Zone Wrap Up – Valley of the Four Winds

The second zone in my Zone Wrap Up is the Valley of the Four Winds. It is located on the southern edge of the new Pandaren continent and seems to be just a questing zone. The Tillers farm will be located here along with at least one Brewmaster scenario and the new Stormstout Brewery dungeon. Unfortunately, the only screen captures so far are from the video above, so I’ll leave you with just the video.

Blizzard has described it as:

A tranquil plain of lush farmland, bordered by dense mysterious jungles along the south and impassible mountains to the north. The valley is considered the “breadbasket” of Pandaria, but the year’s harvest is in jeopardy and a terrible malaise has overcome the Pandaren that live along the coast. The valley is also the home of the legendary Stormstout Brewery, where Chen Stormstout and his niece Li Li hope to journey to discover the whereabouts of their long-lost ancestors.

Unlike the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, this Valley looks exactly like I wanted the entire zone to look. Green, flowers, animals, growing things; I am more than pleased. This zone appears to be a cross between the Wetlands with water, cliffs and trees and Nagrand with its bright colors, multitude of animals, and plenty of growing things. I am loving it.

Zone Wrap Up – Vale of Eternal Blossoms

Screen shot from the Vale of Eternal Blossoms

To help keep things simple, I’m going to try to dilute the information coming out of the Beta and Press Release for the new content by tackling each zone on its own, including the instances and raids that are (as of the time of writing) going to be there.

Vale of Eternal Blossoms World Map

To start off, we’re going to learn about the Vale of Eternal Blossoms because the Alliance and Horde hubs will be located here. It is located in the central part of Pandaria along with the Mogu’Shan Vaults raid, two dungeons, Mogu’Shan Palace and the Gate of the Setting Sun, and the Temple of Power battleground. It is a level 90 zone that Blizzard describes as:

The ancient seat of the pandaren empire has been hidden for generations, shrouded in mists and walled-off by impassible mountains.  The waters of the Vale are believed to have mystical powers… which has attracted the attention of ancient enemies as well as power-hungry factions within the Alliance and Horde. What secrets lie buried below this mystical font of power?

I’m really hoping this legendary Valley isn’t going to be as brown as the Barrens like the map makes it look. Not to mention the screen shots. I demand color, Blizzard! Pink, purple, blue! Where are the FLOWERS?! Ahem, moving on…

Minor Glyphs from Mists of Pandaria

Once again I have scoured the blogs and information sites so you don’t have to. Why, you ask? Because I was dying to know about the silly new minor glyphs and no one has put together a list of them by themselves. So, I did it and provided images and video where I could.

I’m so interested in the minor glyphs because I feel this is a return to being able to customize our characters in new and interesting ways. When in combat, you’re not looking at the armor, but the spell effects and finally there’s a way to show off your own character. I am so making a macro to let everyone know how pleased I am at being able to bubble hearth again.

As of the blog posts this morning, this is everything I’ve found. The only one I couldn’t find was mentioned by Blizz at the press event where Mages would be teleported to the Old Dalaran crater and dropped out of the sky far, far above the ground. Sorry mages, apparently that’s not in the bata yet. Blizzard owes apologizes to Rogues, Priests and Deathknights as I couldn’t find a single interesting minor glyph for those classes. Those bastards.

Chris Metzen, Varien makes up for shit

Chris Metzen, senior VP of Story and Franchise Development

I’m frustrated. That’s about the only way to describe my feelings with World of Warcraft lore. I’m specifying WoW and not Warcraft, because the lore there and in Vanilla WoW (and BC), I didn’t have these concerns and this feeling like the faction I play the most, is weak and pathetic with useless leaders. At one time, we had Onyxia! Now we have Jaina Proudmore jokes.

Yes, I’m bringing this up again. It’s been nagging at me ever since I read the Chris Metzen interview by WoW Insider. A lot of Horde players (and even some Alliance players) don’t understand why I’m so upset with the lore and the direction it took during Cataclysm. I’m going to attempt to explain my opinions and why this guy needs to get his fuzzy head out of his fuzzy ass. It all boils down to one thing: morale.

Throughout all of Cataclsym, the Alliance has gotten its collective ass handed to it. Go ahead and argue about Camp Tarajo all you want, but when you place all the weights on the scales, it tips heavily in the Horde’s favor: Ashenvale, Southshore, Andorhol. I can pull out a few more here, but suffice to say that would be beating a dead horse, or the Alliance as it stands.

This is not a “woe is the Alliance, we got beaten post,” this is a post telling you, if we get beaten forever, we’re not going to care much about our faction or this damn game. Warhammer Online died with the biggest complaint being one faction was over powers and kicking the other factions ass. While this isn’t lore, I believe it could get that way. Why? Shortly after the information about Theramore burning (another feather in the Horde’s cap), my server saw a huge wave of faction transfers from Alliance to Horde. I can’t blame them because let’s face it, Horde are just cooler.

The Forsaken got so much love in WotLK, the trolls got their own patch in Cata, the Cata expansion revolved around an Orc, and with all this, the Alliance got Worgen. I’m not complaining about that. The Gilneans have a rich, vibrant lore full of grand characters, both good and evil, with so much story potential (the Goblins, not so much). What are they doing now? They squat in a tree, unable to retake their home because of the Forsaken. Their entire starting zone is empty. Hell, my RP server did more with their story than Blizzard did

ME3 Jan’s Way

I posted this in response to Lodur’s blog, ME3 and why the ending is fine as is. He challenged the critics of ME3s ending to write something better. Challenge accepted. I encourage you, if you’re as annoyed by this as I am, to also comment on his blog with your ending. He wrote a good post; I just disagree with him.

