Timeless Isle, Warlords of Draenor, and Free level 90 Characters...oh my

I just came back to the World of Warcraft for the umpteenth time. I was drawn in by the allure of a free character boost to level 90 with the pre-purchase of an expansion(warlords of draenor) that i would inevitably purchase, and the chance to play the monk class at max level. 

The good things, there's a new island called the timeless isle that lets you run around looting chests for ilvl 496 epics that will let you que for virtually all the LFR raids. Blizzard also increased the cap for conquest points so people like me that just came back or people that have never really pvpd could catch up and get in equivalent gear sets to people that have been playing for the entire season.  This is a great idea for players that might miss a week or want to get into a different part of the game that may have seemed like it was unattainable previously.


The bad things: people with boosted "Free" level 90s that actually cost 50-60 bucks running around in green gear in LFR. These folks usually have no idea what they're doing and i'll admit i was one of them on my poorly geared monk.  It's hilarious when you roll into LFR and the tank has less HP than the cloth dps, or a bit disappointing ...I'm not sure which

GTA Roadtrip?

Have you ever tried to obey the law in a game designed to let you wreck havoc and be a total criminal badass with little to no consequence?  My friend was doing just that the other day.  A few of us are planning a roadtrip across the country and we're thinking about renting an RV or a bus. The dilemma was we needed someone to drive said bus.  Here in comes the awesome funness. We're reading the DMV manual for what you have to be able to do to pass a test for your class A license...Navigate right turns.  Ok, takes out 3 lamp posts, 4 civilians and a Mercedes.  Parallel park... Ok, totals 2 cars while creating a spot big enough to park 3 buses. And he still stops at red lights ladies and gentlemen. All in all a good time, but I'm starting to think we might want someone else to drive the bus.

GTA 5 releases in less than 12 hours

That's right boys and girls, if you've been waiting to kill hookers and get your money back, or drive straight on into a barrier to fly out of your car, that time is right around the corner.  GTAV is also letting you have fun with its ingame version of instagram where you can take selfies or hopefully pics of the mayhem and murder you've committed all across the san fierro valley. All i know is the game has a cover system and that makes all games better.
I can remember back when rainbow 6 introduced the cover system with their las vegas games and it was a huge hit among gamers everywhere.  Their facial rendering system not so much...
Anyway, go out there, kill hookers, make money, sell smack, buy guns, cause mayhem and madness. Oh and there are jet skies.

I love daily quests

I really figured this whole removal of a daily quest cap would be a good thing.  Blizzard lets you do 10 quest today, 35 the next day.  But thats not the way it is.  When they added rep requirements to valor gear they made it a near-requirement for people to do each and every daily possible.  In fact, they added more dailies after you do a certain number of dailies.  It's like they heard we like dailies so they put dailies in our dailies so we can do dailies while we do dailies...god that meme is so worn out, but so applicable in this situation.

The anglers and tillers are even better.  Sure getting exalted with the tillers isn't hard and they give you a great number of rewards for your crafting professions, but the individual characters reps is asinine.  You do all this work to make one your best friend so they can come sit on your farm and look derpy while giving no actual reward greater than a vendor that's 20 yards closer than he was before. Nat Pagle is my favorite of these npcs for the anglers rep.  He sits around with this great book that increases your fishing by 50 every time it's used, but it requires you to have max fishing on a character and do 3 daily quests for him each day for about a  month to become exalted with him.  That's about 4 hours of fishing a day for 3 completely random drops from what I've heard.  I guess blizzard wants us feeding the entire horde/alliance army with fish for the next year and a half until they come out with a new expansion. 

You might be curious as to why i used this picture to illustrate my point.  I'm pretty sure it was because these are the only mounts you can legitimately farm in this expansion, with a mechanic similar to that of the netherwing faction with eggs that spawn at random and allow you to turn them in for rep, you can get this mount in a matter of days instead of weeks-months by doing dailies. It also gives you a free mount when you hit exalted with follow up mounts costing a few thousand gold, still significantly cheaper than that of the mount for the august celestials that comes in at 10k gold, and the armored scorpion mount from the klaxxi that is about 7500 gold.  I'm sorry, if i spent this much time and energy logging into your game on a daily basis for a month, i think i deserve a slight break and shouldn't have to throw more gold at this faction who, by their praise I just single handedly saved from their evil oppressors.

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.

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.

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.