Hand of Argus

Catch up and the long absence

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 23:54:00 +0000

It's been over 5 weeks now since my last post and time sure has gone by fast.

So where have I been? To be honest when I started my absence there really was not a lot going on, there were some real life caused attendance issues slowing raiding and I was not spending much time on WoW outside of that.

The first few weeks were mostly just filled with me leveling my new Mage alt who hit 15 via RaF in the last day of the offer.
I had brought a copy of WoW classic from the Christmas special for $5 US and signed a new email address up for it. I then recruited that email under my main account and just forgot about it.
Somewhere in January I finally got round to buying my first month of game time for the second account and then with plans to dual box them, I forgot about it.
With RaF coming to a close at the end of Feb I got off my behind and finished the payments to net Orth his rocket mount and finally taught myself the art of dual boxing.

I have to say once I got my head around the initial complexity of the task it was quite fun. There were still several issues that I would no doubt sort out if I was to do it again but it worked well enough for the day I had left.
I rolled a Mage on my main account and a hunter on my second and sent them off into Elwynn forest where they quickly leveled through, stomping their way over mobs.
My night of dual boxing finished after an hour or so when they hit 15 in Redridge.

Once my blog break had started and raiding had slowed I decided to keep leveling my Mage without the restrictions that the RaF posed. So later that night she stood in heirloom gear and off she went.
I really was enjoying leveling her, for the first time since my Priest I was having fun on an alt and better still I could level her without my partner who my Priest still waits to level with.

The best part about leveling the Mage is being able to see the new Cataclysm world for the first time. Blizzard have really done a nice job on the revamp, there are so many new quests and zones just flow so much better now. It is great to enter a zone like Redridge and have all your quests flow from 2 or so stories into one zone wide piece of lore.

At the moment my Mage sits at 65 having just finished Hellfire and is ready for the painful 3 level slog needed to get out of tired Outland. After taking 5 character through OL it really is getting old and for the first time since creation the desire to level her has slowed.
However Northrend is next and of those 5 toons that have been through OL only 2 have made it through NR so I hope that it is a little less painful.

Guild wise things are finally looking up. Peoples new born babies are settling in, members who were previously without are finding new jobs and with people gaining more free time and a few new recruits we are now able to run most weeks PuG free with the promise of constant full guild runs waiting on a few more members to return.

As a nice side effect of a more active guild we have finally managed to hit guild level 10, opening up the heirloom cloaks to further boost my Mage's leveling.

With guild members coming back we have finally been able to step the raiding up.

We started with a move deeper into BWD to take on and quickly down Maloriak. This fight is another great fight for rebuke where I can be in charge of the first few interrupts and the other interrupters never have to worry about that one spell.

A Concave kill in the Throne of the Four Winds followed the next week. While this was not our first kill in TotFW, a power cut forced us to over PuG the week before and it had not counted as a guild kill.

That week ended with a few attempts on Atramedes just to see the fight. Even though we were not on him long we were constantly making 50% and left him there confident he would soon fall.

The next week was sent to move into BoT finally and get some work done there.
After clearing out our 3 in BWD we moved to quickly wipe out Halfus and move to the Double Dragons.
The fight was messy to say the least. The PuG's did not listen and very quickly died taking out a DPS and Healer wit them. Down a healer things slowly got worse as the other 2 did not have the mana to keep up with all the damage.
Eventually they got low on health and we pushed hard with the few people who were left.
The last percent of health got closer and closer and then finally not without taking one more with them the Dragons died leaving 3 people including myself alive. It was a one shot, messy as anything but a one shot.

The rest of the night was spent on the Council fight where we got to know the mechanics and were getting to phase 2 and even phase 3 on some attempts.

This catches us up to last week.

Wednesday me and my partner did not raid as I took her out to dinner for her Birthday, the guild however pulled in some PuG's and cleared our 3 in BWD without us. I was proud to see everyone still show up and my officers take over and lead a successful raid without me.

Thursday was spent on Atramedes where despite some close attempts we were unable to down him.

Friday was dedicated to BoT again and this time we had to go deeper. Progression.
As expected Halfus fell quickly and we moved to the Dragons. This week was not a one shot like the week before however there were several new guildies there as well as PuG's. Never the less we got them down and moved to the Council again.

The Council fight was picked up by everyone really quick including those that missed the week before. Nearly right away we were pushing phase 3 where we quickly discovered that we could not bring him down unless all 4 previous bosses were taken to 25% equally and we had all our DPS alive into phase 3.
We had many attempts where we would wipe sub 5% due to having a DPS die early to to a mistake or just plain bad luck. To many times did we push into phase 3 with all alive just to have to Ice boss throw off a Hydrolance right after a Glaciate and kill a DPS because I could not interrupt.
Finally though towards the end of the night we got an attempt without bad luck and easily pushed through the final phase for the kill.

That night ended with a brief look into Cho'gall's chamber.

This weeks raids come tonight and our main goal this week, Cho'gall.

Raid catchup and Rebuke Day

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:25:00 +0000

Its been a busy past week and a bit for me and real life has keep me from posting on the large array of things that have been happening since my Rift post.

Our first proper raid week started very nicely 3 weeks ago, with me managing to pick up some new BoE shoulders from the trash Mobs.

That same night we got our first kill of the current expansion downing Halfus with the Dreaded Nether, Slate and Storm combo. This is defiantly a nasty set up and a big thanks goes out to the Mage who we taught to blink and interrupt the Shadow Nova after the Furious howl, you defiantly helped to compensate for the other PuG's in the group with that.

From then on Halfus has been on farm with the combos getting easier each time until this week when everyone had the simplest combo by far; Nether, Whelps and Time.
I'm not sure how much the 4.0.6 changes made to this fight being such and easy combo that will have to wait till next week to see.
Because of the lack of MS or Shadow Nova we were able to release the Nether and Whelps at once cutting the damage almost completely to my new OT who is finally raid ready.
The Time Warden was released very shortly after while the Nether Scion and Whelps were still dieing and once they were all dead it was a nice easy burn to an achievement.

Two weeks ago we got our first Magmaw kill after finally getting some PuG's in that could switch targets and kill the adds quickly. It truly is amazing how much simpler that fight got once people were getting onto those adds quickly.

In fact the fight went so well that our first kill also netted us this achievement.

We also put some attempts into the Omnotron Counsel that week but only managed a 5% wipe before the PuG's had to leave and the raid was called.

Then this week before raids patch 4.0.6 hit and what a mixed bag our 'Rebuke Day' was.
We all got Rebuke trainable baseline at 54 and there was much rejoicing, then we find a stealth change to the way HP is generated and the rejoicing is hidden by anger and confusion.
For many people they just decided to live with the new change and deal with any missed attacks as they came, which is a fair choice and keeping your survivability up is a nice bonus to that. For me being a 10man raider the good and bad went hand in hand. Getting Rebuke changes a lot for our raid as it no longer means that DPS have to watch Shadow Nova or gimp their damage by watching Arcane Annihilator on Omnotron.
To make sure that I am not letting the raid down on interrupts I need to be hit capped which as a result means the HP change has very little effect on me.
Sure I have lost 7% odd Mastery but in exchange I get a boost to Threat/Damage and can interrupt reliably and boost raid damage to.

That brings us to this week where after downing Halfus as already mentioned we moved on to try the Double Dragons.
We had seen this fight briefly the week before but had not put many attempts into them.
As we had already picked up last week we had Phase one and its transition down pack with just a little refinement to do on the Blackouts.
Phase two however was still causing issues with the ranged slowly being picked off. There were revisions made to the strat an we were reliably hitting the 50% mark on transition before we wiped. The night was then called with the plan to come back the next night.

Thursday came around and our PuG from the previous night had to drop due to being called to raid on his main. As a result we left BoT and headed for BWL to start its progress a night early.

A quick pop to town to fill the missing spots and we were in BWL clearing trash to Magmaw while the PuG Mage 'fixed' his internet.
The PuG Mage proceeded to do no damage on trash and spent half the time offline. At the boss we finally managed to get him on vent to find that not only is he a immature 14 year old but he also has very little clue about his class and is running 2k latency.
We proceeded to try anyway and immediately wipe because as I ran in I clipped the windows key while hitting shift to pop wings. Naturally I was tabbed out and ran directly off the edge into the lava.
Hilarity ensued and once we had recovered and several jokes had been made on my behalf we tried again, this time the Mage DC'd again as my AS missed and the PuG Resto Druid pulled aggro and was one shot.
With our bad luck out of the way we kicked the Mage and eventually pulled in a Hunter.
With the group back in Magmaw's room we then swiftly took the bugger down and moved across the hall to Omnotron.

