WoW: Free week over.

Results ?

All new heroics done, epox looted, CHECK !

Dragon Soul done, Deathwing is dead , CHECK !

Transmogrified my PVE gear to Merciless/T5 (Merciless is so much better!), Used Void Storage, CHECK !

Played the new Darkmoon Faire, doing all the achievements I could. CHECK!

Passed 11K achiev points, back to 1st place in guild :) CHECK

Completed Glory of the Ulduar 25, got my beautiful proto-drake, CHECK !

NEARLY did Glory of the Icecrown Heroic 25 (always some idiot causes defile).

Had fun in PVP, healers rock so much, it's now a healer's war.

All in all, I had great fun.

Is WoW still worth playing ?

Dunno.

My new i2500K machine is nearly ready. SWTOR is waiting.

WOW: Free week and Dragon Soul .. AH AH AH

I went back to WoW to check whether 4.3 is worth playing.
From what I saw, it is NOT.
Except, of course, if you want to see all the content in one day and be done with it.

There are three new instances, one new raid, which can be entered, and conquered, by anyone, because Blizzard implemented a "look for raid", which gives loot and is (at least from a dps point of view) the easiest thing ever done.

Come on, downing a boss in DS25-LFR is as difficult as the first boss in old Deadmines.

I checked on the prerequisites, it was 370 iLvl or so. I went from 359 to 370 in 2-days by a bit of farming for Justice Points and the three new heroics.

Today I did the first 4 bosses. It was either nuke boss or "go where the other 24 are going and kill whatever they are killing". No strategy, no communication, no "I'll do this". Nothing.

I can't imagine how Deathwing is going to last more than 24 hours, because the next 4 and last bosses will probably be as easy as these first 4.

Oh dear...comparing with BWL and AQ40.. what a joke.

What else happened ?

I suspended RIFT, of course, since I'm now level 50.
My LOTRO minstrel Janariel completed all the questing, and now all that remains are a few deeds and some fun time with 3-instances with my RL pals.
SWTOR...my new PC is still under consideration. And part of it (PVP) is for me atm unplayable. Some PVE parts, the ones with lots of ppl around me, also not. I look at WoW and think that they did a very good job limiting CPU usage. Yes, in 25-raids my machine goes down, or in populated areas. But I can run everywhere on more empty servers (like Chrommaggus) and get 50 fps, continuously.
In SWTOR, I get 10-40 fps. And it oscillates a LOT, with the CPU usage always at 100% for both cores.

SWTOR: The Hunt for Gold

So... Star Wars The Old Republic has arrived. I missed launch week because of Xmas holidays, which was actually a good thing, as I skipped the initial bug/lag/queue fest.

My machine is holding up better than expected. Alone, it's quite playable with everything maxed up except shadows. RIFT was like that too. The problem comes when I enter a populated area, with NPC's and/or players. Then, it starts to get worse, below 20fps, ie, ugly.

I'm on target for a Core i5 2500K upgrade, but I'm still selecting components, PSU and stuff. Low noise is the culprit of my delay.

Back to gameplay. I joined forces with old Lords of Midnight guildies from Chromaggus server in WoW. They are going towards dps and tanking, so I'll go towards dps and healing, which is good.

After a long debate, I decided I won't be a bald man called Netcownt anymore. It was 5 years of looking at a bald head and neck, and it sucked. It's much nicer to watch a girl, so I went for a cyborg chick, human faced, called Netgold.

She rocks ! Well, she's a Bounty Hunter, so she better rock, and rock hard. Advantage ? I'm not a Sith at heart, and we started on the Sith side, so I couldn't see myself playing the "bad guy", although SWTOR allows Dark side and Light side decision making during quests. Bounty Hunters allow me to be mercenary, ie, do the good (or evil) because I'm paid for, not because of a Jedi or Sith mentality.

It makes a difference, LOL.

So, Netgold starts on Nal Hutta, and, as a Bounty Hunter, she quickly joins "The Big Hunt". Nesingwary keeps coming to my mind, I wonder why. If I could select a surname for my toon, she'd be Netgold Nesingwary, for sure.

Levels 1-10 are spent in Nal Hutta, preparing for the Hunt, doing shores here and there. Questing is fun, although a bit too easy, specially when I get a healing companion by level 8 or so.

There is a sense of "lots of new abilities for me to press keys, all seem to do about the same thing, ie, kill stuff".
But at the same time, some common things to other MMO show up, ie resource bar management (in my case it's called Heat, opposite to rage or.. whatever rogue had, I forgot, or hunter focus), AoE, crowd control, range abilities vs melee abilities, etc.

If I could match SWTOR with WoW, Bounty Hunter looks like a hunter. What else...

Tonight I'm leaving Nal Hutta and start exploring the outside world.

RIFT is dead, long live SWTOR

During this December , I subscribed RIFT and leveled a Mage (Warlock/Necromancer) up to level 50.

Why ? To be honest, I wanted to see the sights. Everyone kept telling me how it looked like another WoW, how irrelevant the game was, yadayada.

