The Friendly Necromancer

While we were in the Beta phase of Animal Cove, I managed to score Stripes the Zebra, which I believe is everyone's first pet. Yesterday, I was able to unlock this little cutie named "Scruffy!"

I miss that about dogs

In real life our family owns a cat and a bird (no they are not named Sylvester and Tweety . . . they're named Zoodles and Sweety.) Unfortunately our real life dog was killed by the neighbor's dog several months ago. But that's another story for another time . . .

The only thing cuter than Scruffy

Well if you can't have a real dog, virtual dog it is! (IMHO It's a much better option than dropping $3000 on a robot dog.) To unlock Scruffy you had to complete a gauntlet of six levels. Fail one, and you go back to a checkpoint and try again.

Running the baby puppy gauntlet is CUTECORE!

Finish all six levels and you'll have unlocked a new baby animal!

What would happen if you never tapped to continue? What kind of monster would do that?

After this you're rewarded with a fun, new friend who wanders the island and interacts with its denizens.

I feel you, Dez. I feel you.

Pets are now slowly rolled out each week. Most likely all the players who earned Stripes are going to be seeing Scruffy next week. It's great to have something new to do in Animal Cove, week after week, even if you've finished all 300 levels.

I hope everyone is really enjoying playing Animal Cove. The team has worked hard and is still working hard on new stuff to add to the game! Thanks for playing. :)

Happy Dueling!

I continue to play in Barovia . . . although I don't know why . . . I'm getting my butt handed to me most days and really have no business being here, but I'm succeeding "just enough" to make me want to stick it out.

Barovia is a setting that's been around for a long time hailing back to the days of Ravenloft, a 1983 Dungeons and Dragons module that borrows lore heavily from Dracula. It's a mountain valley that's a densely wooded area with cold winters . . . and lots of undead, cultists, vampires, werewolves, and gypsy folk. Sounds like a great place for a Friendly Necromancer to hang out, doesn't it?

There's one thing I know for sure about Barovia . . . I can kill a deer there!

. . . not only "a" deer, but two deer at once!

Yup, there's a quest to kill deer for their meat and then place the meat in front of wolf caves to lure out the alpha wolf and kill it. Check. Can do! Did that this morning in fact! What I can't really do at the moment is kill a giant werewolf boss. It's a gear check fight, and my gear and stats just aren't up to snuff yet.

That's ok. There's still plenty to do here with repeatable daily quests, which most I can do, but those witches and their Ray of sickness spell though. Wow! Can't do that one just yet!

They own me every time . . .

Ultimately Neverwinter is an MMO and the coolest things in the game are definitely multiplayer focused. My favorite of the multiplayer experiences are the "low barrier to entry" heroic events. Most can be done with one to three random people that also happen to be nearby.

There's heroic events with everything from saving a couple of merchants from disaster to defeating a large mass of undead or wolves. . . and then there is Yester Hill.

Looks pretty ominous doesn't it?

I kept seeing people yelling for more assistance for a "BHE." I'm like ... What the heck is a BHE? Bad Halitosis Encounter? No? I'm checking my quest log. *Shrug* then someone (like me) asked in the world chat what that stood for. I'm so glad there are other confused people out there in the world. BHE stands for "Big Heroic Event." Duh. In Barovia the BHE is called Yester Hill.

Now it all made sense. There's a weekly quest to complete three smaller 2-3 person heroic events and the Yester Hill event. I finished mine up just yesterday by joining a group of 12 or so likeminded adventurers in downing the evil Thornspur.

Gettin twiggy wit it

The gist of the encounter is that you need to defeat 50 twig blights who are trying to give Thornspur damage resistance and also defeat a "draggle of druids"(you like that? I just came up with it) who are giving Thornspur additional health. Pro tip: just follow the crowd and kill everything.

Kill all the things!

Eventually Thornspur himself rises up and you burn him down ... End of the Yester Hill BHE.

Low barrier-to-entry events like this I have no problem with completing. It reminds me a lot of the fun world events in Guild Wars 2. Those were always a good time and pretty easy to beat as long as enough random people were gathered in the same area.

My next goal in Neverwinter is to actually go on some 3 person hunts in Barovia. That takes the scariest thing of all . . . interaction with other gamers. *gulp*

Till then ... Happy Dueling!

Happy Sunday everyone! For the next few Sundays, I thought I'd take the opportunity to do something a bit different, and that's talk about each of my D&D characters a bit. I'm not going to lie, this was totally inspired by Destiny Soultamer's blog post from five months ago. It's a great read, you should check it out.

Today's character is one that I just played with a group of people last Thursday night. His name is . . .

Pryce Cinder-Earth

Pryce is a Hill Dwarf and comes from a long line of Cinder-Earths. Ancestrally speaking, members of his family have always been Smiths. A fine shield and hammer is a thing of beauty and so it was also natural for him to find those items in his possession. Unlike the other Cinder-Earths, however, Pryce was a man of the cloth -- only when dwarves are involved, it's cloth covered in armor with the mighty symbol of Moradin emblazoned upon it.

Image kindly borrowed from the Forgotten Realms Wiki entry on Moradin.

During his training with the Hammers of Moradin, Pryce excelled in his studies and learned the languages of orc and giant and also came upon some lore about the Tablets of Fate, an ancient artifact said to keep law and choas in balance. Though his fellow students shrugged off these tales as exaggeration made by humans, Pryce made it his life's quest to find these Tablets of Fate, or at least some evidence of them.

Ultimately Pryce is a Cleric of Light, which may seem a bit strange for a Hill Dwarf. One wouldn't typically think of Moradin as a visage of Light . . . then again, when one feels the heat of a forge and feels the sparks from hammering hot steel, that thought dissipates quickly.

The quest for the Tablets of Fate have put the rest of his life at bay. knowing that this task was too much to take on by himself, he sought to find a group of adventurers willing to plunder ancient tombs in search of "treasure." All the while believing that Moradin would guide his fellow adventurers to not only the truth of all things, but also to the Tablets of Fate.

Image kindly borrowed from the Forgotten Realms Wiki entry on Ao.

Pryce did encounter a group of adventurers and has been questing with them for what is actually only a few weeks, but what feels like a year. Early prey consisted of Kobolds and bandits as to be expected with fledgling adventurers, but what wasn't expected was a Blue Dragon disguising herself as a quest giver that sent them into a haunted church where ogres had taken up residence.

Since then, Pryce and his companions have faced many dangers, including were-beasts, slimes, and crocodiles oh my! Currently Pryce and his companions are delving into the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, following a lead Pryce received on said Tablets of Fate.

