I popped into WoW briefly today, just to buy a new mount after the 3.0.8 patch went live:
Unfortunately it’s a bit taller than my wolf mount, so I get caught on doors and arches more often. Oh well, I’ll mostly be sticking with the wolf anyway.
Now that I’m officially on break from WoW, it’s time to get back to some of the other games I already had going.
So, today I finished off Defense Grid: The Awakening. I haven’t mentioned this one before since I actually started it while I was on Christmas vacation. I completed the first half-dozen or so missions back then, and today I finally went back and did the rest of them (there’s 20 in total, I think).
It’s a “tower defense” game, where the goal is to place towers on the map in order to stop waves of enemies that are trying to steal your “cores” from a particular spot on the map. There are different towers with weapon types that are useful in different ways, different styles of map layouts (wide open and you have to influence the enemy’s path by tower placement, or straightforward paths with few weapon spots so you have to choose carefully), and different enemies (slow, fast, stealthy, shielded, flying, etc.). You have no direct control over the towers; you just choose where to put them and when to upgrade them to more powerful levels, limited by your scavenged resource meter, but the possible options are still overwhelming enough that you need a solid strategy in your choices.
There was only one mission that I failed outright, but on a handful of others I did have to use the ‘checkpoint restart’ feature to rewind back a bit and try a different tactic. It usually wasn’t too difficult to complete each level, though I rarely managed to retain all of my cores. The final mission was fairly tense, with the final wave of aliens playing hot potato with my last and only remaining core while I frantically upgraded towers along the return path as I was mentally screaming “AAAAAAAH”, certain that I was about to lose. I just barely scraped by, though upon reflection I certainly could have chosen a better path.
There are different modes you can play each level in for some extra gameplay, but there just isn’t time. Next up…is a secret.
WoW has been nothing but yet more clearing out of low-level quests, and a couple days ago I finally hit Stranglethorn Vale. It took two full days, but I finally cleared all of the quests there, including the damn Nesingwary ones. I still need to do the ones in Outland, though…
But more importantly, through all of these quests, I managed to squeak out the last little bits of faction needed to become ‘exalted’ with Silvermoon City. That got me an achievement, my first title (Ambassador), and I’ll be able to buy a chickenhawkstrider from them when the next patch goes live. I’ll probably just get the cheapo one though, since it’s just for show and I’ll prefer the wolf for actual riding.
(And I also got a few other achievements along the way, like one for hitting 1500 quests, completing a few instances, etc.)
There are still a bunch of other low-level quests to finish off, including some I’ve picked up for Zul’Farrak, but now it’s time to take a bit of a break, I think. I feel the same kind of burnout coming on as when I abandoned WoW after BC came out.
The only really major news in WoW lately is that I finally bought my flying mount, and can now knock off the rest of the exploration achievements in Outland the next time I’m over there. For now though, I’ve been spending a lot of time finishing off low-level quests in the old world and gaining faction. I have all of the home cities except Silvermoon up to exalted now, and it’s going to be a pain since I’ve done all of the newbie and Ghostland quests for it and I’m still 3500 points short. I guess I’ll have to work on other quests and see how many ‘bonus’ points I can get towards it before I have to resort to farming runecloth.
And Paul and I finally got back to Halo 3 tonight, getting through chapters 6 and 7 of the co-op campaign. I don’t think he’s letting me drive any more, though…
And it wound up not taking very long at all to finish off the Blade’s Edge quests tonight, so I also worked on blacksmithing a bit (up to 346), finished off a couple quest lines I’d forgotten about in Terrokar, and bought the riding skill level that lets me use flying mounts.
Now I just need the money to buy a flying mount. And I won’t be able to use it in Northrend for quite a while anyway…
There’s not really much new to report on the WoW front, other than hitting level 71; I’ve been working through the quests in Blade’s Edge without too much notable happening (I’m already a bit overlevelled and overequipped for it, and probably should have done Blade’s Edge before Shadowmoon Valley), and made a brief detour to Hellfire Peninsula to finish off some of the leftover quests there. It shouldn’t take much longer to wrap up in Blade’s Edge and then there’s just Netherstorm to go as far as Burning Crusade content goes.
