Fuzzy's WoW-blog

This is the End

2010-04-29T12:54:00.002+02:00

Hi everyone,

For those who have been following this blog they probably know I haven't done a lot about it for a long long time.

Some new developments have come up in my life. This means I'll be changing course. This will be the last post made in the name of Fuzzy's WoW-blog.

For those interested in Diary of a Dwarf. Please contact me and I'll send the full 7 chapter version to you.

From now on you can follow my work at my website www.snowbuddha.nl and my new blog which will be The Daily Snow Buddha

Thanks everyone for your support and the fun times I've had. See you all in WoW or on the new blog.

Best wishes,

Fuzzy.

Diary of a Dwarf - Chapter I

2009-10-13T08:48:00.005+02:00

Chapter I

Day 1
Coilfang Resevoir - Serpentshrine Caverns

Dear Olivia,

Pfffff ... It’s been years. 26 Years since I last sat down and actually picked up a pen. For some reason I couldn't bring myself to it. Of course I wrote the usual letter to my friends adding food supplies, sometimes money; but most of the time stuff I found lying around which might be of more use to them then to me. In time I’d receive a thank you note or a friendly gesture in the form of money. That was about it. I didn't write anything else. I've done so much over the years. Some things I can hardly even remember. The doc says its brain damage - too many bonks to the head.

It all began way back even before the first war. Around the age of 210 I had left my parents house, because I wanted to become a fisherman. Some place I hardly remember the name of, became my home for about 5 years where I learned some tricks of the trade. For a while it wasn't even going that bad, even made some money there to save up for my future. It wasn't much, but it was a living and at least I was on my own. My mother always had been way to caring. She still made my lunch when I was already past the age for it to be appropriate. I already had a small beard for crying out loud!

2 years after I left my home my dad died. My mom said he got killed when he was on a hunting trip but I knew she was lying. My dad may have been a useless drunk like me, but he was an excellent hunter. He was a crap blacksmith though and that was his fatal blow. The moron had a bit too much to drink and spilled his last Dragon's Breath in the forge fire. "Burned to a crisp, ye dad" - that’s what our local inn keeper always used to tell me when I came to visit my mom the years after on my fake vacations. I told my mom I was in the army, told her that so she'd tell her friends. One of them had a beautiful daughter. Breasts the size of beer kegs. Olivia...

I always thought if I went away for 5 years, learnt fishing while everyone thought I was in the army I could retire as a fisherman back where I came from and maybe Olivia would love me for being such a tough guy. It pains me to say that wasn't what happened! 2 years after my dad’s death, the village my mom lived in got ran over by trolls. Greenskins we called them. The bloody creatures killed everyone including my mom.... and Olivia. I was devastated. All this happened just because some silly elf got it into their fat head they had the right to claim the upper regions of the Eastern Kingdom and drove those damn beasts off whilst they were at it. The trolls wrecked any place standing between them and the next place they would build their next settlement. I found out later they set up in the region of Zul'Gurub in Stranglethorn Vale.

That was the time I actually wanted to join the army, any army! I didn't care if it was the Wildhammers, Dark Irons, Bronzebeards or maybe even a human campaign. I didn't belong to any of them so I couldn't care less who I killed, just as long as I was with some tough guys who might get me the chance to eventually get back at the monsters that killed my mom. So I did, I joined an army! Of course ... knowing me ... not a normal army! Nooooo..... I joined the Privateers. "Hardened warriors, rangers and mages, best you'll ever find". At least ... that’s what the recruiting guy said when I was drunk sitting at some bar. When I woke up the next day, by someone poking me, I found out I’d been taken in by 2 rather weird looking guys and a night elf. They ran a travelling party which did chores other people where too afraid to do, or were too lazy for that matter. I wanted out. Come on..... hardened warriors? Who? This big brute 3 times my size that had a pet squirrel that lived in his arm pit? A ranger, what ranger? All I saw was a skinny little guy with a bow who was just as green as a troll in my eyesight. They said he was an elf, still hated him though. No special reason I just didn't trust the fact he was green. Then again I'm colour blind. They kept telling me he wasn't green at all. Then there was a mage. Right ... a mage ... some guy called Medetheron, or Meddy for short. Always had big stories about long travels, gnomes, and stuff about big mountains and throwing away magical rings. Weird guy! Everyone knows all fake stories include a long journey. It’s because they are trying to buy time to actually make up the ending.

I wanted out of there so badly.

That was until they told me their current occupation was travelling to Stranglethorn Vale to investigate some troll movement near there and the regions of the Black Morass. All I could think of was Greenskins! Greenskins and blood! Oh, how I wanted them dead for what they had done to my mom. I sold everything. Didn't think I'd be back any day soon and all I took was my best fishing pole, a bag of food and a pouch full of money...

"Stop your day dreaming Fuzzy!!! ... Its Boom Boom time ... Time to kill stuff ... It’s now or neffaaaaa..."
"Ohw, quick or he'll never stop singing"

Fuzzy tucked away his little book. He kept it with a pen; he once got from his dad, in a secret pocket on the back of his shield. He wasn't the philosophical type but since the only thing used to block a sword was a shield that’s where he kept it. That way he mused, the pen would always stay mightier than the sword. Fuzzy jumped off the keg he used as a chair, and while Gnome mage Elmica was still holding her ears to avoid hearing any of Nik's terrible singing scuffled up to the front line. "What’s on the menu today boss?" he asked while looking blurred out of his eyes. Nik squinted at him and replied "Have you been drinking again you silly dwarf! I sometimes ask myself why we keep a drunk like you around. It's a good thing you're just as good at fighting as you are at drinking." With that said Nik pointed in the general direction of a female naga. "You see her?" he asked. "Yesh, I do" was the only reply Fuzzy could give before Nik shoved him in that general direction. The next thing he knew was being dragged from the underground lair and being put next to a mage from another squad known as the 'suicide team'. "Things didn't go as planned then?" he asked to the guy next to him. "Not really ..." was the last he heard when the world faded to black.

Diary of a Dwarf - Opening

2009-10-11T23:14:00.011+02:00

Diary of a Dwarf.

Written by Frank Stam

Based on adventures of
Brewmaster Fuzzball
Dragonblight(EU)

Taking place in
World of Warcraft
Created by
Blizzard Entertainment

Special thanks to my editor Karen and the people I've been playing with over the years to make this possible.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Writers Note.

Nowadays I usually update my blog on mondays (or at least for the past few weeks). However 'Diary of a Dwarf'. Requires a bit of extra attention. In nature I'm not english, but dutch and therefor my english is a bit crooked sometimes.

I send off the first chapter to be spelling checked so people don't stumble upon my horrible english while reading the complete story.

What I can do however is give you the original intro plus the timeline. I made those a few years ago and I'm fairly sure they are error proof. So without further redo. I hope you enjoy the story.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction.

Dear Diary,

I've kept you for so many years, since my mom gave you to me, after I left home. I'm 237 years old now and your pages are beginning to colour a little yellow. Can't really bring myself to throw you away and I really don't know what to write down at the moment. When I do think of something I'll start writing as soon as I can.

I know.. promises promises .. but I seem to have become a busy man. For now I'll just give you a name. Just so I can one day when I get too old, remember why I kept you for so long. I'll call you Olivia. Somehow I feel that would fit you. Made you a nice comfy home today right next to my pen. It’s made of linen, but you can't blame me, I'm an armour smith ... Not a tailor.

Goodbye for now Olivia ... Sleep well ... Rough day tomorrow.

Oh, I'm Frank by the way, but everyone calls me Fuzzball.. Or Fuzzy if they like me enough.

Finishing up

2009-10-05T20:38:00.008+02:00

Legacy of Kain:

As promised I told everyone there's a way to get the Legacy of Kain running. I have to thank the following websites.

Legacy of Kain: DARK CHRONICALS - www.dark-chronicle.co.uk
Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds - www.thelostworlds.net

These people dedicated their websites (and maybe part of their lifes) to this story and to keep it alive.

Now I can't say I found any legal way to get all the games, but I do know there's a download currently run along the torrent scene. Most people know these sites and how to use them.

That'll be it for Legacy of Kain. Of course I've been busy with other things too. So here's...

The News:

The Twilight Zone

After going through some childhood memories I've jumped when I heard that The Twilight Zone actually had 3 series seperate from each other (see wiki here). I'm an 70/80 guy when it comes to TV. So I never knew the first series and found out about it by a site I visit often called Cinemassacre. I'm still very fond of 1 episode from the second series so I jumped to the chance to get a hold of as much as I could.

To my surprise I found both the first and second series including my favourite episode. It was called 'The Misfortune Cookie'. I won't spoil it for anyone but I do suggest people to try and see it including all other episodes.

Its new and refreshing even compaired to everything thats on TV right now. It shows storytelling at its best. By the way stories are told it actually makes people think and gives something to talk about. I watched 4 episodes with friends and it always leads to a big chat about the topic of the episode. Which leads to another good memory of my past...

The Storyteller

I've spend my childhood watching a lot of english television. Including The Storyteller. Its only 9 episodes in the first series and I never seen the second series. However I read on wiki that the second series got pulled after 4 episodes.

I highly recommend people to get all episodes of The Storyteller. Its way better than all the high violence "BO-YA-KA-SHAAAA" cartoons and series that are on the television these days. I've loved this series when I was a kid and I still think its great. I promise, your children will always remember these episodes as something special. Which brings me to...

Creations

I've been working on 3 projects for the past few weeks. I'll share them with you here and now.

A new table top game based on Fallout and Necromunda
A pair of Steampunk sunglasses
A rewrite of 'Diary of a Dwarf'

Now the game I can't tell anything about cause its far from finished. Its basically a result from writing my post-apocalypse review. When its done I'll post it in the form of a PDF for those who want to try it. With the feedback I'd like to balance the game so its completely finished.

The steampunk glasses will be shown right now. I've 3d composed the glass-holders in Google-Sketchup and this is what it looks like.

Top view Bottom view

I already have the leather to make the straps that will eventually go over the top and sides of the wearer's head. Including the buttons, screws and buckles. I just need the metalwork done (which is the most expensive). I should go for a copper plate cause thats the steampunk thing to do. However to make it as lightwaight as possible I'm thinking of using aluminium. There's a steelmarket around here somewhere so I'll have to check in with them on what the possibilities are. Maybe I can even use some coating to make the aluminium look like copper or worn down steel.

Now the last one about 'Diary of a Dwarf'. Some of you already know the story and some of you don't. I wrote it when in a guild with friends and never really finished it. So I decided to rewrite the whole thing, remove names and such, to make sure the story is easy on the eyes of everyone. Including those who never heard of the people who are in it. Its also so I can start work on a new story I got in mind.

Upcoming weeks I'll be posting chapters of 'Diary of a Dwarf' here. Its 7 of them so I hope people like it and charish it as much as I've done over the time I kept it. Its probably not the most original story out there, but its mine.

For now ... Enjoy this picture of an ORLY owl.

Legacy of Kain - Story

2009-09-28T17:10:00.004+02:00

I've decided to make a short story about all the Legacy of Kain games. The main reason is cause the story in total is so complex it would take years of explaining. There's so many characters, so many timelines and jumps back and forth. Its really hard to tell it all in one post. So here goes the very short blood omen / soul reaver / defiance recapture.

Blood Omen

There once was a man called Kain. He gets jumped and killed by some thugs. In turn he gets resurrected as a vampire to play out his vengance. This is pretty much the reason of motivation for Blood Omen 1. However there's a background story and this will return in future games. Kain kills the thugs and goes after their employers. These 'employers' are the guardians of the Pillars of Nosgoth. If Kain kills them all and returns the binding items to these pillars, he'll be able to restore the balance in all of Nosgoth. So he does.

The story from this point all the way up to the end, where Kain is asked to either sacrifice himself or not, is so full of plots twists and turns it becomes a bit hard to explain. However the guardians are pretty much trying to screw him over as much as possible. Even up to a point where Kain goes back in time to kill someone who'd otherwise threaten the kingdom in the future. By going back and changing things he opens up the road for the main villian Moebius to go and start a vampire hunt.

With all the guardians slain and the pillars restored there's only one pillar left. The Pillar of Ballance. Kain who is bound to this pillar has the choise of either restoring this pillar by killing himself or starting of a line of sequels.

Blood Omen 2

The story picks up after Kain's first adventure. He launched a massive attack on the Sarafan in order to gain control over Nosgoth. This goes a bit wrong and leaves his armies ruined and Kain himself pretty much on the road to becoming the most insteresting wormfood in the world.

Waking up after 2 centuries of recovery Kain finds himself in a city he doesn't remember aided by vampires he never heard of. Since Kain is a man who finishes the job he started he goes after the Sarafan who put him in the state he was in to get Nosgoth under his control again.

There actually doesn't happen a lot in this story. Kain beats some vampires who sided with the Sarafan. The most important about this part is that after killing the Sarafan lord he ressurects his soldiers to become his sons. Which leads to...

Soul Reaver

The Sarafan 'blessed' with Kain's gift of renewed life all get new abilities after Kain got one. However one of them gets an ability before their master.

Raziel is granted the ability to fly and when showing his wings to his master, his reward is eternal damnation. But by a stroke of luck Raziel survives. He's granted the gift of life by The Elder God. As with Kain, Raziel goes into a frenzy and decides its best to clear the land of his brothers and Kain. So he does.

With each brother he kills Raziel gains a new power and thereby reaches up to a point where he'd be able to defeat Kain. Being the last one left Raziel goes after him through a long hallway of visions. Some of these will come true, some are alternate timelines and this brings us back to the time streaming device which zapped Kain back to the past in Blood Omen. Kain activates the divice during a fight with Raziel.

