I know they say April showers bring May flowers but it seems like it’s raining every other day here. With 2 kids suffering from cabin fever due to a near 6-month winter, good weather is sorely needed. Fingers crossed that Mother’s Day is sunny so the kids can leave my wife alone.
Neverwinter
I am short on gaming time, with under an hour per night, if I can get a night. Neverwinter does scratch an itch with their daily quest progress. I can do Sharandar and the Dread Waste quests in about 30 minutes with my Cleric. I have noticed that a Cleric deals, oh, about half as much damage as any other class but I am quite literally impossible to kill. I also have a Guardian (tank) who is quite good at soaking up damage but wow, Cleric in Neverwinter are a solid choice for the solo player.
Also have a Rogue (mid 40s) who is a ton of fun to play but has trouble on elites or long fights. I made a few AH purchases and my “gear score” went up by 50%. That made a difference. Anywho, it’s like playing a 3d arcade game really. Scratches a heck of an itch. Plus, for a F2P game, it doesn’t scream “give me money”.
Wildstar
Open beta has started, which is a good thing for anyone wanting to give it a shot without forking over some dough. Plus, you get access up to level 30, which is more than previous beta had. I think I’ll try a couple more classes up to level 10, see if there’s another option out there. Right now though, my sights are on a Chua Esper. A squirrel that shoots birds. Come on, that’s cool!
Recent patch had a fair chunk of fixes, including the GW2 overflow server concept. I am really hopeful this becomes the defacto launch practice (outside from mega-servers like ESO) Nothing worse than trying to play on the same server as your friends only to see “server full” or “queue ETA is 1 hour”.
I like city building sims and this one takes it to the frontier using a scenario approach. Rather than the delicate balance of self-sufficiency, 1849 requires you to continually trade in order to keep your folk happy. Some scenarios let you log, others only let you hunt. So each is unique in a way. The hardest part is juggling the housing, and employment ratios. Sometimes I prevent upgrading just to save me the hassle of too much unemployment, then an increase in crime. Suppression for the win!
I’ve played a bunch of tablet city sims, they are all F2P money grabs of some sort. This one is an actual sim, with a $5 entry cost, with what I expect to be a solid 50+ hours of gaming to boot. It’s rare enough to get a decent tablet game (last one was Room 2 for me) so I highly recommend it.
