Review: Granado Espada (aka, Sword of the New World)

Well, I finally have decent internet! This is something I've been itching to do and, to be honest, was also something I was afraid to do, mostly because of expenses on my end. But I have better internet and such so my reviews are officially commencing! I imagine y'all are excited about this. I know I am, at any rate!

Some quick things before I actually get the review started. I've decided to work on some new artwork for the blog. I'm not sure if I want to redo my logo but I do plan to do some art for smilies and the like, so keep an eye out for that! I'm also trying out some "spoiler" style tags, so that the content of the reviews is short for those who want shortness, and if others want more detail, they can read as they please. I'm also trying out anchor tags, so you can click the headers of each section to jump to them automatically on the page, to make it easier for you guys. Let me know if you guys like these features or if there's anything else you'd like me to try out!

Without further ado, ON WITH THE REVIEW!

Review: Ragnarok Online 2

Hey all, Little Miss Squish here! Well, I finally have been able to play an MMO with relatively little headache from my internet, which seems to do what it wants to do, in terms of lag spikes. Some days I have great connection, other times I get small spikes of lag, conveniently in the middle of a dungeon boss fight, but that's beside the point! Right? Right. Steam recently launched Ragnarok Online 2 into its massive tome of games list and, naturally, I had to jump in.

borrowed from anjelsyndicate.org

I have a lot to say about this game, so let's get on with the review, then, shall we?

Free to Play versus Pay to Play

Also known as "Why I dislike most MMOs' gameplay"

(and the return of the meme faces)

Hey all, Little Miss Squish here. Now, before y'all freak out and such that I'd be posting two reviews within one week... I'm not. For those that have poked around old posts and such, every now and then I put aside the reviews to discuss MMOs in general, particularly relating to the healing classes ("uh, durrrr, LMS. That's obvious, you retard."), and all that good stuff. I'd been thinking about what to review next, whether I wanted to replay something I'd played before or play something new entirely. I'd poked around www.mmorpg.com (which you should totally also check out!) and found an article on free-to-play versus pay-to-play gaming, specifically, RIFT versus WoW. While the article itself isn't exactly about free-to-play games versus pay-to-play ones, it did make me think about why exactly I play free-to-play ones specifically and question why I tend to review those more than the pay-to-play ones.

Well, there are a few answers, most of them fairly straight-forward, honestly.

Review: Team Fortress 2

Hey guys, Little Miss Squish here! Sorry for my lack of posting for.... god knows how long. The internet where I'm living right now has been ridiculously horrible and incredibly unstable so my actual MMO playing has been.... well, non-existent. That and my life has been taken up by a lot of other things lately. BUT, I was thinking about what to review next. I knew I hadn't posted in a while and I felt really badly for not doing so but I was like "I haven't been able to really -play- anything, let alone enough to review a new game on the blog!"

And then it hit me. There was one game that I'd played a lot, loved the healing class for it (enough to start to put together a costume of it!) and went back to it over and over again. It always plastered a huge grin to my face whenever I played it or even thought about it. And when my boyfriend suggested I reviewed it, I knew I had to.

Review: Age of Conan

First off, I apologize for not posting as often as I had been in the past or when I say that I will. I'm still kinda adjusting to new things in my life and I'm also working on making rather large changes in my life. Things like settling in with my new job, being in a long-distance relationship, working on buying a house and moving closer to my job... Things like that. It's taking up quite a bit of time out of my day and energy from me, so by the time I can sit down and hammer out reviews, I'm ready to fall asleep, most often. But, I've decided to sit down and write a review, since I owe you guys at least that much.

Also, on a side-note, I'm working on making and implementing a more standardized review layout/template, so don't be surprised if you see some things changing a bit over my next few reviews. I'm trying to find what looks best and what would work for y'all and myself. If you guys have any suggestions/comments/opinions, I'm glad to listen to them. 

Anyway... On with the review!

