In both my MMO drugs of choice, World of Warcraft and The Secret World, I’ve reached something of a plateau on my main characters. In WoW, my rogue and my warlock are both geared enough to do Siege of Orgrimmar when it releases, and my warlock is nearing the end of the Wrathion legendary chain. In TSW, my Dragon has beaten all the solo content in the game and run every dungeon at least once.

For some, this situation might lead to boredom, but for the alt addicts among us, this is an opportunity! Now is that glorious time when I shift focus away from the main characters a bit and move on to the neglected low level characters.

WoW: Monk-ying around:

I’ve decided that I want to get my monk to level 90 before Mists of Pandaria is finished. Partly, this is because I’m genuinely enjoying the character. But another reason is that I continue to be very unhappy with the direction of the rogue class, and it’s actually getting worse, not better. The next patch is slowing down combat even more.

So I want the monk as a fallback. If I’d known things would be this bad for rogues, I wouldn’t have bothered leveling mine at all, but I’ve sunk enough time into her now that I might as well stick it out through the rest of the expansion. But if things don’t improve in 6.0, I’m jumping ship to the monk.

So I’m pushing on towards 90 on my kung fu Night Elf. I cruised through Northrend in no time at all thanks to the monk XP buff, and I’m now punching and kicking my way through Cataclysm. While I’m still questing, I’m also doing a lot of dungeons in brewmaster spec.

It continually amazes me that I enjoy brewmaster as much as I do. Normally, tanking is my least favourite group role by far, but monk tanking is fiendishly fun.

I think a lot of it has to do with the mobility. My paladin felt so slow and sluggish, but my monk is blindingly quick. There are so many strategies you can pull off as a monk that would be impossible for any other tank. A lot of times I can avoid damage simply by staying out of the boss’s reach.

I also like that they have a very broad toolkit. This is the first tank spec I’ve played where I feel like I always have the tools I need to handle any circumstance.

TSW: Templars are red, Lumies are blue…

Meanwhile, in TSW, I continue my disturbing need to play alts in the game where there is absolutely no good reason to have alts.

On my Templar, I’ve now finished the main storyline. Her choices took a darker road than my Dragon’s did. She dreams to soar among the screaming stars with the whale-mollusk gods. The Dreamers will wake.

Ahem. Anyway…

I also repeated issue #7, A Dream to Kill, on her. It occurs to me I never gave my thoughts on issue #7 on this blog, but suffice it to say every aspect of it blew me away, and to my surprise, it lost almost none of its luster on the second playthrough. The snowmobile chase is still ridiculously fun, the new twists still have me chomping at the bit to get to Tokyo, and the Nursery is still absolutely bone-chilling.

Now I’m going to have the song stuck in my head for a few more days…

And a new player has entered the scene. I’ve started a second alt to experience the Illuminati’s version of events.

The Lumies appealed to me the least out of the three factions off the bat, and playing one now hasn’t improved my opinion of them, but I can definitely see how a certain type of person would adore them.

While the faction-specific content in TSW is minimal, Funcom does a very good job of creating a distinct feeling between factions for what content there is. The Dragon are very mysterious and intellectually stimulating. The Templar ooze pride, tradition, and power. And the Illuminati are very clearly the comedy relief of the Secret World.

While superficially very different, the Lumies sort of remind me of the Goblins in WoW: madcap eccentrics out to make a fast buck or die trying. No sleep ’til Brooklyn — sex, drugs, and Rockefeller!

For all the fame Kirsten Geary has among the fans, I didn’t find her as funny as some seem to. Dr. Zurn, on the other hand, was definitely the highlight of the Illuminati starting experience.

“You ever seen a jaguar trippin’? Look it up sometime!”

The really horrible thing is that I’m already considering a fourth alt. I love the Dragon so much I want to play through their whole storyline again.

Although that would mean playing through that nightmarish parking garage mission again. Hmm… maybe not.

New article:

My latest contribution to WhatMMO is 5 Boring MMO Mechanics (That Could Be Fun). YES I REALLY WANT BETTER ARCHER CLASSES IN MY MMOS DAMN IT.