Can’t Sleep, Thoughts Will Eat Me

So… yeah I was going to start writing again back in March, but that didn’t work out so well. So here I am again, trying this out again, and hoping that it will work out better this time.
New job again, this time no 60+ work weeks, so I should have more time. I have different kinds of topics that I want that to write about. So keep an eye out, and we’ll see how it works out this time.

Let’s Try This Again

Wow, how long has it been since I tried this. I know, it’s been awhile since I tried to write anything here. I’ve had a strange few years, and I think things are finally starting to settle down.
So, where should I begin.
I guess I’ll go back, and give a little bit of my background.
Like most gamers I started out with a bright shiny box. This wonderful box was my first copy of Dungeons and Dragons. From there it went to an Atari 2600. I remember my girst RPG on my Nintendo.
Final Fantasy.
I fell in love with that game, and the entire RPG genre.
Fast forward many years,  video and tabletop games, snd my wife and I started playing Everquest. It was like the first time we played D&D, and Final Fantasy and every other gameing goodness all at once!
From there we played EQ2 , and moved on to World of Warcraft. We’ve ben playing WoW, and several other games for years now. Wife doesn’t game as much as she used too,  but I still do.
Recently I started trying different games. I’ll go overall of that in the future, hopefully.  I also am going to try to update my class guides for Rift in the near future.
So until next time see ya round.

The Future Looks Bright

So Blizzcon is winding down as write this. Once again I didn’t get to go to Anaheim,  so I got the Virtual Ticket again. I’m not complaining, I enjoy being able to watch all the parts when I want to.
So the big news is the new expansion for Warcraft,  Warlords of Draenor.
Holy crap! That’s all I have to say. It looks like Blizz is finally listening to what the players want. So where do I begin. Housing,  new collections, stat squish, changes to armor, and so much more.

The new housing feature, garrisons, lets start there. Blizzard knows how to do things bigger and better than most other game companies do. We are getting more than just a little house, or a dimension. We are getting a towm, or a garrison to grow and stay in. Followers and professions all there for us. Our followers can go on quests, raids, and so much more.

We are going to be going through the big stat squish also. Don’t panic though, while our stats and damage will be smaller,  it will still stay the same in terms of effect.

Armor is going to go through some major changes. No more agility verses wisdom mail. It will juat be mail…or cloth…or plate…or leather. That’s right, the armor will automatically adjust to your current spec. It doesn’t matter if you go from being an elemental to an enhancement shaman, the gear will adjust. This auto adjustment will happen with tier gear also based on your spec. The stats are changing also. Hit, expertise, dodge and parry all gone. Reforging is going away too.

There’s more to come, I juat haven’t had a chance to watch the rest of Blizzcon yet, so keep an eye out for more of what I think of WoD and the rest of all the new things that Blizzard is doing.

The “New” Virtual Community

Things change. We all know this.
I’m sure we’ve all heard the saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
I want you to think back to a time when you had to actually look for a group.  Think back to the days of yore, back when there wasn’t a button you could press to find a raid or an instance group.
Back then, you were responsible for your actions. You had to communicate with others to get a group, also you were held responsible for your actions. If you acted like a jackass, you would start to get a bad reputation. That reputation would follow you, and haunt you for years to come. People would talk about you in Trade chat for years. Even to this day, I still hear people bad mouth jackasses that have either quit, name changed, or transferred off of the Argent Dawn server years ago.

Then we were given the ability to press one button and be put in a group with random strangers from our own servers.

It gave people a little less personal responsibility for their actions. It lowered the amount of communications needed to find a group, which lowered the amount of communications that went on in the group. You could still get a bad reputation, but it didn’t matter as much, since all you had to do was just re-queue for another group.

