The Magic Flunkies

WoW can be rather intimidating for newbies, or even casual players like me. So I’€™ve decided to come up with this ‘€˜guide’€™ with whatever information that I deem to be interesting or valuable.

First off, I’€™ll give a rough rundown on the basic races.

Alliance

Dranei

The latest addition to the WoW family, Dranei comes with a nifty ability called ‘€˜Gift of Naaru’€™ -€“ a slow healing spell - that comes in pretty handy when fighting in long battles. For me, this ability proves its worth when my Dranei hunter attempts to train a beast. Other notable racial ability Heroic Presence/Inspiring Presence, a passive ability that increases chance for spell to hit (for casters) and chance to hit (for non-casters) by 1%. This benefits you and party members within a 30 yard range.

Being a Dranei also gives jewelcrafting a +5 bonus and an increase in shadow resistance of 10. Available classes for Dranei are Mage, Hunter, Shaman, Paladin, Priest and Warrior. Interestingly, Shaman (previously only available to Horde races) is the most popular choice for Dranei.

I’€™ve started so many Dranei characters that I’m bored of the starting area, Azuremyst Isle. Leveling from 1 to mid-20s is pretty fast and easy, even if you’re soloing. Only downside is that it’s another ‘continent’ away from Ironforge and Stormwind.

Dwarf

With ‘Gun Specialization’€™ (increase chance to crit with guns by 1%), Dwarfs are the favoured choice for hunters. Though my only reason for choosing a Dwarf would be Find Treasure, a passive ability that when activated it locates nearby treasure chests in minimap. Do note though, if you have Find Treasure on, you wouldn’€™t be able to locate mines or herbs, as well as Hunter’s Tracking spells.

Dwarfs get Frost Resistance, a +10 increase to Frost Resistance. Starting area for Dwarfs is in Dun Morogh and home city is Ironforge. Available classes for Dwarf are Hunter, Priest, Warrior, Rogue and Paladin.

Gnome

You can find countless female Gnomes with pink ponytails at any given time in Stormwind and Ironforge. Gnomes arguably are the cutest race around, plus they have the mechanical mount ‘Mechanostrider’ as their racial mount. Gnomes come with a 15 bonus to their engineering skill and a 5% increase of Intelligence.

Contrary to popular theory, Gnome runs as the same speed with the other races. Available classes for Gnomes are Warlock, Rogue, Warrior and Mage. Starting area for Gnomes is in Dun Morogh as well.

Human

For those who played AD&D, you would remember choosing Human for its extra Feat bonus. But in WoW, the bonuses you get for Human aren’€™t really exciting (well, at least to me they aren’€™t). You get Mace and Sword Specialization (crit strike chance increased by 1% for Mace, 2-handed Mace, Sword and 2-handed Sword), a 10% increase to Spirit and also a 10% bonus to faction point gain.

 The racial mount for a Human is a…horse (yawns), and your starting area is Goldshire, home to a large chapel. Ironically enough, my (only) 70 character is a Human. Available races for Human are Mage, Warrior, Warlock, Rogue, Paladin and Priest.

Night Elf

Night Elf is the only race that can be a Druid (I only realize this information when I was compiling this article), and that, my friend is a huge incentive for choosing to be a Night Elf. They get a bonus of 1% to their dodge chance and a +10 to their Nature Resistance. Night Elf becomes a Wisp (floating globe of light) when they die and it has an increase speed of 50% (compared to normal dead speed of 25%.

Night Elves racial mount is the handsome Nightsaber. Other available races for Night Elf are Hunter, Priest, Rogue and Warrior. Starting area for Night Elves is in Teldrassil.

Those are all the current available races with the release of Burning Crusade. I would suggest creating a character based on the CLASS that you want, the race would just be a supporting factor. i haven’t got much chance to play hordes characters, so i might just skip to classes in my next part of NGWOW. Until then, have a great 2008!

