May 2011

A Warrior, Shaman, and Mage Walk Into A Dungeon.. #WoW

stargrace May 10, 2011 No Comments

I’ve been learning to tank. I know, scary thought. I decided to create a warrior and team up with two guild mates, one is playing a shaman healer and the other is playing a mage (or a warlock depending on what levels we need). Over the last few days we managed to complete 7 guild achievements, dungeon runs. We started with Ragefire since we were level 15, and then before I could blink my warrior had hit level 24. I’m brand new at tanking, I’ve done two instances on my paladin, but I’ve never played a warrior. I wanted something new and since I pride myself on knowing my characters it’s been quite an experience. A few things I’ve learned from my dungeon runs.

90% of people will never ever assist you. The majority in fact will specifically target the mob that you are not targeting, just so they can get smacked around a bit. Letting them die a few times by not taking aggro back will (in most cases) remedy this.
All hunters want to be tanks. They like to let loose their arrows (or bullets) just as you’re about to pull something, and pull for you. Sending polite tells to remedy this is a bad idea that results in the hunter doing something else aggravating like calling you a ‘carebear’ or training your group.
New paladins rarely know what any of their spells do and quite frequently enter battle with their threat increasing buff on while they’re dpsing. If you’re grouped with a paladin who keeps taking aggro from you try checking their buffs, it’s a yellow symbol and pretty easy to spot.
It only takes running Shadowfang Keep 4 times to become an absolute expert at it and to be able to run it with your eyes closed.

I do have to admit, playing with a guild group makes tanking far more tolerable. Even though two people are still a part of a PUG via the LFD tool, I know that two members will have patience while I fumble my way through the dungeon. The results yesterday were pretty good. I had fun (gasp) and I’m looking forward to future dungeons!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Gaming

Lets Get Back to Gaming #EQ2 #WoW

stargrace May 9, 2011 1 Comment

Been a little while since my last post, I know. I haven’t been around online because I’ve been getting used to some new medication that has horrible side effects, thankfully I’m feeling almost back up to my usual self, and that means I should be back to posting on a regular daily basis some time this week.

SOE games are still down, and we really have no ETA on when they’ll be back up. That means my adventures in EQ and Vanguard have been put on hold until further notice, and my desire to create via player housing (so soon after multi housing was released too, what a shame) goes unscratched. In the mean time I’ve taken myself back to World of Warcraft, where I play Alliance on the Argent Dawn server. I’ve started up a guild there (Dragon Flight) and if anyone else is looking for a place to hang out then please feel free to look me up. My characters there are:

Kameeko (warrior), Faydai (druid), Ellithia (priest), Arysh (shaman), Seduisant (rogue), Velours (paladin), and Minxes (warlock).

The guild is only level 1 right now, and blizzard makes it quite hard to level up a guild that has only 2-3 members, but I’m persistent and hope to at least reach level 5 eventually. We’ve done a few guild dungeon runs where I attempted to tank – and no one died so that’s a bonus. I feel more comfortable tanking (so far) on my paladin rather then my warrior, but I’m hoping maybe that changes over time. I think it’s because my paladin feels like she has more ‘to do’ to keep aggro, although it could certainly be because my warrior is currently only level 16. There’s something to be said about playing a ‘simple’ game that doesn’t require massive amounts of thinking in order to accomplish anything. I will admit another reason I’m happy to be back playing is that the game runs wonderfully on my laptop, which is a big deal to me while I’ve been feeling under the weather.

I have also played a little Rift, although not as much as I may have wanted to because I don’t think it will run that well on the laptop. In fact just before I started taking this new medication I removed a bunch of games from my acer because I didn’t think there was a point to them being there (games such as LotRO) and I now regret removing them since I enjoy having an option of multiple games to play (always the nomadic gamer that I am). In any case, WoW is going well. I enjoy doing dungeons, questing, working on guild achievements and crafting. I still haven’t been to the two new dungeons that were released with 4.1 but my priest is now able to queue for heroics (although I have yet to enter one) and that was quite exciting.

I hope everyone is doing well, no matter where you find yourself. Safe travels and happy gaming!

