One thing that has gamers divided the most in MMO’s (and games in general) is Player Vs Player combat (PvP). You generally love it or you hate it. However, I think that even the haters of the world of PvP will dabble a bit to see if the game they love and invested time in somehow has managed to become fun since the last time they tried. Games are constantly trying to balance and make PvP more fun to the casual player to keep them interested so it’s not out of the realm of possibilities that it all of a sudden might appeal to you.

In real life I play Ice Hockey 2x a week and in the spring/summer I play baseball. So it would stand to say that I am a PvPer so to speak. The sports are more man vs man (PvP) rather then say, golf or bowling which could be more-so described as PvE (Player vs Environment). Which really surprises me as to how much I hate PvP (for the most part) in games. To me, the difference is there are no loopholes and no ways for people to get what I perceive to be extreme advantages in these sports like there are in games. I won’t count the people in this category that PvP exclusively for hours on end and have the best in slot PvP gear, b/c well they deserve to be better then the avg Joe PvPer. I am talking about the 12 year olds who camp or cheese you using loop hole tactics to take advantage of things that the developers have not fixed or have not thought of happening, that they just read about on how to gank newbs.com.  Even these people I can’t completely fault b/c hey if you don’t want to get killed, then get better and be able to take them out. Me? I just don’t have the desire or care to take the time to grind up the gear or put in the practice to get that good. Usually once a new battleground in WoW comes out there are some great fun times to be had by all. People are just there to have fun and fight. Everyone is on the same playing field, until, that is, the short cuts to win get found and then everyone just wants to do that. Or the primo hiding spots are found where people can jump to to range attack you and you are a sitting duck. Cataclysm has 2 new battlegrounds next week when it comes out and I think it’s highly unlikely that I will even touch either one of them beyond the first week when I will try em to see if they are any fun. Sure PvP is a completely different game then PvE and a 7-8K DPSer in PvE could end up just being road kill in most PvP matches, it’s just the nature of the beast.

Other PvP areas not in traditional MMO’s are the console games arenas like XBox live. To me there are 2 huge differences in the 2 example games I want to mention. First you have the leveling type like Call of Duty types. The good is they have a huge variety of weapons etc to use and the maps and game types are great. The bad is the levelling system. On paper and if matchmaking EVER was done correctly this is fun as can be. But it’s NEVER done right. When you are first coming into the game at level 1-4 or whatever in these type games going against level 30+ is just no fun at all. This is when you can be standing in front of a guy and hit him 10 times with bullets and he pulls out his gun and one shots you. Nope not fun at all. So much so that it outweighs any fun you might even get in the match.

The better way to do it is the Halo way.  Halo has leveling and unlocking/ buying items, but they are purely cosmetic. A General ranked player is at no more of an advantage then a Sargent player. The maps are great, the varying types of game types are amazing, and the game just matches so quick to keep you involved and excited. Of course using Halo:reach as an example is hard b/c many maps do have those hot spots where guys who should not be able to get to certain places are somehow able to jump up and hide out away from any attacks (even without jet packs). Yet, I will admit this is pretty rare in games and even if you quit out of those matches where you find this happening it won’t happen enough for you to get the 10 min “time-out” the game makes you sit out. With Halo you seem to get a somewhat happy medium between frustration of being killed a ton by people who know the maps amazingly well and those times on slayer where you finish 2nd in kills and it keeps you coming back for more. But, it’s just not the same as PvE/the campaign. Playing in the story mode solo or co-op is just a much better game. If they could find a way to get massive story type battles all in co-op vs AI (this is kinda close to the fire fight mode tho) and advance the story along after this then that will be an amazing achievement in game making.

Even in other games like board games, the game has to be right for me to enjoy PvP. Most of the board games with this type of interaction I shy away a bit and try to find the alternate ways to ensure victory. I don’t know what it is but I guess my Type A personality just takes a back seat in PvP situations for the most part. Unless of course a game is as well made as “Small World” (by Days of Wonder). I will try and review this game at a later date (hopefully next week maybe), but the game is just simply amazingly good fun for the whole family. The PvP aspect is fun and exciting, probably mostly due to no one being completely able to be eliminated from the game, which is a huge plus when you want some player battles and PvP in your game.