Jar 

I can’t miss a scandal. In fact, i think i live for it.Anime fans in Singapore are uniting for a cause. Local anime distributor - Odex - is now suing ‘illegal downloaders’ who are as young as 9 years old. The mastermind behind this, Stephen Sing, is apparently now on a crusade around Singapore, taking ISP into court and bullying them into revealing downloader’s IP addresses. He would issue letters to these downloaders and offer an ‘out of court’ settlement - by paying a fine of S$1000-S$5000 - for his apparent losses and damage. And that’s not enough. He has to go online and gloat about it.The screenshot below, taken from http://asia.cnet.com,  he (xysing) announced that he is too busy ’sueing’ (apparently, he needs to go for spelling lessons too) people. I can’t help but feel that he’s enjoying it.In a news article in Singapore (Newpaper), he was quoted to be very stressed about the pressure and hatred he is getting. Has he thought about the 9 years old children and how traumatised they would be? He could have taken better actions in this, like issuing warning letters before issuing fines. But being the typical businessman, he goes straight for the throat. And now the public backlash - boycott of Odex’s products and local anime fans are pooling money to counter-sue him - some are even considering serious actions like burning down his house. Here’s his mugshot, do give him a holler if you ever see him.Jar

I’ve completed my Wii obligation.

Some Singaporeans have been complaining about the lack of supply of Wii here as well as the ‘exorbitant’ price of a set. While US is selling a set at S$560 (US$369.99) Singapore has been selling a ‘bundled’ set at $649 (US$420?). It seems that the bundled set has been forced upon by us by our cutthroat games distributor (Maxsoft).

I caved in to peer pressure and got myself a set of Wii. And i must say, that $700 odd i paid is money well spent. Never have my body ached from playing console, and here i was, spent and aching after playing 3 sets of Wii Tennis and Wii Boxing.

I enjoy playing with Godfather too. IMHO, it’s the best game so far for Wii. The action, the blood, the violent and the language. Plus the added RPG character development. It’s one solid title for Wii.

Interesting Wii site: http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com

After the What if! Harry Potter Online post, i went around surfing for some inspiration and stumbled upon a very interesting Harry Potter D20 thread.

Do take a look if you’re interested in both D20 stuff and Harry Potter.

Before Future Sight was released, rumours of it being a set of ‘more than 50 keywords’, new card frames and textless cards seems to be more interesting than the cards itself. And even card previews in magicthegathering.com didn’t really interest anyone, well, except for Pact of Intervention, which i did rise an eyebrow at that.

Let’s take a look at the hits and misses of Future Sight:

Firstly, i must applaud WoTC for taking a risk on creating the new card frame and citing them to be ‘future-shifted’. We all know that WoTC is just testing the waters with something like this. In fact, i would think that Future Sight is all about testing the waters. First off, 50 (or less…or more..i don’t care) over keywords and most of them are pretty unimpressive. Being a player for almost 10 years, i miss the good old days of ‘can’t be affected by summoning sickness’ instead of haste. So i didn’t quite understand why they have to create an entirely new keyword (a very unimpressive Shroud, by the way) for ‘can’t be target of spells and abilities’ So what will the keyword for ‘can’t be target of spells and abilities opponent control’? Shroud Them? Or what about ‘can’t be the target of spells and abilities you control’? Shroud You? I was wondering why Imperial Mask didn’t have that Shroud keyword. Was it because they didn’t want it to be named as…Shroud Player? Or ‘You gain Shroud.’ Or ‘You are Shrouded’. Well, you get the drill.

While I do agree that keywords like Reach (can block creatures with flying) does clear up the rules a little, especially for newbies, they should really just implement it in the core sets. With other keywords that only appear in one or a few cards, like Transfigure, Delve, Fateseal, Absorb and a very uncreative Life Link, one can only imagine how bleak and unoriginal the future of Magic will be like.

What i do like about Future Sight…hmm, i do think that the Grandeur is a nice touch to the legends cycle, it encourages players to include 2 or more copies of the same card. I hope this is one ability that will be reappearing in the future. I’m also interested to see how the new cycle of rare lands will play out in block. It would be nice to see a separate cycle of the individual land in the upcoming expansions.

We all have our share of crap rares…Moonlace…Mudhole…But imagine this, you open your first pack of booster and excitedly reveal part of your last card. It’s a red rare! Could it be Tarox Bladewing?! And then you reveal the entire card and realised that it’s Steamflogger Boss. Oh man. That’s just a bad decision on WoTC’s part. It’s an unimpressive 3R for a 3/3 that grants what? Riggers? +1/+1 and what was that? Contracep…Contraptions? Simply useless. I’m not sure which is worse, Force of Savagery or Steamflogger Boss.

