2014

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.

Holding off on ESO – For Now

cooking

A lot of my friends have been diving into Elder Scrolls Online (screenshot above is Pete’s character, he blogs over at Dragonchasers). Normally, I would dive in too, and each time I see a post or a tweet or a mention on google plus I’m tempted – but I know I just don’t have the time. I especially don’t have the time to justify a $15/m subscription. That doesn’t mean I’m immune to the fun that everyone else is having. I (of course) want to be a part of it. I love that new game smell.

Sometimes being a grownup sucks.

The expression on the character above is priceless. I would love to play ESO just for the crafting and exploring.

New Deeds, New Excitement

deedLast week I decided that Bitgum was too far away from my main deed to maintain both. Especially since Bitgum deed upkeep was over 6 silver a month but I only visited the place 2x a month give or take. I made the decision to close Bitgum down and disband it. I packed everything I owned into a wagon, loaded it into a corbita, and decided to set down a second deed on the Pristine server, not too far away from some alliance members, and on the mainland.

The new place is called Carrara, and it’s filled with marble. Above is a map of the current mine system. The bright pink are areas that I have yet to mine, the grey represents marble nodes, the black iron. There are also a few silver and zinc nodes thrown in. As you can tell by the map, there is a lot of marble uncovered (18 so far). Ore is regional, but it still seems like quite a bit to me. A fair amount of iron makes the place the perfect mining operations, and the land had already been worked quite a bit as a deed must have decayed there at one time or another. There was some enchanted grass, 5 forges, a few ovens (I bashed those since I don’t need them), and a handful of coffins for storage. I built a brand new smithy as well as a wooden cottage, and began a guard tower. The deed rests right on the edge of the desert which is typically teaming with creatures but at the moment it’s pretty quiet due to a bug. While it does rest on the edge of the desert, the deed itself is covered with lush trees, and is up against a mountain with a pretty nice view. There were plenty of lamps already placed, so the location is already well lit without me having to do any extra work. All in all I’m quite pleased with the spot, even though I have my priests over at my main deed still. Since there’s not much to do at that main deed I enjoy having a second project.

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