It took forever, but I finally reached level 85 in World of Warcraft.  There are two main reasons it took me so long; the biggest of course, is just a general lack of playing time due to the demands of being a father of a four year old and a six month old.  Those dang kids are so dependent!  I’ve mentioned the second reason a few times lately, and that’s just a dwindling desire to play WoW.  I’m ready to move on to other games.  Or so I thought.  While I pretty much hated the first two Cataclysm zones I did (Vashj’ir followed by Deepholm), I really enjoyed Uldum and have enjoyed the first few quests in Twilight Highlands.  I may just stick around and finish off the Twilight Highlands quest achievement.  I’d also like to quickly run through the Goblin and Worgen starting areas, just to check them out.

I’ve still got a level 80 Shaman, who I suspect will remain at 80 for some time to come.  I have no desire to play him at this time and don’t see that changing.  My Warrior, currently 61 is the other character I’d consider leveling to 85, but honestly, I can’t see that happening any time soon.  I’ll keep my WoW subscription active for a bit, but it’s time to tackle my ever-growing pile of games and live outside the MMO space for a bit.

In other news, I was bored the other day, so what else should I do with my time besides hauling my huge PC upstairs to hook it up to our LCD TV.  It looked great, and I’m now wondering if my wife would notice if I brought the TV down to my comptuer room and plopped it on my desk.

I’ve been logging in to World of Warcraft less and less these days, and I have suspected for some time now that my time with the game may be coming to an end, and were it not for the release of the expansion,  I feel fairly confident in saying I would have already un-subscribed.

I just recently reached level 84 on my Mage, spending all of my time questing in Vashj’ir and Deepholm, earning the quest achievements for both zones.   I found it pretty tough forcing my self to continue playing through them, but I’ve vowed not to quit playing until I’ve got one character at 85.

I have two main complaints with my experience so far.  First,  both Vashj’ir and Deepholm lack many unique features or areas within the zones.  In Vashj’ir I was constantly using the map to find my way around because everything looks the same; an endless jungle of seaweed and coral.  The same holds true for Deepholm; just a whole lot of rock, lava, and crystalline formations.

My other complaint is with the way questing works, where you complete all the quests at a given quest hub and stay in that general area before moving on to the next hub.  I realize that it’s relatively unchanged from Wrath of the Lich King, and even Burning Crusade, but it seems a lot more obvious in Cataclysm.  There is really no incentive at all to explore the zones, nor is there any reason to because you never need to stray too far from the current quest hub to reach your objective.  Plus, the map points out exactly where your quest destination is so that’s one less reason to explore.

I actually much prefer quests that have you traversing across multiple zones and areas, but there’s none of that to be found.  More so than the previous expansions, I just can’t stand the “quest hub” system.  At the very least it would be nice to have to travel more than ten feet from the quest giver.  As it is, it feels as though the designers don’t want the player to stray too far from a predetermined path.  Not to mention the fact that all of the quests at each quest hub generally follow the same pattern.  There’s always a “gather x number of y” quest, along with a “kill x number y monsters” quest, which will be followed up with “go kill named monster x”.  Once the named is killed, the quest giver sends you off to the next quest hub to repeat the same quests but with different collectibles and creatures.  It’s horribly boring, and the pattern has become so noticeable because of the slower experience gain.  In order to stretch the level progression out, your forced to do a tonne of quests, so obviously quest originality gets tossed out the window.

I’m now a couple of quests into Uldum, and it appears as though it will be more of the same, but at least Uldum is a visually interesting zone.  I did a quick fly-around and it was nice to see several unique features in the zone; it doesn’t all look the same.  I’m still faced with a dilemma however; I don’t want to quit until I hit level 85, but I don’t really feel like playing because I find the whole thing kind of boring.

This is me riding my newly acquired Green Proto-Drake.  The Proto-Drake is obtained from a Mysterious Egg which can be purchased in Sholazar Basin if you have revered reputation with The Oracles.  According to WoWWiki, ”you may only carry one Mysterious Egg at a time, each of which takes three days to hatch. [The Reins of the Green Proto-Drake] has an extremely low drop chance, although this chance was increased in patch 4.0.3″.

Originally, the egg took seven days to hatch, so you could only check once a week to see if you got the mount.  After reaching revered with The Oracles on my Shaman, I was fairly diligent in checking my egg once a week, but after having no luck with the mount drop, I gave up.  Then I started focusing on leveling my Mage and forgot about the Shaman altogether, who I haven’t played in over a year now.  His talent points are still sitting unassigned since the release of Cataclysm.  He’s had a Mysterious Egg in his inventory, ready to be checked, for a very long time.

A friend of mine has been doing the egg-checking dance for quite some time now, hunting for the Proto-Drake.  He has had no luck, but he has continued to check time and again.

