Christmas Time Sinks.

Apologies for not blogging, the season caught me up and whisked me away.

As I previously mentioned, I started a Tauren Shaman on my friends server and sunk spare time pre-25th (and post) into levelling. I dinged 39 the other day, So its possible I will hit 60 and gear up a little in time for TBC.

Some other time I spent revisiting the Beta, I copied myself over again and it seems theyve changed alot of quests. Theres now green quest rewards from the first 2 Quests that put many non-raid-epic items to shame. Even then, The Epics are only a touch better. It will be good to know that in future my alts can gear up without UBRS/Strat etc - Although a sad thing, in my opinion.

For Christmas i got the usual Chocolate/Toiletries/Clothes/Money stuff. Appreciated.. really. I got a new Mobile Phone which was nice - Aswell as a watch, Also Helpful. But, What I really cared about were also gifted to me, Only two of them - but lovely computer games.

This Yule, I asked for Warhammer - Mark Of Chaos, And Medieval 2 - Total War. Most of my time since christmas has been spent exploring these new games.

Now. My Computer is beginning to lack, Although it has a decent graphics card, it only has 512mb of RAM, and the Processor (2.0GHz) is starting to get outdated. Hopefully ill replace it sometime this year. Medieval 2 - Total War and Warhammer - Mark Of Chaos both work, though.

Due to the above, Mark Of Chaos is more of a time sink than one would expect. Its a decent game, it plays well, it has a decent story line so far (I havn't completed the "Good" Campaign yet, or started the "Evil") - But, It loads sooooo much. With my poor RAM and Processor i spend most of the time loading. Suffice to say though, its worth it. If you want to try your hand at Mark Of Chaos, head over to Fileplanet - They have a demo for it, Aswell as MTW2.

Medieval 2 - Total War plays much like its predecessors, Except with a beefing up of the graphics, Added features, and so on. A complex game but thoroughly enjoyable. Again, grab the demo and try your hand at it.

So again, Apologies.

New Year is coming up and considering I dont drink much, I should be concious enough to do a Blog Post then, and beforehand/after, Of course. Merry Christmas/Non Celebration Period/Hannukah/Divali etc. (late i know) - And ill be blogging you a happy new year too!

Familiarity In WoW.

Quoting Last Comment Received: interesting topic for a next entry: which classes, races are you familiar with, why did you choose them and not something else?

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Well, Lets see.

My First Character in WoW was a Human Female Paladin, I don't know why I choose it, and to be honest i don't know now. Suffice to say, she made it to level 16 before i gave up.

My Second Character, again, for reasons unknown - was a Night Elf Druid, Male. He made it to level 18 done over a allnighter. Now he is level 44, but as an alt.

My Third Character was a more educated choice. As a Roleplayer I choose a race i felt comfortable in lore with, A Night Elf. I choose a Priest, as i was fond of the Warcraft 3 Priestesses and their attached lore, aswell as my guild being low on them at the time. Of course, for lore, i picked female. I could've chosen anything else, but for some reason i gravitated towards this choice.

I played Valiya very slowly over about 6 months. In the end she hit 60 with 18 Days Played. I took time to do all the instances, I got familiar with the shadow tree at the time, and when i respecced at level 58, i took time in the end game instances to familiarise myself with the talents i had chosen to be a good healer.

Then I began making alts. When i started doing this, i didnt pick for any particular reason. I chose what felt fun to play, First i had a go at the Rogue Class, my rogue now lingers at level 27.

The fate with many of my alts is, they dont get played, I have a level 42 Paladin, a Level 32 Warrior, i would like to think i have experience in all these classes, enough to make helpful comments when they are needed with a good understanding of how the class works and how the talents develop.

I have played every class to at least level 20, Except Warlock, However, I am close to 20 on my Warlock.

Whilst im not amazingly proficient at any one class, except maybe as a healbot. I feel that becoming familiar with every class, and ultimately, rolling every race except Orc - I have a good understanding of how all classes work, and what one should expect of them.

You wont see me whining about any class or race and how "unfair" something is - there is no point, and ive experienced many of these classes own problems first hand.

Im now levelling a Tauren Shaman - I wont be doing many instances with him as i need him 60 ASAP for TBC things with my friend, but ill keep you guys posted. This Shaman is on a different realm, and purely chosen because i like taurens and the shaman class of the horde.

Ultimately, racials are helpful, and classes all fullfill one role, but they should be allowed to branch out. A paladin CAN dps, a druid CAN tank (Ive tanked Gnomeregan (Yeh..) and Scarlet Monastery).

So, go and make a character, level it at least 20. Its a good learning experience and you can start to comprehend the up's and down's of classes you want to know about.

Beta Blues - Musings again.