His fellow adventurers would probably describe Pryce as being a bit "handsy," as he tends to use the Guidance cantrip for everything. His favorite way to cast this is with a gentle pat upon the buttocks accompanied with a "pop" sound from his mouth.

As a now 7th level Light Cleric, Pryce commands a powerful array of spells and abilities, Always at his side, however, are his "Spells of the Forge" that fuel his power: Burning Hands, Flaming Sphere, Scorching Ray, Fireball, and Wall of Fire.

Along his journey he's also acquired a couple of interesting magical items: a Rust Bag of Tricks and a Broom of Flying. Though he may be granted one of eight various creatures (up to 3 times a day) to assist him from his Rust Bag of Tricks, he's always secretly hoping to pull out a Giant Boar he's named "Betsy." As for the Broom of Flying, unfortunately an encounter with an acidic ooze has temporarily damaged his prized possession -- he's patiently waiting for its repair, but he will fly again!

Mark my words, fine readers, the Tablets of Fate will be Pryce's someday, and he and Besty and his flying broom will live happily ever after.

"Have ya' happened to have heard of the . . . uh . . . Tablets of Fate?"

One thing is for sure, if you happen to be in a party of adventurers where Pryce is at the table, there's going to be some Voodoo happening . . .

I think these chips are the real reason I keep getting invited back to play.

Happy Dueling!

Yesterday The Art of Warlord streamed an hour of Wizard101 with me in our continuing quest to make our way from Wizard City to Polaris--one hour at a time. It all started back in 2015. At first we were on a great schedule, and then I got busy, and then Morgrim got busy . . . but the "WC2P" project has always been in the back of our minds.

On our very first episode we made a rule that, no matter what, if I drew a beetle card, I had to play that card. Now I have a new rule . . . if I draw a beetle card, I must immediately discard it and play instead a Monstrology summon card. Why? Beecause Tarlac is now professionally dabbling, professionally, in Professional Monstrology.

BOOM! 48 Monstrology xp!

We had originally planned on playing Wizard City through Polaris on Saturday, but I made a dumb joke, and Morgrim took that as a cancellation. Whoops. Anyway, not knowing our wires were crossed, I logged in to wiz and noticed I hadn't done my Monstrology quests yet on Tarlac, so I thought I'd see what it was like to pick up Monstrology after Arc 1 and then try to keep it up while doing our Wizard City through Polaris episodes.

Here's the basic gist of what I did: After completing the introductory quest, I bought the triple animus elixir for 150 Crowns . . . I mean, if you're going to be grinding out Monstrology, there really is no other way to fly. Lost souls got me to level 2. Lady Blackhope got me to level 3. From here I switched over to Krokotopia and earned levels 4-6 from running through the Karanahn Palace and killing (er, extracting the animus from) all the Karanahn Deathfeeders and Karanahn Mortifers there. From here I switched to Dragonspyre and at first dipped my toes into the Pyromancer's Tomb for the Fleshless Sentry animus and then switched over to Sylvia Drake's Tomb for the Necrotic Haunter and Bone Warrior Animus. Finally I dropped in to The Great Spyre to hit up the Soul Searchers there.

It really only took maybe an hour to an hour and a half to raise my Monstrology to level 9 and fill my sideboard with undead summons. It made me wonder though, has anybody written up a really great guide for quickly leveling Monstrology? Let me know in the comments if you know of a good guide.

Yesterday was pretty fun playing with The Art of Warlord. We had a few people drop by the stream to say hello. It was great seeing everyone and even better playing on Tarlac again. I'm sure Morgrim will upload a condensed version to YouTube soon. Make sure you follow The Art of Warlord on YouTube!

Happy Dueling

A few days ago I logged on to Steam and downloaded a new game to play called Paladins. To be honest, until I read their wiki page this morning, I thought this was an old game and could have sworn I watched someone play it years ago, which is kind of freaking me out. I don't know why I thought that?

Anyway, the gist of it is that it's Overwatch / Team Fortress 2 with a different skin and a different monetization system. Blizzard asks you for money up front and quite frequently holds "free weekends" so that players can give it a shot. Vice Versa, Hi-Rez gives you five free heroes to play always and asks for money to unlock them all -- alternatively you can micro-transaction purchase heroes one-by-one and apparently for in-game currency as well? I did that with this guy . . .

Yup . . . that looks like something I'd love to play.

When you go to purchase, they put all the options in front of you.

Basically 200 gems is five bucks -- with 39 heroes you can see it clearly makes sense to purchase the pack unless they give you enough cash throughout gameplay to unlock all the heroes, which I'm unsure of yet. What I did see was that if you log in daily, they have a reward system available to you.

Aesthetically I can't help but feel like I'm playing Overwatch with Skylander toys in a way. You remember Skylanders don't you? My kids had us buy tons of those and hardly played with them at all. What I didn't know is that they have a cartoon now?

I may actually have to watch that! . . . I digress.

Anyway, I'm a total of 10 games in (with one scaley dragonborn character unlocked), so I can't give much of a fair review yet, and that's not typically what I do anyway here on the Friendly Necromancer. What I do is play games, tell you about it, and get your thoughts. Why? Why not?! Amirite? So if you have experience beyond an hour in the game, let me know.

Here's how my hour went. I played a tank character named Ruckus to start. He's a little goblin dude that pilots a suit of armor.

Notice that player in the back with Drogos? That's when I was like . . . mine!

I think the first few matches might have been us paired against bots because there's no way regular people are just going to run to point like that. After a few matches with Ruckus, the game shifted to a 5v5 deathmatch. I was still playing Ruckus, but then I came into a match where a dude auto-locked Ruckus and I had to go with a second option, which was Viktor (a straight DPS character who plays a bit like soldier 76).

(Sorry for the poor quality on the video btw . . . I'm a bit time crunched or I'd record it again)

I faced my first defeat after 10 matches or so when my group didn't have a support character playing with us and the other team did -- it makes a big difference.

So there you have it . . . I'm going to be playing a bit of Drogos in this game since my motto with lizardfolk-esque characters in any game is basically "if it has scales, it's MY BABY!" I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

Happy Dueling!

Last night, four of the Potato League members were actually in a group together in Paladins. Gotta give it up to Eboni, Beau, and Lemonz for joining me last night. Thank you, team!

There were some general lessons learned from the exercize of playing a different game -- there are some matchmaking "issues" with this game, there are some definite differences with its mechanics (like not being able to switch heroes mid-combat), we had an AFK thrower, etc. . . . but that's not what I'm here to talk about. I was able to play Dragos a few times and get a better feel for the character.

