Friday, December 13, 2013

Gifts For Geeks

It's nearing that holiday time of year again and you may be thinking to yourself, "What in the hell do I get the geek who has everything?"  The immediate answer is that they don't have everything - no matter what flavor of geek a person is, there's always that one extra cool thing that they'd like.

Now, there are many kinds of geeks - from audiophiles to Trekkers to trivia kings/queens - but in this post I'll be giving you a hand with the more "traditional" geek.  Again, there are so many slices and flavors of geek that in reality a traditional geek is undefinable, but I'll focus on the geek who's into sci-fi/fantasy, superheroes, and/or technology.

If you're not a geek, it's hard to know where to shop so here's your handy guide!  I'll mention a few sites as well as some possibilities in your local area.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Games of the Moment

I'm playing mostly Star Trek Online and Neverwinter these days - both Perfect World / Cryptic Studios games.

One of the things that I've noted in the past is that when you jump from one MMO to another that what happens is that you lose skill in that game and have to relearn it when you come back.  On the plus side, it does keep things fresh and new - when one game gets boring, going over to one that you haven't played in a while livens things up.

While STO and NW are very different games, because they've both been developed by the same people, it's easier to understand some of the systems.  When I pop on either, I know to look for the various hourly events and that I can basically "teleport" into them from anywhere, I know that it's a good idea to accumulate dilithium/astral diamonds to buy special things, and when the urge arises to spend actual money on the games I can divide the Zen that I buy between them if I want easily enough.

Basically, by trying to stick to a select few MMOs at the moment is my attempt to actually get more skilled and better geared in them.


On Star Trek these days, I've been concentrating on getting my various level-maxed characters finished with their reputation grinds.  The good news is that they just implemented a system with the last episode that allows a character who achieves the highest level of rep with a given group to create a token that can then be given to other characters, giving them double reputation experience with each project that they finish.  So basically, get one character to level 5 reputation, grind out tokens to your other characters, and they then have to spend half of the reputation/items/energy credits to get there themselves.  That was a long time in the coming.

I've also been working on my Klingon Empire character and enjoying the difference in KDF ships and the change in playstyle.  For those of you who don't play, Klingon ships are very focused on forward firing arcs - they're not made to attack to the stern - which I think is very, well, Klingon.


On the Neverwinter side, they just introduced the Ranger class, which I've found to be interesting.  Once they hit level 10, a bulk of their skills can be switched from a ranged mode to a melee mode, which is unique in the game thus far.  After playing my new Ranger a bit, I did head straight back to my favorite - Devoted Cleric.  He's pretty powerful in his own right and I enjoy the idea of being able to heal party members when I do group up.  The thing that I like most about this class is that it's not a sit-back-and-heal type of MMO healer - he's very active in fighting and the very act of doing so charges up his "daily" powers to add extra some extra punch into the mix.

If you do get a chance to try out either of these games, give it a go.  They're both free-to-play and you really can play them for free and be competitive (slightly less so on the STO side).