Christmas may be over but the holiday events are still going on. New years is a big celebration in World of Warcraft. Here is the description of the holiday from Blizzard:

Another year is ending in the rich world of Azeroth. Countless battles have been fought, and numerous accolades achieved. It is time to laud victories and give remembrance to those lost. In celebration of the old year’s passing and anticipation of the new, skilled brewers and talented pyrotechnicians have brought their finest creations to the bustling cities; join the party underway and ring in the New Year with your fellow adventurers!

Type: Holiday Event
Date: December 31st – January 1st
Location: around Azeroth

Fireworks

The innovative and artistic engineers of Undermine have been slaving away since their display of pyrotechnics in July. Their latest and greatest — not to mention highly dangerous to operate — creations will be on display in the cities of the world every hour after sunset. Keep your eyes to the skies, and be sure to stick around for the finale!

Potent Potables

What good is a party without sampling some of the brewers’ delicious work? Kegs of the finest brews are available in the cities of Azeroth, bringing good cheer as we bid farewell to the old year. Cups are available for all party-goers; simply pick one up and fill up at the keg to warm your belly and lift your heart!

Revelers, All

Many soldiers formerly abroad have come home to engage in the festivities. Share in the merriment and dance with the revelers, or, if you’re so inclined, blow a kiss to one that catches your eye. It’s all in fun, after all; they appreciate the attention!

Winter Veil is almost over in Azeroth. If you have not done so yet, head over to Orgrimmar and Ironforge and grab your gifts from under the tree. Each of your characters can receive gifts, but hurry it all ends on January 2. 2010.

Here are some of the activities athat you can accomplish in World of Warcraft before its all over.

Greatfather Winter Greatfather Winter is visiting the great cities of Ironforge and Orgrimmar – courtesy of the fine folks of Smokywood Pastures and he’s spreading cheer in celebration for the Feast of Winter Veil. But, all the cheer-spreading is making Greatfather Winter hungry, and he’s looking for adventurers to get him his daily fix of milk and cookies.
Winter Veil Bosses The denizens of the dungeons of Northrend are also getting into the holiday spirit, and some dungeon bosses even wear festive Winter Hats just like Greatfather Winter’s. Defeat a Winter Veil boss, and the boss’s hat is yours! Winter Veil bosses of Northrend: Grand Magus Telestra (The Nexus) – Red Winter Hat Jedoga Shadowseeker in (Ahn’Kahet: The Old Kingdom – Red Winter Hat Mage-Lord Urom in (The Oculus) – Green Winter Hat
Revelers During the Feast of Winter Veil, the innkeepers bring out holiday decorations to provide a festive atmosphere for their patrons. Who knows what might happen if you /kiss a reveler standing near a sprig of mistletoe….
Gift-Giving In the quiet, early hours of the 25th of December, the industrious goblins of Smokywood Pastures are already awake. As a much-deserved reward for the noble adventurers throughout Azeroth, these generous harbingers of the holidays deposit gifts underneath the decorated trees in Orgrimmar and Ironforge. Keep a keen eye out for these presents, as they’re there for the taking! Starts: December 25 Ends: January 2
Metzen the Reindeer Disaster has struck! Metzen the Reindeer has been kidnapped! Metzen is one of Greatfather Winter’s eight reindeer – and property of Smokywood Pastures. The Jinglepocket Goblins have received two ransom letters from groups claiming to have Metzen. Concerned adventurers should visit Ironforge or Orgrimmar for more information.
Smokeywood Pastures’ Missing Shipment Smokeywood Pastures needs a few brave adventurers to investigate the disappearance of a shipment of holiday goods. Rumors are the shipment are in the possession of the Abominable Greench, found somewhere in the snowy regions of the Alterac Mountains.
Jinglepocket Goblins’ Fare Shops The Jinglepocket Goblins have set up their seasonal fare shops in major cities. Adventurers can purchase many holiday favorites – including Greatfather’s Winter ale, candy canes, gingerbread cookie recipes, and mistletoes.
Snowballs Whether you pick them up from your local vendor or ask a friendly engineer to craft them for you, no feast of Winter Veil is complete without some frozen projectile-weapons. Get your mitts on some snowballs and say, “Merry Feast of Winter Veil” the old-fashioned way!
Snowmen Accompanying Greatfather Winter in his journeys across Azeroth are his loyal troops of snowmen. They can be found wandering around Ironforge and Orgrimmar, bringing with them the chill breath of winter into even the warmest climates.