In an attempt to follow, Raziel jumps into the portal, but instead finds himself facing Moebius. And a very annoying "to be continued" screen.

Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance

Raziel finds himself in the past and from here on explaining becomes near impossible. So I'll skip from SR2 directly into Defiance and back from time to time.

The main reason is cause these 2 games take place in and around Blood Omen 1. So most main events are already known and just recaptures. Also the gameplay pretty much is a remake of SR1 for Raziel and BO2 for Kain.

Raziel finds the Sarafan in the past and gets to kill them all. This means he was the reason why Kain could later resurrect them. Mainly Raziel is still running around trying to get to Kain, but he gets a bit side-tracked by everything that happens in Nosgoth's past.

Eventually Raziel flip-flops through time again ending up around the same time as Young Kain is running around killing the guardians of the pillars (Blood Omen 1). Old Kain is there too however. So this gives a new chase.

BUT ....

and now I'll step away from the story cause this is the ending and there's 3 things that need explaining before the world goes Poof.

1. The Reaver blade

Its the blade both Raziel and Kain wield. It was made by a vampire and eventually its the weapon that will be the key to everything falling into place.

2. Prophecy

There's a background story of 2 fighting heroes that will bring balance to the world. The hero being Raziel in both cases. Both Salvation and Destroyer.

3. Moebius and the Elder God

These two are actually in one league and trying to prevent Kain from ever doing what he's ment to do. Which is also part of the Prophecy.

4. The End...

And thats all I'll tell you. Defiance is still a game that you can get easily and it tells you everything you need to know. It'd be a massive spoiler if I told it straight away right here and now.

Also the story works in a loop. Somewhere in Blood Omen 1 Kain fights himself. The ending of Defiance actually stops near that point. So there's no end to the sequence of events. In other words .... there is NO ending.

Next week I'll give some sources on how to get all the Legacy of Kain games running. I might include links to where you can download them 'legally'.

For now I'll leave you with the most impressive screenshot ever taken.

Legacy of Kain - Introduction

2009-09-22T15:40:00.005+02:00

Welcome to the revisit of Legacy of Kain.

You'll probably be wondering why these games .. why now? Let me tell you. My goal is to show that its possible even in this time and age to make something original. There's too many games out there made with the same stamp. The world already narrows down everything around us to unisex products that will attract the most attention and money. Thereby making a sacrifice in originality and uniqueness.

Its been years since I first bought Soul Reaver and I never fully finished it. I did finish Blood Omen 2, but that was it. I was always very impressed by the story and unique feel these games have to them. There's a few things that stopped me from ever finishing these games and I'll start with Blood Omen.

Blood Omen - Most downloads didn't have FMVs, Didn't run on XP, Didn't have save games if it did run on XP. Playing this would have been as useless as eating air for breakfast.

Soul Reaver 1 & 2 - Dodgy camera angles and respawning mobs that get annoying after a while. Plus some areas lead you back where you started and you tend to get lost from time to time.

Defiance - Even worse camera angles then Soul Reaver 1 & 2 which made my first go a very 'Meh' experience. Plus it was told to be the last in the series so I first wanted to finish the other ones.

Since the game(s) are pretty old, the last one (Defiance) coming out in 2004, finding Blood Omen (1997) will be a bitch, running it on a XP / Vista machine even more, but the story really builds on this one and its sequel Blood Omen 2. So it'd be really hard not to include it. So I went out of my way to find a copy on the web that includes the FMV's. Which are the 19-- version of current day CGI movies we find in games as Warcraft and Final Fantasy.

Some mysterious events have rendered me with time to spare and by amazement got Blood Omen and Soul Reaver working again. It was time to blow the dust off these disks and dig in deep to reveal an epic story so complex it still has people talking about it.

Next week I'll talk about the Blood Omen story and ways to get it running for yourself. For now enjoy this old picture of my hanging upside down.

Corperate Marketing Spew

2009-09-10T21:28:00.006+02:00

There's currently 4 websites that keep me busy (not counting 2 dutch ones. Its to hard to link those and expect everyone I know to understand them). These are the common sense sites which mix every day news and pop culture with humor. As an ode I'll link them here now.

Fun facts - The wacky colums of Cracked
Nostalgia - The works of Angry Video Game Nerd, Cinemassacre
Gaming - The down to earth view on things by Escapist
Mindless fun - From the school of College Humor

Now, I value honesty, open mindedness and non-corperate bullshit. However to keep these pages running they can't avoid having adds on them (kinda like I have on my blog ... however I just have it to look professional). I also believe in paying for things that are actually worth something. Thats why I don't support EA's Sims 3 commercial, currently plastered on the background of College Humor.

Let me tell you why and I warn you ... I'm not proud of what I'm about to say, but it has to be done. It might even scare you a bit to hear this, but here goes.

I own every single Sims 2 content on original disk.

Yes, I fueled that housewife cocain that is now the biggest offline hype in gameland. Now to explain why Sims 2 was worth it and why Sims 3 is a pile of garbage, I'll have to go into a bit of history.

History Lesson 101

Remember Maxis? .. I mean before the big EA monster came and beat them into submission? .. I do .. They used to be the name that was linked with everything that including the name sim in the title. SimCity and SimFarm being the only ones I want to name cause after that I can't really say the Sim-whatever series had anything impressive to add.

I'll make it easy for you cause Wiki has a nice timeline pre-made. Now let me point out which games where actually interresting and landmarks in simulation.

SimCity was groundbreaking. Underappreciated at the time cause of it being a hard game to understand or just too boring for people to get into. Remember this was at the time games like Streets of Rage, Final Fight, Street Fighter and such hit the home console too. However it had its following just like Civilization and Railroad Tycoon and became an icon in the simulation world on how things should be done. But every great idea (even back then) soon becomes a milking cow. SimAnt did something fun with the concept, but SimFarm was pretty much the big one when the first Sim-era came to an end.

SimCity 2000 was a graphical marvel at the time and set another small landmark. However it was basically a remade version of SimCity and didn't bring much new to the table. After SimCity 2000 everything pretty much went into a grinder to milk the product as much as humanly possible. Even up to SimCopter, a game where you could fly over your own SimCity without (as far as I remember) any purpose but eyecandy. I skipped almost everthing from SimCity 2000 up and I'm pretty sure I didn't miss a lot. I only got to play SimCity 4 years after it came out and I'll say its probably the best build SimCity thus far. However, since SimCity 2000, Maxis was part of EA and this kind of shows in the way the product got hyped. Spore was for me what should have been SimCity 5, but failed misserably.

Sims Uprise

Between SimCity 3000 and 4 (talking about weird numbering of sequels) came The Sims. Probably the biggest thing in gaming history when it comes to simulations. For the first time you'd be able to be a god. Not just the kind that plunks down houses and factories or makes armies to destroy other civilizations. Ofcourse, back then I was still too macho for this kind of thing and didn't pay much attention in "Biggest hype since baked bread"-class. So a few years passed by before I got my first sniff.

Pretty much the first thing I did was make a family and try to find all the ways in which to kill them. Yes, typing that still brings a smile to my face. I also got it with all the expansion packs cause it was about half a year before Sims 2 would come out and I wanted to know what bandwagon I was climbing onto. I actually enjoyed it a lot. More the creating houses bit than the actual gameplay, but I managed to digest pretty much all of it.

So I bought the Sims 2 and enjoyed it as much as it allowed me to. However I felt some things where missing. Things that the expansions had already clearly made the first one better in small details. However Sims 2 was far superiour to its bulky ancestor. It introduced the Wishes system, improved graphics, gameplay mechanics and brought a whole new generation and society into gaming. I even downloaded huge amounts of drivespace in user made content and (back then still free) DLC from their website. Sims 2 was great.

The Brickwall

EA's marketing scam hadn't dawned on my yet with Sims 1, cause I didn't know about the whole setup and release of the addon sets yet. This came on the release of Sims 2. What I noticed was blank spots in the game. Things where I just felt "hey, something is missing here". Like for example certain actions. Now this at first wouldn't be such a big deal, but after installing the first addon / expansion it became all too clear that those wholes there are just too fitting not to be planned. All of a sudden blank space was filled with a new action button.

With every expansion this became to dawn more and more on me. Basically the finished product had been ripped into pieces and as time progressed and more expansions come out, it got stitched back together again. However I forgive them for this now. I bought all the content and got the full game that works. Somehow it doesn't take away the fact I feel a bit ripped off for buying a not-even-half-finished product (remember my rant on the Fallout DLC). Would this be an online game like Warcraft where the world slowly catches up by leveling and end-game just becomes dull, it would be something else. Games like that sometimes just need a refreshing push forward. This game however is static. There is no end-game and the only reason to do something like this is pure marketing.

However where the unfinished product hit a wall and needed addons to complete, thats where the DLC and the community added to it and made Sims 2 what is now in my book as a great game which I enjoyed dearly. So I was looking forward to Sims 3. I really was. Till it came out and I got my grubby hands on it...

MOOOOO

Thats right. The milk factory has opened again just like it had 20 years ago with SimCity. The first thing you notice after Sims 3 is done installing is that the graphics haven't improved a lot from Sims 2. They did add more changable features to a character by the means of sliders, but thats about it. The base package of clothing, hair, etc. are very low. Yes, you can now change clothing texture and you have a very deep ability to change colour all over the place, but it still feels incomplete.

Thats when the alarm bells will start ringing. Yes, expansions will yet again make this a complete game. Since I was already used to this abuse I just ignored it for now and went onto making a house. You know ... the expensive kind where you can only cheat your way into by getting enough money from killing off sims and taking their money. That is untill you find the money cheat code.

The features here have improved somewhat. You can now put up furnature crossward instead of only horizontal or vertical. As with the clothing you can change textures and colour to your liking. However, here you'll also notice that the selection is rather minimal. Then it becomes annoying. So I asked myself where I could get some more stuff. Turns out DLC is now payed for. There's still an Exchange like in Sims 2 and thats probably where you still get stuff for free, but I'm very scared since there's actually a Store page too that features things you need to pay for.

Look at it this way. To use downloaded content in Sims 2, most of the time you needed the base-model it was build on. If this base-model can only be bought at the Sims 3 Store online you're pretty much screwed out of your money straight away. So thats double money. First for the upcoming expansions, now the DLC too. The game already misses more then it should.

So after noticing all this I was pretty much set on destruction mode, but I still had to play a bit first. The promised "less worry about (example) your bladder and more fun with the wish system" totally failed on my part. The first day the idiot I made went to work smelly and in a dire need of a piss. Naked sims now have more censor then a japanese porn movie. Guys there was nothing wrong with the first 2 censors. Why are the ones in Sims 3 bigger? Have female sims got breast enlargement that might destroy my screen if their censored razorsharp nipples run along?? The open-world city you work in doesn't allow you to do anything. The game still goes into turbo mode till you get home. The open city itself is a nice new feature you won't hear me complain about that, but they could have at least included the work into it somehow. Now that would have been a real new feature. How funny would it be to piss off your co-workers by paying them a visit on your day off.

I was so fed up with Sims 3 by now and I only had been playing for maybe an hour or 2, then my pc itself got fed up with the game all together. No kidding. My pc actually went back to windows and shut down the game.

Conclusion

Back to the EA Sims 2 commercial. It states:

"The best sims game yet" - PC Gamer
I didn't even know PC Gamer is still around these days. Nice of these guys to jump the corperate bandwagon. Little tip guys. Its passed the year 2000 and offline magazines are wastes of paper. You're destroying the enviroment.

"...Sims 3, Remarkable, Blows past its ancestors in every way" - Time Magazine
First of all Time should stick to their own kind of journalism, cause gaming definatly isn't it. Sims 3 is Sims 2 with a minimal engine upgrade. Second of all Yep, Sims 3 sure blows.

"The latest sims game is also the greatest" - Gamespot
I knew I hated Gamespot for a reason. I always thought it was just their crummy logo. Now I know its due to their lack of game knowledge.

And thats just from the commercial. Gametrailers give it a 9.0 and IGN give a 8.9. Two sites who are to me the information sites when it comes to gaming. Both have just dropped off the face of the earth now for me for some reason. For the part of Users Scores go. Ever thought that maybe the kind of gamers that play Sims have lower standards and/or anyone can vote for that score including developers themselfs. The only site I generally use for patch downloads that actually had the best score fitting was GamersHell. To be exact their score was this N/A ... Not available.

Before people piss on my parade of being a bad reviewer. EA had this funny story about the pirated version being a "demo" and not containing the full content. So let me clear up one thing right away. Yes, I had this "Demo" and got the full version right after I heard this. Both versions where exactly the same to me. So either I had luck with my download or its a hoax. I had access to all released content and I even consulted a fellow WoW-friend of mine, with a full version of the game, about her findings (yes, an actual female of our species ... Thanks Lenouk!). Basically we both came to these conclusions on all points.

As Zaphod Beeblebrox would say "Okay. So, ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, huh?"

PS: Did you know the current patch while I'm writing this is already v1.4.6... The game isn't even 3 months old and already it had 4 patches needed to fix the crappy first release.

What I think is Funny.

2009-08-30T04:24:00.006+02:00

Forgive me if this post is a bit on the dumb or tasteless humor side of the globe, but I spend my late hours from time to time these day rummaging through internet finding things no godly soul would ever come up with looking for in the first place.

Now I heard a phrase which containted the very scary word "Completionists". This was about gameplayers who go out of their way to actually complete EVERYTHING in the games they get their hands on. I myself consider myself a Solve-erist or however you call it. In other words End of Game is the same for me as reaching the end credits even if I didn't find all the collectable items or saved all the helpless puppies.

