femalegamer

In some of my most exciting gaming news as of late, I am currently taking part in the WoW Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack beta test. And, I can say that is it absolutely amazing! I fully believe that what they’ve added and have done this time around will blow everything from the original and The Burning Crusade out of the water. Very exciting things are afoot!

Currently, I am leveling up a Death Knight - what an amazing class! It is so exciting seeing new skills and talents in game, and the DK starting area has the best quest progression so far out of all the “class/race” starting areas.

I’ve also been taking my hunter through the Northrend areas. Beast Mastery hunters have undergone unbelievable changes and finally have a really solid place in end-game raiding! Not to mention the 51st talent point allows BM hunters to basically tame anything in the game!

If you’re a current WoW player, you can opt into the Beta (key codes are given via random lottery), by clicking here:
https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/beta-opt-in.html
For more information, check out the WotLK forums here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=1793231&sid=1

After two days with the Wii version of Rock Band, I can truly say it is a fun experience.

Never in my life did I imagine I would be singing in front of my husband with reckless abandon! (Normally I’ll sing in the car, but one or the both of us will turn up the volume to drown my voice out).

Yes, we seem to be a female fronted band - I get to sing, he takes drums or guitar. Right now, we’re just going through the game in the hopes of unlocking all the songs for an upcoming weekend at camp (I use the term camp very loosely, camping involves tents… this involves electricity, indoor plumbing and real furniture) with two other couples.

Occasionally we switch it up so I can get accustomed to the instruments. For the most part though, he swears that when he’s drumming he’s paying no attention to my vox… I guess that’s a good thing - though damn I wish he was paying attention to my 34-phrase streak on R.E.M.’s Orange Crush!

The game has a fun selection of songs, although it doesn’t have the ability to download additional tracks like the Xbox. It is still enough for our use - ultimately more for social fun than serious rock star dreams. Within a few days, if we’re feeling particularly musical, there will be a Rock Band “expansion pack” we can pick up to add to our collection (20 new songs).

The various instruments work great and I think they’ve improved the drum kit since the Xbox version. However, I’m not without complaints. For the Wii version, they’ve done away with the band personalization - you don’t get to create “your” band. Yes, you get to come up with a band name, but the bands playing behind the tracks are generic bands. Figuring that we don’t have completely new band members every single song we do… it’s a little annoying. Also, they’ve streamlined the “rise to glory.” There’s no winning fans or unlocking new venues. While it really doesn’t take away from the play experience, I love having silly goals to work toward - this one included.

No matter the complaints, I look forward to the hours of entertainment this game will provide to us and our friends alike. And, in the meantime, we’re going to continue rocking The Fillmore in our bedroom.

Happy gaming!

Well, we did it, we’re putting World of Warcraft down for a while (though I’m guessing we’ll be back). On Friday I picked up two copies of Age of Conan for myself and my husband. I was hoping to have the game installed and good to go by the time he got home from work… I forgot about the PC game to Mac conversion issue.

Instead he got surprised with the game boxes and the several hours of work involved getting the game installed on his PC and Mac’s “Windows program” Boot Camp and the game installed on my MacBook Pro.

Nonetheless, we got a decent amount of playtime in this weekend and so far I have a Level 20 Stygian Demonologist and he has a level 18 Cimmerian Bear Shaman.

I have to admit, we’re both very impressed with the game so far! Beautiful graphics; interesting, immersive quests; nice spells for my Demonologist and a more detailed melee system for his Bear Shaman; the ability to do a solo quest thread in your own personal night instance; and an interesting loot system.

It has already held our interest more than any other MMO we’ve tried since picking up WoW. Then again, that’s not hard to do… There was one in which I played for five minutes and proceeded to get my character stuck on a water well (Dark Age of Camelot, I think). When I realized my character was there for good, I called it quits out of annoyance… five minutes! Maybe we should have given it a better shot.

Although we normally play together, I like that this game has you to play solo in your own instanced world a decent amount. If nothing else, it’s forcing us to really learn our classes right off the bat and not rely upon one another as a crutch all the time.

My biggest complaints so far are the storage opportunities. Your bank bag also serves as the area in which your “trade post” (auction house) items are stored and it isn’t very big. And I’m a pack rat… Mine is full already. In Warcraft we used to use the mail system as backup storage, sending items to one another. In AoC it seems as though there is a limit on the number of items you can send a character… That will get old very quickly.

Anyway, and on an aside, I’m impressed with Boot Camp for running the game. Though I feel dirty logging onto my Mac and having it act as a Windows PC. I’m just waiting for the blue screen of death.

Note to game developers… make more games Mac friendly!