Dvons of WoW Ladies brought up an interesting point the other day. For those who play on PvP servers, Dustwallow Marsh is looking to be the new gank-a-palooza zone after Patch 2.3. Players in their 30s will now have a second quest hub to work through, although I don’t know how much different a swamp really is from a jungle in terms of terrain. Less trolls perhaps, but still a lot of water, a lot of trees, and a lot of crocolisks.
When I got a chance to hop on in to the PTR and try the new marsh on for size, I was delighted. Once again, I feel like I have been given a zone back. Not only will we finally get a chance to continue quest lines that have dropped by the wayside, there are entire new ones that absolutely rock. I won’t tell you much, but there’s a certain large fish, and some cannons, and suddenly Nat Pagle is asking you to do completely wrong things with fish bait.
Dustwallow is no longer “that zone I travel through on my way to the Barrens.” It only makes sense that the place will be flooded with people trying to get their quests done. I personally don’t play on a PvP server, unless you count that belf mage I made on a whim, but I imagine that the craziness in the next couple of weeks will eventually die down as people speed through the levels toward 60. Or perhaps the marsh will become everyone’s favorite contested zone. Either way, bring extra socks. That’s what they always say when you’re preparing for battle in the swamps.
Hey. You there. Bought your Xbox 360 and Halo 3 yet? No? Then do we have a deal for you. Microsoft is now offering a free copy of Halo 3 to gamers who purchase an Xbox 360 by December 21. Pay attention though because this isn’t a bundle and you’ll have to take a few extra steps to snag your copy of Halo 3. According to the offer page, you must:
Buy an Xbox 360 by December 21.
Connect to Xbox LIVE.
Register at this link with the code XBX7777, the serial number of your new Xbox 360, and a valid mailing address.
All in all, not too much work for a free game. And chances are if you’ve waited this long to get your Xbox 360, you were probably waiting for Halo 3 anyway. Now the only question is what to buy with the money you would have spent on it. We suggest a second controller so you can convince your significant other that games can strengthen relationships.
It occurred to us after publishing this that we should probably mention that this promotion is for the United States only.
The rumor-mongering masters at EGM have a few juicy tidbits to contemplate in their upcoming March issue. The notorious Quarterman is back, with a few more rumors:
They say:God of War: Chains of Olympus will move to PS2. We say: Yeah, that’s almost a certainty. But, how long will gamers have to wait for a console port? PSP games that move to the home console usually take a year to transition, and by then, PSP owners will have already moved on to bigger and better games. If you need your GoW fix any time soon, you’re going to play it on Sony’s handheld.
They say:Everyday Shooter will arrive on PSP. We say: Yep, that’s also almost certainly going to happen. flOw made the jump from PSN to PSP, and we’re confident that many games will follow. Considering Everyday Shooter’s simple control scheme, it’s perfect for PSP. We can’t wait.
From the pages of Japan’s Jump magazine comes news that Square Enix is giving tri-Ace’s RPG franchise Valkyrie Profile a touchable makeover, with the series’ latest sequel heading to the Nintendo DS. So says the translation sages at IGN, the game will carry the cumbersome title of Valkyrie Profile: Toga wo Seou Mono, and will introduce a new hero named Wilfred alongside unspecified series regulars.
Amanna is the latest blogger to bring up Warcrafter, a nifty little online application that is basically the Armory on speed. It’ll not only pull up your character, your gear, and your talents, but it’ll use all of that information to calculate everything you’d ever want to know about your stats, including DPS, crit percentage, spellpower, and even where all of those things come from. It’ll even go into your spells, and calculate the average heal or average damage of your most-used spells and abilities. Warcrafter tells you everything it can calculate about your character, directly from the numbers pulled out of the Armory. Fascinating to see.
There is also a sandbox page, which is everything an aspiring theorycrafter would ever need to make up the character of their dreams. Punch in a class, race, and gear, and then go to town shifting around buffs, weapons, talents, and anything else you’d want to check. Cerberus is an attentive creator, too– if there’s a calculation off or a piece of gear missing, he seems more than happy to add it in. I only hope that we don’t crush the site with our exposure.
The sandbox page mentions something about “locking” the character, and it would be cool to have a quick permalink setup for created characters (we could have someone show off all the buffs/gear needed to get the Ghost Wolf taming cast time down, or show off the highest possible spellpower available in the game so far). But other than that, Warcrafter is a great piece of web-based software. Very cool way to inspect every single aspect of your character out of game.
