Saturday, February 28, 2015

Ice Skating Caturday

I'm going ice skating tonight. This will be me.


I got a couple chilly kitties exploring the snow for you today. Happy Caturday!

what is this place

Friday, February 27, 2015

Hallelujah Heirlooms

With 6.1 we saw a revamp of the heirloom system - MMOC has a short little video about it if you haven't seen it yet, or you can read the screencap summary below!


Previously, before Warlords, heirlooms were datamined to be available to purchased with gold at release, but they scrapped that and they were unable to be purchased at all for quite awhile, except with darkmoon faire tickets, with the promise of a future new heirloom system. I wrote a bit about my baseless theories on the impacts of removal of the valor point system, like months ago, but it looks like heirlooms are just about the only things that are able to be purchased with gold, and apexis crystals are the 'new valor points'.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Dungeons and More Skeletons and No Dragons Yet

our campaign so far in picture form
We finished off our most recent dungeon in our D&D campaign. Just so there are no surprises, this is not the final episode of this dungeon! I will conclude it in the next D&D post after this one.

I left off with how we freed all the prisoners and were starting to work our way into the rest of the dungeon to reclaim the evil book that we had for about a minute before it was stolen back from us, all the way at the beginning of our campaign.

So, we were faced with the difficulty of having about 55 freaking people with us, most of them weak, battered prisoners. We armed about fifteen of them and had our cleric and some other guy we had met (probably should have kept the cleric in hindsight though) bring the other 40 people back to the castle town. We had kept one of the prisoners, the guy who helped our assassin defeat the lion with his bare fists, and our DM actually rolled up stats for him and made him a character. He is known only as "The Pugilist" and was played by the DM, who actually made him kind of a nutjob.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Tidying Up

I missed a few update days recently. It wasn't due to any particular important reason, I was just playing video games. I have plenty to write about, but I've been killing monsters, and I'm going through Majora's Mask.

made some armor out of this guy

There were a large number of birthdays to celebrate this month, including my own, and I've just been going between games and other various activities for awhile, which settled down into a situation where I hadn't turned on my computer for about four straight days.

So, I got on yesterday to make a post, and kind of realized that I have close to 100 posts on my blog. When I started this blog, I had the plan that I would make a general theme and then just make posts until it felt more concrete. At which point, I had planned, I would fix up the place and see exactly where I was and where I was going.

Well, I think it's about at that point - except, I still don't exactly know how to cement this whole idea out.

maybe it's because of my construction team

If I don't know now, I might not ever know. I've added a few pages and plan on doing more to change up the layout. I'm not sure there's anything about my layout or design that is particularly awful, so the process will be gradual and possibly disorderly. If you are one of the 0 to 20 people that my pageview tracker says exists and you have any suggestions, go ahead and let me know! Otherwise, I'll just be here messing with things until something seems good.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Mislead By Remakes

I get excited about remakes, then subsequently disappointed. To me, an upcoming remake is a chance to play a game that I liked on a newer system with updated graphics. I don't know why it took me so long to realize how big of a lie that is.

none of this applies to pokemon games
they are all the same game remade forever
and that is totally okay

Remakes change the original game. Whether it's for better or for worse is up to the player, but when a company remakes a game, they change things about it. That's part of the whole idea of a remake. Clearly, I'm a little slow on the uptake, because I've only just realized it after playing several remakes over the years.

why isn't this wooooooorkiiiiing

I would be more than happy to pay 40 bucks to play the exact same game on a newer system. I guess game companies don't think that's a great idea, and I mean I guess I can see why, so I guess that's just me.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

The Guild Goes Full Circle

Last night, my guild did a co-op raid with the guild that originally started to cause all of our troubles. It was the guild that the first guy left to join, which was the catalyst that caused several other people to leave to join their 'more progression focused' guild, then more people ended up leaving because we were 'too progression oriented'. Yeah, that whole thing.

Turns out, that first guy is going to quit raiding, and that guild is also losing their guild leader and raid leader. The co-op raid was a pretty good success, and there is some talk that members of that other guild may be looking for a new home. Unlike our failed merger, having people join us would probably work out fine.

This is all in spite of the fact that I wasn't there. I had uh

zzzzz

yeah. But another officer told me all this this morning, so that's all pretty interesting.

I don't feel particularly awesome, but maybe I can feel better by raid time tonight. I have the conclusion to our latest D&D adventure coming up soon!

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

AFK Killing Monsters

hunting ft. monsters
I didn't post yesterday - I didn't even turn on my computer - because I was binging on MH4U. It just came out for 3DS a few days ago in the US.

Monster Hunter is a game where you fight... monsters. After the first few quests, which are just simple introductory fluff, you fight increasingly tougher monsters as you progress through the storyline.

MH is also known for its online grouping, where you team up with up to four people to fight monsters together. Fighting monsters together is basically the staple of any online community.
While playing online, or solo but just doing the same quests, you can raise your hunter rank and fight more and stronger monsters.

Obviously, being an online community, people will judge you based on your hunter rank and other people will whine because they're being judged by their hunter rank. Personally, I like playing through the storyline. Not only is it incredibly advantageous to go through the storyline, since only single player mode unlocks all the cool stuff, but the story telling is good.

There are just a slight few mild spoilers up ahead, so go away if you plan on playing the game and want to be surprised by what kinds of things you unlock during the single player storyline.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Big Caturday!