So Hello Google and I found this. A Completionist blog

Now you'll probably go "whats funny about this". Let me explain. A completionist started a blog on the 31st of March this year to write about his / her work as an IT employee at a goverment somewhere. Its now the 30th of August .... Forgive me if I'm such a person that think its funny for a completionist to have commitment issues to a blog. It becomes even funnier when you realise the blog isn't even finished properly and you can't even comment on it without the page giving a "can't find page error". The person who's supposed to be working on this is in IT ... making a website should be like what baking cookies is for a 5 star restaurant chef.

I thought I'd share ... next up: My idea for a Post Apocalyptic game.

Post Apocalypse - Extra

2009-08-29T15:18:00.008+02:00

Out of boredom after playing STALKER I went through my own game collection and surprised myself with the fact of owning a copy of KKND2: Krossfire. I never played it and it was a present from someone a long time ago. This game actually falls under the PA gaming list aswell so I thought I might aswell give it a try.

KKND2: Krossfire

Unlike all the other games this is a RTS game. So the grading is a lot different from the previous ones.

Look and feel:

KKND2 feels old. By old I mean Win95 old. If you know the old Dune games you'll know what I mean. However that doesn't make for a bad game. It actually feels more Pre-Apocalypse, but they have Mutants in the series and therefor its Post.

The landscape is well and destroyed, but somehow in this post apocaliptic land's technology is on high rise. You got 3 factions, so you got a good amount of play to choose from. Either choose Humans, Mutants or Robots.

Now I'm all up for a good Dune clone so here goes the first human map.

Combat:

Its rather straight forward. Get as many units as possible and do as the title of the game says. Kill, Krush N Destroy. Basically there's not a lot of S to this RTS. Just the way I like it.

Make the biggest army you can think of, find the enemy, run over him like a bike runs over a snail and wait for the squishy sound. There's only one downside.

You better have a good army at your homebase too cause if your attack fails its highly likely that the spoils of thier team come over for tea a few seconds later.

Area's and Questing:

The maps are massive and thats honestly not that handy. Mainly cause the missions demand you to kill EVERYTHING. So you mostly spend more time running around finding that last unit then you do actually playing.

The missions are pretty straight forward. Find or found a base, build an army, go shopping at the neighbours. Between that you have to find Oil so to fund your army. This makes up pretty much all of the gameplay mechanics and its rather easy to understand. However due to the old age of the game it takes a bit of getting a hang of.

Character development:

There's a lot of different units to build and a good thing is they build all at the same time. So your army builds up rather fast. Besides that you can eventually build a research station and upgrade your buildings to be better, faster, cheaper...

Actually I don't know what the benefit is cause it doesn't tell. It's probably in the manual that I don't have. Its there so its probably usefull to use.

Conclusion:

This game is simple fun. It passes the time even if its just by playing only 1 map. Its not the best RTS game ever, but its fun to play, easy to understand and most of the lesser details are forgiven due to how old the game is.

When it comes to PA games however I don't really understand how this one entered the list. I don't really feel like being in a PA wasteland, but at least its fun.

Post Apocalypse - Part 4

2009-08-27T16:24:00.009+02:00

I've played Shadow of Chernobyl once before, but stopped half way through the start. Time to give it another whirl...

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:
Shadow of Chernobyl
and
Clear Sky
Official Site

And yet again I've got stuck half way through the start. Not only on Shadow of Chernobyl, but also on Clear Sky. This game is HARD beyond belief. Now I'm not one to give up easily on a game. I usually tend to keep on trying at least for an hour or 2 before I go "fuck this shit". However with this game its hard not to go FTS on it.

First of all there's no auto-save and if there is I haven't noticed. Every single time you die you'll have to start from the beginning of the game OR be so lucky to have Quick-Saved just before starting the next encounter. Second of all when my mission guy was killed on my way over to him the game crashed.

I tried to patch the game, but then my save games didn't work anymore plus my mini-map stopped working. That might be cause I used patch 1.0006 instead of the last official one was 1.0005 on STALKERS own website, but thats besides the point. Anyways, thats just game mechanics and I'm here to review it, so here's a review as best as I can give it. Its about PA games afterall and not really anything else.

Look and feel:

This game actually looks good. Now understand that its Chernobyl you're running around in and not total world destruction. So if you look at it that way the game feels pretty real to its source. At least ... to me ... I've been to Czechoslovakia in its poverty age and this game looks a bit like that with added destroyed property.

Now the sad thing is I can't say much else after the first quest, cause I couldn't get there, but if it'd all work this game is on the same level as Fallout 3 when it comes to look and feel.

The story is a bit weird though and I can't say much of it. Mostly cause there's not much to go on. In both games you get a small movie that doesn't explain a lot and then you wake up. Here's the story on YouTube

Combat:

This is what should make most of the game and which actually breaks it. Combat in STALKER is so damn hard its beyond human capabilities. You'll have to take your time aiming straight, Cause without practice you won't even hit a cow if it was right in front of you.

Besides that, your targets have an auto-aim, cause they'll always hit you and you better be sure you hit them before they hit you or you're dead. Even on Novice (the easiest of easy play) the guys who shoot at you will have an aim like Robocop and you'll feel like you're shooting a bb gun with side-wind.

Area's and Questing:

It takes a LOT of reading before you get to the point where you can actually start on your quest. At first everything is supported by audio speech, but later on this is removed and you're left with only lots and lots of text to read. In Clear Sky more is done with audio, but I'm not sure how far into the game.

This would probably give me a better idea to the story, but STALKER doesn't really feel like a game that should have such great deals of text in the beginning. The characters don't know you and there's not a lot of reason for them to tell you their life story.

So I skipped through most of them just to get to actually playing the game. However you can practically talk to EVERYONE in the game so it becomes a big drag to actually get passed it all. I can't imagine making all these characters have a story to tell. Why? It doesn't add anything and it feels obsolete.

Character development:

I'm not sure if there is any. I can't get far enough to actually know if there is. I know you get better gear along the road. Better weapons and outfits can be found and bought, but other then that I don't really see a lot of char. dev. in the game.

Professions:

There aren't any. Then again STALKER feels more like a shooter then a RPG. So there isn't much use for it.

Conclusion:

There's 3 things to say about this game.

If you want to play it ... Patch it
If you want to finish it ... Cheat
If you're a sadist ... don't do the first 2

The only way this game can be fun to you is if you either are REALLY good at it or if you don't mind cheating or dieing a lot.

I'm really pulled to the story in this one and will return to it with the proper patch and cheats just to finish the story. That will probably indicate that they did do something right. Yet STALKER is far from perfect and I'd really not advise it. Neither of them.

Post Apocalypse - Part 3

2009-08-27T16:20:00.007+02:00

I'm looking forward to this game. It looks good, so lets hope it is.

Exodus - From the Earth
Official Site

Ok, a big lol goes out to me. I found this game while I should have been looking for Exodus with no extra title. So after playing this for a bit I went to search for the other Exodus, but its nowhere to be found as of yet.

The only thing I found was Exodus the RPG pen and paper game and some project called Phase: Exodus which isn't completed yet.

But since I'm here now anyway.... Exodus from the Earth

This game is BAD. I won't say its not fun or anything, its just really really bad. The fact that its a russian production might kinda be the reason for this. The english speech feels canned and the lipsink it totally off. The gameplay is ok. Its just your average Sci-fi shooter.

The story is this:

Sun is coming closer to the earth and you're going after the guy who has the medication that will make it able for humanity to survive elsewhere. Cause this guy can make a lot of money off of this and we wouldn't want that now would we.

Thats it. After that its just a long string of shooting bad guys (actually I don't really know why you start gunning down people ...), the story will unraffle for you and then probably leads to a climactic ending. I didn't get to finish this game cause it wasn't the one I intended to review so I might get back to it another time. The story isn't too catchy so don't count on it.

Post Apocalypse - Part 2

2009-08-27T15:11:00.004+02:00

Now the I never got to finish Fallout 1 and 2, just cause I'm to lazy to read everything. However I love these games. They are the milestones for this genre and just like all open-world games are now GTA-clones its hard not to make a PA-game and not be compaired to the Fallout series.

Fallout 3
Official Site

However hooked I've been to Fallout 3 I'll try to make a fair judgement to it. Here goes...

First let me get something out of the way and this is rather important.

EXPANSIONS - something you buy to actually get something new in the game to continue its gameplay and thereby extending the amount of gameplay available in this game.

DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT - stuff you can download for FREE cause they made it after the game came out, but thought it was still fun to put it in. Patches are also DLC.

In no way ever should there be payment for downloadable content. Unless this is burned on CD, packaged and sold at your local store as Expansion or addon. I payed for the game and thereby expect it to be payed in its complete form. That includes DLC's.

Look and feel:

There are some technical glitches with my graphics card that sometime makes the game go "oops, *gniffle* shut-down, tihi". We're currently on patch 1.7, 5 expansions (I refuse to use DLC here cause they're not free, God bless Torrents) and its still not fixed.

I had to go out of my way to get something that stops Games4Windows Live from screwing up and tweak the graphics a bit, but although this minimized the shutdown error it still does it sometimes. Mayor programming error. So unless you got exactly the right pc for the job, your first look and feel will probably contain you breaking the CD and getting splinters in your eyes.

Now the game itself is good in graphics. The wasteland is wasted, the cities are destroyed and settlements feel like last bastions of civilization. Its not perfect for one reason "Perception". This will disable you to see further then the skillpoints you got into it and will sometimes let you miss a location or get you killed cause a enemy got past your vision.

Combat:

With the VATS system, which is used from its old ancestors, the game has a plus. However its not a plus that always works too well.

Since you're stuck to a certain amount of Action points (or AP) you can't always keep using VATS. Only once you get the Grim Reaper Sprint perk you'll be blasting your way through enemies like there's no tomorrow.

The normal Aim and Shoot leaves a bit of question to VATS. Your aim is off a lot and since you want to save ammo as much as possible you really want to avoid not using VATS.

Melee is added in the game, but since there's not a lot of enemies who actually are melee targets you are better off not using these weapons. Its handy to have a melee weapon at all time to save bullets when you're just bashing a critter.

Area's and Questing:

Area's are mostly buildings you go into and the most annoying thing is that most of them are subways. When out in the wasteland you can travel for miles and miles till you get to your destination, but when you're into DC you have to take one subway after another to actually get somewhere. Now most of the game is about DC so you're stuck a lot between fast traveling to certain areas you've already been to just to get to the next, taking wrong turns left and right to finally find which way to go and then never return to these spots to avoid getting lost again.

The quests are solid compaired to the "how to get there" part. With that I mean you know what to do and the story is massive. However there's a moral choise system that doesn't always work. You better be damn sure what you say will eventually have as a result or you might end up killing someone, giving you bad karma. More then once I ran into someone I wanted to help and by saying something wrong I got them angry and had to shoot them.

Character development:

Besides the whole Character buildup you got your perks. These systems worked since Fallout 1 and there's not a lot to say about them. They do what they say and thereby you know what will improve if you choose for one or the other.

Professions:

These are pretty much linked to your stats. The better you are in Medical the better your healing works. The better in Repair, the better your weapons get repaired. etc. However you get enough points to spend on both your combat skills as your non-combat skills. This is how its suppose to work.

Lets take a step back to Fallen Earth. Here you need to combine certain skills before you skill up in a profession. However the things you skill up aren't directly indicating what profession you are skilling them up for or even if its usefull for your style of combat. You need to extensively read up on it to understand it.

Conclusion:

Fallout 3 isn't perfect but its the closest thing there is to perfection in PA games. There's an announcement for Fallout: New Vegas and I can't wait till its here. There's also the Fallout: MMO to look forward to if Bethesda stops being an idiot about rights they bought off Interplay. Afterall if Bethesda didn't get those rights they wouldn't have been allowed to even make Fallout sequals in the first place.

Post Apocalypse - Part 1

2009-08-27T13:23:00.013+02:00

Now I ran through all the games that hold this genre and the only one I could find that I haven't played yet was Exodus (and I'm working on that).

So what I'll do here is look through 2 games that cover this subject and fill the rest in later. In the following posts I'll talk about some more games and I might do a bit about what I want from a PA game.

My hope is that Fallen Earth learns from this, that there's a game out there I missed and for the Fallout MMO (if it ever comes out) to be as good as Fallout 3 was. So .. Lets start off shall we.

Fallen Earth
Official site

Well. Unlike the other games its the only MMO and its still in Beta-Test so it can still change.

Look and feel:

This game doesn't feel too bad in the tutorial and that is afterall what should get you hooked. The character build system is really massive in the looks department and it really makes a solid statement of wanting to be something. Although that pretty much falls flat on its face straight after you jumped out of the tutorial into the actual game.

The story is good too. The whole Clone-technology kinda gives a good reason for you to be able to respawn. Afterall normally dead would be dead and thats the end.

Now comes the part where all the bad stuff comes up. The graphics for this age and time are So So. They're not bad but they're not perfect either. As I said the character building is massive and looks great, but passed that the graphics slowly start to become less and less impressive. Its all kinda clunky. There's a lot of free MMO's out there that use the same kind of graphics. It definatly needs an improvement before release. The world looks a bit like a wasteland, but its far from it.

Combat:

Its overcomplicated. You got 6 weapon slots on your character (yes 6, 2 on your back, 2 on your legs, 2 on your belt) Now this makes for an interresting concept. However in a fight this becomes a bit overdone. There's no reason to switch firearms since you'll always use the one packing the biggest punch. So you can sell everything else to get ammo for you gun in favour. Then there's the fact most of the time you'll be fighting in Melee, cause the enemys feel the need to stand in your face most of the time.

