In Game Purchases Ruin Many Good New Games

I think there is a rather unhealthy tendency going on. Nothing new but oh well here I go. Have you noticed that there are literally hundreds new free games coming out - Facebook games, browser based and, of course, touchscreen devices - iPad and so on? They are.. sort of free to play but there is one very big catch.

Here are few examples. Let's look at The DeadZone - The Last Stand. Idea is superb - run your own compound in zombie infested city, in a post apocalyptic world - raid buildings and other compounds, gather resources, trade with other players and so on. Very addictive and exciting... for the first 5-7 levels. After that the game will start to drag - to complete mission you have to wait 2-3 hours or spend money to get "FUEL" and speed up mission return times. Sheesh. Spend 100$ to enjoy the game play.... or portion your fun to few minutes per day.

Same deal goes with new title from EA - Dungeon Keeper - for the first few hours it is interesting, exciting and addictive - just enough time to hook you up on the game and then the drag begins. You need gems, gold, mana and so on to speed things up or the exciting new game turns into a massive training in patience. Wait... wait and wait some more till you get your dungeon upgraded/new areas cleaned up. I think EA went very wrong with this and, in my opinion, ruined perfectly good remake of a classic Dungeon Keeper title from 1997 (love that old game, hence so angry!! :D ). Well, with this one at least you can get a good iOS/Android Dungeon Keeper hack to get all the free gems. Of course, that's cheating, but oh well, at least there is a way to speed things up.

Thing that totally pisses me off is that it's not enough to spend let's say 10-15$ to enjoy the game, you need literally hundreds of dollars spent on in-game purchases to have fun. Gosh, after all this the classic monthly subscription models like with World Of Warcraft seems like a very fair deal.

It looks like there is a simple pattern - make a new game, release it for free with just enough game time to get people addicted/hooked up and then tempt them with in game purchases to continue playing. Who can resist?

What happened with making games to have fun?

Seriously people, so many new games get screwed up with in game purchases. I'd rather stick to a titles with fixed payment plan or one time payment rather than spending endless times on gems, fuel, soulstones and other resources. Seriously.

Well, apologies for venting it out, but I had to write this! :D

Back To WoW?

Hey gang. It's been a really really long while since I wrote something here. I guess I was just too busy doing all sorts of weird things... like getting a life lol... and in all honestly I even forgot I had this page up. I've been doing my online inventory (lol) to minimize some of my digital footprint (rofl!) when I came across this page.

I had a few relapses here and there and got back to playing World Of Warcraft from time to time but you know what? Like in that old saying (or was it song?) - The Magic Is Gone. Either I got way too old for this game (doubt that, there are plenty people older than me still playing it) or the game itself kinda got dumbed down.

In my opinion, it is latter. If you recall, first two expansions were really really great - I mean there was a challenge getting through all those heroic dungeons in The Burning Crusade. You actually had to balance group and have good crowd control, tactics. It was challenging and fun. Same went for WOTLK expansion - still needed a strong guild or a good friends to get those gear runs done and PvP was thrill. I admit, there were a lot of IMBA things (imbalance in classes, gear/etc) but it still was fun - you had to tinker your builds, play around with them and had many options how to go about your character.

I think the whole mess began as soon as the Cataclysm was released... Down the hill we go. Simplified talent trees to dumb down the game so the six year olds can play it, LFG across the realms and dumbing down dungeons made the whole gaming experience from a challenge and fun into a 3 button smash and run.

Now, it boils down to ilevel of your gear, that's it. You can literally run through dungeons with a 4 mele and a healer, no need for tactics or careful planning. Where is fun in that???

The game that used to be fun and challenging to play now boils down to grinding dailies to get your gear ilevel up, grinding weekly raids in LFR with hope to get some upgrades and, if you are lucky, having a few raids with your guildies. More grind, more daily grind, more "kill 10 pigs and bring me their heads" type of things. Ofc, it is not actually that bad, but it is close.

Look what happened to all the old dungeons. It's literally a ghost town. No one goes there unless they are drunk or so bored they have nothing better to do. There are many fun and great instances that a lot of new players never even saw because they flew by them while leveling up. Same goes for raid instances - at the top level you can now actually solo many old raids. Again, no fun.

So today's World Of Warcraft is turning into a shiny nice looking grind'o'mat instead of something that is really fun to play. I agree that a lot of new storylines and quests, especially in MoP, are great and fun if you do it once or twice. In a while it boils down to a grind again.

I sort of start seeing through the quests and all I see are "kill another 10 pigs"... Oh my. I want my old WoW back! :D

Right, I vented, I do feel better and time to get back to mycheats.net - write a code or two of some new hacks....

Is RP is really dead in World Of Warcraft?

