Archive for November, 2008

I’d hit a wall at some point last week in regards to WoW. I loved Northrend. I loved the new shiny content. But… I was bored. Really bored. Somehow, I’d hit a point that I still liked WoW but it just wasn’t compelling to stay logged in past checking my auctions. So instead of playing WoW, I found myself playing around with a new beta, watching TV, or relearning to knit (that’s right, I said KNIT!). Part of it was a still wonked sleep schedule that had been tossed around from the release, with a good dose of insomnia for a couple of nights. So what’s a girl to do?

Well first things first, I didn’t force myself to play. Brain can’t concentrate on leveling? Fine. I’ll go knit and watch a movie. Want to play something but want to be able to drop it in two seconds? Fine, I’ll play with games on the iPhone. Want the “new shiny” feeling without having 500 people stealing mobs out from under me? Fine, I’ll go beta test for a bit. No brain power at all? Fine, I’ll go watch TV and meld with the couch. Or, in the case of Monday night, struggle for 2 hours to try and stay awake, fail and finally give in and go to bed.

But last night was guild night and I knew Exar would be sitting at the computer nearby, so I sighed and dragged my butt online. Apologies were made to the Monday night crew for missing runs with them and were accepted. I slowly started getting a few quests done, then it was time for guild runs. It was then that I remembered I’d lately been stuffed into the groups doing the “undead bug” instances. The last thing I wanted to deal with was undead bugs. By the time I got put into a group, they were asking where we were going to go, and all started to laugh when I yelped “No undead bugs!”

Fortunately for my sanity, there were no undead bugs last night. Instead, there was lots of trolls and dwarves. What? I get to see new instances? SCORE! New gear? Well I did pick up a BOE sword. Or was it a dagger? I remember looking at it and not being sure if I wanted it or not, if it would be better with enchants on it than what I had, but won the greed roll for it anyway. Quests were turned in, and then there was a ding. Siana is now 77 and has her flying mounts back. /cheer!

So what does the holiday weekend hold for me? Seeing if I can keep the forward momentum going while still managing to maintain what little sanity I have left. Maybe even ding 80! /gasp Or if I’m feeling REALLY frisky, working on the gnome warlockette that’s sulking in the corner cos I’m not playing with her.

To those that celebrate it, have a very Happy Thanksgiving and see ya next Monday.

I’m a little out of it today, since insomnia has reared it’s ugly head again. I’m hoping that this upcoming Thanksgiving break will help me settle that battle.

But while I was glancing over my regular website reads, I came across an interesting article. I, Gamer over on Kotaku talks about how there’s still a gap between the Gamers and, well, everyone else. Go one, go read it. It’s food for thought. Most of the people that I talk to WoW about, and play WoW with, are (to me) Gamers. They read up on their class, abilities, new things in game. Maybe some more than others, but for most of them, it’s something they enjoy participating in enough that they continue trying to experience the game when they can’t play. Why else do you think there’s 8 billion WoW blogs out there?

But then there’s the rest of the world. “World of what?” To them, names like “Blizzard” and “Activision” might as well be made up names for made up things that you’re babbling about to them in Martian. Nintendo, Playstation, and XBox might get a bit more recognition, but if you ask any details (”What exclusives are coming out for each system?” “Hey you hear about the new SKUs they’re releasing this week?”), you’ll get blank looks. They don’t know that there’s a “battle” going on between the manufacturers, and honestly, they don’t care.

And that’s the thing: they just want to play a fun game. They could care less if 80% of the reviews said “Dear god, do not buy this game. The controls are awful, the story is trite at best, and the character design looks nothing like the initial sketches.” All they care is that they had fun with it.

And if you look at it, it’s the same situation with movies. There’s always a huge upwelling of expensive movies at the summer, and almost always, most of them are derided by the critics. And almost all of those movies make tons of money, because the majority of the people going to see them don’t care that it’s a recycled plot, with a shiny CGI layer to make it easier to swallow. They just want to watch the shiny new movie and promptly forget about it the next week when the next blockbuster hits the screens. They just want to have fun.

So where does fun end and electronic elitism begin? Can we bridge the gap between the Gamers and everyone else?

Yesterday, I got off work early and giggled my way home, to hop into WoW. Another friend of mine was on and was questing in the Howling Fjord, so he and I hooked up and knocked out a ton of quests. All in all, a good thing, even if I kept getting distracted by all the animals around that could be skinned. >.> After he had to afk, I kept at other quests, skinned more dead animals, then went with a group of friends into one of the instances in Dragonblight. Which one, I have no clue. It had icky undead bugs that could be skinned, so that’s all I cared about.

My leatherworking is progressing nicely. I’ve gotten up to 420 and have access to some of the patterns that are really nice. Example: there’s a set that so far, I could replace everything on me with and get bonuses out of every piece. Granted, I can’t WEAR any of it til I’m 78, but hey, who’s counting?

