I know everyone has probably heard about Minecraft by now, but just incase here is my review of this lovely game.

Minecraft is a indie game made by Mojang which was formed entirely from sales of this game. It currently sells for €14.95 and has sold around 2 million copies. Which is a big feat for a game with no  real marketing, other than word of mouth.

The game itself is sandbox, its half and half between building and survival against monsters which spawn in dark area’s and at night. You can turn off the monsters if you want and just create your own little peaceful world.

Gameplay wise the first thing you do is to punch a tree up to gather wood, then you use that wood to make a workbench to make other tools such as pickaxes and shovels for digging etc. This is most of the game really, trying to dig for resources to build whatever you dream up.

The game really reminds me of playing with lego as a kid, I tend to make these awesome buildings and villages then start again in a new world. Exploring the randomly generated worlds is great fun and some of the views you find are really pretty, even if it is a bunch of blocks.

Notch who is the creator of the game is always adding new cool features to the game and this is what keeps me playing it month after month. I think he’s possibly one of the coolest developers out there as he really enjoys what he does and is very up front with the community.

So if you like being creative at all or even just like exploring, then you should have a blast with minecraft.

I’m Giving Minecraft 8.0/10 
For so many hours of fun

This may come out in other Regions, but nothing is confirmed at this stage.

I seriously hope they bring out a English version for both the PS3 and PSP.

We’ve been waiting too long for MHP3Rd to come out in the West.

Intro

I was originally going to write about the new Blood Tanking changes but there isn’t that much info available at the moment on how Blood Tanking will work in Cataclysm. Instead I’m going to write a little guide on how to deal with pugs (pick up groups).

The first problem in being a Death Knight Tank is that from the onset in a pug you will have a bad reputation. There is a lot of bad Death Knight tanks and they get remembered more so by the community as its “cool” to make fun of Death Knights.

The only way to overcome this bad reputation within the group is to know what you are doing and do it well.

Pro tips:

• Reading other DK guides about what talents and glyphs to use
• Asking questions on the DK forums about anything you don’t understand
• Macro’ing certain abilities like Rune Strike to your other melee attacks
• Watching videos of how to tank dungeons you haven’t been to before
• Be polite and ready to do the dungeon soon as you port in
• Knowing what rotations to use on single mobs and groups
• Watch the healers mana and it get’s low ask if they need a mana break
• Remember to Use Horn of Winter and Be in Frost Presence!

What’s your role?

A tank should generally know where to go in an dungeon and provide some leadership to the group. You set the pace for the group so you need to try and be fast as you can without doing things that can potentially wipe the group.

Your job is to keep threat on all mobs that are attacking the group. All damage should be direct at you so the healer doesn’t waste mana healing the whole group.

It also help if you know the boss fights and explain quickly explain them to the group in case someone is new to the dungeon. It could just be a few remarks like “stop dps when vines come up” or “stand here, I’ll tank the monster over here”.

What Specialization to use?

For 5 mans and heroics I’d say frost. As frost works well even if you gear isn’t that great. It also has some awesome AoE threat with Howling Blast and a great “oh crap” button with Hungering Cold. You can go Blood and Unholy but at the moment their more for raiding as the scale better than frost, but frost to me is still the number one 5 man tanking spec.

What dungeon’s to do?

Some dungeons are harder to tank than others. I’d advise newer players not to sign up for a random dungeon as this can put you in dungeons that might be a tad too high for you and therefore harder to tank.

I generally find a dungeon I enjoy doing (or has good tank drops) and stick to it until I’ve leveled up and can’t do it anymore. If you want to challenge yourself after a few runs on the same dungeon, try pulling bigger groups in the dungeon, but make sure your healer can handle it otherwise you could wipe the group.

I’d keep doing selected dungeons until you hit the level cap, then go to dungeons with tank drops you want. After you have geared up a bit you can do random dungeons or move onto selected heroics (provided you have hit the def cap etc).

How other players can negatively affect your run

When you use the LFD system you are put in a group with four other people who you might never see again. You will also group with players who might not know how to play their role/class properly. The following is a list of things that other players might do on your run that can make your job harder or wipe your group.

