Archive for the ‘MMO’ Category

Cheap Updates!

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

Cheap Games

Well, for a while there wasn’t. Been so busy with lots of stuff; study, work, family, leave, WoW!… and other stuff that pop up when you least expect them.
Well, lets kick off with some news related to WoW. Patch 3.0.8 has kicked in with lots of bugs and issues. An emergency maintenance has been made and hope to sort things out.

As for other games, well, I still have to finish Dead Space which is until now the scariest game I ever played. I suggest you try it out too. It is available on PC, Xbox360 and PS3. Hanging on the shelve are Fall Out 3, Prince of Persia (4!), Far Cry 2 and GTA4. I still need to go out and grab Red Alert 3 (An expansion has been announced already!). They are all not only great games, but very very good ones that will get you hooked. Though with so many great games coming out very soon, you can’t imagine but ask yourself how will you find the time to play them all.

Oh and regarding the cable cut, it seems it has been restored to about 80% of its previous performance. Expect full recovery with time. Some of you won’t notice it and will start saying that it has fully recovered, which it didn’t.

Last but not least, I picked up some nice post and articles for your enjoyment:

Well folks, I am on leave and thought to put something for you to read on until it is over. Will try to update more frequently whenever I can.

New Undersea Cable Cuts

Saturday, December 20th, 2008

If you have been having slow or no internet since 19th December and are frustrated with your ISP because they still didn’t fix the problem, then you might want to know that they are not to blame. It seems someone/something has cut undersea cables between Egypt and Italy which caused huge reduction in internet performance around the region and especially to Middle East and Asia.
It seems this will take a long time to get fixed and an estimated Dec. 31st has been announced for a full recovery.

Be happy that it wasn’t a total black out!

BBC News has the full story.

Oh and that also means NO WoW!!!

A Chance to Win a Spectral Tiger Mount

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008

You might be wondering about what is special about this. It is just a mount, but as many WoW players know, this is THE mount that rules them all. It is almost impossible to get and only a mere fraction of players have it. Though it is your chance (and mine) to get one. Blizzcore is a new WoW site and they are starting it with a bang by offer people a chance to win the mount simply by making a comment on their website regarding this topic.

So what are you waiting for, go go go.

Note: As of writing, 1500+ comments have been made and this is running for 2 weeks but still, 0.0001% of a chance is good than 0%.

Back to WoW and WotLK

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

Yep, I couldn’t help it. WoW is great fun and even though many hate it for being an addictive game, for whatever reason, it is just that good that I went back. Lots have changed since I left back in March 2008 which is when patch 2.4 was released with new content on the Island of Qual’Thalas that brought the Scryers and Aldor together against the forces of Kael’Thas who is planning to bring Kil’Jaeden back in the new and tough raid instance: The Sunwell. In addition of lots of new dailies (almost all daily quests are on that island) and badge gear, lots to keep people busy. Oh and lets not forget the cool new 5 man instance: The magisters Terrace.

Now that I am back, post patch 3.0.2, lots have changed and have been added since 2.4. Mainly in preparation of the second expansion pack: Wrath of the Lich king. Talents have been changed a lot, lots of class changes, the new inscription profession, the cool achievements system and huge raid encounter nerfs (Reported by many as 30% reduction from mobs to bosses) are just some of the main highlights of the patch. You can check the patch notes for further details. Also because of WotLK release date is nearing, you will find Argent Dawn officers around the cities asking for help to kill the undead showing up because of the Scourge invasion. There are cool rewards that you can find there so easily that can compete against Tier 5 items but as of writing, the invasion has stopped and only the vendors are still around.

The best thing is, everywhere you go in Azeroth or Outland, you will find huge amounts of activity going on. Mainly because people are trying to earn achievements or leveling their alts. I also started to level two new alts as well on separate accounts and using dual boxing to level them. Dual boxing is simply controlling two or more WoW characters at the same time on one or more machines. For me am using the same PC but having two windows open. The idea is that both characters level at the same time and help each other quickly to finish quests.

As for my main who is a Warlock, he is trying to finish any remaining quests in Outland and get exalted with remaining factions before the expansion arrives.

One big change I noticed is how much the latency has improved since early this year. Currently the ping stays in the range of 200-400 ms which is damn playable compared to the disaster that was before in the ranges of 600-1000+ ms. Also, a nice graphical update has been done to the game as some cool lighting and shadow effects have been added. It would be nice if Blizzard adds more shaders to the game to make it shinier at least.

Will keep you posted on new stuff as they arrive with my progress as time goes.