Now I'm all for the ability of shooting stuff, but they really need to figure this out. There's 2 modes in the game, Fight mode and loot mode. This is done by using Tab to actually go from the shooting thingy to the looting thingy. When you switch however your way of movement changes too. This actually brings more annoyance then ease. Either make it a shooter with a leveling system or make it an rpg with no 3d shooter aspects.

Area's and Questing:

I know its an MMO so yeh there have to be a lot of quests or there isn't a single thing to do. However when you enter the starting area you hardly feel like being in a post-apocalyptic warzone. Not that there's too many players around. Thats fine by me. There's just too many people in the city / village where you start.

It feels like everything is fine and dandy and this army can take on pretty much everything that will hit it. So as far as the story goes I don't see a real reason for me to go out there and wonder the wastes for anything.

The first quest I picked up required me to kill a bunch of warriors in an area the size of a small village, but the area was to small for the amount of spawns in it. Now if the area was bigger and the warriors where packed in small groups over a wide spread area I'd feel a lot more at home plus the quest would make more sense. Because than you'd actually go out there and find them.

Character development:

Then there's the fact that a character has loads of equipment slots for all his clothing and armor. Honestly this isn't a fantasy game. Just suit and helm would be enought. Ok, maybe split the pants and chest.

Besides that you can already get equipment for every slot in the first area aswell and there's different kinds too. So either you end up wasting a lot of money on things you can't use or you're lucky enough to figure out in time you only need the cheapest stuff for now.

Just being able to buy 1 set would be enough in the starting area. That would at least make things a lot clearer. Plus the fact ITS AFTER A BOMB DROPPED. Where did all these supplies come from??

Professions:

You get all these professions that you are able to learn. However unlike WoW (for example) you get a starter kit for all of them. Then comes the question which one do I pick and how?! Now this is done by upgrading certain abilities, but there's a lot to keep in mind and afterall you don't want your combat to slack under your ability to make armor. So you'll probably end up making a lot of mistakes for testing everything first and then knowing what works and what doesn't.

However I don't think anyone is dumb enough not to be able to salvage. You actually need to skill up to be able to salvage in the first quest area. Honestly all you need as professions are Medic, Repair and Crafting. Crafting can even be split up between Armor, Tech and Weapons. Scavanging should be something standard everyone can do.

Conclusion:

The game doesn't look too well and theres way too much to get a hold on before you actually get it all. The combat makes you want to cry and the learning curve is rediculous. The creators really expect everyone to understand everything as they intended it instantly, without ever thinking of people who might never have touched the game. I rather go "Yeh Yeh, I know this shit where's the action" then not being able to even understand how everything works. Besides that, for a PA-game the start area has way too much filling.

Its trying to be too much at the same time. My tips to the development team is this:

Make a FPS with the ability to go to 3rd person.
Stick to the combat mode.
Abilities and such done by mouse click confirms with crosshair changes.
Make cities less populated and feel abandonned or fortified.
Work on the world graphics (honestly use a better engine)
Clear set for leveling

I'll get back to it once the servers are back up to see if I can find some possitive news on the game, cause the concept does attract my attention and I would definatly love to see a better finished product then whats out now.

Cataclysm

2009-08-23T03:35:00.004+02:00

BLOG2BLOG: Fuzzy salutes Ronald of Ronald's Blog

(there wasn't any nice screens/wallpapers from Blizz so I made my own ... download if you like .. its 1680x1050 dpi)

First off the official website here Read up, watch the movie and then read on here .... done? ... cool ets take a look at the features that will come up...

Two New Playable Races - Ok, nice ... we'll get the Worgen and the Goblins. Yet again the cool guys join the horde. I'm sorry but Worgen are just disfunctional Druids that can't shapeshift. My honest oppinion is to make both Worgan and Goblins able to choose faction of themselfs. Afterall Goblins have always been a neutral race.

Level Cap Increased to 85 - Only 5 levels?? .. They note this in their FAQ stating "We spend more time in end content then we did in the leveling department". Basically what this tells me is "the storyline this time is so shallow we only needed 5 levels to tell it all. They might contradict this and go all "Yes, But" but honestly the next few points will proof this actually.

Classic Zones Remade - So thats the reason for only adding 5 levels. They remade practically everything. Let me explain how hard work that must have been. Change the textures to the terrains, change the level spec of a few mobs, remove a bit here, sprinkle some new shit there, add some quests to fit the flimsy new story and vola.

New High-Level Zones - Now they sugercoat this by saying there will be new high-level zones. The only one announced so far are 2 unaccessable areas on the map in the old area. They also talk about making high-end level zones from old areas (example is The Barrens).

More Raid Content than Ever Before - Yes, I see. Why? Blizz calls Old raids remade into 10 and 25 men instances with both a Normal and Heroic mode "more raid content". I honestly call it "milking". They even gone as far as "remaking" Dead Mines .... DEAD MINES?!?!?! ... if there's 1 person who doesn't hate dead mines please let your voice be heard. I've done so many DM farm and boost runs, if I set one more foot in that place all the mobs will salute me by name and sirname.

New Race and Class Combinations - Ok I understand people wanting a certain class/race combination, but I really can only think of new players who this would actually interest. The main reason I think this feature is called to life is simply to promote the new feature Blizz made called "Change your spec / race / sex / etc. for money"

Guild Advancement - Now here's something interesting for the first time this rant started. Guild progression. Since AM (my current guild) is build on this idea this should make for a very interesting new upcoming thing for us to sink our teeth in. Although I must say its another way for players to drag in their old buddies to say "see we can do something together now".

New PvP Zone & Rated Battlegrounds - Who cares about pvp? ... ok sorry if I'm not a pvp nut like all the other wannabe Counterstrike players with a fantasy complex that hasn't been fullfilled since Lord of the Rings came out on movie form.

Archaeology - Yeey new secondary profession ... No ... Seriously .. I'm looking forward to this one!

Now since I pretty much dismantled everything (except for 2 thing) let’s see the features they don’t directly talk about.

New end boss - Deathwing is making his return. Now, those who talked to me on the expansion subject already now I said "all they can do after killing arthas is probably bring Sargaras back”. What I didn’t expect is them to continue the Deathwing story after 5 years of him being presumed dead. Besides we’ve already had the whole dragon story before. Onyxia, Blackwing Lair, the World Dragons (killable elites), the Aspects. Aren’t we done with this by now? Ok, Deathwing on return might be a nice touch to finish up another open story line, but there’s another thing. In the into they state “While war wages on in Northrend”. What does that mean?? We don’t get to kill Arthas???

New Raid Instances – Uldum, Grim Batol, Sunken City of Vashj'ir. My answer to these – Finally, Finally, Vashj?! … where is Queen Azshara? Isn’t she rather the queen of this naga folk instead of her maiden? Or is she going to be the last boss in the Sunken City? Cause if she is that means 2 story lines killed with 1 expansion.

Phasing – Now I’m all for dynamic world play and I liked the concept of having separate phases in the world around you, but I hate the fact I can’t do quest b on my own cause my friends are still on quest a and aren’t in the right phase yet. They already said there will be a UI solution to being able to see who’s in what phase, but it’s a serious thing that really puzzles me. If you’re only making 5 levels of leveling content then why focus on phasing the landscape and separating people from each other.

No new hero class – While the specifically said “this will be a new upcoming feature joining and players can expect lots more of these”. What? Did that plan foil? How many expansions will come before we get the monks and ninjas?

Although I’m burning down a lot on Cataclysm I do this with good reason. I’ve always said “I wonder what they’ll come up with after WotLK, if we kill Arthas that pretty much kills all the storyline that is left except for Sargaras” (and now turns out deathwing and azshara … can’t belief I forgot those two). I’m really a sucker for new content to a game though, specially one as massive as Warcraft, but what comes to mind first for me with this expansion is Milking. Redoing old content doesn’t really spike my game. I don’t level alts cause I hate doing the old content over and over again. I play a game to progress in the story and although Cataclysm does this to a certain level I get the feeling Blizz is trying to get away with an easy way out. Let me know what you guys think.

Fuzzy out! …

Old Skool - Cause its worth it.

2009-08-17T17:48:00.005+02:00

By now everybody probably already heard about an internet phenomanon called 8-bit peoples. If you haven't you should check it out. I always had a real big fondness of old 8-bit music.

I'm a C64 geek myself and I used to make program games out of books from the library with my sister when we were only 6 and 8y old. I was always amazed by the music that came out of that brick of a computer.

Now from the bowls of internet society steps up a band called Anamanaguchi who preform with a chip-hacked NES. I say check it out. Kept me busy for at least an hour or so and its pretty cool all together.

Their EP can be found here and they now got a CD for sale in their own website.

Enjoy

PS: Check out I, Cactus too

Online TV

2009-08-11T12:04:00.013+02:00

Since offline TV sucks or as I'd like to call it "we-get-paid-for-ever-5-min-of-commercials"-TV. I kinda started to enjoy the finer bits of work around the globe. Afterall you can only watch so much Comedy Central till it starts rerunning on itself gets boring.

I've always been a big fan of Atom.com and the works that come out of the people connected to that. Good example I know Atom from is Rockfish and they used to have The Cathedral too as far as my memory goes. So I checked back today and I found the series called The Legend of Neil. I seriously pissed my pants laughing. So to share .. here you go:

The Legend of Neil

Then I did some fiddling about while trying to find the best link to add here and found some guy commenting on The Guild. Another online serie I totally forgot about. Worth taking a look at too:

The Guild

Trial of the Crusader (10 player) - Tactics

2009-08-09T21:29:00.009+02:00

**WORK IN PROGRESS**
As Alterior Motives progresses these tactics will be filled out. We don't mindlessly use other webbased tactics. We believe learning fights on our own with some help from information sources makes for stronger and more solid tactics.

I'm not going into all the gear checks, buff food, etc. Everyone should know their stuff by now or shouldn't be raiding. This is going to be straight forward tactics without too much messing about on what abilities a boss uses. Its basically a need to know tactic that will work no matter what. (Yes, It will include sucky drawings)

Gormok The Impaler.

He's not too hard if the group knows what to do. The positions:

Where there's only 1 dot doesn't mean there should be only 1 person standing there. Setting up like this should enable the healers to be able to target everyone and the MT-healers to get healing on the tank who's waiting on the debuff to go off.

Once everyone is in place someone should start the fight and the MT can pick up Gormak. The MT will get a debuff which will increase damage on him (massively). After 2 debuffs the MT and OT should switch. The OT and MT need to wait till their debuff runs out and can then keep switching. Its also a good idea to Disarm during this fight. This will decrease the damage done to the tank and anyone that can do it should when possible.

The second thing that happens is that Gormac throws Snobold Vassals on players in the group. These need to be killed cause they will basically render that person impossible to add to the fight. All dps can switch on the add and should get them off pretty fast. (On the achievement you need to keep them alive. A trick to do this is to kill them all the time till the boss is on 5% or so and then stop killing them and focus on the boss)

Third there will be flames in the raidgroup. Watch out for those and just step out if you're in one.

Keep repeating this till the boss is down and you should all still be alive. You got a small window of time to rebuff / get mana / get health. Use this time and prepair for the next fight

**To be continued**

Honerable Mentioning

2009-08-03T22:31:00.010+02:00

Since I'm out of a job for now and in a bored streak lately I've set myself to test another set of games and was amazed. I'll share my insights and I can generally say these games are worth buying and replaying from time to time (unless its not your thing so lets run through them shall we...)

Zeno Clash.

This game is unique in every way. I got the review from Escapist Magizine where they said and I quote "this is like when you'd ask Tim Burton to make an action movie about the stoneage" and its true. Thats exactly what it is. With beautiful outlandish landscapes, creatures and a story that is absolutly mindboggling.

Build on the Half-Life 2 source engine this game is a 3d beat'm'up with FPS features. Most of the time you'll be running around barehanded fisting and kicking people in various ways that I thought I'd never see outside a game that wasn't from Bethesda. There's points where you get a weapon, but you notice soon enough your fists are graced with the magical Ouch that hurt enemies much faster then say a speeding rock from your primitive x-bow.

Now what makes this game even more special is this. Its not made by stuck up programmers who only want to see money but actually care about their product. Here's what one of the developers had to say about the download I used.

"I would appreciate you read this if you are about to download this file. Zeno Clash is an independently funded game by a very small and sacrificed group of people. The only way in which we can continue making games like this (or a sequel) is to have good sales.
I am aware that at this moment there is still no demo of the game, but we are working on one which will be available soon. We cannot do anything to stop piracy of the game (and honestly don't intend to do so), but if you are downloading because you wish to try before you buy, I would ask that you purchase the game (and support the independent game development scene) if you enjoy it.
We plan on updating Zeno Clash with DLC and continuing support for the game long after it's release.Thanks for taking the time to read this... hopefully it will make a difference."

Now I can honestly say this touched me deep. Not only cause they understand the Try / Buy factor, but actually intend to build a fanbase around their product and hope they can actually build on that to continue development. I'm 100% for this sort of game production and I will therefor buy this game as soon as I can.

The game can (as far as I know) only be bought on Steam
Mediasite: Zeno Clash

Ghostbusters.
The Game

No the picture isn't an actual game concept thing ... its just something I plucked off the web, but as funny and nostalgic as that picture is, Thats how the game feels.

The first time I saw Ghostbusters I think I was about 8 or something. It was released in 1984 so that should be about the right age when it first came on tv. On belgian tv where they didn't have any commercials between movies. Can we have that back please, I hate the american style 15 min. then break kinda tv we have now and especially the irritating commecials that come during the movie in the top and / or bottom of or ALL OVER the screen. Then a few years later Ghostbusters II and I loved them. I've watched them probably as many times as I watched Labyrinth and Karate Kid I, II and III. And I can tell you ... nothing waxes more on and off then a game sequel / remake of the Ghostbusters.

