When in doubt, mount.

LOTS of mounting going on around in my neck of the woods lately.

Washed away the dreary malaise of level 76 and pushed through the Zul'drak main quests. Glad I did so, since I got to ride a storm giant in the end. That was pretty freakin sweet.

Hit 77 and flew back up to K3, where I found to my surprise that a kind goblin was willing to give me a Loaned Wind Rider while I saved up enough to buy my Cold Weather Flying Skill.
It flies at 60% speed and operates like a vehicle, but it was an incredibly nice surpise all the same. Did a bunch of quests for the Goblins of K3, including the sprawling battle across the minefields. That was crazy. Reminded me of films and stories of World War I, with doomed soldiers charging the trenches on the other side of death.

Then I logged on today, and found I had Auction House mail available from nearly three weeks ago! I sold a Tranquil Mechanical Yeti the on the Monday before WotLK hit, right when all the in-game mail got screwed. Thought I'd lost it all, but hey, all of the sudden here's 266 gold in my mailbox. Not bad at all. And with that extra golden boost, I had enough for my Cold Weather Flying Skill.
Sooo nice to be flying again! And doing quests for the giant warrior women is hilarious. Makes my Turbo-Charged Flying Machine look like a carnival ride. :D
And FINALLY...I declare The Storm Peaks to be my new favorite zone. Ever. Love the soft, mournful music with a touch of heroism to it. However you want to describe it. I love the quests I've done so far for Xarantar the Witness in Camp Tunka'lo. He says he was one of the very first druids, and he's learned how to talk to the rocks and the water and the sky, etc. Very cool stuff.
You know, with folks like him popping up, and insane areas like the Engine of the Makers, allusions to Uldar and things apparently coming to an ultimate showdown between the Alliance and Horde. It makes me wonder if Blizzard isn't just going all out with the lore in this expansion because they expect it to be the last one? I'm guessing the Uldar are related in some way to the ancient creationist lore we got way back in Uldaman. Are we getting the whole shebang? I guess I'd be OK with that. At least we'd go out on a high note. WotLK is a godly step up from Classic WoW and BC in every possible way. And those versions of the game were great in their own way.

Oh, and I also love the ghost mount.Epic flight in death ftw!

Gnomish Army Knife – no tool for RRoD

Welcome to Monday.

Cue fireworks.

Been a crazy week, and not a lot of WoW has been happening for me or to me.

In between work, Thanksgiving, a wedding and various RL obligations, I didn’t get more than 6 hours in game over the last five days.

I DID however reach exalted with the Tuskarr early on Thanksgiving day, and quickly grabbed my penguin pet, epic fishing pole and blue breast plate. High five.

Also hit 437 (or something) last night in engineering after a painful stretch of mats-intensive items like Sonic Boosters, Noise Machines and Heartseeker Scopes. Thankfully, I was able to get into Gnomish Army Knives at 435, and I’m back in love with the profession. I love this tool – jumper cables (useable by engineers only), blacksmith hammer, mining pick, skinning knife, flint/tinder, arclight spanner and gyromatic micro-adjuster all in ONE. SINGLE. SLOT. Awesomeawesomeawesome. AND it’s not soulbound or bind on use. You can trade it around if need be.

I sent one to our guild blacksmith last night, and linked another in guildchat for whoever else wants one. I love that so many non-engineers can find multiple uses for an engineering item. Easy mats, too. Only 10 saronite bars, a hammer, a pick and a skinning knife.

Level-wise, Paquita remains at 76. More guildies are hitting 80 each day, and I’m fairly sure I won’t be the first guild hunter at level cap. I seem to be a in a rut with questing. The motivation for dings just isn’t there. Maybe it’s the quests – I’m wandering aimlessly around Sholazar Basin these days, tapping every saronite node I can find and only doing incidental quests for Nesingwary and the two warring tribes in the zone. I had been working through Zul’Drak, but that place is incredibly dreary and a pain in the ass to run through unmolested.

I probably just need to lay off the engineering for a while and focus on getting to 80.

Actually, I picked up Gears of War 2 on Saturday and was prepared to put WoW aside for a few days, but apparently Microsoft had other plans.

The Xbox 360 dashboard (OS) update hit last week, upgrading the menu system and implementing a new Wii-ripoff avatar landscape. I hated the idea when I first heard of it and saw the cutesy avatars, but after the update I found I could live with it. I made my avatar look ridiculously stupid, so I was happy. And the menu system is actually very nice…if you can ignore the frequent screen tears and system crashes accompanied by LOUD static bursts.

Yeah, it’s fucked. I was able to just restart the console after the first couple of times, no problem. But it got to the point where just starting it up and flipping through the menus would trigger the frozen screen and static sound.

Then, on Saturday, as I started it up to pop in my freshly-purchased copy of Gears 2, it froze for the last time. I restarted, and the 360 only took a few seconds to give me the glowy round finger in the form of 3 flashing red lights. Fuuuuck.

Thankfully, I only purchased it back in February so it is still under warranty. I called the Xbox service line, and encountered the dreaded automated repair technician, which was of absolutely no help whatsoever. I did appreciate the “hip” voice intonation though, no doubt provided to exude a cool, X-games competing, Mountain Dew-chugging, Pac-Sun employee vibe. So I now have Microsoft sending me a pre-paid shipping box, which I’ll use to send the console back for repair. Who knows how long that’ll take.

I find it amusing how every time I try to switch between game genres after a while, it costs me a pretty penny. Had to buy an Xbox 360 in February to get back into consoles after almost 2 years of WoW. Tried to return to WoW in late June, only to find that my video card had crapped itself, and I had to purchase and install a new one.

And now that I’m in danger of burning out again on WoW, I wanted to lay off a bit and enjoy a little console action. But it looks like I have to pay for it. Not in dollars, hopefully, but it’s still a pain to box it all up and send it back to Microsoft. Plus, I’ll be without a DVD player for a while.

Bugger.

Recipes are for closers only.

Was checking out random engineering recipes last night, and noticed this conversation going on with the Goblins in Warsong Hold, Borean Tundra. Took me no time at all to recognize Alec Baldwin's classic scene from Glengarry Glen Ross. That's fucking awesome, Blizzard.
Anyway, checked out some of the higher-end engineering stuff, and wow. OK, must have: Truesight Ice Blinders (440), Gnomish Army Knife (435), and of course the Nesingwary 4000 (450). Damn that's a nice gun. Nice enough to actually prompt me to level Paquita's gun skill, which I swore never to do. Ah well...she's at 377 now, so I'm set.

Engineering is fun as hell these days.

Oh, and NO ONE from my guild got the Glengarry Glen Ross reference, so here it is for my own personal amusement:

Normalization

I’m still taking it easy, enjoying the win that is Wrath of the Lich King.

Dinged 75 on Wednesday night, and I’m still running on at least three bubbles of rested XP. The sneaky druid was 78 as of last night, and I expect he’ll be hitting 80 at some point this weekend.

I’ve fallen back into a regular schedule each night, first hitting the Dalaran cooking daily, then porting to Shattrath for the cooking and fishing dailies (croc pet and two cooking recipes continue to elude me). When those are finished I hearth back to Dalaran and hit up my three Kalu’ak dailies. Just passed halfway to exalted last night. When all of those chores are out of the way, I can get down to leveling.

I did take Monday evening off from Paquita to play my 61 mage…whom I’ve not actively quested with in nearly a year. A good RL friend of mine recently transferred to Perenolde with his 42 hunter and just dinged 60 last weekend. So he’s enjoying the Burning Crusade for the first time ever. It’s fun to watch (or listen, I guess) to his reactions.

