WoW: Professions in Harmony...?

While still far being being "wowed" by the news released on the newest WoW expansion, Mists of Pandaria, I will be purchasing the game and might even end up playing it some.

I came across this Blue post from Wowhead on Facebook (it was quite unintentional, I swear!  It shows up in my feed!)    http://www.wowhead.com/news=205515/professions-living-in-perfect-harmony

While not exactly what I would have had in mind had I thought about harmonizing professions, it still might be a step in the right direction.  I believe all professions should be able to work together, encouraging players to help each other out by crafting things needed by other professions.  For example, there are some Tailoring recipes that require potions made by Alchemists.  Most, if not all, professions have a "materials" tab which houses the things they can make that might be needed by others during crafting.

I hope they do not make these obsolete as the expansion progresses.  Updating profession rewards while still utilizing Chaos Orbs was a nice feature in Cataclysm, even if they did greatly devalue the orbs when they removed the binding property.  "Back in my day" I paid 1k gold per orb to have a weapon crafted by a Blacksmith... and I think that was actually considered a fair price at the time.  Last I checked Chaos Orbs were selling for about 30g each in the Auction House.

Professions in WoW are something that needs to be taken advantage of in a timely manner to actually profit from, and I always seem to fail in that department as I wait too long to max out my professions.

There is a note about Engineers in there and I hope they do what they have failed to do in previous expansions: update the Engineer profession-only rewards as the expansion progresses.  Engineers don't catch much of a break: they're not very profitable and they don't get a great bonus from their profession, with the exception of helms, so I hope they are updated as new tiers come out.

TERA Screenshots

Screenshots from TERA Online:

Hopefully these pictures didn't freeze your internet connection and if all goes well they should be viewable in both small and large sizes.

Note that the first and third pictures were of the Castanic race, and the second and fourth were of the Elin race.  (I'm not sure why they consider them races when they are clearly different species, but, meh, oh well.)

The first picture is Bellethiel (Frost Reach) a Berserker, wearing Ruby Rims and performing a random standing-still movement.  The second is Bunnypop (Dragonfall) a Mystic, also wearing Ruby Rims and performing a random "bored" motion.  The third is Drakynix (Frost Reach) a Sorcerer casting a spell, while wearing a Bandit Mask and using the Mister Patches costume item.  The fourth is Sucker.Punch (Dragonfall) a Warrior in the middle of the /dance emote.

I  hope you've enjoyed this taste of the magic that is TERA.  

TERA and more...

It's been a long time, but I'm still here and here's an update:

As you may already know, I'm constantly seeking distractions, especially with my most recent medical problems. My latest, fondest distraction is TERA: The Exiled Realm of Arborea. I'm still dabbling in D3, but after beating it in normal mode with no deaths and not really feeling a great deal of motivation to continue to repeat myself, I've mostly come to the conclusion that it will be a game I play with my husband when he feels up to it and a game I use to play the Auction House and have a tiny bit of entertainment from that.

So, TERA... It's absolutely gorgeous and the combat system is such that you can never AFK or mindlessly tab-target: it requires a certain degree of constant vigilance. Also, “mobs” take up real space – you can't run through them, you have to jump over them or run around, which generally prevents me from auto-running anywhere. In a party or group, team members also take up real space, which is both good in that it is realistic and bad in that it makes things particularly challenging for melee and tanking.

I've even made a new blog in which I will attempt to compile information relating to Achievement Titles in TERA, as I cannot find any good source of information online.

I was fortunate enough to be able to purchase this game due to a combination of “income” earned by creating lego-like connectors and from a very small but unexpected settlement check, and have also been able to purchase Guild Wars 2 in advance. (My husband promises he will play that with me, at least for a time.)

Back to TERA:

Level 60 is the max and I have yet to achieve it, (I think my highest is level 42). Leveling and questing is slow and due to the fact that all races and classes share the exact same quests while leveling and almost every quest must be completed to prevent being “under-leveled” it can be quite tedious, especially if you are, like me, an ALToholic and unsure which class to level first. I think I've finally decided that my Sorcerer should be my first 60, but this is after having played almost every class for hours. So, despite my large time investment, I have very little to show for it. I've also created characters on two different servers, between which I split my time, thus further reducing my speed of leveling. Frost Reach is the server I first chose, and I found a good guild there and made one out-of-guild friend, who then decided to transfer to Dragonfall, where I've made more characters and friends. Most of my characters on Frost Reach are Castanics, a sexy elven-ish race with horns, and on Dragonfall most are Elin, a fae, childish race with ears and tails of different woodland creatures, so not only do I have to choose which class I enjoy playing most, but also which race. I love naming characters, and most of my characters on Frost Reach have “RP-ish” names while most on Dragonfall are clever plays on words.

Queue times on both realms are rather long, unless playing a support class such as a tank or healer. The classes themselves are, in general, much different from WoW. It could be argued that the traditional Warrior class in WoW is represented by 3 or 4 of the classes in TERA, while there are few magical classes and the Rogue class is not at all represented. There are no pets in TERA, either combat or non, and this makes me rather sad, after having been an avid collector of both in WoW. According to the grapevine, non-combat pets are in the works, and there are several potential models implemented already in the game. The closest there is to a pet class is the Mystic, a challenging healer who can summon “thralls” to assist him/her in combat.

I majorly slept in today and just wanted to release some form of update, so I'll be on my way now after having provided this snippet. Ciao!