Yeah,

I kept being adamant about not touching the burning crusade beta as id have to do it again later. But i fired it up again and In all fairness i thought it would be a learning experience. A little while after logging in, the servers went down for a patch so thus my blues!

But still, it reminds me how much my character has changed since i copied her to beta a month or two ago.

My character now is pretty well equipped considering, aswell as having an epic mount, etc. Whilst me a month ago still had a blue mount, almost entire blue equip... and meh! In BC i do have more spell damage from some of the equipment ive picked up though. Ill probably just be working my way through it just to know what to expect come release lets face it its imminent and i doubt ill touch much, besides - i read enough about it to ruin it for me anyway :D.

So thats the plan.

I hope blizard give us some premades for at least a short period of time, considering all the nay-sayers ever say is "omg epiked 70's nuuu" its pointless trying to have a constructive discussion on the beta forums.

Many have simply asked for tier 0 equipped level 60 Draenei and Blood Elves just to test their integration into group makeups and the overall impact on instance balance on a large scale, aswell as raids. I'd be happy with that I really would, but it needs to be soon or there will be no reason to do it, due to time constraints. Blizzard could of released dungeons fully tested by a decent raid composition on a larger scale than they have with "internal testing" - which may be effective but - in my opinion doesnt really get the full picture.

But no - unfortunately not yet a reality. Maybe it will come as a christmas present. Me being sad and all that - it would probably be a pleasant one, as ill be sat here come christmas day playing away on games and a little foray on WoW too.

Bring on the Gnomish Crusade i say!

Ooh, new formating for links... eh sorry, haha.

On that note, Christmas is 5 days away folks. What are you hoping on unwrapping this yule?

Post 2.0 Neffy Down

My Raid Comm did their first serious Nefarian attempt yesterday, suffice to say, with only one wipe getting the Drakonids down right, we succeeded in downing him, with no shaman loot popping up :D.

Instead of the former battleshout tactics, it seems weve adopted mass Paladin bollards doing consecration and such, of course, first time being .. first, too many pallies died and the drakonids ate the healers, but second time went perfect. Nefarian dead.

We hit Onyxia's Lair and downed her in the usual 7 mins it takes to down her hiney, Stormrage dropped, druid who needed it not present, sharded >_<... Judgement dropped, Paladin who needed it left, sharded >_< ! BAH!

Nevertheless, we hit MC with some Alts of members on a rolling for loot run, And i got my Girdle Of Prophecy (only piece of prophecy to drop). Fun stuff!

Im tempted to try PvP, but i cant really muster the effort to do anything there aside from heal, and then get a flurry of shots from hunters and die, which aint really my thing. Maybe when the epic'd out guys looking to get a high warlord blade or something are done, I might.

That was really the last raid i had to attend, with the time clear for christmas, i dont know what ill do. Maybe continue levelling an alt, or something, Take a look around and dabble in the beta, maybe.

A Spate Of Writing - Winter Veil, And Yet More Roleplay Banter

Yeh, I kind of put off posting due to Tired-ness, Visitors, and Coursework, but hey, you dont care about that sort of stuff :P.

So ive done my spate of writing. But hey.

I Bought World Of Warcraft in December 2005 - Post Winter Veil, Moving From SWG, which i sometimes fire up, subscribe to, and play for a while. Anyway, So this year would be my first Winter Veil in WoW .. yay :D. I only started playing properly in March, When I created Valiya and began to level her, slowly. I only hit 60 in.. Hmm, Early August? This year, but with only 18 Days Played, so it kind of worked out as a pretty fast levelling time, just spread out over a longer time period. The Way it should be?

I now have a level 44 Druid, Level 42 Paladin, numerous 20-30 alts, something i never thought i would have, I raid, something i never thought i would do - I managed to see Nefarian die before BC, and AFAIK, my raid community intends to hit Naxx for the "levelling" loot and for the experience, which even though designed for 40 people, can probably only help in Burning Crusade.

I am getting Medieval - Total War 2, and Warhammer: Mark Of Chaos, for our own version of Winter Veil here, aswell as the usual, and some money. So my next break from WoW will be then. Hopefully by the time BC is released, My Druid at least will of hit 60, Just for chance at Flight Form at 68 :D.

Yeah, Plan Ahead.

Now, I havnt roleplayed in WoW for quite a time now. If i login, its to level an alt or hit Blackwing Lair/Molten Core, or another raid im interested in helping out. (Which is a fair majority). Something I commented on is how Blizzard doesnt offer much customisation to Roleplayers in terms of actual in-game content.

