Children’s Week Pets and the Sea Turtle!
Children’s Week brought the opportunity to grab a few more additions to my pet collection, with Speedy from the quests in Orgrimmar, the Curious Wolvar Pup from Dalaran, and Peanut from the quests in Shattrath!
The Last of the Wandering Isle
I just had a few more quests to do in the Pandaren starting area: helping the Alliance survivors with a few quests. An NPC in the Alliance camp had a plan for removing the wrecked ship from Shen-zin Su’s side.. blow the ship free with explosives, and then heal the wound.. I was amused at the NPC’s name here: Makael Bay 🙂
While the Horde refugees had been under attack from tigers in the forest, the Alliance camp was under attack from more aggressive attackers. I found it surprisingly awkward to snag enemies as they ran past me.. the Mistweaver specialisation at this stage has no ranged attack. This was a first for me; most of my playtime has been as a caster, and when I started levelling a Warrior I had a gun during the early levels.
Other quests had us gather lost supplies, and then there was the None Left Behind quest, which had me rescue Injured Sailors..
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.
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!
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..
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!
Back to World of Warcraft
It had to happen eventually.. I’m back playing WoW! I’ve also signed up for the Annual Pass, which will allow me to play with the beta for MoP as well as granting me a copy of Diablo III. I suspect I won’t be playing a lot of WoW when I get my hands on Diablo III, but still.. I think it’s a good deal 🙂
I’m levelling a Troll Hunter alongside a friend’s Priest, at a somewhat relaxed pace.. enjoying the quests, especially when they involve explosions 😉
Diablo III Releases on May 15th!
Diablo III is to be released on May 15th.. a global release (or at least nearly global) with both retail and digital being made available at the same time. You can pre-purchase the game now from Blizzard, for £44.99.
Those who have signed up for the World of Warcraft Annual Pass will get the game for free, along with the Tyrael’s Charger mount and beta access to the next expansion: Mists of Pandaria.
I’m really looking forward to the game. Two months to clear my backlog first, though? Unlikely to happen! 😀
The Resurrected Scroll of Resurrection, and Other News
Blizzard are encouraging WoW players to bring their friends back to the game, with the latest version of their Scroll of Resurrection. The player referring their friend gets a Spectral Mount, while the returning player gets a free upgrade to Cataclysm, a boost to level 80 for one character, and free character move if required, so they can join their friend’s realm and faction.
Are we being exploited by DLC?
Spurred on by the debate around the Mass Effect 3 DLC, I started writing some thoughts down.. but it quickly turned into a definite TL;DR with DLC, online passes, pre-order bonuses, retailer exclusives and the fight against used games.. as well as the all-too-common cry that customers are being exploited.
So.. I’ve split it all up, with this part mainly being about DLC, in-game purchases and other bonuses, and another part to come about the fight against used games. I’ve mentioned a few games or companies in my examples here.. either because they were the first or best example to come to mind, or because I know that product better. I’m sure I’ve missed some great examples, and although I’ve checked my facts, I may have something wrong or out of date in here.. so feel free to let me know in the comments 🙂
The first Mass Effect 3 DLC pack appeared briefly on the Xbox Live Marketplace last week, and stirred up quite a debate about exploitation.
One complaint against DLC is that it provides an incentive for developers to withhold part of the game to charge more for it later.. or even on the same day, in the case of Day 1 or unlocks of content from the game disk itself. You can’t return DLC if you don’t enjoy it, nor can you sell it on as it’s usually tied to your game account. Other complaints are about price (Modern Warfare 2’s ‘Stimulus Package’: £10 for 5 maps, two of which were re-releases), or the worth of the DLC (Oblivion’s Horse Armour), and then there’s the idea that it’s only being produced to milk consumers for every last penny. (more…)