I know I’ve written about this before. Inspired by the abundance of downtime in World of Warcraft three years ago I wrote Toque’s WoW Fitness Program, which was recognized on the official site. Now my question is what else do others do? Lately I’ve been trying to get some knitting done (not WoW related… yet! Stay tuned) and I also discovered that there are some great in-game addons to help you pass the time while flying, while dead, etc.

This weekend I was doing some badge farming heroic runs on Amoo and Culling of Stratholme was the daily. No sooner had I added myself to LFG I received a whisper and invite. However, with issues like members who got disconnected or had to go and finding a tank, it took 45 minutes for the group to get organized. Instead of pulling out my hair because my guildmates had already run it and I was stuck with the PuG, I pulled out my knitting. With CoS being the daily, I know I would’ve found another group fairly quickly, but just when I think I’m at the end of my rope waiting on group members, they get their act together. But then 5 minutes later someone else had to go and then it would all fall apart again. And I’d wait a few minutes… nearly leave again, and then we’d find a replacement. Rinse repeat. I almost gave up on CoS this weekend but knitting while I waited helped.

I don’t know why in-game addon games never really occured to me; this weekend a guildmate of mine mentioned the Bejeweled addon and it nearly blew my mind. Genius!  Playing Bejeweled invokes memories of working in the Student Loan office at Indiana University Bloomington years ago. It was how we passed the time. While I’d prefer a Frozen Bubble type addon game to pass the time instead, I do enjoy having Bejeweled at my fingertips. The settings make it really convenient: it pops up instantly when I take a flight path or when I die, and I like trying to beat the clock before I land. These days with epic flying mounts, taking a flight path isn’t always the most efficient route, but sometimes the idea of a little Bejeweled is inticing enough for me to make the choice.

So what do YOU do during downtime? Is there a certain addon you recommend? Is there something like my knitting that you keep near your computer to help make the wait on the rest of the raid interesting? Let’s hear it!

P.S. I realize that when I updated to the latest version of Wordpress a week or two ago some of the text got garbled; it seems the copyright symbols or other alt code symbols didn’t make the jump. I’m trying to get in there and correct those as I can :) Thanks for letting me know!

All this time your wonderful comments have been caught by the spam filter and I never even noticed. But as I was cleaning up the 34893098069485907508 spam comments this evening, I caught them… and am now approving them. I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to “ignore” you! So many kind and thoughtful comments that really made my night! Thank you for commenting and my apologies for it getting caught up in the oceans of spam.

<3

Love to Middea, Lucius, bum, Bartlebe, Reltius, Ringo Flinthammer, chris, noobcakes, Daxenos, and romstomp. Sorry!

… but it did. It sucked me back in.

and P.S. – thanks for making my day, Ranbodan :)

I’ve added some real beauties to my AION screenshot section in my Gallery … go to Main Menu -> AION -> Toque – Asmodian Cleric to check them out! You won’t be disappointed.

Also, Noroia is not standing in the middle of Altgard; as the quest says, she is in the Altgard Dungeons, which are located below Altgard. This is why she appears to be standing in the center of town when you use the locate feature to find her — she is actually underneath you. To reach her, go to the west gate of Altgard and follow the little stone path north along the wall around behind the buildings. You’ll see a little entrance that will take you down below into the dungeons.

For Scout It Out, you need to find and pick up the documents on the table inside the house. If you’re looking for the Escort Wagon and you can target it but can’t attack it, change channels and try again.

Speaking of changing channels to fix problems with quests, you’ll also want to do that with the incense burner one where you summon the monster at the shrine if you can’t click on the urn to activate the incense.

I figure since I write this information out 4949534947 times in general chat each day I’d post it here, too. Not that anyone will read it, but… you know. Just sayin’.

Wow. I guess the fact that I haven’t had time to update here should be indicative of how amazing Aion and its launch has been.

At 3pm EST on Sunday afternoon the servers went live for Head Start, the 2 day head start access that pre-orders were granted. The servers basically just switched on as planned on Sunday, and even with as many people who hammered the servers all at once, clamoring to get in, I had zero trouble logging right in, accessing my server, and launching into the world of Atreia right on schedule. It was … well, let’s say crowded those first few hours, but it was exciting and amazingly smooth for an MMO launch.  No downtime, no disconnects… I simply played for hours on end from the moment the servers launched until I was too tired to go on. Congratulations for the smoothest MMO launch I’ve ever experienced, NCsoft.  The game went live for the rest of the world on Tuesday, and that went off without a hitch as well. There have been some big queues to get into the game during prime time for some, but as I understand it, NCsoft has capped the servers at lower than the maximum capacity temporarily to help distribute the population more evenly as they ease into the full load. It really has been a successful launch, though.

My main character is Toque, an Asmodian Cleric on the Lumiel server. She of course has pink pigtails; a shout out to my original Toque, the pink pigtailed gnome Warlock in WoW that I had that was the “face” to go with the Toque gaming nickname that originally inspired this site in the first place. The world of Atreia is large and there’s so much to take in; scenery is gorgeous, crafting is thankfully more challenging and even risky at times, and I’ve found myself getting lost in the sheer overwhelming aspects of a completely new game. New worlds, new lore, new stories, and new mechanics to explore. Crafting is pretty time consuming, and I can spend hours just gathering various materials and aether. You get small amounts of xp for gathering and crafting, so I don’t feel like I’ve completely neglected leveling when I go on a crafting or gathering binge, but I’m definitely leveling a bit slower than some of my legion mates. I just don’t feel the need to rush; in beta I only leveled a couple characters just past ascension at level 10 so that I could get a feel for the classes and basic combat mechanics. I hit level 10 the first day of Head Start on Toque because I knew the starter area well, but from then on the rest has been all new and I just don’t want to miss anything.  There’s plenty of time to level up, so I figure I’ll enjoy myself more if I absorb it all as I go, at my own pace, instead of trying to rush through it or keep up with others. It’s hard not to keep pushing to level because I’m so psyched about PvP in the Abyss starting at level 25.  I know I’ll suck at it, but I’ll sure have fun dying while I try… and having fun is all that matters.

Be sure to check out the new pictures I’ve put in my Screenshot Gallery. Go to Main Menu -> Aion -> Toque – Asmodian Cleric to check it out; I’ll be adding more as Toque progresses.

One thing I’m trying to get the hang of is gliding. In Aion you can fly for limited amounts of time based on your level and the type of wings you have. You can only full-on fly in fly zones, but in no-fly zones you’re able to spread your wings and glide for a short time. Gliding is handy if you can get the hang of it and use it effectively. If you jump just right and are able to gain speed and catch drifts just right, you can really save a lot of time and cover a lot of ground quickly by gliding. I’m far from there, but practicing is a lot of fun. It all boils down to coordination, and I laugh trying to imagine me managing an epic PvP battle and flying (and managing to get down/land somewhere safely so I don’t plummet to my death when my flight timer runs out) at the same time. Coordination. I’m doing it wrong.

All in all, I’m really happy with Aion. The game is beautiful, the Lumiel community is really great, and I’m enjoying every little detail that I’m soaking up like a sponge in my character’s infancy. It’s like starting out with my first MMO ever; not knowing it all and not being sure of myself or my surroundings and having to learn is really refreshing. Cheers to Aion and to enjoying the ride. See you in game! :)