The Founding of Durotar, Campaign Menu showing Rexxar and Misha
This decision basically came from questing and exploring in World of Warcraft specifically where I was either thinking about the new areas that had come in cataclysm and/or thinking about the events that occurred between Warcraft III (WC3) and World of Warcraft (WOW). The Orc campaign in WC3 was mainly about them landing on the continent of Kalimdor in the area which would soon be known as Durotar with both their alliance with the Tauren and Darkspear trolls and continued struggle with the humans. Speaking of the Darkspear Trolls, there was a custom campaign that Blizzard made to show off that part of the WC3 Map Editor. It detailed how Thrall met Sen’jin (and Vol’jin) when the Horde reached the Broken isles on the way to Kalimdor, however this campaign although being ‘bonus’as well was only selectable from the ‘skirmish’ game screen as it was not an actual campaign .
Rexxar and Thrall in an in-game cinematic in the first chapter
The Founding of Durotar, takes a different approach from the usual WC3 RTS style, instead of commanding a whole army, you played as a small group of heroes, the most prominent being Rexxar, who is a half orc/ogre hybrid of the Moknathaal and is also a BeastMaster which in turn is one of the neutral heroes available from the Tavern. Rexxar by chance runs into the Orc Leader Thrall while he is building a new nation for his people and eventually leads the horde army against the bulk of the human Kul Tiras forces led by the staunch hero of the second war Admiral Daelin Proudmoore. During his quest he meets various other characters who are also able to be played some hero units some not. One of the purposes of this campaign was to let you play the existing predominately horde related heroes and units again as well as introduce you to the new horde hero and units as well as some new neutral heroes as well, as shown below.
Rexxar, Rokhan and Cairne Bloodhoof in the final chapter of The founding of Durotar
Playing through levels in control of a single hero is something really wanted to do pretty much throughout the whole of WC3, I even went so far as to customise multiplayer maps via the WC3 World Editor so I could play alongside the computer with a single hero unit, this idea was also picked up by the makers of the custom map Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) which became wildly popular. Basically what Blizzard were trying to do with this type of gameplay was to use the Orc Campaign in the expansion as a player introduction to the single unit questing adventure style of play in WoW as the Orcs didn’t exactly have a huge part to play in the Frozen Throne storyline anyway. Going back and finishing this campaign also answers a lot of questions and gives some insight of what actually happened between the finish of the Orc campaign in WC3 and the start of WoW, for example it explained who Rexxar was, how Durotar was claimed and Orgrimmar built and how Ogres and Tauren and many main characters appear in the WoW today, also it explains about Admiral Daelin Proudmoore and where Kul Tiras had been this whole time, though technically their island home is yet to be added to WoW.
Admiral Daelin Proudmoore, as he appeared in WC3 in the final chapter
Anyway It was a good experience, even though I got a bit impatient at the end and just wanted to see what happened, I played almost the entire Warcraft series of games from start to finish and have accumulated a broad knowledge of the Warcraft universe. I do like informing people of lore they may have missed out on especially when they may not have played any of the previous Warcraft games as it is a lot to learn by having WoW as your first ever Warcraft game. Saying that though a lot of people never bothered playing the singeplayer of many of the previous Warcraft titles, sometimes this can get annoying like for example people who ask things like where the Dark Portal goes to even after The Burning Crusade expansion had come out.
Anyhow, It was great to finally finish off this last bit of Warcraft 3 as I for one enjoy lore a lot and finding out more about the Warcraft universe is exciting to me whether it’s reading a book, the internet or playing an old game.
Until we meet again, know your lore,
JD
Rexxar, Misha and his Quillboar and Hawk as they appear in World of Warcraft
I have done a bit of experimenting with fraps and found it quite easy to use not to mention useful for screenshots, viewing your frames per second (this is sometimes abbreviated as FPS confusingly the same as First Person Shooter) in any game you desire as well as recording videos as I was thinking of making a youtube account and adding videos to my blog if the need arises. Usually I have just found relevant videos from the net if I need to show something. But I suppose having my own videos would be useful if I want to show a specific example of what I do in a game, I decided not to go with it for my Battlefield post as there was enough content out there to use. I think this kind of thing would be more suited to my Minecraft posts where I can catch what happens in my experiences or show off what I’ve made by way of panning camera and walkthroughs.
I like to think of myself as a writer more then a videoblogger as my very Minecraftesque friend TheFiendish has established himself to be, I’ve seen some scepticism from certainplaces that there is quite a lot of Minecraft (as well as other game) machinima out there and I’d rather not add to the mass (though you could argue there are a lot of blogs out there too) but when you obviously haven't scripted what you are going to say, it does begin to sound a bit painful unless what you are doing is someway incredibly exciting.
The Fiendish's, 'Let's play Minecraft' series, riveting stuff
One of the things I like about writing is that I can write in a lot of places that aren’t at home and I can express things better rather than through unscripted babble or a voiceover while viewing game footage. Also I use screenshots because I do save every one I take on my hard drive and they do take up a bit of space, and if these happened to be videos they would take up about triple the space, though technically there would not be as many videos and possibly less screenshots if I did this.Additionally I do not have the best internet bandwidth cap (25gig per month), so I would rather not be uploading and constantly auto-downloading while checking the videos, though these issues can all be rectified in some way.
