T w e n t y S i d e d

A variety of bad weather and bad eating leaves me a bit content-poor at the moment. I am working on a longer post; I’m just pretty low energy at the moment. My week in hobbies and gaming consisted of working on two Metal Earth-brand model kits, getting to the final ten tiers of rewards in Galactic Season 6 in Star Wars: The Old Republic, figuring out what needs to be done with Mystilatre the Hunter in Warlords of Draenor before doing the end-game zone, and starting Selarishari, my Blood Elf Paladin, in The Burning Crusade.

Have you ever heard of Metal Earth models? They are, well, made from metal. Specifically, very thin steel sheets. Most of them are very small, as well. The scale varies; most of the character models I would guess are around 1/12th, and your average car model is probably around 1/32. That is, most of the models are 4 inches to 6 inches in length and height when assembled. They have recently started making larger models, but I have no experience with those. I picked up three that were on-sale at a crafts store around eight months ago: an Enterprise-D, a Burton Batmobile, and a Delorean.

Keep in mind that image is blown-up for reference; the actual model is, like I said, about 4 – 4 1/2 inches long. The etching that creates the detail is amazing. The assembly, as you can see if  you study the image, is pretty wonky. Not that you notice on a 4″ model unless you’re holding it up close, and that’s fair enough. Notice all the tabs sticking through slots. Sometimes they fit well, sometimes not. All parts come off of the same sheet, and the metal has to be thin enough to roll and bend parts that are meant to be curved. Which means ALL the parts CAN BE bent and curved. In fact, that’s what you do with the tabs that hold it together: you either bend them back on a part after inserting through the slots, or you twist them. The twisting is easier, but doesn’t work very well. The problem with bending the tabs is that there usually isn’t a good way to hold the parts you DON’T want to bend steady…you are frequently folding a tab back against a hollow assembly that bends very easily. To their credit, even in this official picture found on Metal Earth’s website, you will notice many tabs that are NOT bent or twisted. They are just stuck through a slot then left alone. You can also see some gaps where the two halves of the saucer section come together and parts that don’t really connect the way you would expect. Applying the right force to get everything fitted tightly together is, in my experience, almost impossible.

I made it to the last step of the Enterprise before throwing it out. The process of connecting the neck to the engineering hull was so tedious and ended up damaging the model so thoroughly that I gave up and went on the Batmobile. This started out promising. I sensed trouble approaching when the parts that build out the chassis to follow the line of the sides of the car only attached along one edge. Looking ahead, the entire outer shell of the car was un-braced and unstable. In fact, it would only hold together once the entire thing was assembled. Until that point you would have to constantly rebuild that same parts as they disconnected over and over. I gave up after losing an entire wheel and tire assembly. The tire is, of course, just a flat piece of metal rolled around a pencil, that latched with a tab and slot. This came undone while I was trying to fit the center part of the wheel onto the back of the tire, and sprung across the room. I haven’t found it yet. If you go looking at these models online, I had the OLDER Burton Batmobile; they recently released a newer version that is dyed or painted black, I don’t know how they do it. I kept the unopened Delorean kit. It is a newer kit that has some dyed or painted parts, and uses brushed steel instead of the shiny, polished stuff they normally use. Very realistic, but I suspect it will have the same problems as the Batmobile. I may look at it someday, but for now, back to glue-together or screw-together models.

I am still working the daily Garrison duties like follower missions and the seaport missions, along with using the dungeon quest prompts that you get in your garrison inn and a few other places to do the dungeons and raids. The daily stuff is just to help build gold, so that I can build up my inn to level 3…so that I can get dungeon quests that ONLY become available in a level 3 inn. At some point I will probably look into reputation rewards in Warlords of Draenor, but right now I am focused only on story completion. Being able to solo dungeons and raids in older content is, of course, sacrilegious to some; and completely missing the point of a MMORPG. To me, it’s the best way to play the game. This way you don’t have to be super careful and plan out every detail to be able to take the EXACTLY correct steps to gain access to some piece of lore; you can just go get it when you hear about it. Of course, the “missing the point” part is that you could do almost the same thing with NEWER content by grouping up. But that’s not AS FUN to me. When I group, I do it only for the socializing aspect, not the game-beating aspect. I can get most of my “multi-player” needs taken care of it chat, honestly. I spent years playing the original Guild Wars after Guild Wars 2 came out because I like the chat. Of course, it’s almost completely dead now, but I still check in every now and then.