The reason for the sequel being shared with remake is this. Ghostbusters the game is actually a 2 in one package of the movies. Its kind of like asking the guys to write a script for a game that will be packed with the 10th anniversary edition of the collectors edition of the movie. During the game you'll visit most of the locations the first movie plays in with most of the first movie's ghosts. Although I must say that Zero Punctuation is right about it loosing in the being "original" department, by bringing back ghosts like Stay-Puffed marshmellow man and the gray library lady, it does make for incredible nostalgia.

Ghostbusters has an original story that contains a lot of "hey, I know this" moments. For me it was the first movie game adaption (and there aren't any that are good) that was actually a good. Even though it took them more time to come to a point to make it then it took Duke Nukem Forever to ever see daylight.

Mediasite: Ghostbusters - The Game

The Path.

The Path isn't a game. Its an interactive story book and a horror / thriller story in its kind. For those who are interrested in the sick and twisted mindset of human nature this will be the "game" for you. I can't really say a lot about The Path with a very good reason. Even though its small, its also massive. There's more then 1 way to finish the game and there's no set road to pick. You wonder around the forrest looking for clues to unlock more of the story of the character you play, but the forrest seems endless (its not actually .. its looped .. but you won't know after you walked 500 steps or so and get to see the map for the first time).

You are one of 6 Red Ridinghoods and with each one you play you'll get a different story. Most of the the game leave your mind boggling. For instance the lines that are displayed in the game are suggestive to what the girl thinks, but other then that don't say a lot. Its more a psychological trip. After playing an hour of The Path I felt like I needed to talk to someone about it. You can't play the game and not want to talk about it. You can compare it to Sigmunt Freud having a chocolate milkshake for the first time. He probably can't shut up about that either and how its the medication for any female mental problem.

Ofcourse like in Red Ridinghood there's a Wolf, but even the wolf isn't just a wolf (although in my case it was ... I played as the youngest girl first). I'm looking forward to diving back into this game as soon as I can cause although its a game that will bore the hell out of a lot of people, for me its the most interresting thing I've ever seen in the field of computer entertainment.

Mediasite: The Path

And I almost forgot this one ..... DRUMS PLEASE !!!

Tales of Monkey Island.
Chapter 1 - Launch of the Screaming Narwhal

Now if you think Ghostbusters rings nostalgia bells in my head ... Monkey Island has been a game thats been with me since I first touched my own pc. I was 11 years old and the game industry was just booming with new and exciting new things. Ofcourse back then we didn't have internet but we sure as hell had downloads. I had a lot of friends and family who provided me with new games every time they passed by (mostly cause my computer was always slightly better then theirs). And there it was ... "The Secret of Monkey Island".

I must have played that game at least 25x and the sequels less but about as much. 4 gametitles that are carved in my brain like the childseat of a trolly car once did to my head (don't ask ... long story). To sum it up the Monkey Island series is this:

Pirates
Great humor
Twisted puzzles
Failure

Its the epic story of a never was or will be pirate Guybrush Threepwood. Its probably been the backbone for most of the content of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. If not then tough luck cause I think it is.

When I first heard of Tales of Monkey Island I was afraid they'd screw it up as much as they did the Sam and Max series. I loved Hit the Road, but I never really got into the series. That doubt pretty soon faded away when I saw my old time friends hit my screen. Guybrush, Marley and LeChuck are all in the intro and stole my heart again as they did so many years ago. Even the voicecast is back (or equally good) which is a huge plus.

The game contains the usual gameplay of point, click, combine items and fiddle till it fits mechanic puzzles and it works. The story is funny, the puzzles are as screwed up as ever and I can't wait for Chapter 2.

Media and sales site: Tell Tale Games

Conclusion:

There's great hope in the pc game industry to my oppinion. Old titles are getting a make-over and are becoming pretty successful titles without having to be an MMO all of a sudden. New games don't all have to be Warcraft, Half-Life or GTA clones and can actually contain original concepts, gameplay and storylines. One that I skipped was Trine, but thats because I can't really say a lot about it except that its fun for a go and I'm doing games with replay value here. Another is Blood Bowl, but thats a game that deserves different attention another time.

Then there's one final thing I'd like to promote. A lady called Rebecca Mayes. She's probably the most original game reviewer in the entire world. I'm not going to waste words to her amazing work. Just go to her site on Game People or at Escapist Magazine. Enjoy!

Alt-aholic - New (gold) guide (part 4)

2009-07-27T13:53:00.003+02:00

Yes ... ALTS ... I know I hate them too .. they take too much time and they bore you to death when they don't work your way. Here comes the trick.

Pick a class you like and are good at playing with.
Go to http://www.wow-pro.com/
Follow the guide to the dot.

Most people will go "HUH?!" when I say this but realise this. When you're leveling you're doing quests. Quests make gold and thats what we're after.

I figured over the years that leveling a character, using only the gear you get from quests and saving up ALL your money you can make over 6k gold easily by the time you're level 80. Now leveling sounds like a lot of time, but you'll get faster at it the more you do it. Plus you already know the character that you picked to play with, thus taking away the learning part of leveling. Also, using the guide speeds up things a LOT. Consider this, I was 6 hours away from being the first level 1 dwarf when WotLK came out. All I did was play the guide. Yes, I only slept 3 hours a day and made level 80 in 3 days but thats still freaking fast considering I did all the quest areas.

Now if you follow the guide and you can play a few hours a day you should have a level 80 char in a week (maybe 2) with 6k or more on it. After you get your char to level 80 you can consider keeping it or deleting it after you tranferred the money to your main.

Now .. here comes the big picture

Alt 6k + (1500g grind x 2 weeks) + (AH broking x 2 weeks) = say around 25000g

I hope this guide helps a little for those really desperate to get more gold. Its been fun writing this 4 page rant. Hope you guys enjoy it.

Fuzz out.

The grind-o-thon - New (gold) guide (part 3)

2009-07-27T13:16:00.003+02:00

Ok, we had the AH trick. Now comes the "grind your ass silly" method. Now this might not sound appealing, but here's what you do.

Get your main character to level 80.
Get all the quests you can.

That should unlock at least enough daily quests to fill your evening with repeatative action for the next couple of months. Now I'm pretty lazy and I play a game to enjoy it so this isn't my method, but it works wonders for those who's brain can deal with it. Here's the math part to it.

25 dailies x 12g = 300g a day.

This doesn't sound like a lot ... I know. But....

While you're doing this get EVERYTHING you can. Greens, whites, grays, ores, herbs, etc., everything. Disenchant all the greens, etc. and put whats useful on the AH. All the loot combined should easily sell for another 100 or 200g. So ...

(25 dailies x 12g) + 200g loot = 500g a day.

I know this still doesn't sound like a lot, but it shouldn't take you more then say a few hours a day and if you're lucky your drops might have a good day and it can turn out a lot more then just 500g.

Now for the next thing you can grind. Solo Old School raids / dungeons. I've found these usually still contain a nice amount of loot / gold that sells pretty ok on AH. Besides you get to enjoy the old content,help out friends who are still leveing, pwn like a mofo and figure out new tactics to bosses. I found an evenings grind in a good instance usually gets you about 200g or more so lets benchmark it there. Preferably take an enchanter character for the BoP items and sniff out places with rare items (example: in scholomance drops Enchantment - Lifestealing once every 3 runs). You're also a lot faster that in the past cause you'll pass a lot of content so you should be able to do 5 runs before the lockout in a pretty ok time. So ...

(25 dailies x 12g) + (200g x 5) + 200g loot = 1500g

Now we're getting somewhere. Then there's the high-end raids. Blizzard has upped the gold droprate on these a lot since WotLK. I easily enter a Naxx raid and exit with a few extra g after a full clear. now you have to remember you might wipe a couple times and there might be a chance you break even. Lets say you got a lucky day and only wipe once, but clear the full instance. Each wing drops around 100g - say 30g repair and there's 5 wings. Do remember you can only do a raid once a week so it gets devided by 6. (lets say you take one day off a week from wow

(25 dailies x 12g) + (200g x 5) + (((5 x 100g) - 30g)/6) + 200g loot = 1578g(and some silver)

If you don't devide by 6 its almost 2000g. So if you would only play 1 day a week you'd have 2000g in that one day. Now there's more then just Naxx so you can always try to get other raids on the other days making your total even higher.

Yes, I know this takes a lot of time, but aren't you playing WoW to enjoy it. This way you get everything out of the game in only a few hours a day. Combine it with the AH trick and you should have more then 3k gold a day.

Now ... for the final and best trick in the book... (in part 4)

The AH trick - New (gold) guide (part 2)

2009-07-27T12:54:00.005+02:00

There's a few simple methods to grind gold. Most guides tell you about AH and controlling the market, but since thats just simple economics its like being a stock broker (and we know how well those guys are doing right now). Basically if your stock (selling-mat of choice) goes out of populairity you're fucked, but since its a valid and good way to make some money here's the trick.

Get Actioneer or WoWEcon. There's probably other addons, but these are used world wide and known to probably everyone.

Auctioneer:

Pre - Free all over. They do ask for a donation but you can use everything it has to offer
Con - You have to scan manually by using the scan button. Cost of gameplay.

WoWEcon:

Pre - It autoupdates and you don't have to scan AH.
Con - I don't trust things that autoupdate. Plus you have to pay for half of the things it can do.

Once you got one of these addons theres a few ways you can use them (and the AH) to make money.

Enchanting - Buy things that are low price. Disenchant them and sell the mats.
Crafting (Tailoring, Blacksmithing, etc.) - Make Epics and sell them.
Collecting (Mining, Herbing, etc.) - Sell the mats.

There 3 ways are the smartest way to make money at first. Your addon will tell you the best selling prices and you'll only have to put them in and post the auction. You'll start to make small amounts of gold and you can eventually pick a mat of choise you want to start controlling once you have enough. Remember "Making money, costs money" So buying up mats and then selling them for a higher price is THE way for profit. The downside is you'll be undercut. Specially on very active servers and selling something that no one wants for a high price will also cost you money.

So ... the best way with this is to stick to the mats you can gather and sell those once you got a stack of something.

The reason why all these guides can't tell you What to sell or What to buy is cause economy on the servers keep evolving and that includes whats in high demand. By following the news facts on WoW sites you can get ahead. For example if a new enchant will come out in a new patch, buy the mats for the enchant and sell them once the patch is released.

Once you got a hang of this all you can focus on really expensive things and try to control the market with those. But always keep in mind you'll get undercut and the only way to kill them is to buy up their stock and sell it again. This ofcourse can only be done once you got the money.

New (gold) guide (part 1)

2009-07-27T11:01:00.007+02:00

I've been into wow for ages now and I've also been lured in from time to time by things as gold guides and leveling guides (best guide ever http://www.wow-pro.com/).

Since I've been REALLY bored the last couple of days I got lured in by the "golden chance" to make more gold. The so called Secret Gold Guide (I'm not even gonna link the page). First thing that cought my eye was this:

This looks Awefully formiliar to other gold guide advertisements. I've seen these advertisements before. Now I'm not a snob if I knew these things worked or at least would be real, so I downloaded it of "borrow net". In other words horay for torrents and newsgroups. Ridding the world of faulty shit including games that aren't worth buying ... if a game is good, companies who make them shouldn't be worried about downloaders. Same goes for movies and music.

So I started wondering: Why are these guides here and if they where real then why aren't they flooding the internet for free by now? And trust me ... they aren't real ... all they are is just another attempt to scam people out of their money. And if you're saying "aah only $54.-" here's the catch. There's more then 10 million players of WoW by now (last check I found). 10 mil. x $54,- = Never work again. Even if you only get 1 mil. people or half of that. Its still a LOT of money.

Now I'll reveal the real secret. Not the secret of how to make gold, But how to make cash. Yes, I'll write you a guide for gold myself in the same style as everyone else does. Guess what .. it for free. Tell all your friends. I'll even chuck in the details of how this work. In case you're interrested in making some money of your own by scamming people. Now's your chance.

First comes the advertisement (ofcourse first comes the product, but we'll get to that later)

Basically its allong these lines:

Flashy pictures + "proof videos"+ fake thank you notes + "offering it cheaper now" or "last chance to get" lines = Profit

So let me go to photoshop for 2 seconds and prep something nice. Done:

I'm pretty amazed myself about how easy that was. Now you probably noticed there's a video there. How to get someone to trust that vid? Here's the trick. You only need 1 character with a shitload of gold. How to get that. EASY ... boring ... but easy. But we'll get to that later in the real guide.

For the video you'll need to have someone with a crystal clear charismatic voice that will make any man or woman ooze in their pants. I tried asked Ciderhelm of Tankspot to do it but he's busy making guides of his own (Great site for raid tactics and such .. you should check it out http://www.tankspot.com/). Once you found your voice actor (Cause thats what he / she will be) just record a nice vid showing off a nice high level character with nice booty on it and your (transferred) shitload of gold.

Tell them how easy it was with the tactics you used from your guide and bla bla bla ... you know the works. Just ooze self-loving awesomeness and you'll get the buyers.

Once you've set up this nice website its time to work on the details. There's enough of them around the web so there's enough data you can copy paste. Good ideas to use are the recommendation and lists of content. Those always get people going.
Example 1- recommendation

Who's Tobias Beecher? from the television series OZ - Convicted July 5th, 1997. Driving while intoxicated, vehicular manslaughter. 15 years, up for parole in 4. I'm pretty sure theres loads of names you can come up with.

Example 2 - List of content (or why the guide is so good)

Find the best prices
Get the skills you want
etc.
etc.