I’m not exactly giddy with the prospect of the future sets, but i’m glad that WoTC took a proactive

-Jar

In this first segment (and The Magic Flunkies first update of the year) of The Magic Flunkies’ What If, we imagine how a MMORPG would be like in the world of magic and wizardy.

Background Story

The game takes place way after Book 7. The World of Witchcraft and Wizardry is in turmoils again. The Death Eaters have risen in power in a couple of years and they managed to secure a huge following who believes in superiority of the pure-bloods.

Reports of muggles missing appear on the headlines everyday, paranoid grew among the wizardry world and everyone starts to wonder who’s the traitor among them.

As the Order of the Phoenix prepare themselves for war, the Death Eaters secretly found a way to rise Voldemort back from the grave again…

Character Customization

The character customization’s interface would be as user-friendly as The Sim2. While you can only be human in this game, there are a variety of customization to choose from.

Players start the game in Hogwarts, regardless of whether they choose to be in the Order of the Phoenix or the Death Eaters. PvP action starts only when you’re level 10.

All characters start off as a level 1 wizard/witch with only basic cantrips spells like lumos and wingardium leviosa. And they begin their adventure by completing basic tasks for the teachers. Basic tasks can be in form of running errands (ie, fetch me 10 feathers!) or can be in form of getting rid of vermins (ie, kill 10 rats in the basement). And they would gain experience points from these tasks to level up.

Leveling up in HP Online is similar to WoW. You got to find your teacher (trainer) and learn new spells.

Yes, we’re still alive.

Our attempts to update the blog have been thwarted by the release of Time Spiral, World of Warcraft TCG, World of Warcraft online game (but more about it later) and my 10 days trial period on Matrix Online.

Firstly - Time Spiral - We were totally caught off guard about the Time-shifted cards and i must say that it was a good move. It was nice seeing old favourite cards of mine getting reprinted. Like Bad Moon, Auratag, Feldon’s Cane, Gaea’s Blessing and Mystic Snake.

Moving on to World of Warcraft TCG , the sale of it was crazy! out of stock at the local stores within a few days of release and also the surge of the pricing. It sort of reminds of the days when Pokemon was still hot in the card game market and the demand for it was so huge that each booster pack cost about $10. It seems to me that most of the WoW TCG players are also Magic players, which made the learning experience a lot easier. The game in a whole, is a pretty easy game to pick up, yet perhaps being a new game, some parts of the rules seem pretty buggy. I shared several boxes with Mel, built a deck and played a couple of times. I enjoyed playing it only because im playing the online game, it’s fun to see characters on the game appearing as my ally in the card game. But give me Magic anytime!

And the main reason why i havent been updating much is because of WoW online game. I finally hit 60 after 8 months of procrasinating and i still can’t believe that im 60 now. Well, being a level 60 mage (Alliance in Runetotem) really means nothing since i couldn’t really solo elite mobs of my levels, but at the same time im having great fun running Scholo and Strat UD almost on a daily basis with my guild members and trying to get my Magister’s set items. Mel has been trying to level up his mage as well, but the funny thing is that he got his girlfriend hooked up to WoW and now she’s more hardcore than both of us. She has like 4, 5 characters in the server and they range from 20s to 40s. I didn’t have much patience leveling up one main character, not to mention her training 5 characters at one go!

Also, i tried the 10 days trial for Matrix Online…and I hated it. Really hated the gameplay, the interface and just the game in general. I just got the trial cd for Dungeon and Dragon Online and I might try it one day when im free. Pretty eager to play that game, being a huge D&D buff, but now im trying out Neverwinter Night 2 that just got released.

A really lengthy update i know. I shall try to update this at least once per week. Been trying out this d20/homebrew Magic: The Gathering rpg and maybe i shall log the process with this blog. Meanwhile for those WoW players, head over to The Weekly Murloc for my favourite WoW podcast these days.

-Jar-

Our weekly (or monthly, whatever) update had been disrupted by something HUGE.

The official answer taken from Magicthegathering.com.

