On Brawling and soloing

A new year with some funny things, for a change, implemented by Blizzard. For a long time I've been thinking, why didn't they allow viewers, spectators, in PVP arenas. Well, they made the first step. The Brawler's Guild is not PVP, but it's 1v1 PVE, hard as hell, and people strangely join together, more than in instances, and help each other, with buffs, ressurrections (much like GW2), and advice.

I joined the Brawler's guild by buying a very cheap invitiation (1K) on Chromaggus, and as it's applicable for all chars on all servers of the same account... there we go. Actually I only found that out after a few rare farming that also drops (3%) that invitation, using a cross-realm invitation for Chromaggus, since the server is virtually empty so I get the rares all for myself (nearly). The rare farming in Krazarang Wilds has another advantage: It gives you a ton of free HP (750HP/hour or more.. shooo don't tell anynone) so you can gear up for PVP and upgrade your equipment in no time.

Talking about PVP, that's my other achievement from yesterday, I got my T1 weapon and that helped making to 1550 rating in 2v2 Arena with Strings, my Arms Warrior pal, so next step is now 1750 :-).

As to PVE, our guild cleared 25-MV (I still miss Elegon, as the damn dudes decided to kill it the night before Xmas when I was away :) and is now battling through 25-Heart of Fear, the 2nd raid in MoP.

My personal raiding was fun too, I decided to solo Ulduar and do a lot ( I mean a LOT) of achievements I missed. Boy, is that hard ! I soloed a lot of bosses, doing the 10-achievs that are not meant for the Glory meta-achiev, and I sweated to do them, but they are done. Only 1 missing, a nearly impossible one to do alone, as it requires interrupt every 5 or 10 secs or so.

Naxxrammas I soloed it completely, cleared all 10-achievemnts too (some are hard because of the excess DPS) and I found that Blizzard is now dropping pets in old raids like this, MC, AQ, BWL, etc. So I get a few more reasons to go inside and visit some oldies like Nefarian.

On a misty morning

These days Lisbon is waking up misty, much like Holland or England. So my early mornings are spent in the mists, in the tavern of mists, checking if there's an invitation at a reasonable price.

The reason is Brawler's Guild, a new invention by Blizzard, to sum up, a bunch of goblins and you name it, showed up under the tram station of Ironforge. To enter, you need an invitation, and it can only come from a leveled up member of that guild, or from a drop in the PVP dailies from 5.1, or from... the Blackmarket Auction House near the Tavern of Mists.

Can you believe I had not seen it yet ?

Well, now I have. Seems pretty basic. There are 10 items for auction, set up by Blizzard RNG (or no so much RNG), with prices ranging from 1k to ... well, I've seen 50K or more for some items. Invitations have been sold for about 30K which is about 50% of my Geld , so... no way José.

The alternative ? Well, one is to get an invitation from a guildie. But since I'm new in the guild, it's not so easy. Another, is to make money. A lot of money. And another is to make the invitation drop from a rare in the PVP area, something quite hard on an full server. HOWEVER, on an empty server like Chromaggus, it's not. And... now there's this little thing called Cross-Realm-Invitations that allows a player to invite another to his realm (kind of). However, in order for you to be in his realm, he must be as high level as you. So I need a 90 on my dualboxing account.
Needless to say, I started leveling it, the fastest way I know, ie, pure XP farm.

So, I've been having some fun.

PVE-wise guild raiding is still 4/6 MV-25 , my iLvl is 479, because I've again been stupid and didnt roll on some 489 items I needed. We're now using EPGP, which looks much better than DKP bidding, a thing I utterly hated while raiding with Arcadia/RGC, because of DKP burning.

PVP-wise, I started to gear in a more serious way. Luckily, Strings, my old pal from SDD is on Haunted Heavens, so I can go to arenas with him. He plays well and is imba geared. I was noob the first week as I posted before, but my burst has increased now and with PVP power growing on my gear, I will soon become "good old net" and pwn people.

Today I finished chapter 1 on the Legendary Chain Quest from MoP, getting a +500 Intellect gem. Now I just need a 483/496 weapon to use it.

As to LOTRO Riders of Rohan, I bought in on Black Friday, went to the new area but haven't played it yet.

