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?