Stuff I'd Like to See

So I've come up with more things I'd like to see in wow.

1.) Vanity Gear Set
I believe it was EQ2 that did this first? A separate set of equipment you can equip so your character doesn't look like a clown when you start getting new gear. Death Knights in particular will be getting a very nice blue set once they finish questing. I'd like to keep that set in the visual spectrum even when I start getting outland equipment. Because everyone knows that you start looking like a hobo with a fetish for bright colors when you start upgrading gear.

2.) Fix the 'Death Knight' label on the main screen
Instead of cramming 'Death Knight' across the class selection button why not make a little room for the class name above the classes. Little things like that annoy me.

Current Roster

So I've worked my way up to four level 70 characters on World of Warcraft.

Frost Mage, my current main
Hunter, my farmer
Warlock, my PVPer
Shaman, my healer

Each of them are (or were) DPS, see a trend? My next character is a Druid and as soon as WotLK comes out I'm making a Death Knight. I'd like to see the difference between current tanks and the next-coming tank first hand. My wife has a Prot-specced warrior who serves as out main tank. A friend of ours is the current healer, a holy paladin. And I serve as the current DPS/CC/Healer substitute. With the addition of my tank we'll have a very diverse array of characters at our disposal. So within our group we'll have two choices for an account to tank, two for healer, and plenty of DPS to go around. We feel the synergy and honestly I love the core group we have going. Now if only we could instill that within others in World of Warcraft some how. We may join a guild but honestly I just don't see the benefit other than doing raids. We'd love to do raids but we don't want to experience the drama ourselves. Plus we own a bank guild that has four tabs purchased. I think we're doing okay now.

Honestly the last time I joined a Kara pug it went smoothly, so smooth in fact that I was tempted to ask the hosting guild if I could join with my mage. I opted against it though because I just don't see the point. Last time I succumbed to this urge we all ended up suspending our accounts and I bought Age of Conan, which was a complete waste of time. Anyone out there want to buy Age of Conan? Comes with a free necromancer.

Warhammer Online

There is a beta.
I am in it.
I have canceled my pre-order.
End Of Line

Final Fantasy Tactics A2

So I've been playing Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimore of the Rift but before I say anything about the game let me just say that I am biased. I love tactical and strategy games. Tactical games, like the original FFTactics, really catch my attention. The graphics resemble the GBA version of the game heavily with several differences. The portraits look much better. Movies are still rendered with in-game graphics. Although I am a sucker for CG I can't take anything away from the game for sticking with the formula.

The main difference I've seen from this version as compared to others is the amount of classes offered. Wow, I'm astounded. There are more classes available than I know what to do with quite honestly. There are new races though I've only gotten one of them, the big fat dudes. I don't remember the name of them. I haven't finished the game of course so more is to come but I'd say this game is worth the pick up.

Internal Competition

While I haven't read the interview yet I read online that Blizzard isn't afraid to be compete within the company. This is good news in my opinion, I'd hate for my next Blizzard MMO to be delayed because they don't want to take away from their World of Warcraft player base. I will also say this, I think they should introduce a multi-game subscription plan. Charge your character base $20 a month to play all of your games. I will most definitely be playing the next Blizzard MMO, every game they've published has been entertaining for hours on end. I still pull out the games from the Diablo and Warcraft series frequently to amuse myself with from time-to-time.

I have a station account and I own every Sony game that can be associated to it with the exception of Vanguard, I haven't purchased it yet but as soon as the game drops to $20 I'll swoop in to snatch it up. In all honesty none of the games have kept my attention long but they have their merits. Just imagine the power Blizzard would have if they had two or more MMOs that you could switch between at will. People would stop urinating.

Things I would like to see in WOW

Expansions are to a game as CPR is to a dying man. Morbid I know but the point is this: Expansions for games are supposed to breathe life into the game itself. Instead of just putting a Band-Aid on the lifespan of my favorite game I would like to see something different.

In the past the WoW devs have answered our respective prayers for divine intervention and added new low-level and mid-level content. I want to see more of that. So what will happen in the next expansion after WotLK? Who knows, but this is what I would like to see. I know I've posted this before but this is an expanded list (an expansion if you will).

Into the Maelstrom
-A new race for both sides or maybe a neutral race? Half-naga, complete with water breathing and a built-in swim speed.

-Of course a class suited to the sea-faring type of adventurer. I'm thinking 'Mariner' or 'Swashbuckler'. A hybrid class capable of melee dps and wearing a max of mail armor. A rogue-warrior cross breed. It may help with tanking. Who knows, maybe the class has built-in damage mitigation so that it can tank?

-More content for leveling up your characters, not just another 10 levels. Complete with a new submerged city and sunken ruins to quest in. (Zone-wide water breathing would be required to reduce problems in leveling other races there; you know someone would want to.)

-A new type of mount that is water-based. Who wouldn't like a mount that has not only a 100% land speed but a 280% swim speed? Hippocampus? Dolphin? Something fish-like.

This is problematic I know, because not all races have a water-breathing ability. So how do you counteract this? Have an attunement quest that characters have to perform to get a water-breathing buff for these areas only. Just a few ideas to throw out there, something different. Maybe introducing a whole new continent and faction would be the key? Someone opposed to both the horde and the alliance.

Enter one of my creations, a race that is half demon, half elf. We already have them in the form of the demon-siphoning elves in hellfire peninsula. So we introduce the third faction of WoW, The Spawn, children of Kil'jaden.

Initial races could be half-breeds. Humans and blood elves have already been corrupted so let those two be the starting races. Give them a beginning area not unlike outland and offer new mid and high-level content based around the demonic theme. Maybe they start in the equivalent of 'hell' or one of it’s' layers. Each layer would offer a new range of content like moving from Westfall to the Redridge Mountains. So why send characters there? Why else, for expanding the territory and looking to defeat the latest menace. Or instead of hell maybe old Killy made plans to raise a whole new continent for his children?

Diablo 3

Okay so Blizzard announced Diablo 3. I must say even though I said I'd be happy ether way I'm not as excited about it as I would have been previously. Now don't get me wrong I'm a big fan of the Diablo series. I remember playing the original Diablo on an overclocked (bear with me now) 486 DX2. I know, it's painful to read. I was also in the Diablo 2 beta along with a friend of mine. I own not one, not two, but three copies of Diablo 2 which I used to run on three separate machines at the house for myself and my friends.

Diablo is a solid series with rich lore and colorful characters. If anything it has continuity, you meet and even save one of the original characters from Diablo 1 in Diablo 2. Deckard of course. Honestly I am going to buy Diablo 3 because it looks good. The engine seems to be near to being finished if not finished already, I think they just need time to write the campaign and all that.

My point is that I would be much happier with an MMO announcement coupled with something akin to the 'station pass' that Sony has. Until then, I cheer for thee Starcraft Online!

WWI Predictions

So people are all about speculation where the Blizzard World Wide invitational is concerned. My money is on Starcraft Online. What's with the ice? I don't know maybe it's a 'blizzard' thing? I think the stars-and-eyes theme says a lot.

If not starcraft online, I must submit to the common fever of Diablo 3. Ether way I'll be happy!

Aaragoth, the Shattered World

So here it is, the intro from my in-progress conversion. I hope to find a publisher for it once it's done but I may end up doing it via PDF. Anyone know a good artist?

History, they say, repeats itself in a countless loop. Ever changing ever circulating but always folding back upon the same timeline. Once this land was a growing thriving planet with much untapped potential but in the present day we feel the repercussions of those who tapped it too greedily.
-Adamos, Sage of the Return


The World Itself
The world of Aaragoth is a place of powerful and ancient arcane power where the very fabic of magic is what holds the remaining pieces of the world together in its previously-feeble grasp. Remnants of the previous age stand to this day as a testament to the influence of the great Arcane Kings of old. Most cities ether dwell on or around old and potent dead cities that provide not only the basics of day-to-day living but the conduit that enables those who can use the old power to delve into the secrets of magic.


The primary continents, shattered from the last war span out across the infinite reaches of the astral sea connected only by immense expanses of bottomless water and tracts of pure rock and earth whose edges spill out into cosmic nothingness. The sun rises and sets while the three moons appear at night just as if the planet itself had never been sundered.


The conveniences of the previous age are oft-misunderstood and overlooked as a given. Rare few left on the world know how to fix or operate the great mysterious machines and artifacts of the past. Aqueducts tied directly to the bring pure, fresh water to homes within major cities. Furnaces deep below the city provide warmth. Walkways connect the various city tiers and are held aloft by currents and great pillars all of these wonders are tied directly to the elemental chaos. Homes with these amenities while not rare have not been fully comprehended for generations.


In the wild earth elementals of an epic scale carry lifeless cities on their backs while forgotten palaces and ruins float above the endlessly shifting masses of earth.


In the current age magic has made a resurgence and the gods of old who had vanished have once again emerged from the wrecked blanket of magic. The echos of the Wizards' War still haunt the people in the form of ghosts from the past and the magic of the future. The primary continent, Argon, holds the world's current seat of power for the human nation and the unified dwarven people. While the elves and eladrin have taken to the forests that are ever-connected to the Feywild. Halflings and Dragonborn live among all races while the Tieflings reside in their own city-states welcoming those who can work the arcane arts.


Machina is the current capitol and seat of authority in the human nation of Koric. The present council of elders rules the surrounding countryside with an iron fist and strained diplomatic relations with the free nation of Gradis, a sea-faring culture of humanity that rules the waterways between the various continents.


The Illumin territories primarily populated by eladrin, tieflings, and half-elves openly welcome and those who have been shunned for their magical gifts. They war a constant feud over the mineral rich crescent mountains between Koric and Illumina.


While other continents exist, few have been fully explored. The far-off desert continent of Altair is all but a mystery, as are the thick jungle of Hulan, and the forest-rich continent of Makar or the cold tundra of Dael'na. Few who journey that far along the elemental catwalks return, those who do speak of strange peoples and ancient cities that span across miles filled with dangers and treasures alike. Rumors persist of a sixth continent as-yet unexplored, but rumors will persist.

Not working out.

So this isn't working. Gaming isn't an institution for me, it's a hobby. That being said I'm working on converting the campaign setting I was writing for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 into 4.0. Personally, I'm excited about the changes to the game. It's more streamlined and user friendly. The elements would fit quite nicely into a MMO type game. I smell Forgotten Realms Online.