The new Dungeon Finder tool, promotes the joining of random pugs to receive gold and emblems. There is also an achievement tied directly to the dungeon finder.

When your character completes the “Looking For Multitudes” achievement you will receive this cute little pug as a companion in Azeroth. To complete this achievement, your character must have used the Dungeon tool to group with a total of 100 random players to successfully complete random heroic dungeons. After completing the achievement, you will immediately receive this pet in your mailbox sent by the Blizzard Development Team. Go out there, meet some strangers on the internet and receive a pug.

The newly updated Looking for Group (LFG) Tool in World of Warcraft is,… well Wow! Pardon the pun, but the tool is just that good. In the old days, raiding was the only way to access high level dungeons to attain epic gear. Blizzard realized that only a small, (very small population) of players actually had the chance to enter these epic encounters. Blizzard decided to make these encounters more accessible to a broader audience. Throughout this year and last they have made improvements that would allow the average player a chance to enter these dungeons. The greatest innovation, in my humble opinion, has been the LFG tool or now known as the Dungeon Finder.

The Dungeon Finder supports cross realm groups, teleporting directly into the dungeons and a few other features. Here is a breakdown of those features;

Dungeon Finder

• This feature has replaced the Looking For Group tool and provides all-new dungeon party creation functionality.
• Players can join as individuals, as a full group, or a partial group to look for additional party members.
• Groups using this tool will be able to teleport directly to the selected instance. Upon leaving the instance, players will be returned to their original location. If any party member needs to temporarily leave the instance for reagents or repairs, they will have the option to teleport back to the instance.
• Players can choose the Random Dungeon option.
• The Heroic Wrath of the Lich King Daily Random Dungeon option will award two Emblems of Frost no more than once a day.

• The normal Wrath of the Lich King Daily Random Dungeon option will award two Emblems of Triumph no more than once a day.
• Continuing to complete Wrath of the Lich King Heroic instances using the Daily Random Dungeon option will award players two additional Emblems of Triumph each time.
• Daily Heroic and normal dungeon quests have been removed. These quests have been replaced with weekly raid quests (see the “Quests” section for details).
• Level-appropriate rewards will be offered to players who choose the Random Dungeon option for pre-Wrath of the Lich King dungeons.
• Players can be placed in a group for a random dungeon no more than once every 15 minutes.
• Random Dungeon rewards will be placed in each player’s inventory automatically upon completion of the dungeon (final boss killed). A pop-up notification will display any rewards earned through the Dungeon Finder.
• Instead of choosing a random dungeon, players can also choose specific dungeons appropriate for their level range. Multiple instances can be selected at one time. The feature no longer limits the choice to look for only 3 dungeon groups at one time.
• Pick-Up Groups
• Cross-realm instances are now available and use an improved matchmaking system to assist players in looking for additional party members. As with Battlegrounds, the realms in each Battlegroup are connected.
• As part of the matchmaking system, some of the more difficult dungeons will have a minimum gear requirement. Players also need to meet the requirements for dungeons that require attunement, such as keys or quests. If a player does not meet the requirements for a particular dungeon, a lock icon will be displayed next to that dungeon. Hovering over this icon will display the requirements which have not been met.
• Only conjured items and loot dropped in a dungeon for which other party members are eligible can be traded between players from different realms.
• A Vote Kick feature will be available in the event a member of a party is not performing to the expectations of the other members.
• Players who leave the group prematurely are subject to a Deserter debuff preventing them from using the Dungeon Finder for 15 minutes.
• If an existing group loses a member, the leader will be asked if he or she wants to continue the dungeon. Choosing to continue will automatically place the group back into the Dungeon Finder queue.
• A Player will not be placed in a group with people on his or her Ignore list.
• Players who take part in groups who have one or more members who have been matched with them randomly from within the Dungeon Finder will receive extra rewards, up to and including the coveted Perky Pug non-combat pet. The more random players with whom one groups, the faster the pet can be obtained.
• The Need Before Greed loot system will be the unalterable default looting system for pick-up groups in the Dungeon Finder and has been updated.
• Need Before Greed will now recognize gear appropriate for a class in three ways: the class must be able to equip the item, pure melee will be unable to roll on spell power items, and classes are limited to their dominant armor type (ex. paladins for plate). All items will still be available via Greed rolls as well as the new Disenchant option should no member be able to use the item.
• Players will be able to roll on items with a required minimum level higher than a player’s current level.

