KDS Gaming

So recently both writers here faction swapped, from Horde to Alliance. We’ve both raided as both sides and have no misconceptions that problems exist on both sides nor do we think that “the grass is greener.” We did it for personal reasons and because we enjoyed the characters we swapped. With that aside, we’ve heard a lot of issues with faction swaps. We had our fair share, but all were contributable to something that was done by the user. Once the listed problems on the FAQ on the official site were dealt with, there were no problems and the whole process took just over 30 minutes, including the “Character must be logged out for 20 minutes” catch.

Having the same character, but having it look totally different and actually play different is a great thing. It adds new life to your character, new aspects to the game, and I must say, if you have nothing tying you down to a faction and want to make a good bit of gold, swap and redo all the quests you’ve already done. I lost about 1k or so completed quests in all areas, so that is a lot of free and easy gold that I don’t need to do anything to get back. I must say it is rather funny to see in the Feats of Strength tab you earned a PvP title years after the system was removed too.

In the server downtime today, for WoW, I’m sure a lot of people are going to be bored. I’d recommend checking out Aion personally. It’s not the same as WoW, that’s for certain, but it’s a welcome change. Right now the game is in open beta, and having played most of the closed beta of Aion there are a lot of good things that have come about for the game. Not to mention the cool aspects of flying that are built into the game. It plays a lot like AoC in that it has a semi-reactive system, but it doesn’t require constant input like AoC does. It is a great game with a lot of fun, I just hope that it will continue and have some lasting power once the “end game” phase comes out, the Wintergrap-esk concept of a raiding instance is not really that much fun when it’s the only option; that type of system works fine in a Warcraft like game where there are multiple instances and raids to do so that you aren’t required to control a certain PvPvE zone just to enjoy the game. Also, the crafting system is truely involving in Aion, it grants you experience, has some neat animations, and has a ton of quests to focus around leveling your professions; though sadly they are a bit overwhelming at first once you catch on it’s not bad at all.

So earlier we decided to two man some older content, level 60 stuff, it’s a decent way to have some fun and make some gold to be honest.  Bosses take maybe 5 minutes and yield around 20-30g if you two man most of them; gold amounts have dropped since we quit playing awhile back sadly.  Both of us have run everything in the game, in their original forms, at the time they were released so it gives us a break from “new” content and something to look back at and how the game used to be.

Tonight the fun ended at Ossirian.  We both have killed him many times on our Vanilla / BC raiding toons, but it’s a rather funny fight to do with just two people, or I’m sure one if you can manage it on say a Druid or Paladin…  Regardless, for anyone that knows how the fight originally played out, you know that it was a lot of running, a lot of kiting, a lot of tornado avoiding and a lot of decursing.  We didn’t kill a singl guardian in Ossirians room and just ran right to him and killed him where he stands, with his 300% damage bonus, he hit my tank for about 3k each time, not that hard considering the 35k health pool in my outdated gear.  Even D was able to “tank” him when I was stunned, which is oddly enough spell reflect-able go figure.

As far as doing this for any real purpose, there isn’t one other than some minor achievement points and some gold, the books from AQ20 vendor for 10g each, and some nostalgic gear that’s fun to sit around in sometimes.  Relating to achievements, I’ve begun working on finishing multiple ones on my warrior that I had started by got lazy about doing, like Ambassador and others similar, so now I’m 6 mounts from 50, have over 50 pets, have Ambassador, and will have Crusader soon!

Catching back up like this is a time drag, would be much easier if we stuck to the old toons, but to catch them back up in gear would be even more of a time sink.  Oh dilemmas.

So in reactivating my WoW account, I’ve come to realize, nothing stays the same except everything.

My guild is the same, my toon is the same (barring a few spec changes I made), the content is mostly the same, but it’s all somehow different.  I spend about 90% of my logged in time afk on Facebook games to be honest.  The other 10% I spend staring at stuff, and the other 4% of the time I spend raiding.  For you math whizzes that makes 104% because, at times, it feels like it takes that much time.

Somehow all of the things I felt would of somehow changed, didn’t, because well, lets face it, I didn’t make them change.  The good news, however, is that in staying the same, PuGs have somehow become the norm and I think that’s where the fault is.  PuGs somehow take the fun and enjoyment out of the game.  To spend hours wiping to the same encounter because of some new guy you don’t know sucks, to spend hours wiping to the same encounter because of someone in your guild being a tard is fun.  Vanilla was fun because of the required understanding everyone had of each other, Wrath is slightly less fun because only fresh content requires that.  Sure there were raiding pugs back in Vanilla after awhile, but generally they were carried by the group composers core group late at night, or they were prescheduled pugs, which really kind of makes them not really pugs at all!

AFKing, as a tank, in a city, during prime-pug-time, is seriously entertaining.  I don’t have great gear, I don’t have much (read: any) Best in Slot gear.  Yet I can afk and come back to a screen full of tells, some apologetic, some angry, some just weird, but almost all requesting me to run something.  Raid, heroic, normal, carry some level 5 through a group of rats, who knows.  I personally enjoy it, if I’m feeling nice, I might even respond and say “No thanks,” or state I’ve already run it.  Most of the time I don’t even reply, which in turn leads to the angry tells at times.  lol