Hopefully I will have a short blurb for it up soon. After that I plan on posting a sort of short diary on how I am progressing on the conversions. I hope to get it published but who knows.

MMOSite.com

Here is my new address. I'll still be posting my own ideas and other things on this blog but for the most part my game blogging and reviews are going up there.

Mr. Gone is moving!

I've accepted an offer from MMOSite.com to move my blog over to their site. As soon as everything has been flushed out I'll get back to posting. As soon as I'm sure about the details I'll post them here as a final post before I start up on the new site.

Polishing others' mechanics

I've seen a lot of posting about how blizzard stole this mechanic and just polished it or that mechanic and fixed it but I'm not really in agreement with the 'negative' argument of that side. If someone impliments a feature into their game and it sucks, then someone else impliments something similar but more polished and easy-flowing who wins but the players?

Now I, above all else, know that there will always be those players that have to nit-pick and pull everything apart just so they have something to complain about. I just ignore those guys, they're never happy. Here's what Activision-Blizzard needs to polish next:

Guild Housing - Instanced or not I think that guild housing is a damn good idea. Not only would it reduce traffic but it would give guildies a place to congregate and plan together. Giving your guild a better face than a list of letters thrown together to make a vaguely fantasy-esque name. This opens up the possiblity for adding rooms, decorating, guild banks, guild vendors, guild forges and crafting stations, etc.

Player Housing - This goes along with guild housing, who wouldn't like to have their own house complete with forges/vendors/bank space/etc. What about a room with your accomplishments listed? Several sets of equipment on dummies just waiting for you to pick it up?

Cosmetic Changes - This is actually coming (somewhat) in the next expansion via new hair cuts and dances but I want to see more. I want to see something similar to the everquest mechanic that allows you to use one set of equipment for your appearance and one set for stats. Tell me you wouldn't see more females running around in skimpy clothing and I would laugh. This would also open the possiblity of adding previously unsuable equipment to the character. I've seen several peices of mail that I wouldn't mind outfitting onto my mage. I'd also like to see you able to leave spots blank.

Mentoring - In City of Heroes (and I think in eq/eq2, it's been a while), which I played for a little while, you can mentor someone by bringing your level down to theirs and apparently vice-versa. Now unfortunately I didn't get far in those games because they just don't appeal to me. I like being able to solo mainly and jump into a group to get an instance done. That would be an interesting concept to add to wow. I think you'd see more low-level instances being done.

Overland PVP/Objectives - Also an upcoming feature in WoW via the next expansion. I'd like to see whole cities that are capturable. A guild, or series of guilds take over a city or a keep by defeating the inhabitants and the NPCs therein. After the long bloody battle they hire npc guards to keep their town safe from invasion. Maybe they set up overpriced vendors? Maybe a faction vs. faction goal? or a server vs server vs faction vs faction goal? I think I'm getting ahead of myself.

Oh well, that's some more things I'd like to see in wow!

Goal Really Exceeded! / Weekend in WoW

Daily quests and magisters terrace, nothing more nothing less. Even my wife has gotten into the habit of doing her daily quests. 100g for free every day is nothing to scoff at for a half hour to an hour of work. So I discovered a small cache on my level 62 shaman, though technically that didn't come from daily quests it does count. I'm currently sitting pretty on Stormrage with 3,775g. Not a bad haul. A few more days and I'll have my first epic flyer. Honestly the daily quests have satisfied my need for a routine with my characters. I do the dailys on my three 70s then switch to my lowbie shaman to finish her leveling off.

So on to the shaman? She's currently at +315 damage at level 62. That's more bonus damage than my mage had at 60 in mostly blues/purples at 60. Interesting, very interesting. Honestly the exponential growth potential of all of the classes is astounding. From paladin tanks to shaman healers and even shaman dps it's staggering. When you hit the levels above 70 you really feel like a hero, something special.

Goal Exceeded!

So after doing the daily quests on three characters, every day, all weekend, I have exceeded my goal and bumped myself up to 3,416 gold! Not far now!

Magister's Terrace continues to be 'big pimpin' if you'll pardon the lapse of grammar. We ran it again only this time my wife and a good friend of ours made up the dps while a tankadin and a holy paladin made up the tank/healer combo. As I thought, this instance gives tankadins the chance to shine. It went smoothly, with only one wipe (my fault I think), and a few deaths. We walked out with her getting a new staff and the rest of us getting shards. Our tank (damn him), won the phoenix pet that dropped.

This weekend hasn't held much other than me doing daily quests and gathering materials. I've gotten to the point where I need four primal mights for my enchanting and craploads of adamantite ore for my warlock's engineering. Thankfully though nether of them are as resource-demanding as blacksmithing, which sucks. My wife, as a matter of fact is pondering getting rid of blacksmithing in favor of something else because of the fact that it is so ore-intensive. And with each smelt requireing 2 bars it's just not right.

So another point I've come up with is Tailoring. As it is, it is very inefficient. I think that tailoring should be grouped up by class, not damage type. Mage Tailoring, Warlock Tailoring, and Priest Tailoring. This is why: I have come to a juncture (don't get me wrong I love my frost mage) where I want to try a fire/ice or fire/arcane combination. My hard work at shadowweave tailoring makes me NOT want to try it, that compiled with the cost of respec makes me not want to change my current spec out.

Mage Tailoring could be Fire/Arcane/Ice
Priest Tailoring would of course be Shadow/Holy/Healing
Warlock Tailoring would be Shadow/Fire

You could even use the current names Spellfire for mages, primal for priests, shadowweave for warlocks. That would have been a much better division of tailoring.

Money Making the Easy Way!

Phase two of the Shattered Sun Offensive is on! So I've got a list of 10 total daily quests I can do per day per character. Holy crap. So this weekend I will have plenty of time to do those quests on all three of my level 70 characters. Plus my mage has access to an extra six or so quests that I can do quite easily. That's 360g per day for the next three days. By the end of this weekend I will have 3100g so I am quite close to my 5k goal. Go Stormrage!

I may do this for all three of my characters just so I can get them all flying around in the proverbial "big pimpin'" style. That would greatly increase my leather/mining farming time on my warlock and hunter. I'm quite excited. Can you feel the excitement?

Of all the quests I've done in WoW the new daily quests are not only the most rewarding but they are the most fun. Not only am I getting roughly 10g per quest but I am also getting rep toward valuable patterns and random drops that can include greens and badge. Those greens are all being disenchanted for enchantments.

On that note I have worked my cooking, tailoring, enchanting, and fishing all up to 375 on my mage. Yay mage! Problem is that I can't make my runed eternium rod because it requires four primal mights. They go for about 150g per on my server right now so I will have to go farm motes and find some nice transmute specialist to let me use their cooldowns for a tip. Maybe I can trade for arcane dust? :)

How's the money making going?

Well honestly real-life issues have kept me from my money making dreams. I've only been able to do the daily quests on two of my characters thus far. Oh well, I'll get to it when I can. Other than that I don't have much wow to report on.

Quake Wars has turned out to be one of my worst enemies, it's one of those games I really want to play but can't. I keep getting disconnect errors even with nothing else running on my network and connection. Multiple servers by the way too. I've been cruizing the forums but I haven't found anything that addresses my problem yet.

Pleasant Patches

I remember back in the day when you couldn't just go to a gryphon master and click on a distant four-point flight and walk away from the machine, you had to plan out your flight for the least possible resistance and individually fly to each point. I also remember when patch days were far from smooth. This patch, like the burning crusade release was very smooth.

Honestly I have to say I'm impressed with the new content and changes. The combat log has been revised quite nicely though I rarely ever use it. None of the other class changes have really made a difference to my characters with the exception of the icy veins change, which I must say is nice. Having worked myself almost half way across the honored bar with the shattered sun offensive, and my server being 86% to the goal already I am quite impressed with the speed in which things are progressing. Even better is the daily quest increases. I have three 70's right now. I was only able to complete the daily quests and do an instance of the magister's terrace with one, then dailys for another. By my calcuations if I do all the daily quests I can on my characters (some of them are not attuned) I can make 280 gold per day. That's almost 300 gold just for doing a few quests. Now of course it will take some time to do all of the quests and I have other (real life) things to get to so I may not be able to do them all every day. Even if I only do 200 gold worth a day that's still an epic flying mount in less than a month's time. If I pool my resources it's 11 days total to my goal. I'm excited.

The magister's terrace (normal mode of course) went surprisingly well for my group. We wiped two times on the priestess and her flunkies and three times on Kael'thas, mainly because our healer wasn't used to healing. All of the drops, while mage drops, were not upgrades for me and I expected that since I'm decked out in heroic blues/purples and a bit of karazhan gear. One thing that I did get on the first run was the steelweave enchant. Quite interesting. I can't use it yet because I need the void shatter pattern first. Once I hit honored with the shattered sun offensive it's on like Donkey Kong!

The two daily quests on the island are so easy it's stupid, especially with so many people crawling over the island, it looked like a rave in the quest hub, honestly. You gather four stacks of this mana dust from the wreched dudes and kill/convert five sentries.

The quest in hellfire penninsula to destroy the fire elementals was easy because everyone around you with their little ember out gets a charge. However, the one to drain the felblood initiates was quite difficult with so many people doing the quest yesterday. This morning wasn't so bad.

In nagrand, the inspections go well and since my hunter is a skinner he can do the other quest for the nether at the same time. I haven't tried it yet with my miner but my hope is that you can get it from mining elementals as well. Last but not least the quest in to get the sunfury attack plans always goes well for me, the drop rate seems to be fairly high.

All-in-all, the content introduced is quite helpful to someone trying to save for an epic mount. Tonight I am going to finish all of my daily quests and do the same with my wife's characters.

Holiday + WoW = ?

So I've been playing wow a lot over the holiday, go figure. I've gotten to the point where I have my Nether Ray, I have my combat medalion, etc, but I don't have the cash to buy the next riding training. So I'm also neutral with the netherwing. Great, but I can't continue until I get 5,000 gold. Wow. I've worked myself up to 1600g doing daily quests and selling all the crap in my bank. My main problem is that I can't find anyone that needs to do the preliminary quests to the daily quests.

