The other day I played another round of subscription musical chairs. DAoC and EVE Online missed the open slot for subscriptions and the agile newcomer, Hellgate London was able to slip onto the one available chair. In non-metaphorical parlance, that means a I cancelled my DAoC and EVE accounts (four accounts altogether), and opened a Hellgate London account. This should reduce my monthly gaming outlay from around $50-60/mo to just $10/mo.
I won’t fool myself into thinking this is a permanent setup. I’ve cancelled and re-opened my DAoC account so many times it needs a revolving door. And this is now my second cancellation for EVE. I’ve got too much invested in those two games to resist the temptation to re-enter their worlds when the FOTM game starts to lose its luster. And for now, Hellgate is the shiny new bauble that all my gaming buds are playing, and I also enjoy it quite a lot – being a D2:LoD crack monkey from way back. I was hoping my affair with HGL would last me until Warhammer Online came out, but with the recent announcements of their delayed shipment to at least Q4’08 I’m not sure I can last that long. Only time will tell.
Other reasons for my begrudgingly subscribing to HGL was the fact that I’m totally an alt-o-holic and 3 character slots just was NOT going to work in the Multiplayer game. I’m also a pack-rat, so the expanded “locker space” was also looking quite sexy to me. What cinched the deal was when I got the “How Much Can You Take” achievement award, which you get when your locker and your personal inventory are completely full – LOL.
My multiplayer characters are quite a bit behind my buds, since my net-connection was down for a couple days last weekend, so my highest character there, an engineer, just got to Act-3 and is in his early teens. But he has already surpassed all of my single-player characters’ progress, since I haven’t been playing any of them since my net connection came back online.
Ok, and one more gripe about HGL. My blog wouldn’t be complete without a complaint, now would it? I just discovered last night through a guildmate that the number readily seen on weapons is NOT the damage they inflict – it’s just some arbitrary “Rating- grrr. WHO CARES what it’s “rated”! We want to know how much damage it’s doing! The only time you care what it’s worth is when you’re at the market NPC, and then it already conveniently tells you what it’s worth when you hover your mouse over the item. You shouldn’t have to delve weapons just to find out how much damge it’s going to do, ugh! Hopefully that will be changed in some future patch – that would actually be a useful change, instead of the dumbing down (censoring) of the NPC’s voice acting that’s already been patched in. (ya I’m still miffed about that…hehe).
Ok, well enough rambling for today. I’m looking forward to getting into Act-3 proper this evening. Enjoy!