Very awesome combo - my deep frost mage, his DPS and gorilladin keeping the aggro off of us. We had a nice AOE rhythm going by the end of the evening. And it was actually fun to play the mage again.

It was great, we were screwing around near the edge of Hellfire, next to the Expedition Armory, and I offhandedly told him that if he jumped off the edge, a healing wind would carry him back up onto solid ground. Very cool stuff, I said. He was like “Oh, OK,” and we moved on with questing. Then he whispers me the next night, telling me I’m a cruel bastard and that there was no healing wind at all. But the thing is, he did it TWICE to make sure he was doing it correctly. HAHA. /evil.

Encountered a shitty bug with my hunter pets in the last couple of days. I had my four stable slots filled – cat, wolf, gorilla and ravager – with my rhino on active duty. I saw an awesome black and red spider in the Grizzly Hills on Wednesday evening, and ran back to swap out for my ravager so I could abandon him and tame the spider. I successfully abandoned JuanRico and tamed the spider, but when I returned to the stables, the ravager icon was still there. So I pulled him out and he turned into the rhino.

Huh?

I swapped the pet icons around a couple of times, and then ended up locking in place. Showed my cat, wolf, spider and ravager – but no gorilladin. Kriegaffe! I opened a GM ticket and waited nearly two hours for a response…which was, you guessed it: delete your WTF, interface and cache folders. Seriously people, is that your response to every fucking issue? Could it not be that there is a bug with the hunter pet stable? How could something like this possibly be a UI issue? I dunno. I’m not an expert, so I can’t bitch. I thanked the GM for their time, and mentioned that Blizzard is doing a fantastic job with WotLK, since overall they really are. Felt good to give that direct feedback, for whatever it was worth.

In the end, of course the UI reset did not work. I found a solution on the hunter forums which suggested abandoning the current pet. /Sniff, goodbye Ryanseacrest. So, in letting him go, the cat jumped into active duty, and my gorilla’s icon appeared in the fourth slot, as though he was in the queue all along. /Sigh. I swapped him with the ravager, abandoned that bastard, and swept off to Sholazzar to tame another rhino. So now I have Ryanseacrest back, but the funny thing is that his skin changes randomly every time I dismount or summon him. Sometimes he’s grey, sometimes he’s brown.

I don’t fucking know. :D

Maybe I need to reset my UI.

And yet...no Baloo

Awesome enough to charter a Tailspin-style flight for one of the Scalawag Point quests in Howling Fjord, but to have my rhino strapped to the cargo hold is bloody priceless. This should be stock for all epic flyers. :D

My WotLK Weekend

I had great plans to have ongoing reports in here of my first hours and days of WotLK.

Big fat thanks to a great fucking game, I failed. :D

So since it’s Monday morning and I’m having a rough time adjusting back to any semblance of an RL schedule, let’s recap in brief:

Wednesday evening, Nov. 12.
Left work in a rush for last-minute errands; got home around 6pm, Pacific. Logged in to check server stability, since all servers were offline Tuesday evening. Everything appeared OK, and guildies were excitedly chatting away. Knocked out Shattrath fishing and cooking dailies and logged out.

Ate some dinner and then napped from 7:30 to 9:30p. Woke up grumpy and pissed off, for some reason. Actually considered blowing off midnight release. Smacked self across the face for blasphemy.

Hopped in the car – still grumpy – and drove across town to the mall. Why are there so many people out this late, and why do they suck at driving? Walked into the mall at 10:10p and found a long line of WoW peeps waiting patiently outside Gamestop. Some were chatty, some were somber. Some were wearing armor.

Got my receipt and number (52) around 10:45p and the milled around the vicinity inside the mall, waiting for midnight to arrive. Also picked up a WotLK game guide, so I was able to peruse those pages for a while.

Formed a new line according to copy number around 11:45p.

Thursday morning, Nov 13.
Copy received minutes after midnight.

Zoemgee.

Drove home, stopping at all-night Safeway for energy drinks, water and food.

Home by 12:50a. Popped game disc into computer for installation and settled back to watch Hellboy 2 while I waited. Only got through the first act of Hellboy before the opening cinematic started! Re-installed the previous two patches, and the game was ready to go. Sorry Hellboy, another time, maybe. (Great fucking movie, by the way, can’t wait to see what Del Toro does with The Hobbit.)

I logged in to World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King around 1:40a. Hot damn. Rolled my Tauren Deathknight and left him be. Logged on to Paquita and chartered a zeppelin to the Borean Tundra.

Now, I’m not a terribly expressive person in RL, but I think it would have been interesting to have a camera on my face for while weekend. My jaw was literally as far down as humanly possible in the first 10 minutes of Warsong Hold. And that place isn’t even all that awesome in retrospect, compared with what was coming. Spent nearly 250 gold upgrading all my tradeskills, with very little left for actual recipes.

On to questing. Kill these! Open these! Collect some more of these! I don’t really care about these sorts of quests, actually. It’s experience, it’s the game world, and it all tells the story appropriately.

The Borean Tundra is gorgeous. Took a magic carpet tour for the full effect, and even waved to Kel’thuzad! Played through those initial quests, encountered the viking giant dudes, the Tuskarr and the Taunka. Love, love, love, love, love the Tuskarr and their villages. That whole design is dead-on for indigenous arctic peoples, and the water, glaciers and ice floes are just beautiful. Loved the Tuskarr even more when I saw that Kalu’ak rep gets you a pet penguin at exalted! There’s also an epic fishing pole that allows underwater breathing! Immediately started doing these quests and dailies.

Stayed up until 7:30a on Thursday. Completed quite a few quests in the Tundra, and found my new most-hated mobs – the level 70 kobolds and gorlocs. /Shudder.

Very nearly hit 71, but alas I wasted some time exploring, fishing, mining and crafting. Wandered around the Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Crystalsong Forest, Grizzly Hills and Howling Fjord picking up available flight points. Cursed Dalaran for being so high in the sky, and the Kirin Tor for being too snooty to let me teleport into the city at level 70.

Thursday morning, Nov. 13, part Deux
Woke up around 11:30a and made coffee. Logged in and found that to my eternal shame another guildie had already beat me to 71. Noooooo! Sneaky freakin’ druid. :D

Ah well. Moved on with more quests and DINGED 71! Played an unhealthy length of time throughout Thursday and dinged again before logging off on Friday morning.

Friday, Nov 14.
Limited playtime. Hit Honored with the Kalu’ak and Warsong Offensive. Leveled trade and secondary skills. Swapped my wolf, Fettgisicht, for Kriegaffe the Gorilladin since I seemed to be aggroing entire groups of mobs fairly often. Wandered into Sholazzar Basin and let Kriegaffe tackle groups of 4 and 5 level 76 mobs – hunter and pet were only 72 and 71, respectively. We survived. AND we got a the manual for Heavy Frostweave Bandages off a level 76 scourge mob!

Saturday, Nov 15.
Limited playtime again. Awesome guildie warlock summoned me to Dalaran! Niiiice. Hearthstone set. Wrapped up quests in Dragonblight and triggered Wrathgate. ZOMIFUCKINGGAWDthatwasawesome. And the follow-up quest with Thrall, Sylvanas and Vol’jin? There are no words to express that kind of badassery. WotLK wins on that stuff alone.

Sunday, Nov. 16.
Hangover. Let’s play WoW! The sneaky druid dings 76 and I’m left in failure at level 73. I later understand that he’s uber-leveling, neglecting tradeskills and anything not having to do with gaining experience points. I’m taking my time and not doing too badly in the larger scheme of guildie leveling progression, so I don’t feel that bad.

