With the DarkFall trial of my two friends coming to an end this Thursday, we set out last night to work on their archery in preparation for a PvP trip tonight. While DarkFall does not limit what a new character can do like many other MMOs, that does not mean you want to run out and go PvP without at least some focus. Being that time was limited, I figured archery would be the quickest, safest, and most effective skill for them to raise.
In just one night I believe they gained close to 20 points and are close to 50 total, which is amusing considering my EU character ended his career at just under 50 archery (though in all fairness I did not focus on that skill, but still, he had a good many months of play time under him and did shoot arrows now and then). While 50 archery and 22 dexterity won’t scare any veteran players anytime soon, in a group it will allow them to add some damage to a fight. The other bonus is that unlike magic or melee, archery does not draw much attention, and so hopefully in the confusion of combat they will be able to sit back and plink away. 202hp and lesser armor (to avoid the archery encumbrance penalty) does not make for a tough character to bring down, so keeping them out of harms way is likely our best bet. Hopefully I have something good to report on that front tomorrow.
In unrelated gaming news, the iPhone app store recently saw the release of the PSP versions of Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II. I grabbed FF1 and so far I’m having a good time with it. It’s very, very oldschool, meaning its light on story and heavy on combat, as at times it seems you get attacked every second step. The graphics are very nice for an iPhone game, and the music is also classic FF. Some of the sound effects are a bit much, and the control scheme takes some time to adjust to, but neither is reason to not play. I’m only about two hours into it right now, so we will see how long it holds my attention going forward.
In completely unrelated news, Aria and I are watching Lost season 5 on DVD now. We originally got into Lost through Netflix just before season 5 come out on TV, and were all caught up and excited to watch the episodes premier on TV. After about 3-4 weeks, we stopped watching the weekly TV broadcast. At the time I thought it was because season 5 was just not as good as the previous seasons, but watching it now on DVD it’s very enjoyable. Odd how that works. Hopefully season 6 is released to DVD shortly after its conclusion.
Hardcore Casual 
With LOST me and wifey had the same thing happen, but at Season 3. The thing was though with each week, we could posit, theorize, and discuss the mysteries of the island ™. With Season 5, there was a lot less mysteries… anyway glad to have another LOSTie MMO blogger. :)
Funny. I went the opposite direction. I watched the original premier and turned it off about the point where there was a ‘monster’ shaking some trees.
It went on to have fantastic success the first two years, so I decided to give it another try and picked up the DVD sets of the first two seasons. Watched them both over like 2 weeks and absolutely fell in love with the show.
The very first episode of Lost is, IMO, terrible. I get that they set up a ton of stuff for later and all that, but as a method of getting people into the show, its bad.
I think the reason DVD works for us is because each actual episode is rather slow, but if you watch 2-3 in a row the story actually progresses. Plus being able to watch 2-3 more episodes the next day or so helps with all the buildup and momentum.
Absolutely. I just got done watching all 4.5 seasons of Battlestar on DVD. It was great.
I find it’s much easier to watch 24 that way, also. We have taken to saving up 2 or 3 on DVR at a time to watch rather than just one at a time. Some episodes are more about plot progression than action, but you can count on finding a fair bit of both in the span of three shows.
There’s a lot to be said for not having to watch commercials, too.
Re TV:
I’m a huge fan of watching episodes in bunches. I hate watching them on regular TV – too short, too hard to follow storylines over multiple episodes, particularly when you miss half the episodes because you’ve got a life =/
So, I just download them later and watch them in groups. Works extremely well, never miss an episode, and get to watch as many as you want at a time.
iPhone FF:
I got both, though I haven’t tried 2 yet. I’ve found the controls to be pretty decent for an iphone game. As a rule of thumb, while I absolutely love my iPhone, I can’t stand gaming on it specifically because of control issues. God, I can’t wait for the ControlPad to be released, so I can use a proper controller with Zod’s NES and SNES emulators on it! Accelerometer gaming doesn’t appeal to me at all – particularly when you have to move the screen as well! I’m not even interested in Wii games, but when you’re yanking the screen around as well, it’s just terrible. And for most games, touchscreens are crappy too as you obstruct view whenever you’re touching the screen.
All that said, because the iPhone FF games are effectively turn based, and the controls are well designed and unobtrusive, it’s never an issue. Once you get used to them (and it doesn’t take long) it’s a really fun little game. Not exactly a deep game, but it reaches in and plucks my nostalgia-gaming strings in a big way :)
I’ve got about 5.5 hours clocked into FF1 on my iTouch. Now I’m out exploring the open seas!