I will definitely keep this in mind though, especially for future Minecraft posts.
Also Known As: BF3 Also on: X360, PS3 Genre: Online Shooter Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: DICE (Digital Illusions CE)
Good aftereveniorning, time for more shit I’ve done played and time yet again for another post title, this is the last one I need to create I think of posts with a theme cause I can’t seem to post anymore without it having some sort of theme, or I think the term is regular article, though I still need to ask my good friend Dave Jackson how he gets that‘regular posts’ feature on the side of his blog. Anyway as“The Past and times of Yore” is the title for reviews of games of the past (and sometimes more recent past) “My usual Spiel” is the new title for my reviews of reasonably new games, games of which I came out in the past 1 or 2 years but unfortunately it’s kind of hard to judge.
I indeed have decided to go back and review past games I have played but it’s kind of hard to differentiate between the past and the“present” in general let alone game releases and obviously I do have to play the game first before I review but that’s not too much of a problem as with new games I buy the game then immediately play it (usually) and whenever I go back and replay a game singleplayer or otherwise the review usually comes after it. Also “review” I probably not the right word to use for these things my “spiel” refers to my“take” or “opinion” on the game and what it means to me, instead of catering to all crowds and giving a score out of 10 at the end, saying that I do try to write the blog to be intelligible to people who don’t usually play computer or video games (or at least the ones I do)hence the large amount of hyperlinks(heh heh) but for the most part there is a lot of gamer lingo in there and I apologies for anyone finding it difficult to both read both my prose and the technobabble mixed together.
But anyway, time for more relevant words to today’s topic though I do need to give a bit of backstory on my whole EA Battlefield experience to make things a bit more clear for my actual review.
Well I’m going to say it, I’ve always been a staunch supporter of EA/DICE’s Battlefieldseries, at least that’s where I stand, it’s kind of a gaming version of the old Australian Holden vs Ford car rivalry, of course one could argue that they’re both different games despite the initial similarities though I still don’t see why you would buy both.
Lego: experience it your own way
This series I can say has a special place in my heart kind of like Lego has a special place in the hearts of children, It provides a service to me as my preferred kind of multiplayer FPS as Lego provides a service for keeping children (and adults) entertained. It also provides me with many different experiences of the one medium, this game gives the FPS genre a much broader feel then the likes of Counterstrike Sourceand the older FPS such as Quake II provides, it allows me to play the game in one way and when I get bored of playing that particular style I can continue with a different style of play. And thus is Battlefield, the game of which I have enjoyed ever since the likes of Battlefield 1942that has graced my screen to this day and as my good friend Brok power has pointed out numerous times Codename Eagle that has come before it. Battlefield 3 is the latest one to come out and is the successor to Battlefield 2 which in turn was the successor to Battlefield 1942. I never played 1942 much online it was more of a LAN game for me (as was Battlefield Vietnamand Desert Combat) only more recently since I had purchased the complete pack for a bargain price I had a small go on the 3FL server Brok had recommended and played on consistently which I even had a go of myself and I got to say it was pretty fun, previously I had only played singleplayer with bots, which is also fun but does get a bit lonely after a while. Battlefield 2 however has been my most online played FPS, I really didn’t have a problem with it, it was a good enough replacement for Vietcong which was one of the first games I played online and the first one where I was serious, serious as in I was in a clan as was online at specific times in order to play for “wars” against other clans, Vietcong was a great game in a way that it had a great multiplayer and a great singleplayer which is a great achievement for an FPS.
Vietcong: a most classic and one of my favorite FPS
Battlefield 2 however did have its differences from Vietcong, for one Battlefield 2 was set in present day using modern weapons, and it had (depending on the map size i.e. 16/32/64 player) a vast amount of area to move around in and that’s just one of the reasons I liked about it another was the different sides and classes you could go, classes were a big thing in all of my FPS playing and it is one of the reasons I never liked Counterstrike Sourcethat much. What I mean by this is that a side is what army you are playing as, whether it be the US or Russia or some kind of Middle Eastern Army (MEC, PLR) and your class is what role you are taking, whether it be basic assault, medic, sniper, engineer etc and what made it great was that all armies have different weapons to each and all classes had different weapons as well. BF2 also had vehicles, and lots of them which included jeeps, APC’s, tanks, choppers, jets and more, along with the vast expanse that was most levels this was a great combination. I played Battlefield 2 online for lack of a better word (or two) a lot, it had next to no singleplayer aspect but this didn’t matter, you played BF2 multiplayer online and that’s all that happened it had ranks and weapon unlocks and was kept alive by expansions and booster packs such as Special Forces, Euro Force and Armored fury. I played a small amount of clanning and warring. And it was good, it worked well, it played well with a few minor quirks here and there and I enjoyed it.