DPS (damage dealers):

• DPS will try to off tank the mobs and might pull agro on them – Get a mod like “skullme” that will auto mark you target and ask the dps to only hit the skull marked target.
• Some impatient DPS will try and pull the mobs before you can – This is really annoying as a tank, so ask the DPS to not pull. If they continue to do it vote to kick them or just stand back as the mobs bash them to death. Remind me as a tank it’s your job to pull each group.
• DPS uses knock-back spells or deathgrip – Just ask them politely if they can stop doing it and explain why their bad. Deathgrip will make the mob attack the user for 6 seconds and knockback spells are meant for pvp and can agro more mobs.
• DPS wants to roll on your tanking gear – Sadly you can’t do much about this, DPS can roll on your tanking gear if they can equip it. All you can do is roll need and prey you get it. If the DPS wins you could try and ask them for it as you are the tank.

Healers:

• Healer isn’t really a healer just signed up to heal as its a faster queue – Kick it soon as you can.
• Healer want’s to DPS rather than heal – Remind them of their role and what they signed up for. If they find healing that boring they shouldn’t be doing it.
• Healer wants you to go faster – Don’t do this, play at the speed your comfortable with. It’s better to be a bit slower in pulls rather than wipe the group and have to spirit walk back to the dungeon

Those are just some general things that can happen and every group is different. Some may be great while others might be your worst nightmare.  Just try to be reasonable and polite while asserting your wishes firmly without being a dictator.

Final points

You will have great groups and very crappy groups in the LFD finder. Don’t let the bad players or groups get you down. Just do your best and most of the time you should have a fun experience, even if you are doing the same dungeon a lot of that tank drop.

Be firm with bad players and try to remember they are probably not aware of what their doing is wrong, so take the time to point out why what their doing is wrong in a firm but polite way. Some players can be reasoned with on any level though that should be vote kicked out of your group. But also on the other hand players may thank you for pointing out their mistakes if you provide solutions to the problem.

And remember this:

If the Tank dies it’s the Healers fault, if the Healer dies it’s the tanks fault, if the DPS dies it’s their own dam fault.

The other week I rolled a Blood Elf Death Knight by the name of “Cathartik”. You can see his armory profile at the bottom of the post.
I decided even before I roll him that I was going to make him a tank and level him by just by doing dungeon runs. I thought it would be interesting to track his progress by blogging about it and write some newb guides to DK tanking.

A lot of new DK’s seem to get confused by multiple DK tanking builds. It’s true that you can tank in all three tree’s of Blood, Frost and Unholy with two handed weapons or two one handed weapons. But for the new DK’s its recommended you go Frost using a two handed weapon. Until you get some nice epic gear at 80.

Here’s the build I’m currently using along with what glyphs to use: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight#eSQeNhlIJIHf6h,wYae-3,11723

You should get all your Frost talents first so you can get Howling Blast at 60 (get the glyph as well!). Then you should get Blade Barrier and Anticipation next in any order.

It’s recommended that you start tanking at 60 as you will have both Death and Decay and Howling Blast at your disposal. You can start at 58 if you really want to. You need to have a good rotation set up in order to keep multi-threat. You basically need to spread your diseases and blood boil to keep multi-threat. So ask the dps to hang back a second till you do that.

I currently use this rotation on my DK for groups at 64:

Death Grip/Strangulate (if not on cool down) > Howling Blast > Plague Strike > Pestilence > Blood Boil > Obliterate
Then Frost strike as your rune dump then maybe Blood Boil then repeat.

The rotation is basically applying diseases via Howling Blast and Plague Strike. You then use Pestilence to spread them to the other mobs and Blood Boil to do damage to any mob effected by a disease. Once my diseases are up I use Obliterate then I have enough runic power to my frost strike once or twice.

I currently use this rotation on my DK for single mobs/bosses at 64:

Howling Blast > Plague Strike > Blood Boil > Obliterate > Frost Strike

Basically the same rotation without pestilence. If you need to grab agro quickly on a mob thats running for a dps or healer then hit it with Icy Touch as it produces a lot of threat now (Patch 3.3.3.).
Please don’t just spam Icy Touch though, you will keep agro but it lowers your damage a lot and makes you look noobish.

