World of Warcraft turns 5 and Warcraft turns 15

OK, now I feel old! I remember Warcraft 1 and II like it was yesterday and my wife can still hum the music from Warcraft II even though she never played the game.

We didn't have a lot but we did have a PC. Fiona, my wife, needed it for her studies and I used it for entertainment from time to time. Back then I spent a lot of time down at my local Archery club and my coach had a 16 year old son, Aaron, that never moved from his PC. We got talking and he showed me this cool game, Warcraft. I could not get how he could spend so much time at his PC when he could be shooting arrows. I got a copy of the game so I could check it out. I was messing around with my 486 SX. I had to upgrade it to a 486 DX just so I could play Warcraft ... then it started.... I was hooked!

And I was about to drive my new wife mad with the music:

From Blizzard:

Over the past 15 years, a lot has changed in Azeroth. Valiant heroes have travelled the length and breadth of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, taken wing in Outland to free the Black Temple from Illidan's clutches, and set sail for Northrend to battle the mighty Lich King. Whether you've been part of the adventure from the beginning or are just getting started now, we're glad to have you with us for the five-year anniversary of World of Warcraft and the 15-year anniversary of the Warcraft series. 


To commemorate these milestones, we've just launched the Warcraft anniversary website. There you’ll find video interviews featuring personal anecdotes from some of the shapers of Warcraft, as well as the Battlecry Mosaic where you can show off your faction pride. Visit the anniversary site now!

And who could forget:

World of Warcraft: Mr. T Commercial - Mohawk Grenade

I can see this driving me nuts in no time. Thank god I'm not spending a lot of time in game right now... I'm dreading trying to do anything on my Auction house alt.....But damn Mr T looks good for his age!




Q. What is the Mohawk Grenade?
A. The Mohawk Grenade is Mr. T's latest invention: an in-game item that, when hurled at another character, gives everyone within the blast radius an instant T-riffic haircut. Don't worry, you and your friends will look gooooood.

Q. Where do I get it?
A. Quit your jibber-jabber and claim your Mohawk Grenades from any of the Night Elf Mohawk NPCs camped outside every starting zone.

Q. What regions are eligible to claim the Mohawk Grenade?
A. North America, Europe and Korea.

Q. Is this a permanent item?
A. Each Mohawk Grenade has five charges before exhausting its power, and you're welcome to claim another once the charges are gone.

Q. How long will the Mohawk Grenade be available in-game?
A. Claim Mohawk Grenades starting November 16th in North America and November 24th in Europe and Korea. They'll be available until... well, until the Night Elf Mohawk decides his work is done.

WoW patch 3.3 not too far

It's got to the stage in World of Warcraft where I'm not really doing a lot outside of raiding. I've got three level 80 characters. Two i just really created for the sake of it. I had to play a Death Knight to 80 just to see the story line. My Druid was created purely because my guild needed a tank at the time. I never really got attached to either of them.

My Hunter is my main character. He's a guild leader of a fairly successful raiding guild and he's now at the stage where he needs one single item from 25 main TOC. Due to the week long lockouts it doesn't leave me with much to do for the other six days a week.

This week, for instance, my guild cleared TOC 25 man and 10 man and Onyixa 10 and 25 man in two nights. Each night we spent approximately 2-3 hours raiding. That's not a lot of time when you consider that you've got nothing else to do for the rest of the week in game.

On Sunday night I jumped online and got suckered into doing an OS25 with 3 drakes. The funny thing was, I was still buffed from my Thursday night raid. The raid ends, I log out and don't log back in until the next scheduled raid.

I am exulted with all the appropriate factions. I have all the gold I could possibly want. The only new content Blizzard have added to the game in the last month are vanity pets you have to purchase off the Blizzard store for $10. I really hope Blizzard get their ass into gear and get this patch out really soon.

The PTR is looking good and I'm predicting that they'll release it on their fifth anniversary - 23rd November or very close to that date. Every week that goes by without Blizzard releasing more content leaves me hearing more and more about people getting attached to their Aion characters.

