Warcraft

While it took 12 years between "idea" and "in the cinema", past summer the Warcraft movie was finally upon us.

Now, as a once fanatic player of WoW, I was curious about the movie for sure.

Plot

Based around the first game of the franchise, the movie details about the arrival of the Horde on Azeroth, migrating from the shattered world of Draenor.
The orcs immediatly start to carve out and ravage territories, while the Fell, an evil sort of magic channeled by Gul'Dan, drains life from the area.  This causes Durotar, chieftain of the Frostwolves, to question the source and sources of the dark power. 

In the meantime, the alliance is gathering in Stormwind to fight the new thread, unbeknowst they will have to pay dearly...

Opinion

Visually, this is a stunning movie, with a lot of recognisable settings.  The inn at Goldshire, Stormwind, pre-darkness Karazhan... memories of nostalgia flooded my mind.

But unfortunalty, story wise it`s more a collection of cutscenes from the videogame, and I just can`t warm to the male lead.  The same problem I have with him as Ragnar Lothbrook in Vikings, there you have this fierce looking bloke with soft eyes and a voice as honey... instead of a croaking, rasping one that would make him truly scary.
But it was a nice visual 2 hours of entertainment, and while it may not be a superb classic, it was darn good fun, and that counts for a lot in my opinion.

Rating: 6 / 10

The Plan - Week 25

All things considered, it has been a decent gaming week, though this mostly comes due to not having been able to sleep properly due to the warm weather.

But apart from working further to gain the Vita The Hobbit platinum and completing an episode of Wolf Amongst Us, I also managed to get some Minifigures Online and some World of Warcraft in.

With Minifigures Online, I now completed all currently available worlds (Pirate, Medieval and Space) and maxed out (for now) until possible both my Striker minifig (the Tomahawk Warrior) and Defender (the Heroic Knight).  Still haven`t unlocked a Creator though that I like to max out.

In WoW, I first finally completed all the farmer friends of Halfhill`s Tillers faction, before hitting the scenarios and complete each one at least a first time.

I really liked the Battle at High Seas part where you are fired out of `transport cannons`, but for the rest I found that scenario rather bland, but the Zan`Vess one I loved as your making bombing runs in a goblin plane.

For the coming week, I`ll mostly be tuning my Magic deck for GP Utrecht and have to take care off a lot of other things, so I doubt I`ll be playing a lot, but the goal will be on Tol barad when I get online as I`m only about two dozen tokens away from getting the dragon mount and then closing off that chapter of grinding...

And I completed Rolo`s Riddle by paracommando gliding to the Ruby Lake using my modified cloak.  It`s good to be an engineer ;-)

The Plan - Week 22

I caaameeee in likeeeee a wreeeeeeeccckkkinnng baaaaaaaaaaallll...

... and then floundered like a plush nerf bolt.

Yes, I started the week on good intentions and got some decent and strong game times in on monday and tuesday, even clearing up some of the older achievements like finally One Many Army.

I even took use of this to finally go open all those treasure caches for all those handy relics I have a lot of use for now that I`m already exalted with almost all factions bar the Emperor and the Prince... but at least I got two of the still missing cooking recipies out of it.

I did however get that second mount from the Darkmoon Faire, now clocking at 166 collected beasts to have some variety of riding around on.

And I completed all remaining quests normally from Cataclysm, in order to bump the cooking a bit as well.

However, in the end I only managed to get to one goal of the Guild goings, in that I broke the 2750 fished from pools aim, but I fell short of both the critters and (just) the 3k Cataclysm recipies cooked.

Ah well, I`ll survive that, I did have a good time though in the play days...

The other game, Minifigures Online, suffered from the same standstill after tuesday.  I left off at level 18, halfway to 19, but I did find a nice tongue in cheek in the game, in the Treasure Island instance...

The reason my games fell short in the end has been obvious on the blog, with my birthday, the bricking for a mount, the building of Bag`s end etc... and it seems the coming week isn`t going to get any better as I have a playdate with the Black Pearl, and hopefully monday with the Tower of Orthanc, so I fear there won`t be much MMO`ing going on.

And I really, REALLY should get my ass dragged over to the PS3... now that the kid is a week with his dad, this is the chance to play and finish the Wolf, as I want to spare his curious glances and explain the `fairy tale world for adults` hehehe...

And I still have a heap of Galge (google it) to try out and play, am tempted to give Lord of the Rings Online a shot AND must resist a female friends naggings to start playing Aion...

So for next week, I`m not putting in any goals at all in mind, I`ll see what comes and what goes without any real `direction` or `I must do that` on the agenda... for video games.

