Be Excellent To Each Other

Is there an Undead David Dickenson you show these off to in game?

No. But that would be excellent.

Grobbler just hit L85 Just under 7 days played, with a fair bit of faffing around timewise.

Now what?

FYI - no money, no Warcraft. I will return one day, just not today, or tomorrow, etc.

So, what has been going on...
Grobbler, my L85 hunter is doing daily quests for reputation (now at exalted for Hyjal, Therazane next). Running through Cata zones that he missed during levelling for fun and gold (finishing off the 84-85 zone), and pvp-ing. I was going to get him all the best pvp gear, but hunters are pretty crap in pvp at the moment, no real burst damage, and no defence. So i'm just using him to get enough honor to send the pvp heirlooms to my L44 priest Moolly.
Moolly priest did a few instances over the weekend to get him up from L42, and now has a couple of heirlooms courtesy of my hunter (the guild ones). To be honest, I much prefer playing him, as I feel like i'm actually making a difference, so I think i'll concentrate on him for a while. I'll most likely level him by just running random instances and pvp, which will cause me a nightmare at the later levels, as I won't know how to kill anyone when it's time to quest

Blizzcon this weekend.

New expansion announced, pandas as a playable race, new monk class, new Pokemon style game for all your pets, current talents are being completely revamped to give more options and configurations, to try and avoid the cookie cutter builds.
Plus if you commit to a 12 month contract, rather than a monthly rolling contract as most people are currently on, you get a free mount and a free copy of Diablo 3 when it is released

...pandas?

Fuck yeah, pandas. For too long pandas have been ignored in video games. Marginalised in favour of fucking hegdehogs, bandicoots, or other weak assed, wanky mammals that in real life would get shit out of anything halfway cool.

Pandas? Sign me up!

It does have the feel of an April Fools joke, but apparently they're serious.

/I'LL EAT YOUR FUCKING FACE YOU CUNT. AFTER I'VE EATEN THAT FUCKING BLUE HEDGEHOG.

It's pandas' heyday:

BRING IT, BITCH

I'm still not sure why Sonic won an 'Outstanding Contribution' award at the Golden Joystick awards this year. It should have been a 'Die, already, you blue bastard' award.

Kung-Fu Pandas!

It's going to be awesome.

I signed up for the 12 months of WoW so I get Diablo 3 for free too.

WoW still ticks more boxes than any other game for my money.

Vaguely tempted to buy SWTOR and give that a go for a month.

Our guild split into two for SWTOR, and for the first few weeks it looked like SWTOR might 'win', however as the weeks rolled by more and more folks came back to WoW, citing SWTOR's dreadful lack of a meaningful endgame, incredibly linear storylines, lack of exploration, lack of zone variety, lack of quest variety, a multitude of bugs and glitches, total lack of addons and game features (threat meter, damage counter, shit AH UI etc), really aggressive instancing of the main game world (like Age of Conan did) and oooohhhhh, the list goes on.

One chap went as far as to describe it as a single-player game with a guild chat feature.

My overall impression is that it's worth levelling a character to 50 once, and that's probably about it, and that's not something I'm prepared to spend £45 on, especially since it'd probably take me two-three months to get there so maybe £30 of subs on top of that.

I'm going to give it at least one major expansion before I have a crack at it, by which time it'll hopefully be cheaper as well.

TBH I'm still having an absolute blast with WoW, I rolled a Tauren Paladin who I've levelled entirely in instances from L15 (when you can queue for Ragefire Chasm), he's currently L75 and I've enjoyed it every step of the way, never tanked as a pally before - which is a mark of WoW's depth and breadth, I've been playing the game for getting on for four years and there's still a load of stuff that I simply haven't tried yet.

I have kinda stopped with WoW for the time being. BF3 is taking up my time when I feel like gaming.

I started an undead to see the new storyline, and wanted a melee pvp character, so went with a warrior. Over the course of few weeks I played her more and more, and am now at L71, mainly by pvp for over 50% of the time. I was playing as Arms for ages, as that is the supposed "best" pvp spec, yet at about L40 I swapped to Prot, just to see...
Absolutely hilarious So much more fun than Arms, in that I can actually stay alive long enough to make some tactical decisions, and if I find a friendly healer i'm pretty much unstoppable.

