Valentines day wheee!

Okay, Valentines day has come and gone. Things are moving a bit slow for me in WoW, partly because I haven't been raiding much, and partly because Mass Effect 2 came out. And I just HAD to import my save game to try out my character.

Mass Effect 2 has a great storyline, and is a great game within itself. But after you finish the game, you don't feel like the side missions are all there, and the dumbing down of the equipment screens makes the game have a bit less replayablity than the first game did.

However Bioware have said from the start they have a lot of DLC planned, which is good because the game is a very strong 'base' to be expanded upon. Especially with side missions and extra characters. A Hover tank is also planned to be coming as well.

In WoW most of my time has been taken up with trying to get the Exalted achievement, so I've been grinding and buying off the Auction House in order to increase my reputation with various factions. Its actually nice to log in to WoW and take it easy. Instead of always raiding.

In other news the local arcade is adding another floor, so hopefully they will have installed a Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike machine, and I can get some games with people just like in the old days hehe.

Super Street Fighter 4

I have to admit I haven't been keeping that close of an eye on news about Super Street Fighter 4, but now that Capcom have brought back Cody, they may have piqued my interest quite a bit!

If you don't know, Cody was originally part of the 3-man roster for a very old side scrolling Arcade Beat-em-Up game called Final Fight back around 1989 i think. Back in 1998 he was featured as a returning character in the classic fighting game Street Fighter Alpha 3, and one of the main characters I used back then.

I just hope they tighten up the controls and make things a bit more intuitive for the next iteration of the Street Fighter franchise!

Going from Super-Rich to broke :(

The other day I finally realised several goals for my character. Obtaining a Tundra Traveller's Mammoth costing 16000 gold. And finally getting the final book to recieve my Kirin Tor Familiar Elemental Pet! Now I feel I can relax and not spend every spare moment grinding for gold! Unfortunately now I'm low on funds, but the dailies should help me with that over time.

In other news, Patch 3.3 will be hitting within the next two weeks I suppose. Which is probably why a lot of raiders have slowed down their raiding quite a bit, to the chagrin of many a Guild Leader. Everyone is just eager to stock up on those emblems of Triumph and get their gear easily methinks.

I've also revised my idea of when Cataclysm is going to drop, based on the news that happened last week in which a Las Vegas convention centre mistakenly pinned Blizzcon at their place in July, which I think probably means Cataclysm will be released sometime in April or May, which will allow Blizz to use the new Icecrown Citadel content coming in Patch 3.3 to be gated to its full extent.

Is the new WoW pet shop just a Gold buying store?

Everyone knows about the new Pet Shop that Blizzard has implemented, where you can buy a Lil' KT or Pandaren Monk. While Total Biscuit has been talking about how this sets the precident within Blizzard to sell completely Virtual goods, and possibly the beginning of a slippery slope, I have a different view of things.

While I agree with him that Virtual goods being sold within Blizzard is new, the WoW Trading Card game and the other MMO's which completely subsist on Virtual Goods, has kind of lessened the shock value of this decision.

However, despite the fact that the Pet Shop is encouraging future games to attempt a Subscription+Microtransaction model, I believe the Shop was also created to curb Gold Farmers.

Gold Farming has been a problem for WoW for years, and there has, and always will be a market for it. Therefore the best way Blizz could combat the problem is by making a Gold Service of their own.

Take my Lil' KT pet above in the screenshot. I never paid real money for him, I traded the Pet Code from another player, in exchange for WoW Gold. Now I know what some will say "It's against the Terms of Service! That's not allowed!" But before you go and report me, take a look at this thread. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19820322858&postId=198185696216&sid=1#4

There are others like this one, but basically it's confirming that Pets Bought with money can be traded for gold. The pet is a virtual item, and so is the gold, and is therefore not against the Terms of Service, which prohibits Real world items for Virtual Items and vice versa.

If you still don't believe me, or are doubtful about the stance Blizzard seems to be taking on this ATM, take a look at this in game mail I recieved from the support department after recieving my Lil' KT pet.