Hit Revered with Kalu'ak, completing all of their regular quests. That leaves 3 dailys per day at 500 a pop. It'll be a while, but I'm well on my way toward exalted. Also broke down and adjusted my Beastmaster spec to allow exotic taming. Got myself a rhino, Ryanseacrest. He's massive and gets my way all the time, but strangely comforting. Dinged 74 before logging Sunday night.

So, WotLK, from what I’ve seen, is pretty goddamn phenomenal. The quests are several steps up from those of the Burning Crusade in terms of fun and ingenuity, and the overall story is truly the stuff of legend. Many screenshots to come, whenever I get motivated to post them. :)

And here I was worried...

Not 10 hours after I wondered aloud how Northrend would come into play, and how Azeroth would come to send its heroes to meet the coming threat, we get this (I post this, taken from MMO-champion, and will gladly remove if deemed inappropriate without permission):

I was in Blackrock Depths pursuing some Dark Iron Ale for the Darkmoon Faire when this all started happening, so I hurriedly rushed my way up to the bar, tossed some coinage at Plugger Spazzring and hearthed out as quickly as I could.

Made it to Orgrimmar just in time to plink away uselessly at the soaring frostwyrms raining down ice, or sicc my pet on a few abominations. But I did get to see the final exchange between Thrall and Garrosh.

So cool.

Cold Winds Inc.

Feel that? Usually hot as effing hell in Orgrimmar, but I just got a massive chill.

Must be WotLK in just THREE FREAKIN’ DAYS.

I wonder, I wonder.

I wonder how it’s going to start. Yes, I know we’ve already had an invasion, but there’s been no mention at all of Northrend yet in the game. There’s gotta be some quest leading us up there. If I recall, the Burning Crusade was prefaced by a new invasion by the Burning Legion and we had to muster a resistance and bring the fight back to Illidan via the Dark Portal. (Love that special Tabard of the Protector, by the way…Mercot has it, and I hope there’s something similar Paquita can pick up while heading to Northrend.)

As I understand it, we have two options for our access to Northrend. For the Horde, we can take zeppelins from either Orgrimmar and Undercity to the Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord, respectively. Word is that the Fjord is amazing, and has better questlines (pst…because I guess the Forsaken are kinda pissed right now). Apparently the Borean Tundra is a bit bleaker for scenery, but carries the Orc storyline further. Now I’ve never been able to level an Orc past 12, but I loves me some Orc lore. And since I’m betting a lot of people are going for wow factor in scenery, I’m going to go where the crowds hopefully aren’t. So Tundra it is for I and I.

Plus, I’m from Alaska, so I heart tundra. And I need to see the Tuskarr.

The core officers and raiders in my guild seem to be inclined toward Howling Fjord, but that’s OK. I’m sure I’ll hook up with other guildies at some point in the leveling process. It’s a big world, and everyone’s always a whisper away.

But god, three days seems like forever. It’ll go quickly, I’m sure.

Wrapped up some long term goals this weekend, as well, running Magister’s Terrace for the first time on Saturday night. So now I can say that I have indeed run all the five-man instances in the Burning Crusade at least once. Also picked up the Hauberk of the Warbringer from Senór Sunstrider, a pleasant upgrade from my Scourge chestpiece.

We also pulled a group of eight or nine guildies together and rolled through the attunement quests for Ogri’la. Fun stuff. I loved the giant Ogre party at the end. And since we now have access to the Ogri’la bombing run daily, we can work toward that Winter Veil meta achievement. Five of us also stuck around to kill the four dragons summoned with Apexis shards. Saturday was a busy night.

Other than that, it’s all just been random achievements and daily quests while waiting for WotLK. Went on a super-quick run through Lower Blackrock Spire for the worg and spider pets, and bought quite a few others off the auction house. I used my Gnome warrior to summon a couple of Westfall chickens for some Horde guildies, and Paquita crafted a few more Tranquil Mechanical Yetis for those who wanted/needed them.

Saved my deathknight’s name with a new character, as well. I wanted to go with some form of Paquita combined with some sinister element. But Paquita is such a sunny, happy-sounding name to begin with that it was hard to think of anything. I considered Darthpaqqles (Paqqles being a running joke with another guildie), but after seeing that name for a while on the character list, I decided it would be a bit much. So I reserved the less silly name of Ragpale. Rags was my second character ever, a Tauren druid. He even outleveled Mercot at one time, reaching the tender level of 21. Then he fell into obscurity and I eventually deleted him. I always liked the name though, and I’d planned on a Tauren deathknight anyway, so why not? I can even think of him from an RP standpoint – a young druid caught unawares in the Plaguelands, slain and resurrected in service of Arthas.

This also makes me happy because that was what I had always thought the deathknights would be as an extension of WoW – a very tough decision for players to turn their mains into deathknights. I didn’t realized that the DKs were completely new characters until just a few months ago. From the original WotLK gameplay trailer shown at Blizzcon ’07, Arthas’ voiceover made it seem like Azeroth’s heroes would move through Northrend and at some point encounter a quest that would give them a decision to surrender the lives they’d led thus far and become a deathknight. It would be a huge decision for players and a real chance for the game to impact their characters for good or ill. In my opinion, this would have been a bit better than just creating a new character. Much like the actual deathknight, you’ve got to sacrifice yourself something to become greater. It would have also greatly limited the number of deathnights at launch. But I can understand the outcry this path would have caused.

Anyway, that’s how I’m choosing to think of Ragpale – my little druid who went off on his own for a while and was lost to the Scourge. Until now. And I’ll get to see where he went and how he comes back to the Horde in the deathknight starting quests! /nerd

Sooo…this’s turned into a nice little wall of text.

Not sure if I’ll post before launch, but I plan on picking up the WotLK game guide today (first time I’ve ever purchased a WoW guide, honestly, and I’ll only break in case of emergency). I also canceled my Amazon pre-order and will be in line at my local Gamestop on Wednesday night!

Ambassador Accomplished

The final stretch of the rep achievement was a bit tedious, but at least it involved a quick foray into Razorfen Kraul to kill Charlga Razorflank, earning me another 10 achievement points.

Reached Exalted with the Horde around 7am this morning, after an all-night session. Ambassador Paquita - woohoo!Might I also add, that with her Scourge purples, a new new hair-do and the Tabard of the Argent Dawn, Paquita has never looked better. I'm enjoying it now, since I fear she will soon be resigned to Skittledom in the frozen lands of Northrend.

Hallow's End, well, ended around 3am this morning as well. I kept putting off the [G.N.E.R.D. Rage] achievement, which was the final goal for the "Hallowed" title (that is, assuming Blizzard removes the [A Mask For All Occasions] requirement). I had four G.N.E.R.D. candies left on a 5-day duration, and had planned to use them in a battleground or something and achieve the 50 required kills fairly easily.

However, a massive group of Alliance players got a wild bug up their collective asses this evening and decided to zerg Silvermoon and Orgrimmar. So I ported to Org, popped a G.N.E.R.D. and got down to killing.They pushed in on Thrall, got shoved back out and then got cornered into the little alcove outside his throne room. Then they rushed back in and we eventually decimated them down (see below). Of course, I died three times during this fight, losing a G.N.E.R.D. candy each time, and while I managed to get my 50 kills while defending a major city for the [City Defender] achievement, 8 of those didn't seem to count for [G.N.E.R.D. Rage].Of course, the lot of us were all dressed up at this point with no one to dance with, so we descended on Stormwind for a half-hearted fight across the Valley of Heroes and into the main tunnel of the Trade District. Got my [G.N.E.R.D. Rage] there, so I was happy.I died fairly quickly, and rezzed in the sewers below the bridge. I was all set to Dimensionally Rip over to Everlook, when I saw a Night Elf hunter running out of the water toward me. I knew what was coming, and I was only at 1/3 health, so I waved, smiled, grinned and flexed at him. Must have made an impression, because he paused, shot me a couple of times and then paused again. I smiled at him again and patted his cat. Then I wished him farewell and began my portal to Everlook. He must have realized what was happening in the last 2 or 3 seconds, because he said something in Elvish and made a motion to shoot - but I ported out at exactly that moment. It was awesome. Even took his Hunter's Mark with me to Everlook, haha!
Pretty awesome end to the evening.

