1990 Silicon Dreams Games and Movie Reviews: WoW
Showing posts with label WoW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WoW. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Mists of Pandaria Screenshots: Pandaren Starting Quests


So I've finally managed to get in the Mists of Pandaria Beta, I've played through the starting area for the Pandaren, and I'm happy to say the starting quests have been great. As previously announced by blizzard, you start out on the back of a turtle, the area is called the Wandering Isles, where Pandaren monks train, and you make your way around the island receiving various lessons from the inhabitants.    

Pandaren Character Creation screen

Check out the screen-shots, but beware of minor spoilers in the starting quest chain plot.

Pandaren Starting area

A nice little travel quest that leads you into another area on the  Wandering Isles

some nice scenery as you move along to your next objective in MoP:Beta

Some background story on what's been happening to the Pandaren over the years

Nearing the end of the quest chain

"If you know what I mean"

for the first time - A view of the turtle that carries the Pandaren Island

for the first time - A view of the turtle that carries the Pandaren Island

for the first time - A view of the turtle that carries the Pandaren Island
More Mists of Pandaria Screenshots after the break. 



Saturday, April 21, 2012

How to Ring the Training Bell in Mists of Pandaria Beta quest

I've been playing some MoP beta and perhaps the most annoying part despite the awesomeness of finally getting into Mists of Pandaria, is the crowds of people around quest objects that make it impossible to interact with them: so I was given a hint by another player of a way to avoid that using a macro that makes the crowds of players disappear for a second so you can click the object - in this case click the Training Bell for a quest. So here's how you do it. Just make a macro with the following text. The quest is called The Lesson of Dry Fur.

/console baseMiP 0;
/console baseMiP 1;

Then as soon as you press the macro the players will disappear for about a second. That is your chance to click the Training Bell so right-click spam it. You can click not just the bell itself but its foundation, so zoom out the camera a bit and click the stone slab under the Training Bell.


How to click the Training Bell in Mists of Pandaria
As you can see I've just managed to complete that quest.

Hope this helps for those of you who may be stuck on the quests, there's another one in the very beginning of the Pandaren quests, called The Lesson of the Burning Scroll, where you have to click a scroll that's similarly surrounded by a bunch of players at all times making it impossible to see let alone interact with the item. Just use the same trick and you're good to go.


Here's a video I made of the macro in action. Sorry for the bad quality but you can actually see the effect on other players. 

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

WoW: MoP: Shameless Pandaren

This just in, apparently the World of Warcraft pandaren in Mists of Pandaria have no shame at all. This comes as a surprise as even the worgen had a underwear for the females and shorts for the males, but this time, Blizzard has gone for a more down with nature look for whatever reason. To be honest when I was shown the screenshot bellow, I thought at first that it might be a mod or something... but no. November-December 2012, everyone... that and Pokemon, ugh, I mean pet battles.

Here's a video from The Yogcast featuring the appropriate reaction when seeing a pandaren with no gear on for the first time.


In other news, some more info has came out around the pet battles. There's going to be a queue system much like the dungeon finder, but apparently you won't be able to see whom you're fighting so as to not turn the battles into a sort of name-and-shame. At least that's what I understand. Now for me that's a bit of a let-down, I wouldn't honestly see a pet battle as a situation where I'd be gravely ashamed if I lost a battle, or more so if someone spammed my name in trade chat announcing their victory. 

As I've mentioned before there's going to be random pets roaming around that you can catch, we're yet to see a pokeballs system involved in any way, so far it seems that to catch the wild pets you'll just have to defeat them. There's also going to be pet trainers around Azeroth, much like the dojo masters in Pokemon. And there's going to be a Pokedex-like journal where you'd get a list of all the pets you've gotten so far and also some info on where to find particular wild pets. As with fishing schools, pets may appear in an area only at a certain time of day, or a certain season, or twice on the night of Pirate's Day on a leap year, or something outrageous like that. Blizzard has stated that they don't want the pet collection to be something you're done with after 2-3 months of grinding, and they have a track record of keeping exclusive items exclusive within reason, so expect some insanely difficult to catch purple-grade pets alongside the usual trash. Me, I'm still trying to catch that dreaded turtle mount and no Pandaren snapping-turtle mount (to be a part of the Faction mounts) is going to replace that. 



Saturday, March 31, 2012

Some Amazing Mists of Pandaria Faction Mounts

Seems like Blizzard has finally gotten the hang of it, when it comes to WoW Faction mounts. In Mists of Pandaria, the Pandaren mounts will vary greatly, starting from Pandaren Kites and Serpents to Yaks, a Jade Tiger, a water-strider etc.