And can I say, Howling Fjord is my favorite new zone so far? The textures, the “feel”, the environment: it all is just awesome. However, Blizz? The plague tanks in the zone and the purple/grey/black buildings? A bit too “Beetlejuice” in the middle of my “Beowulf”. :/ That’s the one reason I’m not giving HF an “A+”. Sorry. Be happy with the “A”.

Tonight is guild raid group night and a hopeful ding along the way. Friday should be another night of runs with the friends’ guild, and Saturday is blissfully off off off work! /wallow Wrath

Yey the headache is gone! Woot! I pretty much took off Monday night due to several factors, but recovered quite nicely last night. We’ve had a few people come back to WoW the past few days, including Uber Pally Tank, much to my delight. Since I was in between the level groups in guild at level 73, when we broke into instance groups, I went to the “kid’s table,” aka the 70-71 level group. That was okay, cos UPT and I got to chat and smash stuff into submission. After doing Nexus and UK, the group had to dissolve and I ran off to kill 6 more mobs. Why 6? Cos after those 6, I dinged 74. Hopefully tonight I can get some more leveling in and get to 75 or at least a little closer to it. I’d like to see some more of the instances other than Nexus and UK. Oh and the one with the undead bugs. -.- /shudder

Once I dinged, it was off to find an NPC mage and get my butt ported to Dalaran. Giddy was about the appropriate description for me then. I crawled all over Dalaran, sticking my nose into various shops, and finally found the pet store. After putting up with my cackling, Exar finally looked over at my screen and asked “WTF is THAT?!” Hearing me cackling and singing “My pet is playing feeeetch” probably didn’t reassure him to my sanity, but he knew what he was getting into long before last night.

So right now I’m a happy camper. I’ve found a nice place to farm crystallized water for leathercrafting. I’ve gotten to Dalaran and made my hearth there. I’ve found the exotic ammo vendor and have loaded back up with purple arrows. And I have my pally tank back. It’s a good time! Wheee!

Since I’ve managed to change up my addons a bit with the 3.0 patch, I’m probably going to work on a addon/UI/macro post at some point in the next few days. Nothing like continuously tweaking your UI for “perfection”. ^^;

If I was coherent, I’d tell you all several things. I’d tell you:
1. How I happily went through 3 instances multiple times in the past few nights, including talking a group of friends into trying one that was rated 73-75, when we were all mostly 72 (with a kitty drood at 74), and we still won. Twice.
2. How even tho Exar had work on Thursday, Friday AND Saturday, he’s (75) still passed me (73-almost-74-dammit) in leveling. Bastard. No cookies for j00.
3. How I’m playing with Power Auras addon after Nibuca talked it up. So many uses, so little screen space. So much addon love.
4. How I’m really enjoying being a MM spec hunter again, even if I am forced to deal with craptastic arrows in Northrend since I’m not of a level for the “good” ones. (See #2)

Alas, I’m not coherant. I have a splitting headache that isn’t going away. Sense of humor’s still somewhat intact, though, and I took one of my employee’s to lunch as a going-away treat (she’s leaving to open her own store, which is total win for her and the town), so I’m still stuffed on Japanese steakhouse. So, I’ll have to post all the fun later. Maybe even with shiny pictures.

…maybe not so much with the pictures. >.> Depends on if I remember them. /sigh

So the plan worked out: Wednesday night, The Boyfriend (aka Exar in the last post’s comments [yes dear, get a Frostmourne, we'll hang it next to my sword and daggers when we set up the game/comp room when we get a house]) and I went off to Best Buy. See, with the xpac coming out, I’d decided that I needed a new mouse. The Logitech G5 that I have was starting to act, well, “wonky”. It would stutter, I’d clean the eye and it would be fine… for 15 minutes. The cord on it has a permanent kink from how the desk is set up and kept getting tangled in the cats’ legs, or trapped under their bodies when they’d flop. I love the thing, but it was starting to slowly drive me nuts while playing WoW, and with the new content, that couldn’t happen.

So we wandered around Best Buy for a while, with me checking on the iPhone and remembering reviews and other bloggers’ comments. I’d asked for opinions from the BA chat room when I started thinking about getting a new mouse, and they were kind enough to make suggestions. My choices are slightly limited due to running on a Mac. I need either the mouse vendor’s software drivers, or use something like USB Overdrive, which is what I’d been using for the G5. But for some reason, USB Overdrive and the G5 didn’t quite get along. The side buttons were mostly useless since they’d get randomly reset constantly. Annoying. :/ So this time, I wanted manufacturers’ drivers, no 3rd party. End result? We walked out with me holding a new Logitech MX Revolution Cordless.

Then we had steak for dinner. No Tauren jokes were made.