Battlefield 2: Simple and effective
Of course I could go on to Battlefield 3 right here but except the Battlefield saga kept going, I for one did not play Battlefield 2142 much at all (I think I played the demo for about 10 minutes) though sometimes I wish I had cause it looked kind of fun. After Battlefield 2 my main FPS of play was Battlefield Bad Company 2 (this is an odd title I know and there were a few more Battlefield games between this but I didn’t play them so look to the video above) Anyway this is where I noticed things had changed which were:
It had a Singleplayer story-driven mode
It was limited to only 32 players
There was now less classes and they had changed their loadout and abilities
You were no longer able to play as the Commander.
There was no Airstrike, Vehicle drop or Minimap UAV (this was replaced by a remote-controlled helicopter and possibly the support mortar)
The maps were smaller so there was somewhat less vehicles altogether
You could no longer use the Laser guided missile in the Jet or the TV-guided missile in the Attack Chopper
I did know this type of thing would happen as I had skipped over a few battlefield games since BF2 and yes there were some good things namely better graphics for one and new unlockables. But I casually brushed some of these changes aside as I always had this idea that the Bad Company series was largely singleplayer focused and was EA/DICE’s attempt at a singleplayer Battlefield experience which by my opinion, worked. I only played the second Bad Company game but I enjoyed the fast paced storyline for the most part. Recently I was talking with a friend regarding Battlefield 2 and he made an interesting statement regarding the series saying that: Battlefield 2 was all the pieces laid out, the whole modern-day combat product with all of the features (well mostly) and they have taken bits away, added bits on, meshed pieces together and generally changed things around. Regardless I was a bit taken back by these changes whether they were permanent or not.
Then came Battlefield 3, I wasn’t really expecting it until I decided to get Bad Company as an upgrade for BF2 I naively thought it was the sequel to BF2 but obviously this was incorrect. So I basically was not expecting anything when it came out and it was only through the encouragement of friends both to play with and write my review that I purchased it not too long ago for a bargain price of $57.00 I might add at a certain non-commercial gaming shop in Elizabeth st. And I will start with the Singleplayer.
Running, following, hoping you don't get shot, usual exciting day
I’ve never really expected a singleplayer in Battlefield, that was largely the territory of other games of roughly the same field, such as Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, Day of Defeat maybe?. 1942 had only a sort of play through all the maps in a half-historical re-enactment of World War 2. Battlefield 2 had no singleplayer campaign at all apart from the semi-useless 16 player bot mode which I think was bettered in later patches but I never bothered to check. Bad Company was the first one largely based on a singleplayer experience, a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare style of singleplayer mode to be precise and Battlefield 3’s singleplayer mode is no different. I hate to complain about this but I have never liked this style of singleplayer storymode, my favorite singeplayer experience of all was not in the Half-life series as some might think, but in Vietcong. Vietcong had a great storyline, you were the same person the whole time a new sergeant going into a new base during the Vietnam war, you had your office and quarters where you could read your diary, previous mission reports and many other documents you also had a firing range you could go to and pick any weapon you had unlocked or picked up to test out and take on the next mission and there was almost always a meeting in the briefing room which was heaps of fun to watch before you went out on your mission and on several occasions you could walk around the whole base.
Ahh, trademark army banter
There is none of these things in the BF3 singleplayer it revolves around a story where you are blipped flashback-style into the minds of several different people and do various army related things which all revolve around the one storyline, there is no home base, no office or quarters, no picking your weapon, no briefing just a harsh awakening and a boot in the head (sometimes literally it seems with the shaky camera) to get your fun-filled action-packed mission-face on soldier. But don’t get me wrong I’m not saying this isn’t fun filled experience, it is fun, but coupled with the features I had previously described would have made the entire experience all that more fun(er) and possibly (ier) and also last a bit longer, maybe I just wanted to see what happened, but usually with things this action packed it is over relatively quickly. Vietcong had that kind of slow paced walking through the jungle ambush style of play which added a great deal of atmosphere and suspense and anyone who has seen movies such as Platoon and then watched Black Hawk Down
Platoon: stealth, jungle and suspense
Black Hawk Down: action-o-rama
Maybe it’s my fascination of being in an expansive online world that I like that attracts me to games that have it (Battlefield as an FPS example, WoW as an MMO example and Test Drive Unlimited as a racing example) except this isn’t exactly the same type of interaction that a typical MMO would give (well, at least when it’s not player vs player enabled), in this environment there’s danger around every corner, literally a corner could be a shield or a barrier from being spotted by a prowling tank (or “lumbering” whatever a tank does) and obvious difference being that pretty much every living thing you interact with is either a friend or an enemy, there are no civilians here, although I sometimes wish there were. I’ve always wondered what games like the Battlefield series would be like with civilians around like you usually see in news reports and documentaries, where you not only have to check your fire for friendly units but for civilians running around as well. I have played the entire singleplayer campaign now and ran through totally deserted streets apart from the scripted events of when enemies suddenly appear and you mow them down. Of course there are certain reasons why I thought there are no civilians in most FPS games:
You could shoot them for fun like the cold blooded murderer you are :D
You could use them as human shields
They could be distracting
They use up extra graphical and processor power
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, however took civilians to a new extreme as you can see below:
I have not played Modern Warfare 2, but seeing this like this makes me think that the Battlefield 3 singleplayer could have been much more entertaining, of course Patrick Bach, Executive Producer of Battlefield 3 had this to say. To be honest, I don't want to be slaughtering masses of civilians in fact I don't even want the intention to, I just want them to be there, walking, running, screaming, hiding doing what you usually do when a gunfight breaks out, to give you the challenge of distinguishing whether they are a threat or not.