Now, "RP'ers" in WoW have coped well enough, afterall, one only needs an imagination and a good way with words to succeed. Addons have sprung up, such as Epheremal (Make your own books, copy books in game, write poems, descriptions etc.) and FlagRSP (Mainly designed to just provide descriptions etc.) - The Problem with this is a fairly obvious, yet simple one - People abuse it, they dont "Describe themselves" as you see them walking by in a street in Stormwind, they describe their entire lives stories in some cases (Many good Roleplayers dont, obviously, as they understand.). The funniest of which tend to devolve into (If this was a game, ESRB warning would be imminent) - "Her Breasts are the largest you have ever seen." - "This girl has a beautiful face and big breasts which you would love to enjoy" .. and so on, such as "When he was a baby he would kill wolves and then eat them and then he grew up and was strong but then he turned into a vampire and then he killed Arthas"... yeah.

The only way to avoid catching that when you click someone, is to not read it, obviously. There have been topics with a huge amounts of posts in the forums, simply asking for a Roleplay Content patch, and roleplayers in general have been ignored and not even given a token amount of consideration. But, Live and let die, and make do, I suppose.

Isnt that always the way?

Burning Crusade, And Peoples Knowledge. - Further Musings

The Burning Crusade Closed Beta was annoying, today, I felt like trying out the Starter area with the Mage Class of character, seeing how it operated, how successful it was, mainly due to the "better" rewards and such, aswell as the racial abilities.

Unfortunately, it is not to be. There are no mobs on the PvE Server, and I couldnt be bothered to change server :D. It seems this has still not been resolved .. so .. oh well, another day maybe.

Moving On, I was browsing the beta forums and came across Sylvanas Windrunner Singing. It cant really be the banshees, as she begins prior to them appearing, and they appear to be giving the background.

Now this is what im talking about in terms of Blizzards sheer awesomeness, when they buckle down to it. The quest is started by finding a pendant from a mob drop (a random mob, dont remember where my pally got it, but i havnt handed it in yet) in the Ghostlands. Now, previously, she would "throw" the pendant down, and nothing would happen, so this seems like a new addition, and one i welcome.

With more neat things like this spread about in WoW, it makes it that more exciting to do things, to explore and uncover them. Which is what WoW is all about.

The Lyrics For The Song Are:
Anar'alah, anar'alah belore.
Sin'dorei.
Shindu fallah na.
Sin'dorei.
Anar'alah.
Shindu sin'dorei.
Shindu fallah na.
Sin'dorei.
Anar'alah belore.
Shindu sin'dorei.
Shindu fallah na.
Sin'dorei.
Anar'alah belore.
Belore.

Apparently, This Translates to:
'By the light of the sun, Children of the Bloodline,'
'Their breaking through, Children of the Bloodline.'

Now there is some (stupid) debate's on youtube that you can read. About how shes trying to warn the "Sin'Dorei" (which are a relatively new faction) that the undead are "breaking through" some also seem to think that shes warning them about their addiction. Though my view is that - As she has her own voice in this song, and not that of a banshee, that she may be refering to The Sin'Dorei themselves, breaking through the undead, as they have done, into the Ghostlands and now joining with Sylvanas's Forsaken. Though my thoughts sounded better in my head, its upto you to decide.

In the topic on the forum, and indeed on Youtube, people refer to her model and how that now there are proper High Elf/Blood Elf models, she should be changed. I agree with this. For all of you out there who think she "possessed" a night elf, or whatnot - This is exactly how she got her body.

"In Reward for her service to the Lich King, Sylvanas was granted her own body to inhabit once again."

Now i cant remember where in the hell i read it, but i know i did, and i know it was something alot more trustworthy than most sites out there. Thus her model should be changed.

But keep up the work blizzard, we need more quest hand-ins like this!

The Burning Crusade Introduction.

Blizzard Released the introduction to the burning crusade on the 14th for me, and all I can say is wow.

You can find the introduction here, - or on the US website. Not that I feel it makes any difference for those of us with English as our primary language, although EU offers other languages, anyway, I diverge.

Blizzard, in my opinion, since i first played Warcraft 2 as a small child (ya, really..) and then Starcraft, have been at least good with all of their cinematics. When warcraft 3 was released, I beleive it won awards for its cinematics, Frozen Throne bought us more, infact, if you dont have these games, get them, just for the cinematics.

I dont know how or why, but i do know blizzard is brilliant at making cinematics - I particularly liked the comical murloc and polymorph moment in the introduction. This eases my fears over any possible movie, considering its likely to be a CGI movie, And its "moved away" from traditional lore, it should be pretty awesome if blizzard have anything to do with it.

Why did you roll here?

Its a puzzling question, why did you roll here?

For those of you out of the know, "roll" tends to refer to starting a character, and "rerolling" as restarting a character, often of a different race or class.

Im refering to my realm in particular here, and RP realms in general, be they RP PvE or RP PvP, And the current level of complete idiocy im happening to be allowed to witness. Now, Ok, sure, I rolled Night Elf, Female, But in my defence, I did it for the Lore, not the dance, and Im a Priest, hardly a "5min stealth uber rogue" (Im refering to those PvP movies where the rogue proceeds to slice and dice (excuse my pun) his way across the battleground, mainly after spending 5 mins in stealth waiting for his cooldowns to finish).