This system provides access to better gear through the badge system for almost all the player base. This is a step in the right direction, as well as slightly addicting. Have fun and good luck in your travels.

Even though I have been put off by MMOs recently, I am still plugging away at Champions Online every so often and so I figured I would post another build I am currently enjoying. Unluminous Man is a “copy” of one of my favorite City of Heroes characters. In CoH, Unluminous is a powerful Dark/Dark/Dark Defender with a ton of dark, cold, slimy, tenticular tools with which to defeat evil doers. (By the way, if tenticular is a word, be very afraid.)  Since Cryptic saw fit to put a darkness set into CO, I figured it would be an interesting experiment to see how the same character concept worked out in the new game.

Unluminous Man is something of an experimental build. Most of my other builds have focused on having tons of layered defense and/or killing enemies quickly. For Unluminous, I wanted to see if I could create a character who could heal and/or drain himself out of trouble. This means drains, heals and yes, Regeneration. I have gotten this character to level 21 and so far, it is working fairly well, even though I am missing some important powers.

Powers

Shadow Bolt (Rank 1) — Nothing more than your simple energy builder here. There is a chance to cause fear, which gives a small overall reduction to incoming damage, but I have not noticed it much.

Shadow Embrace (Rank 2)– I find the darkness Shadow Blast to be a slow, lackluster power. So, I respecced out of it and went straight for the cone AoE Shadow Embrace. This power has a good area of effect and ticks damage fairly quickly. It isn’t the greatest damage power, but it cuts henchmen down in large numbers easily. It is a little clunky to use against master villains and higher because of its energy cost.

Also, this power has a great visual effect, with writhing black tentacles eminating from the character’s hands. My big disappointment is the fact that you cannot change the emanation point to the character’s head. I think the look of this black-clad figure with tentacles snaking out from under his hood would be the BEST. POWER. EVAR.

Regeneration (Rank 2)  — By far, the best passive defense for low-level characters is Regeneration. On Unluminous, the goal is stacking heals of various types as the primary means of defense and regen is one of the best. So, though I generally avoid Regeneration in my builds, Unluminous has it.

Lifedrain (Rank 2)  — Another mainstay of the character, Lifedrain allows me to heal while doing damage. Coupled with Regeneration, I can heal very quickly when the battle goes sour.

Crippling Coils (Rank 1)  — Darkness has a hold that takes a 2 second charge and up to 100 energy. Crippling Coils has no charge and costs 30 energy. Now, there are a few advantages to the darkness hold, but in practice I have found these advantages to be outweighed by the charge time and energy cost. Crippling Coils is a nice, quick-firing hold that takes one target out of the combat for several seconds — enough time to finish off someone else, or to charge a more lasting attack.

Ebon Void (Rank 1) – The darkness block enhancement is… ok. It has a standard damage reduction and a chance to reflect some damage back at the attacker. In practice, this damage is negligible on all but the biggest attacks; no one is going to kill themselves on your shield. There are better shields out there, but this one is good enough.

Force Eruption (Rank 1 & Gravitational Polarity)  — This power acts as a momentary “Get Out of Jail Free” card when I am overwhelmed. It knocks everyone down, allowing me to set up a Shadow Embrace, or Lifedrain. The Gravitational Polarity advantage is a damage buff, and has become standard on many of my characters.

Illumination (Rank 1) – This is an experimental power purchase from the new Celestial power set. It is a debuff you place on a foe that causes anyone attacking the target to get a small heal-over-time effect — another stacked heal for my build.

Stats

My super-stats are Endurance and Presence. Endurance gives me the energy I need to run full maintains of Lifedrain and Shadow Embrace. I am trying Presence as a  super-stat to give me big bonuses on my heals… hopefully. Currently, Lifedrain is the only power that benefits from the super Presence. The Illumination buff might benefit, but it is pretty small and so the effect is hard to see. I need to pick up some other heals to make the Presence pick worthwhile.