Here's a video of the Pandaria mounts in action:




The one I'm most excited about is the Riding Dragon Turtle. That might just make up for the countless hours wasted in unsuccessfully trying to fish out a turtle mount in WoTLK and Cata. The Water Strider mount also looks interesting, and reminds me of the Ahn Kiraj battle tanks. Again hours of Archeology got me some pets, but unfortunately no mounts :P As they say if you don't get it the first 10 000 tries, grind harder.

Hopefully in MoP we're not going to have to grind too much to get those.


Thursday, March 22, 2012

World of Warcraft Annual Pass and Mists of Pandaria beta When will access to the beta be available?

There's quite a controversy right now around the World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria beta Annual Pass deal with regards to the Terms and Conditions of the deal. As you may know part of the contract was that you'd get access to the MoP beta as soon as it was available. Or at least that's what many of us were lead to believe. But does the Annual Pass contract actually say anything about when will you get access to the Pandaria beta?

Here's the part of the contract that deals with the MoP beta access:


Unfortunately the contract never mentions when access to the beta will be granted. It only states that Blizzard will flag your battle.net account so you will automatically receive a beta code.

Understandably a lot of the WoW fan-base has been frustrated with Blizzard's choice to postpone access and release beta codes to Annual Pass holders when it deems fit. According to the official statement the beta will be handed out in waves, according to the age of your World of Warcraft Account and also how early did you sign up for the particular deal.

The fact that screenshots have came out of people with beta access, who don't even have the Annual Pass further aggravates the situation. What do you think. Did Blizzard make a huge mistake with this one?

On a side note people have suggested that if you're running Apple's OS X you stand a better chance of being invited to the beta, regardless of weather you have the pass or not. So if you're running WoW on a Mac go to Battle.net and download the small piece of software that will automatically assess your system specifications and upload them to Blizzard's site.  



Wednesday, March 21, 2012

WoW: Mists of Pandaria Beta to start soon

According to the Warcraft Facebook page, the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta is going to be starting pretty soon. What's going to happen is, players will be invited in waves, based on how long they've had a WoW account, and also based on how early they got their Annual Pass. As you know everyone with a WoW Annual pass (that is a one year non-suspendable subscription) gets a free mount (Tyrael's Charger), Diablo 3 for free (coming out May 15th) and beta access to Mists of Pandaria.



So log-on to Battle.net and update your system specifications info and check the Warcraft Beta option to make sure you're not overlooked when the time comes to dish out beta codes. You'll need to download a small program that is going to evaluate your graphics card, processor, among other things. As with code giveaways I'm sure there will be plenty to go, but in the meantime your best bet for the Mists of Pandaria Beta, if you don't own an Annual Pass, is to upload your system specifications to Battle.net and hope that your rig is unique enough to warrant Blizzard's attention. 

In the meantime the Non-Disclosure Agreement on the WoW: MoP media event fell so here's some more reading for those who are interested to know what to expect from the early stages of the Beta:

GameTrailers Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance Heroics, the new Zones and class, all stuff I'm going to cover, when I can get my hands on it, which should be within a week or two if we trust Blizzard to not keep us waiting for too long. 



Thursday, March 8, 2012

What to expect from Mists of Pandaria: Preview

What is behind a great MMORPG? Blizzard's World of Warcraft stands tall as the leader on the market for Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, but is there something that's missing recently? With the Mists of Pandaria expansion that's up and coming in the fall, the outcries of the WoW fan base have been louder than ever. Sure there's always been dissatisfaction among the fans whenever a change has been introduced to the game, but this time it seems the angst has reached an all-time high. So what can we honestly expect from the expansion?



                                             Mists of Pandaria Preview Trailer

Here's a list of the changes:

- new continent in Azeroth
- new race, shared by both the Horde and Allience - Pandaren
- new class - Monk
- a completely new Talents System
- abandoned stats 
- new levels of duifficulty for dungeons
- entirely new Vanity Pet Combat System and random exploration vanity pet encounters

Seems like a lot, but Blizzard has shown a tremendous dedication to putting out new content in a timely manner, when it comes to World of Warcraft. Starting from the last point on the list, the new Pet Combat System is something the several million WoW players have been stupefied by from day one. The associations with Pokemon are inevitable. From the point of view of my current experience of WoW I could never imagine myself standing in the middle of Stormwind, engaged in an epic duel between a Mini Diablo and a Mini Tyrael. But then again I could not imagine myself, back when Wrath of the Lich King first came out, chasing after achievements just for the sake of it. In hindsight I've got a couple 85 characters and one of them has pretty much every achievement that doesn't require raiding. I made World Explorer in a single day, right after I got my Red Drake mount. I've also spent countless hours (unsuccessfully) fishing for a Sea Turtle mount in Northrend.



