I play this game a little bit. Also a ton of another game I didn't think to get screenshots from. :x

Anyway, aaaaanyway. Recently (read: literally 2 days ago), I totally went back to WoW. I’m not quite sure how to put ‘how’ into words.

Nothing to do with TOR, I’m still playing that a bit, and as I said in the AEPlays episode on it, it’s a good game, but suffers from a lot of there being nothing to do solo at the level cap. I still have alts to level there, but I’m unlikely to spend much time on my ‘main’, just because there’s nothing to do (apart from raid, and eeeeeh, I’m going to respectfully pass there (grouping in general, esp in a performance-driven environment? Not really my cup of tea, although I do like playing with friends)). (Also there is PvP, but WoW’s is better, and the gear doesn’t look half as horrible)

So, WoW. yeah. I was away for all of a month or so since I actually let my sub go, although in practice I’d not played much since pre-4.2 (although I did do some of those dailies for a while). I’ve been doing, amusingly, LFG-tool 5 mans. You know why? Because (as a DPS) they’re super relaxing, for the most part. DPSing is easy, and this takes care of the hardest part about grouping, which is actually finding people to play with.

Mostly inaccurate image of what I've been playing recently.

Still, I’ve also been playing other games, as that doesn’t account for the other week and a half of game-playing that has been taking place recently. I’ve also been playing more Sonic Generations, because I like that game a lot, and a frankly silly amount of Final Fantasy XIII (which becomes less silly when you realize XIII-2 comes out in 10 odd days and I need to be prepared), also Skyrim. I am the best at being a sneakthief, but I am not the best at being a combat guy. Even a magic combat guy. >>;;

I’ve also been slowly organizing everything in my life into lists, because why not (alternate reason: after 3 months of summer vacation, my mind has finally broken into a million pieces, and it really likes lists)

Alternate alternate reason. I FUCKING LOVE LISTS (also I am best at arts)

I’ve also been playing all sorts of other stuff, like “write all the things” and “read all the things” and “listen to all the things”. You know me, I’m not one to do things by half-measures.

Still, once I finish FFXIII (read: when I stop grinding for lulz and instead actually continue playing the game), I will probably move onto OTHER GAMES (oh noes), in total I’ve probably spent a few 100 hours playing games over the last month, which, frankly, doesn’t feel like enough. I’ve only done… 10 work week’s worth of gaming? Maybe 15? Over the last month. What kind of game addict am I? NEED MOAR GAMING. (Figures do not account for time spent ‘double dipping’ playing Pokemon while in queues or whatever)

It’s a horrible strategy, and I’d really probably be better off not wasting my time with MMOs, but I love them, despite never liking that 2nd M at all.

So, the first thing is character creation – specifically here, I tend to pick the ‘Magic User’ class. I like playing magi, I think they’re cool. This isn’t a problem yet, but soon enough, you’ll see this is a horrible choice. >>;;

So I enter the game – and I start to level. Solo. As covered in this post I’m not exactly crash hot on doing dungeons, and as they’re not required, I happily ignore them. Usually I have a pretty slow pace of leveling (not because I’m particularly slow, just because I’m trying to make the fun parts last as long as possible), and I’m usually not even half-way to the level cap before the vast majority of players have started on endgame content (meaning simply at-cap content, probably instances preparing for raids).

Once I’ve made my way to the level cap, the game changes somewhat. I lose my goal. At the level cap, I’ll do the following tasks:

• Explore the world (or as much as possible for a solo character)
• Solo low-level dungeons (if possible – playing a mage makes this double hard, BTW)
• Maybe PvP or something?
• Buy several months or more of subscription for a game that I barely play.

Now, the obvious answer would be “hey, asshole, get over your stupid fears and do some fucking group content”.

I… I don’t like that idea. I mean, even when I have friends or I’m in a guild or whatever, it’s hard for me to initiate group content (as usually due to the tiered nature of end-game content, I need to do things that are completely useless to these other players). This means that I don’t/can’t get geared enough to actually get to the stage where I can do content with said friends/guild (that they want to do).