Omnotron went well considering we had several players that had never seen the fight. Once we got past the first 'Never seen the fight' wipes we were making good progress.
Slimes were taken care of quickly, the Flame thrower was handled very well and my shiny friend Rebuke helped AS keep Arcanotron locked down while his shield was up.
A few 10-15% wipes later and they were down, opening the gate to BWD's insides for the first time.

We of cause popped our heads inside for a look around before calling it a night with both PuG's set to come back and our biggest raid night still ahead of us.

Friday came around and despite putting a whole night into them we only managed to get Maloriak and Chimaeron down to 50% each.
It is defiantly nice to have some challenging raid content to work on after WotLK and I can't want to get back in next week, get those guys down and see what the later bosses bring.

Belated Blog-iversary

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 04:08:00 +0000

With all the playing Rift, going to friends weddings and raiding that went down I completely missed a very important event.

Thursday been was my one year anniversary of my first ever Blog post.

It really does not seem like it was a whole year ago that I have started blogging. Time on the blog has gone by so quick.
While blog time has gone fast a lot of things have happened in the outside world. There was all that guild Drama, Icecrown came out, I went to Oz for a Holiday, moved servers, Cataclysm released and watched many inspirational bloggers leave the world for good.

I would like to think that I have improved in my writing since I began, I know I have never been a great writer, my English marks certainly reflected that.

I would like to thank those of you who frequent my little piece of the internet, whether you have been here since the start, just come recently or to those who may have stopped reading. While I do this for me, as a place to put my thoughts down, it helps to know that there are people following them.

I look forward to the next blogging year and all it provides. Hopefully this place will grow through the future and with it so can my writing.

The other grass: Rift

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 23:31:00 +0000

After entering the competition I mentioned in my last post I received a Beta key for Rift on Sunday. Wednesday rolled around and after a quick install and a 7.5gig update I was into the game.
(Sorry for the image size for some reason Blogger is not accepting the thumbnails)

After watching through the intro cinematic I was greeted by half an our of failed server connections as every man and his dog with a key tried to get in at once. However after some persistence I was able to progress to the Shard (server) screen.
Initially the Shards were very hard to choose as every time a server's information updated it would just that Shard to the top of the list, this made trying to log onto the unofficial Oceanic Shard a game of 'Whack-a-mole' as the Dev's described it. This has been fixed since and is now much less taxing to do.

The Next step is character creation. While you have more options than in WoW this feature feels more limited, leaving everyone looking the same. It is defiantly nice to free pick skin hair and eye colors, slightly modify height and while the facial tattoos are very nice but there are only a handful of hair styles and many of them look alike. With very little physical customization and the limited hair styles your toon still ends up looking like everyone else around you.

Although all the races are very human like and look mostly the same, race will play a big part in how you play your character. In Rift races have very unique and powerful racial's i.e. 'Heals for 30% of damage taken, up to 50% of your total health.' or a 40% boost to Spell and Melee haste for several seconds.

Once your Character is made you can enter into your starting zone, each faction has one starting zone, however with how classes are set up you really should not need to play through it anymore than 4 times. Your first quest will be to choose your first Soul(Talent Tree), there are NPC's around the starting area to explain how your souls work if your new and have done no research.

From there its into your typical questing and lore experience.

There are 4 different classes to choose from in Rift, the Warrior, the Cleric, the Mage and the Rogue.
Each of these classes has 9 different PvE souls and 1 PvP Soul. You choose your fist Soul at level 1 right on your first quest then again at level 3 and the third Soul slot shortly after.
While 9 Souls might sound daunting you can ignore some as they apply to different Archetypes i.e. Warrior has Tanking and DPS Souls so DPS does not have to worry about the Tank Souls.
Like in WoW you can reset your points via a trainer and like WoW you can by additional Specs except where WoW only has DuelSpec, Rift has QuadSpec.

Your skills are also determined by your Souls. Rather than learning new spells as you level you learn them by going deeper and deeper into a given Soul, the deeper you go the stronger the spell i.e. At 2 points in Paladin you learn an attack to hit for heavy damage after you block and at 4 points you learn a Power Word: Fortitude.

For a better idea of how the trees work try the Zam Soul Calculator.

Once you finish your starter zone

It is onto regular questing.
Questing in Rift is very linear, you go to one hub get 2-6 quests in the one area, do them, hand them in and move on. If you finish a hub then the last quest will lead you into the next quest hub to hand in there so that your not back tracking.

After the starter zones the questing is broken up and made more interesting by the constant Rifts and Invasions.
Rifts work similar to Public Quests in WAR in that raids of random people in the area work towards a goal, Exp and Loot. Unlike Public Quests, Rifts are random in location so they may be next to the quest hub or out in the wild somewhere. Each rift will show on your map so that you can find them.
Rifts come in stages, alternating between trash packs and mini bosses before you kill the final Elite mob and seal the Rift.

Once the Rift is sealed everyone who participated will get loot based on how much work they did, loot can range from combat items to Planar currency used to buy character enhancements and powerful gear.
Rifts will also scale with the number of people in a zone so populated zones get many major Rifts and as the population moves on and the empty zones end up with only a few Rifts that can be handled by those still hanging around.

Invasions on the other hand are like very large Rifts except that instead of being in a single location Invasions will move towards camps and even citys killing all in their path.
Invasions require many more people to finish, have a lot more Elites, give considerably more and higher level loot and if not stopped will move in and attack NPC's.

Another of Rifts unique features is that it comes default with a customizable UI.

Rift also comes with features called Antiques and Collections. Think of these like Archeology except without the grind and surveying. Collections will be things like Books you find lying around the starting zones . Antiques are similar except that they show up ether from Invasion loot or as little randomly placed sparkles on the ground beside rocks e.t.c. as you explore.
You use the picked up item of ether kind and if it is a collection it is instatly added to your collection, Antiques will bring up a new screen that shows the collection you are working on and shows which slot your item goes in. When you complete the sets you are rewarded with new items or even epic gear.
The Antiques are not farmable however due to the somewhat random nature of their spawn points.

The rest of Rift is very much like WoW, you move the same, gather mats the same, chat the same, craft the same, it even has an achievement system.

This is not a bad thing though, It means that anyone coming from another MMO particularly WoW will know exactly how to do a lot of the functions and can focus on the game rather than learning basic functions again.

Overall I think this is a really polished game for just being in the Beta stage and most issues are fixed very quickly by the Dev team.
The Dev team has been very active in the community to date and seem to be listening to their customers well.
While Rift has a lot of unique features they have not tried to do anything to new which looks to be working well.
The game does take a bit to get into and is nothing special until you leave the starting zones and start encountering Rifts. The core gameplay almost needs a bit more work to come up to scratch and become addictive as with the more unique game aspects but are not bad in any way.

This game has a lot of potential and I am really having fun playing the Beta, from all the MMO's I have played recently Rift has the most potential to succeed, is the most clean and polished and its still in Beta with a releace date not for another 2 months.
I swore off buying new MMO's on release after Aion and FF XIV but with how Rift is going I think I might pre order the Collectors Edition for it and possibly play for more than the free month.

I will leave you with a screen cap of my level 13 Paladin-Reaver-RiftBlade Tank not tat the gear looks quite good and yes that is a one handed mace.

Free Rift Beta Keys

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:02:00 +0000

Just a quick post for anyone interested.
Guildlaunch is giving away Beta Keys to the new MMO Rift.

To enter simply follow the instructions on this link and you are all but guarantied one.

If you are asking what is Rift?

Rift is a up coming MMO that hold a lot of promise at the present. Think of it like Warhammer: Age of Reckoning except done right(hopefully). I will be playing the Beta and seeing for myself whether it is worth buying or if it will just end up in the pile with WAR, FFXIV and Aion.

If you want further information I recommend this video by the Yogscast crew.