I’ve been feeling my interest in WoW starting to wane a bit again, though. I’ve reached new (to me) content, but I’m still going it alone all the time, all my friends are already busy off doing their own things in worlds far removed from mine, and I still don’t really feel prepared to act as a tank. I really should be grouping up and practicing, but dealing with the constant parade of morons spamming me with guild invites or “want 2 tank DTK plz?” has made me rather wary of pickup groups. It feels like I’m just going through the grinding motions, much like it did when I quit shortly after BC first came out.
Maybe I’ll just finish off the BC content and then take a bit of a break and work on some of the single-player games that have been languishing lately before coming back for the WotLK content.
As usual, it was an eventful weekend in WoW. As expected, the starting area of Northrend paid off in terms of equipment upgrades, and before long I’d replaced those ugly old shoulders and acquired a new sword that was a huge DPS jump over the old one — my measured DPS jumped from around 280 to 340.
After that it was time to get back to blacksmithing in earnest, and I scoured Silithus for thorium ore for a while and eventually got enough to raise it to 300, at which point I could start using all the fel iron ore I’d saved up. That quickly got it up to 330 before I ran out, though now I’ll just work on it as I go.
I stopped in Zangarmarsh for a bit and finished off a few old quests and got up to Honored with the Cenarion Expedition. That gets me the heroic dungeon key and a couple blacksmithing plans that should be useful. Well, once I hit 350 and can learn them… And then it was off to Blade’s Edge, where I’ll be questing for a bit. I also stuck my nose into Netherstorm to finish a couple quests that ended there and grabbed a couple flight points.
I headed to Shadowmoon Valley and worked my way through to levels 69 and 70 fairly quickly. Not much notable here aside from some of the quest chains being really looooong, and getting a new pair of shoulders that make me look even more ridiculous than I normally do.
I’ve mostly finished off the quests in Shadowmoon Valley, except for the ones that require groups. Blade’s Edge would seem to be the next logical step, but I think I’ll pop over to Northrend and at least fool around in the starting are a bit, just in case there’s good equipment there like at the start of Outlands.
Back in the Old World of WoW, I did a bunch of exploring and some old quests, gathering ore along the way.
I died a bunch of times, sometimes from falling, sometimes from zealous city guards, and at one point the durability on all of my items was down to zero from having to resurrect at the spirit healer a bunch of times due to inaccessible corpses. But in the end I did manage to get the exploration achievements for both old world continents, and a couple others like the fishing diplomat one.
I only got enough ore to raise blacksmithing seven points, though. I still need another 13 before I can start using all the fel ore and adamantite I have saved up.
And then I got back to Nagrand, finally finishing off most of the quests there. It took a lot longer than expected to do them all, thanks to the large number of them and the zone’s size. Now I’m not sure whether to go to Shadowmoon Valley or Blade’s Edge next…
I celebrated New Year’s Eve by, uh, getting my warrior in WoW to level 68. Lately I’ve just been doing quests in Nagrand, nothing too particularly exciting other than finally being able to afford my level 60 mount (a white 100% speed timber wolf).
Now that I’m 68 I can head to the new Northrend areas, and I made a run to Dalaran starting from Howling Fjord just for kicks to see the new areas. It was an interesting journey, including dodging a lot of much-higher-level monsters and a 100-foot-tall elite with over 630k health. Unfortunately I didn’t realize that you can’t actually get in to Dalaran without assistance until you’re level 74, but at least I picked up a few flight points along the way.
I still have plenty to finish off in Outland first anyway, and next up I think I’m actually going to return to the old world and work on my blacksmithing (and perhaps some old quests along the way). I’m running out of room in the bank partly because of all the bars I’ve been collecting, but I can’t use them yet until I get my blacksmithing up out of the thorium range…