It’s a pretty painful cycle, but it doesn’t get me down, much. A lot of this level-cap stuff comes directly from my experiences with Cataclysm, but also applies to other games I’ve played. Specifically what happened with Cata was that I was a week late to 85 (it took me 10 days instead of 3-5), and everyone was into Heroics before I had a chance to start working on the horrible 85 normals. And they didn’t want to go back. So then I kept paying for a year despite not playing or doing any group content at all, ever.

Anyway, it’s looking at behavior like this that makes me wonder why I’m considering ordering ToR – and considering how much of a pain in the ass it is to get a copy of that game (because EA/Bioware actually don’t want people to play it – I must admit that it makes me think their game probably is terrible), I’m thinking I’ll import a boxed copy, as the idea of downloading a 30+ GB client makes my Internet connection cry tears of blood. (Stupid download allowances…)

Anyway, my wide range of concerns about ToR is probably another post or 3 worth of content, and it’s not like anyone from Bioware is going to read this anyway! (Let us be honest here – I don’t expect anyone from Blizzard, or Trion, or Riot or Bioware or Valve or anyone else to read this blog – why would they care about my opinions?) (Not that I don’t want people to read the blog… but you know, pessimism and all that jazz – also the wide amounts of feedback I get totally help me think that I’m reaching a wide audience (I’m not trying to guilt trip you into commenting))

Well, whatever. The next part of the “Games I Play” series should be up relatively soon. Like, tomorrow or maybe later today, but don’t count on that. (I still have to do an MMO entry for that, don’t I? Well, it can wait till later in the series)

I also filled in the blanks with some amusing lies (writers call that ‘enhancing the truth’, but I’m not that good a liar)!

So, the interesting tale of Selite’s first day (because my first day was really boring – and Selite was started like a week later, tops) begins… in the next paragraph.

I come home from a long day of doing something. In my hands, a box, it is green, and says “WORLD OF WARCRAFT: THE BURNING CRUSADE” or something. I install it, impatiently, while thinking of the character I would create very soon.

A mage, that much was obvious. They got to shoot fireballs and teleport places, and that was pretty freaking awesome. Race? Blood Elf, as my friend wanted me to play Horde with him, and I was like “AUGH FINE WHATEVER” and subsequently went and bought the expansion so I could do so while having a character model that I could stand looking at for 90 billion hours (also totally wanted to make one of those “cool looking see-through ladies with the waggle’ (I saw a Draenei Shadow Priest on my first day, and was like “dude, that looks awesome” – I still haven’t gotten a Draenei Priest to 40 to actually get that (or 30, whatever level it was) – some day).

I subsequently went and managed to log into the game. I typed my password in, slowly, as I was slightly nervous, as my hands were literally shaking with excitement (remember that truth enhancement I was talking about? Yeah, I think this may be it), as the character selection screen popped up, I hit the big “New Character” button, clicked away from the human male that I was presented with, and hit Blood Elf. Female.

I mucked around with her features. Somewhat pale skin, Red hair cut in that haircut that kinda reminded me of the villain lady from Captain Planet (not really, but I thought it was a great hairdo, as evidenced by the fact that I still have it on her) name… name… I am the worst at names.

This was the spot, where all her adventures began. She's come a long way.

Hit random. Seltie. Or was it Seliet. It was probably Seliet, knowing my secret method for making new names, which is…

Hit Random, change the order of two characters in the name.

I know, I’m a fucking genius. Anyway, this story has a longish way to go yet. I log into the game, which gives me some boring story about the Blood Elves which was most likely covered in the Warcraft 3 expansion. I find myself in the North Eastern corner of the world. Eversong Woods. I fly through the 1-5 area, and as I move out into the main parts of the zone, and am just taken away by the beauty of the zone.

Even at night, this zone is so very pretty.

Anyway, that more or less accounts what I can remember of Selite’s first day. Or evening, as it was. Tune in next time, when I will talk about my favorite memories from a really long amount of time spent playing videogames in a generally spoiler-free manner.

Okay, real life totally crit for max damage for a while there. Time to post up what were going to be the 2nd and 3rd parts of this series.

The first part can be found here for your reading ‘pleasure’. Now to get on with the show.

Generic Elf Lady Mages (ELMs, for short)

Elf Lady Mages (or Magi, if you prefer) have long been a staple of my RPG repertoire. Now, there are a great many games in which ELMs can and have existed, but today we are primary going to look at one, Neverwinter Nights (NWN), a Bioware (of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and many other, more better, games) game from approximately 2002 (that’s what the back of the manual seems to say, but I can’t be certain).

