Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Not so much about the in-game event, but it's that time of year. So we rocked Trial of the Crusader. Then we got put in our place by Onyxia and Marrowgar. And this last weekend's raid window was... rather quiet. With some people's schedules complicated with the holidays, I didn't expect much. We did manage to pull together and down two Ulduar bosses, but it was late and only those two. Flame Leviathan is easy enough on normal mode that we can still "brute force" the encounter and not send anyone onto the boss. XT-002 is still something of a pain. Maybe it was lacking a third healer, or having some less-experienced level 80's or maybe the fight's just that much harder, but it seemed to give us more trouble than most of ToC10 and we weren't even close to triggering the hard mode. I'm... not sure I like Ulduar. It's huge, with something like 13(14) bosses and varying degrees of trash. Maybe it's me, but the fights feel disproportionate

So among my Christmas gifts this year was the Ghostbusters video game. I haven't tried the one-off missions or multiplayer, but the career mode is a fun little romp through the setting. It's short (I want to say maybe eight hours, if that), and lacks a little of the depth I might have expected, but high on nostalgia value. Seeing and hearing most of the characters from the first movie is a blast and may well be what really makes the game. For the most part, it's a third-person shooter, where a third or maybe half the "shooting" you do involves wielding proton streams and traps to capture ghosts. It does seem a little odd, as things escalate, that amidst enemies you just blast there pop up ones that must be captured, but I suppose that's part of the job. The proton packs get a video game overhaul, gaining a miniature version of the second movie's slime throwers, a "freezing" ray/spray, and what might be described as a particle machine gun mod

'tis time for me to pack up and head over to my parents' place to stay the night and enjoy Christmas morning. May this be a happy time for all.

I have no vacation plans in the foreseeable future. Estrella and Further Confusion are both out for 2010. Financially, one might be workable, but the first few months of the year are to involve serious hardware/software upgrades at work (we'll see when it actually gets rolling), so I'm not getting any extended vacation time off in that period. We'll see how that all goes, but it'll be a while before I'm going anywhere major.

"Life changing?" No. Good? Quite. It's visually stunning. The 3D works well, though I'm not sure I can say I feel that's necessary in some way for movies. I didn't feel the story was especially original or special, but it was told well. It's a sci-fi movie I'd freely recommend to just about everyone, and that's pretty cool in and of itself. Just about everything I'd read about the movie is true, or at least I can see where the comments come from. Fern Gully comparisons seem a little stretched to me, though there's definitely a "nature good, technology bad" thing going on. The comparisons to Dances with Wolves seem a lot more accurate to me (in terms of length, too). "Unobtainium?" Really? I read this in reviews and thought the reviewers were being witty. That's really the name of the stuff the humans want? Really? Ugh. Pandora is pretty. Too universally pretty. The amount of bioluminescent stuff is... distra

I find that I don't like this time of year, and I'm not sure how much I can actually blame Christmas. I mean, it's a disruption to the routine, but it's not inherently bad. It's usually pleasant (even if it commonly means online places are relatively dead for a couple days). But even all that aside, the weeks around the solstice are hard because of the deepening winter. I find it a lot harder to motivate in the morning. I get home and it's already dark. I miss out on what daylight hours there are by being indoors. There is a distinct psychological effect to short days, even this far south. Bleh. I met with the other HOA board members earlier this week. The coffee house we were planning to meet at was closing, so we instead chatted at a bar/restaurant across the street. I can't say we accomplished much, save sharing some thoughts on the situation. None of it's good, of course. @whee. The "best" part might be that we can't expect any wor

With more than one person recently, I've had cause to discuss my observation about characters and how their goals, or lack thereof, seem connected to the richness of the game's story... Waaay back when, it seemed pretty normal to my eyes as player and GM that PCs frequently go with the flow. That often seems the state of newer players, and some people always stick with that. Evil warlord terrorizes the town? Well, the PCs go to stop him for glory, gold, or good. Then... the respond to the next threat. For the GM, that's really easy to manage. It's easy to tell whatever story might have been envisioned for a campaign. And, yeah, everyone can be perfectly happy with that. No argument. But... as I was exposed to more games, I started seeing some that actively encouraged PCs who made goals and pushed at the storyline rather than simply being carried along with it. By this time, I'd seen players who gave their characters goals, and I'd reacted to that by alter

How much attention does a game deserve outside the game itself? We all face a balancing act, and life is about priorities. (Video/roleplaying) games, sports, whatever hobbies and interests all need to be weighed against work, family, and home. If you can't keep the electricity on, after all, there's no chance to play WoW. And yet, at lot of games "want" some outside effort. Spending time organizing a guild, researching strategies, and looking at gear options can make WoW progress much smoother. Discussing characters and plotlines between roleplaying sessions can keep interest up and make for greater depth in the game. Even standard video games all have FAQs and forums these days. There's a lot of opportunity to glean just a little more about any given game even outside it. I usually derive some enjoyment from roleplaying sessions. I think I got a lot more, however, back when the games were something I would discuss with a friend at lunch or trade e-mail over