Might log back in today actually, I want to get her to L85 and do some proper PvP, but it just takes so bloody long to get there.

Oh I dunno, they're reduced the XP requirements to get from 70 to 80 by 25%, and if you just get your head down and blast through quests the levels can come quickly.

As a prot warrior your other PvE option is to use the LFG dungeon finder and level as a tank in instances up to 80. As a tank you'll basically get insta-queues the whole way.

That's how I'm doing my prot pally and it's a blast Haven't done one single quest in Northrend

(Also, in a recent patch they've put all the dungeon quests for all the Northrend instances inside the dungeons themselves, so you don't need to do any lead-in quests, quest chains, find NPCs out in the world etc to pick up the quests, there's just an NPC inside the door in each instance who'll give you all the quests for that instance. These give a nice XP boost and of course lots of lovely gear, on top of the fact that all the bosses in instances drop nice blues too of course.)

Aye, but the problem with tanking instances, is that I haven't actually done any instances post L50 on any characters really. Jumping in as a tank wouldn't make me very popular

Just make a macro that says 'new to tanking please be patient' (or words to that effect) and send it to the party at the start of the instance. That's all I did when I started tanking on my DK and in the main I found people were understanding and helpful.

As long as you're properly geared and specced for the role, and you know the basics of how to get and hold aggro, you should be alright. All the Northrend instances have been somewhat nerfed, and it's not like you'll be doing heroics.

It's a while since I've played on my warrior (I left him on Frostwhisper when we all migrated to Doomhammer), but your basic pull IIRC is Charge > Rend > Thunderclap, and make sure you have the points in the talent whereby a thunderclap spreads the bleed effect of rend to all nearby targets.

Here are the action bars and talents off my warrior, who's L71 as well by coincidence! Just get all your defensive cooldowns clustered together, and take note of all abilities and attacks that affect multiple targets, as the key to tanking outside of heroics and raids is basically AoE threat generation. (So cleave is a great one as it hits three targets, on single target fights just stack devastate etc, Shockwave is a brilliant AoE stun and so on, you can work it all out from reading the tooltips.)

Pretty insane SCROLL OF RESURRECTION offer on at the moment.

You can send a scroll to any WoW account that was inactive on the 4th March or earlier, the person who accepts it gets:

1) Their WoW licence upgraded to Cataclysm, even if it's right down at Vanilla at the moment. (That's potentially a £50 freebie.)

2) They can choose any one of their characters to get instantly boosted to Level 80, complete with a full set of 20 slot bags, 500 gold, and a set of Cataclysm starter gear.

3) They get a free realm and faction switch on that character if they want it. (Normal cost £35).

I sent one to Mrs SA (she stopped playing the game over 18 months ago and has no intention of returning), got her account boosted up to Cataclysm (it was down at Wrath level), and popped one of her hunters over to our realm, boosted it to 80, and then just gave the account to a guy at work who's wanting to get back into the game.

Job done, it's saved him about £60, and he's back in the game with us.

Obviously the generosity of this offer has nothing to do with the fact that the game has lost two million paying subscribers during the Cataclysm expansion, although they've still got over 10 million subscribers so it's not dead yet.

Oh yes and I get a super-cool spectral wing rider mount for getting a player back into the game.

hmm interesting May have to have bimble around Azeroth again, to see what has changed

If you want a scroll of resurrection sending your way, just give me a shout.

If you've not played the game for a while, it's definitely worth taking another look IMO. It's a massively different (and massively better) game to what it was when I started playing it 3 1/2 years ago.

Reasonably interesting hands-on preview at Eurogamer today, although it does go on a bit in places without really saying much:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012- ... n-promises

Still enjoying the game myself, not done anything with my 85s for weeks but my tanking pally is now 83 and I'll be getting him up to 85 in due course.

Decent session on Saturday night with a couple of IRL mates who are also guildies, we're all levelling characters up at the same time and rate, so we spent three (increasingly drunken) hours smashing through the Cataclysm instances - as a social experience it's really hard to beat WoW IMO.

Can't grab the direct link now, but hardcore fans might find the latest post on http://www.iamcal.com interesting.