Dragon Age Origins - a really good book

It's been quite some time since I've experienced a game that not only provided me with great gameplay but also a compelling story line to match. Over the last week I've been playing Dragon Age Origins and it's like that book you just can't put down. Not because I want to kill the next monster but because I want to hear what happens in the next part of the story. If you take the time to speak to your comrades in your camp, the story truly expands itself into an amazing book. I'm quite sure that you could play the game right through without touching the depth of the story line but if you take the time to actually talk to all your party members and be patient and listen to what they have to say, you'll find that not only does the story unfold, you'll get extra rewards and quest lines. I would highly recommend Dragon Age Origins to anyone who appreciates a good fantasy story - with a little bit of romance thrown in.

Dragon Age Toolset

Bioware seem to have spared no expense with the development of there newest game Dragon Age that will be out on the 4th of November or in 1 1/2 days away if your getting it off steam. One of the many cool things in this game is the tool set for all you moders out there. And this tool set will be very cool for machinima.

Check it out

Happy Halloween!

Smokin weed smokin weed doing coke drinking beers drinking beers beers beers

Yep thats me as Silent Bob and my mate Dave as Jay :P Happy Halloween! 

New BlizzCast live (and yes it sux)

Episode 11 is live and if you have not read anything online for the last 3 months from Blizzard it might not be a waste of time.

"In our eleventh episode of BlizzCast, we have a roundtable discussion with members of the community team to recap the major happenings, announcements, and other highlights of this year’s BlizzCon. Join our discussion as we relive some of our favorite moments from the show. "

Rob Simpson from the eSports Team voice gives the podcast a football match feel that is just right for a geek gaming podcast ... NOT!

Looking to kill 18:47min click here.

Alpha of Greymane Down Sindragosa on PTR

This has to be one of the best PTR videos I have ever seen. It shows the fight using the default UI so you know what is going on. You get full vent audio and the raid leader is unreal! I wish I had him running my raids. Alpha do a great job together. Kudos to you guys! Looks like a fun fight!

OMG I hate html!

OMG I hate html! I got my hands on the domain www.gamingface.com so I thought it was a good time to re-work all of Gaming Faces. What I have done is move all blogs to here and sorted all the Game and WOW class pages to 1) look the same  and 2) load a lot faster and 3) at the same time (I hope) look better!

Just as I got it all looking good I noticed an error with the posting box in the back end of the site. I cannot edit it at this time so I'm stuck with it the way it is ... all thanks to the new blogger Read more feature ...

I still have more work to do on the site but I hope you like it!

OK, bored now ...

With the introduction of TOC, Blizzard gave us a new level of loot - 245. Even the 10 man loot is 232 and most of it is better than the stuff that drops in Ulduar. Now that we've been at TOC for what, 10 weeks? ... we're finding less and less people are needing anything from other raids. Last week, in under 3 hours, on Wednesday night, we cleared TOC, Onyixa and VOA 25. That's all the possible 245 content in ONE night!

Now we've had a few attempts at hard mode TOC but we don't even seem to be able to scratch the surface. being based in Australia on an Oceanic server makes hard mode TOC a bit harder for some, due to lag issues. Rather than the bosses just having more help and doing damage to the tank, they require the riad to move faster. The first boss for instance puts fire on the floor that gives people less than 2 seconds to move out of before they're dead. Considering most of our raid is running at a 350 ping at best, the first second of that fire de-buff is applied before the player even knows it's there. Blizzard really need to keep latency issues in mind when developing hard modes.

So what does a raid group do now that they can clear all new content in one night? Maybe raid just one night a week? The second night we take two groups in for 10 man. Standard 10 man takes less than 45 minutes but it still leaves 5 of our core raiders sitting out. Hard mode 10 man does provide us with a little bit more 245 content but we're finding that it's hit and miss with what bosses you get in faction champions. The last two weeks have not been a problem but this week we had a healing team of Shaman and Druid and for the life of us we could not kill them. Let's hope Ice Crown Cathedral keeps us busy enough that we're not getting bored so quick.