Pirates’ Day

So, it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day.. yarrrr!

My attempt to join a multiplayer game in Saints Row 2 failed spectacularly, as I couldn’t actually join a game 🙁

Instead I went to Booty Bay and joined the Dread Captain DeMeza as a pirate 🙂

The Explorer

During my alone time on WoW, I’ve been exploring the map, aiming for the ‘The Explorer’ title.
I now have a companion for this, so instead of just seeing the world, I can meet interesting new creatures.. and kill them!  Well, some of them.  Unless they get us first..

Last weekend, I went to see some dragons.. including Emeriss, who was just minding his own business, guarding a portal to the Emerald Dream when we came along.  My character is only the same size as one of his talons, so naturally I wanted to take him on!
However, he put us to sleep rather quickly with a nasty gas cloud, and killed us.

Following the Retaking the Echo Isles quest line, and Zalazane’s Fall (which I finally got round to posting about), three of us took a quick trip to a secret island.. and I got to ride in the sidecar 🙂

Getting to the island required water-walking and a speed buff.. watching the Fatigue appear and yet carrying on was a bit weird, but we were past the dark water before that ran out.  Yay, secret.. ok, not-so-secret island! 🙂

Last night’s exploration was back to normal running and flying around in Outland.  As I wandered through Terrokar Forest I saw something red moving around near the edge of the mountains, which turned out to be a massive spider!  After my recent encounters with spiders in Limbo, this one wasn’t going to be spared..

My oh-so-lovely friend told me he’d laugh if I died, but the spider was no trouble and I even ended up killing him too quickly.. I was still fiddling with screenshots!

Next up was a trip to Shadowmoon Valley.. as well as the exploration, there’s also a bunch of quests and some rep to earn here, so I can have a Netherwing Drake as a mount.

On the way there, we came across a lil doggy, who I was challenged to kill for 100 gold.  Ok, so the doggy isn’t small.. he also has two heads, and breathes fire.  I found the fire was hard to really escape from.. except for when he used an ability to send me running away then breathed fire!

He was fun to fight, but I also enjoyed taking a guildmate’s gold 😉

I wanted to take a nice screenshot of Uvuros after I took him out, but another spawned almost right on top of me before I was done.  My friend dealt with this one.. flames 😀

Retaking the Echo Isles

In preparation for Cataclysm, a nice new quest line opened up: help the Darkspear Trolls retake their homeland!

It started simple.. collecting frogs, which we then threw at markers on the islands.. all completed a bit too easily because of the low level and being in a group.  Trollin’ for Volunteers was more fun.. despite us quickly getting the required five Troll volunteers, we were able to carry on recruiting until we each had five followers!

This nice little army followed us all the way back to Sen’jin Village.. 🙂

After consulting with the spirits and receiving our rewards, I was amused by the Darkspear Pride item, which allows me to transform into a Darkspear Warrior..

We had to wait to do the last stage though, as there was already somebody doing it.  They took rather a long time, and due to this, my transformation wore off before we actually got to fight. 🙁

The fighting itself was rather hectic.. lots of enemies meant lots of Mind Sear 🙂

I now only wish I’d levelled something on the Alliance side, so I could play through the Gnomeregan quest line too.  Ah well.. can’t have it all..

The Wrathgate and Beyond

After moving on to Northrend, the quests have been more grouped together, and following a rather more clear plot.  Moving on to Dragonblight, we got even more impressive plot line, with an increased use of vehicles and flight.

We failed one mission in amazing style: we were escorting some Taunka refugees who just couldn’t keep up with the Rocket..  we turned around to find they had stopped following us and died on the path.  We went a lot slower the second time, and managed to get them to safety 😉

I loved the look of the Forsaken buildings at Venomspite..

More quests involved playing with Blight specimens, including a particularly fun quest with some blight spreader vehicles.  After figuring out how to drive these, firing Blight bombs at the undead was quite satisfying 🙂

The very impressive Wrathgate was the last place to approach..

Outside the Wrathgate, there was a huge battle, which gave us a pretty epic cutscene to watch..

Horde and Alliance forces working together to call out the Lich King, only to be attacked from behind by the Forsaken!  Wait.. I thought they were on our side?

The Forsaken were driven back by the dragons, but only after plenty of death and destruction.  Oh, and fire!

Saurfang the Younger was killed by the Lich King, and so we headed back to Warsong Hold to tell his father, then to Orgrimmar.

Here we found many changes, with refugees camped out everywhere, and some unhappy shopkeepers..
In Thrall’s room, there were visitors: Sylvanas Windrunner, who had fled the Undercity, and Jaina Proudmoore, who had come to ask what the hell was going on..

I found this more motivating than the normal quests, with a bit more story to it.  The large scale battles were part of the draw too..