Fight or Flight
My first thought was that this character seemed to be a Pharah clone, but what I found out after being easily shot out of the sky a few times was that . . . no . . . this is not a Pharah clone. It's basically putting giant wings on Reinhardt and sending him into the air -- you're going to get shot down, and just from practicing in the shooting gallery, it's easy to see that the hit-boxes on these characters are already exaggerated. The other difference with the flight is that you can't really hover high up like you can with Pharah. The gravity pulls you down with greater force so pulsing flight to regenerate fuel isn't really something you can do. You *will* run out of juice.

This seems to make his flight powers very situational . . . easier to get to high ground, easier to spring up in the air and get behind someone, easier to gain vantage on a situation -- use it sparingly, the other team will shoot you down.

(It was pretty handy for jumping up and grabbing the ball out of the air for the capture the flag matches.)

Mishaps with Missiles
Dragos has an interesting ability called "Salvo" that allows him to load several missiles in his cannon and fire them in a cone in front of him with auto-aim precision. It's possibly his most powerful attack . . . but you have to load them . . . which takes time. I'm used to being able to spam an attack when its cool-down is done. It seems you can't do that with Dragos's missiles. You have to stop firing completely, pause, press the missile button, then attack. It's not horrible, but it is "different." And different takes time to get used to.

Need to level him up to get those WYRM Jets and Reign of Terror abilities. Fun!

Ultimate Charging or Charging Ultimate
The ultimate ability is basically a charge forward that autokills a person upon impact. A very valuable lesson from last night was, you aren't invincible while it does the power up animation. I was looking down on a very skilled Viktor player last night and ult'ed on him . . . he just shot me down. So the pro-tip here is that you need to be hidden when you activate this ult. It takes about 2 seconds to fully charge up, which is 2 seconds where you're very vulnerable and unable to do anything else, but when you unleash it . . . somebody is going to die!

A Dash of Splash
Dragos can spit out a big ball of Magma that does a pretty good bit of splash damage. It is slow moving, however, so it can be easily avoided if you're paying attention. Saving it for up-close encounters may be your best bet . . . but I don't think I'm fully understanding all of its power yet. I think that, while in my time at the practice range, eventually Fire Spit gained a larger AOE. And that's part of the difference with this game. It's more MOBA-like in that you level your powers. Lemonz was mentioning that it felt more like Smite than he had anticipated. I can see that since it's the same company that makes that game.

So there you have it . . . my big beautiful scaley boy is a flying pinata full of missiles. I'll have to let you know if I can discover more out about him in the future.

Also something to explore in the future are loadouts beyond "default."

Happy Dueling!

Well . . . I had homework last night. Yup. I hope I don't give away too much, but today on KI Live they're going to use my Pirate, Friendly Thomas, to explore the Test Realm, and for what they need, it will require a level 70 pirate with a level 70 Old Scratch. My pirate, before last night, was level 69 with a level 67 Old Scratch.

But I'm a good student and finished my homework! Luckily it only took an hour or so and didn't involve a lot of math. One level 70 pirate and Old Scratch are ready to go! To those ends, I now present you with . . . a tale of three quests.

BUT FIRST, do you know how I found those three quests? With the brand spankin' new feature called The Quest Finder.

. . . oh it's been on the frequently requested list just since the beginning of the game is all . . .

I'm telling you now . . . it's beautiful and one of the most amazing features to ever hit Pirate101.

Look to the Skies
It all started with a quest from a wooden puppet named Giovanni Cassini. Well he looked like a puppet to me at the time because I had a fresh installation of the Pirate101 Test Realm and all the game assets were still downloading.

How's it feel, Giovanni, to know you're not a priority over Wand Attack Animations?

Giovanni had the need for a skyship pilot. Giovanni needed me to wrangle up a Parabolic Reflector so he could gaze into the stars. All I needed to do was to hunt down a couple Armada ships . . . for science!

Lucky Jack Russel cleaned house easily here. Sorry clockwork dude.

. . . but wait . . . there's more! What good is a Parabolic Reflector without a Brass Setting. Giovanni set us straight to fight "The Pretender" who just happened to have "Brass in Pocket" for us. Yes, yes they made that bad pun.

I used all my arms, legs, style, sidestep, fingers, and imagination to complete this quest.

That little adventure netted me two bubbles of experience, thank you very much! NEXT!

Strike Force
Gerardo Dandini had a serious fashion problem. He had ordered Diamond Buckles from the Guinea Pig artisans in town and, gosh darn it, Grande Masque season was almost here! Since a unicorn needs his diamond buckles and didn't want to stoop to talking to "pigs" about the matter, he sent us to do his dirty work.

When you head over to the Artisan section of town you find that all the Guinea pigs are on strike because the unicorns struck up a deal with Tortellini crab mobsters that circumvented a trade agreement on creating clockworks.

What's a pirate hero to do? That's right . . . go crack some shells and destroy some inventory!

The power of bad breath compels you!

After a quick trip over to Capo to start a small crab civil war, Giuseppe the artisan agrees to send over Gerardo Dandini's Diamond Buckles. The good news for us is that Gerardo was overjoyed and coughed up five and a half bubbles of experience for a job well done -- despite his impatience while we fought a small war over Diamond Buckles.

Due Unto Others
Ludovico Muratori is the local librarian in Florenza and he has a bit of a problem. A nobleman by the name of Luigi Vandelo has a very important overdue, and somewhat famous book that Ludovico was going to trade with the Librarian of Sivella for an equally rare volume of books . . . uh . . . you know, librarian problems . . . they're serious business.

When you head over to Luigi's house, he's super rude and sics his guards on you.

El Toro ain't havin' none of that nonsense

. . . and thanks to an old bug . . . you get to do that fight twice!

Again . . . El Toro ain't thinking twice about that nonsense.

Luigi has a sudden surge of rememberence after you defeat his guards and viola, you have an overdue book needing return to Ludovico in the Florenza Library.

Ludovico was so happy he coughed up the remaining experience I needed to get to Level 70 . . . WOOTAH!

. . . And that's how we do it in Test Realm Town!

Oh wait . . . that's right . . . this is Test Realm and I'm going to have to do it all over again on the Live Realm if I want to do skeleton key boss fights? Not a problem. I'm up to the challenge, and I hope they have a very very successful KI Live today. I won't see you at the show, but I will be watching it with you!

Homework completed. :)

Happy Dueling!

I had a great Twitch stream last night where we had a lot of fun playing Jackbox TV games with my crew and the Tara Cat Club. Thanks everyone for showing up and playing along. It's been FOREVER since I tried to stream something here from the house, and it was great to have that kind of reception.