For many games coming out now or on the horizon, among the first things asked or mentioned is what type of PvP will be in the game. Too much and you alienate the casual player who hates PvP, or too little and the same amount of PvP will say “why bother”. It’s a thing that I am not sure just having PvP and PvE realms fixes 100%. You get that segregated population but sometimes you get friends and family, whom in order to play with a friend or loved one, you must go on that realm and be subject to possible “ganking” all the time. This is both frustrating and discouraging to some players out there.

Is there a happy medium? Possibly in some games like WoW, but to me, I will still be avoiding it other then the occasional match here and there but I am usually quickly reminded of why I hate PvP in the 1st place. How about you? Do you play PvP 1st or is it something have to warm up to in your games?

I always get a kick out of the puckdaddy posts on yahoo sports when he does his Jersey Fouls posts. I don’t really care if a jersey is ugly or not, that’s not really a foul to me, but some of the ones they show with awful non-names and “creative” editing of jersey’s are just funny as hell.

So rewind to last monday when I went to Season ticket holder night as saw what this idiot had done to a perfectly good Ray Whitney shirt.

I don’t even know where to start to bitch about this shirt. First of all why would you waste the time to put tape over a well loved player’s shirt like a Whitney shirt? Also one that has AUTOGRAPHS ON IT!  One has to assume that this shirt was previously signed by the players b/c I don’t think any players would be happy to sign this atrocity (other then maybe just maybe Skinner himself).  Next don’t be an ass-hat get off your lazy ass and go buy a Skinner shirt yourself! They have been in stores/ pro-shop in the area for months. He was the # 1 pick and is a legit stud and fan favorite, you can find his shirts easily. You obviously have money you are a season ticket holder so don’t be an idiot and deface a nice shirt like this. It’s NOT funny, it’s NOT creative, it’s sacrilegious.

Idiot

Well before this holiday weekend I thought I would give some thoughts on some current happenings in DCUO and WoW. I guess I will start with DCUO. Today they put out a video flythru of the Gotham Zone. It’s pretty much the front of a bunch of buildings and a great look at how good the detail of the graphics are.

I really love how the game is starting to look. It looks great and so does some of the daily screenshots they have been putting up on facebook. The fighting in some of these released videos looks good as well. And yet, there is a big reservation. I was listening to the Final Score Podcast (#30, and a great show everyone should check it out, Scott, Brian and Nichole Spags do an amazing job) and Nichole Spag had been giving some dish on going to DCUO HQ and being able to play a bunch of the game and going thru DC University. The info was great but one thing started to turn me off. She mentioned how much better the game played on the PS3 with a PS3 controller then on the PC. Everyone also agreed that it is likely that it will be better to play on the PC with a console controller. I find this to be baaaadddd news for the game. If you cannot get the game to be equally enjoyable on both and catering more to the console crowd I think it’s got fail in it’s future. This really could spell disaster for this game. I say this b/c if they are catering to the console market it’s not going to work well b/c first console players are not typically the type to fork out money per month, and PC players are not the types (in large enough numbers) to enjoy playing an MMO with a console controller. If we wanted to we would play a game on a console not a PC.

What I am basically saying is get your console action clicker out of my MMO. There is always the chance this will play just fine with the keyboard and mouse and the DC universe will keep us all happy enough but we shall see. The Final Score peeps had nothing but good things to say about it tho so who knows maybe it will be good, but I still want to see some gameplay on my PC before I dive too far in. I am hoping they have a free trial out there or a pre-order headstart to try out before I invest.

So here is the video then after that I will go into some thoughts on the latest WoW patch (4.03a) which was “The Shattering”. 

