Thursday, January 30, 2014

Science News and Views

            Star Trek Online has reached it's 4th Year Anniversary. They have an In Game event going on to celebrate this. You can ultimately get a Voth Hybrid Science Destroyer at the end of it. Q is throwing the party and you have to do daily's with him to get the qmendations to complete the rep quest and get the Ship. You also get to collect ship pieces that are part of a 4piece set. They also have Enviromental Suites you can get too. Collect all three suits and you can trade it in with 50 Lobi and get an enhanced version. Two such enhanced sets exist.
           Along with the Celebrations came Season 8.5. In it we get the ability to swap out your ships when in non-instanced locations. You also can now swap out your ship gear with the gear on other ships and your bank. I love this addition because it makes it so much easier to get a new ship and outfit it with what you have. No more searching around for where you might have stashed it away.
           They also upped the number of ships you can have to 50. This is a 20 ship increase. I am no where near this cap. But I can see where people could be reaching this cap. But this is all quality of life changes.
            The celebration also sees the fixing of several bugs and broken abilities. They also updated some of the content, removed a fed mission, and added a new PVP shuttle arena. But one of the biggest changes is the removal of the hourly events. They are going to be turned in to weekend events or dailies. Mostly weekend. I do know that Tour the Galaxy was turned into a daily event. This means I may very well start doing the Tour. Never have done this race because I am not usually on during the hour it's active. It's a great source of EC's.
           All of this is live now. And I haven't had a chance to run any of it yet. Hopefully I will get a chance tonight and enjoy this new arrangement. I hope you guys will enjoy the changes too. I will see you later and Enjoy!

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Fantasy News and Views

       Some sad news, at least to me, Epic Questions Podcast and The Hunting Party Podcast have decided to stop making episodes. Both have gone through some recent host line-up but all have decided to call it quits. Epic Questions is going to reboot themselves as Frozen Nerdz, and they are retooled to be a more general gaming podcast than a WOW-centric podcast. I listened to the first Frozen Nerdz already, but have yet to decide to continue with it or not. I have not listened to the last episodes of The Hunting Party yet. This was the only Hunter-oriented podcast that I could find. It is a sad thing to see it go. Specially after reaching 200 episodes, so I am not sure where I am going to go to get my hunter news fix.

         WOW has released a graphic talking the numbers involving the game since Azeroth first opened it's doors to us. It's pretty interesting, but nothing really outstanding for players.

         So otherwise, WoW did not announce anything groundbreaking in the past week. Lots of people are starting to do more speculating about the release of the Beta for WoD. But Blizzard has yet to announce anything.

         More Sad News, SOE is closing down some of there MMO's. Chief amongst them to me is Wizardry Online. I liked this game. And it had a permadeath feature built into it. And it was Free to Play. But in June, Wizardry will be closing it's door for good. Nothing specific has been announced as why this is happening, just that they want to focus themselves more. DCUO will remain up, so they my characters there will go on. SOE is also creating an master account system. The Master Account will grant you access to all of there MMO's for the same monthly fee. So you pay your $15 and that membership allows access to all of their games, and veterans rewards that is applied to all of the games you play of theirs. While this is a good Idea. I probably will not be dropping any coin on it because there is only one game theirs I am interested in for now. When EQ Next and Landmark comes out, that might change. But we will see.

       That's all for now. I hope you found something interesting amongst my musing. See you later and Enjoy!

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Weekly Character Update

Airholen the Explorer
          Ran Ordos and Celestials. Gained only gold. Ran around a bit and cleared up my quest queue. So I have cleared out about 5 quests that way and ran a couple low level dungeons Solo to do it too. It was fun to do this, but once I completed I just hearthed back to the Farm and logged out.

Brewmaster Asmodea
           Ran Ordos and Celestials, nothing but gold. Ran the first and third wings of Siege of Ogrimmar and didn't get any usable gear. Tried to do more of the rep for the various Tillers and then logged her out.

Ambassador Strayleaf
           Ran Ordos and Celestials. Got a cloak upgrade but not BiS gear. Using new cloak. Also ran Rep efforts for Tillers trying to get better gear. Also queued up for Trial of Zandalari Raid as  healer. got the bonus bag for completing the raid and gained the Sewer Rat pet. That gained me the "I Smell A Giant Rat" achievement. I didn't do much more because I started to contemplated run my Death Knight level 85 as the next Leveling guy. But I got distracted.

