On the “To Do” List
HI know i havn’t made any posts recently. I would like to note the reason for this.
New job – I have been offered and taken up a job as a ghost writer. I get paid for each articles and have a wide range of topics to choose from. I have decided to try and write 5-10 posts a week, being the main reason why posts here have slowed.
Hunter Guide – I have started up on my new Hunter Guide. This time it will be much larger than before, as i have mentioned in a previous post. I have now almost completed the first chapter.
Wii – I have played on the Wii a lot recently. I have started on a few really fun games, such as Zelda and Mario galaxy.
WoW – A lot has been happening on WoW recently. New gems, a new arena season and the Mid Summer Fire Festival. A lot to take in, resulting in a lot of time being spent in game.
However that doesn’t mean this blog will come to a halt! I have planned the following for the near future ..
- New Wii game reviews.
- A new pc game, pre release review.
- Possible Hunter Guide sneak previews
- Tips on website creation
I hope your looking foreward to them!
Wii Play + Wii Sports
That’s right. I got my Wii at long last. Wii Sports comes free with the console and i purchased Wii Play as it comes with a second controller, for what seems the same price. I did have to buy a second nunchuk seperatley however. I also have connected my Wii to the internet via a wireless router. I am also waiting on Mario Cart to be delivered. However these two games are perfect to get started.
Wii Play
Although i have played on a Wii many times before, I still learnt a lot from Wii play and i feel it’s well worth getting as your first game. It gives you the idea of all the consepts of the remote, in fairly basic yet fun games.
- Shooting Range – Getting used to aiming at different objects and improving accuracy.
- Find Mii – Pointing again but while you are thinking hard!
- Table Tennis – Moving left and right to hit the ball back. Helps to increase your speed.
- Pose Mii – Change your pose to fit different shaped bubbles at different angles. Introduced use of the buttons as well as twisting the remote.
- Laser Hockey – Basicly air hockey. Gets you used to moving a object around with high accuracy.
- Fishing – Gets you used to 3D movement. Foreward, backward, left, right, up and down.
- Billiards – Potting balls. Gets you used to moving away and closer to the screen along with use of a button.
- Charge! – Riding a horse knocking down scarecrows and jumping over barriers. This gets you used to the remote in a different way. You hold it sideways. You tilt the remote in the dirrection you want to move, then suddenly lift the remote up to jump.
- Tanks! – The only game which uses the Nunchuk. Move the tank with the nunchuk while firing at other tanks with the remote.
All in all great for building up your accuracy and speed of the remote, aswell as co-ordinating yourself using the nunchuk at the same time. A fun experience which builds up your skills for games in the future! A must have for new players.
So what about Wii Sports?
Simular to Wii Play, Wii Sports helps get you prepared for future games to come. However, the games that you get are far more enjoyable to repeat, as well as being much harder.
- Tennis
- Bowling
- Baseball
- Boxing
- Golf
They are all simple games, but become more complicated. For example, with the tennis game, you can learn to add different types of spin to the ball, add more power and direct the ball much more accurately. Each game has a more complex side to it than it first appears. You can also gain and lose points depending how well you do. Get 1000 points and become a pro!
As well as this, each game has three mini games which are very enjoyable. Have fun struggling to achieve gold medal status in them all! Included with these mini games is your daily work out. Each day you can play three of these mini games at random, resulting in your Wii Sports age. A nice extra each day to go along with trying to reach pro status.
All in all another great game to get you a-custom to the Wii. This time much more fun to repeat and keep playing. Well worth starting off with, alongside Wii Play.
Multiplayer
Both these games are very enjoyable for multiplayer use. Challenge your oppenent or work together on a variety of different games. All the games are simple enough for new players to get the hang of very quickly. You’ll find both games are a lot more fun multiplayer than playing them yourself! They should give you a fun couple of hours to have a go at each game a few times and find out whos on top!
Lasting Appeal
Wii Play will last you about two days of a few hours play. It’s really just a basic game. Wii Sports can vary. It’s more of a game you play for under an hour a few times a week in my opinion. If you play it too much it’ll get old fast. It’s nice to have a go of every so often to try and improve.
Conclusion
I feel both are must have to start of, as well as to use for multiplayer purpuses. However, both are really just mini games to have along with your main games.
