My first week as Horde

 

I've been playing World of Warcraft for a very long time. Since it was closed beta, in fact. Back when the game was still brand new, I mean right when the servers first opened up, I played for team red. I was a Horde shaman, and proud to be so. My first shaman was not named Lodur, in fact it was what I thought at the time was the ever clever name of Rum. I played with one of my buddies who named his warrior Coke. We played with a bunch of workers and friends from college until partway through Classic WoW when they either got promoted at work, graduated or stopped playing. Some of our group though decided to move to another server and see how things were going on the Alliance side of things.

Off to Zul'jin we went, and with moving servers and factions in a time before server transfers or faction swaps were around, came a new toon. Abigail, the night elf hunter was born. She's traveled servers, and been race changed multiple times since she was born. I finished Classic WoW on her raiding with friends all the way through the original Naxxramas. I still gave a lot of love to Rum though, and even found time to run him through Ahn'Qiraj 40. When Burning Crusade released, though, Rum fell to the wayside as Lodur was born over with my Alliance family. I hadn't returned to horde except for a brief tour with the Choose My Adventure here on the site, that was until this past week when I server and faction changed my long time hunter over to play Horde side again with friends.

Learning to navigate capitals again

So, with some prodding from friends, Shialia worgen hunter became Qialoian pandaren hunter of the Horde. The first thing I will say, is it felt good to be Horde again. The second thing I will say, is that I spent my first night absolutely lost in Orgrimmar. The last time I had seen the city was back when Thrall was running the joint and flying was something you paid silver and gold to do. You navigated the streets of Org by foot till you were level 40, and slow mount until you were level 60. That said, having been so long since setting foot in the halls of the orc home, and it having changed so much from when I was last there, I really spent most of my first night just trying to figure out where everything was. After about the 200th time of asking for directions from guildmates I started to get the hang of it. I spent the rest of my evening just poking and prodding my way through and around the city. Even after all the upgrades and changes over the years, I think I like it better than Stormwind. I spent a lot of my time in Stormwind over the years, and while it has gone through upgrades and damages over the years, it doesn't have nearly the character that Orgrimar has. It is an absolutely amazing city, and quite beautiful in color, layout and how varied it is even inside the valleys and peaks. Despite being so varied, everything meshes together in a way that doesn't seem out of place or like it's all crammed into a space too small. While it's true that Stormwind is also quite varied in what it has inside its walls, by comparison it is like blocks of different colors just sort of placed near eachother. wow power leveling

I spent time trying to poke around the other horde capitols for a bit the next day. I still remembered my way around Thunder Bluff quite well, and it still remains one of my favorite cities for any race in any MMO I've played to date. Not much had really changed enough for me to really get lost there. Undercity, at least underneath, has largely remained the same as well, but even back in Classic WoW, I still can't find my way around it. Silvermoon City I still just can't stand. In all the others you can fly now, which makes things much easier, but at least to me in Silvermoon things are so spread out and it is super easy to take a wrong turn and hit a dead end. Not a fan, and I still get lost there. Overall though, I was quite stunned at just how interesting each of the cities were. There is quite a lot of character to each one, between NPC names, layouts and everything else. After a week of spending time in them, I think I like them better than every Alliance city.

From Alliance to Horde in Mists

My hunter was not max level when I faction changed her, she was 85 when the change happened. The good news on this is that it afforded me the opportunity to level-up and experience the questing through Horde eyes. The first thing that I noticed was how much the questing focused on honor and, in case of the Hozen, repaying them by defeating the things that scared and harassed them. Yes, there was a lot of fighting against the Alliance, but from what I saw it was more about survival. When I quested as Alliance in the Jade Forest, there was a lot of trying to convince others that the horde were in fact the bad guys and evil. Horde side, there was a lot of calling for seeing things with their own eyes. Even with the Sha popping up, the quest text was about honor and valor and duty more often than not. It was, in a lot of cases, like night and day as far as the difference between the two factions. Yes there was a lot of overlap in the types of questing, but you have to expect that to a certain degree. Honestly, I preferred questing through Jade Forest more-so than on my Alliance toon. I'm still going through all the zones and doing all the quests on both my toons, and I plan on taking note of all of the differences between the two faction's questing as well as reading all of the quest text. Right now it's more of a feel thing, and how it feels to me for questing.

The biggest shock, so far, was when I started doing scenarios upon reaching max level. Queuing for a random, I wound up getting Dagger in the Dark. I had completely forgotten about this scenario as it is Horde only right now. Alliance side we got A Little Patience, which to be honest I did not really care for. Part of that I'm sure is because I do not care for King Varian Wrynn as a character. To be fair my favorite Alliance faction leader is currently a mound of diamond sitting beneath Ironforge right now. This scenario though, Dagger in the Dark, is phenomenal. I mean, some of it I sort of expected after reading Tides of War, but even still it was very well done. It was a sort of polarizing experience, and something that from a story perspective makes so much more sense with why Garrosh is going to be someone we have to defeat. I got so angry at the betrayal when Vol'jin gets stabbed, and staying after the scenario to talk with Vol'jin, I couldn't help but actually care about killing Garrosh. Up to this exact point, as Alliance, I was very meh on the idea of having Garrosh be one of our bosses. I'm not saying that Theramore wasn't a big deal, but this, oh man. You get to see what he's up to, what he's starting to work towards, and you see even further how deep the corruption goes. I felt the desire to end him even more personally than Theramore after the big reveal of this scenario and I can't wait until my Alliance friends get to play through it in patch 5.2. It's been quite an experience so far, making the switch back over to Horde, and I can't wait to keep digging through the quests, and I'm looking ever more forward to patch 5.2 now, so I can continue the story. buy dekaron account

