Green Bananas

But the quality of the content does not excuse the subpar launch experience we delivered, and I apologize for that

" also hope you'll accept my apology and keep your faith in us"

J. Allen Brack 

Executive Producer, World of Warcraft

I believe this says it all. This is the 5th expansion of WoW, weeks after the 10th anniversary, and all they can say is "I'mmmm soooryyy". Well, not all, they also gave us 5 days grace period. Such a bad quality assurance with 100 million USD a month to spend on a game, it's simply unbelievable.

Yes. Shame On Me. I'm back to WoW. The idea was to raise a different class to 100, a hybrid, and have fun with it. Problem is...every time I want to log and do something, I get a "4000 queue position, ETA = 3 hours" , or "World Server Down", or "stuck at 90%". And then I log to play for 15 mins or so, then log out because of RL shores, which atm are way overwhelming and when I come back...yay, it's a 4000 queue again, etc.

.|. Blizzard.

On the LOTRO front, I did the whole West Gondor quest lines, and then started with Central Gondor. LOTRO seems to be entering into maintenance mode...most quests are the same over and over and over again.

As to RIFT, I'm now deep inside Storm Legion, level 57, nearing the new 3.0 zones. It is a beautiful game indeed, if somewhat repetitive in terms of quests.

On rifting a 50+ Rogue ... and Archeage in standby

I've been having fun with RIFT, mostly with my Rogue, since my Warlock abilities got so messed up since I started playing in 2011 or so... I can't understand how it works anymore.

No worries, I've reached 50+, going for 60 before RIFT 3.0 kicks in.

Here I am playing at night with my RL pals, going for the Elite Saga quest chains. Aelfwar in this case.

Meanwhile I found out that the makers of RIFT released Archeage, which I thought was in Beta still, but as it seems, it was released already.

I downloaded and started up just to see how it looked.

And it looks GOOD ! Smooth movement, very smooth, more than TERA or AION, more than RIFT, as smooth as SWTOR or GW2. Beautiful sceneries. I think I'll give it a go, just for fun.

Added my live gaming Stream on Twitch

Not a big fuss about it, I've been testing Ustream and Twitch.tv for audio and professional purposes.

But why not use it for gaming ? Well, let's give it a go.

When not gaming, I'll display a nice view from my window...better than my ugly face !

Helms Deep and Deep Inside ..: GW2

After my holidays, I decided to come back to MMO gaming, slowly and at my own pace. 

RIFT, I continue to level with my RL friend, and ... I'm still at 45.

With LOTRO, I decided to push it a bit to finish the Helm's Deep expansion, so I could play the battle in itself. It was kind of fun, although it took some time to do all the quests in all the Eastfold, Westfold, Edoras, etc. Now that I finished it, Helm's Deep was a good job well done by the Game Developers. However, a new mini-expansion was released, West Gondor, with a new cap level of 100. But guess what, I'm already lvl 100, even before I ever went to West Gondor. No worries, I'll play it some time later, probably during Christmas or so.

To more serious matters... Guild Wars 2 ! I've been having much fun with this Season 2, playing a bit more hardcore, though still solo.

I joined a lot of daily boss kills, courtesy of the following timer links:

http://dulfy.net/2014/04/23/event-timer/
http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/events.php?serverKey=206&langKey=en
(For Gandara)
http://gw2.limitlessfx.com/

Feel free to use these to jump around doing bosses, getting an enormous amount of loot. I even finished the Tequatl meta achievement, I've now got the Sunbringer title !
I'm approaching the 5000 Respectul Achievement points, and my first 400 free GEMS ! Wohoo, that will go into..bag slot, of course.
Meanwhile, I've decided to go for some collecting (Staffs, for starters), and craft some amazing stuff. Just in time, because Collector achievements are up today, with the September 9th patch.
I leveled up Artificer to 450+, Huntsman to 400, and I already have Jeweller, Chef and Tailoring at 400, which will help me with crafting and $$$
My Legendary hunt is starting to get a bit better, since I can now make $$$...about 5-10g/day, so in a few months ... LOL ... I'll be able to buy myself a Precursor Weapon, if I don't get one first.
Ah, and I got two exotic named-weapon drops, a good value, which will do great for my alts, in a few.. years :)
One of them is a scythe that a lot of Necros cry for...time to level up Netcownt :)
Last but not least, I'm crafting Mawdrey, the exotic/ascended backpiece from the Season 2 Living story.
Takes a bit of trouble, a bit of gold and some persistence, but I'll get it !