Sunday, March 4, 2012

WoW Battleground Weekend: Isle of Conquest

Last time I did this sort of update it was Alterac Valley weekend, this week it's Isle of Conquest and there's still a few hours left before the event is closed. So even though I've been playing mostly Diablo 3 beta giveaway for the past two days, I have some tips on how to win this one. 


Simmilarly to Alterac Valley the key here is speed and organization. As Allience usually what we do is head straight for the docks. As soon as we've captured those, one part goes with the catapults to jump the enemy's gates and start placing bombs on the left door of the keep, the other uses the glaives to finish the gate off.

If we're lucky the Horde will not be defending too much, and their gate will fall a few seconds before ours does. Then all rush in to kill the boss and we win. The problem is that while we do that the Horde are getting siege engines which have a lot more health than the glaives. Two or three hordies fighting a glaive can kill it within a few seconds. So really, everybody has to pull their weight in defending them if we stand any chance to win.

Field Marshal's Raiment PvP set

Field Marshal's Raiment PvP set


Monday, February 13, 2012

A small Alterac Valley Update: Exalted With Stormpike Guard

So I'm finally exalted with Stormpike Guards after 2 days or so of grinding. Over 20 victories now and I can safely say the key to this battle is setting your roles and defending the towers. Also speed really really counts.


I'm also inching towards level 85 (2.5 bars left) with my hp capped (I'm buying JP so I can keep doing Battlegrounds), although when it comes to gold, I don't do quests or dungeons so I'm poor. But I'm in a nice guild that pays for my repairs with no daily limit.

I'm gonna come back with some more games and movie reviews as soon as I'm 85 and this three day Alterac Valley weekend is over. Then I can take a break from WoW and do something else for a change :D

Saturday, February 11, 2012

World of Warcraft: Alterac Valley Weekend

This weekend in WoW it's Alterac Valley that's getting the weekly bonus if you participate. So I've decided to post something a little bit more geared towards WoW players, but for those of you with less or no experience of the game, it should be an interesting read, because it offers some insight into what makes WoW so much fun even after years of playing. 


The Set-up Alterac Valley is a battleground that takes place in its own entire zone that rivals by its size any other zone of the game, its goal is for a team to kill the opposite team's boss leader by forming a raid, while at the same time protecting its own leader, and protecting and capturing bases along the way. This particular battleground features resources/reinforcements where each team starts with a set number, and as their enemy destroys towers/bases, captures mines or graveyards, their resources go down. Another opportunity to lose is by losing all of your resources to the enemy, so defence is equally as important as offence.

Horde vs Ally That being said there's a somewhat different play-style for this dungeon between horde and alliance. From my experience horde generally just rushes to fight in the middle of the BG, with a complete disregard for the BG objectives, while somewhat sporadically performing hit and runs on allies, who are trying to capture bases. If you're a defender on the alliance side, what you'll experience is at least a dozen friendly players trying to hold off the horde at the alliance leader site, while at the horde leader site, it's generally a bunch of alliance players quietly waiting for reinforcements to arrive to form a raid for the boss.

Organization On top of that from my experience within the Horde, those people DO NOT TALK to each other. Like the many seemingly incompatible races they're comprised of, if you try to organize some structure to the battleground you'll be faced with a wall of chat silence. Seems like everyone on that side is happy to score some easy kills on allies that'd wander off away from the groups, and cares for little else. In that respect playing Alliance is a lot more satisfying for me, when it comes to PvP, since everyone at the beginning of the raid neatly announces what they think we should do, people tag themselves as tanks/healers, including my holy-priestly self, people warn each other about incoming horde forces at this point or another. And generally on my server which is Neptulon EU, Alliance wins eight times out of ten.

The trickz So basically what each and every player is expected to do is first of all rush a smaller boss near the middle of the field, then capture two enemy towers, then go for the last boss. What makes capturing towers essential is that it makes the enemy's boss weaker. Lastly you need to capture two more towers right next to the boss, which is not a problem, since the areas is seen by hordies, as a site reserved for ally tea-parties, careless chatting and waiting for the towers and nearby graveyard to be turned over to the ally side.