On another far more ADULT note I saw this Craigslist link posted on the Analog Hole Gaming forums:

That is...extremely specific. I find it interesting that she didn't specify whether her preferred man play Horde or Alliance. :D

An Evening of Upgrade

Good haul tonight.

Hopped on early in the evening, knocked out a quick fishing daily and found a [Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat] in my Bag of Fishing Treasures. Not the crocolisk pet, but very cool just the same.

Our guild then ran two back-to-back groups into Karazhan to take on the special Scourge invasion boss, Tenris Mirkblood. We wiped a twice before we managed to take him down, but it was a fun fight. And he dropped the [Arcanite Ripper], which I won! It's a competitive choice between that or [Legacy], but I love it anyway because 1. It looks badass, 2. It has some nice stats and 3. It's a fucking metal guitar trinket.This puppy transforms me into Bergrisst from Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain, blasts off a sweet AoE fire effect and rips a butt-rockin' metal riff for about ten seconds. Tight.

After the Kara runs, three or four of us headed up to Winterspring and Azshara to farm Necrotic Runes and random Scourge elites. The Warrior would roll through huge packs of mobs and bring them all in for some awesome AoE action. I love misdirection and volley.Interestingly, if the tank pulled too many mobs, as in2/3 or more of the typical Scourge spawning location, he'd group them all together, I'd volley and the whole pack would evade and run back to their original positions. Wonder if that was a mechanic set in place to deter heavy AoE farming. We had no trouble at all with our groups. We eventually found a Scourge invasion point in Winterspring and had it all to ourselves for the duration. Not bad at all. I ended the night with over 200 Necrotic Runes and a fancy new chest piece - [Blessed Hauberk of Undead Slaying].

So yeah, busy night, and didn't leave any time for Mission: Ambassador. I did, however, drop by Thunder Bluff to turn in about four completed quests for Wailing Caverns. Know how much TB rep that earned me? Ziiiillch. Nada. Ah well, at least I got the WC achievement. :D

Mission: Ambassador updates

So the rep experiment is a lot less structured than it sounds.

I'm basically working through each of the Horde starting areas, one at a time, and moving on up to the intermediary newbie zones and on through the inter-mixed level 30 to 40-ish areas.

Here are my numbers as I took a break after midnight on Friday:
Oct. 25 - 12:54 am
Darkspear Trolls - Honored: 9848/12000
Orgrimmar - Honored - 11255/12000
Silvermoon City - Revered - 11903/21000
Thunder Bluff - Honored - 8438/12000
Undercity - Revered - 8888/21000

And here we are a few hours later as I logged off in a bleary haze:
Oct. 25 - 3:57am
Darkspear Trolls - Honored - 10708/12000
Orgrimmar - Revered - 115/21000
Silvermoon City - Revered - 12763/21000
Thunder Bluff - Honored - 9298/12000
Undercity - Revered - 14103/21000

Out of laziness or lack of forethought, I did not record my progress over the rest of Saturday or Sunday.

But here we are as I type this on Monday night:
Oct. 27 - 11:18pm
Darkspear Trolls - Revered - 10726/21000
Orgrimmar - Revered - 17470/21000
Silvermoon City - Revered - 19268/21000
Thunder Bluff - Revered - 8175/21000
Undercity - Exalted - 999/1000

Other news: Spent an hour or so farming Scourge mobs in The Burning Steppes and Blasted Lands for a few Necrotic Runes and one [Blessed Greaves of Undead Slaying]. Also picked up my Tabard of the Argent Dawn for kicks.

The new epic leggings are pretty badass. Not a massive upgrade from my [Mag'hari Huntsman's Leggings], but it's slight raise in DPS, as well as a nice new look. I've never seen skirt-style leggings for a hunter. I'm sure a few hunters with male avatars must be a pissed, but I kinda like 'em on Paquita.

Mission: Ambassador vs. Invasion: Zombie

Love that Lich King with his awesome scourge-y plague crates.

Like many, I’m sure, I find this new Scourge invasion both exciting and annoying as fuck.

Exciting in that wow, what a way to foreshadow the next expansion – dropping a new invasion on the gameworld and having it directly impact the players and their game lives. Last time, we had to actively seek out and engage the invaders near the major cities. This time it started in a wonderfully organic manner – a far-off rumor of some crates in Booty Bay. Then an undead zombie ported to a major city and began infecting people. The guards took it down, but a few were infected in the process. The next day some crates were found in the portal cave under Thunder Bluff. Reports flooded in of plague deaths across the Barrens. Crossroads, Dustwallow, Gadgetzan, Ashenvale.

I love this stuff. Might sound morbid, but mass plague and zombie stories are some of the most compelling fiction around in my opinion. I thinking 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead and The Stand.

Shattrath was a mess of skeletons last night. Argent healers and Dawn soldiers appear to be everywhere, trying to protect people from what they always suspected was coming.

On the shit side of things, zombies fucking suck.

I must have picked the worst possible time to grind my Horde faction rep. With the plague spreading and zombie NPCs and players lurching around everywhere, it’s very difficult to reach lower-level quest hubs and turn in or pick up quests. Either your quest giver is dead or you’re not paying attention and get whacked by a zombie while you’re reading new quest text.

That said, I made some great progress with the rep. I hit Exalted with Undercity on Saturday and got well into Revered with Darkspear Trolls, Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff. I remain kiss-close to Exalted with Silvermoon, but as I spent much of Paquita’s youth in Eversong Woods and The Ghostlands, I think I’ve fairly dried up any further Silvermoon rep and must rely on sympathetic points to push it into Exalted. I’m not worried, though. Thunder Bluff was on the low end of Honored when I started this project, and that reputation rose to Revered completely on spillover from Undercity and Orgrimmar.

I finished all available quests in Deathknell, Brill and The Sepulcher. Polished off a few more forgotten tasks in Tarren Mill and Hammerfall, in Arathi Highlands. Then I made my way over to the Orc/Troll newbie zone and rolled through those quests. It was on the way to Sen’jin Village in Southern Durotar that I started hitting zombie resistance. The whole village was undead, save a couple of neutral NPCs. I killed as many as I could, but eventually turned into a zombie myself.

That’s when it got interesting. When I turn into a zombie, my priorities change. Yes, I could just let myself die and respawn and wait for the whole thing to be over with, but that takes time. I figure I may as well have fun while I’m zombiefied.

Example: I rode into Orgrimmar last night around 11:00pm server time. Noticed that the front gates looked very eerie without guards. That was my first indication that something was wrong (fucking brilliant staple of any zombie movie, and it’s an organic event in a goddamn MMO :D). Inside the city, death was everywhere in a cloud of plague. Diseased NPCs were faltering amidst packs of NPC and player zombies. I took down quite a few before I got hit myself and promptly joined in on the zombie action. I infected several players and ran into the auction house for more fun. Probably pissed a few people off, but what the hell – you’re supposed to spread the infection. It’s part of the event.

