What I Played Today: April 2

Rift

I don’t know what triggered it, but I am consistently playing an MMORPG. I’m not getting bored, I’m staying focused, and I just don’t get it. I’ve been doing more of the group stuff, finding helpers who can assist me on the quests I’m doing. I am one stupid group activity away from completing the epic quest for the starting region. In this quest, you have to destroy three plane anchors, which seems really easy until you realize that it will spawn three groups of five assholes to protect it, and then after that an elite 30 foot tall specter to kill you. So, you need to have a group of at least three people who are paying attention or you’re going to wipe.

Now, I found this group of guys, and we worked together to cap two of them. The first was overly difficult because we didn’t know the groove and had to try to break through a small crowd, but once we got to the second one we were on fire, able to concentrate completely and do it in one try. They had already completed the last one, but they offered to help me get it…when we got sidetracked by the world event happening at the same time. We got merged with a group of 20 on the way there and capped a couple of rifts, one of those adjacent to the anchor, which was already half-completed and roaming with jerks. One of the guys I worked with tried to trickily pull the crowd of anchor guardians around it…but nobody helped, and soon I was left alone, with no one to help. I tried to get a couple of level 50s to help me, but the one who actually tried turned out to be an idiot and destroyed the pillar while I wasn’t in his party, so I didn’t get credit. So…I guess that dark mark is just going to hang in my quest log forever…

I moved on to the next zone and killed a bunch of trolls and mountain goats, which managed to net me three levels pretty quickly. There are a lot fewer people hanging around here, so the rifts here don’t get a lot of attention. But there are a lot less of them, which is helpful when you don’t want to get sidetracked from your goal every ten minutes. I managed to log some time with my other role, which is mostly stormcaller, and it’s a fun AoE class. The majority of the skills apply one of two status ailments, and a lot of the skills have a special trigger effect based on those ailments, like a spell that hurts everyone who is electrified, for example. It’s interesting, although I haven’t had much luck using it to kill large crowds. They still manage to kill me somehow.