I have three level 70 characters right now and each would be more than capable of doing the daily quests as all of them have their epic and flying mounts (I wish now I hadn't gotten the other two their mounts. All it has done is slow my main down. Oh well.).

So how to rectify my delima? Well, the only other thing I've discovered as being profitable is fishing for motes/random fish to sell and grinding for minerals and leather. However, seeing as my leatherworker hasn't reached 375 yet I don't know how much of that I want to sell vs. use.

So I call again, what did my readers (what few I have) do to make their cash?

Reputation

I hit exalted with the skyguard this morning. I got my trinket and my nether ray. However, I still don't have the money to ride it though. I sincerely hope that blizzard tunes down the cost of the training soon just like they did when the burning crusade came out. Once that came out I bought an epic mount for all of my characters.

The prospect of getting an epic flying mount for all of my characters seems impossible. Not all of them have completed the prerequistes for the daily quests though I was thinking of doing it. But with patch 2.4 there will be more daily quests available per day so that will suppliment the whole issue. I have three 70s and one 60 right now. We'll see how it turns out.

Does anyone know a better way other than sniping the auction house or doing daily quests for cash? Don't get me wrong I am a big supporter of daily quests but after a while the same old quests get boring.

A tale of hunters and pets!

I pulled my hunter out of grind mode the other day to pick up a new pet, I figured it would be the perfect time to try for the elusive ghost wolf. Apparently I was incorrect. I missed my chance to get the damn coolest looking pet ever, I think it's unfair of blizzard to fix the issue once people have been able to get the pet in the first place. So I decided on getting the only unique carrion bird available. Trachlea, I think the name was, anyway it's the bird in the bone wastes for the torgos quest.

The begin of the XP grind starts here, and I thought I was done with that. I don't think there are enough viable unique-looking pets at level 70. I mainly use my hunter to farm primals so this pet will be heavy on the resistances for obvious reasons. My hunter got his ass handed to him last time I tried to kill two fire elementals at a time, whereas my frost mage can take between 4-8 if I do it right with AoE.

Honestly it's to be expected that a high level mage with good gear can take more but I was having issues with one elemental let alone two. My pet, a warp stalker, was just a novelty pet more than anything. I've gone through all of my options and apparently I will have to gather my friends together and go for the 70 ravagers that inhabit the mines in the netherwing area.

Petopia has been quite in invaluable resource through this endeavor!

Not much to report on

No wow last night, celebrating my sibling's birthday. Other than that I am excited about the upcoming patch. I hope it's released today!

On that note I would like to discuss another game I invested in (that I wish I hadn't). Hellgate: London was fun for the first 20 levels but after that it began to putter out. It is, in all honesty another one of those massively single player games. If I could demand a refund I would. I even bought two copies, one of the a collector's edition with the founder's program. I spent about $260 on Hellgate: London and it positively sucks.

I think I have lost my interest in first person games, quake wars is fun, team fortress 2 is fun, world of warcraft is crack. I haven't picked up Bioshock, TF2, Quake Wars, Hellgate: London, or any of my other games in quite a long time. Am I loosing my gamer edge? Who knows.

Faction Stigma

For the Alliance!
For the Horde!
For both?

I've met players that go alliance and horde but few that do both. The going stereotypes that currently dominate each faction is that snot-nosed brats and idiots roll alliance and mature types roll the horde. What about those of us who roll both? Honestly I don't have any high-level horde but I do have both. It seems that if you're one side or the other you're good but if you're both it's like being bi-sexual in this day and age. Most people argue pick a side, but when you pick the side they have complaints as it is.

For the record, I love the lore on both sides but I like the 'friendly' look of the alliance for my own reasons and the 'primal' look of the horde for the same. So what happens when I finally decide which side to choose? Well let the social stigmas flow. Until then my cry is "For both damn you!".

Honestly I have been thinking of pulling my horde characters out and trying the horde side again. I've been having issues trying to find groups and a friendly guild on the alliance side. What about the readers? Do you think that the horde or alliance side is more friendly?

Weekend in Warcraft

So I didn't get much WoWing done this weekend but my friends and I have hit an impass. We need a tank. My wife started a warrior for the sole reason of tanking for us. I am planning on creating a tank-specced DeathKnight. The third member of our group has already made a warrior as well. Apparently the key to getting a group is no longer being a holy priest, it's being a tank of any sort. People are even desperate enough to start taking tankadins (honestly they aren't that bad). So barring the fact that I hate playing warriors we must all apparently succumb to the tank shortage.

(begin rant)
This sucks in particular because we have three additional members (all of whom are currently not talking to us for various reasons), that have a potential tank. A warrior, a feral druid, and an epic pally.

Personally, I am damn tired of people telling me how I am supposed to play and who I am supposed to have. If my wife wants to play her priest shadow, so be it. If I want to play my mage frost, so be it. If I want to play my shaman elemental, SO DAMN-WELL BE IT. As soon as you start telling people what they need to do with their account they get just as pissed as I am now. If you don't want to hear me tell you how to spec your druid, leave my wife alone about her shadow priest. I have some friends of mine pissed at me right now because I told them what to do with their alts, shove them up their anus. I'm tired of people demanding that we compensate them. I could never play my mage because everyone always wanted me to run them through dungeons with my 60 hunter. F-you, F-your characters, and it sucks when people demand shit from you doesn't it? Enough said.
(/end rant)

Problem with WoW

One of the big problems with wow is that it's soloable. Hear me out before you decide this article is worthless. Because being a prot warrior is not soloable (Arms/Fury FTL), that makes tanks harder to find. No one wants to switch to Prot because the only use for Prot is soloing. A feral druid actually has fairly good DPS, a tankadin can tank/dps/heal to solo. Protection warriors really suck at battlegrounds and soloing. Why? No DPS. You can take all the hits in the world but NO dps.

Last night for the daily heroic there were seven DPS-specced warriors in the queue but no tanks to be seen. The solution? BALANCE the warrior class. Give Prot warriors DPS and make DPS warriors a viable tank solution. Give their attacks more agro and allow them to taunt their brains out. ANYTHING to increase the amount of tanks out there.

The addition of DeathKnight will be welcome in my opinion, however, the majority of DeathKnights out there will be DPS specced (AGAIN). Blizzard, if you read this (I doubt it) give us more TANKS!

Pimp My Wii

Okay, so I don't own a Wii yet. I am going to get one eventually because I love Nintendo's products. What I want to see though, is an attachment that allows you to play your original SNES carts on the Wii. Now before someone says "VIRTUAL CONSOLE IDIOT!", the games I want aren't on the virtual console.

I own:
Secret of Mana
Final Fantasy 1, 2, 3
Chrono Trigger
Earthbound
Secret of Evermore

ETC. All in cartridge form. My experiment with the RetroDuo was a crash-and-burn failure to the maximum. It pisses me off.

Publish My Game (Part 3)

Concept in Progress: Alien Presence

"They said it would never happen, they told us that we were alone in the vast expanse of the universe. Even after we hard advanced our technology for space travel ten fold and explored galaxies previously unreachable still they said we were the only form of sentient life."

"They were wrong, the attack was sudden and brutal. Within months we had lost our home planet. No one knew where they had come from or why they came. Most of all why they had attacked us even after gestures of friendship."

Through research we discrovered the place these strange alients came from. A galaxy almost beyond our reach, on a planet that we never knew existed. Earth, they called it."

"These 'humans' as they call themselves are more machine than living beings. Long ago they traded their souls for the power and longevity offered to them by their technological advances."

There you have it, the short intro-blurb to a game concept I wrote down almost ten years ago! It's held up well considering the notebook it was written in is considerable older than even my first entry.

Factions:
The Human Confederacy - Humans and Cyborgs
Zythian Resistance - Zyth (Bio-technology)
Landarian Alliance - Landar (Pure energy)
Raxian Prime - Zyth/Human Hybrids (Bio-tech hybrids)

Alliances: Human & Raxian / Zyth & Landar
-Humans used to be like the zyth but instead of embracing nature they chose the way of metal and machines. Most humans still have some flesh remaining though some, especially the warrior-tier, are primarily metal

-Zyth are a tree-like race of beings that base their technology off of nature and life, through the years they have developed living forms of transportation and limited weaponry. With the help of the Landars they developed space travel.

-Landar are composed of pure energy. They have exsisted for centures with the zyth aiding and supporting them in all things. It is said that they are former Zyth, but their true origins are unknown

-Raxian are members of the Zyth that have sided with the humans and undergone metalic grafts. Originally the Raxar were beings constructed by the Zyth and powered by the Landar. They now reproduce through their own means and have formed a resistance against the Zyth and Ladrian Alliance.

Workers:
Human - Assigned a number (I.E. 001, 002, 003, etc)
Zyth - Saplings
Landar - Zapper
Rax - Hybrid

Grunt Unit:
Human - Metal-head
Zyth - Treant
Landar - Will-o-the-wisp
Rax - Charger

Ranged Unit:
Human - Gunner
Zyth - Splinter
Landar - Bolter
Rax - Arclyte

Special Unit:
Human - Mech-Boy (Repair)
Zyth - Woodland Shaman (Priest/Mage Hybrid)
Landar - Stormlord (Mage)
Rax - Techlord (Tech/Mage Hybrid)

Flying Unit:
Human - Scorpion
Zyth - Roc
Landar - Ball Lightning
Rax - Tech Sparrow

Defense Unit: (Ground)
Human - Blade Turret
Zyth - Deep Root
Landar - Shocker
Rax - Mobile Shocker

Defense Unit: (Air)
Human - Flak Gun
Zyth - Splinter Cannon
Landar - Shocker
Rax - Mobile Shocker

Buildings:
Human - Confederate HQ (Base), Chow Hall (Food), Barracks (Training Area)
Zyth - Council Chambers (Base), Sacred Garden (Food), Green House (Training Area)
Landar - The Gathering (Base), Generator (Food), Lightning Coil (Training Area)
Rax - The Collective (Base), Regenerator (Food), Grafting Facility (Training Area)

Resources: Ore, Wood, Oil
Humans gather faster but destroy the nodes, Zyth can 'nurture' nodes to make them grow back, do not destroy but gather slower, Landar are like Zyth and Rax are like humans.