Well, as a lvl 50 (fresh one, for sure), I can tell it's not exactly true, RIFT is not WoW. It might be like WoW, yes, but a different WoW.

In WoW, you reach level 60,70,80,85, and all you can do is one thing: GEAR UP !

In RIFT, they understood their mistake, and changed things. Once you get to 50, you get a Planar development. Yes, it's more XP, you continue to get XP, but instead of leveling, you invest it in enhanced skills. Yes, there's also GEAR. Yes, there are dungeons, of different tiers and expertize required, there is PVP.

But there's also a thing that is dead with WoW. There's WORLD PVP. No you don't fly, you ride. You quest, you get ambushed, you get killed, ganked, all the funny stuff that makes you /yell "FILHO DA PUTA" from your grave.

So, I spent 7 free days, plus 30 (costing 5€!) plus 3 days of free game time (like SONY, Trion Worlds got hacked so they gave us complimentary game time). And in those 40 days, I reached 50, about 1 level/day, having fun.

I discovered nearly all the zones (only left a bit of Stillmoor), I participated in instant adventures ( a new RIFT feature, a bit like LOTRO skirmishes but in open world ), PVP battlegrounds (there are many), dungeons (many, too), I marvelled at some open air scenarios, and I took a lot of snapshots that I'll be sharing here. Most of all, I had fun, something I had not in WoW since my guild Arcadia split up.


So there you have it, December 2011, while waiting for SWTOR, I had a blast.

Now... talking about blasting things, SWTOR was released. So stay tuned, as I learn how to play a Bounty Hunter (currently level 10). Pictures coming right up.

Well well well WoW 4.3 looks funnier than expected

Yes, I'm teasing, this is RIFT.


Tonight I had insomnia, so I drifted towards WoW news, found out that 4.3 is coming to Europe next week, and found my old character has ALREADY got transmogrified.

Yes, Netcownt armory data features the T4 I used in the last days of my June playing, together with my purple 359 items. AH AH AH !

On a more serious tone, patch 4.3 looks fun.

. A new Dragon Soul raid will be able for randoms. I don't know if that will play well or not, but I'm willing to try and kill Deathwing.

. There's a promising legendary questline for rogues, so why not check it ?



. A new Darkmoon faire is coming, so may be I'll make a few more decks to get me to exalted !

. There's a void storage, finally the guys at Blizzard realized that a lot collectors like myself had their banks full of crap they wanted to keep, e.g. for vanity usage. Now, with transmogrification, it will pay off. A pity it's only 80 slots. I think I have the whole bank main slots + 5 x 16 bags full of that stuff.

. And last and best, three new dungeons to fool around and piss off those "I take it seriously FFS". That looks GOOD ! After all, when was the last time a new dungeon came up ? More than 1 year ago, for sure. ZG/ZA doesn't count !



Guess I'll have some fun December, alternating between WoW 4.3 and RIFT as I level up from 25 to 50 on my warlock-necromancer-chloromancer-mage.

D'rifting towards Star Wars

While waiting for SWTOR to get going by Christmas time and thanks to a promotion I decided to see Rift in full. 5 Eur for 30 days of discovery is cheap. Graphics for the 2nd zone 21-29 Gromwood are fantastic. It looks like Silverpine, it has pvp and the nightfall brings hostile undead like the village near SFK I used to have fun as a human lock during the day with pvp, before Blizzard ruined it.

D'rifting away

The last weeks I tried a few new MMORPGs, including (7-day free-to-play) Rift.

WoW.

Yes. it's WoW. A better Wow. It's Warhammer. A better Warhammer. It seems a bundle of all the MMORPG's since 2005, packed together.



Stunning graphics, fluidity is better than WoW. FPS ? Quite configurable, from 20-40 in my machine, depending of the settings. It uses DX11, and unlike WoW, you can see it. Quests ? Same as LOTRO or the first WoW quests, you level up fast, it has some escorts, some grind, some walk-to chains. A bit too repetitive, but that's the nature of these games, the designers are afraid to run away from what they know people like or are used to.



I leveled a Mage/Warlock up to level 20, did all the quests in the first Silverwood zone, I went for PVP in their Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin (better copies), went for an instance (forgot it's name), visited their main city, and played both factions (Ascent guardians and defiants)



There are Rifts all over. It has public quests like Warhammer. It's more unpredict
able than WoW.
It has professions, I leveled foraging, alchemy and runecrafting (WoW enchanting).
It has guilds, I joined one.
It has LFG and battleground(Warfront) queues, I joined them.
It even has a Prince like Arthas. It's called... Prince Hylas. Guess why ?
It has a lvl 50 cap.
It has achievemens. Lots of them.
It has artifacts.
It has triple talent trees up to 51 points, so called Soul Trees.
It has world events, it seems like father Snowfrost or something is coming. Ha !
It has addons. I'll try their DPS/HPS meters.

All in all...WoW universe seems bigger, but Rift is the absolute best copy of WoW I've ever seen. Honestly.

Needless to say, all the people I played with are old WoW players. And ofc, like WoW, it's not F2P.

That's the bad news.