Monthly Archives: October 2011

Well, they did it!  It was said Blizzard was going to need to blow our socks off, raise the roof, set the whole world on fire and I must say, I think they have!  Not for the Diablo III or SC changes, not for the new WoW Expansion: Mists of Pandara (which made it even to our local paper!!)  No, those things are cool!  But I was excited in the first 10 mins of the opening ceremonies.

Blizzard needed to find a way to keep customers loyal and paying even in the first months after the release of some pretty interesting games.  SWOR had my interest until I saw the prices!  Since I’m in a single income family of three, I quickly decided against it.  The trend is moving away from pay to play monthly subscriptions anyways.  GW2 , however…..I was very keen to check out this Free-to-Play, highly developed beautifu artwork of a game.  Still am!  But I won’t be cutting off my WoW subscription to check it out and I don’t feel cheated!  Genius!

It was announced:

• We didn’t want you to have to decide between WoW and Diablo III sooooooo, we’re giving it to you for free! (with one year subscription agreement)  My ears perked up!  Diablo III was on my list but I didn’t know how we were going to swing another €60 x 2 for a game.
• Oh, and we would like to give you guaranteed access to the Beta for the next WoW expansion! Say what?!  I cheered!  Ok, maybe for most of you, you have done beta testing with WoW before.   I’ve never been lucky enough to get a key!  I do haunt the PTR’s, checking out some changes but mostly looking for bugs and reporting them very politely (I love testing!), but never a Beta Key for WoW…..this is my candy!  Beta Tested Rift and a few other games, but never one I actually play…yes, I’m a Happy Panda!
• Aaaand, We would like to give you a new uber awsome imba mount!  It was Demon’s turn to cheer then.  He loves mounts, the shinier the better!  Win win win!  We were both happy!

BETA BABY!!!

What do I think about the other changes up and coming? That’s a topic for another post entirely!  Bottom line though, I have faith in Blizzard that they will make a playable, addictive, enjoyable game.  Wouldn’t matter if we were all blobs of purple jelly, the game would be fun.  Pandas.  Yes, I can see how they fit. I did think the “Bounce” racial attribute was a joke and I desperately hope they don’t make light of every aspect of the race.  I will be making one and she/he will be my zen master!

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It is Monday yet again, and we’ve just finished a weekend full of Blizzcon and news about the new expansion.

Thoughts on Mists of Pandaria

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the Pandaren as a race, but I figure that like other races I’m not entirely keen on I can just not play them. The actual content we’re getting in terms of zones look absolutely breath-taking and I really can’t complain about it.

The whole idea of not having a “big bad” for the new expansion is something different to what we’ve had in every expansion so far, and again I’m not quite sure how I feel. In a way I really like to know what I’m working towards – having a goal if you will. But I also like to trust Blizzard to think that they have something in their back-pocket which will make the story line of the new expansion work.

I’ve been reading a lot of opinions the last couple of days, and I’m sorry that I can’t link to it because I can’t remember where I read it – but the gist of it was that we’re coming to this pristine new world where nothing seems ravaged by war. There’s no ruins and no gritty details. I’m thinking that this might be the point. Pandaria may have their own troubles (and I imagine we’ll find out more about them as the expansion rolls out and future patches hit as well), but on the whole it looks like a beautiful island.

This is where we come in. We – the Horde and Alliance – are bringing our war into their realm. I imagine they won’t be all too pleased about this.

There’s a lot of other information that we’ve received as well of course, but I won’t go into it all. I’m simply going to wait and see how it all unfolds and give it a chance before making up my mind. Some things I’m less interested in, like the Pet Battles, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a decent addition that other people might enjoy. We all choose the parts of the game that we enjoy to play, and as long as the parts I enjoy don’t suffer, I don’t see an issue with adding other bits that other people may like.

I definitely look forward to seeing how they’re going to make the Warlock specs differ from one another, and I hope that the class will continue to be fun to play.

And, I just want to say – from the screenshots and videos we’ve seen so far – Pandaria looks absolutely beautiful!

Project Ten

I’ve been working a bit more on my Project Ten challenge the last few weeks since I finally had a bit of spare time.

- Hunter is now 85.
- Shaman is now 85.
- Druid is now 85.

That leaves only Rogue to have one of every class at 85, and I will be honest with you – it will take a while. She’s already level 74, but she’s moving very slowly. I can’t put my finger on it, but for some reason I’m not really enjoying playing a Rogue anymore – which is ironic considering that it was my raiding main through most of Vanilla. Eventually I’ll get her there though.

Dungeoning

After hitting 85 on some of the above characters I decided to try some dungeons, and it’s always as interesting to see what kind of people you end up with.

I remember zoning into Zul’Gurub at the last boss to a team that seemed to have been there for quite a while already. It was hell, and people were being rude to one another and bickering the entire time. I was there as a healer and no one would keep the spirits off me, sure I kited them as much as I could – but eventually you have to stop and heal people, and by then there’d be maybe 5 of them and I’d be dead.

Apparently a lot of people have forgotten how to do things. I also noticed I’m out of the loop because people have changed how they run to bosses. (When did we start back-tracking after the Raptor boss in ZG and go all the way around again instead of continuing onwards to Panther?)

I also got into a ZA with a Holy Paladin with 58k mana. S/He was wearing 1 tanking item, 1 caster dps item, 1 pvp item and 3 melee dps items. Everything ungemmed and unenchanted. Somehow we managed to stay alive through trash until the first boss, but then the Paladin decided to leave in the middle of the fight (thanks for that, btw!) and we wiped. I wonder if they went oom and just didn’t want to admit it and so they dropped group.

Then there was the decently geared Paladin who decided to ask everyone for achievements as we were standing before the second to last boss in ZA. I mean, really? I had the achievement on the character I was in there on already, but let’s be honest – a lot of people have new alts these days and it might be their first time – doesn’t mean they don’t know the tactic. And people who have the achievement can have be carried and still not know the tactics.

Maybe I’m evil, but when that same Paladin “forgot” to dispel Creeping Paralysis (and got himself stunned and dead), I kind of sniggered. So much for achievements meaning something!

What do you think about the new expansion? Excited, unhappy or waiting to judge until you know more?

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