First off, I’d like to preface things by saying that this is my first blog entry – ever – and that the only MMO I’ve played pre-SWTOR was WoW, so you’ll see a lot of comparisons drawn between the two and you can definitely expect some WoW-terminology.

So, here goes.
I bought the game the day after it was released and immidiately launched myself into the world of Star Wars. I hadn’t read anything about the game before purchasing it and I did not play during the beta, so you’ll find that I probably lack some information and knowledge that a beta tester would have. Anyhoo, first impressions tell me that the game is very much like WoW and throughout my leveling I’ve been reminded of things I experienced in WoW.

Depending on which side you choose(Republic vs. Imperial) you get your pick between 4 different classes. Now, the classes have different names depending on which side you belong to, but their advanced classes and abilities are very similar. At level 10 you get to choose what direction you want your character to go in, f.e. the class I play(Sith Warrior) has the choice of becoming a Sith Juggernaut or a Sith Marauder which largely resembles a prot/fury warrior, with some variations. Both of these two advanced classes have their own two talent trees and a shared one.

Once you start gaining some levels you’ll notice that the choices you make in conversations during quests(or missions) can affect what you end up with. F.e. if you are an evil son of a bitch and choose to torture and kill everyone, you’ll gain a lot of points with the Dark Side and vice versa. At an early point you get your first slave(or companion) which pretty much does everything for you, regardless whether it is killing mobs, gathering or leveling your professions. In this sense every single class in the game is a pet class, albeit only when you’re solo(they get dismissed in larger groups.)

What I love about this game is that I don’t have to waste a lot of time on things I’m used to doing in WoW. The biggest thing being leveling professions, you can send your companions on missions and have them to it for you. Also, as long as you pick up a money-making profession you won’t have any problems getting enough credits as sending your companion on missions to find valuable items keep a steady stream of money flowing in.

At the present I’m only level 28 but I have had the chance to try out some PvP and I’ve played 3 different battlegrounds(or Warzones); Huttball – which is a form of rugby where killing is allowed and encouraged, some SoTA-looking bg where you basically just rush to plant bombs on doors to get to their base and finally a distant cousin of Arathi Basin. Hutball being the only fun one in my opinion. The cool thing about PvP in this game is that you get a huge damage/stat booster buff if you enter a BG as a lowbie so if you’re out of your mind from questing you can easily take a break and do some PvP which will actually give you a healthy amount of credits and XP.

As far as end game content goes, your guesses are as good as mine. I’m sure they’ve got a lot in store for the PvE nerds out there, but that’s not my cup of tea so you’ll have to find out on your own.

All in all I’d say this game is pretty impressive, apart from a few annoyances and bugs here and there. Leveling is smooth, PvP if you’ve got a few pals is a blast, professions and farming aren’t as grueling as they have been in WoW.

PS. If you decide to try it out, play republic. There is a huge favoring of the imperial dark side and we need more subjects to enslave.

PPS. You get your own starship – as if you needed another reason to play this game.

1. Create a 3v3 team as per norm on your Battlegroup.
2. Party up with all members, then proceed to invite a Real ID friend from another Battlegroup.
3. Remove aforementioned Real ID friend.
4. Queue up.
5. Enjoy his BG.

So, why is this important? Doesn’t WoW already partner you up against any other BG now?

Yes, after a 5+ minute time period which is to help combat long queues. You’re randomly shoved into any BG.

But to be able to instantly spam queues into a specific BG gives a team considerable advantages. For example, say you’re playing very high level RMP on Cyclone level and you’re spamming Vindication or Emberstorm, obviously things aren’t as competitive, right?

There should be no 5 minute period of waiting to have your search expanded, and queuing should be immediately possible to any battleground, albeit random BGs only. This exploit allows selective matchmaking and is only a bad thing for the game. Blizzard should look into removing the barriers between all BGs permanently, not only would you be able to play against anyone, with short queues, but it would also remove the so-called ‘easy Rank-1 BGs’.

Well there you have it, what are your thoughts on this exploit? Comment below.

A quick status update on Beta access before I go into winning in the first month of playing Diablo 3: I just got word from Blizzard that I am registered for the Friends and Family Beta invite! That means that within 1-2 weeks I should have Beta access and I am super excited to start producing more articles and videos for you guys on Diablo 3. I was/am really appreciative of Blizzard for allowing me to jump into the Beta. Now, let’s discuss winning in Diablo 3…

For the auctioneer, and even perhaps for most casual players, winning in the first month of Diablo 3 will involve not just killing monsters, but also doing moderately well on the gold and real money auction houses. So when these players go online to plan and strategize as to how they will “win” at the auction house when Diablo 3 is released, what kind of information do you suppose they will see? Unfortunately, not very useful or informative content.