That all changed again, when the LFG tool started putting groups together from multiple servers. You were given free reign to do what you wanted to do, without any social repercussions. People stopped talking in group, people started acting worse and worse. They would drop the group if they thought you were bad, if you didn’t do what they said, or just to be a douche-bag. You could do what you wanted, you could say whatever you wanted to say. Gone were the days when if someone didn’t know the instance they could ask questions, and everyone else would explain it to them. Now they get laughed at, or kicked because they’ve never been there before.

The griefing got even worse when Blizz released the LFR tool. Now instead of being a jackass to just 4 other people, you could be a jackass to 24 other people. All you have to do is go on YouTube, and you can find examples of this.

But that is all about to change.

Blizz is introducing a new concept.

Virtual Realms.

New Feature: Virtual Realms

• Virtual Realms are sets of realms that are fused together, and will behave exactly as if they were one cohesive realm. Players on the same Virtual Realm will be able to join guilds, access a single Auction House, join arena teams and raids, as well run dungeons or group up to complete quests.

• Players belonging to the same Virtual Realm will have a (#) symbol next to their name.

Yep.  

That’s right, now if you act like a jackass in an LFR or LFG or a Scenario, all you have to do is look for the #. If you see that happy little symbol, then feel free to let everyone know how that person thinks that they are so special, that they can wreck any group they get in to.

Help them spread their reputation as a buffoon and spread tales of their jackassery. Let everyone know. This is not a smear campaign you’re running against them, it’s spreading the word of what they do, and how they act. If everyone does this, we can take back our groups. We can start to self-police ourselves again. We will start to see a return to players starting to respect each other more again.

So remember when 5.4 hits, and you’re running LFR, think before you speak and act. All of the community will be watching. They will know what you’re doing. You never know if they will pass on the tales of your actions, and in the process make it that much harder for you in all that you do in game.

Back in the Saddle Again

I know it’s been awhile, but things have been changing for me over the past month or so. Wife and I are slowing down our online shops, we started to lose sight of what was important to us. Since then we’ve stopped fighting, I’ve been sleeping more, and I’ve had more down time, which leads to more time to get things done in WoW.
I’ve maxed out my Cloud Serpent, Tillers, and Killaxi factions, and I’ve had time to start raiding again through the LFR.
That’s right, I finally got to raid again this weekend. It was a blast.
Galleon was up, and I got to take him down. He’s a bit harder than Shanger, more target switching.
Then I finally got a chance to hit up Mushgan Vaults also.
I had a blast, and for being in mainly 450 blues, I didn’t do too badly either. I didn’t die, and I wasn’t at the bottom of the meters either.
After hitting up both halves I walked away with a new back and piece, along with 4 out of the 10 sigils of power that I needed.
So slowly but surely, I’m getting the gear that I need to hit HoF and TotES.
Give it a few more runs, and I’ll be ready for them in no time.

Still Here

Long time no see everybody. I am still alive after the holidays. I hope that everyone had a great time during the past few months. So what’s everybody been up too? Me, a lil bit of everything. I’ve been hitting up all the old raids getting transmog gear, pets and achievements. Doing dailies too. Just generally having fun schlepping around. I’m going to start writing again as I try to fit more game time in. I’ve been working on my faction dailies, and running a lot of scenarios. I like the scenarios, they don’t have the best of rewards, but I’ve gotten quite a few upgrades out of them. I like the fact that you can chain run them fairly quickly, which makes up for the fact you don’t get as many JPs and VPs as you would get from heroics.
Well this is just a quick post to let everyone know that I’m still here.

What’s Up With Dalies?

