AFTER SUCCESSFULLY getting the realm first for fishing when Mists of Pandaria opened this week, I hit the new continent of Pandaria to start my journey from level 85 to 90. As with Cataclysm, I wanted to jot down some thoughts on each zone as I leveled, and the first stop, Jade Forest, took some warming up to.
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WHEN CATACLYSM LAUNCHED two years ago, I made a completely unplanned and half-assed attempt to get the achievement for being the first person on the server to max out their fishing skill. It was so spur-of-the-moment that it was a half hour before I actually started fishing, which was about the same amount of time I lost by.
Since then, I’ve acquired the <Salty> title on two characters and won the various fishing derbies six or seven times, so with the launch of Mists of Pandaria last night, I felt obligated to make a proper attempt at the [Realm First: Zen Master Angler] fishing achievement. Interestingly, you could argue it was more about the planning than the fishing.
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AS I OFTEN DO, I took a summer break from WoW, because I live in southern California and I’m a weird brand of geek who enjoys things like sunlight and beaches. But with last week’s release of the world-changing v5.0.4 patch in advance of Mists Of Pandaria, I spent some time getting reacquainted so I wouldn’t be totally lost when the expansion hits.
Naturally, the biggest changes won’t arrive until the expansion officially releases on September 25. That said, a lot of pretty big stuff has already gone live, so here are some thoughts on ten major changes that have already hit the game. Read the rest of this entry »
YOU MAY NOT HAVE REALIZED it was coming, but Harmonix released a new Rock Band game last week. Called Blitz, it’s an arcade game that ditches the plastic guitars and drums in favor of a standard controller and (hooray!) works with your existing DLC library. The gameplay isn’t revolutionary by any stretch, but as a $15 XBLA/PSN downloadable title that includes 25 new songs (“Jessie’s Girl”!), it’s a pretty sweet deal. Read the rest of this entry »
I WAS ORGINALLY going to write something about the recent slap fight between the ex-Blizzard North folks and the current Diablo III team (and I still might), but for now, I’m simply enjoying the victory of reaching level 60 with my Hardcore character. Meet Chereyna, my unstoppable barbarella, who successfully navigated 60 levels of Diablo III without a single death.
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A FEW DAYS AGO, Valve released a free “Mann vs. Machine” update for Team Fortress 2, offering a new riff on the co-op/survival gametype. In MVM, a team of up to 6 players defends against progressively tougher waves of robots, who are trying to carry a bomb to the map’s endpoint. Done in TF2‘s whimsical style, it’s a fun distraction, and allows Valve to experiment with new ways to separate gamers from their money. As we approach TF2‘s fifth anniversary, however, it’s not quite the upgrade the game sorely needs.
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THE ESA ANNOUNCED TODAY that they’d signed an agreement to keep E3 in Los Angeles for the next three years, running through 2015. The news was met with the predictable variety of reactions, usually boiling down to whether that reporter or commenter happened to be a fan of L.A. or not.
The most interesting part of that news, however, is that the L.A. Convention Center is about to undergo a major overhaul to make way for the proposed Farmers Field football stadium, which includes the removal of the West Hall that traditionally houses a large part of E3.
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Mists of Pandaria: Into the Valley
I’VE BEEN TAKING IT SLOW with WoW: Mists of Pandaria, so I’ve only now finished the second high-level zone, Valley of the Four Winds. There’s an extremely familiar feel to it, evoking memories of previous zones like Westfall and Nagrand, but I have a strong suspicion it might end up as my favorite zone of the expansion.
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