MMO Gaming

I will post pictures of myself playing Burning Crusade on my main. Yeah, I know, kind of a cop out or a Monday morning post, but what can I say, I’m tired from trying to level my Draenei hunter to 10 so I could get a pet.

The pics below are all of me playing my main character, Talren, a restoration specced druid.

This shot is of one of the quests before a big bone dragon is summoned (I think that’s the quest anyway, they’ve all begun running together at this point, there’s so many of them. Anyway, I liked the effect here and thought I’d share. The quest is an elite, and I am not so hardcore that I am doing it alone, there’s actually a priest with me in shadowform if you look closely.

I thought both of these images were rather amusing. The one is of me after I got myself drunk (in game folks!) it’s kind of hard to tell, but there may or may not have been a stealthed cat in that picture as well. To be honest I don’t know if it existed or it was just a drunken hallucination. The other is me walking on land in my aquatic form, a form that is only supposed to work in water, but I was lagging a bit. I should note, the fish followed me onto the land as well.

This one is tough to see what is going on I guess, the picture doesn’t do it justice. This is of the final boss of one of the instances, the underbog. The boss has a move where you are kept suspended in mid-air, and when he drops you, you take damage (not me, I switch to cat form and avoid the damage, but that’s another story). It makes healing a bit odd at times, but was a fun fight regardless.

Stay tuned, my full review of WoW: TBC will be coming up this week.

P.S. Is it just me, or does the picture where I am drunk actually look the clearest??

pictures, screenshots, burning crusade, blizzard, world of warcraft, underbog, instance, druid, restoration, shadow priest, shadowform, funny pictures

I admit, I started a Draenei Shaman, I’m in good company, with the other 2,000 or so running around. However, the starting zones for Draenei are awesome. The quests are some of the best in the game, but none so much as the quest I am doing in the shots below. I won’t spoil it for any players who haven’t done it yet, but it’s the quest where you follow around furbolgs to different totems.

That’s me jumping off a cliff with the special buff that let’s me float slowly off and down the way, very cool, and some awesome wings.

That’s the same quest, a few minutes later, as you get transformed into this awesome looking shadow cat thing that has increased run speed, also very cool.

That’s just one example of Blizzard really stepping up the quest quality in the expansion, and it’s been that good in the Outland quests as well.

Just wanted to pass them along. I’ll throw in some other great shots of my main in Outland later.

Since my time has been spent (not equally) between checking my e-mail, writing posts, and, most importantly, playing the Burning Crusade (eating and sleeping is for the weak) I decided to grab a couple of screenshots of me and some guildmates questing in outlands.

I’ll be writing up a review on Burning Crusade soon (I decided to give it a full week before I really mentioned my opinions on it) but I will say to any WoW fan it is well worth the money you’ll spend on it. Blizzard has proved why they have so many very loyal fans.

Anyway, the screenshots, and some explanation.

Here we see the death shot. This was of a particularly difficult quest in the first zone in the Outlands, Hellfire Peninsula. The important part here is the party chat log, which is hard to read but says: “don’t worry, the gross incompetence was made up for by the sucking and dying”. It is one of my many group motivation techniques.

Fear not, for we were not the only ones falling that day:

The above two shots are what happens when a druid, a mage, and a shadow priest are grouped doing a quest. As you can see we cut a swath of destruction throughout that orc camp.

I’ll try to get some video up later this week.

Just a quick post for the moment to update you all on the BC situation. As you know, the game has been released, and I just got back from my own midnight outing to grab my copies (yes multiple, for myself and my brother). Well, I’ve got some pictures and a decent little story to go along with it, but I’ll have to post that later today, at the moment, I am working on the first of four install discs, so you’ll all have to excuse me.

Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft, Blizzard, expansion

Normally I don’t feel bad for people. Or, to put it more accurately, I only feel bad because so many people can be so incredibly stupid all at once but in general I don’t feel bad for other specific reasons I could have. Today though, I feel bad for all those hermits who haven’t even come out of their houses in years (probably around 2 years to be precise) because today is a horrible day. It is the day before the release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. To help alleviate the stress of the hermits on this fateful day I’ve compiled a list to help you survive grabbing your pre-ordered copy tomorrow.