Morgrim mentioned she had never played any Jackbox TV games a few days ago, and that's when I hatched the plan to have us play together on Twitch. My daughter originally purchased the game for us, and we've been playing them together as a family for a few years now. We currently own Jackbox TV 3 (from Steam) and Jackbox TV 4 (on the Switch). They are all super fun games in the party packs, but out of all of them Quiplash and Tee K.O. have always been our family's favorites. (The word on the street is that Jackbox TV 5 is coming sometime this fall btw.)

Check out this highlight from Quiplash last night. It's pretty much the entirety of our first game together.

Watch Highlight: Quiplash with Vanessa, Uber Wife, and Morgrim from Stingite on www.twitch.tv

During that clip you get to experience the craziness of a full on raid from the Tara Cat Club. wow!

. . . and here's a highlight showing off the winning shirts from Tee K.O., which is a game where you draw and design T-shirt images and slogans. It's a ton of fun.

Watch Highlight: DropTheMike FTW on Tee K.O. from Stingite on www.twitch.tv

Look at that . . . Michael FireHammer with the win. :)

Probably the coolest thing about Tee K.O. is that if you like the shirt you make, you can actually order it to be made from the company . . . unless they discontinued that? I didn't see the option last night to buy Michael's shirt, but maybe I exited out early or something. Anyway, we've purchased two shirts in the past.

One of my daughter's old memes is to insert "Cuss" instead of the real swear word.

Let me know if you had fun watching these and if you'd be interested in doing it again sometime.

Happy Dueling!

Happy Sunday! Continuing on from last week, Sunday is my day to spotlight one of my D&D characters. This week's character is one I've talked about before on another blog of mine, so it's going to be kind of an easy cut-n-paste type of weekend for me. I present to you . . .

Avantador

If one was to look at Avantador now, they'd see a seasoned adventurer who's journeyed to the far reaches of The Feywild and back and fought everything from flaming skulls to hell-pigs, but ultimately he's an orphaned hero with a tragic past.

I love me the scaley boys

Avantador's clan was destroyed in a series of ice giant attacks. Someday he will go back for vengeance but he needs to train. He wants to sing the song of their destruction. His family was destroyed while protecting him. Mentioning giants tends to upset him greatly.

In fact, if one was to merely mention a giant, he'd probably tell you one of these 12 jokes randomly.

D12 roll:

What’s the difference between a clown and a giant? Their shoe store.
It's not a giant's fault they think they're the center of the universe. They just can't see anyone else.
What happened when the giant wanted to hang himself? Nothing, he couldn't find a high enough ceiling.
Yo mama so tall she tripped on a rock and hit the moon.
How do you make a giant look more awkward? You can’t.
What do giants and boulders have in common? Intelligence.
What does a giant and a burnt out torch have in common? They’re not that bright.
What do you call an attractive giant? An evolutionary miracle.
What’s a giant's worst fear? Ceiling fans.
Ever noticed that giants look like slinkies when they run.
Giants are only good for two things: Laughing at them and getting runaway levitating wizards.
Where did the giant find a girlfriend? On the roof of a nearby house.

Avantador is a very charismatic Silver Dragonborn Bard with a heart of gold and a very clear sense of what's good and what's bad . . . and giants are always always bad. Avantador likes to look clean and wears nice clothes (Blue robes, typically). He's a storyteller/singer/songwriter and will perform in exchange for lodging. Besides singing, he is also skilled with the Lute and Hand Drum.

One of his more famous songs is one about his tragic past and the necklace around his neck. If anyone ever asks for the story behind his necklace, he will offer to sing them a little song.

Mother’s Necklace (Avantador’s Theme)

My mother held me tight

Every single night

And she would sing to me

Rocking me to sleep

Guiding my right hand

Peace upon our land

And all that she had

Was all that we had

All we needed then

Was the family den

And the Dragonborn

Why did no one warn us

When the giants strike

They slew us left and right

It was a blood-stained night

I hid away in fright

Too young to fight

But I watched father die

Nothing left to caress

But my mother’s necklace

And so I’m on a quest

Until they’re laid to rest

I will live my life

Until the time is right

And this Dragonborn

Who no longer mourns

Has been strengthened by time

And is now driven by rhyme

When the dragon strikes

No giant left in sight

To be a blood-stained night

From the point of my knife

Nothing left behind

And the nightmares remind

There’s nothing left to caress

But my mother’s necklace

~~

As a proud member of the Althea and Company group, Avantador is possibly the youngest, but for some reason seems to be the one making all the "dad" decisions and although his honesty and quips can get him in trouble, no one really stays mad at Avantador for long.

An encounter with a half-orc bard in a plumed hat swayed him to journey down the College of Valor, and since he seems to be the most heavily armored of Althea and Company, he spends a good deal of his battle time on the front lines next to the Tiefling Monk while his Wood Elf Ranger and Rock Gnome Wizard companions plunk away at their enemies with bows and spells.

One thing is for sure, the journeys of Althea and Company have made him strong and soon his eyes will turn to giants.

Happy Dueling!

Wizard101 has turned 10. Can you believe it? I logged on yesterday and celebrated the Wizard101 10th Anniversary by completing the all new quest titled "The Milestone." This was the first time I had seen the quest as I hadn't even run it on the development server yet (like I would have in the past). It's kind of crazy how the new job really does separate me now from the development of Wizard101, which is kind of amazing in a good way. I came into this game as a fan, not as a hired hand, so it's great to get a glimpse of that back again.

The most I had seen of the quest, was what we had put into the Anniversary Video of TJ O'leary doing his gamma lines for the quest. Can I just say how cool it was to see all the professors standing in one room?

Yup! All my NPC buds!

I loved that the quest painted itself as a ruse for a surprise party with Gamma sending you to the "ombudsman" house with some urgent business. Oh man . . . the drama was about to get thick! Who knows what nefarious public complaint the ombudsman had received about our beloved professors. THE DRAMA!

YOU GOT ME, GUYS! (not really, but I'm gonna play along)

I also loved how the quest was all about the player because that's really what it's all about, yo. Ambrose put it best, "But I can say, without an prevarication, that we absolutely could not have made it without you."(Nice word, writers!)

Preach it, Ambrose!

I put my Decaversary Statue in a nice empty spot in my Death House to celebrate. (although maybe I should float that over the pool instead . . . hmmm)

I still wish I knew who Kayla SilverStaff was . . .

