Book Review - On Basilisk Station

Last month I was browsing a Chapters store that was about to go out of business, I have not been reading much science fiction outside of the Star Wars series, and I took this as a chance to pickup a good book on sale to get into the genre. While wandering the aisle trying to pick a good book, a complete stranger came over and tried to help me make my choice. He was a fellow customer, but he was such a fan of the genre he enjoyed introducing people to good science fictions series. In my case he pointed me in the direction of On Basilisk Station by David Weber.

 The Review:

So first and foremost, one thing all science fiction stories have in common, is that they are filled with science. This means that the author spends a good chunk of time trying to download fictional scientific information which is probably very close to what we currently know into your head. In that way this book is true to its genre. The story takes place in a system far far away, approximately 512 light years from earth in the year 4003 CE (although the story uses a different Calendar). Humans have expanded far into space and have divided themselves into separate Space Nations around the systems they have colonized.

On Basilisk Station is the first book in a long running series that follows the exploits of one Honor Harrington a member of the Royal Manticoran Navy, which is a space navy build around the Star Nation of Manticore. Honor Harrington has just been awarded her first captaincy of a spaceship due to her excellence over the course of 25 years of military service. However life isn't fair, her first ship has its weapons gutted, the crew starts to hate her due to the resulting failures in the ship's military performance and she is sent off to watch over the backwater system of the galaxy. Little does anyone know, that backwater system is about to be the powder keg that starts a 13 book long war that spans several star systems and Billions of lives.

As I mentioned above, the story stays true to the science fiction genre in terms of how much you have to learn about the technology and the time period. The series places a lot of emphasis on the ship capabilities and ship to ship combat, as a result there is a lot to learn about how a space ship in this universe works and how it can come apart. In addition there is a brief glimpse into the government of the Star Nation of Manticore which while not as important for this novel, becomes a much more important focus of the following books in the series.

On Basilisk Station has several supporting characters introduced who reflect the varied workforce needed within a single ship to keep it running. Having read most of the series before returning to write this review, I can say that you have to try and remember these characters as they will keep coming back throughout the series. What is most irritating to me is that like the realities of war, people can die too easily and too suddenly, Weber does an amazing job surprising you when a supporting character you have spent a fair bit of time following through the story and cheering on suddenly dies. Weber is fairly detailed on how these characters die as they don't just vanish when the ship takes a hit, He describes how a piece of the ship usually breaks apart and smashes into them or some kind of power source overloads after too much stress.

This particular book has a good chunk of time devoted to mystery solving as Harrington and her crew try to solve a conspiracy that seems to be happening in the Solar System they are in charge of protecting. Unfortunately, Weber tells the story from multiple points of view including the Antagonists' as such for you the reader the mystery is spoiled, but it is still interesting to see the strands of clues that lead Harrington and her crew to putting together the puzzle.


Overall, I found On Basilisk Station to be a great book to get my feet wet in the world of Science Fiction. You get detailed space battles, conspiracies, and a realistic interpretation what it might be like in a future society with a space navy. I give this book a 9/10 as I couldn't find too many faults with the story outside of the fact that too much of the book was spent downloading information on how this fictional universe works. I highly recommend everyone tries it, even just borrowing it from the library for a one time read. 

Update - March 25, 2016

Hello to all who have visited my blog. As you may have noticed I have been away for quite a while. Last Summer I was able to get employed Full-Time. As a result I am now working 5 days a week and have had a lot less time than I expected for my hobbies, including this Blog.

Gaming:
I continue to play Guild Wars 2 albeit less time online than before, however it is still my favourite MMO. In previous posts I mentioned looking into Wildstar and EVE Online. I did try Wildstar for a few months, however I found the community and the lack of folks to play with while leveling to be very lacking. In a way Guild Wars 2 might have spoiled me with an expectation that people still play low-level maps for fun. EVE Online is fun especially because I'm a guy who likes playing with spreadsheets, but it is too PvP oriented for my tastes, as such I have stopped playing it as well. I have had quite a bit of time playing the new expansion for Guild Wars 2 and I will be putting up a post about my thoughts on what has been done, and where I hope the game goes.