Sledging, Guilds and Raiding

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 06:26:00 +0000

This weekend for me was spent in a place called Rotorua one of New Zealands "Adventure" city's for a friends Bachelor party.
Along with copious amounts of alcohol and dressing up the stag in some very skimpy lingerie we went Sledging

After riding down that river on the little plastic Sledge I occurred to me how similar being in a guild and even raiding are to the act of Sledging.

Path
Like anything in WoW Sledging follows a set path, moving from where you are to where you want to be.
Along the way you will hit some rocks, sometimes you get caught in eddy's that will slow you down and turn you around, you might even get thrashed and pushed under. Despite all that you can encounter you keep pushing forward and as long as you stick to your path, learning from your mistakes you will make it to where you want to go eventually.

Leadership
Its important when on the river to not only know where to go but to have a strong competent person to lead you there, preferably someone who has been there before.
If you choose the right person to follow they can keep you down the middle and guide you away from the obstacles ahead. If your the person out front then you lead through common sense and what experience you have gained from before.
Sometime you find yourself following the wrong person or people. These people can take you off the safest path and lead you astray. They might be doing it by no fault of their own, maybe they lack the experience to lead or the common sense to point themselves in the right path. Some may take you off cause on purpose, guiding you away for their own strange reasons. If you follow the wrong person to long you can get stuck, pinned against a wall, caught in the turning water or pushed beneath the surface.
However you end up off cause you have to always remember that you may be set back but you are still on the river, your path still lies down stream you just have to work to get back on it.
Once back on cause you push forward, ether finding a new leader who knows the way or taking the lead yourself and picking your path from your smarts and the mistakes of the previous.

Skills
As with WoW, Sledging and any other activity you have to know your basics before you can proceed further. You begin by learning the basics, you sit in a safe place and practice the fundamentals. When your ready to move on you step out and encounter your first trials, small at first but growing as you progress.
You learn how to ride the river to move down stream, how to pick your path safely and how to pick yourself up should for fall. Some of these can be taught early but none truly learned until you are out there doing it and using those skills.
Over time these skills become second nature, the paths are clearer and you can dodge the rocks. You might hit a wall still, but every time you do you pick yourself up faster and get back into the river with greater ease.

Goal
Eventually your hard work pays off, you find yourself at your goal be it level 85, clearing raid content, making strong lasting friendships with decent people or simply getting to the bottom of the river.
As you sit at the the bottom and look back up at what you have over come you realize just how insignificant those waves in your path were. You slid right over those rock, pushed off those walls and resurfaced from those times spent under. The obstacles behind you while very real at the time were nothing in retrospect, the dramas of the water are behind you, you have learned from those mistakes and the leaders that you left behind are still stuck in their old path coughing up water.
You have made it to the bottom.

Prot PvP decline 'Rebuked'

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 05:23:00 +0000

Some time in the last few days I missed the very important announcement that Rebuke would be moved out of the Ret Talent Tree and become a baseline Paladin ability. While this is a very nice quality of life change for us and I am already welcoming it for when the guild hits Maloriak its by far more useful in PvP.

Enjoyed at the end of Wrath and really shining at the beginning of Cataclysm Prot was the Paladin DPS PvP spec of choice due to its superior survivability, utility and equal damage compared to Ret. However as Ret got buffed into its rightful place and with Prot really feeling the effects of any form of CC due to its lose of a magic cleanse, Prot was losing its viability.

With Rebuke coming baseline Prot gains a foot hold again strengthened by the increased damage of Crusader Strike. Sure Prot's damage still will not match Ret's unless we are focused on to build Vengeance but Rebuke puts us very strongly in a support roll for 3's or 5's.

Lets look at what Prot Paladins can bring to the team.

Firstly and most obviously is Avengers Shield, not only does this hit hard but if you glyph it right it will help to combat or kite-ability by slowing opponents while keeping them silenced and unable to retaliate.

Next is JotW which combats my biggest dislike of the spec in Wrath by removing our need for Divine Plea. Thanks to this Mana will almost never be and issue and Mana Drains will not longer be so terrifying.

JotJ works beautifully to help stem the flow of DPS from Melee and Hunters for both you and your team mates.

Vindication works wonders coupled with JotJ to further cripple those melee DPS.

WoG provides some welcomed relief for your healer and can help to hold team members alive for critical seconds should your healers be stunned or silenced etc.

Divine Guradian come unique to us and really shows just what our class is about in PvP, saving others. Perfect for use at the start as everyone starts taking that initial damage or when the opposition starts zerging your healer.

From the Ret tree we bring the staples of;

Crusade brings more aid to the healer as every death you bring about only strengthens your team.

Finally the new PoJ. Should the enemy try to prevent you doing your job you only come back stronger bringing the burst with SoR or backing up your healer in a tight spot with more WoG.

With all of these ability's we also carry HoJ and now Rebuke, making us not only support but also an annoyance for any caster that we can stay in melee of namely healers.

Braking it down we have AS on a 15sec CD with a chance to proc and a 3 sec silence. We then have old HoJ with a talented CD of 40 seconds for a 6 second stun. Finally we now have Rebuke a 4 sec school lockout and interrupt off the GCD with a 10sec CD.
All 3 of these together give us 6+ seconds of AS silence, 6 seconds of stun and 16 seconds of Rebuke lockout every 40 seconds.
That is 28+ seconds of every 40 seconds that we could potentially lock out a healer, now think about that when you doubt Prot's use in PvP.

Left wanting Magmore

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 09:24:00 +0000

Last night I came online to a guildie who was in a PuG group looking for one more tank to try Magmaw in the new Blackwing Decent.

I should of guessed it was going to be a bad night when a DPS pulled the boss during the trash because I had tanked a fraction to close to Magmaw.
In fact the next 3 wipes on trash due to a squishy Warrior tank and bad DPS really should of hit it home but both me and my guildie wanted to see the fight so we stayed.

The fight is a reasonably simple 2 phase encounter made complicated by some nasty movies in phase one.

During the first phase the boss will summon adds through a ring of fire that ether need to be snared and AoE'd or picked up by an off-tank and very quickly nuked down.
The adds hit for a ton and any hits take give a debuff that spawns more adds and is refreshed each hit, obviously the better answer is to snare/AoE but if you are lacking AoE snares then a quick DPS nuke and snaring the final add should do just fine.
Also during phase one Magmaw will do and AoE that hits half the room that needs to be avoided and will also Eat the main tank at which point phase 2 begins.

The Tank being eaten will need to be healed but thankfully can act as normal while in the mouth so CD's and self heals can be popped while in there. Meanwhile 3 party members preferably the lowest DPS dealers should jump onto the head of Magmaw where they are given a new ability to chain his head onto the spike below, this has to be done fast because if the tank is eaten for to long then he will be instantly killed. If all 3 chains can be put down at once then the tank pops out and Magmaw becomes stunned taking double damage for the duration.

Once the stun is over the phases begin again until death.

While the concept is simple, AoE adds dodge fire nuke boss several PuG's found this to be difficult particularly one Mage who's only job was to stay in melee and AoE snare the add's and still did not understand his roll after an hour.

Eventually the healer from my guild had to bail due to being called into work and we lost a few more members shortly after. Before he logged off my healer linked his meters showing that he did literally double the healing of ether of the other two one of which was the raid leader.

Seeing the group fall apart and listening to the RL claim that we were "close" despite still not regularly making it to the first phase two I decided that I was not going to wait for 2 more PuG healers to be found. To make matters worse trash was re-spawning and the two healers we had left struggled to keep me up through a single trash mob with all my HoPo going into WoG.

I thanked them for the group and bowed out, however now both myself and our Lead Healer have a very good idea of the fight so that when we finally have our guild back from New Years Holiday we can jump in and quickly down the fiery worm.

New Years Blogolution

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 03:15:00 +0000

2010 officially ends tonight and just like for real life I have a set of resolutions for the Blog for next year.

1. More frequent and regular posting.
I know that my posting has been all over the place this past year and it does not do the blog any good ether.
Next year I plan to try and post more often and try to keep it reasonably regular.

2. More depth to posts.
More text more photos more detail, I often skimp on things due to time or busy with other things. I need to stop doing that.

3. Post Diversity.
Most of my posts are simple what I have been up to posts, I want to do more talk about strats for raids and I even have planned a Prot Pally PvP guide.

