Monday, November 12, 2012

Mists of Pandaria

Well, i finally gave in and ended up buying Mists of Pandaria. MoP is interesting to say the least. More of the same sure, and while the basic play style remains the same I will give it to blizzard, they've found a formula that truly works.

I've been playing a monk on the side and while mine is only level 50(i haven't had nearly as much time to put into this game, littlelone write blog posts as i would like) it's a ton of fun to play. At first i really thought the monk class' roll ability was nothing but a gimmick and a way to let you move faster through the environment while leveling, but i was wrong. It's an amazing ability for avoiding damage especially as a tank in random LFD groups where the healer can be half asleep and not healing and you have to pull out all the stops and allow your monk to survive all by itself. Plus playing as a panda has some huge advantages for leveling. I don't know that it's quite as good as getting 50 free levels by rolling a deathknight but the 100% longer lasting rested experience and extra food buffs along with taking less fall damage make for some very nice racials. Oh and if you're playing as a monk, you get a daily quest that gives you an extra 50% exp on top of your 100% longer lasting rested exp. Every 10 levels you get a bonus quest as well that changes the "monk pandaria master" that you have to beat for your exp bonus.

The new dungeons in Mists of Pandaria are quite nice as well. They're quick, not confusing, and simple. I haven't had a chance to engage in the challenge modes or scenarios yet but i'm sure they're just as much fun as the normal dungeons.

From my few short hours of playing MoP so far, I would say it's an excellent addition to blizzards MMO and I just had to pick it up since I have another 6 months left on my yearly subscription. If it weren't for that I might not have picked it up, but I'm glad I did.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Borderlands 2 3 hours early

For those of you on the west coast, steam may just be that awesome to you, and even folks in the slightly less mild part of the country might avoid a 3 hour wait. At 9PM pst or midnight eastern you'll be able to jump in and own it up in some borderlands awesomeness. I'll see you all on the other side.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Borderlands 2 and Guild Wars 2

As it would seem, two games that I'm anticipating hugely are almost upon us.  Guild Wars 2 launches in less than 2 weeks and Borderlands 2 is a little over a month out.  While the two games are quite different, hopefully they can help to breathe new life into their respective genres.  Borderlands 2 seems like more of the same at first glance,but with revamped and new classes as well as 4 player co-op it has something that other games seem to lack in this day and age.  Teamwork aspects.  That's right, you may think games like call of duty and battlefield 3 have teamwork aspects, and while they may have some semblance of it in league play, it's all but discouraged in random gaming as you push to get the highest KDR and personal score to top the charts for medals and ribbons.

Guild Wars 2 is bringing us a free to play mmo that, while it has aspects borrowed from older games that didn't fair so well (warhammer online) with its Realm vs Realm and character progression, it has new aspects like weapon swapping and more focused world events.  Overall the game plays smooth which is something that's almost never the case with a brand new game.  We'll see how things play out on release with hundreds of thousands if not millions of people logging on to the servers all at once, but I'm anticipating some exceptional fun.  Check out the Beta review Here.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend

It's the final Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend before release.  If you've pre-ordered you've got access and I'll see you all in game.  Play starts tomorrow(Friday July 20th) at noon. Pre-order also comes with a 3day head start and if you get the next level above the basic game you get a few one time use in game items...yeah have fun with that.

Saturday, June 30, 2012

Video games are fun...right?

I'll be damned if I haven't been able to get into any games lately.  D3 lost its appeal before it gained my interest, i get a beta email from blizzard every other day about Mists of Pandaria which leads me to believe they have a piss poor testing demographic which probably means they need to fix things before they put it in beta because people who test to find bugs and help the dev team have left because the alpha testing phase went oh so well.  So I'm betting on Guild Wars 2 now...not really betting, more like on my knees hoping they pull something amazing out of their rears. I dislike throwing my money at game developers that don't do something amazing, but there are only so many indie devs making things now a days with EA and Activision buying everyone and their mother's studio. Maybe a zombie apocalypse will fix it all, who knows  ;)

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Diablo 3 RMAH

Blizzard Launched Diablo 3's Real money auction house a week and a half ago.  I can't say I'm impressed.  I haven't been bothered to play much since they raised the repair cost by over 10 times.  It's like they've got a financial division that actually knows how to bend people over for more money.  If people are forced to spend all
 their gold on repairs while playing in inferno, they'll have to buy gold from the auction house, and who gets a cut of that, blizzard gets a cut of that.  Oh well, I've been playing Civilization 5 lately. The new Civ5 expansion just came out, it's called "gods and generals" I find it to be a much better time sink than Diablo3 at the moment, but maybe I'll go back to D3 once I've 
become slightly less bitter. And for your viewing pleasure, here's a picture I found on the various internets that all of us that tried to play Diablo 3 on release can relate to. Error 37


Wednesday, May 23, 2012

RMAH less than a week

For all of you broke college students or delirious people that think you'll be able to make a living off RMAH and quit your job to play Diablo 3 all day err day for the next year or two until that cash flow stops, might want to rethink those plans. I don't think we're going to see the items that drop bringing as much money as D2 did, especially when the entire player base can put up anything they find.  You'll be able to buy a sub-par item for 5 bucks instead of that item with 1 more dps for 200. or at least that's how I'm calling it.  As usually, I can and often am wrong, but I didn't just admit that.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Diablo III T-3 days

Diablo 3 is coming out in 3 days.  I'm still not sure what class I'm rolling, probably a wizard.  pewpewing laser beams non stop was pretty awesome during beta. I think the big thing on everyone's mind, however, is the RMAH (Real Money Auction House).  Blizzard put a limit of 250 dollars on any item sold, so those super rare weapons are going to have to take a different route when it comes time to sell them.  Either selling by gold and converting that gold to real money via blizzard at whatever rate they're using, or selling it via the black market that is bound to appear similar to D2's.

