Warlords of Draenor: WoW’s New ExPac

Just announced minutes ago, Warlords of Draenor will be Blizzards next Expansion Pack for World of WarCraft.  Check out the trailer below and let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.  More to come as BlizzCon 2013 continues this weekend.

Blizzard Entertainment: Heroes of the Storm [MOBA]

Blizzard Entertainment is certainly priming the rumor mill today with their recent renaming of their MOBA title from “Blizzard All-Stars” to “Heroes of the Storm”.  With BlizzCON just over three weeks away as of the time of this post it stands to reason that Heroes will be one of the keynote discussion points.  Not much else has been said as of yet, but I assume tidbits of information will be leaked in the weeks to come leading up to BlizzCON on November 8th & 9th.

Blizzard grabbed the Twitter handle as well, so be sure to follow them at @BlizzHeroes and keep tabs on their website for updates as well.

Check out the video Blizzard dropped with the name change below and let me know what you think in the comments section.  Personally, I’m a huge League of Legends fan so Blizzard will need to bring something revolutionary to the table if they want to steal some of my game-time away from Riot.

Hearthstone BETA Key

I may have gotten a bit overly excited Monday evening when I saw it and squealed like a little girl.  Not ashamed to admit that.  I had been steadily watching my inbox for that beta key from Blizzard for weeks when it finally arrived.  I have seen so many posts and videos about the game that it was all I could do to keep myself distracted while I waited.  But patience (and really having no choice in the matter) paid off and for the past few days I have been playing the game and trying to unlock all the champion decks.

Because it’s not the weekend and I have life, work, family, etc – I haven’t been playing in a dedicated manner like I would want too, but the weekend is half way here and I’m hoping to have enough playing time to be able to write a decent post about it.  Even now I’m writing as quickly as I can to get back to work unlocking all the Champion decks!  Just playing AI matches for now and will start playing other players soon.

Anorakk’s Quest: Leveling from 1 – 90 in World of WarCraft

Whenever I am asked “What type of character do you like to play” in Fantasy Role Playing Games (RPG’s) my response is any class that is what I consider to be a “Caster” – Mage, Wizard, Warlock, Priest, etc. I appreciate and have a lot of respect for Paladin Tanks, Rogues and the melee fighters who keep enemies at a safe distance – but for me I have always been fascinated with magic. The ability to create, destroy, protect, heal or move things with just the power of your intellect appeals to me greatly. I suppose that is why I enjoyed science so much and not physical education in school because it was the closet thing to magic we have as mere mortal’s. To this day I still imagine what it would be like to wield a staff and cast powerful and beautiful spells. (Admit it – some of the spells in World of WarCraft are just gorgeous to look at when they are cast – right?!)

In World of WarCraft there are only three of what I consider to be true “Caster” classes. The Mage, Warlock and Priest. Yes, I know Druid’s, Shaman’s and Monk’s use Mana as a resource and can cast spells – but they aren’t completely Mana dependent like the others. And before you hit that comment button to correct me – I know Shaman’s are Mana dependent too. My point is that Shaman can be very good melee fighters where as a Mage, Warlock or Priest would be too squishy for hand-to-hand fighting.  All that having been said, I have been playing World of WarCraft for over four years now and have yet to level a character to cap (currently set at Level 90).  I have a severe case of “newtoonitis” in that I start a character and come mid-level I start to get bored with them and create a new one.  In an effort to get my first level 90 character and mitigate the risk of switching toons, my wife and I decided to jump servers and start fresh.

Letting me pick the server, I chose Ravencrest cause the name appealed to me.  Yup, that’s really the only reason.  We both made a few characters to feel out what we ultimately would choose to play to level 90 and started our Guild Serenity Valley and of course created all the characters from Firefly.  But then it was decision time – what class would it be?  We both hate waiting for instance queue times so that makes it difficult to choose a strictly damage (DPS) class, so we were discussing tanking, healing, etc.  Between the two of us we have done it all – so nothing really sounded appealing and I knew I wanted to go with a caster character so I had already limited my field down to three.  I have played several Mage’s, ran a Priest to 85 just before Mists of Pandaria came out, but I have never played a Warlock to very high level.  In fact, I think the highest I have ever leveled a Warlock was mid 30’s at best.  

