Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Lvl 1-2.1

So as it has been more than a week since I've posted, (been busy working and Christmas shopping and such) I haven't had a chance yet to finish my MapleStory post (which will hopefully be done by tomorrow). I decided to take a moment and share some of my experiences gaming, as well as being a family man with 2 kids and a wife with all the gaming that I do.


I went into gaming really early in life, my parents had an Atari, and my grandparents had a Nintendo. Being born in the mid 80's at the turn of the video game era it seemed as if everyone had one. I remember my 2 first games I played was Tanks for the Atari and Mario Bros for the Nintendo. From there it was all down hill.

My parents bought us kids a Super Nintendo back in 93 and that was my first system that I owned. We had only one game for alot of years and that was the original Super Mario Bros for the SNES. When I  eventually moved to Abbotsford from the Kootenays I bought my very first PC and started my online gaming experiences.

My first MMO that I played was at the time called SpaceCowboys and was a FPSMMORPG that you flew in a ship the whole time. From there I went to World Of Warcraft and alot of other F2P MMO's.

Gaming has been a huge impact in my life. My wife and I when were dating played WoW religiously together. Now that the family has gotten bigger and a little later now in our lives she's taken up more,...productive hobbies Krystyl's Blog. When we first started dating we didn't live close to each other so we actually played MMO's together when we weren't able to see each other.

I've owned a few consoles as well, a Gamecuve, a PS2 which my wife and I played so much of that we broke and now we have a Wii. My son now is almost 6 and is starting to do a bunch of gaming himself. He started watching me play World of Warcraft as I am the leader of a raiding guild and have schedualed raids through out the week. He would watch and ask me questions of things that were happening.


I then gave him my old game boy and he started playing the Super Mario Bros which they adapted to the GBA. It's interesting that his first game is the same one that I had for my first console. A little nostalgic I guess. But he's not gotten into Plants VS Zombies as well. He doesn't play as much as he would like, but gets enough of it. There are also "games" for kids such as (if you have firefox) you can get Zoodles. It is a learning and free online program designed for kids to teach them as they play. There is also a User Interface for parents that allows you to take charge of what they are playing or watching. If you want them to do stuff with more letters change it more towards that, more math or numbers you can do that too.

I think video games are great for kids.

I'll let you think about that for a second. Now with all things, in moderation. They are great for hand - eye coordination. Cognitive and thinking skills, video games actually improve eyesight as well. They also introduce alot of problem solving as well. (Zelda and Portal are 2 great examples). Which helps them think out of the box.

Now I'm not saying I let my son sit in front of a console or computer screen as much as I do. I do however let him if he has done some reading or gone outside and played. I should take after my own words more than being a dictator, but this is instilled in me and I'm "trying" to improve?

I love gaming. I love my family, and am lucky enough to have a wife and family who accepts me and my gaming for what it is.

All I have to do now is wait till our 4 month old has big enough fingers to use WSAD and get us all World of Warcraft accounts to have family play time together.

That's all for now;

Ryeno Logging Off.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Level 1-2 // MapleStory

MapleStory

MapleStory is a 2D side scrolling MMORPG, and one of the first of it's kind. The start of MapleStory is said to be the pivotal starting point to the F2P MMO Genre. As the world’s first and most successful side-scrolling 2D online game, MapleStory offers distinctive avatars, a huge variety of items, a slew of quests, ease of control, and an ever-expanding world for you to explore!

As of today there are 19 playable classes (2 more to come within the next week) to make a total of 21 classes. It has a massive world you can explore, and many people online playing. With more than 70 Million accounts, it is by far the largest F2P MMO out there.

The game itself is about 4 years old and started over in Japan and then adapted over to North America. When it first came out the leveling was very grind based, but Nexon listened to there playerbase and increased the leveling profoundly.