I was playing my Mage last night, doing quests in Deepholm, when my friend logged on.  I saw that he was in Icecrown and sent him a quick message asking him what the heck he was doing there.  ”Just checking my egg, on my way to get another one,” was his reply. Remembering that my Shaman had an egg on him, I quickly logged him in to check it.  Lo and behold, the Shaman was actually camped in Sholazar Basin, standing in front of the guy who sells the egg.  My friend was now standing there as well.  I check the egg, fully expecting an Aged Yolk, or some other common rubbish, but instead received the Proto-Drake.  Here’s a screenshot of what happened next…

Here’s a transcript of the conversation for those of you reading without graphics:

You receive loot: [Reins of the Green Proto-Drake]
Friend waves at you.
To [Friend]: I just logged in to this character to check my egg… haven’t logged into him for ages
[Friend] whispers: what did it hatch?
To [Friend]: [Reins of the Green Proto-Drake]
[Friend] whispers: let’s see

At this point I mount up on my new proto-drake, and begin prancing around my friend… yes, prancing…

[Me] says: WOOT!
[Friend] whispers: you’re a stupid dick face
[Friend] whispers: [Aged Yolk]
To [Friend]: I’m sorry, but I’m laughing so hard right now
[Friend} whispers: do you know how many weeks I’ve been doing this?

So there you have it.  I’m a stupid dick face.

A stupid dick face with a brand spanking new Green Proto-Drake!

On the opposite side of the spectrum, I find my enjoyment of Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies on the Nintendo DS increasing daily.  I haven’t been this “into” a game for quite some time.  I haven’t looked at a walkthrough for it so I can’t say for sure, but I’m almost positive I’m right at the end of the main story, so I’ve taken a detour to do some last minute grinding before heading out to save the world.  The thing about DQIX though, is that to me, the grinding doesn’t feel like grinding.  I have fun doing it and it’s strictly by choice; my party is probably strong enough as it is, I just want to make them stronger.  I can’t get enough of this game right now.

After a bunch of games of NHL 10 I finally lumbered up to bed and closed my eyes for a while.  Just a few short hours later though, I was wide awake again.  The clock told me it was just before 6:00am.  I checked on my two kids; the first born was out like a light and typically doesn’t wake until 7:30.  The new born was sleeping so soundly in his crib that I had to stare at his chest to make sure he was still breathing.  Glorious.  Two and a half months old and already sleeping nine hours a night.  So again, I fired up the 360 and dug out a game I haven’t played in ages, Burnout Paradise.  It didn’t take long to be reminded of just how fun Burnout is, and how good looking it is too.

I managed a solid two hours with the game before my daughter awoke and took over the TV.  Later in the afternoon, with my wife out with our daughter and my little guy sleeping in the crook of my left arm, I fired up my PC and killed some time in EverQuest II: Extended.  I haven’t been actively playing it, because I’ve definitely moved on from Norrath, but from time to time I do get the urge to pop in and check out the game I spent so many hours playing just a few years ago.  I gained a couple levels with the Inquisitor, now level 12, and yeah… that game does nothing for me.

Finally, I loaded up Batman: Arkham Asylum, which I had purchased off Steam for pretty cheap.  I only got a few minutes to play it, but what I saw was awesome.  I’ll be coming back to it for sure.  Hopefully my cold doesn’t go away too quickly.

I started the draft of this post two weeks ago on the 28th of November.  I was going to talk about my impressions of The Sundering event in World of Warcraft but of course, that’s crazy old news now and much has happened since.  Since our newest addition to the family arrived on September 30th, I’ve been on my computer exactly three times, each time to get a little bit of WoW in while the kids slept.  So given the complete lack of free time that I have these days, I haven’t seen a whole lot of the new Azeroth as of yet.

I did bring my Mage over to Vashj’ir and did enough quests there to ding 81, and I’m still undecided as to how I feel about the underwater zone.   The quests have been fairly routine, which is just about what I expected, but aside from that the zone itself seems too busy.  It’s so colourful and full of “stuff” floating around and moving about; and with the flood of players in the zone these days the respawn rates of the mobs is insane.  It seems I can’t take two steps without having to fight something.

I’ll probably stick with leveling the Mage until he’s 85 and then get back to leveling my Warrior who currently sits at 61.  After that, I’ll likely roll a goblin to check out all the new old world stuff.  Provided I get some free time of course.

I haven’t logged in to World of Warcraft in about three weeks. Well, actually I’ve logged in, I just haven’t played. I see that a big patch has gone live, changing all of the talent trees which kind of sucks because I had just gotten Titan’s Grip with my Warrior after reaching level 60. I outfitted him with a couple of decent two-handers and got rid of my one-handers; “not gonna need these any more!” I said…

…so I log in to re-do my talents only to discover that the changes mean I will not be able to regain Titan’s Grip for another nineteen levels… crap. Oh well. I actually like what I’ve seen of the talent changes and I’m looking forward to someday getting some time to play again. I’m told the dual spec cost has also been reduced to 100gp which means I can do a Prot spec in addition to my Fury spec, although I’m not sure I really want to venture into the world of tanking in this game.

