens and the Crossroads to keep things progressing. She hasn’t had any issues dealing with any of the mobs she’s faced and I traded in my initial Boar for a tough new Crocodile. I also sent my high level main Druid, Tomalani off to find some new heirloom gear to use. I figured it I’m gonna start from the beginning I might as well have all the XP boosting gear I can find.

In The Witcher 3, I made it past the initial battle with the Ghouls though it took a few more attempts than I would have liked. The combat in this game is pretty tough on the Death March difficulty and I might consider dialing it back a bit. For now, I made it past the battle and I’m gonna leave things as they are. There’s a lot of nuance in the combat system that I’m gonna have to get used to in this game if I’m gonna make it work long term. That’s my plan though.

In League of Legends I gave up again. I am too tired of dealing with toxic players and AFKs. I really don’t feel like I can get anywhere as a support main and I’m not interested in switching to something else at the moment. I’m sure I’ll come back at some point but for now, I am putting this game aside.

My Week in Gaming: September 2-8, 2018