F Me, Penguin

Blizzard has been encouraging players to convert their World of Warcraft account into Blizzy's Battle.net account because soon, players will not be able to log on to the game without their Battle.net login. Apparently, a lot of people need more enticement to do this so Blizzy is now offering those who have done so with a new pet penguin starting later this week. This will include those who have already done the merger - I did it while I wasn't even subscribed to WoW early this year. Hope it is going to look cute.

Thanks to those tardy folks, we are all going to get a pet!

Just a couple of updates on my WoW experience - yesterday, I encountered my first world changing event and it was quite a spectacular. I really like the idea that you can see big changes happening in the world at the player level - it happened after finishing a long chain quest - instead of the server level which is typical in other MMOs. This is quite groundbreaking and I love it.

The aftermath of a war.

I am still several levels away from the level cap of 80 on my main - been playing a lot more of my Shadow Priest now than my Restoration Druid - and even before I could get a taste of the end game gears that are currently available, Blizzy has a new tier of end game armor coming with the next big patch. A preview of some of these can be seen here - though these have a more subtle look to them compared to the wildly imaginative looks from the previous tiers, they are still visually striking. WoW still has the best looking armor sets in MMO history - those in Everquest II are dull and look similar to each other while The Lord of the Rings Online has the ugliest end-game gears ever. The architecture of each new epic or legendary armor/weapon is getting more and more complex as Blizzy keeps adding new graphical flairs to the game engine in both special effects and polygon counts. I am afraid I may be stuck playing this game for a long time.

Tier 10 set for Druids.
Not too crazy about the shoulder piece but that mask is delicious.