This weeks gaming podcast covers two reviews, including LittleBigPlanet and Guitar Hero: World Tour. We also touch on a bit of retro NES history with ExciteBike. This weeks gaming news includes:
We’re also stepping on our soap box and asking if MMO’s are too risky for consumers who buy into MMO’s that fail in under a year.
This week has Microsoft backing Epic against Apple, Nintendo telling people they don’t have controller drift and apologizing for controller drift, and some new games.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think.
“The Grind”
With Wrath of the Lich King arriving last week it only made sense to jump into the new content “Lich King” style. Although we had initially reacted to the beta, playing the final content was much more fun with all of our guild and friends to play along.
It only took a few hours to get my new Death Knight to level-58 beyond the starting area and into the real world of Azeroth. Upon reaching the main city (Ogrammar as we’re horde) I picked up two new professions to make me a bit of dime: mining and skinning. This is where the beauty of the Death Knight fell apart…
A level-58 character has a few options open for exploration with the Burning Crusade content being the most desirable starting point. However, quickly it became apparent that my professions of mining and skinning were useless in Hellfire and other Burning Crusade areas. Why? Professions start with a value of 1. The last expansion requires your professions to be roughly 300 before you can utilize them.
My level-58 Death Knight has no experience in the ways of skinning and mining, what has he been doing all his life? Apparently killing innocent people in small villages throughout the Eastern Plaguelands. My anticipation with leveling my Death Knight died knowing I’d spend the next few days hunting mines and killing animals as if I where a level-10 toon.
There I was, a high level character trolling Crossroads and Thousand Needles hunting for copper and tin and skinning all the low level creatures I could find. Why didn’t Blizzard consider this when they allow you to create a level-55 character on day one? If we don’t go off and grind our way to a profession level of 300 we might as well not even pick professions at all.
I was not alone in these findings, along my path I found several Death Knights with skinning knives and mining tools looking for open opportunities to cut into the earth or the dead animals skins all around them. Sure, we can kill a cat in seconds flat but the “grind” is what we wanted to avoid, this is what characters spend their first twenty levels doing!
After three sessions of mind numbing grinding I’ve managed to reach a skill of 340 in skinning and coming upon 200 in mining. Mining is still too low for high level game content so I must whisk myself away to noobville every so often to catch a few mythril nodes and pray for a gold deposit along the way.
This may not be a bug in the Wrath of Lich King expansion but it sure is an annoying design flaw.
The 265th podcast will be a little delayed, as it will be recorded on Wednesday, the day the podcast is usually released.
There will be one this week, though, so keep your eye on the iTunes RSS feed.
1. Hellgate: London is NOT a pure MMO. You can play the ENTIRE GAME solo, without online.
2. Ultima Online still going strong 13 years later.
1. Hellgate: London is NOT a pure MMO. You can play the ENTIRE GAME solo, without online.
2. Ultima Online still going strong 13 years later.