Books:
No matter how busy I get at work, I always make time for reading. As such I have gone through quite a few different novel series and I intend to put up reviews in the coming month on the books I have read. I am slowly getting into the Science Fiction novel series which is quite exciting.


Thats all for the quick update on what is happening right now, please leave any comments if you have an suggestions for what you would like to see more of.

Heart of Thorns Impression.

LSo two weeks ago ArenaNet surprised the Guild Wars 2 community with an announcement that there would be an Expansion Pack coming out sometime soon. This Expansion Pack would continue the story from the current Living World story arc as well as adding a lot of new content to the game that has been in demand for a while. I'm going to talk about the pieces of revealed information that I liked and what I'm hoping for in the upcoming expansion. 

 Lets start with the story, the current story arc ended on a cliffhanger showing the Tyria's greatest united military the 'Pact' being destroyed during assault of the Maguuma Jungle where the Elder Dragon Mordremoth was hiding. Through the story instances I found out that the Sylvari were minions of an Elder Dragon, however Caithe a Sylvari disappeared with a promise to protect the only remaining legacy of the player friendly dragon Glint. When the expansion starts I think that the new chapter in the continuing story to involve me the player convincing the world that maybe some of the Sylvari are still friendly, or that there may be a way to save the Sylvari from the influence of the Elder Dragon. Between finding a way to save the Sylvari race, locating Caithe and Glint's Legacy that she stole as well as figuring out how to beat the Elder Dragon I expect there to be a lot of story content to rival a few chapters worth of the living world stories. Considering that I will be paying for a full expansion, I hope that this new expansion story is at least as long as the personal story that came with the release of the base game.

 In regards to the new maps and Player vs Environment (PVE) gameplay, with the lack of a standing army to fight the Elder Dragon, it suggests that players will probably be doing more of the activities that were previously assigned to NPCs in earlier content. The latest map released for Guild Wars 2 had a map where players were entrusted with securing and upgrading fortresses and escorting supplies to upgrade these fortresses to withstand enemy attacks. I expect that the new maps will build up on this style of gameplay with more content being dependent on player involvement in the various regions of the maps. Since the pact's airship invasion failed we will probably have to progress a long siege over land and through the jungle reminiscent of the straights of devastation invasion gameplay, to bring the heavy weapons of the world to bare against the might of Mordremoth.

The Expansion announcement also told us that there would be a new heavy armor profession the Revenant and a specialization for every profession in the game. This means that everyone will be busy learning the new abilities of the existing professions or learning the new one. So everyone will be returned to their 'newb' like state where they don't know for certain what works best for their chosen profession at launch. This is good, as currently there are 'efficient' builds which causes folks to all follow the exact same blueprint for creating their characters and I want there to be more opportunity for builds to move away from these Meta (cookie cutter) builds. As for the changes to each profession, as there have been no releases on what kind of adjustments are going to be coming for them, so I can't really say anything about them.

Lastly the new feature I am most happy about is the announcement of more Guild based activities including the ability to obtain a 'Guild Hall'. ArenaNet has clearly announced that they intend to put the 'Guild' back in Guild Wars 2, so I'm hoping for possibly dungeons or fights that require a high level of coordination but are still completable by small Guilds with around 10 people representing.

What I've been doing until now

So its been about 4 months since my last Blog Post. During this time I wandered around a bit between several books, games and tv shows, which is why I didn't have any specific topics to talk about.

However towards the end of October during some casual gameplay I came across a new Guild to join in Guild Wars 2 (GW2). After joining this guild my interest in the game sky rocketed and while I wanted to make a few posts about it, between school and my new dedication catching up on content in GW2 I had less time to spend on creating blog posts. Goes to show that a game is more enjoyable when you have good company to play it with.

Since I have now caught up on all the living story content and achievements, I'm going to be going back and talking about what I've experiences this past few months.

Visiting Dry Top

First thing I did when I got back into Guild Wars 2 was try and catch up on the Living World story. I missed a huge chunk of content from the season 1 of the living world including the destruction of Lion's Arch. I have to say seeing Lion's arch a ruin and all those memorials scattered around the map made me wonder as to whether Lion's Arch will ever be remade, most of the buildings in the city were made out of the hulls of boats that were washed on top of the cliffs. Now those boats are all wrecked and in pieces, while it might be possible to repair them I suspect that Lion's Arch will get an overhaul, all those boats will have to be removed and brand new structures will be made.