It's been an amazing and wild ride to this point, hasn't it? Thanks for reading along on my blog. Life is full of crazy twists and turns, but I'm glad we've had Wizard101 to keep us together to this point. Here's to "many more Decaversaries to come" as Ambrose would say.

Happy Dueling!

I have 40 hours on Doomfist, which isn't much compared to those peeps who REALLY play Doomfist, but I've learned a lot from playing him including when it's just not working and when it worked so well I don't know quite what happened. I love a good mystery, so let me just type out a few things that I do know about the character and how I play him.

He's the bad guy

Not only is he the bad guy, he's the leader of the bad guy team called Talon. That isn't the reason I play him though. Originally I started playing him because I had been owned by him so many times playing Reinhardt, that I wanted to play him more to understand how he plays.

His achievements are hard to get

To get his Air Strike achievement, it feels like you typically have to be in a "125" position on the map already, which are a little hard to get to and you have to have an enemy kind of not moving around when you launch it. A "125" position is somewhere high enough that when you launch Doomfist's Siesmic Slam ability, he will come crashing down to build up enough speed to fully charge his Siesmic Slam to 125. The really good Doomfist players will always talk about "rollout" spots where they use geometry to get themselves kind of stuck in a strange high up area of the game and then use this to slam down on people and get around. It's hard . . . I'm not good enough yet to do these things. Mercedes also taught me a neat trick about getting high up by using his ultimate, so . . . there's still hope for me. :)

To get his Cratered achievement, you have to catch all six members of the other team in his Meteor strike ultimate ability, which almost never happens since everyone is typically super spread out and even more so when they see a giant red circle on the ground where he's going to hit. I'm still waiting for that perfect Zarya ultimate combo with my meteor strike . . . maybe someday.

He's challenging to play

The number one comment I hear from my buds when they play the Mystery Heroes arcade matches is that Doomfist is their hardest character to play. Blizzard marked him as a 3-star difficult hero, and I believe that's because to play him, you are always being put smack dab in the middle of the action. If you've expended all your cool-downs and are in the middle of the action, you're about 1 second from dead. You have to save a cooldown to get out of the action to hide, and you have to know where that safe spot is. If there isn't a shield tank or a good corner to hide behind on a map, I probably won't play him . . . probably . . .

After 40 hours, I still find him difficult to play, but also super fun because:

It's awesome punching people

Seriously, punching someone and watching them fly into a wall from your punch is amazing. Doing a huge uppercut and sending other people into the air is hilarious. Where as widowmaker might get a full charged headshot on someone and get a "one shot, one kill," Doomfist fully charging his punch and smashing someone will get a "one punch, one kill." I like that kind of power. It's great for killing squishies.

He causes mayhem

One of my favorite things about playing him is the confusion people can have from when he's bouncing in and out of combat and just throwing people off their game. Knocking the tanks around and out of the way opens up people that were previously hiding behind the shield for attacks from your team. I'm all about the mayhem.

He has some cool skins
I own some good ones . . . just look how awesome these are . . .

His original skin is pretty cool too.

That's on my desk at the office btw

If you're really interested in playing him, watch a few vids

I'm not going to link any here, but simply searching Doomfist Guide on YouTube is going to net you a handful of them. They have way more tips and suggestions than I could ever give. I've watched a few of them and they really do help and they also help just knowing that even the pros struggle with this character sometimes.

Happy Dueling!

I'm still playing a bit of Paladins here and there -- I've been trying to remember to at least log on, collect my daily reward, and play through the quests.

Gotta get that extra gold and xp!

The other day I faced off against a team with a really good tank character that just controlled the game. I immediately knew this was going to be the next character I needed to give a shot. I have to say he's my favorite tank character in Paladins so far.

. . . And since all I have to refer back to for comparisons is Overwatch (never played Team Fortress 2), he's like playing:

Reinhardt (for the "Massacre Axe" swing -- SWOOSH)
DVA (for the "Reanimate" ultimate -- he can resurrect with an exposion)
Zarya (for the "Power Siphon" shield that powers you up and you absorb damage)
Hammond (for the "Shatterfall" ground slam).

. . . all in one character!

Looking forward to unlocking those other abilities!

Outside of this . . . he just looks cool and has one of those overly tragic backstories: he's a soulless golem guy full of evil crystals whose only purpose is to be a war machine. Awwww!

He's begging to be nerfed.

I grabbed footage of a win from last night to kind of show you how he plays. Obviously, I don't know these maps incredibly well, and I've only played him about the number of times as the number of fingers on one hand, but check me out!

BTW, if you're interested in trying out the game, please feel free to use my referral link so we can get both get the good stuff: http://www.paladins.com/play-for-free?ref=stingite

Happy Dueling!

It was a big day for KingsIsle yesterday! Not only did we release Wizard101 on Steam (and shoot way up the free to play charts immediately), we also launched 100 new levels and more story content for Animal Cove! So excited to get the 301-400 batch of levels out the door. We hope you really love our latest update.

On a personal note, I played through another Baby Animal event and earned my new wide-eyed deer animal named "Dawn." CUTE! A fawn named Dawn.

I love how they all have that I've-never-seen-a-camera-before look

Dawn's gauntlet was an interesting one.

I like how this level looks like a very excited bunny

It started off with a collect starfish and collect flowers level that had some good pinch points at the bottom, and ultimately you're going to have to work pretty hard to get those 50 flowers. Whew!

There were a couple really fun collect mushroom levels as well. Unfortunately I didn't capture screenshots of every level, and I typically get excited and use boosters on levels 3 and 6 so that I don't fail my final checkpoints. In fact, I beat level 3 so fast that I ended up screen capping it after the fact and took my BEST SCREENSHOT EVER!

Yup . . . need to frame this one . . .

Anyway, Dawn the fawn is now happily wandering around and looking out for trouble.

Dawn is allergic to excitement, danger, and healthy foods.

Feel free to leave any feedback on levels 300-400! I'm always interested in hearing or passing along your thoughts.

Happy Dueling!

A couple days ago it was announced that Wildstar would be shutting down and sadly that Carbine Studios would be shutting down as well. I went and took a look at Carbine's About Us page and was immediately heart broken knowing that these fine people had lost their job.

I don't have any insight as to what happened other than the obvious . . . the game no longer became profitable. That's when a game shuts down. I'm sure there were all kinds of things that happened along the way that led to this, and from the mutterings I've heard around my gaming circles was that it just wasn't a unique enough game from World of Warcraft. Of course when I logged on this morning to pay my tributes, it was all the talk.

LOL Princess Sponge with the random feature request causing the game to fail.

