Leveling battle pets can be a chore in World of Warcraft. The problem is that after an initial team of 25s is made, it’s unlikely that team will be a viable option for the more difficult trainers like the Pandaren Spirits or the Beasts of Fable. Ideally, you’re going to want to level a bunch of pets to have a wide variety of options in your toolkit. I’ve recently started preparing a team for each trainer and I think I’ve stumbled on a great way to level pets.

In order to take advantage of this method, you’re going to need a character that can access the Vale of Eternal Blossoms and two level 20+ flying type pets. Personally, I go with the Crow, which can be found on Darkmoon Island, and the Gilnean Raven, which can only be obtained by visiting a pet battle trainer on a Worgen character. They’re not necessary but they are very helpful.

This is the final week of my SpOps revisits. There doesn’t seem to be any indication that there will be a Season 2 as of yet, so this is likely going to be my last article about SpOps until Halo 5 comes out. It has to be a good article, and I’m not entirely sure I can deliver. I don’t like SpOps. It has some good moments, but there’s just a lot of repetition and redundancy in the gameplay. I don’t know what the designers in charge of development had in mind when they sat down and decided that, yes, this is what Spartan Ops is, and this is how it will play.

Last week, I had said that Episodes 8 and 9 were inconsequential. This isn’t entirely true. It’s mostly true, but there are only two key points that have any relevance. The first is that Madsen received a map after looting Gek’s corpse in the Episode 8 cinematic. This map was handed to Doctor Glassman, who is using it to discover the secrets of Requiem. It’s actually kind of cool, because Glassman was a worthless character before, but now he gets a chance to be useful. I’ll be touching on this some more later. Anyway, at the end of Episode 9, Crimson discovered another map, and when combined with Glassman’s map, it becomes a super map to all of Requiem.

Too bad Requiem is about to fall into a star.

On May 23rd 2013, Robin Torres posed the following question over at WoWInsider: What’s wrong with WoW? It’s no secret that WoW’s numbers are declining. If I recall the statistics correctly, WotLK was the height of WoW’s popularity. But I thinking asking what’s wrong with WoW presupposes a “yes” to the more important question: Is there anything wrong with WoW? And to that I say “no.”

WoW is over eight years old at this point. It’s been the king of the MMO world for quite some time. Many competing games have been introduced that were dubbed as “WoW-killers” like Aion, Rift, Old Republic, and Guild Wars 2. But thus far, nothing has lived up to the hype. The health of the game, despite the decline in subscribers, has remained strong.

Recently, Adam posted an article about how healing in LFR isn’t fun. I’m inclined to agree with him in principle, even though I’ve only done LFR on my main, a Warlock. However I disagree with some of the things he said, especially since I’m a damage dealer and apparently that means I’m one of the “. . . seventeen selfish, incompetent morons waiting to blow up the damage meters, stroke their epeens, and get their harmful ejaculate all over the raid.”

Well, I don’t know about that. As a damage dealer, I take just a little issue with the sentiment. Let’s take a look at the problem a little closer.

This week we’re looking at Episodes 8 and 9 of Spartan Ops. I had said last week that Episode 7 was pure filler. It was a level of awful that we hadn’t seen since Episode 3. I also skipped over discussing the cinematic for that week.

Today, I’m going to be talking about Doctor Catherine Halsey.

In Episode 6, she tells Captain Lasky that there are secrets left in the universe, and that she so desperately wants to know everything. That’s why she abducted children, you see. She had them indoctrinated and their bodies augmented to be the perfect soldier. Halsey created the Spartan-II program, because she wants to know everything the universe has to offer.

Oh, and she designed the MJOLNIR Mark IV power armor, too. Equipping super children in the most advanced armor that humanity has ever seen so that they can be the best soldiers humanity has ever seen furthers her goal of understanding the universe.

Healing is something that comes naturally to me. I like healing in World of Warcraft. I like playing as a Holy Priest. Being responsible for the virtual lives of other characters doesn’t bother me. I leveled as a healer. I didn’t level as Shadow until 81-85, when Cataclysm came out; for Mists of Pandaria, I went back to Holy because quest rewards were based on specialization, and I needed to have Spirit on my gear, not Hit Rating.

It always makes me uneasy when I’m playing as a non-healer. I always feel like the healer who is taking up the mantle is going to do something wrong. Seeing health bars that aren’t full actually makes me panic. I’ll be yelling at my monitor, “come on, heal the tank, they’re going to die.” The tank rarely does, of course. You’d think I’d have learned to trust other healers by now.

The weird thing is, I don’t like healing in LFR. I didn’t know why until this weekend. It was something a death knight said when we were in the Halls of Flesh Shaping. What they said was so idiotic it was actually infuriating. I wanted to turn on caps lock and just chew this person out.

Assassin’s Creed III was developed by Ubisoft Montreal and first released on October 30, 2012 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Though the name might be misleading, it is actually the fifth game in the Assassin’s Creed series. Thus far, every numbered game has introduced a new protagonist to the series. This time around we take control of Ratonhnhaké:ton, or as he is more commonly called, Connor.

The game takes place in the 1700’s, around the time of the American Revolution, and Connor is half Mohawk Native American and half British. The game centers around Connor’s struggle to protect his people from the encroaching American and British soldiers. As with previous Assassin’s Creed games, there is also a parallel story being told in the present day through the character of Desmond.

So how does Assassin’s Creed III stack up against previous games? Let us take a look.

Episode 7 brings us to the UNSC Infinity. It’s been a long time coming. When I first played this Episode back in January, I thought it was really cool to visit Infinity. However, I didn’t really think about what I played. The After Show didn’t really demand that; it was a stream of consciousness guised as dialogue for flavor. But now that I’ve gone back, played through the episode, and given it some serious thought?

I don’t like this episode. It has some major issues. It’s probably the worst episode since Episode 3, and Episode 3 was pure filler. It’s bad.

Only one way to get through this: feet first into hell. See you after the cut!

On May 3rd 2013, Robin Torres posed the following question over at WoWInsider: What if WoW didn’t have guilds? An interesting question to be sure! I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it in the past. Having guilds in WoW is just something that comes with the territory, isn’t it? I think the only way I can imagine what it would be like is to think back on how guilds have shaped my WoW experience. Although as I think about it, the idea of a “guild” really didn’t begin for me with WoW. It all goes back to Halo 2 as I recall.

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? A little more than two months ago, we saw the season finale of Spartan Ops Season 1. We haven’t posted much on the site since then. We’ve been busy, you see. Everyone is always busy when they’re not doing something, aren’t they? I have been keeping busy with things related to World of Warcraft, but I haven’t finished any of them. Soon, though.

Last time we talked about SpOps, I was just finishing the awful After Show. Let’s go a little further back to Episode 5. I talked about how Jul ‘Mdama is a cunning villain. He started as a Very Evil villain who was bad because Palmer said so. In the three not-so-short episodes that we saw him, we learned that he’s playing a long game.

Let’s watch the Episode 6 cinematic after the cut before we continue.