Tag Archives: cataclysm

The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO)

Oops! I Did It Again

12 Comments

If you are anything like myself or Mister Adequate, then you will be well-acquainted with that obnoxious insect that comes around every six months or so and nibbles on you and makes you nostalgic for World of Warcraft and won’t stop nibbling until you actually re-sub. This invariably results in a few weeks of playing little else but WoW until the bug is satiated and flies away– for the time being, anyway.

I was visited by this bug about a week back and after several days of trying to ignore it and swat it away while it hummed the Karazhan theme in my ear, I recently caved and re-downloaded the game. I know, I know.

Now I haven’t played in months and months and one of the things that I always felt bad about was that I left my long-time main, Tawyn, rather unceremoniously dumped in Stormwind in a bunch of greens from the new Cataclysm content– basically I played for about a month after Cata launch and then realized “You know what, I’m still bored of raiding and heroics” and logged out and didn’t return. So poor Tawyn wasn’t retired in her level 70 epics or her level 80 epics– no, she was retired wearing [Boring Uldum Pants of the Whale] and such. Obviously this wasn’t going to do, so the very first thing I did was transmogrify into old stuff from my favorite ever raid instance, Karazhan, and various assorted BC heroics. For the first time in years, Tawyn matched my figureprint of her and the mental image I have when I think of her. I… really can’t express how good this felt.

Suddenly, playing my character was fun again. Because suddenly, I didn’t look like a scrub in greens. Nor did I look like a mishmash of epics from the current content. Rather, I looked like my character— something I was proud of.

Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t feel like raiding or doing heroics or really any sort of endgame. But at least I can deal with dailies and things like leveling once MoP comes out (should I get the expac– I’m still not sure if I will.)

The new patch comes out tomorrow and it gets rid of hunter stat sticks, which means I’ll lose my lovely Sonic Spear and I won’t be able to sport my Legacy in the future. But you’ll have to pry Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle out of my cold, dead, purple hands.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Ponies, Pop Culture, and Games

10 Comments

There is no cow level.

There is, however, a pony level in Diablo 3, if the datamining is correct.

The blog's official response.

Now our initial idea with this post was to semi-jokingly rescind any previous doubts we’ve expressed regarding this game, and leave it at that, but I actually think I can turn this into a more in-depth blog post, so here we go:

I’ve heard some people express dismay at developers who throw too many knowing pop culture references into otherwise immersive games. Blizzard is a good example here; most of us played Cataclysm when it first came out, even if you quit directly after reaching level 85 the way Mister Adequate and I did.

Mister Adequate actually rerolled entirely and leveled to 85 from scratch rather than playing his existing level 80 draenei, presumably because he breaks out in hives when he is not playing a tauren warrior. Picture is related.

Cataclysm, as I’m sure you’re all aware, is chock-full of references, jabs, and full-on homages to pop culture. Uldum is pretty much entirely dedicated to it, between the Indiana Jones storyline, the Katamari Damacy quest, the Hackers references, and anything else I’ve forgotten. Actually, I’m pretty certain that there were more playful pokes at culture than there weren’t.

There were a lot of people who weren’t exactly fond of this, feeling that an MMORPG should be more immersive and that what WoW was doing here was purposefully pulling players out of the world that they had so carefully crafted. Others thought it was all in good fun and point out that, come on, Blizzard has pretty much always had their tongue firmly in cheek.

This isn't Warcraft in Space!

I tend to sit somewhere in the middle; I like my games full of rich lore but it doesn’t always have to be super-serious business. It might say something about me that Uldum was my favorite zone in Cataclysm by far. And ultimately, for me, it comes down to the gameplay. Civilization isn’t exactly the world’s most accurate history simulator– in the game Mister Adequate and I are currently playing, my civ just discovered an ancient manuscript containing the secrets of nuclear fission– but it’s sure as heck fun.

What do you guys think?