The Roof Kills: Magtheridon and Masonry Blues

So we finally did it. If you’ll recall my earlier posts, I mentioned there somewhere that Magtheridon was supposed to be our first Raid. We planned for it, even had the strategy session at the Honor Hold Inn. Unfortunately, only three of the seven people present could get in the Raid. That was ages ago, [...]

Winter’s Chill: my first run in Frozen Halls

With the new Looking for Group (LFG) system implemented by Blizzard at the tailend of the Wrath of the Lich King era, running Instances has become quite common, even tedious to some. Instances are now the new Farm Zones for WoW players, so you barely see any 80s out on the field doing some decent [...]

On Wings, Mice and Men

The weird title is my headache-addled brain’s attempt to give you an overview of this latest post. Its actually a convoluted attempt to marry a saying and a statement: the former about the plans of Mice and Men, and the latter about “winging” something. Recently, my Guildies and I have been running Instances. A lot [...]

A funny thing happened on the way to the Terrace

I was supposed to talk about our pre-upgrade Onyxia run after that last post on turning level 80, but I’ve been a lazy blogger so this comes first. Sad, because that was our first WoW Raid ever, and we learned a lot from it. Still, our recent foray into Magister’s Terrace was… fascinating enough to [...]

Level 80

Early this morning (around 1 a.m., Philippines Time), after turning in four of the quests in Venture Bay, Northrend, my Human Paladin (Anetheron Server) finally turned level 80. So how does it feel, for a longtime, old-school, avid gamer to reach the current maximum level in World of Warcraft? I’ve been playing MMORPGs since the [...]

Homeland Securing WoW II: Planning a Raid

When I made my earlier Homeland Securing WoW post, part of me had the thinking that it was plausible. Then again, I was also of the opinion that it was part of the standard, “fear every shadow” mentality that is actually fostered in intelligence operations, especially post-9/11. But, as this article in Wired points out, [...]

MMOs as science labs and classrooms

Found this wonderful article about how MMORPG play could actually be simulating now only our wildest fantasies but the settings in which the scientific method is instinctively being learned by young men and women. For the ones with a bit more preference for the scientific stuff, here’s the link to the draft of the study. [...]

Cats will pwn Mages

Ok, let’s get something straight: even in Shadowrun and Exalted, I have never, never, claimed that we Mages (or Magic user variants) can match up to the big bruisers in a stand-up fight. Raistlin Majere was feared, even by the gods of Krynn, because of his magical power, not his physical prowess. Which was actually [...]

The Azeroth Campaign: Verigand’s Fist Redux, Whitestone Lumber

Eversince I started playing MMORPGs during the Open Beta days of Ragnarok Online’s Philippine servers, I’ve always been kind of a lone wolf. My reasoning was party-level operations would require quite a decent amount of cooperation and coordination between players who had no better way of communicating other than typing. In the middle of combat, [...]

The Azeroth Campaign: Verigand’s Fist Redux, Kor Gem and Refined Ore

Even before the hullabaloo with the overcrowding of the servers of World of Warcraft (WoW), I and the kuya already made alternate characters with other servers. For me, my new Alliance group was birthed at the relatively low-pop (well, it seems like it) Anetheron Server. Of course, this being me, I couldn’t resist having a [...]