TFC vs. TF2… Epic battle ensues!….if only games could fight games…

Today during my Digital Apps class, I was like “Hey, I think I’ll talk about something but WoW today!”…ok seriously? I was actually sleeping but no one has to know. Anyways, this blog is about WoW and beyond! so today I’ll talk about the “beyond”. So lately I’ve been playing TF2, for those who do not know, its Team Fortress 2. I knew the game and how it looked before I played it but I never seen someone actually playing it until my brother bought the game. So I looked over his shoulder while he played. You know kinda like breathing on him and giving instructions. “Go there!, go attack him! Go die?” Huh? Anyways, I thought the graphics looked very cool even though it seemed WAY more cartoon like then in TFC. TFC was the first game, and its called Team Fortress Classic for those who do not know.

When I started playing FPS games on the PC, TFC was one of the first games I started with. I know its weird, usually people go straight to CS but I didn’t like it TOO much. However later on I did play it, but maybe I’ll talk about it another time. So I first started with TFC and I instantly fell in love with it. The gameplay was mostly, you choose a team and then either, you stay defense and protect the flag or you go offense and steal the other team’s flag. Anyways, I kept playing until I got invited to join a clan. We had a few matches and one of the members and this other one was starting another clan so I joined that one because they needed me. Yeah uh huh, they needed me. The new clan was made and we had some top ace players. At the time I was playing offense and I was the ace player along with the other 2. TFC matches, well the one we played in the tournaments were 8v8. We ran a 4 defense and 3 offense tactic and well…we owned, we won the championship and then I retired after that. I know, I know I’m showing off right now but thats ok! I’m really not trying to I swear! 

Fast forward to TF2, and everything I knew in TFC has changed. Back in TFC a major part of playing was the use of grenades and concussion grenades and the other one…I forgot the name. As a offense player, you needed to know how to concussion jump, conc jump for short. This was possible with the medic and scout class. What it was, is you would prime a conc nade, or throw one down, and wait until the timer is done beeping. Just before it blows, you have to time your jump over it so you get a huge huge boost into the direction you would be going. The more advance techniques involve holding a conc nade and dropping it the last second and priming another one and as you land you fly in the air again.

Now in TF2, there are no grenades no conc jumping, just more developed classes. I don’t mean to say that well developed classes aren’t good but I wanted to conc jump! Anyways, TF2 as a lot more class details and focus on more class play, and team play. I don’t mind this at all, I think its a huge improvement. Thats 1 point for TFC and 1 point for TF2!

Another detail that has changed is obviously the graphics. The old TFC had graphics that were like Half Life graphics and CS graphics. In TF2 they are more cartoonish and more cleaned up. Thats…uh ok forget the stupid points. I sorta like the graphics now, but I think it would’ve been cooler if they kept the old TFC concept and made it better. I mean now when I look at the models, I really know who is a Spy, or a Sniper, or a Solider, and so on so forth. This change also affected the maps. Each of the maps have been changed to reflect the character models. More cartoon. Sometimes playing TF2 reminds me of playing a cartoon game.

Overall I think TFC vs. TF2 isn’t as comparable as I thought. One is new gen, one is old gen. I guess its really up to the person playing it. But I’m sure everyone will choose TF2 over TFC which is fine. I think both games have their highlights and great points but in the end TF2 does beat TFC due to the fact of new concepts and better graphics. In this day and age, everyone loves graphics, gameplay? screw that, if its got 1080i graphics, its instant pwnage orgasm. If anyone does play TF2 and wanna play with me, just drop me a email!

Anyways I’m not really done but I’ll save more in my next post, Part 2!. If I feel like it…

- Iternal

Maple Story, is it worth the trouble?

Maple Story, is it really worth the trouble? In this game you will be facing so many challenges. Some of these challenges are… actually getting to a high level, communicating with the idiots in this game and trying to live through the constant lag and spam. Now, when I say trying to get to a high level, I’m not exaggerating. When your level 30, you’ll be facing 10-12 days of grinding over and over just to get to level 35, unless your some kind of inhuman monster who has the free time to play 24/7. Also, after your level 35, you can either do a PQ (Party Quest) or grind for the rest of your Maple career. If you chose Party Questing, then you just set yourself up with stupid party members, and long long long waits until you actually get into one of the dungeons.

Good job, now you'll have to kill 3423480 more monsters (Exaggerated Number)

Even if it’s an exaggerated number it’s still pretty accurate for a guess. But it’s true, it will take you that long, or even longer to get to the next level.