Blizzard Customer Service sends me a mail telling me I am breaking the Terms of Service by: "Advertising non-WoW related businesses or Websites."
Obviously the Trade message I sent was misunderstood, I assume they thought that I was offering repeated Gold for Pet and Pet for Gold services, when I just wanted to buy the two pets.

But no mention of an illegal exchange of goods, no mention of breaking the ToS for buying a pet with gold. An oversight? Or a passive confirmation?

Gothic Lolita in a videogame?

While I was looking at the updates on the latest fighting games at Fighters-Generation I found this very interesting character design from recent ARC Systems Fighting game BlazBlue, which appears to me at first glance to be very similar to Gothic Lolita fashion style. It's unlike a typical Maid or Nun design that you would usually see with a young girl Anime character, I wonder if this means that Gothic Lolita is starting to become more widely known? But then again this is a very niche Japanese fighting game series that has not even been released in the West. I do like the character design though!

Will there be a WoW Patch 3.4 ???

My guess is that Patch 3.3 will drop sometime in November. Now, if you recall, Blizzard said that 3.3 is going to be the final content patch for WOTLK. But Blizzard also said at the time that during BC, patch 2.3 would be the final major patch of that expansion. But as we all saw, the players ran out of content faster than Blizzard expected, and the 2.4 Sunwell patch was released with a lock out system to drag out the content before WOTLK was ready for release.

So let's make a rough guess and say Cataclysm will be released next year in say... June or July, to be cautiously optimistic. Now if that's correct, then that would mean that the space between the last Major content patch and the Cataclysm expansion will be about 7-8 months. If we feel like Blizzard will wait till "the game is done", this wait becomes longer.

Now to put things into perspective, Patch 2.3 in Burning crusade dropped on Live servers in November 2007. Now if Patch 2.4 did not get developed before the pre-release patch for WOTLK, then WoW would be without a major content patch for, wait for it.... 10-11 months.

With 2.4 added to the roster however, this drops back to a more modest 5-6 months.

Will the 3.3 patch be able to drag out content for that long? Will Blizzard rely on small additions to the Argent Tournament in order to keep people playing? What can Blizzard do to keep people interested until the middle of next year?

Will Blizzard even try and rush things out the door in order to hold on to the player base? Or do they already have this content lull planned to allow people to go to the competition and get the other games "out of their system" before we come back to Cataclysm? Nah, that sounds just crazy... .... or is it?

Yes, I'm here!

Well I've been mucking about in all these different games for the past few weeks, Batman : Arkham Asylum, Fallout 3, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Street Fighter IV, and of course; World of Warcraft.

Batman seems like just a very good mish mash of ideas you always would like for a Batman action game, and executes it almost perfectly. It doesn't try to pretend to be something its not, its a straight, linear no-holds barred Batman adventure with a good story supported with great voice acting. I think you can really see the love that was put into this game by the developers.

Fallout 3 makes great use of the Oblivion engine and although it seems like some of the mechanics are a bit dated the world and characters really pull you in. It's a great immersive game and I only had one problem in that I couldn't have my character specialised as much as I'd like to. Much like how Fable ended where your character was kind of good at everything at the highest level part of the game so you really didn't feel like a distinct character.

D&D Online was a lovely game, but I feel like something like Neverwinter Nights Online servers can still easily give this type of game a very good run for its money.

Street Fighter 4 just keeps reminding me how much like Street Fighter 2 it is like, and I'm starting to miss my old Dudley and Urien from Street Fighter 3. I hear Super Street Fighter 4 is now in development, so I hope they hopefully add a few more features that will please SF3 players. :)

Finally WoW, sigh.... I've decided to stick with Strangewayes my Mage, and he's now my main, he's now got 98 Mini pets, and I'm nearing the final goal of obtaining the extremely rare [Hyacinth Macaw]. Apart from him and 2 others, I only have some holiday pets to obtain. I hope there is an achievement for 100 pets.... but I suppose they will award me with another pet. Sigh.

And soon the Lich King will be released from within the Icecrown Citadel! I wonder if it will take a while to take down, like Yogg Saron?