4. Get Active.
I need to get my name out there more, at the moment I simply read blogs and that's it. I plan to get out there commenting on the blogs I read and getting active on forums.
I also have a twitter account here that I never use, I plan to get on it next year tweeting and replying.
I want my name to spread out there and as a result learn more for the blog and hopefully bring more to it.
I also hope to get a Youtube account up and running to post Raiding and PvP videos.

Thank you to everyone who has ever visited my little piece of the internet and particularly to everyone who has commented here or messaged me in game.
Happy New Year to you all and I will see you in 2011.

Remember your beginings

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 23:55:00 +0000

Since Cataclysm allowed race changes to the Goblins and Worgens from day one there have been a large number how have taken the opportunity to switch their race.
While it is great to see these new races out and about from launch these people need to remember their beginnings.

I am talking about starter zones.

Having recently played to level 7 on my Goblin and level 14 on m Worgen I can say without a doubt that these are the most amazing starting zones ever.
As such I highly recommend everyone to at least give them a try and play them through to the end.

The problem comes when many of the race changers who are not fans of leveling decided that they already having one of that race and do not go back to try the starting zone. This would be a huge mistake.

Both starting zones are unique in there own way and both are the very definition of what the Cataclysm quest experience is.
Each zone shares in there use of extreme phasing, amazing cut scenes/cinematic's and engaging gameplay but it is there that the similarity's end.

The Goblin starting area is a quirky and generally 'fun' experience. The questing here is set to be some of the most random, explody and enjoyable in the game however they all obviously have that very goblin industry feel which may not appeal to some people who prefer the more fantasy side of the game. Regardless nothing says fun like running over pedestrians in your HotRod while you go to buy some bling.

The Worgen starter is a much more dark and sobering experience. Right from the first quest you are in a fight for your life and your peoples lives. Your experience is broken beautifully into segments of our dark plight and the rebirth of you and your kind from the events. To me this is the most engrossing and beautiful gameplay yet, the cinematic's are just beautiful and the whole zone is on a level far above the rest of the game.
The absolute wonder of this experience has me very likely set to level my Worgen as my new primary alt to see the world with.

These zones are both amazing in their own ways stepping above the levels set before them by the Deathknights and should not be missed.
Anyone who race changed should not miss out on doing these zones because of it.

Futurama in my WoW

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 10:15:00 +0000

I love the insane amount of new pop culture references in Cataclysm.

I finally got my Jewelcrafting up to a high enough level to run the daily's and what do I find, they are all Futurama references.

Pure win.

Then there are smaller gems like this one from the Goblin starting zone.

Blizzard have really out done themselves this time on the references and I love it.

The Path to 85

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 09:11:00 +0000

Cataclysm has been out for nearly a week now and while I should have written something about it sooner I have to be honest and say that every last bit of my free time as been spent in Azeroth leaving no time to blog.

Fade back to 10am Tuesday (1pm on Monday PST) and I am sitting at work hardly focusing knowing what tonight brings. We wont be having a midnight release as the servers come up at 9pm our time but I am obviously excited none the less. Just the day before however I find from my local EB Games that there is some "situation" with Cataclysm but no one knows what it is until I get a message to my phone from EB. The message basically reads that due to one EB selling Cataclysm early, all EB's can sell it early starting immediately.
All focus I had left is gone right out the window as I now wait until Lunch time so I can drive across town to pick it up.
12 comes around and that is exactly what I do, it takes my entire hour break to do it but I now have two Cataclysm Collectors Editions sitting under my desk. The next 4 hours were painful but somehow I got through and the it was home free.

Since I had already had the Cata pre download run I simply had to upgrade my account and I was ready to go.
The first thing I did when I logged in was collect my Lil' Deathwing

Then it was a waiting game for 9pm and the message to log out for Cata.
When the message finally came the authentication servers were so heavy hit that I keep DCing for the next 15min. Once I was finally in my first step was to buy Azeroth flying.

From there it was off to Hyjal and an introduction to that gank fest that was leveling.
After 30min of questing and 1 hour of being dead I finally got my first look at the big baddy Deathwing himself.

Boy is that sucker huge.
From there I continued to quest and get swarmed by horde for the next 16 hours. I took a break to do some mining and after six stacks of Obsidian realized that I had not trained my new level of mining and had wasted all that ore.

On the topic of leveling on a PvP server, this was my first ever time leveling on a PvP server and boy was it crazy. The entrance to Hyjal was white with bones.
The census sites put us at a 2:1 Horde to Ally ratio but looking at the numbers visible its more like 5:1.
Several times I would get jumped by a solo Horde member and every time I would beat then down until they ether got 2-7 more friends or ran away into a group of leveling Horde who would lend them a hand.
It still continues like this now at 85 while doing daily where I will be jumped by ether one Horde win then have him return with friends or 2-5 of them jump you all at once and always when your already fighting. This proves that we have the better PvP's and is shown by our constant domination of Tol Barad.

As I finished up my leveling in Hyjal I got to see a wonderful site of the long lost Jarod Shadowsong and the great Cenarius.

From there is was off to Deepholme through the Maelstrom.

I love questing in Deepholme, as great as Hyjal for lore was the quality of quest in Deepholme is just so much better and more enjoyable.
Your character gets a lot more involved for example this guy

who literally grabs you by the face. Least he get what he deserved.

Once I was 83 and my quests were up to date with Therazane I was off to the beautiful Uldum.

The quests here are in my opinion the best in the game, funny, engaging and very diverse.
Among the plethora of NPC you quest for you spend a lot of time working with Harrison Jones seen in this archive file photo.

and work to recreate the better parts of any movie that his name sake is from.

While questing in Uldum you will find possible the greatest quest ever made if you are like most people and hate Gnomes.

What we have here is basically a big ball of fire that you use to run down very large numbers of screaming Gnomes. If this was a daily I think it would win hands down, instead best quest has to go to the daily "Thieving little Puckers" that involves smashing very funny sounding pygmy's with a very big hammer.

After I had dinged 84 and found out that the bug's stopping you from leveling in Twilight Highlands were fixed I popped over there for a bit just to see what it was like. Before I could go I had to help out Varian by escorting Anduin around on some duty's.
After a brief introduction I was met by this very moving piece of dialog.

That was quickly followed with a great 24 reference.

While questing I leveled my Jewelcrafting up to 475 to unlock the new daily's and in doing so unlocked new world drops and the ability to finish a quest for this lovely little tanking trinket with a not to shabby 421 stamina on it.

I finished my leveling off in Vash'jir to raise my Earthing ring rep for the Helm enchant. I had not spent much time there before I dinged but I was not thrilled by the whole being underwater thing.

I went and picked up my GoAK

and it was then off to run my first Heroics which were BRC and HoO. I have to say after how easy the normal instances were while leveling the Heroics are a very welcomed challenge. If the Heroics are this hard I can not wait to see the raid content, but what I have seen if filling me with hope for the perfect level of content.
Also HoO has one of the coolest bosses ever, he is a Flame Marrowgar that you fight on Camels what more do I need to say bar.

A Frostwyrm Dies, A Frostwyrm Born

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:04:00 +0000

This weeks raiding was dedicated to one thing, killing Sindragossa's Hard mode and claiming our Frostwyrm mounts.

Our original plan was to extend the lockout and down her on Wednesday due to our Ret Pally/ Temporary Co-Tank only being available that day. However due to having to PuG a spot with a particularly bad Ret Pally coupled with our lack of practice on the fight, we did not make that goal. We did not give up easy though, the team did a great job of working well over time in an effort to get her down that night.

Thursday we came back this time with two PuG's but by the time we got them we were a solid 45 minutes into our time before we truly started. The little time we had was spent working on getting phase 3 under wraps, however we just did not have the time to bring her down.

