Rift and Me

It has dutifully been brought to my attention that it’s been a few posts since I have talked to you guys about my adventures in Rift.  But the primary reason for this is mostly because the word adventure can’t really be used to describe my experiences with Rift lately.  To put it simply…I haven’t been playing much.  Knowing myself as I do, this is not a good sign only a few weeks out after Rift’s launch.  But much like Werit said over on his blog, the reason for me not playing has more to do with my own preferences than anything else.

 

 

As I said in my previous post, I realize more and more every day that the MMO I really want to be playing right now is Warhammer Online.  Well, a Warhammer Online that exists in an alternate reality where the RvR is not nearly as frazzled and poorly designed as it is in this one.  But not knowing any Gnomes who could build me some sort of infernal contraption that would whisk me away to such a reality, and not having the Doc around to help me get to…

 

 

…so I could properly warn Mythic of future troubles during WAR’s early development, I find myself faced with something of a dilemma.  Rift is a fine game to be sure, both well-made and polished, with a great Soul system and a few interesting concepts of its own.  But all in all, the more I play it the more I find my mind wandering.  Rift has just not connected with me in the way an MMO needs to in order to secure my subscription beyond the first month.

When I play Rift I can never shake the “been there, done that, have the t-shirt” feeling I get that courses through my veins until I am about to scream.  The world of Telara does very little to rile up my imagination at the end of the day.  I wish I could give you guys more than that, I honestly do.  But Telara has failed miserably to strike any sort of profound chord within my soul.  Worlds such as Norrath, Azeroth, and Middle Earth were all able to do that and I am forever grateful.  But Telara on the other hand, gives me pause.

Since Rift does very little that is innovative on the PvP-side of things, it falls to the concrete world of Telara and the basic game mechanics to immerse me in the setting so I will continue to log in.  But the world has fallen flat with me, and the game mechanics are so shockingly familiar that I become more certain with each day that my time with Rift will always be somewhat on the low/casual side.  But before anyone shows up here to flame, allow me to repeat something I have said for while now.

 

 

I still think Rift is a good game overall and will become a solid hit for Trion in the years to come.  Though I might not always be there to witness the ebb and flow of Rift’s growth firsthand, I still consider myself a fan and will be cheering for them every step of the way.  They have a great deal of work ahead of them, this cannot be discounted.  Creating a solid MMO is just the beginning of the process.  Now they have to maintain the game’s success and find intuitive ways to add content/mechanics that will both entice newer players and excite the current player-base almost simultaneously.

I have faith that Trion can do just that, and I will still be popping my head in to see how things are coming along from time to time.  But Rift and me…we had a good thing and some great laughs in the very short time we had together.  But in the end it was just not meant to be.  There has been no harm and no foul to either of us, as they say.  But I hope that those of you who are loving Rift continue to love it and enjoy yourselves to no end.  It’s a solid title and well worth your time.

But as for me, I’ll be back to exploring the games I have always loved (WoW, EQ 2, Lotro, Eve, War) until something new comes along that shows some real promise of transforming the genre in a positive way.  Rift adds to the genre by taking much of what has worked in the past and refining it, then sprinkling a touch of their own on top.  That is also what WoW did when it was first released.  The problem for me is that I am genuinely happy with the games I have, and so I am looking for a little more from newer titles.  So will it be Guild Wars 2, The Secret World, or perhaps Swtor that captures my fancy?  Who can say at this point?

But no matter where I go, I’ll be sure to post my thoughts as I stroll along this bewildering and always entertaining road that defines the life of an MMO gamer. 

 

Catharsis

One thing I have tried so very hard to avoid when lighting a fire beneath this blog again, was a Warhammer Online post-mortem.  The more I thought about, I realized that I would just be beating a horse that had been thrashed to death, pummeled while dead, resurrected, then flogged some more for good measure.  But it has been with a potent sadness that I have watched the WAR blogging community shrink over the past few months.  Players are growing increasingly frustrated with recent changes, and it really is no secret that WAR finds itself at a fateful crossroads at the moment.

With only a few servers left running, there is no question that the vultures are gradually beginning to circle…eager to pluck the meat off of WAR’s fragile corpse.

I still play it all out in my head like it was some sort of dream.  To this day I can acutely feel my initial reactions from WAR beta all the way to launch, its historic rise, and ultimately its plummet to the depths we see now.  But if I sat here and attempted to chime in with my thoughts on how WAR got to where it is, I would only be regurgitating analysis from many other sources that are already available to you.

