With my general apathy to world of Warcraft recently, I’ve been playing Fable pretty heavily. My escapades into evil adventuring went surprisingly well, and I finished the game this weekend just gone. Deciding to be as evil as possible turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. It was awesome being powerful, having people obeying me out of terror, killing whoever I felt like (including people on my side) and generally pushing the boundaries of the game as far as possible. However I think I also missed out on a few aspects of the game; definitely some quests (because I killed the quest givers), speaking to people from town (they were either dead or ran away) and a few other minor things.

Overall I enjoyed the game, it was a little shorter than I expected, but then at the same time I don’t like games that go on too long.

Notable evil deeds:

- Hiring a prostitute, smashing down the door to some guys house, taking said prostitute upstairs and having unprotected sex with her, with the guys wife and kid in the house. Deciding I liked the look of the house and to buy it, but then finding out it was more expensive than I was anticipating. Killing owner of house to reduce its sale price, then renting it out at an unfairly high rate.

- Joining the evil temple guys, and going on a quest for them to slaughter an entire village of innocents. Cackling manically as I chased villagers through corn fields before murderising them. Later returning to the evil temple guys, collecting my reward, and then murdering them too.

Just a couple of unsavoury examples there. The best part (I think) about fable is that your character appearance changes over the course of the game, in line with both your good/evil rating and your pure/corrupt rating. I intend to at some point play through again being “good” (meh) so that I have a third picture for comparison, but below you can see how I started out, and how I ended up.

Yes, I was pretty hideous by the time I finished the game. That’s pretty much max on both evil and corruptness. The blue lines on my skin show the amount I used magic (a lot) and the scars are from dying and such I think. Tattoos are store purchased and the horns I think are from being corrupt. Not sure what changed my eyes from brown to green.

So yeah, almost 3 months without a blog post, and I was doing so well too. This is mainly due to epic levels of cba, along with a fair bit going on in my real life. So anyway, I just renewed the domain so I figure I should at least try and post something, maybe this will motivate me to start up again.

As far as WoW goes, thing’s have died off a little. Since my last update I have done 2 main things; leveled characters using the refer a friend thingy, and leveled and raided a bit on my Shaman.

I decided to use refer a friend to level a couple of characters purely by boosting them in instances, mainly so I could get Mage back up into the 60s. I’d enjoyed playing my Draeni Mage, but after leveling that 1-72 I didn’t much fancy doing it all again Horde side. So I made a Blood Elf Mage, and a Tauren Warrior and off I went. I borrowed Dan’s Paladin to do the boosting (see Dans boosting guide if interested) though he did a lot of the actual boosting himself while I just followed him round. The idea behind this was to then consequently get my Mage to 80 and start playing that, as I was bored of Death Knight. Of course, with me nothing ever turns out how I plan, because I can’t be bothered to see these things through. The Mage made it to like 66 before I got bored and realised I couldn’t be bothered.

My next decision was to try a healing class, as I’d raided as a healing Priest pre-TBC and enjoyed it. I was also actually ok at it, which is surprising. I had Shaman at 66, priest at 62 and Paladin at 70 at this point. I decided on Shaman, as I tried Paladin healing and it was horribly boring, and I’d played priest before. Also Chain Heal looks pretty.

So Shaman got leveled, both as Enhancement and Elemental. Mainly Elemental, as I duoed the majority of the time with Dan’s Feral Druid. Set my off-spec as Resto and we did all the instances whilst leveling etc. I actually managed to stick with Shaman to 80, which I am more than a little surprised about. Stayed Resto a good month or so, did all the heroics (well most of) and cleared Nax a few times. At this point I went away on holiday, which basically spelled the demise for my Shaman. A week away in the sun without WoW basically evaporated all of my motivation. Now after being back for 2 weeks I’ve probably only logged in 3 times, so I guess Shaman is out of the window now too.

At the moment I currently have 2 gaming related activities going on in my spare time:

Fable 2

Just getting back into this. I’d bought it on my Xbox when it first came out, but not played it more than a few hours so never really got into it. I bought Fallout 3 at the same time and spent more time playing that. Buying 2 console games at the same time is always a bad idea for me. So I’ve started this up again, and decided to be as evil as possible. I’m pleased with the options you have within game to do this, though most of the time you can kind of see where the game is allowing you to make the choice, and funneling you in the direction it wants you too. I’ve managed to “beat” the game a few times by being evil in ways I don’t think it expected, but this doesn’t usually alter the story in any way. Its just personal satisfaction at having deviated from the expected paths. This is what I’m spending most of my time playing at the moment, I may even knock together a blog post or two about it.