Then there is the living story season 2, I am extremely grateful and happy that ArenaNet has decided to make each chapter of the Living World Story in season 2 re-playable as long as you have the chapter unlocked. I went and spent a few gems to purchase the chapters I missed, and I must say it was well worth it. These last few chapters have had a lot more intricate stories to them and I feel that the new personal story style approach to telling the living world is a brilliant system. It also makes sense to do it this way since from lvl 1-80 we've had a 'personal story' that used the same system to get us into what is happening in the Tyria.

The two new maps 'Dry Top' and 'Silverwastes' are also amazingly well crafted, when I first got back into Guild Wars 2, I spent most of my time running about events in Dry Top. The way there is always something happening, layered areas that can only be reached by clever use of the Zephyrite crystals is a good way to keep folks active in the map.

Then there is the main reason I'm staying in Guild Wars 2, my Guild. My last guild was friendly and somewhat active, but I guess I didn't click so well with the way things worked in that guild. This guild however, its a challenge to not get involved in the Guild Chat no matter how strange things get. Recently we started making animal noises whenever things seemed quiet, yes it is strange but oddly fun. For our Guild events (missions, challenges, puzzles) for several weeks now we've struggled to try and complete things on our own, only to need the aid of other guild in completing our objectives. This weekend however we were able to get through the puzzle and the one challenge we kept failing all by ourselves, I felt very proud and ecstatic of the Guild upon achieving this. I think I've finally found the Guild that I've been looking for.

TL;DR - I'm back in Guild Wars 2 having joined a new Guild and I'm enjoying myself. I will be updating this blog, hopefully more regularly. I've already got a few topics to post about this week.


More things to come:
What I think of GW2 - Heart of Thorns
Book Review - Sword and Staff trilogy
Game Review - Space Engineers 

Review of Wildstar

So yes I'm not the best blogger out there, as I am unable to stick to a single game. I've tried Wildstar out for 4 months now and I've lost my interest in the game. So here is my review of what I liked and didn't like about the game.

I loved that there was a lot lore and text to read through in the quests, I'm a huge lore fan so it worked out in my favor.  The customization options were amazing, Housing especially was very fun to figure out how to create something completely new. Housing and Role-Play were probably my favourite parts of the game. The ability to customize the housing plot any way you wanted to, allowed for nearly endless scenario's for Roleplaying. I created 2 characters, a scientist and a settler as such I got a lot of lore and I got to create several structures in the world.

That said I found the settler path to become a chore after the first month as most players had power leveled to max in order to hit the end game content as such I ended up alone creating structures by myself which took a lot longer than I would have liked. I'm not a power leveler, in my opinion doing that kind of thing takes away from the wonders of the game. As such it took me a couple of months to reach max level, and even so I found the game to be very grindy.
 
In fact there was a grind in pretty much everything there was in the game, which made me wonder....why am I paying ~$15 a month to work instead of having fun ? The crafting was interesting but involved playing a mini-game where you had a chance of getting exactly what you want. Coming from Guild Wars 2 this seemed strange. In my opinion if you had the materials, and the necessary crafting level then you should be able to craft it, not play a RNG game to have a chance at creating it. I found this annoying and going through the levels I found I leveled my character faster than my crafting skill as I just couldn't bare to continue playing the mini game anymore.

As of October 2014 here is my verdict :

I am rating this game a 7/10 based on how much I enjoyed playing the game. In terms of graphics yes I will give them the full 10/10 because the world did look quite beautiful and at times a bit awe-inspiring. I had heard that Wildstar was being aimed at the more hardcore crowd of MMORPG players, it wasn't until I played it for a few months that I realized that I probably didn't count as a member of this hardcore crowd. If you are a hardcore MMORPG gamer I do recommend giving wildstar a try, if you are not such a player hold off... this game is extremely punishing in terms of how much time and effort you have to put in to get much out of it.