 

 

Now one thing I would like to say at this point, is that WAR isn’t dead yet.  It’s getting a little too close to the scythe for comfort, but hope springs eternal.  And I am one to always believe that it’s never too late to stem the tide.  But up to this point, Mythic just doesn’t seem to possess the ability to fix the problems.  Much of this is because WAR’s issues are all so deeply rooted in its design that they would truly need to revamp much of the game.

This is not going to happen, period.

So what we are left with are small bandages patched onto a titanic leaking damn that is eventually going to break open.  But rather than sit here and write what has been said before, I am going to try and aid my catharsis for WAR by linking to some of the most insightful comments I have found regarding why WAR ended up the way it did.  I am doing this as much for myself as anyone else, as I am still coming to grips with the fact that WAR is the game I really want to be playing.  The problem being that it just isn’t the game it should have been in the first place.

So let us hold hands and pray as we open our hymnals to page 113.

 

Where did Warhammer Online go wrong?

 

This article touches on many of the most popular points…the lack of a third realm…few viable in-game options other than PvP…horrible class balance…population imbalance…terrible performance given the look of the game…all of WAR’s sweet spots of pain, if I may be so bold.    It makes for a fairly accurate read so I think it’s a useful place to begin.  But the source which offers some of the most interesting and less well-known facts on WAR’s happens to be a thread on the Warhammer Alliance forums.

 

The Main reason why WAR failed

 

This really does have just about all you need to know concerning WAR’s troubled development.  Though I advise immediately skipping to page 8, as the first 7 pages of the thread are hijacked by a troll who constantly argues the meaning of the word “failed”.  I am not really sure what point he is trying to make here, as I think its safe to say that going from around 80 servers to 4 can be considered a failure.  But hey, some people love denial and cling to it until the cows come home.  So rock on there.

But back to the WAR discussion…some of the finest criticism in this thread comes from Sir Robin.  So start with page 8 and move on from there.  I will still be here when you return. 

 

 

So there you have it…they were planning on totally instanced PvP to setup the realm war.  That doesn’t really sound like the game we all wanted, does it?  But by the time they realized the problem they were already in beta, so they were forced to shut things down to add an Open RvR system that is borked to this very day.  So WAR really has been in fix mode since before it even launched.  Keeps were never supposed to be there in the first place, which is why we got keeps that were not even as well developed as the ones in DAOC, made over 7 years prior to WAR’s release.

But to bring this distasteful rehash to an end, I can only say that I will continue to follow WAR in the future and may even log in from time to time.  But I just can’t see myself spending any significant amount of hours there unless we see some drastic changes.  Though I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there is still a small part of me that hopes…that waits with baited breath for the final realization of the game I so wanted to love that just never really seemed to love me back.

Over the hill?

From an MMO perspective, this is truly something I have been wondering as of late.  Have I just been around the block one too many times?

 

 

Am I forever destined to be a jaded gamer who wanders from title to title, hoping something might actually knock my socks off the way Everquest once did?  Will I stroll through the fog of my MMO memories without reprieve, searching endlessly for a transforming experience that will forever change the way I look at online games?  Maybe that’s all too much to ask at this point.  Perhaps I am the problem, not the people who make these games.

Or perhaps it is a little of both.

I may well be in need to soften my expectations when I step into a new MMO for the first time.  But in return for me lowering the bar, MMO devs really need to get their butts in gear and heighten their ambitions a little bit.  That’s the deal I am willing to strike at this point.    Historically, my time in any particular MMO has always varied and that is by design.  I do tend to hop around some to help fight the onset of MMO burnout, which can strike people like me rather viciously I am told.  But let’s face facts for a moment…I have been playing MMOs for over ten years now.

I have always loved them and probably always will.

But as the coming of each new game passes, I find myself slightly more turned off by the genre than turned on by it.  I keep looking for a game that will bridge the gap between what we once had and the advances we have made since those early days.  I honestly feel that the closest we ever got to an MMO of that caliber was Vanguard, but it was fraught with so many other problems that it just crumbled beneath the weight of them.

But this all brings me to the present and where I stand with Rift right now.