On the few (read: one) occasions on which we’ve been entrusted with the life of another’s child we’ve never thought “Hey, this is so enjoyable, I would pay to do it on a tiny screen.” Babies are noisy, and they smell like milk sick and (often) doody. In fact, “it’s like a job that you pay to do” is rarely a recipe for gaming success. The notable exception here is Burgertime, and only because being chased by giant eggs and living to tell about it is the most alive you can feel without the use of crystal meth.
Exhibit 7,324 that no one asks us before they decide to make stuff: Casual PC game Babysitting Mania is coming to the DS. You can play it for free right now on the PC, if you want. Or, you could take the precious life-seconds you would spend doing that, put them in a rocket, and shoot it into the sun. The choice is yours.
Yellow and blue gem sockets (Socket bonus: +4 spell damage)
Improves spell critical strike rating by 24, increases damage and healing done by spells and magical effects up to 55
So the biggest thing about this belt isn’t necessarily what it does have (it does have the highest +spell damage you can find on a cloth belt), but what it doesn’t have– spell hit rating. Unlike other high level epic caster belts, this belt trades off spell hit rating for a little extra spell damage. And so if you’ve already capped off spell hit rating, then this belt is your best bet.
Shadow priests are lucky in this regard– they get a talent that makes their spells much easier to hit, so they don’t need as much spell hit rating. For an endgame shadow priest, your other gear will likely already cap your hit rating, so this is definitely the best belt for you.
How to Get It: It is called Anaetheron’s Noose, so it drops from Kael’thas. No, I’m only kidding– it drops from Anetheron in Mount Hyjal. I thought maybe that Anetheron was hanged before he was somehow turned into a dreadlord (you think you can match the might of one?), but I couldn’t find anything like that in the lore, and I don’t even think dreadlords are made– they’re probably fashioned from pure evil or something sinister like that.
So odds are the people doing the hangings here are you players. Sure, kill the dreadlord, string up his body, and take the noose from his broken neck to wear around your waist. That’s real classy.
Getting Rid of It: As requested, I will not say something like “are you crazy?” or “why would you want to do that?” Instead, I will assume that you are reading this a few years from now, Wrath is out and we are all level 80, and you found this in your bank and Googled it to find out why you still had it. In that case, a vendor will give you 2g 71s and 88c for it, or it will disenchant into a Void Crystal.
Wondering if your favorite artist has ever appeared in a rhythm game? Looking for an easy way to compare track listings? MTV has just unveiled a new service that looks like it could be an answer for all your rock ‘n’ roll prayers: The Rhythm Game Track Finder.
The idea is simple: Enter in a song title or band name, and the Track Finder tells you in which games it/they have appeared, when the game was released, even whether a master track or cover version was used. Though we found a couple of technical hiccups (we got double results for one of our searches), this looks like it’s likely to be invaluable for rhythm fans.
Sierra has seen fit to release a new trailer for The Bourne Conspiracy, the upcoming title based on the book. Players take on the role of Jason Bourne, a super soldier of sorts who is talented in espionage and the breaking of wrists, elbows, knees, and whatever other bones you care to place in front of him. It’s hard to tell how much — if any — of the footage contained in the trailer is actual gameplay, but parts appear to be recorded within the game engine, and it’s looking very nice indeed. With The Bourne Conspiracy and Splinter Cell Conviction both releasing this year, it will be interesting to see how they fare against each other.
Totem Talk is the column for Shamans. Matthew Rossi has played two shamans to 70 and is working on a third, his main problem being he can’t decide whether to level another Horde or Alliance shaman. Yes, he’s technically working on two elemental shamans at once. Once again, we at Totem Talk hasten to point out that no one has ever said that he was very bright.
Now you begin working towards what they call endgame. How does one go about doing that? Well, hopefully you’re in a guild that can run at least the five man instances. If not, you’ll have to PuG them, but while doing that look towards getting into a good guild. By good, I don’t just mean sharding Bulwarks of Azzinoth here… a fully progressed guild may not actually need you all that much, and even if they’re looking for a shaman with your spec, sometimes it’s more fun to find a guild with which you can progress rather than one that’s already done everything. Look for a guild you can get along with first and foremost, because you’re going to be spending a lot of time with these folks inside unpleasant places packed with horrible things you’ll be trying to kill to crack them open for their nice shiny loot.
Either way, you first need to run instances. In a perfect world, you’d go from instances to heroic instances, then 10 man raids, then up to the 25 man raids if your guild has the numbers. This may or may not be the case: some of the best players I know are in smaller guilds and run just the 10 mans. But you will have to dedicate some of your time to getting gear, it’s the nature of the beast, so to speak. You can’t step into Karazhan in greens and expect to do well unless you’re being carried, or you really are Chuck Norris. If that’s the case, thank you for reading my column, sir.
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