Now get some garantees like Visa and such logos on it to show you're certified and you're set. Your website is done and all you need now is a paypall account, an e-banking site and a product. Now the product is easy. Since there's so many of these guides for sale lots of them are available for free on the internet and almost none of them are licenced or copyrighted. And if they are copyrighted its usually only for show. Exploit this. Dowload as many guides as you can. Compile them into one and you're set. Best thing to do is to sort out the guides a little so it doesn't look to rubbish and not many people will demand their money back.

Now for the paypal and e-banking I'd advise not to use Clickbank.net. They promote 2 guides I found already and it might look suspicious, but I'm pretty sure there are more of these out there (I'm just not bothered to look for them).

Thats it. AND NOW .... THE REAL GUIDE. (in part 2)(and the way to get that guild for the video)

In retrospect...

2009-05-26T10:49:00.003+02:00

I've been off WoW for a few weeks now with that I also been off Datecraft for the same amount of time. So I was wondering "What did I blog there again". Here's a short compliation of the parts I thought was fun (and wow related).

15/05/2008

I wrote 6 chapters of a WoW related book containing a story about my character. Chapter 7 and 8 are ready .. in my head .. I might post it here some day when I feel like it. Other then that I play usually during the weekend.

Lol ... never got to finish chapter 8. I think I did finish chapter 7 somewhere along the line. But since I quit the guild I wrote it for I never got back to it. Never got to posting it anywhere except a guild forum.

15/05/2008

More ouch.. Straigned a muscle. Daddy Nik and Mommy Dina (aka my guildleaders) got pretty nuts and angry and forced me on a week of raid-free. Lucky me, I had already planned a week of vacation from work aswell. Finished the week by mousing left handed and ctrl+c and ctrl+v -ing my way through the days.

This is one of the little things I miss about my old guild. I also still seem to have a little strain in my arm from time to time but its not as bad as it was back then.

21/05/2008

Except for the obvious ending of them eventually falling in love (well la-di-da .. no suprice there) it was a pretty funny movie.

God, I really need to go to the movies more often. I'm not sure if I'm just really bad at motivating my friends to go with me or if its just that sitting at home gaming is easier. Going to the new Transformers movie with a former-wow-player soon.

04/07/2008

Bloggers ... Pleeeeeaaase ... say something fun and usefull. Its a blog. Use it like one and don't post 1 liners. If you want to do that .. post a msg on your own profile or something ... we'll come there and read it .. I promise (pffff ... -giggle-). Take an example by looking around on Roissetter's blog.

I think everyone should check out www.comichidout.com. Everything else pretty much stands for every post I been reading over the past decade or so.

17/07/2008

Coming home I fired up Big Brother and Catya (my old and new PC) and WOOT ... WoW-Patch ... the woot was till it was finished and I couldn't get the freaking GM ticket removed. So I spend half the evening resetting addons.

When I got back to it I excepted an invite (much against my will) to tank in Heroic Underbog. Best team ever it seemed. My guildies really know their stuff. We where more talking about every day life then really paying attention. After UB they weren't bored yet so we picked Heroic Magistar's Terrace next.

While they reminded me I could get some +15 sta gems for my badges. Soooo I went into MgT with 17k health .. unbuffed :D.

After that we went to Heroic Old Hillbrad Foothills to kill some guy called Don Carlos. Seems he drops an awesome hat that spawns a lvl 1 spirit cayote and I won the roll :D.

I still got that hat and I still remember that day. WoW was pretty much the shit back then. To my oppinion its way too easy now. Besides that the team thats backing me up now isn't always as rocksolid as the guys back then.

18/07/2008

Friday:
- Lagwagon Concert
- Out to the pub
Saterday:
- Friend coming over
- Parents in the evening for B-day party
- Out to the pub
Sunday:
- Get out of bed late
- AQ40 raid

AQ40 raid ? aah right ... that was to finish the achievement thing.

21/07/2008

- AQ40 raid
Got cancelled .. not enough signups .... but ... I got my lock to lvl 70 :D

My lock is 80 by now and healthy. Its just a shame I hardly feel like playing him.

31/07/2008

Reporter: "How are you doing Fuzz?"
Fuzzball: Fine thanks for asking.
R: "So whats the special occassion for you to dye your hair and have it cut like the springy look John has?"
F: Ah you noticed .. *blush* .. how sweet .. I'll tell you .. As of tomorrow I'll be off to england for a weekend trip.
R: "Ohw really .. here are you off to?"
F: GUILDMEETING BIIAAAATCH!!!
R: "Ok .. no more beer for fuzzy" and puts down his pen.

Yeh ... that was a good time. Sad to say the aftermath wasn't as good, but its still a fond memory of mine.

You might be asking yourself ... "Why this retrospect?" well ... I'm closing my Datecraft account and wanted to save the fun things I had. I noticed I hardly go there anymore. This also signs in a new era for this blog. It will be filled with more private stuff as of now too. Main reason is cause WoW is f#$%ing boring now-a-days and doesn't have a lot to write about.

I've been spending my time mostly on old games and www.freerealms.com. That suits me just fine for now. Eventually I do still play WoW, but its just not that appealing anymore. The raidteams are crap, Ulduar still isn't cleared and all I do is get annoyed by the massive amount of stupidity.

I know this isn't fair to say, but if you're promised to be able to do what ever you want you understand that you demand a little performance every now and then. I've been looking around for raidguilds, but their all full and I'm not sure if I really want that much commitment to WoW again.

For those who are turning around now and thing "F#%! you fuzz if you're not a wow-er then we're not your friends" Thanks for the time we had and goodbye. For those who are still here. Find me on facebook.

Macros are the shizzle

2009-05-01T10:08:00.005+02:00

I love fiddling around with macros. I also love being a tank. There aren't a lot of macros that can be made for a tank that are actually useful, same as keybindings, so its a lost craft that is forgotten to many. If anyone can proof me wrong I dare them to come and comment on my blog....

So ... since that formality is over with. Now for the interresting part.

Four Horsemen targetting macro

One thing that occured and is pretty widely know to happen is the fiddly fuddly problems with targetting the bosses and taunting in the 4-horsemen fight. Now I think most people have their own trick to it but for me I just stick to 2 macro buttons making it a swift sweep of my mouse instead of "clickerdi click, f$#% missed, Taunt on cooldown, crap .... wipe"

These are the 2 macro's that can help with that.

/target Thane Korth'azz
/cast Taunt

/target Baron Rivendare
/cast Taunt

Ofcourse the Taunt spell can be replaced by any other threat generating spell that gets a mob to follow you. So for paladins and deathknights they can pick their own.

Also if you feel fancy you could stick it all in one macro. Like so:

/target Thane Korth'azz[modifier:alt]
/target Baron Rivendare[modifier:shift]
/cast Taunt

The modifier will give you the ability to shift your macro between the one or the other. However the danger with the modifier is that you might use the wrong modifier and get stuck with taunting the wrong mob.

Vigilance Macro

Ok, One thing I found very handy is this Vigilance macro I put together. Its the most basic of basic in macro making skillzor, HAXX, but it works. Usually when I run around in a raid and run around I don't have time to pick a target, put vigi up, target mob again. Specially not when 8 other guys are running around my screen too and usually multipal mobs aswell

Now having all you warriors worked up and going "yes, YES, Ohw for the love of god, YES, give us the macro, Almighty Fuzzball". Heeeeere we go.

/focus [modifier:alt]
/clearfocus [modifier:ctrl]
/cast [target=focus] Vigilance
/targetlasttarget

The first line indicates if you use that macro button with the Alt button pressed it will mark your current target as your focus. Second line makes you able to clear focus with ctrl.

Ulduar Preperation - Part II

2009-04-22T15:21:00.007+02:00

**To those who pay attention:**
Yes, I know the vids aren't working yet. I need sound to see if their any good and work doesn't allow that. I'll add them later. This bold text will self-destruct once vids are added.

Remember this post: Ulduar Preperation

Well ... Here's the update. New vids, Same wiki's and some tactical page.

I found this page through a search on the web: Zuggaming.
I think they have a great post there. All bosses right there for you to read and watch.

Besides that one of my guildies is currently very busy with writing his own Ulduar Manual: Argy's guide to Ulduar

The links below will be the WoWWiki tactics and the Tankspot vids.

Flame Levianthan
vid / wiki

Ignis the Furnace Master
vid / wiki

Razorscale
vid / wiki

XT-002 Deconstructor
vid / wiki

The Iron Council
vid / wiki

Kologarn
vid / wiki

Auriaya
vid / wiki

Mimiron
vid / wiki

Freya
vid / wiki

Thorim
vid / wiki

Hodir
vid / wiki

General Vezax
vid / wiki

Yogg-Saron
vid / wiki

Algalon the Observer
vid / wiki

Side-steppin'

2009-03-27T14:15:00.003+01:00

Since boredom crept up from the sewers of internet into the World of Warcraft I've started to side-step to other games in an effort to find something that will soothe my gaming spirit till Ulduar comes out. Here's a list.

Dark Orbit.

This game is pretty ok. The camera is top view and lets you look into a 3d-ish scifi-surrounding. There's abilities like Laser and Rockets you can use and its all set up pretty simple.

It requires no installation. The game uses a pop-up screen to display the game area and a website where it displays your current statistics. This detail sometimes causes irregularities in funds, weapons and raw materials.

Fun game, nice quests, but to get ahead you really need to grind a LOT. How is this any different from any other MMO? ... well This game only contains a few types of ore and that only (as far as I got) 1 spaceport. which makes grinding a pretty back-and-forth shipping for the more expensive ores thats a LONG way to fly back.

Maybe I missed something, but that made Dark Orbit a bit of a drag to me. Good fun game, but the reward/time input is too low. Score: 6/10

Last Chaos.

First thought: Great looks, WoW kind of interiour, Guildwars kind of graphics. Now such a game as this gets a good looking through, because if you are in the MMORPG business then you're compeating against games like WoW, Warhammer (more on that one later) and Guildwars.

Now the intro movie is perfect, nothing wrong with it so I had high hopes for this game. Then you get to the point where a character will be made. The first thing you notice is that a class is bound to a sex. So I picked the most sexy looking chick in the game and turned out to be a mage.

You start off in a "starting dungeon" where you have to blast your way out. This actually sounds more exciting then it is. The amount of mobs that attack you are a minor threat and you can pretty much one-shot them all. Once you've done this there's a text states something like "you can come back here once you level" (or something ... at this point the game pretty much lost my interrest. So paying real attention to what it all said was hard. At that point all I wanted to do was mangle and mollest things really really hard).

Outside the dungeon this is what I saw. Huge amounts of characters standing in the main city square doing nothing. Not only was this news for me to turn around and run, but it was also the main reason why I couldn't find ANYTHING. Questhubs, trainers, auction house, etc. wheren't clear to be found on the main screen, nor on the minimap. Finally after finding a quest of some sort I went to look for the exit of the city to "roam the land".

First mistake I made was finding some teleporter dude on the wrong side of town and teleported to a lvl 55 area where I got stomped into the ground. Then when I went looking for the guy that does teleportation (who I eventually found) I needed to figure out which city I was teleported from....

You can pretty much taste my frustration off the screen by now. Finally back into the city I came from, made a 180 turn and headed for the exit (or at least what I hoped was the exit). Got into an area where there was wolves, some bigger wolves and some more wolves, but .... pretty clumped up in the area. There where too many to be realistic. Unless wolves fuck like rabbits in this world... thats the only way to get this realistic.

I'm pretty sure I missed the big point in this game somewhere. However the title does fit the game, although my suggestion would be this .... Lost in Chaos. Score: 3/10

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning.

First thing you notice when downloading the trail (cause, hell no, I'm not paying for another game before testing it) is that this game is worked for. You notice that there's a lot of small details into this. A lot of people have done a lot of work to make this product the best they could.

Now on a trial account you can't level higher then level 10 so you can't really level into a profession or carreer, you can't enter instances, city battles or anything else exciting that might actually grab your attention to keep playing. So this leaves us with evaluating from where I'm now. This is how much I gathered.

The game looks great, plays really easy, PvP is a bit more exciting then in WoW and you actually get the feel you're in the world where the original boardgame and books take place. Even to the point of Gotrek and Felix being in the Altdorf. Altdorf is incredibly big and the first thing when standing there is "what if all hell broke loose here, that would be awesome". Then you realise you'll have to buy the game to actually even see it or join such a battle...

Fair enough so we won't be able to see this part. I went back to the lower level area where you start off. What I noticed most was the world felt empty. For such an epic fight as a city battle to take place you'll really need a freaking stuffed server with more then 1000 players. In the time I was running around I met to be exact about 6 other players, talked to 3 of them and played together with 2. To make matters worse, these where ALL trailists.

However there is nothing more true then the slogan "War is everywhere". Although fun, this doesn't leave a lot of space for other things to be done. Each area has its Quest hub, Public quest, RvR instance and thats it. You rest in the questhub, fight/quest on your way to the public quest, do the 3 stage public quest and start over again or do something simular in the another area.

The best way to explain this game probably is this: ((WoW - rpg)+(CS:S - guns)) = W:AR

You'll probably ask yourself "why the hell counterstrike?!". Well .. I could have taken any other shooter game out there that is an MMO. Counterstrike is just most famous and here's how I play it. Login > Fuck everything up > laugh at some idiots > logout. I wouldn't pay a monthly fee to do that ... EVER. Thats the feeling I get when I logged into W:AR. You log on, kick some ass, log off, play something else.

That also made me ask myself the following: How many times will you actually get to see a City battle, will you be online at such a time or miss it cause of work, how much fun will the game be once you've seen and done that?

