Withdrawals?

Like any addict would experience to going cold turkey from an addiction, I am experiencing withdrawals from not playing WoW. My mind wanders to what I could be doing in game instead of sitting around doing nothing. Sometimes it's just as simple as wanting to be able to log in and say hi to my guildies, as I have no other methods of contacting them. :/ I have found myself making a to-do list of things I want to accomplish in WoW, some of which would need to happen within the next year. Example: I know beyond the shadow of doubt that there will be a server-wide event for the build-up for the Cataclysm expansion that will yield a Feat of Strength achievement for participation. I have mentally thought strongly about returning to play during that time period.

If I returned, I think I would shelve my Paladin, save for getting Feat of Strength achievements or seasonal mounts. In her place, I would likely play my Warrior, which was a tribute character to my friend Brian, who got me to play WoW on the Icecrown server, where my main characters are located. Although, I have also considered restarting my Warlock as an Orc, which I have played on my friends account at high level and it is fairly fun, albeit not since WotLK came out.

I think part of my issue is being a collector of sorts. I see armor sets that look very aesthetically pleasing and make characters to collect the sets. However, in the case of some characters, they are delegated for collecting other things. Example: My Paladin is delegated to collecting mounts. I have no intentions of attempting to attain all mounts on any character save her. My Death Knight is reserved for epic (if they are a decent looking model) and legendary weapons, like Thunderfury or Shadowmourne.

I attempted to post an excerpt from my list but Blogger seems to not support copy-paste from MS Word. To be honest, I avoid calculating the amount of time this list will likely take to complete. It seems to deter me slightly. Perhaps I should to help me destroy what tendrils still remain. Presently I have looked for a similar MMO to play, which holds my interest and I can just play casually, without becoming a hardcore advocate for it. My friends have voiced interest in Aion, which is a horrific grind from what I have read. Between Aion and Dark Ages, I am not sure which has the least pleasant feeling in terms of grinding. I would give it a trial but they lack the free trial option for Aion and that deters me from playing. There is not much point to spending $50 on a game that will just end up sitting on the shelf forever, like my beloved copy of Warhammer Online, a game I had contemplated trying to get back into but it is bleeding players like a stuck pig. :( Star Trek Online is a giant single-player game with MMO PvP in space and a lack of a crafting system, which is mind-boggling and another deterrent.

Looking forward, the games that interest me the most are Hellgate: London (yes it is getting relaunched), and Star Wars: The Old Republic. I had fun in the single-player version of Hellgate, but it lacks a healer archtype and I tend to play healers as a whole, unless I get burned out on that. Perhaps I should look into a career in the medical field, since I seem to have a draw towards healing.

Well, I will draw this session of delving into my inner self to a close. Until next time.

Tis the season to be a drunkard...

So Brewfest started today. Very interesting holiday (started the day after Pirate Day aka free achievement day), and it has been lucrative so far. I got two tanking items for my Paladin, which seem to be decent. Brewfest happens for 2 weeks so I can possibly get a Brewfest Kodo mount (if it drops) or at least the remote. That thing would be epic to get, as it works anywhere. ^^

Also did Onyxia on my Rogue (will have another Feat of Strength to add once Patch 3.2.2 comes out) and Ulduar 10 on my Paladin today. Got two new pieces of gear, which were marginal upgrades but every bit counts I guess. According to WoW-Heroes, Uld10 is an easy instance for me now. Doesn't mean it's easy for the rest of the group... We consistently wiped on FL with 2 towers up, which was not normal, and we ended up calling it on the crazy cat lady because we kept having aggro issues with the cats. Perhaps if I was better geared for tanking I could move into the tanking spot, but everyone seems to like having me heal, because I am good at it. I have been doing this since Burning Crusade came out people! I should hope I am good at it by now.

It is a very nice change to play my Rogue again. Never thought I would be able to get back into that groove but one day I picked it up again and have been riding it since. Switching mindsets between healing and dps is still a thing I am getting used to. Even started to get into playing my little warrior (got plans for that little dude). If Polemistis ever starts playing again, perhaps I can do BG's with him. Two Arms Warriors would be an interesting setup. At the very least, I will get all the Bind on Account items and twink him out: Bloodied Arcanite Reaper, Polished Spaulders of Valor, Polished Breastplate of Valor, and maybe Swift Hand of Justice.

At any rate, it's bedtime. Work in the morning. Until we speak again, solama ashalanorae!

Return to the World of Warcraft

So I have come to realize that there is very little diversity in what to do end-game in Warhammer. Grinding out levels is a royal pain as well, and frankly, I do not have time to play a game that I do not enjoy playing to get to the end-game content.