We skipped raiding on Friday due to multiple people not being able to make it and came back early on Saturday.
None of our PuG's showed up despite having accepted the calender invite, luckily though we finally had more members free and were able to fill a full 10man with our own raiders.
This time we were confidant that we would have here. We had the skill, the practice and the time to put into it.
Every attempt got better and better but despite getting consistently to phase 3 we would always wipe because of something stupid be it and important member stepping to far round and Iceblock (guilty), to much damage being taken (guilty of not popping CD's) or various other little things.
At one point we had a run that while filled with mistakes made it to a sub 5% wipe, we were really close and just needed to tighten it up a bit.
Then we had an attempt where we his phase 3 perfectly and although we lost a few things were going strong. Then on the tank transition we lost my Co-Tank for the night, things got a little dicey from there losing another DPS.
We were 2 down and I had no tank to taunt from me as my stacks continued to rise. We kept pushing forward as we past the 10% mark and I used nearly every tool I had to keep myself up, Glyphed Divine Protection, Ardent Defender, Talented WoG and LoH all got used at least once to keep my up through the breaths.
At the 5% mark before the next Iceblock dropped I called for a burn and watched as her health dropped and the next Frostbreath approached. I had not CD's left and the next Breath would likely kill me but before she could breath.

We had finally brushed off the cobwebs of the last 6 months and claimed the Achievement we should of had a long time ago.

Before the night was out we went and finished H Blood Princes for another members Frostwyrm. Sadly I had assumed that my partner had done H Valithria and that we could finish her Frostwyrm Achievement off with the Council and Festergut, with Valithria already down she was unable to get her mount with us.

We all collected out mounts from the mail

and head to the unphased air space just out of Dalaran for a guild mount shot.

We finally have our mounts, just before Cata I could not be more relieved to have that over with.
Big thanks goes out to not just those that were there on Saturday but also to all the other guildies that have helped out and do not have their mounts, to the handful of PuG's we have used and to my Partner and Real Life friend who both went offspecs in Resto and Prot respectively to help us down Sindy.

On a side note, final Molten Core run of WotLK gone and still no Binding from Garr.

Gold Plans for Cataclysm

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 23:53:00 +0000

With Cataclysm literally just around the corner everyone should have a strong idea of what they will be doing with their professions and how they are going to level them.

I though I had mine worked out, the changes to Engineering were looking very attractive and I had stockpiled a new guild bank alt with mats to power level it at 85. The recent changes that have been made to it however have thrown a rather large spanner in that plan. Losing the ability to have Rocketboots and the Shield at the same hurt but I could live with it, the other bonuses more than compensated. It was the painful raid wiping and frequent backfires that were given to both that really made me question it. Sure there are some nice toys in the skill list but was wiping a raid worth the risk?
For me it was now obvious, the large profits that Blacksmithing have to offer were slightly out weighed by the fun and usefulness of Engineering, but when you take away some usefulness and add in more risk then the gold just plain wins out.
So I now plan to be a Blacksmith / Jewelcrafter in Cata and have filled up the banks a little more just to make sure I will have enough mats.

Now I am sure of my professions for the expansion I can properly plan for how to make gold.
I have played the AH a little this expansion but its only really been a growing part of my game since the release of epic gems. At best my total net worth has only capped at about 20k liquid with very little in assets. That is going to change in Cataclysm.

I have spent the last few months delving into the world of gold making. The site JMTC and its podcast 'Call to Auction' have been an immense help and just by applying the basics of what they teach I have been able to amass a large stock of items for Cata and keep myself at the 10k liquid mark to.

So what have I been stockpiling you ask? Its simple, items that will raise in value later in Cata.
Think about the value if you remember of Adamantite ore in TBC, most likely it was around the 20g mark during the middle of the expansion. Now think about the value it had middle of this expansion, on average I saw it sit at 40-50g a stack that's quite a difference. As History teachers will tell you the point of learning about the past is that when it repeats itself you do no repeat the same mistakes and better still repeat what worked. We can rather confidently say that Saronite will rise in price as Cata moves on and less and less people farm it, this means that the ore you buy at today's prices could be worth twice as much in 6months to a years time.

So what exactly is in my stockpile; three guild tabs of Saronite ore, two of Infinite dust, 1 Borean Leather, 1 Greater Cosmic Essence (sold as lessers) and a splattering of Eternals, Titanium ore and Titansteel bars.
That is a rather long term plan, I won't see a return for months maybe even a year depending on how long others wait until they unload their stockpiles.
How about the short term plans to fill my pockets?

My very first plan is to not repeat last expansions mistakes. Last year I leveled my JC as I leveled mining but did so in no real rush. As a result I was not first on the AH with gems (I had no real desire for it then) and I missed the brilliant golden opportunity that is early expansion gathering. In the first few days of Cata gathering mats will be very rare. Not many people will be farming them particularly in the opening hours after midnight and particularly the mid level ore from Deepholm and Twilight Highlands. The result of this rarity is HUGE prices, I am talking possibly into the thousands of gold a stack. The profit comes from very rich people who seek the realm first achievements. These people will not be able to get enough of that precious ore and herbs and due to their large wallets will pay near anything for them and with little competition your mats should fetch a very nice profit.

Its now been a couple days or even weeks and the mat prices are dropping, at this point my JC will have been leveled enough to get me into the new dailys and I will be stockpiling ore to help the final levels of Blacksmithing. After that I should be able to drop mining once and for all and use my ore stockpiles to powerlevel Blacksmithing and the remainder of Jewelcrafting up to cap and start putting my new piles of gold into mats. The first couple weeks will be big money for those that can get their hands on cheap mats and craft the epic weapons and armor, again following WotLK examples epic crafts will fetch 50% odd profit. The biggest factor to this is that the new Frozen Orb 'Chaos Orb' is BoP so any epic gear you want is going to be on the AH far more than in your own mats.

As the gear market starts to drop a little people will be well into raiding and the gem market is going to flourish by this point I should have more than enough recipes to make a killing selling gems on the AH.

From there onwards I plan to bring over my priest and use her to bring the Enchanting and Alchemy professions to the AH table. I certainly do not plan to ever reach the new gold cap of 1 million gold but I do aim to reach well into the 100k's this time round.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:12:00 +0000

A few weeks back I picked up AC:B but did not mention it due to all the events in WoW and not wanting to waste my 100th post on a non WoW topic. However we still have a week until Cata and I am not raiding until later so now is the perfect time to review it.

Remember how cool the Fable 3 collectors edition was? This Collectors does not just top it, it waits on the roof for it then drops down killing it with his hidden blade.

First just look at this box

Open it up and you find the whole set enclosed in a box that looks like a marble tomb decorated with the Assassins symbol.

Inside, nothing.

Obviously a false bottom but you get;

Behind the Scenes DVD
Soundtrack (not embedded on the DVD like two's was, thank god they did not make that mistake again)
Map of Rome

12 Cards containing pictures and backgrounds on all the multiplayer characters

Codes for two bonus multiplayer characters as well as bonus levels and armor
3 Cards with amazing art from their art studio

Finally a leather bound Codex that is split in two sections. The first is a physical representation of Altiar's hand written codex pages as seen in AC2, the second half is beautiful concept art.

For only $10 more than the Fable CE this set comes out as one of the best I have brought yet.

To the game itself. The Solo play begins as the second game did, in the exact moment that the game before it finished. From there you are given a quick action packed refresher coarse on the gameplay followed by your standard slow intro the the new storyline.
Once you get to Rome and out of the intro the game really opens up with many different places to go and thing to see, it only gets bigger from there as well. By the time you start getting Assassins to train you have half a dozen different paths to take outside of the story, quests and events that can tie you up for quite a while.

One of the best and most time consuming features brought into the Solo play is the addition of different levels of Synchronization through memory's. Just running the mission how you want and being successful is not enough to get 100%. To come out on top you must complete certain criteria i.e. meet a set time, kill no one in the level before your target or maybe perform the kill with a certain technique. The variety and challenge of some of them will have you redoing whole missions just to get that perfect run through.

The new addition to the game franchise is the addition of a multiplayer mode. Not your standard multiplayer games you are required to hunt down and kill over players in solo or team play with more points given the more stealthy and artistic the kill.
There have been many times where I will come 1st place after 6 odd kills while place 4 has 11 odd kills.
As you level through your kill score/exp you will earn new skills to make you a better killer such as disguises, smokebombs and throwing knives.
To make matters more complicated the zones are filled with NPC's that look exactly like you and your targets.

Game modes include 'Wanted' which involves each member being assigned a target to kill while someone else is assigned to kill you. Later in the match the targets change so that the higher up the list you are the more people are assigned to you. In big games of 7+ this means that those who come late or are having a bad day can pull themselves up the ladder without having to worry about being taken out.