Defence as much as Offence All in all what matters is that you divide your forces accordingly towards defending your own bases and capturing, and later on forming a proper raid for the last boss.

Lastly as soon as I could today I got to play a couple of sets of Alterac Valley the first one was an easy win, with me and another healer at the boss, we basically waited out nearly the whole battle in front of the boss's area, and rushed as soon as the graveyard was ours, the second one was a bit more frantic with only me to heal, at level 82, which is nowhere near as effective when your tank is lvl 84. But after dieing myself half a dozen times and rushing back to join the battle (in fact the whole BG group died in portions several times over) we downed him in the last moment, before we would have completely wiped, which would have reset his health and started everything all over. 

Thursday, February 9, 2012

More WoW fun: Healing in Throne of Tides






Just slowly making my way towards level 85 on my Holy Priest in World of Warcraft. Healing is a lot more enjoyable for me, since first of all you don't wait around on queues, and then you generally have more stuff to do, in a dungeon. You have to make sure everyone stays alive, bubble the tank, heal everyone else, think about wether the boss might stun you next so you can cast some HoTs, it's a lot more exciting than just casting spells in a rotation as a DPS, or even tanking, at least for me.

Throne of the Tides is one of the more annoying dungeons though, since around levels 80-82 you're stick with it and Blackrock Depths, since the other dungeons require an iLvl minimum of your gear. So if you're like me and can't stand questing with anything else than a paladin or a DK, you'll have to stick with those two, until you get the item drops. Which might take a good 20 runs.

If you have experience with RPGs tell me which classes/roles you prefer. 

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Raid Food: Three quick easy and cheap recipes for gamers.

Naturally, when in the middle of a gaming session none of us have time to cook, but why order pizza, when it's expensive, unhealthy and most of all it takes half an hour to forty five minutes to arrive anyway. So instead get these simple ingredients:


flour / eggs / salt / baking powder / cooking oil / bulk cooking yellow cheese / meat: any meat will do / veggies if you sway the vegetarian way - onions, leek, potatoes etc. / any kind of spices - pepper, chili, barbecue spice etc.


You'll also need tin foil an oven a bowl to mix stuff, one plate, one fork and one knife and a frying pan, preferably a cheap-a$$ non-stick wok and a pot and probably a wooden spatula.


Some quick common sense tips before you start: If cooking for the first time you can waste ingredients and money
at the least and kill yourself at worst. Burning protein like meat chars and eventually catches flames. Overheated
oil smokes up and bursts into flames, totalling your kitchen in seconds, if that happens don't throw water onto it,
unless you want a fire-ball in your kitchen - use a wet towel to smother the flames, since fire hates a lack of oxygen
more than it hates water. Burning carbohydrates such as veggies boiling in a pot (with the water boiled out) 
smoke up and release Carbon Monoxide, which will kill you in minutes, it's a smokeless, odourless, 
colourless gas that can fill up your kitchen in mere minutes.


1: Trinidad Aloo Pies

Start by peeling 3-4 large potatoes throw them in salted water and boil until you can cut them in half with the fork without any effort - that's the easiest way to know they're ready. Meanwhile in a bowl mix half a bowl of flour, 1 table spoon of baking powder, a pinch of salt and water. Add like 3/4 tea-cup of WARM water and with a stirring motion make a soft dough that shouldn't be sticky. If your dough is softer you can always add flour while you knead it, if it's harder add some more water and stir well.

Your potatoes will not be ready by a long-shot, so dump that dough onto a large plate and sprinkle it with flour. Spread the flour on top of the dough and on the sides so when it inevitable sticks to the plate you can use your fingers and the flour to lift it up. Then KNEAD, like you're grinding fishing in WoW, don't burn yourself out just punch it up, until it's flat then fold into a ball again, flour if sticky, and punch up again - do that for 10 minutes.

By now those annoying potatoes should have started to bubble every now and again, but ignore the weak-sauce pre-boil and move on, being rightfully disgusted by the insane amounts of energy that salty water is able to buffer, before it starts to give a f&*(.

Take your dough and make a cylinder out of it, then cut it into 6-9 equal pieces, then roll those in balls, and leave them on the side, but make sure they're not touching each other, since they'll try to merge together, like the Terminator and annoy the living hell out of you, having to do the whole cutting and shaping all over again.