FFXI

Ugh, I can’t believe I just typed those words. Yes, the game I spent like 2 years playing and hated by the time I stopped, I am currently in the process (or about to be) of trying it again. Me and Dan both seemed a bit bored with WoW, and as per usual have been looking at other MMOs to flake to for a while. With the announcement of FFXIV coming out next year, I think our interest in all things Final Fantasy have been piqued. So Dan found a copy with all the addons on the net for under 20 squid, we ordered it, and away we go I suppose. Apparently the soloability (if that’s even a word) of the game is greatly increased these days. One of my major problems with it back in the day (like 5+ years ago now) was that you couldn’t do shag all without a group of 6 people, as anyone who’s played it could attest to. It seems they’ve done a number of things these days to improve that; increased exp from mobs that can be killed solo, created exp rate increase rings, added collection/kill quests in zones and I think added a few more zones where there’s level appropriate stuff to kill solo or in small groups. So the plan currently is for me and Dan to get ourselves to 30, mainly duoing with a little bit of group work if we feel like it, grab some advanced jobs, and get back on the FFXI train. Choo Choo!

Should keep me busy for a month or two anyway. With Aion and FFXIV on the horizon at least there’s a few things to look forward to trying.

Over and out.

Ok, so just a general update as far as what I’ve done in PVE content since coming back to Horde and before 3.1 popped.

I can’t remember whether I already mentioned Nax or not, but I’ve cleared it with our little group a few times now. Not an achievement as such, or anything particularly exciting, but I’ve managed to survive every fight at least once without watching it from the floor now, so I’m happy. As far as I’m concerned that’s Nax ticked off my list as done.

The last two fights were of particular interest to me, I liked the mechanics involved. The first Sapphiron fight we did I survived no problem. I died during the second one, even though I was definitely standing behind the ice block thingy on my screen. I was told this happens sometimes though, so no big deal I guess. Kel’Thuzad I died early on in the fight the first time. This was due basically to me being unaware of everything that was going on in the fight. I died to one of the red void zone thingies, or whatever they’re called. Second run I managed to survive the fight, just. My DPS was a bit weak though, as I was focusing on trying to stay alive most of the time. I find the “keep 10 yards away” thing a touch tedious in quite a small space, but whatever, it wasn’t that bad.

The next boss in my attempt to get as much done as possible pre-3.1 as Satharion. I’d seen a few videos of this guy, so I knew roughly what was to be expected. We took the easy option (of course) and killed the three drake dudes first (I’m pretty sure they’re called drake dudes…) and then engaged the big boss by himself. I did get caught in one of the flame wall things, but I survived so it was all good. The fight was fairly unremarkable aside from that, and I didn’t get any loot.

My intention was to try and do Malygos too, and we were planning on doing so the night before 3.1 was released. However we were a bit low on numbers, so I still haven’t done that encounter yet. Hopefully I’ll get around to that at some point soon. The fight sounds quite fun and involved.

Lastly, although technically I did this after 3.1 came out, I’m going to include it in here anyway. We did Culling of Stratholme a few times, and I got my Reins of the Bronze Drake. One of my friends had a tiny emo strop because he’d decided he wanted it first and that I shouldn’t have rolled, but he got his the next day so no harm done I suppose.

Much prettier than the turkey skeleton I’m used to flying…

I’ve been a bit slack at updating this blog as of late, predictably mainly due to laziness, but also general business. I’ve still been playing my DK regularly, in fact I’m pretty surprised I haven’t flaked off onto something else completely yet. I have started another class (more info on that in a post coming shortly) but I’ve managed to maintain regular activity on my DK, which pleases me.

