Archive of ‘MMORPGs’ category

30
Nov
2021

It’s like Christmas, and it only came slightly early!

categories: MMORPGs; word count: 275 words

In classic Diablo 2 games, if The Cow King was killed by any member of your party (I’m almost certain it’s “any member of your party” and not by anyone in the entire level, but I could be wrong), all members of that party could not make a Secret Cow Level on that difficulty again even if they had no hand in actually killing The Cow King. However, I recently learned that this is not the case in Diablo 2: Resurrected, and you can kill The Cow King as many times as you would like — on purpose, by accident, whatever — and it does not affect your ability to make subsequent games. Now you don’t have to worry about someone who didn’t know killing him and screwing up your ability to make Secret Cow Levels on that difficulties in the future, and if someone wants to kill him (or more than one person), they are absolutely free to do so without repercussion. So far, I’ve been mining Normal and Nightmare Cow Levels on our sorceress because she can easily, effortlessly kill cows by herself on those difficulties, and I’ve gotten three Runes and two set pieces for my “troubles” so far, and that’s just with me having enough Magic Find gear on our sorceress to make it worthwhile… for the most part. I’m mainly doing it to farm runes, so any additional set pieces that I get that I don’t need will quite likely be given to my friends, people new to the game, or both of those things. Sweet!

So far I’ve gotten two runes and two set items off of soloing Normal and Nightmare Cow levels.

26
Nov
2021

(insert Kansas lyrics that fit on one line, literally)

categories: augmented reality, MMORPGs; word count: 335 words

Ever since my mother passed away, I don’t really celebrate Thanksgiving.

Given the actual history of the holiday, I see absolutely no need to… that, and Bub is partially Native American on his father’s side (and one hundred percent complete sass on my side). We ate food as normal, had snacks as normal, and I got some time in getting our sorceress through Hell mode in Diablo 2: Resurrected. Once I gain some more levels past that by doing Ancients runs, Baal runs, and Cow runs — since when are cows not enjoyable in this game? — I’m going to start hunting on my own for a Shako, which is probably one of the best things I can get our sorceress at this point, not to mention having it on hand for other characters that may need to borrow it when their levels and stats are high enough to be able to equip it. Put a Perfect Topaz (…how many can you fit in this thing, anyway?) in it and it will serve more than one purpose. I just need to pace myself though because my brain will not let me play hours and hours of a game that I enjoyed in my adolescence and early adulthood, and at that, one that Bub enjoys. He likes both Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. I’ve never tried World of Warcraft on him because you have to pay to play it, and that would be the time that my migraines strike or my seizures become… more prominent, and I wouldn’t want to waste money on something that I can not reasonably commit to for periods of time even if Bub might like it. I don’t know. I’d rather pay once to cover the costs of owning a copy of the MMO and then play when we can. Yes.

Luckily though, this game doesn’t have any sudden, more persistent flashes like Niantic made Pokemon Go.

I miss playing Pokemon Go with Bub, but we have this pandemic, and was the “flash” problem even fixed?

19
Nov
2021

This is a new way to reinvent the wheel, I’ll admit.

categories: MMORPGs; word count: 196 words

Sometimes new players to Diablo II: Resurrected, or even people who played classic as infants younger versions of themselves, surprise me with the tactics that they come up with. One such tactic is seen in Secret Cow Level games on Hell difficulty, where… wait for it… everyone separates up and Magic Finds on their own against hordes of strong cows meant to be taken on in groups, which has historically always been the plan…

Yeah.

About that.

For people who play sorceresses, when you run out of mana you become a sitting duck. Playing a ranged character becomes difficult when you are the only one keeping cows off of you — better hope that you don’t run out of arrows, bolts, and to a slightly lesser degree, mana (since you can still fire arrows and bolts even if you are low on mana). You would have to drastically overlevel for Hell Cows to even remotely make this worthwhile, and yet this is still a thing. So this “separate to have better Magic Find” thing really confuses me.

Bub and I have a level sixty-six sorceress outfitted with Magic Find items, but we tend to play in groups.

16
Nov
2021

This is our progress in Diablo 2 so far.

categories: MMORPGs; word count: 109 words

Admittedly, we’ve spent the most time leveling up our sorceress because sending a freezing orb across the screen is always fun, and she is also equipped with massive Magic Find-boosting equipment, increasing the likelihood that good items will drop for us on kills. This, in turn, has been used to begin to outfit other characters. Now that our sorceress has reached Hell difficulty, this means that we can use Freezing (Frozen? I always forget) Orb and Blizzard once I’ve maxed that out for us to mine Secret Cow levels for drops at varying difficulties… mostly Hell though. It’s getting to the point that we could probably actually solo Normal.

26
Oct
2021

We’ve predictably hopped aboard the Diablo 2 train.

categories: MMORPGs, personal; word count: 438 words

In our spare time, we’ve continued to play Diablo 2: Resurrected.

I think that between the two of us, we have all of the characters that we could want, although if Bub wants me to make a barbarian or a paladin I would be open to making those for him and learning the basics on how to play them. Right now that’s outside my wheelhouse since I personally tend to play magic and support the most on MMOs, but if he wants me to, I’ll make those for him and then look into how to play them in such a way that it doesn’t wind up disastrous for everyone involved. This might be really amusing.

We might also get back into Diablo 3 on the PC, although that will probably not be until the craze surrounding Diablo 2 starts to die down. Who knows. As stated, whenever I have my way I make sure that we play with friends before we play with people that we don’t know, although the nature of the beast in Diablo games on Blizzard is that sometimes you can’t help that, because sometimes you have to party up with people that you might not know really well to get quests done or to do certain things. When it comes to MMOs, though, I go through phases where I personally want to play them a bit less than I had been playing them — the exception to this would be Bub, because I will gladly play with him (almost, within reason) whatever he wants to play, the only exception to that being if he ever cued that he wanted to play World of Warcraft. I think I’ve written in here about my reservations regarding that game in the past, and they still exist. To be frank though, I have reservations against pay-to-play MMOs in general and would never seek them out of my own volition unless something, somewhere, changed. I would rather pay once and be done.

In the coming months, I need to get a new cell phone (the battery in my current phone, which I use to keep in touch with all of our doctors, specialists, and the boys’ therapists is… degraded, and I need to be able to rely on it when we are out of the house), a new computer chair (Bub has spun in this one to the point that it is creaky and wobbly, and I wouldn’t want anyone sitting in it to fall out of it), and quite possibly a new computer desk. I’ve had the desk that I have now for quite awhile, and the wobbliness of it is inescapable.

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