Resource Gathering:
Humans: Ore (High Manufacture), Wood (Low Manufacture), Oil (High Manufacture)
Zyth: Ore (Low Manufacture), Wood (Very High Manufacture), Oil (Low Manufacture)
Landar: Ore (Low Manufacture), Wood (None/Low), Oil (Very High Manufacture)
Rax: Medium Across the Board

Gameplay: Two Levels
Planet View (Surface RTS)
Space View (Ship-to-Ship RTS)

Race - Carrier/Fighter/Bomber/Special
Human - Dropship/Disruptor/Destroyer
DropShip: (Carrier, Huge, Slow, Small Laser Array/Variable Defense)
Load, Unload, Defensive Shell (Enhance Defense, Normal is Poor)
Disruptor: (Fighter, Medium, Standard, Medium Laser Array/Variable Defense)
Defensive Shell (Enhanced Defense, Normal is Poor)
Destroyer: (Command Vessel, Gargantuan, Slow, Large Laser Battery/Enhanced Defense)
Radar Array (Detection), Command Formation (+ to attack in a radius)

Zyth - Void Whale/Stinger/Orbital Spore
Void Whale: (Carrier, Large, Fast, No Attack/Enhanced Defense)
Load, Unload, Burst (Speed)
Stinger: (Fighter, Small, Very Fast, Organic Laser/Standard Defense)
Burst (Speed), Hybernate (Regenerate/Stealth)
Orbital Spore: (Bomber, Medium, Very Fast, Spores/Poor Defense)
Orbital Bombardment

Landar - Vortex Battery/Bolt Slinger/Warp Chaser

Rax - Cruiser/Hybrid Spacer/Shield Generator

View Notes
-Races get resources from planets they have conqured, to conquer a planet you must land troops there and establish a base of operations, if another race or races are present on the planet and you don ot have an alliance you must fight your way to dominance on the planet.
-Computer planet takeover? (determined by factors of chance, dependent on military presence.)
-Multiplayer: All races may ally, fixed teams
-Trigger-based maps?
-Ships are made by selecting the planets that you own and queueing manufacture.
-Group selection: One carrier-class ship must be present to take over a planet along with fighters for orbital defense
-Each mode takes over, pausing all other operations, if you win or loose in planet-side mode you return to the space mode.
-Space View: Possibility of evaluating a planet's resources?
-Space View: Creating supply chains from planet to planet? Each race has their own 'caravan'?
-Increased recouse production due to trading from planet-to-planet.
-Planets: Normal Inhabitable planets to take over for resources, non-inhabitable planets for additional resources?
-Space View: Space stations around the planets?
-Black Hole: Very high energy output? Requires Trade Route and Glactic Waystation (or Space Station)

More to Come (There's four more pages of the stuff!)

Heroics, an epic tale!

With the current tank issue going around, and I'm sure all have felt it, I have begun trying to think of solutions to the problem. The main problem is that it sucks to try and level a tank in any form. Plus taking is heavily dependant upon your gear. Enter the deathknight!

So we'll have a new tanking/melee dps class that we can rely on. Great, hurry up with that shit blizzard, I'm getting impatient.

Last night my heroic group went through the daily like it was butter, we only suffered one wipe and that was because I had an emergency to attend to. Our feral druid tank did very well. Tankadins and Feral druids have become quite a tank alternative. What will deathknights do to those classes? Well honestly I think it will ease the tank load, I doubt having another tanking class would harm our game any. However, a flood of Deathknight tanks may make other tanking classes look much better. Because they've had experience tanking and have already been balanced. No nerfs or buffs going around that are too jolting.

World of Angercraft!

So barring of course the normal woes I had a very ugly wow night last night. Not only did a mod I was using swap out my strange dust for my arcane dust on mouse over (twice resulting in a sale of 20 arcane dust for 99s 99c) but I seem to have run into a point of gaming-hell which I am very upset about.

I have a close-knit group of friends that I game with. Between them we have two healers, three tanks, and ten or more DPS characters. Most at 70 or close to it. Why the hell does someone start a character they don't want to play once everyone present (including a significant portion of help from myself), gets to 70?

I'll tell you why, it's the same reason why my hunter is no longer my primary character. The call has always been for me to get my high-level character on to help everyone else level. I did that so frequently that I got sick of my hunter. Now they are experiencing the same, and all I have to say is "oh freaking well, it sucks doesn't it?". Tasting your own far-flung feces isn't fun is it?

So why the hell, between all of those tanks can't we form a group? Because it sucks playing something that you're sick of. So that leaves us groupless and me mad enough to hang myself from the ceiling with my mouse cord! Oh well, I doubt it would support me anyway, which is what makes the statement funny right?

Publish my Game (Part 2)

Okay, I've been out of the game scene for a while so stop me if this has been done. I have an idea about a game played within the mind of a person in a mental institution. It would be a sandbox-style game with free form game play. Each level a different locale or with a different feel to it.

The first is the asylum itself, the second could be an 'infested' version of the asylum to represent how the patient views the asylum itself. Think slime and odd growths, unnatural colors. The deeper you progress the stranger things get. Each of these sandbox levels would open up a new ability that the 'mental patient' can use once you complete the level.

After the first sandbox level is completed the linear gameplay begins with the mental patient trying to escape the asylum (that is coincidentally) conducting illegal experiements on the inmates. The rest of the game would include sandbox levels for more powers and linear levels that progress the gameplay.

Possible Abilities:
Telekinesis (Object Manipulation)
Pyrokinesis (Fire Manipulation)
Clairvoyance/Clairaudience (Remote Viewing/Hearing)
Psychic Blast (Obviously a damaging attack, cone-shaped)
Mental Chains (Disabling attack)
Telekinetic Shell (Damage Absorbtion)
Telekinetic Flight (Obviously movement-based)

More to Come

Jewelcrafting

I'm late to the party. Apparently Jewelcrafting isn't as popular as it was before. Blue gems aren't selling for much though the patterns apparently are. I've come to the conclusion that I am leveling a jewelcrafter for nothing.

I've had this issue with several professions so far. Leatherworking, Tailoring, Enchanting, now Jewelcrafting. Engineering remains my favorite but it's not for profit. Not even selling gyro-balanced khorium destroyers is very profitable. Tailoring wasn't really all that profitable but it's great for bags. Enchanting, I don't use it much. If it weren't for the fact that I can sell the supplies for quite a bit of profit I'd drop it as well.

Does anyone out there make a good profit on ANY of the crafting professions?

Quake Wars

Okay, I broke down and bought Quake Wars. I started out playing Quake 1 via my LAN a long time ago. Ever since then I have been addicted to Quake. Quake 2 wasn't much for me but Quake 3 was. Doom 3 was a good single play but the multiplayer didn't draw me much. I know why now. MODS. Future vs. Fantasy was our favorite mod by far but we had several we'd bounce from. I don't know how many nights we spent kicking the shit out of each other in Future vs. Fantasy.

Anyway I fired it up for a few minutes and found that even with my machine I shouldn't play with high graphics on. There's a noticable delay to me, I am used to instant reaction, and in FPS games if you lag you're dead. It's that simple. I haven't had time to try it online but the 'tutorial' map was quite fun. This could be another Team Fortress 2 for me.

Honestly the graphics are nice, the sound is good, and the gameplay from what little I've seen seems to be fun. Another plus is the ability to create a 'LAN' account which doesn't require a key. That is good for those of us who gather a few friends together and kick the shit out of each other.

Weekend in Warcraft

I have really taken to the shaman elemental build. Since I have a level 70 mage I can transfer (via my wife) food and water to my shaman in stacks. Honestly it's like being a nature mage. Up until this point I have been soloing. But now we have a deadly trio. My wife's 60 combat rogue, my 60 elemental shaman, and my friend's 60 holy paladin. Honestly we go through mobs so fast it's sick. Which brings me to the next part of the wonderful ordeal.

The paladin mount quest. My warlock finished his with the help of one 70 feral druid. Then we did the feral druid's warlock quest with my 70 mage and a 70 paladin. The paladin mount quest is rather difficult to solo with a 70 mage and a holy paladin. Other than some serious jewelcrafting my WoW weekend was uneventful.

My rogue, who has hit level 8, is destined to become a PVP twink. I haven succumbed to the twink-my-alt craze until now but it seems my wife has the urge to do the same with her hunter. Why twink? Well I don't know yet but apparently we're going to find out.

The Shaman Delema.

I don't want to kill my shaman and start over, that would be counter-productive. I have a distinct lack of healers in my roster and my shaman, once she hits 70, will be the first. I definitely plan on going resto once I hit 70 because I like the role of healer. Of course I need to gather my mods up and get some practice in but that will come later.

So back to business I've found that the elemental spec, while not perfect, works better for me than the enhancement spec. Maybe that's because I am used to playing straight ranged dps classes. Hence the 70 mage, warlock, and hunter. I bought some upgrades and subsequently found some using my mage while grinding. Tell me, what few readers I have, what spec is your shaman pre and post 70?

100th Post, too bad it's a sad one.

I've been trying to find words for the loss of one of gaming's fathers. Gary Gygax, co-creator of the most revolutionary gaming system to date died recently. I'm not good at stuff like this but honestly the only thing to say is that he will be missed. I never met the man myself, but I wanted to. Just like I wanted to meet Ray Charles, two down.

I actually own an original copy of the first Dungeons and Dragons ever printed still. It's not pretty but it's a part of history. Thanks for gaming with us Mr. Gygax, lets hope your tour of the planes didn't end there.

Leveling Problems

My Shaman, who hit level 55 last night, is becoming hard to play. I've swapped her spec (and gear) several times to no avail. Nothing seems to work even with mainly blues and high-level and quality weapons and armor. Maybe it's the way I am playing my shaman? I've tried two weapon enhancement, two-handed weapon enhancement, and elemental builds. No matter what I try I end up in the slow kill/slow grind situation again.

My wife's rogue seems to be having the same problem. I think her issue is more that she is specced in sub instead of combat. Don't get me started on holy priests ether. So who out there has been having soloing issues with certain classes? Am I playing my shaman wrong?

Grouping low-level instances

I made an attempt to get a group together for the sunken temple. After a minimal effort I founded a group and went out to the Swamp of Sorrows to summon everyone. Spot-on, everyone shows up and we head into the raid. Getting in is easy, no problem, but when we start getting down to it, our feral druid tank can't hold aggro from the healer. The healer (a paladin) can't hold aggro from me when I heal and the mobs begin bouncing back and forth. No problem, one guy drops due to an emergency and we find another, higher level character to come in. Same thing, even with a level 60+ tank we can't keep agro off the healer. So the instance group flops. Quite an awful night for doing an instance apparently. What's the worst grouping experience you've had?

