Oops.

When I finally got around to pre-ordering the next expansion, it seems that I screwed up and failed to indicate that I wanted release day delivery.  As a result, I won’t get my copy until somewhere around Feb 22.

I don’t care though.  I’m not even the tiniest bit excited for this expansion.  Of course, I felt the same way about TSO and ended up really enjoying that one, so here is to hoping.

In the mean time, I expect that I will spend release week, while everyone else is engaged in the race to new max level/AA/tradeskill/whatever so that they can get there quickly so they can go back to bitching about being out of things to do, trying out STO.  I was sent a free copy and it has been collecting dust for the last week or so, but it is starting to pull my attention.

Back in Time

This weekend felt like a bit of a rewind.  There weren’t a lot of people online and those who were online were mostly playing alts.  I assume that this recent trend is yet another sign that SOE stretched this expansion time out a bit too far.

I puttered around a little bit doing bits and pieces of nothing when I decided to head off to The Shimmering Citadel on a whim.  Back when I was leveling Rao up, this was one of my favorite zones.  I enjoyed most of the Desert of Flames, but The Shimmering Citadel was definately high on the list.

Rather than passing through and getting that nostalgia feeling, I ended up living there for most of the weekend… working through quests that I haven’t done since leveling Rao.  They might have been gray, but that didn’t make them any less fun.  I still have some more to do, but I now know that I will eventually move into Poets Palace and other instance zones in the area.

The fact that I lost myself in this zone could be seen in other areas than just my location as I skipped ahead to being just shy of 192 AA’s on the ranger now.  I think my total AA gain for the weekend was 4 or 5.

There were some other things done as well… including a few shard zones to help guildies with their TSO line, helping with some epic fights, and doing a little bit of alting myself, but for the most part, this past weekend belonged to The Shimmering Citadel.

Enter the Metamorph

Last night, after finishing up another run through Ward, one of my friends commented to me, “Your ranger has gone through a serious transformation over the last few weeks.”

I don’t think there has ever been a larger understatement ever uttered about one of my characters before.  I know there are others who have done more in less time, but I am not a power gamer any longer.  My time online is fairly limited and my guild only raids 2 days a week, so the opportunities for upgrades do not come around daily.

Still, the change has been drastic… and quite a bit of fun to be honest.

I raided my dirge for over a year.  In that time, he picked up one piece of raid loot… the Morrowsong from Hate (I think that is what it is called.  I honestly can’t even remember).  Beyond that, he is geared in whatever I could get by grouping, questing or crafting.  His armor is a mixture of T2 and T3 shard armor and nearly everything else on his person is crafted shard gear.

I changed to the ranger full time towards the end of the second week of January.  In that time, he had gone from using a bow that I looted in Kurns to getting his fabled to getting his mythical.  He has gone from wearing a mix of T1 and T2 shard gear to wearing all T2 to wearing 2 pieces of T4, 4 pieces of T3 and 1 piece of T2 (damn the no-dropping shoulders!).

I went from chapter 2 on the TSO sig quest to finishing the line last weekend with the Varsoon kill.  I swapped out a shard crafted cloak for the ch 8 fabled cloak that I figured wouldn’t be upgraded for a good long while… and then turned around and upgraded that cloak last night with a drop from Aiden that I in turn upgraded again with a turn in to an NPC.

I have upgraded many of his other slots with a combination of raid gear and mid to upper end TSO zone dropped gear.

I still have a few slots that need some upgrading.  The same friend who made the other comment followed it up by saying, “You have a perfect balance of awesome gear and total crap.”

It has been fun to do.  Through more than a decade of MMO play, this is the first toon I have ever gotten into some pretty decent raid gear and it has been fun to watch how significant of an impact it has made on him overall.

I am also rapidly approaching 200 AA’s on him (which will make him my second toon with 200 AA’s).  Hopefully I won’t hit 200 too far ahead of the expansion landing because the last 6 months of having Rao maxed on AA’s wasn’t a whole lot of fun.

I’m scared… I think…

On the radio on the way home from work yesterday, the DJ said that there are rumors that George Lucas is thinking about redoing all of the Star Wars movies yet again to make them into 3D.

Of course, I can’t shake the horror of his last redo… to say nothing of the prequel debacle.

I hate to say it because the Star Wars movies were such a huge part of my childhood, but I wish old George would just leave well enough alone.

Either that or give Joss Whedon a crack at them.

*WHOOSH*

That was time flying by.  I can’t believe it is already February.