Deceived…FTW!

So, not many things shake me to the very core of my nerd-self, but those that manage to get past the analythic part of my brain hit the emotional part. And I think that should be the goal of every game developer introducing a “serious” game trying to tell a story: to reach the emotions of the spectators.

So, while I was looking around blindly for addons at Curse and found a link to a certain cinematic trailer, I just middle-clicked it to open it in a new tab in Chrome, just out of curiosity. After I was done looking around the rest of my tabs (I often open way too many), I find myself facing this masterpiece of a Cinematic Trailer. Ladies and gents, welcome to the Old Republic!.

I have to admit it managed to get me all teary eyed and goose-bumpy with exciteness. So…I’ll just enjoy the moment and try not to think of what to do to get me a computer that can handle that kinda game, cause that’s a bit of a painful thought.

I proceed to embed the video here (assuming I have a clue of how to do that).

Um…wootness?

I have the best wife!

Last thursday a certain item dropped, Velun won it by roll, however the next day it landed in my mailbox, she had put a GM Ticket for it to be given to me instead.

Calamity's Grasp

Thank you again, you’re the best!

Temporal Change of Pace

I know, I know! I was supposed to have that follow up of the certain article by last saturday, but the weekend was quite weird with some events that had me playing from a different perspective.

First things first tho. There’s my Death Knight, who I leveled to 80 to just mess around with it and understand a bit of the class, as DPS, and who knows, maybe replace my rogue as my main AS DPS. Funny twist to the story, as Miara started hitting the 75′s and above, I started tanking with my DK (Voryan), and so it happened that he at least got Defense capped, in mostly blues (only greens were trinkets…).

And so The Crown needed a tank last thursday for Naxx-10. And so my DK got to tank Naxx (Off Tank actually), and as our Main Tank said, “we have a Fury warrior as MT and a Rogue as an OH, let’s hope it’ll go well” (he mainly goes as DPS but has grabbed quite a few pieces of tank gear).  Amazingly enough we cleared the place by friday, with almost the same team.

And I say amazingly because of the people we had with us weren’t exactly our top geared, but our fresh 80′s and just a couple of very well geared people (one healer and one mage). So that might mean the “new batch” of 80′s are better than a lot of the “veterans” in terms of survival/paying attention. We actually did Thaddius without crossing charges. Something Akhellar got in a run with only our 10 best. Long ago. Anyway, that ended up well and people got gear, I got T7 Leg piece and a necklace that were upgrades to what I was carrying.

Then Saturday came, and with it, my parents. They’re staying for 9 days (7 now if we include saturday), therefore I might be a bit busy, but anyway, they brought along Meara’s old laptop. That is relatively good because now we can play together during raid. Granted, it’s old and it’s slow, giving me a whopping 6 FPS in Naxx 25, but it’s better than sitting out there doing nothing.

Akhellar’s Quickies!

It’s friday, and contrary to my last “serious” job as a Computer Technitian, where fridays were hell and every person seemed to want their issues solved, here it is quite boring, so…I’m bored.

Waking up 2 hours before the time you actually have to wake up bites, and even more so if you notice a very nasty and sharp pain in your tooth that gives you problems to go back to sleep.

We have been out of gas for a week, can’t cook or take hot water showers, so it’s been a week of cold showers and take-out food.

The first season of the Knight Rider remake has apparently reached an end, being cut short by the NBC, rumors are saying either it gets cancelled and no 2nd season will be aired or they just cut the first season short to make a re-boot of the show at season 2. I’m REALLY hoping for a second season, I was enjoying it a lot.

Waiting on new episodes of Heroes and Smallville, and that’s all the TV I watch really.

As usual, I should’ve kept my mouth shut about being bored, I just got swamped.

I forgot to put a post break, so I am editing the post, heh.

Chronicles of a Dying Guild 01

Warning: This post may contain some drama topics, furthermore, if you don’t like the “my guild” kind of posts, please turn back and skip this post.

- Ak.

I was sitting here reading one of Meara’s drafts, checking spelling as I am supposed to do, and I thought of something interesting to do (interesting for me anyway).

For a while now, the guild we both are in – from now on referred to as The Crown – has been going in an apparent spiral down to oblivion. And I think to myself: “If it does happen, and the guild ends up falling under its own weight, it’d be the 3rd 4th time I’ve witnessed such a thing first hand, why?”. So I think it’d be interesting to “record” the downfall of such events.

Hey, the rogue is back!

I should have named this “Of PTR’s, DS Gaming, Blue Penises and a Reluctant Macbook”, but I didn’t so yeah.

What’s been up? Not much, first there was that mean issue with instances booting people offline, issue that affected us a lot during a full week. There is no news about it that I can see, but last night I ran Naxx 25 for the first time since that awful week and had no problems, so I’m hoping that issue got fixed finally.

Also we had ISP issues of our own, a week after those instance problems showed up, we started to have several continuos disconnects, not only from WoW but our internet overall kept going down, it was an issue with the conexions physically, that one is definitely fixed and we’ve been enjoying our full 2mbps since then, yay!.

While that whole internet-losing ordeal was going on, I decided to sit back and play some NDS games I had laying around there. I’ve been having a blast with some various games and I may make a post about those individually, but for now, I’m still playing them when I have the time (mainly while Meara is playing WoW and my brother is using the other computer).

