Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Help me ajeya , you're my only hope! So with "enough" level 80's and people wanting to do something last night, we went into Trial of the Champion... with my priest on healing duty. I did, at least, have the sense to insist on doing it on normal before trying heroic. Reyalyn is not my main, and isn't as well geared as Sashayla, nor do I have as much practice. We also had other characters I might consider "second tier" in the guild - which is not to say they're bad, just not quite as experienced/equipped as certain others. Normal difficulty? Easy. Very easy. Renew kept anyone topped off for the most part. We ended up doing this twice, getting both Eadric and Paletress and putting them down without any real issue. Paletress took longer, but we weren't dying. The only part that really made me step things up was the last phase of the Black Knight, which required some group healing, and I wouldn't say I was hard pressed there. Heroic diffic

So our Shadowrun game has died, or at least been put on indefinite hiatus. It's a bummer, but a little bit of a relief, too. It's times like this that get me looking at what went wrong and thinking back... Our 7th Sea game wound down early in 2007. I don't have a clear recollection of what other factors there might have been, but player scheduling was a notable one at the time. Our Exalted game was called back in January of this year. The problems I cited there involved the mechanics of the game dragging in the online format. I could also add that at least two people didn't fully grasp those rules, which could be attributed to the complexity of the maneuver-based nature of them. The game also probably suffered from a lack of focus (as we picked up so many "side quests" it was overwhelming to even think about what to do first). The game is supposed to be big and epic, but stories benefit from avoiding too much extraneous stuff. And Shadowrun? Well, let

Blizzcon is over and the flood of reports slow to a trickle. People will be picking at this stuff for months, if not years. Y'know, I do remember seeing a globe in, I believe, Halls of Lightning that seemed like Azeroth only a little "off." I recognized this, but didn't contemplate it too deeply at the time. Now I wonder if that was a hint of things to come. So... World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has been officially announced. To say it involves big changes is probably an understatement. Really, it's all about change. Burning Crusade added Outland and a couple starting zones. Wrath of the Lich King added the continent of Northrend. Cataclysm is slated to add a few new zones, but mostly remake Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. Geographically, Azeroth as released in the base game will cease to exist. That's potentially good and bad, though I think Blizzard is savvy enough to pull off more good than bad. I can just picture it. Burning Crusade has been release

Not even sure why. Yet I was finding my eyes drifting shut only to snap them open a few seconds later in the middle of a fight in Guild Wars (and while dungeon tanking may require more attention/interaction out of me in WoW, this really isn't about what I was playing). Definitely an early night tonight. And it looks like gaming offline tomorrow night. It's kinda short notice, but I think enough people responded that we're a go. Watched District 9 today. I greatly enjoyed it. It occurs to me that most "science fiction" movies these days are action movies with a futuristic setting. In truth, there's plenty of action in this movie, too. From where I sat, though it felt a little deeper - and I liked that. Last night's WoW-heavy night was intense and kind of awesome. Use of Vent. Something like six or seven instance runs. Several upgrades for folks. Good times. And with that, I'm out. Good night, all.

Unsuccessful attempt to get database replication going last night, so I need to try again tonight. The AC unit is, once again, tripping the breaker leading to an office that's about 80 degrees right now. Such things lead to grumpiness and annoyance. While I retained skepticism, I'm am not really surprised to see most of the recently "leaked" news about the next WoW expansion has been announced as true. Five level cap increase? Eh. Guild talent trees? Strange, but I want to hear more. Remaking the "Old World?" Whoa. That's... actually pretty awesome, and something that's probably due in the game. Deathwing as the big bad? I don't know. He has history, but doesn't strike me as more a threat than the Lich King or Yogg Saron. But I will so be remaking Jhazza (currently a low-level shaman) as a worgen druid. No question.

I remember reading and enjoying Neuromancer . I find myself wondering if I would feel the same about it now as I did then. Perhaps I should reread it and find out. This comes up because I just read The Difference Engine , another "genre-defining" novel by William Gibson (and Bruce Sterling). Rather than cyberpunk, this one's considered one of the major establishing books of steampunk - Victorian-era, alternate history with advanced (for the period) technology. It's very into the setting and society, and it's good at that. It's flavorful. And yet, I didn't get really into it as much as other novels I've read lately. The characters just didn't draw me in as much. Just as I was starting to get interested in one of the protagonists' arcs and the characters involved, it ended. The story shifted to someone else. It's very interesting as an examination of what could have been, and paints a relatively detailed setting, but the specific tale (or

I'm done with Trial of the Champion on normal mode. Which isn't to say I'm never going back, but I was only after The Black Heart , and I got it yesterday... after a few attempts. In the morning, lacking online guildmates, I answered a call for a tank. I don't usually join PUGs, but with the stuff released in the last patch, the rewards make it more attractive. Still, PUG-ing is hit or miss. Sometimes both. The group was slow to get moving, as we had to wait a couple minutes for the healer to log in and by then we had booted one of the DPS for being AFK, and had to find another. We finally got in and... there were some deaths at the post-joust transition, but this stemmed largely from a lack of communication. Two or three people thought the plan was to run out and forcibly reset the bosses on foot. Only they didn't tell the rest of us. After that, things went okay and we cleared out the instance with no luck on my part for the drops. We went in a second time,

There are, naturally, different levels of expertise when dealing with things like computers. I keep them working for a living, and I don't consider myself top of the heap by any means. What gets me, though, is the class of people who know just enough to be dangerous. We have a handful at work. They're the people who espouse the virtues of non-Windows operating systems, not saying "well, I've really only worked with Macs," but rather "Linux/(other OS) is so superior and awesome and cleaner!" These people definitely know more than I do in some areas, as I work primarily with Windows. And yet, these are the same people who are most likely to break something. They start disabling services and tinkering with startup options. They install little monitoring programs and whatnot. All of these little tweaks make it twice as hard to diagnose a problem when they come and say something isn't working - which, for serious OS problems, seems to occur more often

