Tag: WoW

A Night of Pure (Guild) Win #WoW

The members of Dragon Flight had a really exciting weekend, and it was loads of fun. Yes, the entire guild consists of three members, but that didn’t stop us (that being said, if you happen to play Alliance on Argent Dawn and need a home, let me know).

Our first goal was to reach level 6. For anyone who has a small guild, you know what a feat this is. Most guild experience comes from players leveling up and completing quest, other experience comes from doing dungeons / raids and pvp together as a guild team. In order for these to count as ‘guild team’ events, you have to have a specific number of people who make up the total group. For dungeons, this is 3/5 members. I’m not sure how many you need for raids, but it’s more than 3. We ended up doing three heroic twilight dungeons and with one more turn in we were 6. This grants members of the guild a 10% bonus to experience which is really handy to have.

Later on in the evening we decided we would work on old achievements, in specific raid achievements. Our first stop was Blackwing Lair to defeat Nefarian. This is typically a 40 person raid, but we had very few issues – well, that is to say we had very few issues once we decided to read a few walk throughs. See, the first boss (a room filled with eggs) we didn’t read up on anything and we just charged in and instantly wiped because we were fighting the boss. Turns out what you’re supposed to do is take control of the boss, kill eggs around the room, and deal with 42 adds (keep them away / off of the boss because he’s not supposed to die). It was crazy fun.

I forgot to mention that before Blackwing Lair, we decided to attempt an achievement called “Besting the Black Dragonflight” – basically you need to kill Sartharion the Onyx Guardian along with three twilight drakes still alive. The reward for this achievement is a title “of the nightfall” – along with a mount that drops in the loot rewards (and extra loot). We tried this achievement over and over until we found a combination that worked. Bloodgrip and I (on my shaman, bloodgrip is a paladin) were DPS and Toargo tanked the encounter. No heals aside from my shaman totem. Our challenge was to keep alive after Sartharion hit 20% health, which is when he enrages. It took a few tries, but we did it. I won the mount and eagerly added it to my collection. Achievements like this always make me really happy and excited, the fact that I could share it with my guild mates was even better. We might be small, but we don’t let that stop us.

To balance out the rest of the evening, after doing one vanilla WoW raid, and a Lich King Raid, we headed to Burning Crusade and defeated Magtheridon and Gruul the Dragonkiller. The main reason for doing these zones is not only earning fun achievements, but also appearance gear. I walked away with a beautiful set for my priest, and Bloodgrip won most of his paladin set (which he apparently won’t be wearing, as the bright purple is a bit too much for him). Even Toargo earned some neat pieces, shoulders and a shield with wonderful graphics.

It may not have been the most ‘progressive’ of nights, after all we weren’t doing things like Dragon Soul (the latest round of raids) or anything that requires a super amount of coordination or attention, but it was still one of the most fun nights I’ve had in game, and I think everyone else had a great time too.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Counting Down to GW2 #GuildWars2

Gaming these days is still pretty limited, with the Olympics going on and family taking over (Nana is still in intensive care) but I’ve been relaxing at night with a little World of Warcraft while I (impatiently) wait for Guild Wars 2 to release. Not too much longer to go now, I still haven’t decided what I’m going to play.

World of Warcraft has been quiet as well, with MoP releasing in September there’s not really a rush to do anything because I know it is just going to get replaced. I have been working on a few old achievements, mostly from the Wrath expansion. Pictured above is my group trying to take down 100 zombies in one minute. Fun times. I also only need 4 more recipes to reach my goal of 200, which is every obtainable recipe in the game (for now). Two more days will allow me to purchase the final level 85 recipe I’m missing, and I just need to figure out how to spawn the two robots in Desolace to gain two more. I tried last week but didn’t have any luck.

I’ve been completing the LFRaid finder once a week simply for the valor points, there’s very few upgrades from the raids any more for my priest – and yesterday I was lucky enough to win an axe for my shaman. I was a bit sad to see that the second axe went to a caster shaman instead of melee, but I’m hopeful because the loot system also changes in MoP and it should prevent these sort of things from happening in the future.

What is everyone else who plans on playing GW2 keeping busy with? I know a good portion of my friends are playing The Secret World right now, and I would have given it a try on their free weekend, except I’m already very close to my internet cap for the month and I can’t download anything more until it re-sets on the 12th, or I’ll face fees for going over. I normally don’t come close to the cap, but this month I’ve reformatted so there was all sorts of goodies I needed to get again. I’ve managed (so far) to stay away from TSW despite hearing nothing but good about it, for the simple fact that I know myself and I know my game style, and I don’t think it would appeal to me. That doesn’t mean I won’t try it in the future, but for now with GW2 so close, I think I would be better off waiting.

I hope everyone has an awesome week, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Counting Down To MoP #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

First, my apologies for a lack of posts, but my Nana is in the hospital on life support so I haven’t really been in the right frame of mind to post anything here. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been gaming, I have, it’s a great way of relieving some stress and occupy my mind for a bit.