In the last few weeks I’ve managed to tick off most of the pre-Uldar content, which is something I wanted to do just so that I’ve seen it all. I’m not at the “bleeding edge” of raid content, whatever that is, it sounds painful, and I have no desire to be… I do want to stop missing out on even seeing content though. My not-so-friendly little posse seems to have found another similar group of people, meaning that between us we usually have enough bodies around to do some 10 man content. It’s all very relaxed, and we seem to have gone a week without doing anything as a group, and no one seems bothered by it. At least not on our end. This pleases me greatly, I’m completely up for doing stuff once or twice per week, but it’s nice to know I’m not going to be under any substantial pressure to do so.

The number of gear changes in the last few weeks are pretty minimal, but a few small steps in the right direction are always a good thing. The number of blue items on my character are slowly reducing, being replaced by shiny purple ones. A few more weeks and Nax clears and I should be good to start thinking a little more about 10 man Uldar.

Recent acquisitions:

Heroes’ Scourgeborne Battleplate – picked up from some boss in Nax, rather than bought with badges. Does that make me slightly more imba? I assume it does. It allowed me to spend my badges on Tattered Dreadmist Mantle for my new alt instead. Oooooh, bit of a clue there for you as to what I’m leveling, exciting huh?

Glyph of Dark Death – Picked up from the AH just this morning, I’m pretty sure this was a recent addition with the 3.1 patch. Either that or I’m an idiot and just completely missed it before. It replaced my crappy  Icy Touch glyph anyway.

Purple Trophy Tabard of the Illidari - “That’s not an upgrade!” I hear you cry… well you’re wrong, so how about you shut up? It’s an upgrade to my looks, which anyone who’s played a number of MMOs for a good amount of years knows is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT PART of your character. This is one of the cooler looking tabards, so I decided to quickly do the quest one afternoon. There are some other cooler looking ones out there, but you don’t see quite so many people wearing this one since WotLK.

Current targets:

There’s a couple of things I have my eye on as far as my next upgrades go…

Greatsword of the Sin’dorei – From the new Argent Tournament, or whatever it’s called. Getting this I think (though I haven’t fully investigated yet) is just a case of doing the dailies and what not every day until I have enough tokens to buy it. I’m not too sure whether technically this is an upgrade over my current weapon. I’d be dropping 23 Strength but gaining 45 Haste and a little more hit rating. Having a quick read round, it seems Haste has been improved slightly for melee classes come 3.1, so I’m assuming this weapon might actually be a pretty decent investment. Also it puts me even further over the special hit cap. I think I’ll then be in a position where I could drop my Sphere of Red Dragon’s Blood without dropping below the cap. What I’d replace it with right now I’m not 100% sure, maybe the Oracle trinket, unless I can find something better. I’d need to work on Oracle rep for that though, meh.

Heroes’ Scourgeborne Gauntlets – I’m planning on buying these with badges, as I don’t imagine I’ll be getting lucky with a drop of them (or anything better) anytime soon. I currently have about 25/40 of the badges required I think, so another week or two (depending on how many heroics I can be bothered to do) should net me some new gloves. The 2 piece set bonus will be nice too… hmm, maybe I’ll work a bit harder on getting those.

Just a few more gear updates on the DK so far, both form badges/heroics and from Nax itself…

Flame-Bathed Steel Girdle – From heroic Nexus. Got lucky (presumably) on the drop and got this the first time I ran it. Very nice waist.

Mirror of Truth – From badges. Pretty good trinket from what I can tell, and a nice proc. I haven’t actually paid attention to how often it procs as of yet.

Shoulderplates of Bloodshed – From Nax itself, Heigan I think. First piece of really decent loot I got there, I was well happy. Love the DK armour models too, so I’m most pleased with these.

As far as Nax itself goes, last week was my first full run. The last time I’d done it some of the bosses had already been killed, and we stopped before we got to the end. I think I’d ended up completing two quarters. Last week we did an entire run in one go, from start to finish, and it went really well. The final boss was the only one I got myself killed on where we weren’t wiping anyway. This was mainly due to the fact I wasn’t really sure on the strategy. I didn’t know I was going to be going to Nax though, in my defense. I am also very lazy.

My DPS was respectable and I picked up on all the strategies quickly enough anyway, so I was pleased. Plus its always fun to bug Dan by making him give me details on how to do things when he’s trying to concentrate on other things.

I think I’m pretty much as well equipped as I can be right now anyway, give or take one or two lucky drops and a few more badges to chuck around. So now would be the right time to start another alt, I mean why not!? More on that next time…