All in all if you enjoy doing such epic battles, pvp, doing this over and over and just want to continuesly kick ass. W:AR is your game. For me ... it seems like a bit too much money for too little gameplay. Score: 8/10

Discovery Online.
Beta-test

I'm not going to say much about this game except that I enjoy it a lot. The reason why I don't want to say its awesome or suck is cause its still being build and tested.

Its like WoW at sea. Its a cross-breed between Pirates, Warcraft and .. and .. hmm... don't know really. This game is actually pretty unique.

It takes a while to get used to this one, but for some reason it sucked me in and isn't really letting go. I'm really currious what kind of product will be there after the beta-test. Plus the small community that is playing right now makes it a lot of fun.

Ulduar preperation.

2009-03-11T10:33:00.004+01:00

This post will contain the most up to date vid and a link to the Wiki page to the related bosses in Ulduar.

Flame Levianthan - vid / wiki
Ignis the Furnace Master - vid / wiki
Razorscale - vid / wiki
XT-002 Deconstructor - vid / wiki
The Iron Council - vid / wiki
Kologarn - vid / wiki
Auriaya - vid / wiki
Mimiron - vid / wiki
Freya - vid / wiki
Thorim - vids / wiki
Hodir - vid / wiki
General Vezax - vid / wiki

Current vids sometimes a bit crappy, new ones will be added when found.

Thanks Tankspot, Method and WoWWiki for the first footage.

Old McFuzzy had a farm, Ee Ai Ee Ai, Loot.

2009-02-04T11:54:00.009+01:00

So, when you're at a point in time where you think you got everything, can do everything and are at the highest point possible. Thats when you start to get bored.

So I made a list on what I still need compaired to what I got on the armory at the moment:

Warcraft's armory
WoW-Heroes Score
Be.Imba.Hu Score

I came to this conclussion. Its listed as follows Item, Boss, Where and is it a Upgrade. Here goes:

Head

Valorous Dreadnaught Greathelm
Kel'Thuzad
Naxxramas (H) Plate Armor
wanted

Neck

Boundless Ambition
Kel'Thuzad
Naxxramas (H) Plate Armor
yes

Nexus War Champion Beads
Heroic EOE (quest)
The Eye of Eternity
yes

Chest

Breastplate of Tormented Rage
Heigan the Unclean
Naxxramas (H) Plate Armor
yes

Chestguard of the Exhausted
Grobbulus
Naxxramas (H) Plate Armor
yes

Dragonstorm Breastplate
Sartharion
The Obsidian Sanctum (H) Plate Armor
yes

Valorous Dreadnaught Breastplate
Gluth
Naxxramas (H) Plate Armor
wanted

Waist

Ablative Chitin Girdle
Maexxna
Naxxramas (H) Plate Armor
yes

Fleshless Girdle
Patchwerk
Naxxramas (H) Plate Armor
yes

Legs

Legplates of Sovereignty
Malygos
The Eye of Eternity (H) Plate Armor
yes

Gloves

Callous-Hearted Gauntlets
Grand Widow Faerlina
Naxxramas (H) Plate Armor
yes

Gauntlets of the Disobedient
Noth the Plaguebringer
Naxxramas (H) Plate Armor
yes

Valorous Dreadnaught Handguards
Sartharion
The Obsidian Sanctum (H) Plate Armor
Wanted

Weapon

Last Laugh
Kel'Thuzad
Naxxramas (H) One-Handed Axe
yes

Shield

Wall of Terror
Kel'Thuzad
Naxxramas (H) Shield
yes

Nearing the End.

2008-12-29T10:21:00.005+01:00

Its time to close up the year. 2 more days to go and we'll be drinking ourselfs to oblivion with friends, family or otherwise.

This is usually the time of year where we reflect back on the year gone and make promisses for the year to come. I used to have a To-Do list on the forum of my old guild Number One, but ... they blocked my access so I can't copy past it. Unlesss ... Thnx GP!

I've been doing this for a while so the list is pretty long ... some even from back in 2007 ... lets see .. (these are direct copy/pastes)

get arcane resistance ring, cloak and neck piece
grind 31 primal mana's to make some of the above
pwn some arcane armor kits
get revered with honour hold
get revered with cenarion expedition
finish my netherwing questline.
(also) get exalted with netherwing same deal as above
see if I can live on chips and coca cola for a week.
DRINK BEER
grind some gold together to be able to fill the sockets of my arcane set
figure out wich gems to put in
Finish all books of WoW.
Reorganized my house.
Work on the papercraft Egbert.
Kick Melgarh's ass in Zombie Hunt.
Start on the manga trilogy.
Save up enough money for Alton Towers.
Get my NR set sorted.
Update my PWN list.
Upload my xmas gifts picture.
Get Pythagoras to lvl 70.
Get working on my FRR set.
Farm some adamantite for the people who want the dps belt.
Focus on work so my bosses won't notice I'm doing this blog.

This list is so bloody long cause I couldn't be bothered with checking what was from 2007 (around xmas that year anyway) and from half way 2008. Here's the checklist and the story behind it. (I'm bored ... might aswell make you guys laugh)

get arcane resistance ring, cloak and neck piece.
grind 31 primal mana's to make some of the above
pwn some arcane armor kits
grind some gold together to be able to fill the sockets of my arcane set
Get my NR set sorted.
Get working on my FRR set.

God I remember that ... Karazhan, The Curator ... I had 370-something resistance. I destroyed pretty much all my gear from back then, but I think I still have the crafted AC-res items. I for sure have my NR set and the few items I have for my FrR gear. Even had the honor of getting the mats needed to make my SR-gearset for BT.

get revered with honour hold.
get revered with cenarion expedition.
finish my netherwing questline.
(also) get exalted with netherwing same deal as above.

Remember this aswell (guess I'm not such an old man afterall). I'm pretty much exalted with all factions from TBC since that was needed fro the heroics back then to get the keys. Not the pussy revered shit they have now on those instances ... or the nothing at all thing for WotLK. I said screw all to the whole Netherwing thing. After a week or so when it was released 1000+ people already had that dragon thing. Where's the fun in having something totally unique ... like everyone else ....

see if I can live on chips and coca cola for a week.
DRINK BEER

The cola/chips thing I still do sometimes. But back then I was really out of money. The rent was collected early and by this I was flat out of money for the last week of the first month of 2008. This time I've made sure that won't happen ... which brings me to Drink Beer ... Working on it...

Finish all books of WoW.
Reorganized my house.
Work on the papercraft Egbert.
Kick Melgarh's ass in Zombie Hunt.
Start on the manga trilogy.
Save up enough money for Alton Towers.
Update my PWN list.
Upload my xmas gifts picture.

Hmmm ... Pretty much all of these are done. I've even gotten through some none-wow-books I got for X-mas last year. In 5 days I'll have the new book Night of the Dragon and I'll be starting on those. Not showing off my xmas stuff here, but I stil am updating my Pwn list and I'll keep doing that.

Get Pythagoras to lvl 70.
Farm some adamantite for the people who want the dps belt.
Focus on work so my bosses won't notice I'm doing this blog.

Pythagoras is half way to lvl 80 by now. Dps-belt is already replaced by some WotLK-heroic crap epic. And focus on work? I've never had a better place to work then where I'm now. I'm very greatful for the support these people have given me and hopefully they'll keep supporting me through the years. Just a bit of commercialisation.

Thanks Backup-Connect for an awesome 2008
www.Backup-Connect.com

Goals for next year. Hmmmm ... no idea yet. I'll have to get back to you on that. For now I'll stick to this.

Clear Naxx 25 and EoE25
Finish reading Blood Bowl
Make the JaG logo (my new guild needs it ... Just a Game ... jagame.guildomatic.com )
Manage the chat channel called Nederlands on my server. (I've made a chat channel for the dutch people on my server).

Happy new year everyone. All the best in 2009 and may your blades never dull and your spells never fizzle.

Progress Report

2008-12-23T23:13:00.009+01:00

Picture missing for Plaguewing, Constructwing, VoA10/25

Obsidian Santcum - Cleared

2008-12-05T11:02:00.001+01:00

This raid is to be done after gearing up in Heroics. The 10 aswell as the 25 men raid is doable when every member is at least in the craftables and some heroic upgrades they can get their hands on.

Obsidian Sactrum contains 1 boss and 3 semi-boss mobs. The tactics on WoWWiki.com are accurate and can be followed by the book. Some small changes made this fight easy.

Vesperon and Shadron:

These 2 dragons are exactly the same in execution of tactics.

- Engage the fight with at least 2 tanks and 2 healers.
- The first tank and his healer will engage first. Everyone else can follow after.
- After X amount of time a portal will spawn. Maintank and Mainhealer stay behind. Everyone else goes through the portal to kill the diciple spawned there.
- When the diciple is killed all will return to normal and dps is continuedon the main mob.

Tenebron:

- Engage the fight with at least 2 tanks and 2 healers.
- The first tank and his healer will engage first. Everyone else can follow after.
- After X amount of time a portal will spawn. Maintank will have to kite the boss towards this portal.
- Maintank and Mainhealer stay behind. Everyone else goes through the portal to kill a set of eggs. AoE and/or focus fire is needed here, because all unkilled eggs spawn whelps.
- After a set timer everone including whelps will get out of the portal.
- AoE is suggested to kill the whelps and do some extra damage to the main mob.

The reason for killing these mobs is to lower the main boss's HP, Fire and Shadow damage. It will be able to be done without killing these drakes, but for the first 10 times its not advised.

Sartharion:

This boss has 4 abilities. Flamebreath, Tailswipe, Lavawave and Fire Elementals.

- Tank picks up boss and moves it to the middle of the platform. Its face either to the left or right side.
- Everyone stay close to the side of the boss which is turned towards you.
- Offtank picks up the adds. Preferred misdirected to him by a hunter.
- Waves will be coming from either left or right side. When waves come from the left, everyone moves away from the boss into the opening in the 2 waves. If waves come from the right, everyone moves underneath the boss in between the legs into the opening between the waves.
- Offtank should try and keep his adds out of the waves. If not they get buffed.
- Repeat this till boss reaches 10%. Then the boss will spawn more adds then before.
- Group up all the adds and AoE as fast as possible. Raid should be done (or nearly done) in time before the next lavawave and back on the boss.

Thats all there is to it.

Achievement:

For the achievement its needed to keep the 3 semi-bosses alive till the end of the fight. This gives you extra loot and the achievement for a black drake.

They have a effect on the boss and you have to fight them during mainboss combat.

- Tenebron
Has aura: Power of Tenebron: Shadow damage taken increased by 100%
Appears approximately 15 seconds into the encounter, if left alive.

- Shadron
Has aura: Power of Shadron: Fire damage taken increased by 100%.
Appears approximately 50 seconds into the encounter, if left alive.

- Vesperon
Has aura: Power of Vesperon: Maximum health decreased by 25%.
Appears approximately 1 minute and 25 seconds into the encounter, if left alive.

This fight combines the semi-bossfights and the main-bossfight. This means you'll have to make 3 groups.

1. Mainboss group - this being a tank and his healer.
2. Flame elemental group - Offtank, his healer and all DPS till portal phase. This tank will need to pick up the semi-boss too.
3. Portal group - Second offtank, his healer and all the DPS. These will kill what ever is in the portals.

Suggested is to do the semi-boss fights a few times before desiding to leave them alive. Once those fights go flawless try bringing them one by one into the first (first leave 1 alive then 2 etc.)

The Beginning of a New Era.

2008-11-26T09:39:00.005+01:00

I thought I’d make a post for those who are hardcore enough to make the cut into the first raids of WotLK. Since my current guild set theirr date on when we want to start raiding I know there are probably some or a lot who are worried they’ll never make it in time.

So this being the reason for my post. Here’s some tips and tricks that hopefully will help getting you into shape.

Getting into shape:

I’ve already posted about this on my own blog a long time ago.

www.wow-pro.com/guides

This guy knows his way around and has lvling, tradeskill, gold farming, Instance and Class guides. Take his 3 guides and pick up where you are now. You’ll see all content from Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord and Dragonblight. Once done with these you’re not lvl 76 as it indicates. You’ll be 77 and able to fly.

Now comes a trick to make it even easier. Jame’s guide suggests a couple addons. Forget them. You only need 2, all else is to drag for your processor and thus slows you down. Get these:

LightHeaded:

This is a Addon that lets you view WoWHead comments from other players inside the game. Including locations of the mobs, locations of quest items, etc. Most recent version is over here:

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info7017-LightHeaded.html

Cartographer:

This addon gives you the ability to open your map in a window instead of full screen. This gives you the ability to keep flying, chatting, moving without having to open/close your map all the time. It also gives you PoI – Points of interest. These are locations you can sell, buy, repair. Now the most important thing. These PoI can be used as waypoints and you can actually get a pointer on your screen (like a navigator system) which tells you which direction to go in and how long it takes to get there. Get the most recent one from Curse:

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/cartographer.aspx

Combining Addons:

Why these 2 together are enough till you’re at lvl 80 has only 1 reason:

Read your quest.

Find locations needed in LightHeaded.

Click those locations and get a pointer where to go.

This cuts down your gametime by more then half. By following the above named system of guide and addon I managed to be 80 in the astounding time you guys seen. With the perk of having done all quests there are possible to find.

How to aim:

Most people relay on others telling them about their spec, gear, enchants, etc. However, finding this out yourself isn’t that hard.

Here’s some simple steps to follow.

Talents:

If you’re Warrior and going tank spec. Try finding all abilities which will give you high avoidance and high dps. This will make tanking multiple mobs easier.

Healers should focus on their healing spells and how to improve these to a maximum.

DPS, Melee or otherwise. Do what ever the hell you like. As long as you push the maximum you can to your ability there’s not much your spec can change.

How to gear up:

Always look for the craftables first. They might cost you a bit of money, but usually save your ass at least for half of the time.