Speaking of new additions, I recently purchased a Nintendo DS. I had some gift certificates lying around with nothing really to spend it on, so I figured what the heck. It’s actually come in very handy lately because of our new child. I can play in quick bursts here and there no matter where I am, so it’s been getting a fair amount of use. I’m actually playing an old GameBoy Advance game called Golden Sun that I’ve had for ages but never finished. I had the original GBA and it was awful to play due to the lack of a backlight, so it didn’t get a whole lot of use. I purchased a DS Lite specifically because it has a slot for GBA games and I’m now roughly half-way through the game (by my estimation after looking at a walkthrough), and it’s been pretty fun. I miss the old JRPG style games.

One of the reasons that put me on to the DS was the fact that Chrono Trigger was released on it; a game I’ve wanted to play since the Super Nintendo days. Of course, it’s nowhere to be found in stores any more, but it looks like I might have some luck on Amazon, so I may pick up a copy soon. I did purchase Dragon Quest IX though, which I’ll get to right after I’m done with Golden Sun.

Crazy… I’ve already got a backlog of games on my newly purchased DS to go along with the already huge backlog of games on PC and Xbox 360.

World of Warcraft
My Warrior is now level 43 and I’ve run into “the wall”, much like my previous characters. It’s typically around this level where my motivation to play begins to dip. There’s not much driving me forward at this point, especially with Cataclysm looming on the horizon. With my other characters it was around level 50 that my interest began picking up again, as I like the zones relevant to that level, plus knowing that I’d be just 8 levels away from Outland acts as a motivating factor as well. I’ll continue to play, it’d be nice to have a third character hit the level cap, but my pace will be slowing down for the foreseeable future. (Oh yeah, my second child is due to arrive within a month as well, so that may put a bit of a damper on any time I have to dedicate to gaming).

EverQuest II Extended
I have actually been reminiscing a bit about EQII for the past while, thinking it might be neat to subscribe again for a month just to check things out, and then lo and behold, the free to play version gets released.  Perfect!  Of course, I don’t have access to my previous characters but that’s fine, as I really just want to pop into the world to check it out.

I created an Inquisitor, a class I have never played before, and started in Halas, a zone I’d never seen before.  After an hour or two, I’m level 8 and the nostalgia factor has certainly kicked in, but like I say every time I return to EQII, the world graphics are just a wee bit too ugly for me to really enjoy the game.  It’s amazing to me how aged the game looks.  I used to be wowed by these graphics, but now they’re just kind of… meh.  With my new gaming rig I can even play at “Extreme Quality” too, and the graphics just don’t do it for me.  But hey, the game is ‘free’, so I’ll kick the tires a little longer.   I can see though, just how limited the free client is.  Two bag slots?  I was always running into space issues back when I had access to all my inventory slots.

StarCraft II
I’m still plodding along the single-player campaign; I believe I have about seven missions to go until the final one.   I’m still really enjoying the campaign and I’m having a lot of fun.  I did pop into a 1v1 multi-player match against a friend and was destroyed in less than three minutes.  I’ll definitely be sticking to the single-player in this game… I’ve never been good against human opponents in RTS games.

Those three games are the ones that I’m ‘actively’ playing lately.  I recently purchased a couple games off of Xbox Live that I have yet to get to.  I got Catan, Limbo, and Lara Croft: Guardian of Light.  I have actually played a few games of Catan, and it is what it is… a nice version of the board game.  The other two I’ve downloaded but have yet to play.  I plan on checking them out tonight.

Still looming on the horizon… Dragon Age: Origins (I promise I’ll get to you one day soon!), Torchlight (gotta get my $5 worth!), Left 4 Dead 2 (No idea why I bought you), and Dead Space (great game, just needed a break from it).

After unboxing it and setting it all up, I turned it on and almost went deaf.  It sounded like a jet engine taking off, and I knew right away that something had to be wrong, there was no way my glorious new PC was supposed to be this loud.  It didn’t take long to figure out that the thermal control program was set by default to run the hard drive and graphics card fans constantly at 100%.  A quick fix later and my liquid-cooled PC went completely silent, and I was relieved.

Rather than dive into some games right away though, I instead wiped out the factory installation and put on a nice, fresh copy of Windows 7 Ultimate from scratch.  Then I installed Steam and proceeded to download all my games from there.  Unfortunately this was right in the middle of one of Steam’s crazy sales and the downloads were going super slow.  So I just let it run over night, and through the following day.  By the time I got home from work that day all of my Steam games were downloaded and waiting to be played.  I still wasn’t ready to play anything though, because I wanted to install all of my non-Steam games.  This process took way longer than I ever thought it would (Company of Heroes = worst installation ever in the history of anything), but eventually I got everything up and running and I’m now playing games again, and my oh my, what a difference from my old PC.

