This weekend was pretty productive when it came to MMOs, and I had a great time which is always an added bonus. It started off with me doing some dungeon runs in world of warcraft on my priest. I’ve been pretty eager to reach level 60 (for obvious reasons) but even before that I was trying to inch my way to 58 so that I could finally experience some new zones and all of this fantastic gear I kept hearing about. Dungeons are pretty stressful to me, even though I’ve been playing healers for quite some time. I have no idea why, I don’t find myself stressing nearly so much in EQ2, and I’m not sure why I care so much in games about how well I’m doing. I mean, it’s supposed to be a game, right?

Dire Maul was relaxed and easy, but then I headed to another zone (pictured above) and while the group started out wonderful (seemingly) with a rogue who was pointing us in ‘all the right places’ the truth of the matter is that they were there for one particular kill. So they lead us to that kill (ignoring the vast majority of the zone) and when their item didn’t drop they bailed on the group. None of us had been there before and the experience quickly turned frustrating. We stuck with it and managed to complete the zone after a few mishaps, but it was still a sour experience for me personally. I’m still trying to find my ‘niche’ as a healer, it’s difficult when the groups are so much different then what I’m used to. in EQ2, things are orderly, and I have a lot of group heals for the times when they are not. In WoW I don’t have nearly the same affect with my group heals, and it seems like everyone is constantly running off on their own and pulling mobs towards the group. So instead of a group with one tank, I have four tanks to keep healed at the same time, and while normally I’m a fairly good judge on my tank and I can ‘tell’ almost like a 6th sense when I need to cast a heal in order to prevent a death, in WoW I find that a lot harder to judge. I’m sure it will come with time, and maybe I’m being too hard on myself, but I pride myself on playing my characters very well, and having people die in a group (be it their fault or mine) is not something I enjoy.

After two instance runs myself and Manos (troll warrior) were ready to head to that magical portal that would take us to better gear upgrades – and more levels. I was excited. Sure, burning crusade is an old expansion now, but I have never stepped into the zone, despite having owned it for a few years.

Well, they certainly weren’t kidding about the gear upgrades. It was great. Everything was an upgrade. In a few hours we both managed to inch our way to level 60 – my highest level character in all my years of playing.

Of course WoW wasn’t the only game I played this weekend, and I’ll make sure to post about those other experiences in my next post this morning. It was still a fantastic milestone for me to reach, and I’m quite happy about it. Now I just need to work on my tailoring and enchanting, earn some more cash for mounts (I decided to dual spec the priest in a dps and heal spec, so I’m quite broke) and I’ll be set.

I hope everyone else had a fantastic weekend no matter where they found themselves, and happy gaming!

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I’ve been trying to not play my new Death Knight that much, because I don’t want to fall away from my 56 priest ‘main’ – but there’s been one very appealing aspect to this character that I just can’t pull myself away from. One thing I like to do on ‘quiet days’ is farm. Going through old instances and just gathering all the greens I can, silks, craft supplies. Well, as it turns out, Death Knights are amazing at this. Since you start at level 55 you don’t have any of the lower level achievements (dungeons specifically) to your name. I decided to go up the list and complete every one that I could, while farming for craft supplies at the same time.

I didn’t do anything amazing by anyone else’ standards, but because this is a completely new experience to me, it was not only fun, but very profitable. I made about 300g just by goofing around, and raised my tailoring and enchanting by a good amount (profits the main, which is always a good thing). This also allows me to pass down gear to my other characters, and while it’s no wear near as good as the twink gear that’s out there now, not EVERYONE is end game and able to do that sort of thing, so I feel good about it.

I currently have 5 WoW characters, I have my 56 priest (tailor / enchanter), 40 hunter (skinner / miner), 40 Shaman (Herbalism / Alchemist), 31 mage (Jeweler / miner) and my 58 Death Knight. On Ravenholdt at least. I also have a handful of characters on Uther (Alliance rather then Horde). It’s a nice selection to keep me busy, and allow me to craft with each of them.