The Plan - Week 21

I know it ain`t much, but at least I got about 3 hours of game time in with WoW this week.

Which, like I reported earlier this week, completed the 1000 achievements goal for 2014 with one of the remaining Midsummer Festival achievements.

Bar those, I completed the rest of them (Northrend and Cataclysm, I was in my `out` time when they came out) as well, so now I can focus a bit more on gaining mounts again. 
Hopefully that will be the second darkmoon faire mount this week, as the Faire is back in town, the mount costs 180 tickets and I currently possess 170, so I might even grab some pets the coming months.

Talking pets, I`ve slowly started my `safari` as well.  I don`t care if they are `Poor` in quality, what I grab, I grab and so to fill out the lists.  I`ll upgrade them to green later on with Justice Points, a currency very easily begotten these days anyways.

For the guild parts, I have been busy, but not to much yet, something I hope to tackle a little while travelling through vanilla Azeroth, stopping at pools, burning critters and battling what comes on my way to bump some of the pets in XP while collecting, or trying to, the missing pets.

That means that I have set following `Guild Goals` for the coming week, if I am able to put in enough game hours:

* Set the Oven to Cataclysm should be bumped to 3000, meaning I`d need to cook 215 recipies as I type this, so that`ll be a lot of Tol Barad and Vash`jir to go still.

* Critter Kill squad to 20.000, meaning I need to exterminate no less then 1891 small thingies, this is going to be a hard one, but I can only try

* That`s a lot of Bait to 2750, meaning no less then 173 fish will be needed to be pulled out of pools.  Do-able IF I focus, which, well, you know hehe...

But that other game I have been playing (and enjoying) a lot this week is Minifigures Online.  So far, three worlds are available in the Open Beta (Pirate, Medieval and Space) each existing of two seperate `level worlds`, some dungeons are in there as well, and the smaller Pocket Adventure mini dungeons.

In the end, I have settled for the Nature Striker Tomahawk Warrior, his basic attack is ranged, his smash attack makes him charge forward and strike around, handy against shooty opponents for sure.  My goal for this game is to reach the max level cap of 20 (I`m currently at 16) and unlock his full skills tree.

So that`ll be doing some visits to Pirate and Medieval as well to `farm` stars for the skills and hopefully unlock more bags of minifigures.  I have the defender Heroic Knight as well in my collection, and he will be the Defender class I`ll be levelling hopefully to the top, but I still don`t know which Builder class I`m going to `main` in my team...

But all this will have to be put aside somewhere next friday, when the Smurf is back to his dad.  Then I can finally play Wolf Among Us part 4 (and apparently 5 as well by then) as that game is not really 8 year old suited and in the late hours of night, I can`t crank up the volume!

Well, see you all next week, and wish me luck in hopefully getting some good grinds in!

1000 Achievements Achieved

Yesterday I popped onto WoW for an hour or two, to (finally) start grabbing those missing achievements from the Midsummer Festival.

And that resulted in popping number 1000, now slightly putting me under the 50% mark of obtained achievements in the game.

Okay, so I`m going to force myself to grab at least all of those the coming week still, it is not that I need the festival for the Meta anymore, but it is easy money, some easy points and during the flying around I am able to grab a pet left or right that I still lack in the collection.

And it gives me another `green` on the goals list, where some things have been dropped and added over the past 6 months, but more on that tomorrow when I`ll tackle the halfway mark of 2014...

The Plan - Week 18

Even though I haven`t been able to play on a daily basis, I did get some good hours in the past week, focussing mostly on finishing the Raid quests I still had in my log through the LFR system

And I finished both the Isle of Thunder as the Sigil quests from Wrathion...

However, further adventures have been rather limited, mostly working towards completing some `minor` achievements like in the cooking department, and doing the Tol Barad runs when I could. 

The Guild Works

Well, slaughtering crabs and fishing up Fathom Eels for the guild achievements have been going moderatly well on those few times I got to play.  Bar the accidental critter that a guildie kills, that is IF there are any guildies around (about never these days, at this rate I WILL be inheriting the guild), it currently stands at these numbers

Critters killed: 17956 / 50000 -> that is going to pop the 18k the coming week
Fish Caught: 2539 / 10000 -> 2600 should be do-able
Cataclysm Cooking: 2739 / 5000 -> I`m aiming at the 2800 mark here

Why these modest numbers?  Well, because I won`t be playing that much of WoW the coming weeks, probably just popping around when Midsummer hits.