Rift is the most polished MMO to be released since World of Warcraft, this is without question.  It is fun, well constructed, and offers some wonderful class options with the Soul system, not to mention the fun that can be had with the rifts themselves.  The rifts are basically like Public Quests 2.0, and that is a compliment.  WAR gave us Public Quests and it was a wonderfully unique idea.  Now Rift has taken them slightly further, though I still think they are destined to suffer from the same problems that WAR’s did.  Basically, once you do them 100 times the bloom is going to come off the rose a little bit.  Trust me on this.

 

 

But for someone who has played so many MMOs, the taste of  Rift as a whole strikes me as just too familiar.  It’s like going to a pizza parlor that isn’t the one you enjoy the most.  What they serve you may be very tasty and certainly worth your money.  But you will always be thinking about the kind of pizza you really want and how what you are currently eating is good, but not different enough to make it special.  So with Rift, I find myself enjoying the game and appreciating the fact that we finally have a new MMO that was actually released when it was ready.

But I also find my thoughts gradually drifting to other places when I play Rift, haunted by the nagging feeling that I could enjoy Rift on a casual basis, but not really sure if it’s something that I want to sink my teeth into the way I have with other MMOs in the past.  Some examples of that would be Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Eve Online, and Lord of the Rings Online.  Those are all MMOs that I dove into head first and explored just about every facet of gameplay they offered me.  Each one is dear to me in different ways, and I will probably always pop back in to check on those games from time to time.

So while it would not be strange for me to do that while still playing Rift, I now find myself a little troubled by the idea that my mind is already wandering as I play.  It just feels…I don’t know…too soon for me to be having these sorts of desires.  I fully expected Rift to sweep me away for at least a few months, with no thought of playing anything else even entering my mind during that time.  But it just hasn’t happened, even though I have found pleasure in playing Rift and exploring this exciting new world that Trion has given us.

I also have to say that if Rift does possess and ace in the hole, it’s Trion Worlds.

 

 

These guys have their act together in a big bad way, folks.  No company is perfect so don’t kid yourselves, and Trion will have their missteps as all developers do.  But I don’t think I have ever seen a group of devs this on the ball so early in their game’s release.  It not only bodes well for the future of Rift, but for other titles that Trion will undoubtedly make as time goes by.  The thought of how well Trion has responded to player concerns heartens me greatly, providing that warming touch of hope I need to keep plugging away.

But at the end of the day, it all comes down to how much fun I am having and whether or not Rift delivers in the ways I need it to for my own personal enjoyment.  Right now I give the game very solid marks, but I do fear that there might not be enough new spice to keep me playing heavily in the months ahead.  Deep down I think what I really want is an MMO with Rift’s polish combined with the heavy PvP focus that Warhammer Online brought to the genre.  So if Trion can develop the PvP in their game and turn it into something more than what the average MMO offers, then they just might find me subbing for a very long time.

I guess we will just have to wait and see.

 

The Telara Saga

Just wanted to pop in real quick and give a shout out to The Gaiscioch Family, a wonderful guild currently found on Rift’s Faeblight server.  They will soon be holding an epic, 22 week event that begins on March 8th and will run all the way to August 9th.  So if you’re on Faeblight and enjoy a good time, then I suggest you treat yourself to this as soon as it gets going!  Having played with Gaiscioch back in WAR and greatly enjoying their Battle for the Badlands series of events, I can promise a joyous time to be had by all.    Here is a copy of the forum post detailing how this is all going to work in case any of you missed it.

 

 

The Gaiscioch Family Presents: The Telara Saga Public Event Series – Mar 8 – Aug 9

Hail and Well met champions of Telara,
I would like to formerly welcome you all, both Guardian and Defiant to engage in this 22 week server wide public event. Help defend your homelands for the invasions that plague our land or engage each other in battle to the death. The Telara Saga is upon us.

Beginning on Tuesday, March 8th at 6PM PST (GMT-8), The Gaiscioch Family presents their Telara Saga, a 22 week adventure which Begins in Silverwood and progresses all the way to Freemarch through 11 battlefields. The Guardian forces will march each week a step closer to the gates of Merdian. On the 22nd Week, we assault the heathen city of Meridian and kill the 8 Champions of the Defiants, Sylver Valis, Padma Ultan, Brother Damon, Rodan Ismos, Dacia Ultan, Kaspar Massi, Orphiel Farwind, and Asha Catari.