Anyway on to the multiplayer front and as if this post hasn’t been long enough already I’ve got a bit to say, once purchasing the game I was quite eager to see what this momentous release was like, what they’d changed and what was new, and the first surprise was how the installer scared the hell out of me. When you install Battlefield 3 for the PC you have to install this thing called Origin which is basically a new version of the Electronic Arts downloader, and "downloader" being the key word as when you actually activate your product you have to actually press the button to “download” it after this it proceeds to download the game saying it’s going to use 11gig of your bandwidth even if you have the DVD in the drive. However, the difference being is that if you started the origin installation process with the DVD in the drive it would say it’s“downloading” but you notice that it’s going way too fast and there’s no net activity because it is “downloading” off the DVD, but if you started the origin “download” process with no DVD it actually would download the whole 11gig. Well gee that’s not confusing at all is it?
I rarely complain about game company ‘requirements for play’ but this is just ridiculous and dangerous especially for people (like me) with fairly small internet bandwidth caps. But anyway I got the game installed from the DVD thankfully and found that the BF3 main menu system is run from your web browser, which is a very interesting change that I have not seen before, but it works ok and is fine with me, having a look at the multiplayer games available I do enjoy having a large amount of server filter options which work well. I found the in-game interface easy enough to manage, the new player spawning system is pretty good the way you can spawn directly into vehicles, but does take some getting used to.
BF3 spawn screen: fancy but not too complicated
Now for the classes, this is probably going to sound like a rant from me because I have always been a huge fan of class-based FPS as unlike the FPS of old you could do something which made you different from the other person, it gave you a role to fill that no-one else could i.e. Medic can heal, Sniper has long range capability and the nuances that balanced them out i.e Medic could provide health and revive but their weapons were weaker, Snipers had long range weapons but in close range could only defend with a pistol, Engineers and Anti-tanks were slower and equipped with SMG’s or Shotguns but packed more firepower with other weapons and with either a boon or bane to vehicles and Assault were basically the all-round class. To be honest I had no problem with the 7 class system that BF2 had, all of them had their own special way of playing and their own toys. But as I mentioned earlier in the post this had changed in BF2142and then slightly changed again in Bad Company, this wasn’t too bad I guess they had merged the Spec Ops and Sniper classes naming them‘recon’ resulting in Snipers having C4 and being able to unlock a Spec Ops style Carbine, they had also merged the Engineer with Anti tank so you were able to unlock and choose either rocket launchers or anti tank mines to use. These two changes I tolerated but then it kinda got weird, they had given the support light machine gun to the medic and given the ammo resupply bag to the assault class so there was no more support class which was kind of strange cause I always had thought of assault as the main non-support class.
BF2 spawn screen: Seeing this made me happy even before playing.
And so in BF3 I look at the classes and find that the Assault and Medic classes have now been combined, so in theory there was no assault anymore and the Medic class I had always gone and loved was now the only choice for a base assault class, as the Support was back to normal having the LMG again and the ammo bag. I just found it annoying that this had happened cause now my identity as a support class was skewed I have sort of decided to either go Assault (Medic), Support or Engineer depending on what my squad needs, but this is made more difficult because of the fact that both the Medic and Support classes are both displayed as the same icon in the deploy screen.
Battlefield 3 classes: more gear more specializations, more unlockables, better?
Furthermore to my ranting I’d also like to point out that I do not approve of the new minimap, I mean compared to what people say about it I can see things fine in its neon glowingness, the thing that annoys me is the new way you can zoom in and out. The minimap in both BF2 and BC2 had two modes one was where it was in a corner of your screen and it showed your immediate area, the other was when you pushed the button to enlarge the map (mine was capslock) and it automatically showed the whole map. In BF3 the minimap is controlled through the N and M buttons, one to enlarge the map the other to zoom the map if I so desire. When starting play the minimap displays your immediate area as usual but when I press the button to enlarge the minimap it comes up with an enlarged version of my immediate area, I don’t want this, I don’t think anyone would, what I want is when I press the enlarge map button I want to see the whole map I don’t want to have to press N, N, M just to see the whole damn map. People have told me that they don’t really use the large minimap or even that they don’t need the minimap altogether as you just “know where to go” but I for one use the minimap a lot especially when seeing spotted enemies around me and also just when I want to check out which areas of the battlefield I should go, of course I don’t know whether someone has brought out a fix already or this is going to be changed in a later patch.
Oh great an enlarged version of my immediate area, not my cup of tea
Planes are back, fill her up please!
