On a structural relocation

After two years playing WoW in Vindication and three years on Silvermoon, the "locked" server with a multitude of players and over 100.000 items on auction every day, I decided to relocate to The Maelstrom, a PVP server where Haunted Heavens went to. Haunted Heavens, the guild absorving most of old Saviour Deviate Delight guild from Toede and Nilaihah, my old pals from Chromaggus.

It's a challenge, because Haunted Heavens, like Arcadia/RGC was, is a 25-raiding guild aiming for N/N boss kills, not a casual one like Vindication. But this time I've got a PC that can handle 25-raids A.O.K.

Dunklesweiss inside. Here I go

For now, I'm still leveling the warlock, paladin and warrior, but soon I'll have to focus on one, and of course, my necromant blood starts boiling again.

I liked the Valley of the Four Winds questing, it was fun helping Chen Stormstout. I'm now moving up to the Summit, after doing some quests on the southern Hills, but jungles are not for me.

This one looks bad !

Rares are back and hit hard :p

Tier 4 still rocks !

Some day I''ll be a farmer for real

Tankwise, I've been warrior and paladin in instances, and it's going quite good. Let's see when the first heroics come.

I noticed a weird behaviour concerning quest gear offering. Depending on the talent spec you have activated, the quest reward will be different. So if for example you're tanking but you want a reward for dps, you have to respec and then complete the quest. Blizzard... why don't they simply offer the different possibilities for the class ??? That's very stupid.

I missed PVP leveling

Had to finish this before leaving Silvermoon :P

In GW2, it goes slow, I'm now level 26, done with Kazzak Hills and moved on to the Gendarran Fields. As I'm playing together with a guardian, we're both doing the epic quests together, and it's to nice that the epic class/profession stories get merged by level 20 or so. The sad part is that the other guardian we play with is a n "elf" (ok .. sylvari) , so he gets two different starting zones at least up to level 25.

On GW2 and MoP, first impressions

Well well well, autumn is here, and with it, Guild Wars 2 and Mists of Pandaria.

Let's start with GW2. After a few weeks with me creating chars, doing some initial quests and halting, I ultimately decided to level an Elementalist, ie, a mixture between a WoW mage, priest, and warlock (dot dot dot).

I'm happily at level 20, with the first area, Queensdale, 100% finished, and I'm now exploring the Kessex Hills.

What can I say ? The graphics engine is stunning, it resembles (a lot) Warhammer Online, and we can see that things have come a long way since 2005, when WoW launched.

The interface is smart, simpler than WoW, but skills had a lot of thought in their making, so skills are "smart". And in my case, there's 80 of them. EIGHTY different skills, spread in four attunements and a few different weapon types.

There's a class/epic quest line, similar to LOTRO. But then, there are no "quests". There are tasks to do, you may do them, or skip them. You can simply level up by exploring, by collecting stuff, by going for PVP, or by going around and finding new, different events showing up suddenly, with hard bosses, and people rushing  up to help. It gives you the feeling of a full world, the way WoW was before they invented "hubs" and "flying mounts". Furthermore, you don't heve to be in a party to do anything. You can be in a party with friends, but go for any event or task and be rewarded.

I haven't seen chinese gold trading yet, though probably there is, and I haven't seen stupid people yet, though most surely there are.

The simple fact that you get experience for reviving a player gives a sense of community that I had lost.

As to battling, I've mostly done PVE stuff, but I can say it's hard, harder than WoW (PVE WoW difficulty is a joke until cap level nowadays), but if you play your cards well, you can still feel "invencible".

I am liking GW2 very much. RIFT was a newer WoW. GW2 is not a newer RIFT, it's a bit different from everything I've seen in MMORPG, although you feel the MMO effect.


So, now... Mists of Pandaria.

I'm attempting to level 4 characters simultaneously, so it goes slow, I'm still in the same starting areas (3 allies, 1 horde).

Silvermoon on release day.. :O

Level 2 monk

A helping guildie

Damn prince...

Kiting is a warlock's life

Graphics are... WoW. I got used to the chinese way, and I'm actually enjoying the sense of peace and contemplation pandas bring to questing and to battle (or the lack of it). The views from above or from flying are nice, it gives you a feeling not only of the northern chinese mountains, near the Great Wall, but also of Machu Picchu ( may be the set for the next expansion :PPP). There are also a few laughing moments, specially with a dwarf named Sully and his raccoons !

But the rest is all the same, dungeons are easy, killing makes you feel overpowered, one can kill 4-5-6 mobs at once, as a demo Warlock, as a retribution Pala, an arms Warrior, at least. As an elemental Shaman, it is a bit harder.
And what is also the same are... players. Players are rushing through the content, not reading quests at all, but all aiming to 90 in a week and an epic gear set... what for ? I don't know, to sit down and wait for the next big patch, probably. Dear Lord, there are level 90 monks already, 1 week after release, leveling from level 1.

All things considered, if I had to exclusively choose between spending my time in GW2 or MoP, I'd go for GW2 without hesitation.

Until then, I most probably will only go for LFR to know all the raids, do some reputation, Cata runs (still miss going inside Throne of the Four Winds) and stop by Christmas for a few months. For now, I'm enjoying leveling at my own pace.

Time will tell...

Fall gaming

The Fall of 2012 looks promising in what concerns gaming.

• Guild Wars2 has been released a few days ago, and its success has been so big they had to suspend selling, in order to have time to accomodate players and new servers. I created a Necromancer called Netcownt (what else), but he's still parked at level 2, waiting for a few gaming nights to start proper leveling. Server is Gandara, guild will be portuguese, PlayTime.