And so, with that Anorakk was created.  My Destruction Warlock that I will be playing to level 90.  Well, that’s the plan at least.  I know his name has nothing to do with Firefly, but I put him in the Guild anyway.  I wanted to use the name because I’m currently reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and I really like the name and the meaning behind it – so I borrowed it for my Warlock but had to add an extra “k” because someone else already shared my moment of inspiration and grabbed the correct spelling before I did.  Seems that person found the name more fitting for a Troll Hunter . . . . I disagree!  But hey – I’m not bitter.

I’ve created a Twitter account (@Anorakk_WoW) and plan on tweeting progress from in-game, pictures of him as he levels, share his achievements, etc.  I also opened a thread on the Forums on World of WarCraft with the same title as this post for feedback from other Warlocks – so far, only one taker on the advice giving.  I’ll likely also create an Anorakk’s Tome page somewhere on NerdCRIT for those of you who are really interested in how I’m progressing.  For those of you so inclined – feel free to find me in-game sometime or join my Guild and play along with us!  I’m doing all this in an attempt to keep me accountable and to hopefully get to interact with some of you in another venue instead of just here where I write words at you and you (sometimes) write words back.

As I said before – though I’ve been playing WoW for a few years now, I consider myself to be an amateur player.  In fact, I’d say I’m barely passable at best.  My hope is that playing Anorakk to level cap will afford me the opportunity to learn more of the stories within the game, or lore, and become a better overall player.  For me that is what makes World of WarCraft different from other RPG’s I’ve played.   There are some very good stories woven into the games progression that draw you into your character and the world it is not just living in, but a part of.  It’s those stories within the game that make players like me passionate about it.

One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor

Yes, I know I referenced Mordor in the post title – but Come On! Who doesn’t love Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea?!?!

Without a map!  Amirite?!?

Okay, fine – there’s big black gates, Orc’s and evil there that does not sleep blocking the entrance to Mordor for any young adventurer who dares to seek it out.  But a map sure does come in handy to get you to the right place.

As an avid gamer, maps are one of my most favorite items that I have to have.  They not only point you in the direction you need to go, but they help to build the world you are exploring and having adventures in.  As gamer’s we all remember playing the Zork Anthology and grabbing our graph paper composition books and mapping out the world that was being shown to us through nothing more than text on a screen.  It’s ingrained in our genetics and is part of our innate character to “map out” where we have been.  Hell, you even get achievements for it in World of WarCraft!

For gamer’s, maps aren’t just functional items that take up inventory in our backpacks.  They are pieces of art.  We spend hours going over them for their intricately drawn cities mapping out where the nearest armory is or the sweeping landscape sprawling out before us full of adventure!  We appreciate their beauty and the time the cartographer took in creating it and treat them with respect.  Yes, I am that passionate about the maps I use/own – and you should be too!

And maps are everywhere!  You can get great maps for D&D at the Wizards of the Coast archive for  “Map-a-Week“.  You can go to independent sites like FantasticMaps.com and see some gorgeous work there and pick up tips on how to do it yourself to boot.  And some companies like Paizo are getting smart and including not only adventure quests you can take your Pathfinder Character on at the end of each of their comic books (being published by Dynamite  . . . and I do highly recommend getting them – the story and artwork is AMAZEBALLZ!) but they are also including the map for each adventure with every comic as well.  Not to mention you can pick up some great free maps on Paizo’s site as well.  You can even make absolutely beautiful coasters for your humble abode with maps!  Just check out Dodger’s DIY below from Swords & Stitches where she does exactly that with Jessie Cox.

Today was just one of those days that while surfing my Google+ feed that maps seemed to be the main theme, so I decided to share.