Oops I Caturday'd Again

Last week, I forgot Caturday. Well, no, I didn't, but I was busy all day. I'd say I'd make it up to you with an extravagant Caturday today, but I'm not going to because I will also be busy all day today! Tomorrow, as I mentioned briefly yesterday, we're having a DnD overnight event, so I have to get prepared. I'm also leaving today for a separate social event.

I'm sorry, here's some great cats to make it up to you.

Leatherworking with Pascal

I posted ages ago that I may make some crafting posts in the future. Since then, the only thing I delivered was a paper towel holder because I kept forgetting to take step by step pictures. I remembered this time, so please, if you've ever had an interest in taking your in-game professions to the actual world, enjoy taking a look through this very visual process of making a simple little leather bag!

three of my previously crafted bags

The Flying Purple People Eater

Yesterday, I wrote about flying. Well, no, I wrote about Warlords of Draenor's lack of interesting and engaging content. I am a person with various opinions that require many words to reveal their true nature, and in my previous post I precariously left unspoken the matter of my actual opinion on the flying debate. It sparked some feedback, where it seemed to me that I may have implied I think the flying debate is unimportant.

not working as intended

While there may have been parts that alluded to my beliefs, the reality was shrouded. Here is the thing, though: my opinion doesn't matter.

What am I trying to say? That, as one singular individual within the vast Warcraft playerbase, my opinion isn't important? Am I implying, in this statement, that all of your opinions don't matter?

No, no. Here's the situation at hand: the voices of those so opposed to the flying restriction that they have continued to voice their concerns for more than a year are more important than my opinion.

The Flying Scapegoat

The flying restriction in Draenor is one of the biggest controversial topics in the game to date. From the moment it was announced until now and guaranteed into the future, there has been heated discussion on the topic.

this thread was started in March of 2014 and was only just recently locked at 2241 pages

One of the opinions I see that a lot of pro-flyers share is that not being able to fly keeps them cooped up inside of their garrison. They feel that without the freedom to soar over inconsequential enemies and mountains to head to their exploration or farming destinations, they have no desire to leave their garrison at all.

It's my amateur opinion that being flying restricted isn't actually the cause of this garrison-hermitism, and I'm going to tell you why.

Pucking the Fug Up

While I've been pretty content to show up to some friend's guild raids and do casual stuff while I decide where I am in life and whether it's even a good idea to find a new serious guild right now, my elitist itch came back for awhile when I realized I would be locked out of [Ahead of the Curve: Blackhand's Cruicible] if I didn't down him before 6.2, which is currently in PTR and could come out any second now.

or like in a few months

I had some decent luck with doing pugs before, back when my guild was busy not doing any content, so I didn't think much of it until I realized that this was the final boss of the tier that I had done twice in LFR and never had any legitimate practice with.

I read up on the fight and I was relatively familiar with it, so I figured if I could just sneak into a pug that wasn't already asking for the achievement, I could just stay off the radar by not dying and just doing the dps thing I do until one of the groups I joined was good enough that we downed the boss.

Unfortunately for me, there is a niche mechanic that balance druids are known for being very good at, so I kept getting volunteered by other people who had no idea that I was unfamiliar with the fight. If I said I didn't know the fight or tried to talk them out of it, I'd probably be removed immediately anyway, so I opted to just try my best.

can't we just ask them nicely to stop throwing things

My best wasn't very good. For the first time in my life, I was removed from a pug for under performing.

These Boots Are Made For Timewalking

Timewalking is a new feature coming in 6.2. This official Blizzard preview summarizes it pretty quickly, but if you haven't read about it and need an even quicker summary: you can queue up for some randomly selected old dungeons, where you will be scaled down to reasonable power, but you can still get rewards relevant to current content.

baby I'm coming home!

Oh, but only if the current weekend event is a timewalking event.

Lagoon: Land of Druids

At the local game shop with a small group yesterday, I was contemplating how I wish I had more board games, but also how I didn't want to spend money on one. I opted for the first option when I saw this game, Lagoon: Land of Druids.

If you couldn't already guess, it had gained 70% of my favor for simply being druid based, so I looked it up on my phone for a few minutes before deciding that it had a seemingly positive enough reaction on the internet and made up my mind. We were looking at some other games, but "land of druids" won, not to mention the how gorgeous the art is.

small sampling of the tokens and game pieces, it's just dang pretty

Catur Game Day

Here's a theme that I don't know how it took me this long to come up with - gaming cats.

not quite this

Welcome to Caturday, where I get slightly off topic and post pictures of cats. Today, though, we have pictures of cats gaming and playing with and technology, which is relatively on topic.

Hardcore Casually Raiding

I really like raiding. After my guild dissolved, I basically stopped playing, since I didn't have anything to do. Despite pug raids not being quite as bad as they were once known for, they are still just angry conglomerates of people who all don't know each other. They are all just a means to an end for everyone in them, rather than being a group of players who are all familiar with each other joining up to enjoy time together.

typical pugs

I was pugging for awhile, but it was exhausting and unrewarding. There was no reason to hang out in a raid of random strangers killing bosses I didn't need. Considering the time it took to find groups, I spent several hours to kill just a couple bosses, especially since not every group would be successful. Pugging just doesn't amount to what raiding with a guild feels like.

