My vacation in Azeroth. . .

Well, this is going to be a decidedly HAPPY fishy blog post. First of all, I talked to my dad last night, the last of the virus has been cleansed from my system (no pun intended). I am picking it up after work today. As an added bonus, as I had already installed the new video card before this mess, I will be rocking my new 512mb NVIDIA card when I log in! (I know that is far from top of the line, but playing a 4yo game on a 5yo computer, it should be more than sufficient and way better than onboard graphics). I'm back and forth on whether to drop another 2mb of Ram into my system. I'm running XP so with the new video card 2mb should be fine, but there is a little voice in my head screaming "MORE POWER!!!" so we'll see. If that wasn't enough to make me positively giddy, today is my last day of work till monday. Thats right boys and girls, its time for a vacation. . .IN AZEROTH!!!

Ever gone a while without eating (either accidently or on purpose) and you eventually get so hungry you feel like you could eat the entire store? Thats where I'm at with Wow. Sure, there will be breaks for sleeping, eating, going to the gym, tasty adult beverages with friends, but my vacation will be spent mostly in Azeroth (and Outlands). As usual, I have a list of goals for my characters:

Leshif - Run heroics, get l00tz! Become more epic! I believe I am one JC token from the epic necklace, already have the ring, could use the sword and belt from H UP and shield from H CoS (although I'm tempted to make the titansteel shield because it looks cooler and has more defense).

Bullfish - My new fav alt. I have been reading everything druid I can get my hands on(thanks druid wiki, big bear butt, unbearably HoT, and thinktank), and I will admit, even thought I think a bear with horns is kind of dumb looking (and don't get me started on a cat with horns), the ability to Tank, Heal, and DPS with the same character is mighty appealing. I'm hoping to hit 50+ get my LW to 300, and pick up dual spec. Feral/Resto anyone?

Zefish - Outlands or bust man! I think when I left him I was pretty darn close to 50, that means 8 levels to Outlands. If only he weren't so squishy! I <3 mages, frost especially. I love leveling with him, and when I hit outlands I'm switching out his herbalism for tailoring and I can switch my lock's tailoring for enchanting (he used to be an enchanter, and currently I don't have an enchanter).

Dreadfish - Northrend bound! He has been level 69 for literally months. I have used him to skin, or hunt down people who gank my alts and thats about it. Plus with him running around Northrend, I can start stocking up on leather prepping for my druid. And deathknights are kind of fun.

Warfish - I have a love/hate relationship with my warrior. I love love love Titan's Grip. Its awesome. I would love to get ahold of a couple crystal forged war axes mmmmmmm goodness. The hate side - NO STAYING POWER!! I'm used to my paladin who kills slowly but can outlast anything. No self heals? (which isn't completely true, warrior is herbalist, but thats a c/d and not super powerful). Every other class I play (except the mage) has self heals. I'm just not digging not having them. With that being said, would be awefully nice to hit 66-67 to get to wear the adamantite set.

I am looking forward to the most enjoyable, cost-effective vacation I've taken so far. I won't come back to worth with a tan, but thats not exactly a bad thing.

If college was like Wow. . .

Krizzlybear got me to thinking with his most recent post. He graduated from college (which is an awesome accomplishment, grats again!) and made some Wow analogies, which got me to thinking: What if college was like Wow? And then, What if Wow was like college?

If college was like Wow. . .
You would be able to spec into a certain major and EVERY employer would want you.
Needing on all the loots (use your imagination here) would get you swiftly G-kicked.
You could /ignore anyone blatantly being an ass and enjoy the soothing silence.
It would be completely acceptable for higher level friends to run you through difficult things.
Anyone who needed an answer on anything could swiftly be directed to any one of multiple thorough online sources.
Whenever a professor used a curve, 10% of the class would complain it turned into "easy mode" and the other 90% of the class didn't deserve to be taking it in the first place.
Anytime a major became too valuable, there would be an outrage that it was over-powered, and the deans would be forced to nerf it "to preserve balance".

If Wow was like college. . .
Attendance would be mandatory, but DKP points would be given out at a later indeterminate period at the RL's discretion.
Almost everyone would have multiple "alts" and even after choosing a "main" would flip flop between.

Anyone else have any more? I got a chuckle coming up with a few of these. . .

Are you m*therf*ckers ready, for the new sh*t?

I swear, I am not a Bioware employee. It just seems like recently every time I see a game I'm excited about, it happens to be one of theirs. I'm currently playing Mass Effect while my computer is being repaired, and I'm quite happy with it. However, that is not what this post is about. I've also recently written a few posts about how geeked out I am over a Star Wars mmo. Also, not what this blog is about.

This blog is about yet ANOTHER amazing looking offering from Bioware: Dragon Age. Bioware doing medieval fantasy RPG with swords and magic? And it has sex too? And the trailer has the best Marilyn F-ing Manson song to date!?!?!? Well, the title of the blog says it best. . .

Why Star Wars: the Old Republic will succeed

I believe Star Wars: the Old Republic will be the greatest MMO yet produced. I have this belief based on both my experiences with Bioware games and the similarities to Blizzard and disimilarities to both Mythic and Funcom.

Biowares resume:
You may be familiar with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, a couple games which in my opinion are not only the best Star Wars games to date, but tell a better story than Episodes I-III. Bioware came out with another title Jade Empire, which although overlooked is an AMAZING game. I thoroughly enjoyed it and played it through a couple times. The last title in their resume is Mass Effect, a game which I have not yet played, but heard excellent things about.
Thats three franchises which are completely disimilar to each other, none of which are mmos. The similarities are rich, character driven storylines, and fairly customizable character growth. All three were fairly critically acclaimed (8/10 or better by most media outlets), with two out of the three arguably being the best in their areas (I will admit, although I LOVED Jade Empire, it was somewhat of a niche game and was not as popular as the other two).

