‘Warcraft’ Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing ‘Warcraft’
I don’t know how long this has been out, I haven’t seen it before but then again I miss a lot living under my rock here in Ottawa. Watching this was just the funniest thing ever today. Thank you Kasul for sharing.
It felt a lot like Christmas last night when I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of TSO. Two copies, one for each of my accounts. The 2nd account I have doesn’t have many characters who can take advantage of TSO aside from the crafting bits and the mount, but maybe some day.
As you can see by the picture I also got myself two little pewter dire bears, perfect for throwing at people as Ogrebears pointed out, or I can use them as the new tokens in my monopoly game, they’re the perfect size.
I always wondered why Sony didn’t just get rid of the whole ‘preorder’ or ‘digital download pre order’ business (and rewards) and put out a Collectors Edition instead. I don’t think I’d buy it (it would depend on what it included) and maybe the company figures not many others would buy it either so it wouldn’t be worth the cost.
I would have gone with a digital download this year as I have in previous years, if it were not for the bear mount that can be claimed by all characters. It means I miss out on a house item but thankfully that item can also be claimed by multiple characters, so I’m sure I’ll be getting one or two placed in my homes.
Was it worth the wait? You betcha. Of course I got to vent my frustrations out all over this blog and that really helps, thanks for putting up with it! The only concern I have is that the mounts don’t scale down in size with the character sizes (yet) so my poor girls look like they’re hanging onto this giant mount for dear life, afraid that they’re going to get flung off of it any moment.
There were a few things I wanted to do first before diving right into the content. Of course I went and opened the booster pack that came with the expansion (nothing there, my luck holds true) and claimed the items that I could. That includes the Ethernaught painting. I haven’t redeemed it yet because I’m not sure who to give it to, but it’s waiting. I’m still contemplating building that ‘free’ LoN house into a museum of sorts. Having heritage quests on display for each one, as well as the (now huge) collection of LoN paintings I have. My reasoning for this is also stemmed from the fact that apparently these ‘free’ LoN homes have no vault slots so you can’t actually use them to the potential that you could with a ‘regular’ home.
Once I had claimed everything I had worth claiming it was time to head to the docks and wait for the ship to arrive. The lag was only slightly better tonight, we had 4 Moors zones up with 50-80 people in each one. Silly me didn’t bother to turn down my graphic settings for the adventure, so once I had zoned a few times and evac’d through etc, I was starting to feel like I was running through tar.
Kasul, Shadowgeist, and I met up and waited for Albrta and Lanerian and together we did the cannon access quest, where I had a lot of fun being shot through the air, even though it took me a minute or two to figure out where the npc was that I needed to talk to. I wasn’t there to look at any of the pretties or give a glance at the other quests, but that will be on the agenda for later today (or this weekend, or when ever I have a spare few minutes to get to it!). Last night was for crafting only. The introductory quests were well written, and they introduce you to the three factions in the Moors. Each of these factions also have a craft book associated with them and very specific sets of furniture that can be made by any class. These furniture pieces look amazing. Especially the Grobb set. I’m looking forward to seeing what people can create using those ‘stone’ looking pieces. I’ve already got some plans for waterfalls and my necromancer is looking forward to a house that doesn’t look quite as bright and cheerful as the ‘goodies’ homes that I have designed.
Of course to get any of these books you need to work on faction first and I don’t have the faintest idea of how long this faction will take. I know there is both a crafter and an adventurer method of obtaining it and I’m assuming that the adventurer method will actually be quicker for me. We’ll see how it goes!
I haven’t set foot into any of the TSO instances yet, but I’ve heard people LFG for them and spamming the channels with their new ‘uber’ loot drops. Hopefully, all this excitement will last once three or four months has passed. For now? I’m liking what I see.
For the past few days I have been working on the fabled harvesters cloak while I eagerly await my copy of TSO. It got to the point yesterday that I was so close to finishing it, I decided after doing a few TSO quests (more about that later) that I would finish the new cloak first, and get back to the content later.
This quest was by far the most difficult crafting related quest that I have ever done. Of course it made the reward all the sweeter, but I think it will be quite some time before I decide to dust off an alt and finish the cloak for them. Thankfully it’s not essential.
It took me approximately three hours to finish my harvesting in Rivervale yesterday. The dens were exceptionally rare, and if it were not for that Gnomish Divining Rod and the ability to track them – as well as logging in right after the server had been taken down for an hour, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have even finished when I did.
Whoever designed this cloak had a FANTASTIC sense of humor, and you can tell they are a large part of the crafting community for one specific reason.
There is a player joke that has been around since the game released. Crafters far and wide complaining that they just about harvested a badger. From behind these little pudgy creatures look like ore nodes. This is especially apparent in the smaller zones like Antonica, and a few of the 1-9 zones. On the craft channels it was (is?) quite common especially on Antonia Bayle, to hear people moaning over the lack of ore nodes and the abundance of badger bottoms.
I quickly put my new cloak on, and transformed into the small rock pictured above. The illusion is great in itself, you roll along the ground and there are some faint sparkles that tumble off of youl. While doing the quest I managed to gather a LOT of rares. It figures that the one time I really want commons and not rares I end up getting 15+ rares in one harvesting session. The guild bank is happy at least.
I decided to zone home from Mara, after the long (long, LONG) day of harvesting when suddenly – it was ME with the badger bottom!
That’s right, randomly (not every zone) you will turn into a badger when you’re sporting this illusion. Not only a badger, but you will turn into a 35% bigger badger then normal. What a fantastic quest reward. It’s may not be considered ‘essential’ for players out there but if you’re a hard core crafter (such things DO exist!) then you WILL want to get this cloak. The only down side I saw to the quest item itself is that you can’t mount it on your wall like other fancy cloaks. That would be a great option. I’m not sure how often I’ll actually *wear* this cloak with the surplus of other cloaks I have. It boosts harvesting skills, rather then crafting skills.
Aside from working on the harvesting cloak for the past two days, like I mentioned earlier my copy of TSO finally arrived. Two copies in fact. So my main account and alt account are now sporting dire bear mounts. I’ll talk about that more later. One thing I wanted to get done right away is that the crafting instances require you to have worked up a little bit of faction with the new Far Seas Trading Division. This is different then the old Far Seas faction that we all have. There is a chain of 6 quests in the Moors that starts with a happy little crafter on the landing platform. The quests reward a LOT of coin and the aa was pretty nice as well. It gives you a tour of the Moors. You *may* want to look up this quest on EQ2traders first or on the EQ2Wikia once you’ve gotten it because it requires some supplies and if you carry them with you you’ll be much better off. Or at least take along a form of evac (or be a druid).
Eyenstein, Albrta, Shadowgeist, Kasul and I all headed off to work on this quest together. Once we completed it Kasul and I told the group we would be unable to do the crafting instances quite yet. It was only fair, Tipa had been waiting to do a Nostalgia run and my late polar bears had prevented any of us from going yet. So tonight after EQ1 Nostalgia, EQ2 Nostalgia will attempt their first group crafting instance.
Maybe by then the issue with the invisible wood working machines will be solved..
stargrace