So onto The Shattering….This basically changed the World of Warcraft  forever. The zones are different, the loading screen is different and the opening cinematic for Cataclysm is in the game and looks amazing. Here is a short list of what is in and what is not. (from the wow forums and MMO-Chanp)

So sure, a lot of good things and I am in love with all the changes that are coming and new things they are doing. But to be 100% honest, I don’t really care  to do much yet. All the things I really want to do are the ones which won’t go live until Dec 7th. Right now all I am interested in doing is completing a few achievements. The reskinning of the world looks great though. Stormwind for one looks AMAZING.  How much they have changed and updated. But I don’t really want to go wandering wasting more time when I really would rather enjoy it all, as if for the first time, with my new Worgen toon(s?). I am also fairly annoyed they have removed the portals in Dalaraan and Shatarath fairly abruptly. We were well aware that they were going to be gone in a few weeks but we only had a few days notice for this one which kinda blows. But eh it’s not the end of the world that is something that only takes a little while to get to the real world again. And for leveling while going thru those areas they have put AH’s and trainers in those towns so there is less of a need to head back to the new “old world” for much.

How about you what is the one thing you are looking forward to the most in Cataclysm and what zone is your favorite so far?

2:22 (2008—104mins) Mick Rossi, Robert Miano, Aaron Gallagher

   This lesser known indy is a heist flick about a crew of criminals who pull a New Years Eve job which doesn’t entirely go as planned. When things start to go downhill fast allegiances and trust will be put to the test. I tend to gravitate towards heist flicks b/c they tend to have a good heady element to how they pull off the jobs and how they get you side with some guys and I like how most of these teeter the line of weather to have redemption or not in the story.

   In 2:22 you are introduced to these guys and it makes no bones about it they aren’t good people to the world. Yet they have a strong trust and friendship amongst each other. This is the central point of the story but the plot seems to wax and wane to stick to the plot or just go off into left field. Case in point is the including Val Kilmer in the movie. He plays a quirky jeweler who launders the take of many of the heists for the group. If it was just him being quirky and them seeing him here and there that would be fine, but the director seems to want to delve a bit more into him and then just stop. It’s like they have to justify his inclusion in the story, either for the character or b/c he’s a big name. I really felt this took away from the movie a bit. Another issue of mine is the all over the place of the story once it gets past the mid point and starts to climax. We are, as usual in Indy’s, left going “Huh?, what happened next?”.  It’s the usual arupt ending that really leaves me a bit empty and unable to justify this as a recommendation for a normal rental for most people.

Verdict—> Not a great movie. It’s in the realm of quirk films, like Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrells but not even close to as good as that. Don’t rent it unless you just love someone in the film (cept Kilmer who is in it for 10 mins total at most), and love indy heist flicks. It fits into the category of late night cable watch at best.

The Last Airbender (2010– 103 mins)  n. Ringer, N. Peltz

M. Night Shyamalan has been abused quite regularly in the press and by all the “critics” for his last few movies. When you hear his name b/c of these people you immediately think he hasn’t done jack in a few movies, he’s in a slump, or he has lost his touch. Well before I get to the Airbender let me first look at his works. The last few movies (before Airbender) M. Night has done are; The Happening (2008), Lady in the Water (2006), The Village (2004), and Signs (2002).  I cannot say much about Happening b/c I haven’t seen it. Lady in the Water was an entertaining fairy tale of a movie that was good to me but people (and critics) were negative mainly b/c there just was no Shaymalan “twist” to the movie like most of his previous ones. I don’t claim to be a huge M. Night fan but of all these movies I have listed they all have their merritt. I can’t say these are AMAZING movies but I enjoyed them, and would also recommend them to anyone as a decent watch. Not movies I would own (but I am picky) but good watches anyway. So we can dismiss critic’s and the public bashing him for being in a slump quite easily IMO.

So I went into The Last Airbender with no preconceived notions.  Also I have  never seen the cartoon the movie is based on, but since I hate typical critics I was willing to give it the benefit of a doubt. SO, the basic plot. Aang is an “Avatar”, a being with the power to wield the power and master all 4 elements (Air, Water, Fire and Earth) and keeper of the peace of the world. He has been away for some time and since then the fire nation is hell bent on taking over the world in his absence he must find a way to help the other nations overcome them. First we REALLY have to look at the target audience. It’s not a summer blockbuster for the whole world to take in as an epic. It’s basically a kids movie. Prolly a tween boy’s movie that has watched the cartoon a bunch and wants to see that world in a motion picture. So that’s why people immediately want to dismiss it as crap. Most people go into movies like this looking for the next Iron Man or Independence Day. It’s not that. What it is, is a decent kids adventure with some under the surface good lessons.