NWN was my first Bioware game, from memory, and it was an amazing experience (it was also my main gateway to D&D 3.x, despite having know about it (and having read the 2.x books) before).

Now the ELM from NWN was technically a Wizard, but that really doesn’t matter. She did a bunch of stuff (that we can assume involved saving Neverwinter/Faerun/Toril ), and then she retired for a while or something, while I played some other games.

Then she came back after the 2nd expansion, Hordes of the Underdark, which in addition to having a bunch more campaign (with some levels set in Undermountain, so awesome right there), it also raised the level cap from 20 to 40. She ended up kicking ass, or something, and then beat that too (totally can’t remember what the final boss of that was, so… yeah).

So now you know the past of the ELM archetype, you can learn about the present, with Dragon Age: Origins, yet another Bioware RPG, this one set in their own world, with their own combat/advancement systems.

A few observations that I made playing an ELM in that game:

• Mages suck (read: are not D&D style overpowered, at least) in DA-O.
• Non-magic based religions are boring and annoying.
• Lesbian encounters with a redheaded bard with a sexy accent is just going to make me keep playing ELMs.

Neria was a fairly big goody two shoes, partially because every freaking one of my characters from recent games have been, and partially because she was busy trying to get into Leliana’s bardpants, and she wasn’t a huge fan of jerky jerks.

That being said, she would of been 100% for flooding the dwarfcaves of stupid annoyance with lots of toxic, everything killing radiation. She really hated it down there.

The best thing about Neria, and to a slightly lesser degree the ELM archetype as a whole, was the fact that they are very good at diplomacy. Like, they all have discourse skills of over 9000, and stuff. (Distinctly unlike myself?)

Mainly because the ability to make fights easier just by using words is an actual tangible benefit, but also because this is just the way my characters tend to end up being.

Cough. Anyway, moving on, to what would of been the third part of this series, we have…

World of Warcraft (or that one time ELMs went wild)

Yes, it was always going to come to this, which means that it’s time to talk about my personal window into Azeroth once more.

Yes, it’s time for Selite’s last hurrah.

Okay, fine, not last hurrah, but more like ‘most recent’ hurrah.

Selite was ‘born’ a couple of years back, when I first started WoW (in the first month or so of BC), when my mates were all like “bro play horde with me bro”. So I bought a copy of BC, and made a Blood Elf (Lady, because of the reason related to looking at the ass of my character for 100s of hours) Mage, because I was fooling around with one earlier, and also because I wanted to be able to be a master of the arcane. Also teleporting (it was almost entirely teleporting).

Look, she's being kinda nice to old Grom.

So I (incredibly slowly) leveled her up, and drank from the fountains of lore that are quests, and after a while, she started to evolve her own (rather Trope-y, but that’s not really a bad thing) persona, and this just snowballed into the voice in my head that she is today.

Selite embodies more than a few traits I find ‘attractive’ (read: not in a particularly sexual sense, but in a ‘that person is awesome’ sense). To keep it very brief, they are the following:

• Smart
• Powerful (pew pew magic arcane missile)
• A Redhead (redheads are like bonus points for some reason, I’m not sure why)

To be fair, most of this is based off of shit that happens once, to the many alliance characters who see me talking in Thalassian and making funny gestures (and the odd hordie, too).

I was originally going to write a bunch about Iraia, but then I realized that there isn’t much to say, because she’s just not anywhere as well developed (as a character, you pervs). Let’s just imagine she’s Minorin, but like as a Paladin.

The important thing to note is the general annoyance of everyone else.

Are you confused as I am now? Good! Because that is about the end of it. Except… EXTRA BONUS CONTENT!

Halo: Reach

This’ll be brief, but considering that it lets me play as a lady, it’s worthy of comment, I guess.

Lookie here, I can make pew pew pictures!

First thing first, this is almost entirely a non-noticeable choice. You might have slightly smaller limbs, and DAT ASS (not quite so extreme, but still), and also a bit of a breast in your breastplate, but it makes almost entirely no difference to the game.