I've written enough about Wildstar that I have it at least tagged here on my blog. In fact, this link will get you to all three times (now four) I've ever penned a word or two about Wildstar. If you follow that link, you'll also find that I Twitch streamed it a couple times. (Come to think of it, it might have been one of the first games I ever streamed.)

Here's a few thoughts on the game that seem to be rolling around in my head still about the game:

Housing -- The first thing I remembered from my time playing Wildstar the one thing that REALLY caught my attention more than anything else was the housing system. It was simply amazing. In fact I remember thinking, oh crap, don't let the Wizard101 players see this housing system because they'll want everything . . . ALL the things in this system. I'm telling you, it's one of the best I've ever seen.

Combat -- The telegraph markers on the ground for combat were really fun and also kind of frustrating. The game kept you moving around like you were in an FPS and I remember doing some strange finger acrobatics with the WASD keys on my keyboard because of this.

The blue box was the "telegraph" of where my lightning blast was going

Promotion -- There were some strange things about Wildstar's promotion. I remember watching a livestream at the time of Wildstar's launch, and it seemed like everybody in the world was really into Wildstar at the moment. Kinda fun. The really weird thing was that they had a couple guys just hanging out in Times Square that they'd cut to every once in a while. It was really baffling. Like why did they need to do that? Did those two guys just happen to be in New York and they thought, OH, LET'S TIE THIS IN SOMEHOW! Or did they actually ship a couple people out to New York to stand in times square. So strange.

The one really cool promotion that brought me into the game was a sale on the box price of the game as they transitioned into free to play. If you went to Gamestop and bought the boxed copy of the game for a discounted $10, you got like a mount or something. It was like a going out of business sale without going out of business. I'm all about that.

~~

At the end of the day, my highest level character was 25, which I believe is half-way to the level cap. I feel like I missed out on a lot, but I also saw a good chunk of the game and had a great time while I was there.

This morning I removed the UI, logged on a few characters and roamed around the world just taking in the coolness of it all. Here's a few ~~screenshots~~ memories for you from this morning.

What a stunningly beautiful, unique, and fun world they had built over there at Carbine. I found a lonely little island in a desolate place of the world near my favorite Robot Engineer character Robotom Digilover.

I figured this would make a great logging off point for him. I will forever imagine my dude spending the rest of his days playing with his pet robot on this little island, waiting for the war to finally stop.

Thanks for the memories, Carbine, and for making a great game. Robotom Digilover raises a glass of oil to you and salutes.

Happy Dueling!

Every month or so, I host a grand Dungeons and Dragons game at my house where I am the Dungeon Master. After playing several games at my house where Jeff Toney is the DM, he convinced me to also give DM'ing a shot with an alternate game. Thus we began trading DM duties every month for our group.

First, let me introduce you to the group that calls themselves "The Saviors."

When Jeff Toney is in your group, you get custom character drawings!

Creed -- Creed is a Human Paladin played by Jeff. His character has a soft spot for orphans and is almost too serious for his own good.
Elliwick -- Elliwick is a Dwarf Cleric played by Jeff's daughter. She has a pet bat and a tendancy to charge into battle.
Hungry -- Hungry is a Teifling Ranger played by my oldest son. You guessed it, he's always hungry, and he has a pet Black Bear who's even hungrier than he is. He carries around a standard 40 rations.
Whedab -- Whedab is a Black Dragonborn Sorcerer, a folk hero from her town who also somehow always gets the kill shot so they can take credit for the kill. Whedab is played by my daughter.
Twelve -- Twelve is a strangely colored blue Wood Elf Warlock who also happens to be a spy with the ability to disguise herself at will . . . and also just happened to let an enemy of hers rot in prison for a crime she committed . . . Twelve is played by the Uber Wife.

The following is kind of a travel guide to how the group's adventures have played out and how I've been stringing together adventures to get them to the point they're at now about a year later.

For our first adventures I've been stringing together one-shot adventures from the very talented MT Black, created two adventures of my very own, and after one more MT Black adventure, I'll be transitioning them into the campaign called the Tomb of Annihilation.

~~

Their quest began in Neverwinter where they were contacted by a nobleman known as Jorseth Smythe, who contracted them to check on his sister Eemyth in the town of Frickley. He felt like there was something terrible going on with her.

This hook worked perfectly to start the beginning of the Giant Slayer adventure. All I did was add a strange "healer" in town (an Obeah woman of sorts) named Eemyth.

They did great in the adventure! They ended up contacting the old giantslayer named Jahia and convinced her to come help them stave off the hill giant attack on the town, they chose the 14-year-old boy named Bayle to be their guide, which led perfectly into having Jahia adopt Bayle after the adventure.

After this I had them follow a cat with a magical collar into a portal, which took them back to Neverwinter and segued into MT Black's King of Cats Adventure, which is awesome . . . such a well written adventure. I chose "Pouncivil" from King of Cats to be a cat owned by Jorseth Smythe, which led back into an adventure I had been crafting.

In my adventure, the players journeyed back to the town of Frickley, but this time to save Eemyth and the town from the influence of the Shrine of Loviatar there and also a pack of lizardfolk that had taken up nearby residence. It was pretty epic and "The Saviors," as they had by now coined themselves, removed Eemyth's curse and broke the shrine found in the town.

There were some great moments, like when Whedab belly flopped off a waterfall and Creed was able to see through the eyes of one of Eemyth's spider pets. I also gave Hungry his wish to face off with his favored enemy choice of oozes, which btw has got to be one of the worst favored enemy choices ever.

At this point I was going to lead them to Triboar to travel through the Terror at Triboar adventure, but they chose a different path and returned back to Neverwinter. While detailing their adventures in Frickley to Jorseth, a new NPC crossed their paths that led them instead through the Wizard in a Bottle adventure.

They loved Wizard in a Bottle more than I anticipated. The females in the group really connected with Amilya Grayheart's plight of being trapped in a bottle for 20 years and losing everyone she loved.

On their way back to Neverwinter to collect their spoils and drop off Amilya, I had "The Saviors" run into a Centaur who needed help. This led them deep into Neverwinter forest into another adventure of my own design. They just barely finished up this adventure on Saturday and are headed back once again to Neverwinter.

I've already put the group in contact with a ship captain, and they're super excited to head on the high seas for The Dawn Chasers -- yet another MT Black adventure. All I need to do is modify this just a touch and they'll be all set to head into the jungles of Chult, where they ultimately will conquer the Tomb of Annihilation.

~~

Whew . . . it's been quite the adventure and the first time I've really given DM'ing a shot. It's not an easy task and especially with this group. :) They seem to be having a good time though and I love the family and friends time I'm able to have with them.