Spoke too soon…

So, yes we were back, and! we gotz the Itch King…now we need a suitable computer. The very same day Lich King was released, my always faithfull Dell Laptop decided it was time to hang the towel, the video card burned (literally) and it now only works as a very messed up office computer…with some luck and tries. So I was left with one choice: Meara and I were to share her laptop. Now, that one handles Burning Crusade “OK”, nothing great, all settings down, etc. But Lich King is a tad heavier than the previous expansion.

As such, I had a lag-tastic experience during that week, and I was…well, not satisfied, nor happy, but I suppose I at least was playing huh, and Meara was too, so that’s something. Oh no, that wouldn’t be allowed. Three days ago her laptop took a nose-dive into Hard Drive issues!.

Now, after a few testing and more thinking, I’ve transplanted ( O.o WTH) my hard drive to her computer, and at least last night it seemed to go well enough. We shall see, and hope it lasts long. EDIT: Forgot to mention, while installing windows and office apps, and WoW on my ex-hard-drive, the DvD drive decided to start acting up, wooopie! 

In-game, I got as far as some Zul’drak, and level 76, slowly crawling my way there and not daring to do instance runs, something that is slowing down my leveling a bit more. We have some 80′s in the guild already and it won’t be long before we start wanting to venture into Naxx, I must hurry, that…and I have to get another computer so Meara and I can play like the old times.

Ah yes…that was the last time I buy a laptop as a main computer, ever (even if it’s a gaming one).

And We’re Back!

So, a lot …and I mean LOT has happened since the last post, from me being utterly broke and unemployed to me working as a salesman, to Meara and I moving, again. That’s out of game, in-game (once I was able to play again that is), also a lot has happened, going from struggling at Lurker, to going into BT (4/9), Hyjall (4/5), finishing SSC and almost done in TK (Kael refuses to die).

So, I’ll go slow and will start with the subject that has to do nothing with WoW, to then “talk” about the WoW stuff in a future post.

What happened to us? Where have we been? Ok, so …after a long (2 months-ish) of unemployment -if that’s a word- and scratching everywhere possible for money, I finally found a job, as a salesman for a nation-wide department store, in their toys section. Soon after my brother proposed an interesting idea: to come live with him at Veracruz, a big city 1 hour away from my home town.

After a very hectic trip, we arrived a week ago, and I can’t say how happy I am. While this poses a series of other problems and possible chaos, Meara and I are living a lot more freely now, while the apartment is not anything out of this world and is actually quite small, the city itself is great, and opposite to the old town, the weather is hot, but nice. A very nice cool breeze blows into the house at almost all times, but it is most noticeable by night.

There’s a very big mall just 5 minutes away by foot, that places a huge money-spending temptation on us (ok on me) that will have to be controlled, and the beach is only 15 minutes by foot. Meara is quite happy due to a Dairy Queen at bus-trip distance, or at 30-40 minutes walk.

Although my first impression was that we would find a problem to get our internet back, turns out my brother already had internet where he lives, therefore we’re back in game.

What remains right now is for me to find a job here, to get the expansion pack somehow, working on that now. Sadly I forgot to pack our camera, so no pictures for now, but soon enough I’ll have some.

To Apply or not to apply

I will summarize the post here, in case you do not wish to read my rant: So, in short, my question is, should a guild, striving for progression, yet having difficulty fielding our raids due to low attendance, be recruiting via Rigid application forms? or should it be done via trial runs?. Keep in mind trial run doesn’t mean a quick heroic run, it means one of our 25-man raids, or perhaps a Karazhan run.

~~~ Warning: Guild Drama Follows ~~~
(Actually I think I avoided typing about the drama but you be the judge of that)

I was calmly enjoying myself in Alterac Valley, not really bothering myself to care if we won or lost. Just toying around with Azrael’s doing some PvP as protection, reflecting a few Pyroblasts and Shield slamming faces to the ground. Well…alright, maybe not that much. Anyway, after a few minutes of me joining a battleground, our GM asks in Guild Chat if any officers have checked out our new applicant on the guild’s website.

After slamming some more skulls with Azrael’s shield – Ok, I was at the spirit healer – I went and checked out the Application, finding some issues I disliked about the applicant.

A bit of background information about the guild is needed first, I believe. Back when we started, we had a sudden rush of people joining us, and our application form was more a way to let us know someone wanted in the guild, than an actual application. After a few too many times of the guild’s core of raiders running people through Karazhan time after time, gearing the new recruits to a point where they could be of help on our 25-man raids, specifically, on SSC and The Eye, since our “core” was strong and consistent enough to carry a few undergeared people on Gruul, and even Magtheridon’s Lairs.

Final UI and Big Fishes

First of all, I would like to apologize for the lack of writing, I feel Meara has been doing a very good job, but I had some issues to deal with first and now that they’ve been dealt with temporarily, I’m back here.

Anyway, I left pending some final screenshot of my UI and a list/description of the addons I used. Before, and if you’re interested, here is the post that showed the first changes I made, that I also ended up not using after all, and here is my last post about the UI changes.

And now, this is how it looks and how it will look probably until Wrath comes around.

Final Version of UI

Ok, as you can see (if you’ve read the previous posts regarding this topic), there’s very little change from my last screenshot to the final version, mostly graphical changes and the addition of a chat addon. Lists after the break!.