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ookaholic's LiveJournal:
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| Monday, December 14th, 2009 | | 10:10 am |
Barricade the doors!
After work on Friday I did some errands and went to Little Cesar Pizza to pick up a pizza for supper. This is odd for me as the last time I ordered pizza was the time I hosted and we ordered from Pizza Hut. Seriously I just don't eat pizza, it's strange. A number of years back on a similarly cold winter day (I had my old car so more than 6 years ago) I was alone and decided to order from them. Due to some rather glaring fuck-ups I had to pick up the pizza 3 hours later, it was seriously that bad. So to my surprise I walk in and order a Hawaiian with a side order of Crazy Bread. I paid and then walked out with it. All in less than 60 seconds. This is a complete 180° from my previous experience. I may have to order from them again some day ... After getting home I practically barricaded myself in the house. I didn't leave all weekend and cribbed it hermit style. I was so bad I didn't even shovel the walk. I almost called in sick for work but I'm not quite "that" bad. There's also the fact that I need to go grocery shopping, I could probably hold out for one more day but meh I want my Mini Wheats! I might make another post to explain what exactly I did for two and a half days lol. We'll see. | | Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 | | 1:06 pm |
More WoW talk
sick of it now? So either the "Arthas" patch is next week, the week after or sometime early in the new year. I see the reasoning behind each guess. Get it out before Christmas so sales will go up or get it out after when you have staff to deal with the ensuing problems. I think it'll happen sooner rather than later for the sole reason that they're tiering it. We won't see more than the 3 dungeons and 1 raid before the new year. The other two raids will be introduced later. They have time to polish the rest up over the next 4 months or so. ( On Arthas (slight spoliers for those who have not played through wrath) )I might be a greedy fuck in saying this but I sort of hope it's ramped up slowly. This expansion has been out over a year and it's a bit distressing to think of how much time I've spent playing this game. My main character has gained nearly 40 days played in that year. I've become a bit hollow in that it's been an almost single minded expression of my free time. Not quite, but close enough. It was like when I was laid off and the only thing I would do was fish in FFXI for 6 hours a day. Not that bad but bad enough. Maybe this is just a rant, maybe there's no point in it. I donno. | | Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 | | 9:28 am |
Dec 12
Gots a free House, but without the cranky doctor. It's Christmas Time™ so people tend to be busy but I thought I'd ask. Home Alone XXII!!! | | Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 | | 9:52 pm |
Paralells between Star Trek and Stargate
I'm sure I'm not the first to notice it, but it's been bugging me. Star Trek: TNG = Stargate: SG1. Going out and exploring the galaxy, finding new civilizations and new enemies and all that jazz. Star Trek: DS9 = Stargate: Atlantis. Finding a station in a far off place that must be defended against a hostile threat or two or three. Star Trek: Voyager = Stargate: Universe. Stuck on a ship on the other side of the galaxy/universe with limited supplies and no friends to help them. Struggling to find a way home. Yup no parallels, none at all... oh well there's only so many stories out there, everything else is a permutation. It's all in the details. | | Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 | | 3:16 pm |
| | Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 | | 11:18 pm |
| | 4:37 pm |
Torchlight
Played through this game too recently. It's a Diablo clone, but one with class, and for $20 US online it's quite a steal. Graphics: 3/5 It's cartoony in a WoW kind of way. That's not a bad thing as you can run the game on a wide cross section of PCs. Hell there's even a "netbook" mode, though I haven't tried that, I'm sure it looks quite horrendous. There are some "pretty" moments though, with waterfalls and deep abysses and each "tier" of the dungeon does look aesthetically different even if it's still the same thing over and over really. Move forward, kill shit, move forward kill shit. Sound: 4/5 Very Appropriate sounds, which give it that Diablo clone authenticity. Music: 4/5 You can tell the influences in the music, it's on par I'd say. Voice Acting: 2/5 It's got some barely serviceable voices. It's a hack and slash, I don't expect more really Gameplay/Combat: 4/5 It's a Diablo clone, what more needs to be said? Well there are two major exceptions: there's a pet that holds junk and sells it for you, which makes me think where the fuck has this feature been all my life. The second thing that is odd is that it is single player only. Considering they're wanting to make it into a mmog this perplexes me. Storyline: 1/5 Story? there's a story? oh right kill the bad guy, mkay. Quests: 2/5 Quests are just a function of moving you further into the dungeon, that is all. Creep Factor: 4/5 Swarms of spiders in some levels, nuff said. Though for the most part they're the tarantula type except when they swarm up out of grates and the like. Um yeah... Replayability: 4/5 There's an ancestry feature where you can retire your character and start another one with their fame (think talent points). Along with the shared storage box, well you get the picture: Twinking alts! | | 4:25 pm |
