Author: Maureen Nichols

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My Former Addiction to World of Warcraft

There was a time in my life that was wasted on doing nothing but playing games. At the time, my former significant other and I had a PlayStation 2, which was pretty awesome, but it was nothing compared to what I believed was the best game in the universe: World of Warcraft. I didn’t work. I didn’t go to school. My partner at the time worked long military hours, and sometimes he was away for weeks at a time for training purposes. Well, that left me and the computer…and World of Warcraft.

I played everyday. I played for hours. And you know, nothing seemed wrong with it at the time. I even had some people in the game who fell in love with my Human Paladin. Ah yes, he would send me love letters and random trinkets he would find throughout his journeys. At the time, I thought it was cute in a way and somewhat flattering…but when I look back on that, (being the rational person I feel to be today), I see that the whole thing was ridiculous. Plain ridiculous.

I had a character that I taught how to fish in the game. I remember having my character sit on a fishing deck and cast a line, which lasted for hours. Yea, to get the good fish, you had to fish for a long time. While you’re playing World of Warcraft, I think you forget what reality is. It’s just you, you and your character. Or you manifested through your character. Whatever it is, it’s really weird now that I think about it. And it’s very wrong. I did a little light research online, and discovered that there are actually addicts of World of Warcraft. There is a whole website dedicated to postings of anonymous users that write about their triumphs and failures at cutting the WOW habit. It’s affecting people’s lives in a negative way. It’s funny how seemingly harmless a game could be, but how tragic it’s results could be. I heard a strange audio clip on the internet recently of a young man and his family having a terrible argument concerning WOW and him waking up late for school. The boy went ballistic, the parents were infuriated, and the family was just….in pieces. Can a game really do that? Well, the simple answer is yes. The more one becomes entangled in a fantasy world, the harder it is to get back to reality.

In the game, in order to attack a character you have to right click on them and then a red circle appears at the feet of the enemy. Hell, I used to imagine right-clicking on people in my own life that I despised and casting some wicked mage powers upon them. “Yea…a little bit of a fire blast, some arcane shots….maybe a few blows to the head with my staff….”

Now THAT is sad.

I actually leveled up my little cute pig-tailed gnome mage to level 40, but then I had to give the significant other “the boot”, and he took the computer with him, so I never saw my little gnome friend again. Recently, however, I did download the trial version. I thought it would be as neat as the first time I became immersed in it. It’s actually a little stale. I don’t know if it’s because I have so much going on in my life right now…a husband in the military, a relocation placement, job transfers, what have you…but for whatever reason, World of Warcraft isn’t what it used to be. And to be honest, I’m relieved. I’m relieved because that means that I won’t secretly fall into that strange trap of fun and fantasy that seems to grab people from the get-go.

I’m just glad I’m not one of those people on the forums writing about how many times they uninstall and reinstall the World of Warcraft game. Yea…I’d rather be addicted to Starbucks. At least I can share a cup of warm coffee with a warm-blooded being as opposed to interacting with fantasy characters which, in the end, will bring you nothing but regret.

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How to Farm Gold by Mining at Darkshore in World of Warcraft

Over 8 million people play World of Warcraft, and for most, their number one beef is the inability for lower level starter players to earn money on their server. For low level characters in Darkshore, mining is a terrific way to quickly bump up your gold stash. Make sure that you have a mining pick and the mining skill from the trainer in town and head out to the moonkin. There are quests all around the moonkin but you’ll mainly be circling this moonkin section over and over again until you are no longer getting experience points for killing them. Experience is secondary to what we are after.

After you pick up your mining skill and mining pick, head toward the moonkin and make sure your “Find Minerals” skill is equipped. Kill moonkin on your path to hit all the dots that come up on your mini map. You will find 90% copper mines, with the occasional tin and silver spawn. By doing endless circles around the caves where the moonkin are you can gather stacks of ore in an hour, plus you will be gathering the light feather that the moonkin will drop when you kill them. They will also drop small eggs, but they rarely bring gold on the auction house unless you are in the middle of Christmas where they go for a high amount due to the eggnog and the christmas cookie recipes that will float around.

Mining copper and farming light feather can net you around 5-10 gold an hour, which for a low level newcomer is a good starter profession and can up your bounty before you head into harder areas. This can purchase some higher tier armor so that the upcoming areas are easier.

Typically prices will vary widely depending on the server that you are playing on, and the economy of the auction house. On my server, Feathermoon, these are the current auction house prices on World of Warcraft for the things you will get farming gold at the moonkin caves in Darkshore.

light feather 3-4 gold a stack of 20

copper ore 3- 3.5 gold a stack of 20

copper bar 1-2 gold a stack of 20

This is a good way to get your quests done, your experience raised quickly for the area, and net you some quick and easy gold while going through Darkshore on your way to your next town. For it all to work, you must have mining skill, however the light feathers will drop for anyone and you can farm them no matter what skills you decided to have on your character. Good luck.

