Quote of the Day

Cats regard people as warmblooded furniture. - Jacquelyn Mitchard, The Deep End of the Ocean

How well do I know this... my cats constantly decide I'm the most comfortable thing to take a nap on. Especially while in the middle of questing in WoW!

WoW Under Siege, or Is It?

I've watched several different MMOs come out over the last few months, several trumpeted as "the WoW Killer" and some that just quietly slip onto the scene and fill in a niche area that was lacking in the past.

From Charge and Gore to Decapitation and Bloodspray
One of the major ones I participated in was the Age of Conan Open Beta, and then in AoC itself for the first month. This game had been screamed as a WoW Killer, that it would be big, bad, and bloody. It was bad, and bloody - that at much it lived up to. The fatalities were awesome- with a decent system, if you didn't have a good system (IE: most WoW capable PCs fell on their face) you'd better not have fatalities running, or the game might crash. But it didn't get WoW's numbers and after that first week membership started dropping because of glitches, and just the general UI issues. It also didn't help that the game had tried to build a reputation as a "mature" MMO, yes AoC had a little M on the back of the box.

I can sit here and list its issues with ease... 1. You had to upgrade your system in a big way just to play. I myself came from WoW and had to upgrade my processor, Ram, and video card. Would have had to upgrade my motherboard if I'd not decided to spend a tiny bit more when I first build my Pink Monster. 2.Everything in the game was instanced. Town/countryside/actual instance/you-name-it it was all instanced, which kinda made it hard to group up if you didn't know exactly what to click... and no, it wasn't obvious! 3. Auction House wasn't displaying half its items. 4. Certain Professions could not vendor finished products to at least make back a portion of the cash spent in the creation. 5. Occasional system crashes due to a major memory leak on the highest end systems, and with certain video cards as well, it seemed.

This game was suposed to Kill WoW, it had more issues than WoW did when it started... and I remember the complaints and server issues with WoW, it was not fun for the first few weeks... WoW was constantly releasing new servers and they were filling as fast as they came on line. AoC was hyped, and fell far short. I left after my free month was up, it wasn't worth the cash I'd paid to buy it.

From Fast Fingers to Study the Wind
I remember when Pirates of the Burning Sea came out. It was by no means hailed as a WoW Killer, in fact it didn't even make a blip on the WoW radar, unless you liked sailing around the Caribbean in a ship and blowing the crap out of other ships at a slower pace that allowed you to think before you reacted. I played for a little bit, at the insistence of my guy... believe me, he really wanted me to play, buying me the Pre-Order + the actual game. So, what could I do other than try it? This was at a time when I was no longer raiding in WoW, but was still playing Yazmin pretty heavily, and I'd just begun to level my orc warrior. I did get a Naval Officer to about level 37 on that game, then it just kinda lost all the fun because the game merged the server I was on and was tossing out transfers like bad fish off a garbage truck.

I hated the server I just transferred too... lost the community feel of Kidd. Believe me, on Kidd Spain was getting its ass kicked by the French, but it was a friendly rivalry. And if a little Spaniard accidentally wandered into contested French/English Territory, the French were kind enough to let the poor Spaniard escape without harm. Now, I wouldn't have put it past the English to try and screw me over (largest faction out there - no honor) but; for the French, when Furett spoke, everyone listened on the French side... 108 guns non-withstanding.

The new server had an honor problem... people forcing port battles at odd hours where there wouldn't be any defense by the other side, because a large portion of its membership just could not be on at 2:00 AM.

I got sick of it, and refused to play any-more. Suspended the account and there it sits. The guy on the other hand? Has gone back to the game, determined to enjoy PvP... hmmm.

I see so many games hyped as Killers by the Fans of these games, and then watch so many do what I did, play for a month, loathe it, and then come back to the tried game that has figured out most of its glitches and fixed them. I will watch Warhammer with interest, because I believe that there isn't as large of a threat from War... Blizzard ran on the Warcraft NAME, and proved a good product. War has to do that + manage to grab a giant portion of WoW's business just to be believed as a "Killer". I don't think I'll be seeing a David to this Goliath any-time soon.

Rogue's Eye View on WoW Killers

Orcapalooza Fun

Another BRK event over, but this was the first I participated in. I had an absolute blast. Found three of the items and one of Bloodmoon Chosen, the guild that was sponsoring the event.

Saw a number of major names there... and wasn't sure what was more amusing, the NE hunter that showed up flagged and started taking on all orclet comers, or the lil orclets that kept trying to kill her.

I also spotted a dwarf on a cat watching the event. BRK, this was the ultimate blast for me, even though it was only an hour. Managed to get to level four, die twice and log out in Ratchet of all places (yay for falling off the wrong part of the Valley of Trials and landing in water).