Everywhere I go online, whether it be forum boards or Diablo news sites, “professional” gamers are talking about how players can make money playing Diablo 3. Problem is, they are all going about it the wrong way.

This is the sort of advice I see websites instructing players to use:

1. Kill every mob in the zone.
2. Use Materials to level artisans.
3. Sell rarer weapons and gear on the RMAH.

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

These sites have it all wrong! In the first month of Diablo 3′s release, one of two worst things you could possible do are 1. use your materials to level artisans, and 2. sell your rarer weapons and armor. If you’re interested in learning how to actually make money in the first month of Diablo 3′s release, then please read about my latest free download from Diablo 3 Gold Secrets. Click on the “Order Now” button to see information about the guide, as well as a link for my latest free mini-book on winning in the first month of Diablo 3. Don’t worry, you won’t actually be prompted to order anything as the guide is not complete yet, and the mini-book is completely free.

Good luck and have fun!

Markco

After yesterday’s successful tournament, Prestige Gaming interviewed our very own Hydra to get his views on the tournament and the game in general. They’ve kindly allowed us to post the English version here on Hydramist. For anyone who’d prefer the Russian version do head over to Prestige Gaming to check it out.

Кротиззл: Hey, great job tonight, was really impressed by your perfomance!

Hydra: Not good enough it seems :P

Кротиззл: To start off, what’s your overall impression of this tournament? What were the ups and downs for you?

Hydra: Well we pretty much decided to join it for a bit of fun/competition since there arn’t many wow tournys these days (though i guess a few more of these online ones are coming up which is great!) and overall it was good though apparantly a few teams took it a bit too seriously!

As one of the first of these kind of online tournaments there were some hiccups and things to learn from, such as not releasing the team list before all 8 teams had signed up/been locked in. This would stop silly setups being run simply to counter comp the majority of the people in the tournament (hihi skenz team!) Additionally the camerawork/streamer/commentary could be improved though the ‘listen in to skype’ approach was a good one.

Lastly a lot of drama occured when khuna’s team tried to use pve gear which was disallowed in the tournament under penalty of disqualification. There was a lot of debate as to whether or not to DQ them when they did it and they almost got away with it before gothiques had enough and ban hammered both teams involved! The decision to DQ should have been made instantly and the tournament could have gone on.

Overall the tournament was a fun experience and i hope i’ll be able to participate in similar ones in the future.

Кротиззл: What’s your opinion on your team’s perfomance tonight? What are the things that came out as expected and what are those that should be worked on?

Hydra: We were happy with our overall performance, our rmp mirror definitely needs some work and we were really disappointed with how we played vs khuna – we felt that on a good day we would beat them and that our playstyle yesterday was nowhere near offensive enough. Our games vs bladey were good except the losses though there were a few tweaks needed, it’s hard to guage how much damage we could do due to the gear difference from live atm. The last games vs junglecleave we did better than expected, though with full gear i think we would have won.

Кротиззл: What’s your opinion on overall balance? What are the things that could be fixed? Some people might say that WoW is experiencing a slow and miserable death, what’s that spice that can bring arenas back to the maximal competitive state?

Hydra: This season is atleast better than last, rmp is really strong this season for the first time in a while so i’m having some fun with that while it lasts^^ can’t wait for my rogue to get legendary weapons and 1shot everything eheheh. I guess blizzard may try and revive it with the next expansion but in general i dont think they care enough about pvp for it to reach esport level again. Although the player inspired tournaments that are popping up recently is a good start.

Кротиззл: What do you think about Kalimist’s (aka Steven Seagal) perfomance on this tournament? A lot of viewers were really impressed by some of the stuff he demonstrated. I’m not trying to underestimate Mir, but have you recently thought about reuniting with Kali and destroying everything that’s on your way? :)

Hydra: Stopped playing with kali since he was really inactive/rusty since he got banned, maybe we’ll play together again, we’ll see :)

Кротиззл: Since it was the first unofficial tournament for russian community in collaboration with a lot of top tier european teams, a lot of people would like to know your opinion on russian teams – which ones really surprised you, are there any particular players that impressed you the most or the least?

Hydra: Hunter from the junglecleave was good, carrying them probably, fakeyou’s team could be good if they played offensive.

Кротиззл: Any russian players that you would like to try to play with?

