So while doing some X-Mas shopping I picked up Lich King. I’m weak. I rolled a Death Knight called DarkTurk.

Pretty cool class so far. You start at level 55 and the class has some cool features. It’s a tank and he can get a pet. Which are some of my favorite things in mmo’s.

This post is for my own purposes to track my gaming habits really. As of the 15th my City of Villains account is closed. On a whim I’ve rejoined the ranks of the World of Warcraft. I’ve installed the game again and patched up the newest patch. When I log in on my 30th level human warrior the game renders unknown entities and my character is invisible. Then out of goodness of the games heart WoW drops my internet. It’s so good to be back.

World of Warcraft retail day one is over and that’s something I wouldn’t have imagined would ever come. I’m not sure it’s been the smoothest launch. Waiting to login to the game is crazy. I understand that everyone and their bother wants to play this game. It a lot of fun. But jesus I hate waiting for something that I will be paying for. Granted I’m on a free month here. It’s just the idea that maybe this game wasn’t ready to go live yet. I’m still shocked of how fast the closed beta ended.

I can’t help but think WoW was rushed out to compete with EQ2 and to fill the pockets of those french fucks at Vivendi Universal. I’m sure I’m probably wrong about that. But it just seems odd. But don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the game is finally out.

You know the weird thing though? Now that it out I kind of feel like I’m leaving my first love. I didn’t even un-install Dark Age of Camelot. It would just feel odd with it not being on my computer. I do miss the game. It’s just that Camelot stopped being fun for me a long time ago. But I can’t help but have a special fondness for that game. And who knows, maybe I’ll give Catacombs a shot when it comes out. Just to see how things are and to visit old friends.

So I made it into my first instance of a dungeon today in World of Warcraft. I had logged into the closed beta server just to sell some stuff from the last time I played there. And it was just luck that a group was going into the Deadmines in Westfall to go after Van Cleaf. This is a big deal because you need one full group at the least to take on all the elite mobs in there. We passed through the shimmering blue portal and did really good until we met up with a goblin shredder.

The screen shots kind of speak for themselves in this case. One by one the party of two (levels 20 and 22) warrior and one (level 29) rogue met their doom and the sharp whirling blades of the goblin shredder. We never did make it to this Van Cleaf guy and it’s probably best. I think Van Cleaf and his men would have handed us our asses faster than the goblin shredder did. All in all it was a fun experience. Even though I died and took a exp loss (in the negative no less). I did manage to get a lot of nice loot that I will sell or send in the mail to my alts.

So who is sick of the touchy feely shit? I know I am. Time for me to go on again about World of Warcraft. I think everyone knows by now I’m in the beta and that I love the game. Well now I got my own WoW TV thing, which can be found over here. I only really play during the morning hours. You can tell if I’m playing if the the little box on the left has in game image. If it has a WoW login screen I’m not playing. Below are some screen caps taken from my little WoW TV thing:

Blizzard released a patch yesterday and you can read about here in the patch notes. The biggest thing this patch for players is the return of Talents. Talents (shown in that second screen) allow you to customize your character a little bit. So that each player class can be a little different. With this patch only warriors and mages have talents to buy. It works a little like Camelots specs or even closer to Diablo 2’s skill system. The warrior has Protection, Fury, and Arms to choose from in the talents menu. Protection has different choices that affect armor class. Fury is about giving you a chance to go crazy thus improving your chance to crit. And finally Arms gives you bonuses in the different weapon categories.

Also with this patch the game now has an auction system (third screen) that allows players to buy and sell items. There are auction npc’s in the big cities that allow you to use this system. It costs you a minor fee (it’s refundable) to place an item up for auction and once you sell it there is another fee (non refundable) based on the selling price.

My human warrior is now level 12 and I’m enjoying him way to much. I can solo mobs at least two level ahead of me. And it’s not really a problem taking on two at once as screens shots 5-7 show. At some point I have to get back to the other classes so I can report on how they are. I’ll have more to say later and be sure to ask questions in the forum thread for this post.

So I rolled an undead rogue to see what World of Warcraft offered in the world of stealthers and liked what I saw. Like the warrior class you have combat moves (like Camelot’s styles). The neat thing about the rogue is that he has what they call finishing moves. These are special styles that you can only use after you build up a certain number of combo points. Certain styles give combo points when you use them. Now the more combo points you have the more damage the finishing move will do. If you look at the screenshot number seven you can see the five little circles indicating how many combo points you have earned.

Stealth works the way I imagine it works in all of these kinds of mmorpg’s. I’ll play around a bit more with this class so I can see what higher levels bring to it. So far I really enjoy it. And I’m not usually the kind of guy that plays a thief/stealther type of character. Check out the official rogue class page for a good rundown on what this class can do.

Woot! I’m in the World of Warcraft beta! I’ve been playing since around 9 am and just quit only because the servers went down for maintenance. I’ve already made level 5 and I got to say it is as fun as I hoped. Below are four screenshots showing off the game:

I got to take a nap now or I’ll be dead at work tonight. Questing is a huge part of the game just like the previews said. It’s cool how once you get high enough level you get a quest to go visit a region you have not been to yet. Also cool is that you get experience for exploring new regions. Lot of cool things in the game. Already it seems polished enough to be retail right now. And it runs like a dream even at a resolution of 1280×1024. Man I’ll probably never log onto Dark Age of Camelot again. Just kidding. Time for my nap.