Touching Down on Planet Nexus

 

So Wildstar is officially out and I took my first steps on the planet Nexus, the main planet where the game takes place. I planned from the start to have a Granok - Warrior as my first and most likely main character when starting this game. 

So far I've gotten up to level 17 with my character and I'm loving it. As a settler I can build all sorts of upgrades to the environment that give myself, and anyone who visits my area in the short while after, stat boosts that make it easier for us to take on the PVE mobs. I love the challenges, but unfortunately as I'm playing with a 100 others who have been dying to try this game, there aren't much opportunities for me to get the kills/points I need to win them. That said they are definitely fun. 

One of the main selling points of the game for me was the Housing plot. As soon as I reached the capital the first thing I did was find the housing specialist and pick up my housing plot. I even put up a simple Granok house to start off. It seems to me that the whole housing mechanic will be a huge gold sink, but a very addictive one.

The only bad part about this game is that my graphics card ( Radeon 7690m XT) isn't quite compatible with the game as I'm getting all sorts of flickering effects on the screen. That said it isn't too bad and I'm able to play quite well on the lower settings. 


Basically this post is to let the world know that Wildstar is an awesome game, that I am currently in addicted to. I did join an RP server with RP in mind so my next post will be a profile of my character Kaladar Stonehaven and his endeavor to setup Stonehaven Construction Co. -Nexus Branch.

Book Review: The Thousand Names

So I was browsing my local library when I came across this gem of a book. To be honest, I had never even heard of the series or its author prior to reading it. Having read it though, I have come to like the series very much.

About: 

The Thousand Names is the first book in The Shadow Campaigns series, written by Django Wexler. This first book follows the story of two soldiers serving in a colonial garrison of the Vordanai Empire, as they attempt to retake the country of Khandar which has suddenly gone through a religious revolution. However as the campaign reaches its end, there are hints that the new colonel in charge of the army has ulterior motives for taking part in this war.

Plot:

The story takes place on the coast of a country with a great desert, where the soldiers of the colonial garrison of the Vordanai Empire, are trapped in the foreign land with natives who hate them. There are two main protagonists in the story. First is Senior Captain Marcus D'Ivoire, who was in charge of the entire colonial garrison up until the arrival of the mysterious colonel at the beginning of the story. Then there is Winter Ihernglass, a woman who is pretending to be a man in order to serve as a soldier at the garrison. A good majority of the story follows how they get their soldiers ready for war, and then the huge military battles they take part in. One of the more interesting points in this story is the detail Wexler puts into military strategies and knowledge of how one goes about fighting an enemy capable of using artillery

Overall:

This was a great story, and an excellent start to what may be a long series. The main characters have their stories clearly laid out, and by the end of the story you understand their motivations to continue their struggles into the next book in the series. I especially like how an event would start in the point of view of one of the protagonists and grow into a greater event in the view of another character. The explanation for the existence of magic and demons in the story is very complicated and I personally felt that there were a few holes in the explanation. Considering that it was only revealed towards the end of this book, and that the characters in the story seemed just as confused by the existence of magic as I was. It may be that the following book(s) will provide a greater explanation for magic.

This novel follows the stories of an army in an age where they are just discovering the use of guns, as such there is a lot of mature and graphic detail to various events battles and the end results of those battles. While I wouldn't recommend this book to a teenager, it wouldn't be out of place with most fantasy novels that are rated for young adults.

In the end, I highly recommend heading to your local library and finding this novel, it is a fresh and different type of story than most I've read. This is definitely one of 2013's hidden gems 

The trouble with subscriptions.

So the thing about signing up for MMOs that have subscriptions, is that eventually they run out. This week my subscription for EVE ended up running out and I had forgotten to refill my Paypal account. So now I've got to spend an entire week and a bit without playing EVE (Paypal takes 6-8 days for Canadians).

So with all this free time I thought I'd check out other titles in the market. First I tried going back to Guild Wars 2. Unfortunately the main reason I got out of Guild Wars 2 was the immense lag I had to put up with whenever going to maps that had all the activities I wanted to take part in. Even dropping to lowest graphical settings barely got me past 30 fps not including sections where there were mobs of players.