With the aircraft there are now jets in the game again, but after having played the singleplayer mission being a Jet gunner and having lots of fun with the ground attack toys I was mildly disappointed that apparently you cannot be a jet gunner in multiplayer, with used to one of my favorite things to do in BF2 although only being able to use the one hard-to-use laser guided missile, it was very satisfying when used properly and speaking of which they have also taken out the popular TV-guided missile from the attack copper (sigh). Speaking of aircraft though I am now quite elated as I mentioned before you could auto-spawn into the choppers and one of my favorite things to do as an engineer was to sit in the chopper as a passenger with my repair tool out and repair the chopper when needed, it’s quite humorous as people get frustrated as to why they can’t destroy it and also helps because the choppers (especially the transport ones) are easily shot down.
But apart from those things not too much had changed that mattered greatly to me, sure the graphics are better but Battlefield 2 though in its entirety was perfect for me (well that is after all the bugs and glitches were sorted out) it replaced Vietcong as my main multiplayer game for a great length of time until I eventually discovered the greats of MMORPGS with the infamous Lineage 2 and then WoW which ultimately became one of the reasons I don’t play FPS heavily or in clans anymore, the other being the repetitiveness FPS play i.e. run around get shot, spawn again repeat, next map repeat though I’m not going to get into that whole argument that’s just one of the reasons. As I read one employee of DICE saying that it’s very hard to tweak a game when doing so means that you may change or take a minimal feature a single or group of users know and love and I can agree with that, it’s always what I think whenever something is changed in a game sequel or patch, instead of complaining about it, just think about the person who has to make these decisions. Battlefield 3 in its entirety is fun to play, even if it’s missing or changed a few things that I did enjoy myself with and I hope the series continues to be great as the ones I’ve played have been my best experience of multiplayer FPS gaming, it allows people who are not the best at running and shooting to excel and have fun in other ways and allows so many different aspects of play to specialize yourself in.
Battlefield 2002-2011, No matter which side of the war you’re on, long live the veteran.
JD
I may have died but I was different to everyone else, well at least I tried to be
Just a quick post here regarding the Mikeland Factions server
As some of you may have read from my previous post I wrote about my adventures of the Mikeland Factions minecraft server, but forgot to get photos of the magnificent spawn before it was destroyed due to the unexpected loss of the modifications on the server thus rendering the spawn area unprotected (and those of you who do play Minecraft will know all too well what that means)
Well fortunately the server and the spawn area has been made anew (not sure whether that was the official post though)
So here we are, some shots of the best spawn area I have seen in any Minecraft server as yet
Spawn area on top of the tower with a water fall-stopper down
The spawn tower with cages for naughty players
View of middle courtyard from spawn
The world portals and a pvp arena
Alternate pvp arena
Shop district
Shop district (unfinished)
Admin shop
Admin shop
The playable pvp arena
Awesome huh? too bad I probably won't be playing on Mikeland anytime soon with the rumored return of a new server from the one and only Norc of Neonetwise, and stay tuned for some Battlefield goodness
Well I’ll be fwangoed by a two headed tikbalang they actually did it....
Before I go on to explain what I mean by this unusual opening sentence I’d just like to introduce the new post heading. “The World of Alphabui” is my new World of Warcraft (which I will refer to as WoW) post heading, it’s true I have done some posts on WoW in the past but it’s mostly been tying in to my in to my Minecraft experiences. It’s unfortunate that I happened to start this blog after almost 4 years of playing WoW but I do remind myself that It was mainly set up to document my Minecraft creations and experiences as Minecraft is a very creative, new and constantly expanding game, whereas WoW has limited options of creativity has been out for quite a while now in game terms but is still expanding maybe slower than before. But I cannot compare the two as in terms of money and resources WoW is made by Blizzard which is a large company and one of the richest games designers around, whereas Mojang the makers of Minecraft are a company of 6 or 7 in a small office in Sweden who are reasonably rich I guess. Regrettably although I have now decided to make posts specifically about WoW it may not go on for too long, you all know I (and many others) am inevitably waiting for the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic which may very well be a replacement MMO for me, but we shall see.
Blizzard Entertainment: creators of WoW, HQ
Mojang AB: creators of Minecraft HQ
The name “Alphabui” comes from when I was trying to work out a good MMORPG name, as usually my name has always been“JDman” in any game unless it was unavailable (whereas “Gfunkywaker”was used) but I thought for a MMORPG I needed a more generic odd sounding name that A. was short and easy to type B. was grammatically incorrect and fun to hear people say on Ventrilo or Teamspeak and C. could be easily modified to use over several alternate characters or ‘alts’ or‘toons’. The primary reason for this being that people would recognize me even when I was on other characters. How I discovered my name was entirely by chance, I was playing the first Grand Theft Auto (ahh the memories) at school and my good friend Richy J was setting it up for me, he then decides to give me a name to be able to join the multiplayer game and simply bashed the keyboard with it coming up with“hbui” I immediately developed a liking for it and I used ‘Hbui’as a name for the protagonist in a fictional short story about ninja’s in the future which I wrote for english class, it wasn’t till a while later that I actually decided to use the name in a game setting and World of Warcraft was the first, this led to me calling my alts Zbui, Jbui, Nbui, Ubui etc and had led one of my good friends in WoW ‘Awrath’ nicknaming me“Alphabui”
The many "bui's" and these are just the Horde ones
So in short this new post title is the story of the Alphabui(s) and of WoW in general of course
Now, back to our feature presentation….
