A hunter, 2 death knights, a demon hunter and an undead warlock

 I logged on to World of Warcraft retail version for the first time in eons because I wanted a break from Classic and was surprised to see how much had changed. I really enjoyed rolling different classes, especially the demon hunter and seeing what a good job Blizzard had done with those starting areas and with the updated graphics and cutscenes.

I was surprised I had forgotten that I had a 36 level hunter and several death knights on various realms and also my undead warlock. All of the characters had been updated to adjust for the changes made to the game since Warlords and other more recent expansions including the level drop to 50 and the adjustments in gear, equipment etc. 

But the experience was not all positive because even though I enjoyed some of the humor, talented voice acting and in game cinematics, the whole experience, while fun, felt somewhat artificial and compared to classic was more of the ultimate themepark. 

Every zone leads to the next but instead of the feeling of organic exploration you might feel in another game like Dark Age of Camelot, the polished retail wow is one of more controlled fun than an open world experience. I still played for about three hours yesterday and they went fast, trying out the different horde classes and races. I really did like the way levels were redone and scaled back to 50. They had been bloated for so long that this way of leveling feels more in tune with old school mmos where the leveling wasn't out of control.

Sadly I failed in my attempt to level all the Classic classes to 20 with only my undead warrior reaching that milestone after 66 hours played. I think I will take a break until TBC drops and focus on retail toons when I decide to get back to wow.

D&D update

Still zooming in to 3.5 campaign. I have been slowly adding supplements to my core book collection. Recently I became the proud owner of every PHB, Monster Manual and DMG from 1st edition to 5th, with the notable exception of 2e because I heard it was too similar to first. I hope to post a video I made on the races that we like to play on my  Behind the Sreen/noob DM Youtube channel tomorrow. 

This is what the character creation screen looks like in retail, something I was unaware of until recently. I think it is very cool and makes me want to play different classes.

One captivating thing I found about retail wow is the fact that the voice overs, cutscenes and new starting zones make for engaging play. At the same time, the game design is too much of a themepark and it shows, the game practically railroads you from zone to zone and action to action which makes it feel less like an open world as in a sandbox mmo, or even an older mmo like Dark Age of Camelot.

Back to the Wailling Caverns in Classic Warcraft

Inside the WC instance with the PUG

Flying to meet the group from Undercity 

What do you mean I have to wait a half hour to get into b.g.? Put me in now WG Battlemaster!

I am on vacation from the work grind all of this week! So you know what that means? I can give some love to the Nexus and catch up on all of the pending projects.

Last night, knowing I did not have to be up early for work this morning, I logged on to Classic wow and was surprised to discover (thanks to a Facebook post I made a year prior) that I had completely forgotten that I had a level 18 undead warrior on the Smolderweb pvp server. 

I had been playing on Herod for a while because that is the server where my friend was leveling his toons, but I was glad to rediscover Rotting Brain the warrior and promptly proceeded to try and get him to the requisite 19th level. I am not sure if he has the right gear to make him viable for b.g.s but I queued in for Warsong Gulch nonetheless! There was a 22 minute average wait time! 

So while I waited I thought it would be fun to quest around the Undercity areas and kill some mobs, maybe I would pick up a PUG while chatting with the guildies. I belong to the "Devil's Advocate" guild on the server and surprisingly, I was not booted during my almost year long absence, although most of the guild members had long achieved max level.

I got an invite to run WC and since I wasn't having that much luck leveling through the b.gs. (I think I only got into one which we promptly lost to Alliance due to their team being a group of 19 twinks that seemed OP AF.) I decided to take them up on running the long dungeon. It was fun mowing down through multiple mobs and best of all I leveled up like a level and a half, only falling short of my goal due to the lateness of the hour. We wiped twice and the last time was the most frustrating one because we were down to the final boss. One minute the entire group was there and I was hacking and slashing at the feet of the massive monster but when I looked, I had not even noticed that most of the group was dead and without a healer it was only going to be a matter of time, LOL but we came so close!

D&D 3.5 update

I made another video for my youtube channel. This one is focused on the 3.5 classes since we are playing that ruleset in our current campaign. Nothing comprehensive, just a simple breakdown of some of the characteristics and mechanics for some of those races and classes, Barbarian, Wizard and rogue this time because that is what we have currently in our group, though we hope to be adding a cleric. If nothing else, we plan to have our DM take over the role of the healer while she also referees and runs our current game. To that end I plan to get very familiar with those classes, their mechanics and their available skills and feats.

Everquest madness

Zergmaster the Druid halfling ventures out into the world of Norrath

 

Even though I have a subscription to Classic Wow, I haven't made as much progress these days leveling my characters because I jump around from one mmo to another and I guess I like the variety of playing different games.

It really is a shame that the recent RvR event in DAOC only lasted a couple of weeks as I can only dedicate a few hours a day to gaming during the busy work week and mostly game on the weekends like a lot of casual gamers and mmo enthusiasts.

The other night I watched an Everquest 1 video and got the urge to play EQ again so I downloaded and installed the client and decided to roll a halfling druid. This seems to be a fun class so far because I can heal myself with some n00b healing spells.

And in true n00bish fashion, I just discovered for the first time today that I can buy spells from NPCs, I thought maybe I just automatically gained them as I leveled up, and maybe I do, not sure, but you can definitely buy some along the way and I did.