Now your water is probably boiling so go have a smoke, have some coffee, chill out, think about the meaning of life, and come back in about 20 minutes. Try if you can drive your fork into a potato. Do you have to push? No? It goes all the way through and that poor thing ends up in halves? Score! Take off of the stove, dump the water, and using your fork mash the potatoes into pulp, then add spices like pepper, chili, whatever you like, and mash some more. Flatten the thing on the bottom of the pot, and with your fork cut it into the same number of divisions as the balls of dough you have.

Finally heat up your wok with half an inch of cooking oil and be careful here, cuz that thing will smoke up and eventually catch flame if you forget about it. Take a ball of dough flatten it into a pancake the size of your palm, then dump the potato mix, press and fold in two until you have a dumpling shaped thing. Squeeze the edges together and twist to close it. Now flatten it between your hands as thin as possible without breaking it, then fry until golden brown on both sides. Keep in mind it takes 1-2 minutes on high heat per side, and 3-4 on medium heat. Easy way to find out when its done is it's going to sizzle like a motherf*^$#r at first, then it's gonna go quiet. When it goes quiet it's done. Flip it using your wooden spatula, then drain on a sheet of tin foil.

If you've closed the dough well, and your pies didn't have any holes in them, they'll puff up to 2-3 times their thickness, when you fry them. So don't worry about flattening them too much, as long as there's no holes in the dough. The flatter they are the better they'll taste.

You can leave some for later, they're spicy and taste great both hot and cold and in combination with anything else you can think of, they'll also last in your fridge.


2: Home-made pan pizza

Make the dough as you would for the Aloo Pies, but add a tablespoon of cooking oil and a pinch of sugar. Spread it on a piece of tin foil, large enough to cover the baking tray of your stove, the flatter it is, the better. Set your oven on the highest heat (300 Celsius for mine), and throw the dough in it for 3-4 minutes. It may start to form bubbles of air, poke and flatten those with your fork. Don't brown the dough, or you'll end up with a lame excuse for Turkish bread, take it out after 3-4 minutes. We do this so your pizza isn't doughy, cuz it takes more heat for the dough to cook, than your regular ingredients.

So take that out and add some ketchup or tomato sauce on it, cheese, meat, spices, whatever you like. Any leftovers you have will do. Go crazy experimenting. Throw it back in, until the sides are nicely brown and crispy, which on high heat would be around 10-15 minutes. You can add spices after its done, or an egg.

The trick to adding an egg to pizza is it takes 2-3 minutes to cook, after which it turns into rubber. So only add it when your pizza is done, throw a pinch of salt on it, back in the oven, and watch it as it cooks in front of your monitor strained eyes.

3: One-piece hot dogs


Make the dough same as for the Aloo pies, although add an egg, that's gonna make your dough more puffy. Spread it really thin, you can roll it using a rolling pin if you have one, or a thick glass bottle. Make sure to dust it with flour as you roll it, and flip it every now and again or else it'll stick to the tin foil and you'll have to clean that off piece by little piece, which sucks.

Then cut the dough using your knife, into pieces the size of your palm, take some hot dog wieners, or any other meat or veggies or cheese you like, throw them on top and close the dough in the shape of an envelope. Pinch the edges, so it doesn't open up when it bakes, but leave it open on the top, so you can later on add some ketchup to it or whatever you like.

Make sure the oven is heated on max, and throw those things in, making sure they're spread apart on the tray, since they'll expand and you probably don't want to have to cut them off from each other.  As soon as the top is nicely brown and before any of it starts to burn, take them out, add fresh vegetables, sauces or anything else you like and enjoy. 

Saturday, February 4, 2012

A new Guess the Movie Challenge! and some WoW gameplay.

Since it's Saturday I've decided to kick back a little bit, and give you some gameplay of WoW. I'm not much of a WoW player, but I like to play from time to time. More reviews will be coming up in the days to follow. Also please tell me what's your favourite movie and I might review it in the next week.

Also I'm going to set you up with another part of Guess the Movie! This time the movie is about an Eastern European trying to make ends meet in America. The lead actress is a pretty, petite, dark haired Superstar on the European music scene, who is known for her short temper with journalists. For her role she won a Palm d'Or for best actress and the movie won another palm for best movie.

The movie itself is a dark psychological drama, rivaling by its impact the likes of The Green Mile and Requiem for a Dream. As a last tip, the opening scene of the movie features the same snippet from last week's challenge - you know Roses and Rainbows and Whiskers and Kittens :D 

And here's the play-through on this blog's YouTube channel. The character is an Alliance Holy Priest, the dungeon is Halls of Stone. Parts 2 and 3 are in the video's description. 



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