Blizzard Entertainment (the now very wealthy creators of World of Warcraft and anything Warcraft in general) have officially announced the next expansion to WoW and boy is it a big surprise. The Mists of Pandaria is the name and it’s got the WoW abuzz. To understand my statement at the start of the post the Pandaren notably were originally an april fools joke made by Blizzard introducing a new playable race for Warcraft III. They appeared throughout Warcraft III as non playable monsters which had nothing to do with the storyline itself. In the Warcraft III expansion: The Frozen Thronethe playable Pandaren Brewmaster neutral hero unit with one in particular named Chen Stormstout who featured in the Orcs RPG style campaign The founding of Durotar. He was also was referenced a few times as well as there being years of rumours of the Pandaren throughout the non-lore history of WoW.
Common npc Pandren in Warcraft III
A playable Pandaren Brewmaster in the WC3 Expansion: The Frozen Throne
I often used to think that the next WoW expansion was going to be about The Emerald Dream which is apparently in turmoil and keeps popping up from time to time in WoW lore, but I guess this will just have to wait cause I’d hate to say it but it seems that Blizzard has slightly sold out. I don’t mean that in a sense that their betraying their fans and doing what gets them money (well actually one could argue that’s exactly what they’re doing) but I knew people had been crowing for this for ages but the reason they had not given a larger appearance to the Pandaren is that they had nothing to do with Warcraft Lore, until now. It was rumoured (just like a lot of other things about the Pandaren) that they would be a playable race in the Burning Crusade expansion but instead the Draenei were introduced, the Draenei had been around before but it was the way they were introduced into The Burning Crusade (BC) that got some people (my brother especially) kind of annoyed, they looked nothing like they did in Warcraft III which were given the name “Lost Ones” and their starting area was on two islands in the corner of the map which didn’t seem to exist prior to the expansion. It was this kind of making lore up to fit the story is relatively ok with me but this did seem kind of out of nowhere.
An uncorrupted Draenei, Broken and Lost One
However as Lore-spontaneous as the Draenei were the Pandaren are possibly even worse, although small rumours did exist the “Mists of Pandaria” is something pretty much plonked into the Lore just as they have plonked another island somewhere on the WoW map. I really don’t have any qualms against Pandaren (or Pandas in general) in fact the new Monk class does look pretty cool though this coupled with the fact the whole new‘island’ does have a very oriental feel to it just gives me the‘WoW does China’ vibe (similar to the ‘WoW does Egpyt’zone of Uldum) , and also since there is both Pandas, martial arts and a chinese setting I would go as far as to stay it’s ‘WoW does ‘Kung Fu Panda’ as well. Another thing I find kind of weird about the Pandaren is that they’re going to be playable by both Alliance and Horde which makes things awkward in PvP, I mean it’s one thing to chose your own path but aren’t the Pandaren mostly spiritual and peaceful? I wouldn’t think killing other members of their fairly small populated race would be justified in any circumstance, especially for some old hatreds of other races that they’ve never met before, I mean the Goblins do that but their fuelled by greed and their at least not killing each other..
A Pandaren Monk in Pandaria
But who am I to judge I’m just a player who pays my monthly subscription, and I’ve seen the extent to which some blizzard employees get anger directed at them or openly harassed. And whether I decide to purchase this expansion or not will depend upon a few things, but it will be a long time yet.
(warning this next paragraph or so contains WoW jargon)
In recent news I’ve started playing my Orc Hunter and am leveling my way up through Mount Hyjal again on the Silvermoon US realm, there’s been so much changed in Hunters since BC, especially with pets, with them getting talent trees of their own plus a few other things, I must admit I am very glad that a previous Survival-build-only ability Scatter Shot has now been changed to mainstream for Hunters, apart from that nothing too interesting, I decided to spec Beast Mastery again since talents had been reset, as I did want to have a Devilosaur at some point, speaking of which Petopia is an excellent site for everything to do with Hunter pets, it’s an invaluable resource for people wanting info on our Hunter’s best friends.
Zbui: My Orc Hunter with my current pet, a Devilosaur on Silvermoon US realm
I have also decided to create a Worgen Druid on Nagrand Alliance for a few reasons:
1. My current Druid is Restoration/Balance specced so I was eager to try a Feral Cat dps/Bear tank spec.
I wanted to be a Worgen (again) because I had previously made a Worgen druid to try them out and enjoyed the look of them.
2. I wanted to have a character where I only played with someone else so for example I would play with my friend who I will refer to as Rennz after one of his main characters and we will level up together only playing when both of us are on.
3. I’ve always wanted to have a go at the kind of ‘power playing’ that I always see others doing, well not really power leveling just going at a much faster rate then I do. I had also selected myself as doing only Mining and Skinning as tradeskills as even though I had the backup of my other characters I am aiming to lower the ‘downtime’of leveling professions and selling items at the Auction House, although with the ore and skin I’ll be getting as well as various other things. But anyway I’ll see how we go.
My Worgen Druid: Wbui and the rest of my Alliance characters on Nagrand Oceanic realm
Well that’s all for now, I think this was quite a groundbreaking first wholly World of Warcraft themed post. I’ll be back again with more don't you worry.