• Wear multiple layers and sunglasses, this should help protect your skin from the sunlight (or moonlight for some).
• Avoiding physical contact should be easy, your rank body odor should do this for you. However, if anyone does get to close break into a coughing fit and they should back off. Also, you should have already payed for the pre-order fully up front, if you didn’t though, avoid cash which may cause hand to hand contact, go with credit/check card instead.
• If the store where you pre-ordered is having a midnight opening for the release of the game take advantage of this, not only will you be able to play sooner, but you won’t have to face the sun and the chance of third degree burns on your pasty skin.
• If at any point someone wants to talk to you, such as asking you what server you play on, you can avoid the unpleasant exchange by responding with something like: “I play on the Earth server, I can’t wait till I get home and can get back to the real world.” This should stop any further chatting with you. This tactic may also assist in your avoidance of physical contact, but use sparingly, you don’t want to saturate the crazy market.
• Driving to and from the store can be a hassle, especially if you are not there when traffic is light during a midnight release. If you can’t avoid most of the traffic you can still cause the traffic to avoid you. Remember to swerve and weave in and out of lanes a bit, not to much, just enough to cause people to think twice about getting to close because of the state of your inebriation.

I hope these tips help you out on picking up your copy. Happy (early) Burning Crusade day everyone!

Something I wanted to pass along to the readers, I watched this a few days ago, but it’s a good interview about Burning Crusade with Jeff Kaplan, the lead designer. Some things he says are good to hear, particularly for me the explanation of why they are letting shamans/paladins go to the other side with the expansion, and it does make sense, though a lot of people had thrown a fit about it.

At any rate a very good interview, and some great footage of the game and the new areas which all look really great.

World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment, Burning Crusade, Expansion, Interviews, Jeff Kaplan, game designer

According to the World of Warcraft main page announcement they are asking players to log in on certain dates and times to test out various features of the new PvP areas upcoming in the expansion pack, including the arenas, outdoor PvP and the battlegrounds. If you have managed to get on to the test servers make sure to participate so they can hopefully release something that isn’t crap.

World of Warcraft, Blizzard, PvP, Battlegrounds, Arenas, Burning Crusade, Beta test

BB over at 1PStart has put up a video of the new opening cinematic for The Burning Crusade.

As always, Blizzard has done a great job on the cinematic, it really gets me excited for the expansion. On that note, the best part in the video has to be when the mage polymorphs. Priceless.

World of Warcraft, Burning Crusade, Blizzard

Was released yesterday, I would have downloaded it then too, except for the fact that…you know, it was going so ridiculously slow it hurt (of course, so does the background downloader so I don’t know what I was expecting.

Anyway, as I type this up it is currently installing and hopefully I’ll be able to make a decent report on my thoughts of all the changes by tomorrow.

World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment, WoW Patch 2.0.1, Burning Crusade Patch

I’ve been holding off on posting about this, because I wanted to wait until I got the first report about someone using this, somehow, to scam people in-game and starting a forum topic filled with “ZOMG WTF Blizzard!” but I haven’t seen it yet so I’ll talk about it anyway.

For those that haven’t seen it yet, here’s the page. Yep, neat stuff, I can see all sorts of things, most crafted, most gathered, most auctioned, mob who killed the most players, etc. Some of it is fun (the most dangerous NPCs for instance) others just seem to highlight the annoyances that some classes face (most created item perhaps).

At any rate, check it out on Tuesday’s extended maintenance, you’ll have nothing else to do.

World of Warcraft Stats, Blizzard

For the first time last night, trying to log into WoW on the Gilneas server, I was stuck in a queue. Now, back when I was on Hyjal, it’s the kind of thing I would expect, but the Gilneas server is not so auspicious as to demand a line. Apparently, I’m not the only one waiting either. Now, given, as that post states, it was a holiday weekend, so possibly more people were playing, but I’m hoping this doesn’t become normal.

With the expansion set to release in not too long, I’m hoping that this is a one time thing. I don’t plan on paying them all too much for sitting in a line waiting to play the game, and if it does become a regular thing, they will need to come up with some kind of compensation/reimbursement for all the time spent waiting.

Queues, World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment

Well, maybe not the first time this has ever happened, but it’s the first I’ve seen on the front page of the WoW website. The story is from WoW Europe, about a couple that met in game, got married and had a kid.

If you’ve got a minute, and you are the kind of person that cares about 2 people you’ve never met getting married when they happened to meet in an online game that you, along with 7 million other people play then this story is for you.

World of Warcraft, WoW Europe, Blizzard

Considering they are placing this in one of the funniest movies of all time, I’m all for it.

You can download it here or visit the main page to watch it.

World of Warcraft, Office Space, WoW Commercial

There have been some picks popping up of the new Tier 5 armor sets for WoW (the brand new, not out yet stuff). And Curse Gaming has collected them in a single post.

The Warrior armor is so awesome I almost want to bring him out of retirement just to get it. And I’m thinking I may want to start a Warlock as well if I can look that awesome.

Tier 5 Armor, WoW, Burning Crusade

Call this one a winner folks.

I of course refer to one of the honorable mentions from the WoW comic contest. If this isn’t the winner for the month than I hope the real winner is at least as amusing as this one is, but I won’t hold my breath on that one.

World of Warcraft, Comic Contest