The Witcher
Just finished playing through the main game, considering I've gone to bed way late playing it, I suppose that's one of the best compliments I could give a game: my Time. Graphics: 4/5 It's not as gorgeous as some of the newest games out there but the water effects are quite nice, so are some of the lighting effects, even if I imbibe so many Cat potions that I glow in the dark. Sound: 3/5 Sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's good, there's one bird call in the game that makes me look over my shoulders. Music: 4/5 It's ambient but full of all that stuff I like, quite moody. Voice Acting: 4/5 Sometimes it's painful like the character Dandelion and a few others. Otherwise it's actually pretty good all things considered. There's no Oscar level work there but it's functional. Even the main character isn't too bad. Gameplay/Combat: 3/5 The sword fighting techniques add an interesting quirkiness to fights, having to swap out swords and techniques depending on what/what you're fighting. Well that's both good and bad, having to swap swords and techniques in the middle of a large melee well that just sucks as you get your ass handed to you if you aren't already drugged up on Swallow. Gameplay/Tradeskills: 3/5 The alchemy is an interesting twist, the toxicity level just adds to the complexity. It works for the most part, though ZeroPunctuation said it best as it feels like a mmog in that you pretty much have to do that on any difficulty other than easy. Otherwise you don't last long against tough opponents. Storyline: 5/5 It's got a catchy story and it doesn't hold any punches. Need a bit of intestinal fortitude sometimes depending on where you take the subquests. The twist at the end was a bit predictable but still well done. I really liked how your choices through the game changes certain outcomes, while it's a bit heavy handed in places it's appropriate for the most part. The way that characters are consistent and believable throughout is a nice touch. No sudden alignment changes, nothing that makes me scream that's out of character. There's some real nice characters developed. There's also some real bastards too. Quests: 4/5 Everything from small single offshoots to long chains that can take multiple chapters to resolve. My only problem is that you can royally screw yourself over if you're not careful and since your choices have consequences throughout the game it would be nice to have a bit of a heads up. I actually reloaded a few times here and there because of how I screwed things up. Using the Quests Gamefaq helped but you shouldn't need that kind of thing to play a game, only to get the fullest. I guess that harshness is what invites multiple playthroughs. Which I may follow up on when I get a chance. Creep Factor: 3/5 Bugs, walking corpses, weird carnivorous plants, ghouls, humans (worst of the lot). I can't recall there being any spiders but there are other just as suitably disgusting things to fight. Replayability 2/5 Once you play through there's not much left really, it's a roleplaying game after all. There is incentive to play through again though to see all those little nuances. | | Friday, November 13th, 2009 | | 12:13 pm |
nerd raging
I've been looking at netbooks and frankly they do not impress me. 95% of them have the integrated Intel GMA 950 chipset for graphics and that shit is the bane of all computing. It's the worst chipset since the ATI Rage (yes I went there). I don't expect a netbook to play the latest games in full HD but something that could run something more than solitaire would be great. There is one chipset that Nvidia has released that looks decent, even if it costs $75-100 more. At least it could run older games quite well and even maybe run WoW with minimum settings without blowing a gasket. A backup in case my main computer craps out again would be handy. It also has HDMI out which is convenient as my TV has a couple spare HDMI inputs. Unfortunately these ION based netbooks are not that prevalent. There's one out by ASUS and one out by HP so far. I did a bit of searching for those models at Canadian online retailers and it's driving me nuts. this is the only one I've found: http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&dm=DEBUG&sku_id=0665000FS10132279&catid=and it is obviously an older model as it has Windows XP instead of Windows 7. The other issue I have is it only has 1 gig of ram... I know I know, it's a netbook, it's not supposed to need much more than that, but I call shenanigans. With that little ram you can only run maybe 1 program before it starts to page, which is what I heard is a major downside to netbooks in general. It supposedly has one upgrade slot for ram so it could conceivably be boosted to 3 gigs, by then it's well above the $500 mark and regular notebooks start to enter the picture. Though the long battery life and portability of netbooks is one of the things that's drawing me to them, even if I hate those itsy bitsy keyboards many come with. I guess I'll have to do without for now. | | Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 | | 9:21 am |
Finding it puzzling.