We headed to Undercity to take it back and kill those responsible for the backstabbing!  Here we were seriously buffed up, and for once I didn’t need to worry about my health bar 🙂

The bigger mobs were especially fun to hit while in this state, as were the large packs of mobs which I hit with AOE spell Mind Sear for lots of damage 🙂
Again, a nice change from normal as I normally heal team-mates rather than smack mobs.

The flying doomguards were harder to target as they were flying in and out of range.  Still, they eventually went down too..

Varimathras had been taunting us while we made our way through the Undercity, destroying the lift and later blocking off the corridor to the Royal Quarter.

We eventually got to him though, and started on him as he attempted to summon demons from portals around the room.
There was also another mysterious voice, telling Varimathras he has failed him.  Possible future quest line?

Amazing Flying Carpet

So I thought the X-53 Touring Rocket was awesome.. there was more to come!

For a quest in Northrend we were placed on these beauties! 😀

Darkmoon Faire

Another in-game event, the Faire happens once a month, and so this is my first one.
The wagons appeared the day before the faire was to start:

I’m still being surprised by how things change in the game world.  I think if I’d have come across these by myself, I would have wondered what was going on, but I might not have thought to check back..

Darkmoon Faire is easy to get to for anybody this month, being close to a starting area.  At other times it appears in rather more high-level areas.. keeps things interesting, though.

Within the Faire there are various traders, some of which sell more unusual items, along with some interesting characters such as the strongest woman, all with little quests to earn tickets.  The tickets can be turned in for random items, as with the blossoms at the Midsummer Fire Festival.

There was also an odd little character selling frog boxes, and I picked up a couple of new pets to add to the collection 😉

I also had myself fired from a cannon, but was unable to land dead-centre in the target, a lake a little further away.  Nice flight though 😀

X-53 Touring Rocket

There’s something quite clever about the Recruit-a-Friend programme on WoW.. aside from the useful Summon spell, and the increased XP when working together, there is also the awesome X-53 Touring Rocket.  This is a reward given to the veteran once the recruit has actually joined the game as a fully paid member.  Good for Blizzard, and definitely good for those getting the rocket 😉

My friend finally earned his this weekend, and we’re using it at every chance we can get..

As it’s a two-seater, it means you don’t need to buy a flying mount each, and well.. it’s a rocket.

Who doesn’t love a nice big rocket?  Innuendos aside, it does look pretty awesome 🙂

Two Taurens

This will be the third pair of characters made with a friend, but this time, we’re levelling two of the same race and class.

We’re Tauren Druids this time, which means early levelling in the lovely, peaceful Mulgore.  After that I’m not too sure where we’re heading, but it does feel like there’s still more to learn with this character than with previous ones, especially since these have multiple forms.  More to learn, maybe more stress, but who knows?

I think the bear form is a bit ugly, but I do quite like the travel form.  Here, kitty kitty..

Midsummer Fire Festival

It’s the first time I’ve seen a holiday event in WoW, and I have to say it was much more of a big thing than I’d have expected.

The first I knew of it, we had been hit with a buff seemingly out of nowhere, and at first I was looking around for a random other player who might have done it.

So we began visiting bonfires – including the Alliance’s bonfires, which we of course chose to desecrate.  This resulted in us being flagged for PvP, and in one instance, being chased by some guys who were a lot higher level.  I managed to get away, but they killed poor Vorlak 😉

There are tokens to be won for completing various quests, some more involved, and some rather more ‘fun’ tasks, such as torch tossing and torch catching!  I found throwing the torches onto the required targets fairly easy to do, but throwing and catching a torch was much more difficult, especially with other people’s thrown torches in the air too.

The tokens can be redeemed for various goodies, the most expensive of which is a small pet, the Captured Flame.
The festival is running for another two weeks, so I’m hoping I can get enough tokens together for this..

In the meantime, we’re on a mission to collect another pet, the Mechanical Chicken!  We’ve rescued two OOX homing robots so far, and have one more to go!

Tarithel and Erilas

So I had my trial of WoW, and enjoyed it enough that I went ahead and got the game.  I managed to pick up the game plus expansions (Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King) for just under £30, and for the play-time I’ve had so far, I figure it’s worth it.

Thanks to the Recruit A Friend bonus, I’ve been levelling with a friend at a rather breakneck speed, as well as the now obligatory sight-seeing.  I’m loving the damage I can do as a fire mage – well, it’s hard to go wrong with fire, really!
We’ve ventured into a few dungeons, and so far the randoms we’ve met haven’t included too many idiots, though there always will be a few.

Here are Tarithel, destructive fire mage, and Erilas, awesome priest healer, posing just a little bit 😉

As for the few concerns I’ve had about becoming addicted – we’re still finding time to play other games, and go out and see friends, so it can’t be quite that bad 😀