Monday, May 25, 2009

Rogues and Paladins

I made 68 with my rogue, Alaidaroy, and headed to Borean Tundra. I notice how easy it is to do the quests that are orange to me. Anyone who says to stick to green quests is wrong about that. With WotLK, orange quests are actually very easy, and the experience is appropriately high. Before I left Outland, someone was whispering me to join their quest to do Shadow Labyrinth. I ignored the messages. I find it hard to believe that players are actually doing Shadow Lab, when the experience and challenge is in doing the newest expansion. If you want the achievement, you can always go back and solo it at 80. As a Rogue, I imagine I can go in Shadow Lab and sneak to the final boss, then solo kill it. That is a real challenge.

Some players in my guild wanted to do heroic and regular Drak'Tharon Keep, so I switched to the Paladin to tank them. I have done that instance so many times, that they were actually easy. The guildies got their loot, and everything worked out for the good of the group. I also was able to upgrade my necklace with the badges I picked up. Other upgrades require 40 to 80 badges. That is just too many, requiring hours of repeated heroics.

The process that you have to go through to level and gain reputation to move ahead is actually very long and boring, unless you have an incredible amount of luck and patience. Doing the Sons of Hodir quests gets boring fast, but the shards you are supposed to be able to find are picked up by others before you can get them, and drops on the tokens is sparse at best, so I am relying on a long grind. Everyone has to do the reputation grind to get the best shoulder enchants.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Darkfall considered

I just visited the Darkfall site, and I have to admit the MMO game looks great. It has a "European" feel, of course. The "European" graphics consist of dark lines and shadows, sharp outlines and the surreal or super-real look. Other European products have that look. I would have to try out the gameplay, but the graphics look good.

The idea of being able to build siegeworks is a good idea, partly played out in WAR, but the implementation was simplistic in WAR. I hope developers of Darkfall did better with the implementation.

There is nothing definite on the site about an American release date, except that it is coming. The European release was in February. Based on previous experience, it can be hard for Americans to connect to European games, so I may wait for the release in America. Darkfall does look promising.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Paladins are great!

The Wrath of the Lich King expansion has done a lot of good for Paladins. In fact, everyone wants to create and drive a Paladin in World of Warcraft.

Previously, Paladins were the black sheep of classes in WoW. The Retribution Paladin scarcely had enough total DPS to make it viable for melee damage-dealing, even though it had some good spike damage. The Protection Paladin had some good points for tanking, so it was the only Paladin subclass used in raiding, but it lacked in generating threat and damage. Most preferred the Warrior for tanking because of its superiority in generating threat and damage.

Now, Paladins are wanted by most raiding groups for all subclasses. All Paladins have a single-target taunt, Hand of Reckoning. Retribution Paladins put out a large amount of DPS, outmatched only by Rogues, and they wear plate for good protection. Protection Paladins can spike threat or build sustained threat at will, plus they have added Holy damage output. Holy Paladins are wanted for single-point tank healing, plus they can protect their team with added skills and themselves with weapons and plate.