Mythics Resume:
They have produced one game prior to Warhammer, that being Dark Age of Camelot, a game which from what I can tell, looks like a prequel to Warhammer. System looks very similar, it seems to be basically what I've heard about warhammer in a different setting.

Funcoms Resume:
Funcom has two franchises released prior to the release of Age of Conan: Dreamfall, a more traditional platform RPG, and Anarchy online, an MMO. Both games received reviews generally between 7-8/10 although Anarchy online was plagued with problems on launch, one review said it was "promising with big technical flaws".

Blizzards Resume:
Blizzard released a number of smaller games in the early to mid 90's, they are most well known for three franchises: Warcraft and Starcraft (real time strategy), and Diablo (adventure RPG). All three were critically acclaimed and spawned sequels (Starcraft 2 has yet to be released).

What I take away from this: First of all, Blizzard and Bioware are more similar to each other than the other two companies for two reasons. First, before relweasing their MMO's, neither company had ventured into that market. The other similarity they have with each other is a larger body of work with higher acclaim. The way I see it is this: good companies produce good games, period. It doesn't matter if those companies are producing MMO's, real time strategy, Adventure RPG, or first person shooters. Mythic and Funcom seemed to have followed their "model" exactly when it comes to their MMO offerings. It could be argued Blizzard did the same. Looking at past trends, I believe the Old Republic will follow Bioware's model of other games. It will be story based and more than likely offer a large number of cutscenes/cinematics.

Dr00ds. . . .

I had hoped to have my computer back up and running last night, but my dad was tired after work and as he's the one helping me out, I told him it would be fine to do it tonight. My hope is that I will be able to recover some data before re-loading windows and starting over. At this point I am pessimistic about the ability to repair the damage.

Onto brighter thoughts. I have been doing a lot of thinking about druids of late. Druid is probably my second favorite class in the game (Paladin is #1, every fantasy game I always go for plate wearing melee fighting self-healers). My biggest problem with playing them on a Horde server (I have 3 alliance druids) was the animal forms. Why do all the tauren versions have horns stapled to their heads for no reason? Enter new druid form art.

I am conflicted about the new druid form art. On one hand, I think it looks fairly cool. More detail, and the forms actually look like a tauren shapeshifted into something rather than just stapling horns on an existing animal. However, I still don't like horns on my cat form! (I'm ok with it on bear form, even though the broker in me sees a Bull/Bear as the ULTIMATE oxymoron).

I have always liked druids for their versitility, I personally believe (that US americans. . .jk inside joke, look here if you don't recall that one for a cheap laugh) that dual spec makes druids hands down the most powerful class in the game. By dual speccing druids can be endgame tanks, healers, and DPS. The kicker is that their DPS and Tank specs share talent tree AND gear. Since feral druids can be uncrushable with talents and get a massive armor buff in dire bear, their armor is mostly stamina, agility and crit stacking. If it sounds like the same thing a melee DPS character would wear, thats because it is. Since druids can wear leather OR cloth and their is no lack of caster cloth in the game, it makes assembling passable endgame sets easy to acquire.

Right now (ok, not RIGHT now, I have to get my comp up and running first), I'm leveling a mage and a druid. Both mid-upper 40's. I will probably have the mage to outlands first, but it wouldn't surprise me if the druid is my next 80.

To be the man, you have to beat the man. . .WOOOOO!

Ric Flair was an insightful individual. For quite some time, people have been predicting a "Wow Killer". But, as the quote says, to be the man, you have to beat the man. Age of Conan tried and failed. Warhammer tried and failed. Star Wars will succeed.

It is not in doubt that Star Wars is a mega-franchise and slapping that name on anything will bring in revenue. It is also not in doubt that Knights of the Old Republic was one of the greatest RPG franchises in recent history. Having just seen the trailer (which I've linked below). I have no doubt this is the game many have been waiting for.

5k views and day 5 of my Wow exile. . .

I reached a milestone of sorts recently. My views counter ticked over 5000. I know thats not a very large number compared to some of the more established blogs, but it still made me feel a sense of accomplishment. I have a friend who is a professional writer who kept a blog for some time for a community newspaper. I think he said he had less than 100 views total. I guess it's an example of consistancy and sticking with it.

On a not so happy note, computer is still unresponsive. I ran a full disk scan (approx 4 hours) revealed no problems with my hard-disk, no memory issues. I attempted to repair my windows and was unable to really do so (it reloaded some but not all the files and the issues remain). I still can't even manage to run MSCONFIG in safe mode. I am starting to think my only solution might be to re-load windows and accept the loss of all my data as a casualty of war. My last ditch effort will be to see if my dad can do anything with it (he does IT for the university here).

Honestly, although I have desperately missed Wow (voluntarily quitting was tough and I couldn't stick with it, this involuntary stuff SUCKS!), I have been able to occupy my time with a few other things. Been playing the UFC game, I <3 head kicks. There is something satisfying about kicking the computer in the head, seeing the eyes roll into the head, mouthguard go flying, and opponent hit the mat. Game over man. I have gotten some more time in with my guitar. I am beginning to play things which almost sound like the songs they're supposed to. Currently my two favs I can play are Killing in the name and Bad Girlfriend (well the part that doesnt need a slide, I don't have one of those).

Anyways, to those of you enjoying wow, I'm jealous and I will be back hopefully sooner rather than later. . .