Here is the Full Season One Schedule:

MAR 8 & 15th: Securing Silverwood
MAR 22 & 29th: Advancing to Gloamwood
APR 5 & 12th: The Battle Rages in Scarlet Gorge
APR 19 & 26th: The Securing Of Scarwood Reach
MAY 3 & 10th: Troop Training in Moonshade Highlands
MAY 17 & 24th: Setting up Foreign Opperations In Droughtlands
JUN 7 & 14th: Securing Resources In Iron Pine Peak
JUN 21 & 28th: Scouting The Lands of Shimmersand
JUL 5 & 12th: Testing Our Stregth In Stillmoor
JUL 19 & 26th: Advancing Our Front Line in Stonefield
AUG 2nd: The Siege of Freemarch
AUG 9th: The Battle for Meridian

Over this 22 week campaign we will be taking on Rifts, Invasions, World Events, and most importantly cleansing the heathen Defiants from the lands. We will build our forces, equip them with the best gear we have to offer, and prepare for the battle of the ages to sever the head of the Defiant beast. This event series is design to introduce players to the world of Telara, give them the help they need to understand the mechanics, and expose people to the joys of large community driven events.

EVENT DETAILS:

WHO: All Players of Faeblight Server. Defiants Engage us to your hearts content. PvP Centric folk feel free to have at each other. The PvE folk will be closing Rifts, Invasions, and World Events while the PvP Centric fight to secure the lands against foreign invaders.

WHAT: A 22 Week Public Community Driven Event. Ventrilo Will Be Provided for Guardian Players.

WHEN: Every Tuesday starting on March 8th and running through August 9th, 2011. Event begins at 6PM PST and continues until 9PM PST.

WHERE: 2 Weeks In Each Zone leading up to the Siege of Meridian.

HOW: We will be forming in the town where the previous week ended and marching our way to each region. All Ages welcome to participate.

ABOUT THE GAISCIOCH FAMILY
The Gaiscíoch (Pronounced: Gosh-Kia) Family began as a social gaming community in the industry pioneering MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot. We began on the Nimue server on November 11th, 2001, with a focus on creating a fun and enjoyable community for players of all ages and skill levels.

With our roots firmly attached in the Celtic Mythological Cycle, the Gaiscíoch hold honor, respect, integrity, and fellowship, over hierarchy and dictatorship. Today the Gaiscíoch family spans many games, sports, and social circles.

We are a social casual gaming community with a relaxed approach toward gaming. We allow our members to play how they want, when they want, as long as they want and do not constrict them with quotas or requirements. It is through gaming, athletic competition, and social interaction that we forge new friendships and relationships.

The Gaiscioch Family has been coordinating large scale public events for nearly a decade. We focus on creating fun and enjoyable events for players of all backgrounds. Community development is our primary objective.

If you have any questions please feel free to shoot me a private message or stop by: http://www.Gaiscioch.com/

Slan Go Foil!

Foghladha
Ceannard de Gaiscioch Treubh
http://www.Gaiscioch.com/

A Second Chance to Carve your Skull

Now if only I could temporarily change my blog’s background to something like this…

 

 

Poor old Ingvar…doomed to countless amounts of farming by a bunch of bunny hopping, foaming at the mouth MMO addicts.  But getting back to the point here.  If I could just change my background to that picture then I could say to hell with the long-winded post about where I’ve been, what I’ve played, and why I have suddenly decided to return, as that image would tell you all you needed to know about my status.   But that just wouldn’t be my style, now would it?

So yes indeed, my interesting gaming compatriots…I’m back.    Would someone please que the bloody inspirational music?  It’s awful quiet in here.

 

 

Now that’s more like it, thanks Mr. Jablonsky.  So out of the depths of Middle Earth I am come, or at least the earth part is within the vicinity of accurate.  Nevertheless, I am going to make the naive assumption that kicking the tires around here will be just like riding a bike again.  And though I highly doubt I will reach the heady days of early 2010 as far as post count goes (my keyboard has already filed an injunction against me for the times when smoke was frequently spotted funneling out between the keys).  I do hope that I’ll at least be seen here at headquarters with a little more regularity.  But fear not in any case, dear readers.  My intentions are full of rainbows and win.

 

 

Now I know what most of you are probably thinking right now.  Nightwreath, you incessant windbag, why the hell should we care whether you’re back or not?  The answer to that question is simple and contains no misrepresentation or innuendo whatsoever.

You shouldn’t give a rat’s ass.