Behold the view from behind the DM screen

Happy Dueling!

I continue to log on to Paladins daily to complete my quests and claim my log in bonus! This weekend the healer Grohk was back in rotation, so I gave him some play time. Not only did I give him some play time, but I also went to the training range and gave several of the healers a shot to see how they played versus him. There's a pretty great spot in the Paladins' training range where they have a target continually getting hit by another NPC so you can test out your healing powers. The one I grokked the best was Grohk. (see what I did there?)

I even have a skin for him! He's typically blue colored.

My one complaint about this dude is how "dumb" they made him sound with his voice over. I wish they would have went more, I don't know, "mean"orc with him? Either way, his lighting staff is about the most amazing thing ever and especially after getting his Spirit's Domain ability.

I'm not sure why I'd want to use anything BUT Spirit's Domain TBH

So let it be known . . . I hearby choose Grohk as my healer of choice in Paladins! I now have my DPS choice (Drogos), my tank choice (Terminus), and now my healer choice. All I need now is to choose a flanker, and I'll at least have four characters I can concentrate on for learning. But, as per usual, "favorite characters" are sure to change over time for me. ;)

I went ahead and quickly recorded some Team Deathmatch play with Grohk today, which was a little frantic. The thing about Team Deathmatch is that you typically run all over the map "hunting" for the other team. Our team was together, but spread out a lot and that makes healing as Grohk a little interesting, but we won the fight and my healing was double what the other team's healer put out. I'll take that as a success.

Happy Dueling!

I decided to log on to Hearthstone last night for kicks to see what's new. I've been completely out of the loop for forever. Upon my return I was greeted with a new card in my collection.

Whoa! Making a 3/4 copy of an existing card will definitely be dangerous!

It's also pretty mind-blowing how really deep the PvE content has become in this game. There seems to be a ton of things to do now outside of PvP, including this newer set of challenges called the Boomsday Project.

Look at all that content I've never played through on the right hand side . . . wow!

Basically the Boomsday Project is a gauntlet of "puzzles" where you are given a hand of cards and an objective. The ones I tried last night were labeled the lethal challenges . . . and they were at the top of the list. I see what you did there, Blizzard!

Sounds pretty straight forward . . .

What I liked about this was how it tapped into that feeling in Hearthstone where you know you have a really good combo of cards in your hand, but you just can't see it. These challenges are all about that -- in what order do I play these cards to finish the job in one round?

Things start out easy enough . . .

There was a moment when I was facing the 8/9 challenge for the Poisoner where I thought, pffft, I should just search this up on the Internet, but really, what fun is that? That just ruins the purpose of the challenge, which I believe is to make noobs like me a better Hearthstone player.

Thanks for doing all the set up work for me. LOL.

. . . and then there's just silly things like puzzle 9/9 where you just play a card and watch the ultimate destruction happen on the board. After getting past 8/9, I kinda feel like this is your reward.

By the end of the night I was starting to get sleepy while playing through the challenges. That's one thing I'll say about these, they're not very "exciting" challenges. It's more strategic and accesses a part of my brain that, by the end of the night, just wants to shut down on me.

That said, I summoned the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, so there's that at least . . .

I look forward to playing through more of these Hearthstone challenges; I just need to do them at a different time of day so I'm not so sleepy. :)

Happy Dueling!

I play a lot of Reinhardt on Overwatch. Most days I'm perfectly happy to queue up as the tank, but then there are days where things are about as painful as can be (as keenly portrayed by the Art of Warlord)

As a shield tank, the game is designed to destroy you again and again. Your shield eaten away by a Bastion, punched away by a Doom, slammed and stunned by a Bridgette, hacked by a Sombra, blown 50 feet in the air by a Jankrat, slept on the ground by an Ana . . . and MORE!

But the WORST thing as a tank is when you get out-tanked by the other player or when you're not supported as well as the other tank. A few examples:

Executing a beautiful ultimate (5 on the ground!) only to find that no one is there to finish the job with you.
Charging an opposing Rein or Doomfist and your team doesn't take advantage of the other stunned player (but the other team definitely takes care of you)
A Lucio or Mei coming up and hassling you with your shield up and no one is killing them.
Wasting an ultimate because the other tank tricked you out of it
Better positioning
Better Ult Charging
etc.

As a Rein, my eyes are always on the other tanks looking for moments when I can take them out of the equation -- I get mad if I can't do that. It always feels like if I can out-tank the other guy, then our team is going to win. If not, it's an unhappy ending.

That said, I really think there's no one to blame but myself. A few examples:

I kind of take for granted that people know what I'm doing and why, and I seem to not communicate very well during the heat of the battle.
I don't watch the kill feed closely enough to know if what I'm doing is too risky or not.
My situational awareness as a tank is lower than it should be.
I Leeroy Jenkins far too much and too often.
etc.

So with all that said it feels like I've peaked with Overwatch as a tank unless I can evolve as a player. I've identified what I need to improve on above, but after a bad string of losses, I don't know . . . it makes that original happiness to queue as tank much less joyful.

It's just feels a lot more fun to play as a DPS or a tricky support character like Mei or Lucio. I guess I wish it was just more fun to play a tank rather than someone who hassles the tank. Maybe a bigger hammer? Maybe a different character? Maybe a different game?

*shrug*

Happy Dueling!

Thought I'd do something a bit different today. You may not know this but I actually have several gaming blogs. Yeah, I know. It was a bad idea. I should have just blogged about anything and everything I wanted to here on TFN . . . kind of like what I'm doing now, but the pressure of being a "pure" Wizard101 fansite was something that used to be a thing for me.

Anyway, I thought I could repost "an oldie but a goodie" from one of my other blogs on Nanovor. Don't remember what those were? Then read on for a Throwback Thursday post from yours truly!

Apparently the game was discontinued in 2010 and had a release on iOS devices shortly afterward. Unfortunately the game couldn't quite rise to the Marketing, which was really good btw. Check out this throwback commercial from 2009

Nanovor have taken over the world

Originally written on Sept 7, 2009

About three days ago the kids and I were watching Cartoon Network when a commercial for nanovor popped on.

I didn't think much about it until after the commercial when the kids literally jumped out of their seats and wanted to go check it out on the computer RIGHT NOW I MIGHT DIE!

So we went there. (NOTE: link to Nanovor.com now defunct)

Three days later I am 20 dollars poorer from buying two of these nanovor toys at Toys R Us, and a lot more educated about how a "red spike" move might be accomplished by a 2.0 evolved nanovor bug.