A More or Less Wonderful Life

One of my favorite Harvest Moon games, and favorite games in general, was A Wonderful Life on Gamecube. It was also one of my mom's favorite games.

it's actually one of the most different games in the franchise, too

My mom started dabbling in video games right before I had become a teenager. The first kinds of games she played were simulation games, typically a lot of stuff with tycoon at the end, The Sims being the game she ultimately binged the hardest on when first starting out.

You Can Be Bad at Playing a Video Game

I recently saw a joke by a comedian, Dara O Briain. It was about video games, and it was pretty funny on the surface.

"Video games do a thing that no other industry does. You cannot be bad at watching a movie. You cannot be bad at listening to an album. But, you can be bad at playing a video game - and the video game will punish you and deny you access to the rest of the video game. No other art form does this."

The joke, clip here, continues, expressing how absurd it would be for a book or an album to test your abilities before allowing you to continue.

The exposition to his joke was pretty funny, but after about the 50 second mark where he starts tying the joke into a real life experience with video games, it wasn't funny anymore.

Now, now, I wasn't offended or insulted by his story or his outlook on video games, it just... wasn't funny. I wasn't the audience of that joke. In the rest of the clip what I saw was an older man who was complaining about how weird video games are because he's not good at playing them.

and what's the deal with airline food?

Cats and Crap

Hello, and welcome to Caturday! Today I'm going to highlight one of the less glorious parts of cat ownership...

if this picture was a person it would be lewd

"That's gross," you say "why do you even think this is a good idea?" you ask nobody in particular, as you contemplate not reading the rest of this post even though there will be cute cat pictures in it.

Well, you see, cats are adorable and do tons of super cute things, but they also definitely have to poop, in fact I'd say most likely daily, if not more often. It's a reality that is important to acknowledge if you want a happy cat, and understanding cat bathroom habits can help your cat caretaking skills immensely.

There is actually a buttload of information regarding cats and their poop boxes. You could write a full length novel about it. Luckily, you don't have to do that, and you can just read this post. So, let's get right into this crap!

I didn't mean litter-ally.   get it ahahah

Game Evolution - Why The Game Changes

World of Warcraft has changed dramatically over the course of its life. We all know that the game does change - duh, it's not going to not change. We joke about playing "the same game" for ten years, but really, no one is going to play the same game for so long. The game has to change for people to keep playing it. You'll go back to a game you liked and play it again, but not for, say, six hundred total days worth of time. For a game to accumulate that kind of loyalty, it has to keep its playerbase entertained and happy.

A more curious question is why does the game change the way that it does? What factors influence the designers' decisions on how to change the game?

well...

This subject is misleadingly complex. There's no shortage of people claiming they know exactly what would fix the game, but that actually attributes to part of the problem.

We all know the game has to change, that the driving factor in changing it is to keep people playing, and that the changes made are intended to keep people playing and hopefully increase the amount of people playing it. Anything else would be nonsensical.

What's complicated about that? Well...

playerbase vs. blizzard

Warlords Subscription Prescription Description

If you already read forums or read trade chat (why would you do that, though?), you don't need to read anything else about the state of World of Warcraft's active subscription numbers, I'm sure - but I don't usually talk about the active subscription counts, so hear me out for a moment.

This is the (cropped - view full, interactive chart here) chart of WoW's active subscriptions. At Warlords release, subscriptions skyrocketed to be as high as they were at Mist's release, clearing the leap upwards from the dismal sub count that Mists had earned after overstaying its welcome with over a year of SoO. With this latest report, we're seeing that in record time of only six months, subs dropped back down dramatically to almost as low as they were at Mists' lowest point,

However, in case you forgot, Mists' release came with that Annual Pass deal - free beta access, a mount, and Diablo III for free - if you had already paid for Diablo III, you had game time credited for the worth of the game - if you agreed to subscribe to the game for a full year. Cancelling before your year was up revoked your mount and Diablo III access. Of course, after the Annual Pass ran its full year course, the subscription count was 7.6M.

The Story This Season

I'm a huge fan of Harvest Moon and similar farming 'simulation/role playing' games. My favorite was A Wonderful Life on the Gamecube, a close second would be Runefactory 4 for the 3DS. Story of Seasons is a newer release from Marvelous/XSEED for the 3DS - Natsume owns the 'Harvest Moon' name, so they were unable to run with that trademark and took a new turn. About a month after Story of Seasons came out, I got it and... well... I kind of don't like it.

yeah yeah go ahead and be upset

Now, I'm pretty alone here - and it really bothers me that I don't like it. I want to like it. The graphics are fine, the mechanics are fine, they have all the same attributes that previous games had, and a bunch of cool new stuff! Well, it would be cool I guess, if I could actually experience it.

Please note, tons of plot and gameplay will be revealed in this post, i.e. spoilers.

I Think I Hate Garrisons

Garrisons, as a functional mechanic, are pretty cool. I am the commander of my own little army of duders who go out and get me gold and loot, I can make them work for me or follow me around, and I build workshops and gardens in my own little outcrop of Frostfire Ridge.

I am master of my domain

I found no fault with garrisons as Warlords made its first impressions. I wrote before about how I actually love follower missions. I thought garrisons were cool and I found that they were entirely optional if you wanted them to be. I was in favor of them as a non-stressful daily activity that gave you access to a lot of cool stuff.

I haven't been playing a lot lately, but I've started to notice something when I do log in.

I hate my garrison.