As I was saying, Im beginning to question why people have rolled on these Realms, they are realms specifically created to house roleplayers, who play exactly the same everyone else does, but choose, on occassion, or frequently, to live their characters and bring them into a new light, which is cool, really.

Since the advent of Cross-Realm Battlegrounds, our realm forums, and untill recently, LFG channel, have been frequented by visitors, Kind and... not so kind, from the other realms in our group, which are all, fascinatingly, PvP. Whether they be kind words from a good fight, or a rant from some little kid who got creamed by someone from a roleplay server, which as i have said, plays the same way any other server does.

Im seeing more people on my server who dont roleplay, walk around with names like "Ragnaaroos" and "Assassinelfx" and "Horneeygnome", to add insult to injury, they all manage to get above level 30 before they magically disappear.

Although my Night Elf's name, Valiya, may not be particularly elvish, i say it depends on the pronounciation, and my guild is just a little bit of humour, im getting quite sick of the lack of respect for RP realms, on a non RP PvE realm, i dont tend to mind, it doesnt ruin the atmosphere im playing in there, and i dont play on PvP realms very often, so i have no impression of them, though it would probably be the same.

I suppose i wouldnt really mind, but the GM's have other things to deal with than name changes, I feel... what really makes me annoyed is the fact that Argent Dawn is full, and this summer there were annoying queues, Although its easy to blame gold farming bots and how they take up slots, i feel those who have no respect, or are even aware of what realm type they are on, should take some responsibility.

What do you think?

Legacy & More.

No, im not feeling high and mighty, Im refering to Bethesda Softworks - Star Trek Legacy, the newest in the line of Star Trek Games.

Star Trek Legacy, For PC, at least, has been fairly hyped up about, There are apparently versions coming out for Xbox, aswell as some other games, though i beleive they are all console based, correct me if im wrong.

Unfortunately, The hype may of been a lil more damaging for those of us out there hungering for something to fill the void, in the lieu of new trek games. Sure, its a good game, it plays ... well, it plays ok, it looks good, the captains are all voiced by their real life counterparts, and its a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

It just... lacks.. fullfillment, Maybe multiplayer would change that, but after experiences in Starfleet Command 3, I think i'd rather not.

For those of you out there who played Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, the game has a remarkably similar feel, fleet based combat, fullfilling objectives, and such on. My quarrel isnt with the game, although it plays very badly sometimes, Sound, for me, was choppy, aswell as the extra movies not being very co-operative, but the lack of.. completeness, to the story. (Though the extra's are meant to fill that in).

The Legacy Forums, are seemingly frequented by the story writers and other such people, who make comments about the lack of.. overall fullfillment in the game, mentioning how some things had to be dropped, and if they could, such and such would of been kept in, it seems the entire games CGI Cinematics were axed, but that could just be my crazy eyes.

It seems that games are taking the move away from decent story telling thats well fleshed out, in a attempt to publish early for whatever reason, Warcraft 2 had a great storyline, As did Warcraft 3, Starcraft (Hmm.. all Blizzard Classics) and the epics like Freelancer and Freespace, whilst newer games seem to be flashy, but lacking what matters to me, the story, and generally, suffering in the way they play.

Legacy does have a great storyline, I suppose, and if you read a little and view the extra's, you can learn how the borg came to be and other little snippets, so dont judge Legacy on the above comment, I just feel Bethesda should of given it a little more time.

Anyway, if you have the money, it might be worth it if you like the genre, or just general tactical space combat, but, if you dont, dont worry, your not missing out on anything too ground breaking.

Moving on, I havnt touched WoW for a little while, Though im probably going to continue raiding with my Priest untill the launch of BC, then the levelling grind, I am hoping to get my 2 alts, who are in the 40's, upto the big 60 and maybe speed my lil level 16 lock up, For the record, Xaylissa should be the name of my Blood Elf mage, come launch of BC, and for those of you who care, Im on Argent Dawn, RP PvE, WoW-Europe.

It seems this week, according to Xfire, at least, ive played Warcraft 3 - The Frozen Throne, more than I have WoW, which is fine, The Classic Wc3 will never die for me, its still great, and theres plenty of "roleplay" and other maps still hosted on USEast, although my former love of USWest seems to of died miserably into DotA land.

And on a closing note, enjoy Basshunter's DotA song, and others HERE.

So it begins..

Y, Halo Thar.

Sorry, anyway, This is my first blog and I doubt anyone will ever find it, but hey! Im inspired, and so what does inspiration do? Take control.. or not, Suffice to say, I feel I can contribute an hour a day to this, regardless of who reads it, or not, as the case may be.

And so, It begins!