Sometimes, I find my own psyche isn't a comfortable place to be. WoW patch 3.3 went live this last week. I never would have thought it's be such an annoyance to me. Several of my friends/guildmates have been making extensive use of the ease of the updated LFG feature to run dungeons like crazy. "Man, I have to get home and earn more emblems," was in fact heard by me this week. The level of obsession has been... a little nuts in my book. I'm typically pretty pleased if I complete one or two dungeons a day. Unfortunately, this is where my competitive side kicks in. "You're falling behind," it tells me, "and you won't be best-geared in your guild anymore." I try to tell that little voice to shove it, but such niggling thoughts aren't so easy quashed. So even though it's mostly internal, I feel like I'm being pushed to do more than I want to do. So far, I've resisted giving in to the siren's call of dumping all my f

You know, you go through life and develop a certain understanding or expectation of how some things work. Through media, through schooling, these processes are painted in your mind's eye. And then you see them happen for the first time, and your experience can be so radically different. That's generalization. In specific, I reference this ongoing, painfully unfinished, going-to-stretch-into-next-year-at-least condo repair project. Sometime in 2008, our property management company representative called the board together and said, "Hey, that was a lot of damage from last winter. That's bad. The insurer for the buildings is threatening to drop coverage if something isn't started soon." I wanted to involve the whole HOA, knowing this would be an expense for everyone. But there seemed a pressure to get something approved and proceeding ASAP. So we got bids. Well, she got bids. She really didn't present much in the way of details, save for one that seemed

... and yeah, I'm so not going to work today. There's going to be plenty of effort put into shoveling things here, but it's not worth the struggle to get to work (and potentially to get home again). I rarely see this much dumped this fast. Plus I'm still feeling wiped from yesterday. Snow day.

That's a lot of snow that's fallen today. I shoveled in the morning. I shoveled in the afternoon. I still came home to almost a foot in placed I'd cleared. Nevermind that I easily high-centered the car trying to get out of the parking lot at work and spent at least 45 minutes shoveling around it and inching my way back until I could get some momentum and get out. Then a slow, careful ride home. Thankfully, someone had plowed the drive lane at home, but... not the parking spaced themselves, so I had to clear that out before I could pull in (and expect to be able to leave later). And I'm told the "worst" of this storm is supposed to be between midnight and 6 AM. Ugh. If it's really that bad, I may well just stay home tomorrow. I wouldn't be the only one, school's already canceled for Tuesday.

With 3.3 all but assured to be released tomorrow, I'm taking a look at what loot to expect down the line. There's a lot of stuff to be sure. The new 5-man dungeons drop gear that's on par with 10-man Ulduar on normal and higher on heroic, so making a push to get through them looks like the new way to gear up. And, of course, the emblems are shifting, so EoTs will be much easier to gain. Whee! From 5-man dungeons (232 heroic, 219 normal): Rimefang's Claw : 232. This will likely become my new tank weapon for a good long while. It actually isn't a huge upgrade over the Peacekeeper Blade I have now, but it's enough of one to want. And it looks less... gnomishly mechanical. ;) Fossilized Ammonite Choker : 232. This neckpiece looks pretty good, and should likely replace my 226 one, even if I think it means losing some hit. Ick's Rotting Thumb : 232. Viable avoidance trinket I suppose. It may make my Valor Medal of the First War obsolete, but it doesn'

Freshly switched back to Retribution off-spec, I'm seeing need to collect epic gems again. One of the easiest ways to do this seems to be accumulation of honor via Wintergrasp weekly quests. So this morning I queued up for defense. It was a reasonably quick loss. Pity, but it netted me somewhere around 12000 honor points, enough for one gem, two with the 8000 I had sitting around already. But... I started off the battle going to a tower cannon. I've done this dozens of times before (mostly with my priest when gathering marks for a healer hood). This time, however, there was a Horde warlock on top of the tower above me, nuking the heck out of my cannon and (in)conveniently out of reach of most of my attacks. WTF? I guess this is a new trick since they allowed flying over the zone, or something - put yourself in a strategic location before the battle start. That... kinda sucked and felt really, really cheap. I used to actually feel useful at a cannon position. *lesigh* Probab

At what point does malware go from insidious, invasive software you can't see coming to it's the user's fault ? I don't expect coworkers to say "oh, don't mind this, I'll run the scans and clean it," but I'm really sick of "I didn't do anything!" when there's about a 99% chance that they did something . If they deleted suspect/unknown e-mail, and kept their web browsing to necessary sites, I probably wouldn't be spending hours disinfecting computers.

And not really in a bad way. I was starting to think I'd never see a new shield, but last weekend our Auriaya kill netted me a Shieldwall of the Breaker. The big face and glowy eyes is sort of neat, but it sadly doesn't look as awesome as the Royal Crest of Lordaeron now adorning my bank. Also, I was able to get in touch with a nice smith on the server who has all those fancy 3.2 drop patterns I don't and get myself made a pair of Saronite Swordbreakers from him. It looks like those may very well last me a looong time from what I've seen of the 3.3 loot lists. And speaking of patch 3.3, many sources are pointing at next week. It seems likely. The PTR reports have slowed to a trickle, with no major changes in the last build. If they wait much longer, the holiday interferes, and Blizzard has stated they don't want that. I may not put money on it, but it seems highly likely to me. New 5-man dungeons, a new raid, a bump up in emblems, and the new LFG function. I