Next we have 'Alliance' which is a basic 2v2v2 game which functions a lot like 'Wanted' but with a partner. In this game bonus points can be earned by working with your partner but this proves difficult in a random online pairing. The game is broken into two segments where you chase one team and then reverse the order in the second half.

The final basic type is 'Manhunt' which is a 4v4 team game. Each team shares a look and is given a 5min round at being the hunter while the together team must hide. The aim in this game is simply about earning the most points ether by killing the other team or by avoiding being killed.

Over all the game is very fun and full of things to keep you busy well into the future. While the graphics have not been updated since the second game the rest of the experience has evolved nicely. The multiplayer is a very welcome addition that brings a unique and enjoyable experience.
This is a really well made game for it only being a year since the last one was released. I defiantly recommend you give this ago even if you have never played an Assassin's Creed game before.

Post 100 and Chasing the Wyrm

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 06:32:00 +0000

Today's post finally brings me to my 100th blog post. When I first started blogging I never thought that I would really last this long let alone get to 100 posts. Heck with the decrease in posts lately I thought it would take a lot longer two.

In WoW we have been working towards finishing off our ICC10 Drakes prior to Cataclysm and this week we set our sites on the last normal mode Achieves we had left, Sindragossa's and the Lich King's.

We did not raid Wednesday or Thursday due to other player commitments so it all had to take place on Friday night. We re extended the raid lockout from two weeks ago and after clearing out BloodQueen we moved right into Sindy.

Sindy was proving to be a challenge because there kept being those little things that went wrong at the start of phase 2 that caused someone to take to many Debuff stacks.
We spent a while wiping but it was obvious that RNG and our own bad day were going to hold us back from doing it normally so we stitched to trying for a Zerg.
The first two zergs went badly but the first went off perfectly, we hit phase 2 without problem but then lost a few people mid phase to bad ice blocks. It came right down to the wire, we had lost a few players and I had just hit my 5 stack as we closed the final few percent. It was to late to call a wipe so we push on with everything we had left and watched helplessly as the Debuff timer reached out to the 6 stack mark. Then just at the last moment

literal moments after the Debuff ticked up to 6, but I have no idea how after she was dead.

From Sindy we moved to LK and while the achievement is much easier we ended up having a more difficult time due to real life things coming in the way such as sick and medicated people falling asleep. While we were constantly getting phase 1 fine we kept wiping on phase 2 so called it a night and planned a follow up raid for the unusual time of 4pm Sunday.

Sunday came and back we went for another attempt. The first few try fell apart when the adds died to quick and we lost the Debuff, the second attempt however went perfectly and a few minutes later.

Now all we have left is Heroic Sindy. Its going to be close with on of our officers only having one night for it but I am confident that we can push through the few blocking Bosses quickly and Take out H Sindy in the small time we have.
Hopefully all going well next week will mark the completement of all ICC10 baring H LK for us. Just in time for Cataclysm on Tuesday, boy is that getting close.

Shattering Nostalgia

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 19:11:00 +0000

AS you all should know by now 4.0.3a hit servers last night and despite being one of the smoothest patch's to date it destroyed everything.

The first thing I did when I got home yesterday was set up the download of the patch.

The second thing was to sit in the lounge watching the sad news about the Pike River Mine.
For those of you who's local news has not been talking about it 6 days ago there was a large explosion at the Pike River Coal Mine on the west coast of New Zealand where I live. 29 men including several from overseas were in the mine at the time and were presumed ether trapped or dead.
Due to the large presence of methane the rescue teams could not rush in and while they were drilling holes for samples and bringing in robots not much else could be done for fear of rescuers safety or another explosion. Yesterday that second explosion happened at about 2:30pm our time. It is now sadly the official statement that any who may have been alive after the first explosion will now most likely be dead. Of cause we all are hoping for a miracle for someone to have been in the right place to avoid harm, but it seems very unlikely now. May those poor men R.I.P.

After that sad news and the finishing of the patch me and my partner sat down to watch the cinematic together. Nether of us had seen it yet as we had been waiting for it to be released in game, boy are we glad we waited.
The cinematic was beautiful, watching Deathwing get plated together and then soar across the world bringing destruction, simply beautiful.

My first point of call was to log into Orth and admire the new Stormwind. I have seen all the pictures and wow it is simply beautiful. The pictures did not do it justice. Everything is newer brighter and more detailed. The new Banks and Auction House's are stunning and the ground textures add so much.
Once my initial tour was complete I popped over to the Cathedral and checked out the new class quests. I also realised that my new mount did not need to be re learnt so I mounted up on my 'Great Exarch's Elekk' and took a detailed look at the new areas of the city. I particularly love the new Graveyard/Lake and the addition of a Pagoda and seats for any RP Weddings that may take place.

From SW I took a Flight over to Iron Forge to check the new Rep vendors and catch the changes from the air. I love the work done to trees, not only are the bigger and in larger numbers but they look like trees from the air, no longer do I feel like I am flying over a paper landscape.

After IF Hearthed to the Exodar and picked up a cloak to match my Argent Tournament Tabard then I was off to Darnassus to see my first Worgen and buy the beautiful Gilnaes Tabard.

I then spent the next few hours moving zone to zone checking out what had changed and picking up the new flight points.

I did pause from that for a moment in Badlands to punch Deathwing in the face. I love those quests.

I finished my night by rolling my Dwarf Shaman and leveling him to level 10. So much has changed in the starter zone that I think I am defiantly going to have to do all the starting zones.

I am loving this new world, while it is sad to see so many memory's altered forever the new content will more than make up for it. There is new stuff here to keep us occupied for a very long time to come. All I can say now is 'Bring on the Cataclysm'.

Kinect or Move

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 18:24:00 +0000

Not a lot has been happening inside of WoW at the moment, not only because the Sundering is only a few days away but also because I have barely been home this last weekend.

On Friday after a work dinner my partner and I were off to a guildies place to try their new Xbox Kinect.

My initial observation was that the Kinect has a very slight delay in its avatar movement, you move your hand and the little cartoon you moves half a second later. I don't think it caused any issues in game but it defiantly seems to be a limitation to not having a controller.
However once we were in game I quickly forgot that gripe and got on to having a lot of fun. We were playing the "Kinect Adventures" title, which as you can guess by the name is very exhausting.
You really need all your free pace for the Kinect and with all the jumping and quick moving you do you can not afford to have anything valuable to close ether.
I will also take pictures of you as you play so later you can laugh at how you look, although many of the action shots are blurry due to the speed at which you are moving.

Pros:
No controller.
Easy for new players to swap in and out.
Potential for very fast, high energy activity's (See the new "Dance Party", "Zumba" and the Martial Arts Demo from pre release shows).

Cons:
Sometimes hard to know where on screen you are aiming.
Needs a lot of free space.
No distinguishing between different voices or hands issuing commands.

Conclusion:
I loved playing the Kinect, sure the drinking may have helped but this was a fun game that works really well with groups. Still has some way to go before it reaches its potential but until then its still doing well.

The next night we went off to some work friends house for dinner and to play on the PlayStation Move.
First impressions, that those controllers look stupid as hell. Once I had one in my hand though they were not only really easy to use but I was amazed at just how easy they make the movement. Not only is the ball on top really handy for knowing where you are pointing but the camera know just where it is and what angle and rotation its at. This means that when say playing table tennis you can go as crazy as changing the angle and direction of your serve.
Our first game of the night was "Move Sports" which has some really fun activity's like Archery and Sword fighting however they are both so much more fun with two controllers so should you have more than one person playing then to get the most enjoyment you really need a second set.
The second set really became necessary when we switched to play "TV Super Stars" where the constant passing of controls particularly with the need to always redo the wrist strap got old quick.
However the game also brought about a new feature, the inclusion of the camera and microphone. When you set up a new avatar for the game you have your photo taken to be used as its face and then you can record a catch phrase for it to use when on screen.

Pros:
Simple control and pointer movement.
Player game interactivity i.e. Photos, signatures and voice use.
Diversity of games through use of buttons and control rotation.

Cons:
Limitation of physical controller for multiplay.
Needs lots of floor space.
Learning curve.

Conclusion:
The Move has great potential for producing some amazing games with the inclusion of control rotation as well as voice etc but the multiplayer use is hampered by the requirement of several controllers.

