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.

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.

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  ;)

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

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.

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 ;)

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...

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

New gaming news website

I'm not updating this blog anymore (really?  like you couldn't tell) because I've started a new collaboration over at Bantergaming.com It's mostly news, trying to get some editorials going on some of the more popular games/game companies. If i do come back here it'll probably be an MMO rant/rave blog since TOR comes out in a few days or I'll go ahead and start complaining about WoW some more(<3 those guys). Oh if you haven't been paying attention, Blizzard released the Looking for raid system a week or two ago.  I ran a few, it's fun to be *That Guy* that ninjas all the loot and takes advantage of blizzard's follies in development of the system...I mean, there was some random huntard ninjaing everything...that guy was a jerk. He's probably part of a Broteam...ala wowcrendor.  If you don't know who they are...go to youtube and type in their name.  Actually here...CLICKY CLICKY

GTA V Trailer

Hmm, what to say about the franchise that made gaming cool.  Grand Theft Auto.  Spank, the infamous drug from GTAIII, murder, mayhem. The game that brought out the fight in mothers against video games and teen normality.  Well, hopefully Rockstar games has another hit on their hands(purple dildo beat downs included).  The first railer was released all of a few minutes ago on their site, which you can go to Here.

 

GTA V Trailer