There isn’t much of a point in trying to stick to a consistent outfit until you reach max level, although I was quite impressed that I wound up with this armor just by accident. Impressed enough to go save it at a transmogrifyer, although that led to some new discoveries. You can’t transmog belts. That was a lie. You CAN transmog belts, and the other couple of things that weren’t available…IF you are wearing an item that CAN BE TRANSMOGED. In my case, the belt I am wearing in the pic is WEARABLE, but not class appropriate for a Retribution Paladin. That is, plate armor. I have actually finished Hellfire Peninsula as of last night and have started Zangarmarsh, the second zone in The Burning Crusade. It has been a lot of fun doing the Outland version of Draenor right after visiting the original version of Draenor. Of course, the Draenor of Warlords of Draenor is technically an “alternate” version now, as the timeline meddling spun off history in a different direction from the prime timeline. But of course, the knowledge of what happened the first time around affects the choices people make, so some things end up in the same place. You can find maps overlaying Outland on top of Draenor to compare locations and sizes. The lore in TBC is DEEP. While Draenor tends to pull only from World of Warcraft to build its story, TBC still had many elements drawn from the RTS games…stuff that has been largely ignored or forgotten. There is actually some lore about the original Horde and dragons, for instance. It’s part of a reputation faction…you don’t even have to do any of the quests. (I did, years ago…I had forgotten this was even in the game.)

There is one really good thing, one really bad thing, and one really mid thing about leveling in The Burning Crusade. The good thing, and what I’ve learned about Chromie-time. You can visit Chromie and set your timeline to The Burning Crusade. I’ve done this before. Once you ding level 60, you get pulled back into the current game. I’ve heard there is a way to reject this and keep playing in your Chromie-time chosen expansion, but I haven’t tried it. Supposedly Chromie-time “syncs” your leveling progression so that you can complete the expansion when you reach level 60…give or take. That has NOT been my experience. Previously, I reached 60 before I was even half-way through The Burning Crusade. And I’ve having about the same level progression THIS TIME, but I AM NOT USING CHROMIE-TIME. As I mentioned a week or two ago, THIS TIME I just went to the (I looked it up) Warchief’s Command/Hero’s Call board and chose the prompt to quest in Hellfire Peninsula. This wasn’t SIMPLE; the board presents three options and I had to accept all the options presented until I was offered Hellfire Peninsula, at which point I abandoned all the others. Annoying, but not a real problem. THEN, however, once again, the instructions given BY THE GAME on how to get started WERE WRONG.

Blood Elves are a Horde faction, so this is told from the point-of-view of Orgrimmar, the Horde capital. I am instructed to go to the Orgrimmar portal rooms, and talk to a particular mage to be sent to the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands, which is how you get to Outland in The Burning Crusade. BUT…there are TWO VERSIONS of the Blasted Lands: pre-Warlords of Draenor and post-Warlords of Draenor. The new default version, appropriately, is post-WoD. Because that’s the current live game. So you talk to the mage, tell him you need to go to the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands, and he sends you there. But it’s the post-WoD version. If you go through now (well, you can’t, because you go through as part of a scenario battle) you wind up in Draenor, not Outland. BUT BLIZZARD HAS A SOLUTION! If you run (and remember, I am currently level 11, having just completed the starting area) ALL THE WAY TO NORTH EDGE OF THE BLASTED LANDS there is an NPC that will “switch” the version of the Blasted Lands you are in. No lore reason for this ability, no story, just an NPC on the other end of the map in the game specifically for this purpose. Which…I mean…at least they DID put the functionality in. I don’t wanna be TOO critical, because this NPC let’s you play The Burning Crusade WITHOUT doing Chromie-time. Starting in Chromie-time DOES put you on the Outland-side of the portal, which skips the steps of teleporting to the Blasted Lands and having to do the run to switch versions, but otherwise I can’t tell the difference. You level at the same rate, but Chromie won’t jerk you out of the experience once you hit level 60.

Oh, and the other thing is you don’t earn nearly as much money as a reward in The Burning Crusade…leveling in Battle for Azeroth showers you with gold (by comparison). Even Warlords of Draenor rewards you at a much higher level, but not nearly as much as Battle for Azeroth. And of course, you don’t receive nearly as much appropriate, leveled armor in older content as you do in the newer expansions.

That’s it for this week! See you soon!

Paige Francis He/him