June 2019

Happy 13th Blog Birthday

That’s right, June 25th 2006 was the very first blog post I posted here. The URL may have changed, but the blog has remained pretty much the same over that time. I’ve talked about my love of gaming and I’ve done my best to keep a positive attitude about it all. Over the years I’ve tossed in some other hobbies, but I think the style has remained pretty consistent.

I’ve had numerous opportunities present themselves to me because of writing here. I’ve met some amazing people. It was because of my posts here that I got a job with Beckett Massive Online Gamer when that magazine was around. I wrote about Aion, EQ2, Wizard 101, and other games. From there I moved to working with the good people at SOE, I flew to California and met the team of Vanguard, and when Beckett MOG shut down, I landed a job with Carbine Studios. I swapped around a bit there and found myself with NCSOFT.

I eventually gave that job up and focused on starting my family and being a full time Mom, which is where I’m at now. My son is almost 3, and my daughter is almost 1. When I started the blog I was living in Ottawa Ontario. I moved to Kelowna, British Columbia – and now I live in Saskatchewan. I got married. Friends have passed away, and new friends have been made. It has been quite amazing to think back about these things.

Over 13 years I’ve made 3,482 (now 3,483 after this one) posts. Some have been thoughtful in-depth assessments of games and other posts have been nothing but a screen shot. I think that no matter what, I’ve kept true to myself.

Happy Birthday, to me. Here’s to 13 more!

Astralaria Part One – Complete

Thanks to my amazing guild mates PixelOne, Cheyenne, Ironwolf, and Ogur, after a few fractal runs yesterday I am done the first step in obtaining my legendary weapon, Astralaria. Next I need to craft The Device, and then I can move on to part II. For this I need to do a few daily crafts (globs, mostly) and I’m trying to harvest as many components as I can to cut down costs. Most of what I need is iron ore, which conveniently has some static rich nodes that I can harvest each day. I do also need a lot of rugged leather, which I’m finding more difficult to obtain, and I may end up purchasing instead.

Getting a legendary weapon is daunting to me, especially when I look at the incredibly long list of components, but taking bite sized chunks and working on it has been much easier. If I could get it done by December that would be amazing, but I think it will take a bit longer than that, given that my playtime is sporadic at best. I’m still just doing little things here and there in between everything else going on in life.

5,000 Goal Reached!

It may have taken over 6 years, but I finally reached 5,000 achievement points in Guild Wars 2 – and I’m really proud and happy that I did. It rewarded me with a ton of stuff, including 400 gems, a new skin unlocked, 15 gold, some laurels, a title, and more. For my final few points I ended up running around the starter cities purchasing the cultural T1/T2 armour to unlock some fashion achievements. As Pixel_One is always saying, end game in GW2 is Fashion Wars – and it’s completely true.

Today I’m hoping our guild can get together for a fractal run. I need Cliffside in order to finish the first of three parts to my precurser weapon. I’m excited to almost be done this one part, in a long chain of parts that I’ll need to accomplish. I happen to think the legendary axe is worth it, so I’m confident I’ll get there, one day.

As we inch closer to the 7th year anniversary I can’t help but get a bit excited at whatever might be planned. I also joined a VERY active guild yesterday for my 5th guild slot. There are over 400 members, and last night 100 were online. They do have a policy that if you don’t log in for 8 days (giving notice is fine) they remove from the guild, so that’s 400+ active members which is nice. They have scheduled events including raffles and an active discord. I just wanted a few people to hang out with during my random play times, and since you can be in 5 guilds at once and very little changes, I’m pretty excited.

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

It’s So Shiny

I’ve been working on boss fights almost daily so that I can collect the ley-line essences and then craft some appearance weapons. There are two versions, shiny – and then you use those to create ultra shiny. I admit now, my main reason for wanting to craft them is to get the title. If you don’t get a chance to complete the collection while the event is running (I think there are just a few days left) you can also obtain these items through raiding. The chances of me raiding are slim to none, so I’m going the easier way.

I love that ArenaNet has had so many events lately, and I am hoping that they actually ramp up the closer we get to the anniversary (around 2 months from now). It has been fun logging in any seeing huge crowds gathered all working towards things. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Luck? What is That..

I do my best to boost magic find as much as I can, but with over 800 hours played, I have still never gotten a pre-curser or an ascended piece of gear to drop.

My luck holds true no matter what game I find myself in. If I didn’t have bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.