My guild cannot get 1 light in the darkness or firefighter down but we're up to 45 attempts left by the time we defeat Anub'arak on Heroic (this is all 10 man). Next week we have a good shot at 50 attempts left depending on what we get for the faux PvP encounter. We can kill Anub on 25 but just got Thorim and General a couple weeks ago. Forget about Yogg, that will take us another month or two by my estimates, we'll get 25 Heroic Beasts before we down Yogg in all likelihood. I can sort of understand the "hey lets gear up everybody" for Icecrown that they're doing but it's still disconcerting. I guess we'll see how tuned the last few instances will be in a couple months. It's still a jarring disconnect. | | Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 | | 9:33 am |
| | Friday, October 16th, 2009 | | 8:50 am |
Mini WoW post
Creeping up on Loremaster. It's kind of funny really. 4 group quests in Icecrown that I cannot solo and I don't go around badgering guildmates to help with. I may resort to spending an inordinate amount of time in Icecrown spamming LFG if I don't get desperate enough to bother guildies. I also have 4 more quests in Eastern Kingdoms. I've been doing quests in The Burning Steppes, BRD and BRS. It's amazing what a blood DK can solo with ease these days. It's kind of ridiculous actually. I did the same thing a while back with my shaman and every fight was a bit touch and go. I get so much passive healing and hit like a ton of bricks on the DK that things in Blackrock Spire practically killed themselves. Hell I soloed the Jenkins achievement just because I wanted to see if I could last night. I am a bit foolish in that I want to finish everything I can in the old world before 4.0 and Cataclysm, so I've ignored the Plaguelands, Scholomance and Stratholme saving them for later. Which also means that I might, just might get Loremaster without touching those zones at all. (2 UBRS quests left to do, don't know if there's followups) Same as Kalimdor, where I skipped Dire Maul and Silthus so far. I might go back and do those soon™ But the good news is that with those done I won't have to stress pushing so hard anymore. 3000+ quests over the past 6 months is a bit much considering it's an alt. Other than doing dailies and the occasional raid/heroic she might end up in semi-retirement. So I will likely start focusing on other games and things to do on my raiding off-nights. | | Monday, September 28th, 2009 | | 9:24 am |
| | Monday, September 14th, 2009 | | 8:56 am |
I'm such a sucker.
There are 5 computer parts I have horrible luck with. - Power Supplies - Hard Drives - Motherboards - Monitors - Video Cards I've had various failures over the years; at least 2 power supplies, 5 hard drives, 2 motherboards, 3 monitors and 4 video cards. So when my 2-3 year old 8800GTX video card died Friday just before supper I wasn't surprised. It did kind of miff me as I had spent $450 on it originally. I am a heavy computer user and I do run some games that some would call system killers, but I never expected a 12 year old 2D game to be the last straw. That's right, Starcraft killed my computer. By the time I made sure it was the video card it was 7:30 pm. As luck would have it the northern Memory Express was open till 9. So I peeled rubber and got there by 8. I ended up buying a GTX 275 after much hemming and hawing. I debated getting 2 of em, but I don't really care to SLI as it would also mean my 600W power supply wouldn't have been enough and I'm having enough trouble trying to get older games to run with multiple CPUs, multiple GPUs would probably exasperate the problem. Now the part where I'm a sucker. I don't usually go for replacement plans as they're obvious ways for them to make money, but if I had had one on my last card it would have been replaced at no additional cost hence saving me $200 or so. So I spent an extra $38 to get a 3 year over the counter replacement plan. I even don't really regret it as between monitors, video cards and hard drives I've spent thousands in replacements for dying or dead equipment. I had it installed and running by 9. I missed the usual Friday night raid (which is admittedly the only part that really annoys me about the situation) but it's now back up and running. My framerates in Dalaran haven't really improved but everywhere else there's a 10-30% increase so that's good. On the plus side the video card was going to be my last upgrade for this computer before building another in the next year or two, I just ended up speeding up the process. I'm waiting for the bugs to be ironed out in Windows 7 and at least 1 more generation of CPU and GPU before making a whole new system. While Vista ain't no 98 SE it's not nearly the wallflower that most pundits claim it is, that is if you have a system that can handle it's resource hogishness. | | Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 | | 12:47 pm |
This is mostly for me, but it's a thought that's been bubbling in my mind