• In two weeks, Warcraft Mists of Pandaria will be released. I'm not sure I'll go into dualboxing mode, or may be I will level my 5 alts on the main account to get all 10+1 (of course I'll get a monk running) to level 90 by the end of next year. Personally, I'd like to go raiding and such, but not sure about my mind committing to it. For Cataclysm I waited 6 months in my Vindication guild, to start raiding, and then I only raided 3 weeks and went on holidays, a long 6 month WoW break. Let's see how it goes with MoP. It also depends on Arcadia being reborn or not, if Ssorn and Averia, my old guildies, come out of AFK.

• LOTRO will release Riders of Rohand in October. I haven't bought it yet, but I will. I spent the summer break doing the farmer's event and the summer fest, but Turbine coders are so bad (Bangalorian 20 year old amateurs?) that they bugged up a few quests in both events, so I could not complete deeds.
• Black Prophecy will close its doors in Setember, but Black Prophecy Tactics - Nexus Conflit (the prequel), will be released sometime later. It's already in beta, and looks quite promising. The same fabulous GUI, but more EVE-like, with less shooting and more strategy, as we drive the big space cruisers instead of the smaller fighters.
• AION... been playing a bit, my ranger is now level 23.

Back in business

A lot has happened in two months. One month, I was Afk.

Came back in July and
- bought GW2 and spent some time in the beta. Great game incoming !!
- went back to SWTOR for a comeback week and transferd server, my old was dead and guild was empty. Hopefully I'll find my old pals on the new server.
- went back to RIFT for the same reason and the same happened, transferred to a server as my server was empty and for trials only.
- went back to WoW, to try 12500 achiev points and did it. Guild is empty for the Summer.
- Finally decided to complete the Cataclysm Heroic achievements to get a volcanic drake and did it.
- Now I'll go afk again.

Meanwhile, I'll spend some time recreating the pictures for this damn blog. Hopefully a few can be recovered.

Today I went to the PTR to see what account achievements I will miss because I have 5 toons on each account for dualbox.

From what it looks like, profession achievement account wide requires only 5, not all 11, so it's ok. As to different classes, only two are needed. Factions A/H are covered. Races.. didn't see a specific achievement for that.

Anyway, I slowly started to lvl up my 5 lowbies on the main account, just in case. Lowest I had was lvl 20, so I went strait to LFD for all. It's so nice to level now, with heirlooms, guild perks, lots of XP buffs and dungeons where mobs can be nearly 1-shotted, most times healing is not even required. Ahhh the good old days' 3 hours in UBRS are over.

IRL

WoW addiction is terrible

All my 85 chars on main acc are DS-LFR finitto

I've been not so much time to take care of this damn blog problem and its photos.

But I've been playing a bit, so a bit of status update:

- Completed the Mastership of Isle of Conquest, and got the Tabard of Conquest for that ! Yay !
- Completed the 150-pet achievement, and got my celestial dragon ! A thanx to my guildie Flanx who bought me a present, a ToC horde pet, and allowed me to reach 150 before I started farming for Mr. Grubs in Eastern Plaguelands. Of course, the next day, it dropped after 3 bags, or 30 seconds. LOL. So now, I've got 152 pets, ready for Pandaria !
- Completed a "self" achievement, ie, bring all 5 chars of my main account to be DS-LFR ready and DS-LFR achievements done.

Concerning the last one, it was actually quite fun. After warlock and paladin were both ready and rocking, I turned my eyes to my poor hordies, resto-->elemental shaman, fire mage. Took a bit to decide that I wanted to dps and not heal or tank, as it would be faster, and faster it was.  So I turned my head to the other side, to my warrior, alone on Chromaggus. Decided against tanking, went for arms, and learned arms dps in 48 hours, so quickly brought him to LFR and completed the achievement a few mins. ago.

While gearing Morkin, the warrior, I found Strings, my old mate from SDD, which moved to Haunted Heavens, the "almost" only guild on Chromaggus. We had some good time chatting and he gave me a few tips to improve my dps to allow top10 with a miserable gear, ungemmed, unenchanted, half-unglhyphed. The most important tips were "overpower FTW to get rage back", "slam to drop rage", "heroic strike" only if you are at 100% and nothing else to do.

Btw, try to get gems, enchants or glyphs on a server which has 3-5 lvl 85 in Stormwind at 19:00 h !!!!!!!!

Ok, so I should be ready for Pandaria. Actually, I'd like to complete the Summer achievements, so this means I will have to pay for the account around July, 1st.

But it's good, I'll be AFK for a month, holidays in Barcelona and all that.

May be I get bored enough to get all my pictures back to this blog.

Oh My God Chandler Bing !

Test

All my old pictures have gone, quite possibly because of the redirect.

Have idiots taken Google by assault ? Blogger is being changed to use country specific URLs and my pictures have all gone. Orthogonal events ? Hmm...

OMG. All my Picasa pictures have gone. Vanished. That's the problem. I deleted them "supposedly locally" from my Samsung Galaxy S2 yesterday, before I sent it for repair. I revoked all passwords, and even changed my master Google password. Well, somehow, this fucking bitched Software managed to synchronize my local phone deletion and decided to delete all the picasa web albums, including of course all that supported blogger.

Dear Lord, why did Picasa and Blogger get bought by Google.

Why oh Why ?

#"$%&/!

UPDATE: OK, it's official, All my pics have gone, the absolute fuckers at Google somehow synchronized my phone picture deletion with Picasa and all photos have gone down the drain. My last resort was using "Internet Archive: Wayback Machine" to access a recent version of my blog, but I guess it's gone.