April 2014

Holding me Back from my Legendary

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The ONE thing holding me back from getting my legendary cloak is the fact that there are two PVP components to the quest. You need to win a single fight in two 10vs10 PVP arenas. The first one was pretty easy. There are four orbs, you capture an orb and hold onto it. Hang out in the middle of the zone and your team earns more points. While being blasted of course because you’re carrying an orb. This arena only took two tries before my alliance side got a win.

The second arena is more complex. You’re in a mine, and three carts spawn and travel along rails. Hang out in a giant circle around the cart and it will be “claimed” for your side. The object is to walk alongside the cart while it moves towards its destination, and keep the cart on your side. Of course the opposing faction will come along and kill you and claim the cart for their side. As the carts reach their destination you earn points, as well as earning points for kills. Alliance has come close a couple of times but I have yet to win a single match. I have played through approximately 10 matches so far. I know these two arena matches are filled with others trying to get their cloaks too, but I sure would like a win so that I can move on from this step. I’m not fond of a PVE quest requiring PVP components, and vice versa. Some players just don’t like PVP. Now, I am not one of those people, I actually DO enjoy PVP quite a bit, but I dislike being forced into a specific battle, especially since if you queue for specifics you miss out on a lot of rewards.

I am hoping I have some luck today after work and I finally get my win. After this it is back to collecting trillium and raid drops. I think it would be fantastic to get my cloak before the next expansion comes out – although with the way PVP is going lately, I won’t hold my breath.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

It’s Fixed! It’s Finally Fixed!

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One of the downsides to moving across the country was that I had to ship my PC, and lets just say that it didn’t handle the move too well. What I thought at first was a video card issue, turned out to be a power supply issue. Of course by then I had already purchased a new video card that was better than my old one, so why not keep it. I ended up getting the MSI R9 270 Gaming 2GB 26-Bit GDDR5 HDCP ready CrossFireX Support Video Card and then a brand new 850 watt power supply (replacing my broken 750). Unfortunately because of a bad crash (due to that power supply issue) I had to reinstall windows, and I lost everything on my main hard drive. On the plus side, I kept backups of all my photography and important documents, so the only thing I “lost” was video games and other odds and ends like skype, irfanview, etc. After a lot of downloading and installing, things are FINALLY running again.

Oh man do they run.

I did not bring my two monitors with me, so I had to purchase two new ones. My old ones were 22″ and the new are 24″ acer monitors, two of the exact same ones which is nice since my old ones were different brands and the colours between the two were different and bugged me. I also picked up a new keyboard, which is the exact same as my old one a G510s.

Two new monitors, a new keyboard, a new power supply, and a new video card later, as well as a month gone by (I haven’t had my PC since April 7th) and things are FINALLY working properly. My PC has been my “comfort” for years now, it is a way I connect to the rest of the world, a way for me to relax and zone out, and not having it around while I undertook a gigantic cross-country move was incredibly difficult for me.

It is nice to be back in game.

Finding a new Schedule

WoWScrnShot_042014_190010I know, I haven’t written since the 14th of April which is pretty much unheard of for me. Thank you very much those who expressed concern at my absence. I’m trying to get used to a whole lot of new things all at once and adjusting to a new schedule has been harder than I had thought it would be. Plus my PC was shipped across the country three times and when I finally got it this week I discovered that my video card didn’t make the trip. A new one was ordered and I’m expecting it to arrive either today or Monday. In the meantime that means I still only have my laptop for gaming, and while (as I have already mentioned) it does handle games pretty well, it doesn’t compensate for having a PC.

Things in World of Warcraft have been going well, when I can find some time to play. Yesterday I decided to queue for a few raids in order to finish off the 3k valor I needed for my cloak quest. It just so happened that healers were one of the required classes for an extra goodie bag, and inside mine was a white polar bear mount. That’s the first time I’ve ever gotten anything useful from one of those goodie bags, and I was quite pleased. I did manage to finish off the valor required, and defeated the named I needed – next is PVP which I am really not looking forward to. Alliance has a horrible time with PVP (my personal experience here) and a friend was telling me it took him 16 attempts before he managed to get his updates. Ouch. I was hoping to have my PC set up for the PVP attempts, but if I don’t have it by this weekend I may just do it on the laptop anyway. We’ll see how that goes. I believe after the PVP components comes the 40 trillium and some raid drops. I’m getting closer to completing the cloak, which really pleases me. Then I’ll have to do it all again on my hunter (my 2nd main, the first one being my priest).

WoW has been a great distraction and a wonderful way for me to lose myself for an hour here and there when the weight of the world becomes too much. In the past I would have gotten mad at myself for using games as a temporary escape, but these days I can see the value in it so long as I’m not using it as a permanent way to escape from my problems. With so much turmoil and change in my life, gaming has remained the one constant, and I appreciate that so much. It has done wonders in helping me to keep my sanity.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Gaming for Comfort

comfortzLast night was the first night in a week or so that I was able to sit down and get some gaming time in. I recently moved across the country, and my PC arrives today (yay) so I spent some time playing World of Warcraft on my laptop. Not exactly the same experience as my dual monitor PC, but hey it was better than nothing.

I’m a huge advocate of gaming for comfort, so long as you’re not neglecting your real life obligations. I don’t personally believe that there is anything wrong with diving into another world for some time to escape real life. Again, this comes with the notion that you’re not neglecting something in real life (friends, family, jobs, eating, etc). Being able to game (whether it is on my PC or my laptop) means I have the ability to dive into a familiar world when my actual world is upside down. This has been very important in helping me get comfortable in my new surroundings, and keeping me from tears (though there are still tears, don’t get me wrong).

I’m looking forward to getting some more time in WoW and Wurm this week, and so long as my real life obligations are not suffering, I’m not going to begrudge myself this time that I spend in-game.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Eastern Kingdoms Safari

WoWScrnShot_040614_164255I spent a lot of the weekend working on collecting pets, doing pet battles, and collecting more pets. It was a quiet way to get back into World of Warcraft, and I had an absolute blast with it. As you can see by the list above, I’ve almost completed collecting all of the pets available in the Eastern Kingdoms. Right now I am waiting for it to rain in The Cape of Stranglethorn so I can catch a baby ape. That will complete the list. This morning when I logged in I was able to catch a Restless Shadeling, which spawn at 12am server time. The baby ape only spawns when it’s raining. Pets like this are interesting to have but can also cause frustration if you’re a collector trying to catch them all, as it were.

The baby ape will also be my 400th pet. I’m pretty excited about that.

Aside from all of the pet battles I did, I also worked on my new level 90 hunter. I have played a priest pretty exclusively in Pandaria and I wanted a hands off character to play as a “second main”. I decided to go with the hunter, and I am really enjoying it so far. Thankfully I was able to save up 20,000 coins on the Timeless Isle, and upgrade my weapon. Even without the upgrade the hunter was doing quite well. Better than my other 5 level 90 characters at that time at least.

All in all, it has been a relaxing time in WoW. I know there’s a lot of information coming out about Warlords, but I’m patient and I’ll wait to decide what I think about the changes until I can experience them myself.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.