This holiday season I’ve drifted a little from my ‘usual’ games, but I expect that in 2010 I’ll wander back. After all, everyone needs a break some times.

In the mean time, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

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Alright, I realize that I haven’t written for a few days but it’s been EXCEPTIONALLY busy this year as far as holidays go. Thankfully I have some quiet time now, and I’ll be spending a few days at home. I’ve got other posts scheduled to talk about all of the holiday goodness, and games I enjoyed in 2009 and what not. But for now before my head hits the keyboard I’m going to write about my first experience with the Death Knight in World of Warcraft.

First of all, it was a huge milestone for me to even reach level 55 on my priest main. I’ve had the character for four years now and never managed to actually play the game longer then a month at a time to get anywhere. Then I’d start up again (most of the time with a new alt) and manage to just barely hit 50 and I’d stop playing. Plus, I didn’t own Wrath of the Lich King. Now I do.

After hitting level 55 I of course decided to make a Death knight. It sort of goes hand in hand, especially if you’ve never played one before and this is the furthest you’ve ever gotten in the game. It was awesome, I was happily going along doing the story line, learning things about the lore, and a few new (to me) quests came up that I really liked. Especially the almost-end when I got to ride a huge dragon around and blow things up. That was neat.

Then I got thinking about it.

It wasn’t so neat after all. Here I was, a few hours old, my gear is all blues, I have a mount, lots of bags, flight paths all over the place, and numerous other things that I don’t even have on my main yet. That’s where I started having a problem. My actual main is no where near as good as this level 55 Death knight I just created today. The only thing my main has above and beyond this Death Knight aside from some achievements, is her crafting.

I really wish there had of been an option for those non-DK classes to at least complete the same quests. Not only is my Death Knight pretty well geared – she’s level 58, three levels higher then my main, and it took barely any effort to get there. Of course, I love my priest and I have every intention of going back to her but how do you fight that sort of pull?

It was a very well done script, and I had a lot of fun doing it. The atmosphere was fantastic, the story intense, and the music outstanding. Everything I love about games came through. There were barely any other people around which always makes my leveling easier and now I just wish I could have experienced all of that on my actual character rather then (yet another) alt.

Why not give everyone the choice (once they’ve reached level 55 as that’s the starting level to create a Death Knight) to skip ahead in levels if they want it (and once they’ve reached 55 on one character ‘naturally’) if they’re going to allow one specific class to do it? Why not create (yes, I realize it would take a lot of time and work) a separate story line that some how ties in the Death Knights to ‘everyone else’ and give them the option to help out – gaining levels and equipment that’s just as nice. A choice for players of course.

Anyhow, that’s my rant. Fun, but made me feel like I’d put all that effort into my main for nothing. Hopefully I’ll be back to playing her soon, although I can certainly see why the Death Knights are so awesome.

Happy Gaming!

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Since things have been so very busy I haven’t exactly had a great deal of spare time. I’ve taken to playing World of Warcraft in the few spare moments I have because it’s so simple to play and it allows me to shut off my brain completely for an amount of time. It’s never been my main game for that exact reason, too.

I own burning crusade (though I’ve never taken advantage of it aside from making a blood elf or two) but don’t currently own Wrath of the Litch King. I haven’t had any reason to buy it – for as long as I’ve played I’ve never made it past level 50 before. I’ve played off and on since release, so that may seem a little sad, but it’s just because I’ve been playing on a very ultra casual mode. Off a month on a month for four years.

A friend managed to drag themselves over to WoW with me for a little while, and we entered the recruit a friend program. Having bonus experience is nice. So far we’ve made it to level 50 – I have a now 51 priest, though she’s not especially well geared and I have no idea where I should be questing.