MapleStory however doesn't come without it's own pro's and con's. With it being such a large game it's very easy to meet people in the game and party up for some of the larger instances. At some points it does seem very repetitive, being it has a level cap of 200 some things have been a little rehashed at lower levels, just a little harder. There are major content updates including the last Big Bang patch and the new "Legendary" patch, these in turn have increased the amount of playable classes from the starting 5 to the almost 21 now (and 15 more if you include the Explorer's 3 job advancements after the first 1).

Explorer :

Beginner:  The Beginner class essentially serves the purpose of being an introductory class. Though beginners obtain ability points upon leveling up, beginners do not lose experience upon death. It is advised, however, that one makes not dying a habit before advancing to the first job because experience is lost once the advancement is made.
  • Warrior:  Warriors are the strongest melee characters in MapleStory in terms of raw damage. Warriors also have the largest amount of HP out of all the classes, as well as the highest defense. There are three main types of Warriors: Fighters, Pages, and Spearmen; each having their own pros and cons.

  • Magician:  Magicians are ranged characters that eventually become imbued with a specific element, dealing 150% damage to monsters weak to that element. Each of the three specialised Magician jobs can get summons at the fourth job (3rd Job for Priests) and use Area of Effect attacks (though they are slow to cast). There are three main types of Magicians Ice/Lightening, Fire/Poisan and Clerics.

  • Bowman:  Bowman is probably one of the more difficult in MapleStory. Bows are faster than crossbows, but they also do less damage. At their second job, archers have two options, Hunter or Crossbowman, and will proceed on to Ranger and Sniper respectively. If you decide to level an archer, you will be rewarded with fancy skills, many bossing opportunities, and very stable damage at Fourth Job.

  • Thief:  Thieves are a very popular but expensive class. They have their likenesses with archers and warriors. Though probably being the most expensive to handle, they gain the most money in the process after magicians. The downside is that the Thief class demands precision when allocating stats, as they can be screwed up very easily. There are two types of thieves: Assassins and Bandits. Assassins are quick ranged attackers. Bandits are quick melee attackers and are quite powerful among the 2nd jobs.

  • Pirate:  Pirate is one of the most popular in MapleStory. At their second job, Pirates have two options: Gunslinger or Brawler. Gunslingers are faster and ranged attackers, but their shots tend to be weak due to the lack of critical strikes that an Archer or Assassin has. Brawlers are melee, close-ranged fist fighters who deal lots of damage and have high HP, but they must get extremely close to their enemies and thus tend to take a lot of damage.


TO BE CONTINUED!

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Level 1-1

As I am getting started with this blog and all that entails, I start the painstakingly grueling task, of updating the games I have on my PC at the moment to their current patches.

Games to Patch:

  • Forsaken World - patched 12:10am - 12:42am Dec 10
  • Perfect World - patched 1:00am - 1:46am(still patching) Dec 10
  • Maple Story - patching 1:15pm - 1:27pm Dec10
  • Runes of Magic
  • Scarlet Legacy
  • World of Tanks
  • DragonNest
  • DC Universe Online
  • SuddenAttack
  • ARGO Online
  • Dekaron
  • World of Warcraft (this will be the 4th time this week doing this)

Installed PC Games:
  • Sonic Generations
  • Dragon Age 2
  • Fable III
  • Neverwinter Nights 2
  • Need For Speed Underground 2 (it's still an awesome game)
  • Plants Vs Zombies
  • Jazz Jackrabbit 2

Friday, December 9, 2011

Level 1

So I have been thinking of doing this for a while, well my wife has been insisting I do this for a while. I will be starting up a PC Video game blog with fraps, screenshots and the like. Even some walk through's as well and share my gaming experiences with more people. (Give people more of an opinion out there other than Omair [from MMOhut.com],...even though he seems pretty cool.)

The reason for this? I test and play ALOT of MMO’s and games. Most of it comes from me migrating from Retail WoW to Private servers (due to cost issues) and then seeing all the F2P games out there, that me and my online buddies could play while our server was down or getting maintenance.

Anyways here’s hoping that it all works out and picks up quickly…I may need a bigger hard drive than the 1 TB to deal with all the fraps, but we'll see.

Ryeno