Tactics

Pretty simple actually — fly in, zap all the henchmen with Shadow Embrace. Any remaining henchmen and villains (or higher) can then be dealt with using another Shadow Embrace, or if I am in need of health, a combination of Illumination and Lifedrain.

If things go bad, I can use the Force Eruption to knock people down for a second while I drain some life, or I can turtle up with Ebon Void and hope that Regeneration can save me.

Thoughts

This is an experimental build and I am not yet sure how well it has worked out. Regeneration is very good at low levels and almost any situation where your health gets low can be handled with block turtling. I hate block turtling and so my goal is to build up enough layered healing so that I can stand in the middle of a pile of enemies and heal through their damage, blocking only the charged shots of the bosses. In this respect, Regeneration is good for probably 80% of the fights in the game. In the fights where the incoming damage is too heavy for Regen, I have Lifedrain which heals for 90-100 points each tick.

I took Illumination on a whim and unfortunately, it underperforms, providing a meager heal over time effect after you hit the affected target several times. The heal amount is in the low teens every couple of seconds and this just isn’t enough to notice under most conditions. If I could, I would drop this power for Bionic Shielding which has gotten a significant boost in the latest patch by having its recharge time cut in half.

I could still use one or two more stacked healing powers and I am wondering how Ego Sprites (with Slave Mentality) and Mindful Reinforcement would perform with a Presence of over 100. Alternately, I could just take a maintained healing power, but I like the idea of fire and forget heals that allow me to recover while fighting and so I will take a traditional heal only as a last resort.

Damage is another issue. The tentacles are adequate for most fights, but take a little too long to kill hard targets. Unluminous could use a big hitter. Still, the goal of this build isn’t powerful attacks, but having the capability of outlasting and outhealing opponents. I will have to see how the next 10 or so levels play out to determine if this is a viable strategy or not.

The folks over at Hi-Rez Studios certainly know how to keep the hype moving.  Following the recent Beta Weekend, and Limited Edition reveal, comes another contest that will score some lucky players virtual face time with the devs.  Chatting not your cup of tea?  How about a shot at a free copy of the Global Agenda, Global Agenda apparel, gift certificates “and more?”  Oh, did I forget to mention the drawing would award in-game “flair” items?  Because they will.

The contest, aptly titled ‘It’s a great game contest ™,’ is based on your Steam handle.  Change it so ‘Global Agenda’ is in the handle somehow, play some multiplayer games (MW2, L4D2, etc), and if you get spotted by a Hi-Rez developer, or a curious gamer, they’ll ask you some questions regarding the game.  It’s really that simple, but here’s the official post on the ordeal.

Judging by the wording of the contest, there will be multiple drawings.

Tip:  You don’t need to actually be playing multiplayer games to have your name show up.  Just load them and alt-tab out of them to keep your name in the pool.

So let’s get this out of the way first thing: I promised screenshots, but can’t deliver. I obviously screwed something up with the configuration of my screenshot program and it is no longer behaving. Obviously, I will have to take some time out to fix that problem before getting too far along because I would really like to accompany some of these stories with a picture or two.

Last night was my second night with Vedis, trolling about the starter human lands. This time, my friend Steve, who decided to resub his account to team up with me, joined me and provided me with some armor he crafted. Add to that a quest reward or two and I am the owner of a sparkling new set of chain mail and a wicked looking rank 10 glaive. Time to stick me some goblins!!

And there in fact, were a lot of goblins killed last night… and some fish caught and cooked… and a package delivered. I am taking the advice of many Darkfall forum-goers and getting my basic quests done before heading out into the world, and it seems to be working for me. However, you’ve already heard about my adventures with goblins and I can’t stand to fish in real life, so I can’t imagine someone telling you about their fake fishing in an action game makes for a good read.

So instead, let’s talk about killing folks… well that and getting killed by folks.

