Since this is National Whine On Your Blog Day, I’m going to confront the amorphous entity known as Mage Hate head-on. There’s this general feeling I get sometimes that players think mages are scum. Yes we have our ongoing rivalry with Warlocks, but this feeling goes beyond it. It’s like the rest of the Warcraft-playing…
Escaping the Vortex of Suck
Lets be honest, the Dungeon Finder tool can be an invitation to torture. What started out as a way to find groups and gain some excellent rewards quickly deteriorated into an all out slugfest. Nowadays you’re as likely to find a group where the players are openly hostile to each other, or where some use…
Nostalgia Is A Double Edged Sword
Two of my characters have been trekking though Thousand needles recently. Jupplar has been going back to the Old World to grind some gathering skills, while my Blood Elf mage has been finishing the quests at Freewind Post and the Mirage Raceway. All the while this nagging reminder kept on creeping up in the back…
Charting the Curve of Awesome
I’ve been levelling up a newbie mage using the Refer-a-Friend feature, and it’s been a slog. We’ve gone Hordeside and have no heirloom gear, so we’re relying on instance gear, random greenies and quest rewards to gear up. The slog is worth it though – I’m now getting to the stage where the new spells…
It’s The People That Make It
I get up to some silly things in-game. Usually it’s just messing around with strange game mechanics like using Slow Fall then jumping from the Temple of Storms. Once in a while though, it’s something that’s shared around that’s equally silly, and makes the game even better. I’m going to kick off with something that…
Evolution or Revolution?
I’ve been thinking recently about something that Tobold mentioned on his blog about Blizzard’s continued game development cycles. In it, he rightly describes that Starcraft 2 has a similar look, feel and playstyle to the original game. He also mentions that the Diablo 3 gameplay footage has a similar look and style to the original…
The Melee Misfit
As I’ve probably mentioned before, I’ve been trying out a new guild on a new server. Single Abstract Noun is on the Argent Dawn servers in both Europe and US. It’s a guild for warcraft bloggers, the people who read them and anyone else involved in the community. It’s got a great feel, and provides…
More on Mastery
In what feels like a healthy dose of rumour control, Blizzard today released a huge update on how Mastery will work in Cataclysm. While there are no mage specifics, there’s a ton of information available to allow us to predict how Mastery will work. It’s also worth looking at what problems Mastery won’t solve for…
It’s Only Taken Four Years
It’s great when you help others and get something from it yourself in return. As an example, I’ve recently been helping a bunch of level 60 characters work through some of the Vanilla WoW content. It means that they get a chance to face Old World dungeons and 40-man raiding, with raids lasting a few…
An Architect of Archetypes
I’ve recently joined the Blog Azeroth community in order to get advice and guidance as a fledgling Warcraft blogger. There’s a seasonal topic currently running called the Blogger Elder Project, in which a writer tries to impart advice, information or expertise to their readers. I’d been thinking about it for a few days, but was…