Hunter Guide
That’s right! I’m bringing it back.
Right now i am working out the headings of what the guide will cover. Once this is done i will post the layout here for you guys to see, as well as on my hunter guide.
I have listened to everyones suggestions on it. This time you will find..
- A lot more on pets.
- A lot more on lower levels (basic leveling guide).
- A more complete over all guide to hunters of every level, rather than just end game.
- Notes on every talent point and spell.
- Every aspect of gameplay will be covered.
And much much more. Everything you want bundled up in a neat little package! For people who just started, to people who have been playing a hunter since the beta release of WoW.
The Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King?
Everyday i keep myself updated on the new WotLK content by the means of the following link..
http://www.wowinsider.com/category/wrath-of-the-lich-king
Yesterday on WoWInsider, there was a post containing a poll. The question to the poll was..
Are you more excited for WoTLK than you were for BC?
Yes or No
I thought I’d show my feeling on this question.
First of I’d vote YES, plain and simple. Why? The basis is, when TBC came out I was busy. I was progressing. I was happy. After TBC was released it was great to explore new content. But I feel they didn’t get it right this time. There just seems nothing to do. I’ve been bored for months and i’m waiting for something new to get sunk into.
Before TBC there was a lot of people raiding. Just before the release there were two patches introducing naxx and AQ20/AQ40. This gave people lots more to explore, but hardly any time to explore it. TBC was released as guilds were just starting to get to grips with these new instances. We needed more time to progress.
People were farming for PvP ranks. People had caught onto the fact that these ranks were going to disappear in the not to distant future. We wanted to obtain them while we could. Again, time ran out for many of us.
We were farming reputation. Along with new instances came new factions. We were all farming rep for these new factions as well as the old ones. Again, time ran out.
All in all we were kept very busy and excited right up to TBC. This is nice to have, as you don’t want to be bored at any time. Getting cut short means your moving onto something new without getting the chance to complete everything. Although I think they could have given us an extra month, or just informed us a month earlier, they made a good move. Don’t wait till people are bored to release an expansion. Catch them off guard and keep them on their toes.
Lich King. Many of us have finished pretty much all we can be bothered with. Everything left to do seems too hard or too repatitive and dull. What’s left? Every faction is exhalted. Got the epic flying mount on two characters. Raided as far as most will ever get. Got enough gold to take me into Lich. Got the wanted pieces of pvp gear to fill pve gaps. Could farm karazhan and heroics for more badges, but whats the point? Getting slightly better equiped won’t help when Lich comes out. Leveled another 70. Leveled another. Leveled another. Guess what? I’m working on my 5th.
It’s just been too long and too dull. Content has been added far to slowly. A new faction is easily farmed up to exhalted in a few weeks. I had my nether drake in under a week and my ray in another two. Less than 3 weeks and that was all the non-raid content added until the new Sunwell Island. Yes, they added 15 or so new quests. Easily completed in around an hour. It is not fun repeating it over and over again every day. I personally have not got exhalted yet just because the thought of doing those quests again is the equivalent to having a bad nightmare.
The last 4 months my guild has been praying for Lich to be released, but we may still have to wait that long again. People have given up and moved to Age of Conan in the mean time. Not only is Blizzard’s slow pace boring players, it’s making them turn away. I’m not saying their doing a bad job. Their just doing a good job half pace.
To add onto this, Lich looks far more exciting than TBC ever did. TBC on release contained almost no lore, no new styles of gameplay, having no real purpose for your actions. It gave you a different atmosphered Azzeroth, with the only real lore being far out of reach for the average player. Now Lich, we have loads of new gameplay such as new quests and a massive PvP zone just to start. We have lore coming to you as soon as you step into Northend and all the way through your journey. Your actions really mean something now. You are working to progress through a story. Lastly there are so many improvement thats we’ve wanted almost right from the start of TBC, such as quicker instance times, smaller raids, character customization, new hero classes and much much more!
So in conclusion, pre TBC we were busy, Pre WotLK we are bored out of our minds. I think it’s obvious which i’m looking foreward to more.
Dominate your Server- Hardware post
I posted on the new hardware post on the site, taliing about my views on gaming hardware. The basic message being keep it simple. You know you have the right new piece of hardware, when you know that you couldn’t go back to before.