Today, I crafted Hymenoptera, the AQ40-style exotic Staff from the Dry Top area vendors. It looks amazing. 

Here's a pic !

Back to LOTRO and GW2... and RIFT

It's been a long time since I played LOTRO. I finished the Riders of Rohan expansion, leveled to 85, did all quests, completed the epic chain quest and most of the solo deeds (except rebuilding Hytbold to 100% and Wildermore to Exalted...). As for reputations, I used my store coins (being a life-time VIP helps) for them. And last week, I noticed that LOTRO store coins can also be used to buy the Helms Deep expansion pack (around 4K, actually there was a 2K sale some months ago). So I spend 4K out of my 14K coins and got the expansion for free. This allowed me to ride into Edoras (beautifully crafted, congratulations to the grahpic developers) and start a new epic chain, interacting with Théoden, Grima, and the whole character lot. It seems that Janariel (my character) will stay behind with Éowyn to help guiding her people away from Erodas into safety, while Théoden, Éomer, and probably Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas and Gandalf will go with them (can't remember this part of the novel properly, tbh, shame SHAME on me !) Well, it'll be a fun Summer with LOTRO. As to Guild Wars 2, I missed (xuif xuif) most of the Crown Pavillion 2-month event, but I came just in time to do some arenas and kill all bosses (and earn a ton of gold doing it). Now, it seems Seasons 2 of the Living World with start on July 1st, so there's a lot to be discovered... hopefully. Last but not least, RIFT: I've restarted playing with some friends in May, from scratch, leveling a rogue, doing some quests (as guardian, not defiant again) and having fun. Currently at 39. I'm in doubt wether to go with the mage or rogue for Storm legion, but last time I tried the mage, it was strange to play, lots of skills I didn't know how to use. I guess rogue is way easier, so may be I stick to it. Stealth also helps a lot while soloing. And I can even tank (and heal with a paid soul tree). All in all, I'm not missing WoW at all. And with Blizzard stupidity of creating TBC II in the same exact place (fk, even Shadowmoon Valley and Black Temple are the same !!!) and with the same kind of graphics, I think I won't miss that expansion at all. Time will tell...

The End (?)

Last week I got two achievement fronts I missed.

The first, Veteran of the Alliance, 75 won RBGs. Ended up with a rating near 1800 and full prideful set.

The second, 200 Mount Parade. got it without pre-ordering the WoD expansion and getting the free mount. Instead, I purchased a Grand Ice Mammoth for 7k.

Why so ?

Well, a little birdie is telling me this is the end, I won't be pre-ordering and my WoW days are coming to an end, about 10 years later.

I've been reading a little on WoD, and... THERE'S NOTHING I LIKE.

1) Graphics, location and story. WoD is TBC revisited. The same kind of graphics. Absolutely hated the graphism of buildings, pinnacles, and the orange/purple colors used in TBC. Location ? Outland/Draenor. Back to Draenei. The race I disliked the most, ugly, poor, extra-terrestrial lore, with no connection with the medieval tolkien races of humans, elves, orcs, goblins, trolls. UFOs in Azeroth ? A joke.

2) Level cap 100. Really ? Is this something to cheer about ? 

3) Garrisons. It's a joke, a mix of old ideas from SWTOR, LOTRO, and whatnot. I've had a house in LOTRO for years.

4) Flexible 10-25 raiding. Couldn't care less. Is this supposedly a new feature ? Flex was already like this in MoP. What they'll do is.. remove LFR code, replace the "Flex name" with "Normal", replace "Normal" with "Heroic" and "Heroic" with "Mythic", with a 20-fixed size. 

5) New character models. Really ? 99.9% of all times, you're looking at the back of your char, and looking at others armor. You don't see their faces or body. And even if you see them, during raids or PVP... do you really care for a high-res model ? Trash.

6) Level squish and attribute erasing: "hit, parry, dodge, expertise, and reforging". Easy mode for all the dumbasses that can't cap hit because they have no idea how to check it.

7) "armor will automatically change stats based on your spec". This is targetted to hybrids, because people want to have only one gear set and play different styles. Nice. Should have been done eons ago. But not a feature. More like an "easy mode".

8) Bag space without quest items. YAY ! New feature ? RIFT was launched years ago and had it from the start. It's a new idea. But call it a feature ? Argh, should be part of the core game.

9) The rest of the "new stuff", like buying a mount for "make-a-wish" foundation, or the Adventurer's Guide for noobs, is trash.