Long time no see people! Everyone having fun in pandaland? I know I have. I finally hit 90 the other week, and I’ve been slowly working on gearing up for heroics and raiding and dailies.
So what’s the big brouhaha over dailies and factions? I don’t get it. I mean really folks, what’s up with that.
I remember back in the days before dailies, when you hit max level at 60, you had nothing to do for gold, or gear other than to run the same 10 and 15 man runs over and over again.
Then they turned all the old instances into 5 mans. There wasn’t much to do if you didn’t raid.
Then BC came out, and introduced heroic versions of instances. When they first came out, you had to grind different factions to exalted to get keys to unlock heroics. This meant running non-heroic versions over and over again to buy the key.
Now this wasn’t the first time we had to farm faction for upgrades. I murdered entire tribes of bear people to get enchanting recipes. So grinding rep for items isn’t new to me, it’s part of the game.
Anyway… back to BC.
Blizz decided to lower the rep requirement for the key down to honored, making it much less of a grind.
Then Blizz introduced daily quests late in BC, and there was much rejoicing. Gold flowed, and new quests became available. They also started advancing a story through the dailies on the Isle of Quel’Danis.
Then Wrath came along with its dailies, they didn’t advance any real story line, but they did give faction. Around this time Blizz also introduced faction tabards. You could plow through getting rep with factions now by chain running instances.
They made it even easier to get faction this way. The same faction rep model continued through Cataclysm.
Then Mists hit. Mists got rid of the rep tabards. They also introduced an ungodly amount of dailies, and got rid of the daily cap of 25. Now people are getting angry that Blizz put gear that could be used for heroics and raiding behind faction reputations. They also put valor and justice gear on the factions vendors.
Everyone is now crying about dailies. People think they are required to max their faction through dailies to do anything.
Guess what. You don’t have to run dailies if you don’t want to. Blizz isn’t holding a gun to your head to make you do anything. If you want to run heroics, and raid, there is the AH. Go buy player made gear. Buy the mats you need to make the stuff yourself, or have a guildie do it, or someone from trade chat. Yes there is gear to be gotten from grinding faction through dailies. There’s also mounts, I’m looking as you amber scorpion, and recipes too.
Recipes aren’t anything new, you have always had to grind faction for recipes, see my genocidal comment above, that were the most desirable.
Some of the best looking, and most interesting mounts came from faction grinding.
Then there’s achievements. There’s an entire section dedicated just to faction reputations.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, deal with it. Faction grinding isn’t going away. It’s always been there, and always will be. It’s a part of the game, and if you don’t like it, find another way to gear up.
Go there’s nothing stopping you. Now can we please find something new to complain about? Like the new loot rules for LFR?

Only 2 More to Go…

Happy Halloween, or Hollow’s End. I know, I know it’s been awhile since I last wrote, but I don’t think we’ve ever been busier on eBay or Etsy, than we’ve been this month. We sell a lot of Day of the Dead and Halloween jewelry, and holy crap this has been our busiest month ever. I think at one point I heard the poor lady who works at the post office start to cry when I came in lol. So, I haven’t had much free time so far, but I think it’s starting to slow down.
So I hit 88 this weekend, through of all things…. candy buckets. Yep, in between making things I flew to all the Outlands and Northrend buckets and a few in Azeroth. The XP from is pretty good, and allowed me to work and level at the same time.
So naturally when I hit 88 I started thinking I could run Headless Horseman, because well you know you have to be 88 to queue up for him. Wrong. It’s 89 and not 88 like I thought. Sigh.
So I kept working on leveling. Oh, and I picked up two news pets along the way. The first was a purple chicken that spawns when you are doing the egg quest for Master Ironpaw. So now when I get enough Darkmoon tickets, I can get the matching mount, and run around on a big purple chicken with a purple chicken beside me.
The other new pet I picked up is a quillen. Yep the Fu-Dog is awesome looking, I think. See my lil Fu-Dog keeps getting stuck as a rock. No matter what I’ve tried, he keeps getting petrified again, and again. So it looks like I have to drop him for now, till I can find one that isn’t a rock.
Now I ran into another problem. A problem that more and more hunters are running in to.
Space.
Or more accurately the lack there of. My stable if full. So full, I had to release two pets today, to keep my normal two slots open, you know just in case I find an awesome looking mob that I don’t have yet…..
I AM NOT A HORDER! I am a collector. There is a difference. So yeah Blizz, we need more stables, or a new way to store and bring them with us. How else are we supposed to keep all the cool pets they put in. Where’s the fun in getting the rare spawn or that hard to find spirit beast if you can’t have them all. There are more challenge/rare/spirit beasts in the game than stable slots. I never did the challenge tames for this reason. I need more slots.
So I’m hoping to finally hit 90, or at least 89, before the end of Hallow’s End. If all goes well I will. Oh and as a side note, I’d be very careful about flagging up at cook city. I went there today, and the whole cooking area was littered with skeletons…

