World of Peacecraft: The Neutral Pandaren Lifestyle

In both of my previous WoW articles, I claimed to have played only two characters for my entire on-and-off history with the game. This is essentially true, since the druid is Alliance and the warlock is Horde and that means I can interact with every part of the world between the pair. I’ve never really felt any urge to make more characters since leveling is my least-favorite part of the game. The only thing that ever tempted me to make a third character was learning about a specific quirk through which a player could theoretically reach max level without ever… [Continue Reading]

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How to Find the Age of Your World of Warcraft Character

During a content lull in Final Fantasy XIV, I temporarily reactivated my WoW subscription to try the new War Within expansion. I’ve had a long on-and-off relationship with this game, having first installed it sometime in undergrad after they added the free trial and taking multiple years-long breaks in between sessions. Nonetheless my two toons, a zombie pirate warlock and a werewolf druid, have pretty storied careers since they’re the only ones I ever play, and like most players I’ve developed something of an affinity for my little guys. So it’s always bothered me that I can’t see their age… [Continue Reading]

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Trying EverQuest in 2020

Despite not considering myself an MMO kind of guy, I’ve somehow put in hundreds of hours in both World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14, mostly because they’re great games to play while plowing through my TV backlog on the second monitor. Both of them were highly influential games for their generation of MMOs, cornering the market by setting the standards many of their competitors would try and (for the most part, fail to) surpass. But they’re only two parts of the triumvirate. There’s a third game, one that first put 3D MMOs on the map. Most of the earlier… [Continue Reading]

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5 Useful Battle Pets in World of Warcraft

Since Pokémon has still somehow not released an MMO, World of Warcraft has remained the perennial title any monster-collecting MMO gets inevitably compared to. Its completely-optional minigame of traveling the world capturing pets, choosing their movesets, leveling them up and doing turn-based battle with NPC trainers and even other players is one of the most straightforward adaptations of the monster-collector formula, and I don’t know of any WoW players who didn’t sink an embarrassing amount of time into obtaining their favorite critters. While there are far, far too many battle pets to ever make a case-closed list of “The 5… [Continue Reading]

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Final Fantasy XIV: First Impressions in 2020

Breaking News: Yesterday the devs revealed that FF14 is raising the free trial’s level cap from 35 to 60, as well as adding the whole base game, the Heavensward DLC, and all related races, classes, and content permanently free to play. This is the best opportunity to try this game out if you’re on the fence! Two months ago my boyfriend asked if I’d be interested in trying Final Fantasy 14. The coronavirus had completely zapped all semblances of a social life outside the confines of our apartment, and the rest of our local friend circle had already subscribed just… [Continue Reading]

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Waking Up in Azeroth

I’ve never really been an MMO kinda guy, even when my first job out of college was writing for one. I never had the patience to level up a character, and they’re always super boring at the early levels before you’ve unlocked anything of value. I first tried World of Warcraft in undergrad after it went pseudo-free-to-play, but didn’t get even remotely close to the level 20 cap before giving up on Kerychtyrr, my zombie warlock. The gameplay felt completely repetitive, just talking to NPCs and killing x amount of y enemies to complete quests. I didn’t touch the game for almost… [Continue Reading]

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Subscription Games and I

So I was chatting with aabicus the other day, as we do, and we were discussing what games we’ve been playing as of late. As you can tell, I’ve been playing Warframe. Aabicus though is playing games by Blizzard. He wants to get a job writing paid articles for another blog. Of course, World of Warcraft popped up. He said he found it rather addictive. I tried it years back and didn’t like it. The thing that always put me off was the subscription. And buying new expansions all the time. Now you just need to buy a subscription and… [Continue Reading]

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