I've been doing some more resurgent MMO playing lately. My wife has been playing LotRO again sporadically and I've been playing Saga of Ryzom now that it is free to play. Free is a very good price for this MMO. It had a lot of features that were very promising for roleplayers, but in the end it remains a hall of broken promises and missing content. The mechanics are neat, but grinding gets old and you can choose to do that in any game. Never the less if you like MMOs you should check it out because there are numerous features that many good MMOs should copy from it. They have a great way of avoiding the class sytem and an interesting take on skills. Their faction system has a nifty way of gaining loyalty with factions... they just need some real incentives for actually doing so. The difference between a faction that totally loves you and one that is neutral is ... nothing. None the less you can grind it for the sake of seeing numbers scroll on your computer screen. I'll continue playing it while its free but I wouldn't pay anything for it in its current state. Say "Hi" to the lonely Pilgrim guild leader Svayvti if you stop by, the last Pilgrim leader of Atys.
I had a good post-PAX match up of Anima: Tactics at my friendly local games store (FLGS). My Church force Vs. Church Inquisitors Vs. Dark side. You can see me and the dark side player going at it to the right here. However, now that I've got the Konosuke figure from PAX... I've changed my playing allegiance to Samael for the time being. People seem to be down on them but I've found they can really put the hurt on. I've had one 300 point game with them and won it handily while still learning to field a Samael force. Good things appear to be in store with this force so lets hope we can really stir up a lot of local interest in this game.
In VOR news I haven't gotten any good games in lately with Scott and to a lesser degree myself being fairly busy. There is however a new Golden Growler contest going on. My wife took second place at the last one and I'm glad in this one we won't be directly competing. She is doing a Diorama entry for the Diorama contest and I'm doing a special character entry for the special character contest. Can you guess which special character I'm going to bring to life? For a harder question guess what Kirara's diorama will be of... You can see a picture of the fantastic trophies that Merc created. Will there be more good Shard entries? Last time I was totally impressed with Balrog's Shard Axion and thought is should have won first place. I hope we get more Shard entries ths time.On the subject of RPGs, I've got yet another new RPG to try out. This one is the Chronices of Ramlar "Revised edition". The setting is classic fantasy, but the system mechanics are very intriguing and completely oriented towards hardcore roleplaying that I like. Tomorrow they have a RPG day at my FLGS and I'll see if I can poach some roleplayers to try and get a group going. Expect to hear a good deal more about Ramlar in the future. Shadowrun 4th edition continues to disappoint and their 20th anniversary is focusing on the failed Earthdawn crossovers rather than anything truly good and original from 1st edition. Smith & Tinker, please, please don't let me down in my hopes for a good Shadowrun game. Just trust Mike Mulvihill and Jordan Weisman because they made 1st and 3rd editions rock.
I'm getting back into the swing of applying for regular employment. Some of the jobs I'm well qualified for just look too boring. Would I like to make good money working in a boring downtown job for a soda distributor or dare I hold out for something interesting but less lucrative like game testing or working for government environmental consultants? I've inquired into both and potentially may have something next week involving contract work for Microsoft. We'll see what happens. Any ways it goes, my twice a month blog schedule I have going probably won't be impacted.
Peace and Fragging Happiness to you.
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