As a roleplayer, I try to make characters that fit their settings. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I feel rather lost when I'm making a new character and feel I have insufficient framework. That wasn't always the case. There was a time my characters and their backgrounds were created "whole cloth" and sometimes required a shoe horn to fit in a setting. I'm not sure whether to say I "grew up" as a roleplayer, or I lost creativity along the way. I do feel it's a definite result of my experiences along the way. I feel characters that fit in a setting work better, even if it means more effort at the beginning to explain and define that setting. And I've had some... bad experiences here and there stemming from character creation independent of world building. My first real experience with Exalted bordered on miserable because the background I submitted wasn't looked at until the last minute and then was deemed largely impossible base

I'm not going to delve into this fully at the moment, but I was asked to look into feral druid DPS rotations. This post seems to be fairly updated, and contains a priority list for the build that may work: http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=54761.0 So... Patch 3.2 for WoW is a big deal as far as equipment goes. Prior, my main was about as well-geared as I could expect until getting into 10-man raids. While the guild has been growing, it's not that size yet. Then the patch hit and suddenly there are upgrades available for almost every gear slot available via the new 5-main dungeon (mostly on heroic), Emblems of Conquest (now dropping from all heroic dungeons), and Emblems of Triumph (I won't see the drops anytime soon, but can earn 0 or 2 per day by doing the heroic dungeon daily quest). It's been one week now. My schedule has limited how much I've been able to do. I currently have 28 Emblems of Conquest, 6 Emblems of Triumph, and precisely zero tank

Y'know, I've stayed in a variety of motels and hotels over the years, some very cheap, some less so. Two truisms come to mind: One, no matter how comfortable, a foreign bed tends to take some getting used to. Various sounds of the room and air conditioning are a factor, too, but I mostly blame the difference in bed. It seems to take me several days to be comfortable and at easy enough to sleep well , by which time I'm usually going home. Two, ventillation is almost always a problem. I suppose I haven't been to truly high-end places, but most motels/hotels I see these days don't even have a patio in the rooms and the rooms will get stuffy if you have a couple people in there for a couple days. Oh, the air conditioner might keep the temperature down, but it'll still feel humid. And at a convention, this gets to be a hotel-wide issue, not just in the rooms.

Quick post from a Holiday Inn in Albuquerque. I'm just the ride. Roommate's boarding a 7:15 am flight ultimately to Hawaii for the week, and I'll be back homeward (albeit possibly after a nap and one or two stops around town). Have to pick her up next weekend, though that looks like a single-day affair. Four hours is... long enough of a drive that I'd rather not do it regularly, and it'll be awful quiet coming back. Not too bad, though. We hit Page One and Active Imagination. Depressingly, not one RPG or sci-fi/fantasy novel said "buy me!" to me. We also watched GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra . Now, bear in mind that I went in with little expectation beyond action, some familiar quotes/names, and a dose of cheese. I was actually fairly impressed. I'm not saying it was a masterpiece of filmmaking, but... it didn't suck . Sure, it's over-the-top. Sure, there's plenty of cheese. Sure, there are things overused and some things underplayed. There

Managed to sample the new Trial of the Champion last night on normal and heroic. Oof. Learning fights and PUG-ing again. Whee. Well, Kyn was there too, and a rogue in the group at least had information about the fights. Round One First, you mount up on jousting horses and talk to the fellow in the center. Three horde (opposing faction) champions ride out, each with three one-shield minions. The minions will attack in waves and have to be jousted down, not unlike the dailies. Then the three champions take their turn at you. More jousting. If you're unhorsed, you're temporarily stunned, but may be able to get to a horse and mount back up. You may get trampled as you try, though, with knockdown/damage/stun. Similarly, the champaions will do the same, and you have to trample them while fighting the others to keep them from getting new mounts (which seemed to put them around half original health, though I could be wrong). Once they're all unhorsed, the tank needs to dismoun

Whee. Patch day in WoW. We'll see how long 'til the servers are back up and running. I'm not surprised the maintenance period got extended. I probably would be surprised if things aren't running when I get home. I'm eager to do a number of things. I want to see what new dailies there are, I want to start collecting Emblems of Conquest and Triumph, I want to get my death knight airborne at newly-reduced prices. Aiee. So much to do. So, as I said, I made a character at someone's request to be a mortal "chosen" for one of the gods of Nimby, Faran. Getting the character made was a little bit of a trial, as that player seems more the sort to have ideas than to put them down anywhere. I had to ask him a number of questions about the race he created and such in order to piece a character together. I ended up with someone who is reasonably dedicated, but very ambitious. She serves a god of "desire," but doesn't interpret that as "lust&quo

I happily milled herbs collected the last week or so with my warlock doing inscription yesterday, and made three Darkmoon cards, since I had materials. What I didn't expect was getting an Ace of Nobles, which finished out a Nobles Deck. This gets traded in to the Darkmoon Faire for a Darkmoon Card: Greatness trinket that's pretty good for most characters in some way. Depending on which version is chosen, the trinket gives +90 to Strength, Intellect, Agility, or Spirit. Any of the four versions has a chance to proc a temporary +300 bonus to whichever of those four traits is highest on the character. My first one went to Sashayla, with the Strength version. That doesn't do a whole lot for a tank - it's more damage blocked on a block, and it's more damage done, but it doesn't increase survivability much - but it's probably one of the best trinkets I could hope for when she's playing DPS, as Retribution paladins get most advantage from Strength. So now