After that, it was off to GameStop where I’d prepaid for our copies of the CE. It being a small town, they didn’t open their doors til 10:30. We were the first two in and for a while, I was thinking it was going to be Exar, the GameStop employees and myself for the night. After 25 minutes or so, another guy came in. Then another. Then another couple. Then a whole group. By the time everyone lined up to pick up their copies, we’d all been chatting, comparing notes on servers/classes/races for a while, free posters in hand. There ended up being around 18-22 people in the store, and I was pretty pleased at the turnout. I made my call in to the TNB to say hi (and think I’d hit the babbling stage by then), and took a picture of the store as we were getting our copies.

(Yes, Exar’s hiding, as are about 1/4 of the people there. The Xbox racks were digging into my back.)

After that, it was race home, install, log in, and start slamming out quests. He and I had a little bit of an advantage since we’d both been in beta, so we were able to zip through quite a few quests. He started his Death Knight (conveniently named Exar) and got it to a point to start collecting rested XP. I played around with Siana and Wrenn, then finally collapsed at 4:30am, only to get up 2 hours later when he got up to get ready for work. I had one more nap, probably not any longer than 45 minutes, around 3pm. Other than that, I was in-game, questing, chatting, or flat out goofing off. At some point before 3pm, Siana became the first guild member to reach 71. When I went to bed, one of the other guildies had dinged 72 while about half the guild was at 71 or just about there.

We managed to get in runs on Utgarde Keep and The Nexus and I got quests done in both for Sia. Today, I’m going to try and get quests for both on Wrenn and see about taking her to a run with the Runtz. Or I might take Sia. Still wafflely I have to say, tho, that I love the instance designs on both. UK is dark, rustic, and very Nordic inspired to my eye. The Nexus was a nice change as well, similar in some ways to Tempest Keep but not. It’s definitely it’s own flavor.

Today and this weekend, I’m off to explore more, work on both Siana and Wrenn, and explore my brains out, looking at cool new things and being happy about new content. I’m sure in 6 months, I’ll be sighing “Boooooooooored.” But now, I’m thrilled to be exploring new areas and finding even more things that fall down and go boom in new and interesting ways.

My good friend Nytetyger lives in the OC. Yep, she lives in throwing distance (or at least cab ride distance) of Blizz HQ. As such, she gets to see the OC Register paper every morning, and giggle over the Blizzard news that’s reported within. Today, she gave me two links that I thought I’d share.

First, is a link to a slideshow showing off art being displayed at a nearby art college. Some nice stuff and wish I’d been able to see it close up myself. But the fun one? The Blizzard COO showing off his collection of toys and “stuff”.

You gotta love a company that has fun with it’s own products.

Okay, is it bad that I keep singing songs from Muppet Christmas Carol in my head? Except applying “Wrath” and “Lich King” to them? I’m at work, completely useless to do anything other than talk with other bloggers, watch Leafy unbox his CE, and vibrate along with Breana and in general act like a kid the day before, well, Christmas. So, since I am, well, useless for the moment, enjoy this song, which has been going through my head since I woke up this morning, giggling in glee, and I’ll see you all in Northrend.

I have two new additions in the sidebar. One is a Twitter badge. I had played around with Twitter pretty early on, but hadn’t used it in a while. A few weeks back, I rejoined the twittering world and it’s been amusing.

The other addition is a Raptr.com profile. I had heard about Raptr a while back, but had forgotten it until earlier today when it was brought up in the BA bloggers room. Invites went flying, and soon a ton of us all landed on the site, creating accounts and poking the new toy.

Will I be keeping them on the front page? Who knows. Right now, they’re helping relieve a little stress from no servers and wishing 12:01am Thursday would get here already…

So last night, I spent hopping between all my characters and looting them and their banks of anything useful that I wasn’t going to need come Thursday. I tossed a ton of stuff onto the AH and giggled as it sold as I was putting more things up. The banker character now has a clean mailbox and is mostly emptied out. All the money she was holding has been divided and given to Wrenn and Siana for “OMG LICH KING!” day. When I go home at lunch today, I’ll see what sold before the servers went down for maintenence, and what didn’t goes back up. Fun fun!

While I was running around in Stormwind on my banker, I saw the yells between the King and Arthas. After a while, I switched over to Wrenn then wandered down to the harbor.

I lined up with everyone else after I’d gone and talked with the King and everyone else. The one that made me blink a little was Broll Bearmantle. Part of his chat is this: “Are you heading to Northrend? I have never been there, but I hear it is both a beautiful and treacherous land. Sadly, urgent matters at home require my attention, so I will not be able to join Highlord Fordragon and his army on their journey.” After I blinked and re-read that, I looked over at The Boyfriend and asked “WHAT ‘urgent matters’?!” Seriously? “Urgent matters?” What on earth is going on over there?!

Then the shiny happened.

I watched it all for a while, being horribly horribly impressed and, well, geeking out. After watching that for a while, I wandered back off to continue the clearing of the banks. /sigh

Tonight, it’s the last of the bank organization, and the last of the laundry. Boy, do I lead an exciting life or WHAT?!