Stop! Panda Time

Ok, Pandera has been out for almost a week now, and I love it. I’m loving everything about it. The quests, the zones, the pandas, the pet battles, everything I’ve done so far has been awesome.
Oh, and the money. Good lord, have I been making money off of fishing. Golden carp are selling insanely high on Argent Dawn. I mean like several thousand per stack. I’m actually think of just fishing during my lunches now to get more of these wonderful, wonderful little fishies.
I know there are people out there who hate it. I see people in trade and on forums who are constantly bashing this xpac so far. Really? You don’t like it, so you are going to sit in trade and whine and moan about it? So are speaking for everyone when you say how horribad Blizz is for making pandas? If so please stop. Stop right there. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. See everyone plays WoW differently. If you don’t like it, fine you don’t have to like it. However, however, please, please, please make your own chat channel, and go cry somewhere else.
Now where was I. Oh yes, pandaland. I know some where upset when we couldn’t fly right away, but I like it. I forgot how many awesome looking ground mounts there are in the game. Yes, some of the flying mounts are gorgeous. Wife keeps going on how she loves the purple fire chickens, and wants us to get them. I am a collector. I have the blue dragonhawk. I have almost 150 different pets. I love hunting and trying to get as many toys and pets and mounts as I can. I use two different add ons that I use for my pet and mount collections. Rmount and rpet. Both are light weight add ons that randomly summon a mount or a pet. They both come with a sliding scale that let you increase the chance of getting your favorite one.
So I hope everyone is having fun, and seeing the sights, and fishing, and farming, and dragon raising, and everything else out there.

Back In Action

What a glorious weekend it was. I can honestly say that this last weekend was the best in a long time. We started Thursday by spending the day finishing up the last seven of our day of the dead bracelets, and soldering several tile necklaces. Now all I have to do is get the pictures taken so we can get them up and listed. So hopefully we will have them up next weekend. From there it got better.

She’s Back
Then Friday came. Now Wife has been hinting to me that she might want to start playing WoW again. Needless to say, I was thrilled with the idea. Then it happened. While we were packing up the orders I had to run up to the post office, she said that when I got back, she wanted to hop on WoW and start playing again.
That’s right. She wanted to hit 85 on her toon, Gweninuu, before MoP came out.
I don’t think I ever packed that many packages and made it to the post office that fast. So after getting her up and going we set up her talents and off we went. We were gonna head to BWL but when we got there turns out you still need to be attuned to it. So off we went to UBRS. Burned through it as fast as two hunter can. Killed the General. Lo and behold… I forget to have her pick up the quest from the Quartermaster outside… So out we go, find and the Quartermaster, run back to the orb, and she’s finally attuned. Needless to say we still didn’t get past Razorgore.
So we stopped doing BWL for now. So she decided she wanted to start leveling from 80 to 85. In less than a day we got Wife and my shaman from 80 to 82, and got the achievement for 115 quests in Mt. Hyjal.
So now we’re working on Deepholme, and having a blast doing it. We set up Mumble on her computer, so while I’m at lunch, we can knock out a few quests each day I’m at work.
All I can say is it’s great to hop on the game with her again, and that she’s having fun playing WoW again.
So off we go, getting our toons to 85 so we can be ready for MoP to land on the 25th. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.