There's been a lot of mixing up two things in the WoW community lately. There are three elements to being "successful" in WoW. The first two are generally correct and people assume they're what's needed: Gear and Skill. But the third is often mixed up with the second and that is Knowledge. Skill is your ability to do things, your ability to adapt when things go wrong. The ability to quickly move out of the fire and get of that taunt or heal in time. Skill is the ability to analyze a situation and react in a timely fashion. Knowledge is knowing when the fire will come, knowing when you should wind up that heal so the tank/dps doesn't die. Knowing when to blow cooldowns so the boss doesn't smear you into paste. Knowing what gear is an upgrade and how to enchant/gem it properly. Knowing what stats to vie for and what caps you need to hit. There is an element of skill in that being able to find out these things takes learning skill. This is probably the most important skill you ever acquire: learning how to learn. As a few examples: my healing lead is a druid, he's as skilled as they come and his knowledge of how his heals and hots work is second to none, but the dude can't gear worth shit. Throughout Wrath he's taken pieces with hit on them left and right because they're "upgrades" even though a good portion of their stat weights are wasted on hit rating. He was genuinely perplexed when a shadow priest rolled and won Aesuga the other day because he was thinking oh that's a nice healing mace when it's just as viable if not more so for clothie dps, moonkins and elemental shamans. This is where his knowledge fails. Second Example: My guild has a fair number of "casual" raiders. Those that show up when they feel like it and there's no sign up/show up requirements. Their skills are pretty bad and their gear reflects that. We've been bashing through Ulduar 25 with these individuals. Not 10 man as that's the "hard core" group that does it for achievements and hard modes. So there's one group of 15 or so individuals who go into Ulduar 4 times a week. These individuals know the fights by heart and can do the required dances. These are the ones who are getting tired of Ulduar as they sleep through it. The other 20 or so "casual" individuals only end up in there maybe once a week on average. At first we could bluster our way through the first bosses quite easily. Getting to Kologarn the second week, getting to Auriaya the third. But then we hit the keeper wall. At first it was Hodir because people didn't know they needed to jump in the snow. I swear we lost a minimum of 10 people on each attempt the week we started on him. We gave up after a dozen tries. Second week same deal but we'd only lose 5-7 people due to being frozen. By the third week we killed him by the skin of our teeth. Now we have little problem with killing him. We didn't kill him because of increased skill, we killed him because of knowledge. The casuals finally figured out how to jump into the snow and stay out of the "little circles". That doesn't require skill, that requires knowledge, and knowledge is something that almost any old person can attain with enough practice. True there are some that never learn (don't know how) but the truly inept are a rare breed. Their DPS goes up linearly with gear, not exponentially like some of the better DPS. But in the end it's good enough if they stay alive to help kill the boss. Are they being carried as Gevlon would say? I would have to say no, they're doing their share but not much more. They may not be skilled but they're becoming knowledgeable, which some would say is the same thing. Some people bemoan MMOGs as "easy" and requiring "no skill" and to a point it's true because in the end it does mostly only require knowledge and that's usually acquired through practice. | | Monday, August 24th, 2009 | | 8:47 am |
| | Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 | | 2:10 pm |
So yesterday was the "big" 3.2 patch
Maybe I'm selfish but It's coming too fast... when 3.1 was on the horizon I fell back and just enjoyed the scenery. I was happy that there was an abatement in the "formal guild events" schedule. Then the very next week Ulduar opened and shit went to hell. Coupled with the fact that my guild is not progressing very fast (still haven't cleared Ulduar on 25 man yet, 10/14) it felt busied and rushed. Not the content, but me and the guild more so. The past couple weeks we were kind of actually getting crap done and the 10 man is doing pretty well at the achievements and hard modes giving me just as good of gear as 25 man normal leaving me a bit conflicted about why we're actually doing 25 man. Now 3.2 has hit with new instances and new dailies and new "stuff". And I'm sitting here wishing it would have taken another month or more. The fact that the Heroic Daily drops what I want means I'll be running it more often than not. It means I'll have less free time to play other characters (like the current project: the DK) and other games. It makes me want to give up and scale back and be one of the facerollers, to play other games and do other things. At the same time I don't think I could half ass it even if I wanted to: If I'm going to do something I'm going to go whole hog, it's just the way I do things. I also eventually want to see Arthas and try to kick his ass like he's tried to do to me all xpac so far (in HF, in DTC, in UP et al) | | 1:23 pm |
le sigh
Last weekend I did very little other than play WoW. Great progress but still WoW related. Friday we managed to down all the keepers other than Thorim, even Mimiron. Hell we practically steamrolled him, funny that he's our biggest obstacle, but there's where it stands. Saturday I fished in WoW... no seriously. My DK's fishing was at 220 before I started. By the time I finished I managed to get to 405. With what I fished I got my cooking up to 385. During that time I watched a couple of movies: 300 and Batman Begins. They're both good movies if a bit campy. That night I banged my head against Yogg'Saron for 3 hours before finally beating that bastard. Sunday I powered through Netherstorm getting my Loremaster Achievement for the zone with 2 normal quests left. I still have 3 5 man group quests left of which I tried to solo 2 before giving up for now. 122/120 isn't much room for error and there were a fair number of 2-4 man quests I did manage to solo, some with very little left over in me. Monday was all over the place, with some Shadowmoon Valley stuff a plenty, more group quests to fail miserably at, and general misanthrope. which leads me to my next post | | Thursday, July 30th, 2009 | | 8:13 am |
