Moar foozles!

Despite my ranting about Rift a while back, I have been playing it.  In the main, my characters are sensibly dressed (they're all female) and the community, at least on the Defiant side of Argent seems ok.  I haven't run into any gratuitous (or even mild) sexism.  General chat ranges from the daft to the geeky (situation normal) and is better now the inevitable 'WoW comparison' conversations are lessening.  There are even small pockets of RP!  I've stayed away from the forums, as is my general wont, so I can't comment on those.

Rift suits me at the moment.  It suits my utter lack of commitment.  It's taken me a while to get stuck on a class/soul set that I like, so I'm a  bit bored with the Defiant start zone now, but the weirdest thing is I'm playing a melee cleric.  Me, doing melee!  But she has a fairy (called Jemima).  Soon she'll have a bigger fairy.  Eventually, she'll have a satyr and then I'll swoon and get all staticky from stroking the screen.  Anyways, melee is odd for me.  I'm used to being a caster, not someone who hits things with a big stick.  Also, my favourite race by far are the Bahmi.  Not the sweet, human-like Eth, not the elf-gone-steampunk-Kelari.  Not even the High Elves on the Guardian  side. The big, strapping, take-no-shit Bahmi.  My beloved aforementioned cleric, who I adore, reminded me of someone (someone beautiful and strong and gorgeous and swoon-worthy!)  I couldn't put my finger on it, but eventually I realised; I'd made Vasquez. Himself is amused by this. Gotta love my subconscious...

*Ahem* Moving on... One of the (many) very small things I like about Rift is you can name all your summoned 'pets': animals, elementals, minions, fairies.  Everything.  And you can re-name them.  As often as you want.  My stone elemental was called Mica, Himself's is currently called Mudd.  I've had skeletal minions called things like Roger, Fred and Chuckles (there are a  number of McCoy ones too...)  Everything from very sweet (fairy names in particular) to daft - Himself has a boar.  Called Clarkson.  Mine was called Slim.  It's not a *big* thing, I know, it's just something tiny that makes me happy.

Invasions are a less tiny thing that makes me happy.  As are rifts.  Again, it's all tied up in 'no commitment' gaming.  You do group with people, regularly, but because rifts (in my experience) are designed for everyone to do something, you get rewarded (allegedly - I have some issues with how accurate the algorithm for the reward table is) for your contribution, whether that's tanking, dpsing or healing.  Or buffing, or dispelling or whatever.  This is significantly different, in my view, to the 'dps meter race to top the tables'  mindset.  Rifts are quite avoidable, ok sometimes they might briefly interfere with your questing, but often they're just something you can track round.  Invasions are a bit trickier.  The mobs wandering along the roads on their way to point x can cause issues.  However, it's usually done and dusted in half an hour or so and the best thing to do is just to get involved and have some fun playing along.

It's interesting, to me, because one of the things I thought I wouldn't enjoy were the rifts.  And now I have to remind myself that, yes, they're fun, but they don't get me levelled, god-dammit, and no levelling means no big fairy for even longer.  Because, a little like raiding, they do suck you in.  I think 'ok, I need to go to here,' and I look on my map and 'oh, there's a rift...' and half an hour later I've done 5 rifts and the horn goes to mark the start of the invasion and I think 'oh well, I've been rifting anyways, might as well carry on and blat some more bouncy abyssal thingies eh?' and then I realise that I need to cook supper/do some ironing/hoovering/go to bed and I haven't levelled.  Again.

My biggest bugbear is the foozle element. There are many, many, many foozles and they will try to blat you, even if you're 15 levels above them.  This is irksome in extremis.  They're irksome when you're charging towards a rift, when you're doing invasions, when you're foraging.  They dismount you (even when they're 15 levels below you) and by the time you've done this they've called their foozle pals and now you have to fight 10 foozles, none of whom are going to give you experience or loot.  They're probably going to mean that you miss the main stages of the rift which is annoying.  There are just too many damn foozles.  There is a bouncy pig who is King of the Foozles.  He's more annoying than Paris Hilton, and just like her, he's everywhere.

And the foozles appear in quest chains too.  I don't have an inherent issue with 'kill 10 foozles' quests, as long as they're interspersed with other quests, but I hate having to blat my way through foozle-town to get somewhere, blat them again on the way back out, return to the quest-giver, who proudly tells me that there are too many foozles where I've just been (newsflash mate:  I killed them all.  Twice. Going and Coming.) and would I be so kind as to go back and blat a few more for him?  Thanks awfully.  I'm suffering at the moment because I've done the best part of  a level in a crypt full of foozles and I am Sick to Death of Blatting Foozles.

On a lighter (and totally unrelated) note, Himself made me read an Elitist Jerks forum thread which led me to Charlie the Unicorn.  And this photo (NSFW!) which I can't get out of my head.  Coupled with seeing an advert for Avenue Q thing at the theatre on Friday.  Not this Avenue Q thing (NSFW again) admittedly, but it does provide a soundtrack to go with the photo, I'm sure you'll agree. It's ok... I'm happy to share *evil grin*.