Guide: Healing 101

Hey guys, Little Miss Squish here again. Sorry for my lack of posting over the past few weeks. I've been a bit busy between starting a new job, moving, and working lots and lots of hours lately, so I haven't really been able to play any new MMOs as of late. I'm working on getting my hands on something new to play so y'all will have something to read soon. I'm considering replaying Mabinogi as I have a friend who was curious about my thoughts on the game. I've also been told by several people now to play Star Wars: The Old Republic and I'm looking into that as well. (If you have any thoughts on the subject, feel free to contribute.)

That being said... I've decided to make another healer's guide. Why? Because I think that there's more to healing well than just knowing what skills you have, which is what I focused on in my last guide, Bandaids and Disinfectant Required. I'm aiming for this guide to be more beginner-healer friendly than the last one and I'll explain things [hopefully] a little better than I had the last time. As a warning, this will probably become a little long, so I hope you're prepared! (Though, I hope it'll be more entertaining and less textbook-ish.) So let's get started, shall we?

Review: Blade & Soul

Hey all, Little Miss here again. Well, it's official: I've graduated college! It's surreal to say the least. I don't honestly feel like I've graduated. But I digress; I'm sure that's not why you came here, is it? You're probably demanding me to get on with the review.

(Sorry, I couldn't help it. As soon as I said "get on with," this is the first thing my brain thought of. You can attempt to throw a brick at me if you like but... I wouldn't recommend it.)

Anyway, yes! The Blade & Soul Review. Without further ado...

Review: Call of Roma

Hi again guys, LMS here. I got a request to review Call of Roma, based on an advertisement that kept floating around a WoW RP server that I'm on. Specifically, it was this image:

Now, I know what you're probably thinking. "Holy crap, a Roman orgy! That sounds fantasti-- Wait what does this have to do with an MMO?" And then you're probably going to look at the screen slightly creepily and sketched out. And yes, I would have, too, if I were you. To be honest, I believe the review request was more for jokes but I figured, "Hey! Why not actually review it? Maaaaaybe it'll be interesting?" On a side note, I know I said I was going to review Fallen Earth, but the game refused to cooperate so I kinda had to give up. The environment wasn't rendering no matter what I did. So I kinda had to give up, sorry guys. Without further ado, here's my review of Call of Roma!

Somehow I Ended Up Playing WoW: Cataclysm

This is the story of how I lost my soul, otherwise known as "Somehow I Ended Up Playing WoW: Cataclysm." To make a long backstory short, I was waiting for TERA Online to come out for CBT and needed to play something in between that was new and entertaining as I was getting bored of the same old thing day after day. Since the server I play WotLK on just released Cata realms not too long ago, I decided to sell my soul and try my hand at Cataclysm. I had heard horror stories from enraged fans about how Blizzard destroyed X and Y classes, the talent system was completely changed, and this that and the other. But.. Surely it couldn't be that bad, could it? I mean, when I heard of Cataclysm's changes to Priests (my default class in most games), I looked into them and was rather excited. Not to mention I was curious about what environmental changes Blizzard had done to different zones now that Deathwing was prowling about. And, to be honest, I was really frickin' excited to see those underwater mounts and zones. That sounded really friggin' cool. (And shut up, I know I'm easily amused sometimes.)

Glimpse into TERA Online

Hey guys, LMS here. I FINALLY got into the Closed Beta Testing of TERA Online this past weekend. I was very happy to have the opportunity to play the game as I was really looking forward to the combat system the most. I only got to play for a few hours due to a tight work schedule this weekend, but my overall opinion is very positive of this game so far.

Review: ARGO Online

Hey guys, LMS here again. :D I don't really have anything exciting to say so I'll just cut to the chase and present my review of ARGO Online. :)

Review: Prius Online

Hey guys, Little Miss Squish here! Hope you all had an awesome Thanksgiving holiday. I know I did. With the semester exams ending tonight, I figured I'd start to review the games I've been playing over the past month or so. I've been playing two games as of late, Prius Online and ARGO Online. I'll start with Prius since I played it first. So let's get started.