Pulling the 'Race' Card

While reading around I found this article Link. My friends can testify that I predicted the races of The Burning Crusade well before the expansion came out. I don't see any races coming out in the lich king but the walruses are an interesting race. Not too sure about that.

Neutral Candidates include:
Goblins, Ethereals, Tuskkarr

Other Candidates include:
Naga, Dryads (Not Likely), Centaur (Not Likely), High Elves, Anubisath (or whatever) humanoids, etc.

I, for one, would love to see a 'neutral' faction available for play. I want to roll an Ethereal mage ASAP. One that can visit ether horde towns or alliance towns without any penalties. Good luck dreaming eh?

Another WoW night.

My shaman has finally worked herself up to exalted with Darnassus and in the process I hit revered with gnomeregan and ironforge. As a left-wing bonus I also hit exalted with stormwind. My mage, who started her life when wow was released, and my hunter who is the same, are both relatively low in rep with the other factions. I must say though that it was worth the grind for the kitty instead of the dumbo.

I am very disappointed with the elekks. I would have made the talbuk the Draenei's mount and the elekk the Kurenai mount. That's just me though. It's nice to be able to fit into doorways now.

I also hit Alterac Valley with my wife last night, admittedly we did it for new weapons more than anything but I had forgotten how fun it was to play against people that aren't geared out in the ulimate arena/pvp gear combo. We had a blast last night, which made me think about the whole pvp/pve/gear issue. If they're making PVP gear on par with the PVE gear that people can get from raiding, what happens to us casuals? We don't have the time to raid nor do we have the time to pvp for hours on end to get the gear we need to compete. Sure, what people call the 'welfare epics' help but sometimes even that's frustrating. My mage currently has eight epics from various locales including heroics, karazhan, instances, and world drops. Soon to be 10 when I complete my frozen shadow weave set, but even then I still get ghetto-stomped by over-geared people in arenas and pvp. What's the general concensus out there about easy-mode raids?

New additions to the collection.

So I finally finished my RPG collection last night with Chrono Trigger. That brings my list to Final Fantasy 1, 2, and 3, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Earthbound, Shadowrun, Chrono Trigger, and a few others that are noteworthy. Another addition which is currently still on the way is the Retro Duo. It apparently plays both SNES and NES games. Since I still own working copies of both the NES and SNES I figure that letting them sit unused should preserve them a bit further, plus it will be nice to consolidate. I'll let you know how well it works.

So another two items that came in last night were the collector's edition for Everquest 2: Kingdom of the Sky ($0.98 + Shipping), and Shadowrun ($4.99 + Shipping). Still sealed and unused. The bad thing is that I forgot Shadowrun requires Windows Vista, which I do not have. Now, I beta tested Windows Vista and I have to say that it is pretty but a little resource-hungry. If you turn off the extra functionality it looks vaguely familiar (*coughXPcough*). But what you have to remember are the things that go on in the background. Apparently they fixed a lot but who knows? I can't afford a real copy of Vista so I guess Shadowrun goes on my shelf until I can.

Flying Mounts

Link
This is an interesting article, it made me think. Why not offer flying mounts to every profession? Strange, you say?

Tailoring: Flying Carpet - Sim sim salabim?
Leatherworking: Patchwork Flyer - Think dragon or something scaily!
Blacksmith: Metalwork Flyer - Something akin to the engineering flying machine.
Alchemy: Winged Homunculus - No explanation needed.
Jewelcrafting: Emerald Eagle - Why not? That would be grand!

How would this make engineers feel? Well I don't freaking care! I have an engineer by the way, he has the basic machine. I wouldn't mind at all!

Something else wow needs

Brewing, plain and simple. We have cooking and cooking does yield some drinks but we need more. I hate having to buy drinks because my shaman goes through mana very quick. I would have to carry around four to five stacks of drinks around in order to enable myself to continue on for the same time that any other class can. Luckily for me a friend of mine has a mage and makes me food and water whenever I need it.

But back to the issue at hand, brewing. Potent potables anyone? Maybe not nessicarily that but SOMETHING that gives out mana for normal world drops.

Weekend in Warcraft

This weekend was strange indeed. We have a man down! A very good friend of mine, who has been staying with us on the weekends and WoWing with us has found a job and subsequently moved to Minnesota. Our trifecta from hell has been broken down to a dangerous duo.

With that in mind we worked on my wife's mage some and then I decided that my Draenei shaman requires a different mount. I am very displeased with the elekk mounts. They are ugly, huge, and they don't fit in most doorways. That is just annoying.

With a heavy decision on what to grind for I finally decided I would go for Darnassus reputation. I don't remember what patch it was but there was a patch back there that made quests give full reputation even when you're out of the level range. My sunday, half spent making videos of my wife's horse, was subsequently spent grinding for the tiger. I'm three bars from revered and still annoyed with the quests in the night elf area.

My top five worst leveling areas in order are:
1.) Stranglethorn Vale - I've seen this area WAY too damn much. That's all, other than that the quests are pretty much grouped together in the two separate areas.

2.) Mulgore - While it is understandable that the Tauren are plainsmen (and women) their area is atrocious. The quests are spread way out there.

3.) Astranaar - Way too spread out, and each quest hub only has a few quests. Definitely a pain the ass.

4.) Loch Modan - Another example of quests being spread out way too far.

5.) Silverpine Forest - While the quests aren't as spread out as some areas are they are spread out and it seems that mobs roam in groups.

Of course there are more, but those are the ones I've leveled in that come to mind off hand. Any areas you don't like?

Visit to the Deadmines

Last night was interesting. As soon as I walked in the door from work I was accosted by my wife and a friend of ours, their mission: The Deadmines. They had made alts and leveled them up to 11 and 12 respectively. A holy priest and a fire mage. I have run instances all the way up to BRD solo and I'm pretty good at AoE farming. So what did I do? I put my mage in full damage mode and ran them though The Deadmines at least 4 times. In that whole time they went from 11 and 12 to 14 and 15. It didn't take long because my mage can kill most mobs in the instance with one blast, burn, explosion, or even a staff hit.

So with that in mind, how do you power level? I've found that pushing the characters through an instance with one 70 mage takes less time than running around gathering quests and getting them complete UNLESS the quests are in the area anyway.

Back in business!

So now that my pc is complete (after a power supply arrival last night), I have returned to the game in all of its splendor. All graphics and sliders turned up to the highest setting and everything turned up to the max with a huge widescreen resolution.

That got me thinking. Some of my former co-workers used to play Everquest 2 (I did as well, call it a momentary lapse of sanity). There was a long debate between me and them about the merits of world of warcraft vs. everquest 2. I ended up giving them all of the trial keys I had laying around so they could try it out. With a little resistance I finally got one of the group to try it. He was instantly hooked on the simple gameplay, the quick learning curve, and the simplistic beauty of what he called the 'cartoony' graphics. So more people began to switch over to World of Warcraft, one guy came back to me with an interesting story. His wife, who never had really taken to the games herself, had passed by him playing the game on the computer and paused. She asked him what he was playing because it wasn't the same game she was used to seeing him play. He confirmed it and showed her a bit more of the game itself to which she replied the graphics looked much better than the other game he played.

It dawned on me way back then, when WoW was still young, that one of the main reasons WoW is so popular is that the graphics are simple but pretty. The gameplay is easily taken to even for kids! It's one of the many factors that makes WoW what it is.

With my computer I can turn all of the graphics up on WoW and stand in the middle of Shattrath City without a bit of lag. On that same note I can pull all the settings down a bit and play it on my crappy laptop that shouldn't be able to play it at all. WoW is accessable and the average computer can run it without the extra bells and whistles. Why do you play WoW?

World of Warcraft and Widescreen

I've been playing with a widescreen monitor so long that I seem to have forgotten what WoW was like without the widescreen. For the last few weeks I have had my normal LCD monitor hooked to my WoW box because my widescreen's power supply went pop. It's so frustrating to not have that extra viewing space.

Last night my replacement monitor, a very nice 22 inch widescreen made by DCLCD. I have to admit that the color difference and the contrast really set this monitor off from the competitors. However, since my primary gaming machine seems to be having a power supply issue I won't know how nice it is until my new power supply arrives tonight.

How many wow'ers out there use widescreen?

A return to Dungeons and Dragons.

Another activity I participated in was Dungeons and Dragons (3.5), it's been quite some time since I've run a campaign (Barring a failed D20 modern campaign because everyone ended up quitting due to the fact of the D&D with guns association). My return to the fantasy realm coincides with the fact that I have been working on my old campaign setting again. So with all the information I have come up with over the years I have converted this campaign from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 3.5. With 4th edition on the horizon I suspect I will have to again convert myself up a level.

So without further delay, I present you with Mr. Gone's Arcane Theatre. The setting is Aaragoth, the Shattered World. The long and short of the history is that the world itself was rich in magic until a great disjunction, caused by the mages themselves, split the fabric of magic and caused it to fade but not disappear. Centuries later magic has re-immerged on a world that is heavily rhabdophobic. The characters themselves have been called upon to investigate some local disappearances that happened after the town's harvest festival. The only clue they have is that a rather exotic merchant came through town and sold items to almost every person that has disappeared.

Our cast of characters consists of Sierra, Rubin, Samuel, Rusty, and Colin. Sierra is the daughter of well-to-do merchants with a strong martial tradition in the family history. As such she is the captain of the guard in the city of Morigan in the province of Umach on the main continent of Argon. Rubin, a favored soul of Moradin, is just a local cleric that helps oversee the church of moradin in the city. Samuel, a local brawler (monk), is the former champion of the town's monthly boxing matches. Rusty, a kobold laborer, keeps his sorcerous talents hidden from the townsfolk due to the strong rhabodophobia demonstrated on Aaragoth. Finally Colin is a local 'treasure relocation expert' that operates in the city doing various odd-jobs and such.

Another local has volunteered to help in the town's time of need. Norrin, a tall and rugged farming fellow with a liver as hard as the earth he tills, is not the smartest man in the world but he, by far, is quite an interesting addition.

