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y quests found in a few hubs in the last few zones that were added that more importantly scale to your level the idea is to do all of the missions you have access to but not turn them in as you go then pop an xp booster scroll and turn them all in at once one of the boxes from some of the weekly meta gives a 100 scroll so they shouldn t be in short supply since missions are always on level it s better than regular quests which can have reduced rewards as you outlevel them plus since you can save them all up you can be sure to turn them all in while under the double xp buff once that s done to use the rest of the xp booster time wisely i either run a few skirmishes or log out until tomorrow s missions trying to start with the most combat intensive ones first to boost my xp from those enemies so there you have it lotro power leveling it s a thing i m doing even though i don t generally recommend it but only because i am vain and wanted a character who looks pretty but also cheap and i don t want to pay for a pricey race and name change november 13 2023 beaming back to star trek online after an extended leave space the final frontier these are the voyages of the starship jeraddo its oh you know the rest i ve been in a bit of a rut when it comes to gaming i play guild wars 2 a lot dabble in the elder scrolls online and play some single player games on the side largely tears of the kingdom lately having a kid has made me prioritize known quantities in my gaming time i hate feeling like i wasted my precious gaming time on an experience that wasn t as fun as i had hoped so i would rather play something comfortable but sometimes i want something different eso s action combat is fun but not really relaxing and its story focus means you kind of have to devote your full attention to it with your sound on or you are missing half the game gw2 s hybrid actiony tab target combat is my all time favorite but sometimes i want something a little more chill plus to be honest i m a little concerned for its future so my motivation to log in has waned a little at least until the expansion drops i won t bore you with the list of mmos i tried and bounced off of new games old games revisiting favorites and dipping into games i have little to no history with but i finally landed on star trek online i was there when this game launched cryptic jank and all and for a while i was in the habit of coming back every year or two but it has been quite a while since i played it seriously star trek strange new worlds continues to be surprisingly good the show they should have made instead of discovery handling heavy topics like the horrors of war and ptsd in under the cloak of war but balancing it with goofy lighthearted episodes like those old scientists and subspace rhapsody and somehow making it feel cohesive with well written characters even if those three episodes in a row did give me a bit of tonal whiplash i m not ready for the season to be almost over trek has been on my mind lately and sto has a nice mix of well voiced story content and mindless repeatable patrol missions not to mention duty officer missions that let me get xp and other regards while i m offline plus it s a game i m already comfortable in exactly what i was looking for my project last time i played was a new tactical captain an aenar before strange new worlds made it cool and i tried picking up where i left off with her i even used a free t6 ship coupon i had lying around to pick up the lexington class for her which is a variant of the recently canonized odyssey class the class of the enterprise f which appeared in star trek picard for about 30 seconds before biting the space dust that can load dual canons and includes a hangar gotta love space pets unfortunately there s something about the tactical class that i just don t enjoy so while i got a little farther with her this time ultimately i ended up rolling a new science captain instead sure i have a level 40 something sci captain just sitting there but i m not feeling his look theme anymore it s been so long that i either don t remember or haven t played most of the game s existing story so a fresh start was welcome anyway i remembered that i also had the t6 titan class sitting around it s one of my favorite ship designs i even bought a little model of it which is currently sitting in my office so i nabbed it when it first came out originally for the aforementioned tac captain then after flying it for a bit i realized that while it has the cool ability to flip between a tac ship and a sci ship at the push of a button it s much better at being a sci ship and while changing ship types mid combat sounds cool it s not very useful in practice given that you can t actually swap your gear or build or officers on the fly but hey it s perfect for my new sci captain i miss having hangar pets but there s nothing stopping me from flying the lexington later on with this new captain if i feel like it when i played a lot back in the day between launch and the delta rising expansion i was a broadside beam boat player with heavy slow tanky engineering ships captains that use phaser arrays on the front and back turn the ship parallel to its target is in the overlap area of both the front and back weapons and burn down enemies slowly but can basically never die this time around i am trying the opposite approach i m throwing everything forward with a bunch of torpedoes and one set of dual cannons on the front and all 360 degree turrets on the back i was afraid that this wouldn t work as well with the middle of the road maneuverability of science ships as it does with the more nimble tactical ones but it suits me just fine i have my bridge officers loaded up with as many aoe exotic space magic abilities as i can and it s a lot of fun understanding of optimal character builds in this game has always eluded me but the setup i have is fun and it gets me by which is the important thing august 4 2023 what is it with lotro and alts the grass is always greener in the shire the other day syp over at bio break wrote a blog post about what he s calling s o s or start over syndrome i like this term a lot better than altaholism which seemed funnier before i knew people who struggled with actual alcoholism can we as an mmo subculture switch to this term thanks anyway it s funny because i ve been feeling the same urge in the same game lately i feel guilty that my highest level character is currently outleveling mirkwood and yet i m also mixing in leveling old content on my 50ish burglar and 25ish guardian this made me think what is it about this game that drives me and syp too apparently to make so many alts of all the mmos i ve sunk a lot of time into this is probably the one with the most content i haven t seen the slowest progression and the most linear story path though that s changing a little logically i am actively disincentivized to make alts in this game i can t speak for my esteemed colleague but i think for me the above arguments against alting are some of what pushes me to make alts i know that there is a ton of story content in this game and i want to experience it with a character i really like i know it s going to take me years to get a character to endgame at the pace at which i move through this game even if i focus on just one so i want to be sure it s the class that fits me best and i know that once i do it once any subsequent characters are just going to be