I thought while I waited for GW2 to release I’d be playing nothing but GW1 – but that hasn’t been the case. When Blizzard announced the release date of MoP (September!) I started excitedly playing again. The first week ‘back’ (I say that in quotes because I never really left, having been subbed for the last year) has been eventful. My priest (who I consider my main) managed to pick up a lot of gear in her LFRaid groups, winning both the main hand weapon (healer) and off hand, as well as shoulders, helm, and gloves which I already have in my holy set so I added to my dps spec.

Of course when I ran my warlock and shaman through those same raids they ended up with nothing but the valor points you’re guaranteed for the win, for some reason my priest has always had fantastic luck and the other characters I have not so much.

I mostly just ignore raid chat these days, it’s typically one person moaning about a random other person in raid and what they’ve done to offend them, or moaning that their main could do this raid solo and why do we all suck and how we should vote out half the raid because they’re horrible. When I first doing raids in the raid finder these comments bugged me, my under geared warlock was even voted out once but as time goes on I’ve developed selective reading and pretty much ignore anything said that isn’t mechanic related.

My paladin also managed to inch her way closer to 85, I’ve been 81 for a really long time and just couldn’t find the motivation to push to the end. She’s now happily sitting at 84, and I even healed my first dungeon with her. I’ve spec’d the character as holy / protection, and have been having a lot of fun.

Aside from that, I’ve still got smaller characters that are a blast to play. I’m looking forward to mounts and pets being account wide, and I’m excited to see if perhaps today’s downtime is for the patch that’s on test. We’ll just have to see. In the mean time, it’s really nice having a very simple easy game to play when I only have a short amount of time and need to unwind my brain. I hope everyone has a wonderful week, and happy gaming no matter where you find yourself.

Yeah, I Still Play That “Other” Game Too #WorldofWarcraft #WurmOnline

When I tell people in other games that I still play (and enjoy) World of Warcraft, they seem to look at me in a different light, a negative one, at that. Suddenly I’ve lost some online points with them. Trying to explain why I continue to play has been my new challenge, and the one point I keep coming back to is that sometimes, I like not having to think.

While my heart is forever drawn to those complex sandbox games like EVE and Wurm Online, there are days when I don’t want to have to do anything that requires any thought process what so ever. Where I want simple fun and the quicker I can get it, the better. WoW fills this desire perfectly. I can queue for a raid or a dungeon and be happily killing mobs in no-time. I can quietly harvest, craft, or work on achievements. If I’m in the mood for pvp it’s even simpler, and it’s a lot of fun (personal opinion of course).

I think it’s important to play different games, especially if you work in the gaming industry. You don’t want to become so involved that you shut your mind down to other methods of gameplay. You also don’t want to play your game of choice so much that you become bored with it – having other options eases this slightly.

So even though I work mainly with Wurm Online, and yes, it is by far my ‘game of choice’ and has been for quite some time now (as is evident on this blog) I do continue to play other games, and will probably continue to do so as long as I game at all. Because I’m not looking to get heavily vested in another game I tend to swerve away from the more time invested ones that everyone else is talking about these days, but I’m sure I’ll pop in eventually.

Video games are supposed to be fun. As soon as they’re not, it’s time to stop playing them. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Pandas, Guild Wars 2, and Vanguard

Even though WurmOnline has taken most of my attention these days, I do still have an interest in a few other games coming out this year, and I do still get excited about announcements.

Vanguard: Finally, the Free to Play announcement that we’ve all been waiting for. We haven’t gotten many details yet other than it will happen (maybe) this summer. Personally, I’m excited. I’ve been a long time player of Vanguard and I’m constantly going on about how much I love the game. I realize that there are always going to be people against a F2P model, but honestly at this point in time, some players are better than the no players the game is currently working with. I have high hopes that this will help revitalize the game a bit. The only down side is that it will be happening when a lot of other games are coming out, and that may cause issues.

World of Warcraft: It has to be said, I still play. I still enjoy the game even though I did not really enjoy cataclysm. I don’t raid and I find that there’s a lack of things for me to do, but I did sign up for a year (Diablo 3 for the other half) and I enjoy poking around when I want a game to play that requires very little thinking. I should be getting into the beta for the panda expansion, and I’m also really looking forward to the new race. Jokes aside.

Guild Wars 2: This title has been on my radar for ages now. I’m not in the beta, but I wish I were. I enjoy Guild Wars, I enjoy not having to worry about a subscription, and I don’t really care if there’s a market or how it works. I have been staying away from most of the news updates about this game, although I have indulged and watched the trailers. I’m eager to jump in and play, and it doesn’t matter how good or bad the game is, I’ll judge for myself whether or not I enjoy it.

There are a few other games coming out this year that are pretty exciting. What are you most looking forward to if anything at all? Perhaps there’s a console game that tickles your fancy? Let me know in comments! Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.