Rep. gear. Once you’re lvl 80 you should have a considerable amount of rep with certain factions to be able to buy rep. gear off them. On armory.wow-europe.com you can pretty much see what is the best next upgrade rep. wise. In case you’re lacking the rep. Try to join lvl80 or heroic groups to instances to max it with your tabard.

Last and not least, Heroics. While you’re looking for what to craft / buy on the armory. Be sure to note down all the gear you’ll be needing from heroics. This will give you the focus you need on getting the items you need. Just stick to the instances that drop your loot and you’ll be geared up to the max in no time at all.

Enchants:

Same as the talent spec you yourself knows best what you need. Yes, there is things like defense cap and such but usually other people of your class know them and they are widely spread over the internet. Take the enchants that suits your needs best.

http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/enchant.html shows all enchants linked to the type of item. This means you can easily select item, find enchant, get mats, find someone to make them.

What to expect:

Momentarily there’s 3 known raids. One of them everyone already knows the other .. you might not.

Naxxramus II

Vault of Archavon

Chamber of Aspects

Eye of Eternity

Naxx II:

A multiple winged instance. Most tactics haven’t changed about this instance. Only the mob’s health and damage has been lowered for it to be capable to be done by 10 and 25 men groups.
Considered to be doable instance with 4 wings of 3 bosses and 1 wing of 2. However since this is momentarily the only multi-boss instance most guilds prefer doing the other 3 first or one of them first and then a wing in Naxx.

Since nothing much has changed most tactics on WoWWiki and Bosskillers.com are still pretty accurate.

Vault of Archavon:

A one stop shop boss. Already names a Onyxia kind of instance. Tactics on this boss can be found here:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Archavon_the_Stone_Watcher

Fact is that this raid instance is in Wintergrasp and can only be accessed when the fort at Wintergrasp is in Alliance control.

Chamber of Aspects:

This instance is planned to be expended in the future. However, now it only contains the Obsidian Sanctum. Making it the second Onyxia kind of instance. Tactics on the boss and her 3 adds can be found here:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Sartharion

Eye of Eternity:

Yet another .. dun dun duuuuhhh Onyxia kind of instance. This one is however considered the hardest and has the most tactics and phases. These can be found here:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Malygos_%28tactics%29

Conclusion:

Using the tips I’ve set here and when everyone reads up on the tactics above. Know them at least well enough to know 75% of its content. We should be out of Naxx before new years eve and done with the other instances aswell. Ready for the new patch to arrive.

Why so fast? Since people from the high end guilds done this 2 days after they dinged 80. Only half of them having the gear requirements for these instances.

If they can do it .. We sure as hell can too.

Brewfest and its After Effects.

2008-10-14T11:09:00.015+02:00

So .. there once was a dwarf named Fuzzy ...

I've seriously been screwing around in WoW lately and this resulted in a series of really weird screenshots ... the kind Blizzard would go by and say "HUH!?". Here they are and the story behind them.

Last year I fiddled around a lot with jumping on kegs and getting on top of tents. Usually ending up in the funny result of millions of /w's of people asking how you did it. This year I did pretty much the same thing. Except I miss-jumped cause the keg dissappeared ... guess what .. I went to the kitchen and when I came back Fuzzy was taking a beerbath...

Since that day weird stuff has been going on for example. I got the habbit of going to windows and back into game. Usually this screws up my windows by showing overlays of WoW in my MSN-screens and on my Winamp, but I never expected my interface of WoW going into Gambling mode

And to make things worse .. that wasn't the only thing I kept seeing. It was like the sky was falling (and may I note ... this was in Auchindoun)

So after all this freaking around a bit Fuzzy went warpspeed to the next location with a couple friends:

This shot was taken on some islands below Tanaris on the oil platform in the middle of them. The outfit Fuzzy is wearing is the full geardrop of Hearthsinger Forresten Which to my oppinion looks incredibly gay....

On to the next part ... where I see the most freakiest of freaks ... The Pettus Hugeius ... a special race of pets breaded to fuck up your graphics card ... and make your eyes scream.

The second picture was taken while farming for Runecloth (I'll tell about that later). Speaking of farming. Does anyone know DM? Remember that boat? ... ever counted how many mobs are on that boat from the start all the way around top and over? ... here's your chance:

(Bigy was a loothungry alt of Bubblena. Who on his turn boosted my priest.)

Now ... its time to close up with a small story. I wanted this for ages ... and I finally got it thanks to the help of the community on Dragonblight(EU). Thank you all for selling me your Runecloth. The end result:

Honorable list of people who helped:

Paiser
Fadervår
Gymbrowsky
(list incomplete)

And to leave you all with an "Aaaaaaah"-feeling:

Against All Odds.

2008-09-22T15:24:00.023+02:00

We did it......

No.1 set their minds on getting SSC and TK done before progressing further into MH and BT. First we started of with Lady Vashj, which was harder then I expected really. The whole tactics with the Tainted Core which needs to be thrown up so a certain point and the Poison Spit on the floor which eventually fills the whole room. That fight is one tough cookie.

How ever we killing Lady Vashj and moved on:

Next on the to-do list ... Kael'thas. From the day I met this guy in Warcraft 3 I hated him ... Arrogant bastard child of a bloodelf. What I hated even more though ... was all his health before 50%. The fight is pretty straight to the point after you killed the advisors twice and the got all the weapons, but getting there is like trying to ride a bike without legs. So night after night of whipes. We finally got him. First try we where so surprice we got it to work. We eventually whiped at 3% due to the huge adrenaline rush everyone had. Proof can be found here:

No.1 vs. Kael'thas

So we pressed on for just another 15 min. (the usual No.1 style when we feel we're nearly there) and kicked his ass to oblivion. The end result:

This is all nice and peachy, but ... where does that leave me on the improvement ladder of imba goodness. Well ... I'm pretty much between OMGZOR and HAXXOR-skillz:

Progress Quest

2008-05-28T10:45:00.006+02:00

Yesterday I laughed sooo hard. There is an MMORPG where you have to do ..... absolutely NOTHING.

If you want to have a good laugh you should check it out. Its called (as the title of this blog says) Progress Quest and can be found here:

http://www.progressquest.com/

Here's what you do ... download software ... create account ... run software and login on multi-player mode ... create a character ... Sit back and enjoy the show.

I watched mine lvl for about an hour and almost pee-ed my pants from the silly things that are stated in the bottum of the screen.

Fuzzy ... Have you forsaken us?

2008-05-15T10:52:00.005+02:00

Hello my true followers,

No I have not forsaken you. For those outside No.1 who don't know what happened .....

Here's the story.

**How Fuzzy lost his motor functions**
In 4 easy steps.

April 21...

Ouch .. ouch ouch ouch.

why? ... airconditioning at work. I felt rubbish my neck was tightning up.

April 24...

More ouch.. Straigned a muscle. Daddy Nik and Mommy Dina (aka my guildleaders) got pretty nuts and angry and forced me on a week of raid-free. Lucky me, I had already planned a week of vacation from work aswell. Finished the week by mousing left handed and ctrl+c and ctrl+v -ing my way through the days.

April 28 till May 5...

FREE!!!!! No gaming (did miss it a lot), no blogging, no computer what so ever. Feeling better every day. The rest is doing good and I'm cleaning my house and doing the guarden in the maintime. Lots of alcohol and partying aswell since its Liberation day on the 5th.

May 5 till now...

Seems the guild has pressed on pretty much. I missed first kill on Akama, but joined in on the second kill and on the first kill of Teron Gorefiend (story posted later .. haven't got screenshots atm). My arm is feeling ok again... so is my neck. I started fitness yesterday and hopefully will tone my body a bit more to health (instead of the sack of patato's that I look like now during raids).

**The End**

So there you go. The whole story in a nutshell ... or blogpost ... which ever you like.

Game On!! .. Fuzz Out!!

You are not prepaired

2008-04-18T00:41:00.010+02:00

Pretty much everyone knows this line from the TBC intro.... Well if you ask me after tonight .. I got the feeling we where a bit over prepaired. I'll explain.

No. 1 went and visited Black Temple. Now we've tried out first boss and trash around him and though that was pretty hardcore stuff.

Last time we went we got the first boss to this taunting percentage:

Tonight .. we replanned and revisited ... and conquered:

After that we just had to move on and see what was waiting for us. To my suprise (and that of some other) the next trash seemed a LOT easier and we got to the second boss pretty fast:

Now that would all be ok and fine ... till I spotted this...

Decardo - The Evil Plumber from Hell
Had his skin on the outside of his gear....

Now sad to say we whiped after that and I didn't record the % of the boss. But right after we gave it one more shot before going to bed and ended up with this.

I'm pretty sure we'll kill him sunday... Till then

Fuzzy out...

Progress - A Raider's best friend.

2008-04-11T00:44:00.010+02:00

Horay for Number One. We're now the proud owners of a blacksmith who can make this:

Of course that lucky someone was me. Thanks guys!

Then there was some more raid progress. First we payed Maggy another visite. And then we went for Mt. Hyjal and killed Rage Winterchill again.

After that we had a little break and I found a really nice weird spot to make some bars.

Then there was tryouts on the next boss in line. Last time our progress looked like this:

First attempt

Second attempt

Today our progress was a lot better and I think we're getting the hang of it:

Unfortunatly that was all we got for today, but I really enjoyed it as it should be. Off till next time...

WTB boost DM....

2008-04-06T12:49:00.005+02:00

Are you annoyed asking this question. Like I said in a post earler, there's no need to act like a noob. There's several websites I posted here with all the details you need to lvl up quickly without asking anyone to help you out.

Now here's a thing you can do if that doesn't help you:

GET A MANUAL!

Here's one for free http://www.wow-pro.com

Now if you want one of those 30 dollar guides I suggest you download them instead of buying them. They are all over the internet as torrent files so there's no need to waste your money.

Quick guide to downloading a torrent:

Get uTorrent. Probably the best software you can use for downloading torrents and can be found here: http://www.utorrent.com/

Go to a torrentsite. I prefer one of these:

http://www.mininova.org/
http://isohunt.com/
http://thepiratebay.org/

Good luck lvling fast....

2.4.1 Patch ... Horay, Blizz F{skull}s up some more.

2008-04-02T11:07:00.007+02:00

Patch 2.4.1 has been announced. Although it was April 1st yesterday when it got noted in game. I still think its pretty save to assume its true due to some actual errors I encountered in game.

Here are the patch notes found on random sites all over the WoW realm.

ohw ... and of course ... my comment on them

* Hunter *

>>Tranquilizing Shot no longer incorrectly restricts use of other Hunter abilities in specific situations.

Huh... how did that get broken?

* Combat Log *

>>Only the last 300 combat log entries are now stored.
>>Filter settings are now properly saved.
>>Changing zones will no longer reload the entire log.

I'm gonna miss my log going haywire every time I enter a portal.

* Bug Fixes *

>>Fixed a sound engine error that was causing lock-ups on exit.
>>Fixed a shader error that was causing kernel panics on Mac PowerPCs.
>>Fixed a bug on Mac that was preventing the intro Cinematics from
playing.

Whaha on you Mac users!! And horay .. I thought my Omen was the one crashing my WoW on exit

Addons will be added later on a quickfix on my blog when I get to them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

**PS: Twinklestars on Dragonblight(EU) is slacking on his daily quests. Everyone spam /w to tell him he's holding back our progress on opening the gates!!!**

Back in Action

2008-03-31T02:30:00.004+02:00

Today (or rather last night) No.1 downed Rage Winterchill. After that we payed a visite to our old friend Magtheridon.

Drop pictures and run photo's ... here ya go:

Rage Winterchill bytes the dust:

Tanks in action (Dina aka Dolfina right. Uncle Fuzzy left):

After the fight me and Tourniquet went for a little stroll up Mt. Hyjal to take a look.

Orc camp:

Night-elf camp:

A day of firsts.

2008-03-27T23:36:00.014+01:00

Tonight me and No.1 have gone to the new Sunwell Plateau - 25-men Raid Instance. Also we got some nice screeny's from Mt. Hyjal.

Around the first corner in Sunwell (Elmica was first to die on mobs):

Also .. I got a nice new item to craft for the guild:

Mt. Hyjal wave 5/6:

Fuzzy vs. Rage Winterchill:

Fuzzy vs. Rage Winterchill:

Rage Winterchill on 44%:

The noob guide through World of Warcraft.

2008-03-27T12:13:00.007+01:00

Who doesn't hate them .... noobs. The most dreaded players and although we all been one once upon a time. We never quite forgive them for entering our world.

Uncle Fuzzy wouldn't be much of an Uncle if he didn't help the little ones out. Now since the new patch I've noticed that even lvl 70 players are incredibly stupid sometimes. When new content comes out and all addons flunk, these players wouldn't know how to put one foot in front of the other.

so ...

READ THIS AND NEVER BE CALLED STUPID AGAIN!!!

For addons:
http://wow.curse.com/
http://www.wowinterface.com/
http://www.wowace.com/

For Quests, Items, Lore, etc.
http://www.wowwiki.com/
http://wow.allakhazam.com/
http://www.thottbot.com/

For Character information:
http://armory.wow-europe.com/ (EU - america and asia can select their own area here aswell)
http://be.imba.hu/ (see if you can raid and where)

Now there are a lot more sites to go to but these are pretty much all the ones you need.

When you're done with this information you can finally use the following phrases yourselfs agains other people:

"Go back to DM you naab!"
"L2P!"
"OMG ]\[()()8"

and my personal favorite when someone asks for where the thing thing is ...

"Here's what you do ... Go outside ... find a pair of glasses ... go to http://fuzzyswowblog.blogspot.com/ ... read! and stop whining"