Vice Admiral Zombee Scorpio Danus
           Worked on Reps. Got to Level IV with Romulus and Omega reps. Level III with Nukara and Dyson. They have also started a count down to the 4 Year Anniversery event by having free things to get if you log in. Working on getting all of the free stuff. First up was a Horta that is account unlocked. Next is the new bridge styles for Fed and KDF, again account unlocked. They haven't announced the third one yet. They also handed a free costume account unlock for using Arc. So need to get that for the characters. It's what Khan wore in Wrath of Khan movie.

That's all that I had time for. Tune in next time for what I might say. Enjoy!

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Fantasy News and Views

World of Warcraft
         WOW has released news models for Human females. These updated models make them way more realistic looking and pleasant to look at. I am now looking forward to Asmodea's update.
          My alliance realm, Alleria was supposed to get combined with Khadgar this past week. But a tweet came out that it was going to happen now. I wonder why?
         
Neverwinter
         There was a special event running over the past weekend. It was a new dungeon. I haven't done anything more with this game recently so I have been keeping up with it.

Hearthstone
          OPEN BETA is here. Cards are pretty much set to what they are going to be. With only minor tweaks to happen from here on out. The new season is still in play and now that the upper end players have risen up, I am occasionally trying to advance. But this game is starting to be less fun and more frustrating than a card game should be. So I may not do much more with this game in the future.

That is what I have for now. I haven't really paid the news much attention so I will be sure and review next week and try to bring better stuff next time. Until then, Enjoy!

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Weekly Character Update

Airholen the Explorer
      The effort to expand my gear is still ongoing. Got one more piece. Had to run some of the random scenarios and dungeons to get the valor needed to do the upgrading. Generally don't do anything else with him at this time.

Brewmaster Asmodea
      Worked on getting the BiS gear. Got PVP gear but not PVE. Attempted to run Silvershard Mines, but didn't get my win yet. Also worked on raising cooking and Tiller's rep. Have three plots open now. I am not very good in PVP so I see this as my bottle neck for all of my characters to get the legendary cloak.

Ambassador Stayleaf
       Worked on cooking. Ran Ordos and Celestials as Healer and gained my warforged helm. Raised my Tiller's rep and cooking skill. Hoping to get more gear soon. I am going to stay healer for now to get all geared up and then pick of protection stuff while healing, I think. I like healing better than tanking so far. even though my gear iLevel is lower as a healer.

Vice Admiral Zombee Scorpio Danus
        So worked on raising my reps. By the next time I report here Nukara and Dyson Sphere reps should have leveled. It's working for very well just to work one character in STO.

Zombis
       This is my DIablo III character. I haven't played it quite a while so decided to dust it off and try it out again. Zombis is a Witch Doctor and is Level 47. I am currently running through Nightmare stage of Act III. Just finished off the the Breach stage and so getting ready to go rescue Leah. I remember why I liked playing this game more than why I stopped at this point. SO maybe the latest changes are enough to get me back into it.

Blue Adept, Ghosat Whisperer
        With WoW servers being down on one night. I fired this game up to try to progress some more. I do like this game a lot (Champions Online) but gearing options, stats and recent changes made it difficult for me to clearly define how to play the game for me. I am working on figuring it all out. But as it is, I am just a healing superhero with no team to keep alive. Which makes it real hard to fight sometimes.

         I clearly had a little more time on my hand as Wow gearing is not engaging me as much as it used to. And it's the lack of gearing progress that has me not trying to close out old quest content that I have in my queue. Maybe I should just take one night with Airholen and just clear out all of the old quest that I can. Should be boring but it's to clear the space in preperation for WOD.
        That's all for now. Thank you for reading and Enjoy!

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Weekly Character Update

Airholen the Explorer
       In last two weeks I have only gotten 1 piece of BiS gear. This is why I dislike the RNG control over gearing. This is getting to become a chore rather than fun. I am not a progression raider. I am not flex raider. I am a solo player. I don't have a lot of friends or relatives playing this game. So I have to do it all by myself. Which I don't mind. But this game does have things that limit the enjoyment for the solo player that doesn't need to be there. That's a discussion for another time. But after running Ordos and Celestials and not getting gear, I parked him so that I can go to another character and feel like I am making progress.