So yes, zombies suck while you’re questing or leveling or simply just standing in the auction house checking prices. But I realized last night that it’s supposed to suck. You’re supposed to get angry. From a game perspective, those who die are your friends, your neighbors and your enemies. When you turn into a zombie, you’re essentially playing out the final moments of the Azerothian Everyman who falls to the Scourge in this most vile recent attack.

All of this bullshit is happening so that when you step foot off the boat in Northrend, you remember all those who died – and who is responsible. When I think about that, and how the player population at large had no idea this was going to happen, it’s clear that this was a fantastic moment in World of Warcraft, and a brilliant precursor to Wrath of the Lich King.

And if my little peeks at some spoilery spoils for Wrath are any indication, all of this is going to lock together in an INSANELY cool way for a major part of the WotLK storyline. Cannot freaking wait.

Mission: Ambassador - Day 1

Only had a couple of hours to spare yesterday, so I rushed through my fishing and cooking dailies (still no baby croc pet!) and whacked the Headless Horseman a few times before abandoning most of my non-essential level 70 quests and riding over to the Undead starting area, Deathknell.

One quick aside - joined a PUG for the Horseman and killed him twice before the Sinister Squashling dropped. Everyone passed except for myself and the warrior. He rolled need. I said was going to need too. He asked why. I told him I needed it, of course. Well, he needed it too...he had the Hallowed Helm and only needed the squashling to get the achievement. Exact same situation for me, I said. I announced again that I was needing. He emotes "bites lip." I emote "*cringe*." I beat his roll. He's out. He up and quits the group, even though I won by complete chance and we still had like 4 summons to go. Crazy people.

But hey, I got my [Sinister Calling] completed. And the squashling pet is wicked awesome.

Anyway, on to Deathknell. Now, I did not get a baseline for all my Horde rep before trying this yesterday. This all was mostly on a whim, and I was under time constaints. I know that my UC rep was Revered, somewhere around 3,000/21000, ballpark. I completed perhaps 20 quests between Deathknell, random road NPCs and Brill, pushing UC rep to around 7 or 8k. And that was about 45 minutes of effort.

Also, the issue of finding low-level quests has been resolved! They now have a "find low-level quests" tab in your map locator, right in there with "find minerals" or "find fish." Niiiice.

I'm almost wondering if I'm actually taking a loss in profit by wasting Adamantite Arrows on these tiny mobs. I'm one-shotting them, of course, in like 2k crits. Maybe I should go unarmed in an attempt to boost my skill for that achievement.

Achievement System, I hereby declare thee Achievenor the Corrupting, tainter of all that is holy in the land of Azeroth.

Of course, I had to log pretty quickly last night, and I had about eight more completed quests in the bank waiting to be turned in. I'll start keeping track of my Horde faction rep tonight before I resume, so I can measure my progress.

Will probably look something like this:

Darkspear Trolls - Honored (0000/00000)
Orgrimmar - Honored (0000/00000)
Thunder Bluff - Honored (0000/00000)
Undercity - Revered (0000/00000)
Silvermoon - Revered (0000/00000)

(Unless I can take a screen shot of my window, which would be much easier.)

New goals

There are a number of kickass achievements included WoW these days and I've decided that the most realistic one I want is [Ambassador of the Horde]. All this requires is Exalted status with the five Horde factions - Silvermoon, Undercity, Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff and the Darkspear Trolls.

I'm of course Revered already with my home faction, Silvermoon, and have sympathetic rep through Honored with the remaining four groups. So I wonder how much I can boost the rep with each of these factions, both directly and sympathetically, if I went back and started from the newbie zones with each and every one?

This tactic worked when I wanted a Stormwind horse for my gnome, so why not here, with my level 70 hunter? Might be time-consuming, but theoretically it should go much faster with the higher level and an epic mount. Even if I don't get a specific faction to Exalted with their specific 1-20 newbie quests, I should definitely continue gaining sympathetic Horde rep to that faction through other major quests. And I'm pretty sure I skipped a LOT of content / quests on Paquita in leveling her so fast.

The Big Issue will be having to mouse over every NPC to see if they have a quest for me, as opposed to automatically seeing an exclamation point for quests of my own level.

There are quite a few benefits to this plan - 1. Ambassador title, 2. at least 4 more mounts, 3. the achievement for gaining Exalted status with at least five factions, 4. achievements for numbers of quests completed in various continents of Azeroth, as well as the general 1500 quest achievement, 5. The many possible achievements for completing old world dungeons while following the lower level questlines, and 6. the opportunity for exploration achievements.

OK, so this idea is COMPLETELY based on opportunities within the achievement system. :D

But it sounds fun, no?

Shiny new hooves.

Damn.
Only took 3 hours to earn 12,286 reputation points with the Mag'har clan in Nagrand.

I'm now Exalted. :D

Not a bad looking mount...possibly even cooler than my Brewfest Ram.

Bonus round! (Additional Thoughts, some six hours later, 7am Thurs):
Note to self - try to avoid making posts when you are clearly too tired to make the word thingies.
Brevity was triumphant last night, apparently. So, since I obviously neglected to mention it, that's Paquita up there with her new White War Talbuk after grinding Nagrand Ogres for a few hours. That's 10 Mag'har rep per Ogre, and 500 rep for every 10 Obsidian War Beads I loot and turn in to the Mag'har.

I think this little push just rose out of a white Talbuk catching my eye in Shattrath the other day. For some reason, the white ones just pop visually. I think it may be the pink-purple horns. Really goes with my purple guild tabard and general pink-purple ensemble. Amazing how color schemes factor into a character's look once you're used to a certain style.

Anyway, I saw it and casually checked out my rep with the Mag'har - 8714/21000. I was already well into revered with the faction after completing the Great Mother Geyah quest chain. Plus, I can always use another mount.

It really wasn't all that difficult. I just grinded Ogres along the three camps across the northern and western mountains of Nagrand, rounding up groups of 3-4 and sometimes even 5 or 6 Ogres at once with Kriegaffe the Gorilladin and volleying/multi-shotting them down. Kriegaffe gained three levels throughout the experience, and is now level 70. I created a macro to cast Misdrection onto Kriegaffe as well, so that saved some precious seconds and mouse manuevering. Just have to remember to switch that button out for the real Misdirection when I'm in a party or raid. :D

Elephants in the room

This is surprising.

So Tobold has decided to quit Warhammer Online.

He notes that he never expected to play it much when WotLK hit, but given the amount of coverage he posted on WAR, and the level of intereste he showed, I didn't expect him to quit so soon.

It's a bit comforting though, seeing as how I was feeling guilty myself over not having logged into WAR in nearly two weeks. My account is active, but with the fun I've been having in WoW and all the tasty 3.0.2 goodies released last week, it's just been no contest.

WAR is a fun game. I like the character selection process, the opening quests, the emotes, the public quest system, the RvR scenarios and much of the game design. But it lacks the polish, familiarity and social connections that WoW holds and continually sharpens for me.

When WAR hit, my WoW guild created new sub-forums specifically for a WAR extension of the guild. Our guild leader removed those threads over the weekend.

I'll be cancelling my account, but I would actually like to return someday. WAR devs are saying they're in it for the long haul, so perhaps in four years we could have a WAR version of what WoW offers now. But for the time being, I'll sit in Durotar and gaze longingly at the new Zepplin tower, waiting for the first trip north.

And possibly maybe continue my career as an achievement harlot.