The fighting in the movie, is not really the way you think of. All these “benders” of the elements do what looks like some sort of Tai Chi and then elements (like water or fire) are thrown all around. This is combined with some other martial arts also but it all looks a bit strange. It’s just the style of the movie. Might not be my favorite style but it’s consistent in the movie and it’s it’s own style. I can get over that. I am sure people didn’t like this but hey get over yourself. The story is a decent one for an adventure and I was interested in seeing how it unfolded. The acting while not great (most main characters are not seasoned actors but some of the supporting ones are) is good enough, especially for this child fable-like tale. Don’t look for a heady Oscar movie, just sit back and let your inner kid have fun for a while and you will like it better.  The movie does a pretty typical ending with hopes for sequels but like a movie I did like quite a bit Eragon , I bet we are left in limbo for any furthur installments of this one. Don’t worry M. Night, I might not be a huge fan but I think you are still making quality movies.

Verdict–> If you have kids or like fantasy type faire you will be ok watching this movie. If you have no interest in those then don’t bother. I think of the first 2 the only people who won’t like it are hard core fans of the cartoon/comic (I hear it’s missing some characters from them). It’s worth a rental to me.

Last night the Hurricanes announced shortly before the game vs the Senators (a 7-1 win WOW) that they had dealt hard shooting but useless defensively D-man Anton Babchuk and hard nosed F Tom Kostopoulos to the Calgary Flames for D Ian White and minor league F Brett Sutter. I like this trade for a few reasons and only dislike it for 2. First the bad. I don’t like that he didn’t get to play last night, which is quite selfish and nit picky for me, b/c well I just wanted to see his first game as a Cane. However immigration stuff happens so it’s not that big of a deal really. I also don’t like that he’s a UFA after this year. I suppose that he could always re-sign but likely he will be worth more then his just under 3 mil he’s getting right now. Jim Rutherford has stated a bunch that he likes having a bunch of UFA’s on the team b/c it gives him some fluidity and wiggle room to keep the roster moving. That statement can be good or bad, but just as long as at some point we get a GOOD season or two in a row that will keep me happy. This constant state of building or youth movement is for the birds.

As for the good, well I think Babchuk blows. He’s too damn big not to be physical and the Canes have enough offensive D men that they don’t need another useless guy on the blue line defensively. So good riddance to you Anton. As for Kostopolous, well I had kinda liked him a bit b/c he brings his brand every night and doesn’t often take nights off. He also was one of maybe 3 guys who would fight or stick up effectively for a teammate. But he was under contract for next year as well so getting rid of him saves them another year of a guy who wont put up more then 5 goals total.

Ian White brings the team a solid 2-way D man. He has been known to put in his share of goals from the blue line (13,10 the last 2 years), and he takes care of his own end better then most of the guys on the team do right now. It gives the team someone effective to use on the PK with Gleason instead of Maurice putting McBain and Pitkanen out on the PK which might be the worst decisions I have ever seen on the ice. White was the worst minus on the Flames this year, which I won’t discount but that team is quite in shambles and not playing well at ALL, so I think he just got a raw deal there and will enjoy it here in Raleigh. He has had his best years under Maurice while in Toronto so this could spell a jewel of a find for Rutherford. Good job, I hope this helps get the team on track defensively, b/c giving up 7-8 goals most nights isn’t fun to watch.

Ok so admittedly, as usual, I am super psyched about this movie so it could make me have some Green Geek goggles on here. I am prolly going to love this movie even if it’s a piece of crap but the trailer looks pretty damn good. A lot of the web is torn on the take on Hal Jordan by Ryan Reynolds. See traditionally Jordan is a bad ass. He’s more or a no nonsense guy who is not all jokey and funny. Reynolds is the jokey funny charismatic guy. He’s kind of a middle man of the Hal Jordan – Guy Gardner mix. The only arguments to make are there were some times in the comics where Hal was a jokey guy with him and the Flash being buds etc. so I will give it a bit of a pass, but I can’t decide to cringe or chuckle when Reynolds screams “I know Right!”.  Either way the footage of the Corps HQ planet is AMAZING, and the Green Lantern Corps themselves are cool as hell, and prolly my fav part of the old GL books in general. Such great characters and stories that I hope this franchise continues b/c there is A LOT of potential with Reynolds and the Corps.

