Given all the news and hoopla as you might imagine it’s been a bit busy for me. Between ongoing issues at home and all the work at work, I’ve been very glad to take my fun where I can find it. Thankfully I’ve taken time away from both LotRO and WoW to reconnect with some old favorites.

On the AAA front, I wanted very much to make sure that Ostimak the Gnomish Inquisitor didn’t die the death of loneliness. After two-plus years of play I’m kind of attached to him. So I took up the kind offer of Karen (Jaye) and hied him over to the Guk server. There Revelry and Honor reside, her guild and the guild Darren plays in. Other VW’ers also call R&H home, so I’ll be in good company. On the more casual side, I return to the fun and games of Shortiez gaming in a bit more casual environ. We took on Puzzle Pirates with a fervor.

Read on for my duality of experiences; old and (old) new.

It’s fascinating because after the aforementioned two-plus years of gameplay, Osti is now more-or-less on his own for leveling. As a result I’ve been retune/reorienting my understanding of what it means to play him as a character. I’ve had to swap around some Achievement points, I’ve made a point to look to my equipment more than I might have otherwise, and I’ve done a lot of examining how to solo through the levels.

Thankfully the EQ-IQ podcast, and the associated guide Dave made up for episode 5, have a lot of handholding guidelines. I’ve actually found myself … sigh … in the Kingdom of Sky content. It’s actually quite beautiful. As I remember, I didn’t lead the Shortiez there because I heard that it’s not that great an area for grouping. For soloing, it’s working just fine. My only problem is that I can’t handle more than three regular guys or one group guy at a time. Healers are fun, but even my Inquisitor isn’t so much for the DPS. Especially since I’m primarily still a healer, and haven’t completely gone into DPS-speccing.

As I write that, maybe I should look into that more; completing quests gets you AAs, so … yeah. Really glad to reconnect to my EQ2 time, though it might not be something I do much more of overtime.

Speaking of the Shortiez, yesterday we played together for the first time in something like two months. Weird to say, but that’s the way it’s been. Between holidays and RL issues it’s just not been conducive to gaming together. Yesterday’s outing was notable then. Notable too because it was a return to Three Rings territory.

That’s right, we played us some Puzzle Pirates, and I’m pleased to report it went over like gangbusters. I actually still had a character sitting around from back in the day, though his skills had atrophied quite a bit. It was nice to walk around with a guy wearing something better than the ‘castaway’ garb. It was equally nice to be able to outfit my comrades with gear.

To add a nuance, though, I was basically giving away money to my friends. I’ve played on one of the Doubloon oceans essentially since they started up, and having cash in your pocket is as easy as swiping your Visa. Doubloons are the RMT currency that underpins the game, translatable into in-game pieces of eight at an island’s bank. The night we were playing each doubloon was trading for about 1250 piece of eight, so I was able to give each of my comrades about 12-15,000 in-game coins – about four or five bucks in real money.

As a quick aside, have you looked at how easy it is to buy Three Rings money now? Check out the FAQ on the official site … you can buy Doubloons at one of those freaking green coin counting machines you see in the grocery store! We live in an age of wonders!

Once everyone had played through some tutorial time and outfitted themselves adequately, we had a ton of fun playing games together. We played about 45 minutes worth of Spades, and then did quite a bit of Swordfighting. Both of these games (as well as Rumble) were available as free-to-play options that day. If we hadn’t played on Thursday, we would have had other options. There’s even a helpful calendar.

Spades was a bit weird. It has a kind of hardcore bidding mechanic that all of us found a bit abrasive. When we sit down for cards (and most of us are from Wisconsin, where Euchre is like a freaking state-wide pastime), we do trick-taking games for fun. All this trick bidding and hardcore decision-making, penalties for overtricking … very harsh. Fun, because it’s basically a Euchre offshoot/Hearts variant. But, still. Harsh.

Swordfighting though, is just as fun as always. Definitely one of the best game rip-offs on the high seas. I’ve never actually played Puzzle Fighter proper, so all of my experience with that mechanic has been with this Swordfighting mini-game. It’s perfect for an MMO because of the potential for numerous players all participating in the same fight. I found it’s also a bunch of fun to play while voice chatting, because you can say things like “Have at thee!” and “Take that!” and not just be talking to yourself.

I’m finding … and I don’t suppose this should come as any shock … that as I get older my definition of ‘an awesome game’ is changing. As reflected by Tipa’s change at West Karana from a hard-bitten raider to a Wizard 101 grinding / DOMO rocking titan, free to play games hold more and more appeal the older I get. There’s a lot to like in these quirky titles … not the least of which being that they don’t cost anything. If I can get together with some friends in an online space, screw it. Who cares if it’s some huge AAA game or a puzzle-based f2p title about pirates? As long as we’re having a good time, that’s really all that matters.

That said, still really like AAA games. I’m not exactly planning on hanging up my hardcore spurs anytime soon.