A few fun screens from the last few weeks:

C'mon...a little puke never hurt nothin'. Al'ar tempts us. Al'ar would obliviate us. We do not touch Al'ar.
Paquita 3.0, now with short dark hair and Kriegaffe the Faithful Gorilladin at her side.
Male Tauren riding a reindeer into the Dark Portal? Throw in a Dimensional Ripper and some Preserved Holly and it makes a little more sense. Just seemed like an absurd image to me. :D

Achieve or die.

It’s a sickness. Gotta be.

Why the fuck am I more motivated to get the little flashy Achievement animation and the heroic Ding! music than I am to grind dailies and hoard gold?

Oh yeah, because grinding dailies sucks. Unless it’s for the [A Simple Re-Quest]. Then it’s all good. ‘Cause you’re achieving something.

It’s so strange. I love this new addition to WoW, but at the same time it feels dangerously distracting. Like I should be working on other goals than boosting my total achievement points. Not sure what other goals those could be. Sure, I probably don’t have as much gold as others in anticipation of WotLK. A little over 600 right now. Actually less, since I bought a Swift Green Hawkstrider to boost my mount count. Sonuvabitch.

It’s like I’ve made a new best friend and an eternal nemesis at the same time.

Ah, well. I did make a little over 150g this weekend just by visiting all the candy buckets in Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor and Outland for [Tricks and Treats of Azeroth]. I really want to close out all these Hallow’s End achievements before the festival ends. Be pretty cool to get “The Hallowed” title after my name.

Got a lot of the easy ones finished this weekend, and now it’s a game of getting transformed by a few more wands and collecting the flimsy masks (these will be the hardest, I think). The PvP quests should be relatively easy. Oh, and I’ll have to stay on top of the Headless Horseman for the Hallowed Helm and Sinister Squashling.

Downed him multiple times yesterday. I’d wondered how they were going to handle his loot, since we’d already gotten such awesome trinkets from Coren Direbrew. I picked up the +attack power and stam ring, but it’s not that much of an upgrade for me. Still a fun fight though, if fairly easy.

Still no Old Ironjaw or Old Crafty. I got my [250] and [500] catch-a-fish dings though. Spent easily 3-4 hours late Saturday into the dawn hours of Sunday fishing for Old Crafty in Orgrimmar. Nuthin’. And if there’s no luck there with that amount of time spent, I can’t even imagine how painful it’s going to be when I resume my Ironforge intrusions for Old Ironjaw. There’s no place to fish discreetly in IF. At least in Orgrimmar Allies can hide in the little rock formation at the base of the waterfall.

Also casually crossing off the lower instance achievements. Dropped into Ragefire Chasm for less than five minutes to kill that boss. Then, as I was riding through Silverpine Forest toward Southshore last night, a little mage /whispered me and offered 5g for a run through Shadowfang Keep. Figured what the fuck, and ran him through for free. I got an achievement out of it, so I was all good.

It was funny, I told him I’d do it, and he was like “what? really?! like right now??”

Haha. I guess he must have been asking people for a while.

Too much good stuff.

Oh, the insanity.

There’s got to be some law of illustrating the frequency of blog posts in relation to how much fun one is having in WoW. One would imagine that the more fun he has, the more entries he would post. That’s not been the case with me lately. I’m having a blast in WoW, taking taking screens for the blog, but I’ve just been having too much fun to get in there and post.

I’m a classic procrastinator, and this evidently has transferred into the blog as well. :D

Let’s go chronologically, since so much shit has happened since the last post.

Well, let’s see. I pushed my old Warlock past his 225 fishing and cooking quests early last week, so that was fun. It’ll be good to have another character for these quests, if I get him up to the appropriate level. I was able to do the Shrimpin’ Ain’t Easy daily in Zangarmarsh, but all of the other fishing dailies have been in zones out of his level range, even with the +100 lures.

My Hunter hit 375 in fishing last week, though, making an even cap across all of her tradeskills and professions. First time I’ve accomplished that with any character. Of course, I announced this with appropriate glee in guild chat, which prompted a particularly snide guildie to reply, “I’m sorry.” Haha. Dick. It’s cool, though, we talked about the merits of fishing, and as always it just comes down to personal preference. I used to hate fishing. Never understood the draw. But that was because until patch 2.4, and until I got my skill high enough for the dailies, there was no viable reward in the skill for me. Now I do my fishing daily in hopes for the non-combat gator pet, or the hat. I already picked up the booze recipe. Plus it’s a very, very easy 7 gold, with some occasionally interesting junk and free lures. More on fishing later though.

I got into another run of Karazhan’s first half last Wednesday, and we again cleared up through Curator and before at Shade of Aran for the night. It was more fun this time, as I pretty much knew how the pulls worked, and I had a great hunter to watch and follow for tips. We got the Wizard of Oz event that night, and it was very cool. Seemed pretty chaotic to me, but the raid leader just had me focus DPS on whoever he called out, so it was fairly simple. Even managed to avoid the tornado from the Crone! And, bless her blackened heart, she dropped [Legacy]. The other Hunter gave it to me, since he had some PvP axe already. Such a nice upgrade, and I love the inscription on it. Extremely cool weapon. Then I believe it was Curator who dropped the token for my Tier 1 Demon Stalker gloves. As I was still wearing (nicely) enchanted green gloves, it was a tremendous upgrade. That run also brought me up to Honored with the Violet Eye (dinged on the last mob of the night) so I was able to turn in my signet ring for the epic upgrade. Not too shabby for a Wednesday evening.

Ran a few heroics over the weekend and pulled in some more badges (I’m guessing I should earn and spend them now, as they’ll only buy outdated stuff when WotLK is released). Mostly, the weekend was spent buzzing about patch 3.0.2, which was expected to launch on 10/14. Gathered a bunch of lowbie herbs for the three projected inscriptionists in our guild.

Patch day was a pain in the ass for me, just like it was for 99% of everyone else. I’d already downloaded 1.17 gb before Tuesday, and got the remaining .03 gb and completed the installation without issue. However, Perenolde was one of the many realms that alternated between a lack of character lists and the whole server going down. I left it alone after an hour and a half.

Access on Wednesday proved unfettered, and I quickly reviewed my achievements. WOW. I got shafted on a lot of shit, on the Warlock and the Hunter. For the Warlock I received no credit at all for the numerous times I cleared Stratholme, Scholomance, Dire Maul and BRD. I may have come late to the game in early 2006, but I did kill those bosses. And for the Hunter, I didn’t get any credit for all the dailies I’ve been doing, or for insulting and killing the Brewfest boss, Coren Direbrew. Ah well, it’s not like these are all impossible. I’ll get to them eventually. Again.

On the subject of achievements, my point whoredom from Xbox Live has transferred nicely into WoW. Fuck me. As if I needed more reason to keep playing. There are a shitload of achievements I’d like to get, and I have a feeling I’ll be working on a few of them for quite a while.

Others love them too, apparently. We formed an impromptu 10-man on Wednesday and rolled through Onyxia and Upper Black Rock Spire like buttah. Ony was fun! It’s a little sad that I never took the time to follow the attunement questline, but great to finally see the old girl in all her fiery purple glory.


So we got that achievement, as well as the [Leeeeeeeeroooy!!!] title of Jenkins after our names for killing 50 whelps in 15 seconds in the UBRS rookery. We also got the achievement for killing the final UBRS boss, General Drakkisath. Then we spent the rest of the evening jumping off high towers, hunting down random elites, cooking and fishing for other achievements.

Oh, and I also re-specced BM 43/18/0 and tamed my Gorilladin pet, who I named Kriegaffe. Love, love, LOVE his aoe taunts and damage. He’s pretty badass now, and I can’t wait to get him up to 70 before WotLK hits. Fairly sure he’ll be my leveling buddy in Northrend.

