After much debate, ‘I bit the bullet’ and bought an Xbox 360 (Limited Ed. MW2) a couple months ago.

Why Limited edition:

For those who do not follow the ‘Xbox family‘ of products, the limited editions tend to be $100 more in price. Naturally, a couple of friends wondered why I would bother with purchasing such a version but I figured why not? Aside from being the latest and greatest (thus presumably less buggy) version, the harddrive is 250GB, a nice step up from 120GB ‘elites’. I’m sure I could have lived with only a 120GB main storage device but the bump up really eliminates any worry of capacity issues.

Also, the limited edition looks sweet! It’s not the pure white or black like the ‘normal’ Xbox. Yes, I know there are Xbox faceplates for changing the look but I prefer the MW2 look still. But regardless of harddrive and the exclusive design, I still did not waste $100 on this edition.  Why? Because a copy of Modern Warfare 2 ($60) and an extra 360 Wireless Controller ($40) are included in the package. Those two items alone compensate for the rise in price.

A Little History

Ever since I first laid eyes upon my first MMORPG I was pretty much hooked. This game happened to be World of Warcraft and it took me a while to download! I remember my friend logging into the game after I finished installing and patching it like he asked. He was actually using a friends account, so my first look at the game was through a friend’s friend… but anyways, he had a level 60 Pally! I realize now that the forested area where the character stood was in fact Ashenvale Forest. This was the summer of 2005, just over half a year after game’s launch. It wouldn’t be until October that I decide to buy and pay $15 (subscription) every month for an online game.

Ever since I started my own account (a little under a year after WoW’s release) I’ve played and remained active 95% of the time. The longest my account has been ‘froze’ would be around a week and only a couple times which has not happened in two years now. Back then, I did not fully raid SSC/TK so I could focus on finishing up vocational school at the time. My raid attendance was very lax at the time. Other no-play times would be vacation time with the family.

‘RPG’ is for Rocket-propelled grenade…

Back to the Xbox, I’ve logged a good amount of hours in the past two weeks now with my game of choice Modern Warfare 2. (I used to call it CoD6 but that greatly confuses some people.)

Most of my friends, on and offline, have an Xbox 360 so I’d be lying if I said that had no weight on my console decision. The PS3’s support for Blu-ray and the web browser is quite appealing but do I really need another device to browse the web? *Pickups up iPhone & lays it on laptop* And since I’m a Windows (7) user, my Xbox is linked into my media via Microsoft’s Media Center software which can browse network drives/shares so it works out to be a pretty nice if setup if done correctly. Although I just use my laptop for such things still, best solution for PowerUser.

Steam has been installed on my PCs for many years now (and for many to come) so I naturally have the Orange Box for PC. For $20, I also have it for the Xbox now (should I ever want to beat Portal again or popup Team Fortress 2 for some good online play). So aside from MW2, I have Dragonball Z: Burst Limit which is another reason for purchasing a console system. I’ve tried the whole emulator mess off and on over the years but I just don’t care for it. Some games are console only… like DBZ: Burst Limit! I played the original DBZ Budokai games on my Play Station 2 so it brings back memories to some degree playing through the new DBZ games.

Since the online portion of DBZ: Burst Limit! pretty much lacks players, most of my console time is with Modern Warfare 2. First person shooters provide a nice break from WoW and the guild during slow parts of the day/afternoon but it is only a small break because it’s back to warlock in the evenings for raiding!

This year is different though! The in-game world event for Love is in the Air received a major face-lift this year. We have a completely different system for the [Love Token] and the needed achievement items / vanity items. Many sites like WoW.com and MMO-Champ have laid out the details but it’s a good change to this holiday. You can now guarantee grabbing a Peddlefeet!

I’m actually not to worried about getting it complete on my alts with this nerf/change.

Here is a screenshot of the some of new content/quests:

Anyways, I made a short video clip of the new Love Boats that are available in various capital cities:

Frostwing Halls wing is our target now, one more boss left!
And after Sindragosa, the Lich King himself will be next on our list…

Frostwing Halls Progression

Scourge waves put up a fight for about an hour but after switching a tank, the dragon was restored.

Crimson Hall Progression

The Blood-Queen died our first night we fought her, took only a few wipes to understand the fight.

Being the warlock in-raid, it was my job to ‘tank’ Prince Keleseth during the encounter, rawr.

Recently, I bought another WoW account (on sale for $5) and went through the recruit-a-friend process to link my two accounts together. Why do this? To gain the benefits of the R.A.F. of course! (I plan to post about my experience with the RAF later.)

It more or less allowed me to ‘pwrlvl’ him from 1-60 in a few days and from there I grinded to 68 in Outland. Once any of my characters hit 68, it will take me about a week to bump them to 80 thanks to the wonderfully laid out Northrend quests.

Thanks to patch 3.3’s [Emblem of Triumph] change, my newly leveled warrior only needs a handful more emblems for his (ilvl 245) helm and throwing weapon then he’ll be maxed-out gear wise. (With the exception of the new ICC 5mans and ToC & ICC raiding.) Not bad for a week’s worth of random heroics…

The first gated content in Icecrown Citadel has opened up & I’m looking forward to it!

We had some good tries with Professor Putricide this first week but the 10 attempts were not enough to kill him off. We did take down Rotface & Festergut with relative ease though. I wish Blizzard would stray away from the limited attempts scenario for raid bosses but they have improved from Anub’arak.

Many guilds, even the ‘high-end’ ones really did not approve of such achievements as [A Tribute to Insanity]. Keeping achievements away from ‘how many attempts are remaining’ is what happened with Putricide. You can kill him with 10 attempts left or 1 attempt left, it has no negative ramifications (aside from repair bills).

I can live with limited attempts for bosses in ICC but the achievement-based bit that we saw in patch 3.2, with the Crusaders’ Coliseum, was really depressing at times.

Wanted to start out a new year, 2010 with a resolution to keep up with this website!

“This footage was created two years ago, and since it never got completed, it never got released.”

#Machinima Collaboration – Part 1

This World Event marks the last that my main character was lacking! Aside from a few achievements (that are not a necessity for)  I have all the World Metas completed on  Uriahworld!

As always, the two 80 alts need to follow through next and they did.