Did Someone Say Tree?

HG:L has been picked up, and is awaiting testing. In the meantime, here are some anticipated trees:

1. Engineer: From threads, it seems like this minion-summoning class is meant to be more of a damage/support hybrid, so I decided to concentrate on minion ranged damage and engineer ranged damage. Most pets tend to die in melee from what I’ve seen, so I expect the pet to be more of a dot-bot than a crappy tank. I put a point into Sprint for the 20% movement bonus which may be useful when soloing I maxed most of the useful party skills, tactical stance, and nanobots (which must be good because it is in the final tier, haha).
2. Evoker: The skill tree seems to be broken, as you cannot allocate points to Elemental Drain. I left 6 points behind to max that skill, and possibly put a point into Sprint. I like the way lighning spells look, so I went down that tree, but I don’t really know which spells will be most useful. I focused a little more on AOE damage, just so the character will play differently from other ranged damage classes. I expect there to be some very large mob groups in HG:L.

The trees are sorta primitive right now, and they don’t really tell you what all the ranks do. I’m hoping level 50 is pretty easy to reach. No clue yet on the third class. Videos and skill descriptions for Guardian sound a little lame, but I would like a melee class.

Thanks But I’ll Pass

Hahaha, MBA asked me (via stock email) to take a survey to assess the effectiveness of their program. First off, I’ve only been in the program for half of one trimester, so I don’t know anything yet. The questions were very general business type questions, but they were the kind you would only be able to answer if you had taken the classes and paid attention. So, let’s see: I can spend over an hour answering the 100+ question survey… or I can decide not to. I’d say the survey was the equivalent of a voluntary test with no rewards.

I did actually click on the link to the survey because I’m a nice guy, but I didn’t bother to answer any of the questions. I’m thinking they are going to get a very very, small sample size.

Time To Lava Dye

I pre-ordered Hellgate: London and I think that this game should be some nice, pseudo-mindless fun. I especially appreciate the lack of healbots and buffslaves, although there is a tanking class. Hopefully, this game will have minimal grinding, and be a sort of Guild Wablo 2, as I mentioned to Velius.

With my preorder, I was told I would get all kinds of goodies. The clerk handed me a plastic box (the kind that games come in nowadays), and I was surprised and eager to find out what was inside. Although it was the type of box that holds CD/DVDs, and even had the little spindle thing in it, all that was in the box was two pieces of paper. The first was a legal paper-sized glossy poster of some class art. The second was a little card that invited me to try the Beta (lol…). However, all was not lost, because there was a super-secret code that will let me customize my armor “in the scorching red and yellow scheme of the Lava Dye Kit.” Sweet, now I can make all my armor look rusted! Mwahaha, I bet those demons never got their tetanus shots.

Over the weekend, I also saw an ad in a magazine with another code. That code would let you get some kind of super-fugly yellow pet with 5 legs or something. I was tempted to snap a pic with my cell phone camera, but it was too much work to actually take my phone out of my pocket for this sort of thing. I’m not going to sign up for the subscription fee, so I will only get 3 character slots, and so I am considering:

1. Engineer: I heard they were really buggy in the Beta. I also heard that if you upgrade your minion with enough rare artifacts, it can run Crysis on high.
2. Evoker: Sounds like your standard mage.
3. Guardian: Off-hand shields seemed pretty lame in the demo, but grappling guns are fun.

Big Little Package Coming

Most expensive online purchase I’ve ever made is supposed to arrive today. Managers alerted everyone we get to leave mid-afternoon today.

Edit: Of course nothing ever works out perfectly. Even though every other delivery service can find my building easily, Fedex always has problems. The package was shipped overnight priority, and Fedex is trying to say that the address was wrong (it’s not). They then tried to say that there is no building at that address. OK, the condo building is the largest freaking building on a major intersection!