And then last night I got an invite to Mount Hyjal, of all places. We had fun on the trash waves. Volley does some amazing damage now, and I’m so happy it’s channeled. My volley crits were for 400-1050 damage, but the other hunters were exclaiming 2k+ in theirs. Wiped on Rage Winterchill, but not before we got him down to 30%. Not bad for an largely mixed group of raiders from a few friendly guilds. We then moved over to Tempest Keep and took on the Void Reaver. That was a fun fight. :)

And finally, to close out the night, I charged into Stormwind, dying only once, and hit in the outer sewer area to get the [The Fishing Diplomat] achievement. That attained, I decided to try my luck in Ironforge to fish up [Old Ironjaw]. Ironforge is so much fucking harder to get into. I died at least 5 times before I found my way to the Forlorn Caverns. There were a couple of Night Elves fishing in there as well, and they pretty much ignored me for about 15 minutes, until a Gnome Mage rode up and promptly incinerated me. From there, they all camped me for another hour or so, until it got quiet and I was able to fish for another 10 minutes. A Human Warlock seduced me, but didn’t attack. A 56 Draenei Priest mind-flayed me and stabbed me for a minute or so with his dagger, but I /bored him and he ran away. Then a 70 Warrior and Rogue double-teamed me in less than 3 seconds and I called it a night. I’m thinking I’ll leave the Hunter parked there in IF until I fish the old bastard up, seeing how hard it was to get into the city in the first place. I really hope I get it soon. :D

Changes

This is going to sound weird and a bit idiotic, but I’m actually getting sad that November 13, 2008, is only seven weeks away. I finally feel like I’m experiencing a lot of what The Burning Crusade has to offer, but then I realize that it’s soon going to slip away when Arthas makes his big return.

Good news is that it sounds like it won’t be as gaping a hole from BC to WotLK as when BC hit vanilla WoW. Someone mentioned last night on vent that they’d taken their copied character to 80 in the beta and that they were only just starting to replace the major gear. Of course, I’m pretty sure this guy has been running SSC, Tempest Keep and Mount Hyjal, so those are some pretty hefty items.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been slowly chipping away at all of my major goals in WoW. Last night I finally got the chance to see Moroes die a slow (and hopefully painful) death. It’s incredible how quickly and efficiently it happened, but not surprising at all since this particular group has been working Karazhan for about 2 solid months now.

So that was my big happy. I finally got to roll with a raid past Moroes and on through Maiden, The Opera Event (Romulo and Julianne) and Curator (definitely my favorite boss voice). Actually got some loot too, which was cool – picked up Romulo’s Poison Vial and Garona’s Signet Ring. Also got a total of nine Badges of Justice, which allowed me to splurge on the Blood Knight War Cloak, my first-ever Badge purchase.

We attempted Nightbane three or four times before giving up – just too much crazy with the terrors and charred earth. Very cool-looking dragon, though.

/gquit...er ninja?

Bit of a crazy weekend.

Had a minor freakout on Thursday over some guild action that pissed me off and very much tempted me to /gquit.

However.

Maybe I’m getting older, or maybe I’m just understanding that there are certain aspects of online social interaction where some stuff gets lost in translation, but I decided to wait and first talk to my guild leader. I’m glad that I did so.

It’s very easy to get wrapped up in yourself if you don’t have a lot of friends in the game. You see others forming groups and heading off to instances or raids and you start feeling a bit left out. To be clear, this isn’t what prompted me to quit. It’s close, and I won’t get into details, but let’s just say that it was a combination of my overreaction and guild growing pains. In short, I was asked not to leave and am moving forward with intent to get more involved in guild conversation and activities.

I took away a few important lessons. One, it’s almost always beneficial to talk things out before doing anything rash, if possible. Two, if you’re feeling left out, it may be because you’re just not active enough in guild chat or events. The guild has grown a great deal since I joined it nearly a year ago, and more members mean less emphasis on the individual and more focus on group/community goals. You’ve got to put something in to get something back, and unfortunately if you’re a more passive personality, it’s easy to slip into the background.

In any case, I did get to join a heroic Botanica run last night, so that was fun. Also signed up for a Kara run happening tomorrow night (We will crush Moroes, We will crush Moroes, We will crush Moroes…), so we’ll see how that goes.

On the Botanica note, I consider myself a pretty competent player, but I did make some serious fuck-ups. First I left Aspect of the Pack on for a few pulls, until the warrior politely asked me to remove it. And THEN I, in my infinite ignorance, leave auto-loot on and ninja the Primal Nether from Warp Splinter. Thing is, I didn’t even notice I had done it and no one mentioned it. I don’t know if they were all so pissed that they didn’t even whisper me, or if they felt like walking on eggshells after my near-/gquit. I pray to God it’s neither of those.

I didn’t notice it was in my bag until I was doing dailies over an hour later, and by that time, most of the group had gone to bed. I whispered one of them with my apologies, explaining what had happened, and got a simple “np.” I put the Primal Nether in the guild bank and PM’d the rest of the group with my apologies. And that’s all I can do I guess. It was an honest mistake (Note to self – turn off the goddamn auto-loot BEFORE entering Karazhan).

Other news: Hit 375 in engineering, and crafted my butt-rocking Turbo-Charged Flying Machine. Tight.

Awesome.

Comic relief

A friend of mine recently gave me a gift certificate to a cool little shop called Things From Another World. It’s a geeknerd store with all the usual actio- er…collectible figurines, posters, guides, DVDs and of course comics. Very commercial compared to my usual shop, Excalibur Books and Comics, but full of cool stuff all the same.

Picked up a compilation of the first three issues and the fourth single issue of Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass (which is a most agreeable title – highly recommended). Read AICN’s thoughts on it here. I plowed through all four issues in less than an hour. More please.

Also found Spider-Woman: Origins from Brian Michael Bendis and Brian Reed. Fascinating look at my favorite New Avenger. The art drove me nuts, though. It’s stylistic and very well visualized, but the illustration is very basic. I like that the artists, the Luna Brothers, chose a certain style and stayed consistent, but it really wasn’t my cup of tea. Excellent story from Bendis and Reed, however.

I can’t seem to get enough of Bendis’ shit. “Discovered” (read: I’d been living under a fucking boulder) him with House of M in April and have been steadily consuming everything by him I can get my nerdy hands on: New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, New Avengers: Illuminati, Secret War, etc. I’ve been trying to check out Powers, but haven’t been able to find the first volume anywhere yet.

And finally, I picked up Abe Sapien: The Drowning in trade paperback. I love Marvel, but it’s an incredible pleasure to go from something like Spider-Woman to the dark unknown that is Mike Mignola and the world of B.P.R.D. and Hellboy. It’s like admiring sleek new dresser from IKEA and then looking over and seeing a richly polished Victorian sea chest, older than you can imagine, with God-knows-what lurking inside.

It’s your typical Mike Mignola story – paranormal agents on a mission to root out some old forgotten evil. But it’s so lovingly orchestrated by Mignola, and beautifully illustrated by Jason Shawn Alexander, that I could care less about the formula. Maybe I should re-phrase: I don’t care so much that the B.P.R.D. books always involve disastrous field missions because we’ve got to accept that these are always the thin shell for the real stories that need to be told. These missions always spark major character moments while retaining that classic dark ambiguity Mignola is known for. I love that I always have to read his books two or even three times before I feel I really understand what’s going on in the frames and the dialogue. So much of it is left up to interpretation. Less is more.

MMo' time is needed

So now that WAR is in full effect, I hope to be playing it at least as much as WoW.