So, this will be WoD. The only good part is that it will have new achievements, and it will have PVP, which I could get into, e.g. for getting the Battlemaster title I miss. But still.

This is the future. As for MoP...

Fact of the matter is, I disliked PVE like hell this expansion. PVP was much better, specially after I found OQ. Unfortunately, to play properly PVP, I can' be casual, so I would have to be in a PVP guild for more successful gaming. Unfortunately, I cba answering to a teenage leader with rocking hormones that starts yelling because someone lost a base. So I would have to find a mature PVP guild. Is there such a thing ? Rarely, I find people like that, specially above 1700 rating, but overall... well, it's not just that, it's the game itself. 

It's OLD news.

So...

My subscription will end in 2 days. I have an 11th lvl 60 ready  (thank you Pet Leveling!) for pre-boosting to 90, if I buy WoD. But. What if I don't and buy it later ? Ok, I'll loose 600-lvl professions boosting. What if I don't buy it, ever ?

Nice thought.

Sell in May and go Away

My WoW luck returned in May, after a dry April where I got no mount drops. 

But this week, I got both the ZG tiger and the Onyx serpent from Huolon, both 1% or so drops.

Elune be praised, 195 mounts.

If i buy 3 more, 21000 gold, buy the expansion with a free mount, and finish the Argent farm on Friday, I'll have ... 200 mounts, and a mega achievement :)

EDIT: Another mount: The drake of the North Wind, from Altairus, dropped, after 142 tries (0.8% or so rate). One less Cata mount to farm :). May is gooooood !

Ah...forgot to say... I'VE GOT PROVEN ASSAILANT !!!

That was a 2-week's effort inside Proving Grounds, to reach Wave 30 of the Endless Damage.

The first week was spent farming some raids/dungeons, because  I was stupid enough to trash some weapons/off-hand I actually needed, because of the gems. Luckily, most items dropped the first time I went in.

The gear for Proving Grounds is normalized to 463, but enchants and gear are not, as well as the legendary socket for specific ToES or Thunder King weapons. So...I had fixe my gear to maximize the number of gems, focus on "haste" as Destruction and then...

I went for the kill. One week later, it was done, I got past 30 waves. Actually, I got to 34 but then my food/flask/buffs expired and it was late so I gave up.

It felt fantastic, as good as the Kanrethad fight, which was a bit easier because gear was not normalized. The same for Brawler's guild, it was also quite fun and hard but gear was not normalized as it should be. So every noob and his mother gets it, eventually. But not this.

All in all, 

"PROVEN ASSAILANT" IS THE ONLY REAL SOLO CHALLENGE FOR DPS
in Mists of Pandaria.

My 2 cents, of course. 

Now...I really think I'll call it quits if I can get 200 mounts. 

6 months off WoW would be great. May be, just may be, I'll stop for good. 

Lady Luck strikes again

It was a funny month, this one. I tried luck again on a few more archaeology hunts.

And it paid OFF ! The Tol'vir gods helped me and gave me my Ultramarine Qiraji Battle Tank, summoned by the Scepter of Azj'Aqir.

This brings my total mount collection to 187...oh boy, it's getting close to the 200 achievement mark !

Besides that, I've been focusing on finishing dungeoning. Both fronts are done.

I did my Gold Challenge Dungeon runs with an imba-team, 1-shotted all 9. Defiler set, mount title, KTHXBYE.

As to Glory of the Pandaria Hero, I went to OQ, joined a team to finish most, and was left with Nizao Temple. For that, I created my own OQ premade and ended in style. After that, I helped the members doing some achievements I knew already, and it was pretty fun.

Lord of Insomnia is married to Lady Luck

Yes they are. Why ? Because it was thanks to an early waking up that I went to Karazhan to, for the 204th time (at least), kill Attumen and try to get my Fiery Warhorse's Reins.

And guess what, on the first kill of the morning, it dropped, on the first ever char I made, my brave Warrior, and it made my day.

Double doing

Two more steps in WoW, one of them, a cross-expansion achievement, the Vial of the Sands.

It took 4 years or so, but it finally showed up on a canopic jar, a rare occurrence of archaeology which had a further 2% drop rate for the vial.

How many did I open ? Less than a 100, more than 10. So, not too good, not too bad.

The second one, the Celestial Family, is not luck based. Well, a bit may be, in what concerns the hit or crit chance of legendary pets. It took a bit of time, to get all 4 legendary pets, meaning 12 coins overall, so around 9 weeks of fierce legendary pet battle against all the Celestial Tournament opponents.