But just in case a few of you might be reading this and have allowed yourselves to become intoxicated enough to care…then why don’t we begin with a summation of my life over this past year.  It will be brief, I promise you.  The tale goes a little something like this…

 

 

Hello again.  Welcome back!    It’s a little scary out there, isn’t it?  We’re talking about places where angels fear to tread, that kind of thing.  So why don’t we just stay here for a while instead?  The weather is much more forgiving in these parts anyway, and I have it on good authority that we’ll have access to cookies if we keep our voices down.  But now we’ve got the boring crap out of the way, right?  That alone tells me that it’s time to move on to more substantial things.  So let’s talk MMOs.

Yes, those dastardly time-sinks continue to be a part of my life whether I like it or not.  Usually that counts as a positive, but if I get any grayer in the hairline as an MMO-Vet I fear that I might completely loose the ability to enjoy them at all.  That’s a scary prospect in and of itself, but in some ways I think I’ve just played too many MMOs to be truly awestruck by them anymore.  I still enjoy them immensely, please don’t misunderstand me.  But I do find that the overall experience has become somewhat diluted for me as the flow of time has pushed the genre forward.

That’s not to say that I’m one of those cranky old cooks who thinks that MMOs should be just like they were in the old days.  But I do recognize that something is missing within the core of these games right now, but placing your finger on the point and then trying to talk about it with people is much like trying to hold a civil, intelligent discussion on the topic of politics.  About three minutes into the conversation something like this always happens…

 

 

So what am I playing right now, anyway?  The answer to that query would be somewhat surprising, given my history.  But I currently do not hold any MMO subscriptions at all.  I’ve gone cold turkey.  Over the past year I have seen much happen over the MMO landscape.  I watched Warhammer Online slowly devolve with a heavy sense of regret, I had some good fun with the Cataclysm expansion, and popped my head in a few other places here and there.  But all of that has brought me to the point where I am now, just an MMO gamer with no place to hang is hat.

As for WAR, it’s a game that I will always love and hold dear to my heart, but I have finally reached a point where I can no longer convince myself that it’s worth my subscription in its current form.  I’m not going to get into the what, where, when, and why…as I think there are plenty of great WAR bloggers out there who can give you a sense of why the game is stuck in a rut.  Perhaps that will change someday, but for now WAR and I have reluctantly parted ways.  I wish Mythic all the best in their future endeavors, and I hope they know that I’ll always be cheering for them no matter what course they take.  *cough – DAOC 2 – cough*

As for WoW, I greatly enjoyed hopping back on my Warlock for Cataclysm and also found the new 1-60 questing to be quite fantastic in many ways.  But once I hit 85 and with the prospect of a raid schedule looming, I decided to take a step back before I got overly committed.  I have plenty of responsibilities in RL as it is, and I just wasn’t sure that a raiding schedule was going to make any of that easier on me.  What I really wanted was just a place to level, explore, and hopefully find a little PvP while I was at it.

So where does that leave me now?  Funny you should ask, but given that if you’re reading this blog then you’re probably an MMO player…and if you’re an MMO player and you look at the current date, then you’ll most likely know what’s drifting out there just on the edge of the horizon.  Though I see many different positives and negatives regarding it, the beta has been far too polished and smooth for me to say no at this point.  My gaming instincts quickly took hold of me and I pre-ordered the Digital Collector’s Edition before you could say the word spineless.

 

 

Yes my fellow gamers, I am here to declare that I will be playing Rift beginning on February 24th (headstart).  For the lone person here who has no idea what I’m talking about, allow me to explain.  Rift is a new MMO due to release on March 1st, with those of us who pre-ordered getting the opportunity to play it slightly ahead of that date.  (Feb 24th)  As to Rift’s core identity as an MMO, I’ll let the folks at Trion Worlds (the developers of the game) fill you in.

 

 

Much like before, I will be here to report and comment on my various adventures both within Telara and elsewhere.  So I hope that some of you will pop in from time to time and enjoy reading about them.  I won’t be blogging nearly as much as I did back in the day, but I’ll do my best to carve out some time when I can.  It’s good to be back, though, that I can say without hesitation. 

So until next time…

 

WAR and AOC

Warhammer Online and Age of Conan have always felt like distant cousins to me.  After all, they were both released to huge box sales and initial critical acclaim back in 2008.  Both games had a ton of money behind  them and ridiculous amounts of hype to swell the population.  Both of them suffered from very different issues after launch, and eventually watched as subscription numbers plummeted and servers were shut down.  Their attempts at success faded into bitter memory and most people moved on, confident that we would never hear from either game again.