Check this out and tell me your thoughts!

So I broke down and decided to buy Halo:Reach today (As opposed to renting it from the Red Box as I previously thought I would give it a try $2 for almost 2 full days of playing is a good deal to me). Mainly I wanted to buy it b/c I figured that buying it would let me take part in the multi-player aspect of it more, and I had enough gift cards and reward cash at BB that I figured less then a dollar out of my pocket is a good deal to me!

So I got it home and threw it in the olde 360 right away. The opening of course was amazing to look at. The level of detal and polish these games put in the opening sequences these days are awesome and make the whole experience that much better. I was then asked to create my “master chief like” character. Which seemed cool at 1st until I realize some of the customizations cost their in game “credits”. So I kinda just went for the standard for now and just changed my colors and logo for starters. I figure as I play more, later I will come back and customize a bit. I also went right into the solo campaign first. I played it for roughly 2 hours and naturally it was awesome. I loved the game play, the story is cool, seeing your character in the colors you made is very cool. They even had a gimme in-achievement in the game to start with. It has the usual Xbox achieves but it also has it’s own halo achievements which I am guessing reward you with some of those in game credits. They seem like mostly PVP/multiplayer centric achieves cept for the 1 beginner opening one they give you, so I will have to see if and how many others I get to. Either way the game play is sweet so far. They give you a bit of a party to play with at times as well. Sometimes it’s story driven with one of the main team, and others it’s just tag a guy or two and they will come with you. I only got annoyed with the story one once, b/c it ran back to a random check point to do nothing which annoyed me b/c I thought I was supposed to be there as well, but I found later that if you just go on playing, when you get to a point that they need to be with you ZAP they will just appear there somewhere. That’s actually fine with me, the alternative being trying to back track and find some idiot NPC and have them follow you home and hope for no pathing issues on the way as well. I consider myself a decent gamer in FPS games but no expert by any means, so sure I have died a few times already in the 1st 2 hours. Not a frustrating amount which is good. I am looking forward to getting back in there later this evening for some covenant killing, and preying dear God please don’t have any of the infected or zombie whatevers from the 1st couple of games. I might shoot myself if they appear.
As for online play, I am kinda looking forward to this. However, I am not looking forward to getting beat down by a throng of 12 year olds who are ALL 1000x better at these games, or know all the tricks they tend to have. At heart I enjoy playing cooperative style in campaigns, but when you get full scale 12-12 or more type battles, I can get used to the play and really fall in love with it. Hopefully it has matchmaking and good multiplayer content to keep me happy as a relative noob to multiplayer. I have a feeling it will because for months, all they did with the game was beta test and get feedback with the multi player. Seeing as there is no way I am the only one of my kind of gamer, I think I am going to be happy. I will update this post or have 2nd impressions soon! Keep your eyes on the GJ!
And if anyone wants to add me as friends on XBOX live my handle is CanesRx

Bioware has been giving us a decent amount of info on pretty much a weekly basis about the upcoming SW:TOR. As always in games I am looking forward to seeing what the have in store for us, and am hopeful it will be something good. It seems that you are able to send your “companions” on missions for your crafting skills, gathering skills and even do “missions” for you while you are either doing other things or simply not logged in. More and more games have been trying to figure a way to integrate the Eve style of offline jobs, I am just not sure if I like it at all. I don’t play Eve and I don’t play Fallen Earth so I haven’t seen any of their systems in action, but to me I just don’t like crafting of items in which it takes more then a few seconds of a bar to go across the screen to make. I don’t really agree with clicking something to make and then having it say come back in 10 hours or whatever. It’s a dirty trick that browser games use to keep you coming back later to get more hits from you and hoping you will pay more to speed it up. In regular MMO’s it’s just their way of also getting you to come back but they already have your money (if it’s not F2P) so why screw with the player? Sure there may be exceptions to many rules here. I might be ok with something huge taking some time, or only being able to craft certain parts of a large item once a day or some cool downs (see transmute cool down ) but I don’t like the idea of having to wait 24 hours for something to get done.