Brewmaster Asmodea
      So worked on getting her Cooking up. Worked on Fishing. Tried taking on the Bloodhilt guy for the Legendary quest but he one shotted me. So I need to get a team together for it. But that is an issue as there doesn't seem to be people wanting to take it on. And this is another one of those 'not friendly to solo player' game play built into the game. Questing is a solo play content, but to complete this step it REQUIRES you to have help. And getting that help is hard for solo style player. So getting the legendary cloak when it's not current content is very hard, at best, and usually impossible. Which isn't fair to Altoholics, people you are just now getting to 90, and solo players. Blizzard really needs to look at this a devise a better system for this.
      It took all week to get the amount of Lesser charms so that I can get the Warforged coins for the rerolls.

Ambassador Strayleaf
       Ran Ordos and Celestials once each. Picked up on piece or warforged gear for the Tanking and a piece of PVP gear for tanking. Started on working towards the  Serpent Rider skill and cooking skill. Gained some fishing skill. Haven't started on the Legendary quest yet, but I think I will start on it this week. I have gotten enough of the timeless gear so that I am decked mostly out in both Prot and Holy specs. Strayleaf is going to see more activity after Asmodea gets Lesser Charms to 50.

Vice Admiral Zombee
        Grinded out some rep for one day. Not really interested in doing much with him till Winter Event is over.

       That was my week. Tune in next time for the Fantasy News, Until then, Enjoy!
    

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Fantasy News and Views

     So I know that I haven't done this a while but I am not going to backtrack and cover everything. What I will do is cover some of what I consider as the more Notable news to me.

World of Warcraft
        PVP Season 15 will come out before Warlords does. This potentially means that Warlords will come out in 26 to 32 weeks from now. So look for it around June, July or August.I predict more likely in August or September.
        Blizzard has changed their phone support to a callback system. You put in a request at the Battle.Net website and Blizzard GM will call you back to help. This is supposed to streamline the experience and not leave you hanging on hold all that time. I think that this is an interesting support shift. Potentially good, but I don't know how well it will work in practice.
        Hearthstone completely revamped it's ranked play. They are now set in 25 ranks, 3 stars per rank to advance or drop. This ranking system is also set up in seasons. Season 1 has already happened and Season 2 starts today. I like this new ranking system and the seasons gives you a feel that you can reach the top every season if you play well enough.
       Diablo 3 next expansion is in closed Beta. Reports are that the gameplay experience is greatly improved. I am not in the Beta so don't know.


Neverwinter
       The released a new expansion. This expansion included a class, Ranger. Rangers are my favorite class in table top. So once I have time to go back to Neverwinter I will make a new Ranger and try it out.


   So that is the News that I have read over the past couple of weeks. See you all later and Enjoy!
       

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Happy New Year and the return of the Weekly Character Update

    Hi everyone! I have been so busy this past month that it takes me going to work to be able to blog. But here we are 2014 and a whole new year starting. Today will be the Character Updates for the past couple of weeks. I hope to keep this up from now on. Now, on to the report....

Airholen the Explorer
      I have been reworking the gearing of all of my characters. With the advent of random group Ordos and Celestials, I have now worked towards gearing with the gear I can get from that. So far, I am 9 pieces completed on this path. Otherwise, I have done little else with this character. As I am trying to get other characters gearing and leveled.

Brewmaster Asmodea
      Gearing in the same flavor as Airholen. Have completed 6 pieces so far.
      I also am working on the Dark Prince's quest line. I am at the point where I need to reach Revered Status and collect 3000 Valor. I have collected 2000 Valor so far. So I expect to get the both done this week as I am over 10K out of 12K in rep with Wrathion. I hope to get her Legendary Cape by the end of Feburary.

Ambassador Strayleaf
      She has reached level 89! and only a couple million points away from 90. I have been running her strictly as Protection. Tanking is a very different play style in WoW and I look forward to gearing her up. I will go about it the same way as I am with Airholen and Asmodea. I also have been raising her Cooking skill and now have been doing the Pandaren cooking ways now. Fishing has also been leveled a bit because of all of this and the herbalism skill has been leveled. Inscriptions has not been worked on as yet. But that will be changed once 90 is reached. I also just need to reach level 90 to complete what I need to do to get flying and my flying serpent. I figure that by the end of January I will be 90, gearing up and working on the legendary quest line for her. I also will have started to tank SoO and hopefully not be too bad. I also have Holy specced on this character and am not sure if I need go healing in Raids primarily. I am unsure as of this moment I will have to get a feel for things first.

       I haven't played any other games this break besides some Hearthstone and a little bit of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I hope everyone liked the progress that I have made and look forward to see any new comments. Tomorrow should be another posting about the fantasy genre and the news surrounding it. Until then, Enjoy!