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Wizards of the Coast Announces Plans to Begin Work on Dungeons and Dragons 5e

I’m something of a newb when it comes to D D.; I was aware of it, but it never caught my eye until a couple of years ago when I saw some people playing it on a stream. They were having a blast and seeing them play piqued my curiosity. While I’ve picked up a few of the relatively recently released Essentials materials, I haven’t had the chance to sit around a table and play a game as of yet.

Even so, I couldn’t help but take notice when Wizards of the Coast announced that they were beginning the early planning stages of a new iteration for the popular game. They posted an announcement on Jan 9, 2012 giving readers a general idea of what they were hoping to accomplish with this new edition. They wanted to get fans input to see what people liked and didn’t like to try and create the best game possible. They’re even taking volunteers to partake in play testing to try out the preliminary mechanics.

It’s a nice idea in theory, but as others have pointed out, the D D; fanbase can be rather divided at times. There are still edition arguments both for and against each of the iterations that have been released so far. Considering how passionate the fanbase is, and how everybody has a different opinion, it’s not surprising. Still, it can make for a problem when you’re trying to take a consensus on what people like as people like different things and you may end up with conflicting reports.

On the other side of this coin, there’s the sense that WoTC wants to try and take the stuff that worked throughout the 4 and 2 half editions, toss aside the stuff that doesn’t and create a sort of D D; amalgam or Frankenstein. Considering how well that worked for the DC Animated Universe, I can’t say that I’m opposed to this particular strategy.

Who knows, it may even quell the aforementioned edition arguments. If they do pull this off, then all players will be able to find something that they like (in theory anyway). I highly doubt it will go that far, but it’s a fascinating idea.

One of the major criticisms is that it’s too early. 4th edition came out only a few years ago and they later released the also aforementioned Essentials material. The ball seems to be rolling for this edition and telling people that a newer version is coming could vex people.

As I said, I haven’t really dived into tabletop RPG’s yet, but I do get the sense that this is not a new problem. Almost every long running game has put out more than one edition over the years. It’s sort of the nature of the beast.

It does seem a bit early, but this may be the standard timetable for games like this? Another thing to take into consideration is that they are only now beginning work on it, which means that it won’t be released for well over a year at the minimum (judging by the feedback that I’ve read). As such, by the time, the product is ready to ship, people may be more open to the idea.

Considering how hard Wizards of the Coast is working to draw in new players, a new edition seems to make sense as you’re giving people a nice jumping on point. Then again, that was the theory behind both 4th edition and the Essentials line and both of those ended up with results where the mileage certainly varied.

As my interest in the game was only piqued long after 4th edition had gotten underway, I’m interested in jumping in on a new release. How it fares both for long time players and for accomplishing the goal of drawing in newcomers remains to be seen. As the game is still so early in production, it’s hard to even make a preliminary judgment. People will basically have to wait and see how the development plays out and see how things look as more information is released.

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Vindictus Boss Monster Guide: Wood Man Guard

This article will serve as a boss monster guide for the MMORPG Vindictus, covering the various details and stats about the Wood Man Guard npc, with a walkthrough on how to defeat it. Vindictus is a unique new style of action oriented combat, MMORPG. You can click the numbers by the thumbnail above to see images of what’s covered.

Vindictus Boss Monsters – Wood Man Guard

The Wood Man Guard is found at the end of the Mercenary Training Site battle in Perilous Ruins. He is the final encounter in this battle, and the primary objective of the main mission, being to kill the Wood Man Guard. This guys is a larger, faster and smarter version of the Wood Man enemies you have been fighting up to the point of this encounter. He attacks in exactly the same way, crouching down momentarily before slamming his mace into you with his melee attack. Dodge out of the way as soon as he begins to crouch, since his swing comes sooner than the smaller enemies, and cannot be stopped with your hits.

Picking up and throwing some of the various debris, particularly rock chunks from some of the destroyable pillars in the common enemy encounter prior to the boss, is an excellent way of causing some heavy damage to the boss. If you’re going to do this, I advise you make sure you put some distance between you and the boss, since he can quickly catch up to you and smash you while trying to pull this off. Landing enough heavy blows on him will make him incapacitated for a moment, granting you time for some free attacks while he slumps over. Don’t confuse this with his crouch, as they look somewhat similar.

Downing Wood Man Guard drops 3 cores on normal and 4 cores on hard. The Wood Man Guard is found within the Perilous Ruins, Mercenary Training Site battle and can drop one of the following items:

Wooden Plank – Plank of wood used in crafting various items, particularly weapons.
Empty Bottle – Empty bottle used to hold liquid that is used for crafting potions.
Gunpowder – Unstable chemical that explodes violently, used to make various bombs.
Small Bomb – Secondary weapon that causes an explosion, damaging all nearby enemies.
Spear – Secondary weapon that can be used as a throwing weapon, chucking them long distances to impale your enemies. Great fun to us