As an extra note, I am now taking the advice given to me by Lawbringer. This post is the first of my improved use of English grammer. Basicly, I am reading what I have typed before posting, changing what i feel needs a little tweaking, then posting the result. I hope you can tell the difference.
I find the basics are easy enough to play with. I’m one for solid simplicity. I have bought many types of mouse: small, big, laser, jammed full of buttons so it looks like a keyboard! I’ve also used several different types of keyboard attachment. Do you know what I’ve found the best? The roller ball mouse and the basic keyboard, that came with my dell pc. In my opinion, life’s just as easy and the more simple it is, the more enjoyable it is too!
Is your monitor full of addons? Well mine used to be. That’s why I bought my 20” wide-screen monitor. I know I will never look back. You gain far more space on your screen and with better detail. There has been no downsides to buying it at all.
Lastly, my headset. I currently use: Plantronics – a Dsp 500. I have to admit, they are very good. The essence of surround-sound. Noise cancelling, making my lovely voice clear as crystal on teamspeak. However the problem I found with many high quality headsets is how it affects your speakers. You don’t want both working at the same time, or to have to restart your pc to get the other to work. I would say that I miss my old headset for this reason, if it wasn’t for my new headset being able to beat out enough sound to rival my speakers!
I think there is one main question to ask yourself when your testing out a new piece of hardware. Could I ever go back? If the answer is yes, then the item is not for you.
As a final note. Remember that your chair, desk and layout are also extremely important. Not just for your gameplay, but also for your health.
Spore
This is a new upcoming game, which seems to be one of a kind, and far beyond anything that falls into it’s category. It should be released September and i know i will be buying it straight away.
The game is fairly simple. You start of as a microorganism, and you move all the way into a civilisation moving up into space. You design how you do this, staying in the sea, moving to land and customing your creature all the way. Every evolution stage you have complete control as to what parts of your creature you want to change and how.
Not only this, but it will automaticly work out how your creature walks, as well as other features such as eating or even roaring. And if your not happy, you can always tweak it.
It seems to be much like Civilisation, apart from much more beginning to end and much more adaptable. Here are the stages as described by the website to give you a full idea.
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Tide Pool Phase
Fight with other creatures and consume them to adjust the form and abilities of your creature. It’s survival of the fittest at the most microscopic level.
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Creature Phase
Venture onto land and help your creature learn and evolve with forays away from your nest. The only way to grow is by taking chances!
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Tribal Phase
Instead of controlling an individual creature, you are now caring for an entire tribe. Give them tools and guide their interactions as you upgrade their state of existence.
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Civilization Phase
Once your city is established, your creatures begin seeking out and interacting with other cultures. Make contact with an olive branch or a war cry. The goal for your creatures is to conquer the planet.
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Space Phase
The time has come to move on to other worlds in your solar system. Make contact, colonise, or terraform, then venture further to find other solar systems. A ‘mission’ structure provides new goals in your quest for galactic dominance.
The game is a single player online game. What does this mean? It means that although you are playing the game by yourself, the world you play in is populated by other peoples players. However they are not controlling them, your computer is. This allows your would be be populated in an amazeing way, yet stops anyone from destroying your world. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to be careful though!
The exact details such as what happens when you get eaten, what happens while in space, can you evolve past humans and is there any expansion packs to get deeper and deeper into space, i don’t know. But i’m sure all the answers to these questions will be more than satifactory.
Well i’m very excited. It combines different games together, makes them much bigger, much more detailed, gives you complete control, populates your world will creatures the designers couldn’t come up with, and to finish things off, has a great graphics system in my opinion. Here’s to Spore!
Dominate Your Server Feedback
Well after coming 8th place in the contest i thought it was over. But no, now i have some great feedback to set me on the right path. This is really important for me, not just to find out why i didn’t win, but to find out what i have to do to have a chance in the future. What came back is what i have heard a lot, but from a professional i think it will really get me into it.
