This was written while I was gone, on pad and pen. Some of this has been decided, but still putting it up for posterity
Life is full of decisions. What should I eat, How much should I tip, What should I play? Well, today I'm offering answers. Whatever tastes best. Life is too short to be constantly fearing cancer or obesity. Eat a fucking steak with potatoes and enjoy life. 20%. I know, 15% is the standard in America, but having worked for tips before, I know that most people don't. A good server can make a HUGE difference in your meal, so why not let them know how well they did? Besides, 20% is easier math. Just multiply the meal by 2, and there's your tip. Meal cost 25 bucks? Tip 5. Life is better when things are made simple.
What to play is a more difficult question. It depends on what you want to do, and how much cash you can spend. There is WoW, the old stand by. Works fairly well. $15 a month. Has all the major spheres required to be a major MMO. Everyone has played this game to death, and while playing you can't help but think about how much better the game used to be. You cannot help it, you've played WoW for so long that now you constantly think about YOUR favorite in the game. BUT, WoW is pretty awesome in other ways. Multiple leveling paths. For an altoholic, being able to level in a variety of ways is a big plus. If you like questing, WoW has a bunch of different ways you can quest, and, at least until you hit level 60, you can go in different areas with different toons. Granted, at 60 things do slow down because it forces you into the path of same old same old. If you want to do dungeons to level, again it's not a problem because WoW has dungeons that go from 10ish all the way to max level. Once you get to that first instance, you can just grind till you ding 90, and it's all good. If you're by yourself, again no problem, LFG will automatically group you with people about the same level wanting to run the same instance. LFG has taken a lot of shit for how it's killed WoW, or turned everyone into asshats, but it is an amazing tool for doing/seeing content if you're playing the game solo. LFG deserves a post of it's own, so I won't get into it now. Anyways, back on topic. If you like PVP, you can level up by running battlegrounds over and over. It has harvesting, crafting, achievements, rep grinds, collections, solo content, group content, vanity gear. WoW is pretty amazing. If I were to play WoW right now, I would probably spend most of my time running old content for mounts/pets. I'm currently retired from raiding because I'm gone too much. Being constantly under geared because my job makes me leave the Internet, I can't be counted on to be a consistent raider, and I'm not much interested in having to grind 5-mans non stop twice a year so I can catch up. PVP is possible, but soloing battlegrounds is less then awesome, and arena is only cool with people I know. Multiboxing solves the PVP/Grouping content problem, but even ignoring the purchase price, WoW is $15 a month. Paying for 5 accounts is $75, which is a bit much for a late night/early morning activity. I am planning on starting up the wife's account to try to get her gaming again, and I have some friends who's accounts I can occasionally borrow, but it will require coordinating times and all, so an annoying idea if used.
Vanguard. Good PVE. No PVP. Great crafting. Great harvesting. Nice community. Free to Play. I know, I'm a fanboy, but you knew a Vanguard post was coming. Vanguard's questing is very good, but difficult to solo with most classes. Vanguard has some very unique classes to play, but alot of them are now behind a pay wall. Multiboxing is now possible due to F2P. Crafting and harvesting and diplomacy are absolutely epic. Dungeons are pretty awesome, and are non instanced, but no LFG means getting a group requires some good old fashion shouting. Zero PVP is a minus, but I'd rather have a game with no PVP then one that balances too much to compensate. If I play Vanguard, assuming my friend fixes my account while I'm away, I plan on mostly multiboxing to level, and grinding out some crafting. That has a lot of win factor for me, but I'm kind of curious how much processor power it will take to run more then two accounts at once. I'm also wondering how many of the F2P limitations can be paid away permanently. I'm a fan of giving game companies money, but prefer to buy things I want instead of subscribing. But that's another post.
Final Fantasy XI. A huge part of me wants to play this again. With the addition of the Dancer class, this game's solo-ability when through the roof. But, again, this was a game made for a duo. Because of the game's simplicity, you can play two accounts on two PC's with little to no difficulty. FFXI has arguably the best community in any game I've ever played. The economy is solid, and you can make money just playing the market if you know what you are doing. Understand that to play FFXI is to grind, cause that's all the game is, but memories make this grind more pleasant then most. FFXI has two problems. First, it IS a sub game. Granted, with no bank toons, it's only like $11 a month, so potentially doable when I get out from under the WoW 1 year sub. The bigger(and possibly insurmountable) problem is the level cap quests. Starting at lvl 50, and every 5 levels after, you have to do a quest in order to level up anymore. No biggie by itself, but these quests aren't doable at level solo, they are designed to require a raid to accomplish. Since there is not a bunch of people doing this all the time, it means you have to bug the max level people to run you through it. So, Basically, if you aren't cool with joining a linkshell(guild) and being an annoying, whiny, needy new guy, you are constantly trying to pay people to run you through things. Not my fav thing to do. Also, don't forget that the high level toons have WAY more money then you, so your "bribe" is pretty pathetic. You're basically the pixelated version of the guy offering you a quarter for a smoke, while praying I'll give you one for free. While the people in FFXI are super helpful, and I have never had someone complain, I HATE having to beg for run through, so thus the big problem. Squenix, if you're reading, do away with all of them but the last couple.
Rift/SWTOR/Aion/AoC/Every other not broken F2P game out there. All have positives and negatives. Rift's bard class is a multiboxers dream. Aion's crafting quests are the best thing to happen to crafting leveling since VG. SWTOR's companions increases the power of a multiboxer. Age of Conan's version of a necro would be amazing with multiboxing. Any/All of these things are possible, and I might try some/all of them at some point, but that time is not now.
For now, my plan is to get reacquainted with WoW and VG, and experiment/improve my multibox abilities.
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