TERA Online: 

So I decided to go and try out TERA Online, which is a free to play MMORPG with a cash shop. I'd originally avoided trying TERA because of the huge download size (30 GBs) and the speed at which they switched from a subscription to cash shop suggested that there may be issues with the game. That said after finally finishing my download and trying out the game, I have to say. Its actually fairly good. Right now I'm playing at max graphical settings with speeds above 40 fps which is awesome considering I'm not running this on a gaming rig. The graphics themselves are awesome, while Tera has a slightly more cartoony feel than Guild Wars 2 the level of detail and flair of the graphical designs have me enchanted. After playing around with the character creation for a bit, I settled on an Aman Lancer as my first main character.

My Aman Lancer: Rhelgha

Tera is an action combat mmorpg that adds an extra layer to combat in the form of having to aim all your skills. Even the Lancer, a close range tank class, has to aim his strikes in order to hit. After flipping through a few of the classes I stuck with the Lancer due to the fact that the lancer's defense revolved around using a skill to 'block' the incoming attacks. By default this block skill is bound to my right click button and it makes for an interesting combat style. I use my lance with my left click or other skills to damage the target, and whenever it looks like its about to attack. I have to use the right click and make sure that my shield is pointing at the source of the incoming attack. At first because the level 2 monsters do very little damage this seems like a non-important skill, but after getting to level 20. I'm totally in love with this combat mechanic.

The Arakia, an early game World Boss (lvl 20).

I've also started doing some Armor-Smithing since my character belongs to class that uses heavy armor. Right now I'm farming a boss monster called the Arakia for materials to create a full set of enchanted heavy armor for my first attempt at a dungeon in TERA Online.  Farming in TERA seems to be a slight bit better than in Guild Wars 2 as you get something every time you kill a monster, and so far the drop rate for rare items from this world boss has been pretty high. Where as with Guild Wars 2, I ended up killing the claw of Jormag probably a hundred time to get a very low drop rate of rare materials. I'm aware that now that rate has been increased, but the practicality of having to fight through an intense lag fest to get the drop is very off-putting.

So all in all, even though my subscription ran out. I have now experienced TERA Online and I think I'll end up spending a bit more time on this game. Since it is a free to play MMORPG this is going to workout as a good breather/ change of pace from my usual gameplay in EVE.

A small farm I've been operating out of, to collect materials for Armorsmithing.

(despite the watermark these are all screenshots taken in game by players, 2 of them by me and 1, I got off the web, because I wasn't ready to get a world boss angry and then pause long enough to take the shot).

Its cold out there.

So for the last few weeks I've been raking in the cash as an Ice Miner in EVE Online. I've even gone and made the most efficient fit possible for a standard Mining Barge.That said Ice Mining tends to be quite boring. Most times all I do is warp to an ice belt, set my ship up to mine and walk away from my PC for about 15 minutes. That said there were a few close calls, where folks have tried to gank me while I wasn't paying attention. That said it was well worth it, right now I'm making 19 million ISK per hour every four hours when I'm on. I've gone and tripled my savings from my first month of gameplay, which seems like a small jump, except I've also been spending like crazy on new ships, equipment and skills.

Now I have more time and money to focus on getting my manufacturing business up and running. I've started producing ammunition and drones, both of which are things that many people use up quite quickly. Lately though my corporation (Guild) has been trying to get me to take part in more PVE/PVP activities. In fact for this weekend we are getting ourselves set up for a free for all tournament using tier 1 frigate class ships. During the last tournament, in the very first round I had the misfortune of being set up against the person who ended up winning the entire tourney. This time around I'm hoping to be ready for all eventualities and make it to the top 3 at the very least.

In addition to all this, my corporation wants me to start working on getting ready for incursions. For those who aren't aware, Incursions are EVE's version of raids. I'm currently working on getting a battleship ready for Incursions, but it seems like I'll need a lot of time to get my skills up to par for this challenge. Right now I'm thinking of creating a close ranged DPS with a passive tanking ability.

Edit: I've also updated my 'about me' page for those of you who would like to know who I am. 