Oh, here we are: http://insanitytracker.com/

I'm a proper WoW geek, but there's no way on earth I'd go for the Insane title.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18907_th ... ments.html

Proper WoW geeks clearly not only get the title, but then make a website to see who else did

That's the second 'not-very-good' Cracked article I've read lately. "HAR HAR HAR WoW PLAYERS ARE ALL FAT VIRGIN NERDS WITH NO FRIENDS"

Isn't the author (Christina H) a keen gamer and WoW player herself though? I got the vibe that it was a sort of 'poking fun at herself' article rather than a 'being nasty about other people' article.

I'd love to know what she looks like, I believe she's half-Asian, and she likes games, I bet she's well sexy.

I'm not fat

I have friends!

(subs please check)

I don't play WoW!

Err...

The more I read about Mists of Pandaria the more I think it's going to be pretty cool.

Sounds like they're finishing what they started with Cataclysm, stripping out what little dead wood is left in the game and eliminating grind once and for all. (To my mind the game is stunningly better than it was when I first started playing over 3 1/2 years ago.)

Also, the lady pandas have substantial child-bearing hips and are a bit chubby with pretty faces and nice smiles (as far as pandas go), which is the kind of real lass I like.

I think I will make a girl panda as my first character in MoP.

All done for me now this expansion, got my pally to 84 and realised there was nothing I wanted to do with him at 85 so never dinged. (Did get four chars to 85 and endgame raid-geared though.)

Got a beta invitation for MoP but I see no appeal whatsoever in playing an unfinished broken game so won't take it up.

Diablo 3 out next month, so just in a holding pattern until then games-wise really. MoP will be out later in the year, and there are other goodies on the horizon such as Max Payne 3.

Probably a good thing, otherwise it might make you crazy!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17766404

Well fair play to him, I'd not want to go to my grave after committing an act of mass murder with the regret that I hadn't maxed out my level and got my hands on a complete set of epic loot.

This might be of interest to WoW players:
http://worldofmapcraft.com

Cheers for the link there Grim... although it makes me a bit wistful and sad (I'm basically an ex-WoW player now, not even sure I'll return for the pandas).

It does remind me what a fucking awesome world it was to play games in

Until the next mmo takes over, you are never really an ex-wow player, you're only ever on hiatus

Yeah I'm sure I won't be able to resist taking a look at the pandas. In fact, I'll probably level at least one panda to 90, probably a monk as a tank or something similar so I get super-quick instance queueing.

I was chatting at work last week with a few of the guys and we have genuine fond memories for the game, it's four years since we all started playing together and we remember how fucking dreadful we were early on, with not a fucking clue what we were up to.

Trying to kill Hogger (back when he was an elite), all getting panic-stricken, running off in five different directions and pulling every mob in a half-mile radius - that sort of thing.

I think WoW is a once in a lifetime gaming experience, I suspect nothing will ever come close to it for me.

Couldn't agree more, I had played MMO's before WoW and have played others since stopping WoW, but none of them match up. Still not going to go back to WoW however, spent far too much of my life on that game as it is, regardless of all the fond memories I have of it.

I don't think there's anything wrong with just letting something go and simply cherishing the memories.

The 'WoW golden days' for me are not going to return, whilst I'm still good friends and/or in contact with the people I first played with four years ago, our collective circumstances have all changed so that we simply couldn't play the game in the way we used to, even if we wanted to.

For some time towards the back end of Wrath and for the first few months of Cataclysm, we had a fucking fantastic Manx guild on the go. (A bloke started a thread on a set of local IOM forums asking if there'd be any interest in a Manx guild, and he got enough folks involved to start the guild.)

Even at our peak we generally didn't have more than about 15 members online at any given time, but we ran loads of instances, did plenty of 'old world' raids (vanilla 40-mans with 8 or 9 of us at Level 80 for example), all helped each other out, often just went onto the guild's Mumble server simply to natter, guild chat was routinely friendly and hilarious, managed to get some 10-man raids together and even killed the first six bosses in ICC.

The best thing was we were all Manxies, i.e. either lived on the IOM or had close connections to the IOM, and a lot of us knew each other IRL too - it was the best 'feeling' game I've ever known. I distinctly remember a couple of insanely late nights with a couple of guildies where I was still running 5-mans with them at well past 3am in the morning, needless to say we were all being 'alternatively fuelled' in one way or another to still be gaming at such a late hour - and it was brilliant fun.