Grinding for levels isn’t the only grind you’ll have to go through. You’ll have to go through the annoying people. When I say annoying I mean the ones who make your life in this game more miserable then usual. People will scam you, hack, make fun of you, annoy you by comparing there damage with yours. There’s a lot they can do, especially when your leveling. Not only that, but the staff members are really dumb and they’ll ban you for no reason.

No reason at all.

Yes, I found it on some Maplestory Forum, but that just shows how bad the GMs are with their judgment. They ban innocent people, but they seem to avoid banning hackers and scammers. They don’t even bother banning spammers or anything that helps the game because they’re too busy hoarding in all the money there making from the people buying the Super Megaphones to spam with.

Yeah. This is spam on Maplestory. (Apologize for the quality)

Yeah. Which reminds me, if you don’t have NX Cash (The virtual money you use to buy virtual clothing for your virtual characters. Did I mention you have to waste real money to get NX Cash?) then you’ll most likely be made fun of my people who do have NX Cash. There are some nice people out there, but in Maplestory it’s highly unlikely.

This game is pretty horrible altogether. You should never, EVER try this game. You’ll regret it and even if you DO like it, you’ll probably get bored when you get to level 30. I wasted part of my summer getting a Maplestory character to level 59. After trying to level up some more, I got bored, instantly, and I wondered to myself. Why am I playing this again? Then I quit. Seriously, after you get to level 120 (When you get your last job) You’ll have nothing left to do other then getting to level 200. And once you do get to level 200, congratulations! You just wasted 10 years of your life.

- Kricu

WotLK warriors: the results

Well after posting my last blog entry on Protection warriors in Wotlk, I just had to try out all the changes when the chance at beta was presented to me. Unfortunately it’s NOT my beta key (it’s Iternal’s) but nonetheless I got the chance to try out the Death Knight starting quests and more importantly for this post, the theorized PvP Fury warrior build and the new and improved Protection tree! I was extremely excited in trying out all of these, but when I saw the actual numbers coming up, my jaw dropped!

The deep Fury Titan’s Grip/Furious attack PvP build unleashed some truly impressive numbers on various level mobs that I tested on. On Lv78 mobs I was bursting for around 2.2k normal crits with mainhand and saw 1.7k normal crits from the offhand. Yellow crits with Bloodthirst wasn’t astoundingly high (around 2.3k) as the warrior I was using was a premade warrior in Lv80 PvP gear. Nonetheless, there were moments when there would be consecutive crits from both mainhand and offhand racking up to near 4k instant damage followed by a Bloodthirst putting the damage near 5k+. Do keep in mind that this is only self-buffed with only Battle Shout up. Although I would imagine the damage to be somewhat lower against another player due to resilience, nonetheless I was very please to see that this new Fury warrior has similar burst potential as a PvP Arms warrior.

Another thing that also pleased me was seeing how mobile the Fury warrior was. With Heroic Leap I had access to another ability to close the distance between me and my targets, although the place of landing can be random at times, nonetheless it is still a great PvP addition that compliments Intercept well. Heroic Throw even without Gag Order is a great tool in PvP especially when you’re rooted, being able to reach your target anywhere from melee out to 30 yards. The damage I got with Heroic Throw and the two-handed blue Lv80 PvP sword was around 1.3k damage NON CRIT. (Never did get a crit with it although I’m pretty sure it can crit) However, I did notice that the proc rate of Furious Attacks was lower than I expected which makes it pretty much a less powerful version of Mortal Strike in its current state.

As for Prot warrior testing, I wasn’t able to see the mitigation and avoidance factors at work because the premade warriors are geared only in PvP gear, so I ended up trying to tank with a PvP shield and one-handed sword. Still, the damage I saw even with deep Protection spec was very impressive. Blizzard has really boosted Prot warrior’s damage output as I was witnessing Shield Slam crits of 2.3k, Devastates critting for 1.7k and Thunderclap critting for 1.5k!! Those numbers are amazing compare to their current counterparts in live. The change to Thunderclap is finally going to allow warriors to AoE tank near the level of Protection Paladins, using it in conjunction with Shockwave and Cleave as well as adding the glyph that will increase its total number of targets up to 8. The Damage Shield talent also allowed me to keep multiple targets on me more easily as it was basically the warrior’s version of Holy Shield. The in-combat, defensive stance charge was also quite useful at times for generating rage used in combination with Shockwave’s stun (although you most likely won’t be able to do this on bosses).

Overall, I was very satisfied with all the changes that Blizzard has done to the warrior class, particularly with the Protection tree. If anyone is wondering what build I used for the testing, here are the links: Protection Tanking, Fury PvP

- Xei