Guild Wars 2, Ive been slowly leveling with RL friends, and I'm now lvl 50. But boy oh boy oh boy, how hard it is to level a profession like Tailoring or Jewelcrafting...

Ah, last but not least, OLD DUNGEONS SOLO !!! Blizzard changed the mechanics of a few fights to allow soloing, so I've tried them, and will continue to do a few, for legendaries, mounts (Ashes of A'lar!!) or pets, since they now also drop.

Remember TK ? I soloed it.
Remember BT ? I soloed it !
Remember NAXX ? I soloed it (and got a lot of achievs :)

Next is Ulduar, I already saw some ppl soloing Razorgore. With dualboxing, it'll probably be even easier.

On being fast and furious

Nearly a month has passed, and I've been busy doing dailies, getting reputation on the Pandaria factions, for the sake of being able to spend my valor points in vendor rewards, which is the only way to get epic gear, besides raiding. It's so ridiculous that epics are rewarded, not for the difficulty of a task, but for the length of a task (getting revered on these factions require almost of a month of constant grinding).

Some parts are fun, like Tillers, ie, Farmville, some others are ugly and generate hate, like the Klaxxi, an insectoid race AQ-like.

I moved to my new server, PVP Maelstrom, and to my new guild, Haunted Heavens, and raiding has started. I've new cleared half of Mogushan Vaults in 25-normal, which is not bad. Boss tactics seem to be easier and easier these days, as long as your awareness switch is ON. As to dps, I have some very good dpsers in my guild, a few of them warlocks, so it's been fun to see that people still continue to look at raiding as a dps race. My muscle stiffness needs relaxation every 15 mins or so nowadays... boy I'm getting OLD !

I already got ranked in Worldoflogs fight of stone guardians, number 137, with a iLvl of 470 or so !
And I found a nice site: Raidbots , that keeps track of your quality as a raider. Not bad, I've been epic !

As to PVP itself, arenas are now very hard for non-bursty lovers like me, who liked to stay alive and have time to think. Now there's no time, you are bursted to death in less than 10 secs. I don't know if that's because I suck nowadays, or my resilience sucks, or both.

On crazy daily

Dailes have come to stay in WoW.

It's the one thing they know how to do, is to get people farming reputation, for the sake of being exalted or  best buddy with somebody. It's true, in the past it was worse, dailes were all the same every day. Now, in MoP they got more creative, with (a few) different dailies day in day out, multiplied the number of factions, normalized, so there's never a weird thing like "Go find Greg. Oh, you can't wowhead it ? That's right, you can't. He's somewhere in Jade Forest, but no one know where he is, as it's totally random. If you find it, you get kudos ! If you don't, you get paid by the time you spent searching for him".

Anyway, the strategy is the same,a nd I've told it here several times. You cap, you go into dungeons, you farm gear, you farm reputation, for more gear/enchants/whatever, so you can get into heroics and raids and... /yawn. Oh, yes, there's PVP too. You cap, you go into good old AV or good new.. (what's the name of the bg anyway ? haven't bothered to go inside, but will do soon) and farm HP, and cap arenas to get.. some gear.. for ... what was the goal anyway ? Ah, have fun.

Yes, fun ! That's what it was all about. So that's why we're killing every day, X mobs of this type, gather Y herbs of that type, destroy Z machines of that other type, and so on, and so forth, in a totally boring, repetitive way. When do you know it's happening ? When your brain is switched off or thinking about the boobs you saw last night, while you're doing the damn dailies and delivering the quests, not even bothering to read the quest, or how much rep you got that day. It's a damn fun way to spend your free time. Yeah, I know... i can quit.

The nicest thing, is that although there are guilds, you do 90% of this entire tasks and spend 90% of the time... alone. At least, I do. well, not always, there are guild runs for heroics, of course.

My first heroic, in a guild run. Not bad.

And there's guild chat :P

A few things are better with MoP:

World bosses are back (FINALLY!). On a PVP server, it's fun. Well, depends, if you have it tagged at 10% and the other faction shows up with killer instincts.

Rares are back. And some are hard as hell to kill.

Tiller's farmville is fun. Kind of. If you like the genre.

I hope there's some curry recipe somewhere. Because I love curry and I'm starving.

OMG. Curry. Now. Crave. Gotta go.

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.