Gaming

Professions in The Sims 3 #TS3 #Sims3

stargrace May 3, 2011 1 Comment

Since all of SOE has been shut down (going on day two) I’ve been spending some time in single player games, mostly the Sims. One of the sims expansions introduced professions, which are different then jobs in the way that they’re preformed. They include you controlling your sim for the work day, and I’ve been playing with one in particular, architecture. Basically families within your town will hire you to remodel their homes, either with a brand new addition or reworking a room. The homeowners give you a budget and a list of requirements (ie: they want a writing room and it must have 2 chairs 1 tv 1 desk 1 computer) and then it’s up to you to work that beautifully into their home. They take things into consideration at the end when they ‘judge’ you, like how much time you spent decorating it, whether the walls and floors were completed, whether or not the items placed are easily accessible. If you do a good job you take a picture for your portfolio, and this helps you ‘level up’ in your given field. It’s not as easy as it sounds, either. I’ve remodeled three homes so far and two of them said I did a terrible job. Woops.

It’s not the easiest way to make money, but I’m having a lot of fun breaking away from the ‘typical’ sims job, which requires me to fast forward through countless hours of nothingness while my sim does her own thing. There are other professions as well, such as stylist, firefighter, and investigator. Each one has tasks and events your character will have to partake in to get paid.

Looking back over the years at the progression of the Sims franchise I’ve really been impressed with how far they’ve come. Sims 3 is some of their best work (imo) and I also enjoy browsing the store for new items to purchase for the game. I earned 2,000 free sims points by purchasing various expansions over the years and they’ve had so many sales that I’ve yet to actually spend any money in their market aside from picking up the expansions which I would have done anyhow for simply being a fan of these games. It’s easy to spend hours lost in little worlds that I create, and when my online games are unavailable, it’s a comfort to know that these single player games are not going anywhere.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming

Children’s Week #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

stargrace May 2, 2011 No Comments

I’ve been enjoying my time in WoW these days, I don’t know how long it will last (probably about as long as it ever lasts, 2-3 months before I move to another game for 2-3 months etc) but I’m enjoying it while I’m there. A few things changed this time while I’ve been playing. For the first time in 5 years I’m in an actual guild. A rather large one at that. They’re level 25 with over 600 members – and while I would typically be afraid of that sort of guild in this sort of game, the guild has some hard fast rules about maturity and profanity (the first being requested, the second being disallowed in guild chat) that have made my stay quite pleasant. They’re not hard core raiders but they’ve been known to raid as well, and they plan guild events. The web site is well designed and I will admit being in a level 25 guild (max for now) comes with some incredibly nice benefits. The experience bonus is lovely, but something I notice more is the bonuses to both harvesting and crafting skill ups.

I’ve been playing multiple alts (as always) and enjoying them all. I am still considering a warrior tank, but in the mean time I have a paladin who just hit level 40 and is holy spec’d. Out of all of the healers I have played at lower levels, the paladin is by far the easiest. I’ve never ran out of mana thanks to two specific spells, and I have yet to have to need a mana potion (unlike my druid of the same level, who has more mana, but is constantly running out). I’ve been feeling a bit of an itch to try my hand at tanking, but I’m still quite nervous, so we’ll just have to see how that goes. At the moment I’ve got:

Ellithia (85 discipline priest) enchanting / tailoring
Minxes (83 Affliction warlock) engineering / mining
Arysh (77 Restoration shaman) inscription / jewelcrafting
Velours (40 Holy paladin) herbalism / alchemy
Faydai (37 Restoration druid)
Seduisant (10 Assassination Rogue)

This week is Children’s Week! So I’ve been bringing my little orphan around Azeroth. Not exactly the safest of trips (at least some of them) but it’s fun and cute. Today I flew kites and ate ice cream with little orphan “Roo” and then I picked up little orphan “Randis” from Shattrah.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

A Warrior, Shaman, and Mage Walk Into A Dungeon.. #WoW

Lets Get Back to Gaming #EQ2 #WoW

Professions in The Sims 3 #TS3 #Sims3

Children’s Week #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

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