“
I really hope you like writing and will take my critique in the way I intend it to be: a helping nudge in the right direction. I find my own writing ability grew more when I had people take the time to push me out of bad habits even more than those people who liked whatever I wrote. You have a nice story-telling approach that is certainly readable and I'm sure that in your english and writing classes you probably excelled to a degree. If you want to write for a career, it's time to start really pushing yourself. The higher up the ladder you get in any profession, the more you have to work at getting better. I would say right now that it's time for you to find a teacher who will pick every little detail of every single sentence apart and force you to reconstruct them over and over again until each thought is as precise as you can possibly make it. Most professors of advanced grammar could help you with this, and a creative writing course wouldn't hurt either. You already have an easy-to-read style, you just need someone to help you grow it. I'm not sure how old you are, but when I read your articles they strike me as written by someone rather young. Not juvenile, merely young. If you are fairly young (less than 20) then you are probably right where you should be in your development as a writer. If you are older than that, you may have skipped some steps that you need to go back and make. Talent alone, which you have, can only take you so far. at many points in any career, you will have to take raw talent to the grindstone and whack off the rough edges until you are as smooth as a razor blade. I encourage you to keep up the writing and do a LOT of it under the tutelage of both a strict grammarian as well as a polished author. Practice may not be fun, but it does make perfect. In high school I took the same english teacher all six semesters because she made us write a five paragraph essay every single day before class. I estimate that in those three years I was forced to write more than 500 essays. These days, a 500 word article is a walk in the park, but I owe that ability to having done it over and over and over again while she broke every one of them down for errors. Keep in mind this is just one guy's opinion, but I do make a living doing this, so it might be worth something. I really encourage you to stick with it and perhaps one day you'll be the one handing out the advice!"
Basicly, plan my structure beforehand, make sure every sentence says exactly what i want it to say, and nothing more, and reread my work and really put effort into it after i’ve just finished typing. Basiclly no “whaffle” and correct sentence structures and punctuation.
This is important news for me, to hear that i am a good writter, and could be better with just some effort. I will be using this advice, in all my key pieces of work such as my website and my guides.
Pie_Masters
For anyone who doesn’t know, i have created my own website. It is my first attempt at such a project, it contains some of my own created images, as well as my first attempts at flash. Although it is in early stages, and not paticually professional, i feel it’s a good starting attempt, and something i will be working on soon.
I’m going to use it to store all my work, as well as having a web design service displayed on it and a forum to talk to people and to get ideas for the future. Also just to see what it’s like to makes one, andf to learn all the stages behind one, including the flash which was a nice experience, even if lengthy. All these skills will be nice to have in the future i’m sure.
Also with google adds, although minimal it’s nice to have a little income on the side from the time spent, and a nice space to add my videos, even if from youtube still. Anyway check it out and see what you think. For a first time, 100% self teaching, i think it’s pretty good, and something solid to work from.
Death Knight
I for one will be rolling death knight as soo as the expansion is installed. I know i said this when the burning crusade came out, and i promised myself that i would reroll a shaman straight away, and only just getting it to 70 a week ago. Why is this different?
First off it’s only 25 levels below the top level, where as before it was 70. Also before TBC there was so much to do and work for, meaning you only really spent your time on a main making it mreally personal to you. With TBC, after about a year you find pretty much everything has been done. This has let me get 3 lvl 70s, and fourth on the way, and every other class around the 25 mark and a twink to boot. This just means that i now don’t have a favoured class, so starting a new one is so much easier than before.
Lastly, with the huge amounts of lore that come with them, and a dps plate wearer (being something i’ve recently really wanted but still don’t have) along with my favorite race and gender (draenei female) and brand new combat system with new exciting, and unique, spells and abilities i can’t see any reason to stay with my tired out hunter, druid or shaman. Also with every guild looking for one, lots of groups needing one for an instance, and there being so few as everyone is exploring northrend, it also makes you rare and that is very important to me.
So what are they and what can they do?
As i can see they are much like a mix between my favorite two classes of diablo 2, the paladin and the necromancer. Personal auras, melee fighting, and spell usage like the paladin, yet summoning, dark magic and cool abilities like the necromancer. In WoW terms a mix between a paladin and a warlock, twisted together.
The deathknight will be a spell caster tank. This means it should eat any spell casters in pvp, as well as being able to tank those bosses tanked by mages and warlocks in the past. It will wear plate, can duel wield of two hand wield, but not use shields. It will use a new rune system instead of mana, energy or rage to use it’s abilities and seems to be mainly melee orintated, but a strong caster at the same time.