Four people total have disappeared including a young girl, erin, and her mother, carry, who ran a local store. Zeb, a goat farmer, and a wandering merchant. The only evidence that shows any link to the characters is a journal left by the young girl erin that says the merchant visiting gave her a trinket, later entries say that she began getting sick and the last, most cryptic entry, was one stating that she had found a door in the basement of the store.

Investigation of the store brought up nothing but a minor magical trinket tucked away in a crate of miscellaneous items. The merchant's belongings had all been left when he disappeared, among his things was a recipt and a small statue with a green eye perched upon it. The investigation of Zeb's farm turned up a small green ring and nothing more. Upon returning to the inn where the merchant disappeared the Innkeep, John by name, allowed them to stay in his room because it had been paid for up to a week.

Magical identification of the items brought a backlash of pain and a sinister whispering of the word 'Dreams' to the kobold sorcerer, rusty. Having deduced that the problem occurs when the item's possessors sleep near their trinkets two of the investigators decided to slip the ring under the innkeep's pillow. After staging a drinking match that left Rubin and Samuel both passed out on the floor and norrin not far behind the more stealthy of the two slipped into the Innkeep's room and put the item under his pillow.

After the innkeep laid down to sleep for the night the observers noticed that he began dreaming. Rusty left the halfling Colin to the innkeep and returned to their room to find Rubin similarly enthralled in a deep dream state. After waking the rest of them they returned to find the innkeep gone.

The final phase of their brilliant plan left the group sleeping with the small statue in order to find out what would happen. Not far into the experiment two of the group samuel and rusty spied Erin standing by the window. Not having enough time to wake the others they pursued her into the general store and down to the basement where a stone door stood in plain sight where there was none before. Entering the door and the subsequent stone tunnel lead to yet another set of double doors and a passage leading off in another direction.

Inspection of the doors revealed an odd sight, a stunning mountain vista at mid-day. Disturbed, the characters decided to inspect the side tunnel instead. Meanwhile, the remaining party members began to rise and spotted Erin as well. Norrin, however, had disappeared just as quietly as the innkeep had. Once the pursuit was finished, the party rejoined, the characters inspected the hallway only to find loads of cobwebs choking the corridor. In a stroke of ether brilliance or stupidity Samuel burned the webs and pissed off a rather large wraith-spider (another of my creations). Through a long battle Rubin discovered he could affect the environment around him by concentrating very hard. Once the spider was defeated the group of adventurers left the area and came upon yet another door, this one a dwarven-carved masterpiece.

Over three hours summed up in just so many words but that's where the party left off. Interestingly enough everyone was entertained for the duration and I suppose that's all that matters right?

Security Issues

With all of the recent hacked accounts and stolen 'lewtz' (See Here), I've been wondering what steps the gaming community takes against hacking/thieving bastards.

I've worked hard on all of my characters and loosing them or their equipment, while not earth-shattering, would really get me down. I have been using internet explorer because I usually don't care. Is Firefox more secure because it's built better or because less hackers target Firefox? Truth be known nothing is 100% secure, if you built it someone can break it down. If you they can't get in, you can't get out.

Some steps I have taken or gathered are as follows:
1.) Use Firefox with the noscript addon
2.) Watch where you click (Since I work in the IT world this is a no-brainer for me but not exactly for my wife.)
3.) Don't share your passwords (Truthfully I don't even think my wife knows my password)
4.) Don't install addons from a small-time or questionable site
5.) Don't install addons that require an .exe
6.) Virus scan regularly
7.) Have a firewall (or in my case multiple firewalls)
8.) Change your password frequently
9.) Use a mix of characters (My standard is 8-12 characters with at least one capital letter, one lower case, one special character, and one number)
10.) Don't buy gold or powerleveling services (That's a route to stealing or being banned!)
11.) Do regular PC maintenance on your machine (You'd be surprised what digging around in your hard drive can turn up)

So what steps do you take?

Stealthy Gaming

Tobold posted an interesting article about the agro radius in World of Warcraft: Link. Personally I love rogues unless there's one behind me inserting a sharp object into my no-no places.

In the past I have enjoyed playing stealthy games. The list I have played includes the Thief series, Oblivion, Morrowind, and others. In particular I was looking forward to Starcraft: Ghost. I love thief-type characters and rogues. I would love to see a sight and sound based system implimented into World of Warcraft, that would definitely give me the fuel to play a rogue.

My wife has a rogue, this particular rogue is level 60 now and sitting merrily in honor hold waiting for levels. She has gotten a bit tired of the rogue and as such she has been neglected. But honestly having played a rogue for a little while The agro radius system can be painful if you're not really good at stealthing. Being as such she is specced in stealth/murder/ream. She seems to enjoy it. What specs do rogues out there use?

Weekend in Warcraft

So I played World of Warcraft a lot this weekend, go figure right? Well here's a run-down of what we did thusfar.

Power-leveling: Since I am the most skilled at AoE pulling and run-throughs I have been participating in a lot of power-leveling lately. This weekend was my wife's warrior (for the inevitable Zang'thraze the Destroyer, or whatever it is) and a holy priest. A good friend of mine just respecced his 44 priest to holy and as such he requires groups more than your average character.

I often wonder why Blizzard hasn't fixed that problem, I consider it broken dynamics. Every spec for every class should have a viable solution for soloing. Holy Priests, Resto Druids, Resto Shamans, and Holy paladins (just to name a few, forgive me if I miss your class) have the worst time trying to level. I, personally would rather play a holy priest instead of a shadow priest. Some solutions I have thought of would be hiring a tank henchman, or adding more damage-dealing to the specs but what do you think?

On my side my wife and the other dude running with us was nice enough to take my shaman into Blackrock Depths to gather some equipment that drops from various bosses. In particular I was hoping to get the Savage Gladiator's set because she is currently enhancement. Four times in we decided to switch to something else because my equipment will be replaced quickly. Honestly though I am wearing mostly leather and at that it's +int/sta which is more for enhancement shamans.

Dungeons and Heroics: We ran ourselves through a few dungeons and heroics this weekend including Arcatraz, Old Hillsbrad, Steamvaults, and Hellfire Ramparts. My friend, who's mage is named Joinde, has never been into Karazhan or any of the high-level dungeons so we started (and nearly finished) his attunement last night. Tonight we're going to do the Black Morass. The attunement to karazhan isn't really that difficult, I've attuned a few so far and assisted with attunements. The only difficult part is working your way through the shadow labs.

Auction House: Wow, here's the true pain in the ass. I listed my Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer this weekend, again, and got no hits. I'm starting to get discouraged, and as such I think we are going to start questing for cash. It seems to me that it would be the fastest way seeing I haven't touched any quests in blades edge, nor have I finished all the outland quests. What's the fastest way to make money in your opinion?

Power Leveling

So my wife has decided she wants to play her warrior primarily. Me being the good husband I am, offered to power level her with my 70 mage. In turn a good friend of ours will be assisting as well with his level 70 mage. Seeing as she has already hit 40 and has her mount it shouldn't be a big problem to rocket her to outland-level so she can quest with my Shaman and his Paladin or Priest.

Most people are divided on the subject, but I am by far not a WoW purist. I have power-leveled people before and I use Thottbot on occasion, especially since my memory seems to be less-than-favorable in some situations. During my initial run from 1-60 and then 60-70 I didn't use thottbot or any other tools besides the occasional question in chat. So along with what Tobold touched on here: Link, Asking questions seems to bring some sort of stigma along with it so how newbie-friendly is wow? I have found that a good number of people will criticize people for asking questions rather than assist or direct toward an assisting tool.

Could that be because a good percentage of the alliance side is populated with prepubescent boys that get some sort of sick rise out of being an ass? Exhibit A: Link

Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer

So I took a chance last night and ran a heroic with my warlock in order to get a primal nether. Basically it is a waste of badges because I don't really care about his gear right now. Whereas I know that primals will no longer be BoP next patch I wanted to go ahead and throw one up on the auction house.

Currently the mats to make the Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer cost 600 gold give or take. They go for 1000-1400 depending on the day and who has them listed. So having put my destroyer up for 1000g in bid and 1050 buyout that will net me about a 400g profit. So that's nothing to scoff at but will it sell? If I run a heroic every night with my warlock (or my main, the mage when the next patch comes out), I have the potential to make about 1k gold with a 600g investment.

What kind of turn-around does that rifle have on your server? Have you found anything else that is craft-able that sells for more?

Early WotLK Launch?

So I've been catching up on my reading lately and I ran across this post at Random-Battle. Link

Honestly, I have been thinking this myself. Mainly because WotLK has been in development for a while. Will we see an early launch? I really hope so because I'm itching for new content and more zones to explore. Theortically the facts match and I would love to see the new talent builds come out with patch 2.4, that would all but confirm an expansion launch soon after. But to tell you the truth I am not going to get my hopes up, that gives me heartburn.

World of Warcraft: Cellular Phone Edition?

So the rumors about a cell phone tool to access wow have been tossed around in rumors and articles but apparently now blizzard has owned up to 'experimenting' with the idea. Honestly I don't remember where I saw the article or I would link it.

I work for the government, they block worldofwarcraft.com and several other sites (for good reason of course). But having a cellular version of a wow tool would definitely change things on many levels. Even if it were just a chat interface and auction house manager I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands that would use it. So will this strange mish-mash of cellular technology and our most favorite MMORPG be useful?

For the record I have to say that I wouldn't use it because my job keeps me busy during the day. I can see others running their guild 24/7 from any locale with reception. That's a scary thought.

Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!

Okay so with my 27 badges I could start buying equipment. Or I could wait and collect and get better equipment from the sunwell vendor when it opens on my server. So compiled with a wait that seems to be at least two months or more with the release of the patch and the opening of the zone (through daily quests) I estimate that I could potentially earn over 200 badges (I've gotten into the habit of doing the daily heroic quest).

However, it seems that the badge gear coming out with the patch will be better than black temple gear. Now this of course gives non-raiders access to the new raid dungeon if they grind for badges to spend. How does this make the black temple raiders feel? I'm sure more than a few of them feel angry, but you've seen content that we casuals won't see until we can solo most of the mobs in the dungeon (ten expansion from now, heh).