My encounter occurred before my friend joined me. Having mastered goblins for the most part, I was hunting in the thick of a goblin spawn. Scouts and fighters were falling to my spells and blade (the spiffy 2-h sword I bought). Shamans were still rough, but I could take them. As I was finishing my latest kill, I noticed another player up on the nearby hill, fighting his own beasties. I recognized the name — on one of my runs to/from the town, I saw this guy die in combat to another player. I was wary, but figured that this guy was far enough away, injured and fighting his own goblins, so he was likely not a threat.

Yes, in retrospect, I know how dumb that sounds.

In the meantime, my goblin hunting was going well, but I found myself in a bit of a pickle. I had gotten surrounded by a fighter and a scout and though I killed them easily enough, I was down some hit points and some stamina. By itself, this was nothing to worry about, but I thought I probably ought to check on my nearby PvPer. Before I could spot him, there was a flash and damage. A shaman had spotted me, zapped me once and was casting again. I rushed him and started battling, dancing back and forth in an attempt to dodge his spells. I got the combat under control, but realized that I was horribly exposed, with only a fraction of my hit points.

My would-be PKer did not disappoint me. He charged down the hillside and started swiping at me. He was injured (though less so than I was) and had no equipment but his sword. I was not going to let this guy take me down. I took a swing and then moved past him, quickly switched to my staff and fired off a heal. Then it was back to the blade. A few hurried swings later and my assailant was down. Unfortunately, that left me with a handful of health and a shaman who was more than happy to finish me off. I tried to get another heal off and run, but it was no use. I killed my attacker, but he ultimately “killed” me as well.

Which left me in a rough position. My foe had almost nothing on him, but I had a weapon, some armor, a staff, and lots and lots of crappy goblin loot. Both of us died, but he died just a tiny bit ahead of me. If he were to respawn first, he could run back to the site of the battle and loot my corpse, “winning” even though he had lost the fight. I banged on my space bar thinking, “Why won’t I freakin’ DIE ALREADY?!?”  Finally, I respawned and instead of heading to the bank to get gear, I equipped my newbie staff and started immediately to the goblin spawn, zapping my self heal as I ran.

Fortunately, when I made it to the site of the carnage, my tombstone was still there and there were no goblins in sight. I quickly looted my corpse, rushing to drag everything into my pack before anyone else arrived on the scene. Then, without bothering to search for my assailant’s body, I turned back to town. There he was, no more than 100 yards away. He obviously had come to the same conclusion that I did and had charged straight back from town. For a moment, I thought he might engage me in battle again, but he didn’t… his hit points were only about 1/3 recovered whereas my spamming of self heal had given me close to 3/4 of my health back. He exercised the better part of valor and steered well clear of me as I headed back to town.

As I passed him and gave him a “Nice fight” in chat… the “because I pwnd you, Jackass” was implied

In my last post, I talked about my boredom with the latest crop of MMOs. Well, to combat that boredom, I went on a spree of installing games, some old, some not, on my computer. I mentioned Fort Zombie and King Arthur before and you can add to that list various versions of Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Wonders and the venerable, but still unmatched Master of Magic. Those were good games and fun diversions, but ultimately, I was still bored. It seems I had a fever for which the only cure was an MMO.

More cowbell might have worked too, but would have woken the kids.

So, after a bit of waffling about spending more money so close to the holiday and possibly wasting money on a game I would not enjoy, I whipped out the card and bought Darkfall. Now there is no doubt that Darkfall is a risk. After all, its niche is free-for-all PvP with full loot. The only game I have ever played that was close is Shadowbane, which wasn’t full loot, had a safe newbie zone and was many, many years ago. Oh yeah, Eve… but I never got far enough with Eve to really make it count. Add to that the fact that the reviews at Darkfall’s launch ranged from “has potential” (which is the gaming equivalent to my six-year old’s baseball league in which everyone gets a trophy for being a unique snowflake) to “It made me throw up a little into my mouth” and yeah I would definitely say that signing up for Darkfall carries an element of risk.

But, I am itching for a new game and well… I need something to write about so I hit the “Buy” button and started downloading the client. A quick note: The client is huge (about 10GB), but with uTorrent, it took less than an hour to download. If you are thinking about getting Darkfall, save yourself some time by using the torrent as opposed to a straight download (and don’t forget to seed).

