Saturday Post: Presented Without Comment
stargrace 
August 2016
Ghosts are Breaking Everything!
Last night I spent a little time with my Sims 4 legacy family – and was incredibly frustrated. See one of the things I adore about having a legacy family is that they have a history, and since they stay on the same house lot the entire time, that history grows as the family ages. There are two tombstones out back, one for my original legacy starting character, and the second her husband. They frequently return to the home as ghosts and their children and grandchildren (and soon to be great grandchildren) get to interact with them and visit. It’s fun – until they start to haunt and break things.
Without fail, every single night these two ghosts return and start haunting bathroom fixtures like toilets and sinks, sometimes it’s the computer, another time it was the dishwasher, or the TV. Without fail after they’re done haunting these items it promptly breaks, leaving the living sims with a few options, repairing the items themselves (my typical choice, since it costs nothing but time), hiring a repair person (rarely used, I hate having to wait for someone to show up) or spending out of pocket to replace the item (also rarely used). Last night it was especially bad, I think I had four broken items all at once. It stresses the living sims out because the home becomes messy with water and trash everywhere. The maid doesn’t show up on weekends, and of course it was a Saturday.
I moved the tombstones further away from the home and eventually plan on putting them in a graveyard type area towards the back of the lot. Maybe this will help cut down on the destruction that they tend to do. I’m reluctant to get rid of the graves because they add to the family history. Each one is engraved with the cause of death, and while it’s not always exciting, it’s neat to look back on (in a weird creepy way).
Since my sims spent most of their time yesterday fixing broken things I didn’t get a lot of unique gameplay done. I did set their club to giving points while repairing things so that helped out a lot. I swapped it out with the cooking one because honestly my Sims have so much food in their fridge it was getting a bit crazy. In a few days time my youngest sim will become a young adult, and then it will be time to start working towards the fourth generation (out of ten). I’m slowly getting there!
Throwback Thursday
It’s amazing how we look back at things we’ve done throughout our lives and suddenly realize just how much time has passed. 8 years ago this month I was writing articles for Beckett Massive Online Gamer about EQ and EQ II. Today I took a bunch of time to go through some of those articles and just reminisce. One of my favourite features was doing the class guides, especially bards. I got to interview some really fantastic people (some who I’m still friends with today!) and I had a blast doing it. The four years I spent writing for Beckett was (I feel) some of the most rewarding writing I ever did and not only because I could pick it up from a local book store as a physical object (how cool is that), but because of the leeway I was given in my articles to write my way and not have to follow a lot of strict rules. Ah, memories..
Impatience
Yesterday I decided that I’d take my level 15 monk and run some LFG dungeons as a healer. I love healing in groups and raids and my character has lots of heirloom so at these levels it’s pretty simple. I don’t expect perfection from any group that I end up in – but it would sure make things a lot easier if people just had some patience. The first dungeon run I did went flawlessly. No problems, everyone followed the tank, smooth as could be. The second dungeon was a different story. We were in Wailing Caverns, and there was myself (monk healer), a tank (paladin), a hunter, rogue, and priest.
The hunter decided to take it upon themselves to tank and they ran every place that the actual tank was not. The actual tank didn’t know his way around the dungeon, so he was backtracking and just running where ever he wanted. Everyone else followed one of these other people but no one followed just one of them so the group was pretty split. I followed the tank.
As a healer this makes for an exceptionally stressful experience. I can’t heal anyone who isn’t in range. If you’re going to run and pull the entire dungeon (especially as a DPS class) and expect me to keep you alive – well, that’s just not going to happen. We managed through most of the dungeon without incident despite the mass pullings in all directions but eventually the hunter pulled one too many and they ended up dying.
I can’t resurrect in combat. My only option is to wait until we’re out of combat, and then cast it. The hunter had no patience for this and decided to leave the instance instead as soon as I told him that I couldn’t rez until after combat had ended. Since everyone kept pulling (and were finally in range) this put me in combat a lot. The tank then decided to run away from the rest of the group while we tried to trail after him and after another failed pull because people just couldn’t work together I decided to cut my losses and left the group.
I don’t like to leave groups, and like I said at the beginning I don’t expect perfection or even “good” game play. I don’t expect a new player to know the dungeons inside and out, and I don’t groan if someone can’t keep up optimal DPS. I will always complain if someone doesn’t have the patience to ensure their survival in a timely fashion. Don’t run away from your healers. It makes things difficult. Try to stick with your tanks. It makes things easier. Those types of tips are things people should keep in mind. If you’re new, unsure, or returning, just speak up. Yes, there are some less-than-kind people out there who may grief you if you speak up, but honestly you’ll find more understanding people than not.
I’ve done a LOT of pick up groups over the years so these types of situations don’t bother me long term and I was back to LFG later in the evening on my druid instead (until the DDoS stuff happened, but that’s a whole other post) where the runs went pretty well. My Dalaran characters are sitting in a comfortable spot. The deathknight is 60, druid is 27, warrior is 14, and monk is 18. I’m really hoping that some folks from Zero Commitment will be into dungeon runs this weekend, even if I have to tank them myself. We’ll see how that goes.
As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!
Three Humans and a Night Elf
Last weekend I decided to join up with friends on Dalaran, and I created four new characters (originally I created one). A human warrior, a human monk, a human deathknight, and a night elf druid. Why so many humans you may ask? Well, that reputation bonus that humans get is something I will always take advantage of if I can. Out of all of the racial bonuses the game offers, it’s the only one that I feel gives a significant advantage. There’s so many factions in game, and every little bit helps.
I created the deathknight so that I could farm lower level instances for transmog gear and sell them, earning myself a bit of coin. Little did I know that a billion other players would also be headed to the DK area. It was absolutely packed! It was so busy that trying to quest was a feat in itself. Thankfully you can tag other people’s mobs and still get credit, but I feel bad doing that because they also get reduced xp with that method. Since most of the experience you gain comes from quests and not from actual kills it’s not such a huge deal, but still something I don’t enjoy taking away from someone else.
Since my DK has lots of heirloom I managed to get almost 60 before leaving the starter zone. I really wish we could just skip that entire place, I’d rather level up some place else. There’s no option to skip it and you can’t leave until it’s done so you’re pretty much stuck there. A quick dungeon run and I should find myself at 60.
I haven’t decided who I’d like to focus on when it comes to this new server. Lets face it, I’m basically just wasting time until the 9th and then until Legion comes out. I’ll probably swap back over to my priest main during those other times, and group up cross-realm (hey, have I mentioned I dislike servers) through bnet. Speaking of, if you’re looking to add me, my bnet is: stargrace#1783 – I play both horde and alliance, and while I may not say a whole lot, I’m always eager to group up with friends!