Clerics: What I Want to See

Hey guys, Little Miss Squish here. I've been thinking about posting an anticipatory review of TERA Online, reviewing some other MMOs I've played before, not really sure what I was going to do. I was looking at some of the class choices and things for TERA Online and I was really excited about what the Cleric class looked like and some of the features it offered. Then it occurred to me... I've been posting about what I don't  like about cleric/priest classes in MMOs and I've never sat down and explained what I do like about the class, what I'd like to see the healer class become, and things of that nature. So! I've decided to write on the healer class as a whole, what I would like to see happen for healers, and things of that nature. A lot of this will be my own opinion, where you may not necessarily agree with me, but I hope this at least will entertain you guys. I'll also be using terms like healer, priest, cleric interchangeably, so unless otherwise stated, consider it all one thing.

Some Minor Updates

Hey guys! :D I'm currently working on updating the WoW Healer Guide page to include Druid and Paladin healing and it should be finished by tonight. I'll be reviewing Iris Online, a fairly new game, this week, so look forward to that on Saturday! I like some of the ideas in the game but I'm not sure how well they're executed. It'll probably be a mixed love-hate review.

I was wondering... I've posted a few non-review things, such as guides or discussions. Do you feel that they're interesting or useful? Would you rather me just focus on the reviews? Basically, I want to know what y'all think! :D Feel free to let me know!

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or anything, feel free to comment on any of the posts or on the Facebook page, link to your right. :D

Review: Tales of Pirates (2)

Hey guys, Little Miss Squish here. When I thought about what to review next for the blog, I had a LOT of choices. Frankly, too many. I wanted to do something that was familiar to me and that I could review easily. I pulled out my list of MMOs that I've played before and soon found myself staring at Tales of Pirates. I remembered loving it, since it was one of my first MMOs, and wondered why I had stopped playing it. I redownloaded the client, now Tales of Pirates 2, and logged in.

I quickly found out why I stopped playing. And by quickly, I mean within the first two minutes. It's THAT bad.

Band-Aids and Disinfectant Required (Healing Guide)

Hey guys, Little Miss Squish here. This week my internet has been sucky so I haven’t been able to play any MMOs long enough to review them. Instead, I’m going to tell you how to basically heal parties or raids, how I heal, and different methods/playing styles for healing.  So, grab your bandages and your mana potions, we'll start with the basics and work our way up!

Review: Lord of the Rings Online

Hey everyone, LMS here! :D It's the start of Spring Break and I'm super excited! Not for the beach, or a vacation, or alcohol, but for two reasons: no classes and mega internet time, which means more gaming! And that's always fantastic!

Post-Open Beta RIFT Review

LMS here once again, this time with a post-beta RIFT review. I played for a few hours during the February 15th-20th Open Beta session (I wish I could have played more to really review the game but work got in the way... >_<) and I found myself LOVING this game and yet, at the same time, a little dissatisfied with it. I was able to take a few screenshots of the character selection and customization screens because they were interesting to note and unfortunately... I was too wrapped up in playing the game to get screenshots in-game, but I've supplemented with outside screenshots. I'll start from the beginning of the game and work through it in a similar format to the preview from last week.

Gear in World of Warcraft (Pre-Cata)

Hey guys, Little Miss Squish here. Sorry I haven't posted in over a month. Things have been kinda crazy and I haven't had much time to think about a blog post. I'm still working on a logo design. I have one that I'm working on perfecting before I put it here and make an appropriate layout for it. It'll be up soon, I promise! :P Over the past, I don't know, few months? I've gotten back into World of Warcraft. Yes, I had played it, left it, and now I'm playing it again. I tried a few different private servers this time around and am currently playing with Ash Realms. I'll probably write a mini-review on them soon.