A Knight's Tale

Season 15, started, and I decided to give it a go, to get my RBG saddle, my RBG mount and RBG titles.

Going good. Reached 1600 rating, and... I'm now a Knight ! Yes, I know, I've been a Knight and Lt.Commander since 2008, yada yada, but this is an RBG knighthood.

Besides, I've been collecting gold in order to buy myself the Gold 9/9 Challenge Mode, together with its transmog crap, titles, and achievements. People are asking 110-140k gold, so it's within range. Actually, I respawned my account just for that, but since I still have some time until CMs are disabled...

Besides that, and doing PVP pet battles, and weekly Celestials, there's nothing more to do. Arenas are gone, as Strings went AFK, and besides doing some flex modes (oh yes, killed Garrosh in flex a few days ago), there's not much else to do.

Meanwhile, I'm getting better in the RBG business, now as destro (shadowburns on healers are so good, dear lord) , or demo, when flag carrying or guarding needs doing.

About celestial headaches

I FINISHED THE CELESTIAL TOURNAMENT

It took about two weeks, leveling pets and searching strategies. In the first week, I had not enough pets to battle through, but in the second week, it was a matter of finding the highest rares to level or set common pets as rares, and actually getting it done. Six days into the week, and down went Lorewalker Cho, Dr. Ion Goldbloom, Sully, their respective 3-pet crews, and in the end, four legendary pets.

As a reward, the 20th cub pet, my "Crazy Cat Man" title, as a proper achievement.

Needless, to say, this thing is HARD. I'll need to win it another 9 times, with different challenges, like Blingtron 4K or Wise Mari, and get the rest of the tournament pets and achievements. So more hardness incoming :p

With all this petting, I nearly stopped my PVP, has I had done enough to reach 1500 RBG rating. 1600 means Knighthood (I'm Lt.Commander on Lock and Knigh Champion on Pala, but those are vanilla titles), so I've been pushing, but I'm stuck around 1590, always loosing the critical battle.

Rage Hard !

Prontos, aqui vai o meu rage, é o meu blog, tenho direito a isto :)

Filhos da mãe há em todo o lado. Este é um deles. Um mage português do Aggra de uma guilda qualquer chamada Encore.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/aggra-portugues/Volbeat/simple

Este gajo ataca-me quando eu estou plácidamente ao lado dele, com 578i LEVEL !!!!

Depois, faço ress, vou atrás dele e estupidamente meto-me numa zona em que ambos levámos porrada (arena daily de Golden Lotus)  Claro, como ele tinha um iLvl maior e eu sou noob como DK a PVP, morri, por um cacagésimo, ele tinha 2%, e o fdm cuspiu-me em cima.

Vou ficar com este nome. Volbeat. Um dia, sacana, hás-de levar na pá como o Xaire levou ! Nem que leve anos ! É só uma questão de nos encontrarmos sem que tenhas um iLvl 70 acima de mim, fdp !

Into Battle with a Lot of Pets

Yes it's a joke about the first EP of the Art of Noise. So, what was I missing, in what Mists of Pandaria game playing was concerned ? That's right, Battle Pets.

During Cataclysm, I collected enough pets for an achievement (was it 100 ? 200 ? I forgot). 

But with MoP, pets went to battle.

With the release of Hearthstone Beta, I played a bit, and found it funny enough to play a few games. 

So I decided to reactivate my attempts to do some WoW battle Pet achievements for leveling, collecting and battling, which has the same kind of non-real-time, strategy flavor of Hearthstone.

I managed to complete most of the things I wanted, except... the Celestial Tournament, that Blizzard released in 5.4 in the Timeless Isle.

That tournament is HARD. Of course there are lots of strategies you can read, and some specific pets you should/must use, but otherwise it's not one of those things you go in and get done, not my a long mile.

Oh well, I'll get it done, eventually.

I've been having fun with Rated Battlegrounds (1590 rating, thank you OQ!), and got full PVP 522 gear.

SWTOR...I purchased the Rise of the Hutts Cartel, using a promotion pack, in order to become a subscriber the day when they FINALLY added free flight combat, the so called Galactic Starfighter expansion. 

Well.. it's been a month and I think I played for 1 hour at most...the game changed so much, or at least, I forgot so much about the game and Mercenary abilities that I get bored/tired 10 minutes after I logon. 

As to the free flight combat itself...it's a bit too fast for my taste, all kids around move around me like bees, and I get shot without even understanding what needs to be done. I guess I'm getting old... thank god for "slow" books like War and Peace !