experiencing the exact same content with no real agency to make different choices like syp i m also in a bit of a holding pattern till the new class race combos drop at first i was pumped to play a hobbit lore master but then i took my old lm from anor for a spin did i really level him to 40 and remembered how bad i am at playing that class i died several times in a very short period of time i m sure it ll come back to me better if i level a character from scratch instead of picking up one i haven t played in years but it was discouraging then i remembered that dwarves are also getting access to captain i was a cappy main on gladden for quite a while until i made the mistake of boosting her to mordor and between the awkward way this game does boosts and the slog that is mordor i never played her again then i played a lot of cappy on shadowfax before deciding that legendary servers just aren t for me so i think it s high time to start a new one on gladden i ve always like lotr dwarves especially after playing through moria for whatever reason i haven t made more than a couple of them maybe because a lot of their cosmetic options both longbeards and stout axes are unappealing to me not that there aren t any options i like it s just that many of my dwarves end up looking same y why is it that sometimes my favorite pastimes which are supposed to be relaxing end up giving me anxiety is that just me or is this a thing i can t tell you how many times i ve logged into an mmo only to stare at the character selection screen for a while not be able to decide who to play then logged out and yet sometimes when i decide to buckle down and ignore the possibility of playing any other characters i get burnt out even faster i don t have an answer to this conundrum i just know that s o s is real september 19 2022 the gameboy color had the best 2d zelda games i ve been on a zelda binge lately i suppose it s because of the chatter around the ocarina of time pc port that s been getting some good buzz so i decided to go back and play not ocarina but some of the other zelda games from the period don t ask me why i know this won t be a revelation to many but the gameboy color has some incredible zelda games i would in fact be willing to entertain the idea that the gbc has the best collection of zelda games of any console i think breath of the wild is definitely more fun but it s hard to compare it to the rest of the series because it s so different it s a bit like comparing the original nes gb castlevanias to the igavanias that came later they have similarities but ultimately they re so different they don t really belong in the same genre maybe ocarina of time or twilight princess beat the gameboy titles out by a narrow margin i m still formulating my personal zelda tier list but if we re just talking 2d zeldas gameboy color hands down i know some will read this and say whatever colin take off your nostalgia goggles and look again believe it or not though i only recently came to this conclusion i bought link s awakening dx and the oracle duology on my 3ds a few years ago the upcoming closure of the 3ds eshop reminded me to dust off the handheld and poke around and see if there were any games i wanted to play but never got around to buying there were a few mostly retro games that aren t available in any other format get on that nintendo but somehow i ended up playing link s awakening instead of those i remember getting immediately frustrated by it the first time i tried it and wrote it off into the same category as the two original nes titles that is the category of showed promise but was too limited by technical challenges and clunky design to be great oh how wrong i was the game actually does a surprisingly good job at guiding you i think it was a case of having skimmed the text put the game down for a couple of weeks then trying to come back a couple of weeks later in retrospect i could have used one of the phone booths to point me in the right direction but starting over was probably the best call in this situation anyway i m mostly really surprised at how much game they packed into a teeny little gameboy cartridge seriously how is link s awakening comparable in length to link to the past on the snes i suppose there were some corners cut the enemy variety isn t that great for instance but honestly weren t most 2d zelda baddies just the same things with different sprites and maybe slightly different movement patterns the dungeons are also really well designed nary a tile is wasted the plot twist spoiler warning for a nearly 30 year old game i guess that the whole thing is a dream that link has while nearly drowning at sea is interesting it s kind of like all of those episodes of star trek voyager especially that end with time travel happening such that the whole episode never happened but less frustrating it was also an excuse for the game to do some weird stuff and make a lot of nintendo references like random 2d platformer sequences with goombas and piranha plants for some reason it also gives the whole thing a tinge of tragedy once you know you can t help but feel bad when the bosses start pleading with you not to wake the wind fish or we will all disappear and as the game closes it shows all the people of this world fade from view ending with marin who link clearly has a thing for a lot of these themes were reused albeit in a weirder yet somehow subtler kind of way in majora s mask although i was never a fan of that particular game i know nintendo put out a switch remake of link s awakening a couple of years ago it looks cute and pretty faithful to the original but i think i prefer the gbc dx version there s something about that chunky gbc pixel art and chiptune music that s just so charming again the remake kept a lot of this charm with the unique tilt shift toy look but it just seems like adding paint to a masterpiece i m glad that it got a remake so more people will be able to enjoy it aside from being available on a modern console again i know a distressing number of people who are biased against pixel art games especially old ones but i probably won t pick it up unless it goes down to an unprecedented low price i have only just started oracle of seasons but i ve always heard great things about these games it s still weird to me that nintendo who is so picky when it comes to their ip let capcom make a few handheld titles in their precious zelda series in the early aughts i have played minish cap and thought it was just ok but so far oos seems like a pretty strong successor to link s awakening i actually had a gameboy color back in the day but didn t get into the zelda series until later it s one of those games i wish i could go back and tell my past self to get because i would have loved it but at least i have the chance to play them now may 16 2022 lotro and the trap of altaholism for its 15th anniversary lord of the rings online backed up a dump truck to players inventories and gave them a ton of new stuff even more if you were subbed during the anniversary festival including this beautiful star cloak i will gladly pay 15 for that alone thank you it was already exciting that free players were getting all of the expansions up to and including helms deep for free but then they went and gave out the collector s edition to mordor minas morgul and war of the three peaks for free as well seriously if you think there s any chance you ll ever play this game in the future go log in now or you will be kic...