I’d like to sidetrack a bit here before I launch into my gory details, firstly you might have already noticed that these shots were taken in a different texture pack to my usual Misa’s 64x64. Yes the new pack I’m using is LB Photorealism 256x256 yes 256x256 I’ve gone up quite a lot of pixels, I gotta say it looks quite amazing as you can see from the screenshots. When I first viewed this texture with a friend I wasn’t too impressed with the patchy heavily textured feel to it but that was only because we were flying high above the ground so after playing it for a while you just get used to it and it looks amazing when you’re on the ground. Sometimes though It’s hard to determine what’s what, especially in the case of stone, cobblestone and gravel at first glance, probably because everything is so realistic it looks pretty much the same but that’s a minor detail.
LB PhotoRealism: not for the weak RAM'd
Another minor detail for that matter is a few of the new object textures (such as melon vines) aren’t quite finished yet but will be. They have finished the Endermen though which is kind of weird now I think about it cause what does a realistic Enderman skin? Compared to Misa’s it does look a bit better obviously with it being 256x256 though I did notice that some of the armor and sword textures weren’t so good or creative (i.e Misa’s swords got prettier and the wooden one was shaped like a club) and also all the mob textures were taken from Misa’s as well. Anyway so that’s the one I’ll be using for awhile at least, I don’t think you could get much better anyway unless there’s some kind of WoW themed one out there.
Also I just wanted to make a comment on my sort of lack of coverage of the Minecraft patches, this is mainly because I’d rather talk about my adventures and creations in Minecraft rather than the Minecraft development on the larger scale which can be found in many other reliable locations most of the time I just notice the new patch notes on the welcome screen when I login. I do refer to patches at times during my posts but usually it’s just a small announcement, patches don’t mean that much to me in the long run unless it’s something absolutely groundbreaking or experience changing for me, texture packs do though as per the paragraph above. By the way we’re currently on 1.8.1 and 1.9 and 1.10 are coming up soon I hear on the grapefruit.
Anyway, so on to my main topic:
As you’ve probably guessed in my questioning title I have briefly gone for another foray into the Mikeland Factions server, I did a short introduction to the Mikeland Survival server a while ago detailing the environment there and what I had built, my short previous run on the factions server roughly came out the same way as the last one did so here an introduction to life on the server.You login and are immediately presented with a spawn area of incredible size and grandeur, it had pretty much everything, giant walls, high towers, elegant gardens, farms, pvp battle arenas, stores, giant monuments, most of which were only there for show, but it’s a grand sight indeed, much better than the last spawn they had and I was quite annoyed to find I had not taken any screenshots of it where I thought I did, apart from the ones at the end of the post. A long walk to the outer gates then a short walk enters the war zone a zone which is pretty much rife with faction pvp where no land claims can be made, a short walk further out leads to the mainland, where most of the clans have laid their claim (har!) You are then presented with a difficult situation.
Factions!
In order protect your chests and items and buildings in Mikeland factions you need to make a land claim and to do that you surprise, surprise need a faction, the times of the LWC mod are gone as I had earlier detailed that there was an epidemic of people making houses out of furnaces etc, which were also protected. The strength of the land claim depends on how many members and claims a faction has, for example if faction A has 4 members and one claim and gets attacked by faction B with 8 members, if faction B manages to kill all of the faction A players it can claim over their land because they have the greater number of members. At least that’s what I could work out for the short time I was on there, it’s a very cutthroat kind of culture that makes you feel unsafe pretty much everywhere you go and making you take precautions such as living underground, hiding your chests and being wary whenever you’re on the surface.
So here's my story, and I do apologise for the lack of screenies, I'm not exactly the best photojournalist
When I first logged in the spawn area was nice and safe and very grand looking but once I left it’s protective haven I had to first traverse through the‘war’ zone filled with people warrin’ it up and just hoped I didn’t attract any attention, but of course then I got to the‘wilderness and had to make a choice about who I was going to join. This is a very delicate situation as I had to contact someone who is already in a faction and just hope I spoke nice enough that they will allow me in. But to be honest I could be anyone, they don’t know me, I’ve just recently arrived on the server and now they’re going to accept some random person into their secret hideout and I automatically have access to all the shared resources, trust is a crucial matter unless you personally know the player.
Eventually I did get accepted firstly with a small faction called ‘Genesis’(previously Exodus) who had just taken over an enemy base, this of course didn’t last for long until we were attacked by another faction and had to retreat to an underground base where I took it upon myself to organize all of the faction’s resources, I liked doing this, along with building farms and expanding the base I was much more of a builder and resource organizer and collector then a PvPer which gave me a lot of rapport from fellow faction members. I had just finished a small but high wall around the entrance to our underground lair when I logged out and logged back in to find things in a bit of disarray, this happened a few times actually I seemed to keep missing the moment when the shit hits the fan and always come bumbling back in oblivious to what’s happened until I see the previous signs of carnage around me and take an educated guess, I then do a quick warp to the faction home and find a completely new “fallback” base. I always liked the idea of fallback bases, basically in case you got raided by another faction, you set your own personal /home teleport to the fallback base where there was a backup supply of food, tools, weapons and other resources ahh just like in a real war.