Overall its had to decided which one comes out on top, they both cover two different areas of gaming. The Kinect wins hands down at present for multiplay as well initial physical requirements. The Move wins in variety of games and potential for future variety, also once you get into the harder levels and certain activity's the Move can be very tiring also but its not using you whole body like Kinect.

If your looking to get one, just get the one for what ever console you have. If you have both then it will come down to how many people you want playing at once and whether those people want to spend their game time always moving.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 19:13:00 +0000

Last night I went to see the first part of the final Harry Potter movie, 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; Part 1'. I will keep this relatively short as I do not want to run the risk of spoilers for anyone who (in the off chance) has not read the books.

I have been looking forward to this movie for quite awhile. Like many I have read the book series upon each release through out my teen years, in fact the Harry Potter books are some of the last true books I have read of late. Likewise when the films came out I followed them, each upon release.
They have had their good and bad moments, one point that always sticks out to me is the terrible piece of cinema that was the opening scenes of 'The Prisoner of Azkaban'. One thing that each film has gotten right so far was the increasing maturity of the books as the series went on. This thought worried me as TDH came closer to release because I know just how much further the book took that path. To not ruin the books the film would almost have to be not suitable for the children that love them so much.

My worries were unfounded.

This penultimate film barely holds back at all, without any spoilers there is one scene in particular where Harry, Ron and Hermione are in a lift and through the grate mesh door a hallway of Dementors reach for the Heros. The Birds Eye View from the roof shows two dozen shadowy skeletal hands clawing at them in a manner that you could swore was from a zombie flick if not for the distinct lack of rotting flesh.
Heck the movie even get almost a little R18, Adults only at one point.
Obviously the film does not carry a serious rating so every precaution has been taken to not go further than they can but they do a solid job of riding the line at points.

Sitting at 140 odd minutes its not a short film and while it cuts a few scenes short the running time nicely covers the majority of more than half the book. Assuming a similar run time this gives the second and final part ample time to fully delve into the darkness that lies ahead.

If you are a fan of the series in anyway then I recommend you go and see this movie, you will not be disappointed. My only major problem with it is that I now have to wait another 6 months to see the final part and that says a lot.

The Long Delay and New Progression

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 08:17:00 +0000

I have really been slacking on my posting lately.
Mostly its because I'm not in WoW as much and when I am its because I am doing the Cataclysm pre quests.

I have really been enjoying the current events, its no Zombie invasion but its still a lot of fun. I just hope the final stages really step it up to rival the zombies.

Outside of those we have been starting to get back into raiding again. We really have not done much since the guild feel apart and we transferred.
However this past week we finally got back into the progression with working on Heroic 10man Putricide.
Our first day started poorly with 2 members missing due to work and other real life commitments. However we quickly pulled in two adequate PuGs and set into a fresh clear.
Our first day was spent clearing out the first 6 bosses into Plague Wing all on Heroic.
It was a very uneventful night really just your typical farm night.

Day two however was to be dedicated to Putricide himself. We had some new faces with us and we were all feeling a little rusty. Those two together did not make a good combination. We by far had the DPS and Heals to pull it off but raid awareness had been dulled by the time away from the fight. We were there for an hour and a half after the late start and while we were making progress to getting our groove back we still had a way to go.

Friday came around and we were all ready to go, we had the raid near full and plenty of time ahead of us. Boy did we use the time ahead of us. We were a man down again due to some raiders under staffed real life jobs and we had to resort to a new PuG to fill the final spot. It ended up being a friend of another PuG but he was rusty to and worse still did not have the last nights worth of practice on the fight.
We wiped for 3 hours on him some times it was a simple mistake. Sometimes it was RNG just deciding to kill us, like the time I turned to SotR a Ooze and got hit hard due to turning just to far, the Ooze then knocked us back where my flask came off mid air leaving me very low on health and I died to fall damage.

The night was coming to a close with 45min left on the raid night and some people having work early the next morning. We had just cleared through trash again and I called this the final try. Phase one went well everything moved where it meant to and we pushed him through nice and quick. Then phase 2 came and that was going well until nearing the 50% mark a screw up from a PuG left both of our PuGs dead. I was tempted to call a wipe with 2 DPS down but left it to push on.
We hit the 35% mark and brought on phase 3 for the first time that was not a clear wipe. However RNG shined on us again and the Plague in combination with a Slime took out another DPS. We pushed on into the final phase and it was getting hectic with so many dead. Me and my Co-Tank started popping all our CD's as the Plague claimed another DPS. It was getting close and I was kitting him round with 5 stacks of De-buff and no CD's left to pop. My heart was racing and I was not sure we would make it but then at the table he started at he fell.

A sigh of relief came over us all as he was finally down and the guild got its first progression kill on the new server. We are now on our way to being back where we want to be.
Next stop Heroic Sindragossa who we are quite looking forward to after Putricide then its just to normal mode achievements until our Frostwyrms.

One King to rule them all.

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:32:00 +0000

Most of my time this past week has been spent outside of WoW playing Fable III the newest game in the 'Fable' series by Lionhead studios.

I have to say at the start that this game has one of the coolest collectors edition boxes of all time.

For a starter the case is a fake leather bound book.

The book opens up to reveal the game held inside.

The bottom of the book then flips down to revel a hidden compartment holding the collectors coin and playing cards.

Very awesome looking case in deed.

As with all the previous Fable games there was a lot of hype behind this one with the games creator Peter Molyneux once again telling the world all about his ambitious plans for the title. I as always got right into the hype and was expecting great things.
I have been a fan of the series since I heard about and played the first game, the concept of a game where your choices and actions could effect not just yourself but the world around you was amazing. However like the first game and the second as well Fable III tried to do to much, and anytime we are told to expect perfection and are given anything less the Internet attacks. It is a long running trend that Molyneux over estimates just what the he can pull off with the technology, time and money he has available. The man dreams big but sadly he can never make just what he in-visions and as a result many disappointed and deluded individuals attack him and the company for letting them down. If you take a step back and look at the games for what they are and not what they fell short of you will see that they are still very excellent games.
Fable III defiantly has its short comings, for starters and probably one of my biggest disappointments is the weapon morphing system. Their dream was to have weapons that evolved with the character so that every action effected your weapon. What we got was a random change based on a few things you had done that only occurs to a set part of your weapon and only at one point i.e. You are an evil player that does a lot of treasure finding and you open the melee upgrade chest level 3 which morphs your blade or hammerhead to randomly reflect one of those two styles. This change is permanent and your look will not upgrade ever again. The two biggest downsides to this is that once you have your weapon design it can never change no matter how you change your play style. Secondly you cannot predict what your weapon will look like without force quitting and reloading.
My second main disappointment is how little your moral effects your game. In the first Fable the more "Good" you were the lighter your hair got and the more visible a halo was above you, similarly the more "Evil" you were the more your feet burned the ground and horns grew from your head. Fable II had a similar level of character morph with the added bonus of corruption effecting it to. In Fable III I have seen little change by moral outside of some glow effects on weapons and tattoos, now sure I have not played an evil game yet but from what I have seen this seems like a step back in this area.
The third area of annoyance for me is the housing system. In all games you were able to buy houses and rent them out for profit however Fable III stepped this up with the ability to customize the interior with new furniture, change the rent and with the ability of the quality to decrease over time. Now having your homes degrade and need repairing is a nice idea after all this happens in real life to however the issue comes when you start to own quite a few houses. You see each house has to be repaired separately and while this is not much of an issue for your first few homes once you own most of the continent it takes onwards of 20-30min just to repair them all. What would of been nice would have been a repair all feature, even if it was just town wide.
My final major annoyance is the requirement of Xbox Live or the very least multiple account abuse if you want to get the most out of the game. This may not be directly a Lionhead decision and Microsoft may have played a part but for someone who does not like Xbox Live its a real pain. For example the game has a total of 51 weapons available in it to collect but each time you open a chest the weapon you get is random from that list. Even the two weapon stores have a random list decided on game opening. In total any one game you can only get 26 different weapons the rest must be traded for between games ether as a gift from a second game or across XBL. Similarly the first "Demon Door"(Sealed room that requires certain conditions before you can enter for a big reward) requires two players to stand before it and be friends/lovers for it to open. Finally there are several dyes that are missing from your self that can only be brought via Microsoft points on XBL including the much wanted Black dye. I get that there will be things that co-op should get as a bonus and sure things can be sold on XBL to add to the game but I should not need to do them just to finish the game completely.