I have been playing World of Warcraft on the Icecrown server since Patch 1.10, which was Shadows of the Necropolis, better known as when Naxx'ramas 40 was added to the game. That was roughly 4-5 years ago. Since then, WoW has had several changes, some I like and some I don't. Raiding is a lot easier, which is not a good thing in my opinion, although they have achievements that you can attempt, which add back the difficulty that feels lost. Some fights are just so easy though that achievements are no trouble to get.

If I were to rate expansions, Burning Crusade was the best in general, while Wrath of the Lich King was good in balancing out the classes to be on equal footing for the most part (Retribution Paladin is still overpowered and needs to be nerfed). WotLK would have been more aptly named "Wrath of the Recycled Content," as it reused lots of models and old bosses.

However, I was very surprised and genuinely excited when I watched the Cataclysm trailer and read the panels from BlizzCon. They are remaking the face of Azeroth, and opening several new zones, as well as introducing Worgen for the Alliance and Goblins for the Horde. Freaking Worgens!!! Very tempted to reroll Alliance. In addition to this, they are unlocking several new options for race/class combinations. Most notable is the ability for Taurens to become Paladins. I think I will be making use of the Paid Racial Change when it appears.

During the non-WoW time, I have been chasing my son around the house, drawing, or playing Heroes of Newerth, a stand-alone DOTA clone.

*EDIT* Forgot to mention my characters: Vazhra (BE Holy Paladin), Scout Abikutanda (Troll Combat Rogue), Vazh (Undead Death Knight), Bigspoondude (BE Priest), Scout Jelazingo (Troll Hunter), and Polemissedit (placeholder)

Back to XP

Well after much fussing with it, I reinstalled XP. Very sad to do so but I want to play. lol

I am back on Azazel, playing my Magus. oRVR has come a long way since I last played. Mythic needs to do some server merges though so we overall have at least medium populations on all the servers.

Well off to school. Later.

WAR & Linux PART 1

So I got fed up with not being able to use my microphone and went back to Ubuntu, but wasn't sure how well Warhammer was gonna run. So for the past 3 hours, I have been fiddling with it to make it work, and at last:




I have the patcher working! The script provided on WineHQ that involves replacing the warpatcher.exe and .bin is broken. All you have to do is initially start warpatcher.exe, which will patch the warpatcher.bin file. After that, you have to reset all the permissions for the user to read and write files and that warpatcher.bin can be executed as a program. Then you type: wine warpatcher.bin in the console and boom! Patch time!

I am gonna have a celebration snack and post back when I am in game. ^^

*UPDATE* Well I am unable to determine the exact reason why it's not working so looks like no WAR for me. = ( http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=13139

Back to Destruction

Well, after a short bit of playing Order, I have rerolled (again) on Skull Throne, among the 5 last servers that hold medium population. This time, I am going with Sorceror, and my name shall be henceforth Arrolath Frozenheart. After a single day of play I am R11 and RR9. 

It's a very fun class, a lot different from WoW's Mages. For one thing, if they added Backlash to WoW, every Mage would reroll a Warlock or a Balance Druid, because they wouldn't be able to constantly spam spells until they go OOM. Spell-weaving with the possibility of it blowing up in your face is a thrill, and the damage absolutely rapes! I am gonna see how I do in T2. I shall walk the Path of Destruction (AOE) until I feel called to do otherwise. Apparently next level I get Grip of Fear, which from what I see is basically Frost Nova, and with that this becomes probably the strongest caster for Destruction.

Hopefully I can get to 20 without too much trouble, purchase my mount and last name and start in on T3.

~ The chill of death lingers on...

Get to the Choppa!

Been taking a small break from Warhammer to play Wrath of the Lich King with my friends and I am pretty sure that was the biggest waste of $65 I have ever done. Granted they have made some improvements since I last played but all of the servers were crammed with tons of players and the only class I generally play suddenly has like 15% of the server playing it, which is a lot when you consider that there is like 9 different classes. Definately miss having unique classes per race though.

I noticed, while reading news about Warhammer (I usually read the latest news about MMOs to try to stay current with what's happening in the industry), that Mythic sent out some funny hints about what classes they are releasing soon. The missing Dwarf career is probably the Slayer but the Orc career is (and I say with 99.9% percent certainty) the Choppa, which is coming back from beta. I was reading some of the backstory on the Slayers and they sound like a very interesting kind of Dwarf, yet fit the theme of WAR Dwarfs perfectly. I think I will give it a try.

One thing I would love to see is a section of the Tome of Knowledge where I could reread all the old quest text of quests that I have done, as I breezed through most of it without reading all the dialogue that they put into it and I am sure it is very fascinating but at the time I was power leveling and not playing for fun.

Well I need to stop goofing off and get back to my homework for college. I don't need to fail my writing class because I was too busy blogging. Back to Bleach and maybe I will reinstall WAR later tonight and jump back in the fray.

Until our blades cross again,

Vazhra