Monday, September 17, 2012

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Days 16,17


Here's the real life story of my weekend:

1.  Car started breaking down.  I took it to the shop Saturday and they decided to keep it until Monday, not sure what's wrong with it.

2.  Did not drive up to Seattle for Writer's Night with my friends, as I had no car.  Instead went to dinner with an old friend and we saw Avengers again at the cheap theater.  Made me want to play City of Heroes, but it was really late when I got home.

3.  Sunday I was supposed to have dinner with my parents and sisters for my parent's 50th wedding anniversary, but it turned out to be an early brunch and they did not bother to call me until they were at the Space Needle in Seattle wondering where I was.  Still had no car.  Friend picked me up instead, we went to a Half Price Bookstore warehouse sale and ate dinner at Gordito's.  Got home late, had to get up early, did not play much.

4.  Monday -- dinner with parents after work.

Basically I didn't get a lot of time to play on the weekend.  Sunday I did manage to run the Ramiel alpha unlock arc, and in the evening I ran most of SSA 2.2 which I completed on Monday.

I've been pretty stoic about the closing of the game.  I always knew I wouldn't play it forever, in a way I'll be glad to find a way to break my addiction and try to get more writing done, and I leave behind few regrets -- I've done just about everything in the game, I've played just about everything, all ATs to 50, over 40 level 50s, most of them IO'd out to the gills with money-is-no-object builds.  I have over 1100 badges on Mouse Police even though I haven't done serious badging in a couple of years.  There wasn't much left for me to do in the game.

But what makes me sad are the things that were planned or on test that I'll never get to see live -- the cool costumes, the new AT sets and changes to game play, and the last parts of the second SSA arc.  Just running the first three parts of SSA 2 makes me sad, because I know I can't finish it or find out what cool stuff the had in mind.  That's just something that can't be changed.  Even if the game is miraculously saved, you probably won't see the same Paragon dev team that was there on August 31st, and whatever ending they might publish for Pandora's Box probably would wind up different than what they were planning.

But most likely you won't see it at all, and that makes me sad.  But I'm not one of those people who feel like NCSoft kicked my puppy and I'll never ever buy one of their games again.  All of the angry posts directed at NCSoft just seem silly.  They made a business decision to close a game that had a really good run, and before that decision they'd done very well for the game.  I may not like it, but I don't hate Paragon Studios so I certainly don't hate Arenanet.  I haven't bought GW2 but I may try it out, who knows.  (And I've already sworn to never buy anything from Sony and Electronic Arts, I can't write off every gaming company out there, and I believe have much better reasons for hating those two.  ^_^  )


Monday we did an Abandoned Sewer Trial.  That was cool, it doesn't get run that often and I hadn't been on one on probably a year or more.  The last several I've joined have been very easy -- these days, with overpowered characters and disciplined teammates it's actually quite easy, whereas it once seemed near impossible to complete.


I brought War Maid, and like I said in my post about the rikti raid, she's nearly invulnerable against lots of enemies.  I didn't have to hide from the hydra's psionic attacks, I ran out and slaughtered tentacles at will and went toe to toe with the tough monster-class baby kraken.  Much fun!


After that we ran one last Moonfire while it was still the WST.  I brought Cupcake Overdrive for this one and got her to 44, but I'm still ambivalent about getting her to 50, she does nothing that other level 50 characters don't already do for me.  But I had fun.

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