There will be three different talent trees for the deathknight:
- Blood: Talents in this tree focus on damage-dealing abilities. Blood Presence increases damage output by a percentage.
- Frost: Talents in this tree focus on tanking abilities. Frost Presence increases threat and lowers damage taken by a percentage.
- Unholy: Talents in this tree have a variety of functions including summons, diseases, and PvP-focused abilities. Unholy Presence increases attack speed and reduces the global cooldown on death knight abilities.
In conclusion, a new tank with high damage, awsome casting spells and a brand new style of play. For anyone looking for something new and exciting, have a change from their normal gameplay, i definatly reccomend this, and i’m sure it’ll be well worth those 15 levels of waiting to explore northrend. I’m certainly looking foreward to it.
LichKing
So what are we expecting from the up coming expansion pack? And when will it be out?
First off, new unexplored areas. We are all hoping these will be worth the wait, bringing in much more detail than the last expansion. Although WoW’s graphic system is different (in more of a cartoon style), than the new game age of conan, this does not mean we’re not expecting much. It means we want much more detail to try and match up. being able to easily immerse yourself into a landscape is key. From what i’ve read they’ve done their best, lets just hope it’s enough.
With Dalaran moving over to Northrend, i’m looking foreward to what will be left behind and also what the new city will be like. From my knowledge it should be similar to silvermoon, but much more magical. It will be the new shattrath, but in a high leveled zone. You can see everyone running all the way there picking up the flight paths almost as soon as they get into northrend. Also with no class trainers or auction house, it will be much like shattrath, so lets hope they have another kind of portal system, rather than having to catch the boat all the time.
Quests. There sounds to be a brand new style of quests based upon mounts. Shooting down mobs in planes, escort quests with the guy on the back of your mount. It does sound good, and lets hope there are many other new styles of quests, and not the same boring 4-5 same old quest types.
Storyline. A lot of lore seems to be getting poured in. I am really looking foreward to this as even before the burning crusade came out i was a huge lore fan, my favorite section being centred around northend. With frequent visits from the lich king, new factions being introduced and of the entrance of Frostmourne and even possibly the ashbringer after many canceled attempts this should be good.
Instances. A key point for me will be lore for instances. I really want there to be purpose this time in going in and clearing these places, rather than just for gear. Everything you do should have some kind of purpose for the greater good (or evil). With times being cut down to an hour for heroics, this gives people time do do them where they haven’t done before. It also gives the people running them before much more choice in selecting different instances, and not spending all their time in one place.
Raids. With all raids 10 and 25 man i feel this is a huge step foreward. So many guilds previously got stuck in karazhan and ZA, just for the reason they couldn’t get the numbers to get into anywhere else. This means the smaller guilds can progress further, and not become bored with content, as well as the bigger stronger guilds still dominating their servers and with their own gear.
PvP. A brand new area dedicated to pvp, with destructible buildings, war engines etc. This should be good! Also a brand new battleground should hopefully give us all some more choice, rather than just farming AV for honor. Hopefully everything gets evened out. Oh and a new arena season which hasn’t really been mentioned anywhere. That should hopefully be a good new starting point with new gear for everyone to get an equal start in a new land with new gear.
New abilities and talents. Everyones looking foreward to this, and from what i’ve seen nobody, no matter what their spec should be disappointed. New and improved spells should make everyones role in game become much clearer, as well as some awesomely cool new abilities with very nice affects. I won’t go into and detail here, as i’m sure everything out now is most likely to change come release.
Armour. From what i’ve read we’ll all be getting a brand new look, so that everyone will know that you have been into this new wilderness. It’ll be very viking, lots of stone, crude metal and spikes. Savage summed up in one word. I have seen some of the new set ideas and they look very nice, very evil looking. Lets hope there will be lots of nice shinies to get our mitts on.
Lastly the new hero class. The death knight. I will be making another post on this brand new daemon.
In conclusion, we are likely to expect a lore filled world, with an Azeroth, Viking feel. Instances will be far better than anything we’ve seen before, guilds will progress far further than in the past, and getting those last 10 levels should be far more enjoyable than anything we’ve experienced in the past!