Next entry I’ll talk about upcoming Cataclysm change that makes Blood the only tanking tree.

I think I was off WoW for about 2 years. I sold my old accounts (two of them 0_O) back in the burning crusade days.

At the time I didn’t have the time to play WoW and didn’t really see that changing anytime soon. I didn’t miss WoW at all until a few months later and from then on I would have “urges” to play it. Like I’d miss playing my Feral Cat Druid or I’d miss healing on my paladin.

These urges weren’t really enough on their own to push to back into WoW. Then a friend told me about some upcoming additions in the new expansion such as old zones changing, new race/class combos,two new races and heroic deadmines. That’s that finally pushed me over the edge and I ran out and brought a World of Warcraft Battlechest and Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

So now I have a level 45 Druid (Feral Cat spec) called Ashbrooke.

For me WoW is so much more enjoyable now as leveling in azeroth is a lot faster due to exp increases and using the dungeon finder tool. The new dungeon finder tool lets you queue to do a random or selected dungeon with players from your battlegroup. So there’s no more standing around in Stormwind on the LFG channel spamming for a healer or tank. If you choose a random dungeon you are rewarded with a bag that will contain a nice class/spec appropriate blue on completion of the random dungeon.

All the “classic” dungeons seem like a push over now. You can steam through dungeons like Uldaman in 30-40 depending on how good your group is and from my experience most of the are great. Pugs are so much better now most people seem to know how to play their roles and with stuff like the dungeon finder group buff and heirlooms you just breeze through dungeons that were harder before.

Another cool change is that mounts are available now from level 20 for a normal land mount and 40 for a epic land mount with reduced costs. The normal flying mount now can be brought at lvl 60, its faster now at 125% of movement speed and it only costs about 650g for training and the mount! So leveling in outland is going to be fairly easy now.

I can’t wait to hit 80 or 85 if the expansion comes out before I’m at 80!
Also I’m dying to hit 55 so I can roll a Death Knight and have that as my tanking alt who will level up just in dungeons.

You can check out my character Ashbrooke below.

So in an effort to let some steam off I though I’d make a “reply” to one of these stupid comments.

k gave it a3:
Same old story, same old song and Danceeeee my friends, this is Ridiculous! I just wasted 50 dollars on this game, and its basically the same stupid Mass Effect one problems, Over-bloated, unfollowable story that’s plagued with the same problems as the first one, you’re telling me they still can’t figure out the AUDIO levels?! I can’t hear half the lines of speech, My character plods around space like playing an old SNES game, whereas you just keep hoping he’ll move alittle faster, or this crummy repaint of the same garbage Bioware tricked me into buying last time called Mass effect. I don’t understand the Hype at all, have you all been paid for you’re time? This game falls far, FAR, short of anything ground breaking like Fallout, Bioware in my opinion, after Dragon age’s slight disappointment < or major disappointment if you bought the Console version like me > Is slipping down hill in quality. It used to be I’d pick up a bioware title just because they put out great games, but now it’s getting to be they put out buggy, lower quality games they expect to patch and make proper? TRY shipping a properly looked over product, instead of trying to pump out game after game. It seems as though the scores are so high maybe due to the fact those that didnt like the first havent brought into the hype, but I did, and let me tell you I regret it already, The excitement the silly articles and scores people have given this game undermine the product itself, They claim in one major Magazine put out by a giant game retailer, that the mechanics people complained of have been removed, but that really only boil down changing the unlocking and hacking parts of the game, Which are two seconds stupid little mini-games, THE ENGINE RUNS THE SAME! Shepard’s choices for looks are still the same generic space-man, the voice actors still grapple with a lore that’s far too overloaded with nuances for anyone really listening to get bored and left feeling as though it was written for people who just click through this garbage they’re calling dialog, Why do I care, I ask them, You’ve hardly even made me feel like I am this character, it’s more like watching a movie you don’t care about, you’re just waiting for the shooting to start, And Thats just about the same as the first game as well BUT WAIT, we need a clip now! oohhh that makes a ton of sense, we don’t overheat now guns use antiqued bullet clips when last installment I had a Assault rifle firing thousands of odd shaped plasma green b.b’s a second. That was the only complain about the gunplay?! Fallout 3 has a better grasp on RPG gunplay then they do over at Bioware, and Bethesda has alittle ways to go still as well! If you’re thinking like me, that It seems people are making this game out to be one of the greatest of all time, try to start thinking of all the games they’ve been using this STUPID new marketing tactic on us, the communal memory of our glorious public about 5 seconds, We forget they just released the best game of all time two weeks ago, and three weeks before that, and two months prior to that Another Greatest game of all time was Uncharted, OR ANY other big huge media spend fest, if you give these guys a few bucks, They shout Its The Best! yeah right… Avoid Mass Effect 2, it’s horrible