  There is also the idea of getting ahead while away. I don’t like the idea of someone getting more money or nice materials or items while they are sleeping or off playing another game. This could mean that crafting here, like most games, won’t help the player all that much and will be pretty much optional and frivolous. I hope not. I happen to love the idea of crafting in games provided it’s a little more involved then the WoW system (which I still love even being simplistic) but not quite as much of a nuisance/chore as the Vanguard system (there should NEVER be a chance of FAIL when you are putting materials on the line, only degrees of success). Anyway check out this video, it’s got some great shots of the interface and game as well which I love to see! (Thanks to Massively for the heads up and Bioware for the releasing of it)

So Cataclysm is a month away. I haven’t pre-ordered or anything but I am hoping that since I work the first few days of it, that if I go to a remote(ish) Target that morning at 830 (after work) that I might be able to score a collector’s edition. I am not really worried about not getting a copy I just really want to get a CE and I don’t think anyone has any more of those to pre-order. The most important thing to me, is what I am going to do before it hits. Yet, first what I have been doing last week and a story about the big drop of a Battered Hilt.

  Going into my last off week I had 4 level 80’s, who’s gear range from my DK and Hunter who have above avg to good gear (mostly T9-T10 or above) to the 2 80’s, Lock/Warrior  whom I am kinda in the middle of gearing (mix of heroic drops and T9). The toon that I had been working on a bit was my Paladin. He’s the 2nd character I ever made in the game (after the Hunter) and he has yet to hit 80. But he was 79 at the start of last week and was tanking LK regulars so getting to 80 was just a matter of time.  Once I hit 80 it was time to get some gear. One thing I have enjoyed since the new patch came out is the retribution spec. It isn’t what I have been used to but since there is no way I could go into tanking heroics in my gear I was going to have to DPS those heroics. So good thing I liked ret. b/c I am going to be stuck with it for a while. The Good news is that since the patch dropped and a ton of people are back to try it out, and they are all overgeared, so being carried in a few heroics for gear isn’t that big of a deal. What I normally like to do is start by queing for ToC (reg and heroic) and FoS  (reg andheroic). They are both quick and both drop good enough gear.

   So in about the 5th of these runs a Battered Hilt dropped,and lo and behold I rolled a 90+ and it was mine! This was a kick ass feeling since I generally don’t ever win any loot rolls. So the decision needed to be made. Sell it, keep it on pali, or send it to another toon. Well it’s only fetching in the neighborhood of 4-5k on my realm right now so it wasn’t entirely worth it. And since the quest is supposed to be fun I figured I would try it out. Well the Pali andWarrior are both not going to be completely geared up in tier 10 by Cataclysm I figured the best bet is the toonI will be playing a ton, my Death Knight. More on the quest after some talk on the DK.

   Ok so what else have I been doing? Well, in game right now I only have a handful of friends I regularly talk to and/or run with. One is my Cousin whom is coming back to WoW after a bit of a break and is not only not 80, but he is trying to get his fiance’s toonsleveled up to the 70-80 range. The other group is a group of 3 people whom I have been playing with for a few years. They are all amazingly great players and I thoroughly enjoy playng with them. We all help each other andbasically do whatever someone comes up with on any given night. Well a certain 8k+ dps Fury Warrior who has a mount collecting habit figured she needed to get the drake which comes from the Glory of the Hero achievement.  It’s been a real fun time doing those that the 4 of us have left over. No one had more then about 10 to do and now we are all basically down to 5-6 achievements left. The very cool thing of it is we have been 4 manning all of the heroic dungeons to get these done. What we have is my DK as the Tank, said Fury Warrior, a Gnome Mage who puts out as much if not more DPS then the warrior and a Priest who can heal his ass off blindfolded. So it all works out perfect. So what I have left is this. 2 Easy achievs, Share the Love andAbuse the ooze, both of which will be easy to do in one night of runs. Next up is Zombiefest!, which is also easy to get in one night but just a bit of a pain in the ass to do but I think won’t be too much of a problem for us. The next two groups are the harder ones. First are 2 Oculusdrake ones, one for doing it withno tank drake one withno healing drake. Only problem really with those is that we will have to grab a 5th player. Hopefully we can grab a guildieof one of theirs or else we are stuck with trying to get a competent random 5th player from the random dungeon finder.  The last one which is only for me has been a royal pain in my ass for nearly 2 weeks now. Dehydration. Sure it’s not hard at all, but the hard  part is getting the boss to actually spawn in Violet Hold. I have been in there 10 times since we started trying for the achievement, and I have not seen Ichoron one time. So now I just have to hope in the next 30 days I will be lucky enough to get him to spawn one time. Odds are that I will but stranger things have happened I guess.  I will keep you guys posted on when we finally do get our Drakes and with any luck I will put up a few screen shots of it as well.

