Project Lore

Evil Sudoku Puzzle Via WebSudoku - Good Luck! The RPG genre, and by extension the MMORPG, is full of cliches.  Tired cliches.  We are led to believe that our single avatar has enough skill, power, intelligence and cunning to change the fate of the world/galaxy/universe/dimension alone.  Our toon can wield unimaginable power no matter how long it has been fighting, and, for most games, with absolutely no sleep.  For some reason the capabilities of our fighter, be it healer or warrior, never diminishes as our health depletes.  Health, which is a static pool assigned by an arbitrary numbers, may fall from from 18,928 HP down to 1 HP, but the savior remains piss and vinegar till the last drop.  For some odd reason the gear carried by our hero contains power of its own, which is granted to our avatar when worn.  And to cap it off, lions, boars, bears and other nefarious creatures carry these items with them until they breath their last breath.  Yet we never receive the exact item they just wielded against us. Sound like damn near every RPG you've played this millennium?  Frankly it should, because it has been the tried and true method since RPGs started.  And I don't mean in the digital form.  Sure, there have been incremental changes, and even some titles that stand out for one reason or another (loot drops in the Fallout series), but by and large, developers know that gamers fear drastic change and have heeded that warning. Blizzard has made its own steps towards Vulcan approval in Wrath.  During my questing expeditions in Dragonblight I ran across a little number that tasked me with collecting animal hides.  Being a skinner I initially rolled my eyes, annoyed at the prospect of having to skin for a quest.  Not only had I perfected the act ages ago, but couldn't the dozens of stacks I already posses, some still on my person, count towards the requirement? Nope. But it wasn't as painful as I thought it was going to be.  Sure I had to hunt down some worms, and shake out some birds, but my skinning abilities did come in handy.  After looting the downed beasts I was able to skin them, like normal, only this time Borean Leather wasn't the only thing my blade peeled off the corpse.  I was also given a Thin Animal Hide, at a 100% skin rate no less, the very quest item that I was after.  It struck me how much sense it made.  Solidsagart is a skinner.  She skinned an animal that died as part of a quest and received the standard drop of a hide, but gained another item - a guaranteed one - for her additional skills. I know I saw something along these lines during Solidsamm's quest, likely from his engineering skill during Fizzcrank Airstrip quests, but I can't remember the specifics.  Do you remember anything of this nature?  Perhaps not the logical use of a skill, but something that broke from the traditional group of cliches that we so easily accept. Shortly after the small step forward I was tripped back in line.  Not a day later, Solidsagart progressed to Zul'Drak where she helped Gristlegut feed his Scourge buddies.  An act that doesn't make any sense.  Unlike the Drakuru-based quests, they are for subterfuge, helping the Scourge here does nothing to further our own cause.  In fact, we are strengthening them!  Back to the illogical I guess.  At least the quest text, item descriptions and completion text is funny. Num, num indeed.

Click to read more ...

How do you choose your professions? If you just want to make money, clearly there is a general consensus that taking a couple of gathering professions such as mining and skinning would be best. Just head out for a little while, gather up some materials, and sell them. No sinking money into leveling, no rare recipes to find, no investing in mats to make something and hoping it sells. However, if you want to make your character as effective as possible in battles, it will probably cost you a bit of cash. All of the crafting professions have a few items that can only be used by characters with the right profession, but some are better than others. A couple of the nice ones are engineering for goggles, leatherworking for drums, enchanting for ring enchants, and alchemy and jewelcrafting for trinkets. Let's say you decide ring enchants and drums are best to make your character top the dps charts. How are you going to make that profit? Doing enchants and making armor kits will only make you so much money, especially if you have to buy mats. So, now you have to make an alt in order to provide mats and make a little more money. But don't you want to make your alt as uber as your main? I guess that's just something you'll have to decide for yourself.

Click to read more ...