So how do the hardcores feel? Well you're also going to have access to the new raid content quicker than we will, so in my opinion you should just shut it. I already feel like casuals can't access all the content they pay for with that monthly fee. My first thought is that maybe casual players should have a lower monthly charge than the hardcore players. Take away our access to some of the dungeons maybe? But that's a silly idea.

Stuff it, we want to see the raids too! :)

Leveling 1 - 60

So someone asked Tobold a question, he addressed it in a post (good old Tobold, answering questions from us noobs since... well... whenever he started blogging. lol (Link)

So here's my thoughts on that because I just can't resist. In my opinion there are several ways to handle this. First off would be to continue cutting the time and XP required to level from 1-60 and then 61-70 and then 71-80, etc as each expansion comes out. That's simple.

What about this, give a person who has at least one character at the max level cap (80 for instance when Wrath of the Lich King comes out) a /level command that works up to the previous content level. So when Wrath comes out someone who works their way to level 80 can level their character up to level 60 with said command. That eliminates the alt-grind wait just a bit.

Any thoughts on that? So when the next expansion comes out, Lord of the Maelstrom, for an example that raises the cap to 90 from 80, your leveling command will work to push a character from 1-70. That makes the previous content still active and the new content still active as well.

Fudging the numbers for drops

Okay, here we go to talk about heroics again. So I'm up to 21 badges total after a few good runs and a failed hellfire ramparts run. A good friend of mine and I have been running together and have come up with a few rules of thumb.

First off, no more paladin tanks unless they have at least a few epics on them. We've had very bad luck with the pallytank situation save for a friend of ours that is decked out in epic gear. But with a set of epic gear for every occasion who wouldn't be good? Sorry to the tankadins but unless you're specced right and have some good gear heroics seem to be a challenge. Maybe we just had a string of really bad tanks?

Second, no more druids as primary healers. Okay, I love HoTs as much as the next squishy class but the problem is that your druid can only rez every 30 minutes. When running a heroic instance NEVER use someone who can't rez frequently. Sorry druids, don't get me wrong you make good tanks and dps but you're only really good at backup healing.

Third, no more mages other than us. I'm sorry but I play my mage primarily for heroics and he plays his mage (suffice to say it's his only 70). Adding a third mage to the mix is great for crowd control but it SUCKS for getting drops.

Fourth, Shamans make good healers but only when they're geared properly. I don't know what it is, I play a shaman too (she's my next to level to 70) but for some odd reason we've had problems with Shamans keeping up with the healing-to-damage ratio. Again, maybe we just got a bad string of healers.

Fifth, (this is my personal rule). Do NOT ask a shadow priest to heal unless they offer to. My wife plays a shadow priest so she's specced and geared for DPS, NOT for healing. If someone's playing a shadow priest they like shadow priests, end of story. If someone offers to heal no problem but don't pester them for it. That would be like asking a holy specced paladin to tank (though we did have one guy do that quite well but again, epics and normal-difficulty dungeon). Shadow priests are great for damage and off-healing through said damage.

Last but not least (I'm sure we'll come up with more), do the daily heroics. Well I guess that's more a philosophy than a rule. We have found that doing the daily heroic every day has very profitable returns. Honestly I would have never gotten so many badges if it weren't for the extra two you get for finishing the daily heroic.

So what do you think? Are we being too harsh? Do you think excluding other mages so cloth drops will favor us is a good or a bad idea?

Break for WoW

Sorry for the brief absence but I was on a short vacation from everything, and as such I finally got to play World of Warcraft all weekend long. I must say that I am increasingly impressed with the daily quests that blizzard put out quite some time ago. I stress again that this is a quick and easy way to make cash. It's almost criminal how easy it is to make 12-25 gold per quest.

The daily heroic quest is the best of all. Honestly I have walked out of heroics this weekend with 10 badges of justice, that brings me up to 16 total with two primal nethers. Since blizzard is making the primals BoE next patch I don't have to worry about doing a bunch of heroic instances with my engineer who needs the primals. I think that is a good move, because people charge way too much for the patterns that require primals. I can see the gyro-balanced khorium destroyer firing now from my destruction holo-gogs!

One thing I also did this weekend was craft the first-tier engineering mount. I must say I am pleasantly surprised by the quirks that go along with owning the flying machine. I am tempted to make every character I own an engineer just because I like the mounts. Blizzard did a good job augmenting engineering.

Peripherals

So I use a standard Logitech MX510 gaming mouse (Link) and a microsoft natural multimedia keyboard (Link). I'm looking at upgrading at least the keyboard. I've seen articles on different keyboard/mouse combos. With money being no limit (and carpal tunnel being an issue), what would you recommend?

What's in a quest?

So I've taken four characters through the entire process of Outland including my wife's 70 shadow priest. Through all of that I've done a set pattern of zones. Hellfire, Zangarmarsh, Terrokar, Nagrand, Netherstorm. My gnome warlock who I have affectionately named Wigglerachet (yes he's an engineer too) reached 68 after doing just 5-6 quests in Nagrand. So I left Nagrand without doing any more of the quests. Honestly since there are no instances in Nagrand I don't really care anymore. My Mage has the riding talbuk and above that there isn't any other reason for me to complete the quests in Nagrand until I hit 70. Then I can go back and get gold for them all instead of experience.

Recently though (having never been in Blade's Edge other than to do the chain to get me into the daily quests for Ogri'la and the Skyguard.) I've been doing the quests in Blades Edge for the sole reason to get gold. I've worked my warlock up to 1100g my mage up to 1400g and since my hunter is on another server he's poor. My warlock, however, has not gotten his flying mount since he's not 70 just yet. It seems to me that doing quests when you hit the cap is one of the best ways to make money out there. (Any other suggestions?)

Which begs the question of why would someone risk their favorite characters just to spend REAL money to get fake money? By the way what spawned this was six e-mails from four different gold farming operations asking for advertising space on my blog. Pardon my french but you're an asshole, ASSHOLE.

That said the old saying goes 'It takes two to tango.' WHY damn it all WHY?!

Team Fortress 2

Okay, so I've had Team Fortress 2 for several months now. Unboxed, installed, relatively untouched. So I decided to try it last night and I was pleasantly surprised.

I remember back in the TF and MegaTF days of Quake I. Yeah that dates back a bit but back to the point I was impressed with the game. The same mechanics are there and the same old gameplay. Honestly I was very fond of 2Forts back in the day and I find myself playing that more than anything. My achievement screen is a little underpopulated as is the log that shows your high scores and time played on each class. It seems that Engineer, Soldier, and Demoman are my 'top classes' thus far.

I've played every class so far and found that my least favorite class is the medic and my most favorite class is the Spy. There's just something about coming up behind someone and giving them the assknife that makes my evening. So what's your favorite class?

Graphics: 10 of 10
Sound: 8 of 10
Gameplay: 10 of 10
Fun Factor/Replay: 10 of 10

Honestly it's an almost perfect score. I love the cartoony graphics, it's unique. (Reminiscent of Earthbound) Even though your main objective is to shoot someone else in the face the design of the characters is a little more friendly. The sound is quite honestly annoying at times because of repetitive shotgun blasts but that's fixable in the options. And as for gameplay and replay I can honestly say it's theraputic to shoot the crap out of someone when I need to work off some frustration or do something out of the norm. I can't find myself playing it for more than a few rounds though so it's more of a 'take it in moderation' game. But I plan to take it in moderation quite often. The orange box was definitely worth the $20 I paid for it on black friday.

World of Warcraft Fishing

So I finally got around to fishing last night. Since my Gnome Warlock is an engineer I have an ample supply of aquadynamic fish attractors. I haven't won any of the fishing tournaments in Stranglethorn because someone always gets to it faster than me. So even with a riding crop, epic mount, seth's fishing pole, aquadynamic fish attractors, and being level 70 (so all enemies ignore me unless I stand on their feet) I still get outed. So here's the question for you guys out there.

If you have won the tournament what is your strategy?

WoW TCG, Miniatures

I did previously play Magic: The Gathering, Netrunnner, Towers of Time, and a few other trading card games. I also have played a few board games in my life but I have never tried the World of Warcraft iterations.

Have any of the few readers I have tried the WoW TCG or Board Game? What was your experience and was it worth the investment?

On the side of miniatures (which was just announced, but I saw it coming), I have painted and played a few different games as well. Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Fantasy, Advanced Heroquest, and Warhammer Quest. I don't know if I would be willing to make the investment into the WoW mini game. Would be useful if I decided to play the WoW pen and paper game though. Has anyone played that ether?

Suggestions for World of Warcraft

1.) A third profession for characters: So your character is an grand master know-it-all in mining right? Well you're a blacksmith too, great. What about taking a second blacksmithing specialization or taking engineering? That would really be something. What happens in 'Wrath of the Lich King' when the new inscription profession comes out? My gnome warlock is an engineer, do I really want to drop engineering or mining to take up inscription? No. Okay, I can make ANOTHER alt with ANOTHER set of classes. I don't want to do that, I have too many alts as it is. I would like to see a third profession for characters in wow.

2.) Multiple spec availability: Don't get me wrong, I swear by frost mages 100%. But what happens when I want to try out another spec I have been toying with? I've always wanted to try out an elementalist spec so I could have viable options for fire or ice. I don't want to pay 10, 15, 20, or even 50 gold to respec. I think the pay-to-respec deal is asking too much of the players. Why should I have to pay to respec? I can't see any big issues that would prevent free respecing.

3.) Alternate, Two Specs: So no free respecing? Well how about giving us the ability to have two specs instead of one and the ability to swap them out freely. What if I want one spec for Solo/AoE Farming and another spec for PvP/Raiding?

4.) Fix Azeroth: Tobold has touched on this before and so have I. I would like to see azeroth fixed or just give us the ability to ride our flying mounts in Azeroth without the flying part. It would feel like a true achievement then.

5.) Massive-scale PvP: So you can't call it realm vs. realm pvp lets call it server vs. server pvp and slap it on the table. Blizzard did well with updating the battlegrounds to include all servers. Lets take it a step further and get down on some massive scale PvP.

6.) Capturable Cities, Buildings: Halaa aside (it's a rock in the middle of a gorge with a few buildings on it, whoopee), I'd like to see a server that is FSPvP (Full Scale PvP). What happens when the horde takes over Stormwind? Can you imagine the battles that would erupt to try and claim or reclaim cities?