Another quick WoW update
Tuesday was productive. It's almost as if our group is starting to mesh, either that or some of the more competent people log on more often lately. Not good enough for hard modes (or yogg for that matter) but getting to the keepers and downing Hodir in 3 attempts is a good start. Day two tomorrow will likely be Razorscale, Ignis then attempts at Thorim or Freya. I'd really like to witness the hilarity that would be Mimiron but I guess the officers don't want to try that pain just yet. I mean it's truly a dancing fight more than Thorim or Freya is. Yesterday was a good 6 minute attempt at 10 man Malygos, too bad we were a few seconds too late but that's the way it goes sometimes. I wish my dps could be competitive with the rogues of the guild but I suppose that's not meant to be. Other than that I decided to burn down Blade's Edge Mountains and got 70/86 for [On the Blade's Edge]. There's 3 group quests I know are left for regular BEM that I cannot currently do. I got smacked hard by those elites when I tried, I guess my inherent DK leetness and overleveled advantage has worn off. Unfortunately that leaves the Sons of Gruul and the Ogrila/Skyguard chains left. Which I know I cannot solo either, meh. Another zone to put on the backburner for now. Tomorrow after Wintergrasp and VoA I'm going to work on Netherstorm some, I know I won't get through it all as there are some chains that lead into the TK instances which I cannot solo even if I wanted to and people have all but abandoned most of the Outlands dungeons like vanilla WoW dungeons during TBC. When I have a laundry list of quest chains and dungeons to do I might try and cajole others into helping, though I loathe to do so. First I'll probably come back at 80 and see what I can do alone or with 1-2 other people. It saddens me when I cannot finish a zone like that. | | Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 | | 3:24 pm |
Quick WoW Update
I went back to my DK and finished everything in Nagrand that I could. Which was everything but the Ring of Blood questline, a random encounter quest over by Nessingwary (though I did idle near there a good 15 minutes while figuring out which quests I haven't done) one follow up to go to Netherstorm, one followup to go to Shadowmoon Valley and apparently a long questline starting in Shadowmoon with the Aldor that leads to the blind dude with the netherdrake. I'm currently at 65/75. The ring of blood would take me to 71. One of the followups counts while the other does not, which would take me to 72. If I stayed for the whole spawn timer of the one quest gnome (1.5 hours) that would get me to 73. There are 4 or maybe 5 with the Shadowmoon questline. which could potentially bump me all the way up to 77 or 78. What a pain for Loremaster. I guess I'll wait till I tackle Shadowmoon first. I also flew over to Terokkar and finished all the quests there. It's good to know that Skettis quests (the lvl 70 fly only zone in the east part) do not count towards it's tally. I also found some around Auchindoun that didn't count either. Without those quests I got 64/63. That's not a lot of wiggle room. I might have missed one or two but I'm pretty sure I got all of them. Only 1 quest is cutting it thin, especially since so many of those that did count were group quests. So one more zone down, one more almost done and I moved over to Blade's Edge and did a few quests there before crashing. 10/84 give or take. I also saw a lvl 67 DK do some AoE grinding of quest mobs out there. I can sort of see why he'd choose that method, but at the same time meh! one at a time is nearly as fast, there's almost no risk of getting too deep and respawn times are stupidly slow anyways so nuking a whole bunch and having to scour the area for more seems kind of pointless to me... to each their own I suppose. It's interesting how accelerated things seem too. When I was 600/700 and 610/700 for the first two loremaster achievements nothing seemed close to completion. In fact those 100 last quests for Kalimdor took longer than nearly 4 zones in Outland. Having concrete numbers for quests in a zone helps, but so does intelligent quest design that doesn't have you go from one zone in one continent to another zone in a different continent then to yet a third zone in the first continent before going back to the first zone to finish up. The whole range of quests seem designed to stretch things out as much as possible. That's vanilla design for you. There's some movement back and forth in outland, but if you're smart and know what you're doing it's much easier. I think I might end up slowing down some though as I've only ever finished BEM, SMV and Netherstorm once, on my Shaman. Foggy memory doesn't help in remembering which quests are coupled with which quests. The flying mount though will help a fair bit in minimizing travel time at least. I expect by next week I might actually make it to wrath zones... and all their brutal "goodness". Day 1 of Ulduar 25 is tonight so I won't get much chance to do much more with the DK. Hopefully the group brings their A game. I guess we'll see. |
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