Lucky with Beta invites

Somehow I managed to get both a Diablo 3 and a Mists of Pandaria Beta invite! :D

Diablo 3

I've had a brief go at all the classes so far in Diablo 3 and I like the Wizard the most. I completed the Beta with that one and I really like what I've seen so far.

MoP

I've tried a female panda monk so far, only played for the first five levels yet but this part of the game feels really great.

The starting zone looks amazing!







That's all for now! :)

Guild going inactive until MoP

At the end of January this year I decided to stop raiding for this expansion at least. I've possibly logged in two or three times since then and maybe done a cooking or fishing daily. Instead I've tried some casual SWTOR, playing some alts there instead of pursuing a main character so I've been spread a bit thin and maybe that's why the game hasn't really got a strong grip on me.

I'd say being on a break has been good to me so far, health and work is great though the same was true while raiding seriously. It's just sort of nice to discover the amount of time that you suddenly have available once you stop with something you've been doing a lot for so long that you've almost forgotten what it was like without it. I did commit to the deal about free Diablo 3, MoP beta access for WoW subscription so I haven't really made good use of that if I look at hours spent logged in but it doesn't bother me. I'm fairly confident that I will return for MoP to check things out, even if I strongly suspect that the immersion and comradery I felt in Vanilla and TBC will never return in the game. The people that made the world come alive have moved on and the mindset is lost. It was a shared experience in a perfect environment that is hard to explain if you weren't there.

Anyway, my guild had struggled with raiding numbers for a while and it had to turn into a 10 man guild. Having been an epic full scale raiding guild since 2006, this was a sad turn of events of course. It just wasn't the same in a 10 man raid and looking back I haven't really enjoyed any raiding this expansion. I think the last fight I enjoyed was heroic Halion back in Wrath when it was topical.

I browsed the guild forum today as I do from time to time as I like to stay updated with what's happening and found the post below. As it has been posted on the public part of our forum I think it should be fine if I post it here as well:

Hello guys,

It saddens me to have to write this, but unfortunately this time there is no way to avoid it :(
Never in my 5 years since I have started calling Anarchy a home did I think this time will come or that I would be the one having to do this.

Anarchy has reached a point of no return for this expansion. Due to our slow progress and 10 man raiding not providing the same enjoyment as 25man raiding we have lost a lot of key players in the past months which at this stage prevent us from being able to do any kind of progress raiding.
Taking this decision was the hardest thing we've had to do in what WoW is concerned: as of today Anarchy will stop progress raiding and step down to a casual raiding style until MoP.

The current plan is the following
- We will be only raiding once per week, and then depending on raid setups see what bosses we can try to do on heroic and which on normal, but without banging our heads against a wall if a boss just won't die (see Hagara the past two weeks). The day for this raid will be set according to the day most of you remaining in here with either the mains or just with alts will vote as the best to try to make the raid.
- We will not be kicking any of the alts of the people who wish to leave the guild with their mains. We appreciate you guys sticking with us until the very end and really hope to be able to raid again together (see the next point).
- Two months before the release of MoP we will try to restart the guild and do mass recruiting in order to try to have a 25 man squad ready for MoP raids, even if at the start it won't have the same level of raiding quality as most of us have grown accustomed to.

Once again - thank you all who stuck around until this point, and many apologies for not being able to any longer provide that which we all want from a guild - nice steady progress and a friendly environment.
We are totally aware that even more people will leave now, but while you do so please keep in mind that the friendly environment isn't gone and you will always have a home to return to back in Anarchy should you decide to try with us to restart Anarchy before MoP.

Just so there is no misreading - all current members will get into the guild instantly without an application, should you decide to re-unite with us for MoP. We rely on you for this to happen.

Signing:
A sad Evil, a sad Pharaoh, a sad Dast and a sad Karja

Anarchy, I thank you for the moments we had and hope that you will manage to be reborn for MoP!

[SWTOR] Characters and initial impressions

How could I not try this game? :)

I bought it during the holidays and I really love it so far. I've already decided that I will keep subscribing. I'm not sure I'll raid or become serious about flashpoints but I very much appreciate the story and the starting areas. I'll probably at least level one of each class up to level 10 and then press on with a main and maybe 1-2 serious alts.

I've chosen the Jedi Sage as my main, a fairly obvious choice for a resto druid perhaps? Wanting to see the other side of the story I also created a Sith Sorcerer. I can't help but notice that lightning feels better than throwing a rock at someone but I'm sticking to the Republic side as my main side. I got goosebumps when my consular got her green lightsaber crafted and I cheered when I could choose Force persuade in a dialogue, I'm such a nerd :)

I must say that I care more about my characters and their story already after one week of SWTOR compared to 5,5 years of story in WoW. I've assigned them some basic personality traits to go with their light/dark side choices.

Jedi Consular - Light side. My main, über-good, wise and rational.


Trooper - Light side. Tough veteran, a bit grizzled perhaps. Can make dark side choices for the greater good.


Jedi Knight - Light side. Very zen.


Smuggler - Light side. Adventurous and humoristic. She just wants her ship back dammit.


Sith Inquisitor - Light side. A tough, sarcastic survivor. Kind towards those who deserve it. Cold towards the arrogant Sith.


Bounty Hunter - Light side. A nice guy, will defend the weak but doesn't mind if he earns a few credits while doing it.


I might create a Sith Warrior to explore the Dark side of the force, I can't help it though, you might be able to tell from my characters inclinations that Dark side feels weird to play.

Because of the initial queues I spread out a bit on the realms. I'm playing republic on Peragus Mining Facility and Goluud Corridor and Imperial on Sith'ari and Ludo Kressh.

So, good points and bad points then?
+ Story
+ Voice acting
+ Immersion
+ Sound effects
+ Graphics

- UI (the auction house is so poorly done that I want to cry)
- No addons (I really want to move things around better)
- Did I mention the useless Auction House?
- I miss Right click to move
- No macros

I would really like if it was possible to zoom in a bit more before the first person perspective takes over. It would be nice to get close the facial expressions of your characters, now it's a bit impersonal when you're so zoomed out that you can't really make out the details.

Another thing that annoys me is that there's an option to disable action bars, I think it should be show/hide, not enable/disable. I want to put abilities on keybinds and not have them shown in the UI. Is that not possible? I added an ability, got it keybound, removed the action bar and hell no the keybind didn't work any longer. Why would it be a good thing to disable something like that, can't it just be hidden please? I also miss macros and modifiers on the same button. It would add so much to the gameplay to be able to use Alt, Shift etc to alternate one buttons ability.

Transmogrification addon

I need to confess that I haven't paid that much attention to transmogrification. I just discovered the addon Mogit so I felt that I wanted to share it with you in case that you have missed it.

There's a an article in the Addon Spotlight that describes it more in detail.

I think it's a great addon!