7.) Destroyable Cities, Buildings: Not only did the horde take over Stormwind but they demolished the bridge across in the process, making a half-hearted and unstable wooden structure to bridge the broken gap. Plus there are several buildings that are out of service as well. Whatever shall we do?

8.) Player Housing: Instance it if you have to but player housing would be a nice way to customize my wow experience. Let me hearthstone to my house and then go to one of the major cities via a portal I have paid for to have installed in my basement. If my household contains a mage, maybe the mage can set up the portals themselves?

9.) Guild Housing: I'm not a big guild-going person but honestly I'd love to see something like the guild-owned 'castles' or whatever they are in Age of Conan. Capturable? Customizable? Bring it on! Well even if they weren't capturable it would be nice to have a guild house that allows me to hearthstone to. Teleport to any city? Have your own crafting room? Maybe access to the guild bank?

Crafting Systems

Okay, crafting systems are definitely a hot topic for all MMORPG's. What I'd like to know is how many people actually use in-game crafting and which systems do you like the most?

I have experienced the systems in World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, and Horizons to name a few. Whereas I like the crafting system in Everquest I never read the manual so all those little pop up buttons and things just passed across the screen with no interaction. My fault entirely.

So here's what I propose, we as the community come up with THE crafting system and offer it up to a developer to use in their game. For the people by the people? Wasn't there something else like that, and didn't it not turn out the way it was supposed to? ;)

Crafting is broken down into several categories:
Resources (Raw): Wood, Metal, Gems, etc
Nessecities (Purchased): Thread, Dye, etc
Equipment (Provided in game, or in a player owned house. Hint, Hint): Forge, Anvil

So the resources appear in nodes that are accessable by anyone with the type of gathering skill required and the skill enough to harvest it. Simple enough. Sometimes it's in hard-to-reach places and other times it's guarded by a nearby mob (mobile enemy). That part is simple enough and definitely the standard in any game with a crafting system.

Nessecities and equipment require no further introduction!

So the crafting process comes into question. I feel that the crafting process has been ignored by most games though SoE did fairly well with the Everquest 2 crafting system. Including providing a 'crafting class' with experience for your characters.

Here are the things I'd like to see in WoW:
-A Crafting Class (or level) instead of a generic skill level that goes up if you just make an item.
-More steps in creating an item. What goes into making a bag or box to put into your bank? I would like to see the ability to create the materials that go into an item and have that give you XP/Points as well. Well you need metal nails to keep the box together, wooden boards to make the box, maybe some metal strips to reinforce it, and then if it's a nice box some cloth to line it.
-More items to create.

Playing the Spec

When I get time I will release a series of updated macros I use while playing my mage and warlock.

Playing the Specs: Affliction Warlock
Spec Details - 0/41/20
Level Ranges - Normal & Elite: 2-4 Levels
Primary Focus - Constant Grinding
Main Spells - Siphon Life, Curse of Agony, Corruption, Shadowbolt, Drain Life
Gear - +Sta / +Spell Damage

Solo Tactics
Affliction warlocks excel at solo combat. I have played my affliction lock almost the entire way to 70 going solo most of the time. I have experiemented with all of the trees at the top-level and still I come back to affliction every time. The primary combination is to sick your voidwalker on the mob and throw siphon life, curse of agony, and corruption on them. For harder mobs you can put immolate and unstable affliction on them. After that you Life Tap to get full mana and then use drain health (it will be hard to interrupt!). Eventually you will pull the mob off your voidwalker. I just let it beat on me because the constant drain of siphon life and drain health. Once the mob gets to the almost dead state even if I don't need a soul shard I will still drain soul because it restores 15% of my base mana and I can always get rid of the shard. Using that method you can not only farm or grind constantly but take on another few mobs via fear and letting one or two beat on you or your voidwalker. Another thing to remember is your instant cast shadowbolt. You will get audible notification when your instant cast shadowbolt has proc'ed.

PvP Tactics
Everyone hates the DoT/Fear combination of warlocks but it is truely the best combo out there. Throw all of your dots on someone and fear them then sick your pet of choice on them. (I prefer imp for max damage but some prefer felhound for extra security and some utility) You can also use the life tap/drain life combo but that gets dangerous in PvP, I would suggest just spamming shadow bolts or draining life without tapping. When you need mana get to a safe place and tap then use bandages (the warlock's friend!)

Grouping/Raiding Tactics
So here we go, grouping. The grouping factor is just the same as the solo most times. I usually go full DoT on the harder mobs and life tap/drain life. Make damn sure you tell your party healer that you'll be tapping and draining (This is where an announce macro would be nice). You don't want the party healer wasting mana on you when you're good to go where you are. Be ready with your succubus (seduction) to CC some mobs and banish for others.

Blizzard's Canceled Game List

Blizzard admits to canceled games.

So there is the widespread Warcraft: Lord of the Clans but notice the lack of Starcraft: Ghost. While some would argue that it was just put on 'indefinite hold' I am under the firm belief that it is going to be revisited at a later time with the possiblity of some of its content appearing when Blizzard finally decides to open a Starcraft Online MMO.

What do the readers think?
Canned or not Canned, that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The lacking content and bugs of underdeveloped games,
Or to take a stand against a sea of unwashed fanboys,
And by opposing, end the game. To program, to debug;
No more; and by a bug to say we end
The carpal-tunnel and the thousand painful needles
That sequel is heir to - 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To program, to debug;
To debug, perchance to play. Ay, there's the problem,
For in that gameplay what games may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal peripheral,
Must give us pause. (Maybe for a bathroom break.) There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long game developing,
For who would bear the law suits and future bugs of time,
th'oppressor's wrong, the proud gamer's contumely, (Definition: Rude language)
The pangs of despised patches, the law's delay,
The insolence of office (call the suits!), and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus (death) make.....
-Hamfist, Prince of the Crossroads


Okay this has ceased being funny and begun being sad. lol Who said gamers are not cultured? Obviously that comes from William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act III, scene I.

The pen is mighter than the sword?

Barring any jokes about the penis mighter I have often wondered how many people out there have played or at leasted watched in on a pen and paper gameplay session. Personally I enjoy pen and paper games such as Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars RPG, Call of Cthulhu, and the like. I usually end up being the Game or Dungeon master because apparently I have a way with words and a vivid imagination. My players never have any complaints about being bored.

So how about it? How many of the readers or passers-by out there have run, played in, or watched a game? How many of you have even harbored the notion of playing?

I ask this because in a few short months Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition is being released. That means it's time for me to update my books and rewrite my campaign world. Again. My original world was written for Dungeons and Dragons 1st edition. I changed it when Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (2e) came out, and again when 3rd edition came out. With the release of 3.5 I made a few changes as well.

4th edition will change some of the core mechanics of the game and hopefully, as they are touting, it will make things easier. The question is will it be easier for the players or the poor DM's that have been changing and changing their content over and over again with each release?

Sports MMO?

So I wrote out a draft for a sports MMO that I think would work well for those... 'odd' individuals who collect every edition of 'Madden' and other sports games for the various systems that come and go. Keep in mind I scribbled this out in a matter of minutes so bear with me and throw in any input you may have. (Update: Apparently the blogger ate my formatting, I'll work on it.)

New MMO Game Concept: Sports
This type of game has not been attempted before. Every real-time sport could be converted to this format, even obscure sports. Each game could be broken into seasons that are available each time of the year real-time or off-season depending on business model. The concept would be to allow for someone to play when their favorite sports are not on or even create their own season. Each season would have its own rewards and special teams, all teams owned by a person ‘could’ be available to them if they purchase the ‘expansion’ for each sport.

1.) Names:
-Sports-Net,

2.) Main Design
Sports Available
-Football
-Baseball
-Soccer
-Hockey
-Basketball

3.) Teams
-Players can be created or chosen from a list
-Custom players that advance the more they play
-Real strategies used by real teams
-‘Fantasy’ teams are a strong possibility
-Integrate ‘Fantasy’ Football, Baseball, Hockey, Soccer, etc…
-Multiple players possible to control a team or a series of teams

4.) ‘Guild’ Teams
-Offering a guild stadium for purchase in-game
-Offer in-game purchases depending on your team’s ‘wealth level’
-Custom Jerseys, possible real jersey purchase from online-store?
-Fitness equipment to enhance your players stats, just a little
-Team memorabilia or team items that people will ‘purchase’ by virtual spectators
-This could be a random number based on the team’s status
-Increases revenue and opens up new items and players for purchase in the ‘Store’.

5.) Leagues
-‘Guild-Level’ Teams compete against each other
-Limit ‘Guild’ numbers to a real team size, including backup players
-Real arenas, modeled after real sports locales

6.) Types of Play
Spectator Mode
-Allows you to watch games or matches between your favorite teams, etc.
-When your guild does a match and you are not in play you can watch the game from any angle
1 vs. 1
1 vs. Computer
-‘Practice’ runs that don’t count toward any match points but give you more experience using your team
Team vs. Team
-Every person picks a player and controls them during the game
-Alternate, Team vs. Computer
Ladder Matches
-Teams compete against one another depending on their status, multiple ladders available.
-Instant matching system, computer picks two teams based on their relative score.
-Only hold these matches once a week or once a month to determine the eventual yearly winner. IE: Superbowl, etc

7.) Possible Integration of ‘Fantasy’ Sports
-Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey
-Tournaments
-Ladder Matches eventually lead into a final tournament of the best-ranked players.
-Rewards offered depending on your status
-Jerseys
-Special in-game items such as players or enhancements for your virtual gym or virtual ‘stadium’.

8.) Rewards
Tournament Champ (For Each Sport) Could be rewarded something special
Free year of play
Special in-game items
Out of game items based on their favorite real teams
-Jerseys
-Virtual Stadiums (Guild-Owned or Player-Owned)
-Team Memorabilia to be purchased by ‘virtual spectators’
-Fitness equipment or other enhancements to enhance your team
Possible in-game sponsors
-Gatorade, Team Store or ‘Sports Camp’ adds
-Real teams could be sponsors also, and offer more incentives to someone who would win.
New strategies or ‘plays’ based on the player’s sport

9.) Other Notes
-Allow players to pick their ‘favorite’ real-life teams, possible dynamic reward system based on that person’s team.
-The more someone wins the yearly tournaments the more they get rewarded as they progress.