Considering that I don’t have much to comment on with patch 3.3, I figure I’ll shift the focus on this entry towards console gaming and the upcoming diversions from WoW. There have already been a large number of games released this holiday season that I’m interested in, but I’m always looking forward. Assassin’s Creed II, Borderlands, Uncharted 2 … Meh! Who needs them right? Let’s look to first quarter of 2010 for what really has me excited. Old games are old news is what I always say ^^;

Right out of the gate January has two games that I am really looking forward to: Darksiders and Bayonetta. The buzz revolving around Darksiders is very positive, but I’m hoping a demo gets released in the coming weeks so I can try it out for myself. I downloaded the Bayonetta demo and WOW that’s how you start a demo. It doesn’t slow down in January either with Dark Void and Mass Effect 2 on their heels. Dark Void is likely to get overlooked by many but I’ll check it out based off how much I loved Crimson Skies. Mass Effect 2 is a no-brainer … but I still need to pick up Mass Effect and finish it first.

February isn’t quite as packed with titles that cause me to salivate but there are a couple of titles that I’ll mention. As blasphemous as this might be I could care less about Bioshock 2. I didn’t like Bioshock, the control just felt off and as cool as the atmosphere seemed, it just didn’t grab me. Where Bioshock 2 fails to excite me Star Trek Online exceeds in tapping the inner-trekkie inside of me. Away missions aside the game looks amazingly fun. DS9 uniforms?! Hell yes. I loved TNG and DS9 (season 4+) and cannot wait to captain a cruiser through the Gamma quadrant and kick some Dominion ass (okay, that might be getting ahead of myself).

February closes with a bang with Splinter Cell: Conviction which is a little surprising coming from me. I’ve never been a fan of the Splinter Cell series, but Conviction just looks bad-ass. Obvious inspiration from the Borne movies as well as Fox’s 24 seems to have shifted Conviction into a game that I look forward to playing. Speaking of 24, season 8 is going to absorb my Monday nights. I am a huge Jack Bauer fan and should my wife and I ever have a boy, he will be named James “Jack Bauer” Rainwater.

Finally the grand-daddy of all diversions will come in March as Final Fantasy XIII is released. As much as I love the Warcraft universe, Final Fantasy has and will always be #1 in my heart. Once FFXIII drops my WoW playtime will disappear until I’m completely satisfied and finished with FFXIII. I just need to decide whether I’ll pick it up on 360 or PS3 should a PS3 slim find its way into my home during the Christmas holiday.

With the changes to how deadly poison works I’m wishing I had better daggers to switch over to my mutilate dual-spec. Then again, there is the Quel’delar quest chain with that sexy sword to keep me primarily running as a combat rogue. I’ll need to look through the loot tables for the 5-mans and plan out what I should be aiming for.

Similarly I’ll be running into the issue of DPS’ng or tanking as my DK. Neither his DPS or tanking set are spectacular, but he’s geared well enough that I’ll be comfortable taking him as DPS into the new 5-man heroics. His tanking set is ready for tanking heroics, but I’m not comfortable with attempting heroic Trial of the Champion yet since he’s just shy of 28k hp unbuffed. That might be good enough but considering that I’m still extremely green at this tanking stint, I’d feel more comfortable getting his hp over the 30k mark before jumping into random heroics as a tank.

Then there’s my priest. She’s still sitting at level 77 and in need of a lot of work. I’m planning on eventually transferring her off of Cenarius to find a new home on Jubei’thos, but I’d like to get her to supply my toons with glacial bags before she leaves. I also need to buy her a dual-spec so I can keep her shadow for solo content and disc for pvp/5-mans.

So much to do, at least Cataclysm is still a long ways off. ^^;