Hydra: Don’t really know any apart from the teams that played in this tourny.

Кротиззл: But if you had a chance to choose from anyone who participated in this tourney, who would that be?

Hydra: Fakeyou probably if he could l2p offensive ;p

Кротиззл: Is there anything that you wanna address to the whole russian community, maybe an inspirational advice or shit like that?

Hydra: Uh hey russian community!!!!!!!!!! sorry for raging in the last game ^_^ i get into the game too much sometimes! no offensive intended! thanks to all my fans there i love you all!!

Кротиззл: And for ending, you’re agreed to be one of the best WoW players. What would you recommend for people who would like to improve their skill to the competitive level? Besides using the most powerful combos and classes from patch to patch, of course :)

Hydra: Record your games and watch em back, try and look at ur own mistakes if u lose other than blaming other ppl even if they made mistakes too. If ur playing with worse ppl than urself try and carry, if ur playing with better ppl try and learn from them.

Кротиззл: Thank you very much for your time, Ryan! All the best for you man, keep representing. Your fans will be praying for a release of a new movie. :)

Hydra: Keep track of hydramist.tv! :)

Winners:

Fritterus / Yons / Donkimon

Stream

Tournament over

http://www.own3d.tv/gamesense – English version
http://www.twitch.tv/shurko – Russian version

Information

Prestige Gaming and GameSense are teaming up this weekend to host a best of 8 double elimination tournament. This follows the incredibly successful NAO Invitational last week. Hopefully the tournament will live up to the standards set by NAO and prove to be a highly entertaining event. It certainly has the star potential to draw in viewers and the potential of Hydra vs. Kalimist clash will certainly provide suspense.

With Hydramist potentially set to host a tournament in the near future, these player run tournaments are growing in popularity. Hopefully Blizzard will take note and implement better tools (spectator mode) and a permanent TR to facilitate these tournaments in the future.

Prize: 1000$ (probably that number is going to increase)
Tournament format: Double elimination
Date: 17-18 december
Commentators (2 streams): RU – Gothiques & Shurko; ENG – Kamaal & Shizzle

Basic rules:
Gear – season 10 PvP items. PvE gear is not allowed at all.
Semi-finals will be series “Best of 5″
Grandfinal and Loserbracket final will be series of “Best of 7″
All the other techincal rules (mostly connected with Spectator UI thingies) would be given to the teams.

Teams

Bladey / Braindeadly / Niksi

Creo / Fakeyou / Izdi

Fritterus / Yons / Donkimon

Kalimist / Ziqo / Skoez (Brought back in for Khuna/Dreamz DQ)

Khuna / Xandyn / Zunniyaki (DQ for PvE Gear)

Less / Aromat / Kalach

Mirlol / Raiku / Hydra (Brought back in for Khuna/Dreamz DQ)

Swapxy / Skenz / Dreamz (Yes this really is double Shaman – Enhancement and Resto) (DQ for been douchebags)

Round One

Swapxy / Skenz / Dreamz (3 : 2)

Khuna / Xandyn / Zunniyaki (1 : 3)

Kalimist / Ziqo / Skoez (2 : 3)

Creo / Fakeyou / Izdi (3 : 0)

 

Round Two

Winners Bracket:

Khuna / Xandyn / Zunniyaki (3 : 0 – Nice job Xandyn, MVP…)

Bladey / Braindeadly / Niksi (1 : 3)

Losers Bracket:

Swapxy / Skenz / Dreamz (0 : 3)

Creo / Fakeyou / Izdi (0 : 0 – Fakeyou’s team couldn’t log on and so received a loss)

Round Three:

Winners Bracket:

Bladey / Braindeadly / Niksi (3 : 0)

Losers Bracket:

Swapxy / Skenz / Dreamz (0 : 3 – Ziqo logged Rogue after second loss)

Less / Aromat / Kalach (3 : 1)

Round 4:

Losers Bracket:

Swapxy / Skenz / Dreamz (1 : 0 – Khuna used double PvE items, not allowed at all – Reset)

Both teams Disqualified – Khuna for using PvE Gear and Double Shamy team for bad behaviour

Kalimist and Hydra brought back in – Hydra RMP vs. Kalimist RMP – the match I wanted to see and I’m sure others do too

Kalimist / Ziqo / Skoez (3 : 1)

 

Semi-Final (Best of 7):

Mirlol / Raiku / Hydra (2 : 4)

Final (Best of 7):

Mirlol / Raiku / Hydra (4: 0)

Winners:

Fritterus / Yons / Donkimon