Despite these flaws the game is a lot of fun. They have continued to rework their spell system and while it no longer boosts the large supply that the first game had the implementation is a lot easier to use.
They also improved the Flourish system (Power attacks) so that as you gain in power you see more and more visible rune glow from you when charging until finally at max level magic you will see wings based on your alignment sprout from you.
Combat has also been improved with enemy's having an increased arsenal of attacks, couple that with some spectacular finishing moves and battle become visually amazing to watch even if your not playing.
The game play its self is very enjoyable and the storyline is interesting and very addictive, there have been several times when I have lost complete track of time while playing.
Finally they have done away with game menus, choosing to replace the 'Map', 'Equipment', 'Trophy', 'Clothing' and 'Xbox Live' options with the 'Sanctuary'. The Sanctuary is a physical location where the options are given rooms rather than menus.

To equip a weapon you head to the armory and just take it off the shelf.

In the Dressing room you can browse through all your clothes, tattoos etc shown on manikins.

If you go to the Trophy room you can see them all lined up on the walls and your gold is shown as a visible pile that slowly fills the room.

Your fast travel map is also there in the middle room as a visible table with a 3d map upon it.
I love this feature it makes the menu interesting and gives you a safe place to go hang out and get away from what ever may be after you.

Overall Fable III does not live up to Molyneux's plans for it but knowing he dreams big I was expecting it. While we lost a few features from the other games the stuff we gained makes up for most of it and the rest is filled by the addictive story.
What we have ended up with is a fun and addictive game that still feels like its only part of something.
I think that if Molyneux went back now and was to work on a Fable revamp using the best parts of the 3 games he has made so far along with a few more improvements to bring it closer to his vision we could potentially have a very very powerful game that would change gaming as we know it.
I would not be surprised if we see a Fable IV and hopefully if we do it can be brought closer to this games potential than we stand currently.

Disapointment and Dances

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 07:07:00 +0000

The Female Worgen dance is finally out and its none other than.....'Poker Face' by Lady Gaga.
Yep that's right Horde get the stupid by still kinda cool 'Soulja Boy' and the awesome 'Single Lady's' by Beyonce, Alliance get some Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga way to go Blizzard.
Really sad, come on Dance Studio.

LFG Armageddon

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 07:56:00 +0000

This past Saturday I missed most of the Blizzcon news because I was out at Armageddon, New Zealands smaller equivalent of Comic Con.

My Partner, two of our friends and myself left early in the morning for the 2 hour trip up north to the yearly expo.
This was my first time ever going to Armageddon and only had a vague idea what to expect. I knew there would be people in Cosplay and plenty of games and comics but that was about all.

We got there about 30min after opening and already the place was filling up quick.
Our first plan was just to walk around and take in the sites. Along with the expected booths there was plenty of cheep imitation products and expensive authentic products. There was nerf gun displays and demos for the PS Move and Xbox Kinect, Costumes for Halloween and plenty of other random little things.

After spending the morning site seeing my first proper stop was the Ubisoft Assassins Creed Brotherhood stall where I was able to try out the new multiplayer feature before release. It was a local match with myself vs 4 other strangers, sadly due to a muddle up with consoles I only had two character to choose from but I was just excited to be there.
After picking the Barber we were in the game and I had to quickly remember controls I had not touched in months. Nothing like the thought of someone coming to kill you to help you remember how to free run over buildings.
I spent most of the round in second place and It really was a lot of fun the system took a bit to get used to with a few rules that had to be picked up as you we but it was a great experience. You were given an NPC mark and once they were dead you were given a player mark. The longer your kill streak the more player were assigned to kill you. My friend was watching from behind me and said it was great knowing just who my mark was and watching their face drop as I took them out, I only knew the feeling of the monk beside me yelling with joy as he bludgeoned me to death twice.
Overall the graphics and general gameplay has not really changed that much from the second game but the multiplay was a lot of fun and I have a strong feeling that I am going to be playing it for a long time to come.
Edit:Seems that there were not NPC's I was killing just really bad players.

While on the subject of games I had the chance to have a look at some live demos for the Move and Kinect. The move I was disappointed with, even knowing what it was it came off as just a better higher class Wii. Sure that's basically what it is but I really did not grab me like the Kinect did. The Kinect was amazing, it responded really well to movement and boy was there a lot more movement than I expected. With out playing them myself the Kinect is the hands down winner.

After a late lunch and 45min in the line for the ATM I headed off the the Blind Ferret booth where Ryan Sohmer and Lar de Souza were selling and signing there wares. For those who don't know Ryan and Lar do the web comics 'Least I Could Do' and 'Looking For Group'. I picked up a copy of LFG Volume 1 and was lucky enough to get them both to sign it. After that I went to the Web Comics panel hosted by the two of them. While my partner and friends were not interested in the panel they all came and listened and to be blunt Ryan and Lar are f'ing hilarious, my face hurt from laughing it was just an hour of humorous stories tie together by a little bit of web comic talk, even my partner had a good time. I even go sworn at by Lar and told to "F**k off and let us sleep" when asking if we could have more frequent updates on LFG, loved it.

It was a great day and although we had a lot of fun I was defiantly a once in a while thing, although next time I will be sure to bring tonnes of cash to take advantage of all the great deals there. Also from looking at the different levels of costumes I think if I ever go in Cosplay I will defiantly have to spend a year or so on it. Sure there were some great costumes but I do not want to end up like those people that seemed to just whack theirs together. Also although I know you probably don't read I want to apologize tot he guy I insulted in the ATM line, I really had no clue you were behind me. However to be fair if you come to a Con like this and your Altiar/Ezio Costume is you in an Assassins Creed official hoody with a plastic sword under your belt you deserve to be mocked a tiny bit.

Hopefully some time in the future I can see how America does it by visiting Comic Con itself or perhaps even Blizzcon.

The Raid

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 06:45:00 +0000

The amazing new documentary 'The Raid' just finished live streaming from its pre release party following tonight's conclusion of Blizzcon.
I have to say was very happy with the work they have put out on it. I hope all reading this were there watching as well, if not then it should be released for you to watch hopefully sometime shortly.
My only wish was for it to be longer.

Congratulations to Kevin Micheal Johnson and everyone from Months Behind's Double Dragon 10man team for their hard work.

So far from Blizzcon

noreply@blogger.com (Orthien) — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 23:14:00 +0000

I have been away this weekend and will explain all about that in a later post but I want to add some interesting notes so far from Blizzcon.

In the WoW Q&A Panel it was asked about AS trying to do to much. They said that they liked the though of having to pick roll that you want it for and glyph for that, however they did say that the interrupt part of it may get moved elsewhere.
I don't feel they quite got why its doing to much but removing the interrupt will help bring it down a bit.

They were also asked about whether Prot and Ret had to many spells. Their answer was that they believe we like having so many but if it feels like a lot of maintenance then they are not opposed to trimming a bit.
Not really an issue for me I think our amount of ability's are about at the right amount at present.

On a general WoW note they are looking at making many mounts and Titles to be account bound along with the current account bound Archeology items and guild items.
A nice change, will be good to show what you have earned outside of that one toon. Very nice if you plan to switch mains.

They wanted a kind of "closet" for cool items like tier, tabard's etc but have not had the the chance to do it yet.
I really can not wait for this, I have a lot of bank room filled at present with old gear and tabard's and would like to see that room free again.

Also they have stated that Legendarys will be available in 10man as as well as 25man.
Welcome clarification for anyone that wants to now be a 10man only guild.

In the class Q&A they eluded to the fact that Inquisition should help bring GrCr to its current position making it even more a AoE talent, however they did say number might be out so could see some changes coming.
Does not sound like they will be big though.

They have said they would like to share achievements with alts.
Same thing with the mounts and titles really, still very nice.

Sadly it seems Divine Plea is back for us. The good news is that they will be making it a "Blood Rage" for Prot making it Generate HoPo.
I like this a lot, fixes many issue we have with the solo HoPo generator, lack of burst threat and give us an emergency button in the form o somewhat on demand heal's.

Will keep an eye on the rest of the con. Also looking forward to watching 'The Raid' pre screening through live stream. If you have not heard of it go look it up now and be ready to watch.