You think people would eventually learn that MMOs are forever in a state of growth and change, so what is true now might not be in 6 months.  Sometimes these games change for the better, sometimes for the worse.  But it is never a good idea to write a game off for dead, given that only a small percentage of MMOs have ever been closed since the genre began.  That number has gone up in the last few years, however, as more and more companies grapple to get a piece of the subscription pie and ultimately fail at doing so.

With WAR and AOC, both games began under similar troubled circumstances and now find themselves gaining respectability.  WAR is steadily improving, with brand new City Sieges on the way and many improvements made since launch.  As for AOC, it has undergone a titanic level of bug squashing and made significant improvements to performance, player attributes, PvP Murder System, better gear itemization, along with adding Offline Leveling and new PvP/PvE content on top of all that.

I have said for some time that what Warhammer really needs is the announcement of an expansion.  With all the positive changes that have been brought to WAR, an expansion would really draw some attention towards WAR’s progress and get the playerbase fired up in a way that only an expansion can.  That is exactly what has happened to AOC and now could not be a better time for them to launch their new x-pack.

MMORPG.com – Rise of the Godslayer Beta Impressions

Rise of the Godslayer, the first AOC expansion, will be released on May 11, 2010.  It will feature an Asian-themed continent for players to explore, more dungeons to plunder, NPC factions to align yourself with, faction armor sets, new mounts, and the addition of an Alternative Advancement system similar to that of EQ 1 & 2.  As I said, this all couldn’t come at a better time for AOC.  I am a little jealous actually, as I would love to see Warhammer benefit from the exposure an expansion would bring.

I have had my troubles with Funcom in the past (haven’t we all), but I am sort of curious to check out this expansion on the side and see how the new content holds up.  This might all mean that my little trip back to Star Wars Galaxies could be put on hold.  But that is the difficulty we all face…so many games to play and so little time to play them all in. 

Vaunri Steelrain and the Land of the Dead

I said the other day that I would be throwing up a few more thoughts on Land of the Dead…but I haven’t really spent enough time there to form a valid opinion yet.  So I’ll just go over a few highlights and save my analysis for later.  There will be a certain someone reading this who was in my thoughts the entire time I explored here.  The screenshots will reveal why. 

As I mentioned already, I really do love the design and atmosphere of the zone.  It’s a lovely change of pace from Warhammer’s normal style.

The in-game map for Land of the Dead only lays out the basics…with the Destruction Warcamp in the top right of the zone and the Order Warcamp in the lower right.

One thing I think we can all agree on is that Land of the Dead came out during a time when it was not needed.  I am enjoying the zone thus far, but it was not what WAR required when the decision was made to divert a bunch of development time to creating it.  I think Mythic did a fine job with the zone itself, but WAR was suffering so many other problems at the time Land of the Dead was released that it only served to pour salt on the wounds.

That being said, I am happy we have Land of the Dead and feel that it serves its purpose well.  Lotd opens up to players in the 30s, and is an open RvR (PvP) zone where both Order and Destruction vie for entry.  Both sides gather resources in a race to unlock travel to the zone.  When one realm wins the race they may enter and run Public Quests and Tombs to their heart’s content.

However, after a short period of time the opportunity to open the travel route begins again…and if the opposing side gains access then they may enter while their enemies are still in the zone.  This gives Land of the Dead a wonderful quality of suspense, as you know that you could be beset upon by your foes at any time while you are doing PvE.  Each realm’s Warcamp can also be assaulted by the opposing faction, furthering the level of general animosity in the zone itself.

Apart from the RvR available here, there are 16 different Public Quests, 4 Tombs, and 1 Dungeon…the infamous Tomb of the Vulture Lord.  The Tombs require you to earn Glyphs from the PQs, each requiring different Glyphs in order to enter.  Lotd also has its own currency drops that allow players to progress and earn some very nice loot during their trips here.  So there is plenty to keep you busy in Lotd, as I promptly learned when I came upon a lone Squig Herder while he was hunting monsters.  I promptly laid him to rest and sent him back to the Inevitable City. 

I haven’t had the opportunity to run Tomb of the Vulture Lord yet, though I do hear that it’s getting some much-needed love and attention from Mythic in the next patch.  Once I have a chance to experience more of the zone’s content I will be back with my thoughts!

A decent little Land of the Dead preview vid from G4…