There are no "BIS" weapons though.  Depending on your build, and your other gear will determine what the best stats are for your specific character.  I think all the people with dreams of making a living off RMAH are in a pipe dream and will be sadly disappointed when they're making 5 bucks a week off the terribad items they get from farming for 10 hours.  Plus once the market is saturated and customer base dies off you're going to take a hit in profits.  The first few people who rush to max level and start farming the hardest content will undoubtedly be making some decent cash from the folks who would rather invest money than time into getting the best gear.  People hate on gold buying because it was "illegal" and called it the easy way out, but now that blizzard is "legalizing" it I wonder if people will realize that those people that can afford high end items have a higher value on their time.  If i make 60 bucks an hour and can buy an item for 600 bucks or farm it for 30-40 hours, it's much more time and cost effective for me to buy it and spend 10 hours at work instead of 30 hours ingame.  Of course, I'm ignoring the whole "lol play the game because it's fun" argument, but i find that a moot point because some people only enjoy endgame...see: Raiding and Arenas in world of warcraft.

Damn finals will probably keep me from playing at launch too...guess i won't be getting rich quick ;)

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Typical beta testers

It's as if the people with too much time/money/gold on their hands are the ones who test beta...i'll have you know my spectral tiger is legit, the other one doesn't have an armored tail...

Saturday, April 28, 2012

MoP Kite flight path

Earlier this week i talked about how i wanted this sweet flying mount to go with my spectral tiger.  I know it's not likely for blizzard to give us something as fantastically awesome as a kite capable of powering itself through he air that we can control, but hey...they gave us flying carpets so why not. Here's a picture of how awesome they are.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

MoP beta so far

It's a beta...yep, that's all i can say about that.  Apparently moonfire is designed to crash the game. I will say blizzard may have outdone themselves on annoying creatures this time around though.  Murlocs are nothing compared to these new pests they've pulled out of southeast Asia.  New flight paths are absolutely awesome though.  If i don't get a kite mount I will be oh so disappointed...and that leads me to predict 25 dollar mount in the blizzard store within 6months of release. Although, how long did it take us to get hippogryphs, wyverns, and we still don't have bats.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Thanks for the wrong beta invite


So blizzard invited another 250k annual subs to the MoP beta.  I wasn't among them. I did however get an invite to the D3 beta which I'm not sure if i even want to help test as it's been in beta for a long time and is probably more a publicity thing than actual testing. I guess i could go figure out their AH system and try to create a diabolical monopoly on the market when the actual game releases.  See what i did there?  Diablo, diabolical... yeah. Oh, D3 release date is May 15th.  If you're on the annual sub for wow you get it "free" or for the price of 4-5months you're already paying for. 

Monday, April 9, 2012

The LFR system is great

Dare I say, the looking for raid system blizzard implemented is a great addition to their game.  Just the other day i was on my warrior who is in mostly pvp gear and was qued as a dps despite wanting to use him as an offtank at some point.  I was pulling the lowest amount of dps in the raid and finally, someone noticed and tried to kick me on the final boss.  They succeeded, but not before i could start the encounter with us down a dps and anger in the eyes of half the raid.  Let this be a lesson, the LFR system is great...if you want to troll and mooch off other players.  In fact, the best trolling I've seen yet in LFR was a couple of guys who had a priest and the priest would lifegrip people into the icewalls and his hunter friend would call them baddies for failing at mechanics.  If these guys got together and made a youtube video they could probably get a few hundred thousand views...just queue up some clown music with it. 

PS. It's funnier the more rage conducing it is.  It's just a game and so many people don't get that. Also this post was full of satire, but I really am trying to gear my fail alts for lvling in MoP.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Why would you still play World of Warcraft

So i resubbed to world of warcraft last week.  My friend sent me a scroll of resurrection and i figured, i want to be in the Mists of Pandaria Beta and I'm going to buy diablo 3 anyway...so why not get a cool, well semi-cool, mount and a free lvl 80.

A week later, still not in beta and that mount is dumb. But alas, it's better than the wind rider that half my alts have.  I'm thinking I need to start farming mats for mechano hogs as no one on the hordeside of my server is selling them. 

I'm pretty excited for the new JC mounts in mists, we'll see how hard they are to craft hopefully "soon".  If I get into beta i'll start throwing up a lot of updates here with items and then complaining about how terrible certain abilities or zones are.