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Fine. Even though I am not a fiction writer, a game writer, or a writer of anything but my opinion, I’ll take a shot at this because I think they could have given us something that reflected our paths throughout the game like they promised. I’m not making a special cut scene for people who got 5k+ military strength. This is because I am lazy and I’m not getting paid for this shit.

So let’s get into this: Anderson is dead and Shepard is dying. Everyone Shepard loves, has ever known, everything that has ever mattered to him is about to be destroyed because Hackett needs him to do something. The Crucible isn’t working. No one knew what it was supposed to do in the first place, so what the hell is he supposed to do?

Crawling forward, he tries anyways. With the last of his strength

Nika Davies on the Tillers Farms

Nika Davies farming in Lord of the Rings Online

One thing I really am excited about is the concept of the farms and associated dailies. Personally, I can’t help but wonder if this this Blizzard’s way of testing the waters for possible player housing in the future. The reason I think that might be a possibility is because the farms will most likely be instanced. They have a very similar thing in Lotro (Lord of the Rings Online) with both farms and player housing, and I have a feeling Blizzard got the idea from there.

The way housing worked in Lotro was a series of neighborhoods, each containing maybe a dozen houses of different sizes and costs. You entered the neighborhood through a portal similar to entering a dungeon, so they didn’t take up all that extra space in the world. If they make the farms instanced, and it’s successful, I could see player housing happening someday in the (far) future.

MoP Press Release: Fuck yous, right ons, and other info

The Mists of Pandaria Press event happened today with plenty of stupid reveals and great things to come. I scoured the interviews, blogs and press releases to put together the things I thought were the best, the worst, or just rather noteworthy about the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion.

The obvious things we know about MoP are, of course, discussed in the press release. The Jade Temple, the Stormstout Brewery, new Scholomance, new Scarlet Monestary, Pet Battle system, Pandarians, monk class, etc. I’m not going to touch on those at all if they don’t discuss something new – and for the most part, they don’t. Luckily there is plenty of new information being given out that I’ve combed through to find the most interesting, infuriating, and just noteworthy news that’s been given out today.

We’ll start with the shit that just plain pissed me off:

MoP Image Leak

Some lovely person took a bunch of screen shots and leaked them for your viewing pleasure. You can find the full Gallery here, but here are the one’s I liked best:

Here’s a picture of the Jade Temple, which I believe is one of the new instances. The talbuk wandering around are a bit disappointing (not to mention lore breaking), but I love the dragon statues, all the cliffs and trees everywhere. It does remind me a lot of Nagrand, but I loved Nagrand, so there’s no complaining here.

Holy crap, the new Pandarans look boss! This makes me actually consider rolling a Monk class.

In Before It’s Out: Game of Thrones (RPG)

Anyone who knows me, knows I’m an Atlus fan girl. I have loved everything of theirs that I’ve ever gotten my hands on for its rich stories and realistic characters – even the ones who never speak. Yet, when it comes to the Game of Thrones phenomenon, I’ve been disinterested – after reading the first two books, the third stalled out and I never finished it, so the T.V. show never seemed like something I would enjoy.

Then I heard there was going to be a Game of Thrones RPG for the Xbox and the PS3. My first thought was someone was trying to cash in on the name for the sake of making some money. And then I heard that someone is Atlus. This caught my attention with an immediate reaction of, “Oh God, I have to have it!” I settled down after a few days and decided to do some research into just what I was going to be paying for; I was not impressed. The videos showed half-assed graphics and declared one of those “Play as four different characters” games which always suggests to me that they couldn’t come up with a good enough story to run with only one set of characters. At the time, they had only released two of the story zones and I was sorely disappointed.

Today, Atlus sent me an email telling me to take a first look at the combat for their Game of Thrones RPG. What the hell, I thought and pulled up the video. As the video wound down I was both surprised this was the same game and again excited to get my hands on it.

Mass Effect 3 – All the same colors

SPOILER WARNING: Do not read this blog if you care about being told the ending.

I loved this game, as you’ll know if you read my blog,  First Impressions – ME3. Every second was filled with a new choice, a new option, a new way to shape MY Mass Effect game. Yes, MY game. When you talk about ME 1, 2, or 3, you’ll see gamers tag “my” to the character names: “my Shepard, my Tali, my Kaiden, my Wrex.” We do this because up until the last ten minutes of this game, everything that’s taken place varies from one player to the next. My Tali and Garus hooked up, much to the shock and surprise of another ME3 player and that’s just one example of a very, very small difference.

If you follow me on twitter, you know how angry I was about the ending to this game. I’m still angry – seething, really – that I didn’t get a conclusion to my game; that the options I was given were nothing my Shepard would have ever picked, let alone ran towards in the end. Then I got in an argument with a guy who said the ending was amazing and we should stop bitching (by we I mean the 50,000 people who took a poll on EA’s Origin forums to say we hated the ending and want a better one). This blog is for you guys, for the ones who don’t get why we’re upset, why Child’s Play has raised a donation of over $45,000 in an effort to get Bioware to change the ending, and who think we need to grow up and get over it.

First I’d like to show you a little video