Welcome to Caturday! Today we're celebrating the animals your cat thinks he is - the big cats.

oh jeeze much scarier than your cat

Big cats are not the ones we domesticated into your lazy little purr machine. No, that would have been quite the accomplishment - house cats are likely descended from domesticated wild cats, quite literally wild... cats, that looks sorta like your basic tabby, but, you know, wild. Still, it's all relative, and your fluff ball shares a lot of similarities with these ferocious teeth and claws that make up big cats.

Friday, February 13, 2015

Tips and Tricks of Successful DPS Pt. 3 - Focus

get dem numbers
Welcome to the third and final tips and tricks! Visit part one and part two where we talked about the importance of uptime and not dying.

I've written a guide before on how to learn how to learn how to play. If you aren't already doing well, you should start there. This is less 'how to play' and more advanced tactics on upping your game. 

I primarily play ranged, though I have had experience as melee DPS. If you're already a superstar, you probably won't need much of this advice, but if you don't already know your class' rotation, you might not get as much out of these as you could. I really can't go through and tell you on a class to class basis which abilities you should be using to accomplish these goals. You have to already know that. I've been a balance druid for six years - if, like most people, you are literally any of the other twenty two damage dealing specs, I won't have much detailed advice about your class to give you.

To recap, there is one ultimate truth to successful DPS:

Perform mechanics correctly while avoiding taking damage or dying and simultaneously continuing to perform your rotation efficiently and effectively.

Uptime is the most important aspect of this truth, which is the subject of the first post. Following uptime is not dying - arguably the most important aspect, but more widely known and understood than uptime. To tie everything together today, we have our last overarching theme, focus.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

The Never-Ending Guild Trial

sigh
Well, the merger didn't work out. If you were any of the people I talked to about it, feel free to say that you told me so. To be honest, I was never totally sure it was going to be okay.

There were times when it felt like it was working out, but as reassuring as it felt, I was always aware of the unseen action in the background, the unspoken feelings, and the clear disinterest of several members in meshing together and becoming one.

We had weak links on both sides from the merger, but honestly a lot of the troubles had to do with poor organization and decision making. We would say, oh we're only bringing the best, then invite everyone who was online. Then say, oh we're going to cut the weakest members and tighten up this raid, and then we'd go four more attempts without doing anything about anyone. We'd say, we shouldn't waste anymore time on this boss, let's go somewhere else, and then not go anywhere.

We all knew what should have happened, but it seemed like everyone thought it was someone else's job.

Monday, February 9, 2015

Dungeons and Dungeons and Skeletons

and dragons
We've had two play sessions since my last D&D post. We left off having escaped from being captured, buying supplies in town, and getting in a bar fight.

We had planned with the king and queen of the castle to more or less find the secret headquarters of the evil skeleton dude cult by having one of our own get captured on purpose - the assassin - and then following him and his captors to the dungeon.

This worked out great for our DM - since we had escaped earlier when we weren't supposed to - because now he was able to use the plan he had made in the first place for the previous session. He kind of orchestrated this on purpose, since he was RPing the queen and king anyway.

We brought some invisibility potions, along with a fanciful assortment of other things, and planted our mole with some concealed tools in a poor village outside of the castle town. In the night, it was attacked by some humanoid henchmen, and after a short battle, we started to follow the prisoners and their caravan through the woods.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Catbox Day

Happy Caturday! As we all know, cats love boxes, and laundry baskets, and sitting on the only piece of clothing on the entire bed or couch, and basically anything that is a shape. Cats will even sit in the illusion of a shape.

this is a 'cat trap'

Some people, apparently less inspired than others, are baffled by this behavior. Articles pop up explaining the vast mystery of why cats love to lay in boxes.

Friday, February 6, 2015

Cop-out Day!

Well, I was trying to think of a post topic yesterday but nothing really came to mind. I actually usually write my posts a day or so in advance in case I'm busy that day, and as luck would have it, I'm going to be busy today and I don't have anything to write about! So this is my cop-out post.

cop-out is apparently the name of a movie

We had some trouble with our raid week this past week. We downed two bosses in heroic BRF, which is pretty lame for a guild that was 1/7M in highmaul. Some guilds that hadn't even downed heroic imperator were killing more bosses than us. Oh well. That's the way the cookie crumbles, or some other idiom.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

A Dark Room

Sometimes great games come in unassuming, text based, browser windows. A Dark Room, also a game for iOS, is a text based, somewhat role playing, idle game that begins with nothing more than... a dark room.


It was released on browser in 2013, and became available in the app store in 2014. There is also a prequel, which was released after the first game like some kind of Star Wars, but it's not available on the web.

Before I played the game, I had no more knowledge of it than the general idea that I would be creating some kind of small town and it was quite the roller coaster ride. Be aware that everything past this paragraph will reveal parts of the story! The fact that I would be worried about spoiling the plot of a text based idle game should be a pretty good indication that it gets pretty interesting. If you're already intrigued, go ahead and ignore the rest of this post (or, you know, come back later if you'd like to read the words that I typed).

Monday, February 2, 2015

Tips and Tricks of Successful DPS Pt. 2 - Don't Die

Welcome to part two of my tips and tricks! Visit part one where we talked about the importance of uptime.

I've written a guide before on how to learn how to learn how to play. If you aren't already doing well, you should start there. This is less 'how to play' and more advanced tactics on upping your game. 

I primarily play ranged, though I have had experience as melee DPS. If you're already a superstar, you probably won't need any of this advice, but if you don't already know your class' rotation, you might not get as much out of these as you could. I really can't go through and tell you on a class to class basis which abilities you should be using to accomplish these goals. You have to already know that. I've been a balance druid for six years - if, like most people, you are literally any of the other twenty two damage dealing specs, I won't have much detailed advice about your class to give you.