I fired up the client, sat through about 10 minutes of patching and then a quick character generation screen and the human, Vedis Bishop, was born and thrust into the world of Agon. The first thing I noticed was that the game looked pretty good. Granted, my standards for computer game graphics are low relative to the modern gamer and having read lots of reviews and commentary on Darkfall in the past, I had been conditioned to expect something like this (oh and name that game by the way… should be an easy one):

What I saw were decent character models and nice landscapes. I would love to show you some screenshots of my travels, but some dummy changed the default capture key on FRAPS without realizing it, so I was dutifully taking pictures, but nothing was happening. Thus, the tale of my first night with Darkfall will be unfortunately devoid of pictures.

After putzing with the user interface for a few minutes, I could walk around, use objects, equip, sheathe and unsheathe my newbie sword. I figured that was certainly good enough to start, so I walked over to the nearby Counsellor NPC and picked up my first quests — kill 4 goblins and collect their axes. Sounded easy enough. I checked the mini-map, found a nearby goblin encampment and headed warily over, knowing that at any minute, hordes of evil PKers would pour over the horizon looking to gank me and steal my stuff.

I should have been more concerned about the goblins… I reached their spawn point without incident. There were no PKers nearby and in fact, I was the only player here. In the distance I saw a couple of goblins and another within a short sprint. I figured I could easily take the straggler and then consider my next course of …

*THUD*

An arrow sunk into my shoulder, spraying blood all over me. The damn straggler saw me, pulled out a bow and started firing away. The first arrow had taken a noticeable, but not unmanageable chunk of my hit points, so I charged the archer, side-stepping to dodge his second arrow. I got up on him and let loose a couple of blows. He turned and ran and I gave chase, sprinting and swinging in hopes of landing a shot on his exposed back.

*THUD*

Too late, I realized that the goblin scout had managed to run me toward his comrades. Now the second scout had noticed me and started firing and the other fighter was on me with his sword. At this point, the fight had gotten out of control and I was sidestepping and swinging wildly. I managed to down the original scout, but was cut down.

I respawned back at the Counsellor and since at the time I didn’t know how to rest (or even that there was a rest command), I stood around waiting to get enough hit points to try the goblin spawn again. While I was delving into the help pages, I heard a zap and saw a big chunk of hit points bleed away. I fumbled around, closing the help window, re-equipping the newbie sword and looked around to find a fully armored player standing behind me. Now, I knew I was about to get my rear-end kicked, but I figured better to fight back than be bullied, I took a swing at him.

*ZAP*

Dead again… ah well. I respawned again and though the armored guy was still around, but he had obviously had his fun and didn’t bother with me again. Time to head back to the goblins. This time, I saw a lone goblin well away from the others. I quickly descended upon him and hit him a couple of times, to little effect. He retaliated with spells and powerful blows and quickly laid me low.

Ugh… that was my third death in about five minutes. It was obviously time to rethink my technique. I knew now to avoid crowds of goblins, be careful when chasing the scouts and to steer clear of shamans for the time being. Oh… and that armored guy mining over there is a jackass, but try to ignore him.

I approached the goblin camp from the other side and found a goblin fighter. He caught sight of me and pulled out his bow. I dodged the first arrow and then crouched behind a rock. He responded by edging down the hillside, firing another arrow or two into the boulder. When he was close enough, I sprinted from behind my cover, hacking away. We fought a short and bloody battle which ended with me standing over the fighter’s tombstone.

*ZAP*

Crap! A lousy shaman spotted the battle. There was no way I was going to take the shaman, but I wasn’t going to leave empty-handed. I put away my sword and hurriedly looted the fighter’s corpse, grabbed an axe, bow, arrows, a carrot and a handful of coins and fled back to town as the goblin pelted me with spells. My first victory!! As trivial as it was, I have to say, it felt like I had worked for it. And that felt pretty darn good.

Now, with a handful of hit points left, I just had to figure out how to rest… Darkfall’s UI is certainly different from most MMOs. Much of this comes from trying to jam the fluid aiming and shooting interface of an FPS together with the bulky, key-and-menu-laden interface of an MMO. Thus, you have binds such as right-click to switch between shooting mode and interface mode. To an FPS-player, this is second nature, but to a traditional MMOer, right click is usually used to spin your character, leading to the occasional frustrating experience of hearing a noise and trying to spin to see what is going on, only to be frozen in place and greeted by your character screen or the world map.