Quite an interesting place to set up camp, in the shadow of another factions lava-walled fortress
Especially in the night...
I believe my poor timing was due to the fact of me being a bit older than most of the playerbase on the server, this has been common in my Minecraft servers and communities especially Tribalfield where apart from the server owner and his friends I was probably the oldest by about 10 years and at one point I was in a partnership with someone who was 13 years my junior, but it’s a game it doesn’t make much difference although most older players do try to avoid collaborating with much younger players, this is especially true with WoW, as most of the playerbase is over 25. Saying that I don’t mind playing with younger players as long as they are not complete assheads i.e. talk shit in chat, grief others creations or go around killing (the latter two apart from servers which allow it). But because I am working at full time and they are all school students, I sometimes don’t get on till about 8 or 9:00 where about %80 of the MC playerbase gets on a lot earlier in the afternoon so most of the stuff during the week goes down then.
So anyway it obviously looked like our base had been raided and I checked the faction had been disbanded so I set off in search of another faction, where I came across ‘Vrykul’ (previously Whicolony) if you do happen to be a WoW player you’d know that the Vrykul were an enemy race in the “Wrath of the Lich King” expansion. So I gained their trust by organizing the base properly inc the layout, the resources, I also created a huge underground farm (which my brother claimed looked like a underground drug farm, and I kind of agree) which is a more prominent feature in your usual town or collaboration, underground or otherwise since the introduction of hunger in 1.8 All this took quite a while as when your underground you have to cut out the space yourself which is a lengthy process.
The farm grows..
and grows...
and grows!
The Vrykul resource room, I like being organised
The Meeting Room
So anyway this went well I even had made my own room and was even given the illustrious‘Head builder’ title. Then of course the inevitable happened and our underground base was raided (which I only logged in to see the aftermath of) luckily we had also created a ‘fallback base’ as I had mentioned earlier, this one was in the desert and had a wall and all the amenities needed for a retreat so I went through my room (and a lot of others) and grabbed anything of value even tearing up the wooden floor and ported to the new base. I had only created my temporary dwelling aptly named the“dirty den” outside the main base and hidden my resources when I logged back in after a day or two and yet again found the base in ruins , just previously I had hastily demolished huge sand and stone towers where I was told players were using to try and jump over the wall in our claim which was a bad omen. I wasn’t sure whether our faction was still together, I didn’t bother checking, I noticed my den was demolished and all my items taken, I also remember thinking that hiding your chest under one block of obviously placed wooden floor wasn’t exactly a good idea.
My Room in the Vrykul Faction lair
The Vrykul Fallback Base
My hastily made abode
After that things went from bad to worse, I didn’t really have any intention of starting over again though when I happened to log back in this time I was back at the spawn area which had been almost utterly demolished (I think I was beginning to get a knack for this) I wondered who the hell could cause this type of destruction but this post on the Mikeland forums soon explained a lot , so it turned out that all the faction and land claim data was lost, including the spawn area protection, so basically anyone could tear apart every facet of the spawn area, and boy would it have been quite a haul, I saw quite a few untouched diamond blocks on my brief survey of the wreckage. So that was that, Mikeland factions is factions no more at least for awhile, and with a server message like this I don’t think it will be given any love any time soon. And that was my second time on the Mikeland factions server and frankly it ended a bit more spectacularly then the last, and I digress if the whole server has not gone halfway kaput then it was just going to be joining faction after faction as each one gets destroyed .
The ruined spawn area
The server message reads: "Attention! as a change of pace, the management has decided to remove all faction-based commands and features, and doesn't care about the server anymore, have a nice day!" :S
So I didn’t have much of a run on factions but I would like to say thanks to a few people who made my time there all the more fun:
From Exodus there was only B1SH0 that I knew fairly well who also managed to revive the ‘Genesis’ faction for awhile, and from Vrykul I’d like to thank: Skyguy2424, Dekanmai and xiaphexxi
Epilogue: Afterwards I took up residence on the original Mikeland survival server with my good friend WarpageHD and his friend ConcreteBanana who have quite set up indeed at their underground lair at almost bedrock level (which was the norm) it features a network of tunnels and quite a big mob spawner farm with an automatic drop shaft where they could be picked up, I wasn’t allowed to live in their secret underground base so I found a small pond on the surface and decided to make it into a house, with glass as the roof two blocks under the water, where I could possibly extend to other patches of water or even the outright ocean via underground tunneling. But I may have to leave this development for later due to other recent developments.
So in conclusion as I might have said before the Mikeland former factions survival server and the original survivor server are both fun and scary places, Warpage and I have met the main man Mike (on Teamspeak) at one point and I do congratulate him for managing not 1 but 3 servers (including 1 creative) even if one has partially lost a lot of its data and mods. These servers are not places for the semi survival/creative hybrid style that we used to play on Tribalfield as both griefing and raiding are allowed here which gives quite a dangerous, exciting and edgy feel when you know you could lose everything in a space of 5 minutes, but that’s half the fun.
You’ve been warned.
JD
It can get as bad as it can but at least here it can’t get worse.