My old PC is a single-core, Pentium 4 3.4GHz with 3GB RAM and an AGP Radeon 3850, and for the past two months the graphics card was off being RMA’d, so I was running with the Radeon 9800XT that originally came with the PC.  My new PC is an i7-960 quad core, 3.2GHz with 12GB RAM, a Radeon 5870, and two hard drives totalling 2.5TB of space.  Needless to say, there is a significant difference between the two computers.  I can once again run games at their max settings!  So what have I spent my time playing?

World of Warcraft

Yes, I finally get a new PC and I still end up spending most of my time with a game that looked and ran just fine on my old rig.  Of course now it looks and runs even better.  I was quite surprised actually at how nice the game looks.  It has aged very well.  Pictured above is my new Orc Warrior.  Apparently the game doesn’t appeal to me at level 80 because as soon as my Mage dinged 80 I more-or-less abondoned him to start all over with this guy.  I’m hoping to get through as much content as possible before Cataclysm, as I’ve never levelled a Horde character.  So far, level 23 as of this writing, it’s been fun and a nice change from playing Alliance.  I’m on a PvP server again, but have yet to have any PvP encounters, although I’ve only recently ventured into contested zones.

Starting this new character has reaffirmed to me just how much I like this game.  Damn you WoW.

Call of Duty 4

I actually played a few levels of this on my old PC, and I fully believed that it ran just fine.  Playing on my new PC however, with settings cranked, proves to me just how deluded I was.  This is a fantastic looking game, and this is even an “old” Call of Duty, not Modern Warfare 2.  I’m still not entirely sure though if I love the gameplay.  It’s a little too “on rails” for me, and it feels like I’m just moving from one set piece to the next.  I’m curious to see how the story plays out though, so I’ll keep playing it in bits here and there.

Far Cry 2

I picked this up on a whim for $12 the other day.  I’m still early in the game, but so far I love it.  Unlike Call of Duty, Far Cry 2 feels wide open, like I can do whatever, and go wherever I like.  It’s also one of the most gorgeous games I’ve ever seen.  I was originally going to track down Crysis because I wanted a game to “show off”, to convince my wife that this new PC was worth the price, but after reading some reviews and watching some gameplay videos, I didn’t think I’d like Crysis all that much.  I didn’t know much about Far Cry 2; I had played the first one and really enjoyed it up until I started fighting mutants and other creatures.  I just wanted to kill other people damnit.  My understanding is that the sequel is quite a bit different, and so far that has been true.  I like it, and will probably spend most of my gaming time outside of WoW with this one.

Those are the three games I’ve been playing.  I’m also planning on finally getting to Dragon Age: Origins, but it’s still not pulling me just yet.  I don’t know what it is; I want to play it, but I also sort of don’t.   It’s a weird feeling.  Also on my list is Left 4 Dead 2 which I picked up for $10 thanks to the previously mentioned crazy Steam sale, along with Torchlight.  Although, with Torchlight, just before I put it in my virtual cart I said to myself, “I’ll probably never play this, but it’s only $5″, and I bought it.  We’ll see.

The only thing I’m sort of regretting with the new PC is not getting a dedicated sound card.  I figured the onboard would be good enough, but I’m kind of wishing I had gotten one.  I may be picking one up soon.  I love new toys.

The highest that I’ve leveled a Horde character is 23, so I haven’t seen a whole lot of the Horde side of the game, and I suppose with the Cataclysm coming soon, this will be my last chance to see the “old world” from the Horde perspective.  I’m guessing I’ll have about two months before Cataclysm comes out, so I don’t think I’ll get too far with this Warrior before I’m re-rolling yet again to see the Cataclysm stuff.

This new character of mine is level 17 as of this writing.  I’m actually on vacation at the moment, visiting with my sister, and in what must count as one of the saddest things I’ve done in a while, I downloaded the WoW client to her MacBook Pro within minutes of arriving here.  Like a junkie I just need my fix.  My excuse is that I’m an early riser and I’ve been able to play while waiting for everyone else to wake up.

The hardest part has been playing without a mouse, using only the touchpad.  That has taken some getting used to.  I’ll be back home in just a couple of days however, where I will eagerly await the arrival of my new PC.  I ordered an Alienware from Dell and the tracking information tells me it should be arriving the day after I get home.  WoW may actually take a back seat once the PC arrives, as I’ve been wanting to play Dragon Age for some time, but couldn’t bring myself to do it on my aging PC.  There are a few other games in my pile that I’ll be looking to check out on the new hardware as well.  Should be fun.