All I can say is, thank you for the event, insane orcs running amok and a server going WTF is with these orcs everywhere?! Made my night.

Thank you Temerity Jane, thank you BRK, and thank you a ton Bloodmoon Chosen.

It started off with me getting my regular name the day before and just sitting on the character selection screen. I was happy with that.

The actual event started with me logging in right next to Temerity Jane. I literally saw tons and tons and tons of little orcs milling about and ONE troll, so obviously I've got to mouse over the level 6 troll, only to realize its TJ! I managed to contain myself from jumping up and down, then I looked over all the lil orclets and found Brksorc.

I made a bee-line for the character. Hey, its not every day I get to stand in the presence of great hunterness that's also got a kick butt blog too! (Yes, my guildie hunters rock, but they don't blog ^_^). Anyways, this was at 7pm server time. The whole show didn't start til 7:30, so I had plenty of time to poke and jab at my UI so it'd be at least remotely working.

And then I realized I was more or less sitting next to the Guild Lead for Bloodmoon Chosen, on a war bear. Since I'd not really gotten a chance to study a war bear mount before, I took the time to look it over while BRK was spamming macros trying to get everyone organized.

I joined the raid, with a polite "I'd like to join the raid, please." whisper, and got into the orcapalooza chat channel... didn't bother to colorize that channel, probably should have... would have made it more fun somehow.

Then somebody showed up with shirts! Lot of people were running around with the Orange Mageweave Marital Shirts. I got a regular orange mageweave one... but I was perfectly happy with that, while some other people wanted to trade for the black sleeved one. But, I noticed something that a lot of the WTTs didn't... BRK was wearing a regular orange shirt, and if that's good enough for him? Certainly good enough for me. ^_^

Somebody else showed up with bags, so I picked up a pair of six slotters, and then got ready to go and kill things.

Volley went off, and I took off running to the words GO GO GO GO GO GO! from BRK... killed my first thing and realized it wasn't sparkly... oops, BRK forgot to switch it to Free-for-all, but my XP shot up since I think we had a full raid and everyone in it (aside from BRK) had just tried to kill something at once. Literally I went from 0xp to about 1/3 the way through 1 in the first 20 seconds.

BRK was yelling at us to all drop group, so I did as I ran after the second boar on my list. Shot at it while a warrior swung... yay for hunter being better at pulling (duh, what else would I be playing with this sign off?)! I got the tag, so I finished killing the pig, pivoted and shot at the next thing... warlock got it (which is about the only thing faster than a hunter when it comes to tagging something). The entire Valley was alive with Orcs just murdering anything that moved in sight, it was fun. I made a bee-line past the pigs for the scorpids as soon as I hit level 2. Killed every scorpid in sight that i could get my arrows into.

Helped somebody with a Vile Familar that was trying to separate the orc's head from its body, and then pivoted to kill my own as I went up in a woosh of gold, yep level 3. I slid back towards where Sarkoth spawns and found that same war bear, snapped my screen shot and killed something right in front of the other hunter, using a bit of jumping back, swinging and shooting (hey, whatever works at that level) then circled back towards the Familiar Cave.

My blue pouch fell off a Felhound-thingie, and I hopped up and down briefly before killing the next thing in my line of sight and then I scrambled out of the cave, after a quick Alt Tab to realize that the Scorpid Worker tail was on the list... oops! Scurried over, grabbed the boars pre-cursor quest, slaughtered all my boars, ran back, turned in, picked up the scorpid one, murdered a scorpid, got the tail; and then dinged four and ran like heck for the entrance of the Valley. I killed a level 5 Scorpid got a Stinger and got my third item on the list (my last item too). Which also ran me out of arrows (you'd think after just having leveled not one, but two characters through there I'd have remembered to GRAB ARROWS?! Nope >.>).

Then, after foolishly deciding to jump at a level 7 boar, I found myself rezzing in Sen'jen Village. Scurried over to Echo Isles to see if any of the BMC were visible... nope. Saw the 10 minute warning... yes I went from 1-4 in an hour with only one quest done... and scurried back to the Valley... I was going to get a SS of Brkorc if I could... he wasn't around. So I scrambled up the Hidden Path thinking that maybe, just maybe, there'd be a BMC hiding back there... nope.

And then I fall off, into water and die to a level 7 Muckshell... and rez in Ratchet. The event ended, and that is where Tzia the orc of Argent Dawn is logged out, in Ratchet in the Barrens of all places.

Like I said earlier, thank you everyone that made this possible. I had a blast!