Here come the Big Drills

So as I mentioned previously, in my attempt to fill the gap until the release of Wildstar, I have started trying out other MMOs. EVE Online being the latest attempt. So far I'm loving how the game is set up so that in order to make any real money you have to get into some kind of 'Career' in my case I decided to start in the Mining Career and slowly make my way into Manufacturing. 

I may have gotten a little carried away with my mining career. Just this past week I started work on an Excel sheet to figure out efficient ship/skill setups as well as which ores would make me the most money. The end result was this:    Mining Chart.

It seems safe to say I've gotten a bit hooked on the game. However my recent attempts to get into gas mining in Wormholes along with my corp-mates have met a bit of a roadblock. I've heard stories of pirates in EVE Online but this was the first time I've actually met them. They are a full corporation of players hooked on PVP and equipped with some serious firepower holding my Corporation(Guild) captive inside our own Player Owned Station, in a relatively unpopulated Wormhole.

Once more I find further confirmation that I am more of a PVEer than a PVPer in the way that I prefer to stay out of such engagements. I honestly don't get the appeal of sitting on an exit for 4+ hours, just to attack the guy(s) who try and make a break for it. It is a very slow way to make money, yes there is a small chance of a exciting battle. But more likely than not, it will be just a one-sided fight with the other team just being wiped out because they weren't ready for you.

Book Review : The Lies of Locke Lamora

(Book One of the Gentlemen Bandits Series )

So as I mentioned in my christmas update I'm adding a new section to my usual posts that covers books I've read and like or feel the need to comment on. As the title suggests the first book I will write about is 'The Lies of Locke Lamora' the first book in the Gentlemen Bandits series by Scott Lynch.

About:

For those who aren't aware the Gentlemen Bandits series by Scott Lynch, is part of the fantasy-thievery genre. It follows the exploits of a thief named Locke Lamora who uses cunning and trickery as the tools of his trade. The story takes place is a fantasy world where magic does exist, yet none of the protagonists are what passes for this story's version of a Mage. So don't expect many complicated magic battle scenes, it will mainly be sword vs sword type of battle, or in the case of the thieves an escape from such battles. The protagonists of the story are a small gang of thieves called the 'Gentlemen Bandits'. while most other thieves consider them to be small time crooks, their misdeeds however have the rest of the world in fear of their identity as the 'Thorn of Camorr'.

Story:
The story is a very witty one, it is told through multiple points of view. At first most of the points of view are by the Gentlemen Bandits, but overtime you get to see the points of view of their victims and main enemies. Throughout this book you see several flashbacks to the life of Locke Lamora as a child and his entrance into the world of thievery. While at first I considered skipping out on the flashbacks (I've never been a fan of flashbacks), they play a central role in explaining the motivations of the main characters. Personally I loved all the characters even the victims of their crimes, they were all fully developed and had several interesting quirks.

Overall: 
This is an excellent book, it starts off strong and gets you into the action fairly early on. If you are fans of films like Ocean's Eleven, then this is for you. Expect several plot twists and even if you get to the part where you know the plan, the ending will still elude you. The author has a very descriptive style that paints a clear image of the city of Camorr, and the characters. There is a lot of clever humor hidden throughout the story, if you pay attention it really makes you grin to yourself. I highly recommend this book to any fan of fantasy or adventure novels.

Merry Christmas All (Status Update)

This past week and the coming few days I have been taking off gaming due to family and Christmas related events in real life. However I do plan on having several posts ready to go for the new year. At which time I hope to have this blog running at full speed. 

Status Update:

• So I've decided to take a break from Guild Wars 2 due to my getting a bit bored with the content. I may return to playing after a while, so sorry to those who visited this site for my Guild Wars 2 updates.

• EVE Online is currently my main MMORPG. Until now I've been building up my starter character and familiarizing myself with the game. I've gone and joined a Corp and got myself a good money making mining set up. As this post goes up, I have finished learning a number of basic combat skills that will let me move on to more pvp/pve scenarios including Incursions. I've also started getting an Exploration ship set up, to start commenting on my adventures exploring space anomalies and wormholes.

• As for Wildstar, I will soon be putting up my takes on each of the classes as well as a few ideas on what I may roll on release.