Now let’s pick apart the really stupid bits in this waste of data comment.

I just wasted 50 dollars on this game, and its basically the same stupid Mass Effect one problems, Over-bloated, unfollowable story that’s plagued with the same problems as the first one,

The story really isn’t that complex K, I can understand people not quiet getting what is going on if they didn’t play the first game but you just said you did play the first game. What confuses you K? Do you also get confused reading Dr Seuss books?

I can’t hear half the lines of speech, My character plods around space like playing an old SNES game, whereas you just keep hoping he’ll move alittle faster, or this crummy repaint of the same garbage Bioware tricked me into buying last time called Mass effect.

Your also probably one of the fools who complain they can’t read the text on a SD TV. Don’t blame the game, blame your equipment.

K you can “storm” when you press the A button it will make you run faster for a short period. Maybe you should learn the game controls.

How does someone trick you into buying a game especially when you hated the first one? God that’s like being tricked into jumping off a building for fun when you break your leg the first time only to do it again 2 years later?

It seems as though the scores are so high maybe due to the fact those that didnt like the first havent brought into the hype, but I did, and let me tell you I regret it already,

In what fucking universe does that even make sense in!? Why don’t you go wrap your head in tin foil.

They claim in one major Magazine put out by a giant game retailer, that the mechanics people complained of have been removed, but that really only boil down changing the unlocking and hacking parts of the game, Which are two seconds stupid little mini-games, THE ENGINE RUNS THE SAME!

Those are called game mechanics and yes the stuff people complained about were removed. Such as the Mako and the annoying inventory system! I don’t think anyone really complained about the hacking in the first game!

the voice actors still grapple with a lore that’s far too overloaded with nuances for anyone really listening to get bored and left feeling as though it was written for people who just click through this garbage they’re calling dialog, Why do I care, I ask them, You’ve hardly even made me feel like I am this character, it’s more like watching a movie you don’t care about, you’re just waiting for the shooting to start,

Now we’re getting too the truth! You even hate the awesomely written dialogue of the game, something which Bioware really excels at. Which also happened to by done by great voice actors! But nooooo you just want to shoot shit, so why didn’t you just buy Modern Warfare 2 you mouth-breather

we need a clip now! oohhh that makes a ton of sense, we don’t overheat now guns use antiqued bullet clips when last installment I had a Assault rifle firing thousands of odd shaped plasma green b.b’s a second.

Did you really play the game at all or are you just stupid? The clips are “thermal clips” that means that the guns do still have unlimited ammo but you need thermal clips to take away the heat generated when you fire your guns. If you didn’t have any thermal clips you would break your gun. This is much faster than waiting for your gun to cool down like in the first game.

fallout 3 has a better grasp on RPG gunplay then they do over at Bioware, and Bethesda has alittle ways to go still as well! If you’re thinking like me, that It seems people are making this game out to be one of the greatest of all time, try to start thinking of all the games they’ve been using this STUPID new marketing tactic on us,

Ugh back to guns again. The gunplay was so much better in this game than the last but you still seem to hate it. Also the gunplay in Fallout 3 is really average when you  didn’t use V.A.T.S., that’s what made Fallout 3 so fun to play.