Its been a while, but I have been busy working... got maybe max 2 hours/day to play WoW and, I think I can say that RP is dead on most of the WoW RP realms, at least on the European ones. Makes me a little bit sad cause I remember all the "good old day" and guilds like Silverbrand Cohort. Was a lot of fun.

Thing that pisses me off is that people making characters on RP realm do not even respect character naming policy - yesterday I saw a Healypriest running on my realm. Of course, reported. But we all have seen our share of "Legolasses" running around.

So the real question is - is RP dead on World Of Warcraft? And, sowwy, but I dont count as replaying digest of vampires and werewolves from Sookie Stackhouse's diaries (with all the respects to the Author of those fine novels) in the WoW, but the "original" Warcraft lore and style?

I think Blizzard contributed to this as well by messing up a lot with the items, mounts and so on - I mean, choopa? come on!

Anyone else thinking way I do?

Leveling Guide Horde - I would like to be EVIL please

I have been reading a very good article on Horde Leveling Guide about empty and obsolete WoW instances and it got me thinking about one more thing - its the character alignment, achievements and titles in World Of Warcraft. Being a crude Orc at heart, I was always puzzled about one question - How come I cannot become an "evil" character?

I will start with the fact that, since the achievements ant titles were introduced in the World Of Warcraft, I always wanted to have a title that states something like "Dragthar The Mean" or "Dragthar the Betrayer of Undercity" or "Dragthar the Saboteur" and so on - well, you got my idea. Nada, not possible, instead I have to stick to "Dragthar the Champion of the Frozen wastes".

I think, if Blizzard were to implement either a few questlines started by some shady character (goblin comes to mind, would fit the role perfectly!) where you could actually, at the price of reputation, do some harm and get the new titles - would be very fun. PvP encounters also come to mind - those could be cool places where you can implement a lot of new tricks and twists and get a new "evil" titles.

So, while leveling and playing endgame is fun, you inevitably become a "good guy" - even if you start as a Horde. While in the "game lore" there are many great stories of arrogance, betrayal and other shady business, Blizzard neglected to provide this fun part in the World Of Warcraft. I mean, I bet I would not be the only one who, when bored out of scull by everything else, has an option to "become a bad guy and stab someone in the back". Of course, providing the possible "redemption and becoming good again" would be prudent if nothing else.
In my opinion, this could be great revival force for an actual Role Playing which is diminishing at the speed of new games being presented to 10 year olds as Christmas presents.

While many will disagree with me on this one, I would still like to have an option to become a "lawful evil" character. I hope you had fun reading this article on Leveling Guide Horde prepared by "Dragthar the Philosopher".

Leveling Guide - Horde mining tips and tricks

Hello World, you are sort of snowy today, but nevertheless, I managed not to get buried by the snowplows and got back from office just in time to play World Of Warcraft a little bit and share few tips on leveling horde professions - especially, mining.

While many leveling guides will tell you to ignore professions while leveling, I suggest you do not because later on, instead of playing with your friends, you will be forced to come back to low level areas of World Of Warcraft and do this again - boooooooring, and it wont be faster just cause you will have mounts by the time cause you will have to spend all that time travelling back and forth. Since you do all the running now, why not stop and pick up a node or ten *grin* while you are there anyway. Especially, since Cataclysm release you get a bit of experience for gathering materials.

Another good reason to do it - it is a money maker, even if you get to sell low level crafted items to vendors. This probably will not matter if this is your second or third character, but if you are beginner, you will find yourself short on wow gold most of the time.

So, few tips about gathering professions like mining and herbalism. While you are following your leveling guides - int this case, horde, keep in mind, that there are great many competitors for your mining spots. Maybe not in the low level areas, but later on it becomes a real challenge, especially on high population realms. Here is how to make it easier. First of all - get an ad-on called Gatherer - you can download it from curse com and install. What it does? It keeps your mining nodes on the maps. Secondly, search Google for optimal mining routes in your particular area - you will get plenty pictures with nodes and spots - choose one you like and check if its updated. Remember, after Cataclysm release, a lot of things have changed!

So, after you have installed your gatherer add-on and got latest mining routes, think about competition - when is the best time when you can hassle free enjoy leveling horde mining? Obvious answer is - when there are few players playing - during school hours, early morning, very late evening. When it is not a good time to gather herbs and ore - weekends and Friday nights. Your goal is to try leveling your mining or herbalism profession with as little competition as possible while following a decent route. Thats it - only smart thing to do!

There was a very good post about helpful addons for World Of Warcraft on Horde Leveling Guide - I suggest you check it out - can save a lot of grief and mishap.

Well, hope this helps you to be more time efficient when gathering your resources. While you try it out, Im back to reading my leveling guide - horde rocks!

Leveling Guide - Horde profession choices

Hello World, when I woke up today, I was surprised you are still there... Anyhow, continuing my explorations in the realms of World of Warcraft and leveling my horde character, I came to the tough choices - which professions should I pick?

