Tic Tac Toe : Anthem, Magic, Project 1999

While Anthem is the game I am spending the most time on, I am also playing Magic The Gathering Arena and Project 1999 daily. They are all very different but fill a nice spot. With not a big post on anything today I decided to touch on all three to make a post out of it.

Anthem

Last night, after my second Tyrant Mine run I was pretty much done with it and was tackling some contracts when I received an IM from Asmiroth over at Leo’s Life to the tune of “can you invite me to Tyrant mine to fix the bug?”. I was happy to do so. Funny enough, after a decade of blogging here I don’t think I have played directly with any community members. I find that odd and fascinating at the same time. Much like my last Anthem post, the Gaming Gods smiled upon me and I received my first Legendary piece.

Yellow? Everyone knows legendary is orange

For me it is a good one, even if the rolls aren’t spectacular. I like using Flame Throwers (it’s incredibly epic feeling in game) and the perk here of stacking 30% damage 5 times has some real game benefits – especially in Tyrant Mine during the add phase when they all come out of the same corner. I refilled my Ultimate bar every phase using it. The Gear +20% damage is Javelin wide (so affects this piece and my other ability) and a +9% Damage bonus to everything my Javelin does is not a great roll on that, but still decent. The Ammo parts I don’t care about. Either way, I’m good with this and it was fun to get.

Asmiroth and I ran a couple of them and a legendary contract. Fun to see him in game and he chose a very Captain Canuck-esque color format (white / red) for his Storm. I really appreciated the damage the Storm was putting out – it made me feel comfortable to wade into swathes of legendary enemies knowing he was hovering around somewhere raining down death. Good times.

Right now my biggest complaint about Anthem is that the store sucks. I want new armor skins for my Javelins and have around 200,000 coins stacked up – but they only release 2 things every 4 days and this last flip over was two emotes. Weird to see an EA game worry about the monetization last. (yes, I know they have big problems. Money solves all problems!)

Magic The Gathering Arena

The MTGA season ended and I climbed from a Platinum 4 in preseason 1 to a Platinum 2 in preseason 2 – using the same deck in the one off playstyle. I was hoping to hit Diamond but didn’t realize the season was ending and didn’t grind it out.

This is still a game I play daily but just to beat the quests and climb standings, in the single, quick and easy to play format. I have amassed over 60,000 gold which means I can buy 60 packs to flesh out my collection – but I love my deck and have no need to. I can hold onto this cash and wait for the next expansion and get a good jump. I have said this before and I will say it again – MTGA is almost too generous of a F2P game. I do have to spend some money there as I enjoy the game and want to further it’s success, profit and development but to be honest there is no in game reason need – which means it is very well designed for the player. They have earned some cash. I just don’t know what to spend it on.

Project 1999

Project 1999 is an EQ emulator that never grows or expands. It is a snapshot of time of pure Everquest with all the good and bad that came with playing the game in 1999. This emulator does have the blessing of Daybreak so there is no fear of it being closed down. I am often surprised to log in and see 1000 – 1500+ people playing this game – I have NEVER seen less than 1000 even logging into odd times (sometimes I run it in the background at work).

Think about that for a second – there is a healthy player base of people playing a 20 year old game as it was released 20 years ago. On a server that will never grow, expand or change. It’s crazy and impressive at the same time.

I shouldn’t be shocked because I keep going back there too – and my reasons are simple. It’s a game you can play and be relaxed. Find a quiet corner, fight, rest with downtime, rinse repeat. It’s the exact opposite of Anthem which is very busy, hectic, and exhausting to play sometimes (twitchy) so after long sessions it’s nice to slow the pace down. I am soloing an Enchanter there (and have the Titanium Disks required to play it, if you are curious).

3 comments / Add your comment below

  1. Seemed the most appropriate color scheme.

    I’ve played the classes, and nothing does lock down like a Storm. Their ultimate attack is plain insanity on large group spawns spawns. That + a colossus combo = melting.

  2. *looks around* Where did the Orange go? I literally hit refresh a couple of times to make sure it wasn’t just a load bug. Hah.

    I actually like the new theme though! 😀

    In any case, congrats on the legendary! I find it interesting though that you find EQ ’99 relaxing. I never played it at that time due to AC, but I would’ve thought ‘relaxing’ to be one of the last adjectives to apply to the game. Hehe.

    1. Ha! I have to pay for the layout to.get color options (which I am planning on once I spend some time with it to make sure I like it) and sort out the Logo part.

      There is a zen grind and familiarity to EQ, like visiting the old, smalln home town

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