  So while all of this was going on my DK also had started the Quest for Quel’Delar. Most people who were lucky to have done this quest will be bored of this next retelling but for those who haven’t let me fancy youwith the tale. The quest is full of fun in game lore and anyone who likes that sort of thing will love this quest. I myself, am not a huge fan of all things lore. Don’t get me wrong I do love the game and love the story but I just can’t bring myself to read every single quest text out there. If it’s a good quest line and a dungeon quest I will generally read it tho, so this one was enjoyable to me. First few parts of it have you flying from here to there letting people look at the hilt and giving you some back story of it all. You go to the ring in icecrown a bunch of times for the next piece of the quest and to hear some more musing. Once the 1st few fetch type quests are over it’s actually time to do some killing and you are tasked to go into the Pit of Saron. There you will pick up some infused saronitebars which are on the ground arounddifferent areas of the dungeon, around the areas of the slave miners. You pick up enough of them and then you will need to kill the 1st boss and get the Forgemaster’s hammer.  Pick it up and when youhave both you will then be able to forge the sword. (It’s either clicking on the quest item once you are next to the anvil or click on the anvil itself, I cannot remember). Once you have done that go back to the quest giver and then it’s time to head to the Forge to temper the sword. 

   You next head to the Forge of Souls and fight your way to the end and kill the good old Overseer of Souls. Behind him is the big thing that kinda looks like a large glowing goblet. Click on the quest item while nextto it and you will have the sword tempered and ready to head to the hardest part of the quest, and possibly the funnest as well.

   You will next head to the Halls Of Reflection. No, you won’t have to kill the waves upon waves of ghosts and get thru that whole dungeon, but you will have a cool little event at the beginning of the dungeon. Once there you will see Uther the Lightbringer who will have a small convo with you about wanting to wield such a piece of power. From there you will next have to fight the sword itself. I am fairly certain youwill e able to fight this witha five man group. It’s only an 80 elite so if yo fight it with a 5 man you will mow it down fairly easy. But for the most fun out of it I recommend you try at least once to solo it. Hopefully you are well geared enough to do it. I think you might just need a healer and it will be a bit easier on you, b/c it hits pretty hard especially when it does the whirl windmove. I ended up doing this fight solo with only my Mage buddy watching. He was hesitant to help out b/c he didntwant to glitch the encounter. The good thing about DK Blood tanking is the amount of self healing, so this was a decent lengthfight with some kiting involved.  It’s one of those fights in the game that while it’s going on it’s a lot of fun but when you are done it’s just an epic feeling. It’s better when you work hard for something and succeed.

   After you turn in that quest you have this sword but you must now go to the Sunwell to cleanse the sword of the evil inside. You will be in a different phase of the SW so from here on out until you turn it in at the end you are on your own. It’s ok you won’t need any help but it’s still a cool few more parts of the quest. It’s a shame you cannot bring anyone else to the SW plateau portion b/c some of the drama and scenery that unfolds is kinda cool. You will have to leave the area and head to the outside of the zone and be tasked to find  Thalorienn Dawnseeker’s remains to get his blessing to have the evil removed and be able to wield such a fine weapon. Once youfind his remains you will have to fight alongside him in 3 or 4 fights. They are not terribly hard but still the act of them all is kinda fun. Once you are done that’s basically about it, and it’s time to turn in quests and head back to the last person and pick out which form of Quel’delar you want to have.  I loved this quest and am glad I did it on the DK tank. I really hope I won’t have to replace it after about 10 minsof Cataclysm with a green quest reward but I am fairly certain I will. Either way I am sure Ill keep it in the bank for the fun of having it.

So now it’s off to finally finish off these last 6 quests and get my DRAKE!