Well, I always hated alchemy, tho I know its a good money maker, but I hardly can imagine myself picking all those daisies, fel-daisies and frozen-daisies... *shrug*. Tho, in theory, I understand that "there is no spoon" - I mean, literally, its just a pixel on a screen, but my brain can see it and make sub-conscious choices - like/dislike. Fascinating isn't it? Anyway, I went with one of my all-time favorites - engineering and, of course, mining. Why? First of all, leveling engineering is not that hard for as long as you know where to dig your ore. Secondly, its lots of fun - you get to make all those funky trinkets and devices and use all sorts of interesting things AND you get to use very early a lot of epic items that no other classes can use - item level 200 at lvl 74? not bad, not bad at all! Self-made trinkets - cool! And last, but not least - high level engineers DO make a lot of monnies, if they are smart (and they usually are! *grin*). Where do you think all those players got their Choopas? Thats a fruit of a labor of some very hard working and high level engineer! Think, if you are lucky, you can make at least 2k (yes, 2000 gold) in profit from selling one. Tho, as usual, mats for such a lovely thing are PITA (pain in the you know where) to get and some are just plain VERY expensive and you can only buy them.

But making choopas aint the only way to get your monnies up with high level engineer! There is Moooore. Yes, I feel a little cow-ish today, after spending time running in cataclyzmed Azeroth. If I remember correctly, since the introduction of TBC (The Burning Crusade) and Outlands, as an engineer you can get one VERY nifty device - Zaptech (or something) mote extractor - well, that one is a literal gold making machine. Depending on a realm, you can easily make about thousand per hour ALONG side when you are mining your saronite and titanium deposits! I am dead serious! It used to be more, before b-Lizzard decided that hunters have invented "perpettum mobile" and require no more ammunition for their bows/rifles. Putting all those epic bullets into auction house in the eve of a weekly raid reset and just pre-weekend was extremely profitable. Blizzard, seriously, you are robbing engineers of their fruits of hard and tough labor never-mind all the primordial saronite spent to get that recipe - where is my refund? It aint fair!!!! And I'm bit mad about it.

So, since I feel it would be very funky to become leatherworker as a heavy armor wearing class and I sorta already have a top end jewelcrafter along with top end blacksmith, I went with engineering. And YAY! I got my first helm (cloth thought, but still!) in appearance of a funky glasses at level 18! Neat huh?

I have to explain a little bit here about the way I'm leveling my horde character. I do follow an old favorite of mine leveling guide for horde, but thats not the only thing I'm doing. I don't rush the levels, I do enjoy spending my morning "paper reading" time and mine a node or two. I know it will be a major PITA (pain you know where) doing it all later on and, in fact, will take about same amount of time. Anyhow, I try to level my professions along side as I level my horde.

I hope you have found this entry in my leveling guide to horde if not entirely usefull, a bit amusing and hope it made you smile!

Leveling Horde on EU realms - my experiences

Hello World, just wanted to let you know that after long break I'm back to WoW and started leveling horde yet again. It seems like its never getting old, especially now with Cataclysm released.

Tho I have to say, I think some of the changes Blizz made to the game does not suite me too well, me being all old beardy and hardcore vanilla player. It does seem like with next expansion this game will be made for a 6 year old to play... Khmm.. Now what the hell should I do now with all my fancy excel tables containing my immerse dps calculation specifics and diminishing returns for dodging while tanking? Just a one big Sigh....

One would think that by making game simpler there will be more healers and tanks available, but nop, noone is leveling horde tanks nor healers. Probably never going to happen cause I think most new players got their game for Xmass and OMG do they noob around a lot or no? I mean, I understand I was probably same some time ago, but this is just sad. But seeing all those goo-blins and wolfeys... Allright, I admit, goblin warrior does look kinda cute, in a sick twisted way. But think of it - what will come next? S-prites and b-lizzards as a races? Rite, thats just me kidding around and being a little bit nostalgic about the "good old days back when".

Anyways, back to the fun part - this time I picked a Tauren pally - I think this will make fantastic leveling horde experience. Can you imagine that huge cow running around with a big and shiny 2hander? I mean, this will look nice. I think I will give you one more laugh - think about cute healing pally-cow... Damn, where I was when created my char, I should have made a femme tauren, would be more fun. Holy Cow. Literally, healing female tauren paldin is a holy cow!

Now I beg your pardon, but I just could not resist and post this picture. If the owner feels like offended or something, please drop me mail and I will take it down, but it is just hilarious!!!

Anyway, so far so good, but after all the "ahhs" and "whoaaa" I start to see "zee grind" again. Those of  you who have been in the WoW as long as I have, will probably understand me. And I am starting to feel that I will be needin some leveling guide horde to help me get through this faster.