I’ve also got a 40 hunter, 40 shaman, and 36 mage. Those are my four alts – used mostly for crafting and farming (especially the hunter). The hunter and priest own epic mounts since I use them the most. Making money has been fairly simple the few times I actually played, if I don’t play of course it’s harder to make money (explains why I’m currently broke in EQ2 on the AB server too).

It’s been fun. Relaxing. It’s always nice to have a secondary game to fall back on when you just don’t want to think about anything at all.

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Despite the heat wave Ottawa seems to be going through lately (ugh I’m eager for snow) yesterday was a fantastic Saturday. It was one of those days I could just play whatever game I wanted, I had no obligations anywhere, and I had a blast. I love days like that. In fact I love them so much I think Sunday will be following in Saturday’s footsteps.

I started the day out in World of Warcraft. I’ve settled down on the Ravenholdt server where I have four characters, one actually being a main. I play a blood elf priest the majority of the time tagging along with a friend who plays a troll warrior. I love playing my healer classes, and we’ve just hit level 47, almost 49. With the latest patch giving us epic mounts at 40, we’re now running all over the place at light speed. I’ve never gotten a character over level 50 before even though I’ve played off and on since release, so we’re coming up to content that is still quite new to me. I enjoy it. I also have a 38 shaman, 38 hunter, and 21 mage. They’re mostly just craft characters, with the hunter being my ‘farming’ character. Skinning and mining so I can make some coin for the others. We joined a small little guild (I mean, maybe five people in it) and it’s actually been a lot of fun. WoW still won’t ever be my main game of choice, but when I want to just kick back for an hour or two it’s certainly fun and easy.

The remainder of my day was spent patching Aion (ugh it had been a while, there was a lot of work to do) for their last beta testing weekend, and then playing some EverQuest II.

In EQ2 a few things happened. First of all, I decided to switch from playing my illusionist to my troubador. I know, I flip flop more then, well, pretty much anyone I know. I had a line of thinking for this, and it still (so far) makes sense (in my head). The illusionist has far more gear then the bard but if I concentrate on the bard for a bit that’s easily fixed. I was wearing two sets of T1 gear, and with my spare shards decided to switch so I was just wearing the bard set. Now I need more shards (as usual). I really miss being able to trade shards via the craft system.

There was a pick up leviathan raid going on, and I decided since it’s my troubadors next update I should try to get in. After sitting in group for 30 minutes we discovered that no one in the raid actually had access to leviathan – and so I decided to leave and free up room for someone who DID have access.

Many people don’t realize that YES you do need access to enter the Leviathan raid. So what is this access?

You need to kill the Overking, and you also need to kill Venril Sathir. I had already defeated Venril Sathir the previous week, it’s the first encounter I needed for my epic. All I needed was the Overking. Low and behold Paradise Lost decided to head to Chardok and take down that Dizok, so I tagged along to get my Leviathan flag.

There’s no quest involved, and there’s not any way (currently) to tell in game exactly what you have access to and what you do not have access to. This day in age I think that’s very important to a game. How do I know if I can get into Poets Palace – while there may not be a whole lot in EQ2 that requires access, there are still things. Not to mention those blasted druid rings, how on earth do I keep track across so many characters who needs what. It’s frustrating to say the least – I did hear that they’re adding a keyring type command in an upcoming patch / expansion, so we’ll just have to be on the lookout for that.

We had two groups of guild mates and two groups of PUGS who needed the update. The raid was incredibly smooth, no wipes. Exactly the type of raid I enjoy! I was starting to get a little irritated at the heat by that time, with both the fan and the AC going, so I logged off for the evening and decided to spend an hour or two in bed reading before I fell asleep. All in all, it was a perfect Saturday, and I had a great time. Hopefully everyone else had a fantastic weekend thus far as well, looking forward to hearing all about it!

See you in Norrath!

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My Tauren shaman, in World of Warcraft. That’s right, I still play (from time to time) while devoting most of my game time to EQ2. There are a few other games I continue to play when the mood strikes me but yesterday I decided I’d play WoW. I’ve actually played since release, picking up the game a few months after I got hooked on EQ2. My highest character is level 50 (actually I have a few characters sitting at 50) so even though this game is considered one of the easier ones out there I’ve never made it to end game (which is fine by me).