• New topic: Novels. I am an avid reader of novels. I have read several amazing series and I will be putting up some reviews on what I have read.

I wish everyone the best of the season, and I am looking forwards to making this blog a bit more active.

Suiting Up

One of the most anticipated MMORPGs of 2014 is Wildstar. It was originally scheduled to come out at the end of 2013, but the developers (Carbine Studios) pushed it back for a spring 2014 release. At first I was saddened by this news. But during the last 6 weeks Carbine has been releasing new Class reveals showing off the various mechanics and how unique each of the Wildstar classes are. After checking out all the re-reveals and new releases all I can says is:

IT IS AWESOME. Not only did Carbine release new class pages with more details and lore about each class, but they also included a youtube trailer for each class, an Ask me Anything reddit thread for each class and a livestream where they showed the effectiveness of each class in PVE, Dungeons and PVP. 

Originally I planned on rolling out with a Warrior at release but now I'm torn between a somewhat familiar Warrior class and the newly revealed Engineer class. The Wildstar version of the Warrior uses a Greatsword

and an Arm-Cannon that doubles as a swiss army knife. While the Engineer is loaded with Tech all the way from its awesome looking Blaster to the Exo-Suit in the screenshot below.

Suffice to say I'm totally psyched for the game to be released. So for those of you who don't know what Wildstar is. Please check out: What is Wildstar to figure out why I'm so excited for it.

Launching into Space

While waiting on the release of Wildstar I decided to try out another Sci-Fi MMO. EVE online is an MMO based in space with complete freedom as to how you want to play.

For my first and at moment 'main' character, I decided to create a Gallente character. My goal with this character is to explore most of the EVE universe to get a better understanding of the game. For the moment I have been focusing on PVE and industrial careers. I started out with a Venture Frigate and now I`m using a Mining Barge to rake in the ISK at a rate of 7 million ISK per hour.

Even though I have been focusing on the Mining and Industrialist Careers, I have attempted the Exploration and PVE combat. Both of which have been very impressive for a ship based MMORPG. EVE online has all the combat roles one would expect in an RPG, the Tank, the DPS and Healer are all here in the form of ships. 

Overall the game is amazing and with a 14day free Trial, I highly recommend at least trying it out just to see if it fits in with your style of gaming. 

If you want to try out this game click here to get the trial and see if it is your fit.

New Games I will be talking about.

From now on I will be making updates about games I'm playing in addition to Guild Wars 2. Some of these are games I'm already playing others are ones I'm psyched for and can't wait to start playing.

First up:  Terraria

This is a 2D Sandbox game that can be played in both single person and online with other players. Right now I've been playing it by myself and I've been having a blast. The premise for Terraria is that you are in a randomly generated world of Terraria and your goal is to collect materials to craft weapons, armor and structures that not only allow you to survive but eventually fully rule over the game world. Pretty much everything you see in the game is destructible under the right conditions so it is fun to see people change entire landscapes as they create immense structures.

Secondly: Saints Row Third
I actually bought this game a while back and I've been playing it during my spare time as a type of stress relief. And I'll say this it is an awesome game. It is definitely an R rated game, but even so it is immensely fun. Customizable vehicles, tons of guns, gangs you control, and general mayhem you can wreck on the game world.


Lastly there is WILDSTAR

Now this is a game I am seriously psyched for. This is an upcoming Sci-Fi MMORPG being developed by Carbine studios. The premise is in a galaxy at war, a planet that was once home to an all powerful alien race who suddenly disappeared is suddenly rediscovered. And now every single race and faction is rushing to this planet to try and exploit the resources and secrets of the planet for their cause. In my opinion this is the game that will beat the great dragon we call WoW.

Look forwards to plenty of updates and screens of my gameplay in the coming weeks.

Status Update

Unfortunately I have started to find games other than Guild Wars 2 that I have become much more interested in. So I've decided to change this from an exclusively Guild Wars 2 Blog into a blog about my gaming interests in general.

To those who've visited and are disappointed. I'm sorry but this is what feels right to me. To newcomers welcome, I hope you will find my new series to be much more interesting.