While I was looking for guides and game tutorials online the other day I discovered this hilarious youtuber, Michael Shenanigan's. I was mesmerized about this crazy old mmo and the people who play them. These vids are highly recommended. 

Happy 15th birthday DDO

Hanging out in the Harbor where all the Trainers are in Stormreach in good old DDO

 Dungeons and Dragons Online, originally from Turbine and now owned and operated by Standing Stone Games has turned 15 years old this year and that blows my mind seeing as how I have been playing it on and off for the better part of all those years.

This is the game I usually turn to when I need a break from all the others, specifically the sometimes torturous grind of Classic wow. I figured this was a good time to return to the game because of the anniversary but also because I am in the middle of a 3.5 zoom D&D session with a few friends and this mmorpg is the closest I can find to playing D&D outside of maybe Neverwinter, but DDO is a better game in my opinion than Neverwinter starting with its setting and its ties to the 3.5 rules set.

The Barbarian class from the D&D PHB 3.5 circa 2003.

I am playing a half orc barbarian in the zoom session so it seems appropriate that I am playing one in this mmo as well and it is a ton of fun. You can solo a lot of the dungeons with only a hireling (which technically is not really soloing, especially if you have a healer like a cleric along so that you can replenish hp and believe me, that makes a world of difference at higher levels.)

For those of you who have never played this great game but who are fans of high quality and stunning graphics, a word to the wise: You aren't going to like DDO if that is what you are looking for, I mean it's not realistic to do so when we are talking about a 15 year old game, but what you will find is a lot of atmosphere with the incredibly fun dungeons which are voice acted and very diverse depending what part of Stormreach you are exploring.

It was a bold (some would say even perhaps controversial) move for Turbine to have chosen the Eberron Campaign setting instead of the more well known D&D settings for the online game when the game released back in 2006, but I for one am glad they did because had they not, I would not have been as familiar with the steampunk and magic aesthetic associated with this setting. Expansions of the game over the years have brought with it the other settings, so you can always port out to The Forgotten Realms and even Ravenloft if you are high enough level to do so. Personally, I have not dabbled in DDO consistently so I have not really done the other settings, but that is also something to look forward to in the weeks and moths to come.

During the anniversary players can redeem items from the DDO store including a 15th anniversary cosmetic cloak and also partake of the anniversary event. Every year for the game's anniversary, players get the chance to fight with a member of the dev team in House Phiarlan. The anniversary event runs through March 31st. 

Players have reported on the game's official forums that this year's items are of higher quality than in previous years, which makes sense given the fact this is a landmark for DDO. Confessions of  Geek mom has a really great personal anecdote from a dedicated player detailing her experiences with a game and it made me so happy to read it because that is one of the best parts of playing mmos imo, the social and community aspect of sharing a virtual experience. 2020 was a terrible year for obvious reasons but at least people were able to share some love through their online and mmo communities. DDO is no different in this respect. 

So happy birthday DDO. I am glad this game is still around today. 

 

DDO is turning 15 and they give the players the gifts!

Just when I thought I was out...

 ...you know the rest of the famous movie line.

Blizzard announced during this year's virtual Blizzcon that sometine in 2021 they would drop classic TBC, which of course rekindled my desire to get back to wow Classic, a game I had apparently abandoned in late 2020, which is surprisingly not that long comparatively speaking.

So why did I leave the classic wow experience since I have always been a big fan of the Warcraft lore dating back to the RTS games? I can still remember buying the box version of Warcraft 2 at Target one day with my brother. We both agreed we wanted to try it and split the cost to install it on our old desktop computer at my parents' home in Southern California.

Although I thought Warcraft 2 was an interesting PC game, I honestly never fully got into those games, having dabbled in some award winners like the original Fallout in the mid90s and the original Starcraft. The mmo genre appealed to me more and I dabbled in wow for close to 15 years, having fun rolling alts and playing in the lower level dungeons and battlegrounds. 

When I got back to Classic it was fun for a while but as often happens, my guild zoomed past me in xp and left me behind. I was a casual gamer, not hardcore, never been hardcore so I did not put in the hours to level a character to max 60. Which is frankly, why I am intrigued by Classic TBC, especially the option to level boost a toon. This means that no matter how far I get with my alts or main in Classic now, when I transition over to TBC I will finally be able to enjoy the higher level content which I never got to experience back in the day.

Another reason, and probably the main reason I left Classic last year, other than RL interfering, was because mmos by their very nature are most enjoyable while playing with other people and I don't seem to get much out of them soloing a character. The one exception may be old Dark Age of Camelot which I have also dabbled in and which unlike wow, I have made to max level. In fact, last year I also went back to try DAOC and found a fun guild of old timers who took me under their wing and helped me build my Berzerker. It was fun playing with them, sometimes a lot more fun than playing Classic wow,

However, TBC has the potential or brining more people into Classic, including some of my friends who remember enjoying the game and who like me, find it rewarding to level now in preparation of whenever Blizzard decides to drop TBC. You can find me on the Herod U.S. server and my Orc Hunter is named Hulkhorde. Send a tell if you are in game and let me know how you are enjoying Classic and what are you excited most about the TBC expansion release. 

Gosmas the Berzerker member of the Legendarty Survivors of DAoC guild explores the vendo caverns in the venerable mmo by Mythic/EA. One day soon I will get back to leveling him to 50. 

My Hunter toon is exploring the "harsh lands of Durotan" in Classic wow, horde side, Herod server.