WAARGH-HAMMER ONLINE

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

Just after the release of Crysis Warhead and on the 18th of September 2008, Mythic Entertainment has released the much anticipated MMORPG game based on the popular Warhammer franchise: Warhammer Online – Age of Reckoning. You can learn more about the game and how it fared by reading MEGamers Warhammer Online Review.

Today also marks the game’s first month since release and it is going strong. With 750,000 accounts and being the smoothest MMO launch ever, Mythic are off with an impressive start. All that remains is to see how WAR will fare against the test of time. Read up more about the first month of WAR.

For me, WAR is currently the game I am playing and, until now, plan to play for maybe a couple of months. At least hit the level cap which is 40 and am currently level 24 (Rank 24). I play as a Black Orc, named Grimaxe, which is a tank class but can play as a melee dps class (damage per second class, also known as damage dealers). The game is quite enjoyable and my first impression is better than when I started WoW. You got a lot of things to do from the start and there is that sense of no need to rush to Rank 40. You can experience almost a huge portion of the game from the start and during leveling.

When I do reach the level cap, I will evaluate if it is still fun to continue or stop. Keep in mind that even though I am limited by Rank 40 (Which is harder than getting WoW level 60 btw), there is a lot to work on to reach renown rank 80 (renown is like experience for participating in RvR activities like killing players from the other faction).

I have some concerns with the graphics engine since even with 3GB of RAM, it stutters, which can only means some sort of optimization is required. The other thing is the animation, Mythic really need to work on it and get it in sync with the actions. There are some other bugs and concerns but nothing to take away the fun and/or obvious. I log in and check for an open party to join for PQs (Public Quests), do normal quests, queue for scenarios or join a warband to siege a keep.

I managed to get into some of the dungeons but still have to clear one. Being a player who farmed WoW dungeons heavily, things are different and don’t work the same way. I guess with time we will figure it out.

If you are interested to joining the WAR then you can find me on the European server “Sea of Dreams” (not to be confused with the upcoming Bioshock prequel). Keep in mind that the monthly fee for the game is 15$ and you do get a one month free trial when you purchase an account.

Feel free to ask me any questions about the game.

My gold Making Experience and Tips in WoW

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

Here is an exciting topic which will drive a lot of you WoW players crazy. Since I started playing WoW and during my continuous play, I found out that having gold (which is the currency used in the game) will pretty much do a lot of stuff for you in short amounts of time. Things like: Getting that epic flying training, special epic mounts, rare receipts, epic items being sold, your daily consumables,…etc will be much easier to attain by having enough gold flow. Below I will list the professions and techniques I used to get steady streams of gold and the amount of time needed to spend to achieve that.

Alchemy: Ah my golden profession that allowed me to make thousands of gold when I leveled it to maximum level, which isn’t both hard or gold consuming. For me I went ahead and chose Elixir Mastery because it gives you a chance to produce up to 5xflasks/elixirs with materials of a single flask/elixir and that flasks/elixir sell really well due to all the raiding. One general method you want to use is simply check the mats for most of the important elixirs and flask and compare to how much they sell. Generally I expect that you will break even or sometimes the flasks/elixirs sell less than the mats. In any case, what I did was simply buy the mats for the flasks, mainly Flask of Supreme Power and Flask of Pure Death. I sometimes make Flask of Blinding Light and Flask of Mighty Restoration but these don’t sell as much as the first two. The kicker is that these flasks sell between 30g (for the Flask of Supreme Power) and 50g (mainly for the rest of the flasks). Now imagine you got 2xflask using single flask materials, that’s free 30-50g. Now imagine getting 5x if you were lucky enough, then that’s 120-200g without breaking a sweat. On the negative side you might not get a single proc (proc is a term used that means that the roll for an effect to happen has happened, in this case getting multiple flasks/elixirs), which case by then it depends on the materials versus the product costs. Though even in the worst case scenario, you will only lose a small fraction of gold if you never proc’ed. For me, this was my main way of making gold and it only takes me 15 minutes to do. After I discovered this method, I never bothered making gold any other way. For your information, this method allowed me to get my alts epic flying training within 2 weeks!

Herbalism: Herbalism is a powerful way to make money if you have the time to spend in gathering herbs. Though you can be most efficient if you use an add on called “Cartographer” with the routes plug-in. If you manage through the configuration, it will calculate the best route to herb certain herbs that you select in each zone which as you can see, can save a lot of time. Personally, I didn’t rely on this much and just went herbing when I was bored or waiting for a group to be full for an instance. If you want to follow this path you might want to considering farming the following: Nightmare Vines at Shadowmoon Valley and Mountain Silversage and Dreamfoil in Hellfire. Reasons is that they are close to Shattrath, go into important potions mainly “Flask of Supreme Power” and “Flask of Pure Death” and you can get Nightmare Seeds and Fel Lotus on the Nightmare Vines.

