Tuesday News: Orbit Books Sale, DDN Playtest Packet #3 and More

First off: apparently this is a thing and I didn't even know it. So I guess I am retroactively participating in the Thirty One Days of Thirty One Horror films!

Orbit Books has a sale of five good novels for $1.99 each to celebrate its five year anniversary. This includes Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (a must-read for SF fans), Feed  by Mira Grant and Brent Weeks' The Black Prism. Also on sale is Soulless and The Killing Moon, although I haven't read either of those so can't comment on them.

One problem with relying on a tablet reader like the Nook: don't misplace the power cord! I seem to have stuck mine in the same place the underpants gnomes live, because I haven't been able to find it for days now, and my Nook is about to die. Very, very agonizing! If I don't locate it tonight, I may be taking a trip to Barnes & Noble to snag another. Which reminds me, of course, that I plan on picking up another tablet soon.

In other news, a new playtest packet (#3 or 4 depending on how you count the last two releases) is out. It looks like it adds magic items, some revisions to monsters, and not much else that I can tell so far.

In the "not news" category I got significant game time in this extended holiday weekend thanks in part to good timing and managed to push my main in Rift to level 34, approaching level 35. Stunning! I haven't been this motivated toward an MMO in ages, and its nice to feel a sense of progress in a medium that is often famous for demanding undivided dedication bordering on compusive disorder style behavior to actually get anywhere.

I have to say, Rift is a very meaty game, and around the time you hit level 30 the range of options on where to go and what to do open up wide. It's a good game when you realize that there's more content available than any one character can ever absorb. I'm thinking of making a PvP-dedicated character to complement my primarily PvE character, for example, and I have a third rogue hunter I plan on leveling to see all the other stuff my main skipped on by in his rise to the top. Good stuff.

Guild Wars 2 has all that too, but what it doesn't have is enough of my time at the moment since Rift has all of it. Eventually I will tire of Rift, and GW2 will get more of my attention, but since it's not a sub-fee game, I can take my time with it. That's definitely a perk in GW2's favor, although a downside too since that means it sits next to the other games waiting in line for me to focus on them (i.e. Skyrim, Dragon Age II and Resident Evil 6, to name a few).