I recruited a friend to the game with me at the same time, so we’re both enjoying the experience bonus, and for every two levels his characters gain he can grant one level to a character of mine. I decided randomly yesterday to create a shaman, and via recruit a friend she went from 1-33 in a few seconds. People standing around asked if we were hacking, it was amusing.

While skills are easily worked up, and spells easy to purchase – that meant that I’d missed every single one of the totem quests in order to cast my class defining spells. I spent the majority of the afternoon once I’d geared myself up working on those quests which make you run ALL OVER the dang place. Since I was leveled via recruit a friend I didn’t even have any flight paths, so I had to walk. Thank goodness for the ghost wolf form! I didn’t bother purchasing a mount yet, because I have multiple characters around this level and only so much coin on this server.

I know it’s not difficult to make coin, I just haven’t gotten around to it though.

The bright colours (while cartoonish to some) I enjoy a great deal, as well as the comic feeling of the game. It’s a nice break from what I play as my main game of choice, and the fact that it’s new to me is also a bonus. I’ve played EQ2 extensively for almost five years now, I know it in and out, I know which zones to go and pretty much every single quest. I’ve obtained more shards on each account then one should ever obtain – and while I LOVE the game (and I truly do, if anything this site attests to that) I do need a break every now and again.

It was a nice quiet simple day. I did my totem quests and then decided to call it a night, I popped into EQ2 and checked sales, and did an instance (that I’ll talk about more later because it just amused me). All in all, a pretty good day gaming!

Friday night I’ll be leaving to my parents place for a few days for a little rest and relaxation (much needed) and while I will have my laptop with me (plus my Mom has a gaming machine) I plan on spending most of it taking pictures and reading out in the gazebo. I am very eager to get away from the city for a few days, and I’m really looking forward to this short mini vacation.

Safe travels!

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In any case, WoW is one of those games that runs on anything, which I appreciate. Sure, EQ2 also runs on the laptop, but I ‘m used to boxing in that game and I feel like half a person playing from the bedroom and not the pc. No fault of the game to be sure, it’s just my personal view. Also, being confined to my room means I don’t have the wonderful gaming selection that my PC has, so I’m restricted. I have EQ2, EQ, WoW, W101 and Sims 3 installed on the laptop and they run wonderfully. You can expect that with so much time to do nothing, I get bored, easily. This will also help a little.

I’ve played WoW off and on since release. I’ve never gotten a character over level 50 and I’ve never been end game in any sense of the word. I’ve never made much money, and I’ve always found it amusing that the ‘easiest’ game out there was also the hardest for me at least in terms of leveling. Probably because I’ve never had a steady guild or known anyone else who was playing. I love pvp (but can’t run WAR on the laptop) and while it is HIGHLY doubtful that I will play for more then a month (it’s about all I can handle at a time) it does fill the gaps of my gaming needs for now.

I just need to decide what I’m going to play, and where. I have some characters on Uther (44 priest and my 50 hunter) as well as Ravenholdt, or maybe I’ll just start some where new fresh. I always felt like WoW was the sort of game where it really was too late to start over anywhere new, but I guess we’ll just see.

No, I’m not giving up EQ2, or EQ, or VG or any of the other games I play, but if you see a post or two about WoW or notice my xfire time I didn’t want anyone to think I had betrayed over to the dark side or some such.

In other news, Fan Faire starts today. I’m incredibly jealous. I hope everyone has a safe and fantastic time, I’ll be cheering from the sidelines!

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I don’t know how long this has been out, I haven’t seen it before but then again I miss a lot living under my rock here in Ottawa.  Watching this was just the funniest thing ever today. Thank you Kasul for sharing.