It’s interesting, because the other characters (in campaign) for the most part don’t refer to you as ‘he’ or ‘she’, ‘him’ or ‘her’. Probably to cut down on the amount of dialogue they needed to record. However, it does show in a few cutscenes.

I don’t exactly know much about the armed forces, but I assume that it is just formality to call a higher ranking officer “Sir”, so I took the marine forces calling me that in my stride.

Yeah, now that I’ve said that really small amount about that, I’m done. Yeah. Woo.

Basically to do this, you need to run into the opposing faction’s main cities and capture all of their flames (I’m not sure if you need to get Silvermoon or Exodar’s flames, but I will assume that you do (because I am a completionist)).

Therefore, I have developed this mini-guide to…

Being a Sneaky Fucker. Stealing the Flames of the Alliance & Horde.

Now, this is not actually all that difficult. Honest. To begin with I’m going to do the Cities of the Alliance (I have actually done these, and can be 100% sure that they more or less work). I suggest going Exodar -> Darnassus -> Stormwind -> Ironforge.

To begin, haul your ass to just outside Auberdine (in Darkshore). Then make your way to the far end of the dock (the western end). This boat goes to the Draenei starter zones, and you should be able to get over to Azuremist Isle without any incidents.

To get into the Exodar, take the side entrance, which is just to your left as you get off the dock. Run down the ramp, and then north into the Crystal Hall. The bonfire is near the middle of the area, and takes 1 second to steal (you will find an item in your bags, not an immediate quest popup).

Once you have the flame, take the boat back to Auberdine and take the northern dock to Rut’theran Village, convienently, the Darnassus flame is here, so grab it and scram, if you’re really quick you might make it back on the boat before it leaves.

Back at Auberdine once more, take the southern boat to Stormwind Harbor. From here you need to run up the ramps, along The Park side of the canal, across to the Mage District, and make your way over to the flame, which is outside the Stockades.

From here, quickly jump into the canals and swim for your life to the Cathedral Square dock thing (near the Dwarven District), mount up (you can do this in the water) and ride to the Deeprun tram, which will take you to Ironforge.

Finally, run out of the tram (mounting as soon as you exit it) north to the Hall of Explorers. This is the hardest flame to get, as there are usually about 1,000,000 Alliance douches there waiting to kill you. As long as you get the flame, just spirit rez and hearth out. Congratulations on getting your achievement!

Now to do the Horde Cities

Before I begin, remember that the quests start from an item that is deposited in your bags when you use the flames. As long as you’ve got the item, don’t worry about the actual quest while you’re in the enemy cities.

First off, I’d start in Silvermoon, not for any real reason, apart from the lack of flow to other cities that it has. In Silvermoon you need to get to the Court of the Sun. To do this, you should run north, and through Murder Row. The bonfire is just beyond this.

Then make your way to Undercity. This is probably the easiest one of all the cities, as it is not even inside the city proper. Just run in the front door, and leave. No biggie.

Take the Zeppelin to Orgrimmar, and then run to the western edge of Durotar, and across the river into the Barrens. Follow the river north and go in the side entrance of Orgrimmar. Follow the path along into the Valley of Wisdom, and get the flame. This is by far the hardest of all of the flames, but if you’re quick, it should be rather simple.

Finally, go to the western Zeppelin tower out the front of Org. There are two Zeps that depart from here. One to NR, and one to Thunder Bluff. The best part of this is, that it deposits you right on top of the flame. Too easy. Hearth out and collect your prize.

However, through my many runs this year (like 10, but w/e) I have noticed that most players are either really bad in general, or are just dumb. (Not that I needed a event boss to figure that out, it’s just more exceptional here.)

With this in mind, I bring you…

TwilliK’s Rad Guide to Lord Ahune.

Now, the fight itself is not too hard. Phase 1, gather adds, kill adds (burning the initial big bad add that spawns at the beginning of the phase). Phase 2, burn CDs on the Frozen Core. Repeat if your DPS is too low.

However, there are some really dumb mistakes that I’ve seen people making, and have felt the need to correct, in fancy bullet point form.

• The Tank needs to be at the front, and needs to stand still for fuck’s sake.

Now, I know you’re all thinking that this is elementary, but I’ve only seen two tanks do this, the others are all running around the place like idiots trying to get all the mobs that have peeled off of them. I know that you think it’s important, but it’s really hard to AoE things when the whole pack is moving. Most DPS will stop to kill mobs that have peeled off to eat their (or the healer’s) face, just sayin.