I don’t remember anywhere where Bioware said this was the greatest game of all time! Their marketing slogan for this game was “Fight of the Fallen”. Now some magazines and people may have claimed this was the greatest game of all time but then that’s really down to personal tastes isn’t it!?

In finishing I’d like state that you sir are a moron of epic proportions. I think you should stick to games where you can tea-bag people online and laugh along with the rest of your primate buddies. Try not to construct any criticism of anything in the future because you fail on so many levels.

I picked this up on launch day and have a blast with it. Dissidia is a sort of 3rd person fighting game with rpg elements in it. You can level up and gain access to new attacks and abilities.

You have two types of attacks, the first is HP attacks which will obviously hurt the other characters HP. The amount of damage you do greatly depends on how high your bravery is. The second type of attack you can do gains you bravery while taking the other characters bravery down. Each set of attacks are different for every character (and there’s 21 of them) and every character has a few different attacks he/she can use. These attacks can also be swapped out as well as other skills like increased jumping or taking less critical damage.

Most of the time when you make an attack of any time the other character will shoot out a bit of ex “dust”. Once your purple bar on the left is filled and turns a yellowish orange you can then use your ex mode. In ex mode you will regen hp and once you land a hp attack on the other character you can do a “limit break” on them. The limit breaks are different for each character and require you to do different inputs, some are easier while others can be a tad annoying.

There’s a story in single player mode which makes a lot more sense than the usual square FF storyline (FFX I’m looking at you). It’s basically the good guys work for order while the bad guys work for chaos with elements of the good guys own FF storylines mixed in.

I think this game is probably only interest you if you are a fan of the FF games. I’ve played three of them and that was enough to get me into Dissidia. Though I can see non-ff fans enjoying this game as its fairly balanced fast paced and has a long life to it.

The only thing I don’t really like about the game is that it’s hard to work out how to get new/better items for your character etc. I’ve purchased a guide for the game because if I didn’t have that I’d be randomly grinding until the end of time hoping to get some components that might help me make a end game weapon.

I’m Giving Dissidia: Final Fantasy: 8.0/10 
for being fast, fun and pretty awesome for the PSP

My group played our third session of D&D last weekend and I think it was our best session yet. The party had finished up at the Dragon burial site and after refreshing themselves in town they headed to the old keep.

The reason this was the best session yet was because of a number small factors and one larger factor. The smaller ones are that the party had some fun encounters in the keep and that we have got a play flow going as everyone knows most of the basic rules now.

The large factor was due to using the “DM Tracker” iPhone app. The app allows a dungeon master to track initiative, hp, effects, party members and monsters in an encounter.

You start by adding in character stats such as hp, movement, initiative, perception, insight and defenses.  From there you can “clone” a character which is great for making multiple monsters quickly. After you have created your characters and monsters you can add them into groups for each encounter.

There’s a inbuilt dice so you can roll initiative (It also adds their ini modifier on automatically!) for each character and after you save they will move to their order in the initiative list. I roll all monster initiative before our session and add in the players rolls once we start the encounter. It takes a fraction of the time doing it this way rather than doing it all on paper. In combat you can set status on characters, set damage and healing surges.

So basically this app does all the messy combat stuff quickly and easily. I don’t have to spend time writing onto sheets of paper or looking around for someones basic stats. Which allows me to devote more brain power to other things such as monster tactics etc.

DM Tracker is like having your own little dm assistant for every game, allowing you to focus on more important things like story, monster tactics and seeing if your pc’s are having fun or not.

Though the app does a lot already, I do however have a wishlist for features I’d like to see in future updates.

• The ability to make groups on the character screen in order to sort monsters and characters etc.
• A feature to automatically track on-going damage and what kind of damage it is.
• To be able to add icons or pictures into character/monster profiles to find a certain character easier and because it would look cool!
• To be able to do heals on character as you can only use healing surges at the moment.
• Customizable backgrounds, such importing pictures from your camera roll  (The blue wood is cool but I’d like some variety at least).

You can read more about the DM Tracker here at the Kbar apps website.