Do you have any quest-lines or things that I must do, or have to see now that I'm Horde? After making the switch my quest trackers have pretty much reset, and I'm looking to experience all the awesome things I've missed as an Alliance player over the years.
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Path of Exile hands-on: The sequel Diablo II deserved

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Like many gamers in their mid-20s, I spent countless hours in my teenage years smashing through dungeons and hunting for loot in Diablo II. The deep itemisation system made building effective characters a real challenge, and periodic ladder resets kept the loot-hunting economy fresh. Fast-forward 10 years and the highly anticipated sequel Diablo III was released to some serious complaints. The servers were unstable for weeks at launch, the always-online DRM caused a stir, and the endgame item grind was severely underwhelming.

Indie developer Grinding Gear Games aims to beat Blizzard at its own game with its new free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile. The game boasts a dark art style and an unprecedented level of character customisation that lets players build truly unique characters. Each skill is itemised as a gem that can be slotted into your gear and augmented with dozens of different support gems. The sprawling passive skill system is better described as a "skill octopus," with millions of different ways to build a character. I've spent the past few weeks smashing up monsters in the Path of Exile open beta and absolutely loving it.

Read on to find out why I can honestly say that Path of Exile is the sequel Diablo II deserved.

Look and feel of the game
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The first thing you'll notice on firing up Path of Exile is that the game is extremely pretty, with high-detail textures and the best use of lighting and shadows I've ever seen in a game. The art style is dark and gritty, which I found really added to the atmosphere within caves and underground zones as enemies can appear to sneak up at you from the darkness.

I had hilarious fun in the early levels flinging fireballs about in caves. My only complaint about the art style is that it can sometimes be difficult to pick enemies out from the background. Holding the mouse over summoned creatures also shows health bars that look the same as enemy health bars, which can be a little confusing. buy diablo gold cheap

One of the main complaints about Diablo III's zones was the distinct lack of randomisation, a problem that path of Exile has definitely avoided. Every play-through of a zone will be different enough that you'll have to explore to find way points and quest objectives. Elite monsters can be a real challenge, with special effects like auras and spells, and normal monsters deal an appropriately low amount of damage such that you won't die from a few stray hits. The main problem I've had is the crippling lag spikes and rubber-banding that's been happening on the European servers for the past week or two. The game has been unplayable for me at peak times, but I cut it some slack because it's still in open beta and the servers are being bombarded by an ever-growing player base.

Character customisation
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The passive skill system was initially very intimidating, but after a while I started to figure out how to navigate it. The key is to pick certain major passives that will synergise well with your favourite skills and then work out an efficient path to each of them through stats you'll find useful. I built a Witch that focused on energy shield and critical hit damage to pair with Ice Spear as it gets a 600% bonus to critical hit chance on far away enemies.

The skill system is complex enough that you can build crazy characters like a ranged warrior, a tanky melee witch, or a necromancer who summons flaming zombies. Yes, you can build a character who summons flaming zombies! Respeccing passive skills is possible, but you can get only a few respec points for free from quests and have to expend valuable Orbs of Regret to get more. I consider this a huge plus because it encourages you to build new characters when you want to try something new.

Much of the replay ability in Diablo II was in building new characters, but in Diablo III there's no reason to have more than one character of a given class as respeccing is free. Path of Exile also plans to encourage building new characters using a D2 style ladder system, and the studio periodically runs special weekend ladder race competitions for in-game rewards.

Itemisation and the flask system
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A big part of building a character is getting the perfect items for your build, and the core of any action RPG is always farming for loot. There are so many different stats in Path of Exile that finding the perfect items for a particular build is going to be a real challenge. Even white items can be valuable if they have the right socket configurations as they can be rolled into magic or rare items using orbs. acheter des kamas sur dofus

There's no auction house, but I think that's a good thing as arranging trades through forums is a lot more personal. To streamline the trade process, Grinding Gear Games has added a clever little feature on the official forums that lets you quickly link to items on your characters.

The flask system is a stroke of genius because it replaces the aggravation of having to replenish supplies of consumable potions with another layer of character customisation. Flasks are just like potions but they refill as you kill monsters, and they can even spawn as magic items with stats. I found it handy to pick up superior non-magic flasks and use Orbs of Transmutation to upgrade them to magic items. You can seek out flasks with properties that support your build, like health flasks that also heal your minions. I ended up using health flasks that heal instantly for those "oh shit" moments when my energy shield ran out, and I'm using mana flasks that gain charges every time I get a critical strike.


One of my favourite things about Path of Exile is that gold has been replaced with new currency items like the Orb of Transmutation. All of the currency items are consumables that are guaranteed to be in high demand because they can be used to upgrade items or re-roll item stats. There's even one called the Mirror of Kalandra that will produce an exact copy of a rare item. It's an absolutely inspired way to get rid of gold and the need for a gold sink, but it makes trading a little more complicated. buy guild wars 2 gold

Apart from the ongoing server issues and memory usage, I've had a fantastic time playing Path of Exile this week. I didn't really find the story behind the quests very appealing, but I don't think many people play action RPGs for the story. The art style and randomised maps gave me some serious D2 nostalgia, and the permanent character customisation options and ladder plans are the biggest things missing from Diablo III. In my opinion, Path of Exile is the sequel Diablo II deserved.
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