Futhur updates are on the way

Guild Wars 2 Characters

Alrun Gunnarson - Main Character
Norn Warrior lvl 80 - DPS/Buff
Description: Greatsword as main weapon with sword and warhorn as the secondary gear. As my main Alrun is usually the character I use for living story events and most dungeon runs. He is quite recently also gained a Commander's Tag.






Relga Thorwalds
Norn Guardian lvl 80 - Tank/Support Build
Description: Equipped with a Greatsword and Staff Relga is my main Dungeon runner. Using an Altruistic Healing build she drops tons of buffs and can tank quite well.


Zaaik
Asura Elementalist lvl 80
Build: - All around Elementalist
Description: I'm constantly changing Zaaiks weapon set. In PVE I switch between scepter/focus or dagger/dagger while in WvW I mainly use the Staff. However Zaaik is constantly using Conjured weapons as his utility so he is more of a weapon master type Elementalist.

Talia Shadowseeker
Human Thief lvl 78- Condition DPS build
 Description - Currently an exclusive PVE character that I made for fun. I love how mobile the thief is. I have yet to find a fixed combat setup for her.

Heavyscythe
Sylvari Necromancer lvl80
Description: I've got to be in the game somewhere right ? I'm making him into a staff/ Deathshroud necromancer who spends a lot of time in Deathshroud or using the staff. It is still early and I'm still learning the intricacies of the Necromancer.

Edgewene Sunray
Sylvari Mesmer lvl 35
Description: Named her after a character from the Wheel of Time series who was killed off way to early (sorry for the spoiler).  I created her because I wanted to have a WvW exclusive character. I'm still leveling her and figuring out the various mechanics of the Mesmer... turns out they are just as complicated to play as they are to face against in combat.

Status Update: Tequatl Rising

So the latest living story update is the Tequatl's Rising. All the major World Bosses across Tyria have gained upgrades to their combat mechanics, timers for a victory to be achieved and enhanced loot drops to compensate for the increased difficulty.

As of this posting I have tried the Event three times and have failed each time. For the moment I am going to focus on travelling across Tyria and collecting the various 'clues' so that I can obtain the living story achievements. 6000 Achievement points here I come.

I have been on vacation since my august posting and it turns out most of my Guild has also gone on vacation or taken a break from the game in this time span. I hope to now rally my guild and get some guild events going again.


I'm still trying out the new WvW update which created a new mechanic in the Mist Wars called 'bloodlust' with a whole new set of capture points that my server has to compete over. Thanks to all this, WvW has become a lot more active and of course more laggy. For those of us who had to put up with about 5 fps in Keep battles this extends the region in which we have to deal with low frame rates to include the former lake regions now.

 

Alrun Gunnarson

This is my main character in Guild Wars 2 as well as my main Roleplay character. As my main you will find me running most of the living story and WvW content with Alrun over all my other characters. I play on the Tarnished Coast Server as part of Clan Wolfmane.

Currently I am running a Beserker Build with Alrun focusing on mobility and continuous DPS at all times.  One of the key parts of this build is that I can keep up a near continuous switfness and might so that I can chase down my foes, especially in WvW and bring them down fairly quickly.
Beserker Build.
 
Alrun's professions are Cooking and Armorsmithing. Cooking being his forte.

Roleplay:
Alrun is a Norn Warrior serving in the Vigil. After being attacked by some strange Charr during a Moot, Alrun has realized he needs companions who have his back and can help him out when he is in a pinch. Thus he joined Clan Wolfmane and works as a Warlord in charge of adventuring and hunting down powerful foes.

Sorry for being away for so long.

Hello all who've been visiting my blog.

I apologize for the long hiatus my blog has taken, but now I am back again. I will f- ocus on putting up blog posts about all the things I see in Guild Wars 2 and activities I'm taking part in. I will try to have one post a week minimum from now on.

That said here is a quick update on whats happened so far:
- I now have a total of 7 characters on my accounts 1 in each class except for the Ranger.
- I've increased my bank tab so i now have 4 tabs for storing goods in my personal bank.
- My guild has done some restructuring with me moving up in the leadership chain.
- I'm aiming for 2 builds on my main character a 'Magic-Find' set for general PVE content. And a 'Tank' set for WvW.