This is what I do. I teach my kids how to kick your butts and unleash them upon you. Sorry about that.

As a parent, I was glad to see there were some chat controls available to me, so I'm in!

Nanovor is a pvp-only online game where you pit your swarm of microscopic bugs against an opponent's swarm of microscopic bugs.

The above shot is the initial battle screen. What you see there is that my character has five bugs in his swarm and has chosen the Plasma Lash nanovor to begin his battle. The Plasma Lash bug (or at least this generation of the bug) has four options to choose from: head whip, electro-lite, yellow spike, and skip. The battle proceeds as I choose one of those and click on the opponent's location (unless I choose the spike), and then I finally click which bug to swap out on the next round and reclick on your opponent's location.

After the battle orders have been made, my bug and your bug go at it.

This repeats and repeats until one person either leaves the game in frustration or one person's swarm is obliterated.

SPLAT! like that.

There is progression in this game so far (I mean, we've only been playing the game for 3 days or so . . . we don't know how far this will go yet). After playing and winning a few battles, you'll eventually earn a few badges.

Badges in this game are awesome things. Some of them will result in a new nanovor being added to your swarm and perhaps a few EMs. EMs are the stuff of evolution--Primordial ooze in a microscopic test tube. If you get the right combination of EMs you can take your bugs and evolve them into tougher 2.0 (And on) versions.

Here's a picture of a tank walker bug we evolved into it's 2.0 version.

Evolved bugs are stronger and usually have either more deadly attacks or more beneficial overrides. ahhh! We'll get to overrides . . . be patient.

Now besides earning your bugs and EMs through badges, you can also buy nanocash. Nanocash is where the free game ends. Each of those two 10$ Nanovor toys up above came with 400 nanocash. With nanocash you can buy three things. 1) a bug and 3 EMs for around 65 nanocash or so, 2) 6 EMs for around 55 nanocash, or 3) a whopping 6 or 7 bugs (always guaranteed a rare bug in the bunch) for 275 nanocash.

Here's a picture of my daughter opting for the 6 EMs choice.

Many bugs evolved this day . . . many bugs.

So, as we were saying, What the heck is an override? Overrides are buffs that you can apply to your nanovor to make it stronger, faster, or more deadly. Some are single use buffs (the spikes specifically) and some stay with your swarm until you cast over the top of it or win the match. You can only have one override running at a time.

Here's my one and only tip for you guys on overrides. Don't waste your breath casting a spike if you don't have a 2.0 version of a bug in your swarm that can actually make use of it. Not every 2.0 bug can make use of a spike either . . . only specific ones.

I think you'll figure it out from there.

Now, do I have complaints about Nanovor? You bet I have complaints! Who the heck wants to battle in a black 2-D boring space? My kids and I came up with a very compelling background space out in the parking lot in about 5 seconds.

Come on (who makes these things?) Smith and Tinker, Inc! You can do better than a black background!! We've seen your cartoon episodes; we expect more awesome backgrounds! (How'd I do at my angry consumer voice? not good?)

word.

See you in the Nanovor space!

Both Paladins and Overwatch had updates over the past week, so let's take a moment to give you TFN's condensed and quick thoughts!

Paladins
You can read the full update notes list here, but TLDR:

Adding more lootbox stuff.
Made it so you can control Grohk better during his ult (it was crazy before -- but this is also a nerf since he could move incredibly fast.)
Console players can report bad behavior now (didn't know they couldn't)
Queuing and re-queuing has been improved (yep, I'm really digging this change)
Other hero bug fixes.
There's stuff they know are issues, but . . . THEY'RE WORKIN' ON IT! GET USED TO IT KID! .

There's a new robot Grover skin, which makes no sense, but that's cool

Overwatch
You can read the full update notes list here, but TLDR:

NEW MAP -- Busan -- and you can check it out in the Arcade currently!
Hero gallery filters added.
See your team mates through walls more easily.
Weapons with spread now will have their damage calculated more correctly.
Bridgette will now also get knocked down if she charges charging at a Rein or a Doom during their charge powers.
Rein's shatter covers the payload better and other areas as well. (Can't tell you how upset I've been when I've shattered and the stupid Bastion player on the payload didn't get knocked down by my ultimate -- this is a good change.)
. . . and other hero balance changes. (I ain't listing them out.)
GM comp players can group up with lesser folks
Rialto's payload goes a bit faster. (woot for the attacking team!)
(And although not mentioned on the notes, Demon Hunter Sombra skin for Blizzcon!!)

There's more there, but I figure if you really want to give it a read, you already have.

Busan Screenshot courtesy of IGN.

~~

It's interesting to compare and contrast the notes. It's not surprising that Paladins is going to patch in more lootbox stuff and be straightforward about it -- that's how they make their money. Overwatch is also in a different spot for updates as they monetize differently and are in a different stage of development for the game. (That said, I really hope the rumor is true that the Demon Hunter skin coincides with a Diablo 4 announcement??)

Busan is a collection of relatively cool maps. They are a bit hard to defend from my past couple of days playing there, but I'm sure as time goes on, I'll have more insights. Here's a quick video of four highlights from playing last night. Nothing amazing here, but it does give you a glimpse at where some of the action happens on these maps.

I really hope Paladins keeps growing and adding more stuff. I'm pretty close to throwing down the $40 for a full character unlock. Of course, I'll let you know when that happens. In the meantime, really happy that queuing up now has less roadblocks. That's a plus.

As for last night's Overwatch session at Busan . . . I had a lot more fun playing Mei than I did Reinhardt, but I still played him when needed. Maybe I'm not quite as burnt out as I thought I was in that previous post of mine. Time will tell, but I'm still here playing!

Happy Dueling

Look at the Puppers!

Barovia: What the BHE is that?

Character Spotlight: Pryce Cinder-Earth

Pryce Cinder-Earth

The new beetle = Monstrology

An Hour of Paladins

A Hour with Dragos

Pirate101 Test Realm: A Tale of Three Quests

Fun with Quiplash and Tee K.O. on Twitch

Character Spotlight: Avantador

Holy . . . TEN?! Really? Way to go Wizard101!

Some Doomfist Thoughts

An Hour with Terminus

New Animal Cove Content and Another Baby Animal Gauntlet

Unfortunate Wildstar News -- Robotom signing off

DM'ing for "The Saviors" (Thanks MT Black!)

An Hour with Grohk

Boomsday Top Decking Lethal

The Woes of Getting Out-tanked

Throwback Thursday: Nanovor

Nanovor have taken over the world

Overwatch vs. Paladins Updates