This week, further adventures have started in trying to grind down big beasties for the white raptor mount, 9999 dinosaur bones to grab on the isle.  This is going to be a hard grind, and I should combine it really with the Timeless Isle actually, but it is going to be `not for now` I fear.

And all because I received an e-mail, that has this part in it...

Welcome to the final LEGO® Minifigures Online Closed Beta phase!

Congrats! You have been selected to take part in the last Closed Beta phase for LEGO Minifigures Online. This is the final push before the game goes into Open Beta, and we are looking for your feedback to help us improve the game as much as possible before we let the masses in

Of course, I`ll be under the NDA (Non-Disclosure Act) with this, so I won`t be allowed to share screenshots or such for the new MMO, so the next episodes of this series are probably going to be rather small, unless I get some flashy thingies done in the short WoW sessions I`ll be putting in...

Other things to do though on a gaming level: The Wolf Among Us, Vita The Walking Dead, Chu playing her PS3 Walking Dead,  Lego the Hobbit on both...

To much to do, to little game hours to put in with the end of the school year works... and Magic... and the world cup of course!

Return to the Discount Store

Like I said after the find of two days ago, I would be returning to that Discount Store armed with big plastic bags.

And return I did, snatching up all of this:

And what did I pay for all this goodness???

56 euros!

The Plan - Week 17

Albeit slowly, I`m getting back in the playing rhytm, and I can start doing some minor planning again.  

Putting in two game evenings this week, and with a weekend where I can add some more hours to the clock now coming, I managed to put the Sunreaver Onslaught to Exalted with a combination of Tillers planting, freeing up my patches now for `useful` material and start building to the Noodle Cart quests, as well as the occassional visit to the Isle of Thunder.

This also resulted in mount number 165 to be added to the collection, the Crimson Direhorn. 

The Mid-Term plans

Now, this means I no longer have any faction I can `Champion` for, the main grinds in Mists are dropping down to a halt for factions.

I`m going to move my focus now to other horizons in there, using the Tillers and some of the swifter dailies to grind gold pieces to build the second Mists engineering mount, one that costs me 60.000 alone in three specific orbs sold by the wandering Goblin in the vale.  With currently around 7k in the wallet, that is still an awesome 53k to go, but in the end that should be doable while grinding around for valour through instances.

Heart of the Valourous with it`s double tokens these days should help for that.

This should also allow to upgrade my gear further and grab a few of the Shado Pan Assault higher level items.


The Guild Goals

Well, I`m like the solo-player of the guild mostly these days.  I managed so far to get Cataclysm Cooking over the half way mark, ticking it off currently at 2507 / 5000 cooked recipies.  The Critter kills are at 17750 / 50000 so there is a lot of work to go, as is there with Lot of Bait, now standing at 2373 / 10000.

For the coming week, I want to push that last one at least to 2500 by fishing a lot in Pandaria, in order to get tokens that way that help in the cooking assistant quest line, while the Cataclysm cooking should see another 100 added by means of the daily Tol Barad runs until I can buy the dragon there.

Personal Achievements

I need 10 more on my Main in order to reach the 1000 `goal` gained achievements, and that is something I`m not worrying to much about right now.  In a few weeks, Midsummer event starts, and there are a lot of new achievements in Northrend added that I can snatch, which should get me on that mark.

Alting

Talking Northrend, I really will be forced to get both alts, the lvl 90 priestess and the level 77 Paladin, out there to the tournament and grind through all the steps one day.  I don`t see me make the cut otherwise before WoD arrives to obtain all the missing tournament mounts... but I so look up to that task...

Well, that is about it for the planning for this week, now let`s pop in and do some grinding for more and more gold and mounts.

The Plan - Week 16

Yes, I played, no it wasn`t much.

Bascially I did my Kara run on the main, two Tol Barad tours and an Argent Tournament set.

And that was it, though I did gain a new mount with the promotion this week

As well as an old engineering drop I apparently missed before...

And for the coming week?  It won`t be much better actually, as I have a lot of things to do, so I don`t expect serious gaming getting on before july on whatever platform or game...

The Plan - Week 15

Another as good as WoW-less week, as I only did a single tour on Tol Barad (good for some fishes and critters to the tally, but to few to notice), a non-Midnight drop Kara sprint, and completed at last the Jade Temple cooking quest so I can start on the Noodle Cart chain.

In other words, not worth the mention...

So here are some more bubs this week, all of Blood Elf cosplay this time.

I promise I`ll be playing some this week, as The Lego Movie has platted in the meantime on the Vita... and my bricks are as good as sorted... and the GF has late shifts the coming weekend...