KingsIsle Blaugust Prizes

KingsIsle is Awesome

KingsIsle Blaugust Prizes

Some of you may know KingsIsle games as the creator of the wildly popular Wizard 101, Pirate 101 and the upcoming mobile monster destruction game Rise and Destroy.  For those who do not they occupy a unique niche in the MMO industry.  They create these awesomely rich cartoon worlds populated with tons of content, and all of aimed at being appropriate for pretty much all ages to play.  I’ve not spent a ton of time playing these games but on a whim one weekend some of the AggroChat folks spent it rolling brand new characters in Wizard 101 and wandering around together.  The game just exudes charm and I had enough fun that weekend that I decided to spend a little money on the game even though I really didn’t intend to keep playing it regularly.  I’ve always heard they have an amazing community, and that KingsIsle in general does a lot to try and foster this.  However I was pleasantly shocked when I was contacted by a representative from KingsIsle yesterday and handed some prizes for our Blaugust event.  They handed me several codes for special bundles in both Wizard 101 and Pirate 101, each bundle having a retail price of between $29 and $39 bucks.  That is absolutely awesome, and I actually spent a bit more time playing my Wizard 101 character yesterday.  For those curious, I dug up the release videos for each of the trailers.  I have yet to decide how I will reward these but it is awesome to have more options in the prize pool.  If you interact with any of the KingsIsle employees, seriously give them a huge thank you!

Grand Tourney Gauntlet Bundle for Wizard 101

HooDoo Bundle for Pirate 101

Exhaustion Hits

KingsIsle Blaugust Prizes

Last night is traditionally the raid night for my second static group in Final Fantasy XIV.  However we were missing a significant number of the key players, namely our second healer and tank.  For a bit we considered other options, and were on the verge of just running an expert for the day and calling it good.  Problem being as I sat there at the keyboard waiting for things to happen I kept dozing off while leaning forward, literally waking up when my head banged my boom microphone.  So instead of doing Final Fantasy XIV shenanigans I retired to the couch to peacefully doze in and out of consciousness while waiting on my wife to get home.  I didn’t really want to go to bed for real yet, because once I conk out I am often times dead to the world… and I wanted to make sure she made it home safely and didn’t have car trouble or anything out of the ordinary like that.  Before the attempt at raiding, and a small bit afterwards I continued playing some Diablo 3.  The game worked mostly because I had no one relying on me, and quite frankly I was playing on normal level which means I can doze off for a second here and there and suffer zero consequences from it.  After I beat the normal storyline and unlock the content I will end up dialing up the difficulty as I attempt to level to 70 before the 23rd.

This is really a stupid mission I have set out on…  largely because I really need to be in Final Fantasy XIV instead capping esoterics for the week.  The interesting thing about Season play in Diablo 3 though is it feels like they have ratcheted up the drop rates of everything.  While my profile has not updated to show it yet… at level 13 my crusader already has three legendary drops… including Genzaniku the awesome axe that summons a spirit to fight for you.  When I entered into this seasonal thing I fully expected to lose my character at the end of the season…  because I didn’t actually do any research before saying “sure” and clicking on the seasonal button.  I guess however everything you earn in season just rolls over into your normal characters at the end of a season which is pretty frickin cool.  So even if I don’t make any real progress in season 3, I will absolutely be starting a fresh season 4 character to play as well.  I guess in the coming days I will be popping into Final Fantasy XIV to get in an expert or two and then popping into Diablo 3 because it makes an excellent way to wind down for the evening.  I mostly enjoy soloing over there, but I am always looking for people to chat with while I am doing it.  I finally got around to adding my friend Byx last night to battle.net and I know there are tons of other people that I should as well.  I am finding that I am really enjoying the crusader, but in truth all of the classes I have played so far have been enjoyable in one way or another.  I just find it so bizarre that at this point, World of Warcraft is probably my least favorite Blizzard game.