Hello! Is there a link that explains who/what Marit Lage is? I was under the impression that she was a powerful planeswalker. However, the token art makes “her” appear as a large Hypnox type of a creature? Thanks!
–Justin
Lancaster, OH

The Argivian scholar Arkol thought Marit Lage was a planeswalker, but he was wrong. What’s known about Marit Lage is that she is a being of immense power, able to move across the planes but not by the same means planeswalkers can. She is not native to Dominaria, and could justifiably be called a demigod. She is mentioned in passing a couple of times in The Eternal Ice, a Magic novel by Jeff Grubb. It’s implied that she wreaked havoc on Dominaria at some point, and it’s clear that she had a human following (see the flavor text of Brine Shaman, Curse of Marit Lage, Wrath of Marit Lage, and Dehydration). One interesting footnote about Marit Lage is that the cards that bear her name penalize black’s allied colors rather than its enemy colors.

But we’re not convinced.

Some of our readers aruged that the Marit Lage token is just an avatar of herself, it might not even be Marit Lage herself! We got a little too curious and decided to put on our Jester…erm…Thinking Cap and search for the REAL MARIT LAGE.

Clue number 1: She’s not from Dominaria
Clue number 2: “she is a being of immense power”
Clue number 3: “she wreaked havoc on Dominaria at some point”

We managed to find a few suspects.

Suspect Name: Little Girl
Colour/s of Origin: White
Why she could be Marit Lage: That cutesy bunny ears, that ‘im so innocent’ eyes and that teletubby plushie, cos we all know teletubbies are EVIL!.
Why she couldn’t be Marit Lage: “cos these days all she could do is to pee the bed.”

Suspect Name: Miss Demeanor
Colour/s of Origin: White
Why she could be Marit Lage: She’s a Lady of Proper Etiquette (read: She’s a control bitch)
Why she couldn’t be Marit Lage: She looks waaaay too hot to be Marit Lage.

Suspect Name: Mother of Goon
Colour/s of Origin: Black
Why she could be Marit Lage: She has a human following.
Why she couldn’t be Marit Lage: The human following dresses in hip-hop fashion.

Suspect Name: Phyrexian Librarian
Colour/s of Origin: Black
Why she could be Marit Lage: Flying, Trample, Horror creature type and she loves to read.
Why she couldn’t be Marit Lage: Ah well, she’s a Phyrexian…

After hours and hours of searching, just when we’re about to give up we realised that we left out an important piece of clue. “Justifiably be called a demigod.” So let’s round up the clues. She’s not from Dominaria, she is a being of immense powers, she wrecked havoc on Dominaria at one point and she’s a demigod…Sounds too familar and…too close to home? Guys, Marit Lage has been right in front of us all along!

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She’s big, she’s fierce and she’s NASTY! while she doesn’t have a card to herself (we suspect she threatened the R&D department), we are positive that Marit Lage, is in fact Granny!

I thought of heading to bed. But a thought strike me after a phone conversation with Jar. Dun be mistaken, we’re not a couple and this is not a gay website. We’re lesbians, we love gals…. Well to be exact, I love girls and he love the he-girls…. It’s a complicated situation, and that’s why we dwell ourselves in the world of dominaria or Ravnica. Where Goblins and human can have relationships, see how Squee love to hang out with Sisay under the deck (you know what I mean), and how do you think the zombie goblins, and rat ninjas appear? Magic Characters, they have Orgy,… I mean “Mana” parties…. where all creature types just gather together and have fun…. It might not be their watches they dropped in a bowl, maybe their toes, maybe a scale or two, or even a small portion of their Brain.  However the point is, In that world… it doesn’t matter what you do. Nobody gives a shit. It’s either you’re winning the game or you end up in the graveyard…. and that’s how it is…. you go out there into combat tricks, you get busted…. No one is gonna insult or aggrevate your damaged self esteem, no one! But in reality, when you’re condemn as a homo sapien…. whichever choice you make, you need to consider other’s preception…. ya ya, the saying goes about never let other’s perception becomes your reality? But your reality is made of  other people’s perception and that is a fact for most human being live in the world of earth. So if anyone were to ask me what creature type and wat abilities would you like to have…. I would stand proudly and say:

I want to be a 1/1 human Player with 0:Phasing, indestructable, and protection from everything.

Fuck the World!……. erm sometimes I guess…….

Mel