Diablo III Beta

Although the Diablo III Beta was made available on Friday, we weren’t able to get in right away.  Unsurprisingly, there was rather a lot of interest in the game, and Blizzard had to limit the number of concurrent logins while dealing with various server and login issues.

The beta contained the first four chapters of Act 1: after defending the town against the rising dead, players go to the Cathedral to find out what happened to Deckard Cain, go in search of the mad King Leoric’s crown, and then put an end to the Skeleton King and free the land from his army of the dead!

All five classes were available to choose from, though you could only level each up to level 13 during the beta.

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Panda Crush

Last night’s foray into the Mists beta was an eye-opener.  So many people.. so much shouting, yelling and of course the spamming of broken macros over and over.  I had hoped a Saturday morning would have meant a little more space to breathe on the server.

My quest at hand was The Lesson of the Burning Scroll: snatch a flame from the Master and go to the top of the temple and burn the Edict of Temperance.

Note: you don’t do any snatching as the flame is simply added to your inventory as you accept the quest.. I saw lots of people spamming chat asking about the Flame, not realising that it had been added to their inventory.  Perhaps the quest has been done this way because players are clustering horribly on all quest givers and items, and if you had to actually click something in the Master’s hand, you’d be having problems like those trying to burn the Edict upstairs..

Uncountable masses of players were standing right in front of the spawn point of the Edict, some jumping, and many spamming “/c interact Edict of Temperance”.  This is part of a macro started as a joke that apparently doesn’t work at all.. not that it stops any of these people from trying, over and over again.

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Mists of OMG So Many Pandas

I finally got my own invite to the Mists of Pandaria beta this morning, having checked my email only minutes after finding out that the Diablo III beta is open this weekend as well!  Another weekend of beta gaming?  I nearly picked up some Relentless when we went shopping, too.

I’d been told the Pandaren starting area was busy.. but I don’t think I knew the meaning of “busy” before now!

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Weekend of Betas

A friend got his invite to the Mists of Pandaria beta this weekend, so while I was trying out TERA, he was busy checking out the Pandaren starting area!

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A Weekend of TERA

I’ve spent most of the weekend playing TERA, in the last stages of the mmo’s closed beta stage.

TERA has been touted as a new breed of MMO, with enhanced combat and tactics, relying on timing and position, as well as aiming.  The game world is massive, with gorgeous graphics, and there are seven character races and eight classes to choose from.

TERA has been in the news for their races and clothing designs, though.. with the European version of the game having censored versions of some models.  I’ll come back to that..

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Rediscovering Old Games: Diablo II

We were talking about old games during our lan week, and ended up heading for the spare room and the piles of older games stored in boxes up there.  There was excitement as we found copies of Rollercoaster Tycoon, Theme Hospital, Homeworld 2 and others.. and more mockery from the guys as it turned out I had a copy of Supreme Commander, after saying no, I didn’t know the game.  In my defense, it was in a multipack which I had picked up for Titan Quest and its Immortal Throne expansion, and the Company of Heroes Anthology.. 😉

I also found my copy of Diablo II, plus the Lord of Destruction expansion, which I had thought lost when we moved house!  After a bit of messing around.. updates, copying files to allow the game to run without the CD, registration to Battlenet.. I rolled a Sorceress and went out into the world..

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Serious Completion

We’ve had a friend round for a holiday this last week, so there was more gaming time than usual.. time to complete some games!

We completed the first in the series again a few weeks back, so went on to Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter.. with new weapons to mess around with: a chainsaw, flamethrower and a sniper rifle.  Killing enemies with the flamethrower netted me the Burn, Baby, Burn achievement, and I came close, but didn’t quite make the numbers for Bird Hunter or Space Marine.  Next time!

I loved the Medieval episode, with the huge cathedral.. for style as much as the huge open space.  While playing, we were noting just how big some of the maps are in this game.. something which has been lost a little as games are developed with more detail.. for performance and production time, I guess.

Crazy games like these are better with friends.. especially when there are so many relentless waves of enemies to be destroyed!

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Archaeology Pets

Archaeology was added to WoW as a secondary profession with the Cataclysm expansion, and one of the first things I heard about it was that I could get a pet through it.  However, I was also told that the pet depended on lots of grinding and some luck..

I’ve made a few runs for Archaeology, usually combining it with herb collecting or visiting a digsite if it was on my route, and I’ve collected a couple of toys: Ancient Amber, which traps your character in a chunk of amber for a while; the Druid and Priest Statue, which produces a beam of green light, and the Haunted War Drum, which sets a ghostly drum on the ground and plays a little drum sound too. 🙂

Only a few days back, I completed a Fossil artifact and found that my next one would be the Fossilized Hatchling!  Today, I completed it!

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Noblegarden Sugar High

After going out for dinner with a friend to celebrate his birthday, it was time to get started on the Noblegarden event in WoW!  The event’s main objective is to collect eggs from around certain locations; inside the eggs is chocolate, a buff that turns you into a rabbit, or a variety of other, more rare items including the Spring Rabbit which I got last year.

I managed to collect a lot of eggs.. something to do with the amount of wine drunk earlier in the evening, meaning that I was fairly content to run circuits of Bloodhoof Village grabbing eggs as I saw them.  I found the pet very quickly.. this went to Tim as I already had it.. but I also found the mount: the Swift Springstrider!

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Taming Troll Gods

In Northern Stranglethorn, we came across Pogeyan, the Fire Spirit!  He’s a large cat with a metallic sheen to his coat, and a rare mob too.. I was about to attack him, but I was reminded that as a Hunter, I could probably tame him instead..

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