Enchanting: Unless you have the will to spend a lot to level this to maximum level and then go farm the best Formulas, chances are you won’t make a lot of gold but it helps to do a few enchants while you are at a city. It is also a good idea to have a macro ready that when you click will show what you can do on the trade channel as long as you don’t spam. Though enchanting is mainly prefered to be used as a personal mean of a profession rather than a income one.

Tailoring: Only one sure way to make money with tailoring and it is making Netherweave bag. These babies sell like hot cakes, I literally mean “sell like hot cakes”. Generally the mats cost about 4-5g and you can sell the bag for about 6-8g. Now think about making 50 or so each day or whenever you are sold out and you can make about 100g minimum per 50 bags. It takes about 30 minutes or so to make almost that amount of bags and you don’t need to go farm or anything so it it so easy to do. I managed to raise gold from 10g to 2200g in about 1-2 weeks purely on selling these bags. Why you ask they sell that fast? Beats me to be honest, I guess lots of people make alts and they want to equip them with 16-slot bags.

Cooking: If you manage to level your cooking, then one of the most wanted food items sought by casters is Blackened Basilisk which only requires 1xChunk-O-Basilisk and some cooking fire to make. The materials are really easy to get or even buy in the AH then make a stack of them and sell them to AH or other players. Most raiders will have to have this for their caster players so it will definitely sell out. Again not the best way I made gold but a nice addition. Plus if you are a caster yourself then you can save yourself buying the food.

Dailies: Probably the worst way to make gold simply because it takes a lot of time and effort to do the dailies. Since the number of daily quests you can do has been increased to 25, then if you manage to do that much quests (which I approximate, can take about 2-4 hours, assuming you have access to atleast that much number of quests), the amount of gold you can make can reach to about 400g per day. Counting all the stuff you loot (grey, white, greens and possible blues). If you have the time to invest in such a method then by all means do it. It is still a worthy amount of gold you are getting.

I recommend getting the addon “auctioneer” since it can automate putting up your auctions faster rather than doing them one by one. You can get it at wow.curse.com. You can get “Cartographer” at the same website in addition to many up to date addons.

Oh and a small final hint, maybe you want to look at the mats and selling price for the Gyro-balanced Khorium Destroyer ;)

Quitting WoW

Saturday, May 17th, 2008


Well, I think it has been now two months since I quit WoW. I thought about sharing my story with this game. It was bought very late after it’s release, around August 2006. Reason I picked the game because I was intrigued to continue on the lore of Warcraft and check out this so called MMO genre. All I knew was that you can create a character and do quests together with other people who are on your side and kill people from the other side.

So I started with a warlock class simply because I saw one controlling the infernals in the intro movie. So I started leveling and slowly I was sucked by this black hole of fun (and addiction). I managed to reach level 60 and get my dreadsteed mount (one of the greatest moments in the game for me) just at around the same time as the release of the Burning Crusade Expansion. Do note it took me about 4-5 months to reach level 60. Reasons were I was trying to complete each quest in each zone I go through and that I fought with my weapons (in which is noobish considering my caster class).

At first, I didn’t want to get the expansion thinking that playing the main game is enough. Though in the end, I went ahead and bought it. Took me about two months to reach level 70 this time (faster but still slow). Then I went ahead and started the dreaded Karazhan attunement quests in which I did in two days. Though I was around another two months trying to get into this raid instance and just as soon as I started experiencing the instance, I got bored and thought to quit. I stayed off for about three months, then I decided to go back but without raiding and just for fun. Though gradually, I started getting back to the addiction. So I started raiding with a friend’s guild. Though the progress was very slow and we hardly went past Gruul. A decision was made by me and that was to leave my current realm, Bladefist, and go for a realm which is more ambitious. I went for Magtheridon, home of Nihilum. There, the standard of raiding is much much higher. I joined a guild who was at the end of Karazhan and Gruul and just starting The Eye and Serpentshrine Cavern.

After some time I moved to another guild (my last guild). In this guild, progress was much better and with a less stressful time schedule. Managed to kill Archimonde with them and reach Bloodboil in Black Temple. I even managed to create and level an alt warrior within THREE weeks to level 70 (Compare to my first character). At that point, I felt I had to stop for good. It was too much time investment. So I stopped at around March 2008! Yes, thats like almost a year and a half of WoW. Though the game was so much fun, the time I took playing it isn’t. I hardly managed to play other games. In addition, I got sick of the Carrot-on-Stick formula.

Now, I managed to experience new games, each different from the other, have more time for family, friends and writing a blog! WoW is a fun and great experience, though you should at some point think, am I getting something worthy for my time and money from this game? If no, then it is time to look for something else, something new and fresh.