New Stuffz

EQ2 released it's 14th expansion this week. It has a bit more bulk and outdoor/overland zones than the past two, so I love this aspect. There are many solo/group and raid zones, plenty to do. I jumped in on release day and gave it a spin.

Planes of Prophesy! EQ2

Today the latest EQ2 expansion released, Planes of Prophecy. It is tied to the first EQ game in lore and areas from the PoP, or rather Planes of Power, era and some from beyond. Heavy on nostalgia, we did not get to see a lot with the livestream, but if you pre-ordered you could take place in the beta, or you could check out the weekly posts on the website which highlighted the new zones. Today I've only been to the first area, an isle in the sky called The Plane of Magic.

October Goodies

One of my favorite projects in Rift, my 'Stranger Things' dimension. And now a favorite new mount!

I wanted to do a Halloween guide for all the cool events going on but it seems this year it has been hard to pinpoint some of the starting dates. By the time I actually got all of the dates it might be a bit late and not really worth it. Instead I thought I'd just point out and share a few thoughts on what is happening now, at least what I've had time to check out along with a few other interesting bits.

Rift: Starfall Prophecy

Another day, another expansion launches! Today's experience was a lot more exciting and less confusing. No rants here today, read on to see why I'm pretty excited about Starfall Prophecy.

Legion

Legion is here finally! It has been nice to delve in and take part on all these new adventures. I have only been working on one character, though I have seen friends getting a start on all their character's artifact weapons. For me it has been most fun just taking things slow, enjoying the newness and taking everything in. The newness will wear off soon enough so I will enjoy it as long as I can!

Countdown

The countdown to Legion is on, only a few hours left! I will be logging in, hopefully logged in so when it rolls over I will be ready to go. Being on a late schedule doesn't hurt, heh. I did not get everything done that I wanted to but I'm fine about that. I didn't want to burn myself out over the past week so I only logged in briefly a few times to do invasions. I have all the sets for mogging, several bat pets and I don't think there is anything else I need or want.

New Toys

 Lots of things to look forward to this month. WoW has a new expansion heading out next week. GW2 just released a new part of the Living Story. EQ2 also has a new expansion heading out, as well as the first EQ, which was just released. Lots to look forward to and dabble with.

WoW- Prepping For WoD: Linkage

We still have some time before WoD and 6.0 hit, if you play WoW regularly you're probably already in the know on most of the changes and upcoming details. However, if you're like me and haven't been playing as much, you might find that there are changes in the works that you want to prepare for. Today I thought I'd share some links with some information on what is to come, what you can watch out for. 

The Great Name Purge!
First off, if you haven't logged in for ages (you might still not want to if it has been thaaaat long), but you might be concerned with your character's name being lost. If you have not logged in since November 11, 2008, you could lose your name. Or rather, you will. How to save your name? Why you'll need to log in (with each character)! Check out the official post here.

For Great Justice (and Valor)!
Big Bear Butt has a good post on how to spend your valor and justice, what to do with it and what you might want to farm with it before 6.0 goes live. A very handy post, I wasn't really aware of the changes myself. Check it out here.

Heirlooms on Vacation.
With the previous topic sort of tied into this one, it could be something to take into account. You might want to farm that heirloom before the vendor goes on vacation. I did read that heirlooms will be sold for gold but this post confuses me. So, if there is an heirloom you wanted to get but keep putting off, check out this post here.

Whack a Mole 6.0: Healing Changes.
And... healing is getting more 'interesting' (again). I don't think there really is a way to make whack-a-mole more interesting for players who don't find it fun to begin with. I think it is fun to be able to support and help your party as a healer, not worry about mana issues constantly. I cringe when I think about Cataclysm and the healing changes and how I quit healing through this expansion, the only one I did this with. There are some changes headed for healers, check out the article from WoW Insider here. Maybe it isn't so bad?

Free WoW! ...Sort of.
WoW is free to new players until September 26th. Ten more days to.... dig through your email. That's right, only an email promotion for players who play other Blizzard games. Or something like that. It is all confusing and worded weird. WoW Insider had a post on it, which ends up with it seeming a lot less exciting for non blizzard customers once explained by a Blizzard poster. But, you might want to check through the email if you fit this criteria. Or maybe pass it along to a friend, they could have an email sitting there in the spam folder.

10th Anniversary Events... Moar Levels!
And to wrap up this post, Blizzard has an article up which outlines WoW's 10th anniversary. Very exciting and all, but there are some things to take into account. This event will last for about two months, which is very nice considering there is a raid tied to it, a cool new PvP map as well. But you're going to need to get some levels to participate. I am pretty boggled that the company would want to rush players to end game after such a long content drought. In my honest opinion I think this event should have dropped six months before the anniversary and had a grand finale on the day of. Such as: Log in to claim your corgi! Or something... That way people would have had something interesting to do while waiting for the xpac, enough time to play through with alts and so on. Just really enjoy it and not feel rushed. But that's just me. What do I know. You can find all the details here on the official website.

Warlords of Draenor

I was right about a couple of things with the next WoW expansion, the Draenor Planet, and time travel, oh and the item squish. As everyone has heard by now, Warlords of Draenor is the next WoW expansion. So we get a version of player housing, basically a step up from the farm. New models, delivered in installments? Because I only see three showing right now. So what all do we get? Here's the most prominent things announced today.

•  Time travel and a new continent, with the old Burning Crusade feel. Playing the nostalgia card. I'll bite. I really did love the feel of TBC zones. From what we have seen, the artwork is quite lovely- Shadowmoon Valley looks gorgeous. It will be a nice change from Panda land. Time travel? Eh, not that inspiring. More spacegoats and red orcs? Still not super inspiring. Will they even have the new models? I guess the orcs will. 