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It took me a long time to get my addons straightened out. They’re not even really fixed yet. What I should have done was deleted the entire addon folder and then reinstall the ones I wanted using the curse client. Sounds easy enough, right? Well since I had already spent a few hours moving hotbars around I didn’t do that. I just went through and updated or un-installed the ones I had with curse client and it made a mess of things. So I spent a few more hours last night fixing everything up on the pc. 

All of my characters are currently on two servers. I used to have more but I think I must have deleted and moved them all. I have 4 on Uther, and a few on Ravenholdt. Uther is a ‘normal’ server, where Ravenholdt is an rp-pvp server. They’re both fairly nice, Uther is quite populated from what I’ve seen. I do have one friend who plays with me on Uther, so I’m not completely alone. He spent the evening last night patching, there may be a chance that I switch servers to play with someone else too. We’ll just have to see how that adventure goes. 

Once the addon situation was finally fixed, it was time to play. Or at least, attempt to play. It’s been so long since I’ve been in game I had no idea where I left off, or what I should do. Looking at my gold (180g, ouch) I figured I could stand to do a little farming, and I have a hunter I use specifically for that. Arysh is level 49, with a giant serpent who follows her around named Flirt. I stopped by a few inns and grabbed a handful of candy from each one that gave some fairly nice experience (and something to nibble on later), peeked at my quest journal and gave one of those puzzled frowns because I didn’t have the slightest idea where to go at level 49. After a few minutes of searching, I decided to just pick a random quest and work on that. 

I had one quest that sent me to Un’Goro Crater – which I had heard of since level 47 but had no idea where it was or how to get there. Looked it up and off I went. Along the way I saw these huge space-ship looking islands that made a lot of noise and seemed to suck things up into it, or maybe they were shooting, I couldn’t really tell because they were swarmed by things far bigger then me. I’m sure it has to do with the expansion due out, but I’m still just getting my feet back into things, so I could be completely wrong. 

It was nice to wander into the jungle again after mucking my way through the desert. Until that giant dinosaur decided he’d like to step on my head, of course. Screen shot of me Feigning Death on the ground before he finished me off. I managed to pick up some crystals along the way that I thought may have been for the new inscription tradeskill (Hey, give me a break I’m new!) but later found out they are used in a quest given at the flightpoint way way North in the zone (of course I came in from the South). I did get about 50% of my level, so that was really nice. Who knows, I may actually hit level 50.

A quick side note because these articles are getting scraped a LOT lately – if you are not reading this at MmoQuests.com – then why don’t you head there, I don’t have ads on the site, no spamming for gold selling, and it’s much nicer then reading it from those annoying bots who keep taking my stuff. Plus, maybe I’ll actually get credit for writing it. Thanks!

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So I patched (for three hours?) and then moved WoW over to the laptop. Grabbed the curse client and fanangled my way through add-on city. Finally I was ready. 

A few changes happened while I’ve been away. I haven’t been away *that* long. 

Achievements. I LOVE this. They remind me very much of the knowledge book in WAR. I’ve always loved being able to look at my characters and KNOW what they had done. It gives me something that WoW had always lacked for me (due to easy leveling, and cheap server transfer costs) PRIDE in a character. I don’t have the slightest idea what the points are used for (if anything) but I’ve only finished off a very small percentage of the ones available. 

I’m low level, no where near end game. My highest characters are level 47 (I have a few of those) but I’m looking forward to exploring and getting back into things. We’ll see how long it lasts this time around. 

Oh, another thing I know nothing about. Glyphs. I have a glyph page. I don’t know how you make them, or what they’re used for (something about enchantments?) so if anyone has some resource out there I could read, send it my way! I read everyone else’ sites about WoW and what fun they’re having but a lot of the technical bits are still in some foreign language to me. I’m not too worried (yet), but I know I have a lot of catching up to do!

No, I won’t ever be the big end game player like others I read about. I’m sure I’m too far behind, but I will have a lot of fun learning and relearning everything I need to know.

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