Hexapuma's Army: Multiboxing

While waiting for the next expansion I've gathered a small army of toons. It seems I can't help myself to go creating more and more toons. With the latest "Recruit a friend" (or RAF for the cool kids) boons you can actually level a couple of toons really really fast.

What you get from playing with a friend:

* Friend-to-friend summoning - once every hour (I think) you can summon your friend. This cuts down on travel time immensely - especially since you'll level so fast you want to visit trainers so much more often.

* Triple experience gain - you get triple experience from quests AND killing mobs. Triple is fast - very fast. It is so fast that you'll skip most quests in a zone because it is becoming grayed out. It also makes instances leveling very interesting.

* The recruited friend can grant bonus levels to your characters... even more leveling.

There are a few caveats in the mix though. Your "friends" account gets linked to the recruiter. This means that only those two accounts will gain the triple experience when playing together. It is also only active 3 months... so if you want to level multiple characters - get cracking!

Of course you can always get yourself a second account and either multi-box them (playing two accounts on the same computer) or if you have two computers play that way. I currently have two computers setup next to each others to play my two accounts. It does require a few macros to run successfully but it works like a charm.

I am currently leveling a Warrior and a Priest this way... My warrior tanks and accounts for most of the DPS... the priest is little more than a pocket healer and when not healing auto wanding the target. I am not using the two characters full potential. Probably 3/4 of the warrior and 1/3 of the priest...

It is really interesting way to play... much more room to botch up comparing with running with just one character. It feels a little bit like WOW in difficult mode.

Great 3.0 info over at Too Many Annas

Time to visit Too Many Annas - she has written an excellent summary of various class guides dealing with the impeding 3.0 patch. Go, go now!

Stormspike and the Sky Captain of Tomorrow

Early this morning Stormspike threw his last fire bomb over Skettis and was rewarded with exalted status with the Sha'tari Skyguard. Finally got an upgrade to Bladefist's breadth - the Skyguard Silver Cross, while it lacks Bladefist's active AP buff it gives 0,5% more crit and increased AP after each kill. Nice farming trinket.

I also got a pet Nether Ray Fry and more importantly an epic red Nether Ray flying mount.

Next goal - cooking 375... and 7 more WSG marks.

Almost there...

After a few hours of grinding in the Skettis area Stormpike is now at 19890 / 21000 - it is so close that it felt stupid not to go all the way. But I do have a job to go to. I probably need a new faction to concentrate on after... or actually finishing up quests. With Stormspike I haven't even touched the quests in Netherstorm yet... Best thing is I'll fly around there in style - on my new netherray mount.

Getting ready for the Lich King

As my attention for WOW is slightly wandering at the moment I had to sit down and review my current goals. Especially those I should do before the LK expansion.

1. Get 30 WSG marks for my PVP leggings [ 19/30 done ]
2. Get exalted with Sha'tari Skyguard in order to get the Netherray mount. [ 12800/21000 done ]
3. Get Cooking 375 [ 372/375 done ]
4. Get engineering 375 [ 362/375 done]

That is all I really want to do... now it would be sweet to complete the reputation grind for the Scryers [ 1610/21000 done ]for the greater AP inscription - but hey I have a life too - I hate grinding.

Regarding my alts... there is nothing they need to do before the arrival of LK.

I am in no hurry. When the expansion comes I am truly going to enjoy the new content in a rather slow pacing. The only thing that might speed up my leveling depends on the new battlegrounds...

Looking at Warhammer Online...

I've been cheating on WOW...

A couple of days ago I installed WAR as most of my co-workers have started to play WAR on a regular basis. I don't want to miss out on the fun.

I bought the game from EA's online store and was able to download the client in little more than an hour. It then took almost another hour to install the client on my laptop (a crappy DELL M1710 XPS) running XP.

My experience so far:

* It crashes alot - last night I crashed 3 times over a four hour period. It seems to be related to my computer and lack of recent drivers. Thank you DELL.

* It is fugly - while it looks much better than CONAN or  games that tries to do semi-realism the animations spans from poor to bad.

* Lackluster game level design - the level design feels (judging from the starting levels of CHAOS and Dark Elves) old and more similar to EQ and Asheron's Call rather than WOW.

* Lack of connection to the game character. I think the controls feels disconnected, hits aren't looking like they connect. I don't expect miracles in a MMO but this is mediocre at best.

The good things:

* The quests are interesting and the quest descriptions are engaging.

* The environment, despite the level design, is very immersive.

* Public quests is THE SHIT. Extremely funny and cool.

* WAR's battlegrounds (the name escapes me at the moment) are great. You can always enter the BG queue - no need to visit a certain battlemaster. Best of all - when the game is over you are returned to where you started. I really really hope Blizzard takes a hint from this.

* Fresh classes (careers) - Squig Herder, Chaos Marauder, Witch Elves... Warhammer has a great lore and it uses it to the fullest.

* Tome of Lore - the tome is where all lore, character archivements and rewards are stored. It is amazing... no wonder WOW is including an archivement system in LK - they've been busy playing the WAR Beta.

All these things said ... after an evening of WAR I still had to finish my gaming night with an hour of WOW. Trying to collect the 30 WSG tokens I need for the PVP leggings. Unless EA totally devotes time, money and resources into WAR it will never compete with WOW.