• New models. Yes! They only have three to show. Kind of depressing, I'm thinking only a few will be released and the rest will be released with future patches. I will say these models look awesome, they fit into the World of Warcraft universe and look smooth. But, still they should all be released at the launch of the expansion honestly, don't half ass it. 

• Housing. Rejoice player housing enthusiasts! We will be getting a garrison where we can collect NPC characters to craft for us and go on missions. We'll have a little bit of choice on design it looks like. Is it true housing or just a step up from the farm? Okay, maybe it isn't player housing like EverQuest II, or Rift's dimensions, but it does look interesting, I'll admit that. It feels more like what I have seen for Wildstar. Better than nothing, functional housing seems like it could be fun. But what happens when the next expansion hits. We leave it behind like the farm and all our 'friends' we made there? And they are also phased, these little garrisons.

• Item squish? I read it on WoW Insider. All I can say is gross. Yay, let me get to level 100 to feel like it did two expansions ago, joy, joy, joy. Probably the biggest reason I'll never take this game seriously again. You can't undo how a game feels, it just isn't right. Oh yeah, we're time traveling... We lost some hitpoints on the way back through time. That's just me, I don't get excited losing hitpoints and stats with an expansion. 

So, those are the biggest things. MMO Champ has a huge pile of posts I need to sort through. Things got kind of dry for a bit but it seems more info is flooding in with the Q&A panel stuff. Massively and WoW Insider also have some great coverage too. So glad that we were able to get a play by play from all these gaming sites (many thanks), those of us not attending or watching. It was exciting to be able to pick up my phone and still share in on the excitement. I was excited to hear the announcement. I did almost order the virtual ticket at the last minute, but I still had second thoughts. We'll be able to delve over everything for days and weeks now. 

There are new raids, new instances, a new raid mode, which is harder than heroic. LFR will scale much like Flex, cool. So will normal and heroic modes... I don't really care about raiding anymore, LFR feels so dead and ruined. Will this kill LFR off? My ass hurts just thinking about raiding. I can't sit still long enough. LFR was a boon in my eyes. We really need this many modes? 

All in all it sounds like a decent expansion. Nothing earth shattering. I will probably go back, boost an alt to 90, play one of my mains to cap, play with the garrison then head back to whatever it is I was playing before. At this point that's my guess. I will probably be playing it alone, once again, because my family has mostly all quit. I have zero interest in raiding anymore, and I don't feel like being left behind because I don't want to. The artwork looks great, more polish overall to the game. It is all solid for an expansion, but just not really all that exciting. I do give Blizzard props for the lovely models and the garrison. They really look great and I know the team works hard on this game. I just can't help but feel underwhelmed. How do you feel about the future WoW expansion? 

First Day in Pandaria

Mist of Pandaria is finally here. It has been an expansion I've been really looking forward to, adding a lot of neat content and fun things to do in WoW, which is always a great thing in my book. I managed to do the Theramore scenario the day before the xpac went live. I ended up with two DKs and it went very smooth and quick. I was happy to grab my tabard and get it done. All in all it is a nice change to have small groups made up of any spec/class. I look forward to doing more of these.

I picked up MoP yesterday, getting in rather late. I've not been feeling well for almost a week and I'm at the point where I think I have dry socket with my tooth so I have really been out of it, yet another dentist appointment today. But, that did not hold me back, I had to get in yesterday at some point and look around. I did get in the beta but didn't spend too much time looking around, I wanted everything to be fresh and new.  

I can't really give much of a first impression but I did enjoy myself. I wasn't too keen on the first starting area with the battle going on, too much chaos, corpses everywhere and respawns were nearly instant, but that is always how it is on release day. Once I got past the first entry quests, it got a little better. I even ran off to tame some interesting pets. More on that later.

The music is interesting and the world of Pandaria is gorgeous. I really love the look and feel thus far. The quests have been decent, there have been a few that really made me laugh, I love humor in quests, and I haven't had any problems with spawns as mobs are spawning like there is tomorrow. It does feel weird to be tagging mobs and not helping other people as much, a change from Guild Wars 2. But these games are apples and oranges. Each have their strong points.

I also played around with some pet battles, something else I have been excited about. I enjoy these, very laid back and relaxing, something casual to do on the side, a much welcomed activity. I snagged a cute little black lamb pet, love the fact you can capture more pets!

Hunter pets, I like how things have changed in MoP with pets. Any pet can preform any role, say you want your cat to tank, it can now, really neat that you can basically go with a skin you like. My first pet in MoP was the cutest little porcupine. He's very small and it is hilarious to watch him charge and tank everything. He's about as small as a 'mini pet', just the cuteness factor alone is worth having him follow me around!

It is nice to be playing again, I took a few weeks off for GW2. I do miss the depth that this game offers when it comes to collecting things like pets and mounts. The game has more of a solid feel in terms of goals, there is a lot to pick and choose from, more direction and structure in that aspect. Something I did miss in GW2. Having mounts somehow makes the world feel bigger, like you can really explore it.

I'm excited about getting my own farm too, that is still a ways off, I haven't even made it past the Jade Forest yet! I am taking my time and enjoying it. I expect it won't take too long to hit 90 though. We already had our server first 90's hit just as I was starting out in the new areas, lol. I also made a panda girl, need to set time aside to level her, gives me something else to look forward to.

So, that is it for today. Just some thoughts on my first day in MoP, enjoying myself and the expansion for what it is, lots more to do and look forward to, exciting!