V is for Video Games

It feels strange to call them video games when most of the games I play are on my iPad or my PC but the dictionary says I've got the right word so here we go!

I've been playing World of Warcraft since 2009 and writing about it since late 2010 but I remember Space Invaders back in the late 1970's and was fairly addicted to that even back then. Over the years I've played lots of different games and spent hours of fun, bashing buttons at arcades at the beach too. I particularly enjoy the strategy/resource games like Settlers & Sim City. I think I like those because I play solo and at my own speed, without the need for speedy reflexes & movement, something I struggle with in the multiplayer games but then I wouldn't have so many wonderful people to chat too if I didn't play online!

World of Warcraft is in a bit of a lull for me right now while we're waiting for Warlords of Draenor so I've been playing quite a few other games. I'm really looking forward to Wildstar being released on 3rd June and I'm kinda hoping my operation will be scheduled for the week before! I'll be off work for 2 maybe 3 weeks so it will give me something to take my mind off my discomfort! I was lucky enough to get into the closed Beta and have picked up a few of the keys for the current special weekend Betas. I could pre-order but I'm torn between buying the Wildstar US version or the EU one! So for now, I'm hanging on, hoping something or someone will help me make my mind up!

Most recently, I've been lured into League of Legends by Cold and we've met up with a few Twitter peeps in there too (hellooo Amarochi & LegionHopper!). I'm really enjoying it when I play against the AI at beginner level! I'm really not very good at the intermediate level though! If you'd like to join us on Sundays (afternoon US time, evenings UK/EU time) then send us a friend request. If you haven't played before, it's free so just download & install it and tell them NevToo sent you!

I'm also playing Clash of Clans with a new clan and we're all suddenly re-learning how to attack strategically. The new Clan Wars expansion was a bit of a shock to my system for sure! I'd been using a cheap army to just farm resources quickly but that method of attack doesn't work in the Wars!

And of course, there's Hearthstone - the free to play collectible card game (CCG) by Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft. I enjoy a game now & then but I haven't stayed addicted to it as I did with WoW. Even now that it's been released for the iPad, I have still only played 1 or 2 games! As you can imagine, with 2 blogs and countless other games on the go, I don't have a huge amount of time for it!

Some of the games I do try to find time for are the free apps I review for my One Minute Gaming segment - which reminds me - I need to do some more for this weekend! You can read my reviews here by clicking the page link at the top of the page.

So yeah, I'd say I'm fairly well covered in the video games department - not saying I'm a geek or anything although I definitely have geekish tendencies! I have a long way to go to earn my full fledged geek card I think!

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Warlords of Draenor & Other Games

It's been a full & exciting few weeks for me since I got my new PC and the super duper graphics card that came with it! Just last week, the NDA was lifted on Wildstar so I can reveal that it was that game that had me so fired up to get the PC! I've been playing it a fair bit but I am struggling with some stuff.

It's not an easy, stroll through zones, collect XP type of game by any means! Oh heck no, this game is making me work for almost every single thing and I'm actually enjoying it! It's taken me a few tries with different characters to find a class I like straight off - strangely enough, given my problems with melee in WoW, it seems the Warrior in WS is my best class so far! I've pretty much decided to buy the pre-order for Wildstar in the next week or so but I won't be giving up on WoW either!

Blizzard announced 20th December as release date for Warlords of Draenor but have set-up the free level 90 boost as available with pre-orders now. I won't be pre-ordering for a while yet as I have plenty of other options to be playing in the meantime. Maybe I'm in denial or just straight disbelief but December? really Blizzard? You rushed us through all those patches so fast, I got burned out & totally discouraged because I couldn't keep up and now you're going to make us wait almost a year for new stuff? And you have the nerve to ask me to pre-order now? Yeah right! We all know my answer to that although I'm too polite to type it out here!

You may have noticed my last few posts have been about free iPad games - this is linked to the One Minute Gaming segment I've been doing - and I have to say, I'm having a blast playing all these 'silly' little games! I've got a few really good ones coming up, thanks to some suggestions from Mike & Scott plus I've found a few myself.

Also this last 2 weeks, I've been in St Louis and the first week of my visit, we enjoyed the excellent company of Selltacular & his wife, Goooomba - they popped over to St Louis to see us & we pretty much spent our time eating or trying to decide where to eat! It was great fun though & was wonderful to finally meet some twitter friends for real.

I've also been having a little dabble in League of Legends - it's very different from anything I've played before and my first impression is that it's all my WoW PvP nightmares built into one game but I'll give it a bit more of a try before I decide for sure!

Another game I played quite a bit before my trip to USA is Path of Exile - it's a bit like Diablo 3 but it's totally free. I haven't played much Diablo 3 but if PoE stays free then I don't think I'll be worrying about buying D3!

I also managed to get into an  Elder Scrolls Online beta just before my trip - I think I managed a couple of hours before I had to do something else and the game grabbed me so much, I haven't even been back! I will give it another chance if I can but I won't be paying for it on my current impressions.

So yeah, lots of new games on my horizon, all opened up by the new PC but also by the possible really long wait for Warlords of Draenor - Fall? Really? Bah!

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