Unfortunately as tends to happen the guild quietened down over time as people started to move onto other things or their circumstances changed, to the extent that in the end we had a sort of 'soft disband' and those of us still active in the game moved to another guild on a different realm. (But a lot of us are still in contact with each other and on very good terms, friends on FB etc, even if we don't game together any longer.)

I think it's a 'lightning strikes just once' kind of a deal, I really do - and I have the very fondest of memories for it, pretty much the best extended gaming period of my entire life.

The Panda Patch is now live (over 10GB), although the expansion itself isn't live for another month.

However, all the Panda changes are in there, so a complete reworking of talents, glyphs, looting, cross-realm zones are implemented, ranged, relic and thrown items are gone (!), minimum range removed on ranged weapons, head enchants have been completely removed, loads of UI changes, new roll mechanism - and loads of other stuff too.

You can accuse Blizzard of many things, but resting on their laurels is certainly not one of them.

On the Mac front there's support for Retina displays amongst a few other things.

Quite looking forward to getting back into a bit of WoW, I have to say. Given how limited my games time is these days compared to when Cata hit, I can easily see me getting a good 9 months out of the pandas.

Panda power.

I'd expect my PC to handle this all pimped out at 60FPS+, but according to FRAPS this is 55FPS.

(Admittedly 2560x1440, in windowed mode, with everything at super mega max, but even so......)

My panda is not amused.

I can't help but confess I had little electric 'WoW twitches' going on as I created my panda and logged in, it'll probably replace online slots for a year or so.

Plus I've got all my 85s to relearn and level to 90 as well, as once again Blizzard really have mixed it all up.

Had a proper look through all my 85s and Blizzard really have mixed it all up again, you can accuse them of many things, but being afraid to seriously mix up probably the biggest gaming cash cow in the history of the world, certainly isn't one of them.

It'll be fun to properly get my teeth stuck into it again, I suspect I'll divide my time between levelling my new character(s) and giving some attention to my favourite three 85s, probably the hunter, DK and priest. And possibly the pally. Or the mage. Or the warrior. Hmmmm.

And I never did finish levelling my druid.

It was great to see a load of low level characters running around in the panda starting area, and Orgrimmar was rammed.

Pretty good article explaining the long-lasting appeal of WoW at Cracked.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-i ... -warcraft/

So I tried to play StarCraft earlier but my authenticator needed removing from my account because I have a new iPhone and I didn't transfer it over. I got that sorted in a few minutes (had to email Blizzard my driving licence but otherwise they did it in 10 minutes), and then I was looking around my Battle.net account...

I saw WoW and an offer for 10 free days of Pandaria. I've just downloaded it (12GB!) and fired it up.

Mercifully, they've made some changes that made me quit after 20 minutes or so. I've had to re-spec my Rogue because of the new talent tree stuff, so I've forgotten what everything does and half of my keyboard shortcuts are messed up. I'd basically have to re-learn everything again. Can't be arsed.

I wouldn't mind playing an MMO again, but I'm going to wait for something new to come along. There's just too much in WoW now. I've been completely left behind by it. Is there anything on the horizon? I know Blizzard are working on something, as are Bungie, but we know naff all about those!

Eve. It is calling you.

That's even worse! I absolutely love the concept, but it's just too expansive and complicated to get into now. I've tried a few times. Just don't have the patience to play catch up. That's why I want to get in on something from day one. Like I did with WoW.

Sorry WTB missed this post for some reason.

If you've not played WoW in anger for a while then it is a whole new game in a lot of ways, rather than try and pick up an old character and learn it all again piecemeal, the best bet would be to roll a Level 1 and learn it all 'organically' as it were, because there are massive chunks of the game that have been completely reworked, redesigned, removed, changed, updated etc.

Plus the early zones are hugely, incredibly, staggeringly better than they used to be.

Personally speaking I didn't stick with the Pandas for long, and quit the game months ago (let my account lapse). I actually felt the same as you, I didn't fancy learning all my high level characters again, and for some reason the idea of levelling a Panda from 1 didn't chime with me, in the way that I levelled a Pally from 1 to 85 in Cata and really enjoyed doing so.

I got some four years or so out of WoW, so it did well, but I'm done with it now.