Other interface “issues” come from a deliberate attempt to make certain actions clunkier. For instance, having to sheathe and unsheathe your weapon to perform certain actions, or having to drag every single object from a corpse into your backpack. I am pretty sure this is by design to make sure people aren’t looting in the middle of combat.

A few issues are just clunky design, or part of a poorly conceived newbie experience. I saw no mention of the rest action in the beginning help guide, or any of the tips. None of the basic actions such as rest or recall are on your hot bar by default. So I asked and learned that you have to open your skills screen, drag the rest and recall icons to your hot bar. Then when you want to rest, sheathe your weapon, hit the hot bar item to rest, then left-click. (Quick note: Left-click is always your action button. The hot bar items don’t actually perform the action they are assigned, but instead change what your left-click does. Another example is when you put spells on your hot bar, clicking those spells just sets up what your next left-click casts.)

A little on the tedious side, but I can learn it and deal with it. It will take some practice to get some actions to be smooth in the heat of combat.

In any case, once I had gotten my first kill, things started to look up for me. I equipped the goblin axe and it did significantly more damage than my little leaf blade. Baiting and luring the goblins using cover seemed to work and if I drew two, I could use the cover to protect me from arrow fire while finishing the first enemy. At some point another player wandered by and we started killing goblins together. Soon, the field was littered with goblin tombstones and both of us were fairly rich (in that “I just started playing an hour ago” sort of way).

A couple of sorties (and bank trips) later, I had killed my allotment of goblins and collected the axes required for the quest. I had a helmet, a leather chest piece, arm guards and leggings. I had about 150 gold, a bow and arrows (though I have not tried archery yet) and a few spare swords in case I was killed and looted. As I was adventuring, I was awarded with a steady stream of gratifying messages telling me that my mastery of axes, running and sprinting had increased. I even found a random chest with two amethysts! I continued on a bit, completing a couple of the gathering quests, but then had to reluctantly head to bed.

I would rate my first night of Darkfall as a positive experience. A lot of other modern have gone so far out of their way to sanitize the low level play experience that it often feels as though you get your first ten levels for just logging in. Darkfall does nothing of the sort. It lets you learn the game by trying and failing and in doing so, reaches a balance between accessibility and challenge that I have not seen in a while. Now I realize, that it is impossible to judge a game by the first night and it is quite possible that the skill grind will eventually wear me down, or that the infamous horde of gankers is waiting for me at the next town, but I will say that as far as first nights go, Darkfall was amazingly enjoyable.

And I promise the second night will have pictures…

Account security is important in today’s online games. More so with the world’s most popular MMO; World of Warcraft. I have written previously regarding the Blizzard Authenticator.Yet for some reason there are people out there who still do not have this little gem. Well now blizzard has sweetened the deal.

The Blizzard store has waived the shipping costs of the authenticator. Right now you can purchase this device for 6.50, yep just six bucks and change. Not enough you say? How about Blizzard changes the art on the device to a more colorful picture. Wow still not enough? Fine you people drive a hard bargain, order the authenticator and you will receive an in game pet for each and everyone of your characters.The pet is none other than the core hound pup. Come on it has two heads! Click on the above link and there ya go. Have fun.

Nexon, the publishers behind MapleStory, announced today that the brand new expansion pack has been released.  The MapleStory Pirate expansion pack includes a new Pirates job class and Leafre map addition.

It also opens a variety of new maps, many of which are aboard the Pirate ship, Nautilus, the ultimate Pirate haven. Once a pirate, players can develop their characters and choose one of two paths through tiers of job progression. Pirates can advance to become Brawlers, the masters of hand-to-hand combat, or Gunslingers, dynamic quick-draws that drown foes in a hail of iron lead, for a 2nd Job, Marauders and Outlaws as a 3rd Job.

Leafre is an egg themed area found in the West of Ossyria, and is one of the most powerful places in MapleStory. With some of the strongest monsters and most challenging of quests its debut also sees the arrival of the fourth job advancement in Europe soon. High level players and those on their way can enjoy this town that is definitely worth a visit.

Check out the trailer for the new Pirate MapleStory expansion below.