Unfortunately, right now that doesn’t look to be happening.

Couple things. First – and this is the biggest minus with WAR right now – the game is still very sluggish. At least on my computer. I’ve got 2gb of RAM, with an 8800GT 512mb card, but WAR is at best slightly rubber-band laggy. At worst, it’s completely unplayable – as in gotta wait five seconds before the character responds to any movement controls because the FPS is in the severe shits. I’ve got all video settings at “best framerate,” or other minimal settings.

The best FPS is out in the wilderness with minimal players around. The worst, of course, is around town hubs or public quest areas. And these are unfortunately the best place to be in terms of fun and progression. I love the public quests. I really do like WAR so far and want to keep playing. But the lag and choppiness are painful on the eyeses.

While I want to love WAR, at this point the low FPS and eye strain are really driving me back toward WoW. Well, that and the Brewfest, aka best in-game holiday ever. It was a blast last year and it’s almost as good this year, downsides being the loss of a few awesome quests and lack of any new ones.

Best part of last year’s Brewfest was getting plastered hunting the Wolpertingers, which you could only see whilst intoxicated. The end reward was a neat Brewfest tankard which could summon your own awesome Wolpertinger pet. You still get the free pet, but you don’t have to get drunk and work for it. That was kind of sad. I also recall some quest where you had to find the pink Elekks (also only visible while drunk) at beer gardens in Thunder Bluff and Ironforge. Nowhere to be seen this year.
I got three quests – to ride the ram (once for regular quest; afterward a daily), to pelt a robot with beer mugs (which gets you the Wolpertinger, I believe) and to bark for the Brewfest (another daily). Once you complete these you gain access to the quest to kill Coren Direbrew in BRD, another daily.

There’s also the intermittent assaults on the beer garden by the Dark Iron Dwarves, which are cool, but don’t really offer that much after you’ve done it a few times. So that’s about three daily quests for some beer tokens (also new; changed from tickets last year). Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like there’s so much more they could do with the Oktoberfest theme. That said, I’ve really enjoyed the Coren Direbrew fights so far. I got my Empty Mug of Direbrew trinket on Friday and then a completely unexpected Swift Brewfest Ram last night. Très cool.

I’m actually at a bit of a loss now in WoW in terms of goals. As mentioned before, I finally scrounged together 5200 gold and bought my very first epic flyer. I’m broke, but very happy with it. No more paying for transportation in Outland like a sucker. And mining? Hooomigod. It’s so much faster from node to node now (if I can find a node, since 99% of the population are miners at this point).

But saving for the mount – that was my big goal for the last month or so, after I got the regular flyer. First it was getting to 70 (easy two levels of rested XP), then it was getting my 225 riding skill and building my flying machine, then it was gearing up (moderately geared now), then it was getting exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive and then it was getting the 300 epic flying skill and building the epic flying machine.

Still working on getting the 375 in engineering to craft the flying machine, but at this rate, I’ll have that in a matter of weeks. I’m having fun, no doubt. Accomplishment and improvement always fuel good feelings in WoW, but it’s honestly very strange to have accomplished everything I really wanted in the game, outside of raiding.

I’m going to say it’s a good thing. Wrath of the Lich King is only seven weeks away at this point, and we get a nice patch somewhere in the nearer future, which should make things interesting.

Now if only I could solve my WAR troubles…I want some smooth RvR action!

Final thoughts on TFU

When I posted my initial thoughts on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed earlier this week, someone mentioned that the first few levels of the game weren't a very good litmus for the experience as a whole. Having finished the game at this point, I'd agree and disagree.

As Star Wars experience, the game is a stellar win. As I mentioned before, it seriously feels like you're in the Star Wars universe in terms of music, mood and environment. Those aspects are extremely well done. As a game and as a new chapter to be incorporated into the Star Wars cannon, it's a bit rough.

If you care to venture onward, heed my SPOILER WARNINGS.

The fighting and powers remain fantastic through the end of the game. The main issues I had were with the story and a few major moments in the gameplay.

Remember when you first saw that early trailer for The Force Unleashed? Big Imperial Star Destroyer, minding its own business, only to suddenly jolt forward and lurch toward the ground? Then you saw the hooded figure on a small ledge using the force to wrench the vessel out of the sky? Well you do in fact get this thrilling experience in the actual game - the problem is, it seems the developers didn't really want you to enjoy it. They must have really wanted you to ponder the motivations of your actions, since it TAKES AT LEAST THIRTY FUCKING MINUTES TO ACCOMPLISH.

You start the event and have to destroy several TIE fighters first to clear the air. Then you reach out and grab the Star Destroyer, following the analog stick directions and making minute adjustments to bring the ship in closer to you and the ground. Every 15 seconds or so another wave of TIE fighters move in and you must let go of the destroyer and deal with them. While you're fighting the TIEs, the destroyer veers back to its initial course. This cycle can go on forever, depending on how slowly or quickly you eliminate the TIE fighter waves. I gave up on it after nearly an hour of vulgarities. One of my friends, who had been observing, took up the controller and spent another 45 minutes on it before he found a nice groove and could take out the TIEs in two passes. He then had to find just the right spot to position the destroyer before the game would let him pull it down (hint: it needs to be pointed exactly facing you...exactly).

I can see this leg of the story being a gamebreaker for a lot of people. There's no need to have the difficulty rocket up 200% for what should be one of the coolest moments ever in a Star Wars game.

From that point onward, it's almost like the developers wanted punish you for loving their game and wanting to complete it. By the time you reach the Death Star, you're facing a ridiculous amount of enemies in the main hangar bay, all of which come in waves while you're trying to wrench apart some floor panels to get to the next area. And there are no save points at all.

Granted, I can buy this, because you're staging a one-man assault on the bloody Death Star. It's not supposed to be easy. But good god, it takes some time to get through.

It all culminates in fight with the end baddie, when can vary depending on whether you decide to finish the game with the Light or Dark side of The Force. I chose the Light during this playthrough.

So you finish the game and get the full impact this story has on the rest of the Star Wars canon. I like the idea, but it's not organic at all in terms of how it fits. There are revelatory moments with both Vader and the Emperor where you find out exactly how the Rebellion came to be, and it really doesn't make much sense.

So I do like the story. I can accept it, but it's an acceptance on the level of the Prequels. Fine, if that's the way it's gotta be, I guess that's cool. Kind of disappointing on the execution.

I'm also a bit disappointed that we didn't see more diversity in game levels. We got a total of seven playable environments, and three of them were re-cycled for return visits. That said, the level of detail is still insanely beautiful. I love the look of this game.

Of course, I played this on the Xbox 360. A couple of the my friends were over during the final 5 levels or so of the game, and one of them brought his Wii for some dueling action. We hooked it up to my HDTV, and I was aghast at how awful TFU graphics look on the Wii. I would even go as far to say it looked on par with early PS2 fare. My friend had not seen it on the 360, and when he saw my experience, he was also pretty disappointed. He'd already played the game through twice, and commented a lot on the differences between the two consoles, especially in terms of gameplay and upgrade options.

He said that the holocron spheres don't actually provide points for upgrades in the Wii version. He didn't get to go inside the Sarlaac to find Bail Organa, and he apparently didn't get the initial TIE fighter factory level either. However Wii players were spared the stupidly difficult Star Destroyer crash, apparently, since it occurs as a cutscene instead of a playable event.

I still maintain that any Star Wars fan with a 360 (or perhaps a PS3) should absolutely check this game out. Be prepared for extreme frustration at times, but overall I still think it's a great experience. I'll definitely be playing it through again on the harder settings. First completion was on Sith Warrior.