• Every mob in the fight is immune to frost damage.

You know what that means, Fail Mages (as I have seen about 6 other mages do this)? Blizzard doesn’t work. AT ALL. This is a big issue, because it means we have to use Arcane Explosion (mana eater) or Flamestrike (which is a terrible AoE, but is alright here, if point one is conformed to). This also affects Frost DKs, as Frost Fever doesn’t affect them, which has led to many lols and wtfs among our zombie bros. (Just to make this perfectly clear DO NOT CAST BLIZZARD. Thank you)

• When you can attack the Frozen Core, stop whatever you are doing, pop CDs and kill it quickly.

This is the thing that will change the fight from a 5 minute kinda annoying thing into a 3 minute dream. The Frozen Core has about 500k Health, and is attackable for about 30 seconds (maybe? I don’t know, it’s not very long). Try and deal 5k-ish DPS over that 30 second period and he’ll go down without having to wait another 60 seconds or so for another go.

Anyway. That was all rather obvious tips, but the number of dumbasses I’ve been grouped with made me need to vent about it. Stay classy peoples. Twill, out.

Before I begin, though, I feel the need to state that I enjoy the zones, and their flow, and everything else, and I’m not ‘hating’. I’m simply stating what I feel would be a better direction.

I would like bigger zones. In fact, not even that. I would enjoy having either bigger zones, with more more ‘padding’ OR a larger amount of zones that serve no purpose in the world apart from looking nice (and having rare fishing nodes or something) possibly with some mooks to grind on, but they’d be lower level than the surrounding zone, yellow (not aggressive) and generally leaning towards simple beasts.

These zones would reward exploration. Each one might have a dozen quests, all very simple, often nothing more than courier quests, designed to be a (very slight) reward for visiting them. Here’s an generic example. This is set in a large forested area, like a mix of Elwynn and Grizzily Hills, with occasional houses and stuff. Near one of the trees (spawning at random – spread over a big enough area to make it stupid to farm) you find a book or a letter or something. And then you deliver it. Simple. You might get a few gold too. Who knows.

They would exist entirely for people like me, who have explorer because of a need to know what was on that map before there was an Achievement to clear it all and people with Salty. Because they are fucking crazy, and I wish I was one of them.

Now. I’m a gamer. Obviously. Like many of you, I’ve been playing World of Warcraft for a long, to very long, time (longer than I’ve played any other game with the possible execption of Diablo 2, and possibly the first Disc of FF7 (not on purpose, that second one)), and as I mature as a gamer, and look back at what I want from a game, I still find Warcraft worthy of playing – and I’m sure I’ll still play it for as long as it is around. However, I feel that the game is… drifting away, from where I really enjoyed it, and for now (this post) I’m going to focus on one simple, succinct point.

The world (of Warcraft) is getting smaller.

I know this is not technically true, but with the release of Cataclysm sometime this year (I’m guessing before Blizzcon, myself, but I could be wrong (really hope not)) the world will shrink enormously. Now I know what you’re thinking. “But TwilliK! You’re stupid, they’re adding more zones and stuff!” But let me ask you, once you get the chance to fly around Azeroth, not just Northrend, the world will shrink down tiny small.

Remember when you got your 60% flyer at level 70? (If you got a 150% flyer at 60 for your first, then this whole post might be lost on you, missing out on the mount/world curve the way you did) Even though you were going slower, because you could fly over gigantic cracks in the ground, mobs, the Fel Reaver, and anything else, you got wherever you were going faster than if you were on your epic ground mount.

Now imagine that in Old World. Wanna go from Orgrimmar to Winterspring? No 5 minute taxi or 30 minute mount ride (plus the five minutes running through the furblog cave) just hop in your flyer, press the space bar for 30-60 seconds, and fly north. You’ll be there bloody quick I bet. Remember those old horrible non optimised flight paths? They did one good thing. They made you appreciate the scope of the world that Blizzard had built.

Anyway, that’s some food for thought. Also, please don’t say “why don’t you just not fly anywhere?” because I know that to be able to go anywhere worth going, I’ll need to be able to fly.