Lives, Real and Virtual
Another year winding down and... yeah, not much to say about that itself, I guess.
Been feeling sort of out of it most of the day. Hit the ground running at work. More laptops to set up. More things to work out for the phone system. More things to do for the circulation software upgrade. No shortage of things going on there.
We had our annual HOA meeting last Thursday night. It went more smoothly than last year, but that was pretty much a given. The buildings are in decent, if not perfect, shape. We've a loan to pay off, but no looming expenses otherwise and no contractors to argue with. The most vocal and hostile of our membership were not in attendance. So it was over pretty quick. My term on the board lasts another year by default and I think by then I'd like some time off - but with no one wanting to volunteer for the positions, I don't know if I'll get it.
Almost immediately after (that night? the next morning?) we were contacted by an owner complaining that their tenants were complaining one of their parking spaces had been plowed in "again." Ugh. They had mentioned this before and my reaction was "okay, we'll ask the snow removal guys to not do that." But we've only had one big storm this season and really their complaint is more along the lines of "still" than "again," no matter how they phrased it. As I didn't want to toss HOA money at getting the crew to come back by to clear out less than a full parking space, I took it upon myself to fix the situation. An hour Friday and a couple Saturday saw me blister a thumb, bruise and strain my arms, and dig down through piled/melted snow to the last few inches of ice above the pavement. Not perfect, but parkable - and I've seen them park there since. Sometimes... you just have to do something, I guess.
I did it because I felt it needed doing, it was the best way to get it done now without incurring unneeded expenses, and I felt I was capable (though I knew it would suck). I almost blew off the complaint when the owner started pulling the "I pay good money for snow removal" bit. Somehow, that argument just falls flat when he's one of the two people most behind in their payment of dues. I just don't have much tolerance for that sort of self-entitled attitude these days.
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WoW is still in an odd spot. Saturday saw us poke our heads in at Magmaw in Blackwing Descent. We died. A lot. I still think we're not quite ready to be raiding Cataclysm content. The real frustrating part about it, though, is not knowing why.
Of the ten people we can pull together from a raid (which is probably about 12-13 actual people, but they aren't all on at once), a few are above the recommended gear level and a few are below. That, one would think, might even out. I presume we all know our class/spec reasonably well, though there's probably room for improvement for all of us.
But I just won't know why we're not clicking as a functional raid, and I'm not sure how to know. There's no information I can point to to prove lesser-geared members are insufficient, or player X is not being efficient, or our group composition is hosing us. I want something to grasp at to improve, but I don't know how to get the information for it. I haven't been running the World of Logs app in the background as I did at the end of Wrath, but then I was never able to make much of that data and I don't recall anyone else ever telling me they found it useful either. Even if the right numbers were there, I never figured out how to interpret them.
I am subtly bothered by some shifts in roles among our members. Ultimately, I'd like to see people playing what they enjoy, but it bothers me a little that our other primary Wrath tank is now usually playing dps or heals when I think they'd still prefer to tank, but aren't feeling confident enough for it. And we have one of our best (and most obsessive) dps players off-tanking, which feels like a waste of their expertise.
So... I don't know about raiding overall.
Heroic 5-man dungeons are still challenging. I have noticed them getting easier with some groups. Though inclusion of a lesser-geared alt or two can make them difficult again. I'm realizing I actually haven't seen them all on heroic all the way through. A recent run through Vortex Pinnacle seemed harder than I remembered - and it turned out I'd only done it on normal. I haven't even seen heroic Shadowfang Keep. We started my first run of heroic Grim Batol (I'd done it once on normal), but that ended up in failure at the second boss.
I tried out my paladin's DPS spec while doing some dailies and... wow, that's so alien to me. I'm still tempted to go Prot/Prot or maybe Prot/Holy. Retribution plays odd. While Protection has a rhythm of building up holy power and spending it, Retribution is so random with it. Due to talents, a lot of abilities grant a variable amount of holy power, so you can't rely on them as much and have to react quicker when you get a good streak. Ret's mastery is a really counter-intuitive change to be able to use a holy power ability at max power for less cost, which throws the timing off even more. I guess I could get used to it, but I can't even remotely claim to understand it (much less perform it) well at this point.
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Guild Wars was sort of quiet this week. Most of the others were helping someone in early Prophecies content that I'd... sort of just as soon not see again. I've been working at the Hearts of the North stuff, which is mostly-single-player content that plays out some story after the end of the last campaign. Single player, but not quite solo. You track down items, each one unlocking a mission where you take control of Keiran Thackeray. So whatever you normally do, you get to play a ranger variant. And you get an assassin NPC along for the ride.
I played through the first one and this seemed simple enough. I wondered why people said it was difficult or unpleasant. Then on the second quest, I died (and thus had to restart the entire mission) multiple times because an enemy got lucky or the NPC didn't join in the fight, or whatever. Normally, if one person dies another can rez, but here it's "game over." Very unforgiving - and thus I begin to understand what dislike there is among other players for it.
I'm still cautiously optimistic about Guild Wars 2. Mechanically, it looks more interesting to me than The Old Republic, though time will tell for both games.
Been feeling sort of out of it most of the day. Hit the ground running at work. More laptops to set up. More things to work out for the phone system. More things to do for the circulation software upgrade. No shortage of things going on there.
We had our annual HOA meeting last Thursday night. It went more smoothly than last year, but that was pretty much a given. The buildings are in decent, if not perfect, shape. We've a loan to pay off, but no looming expenses otherwise and no contractors to argue with. The most vocal and hostile of our membership were not in attendance. So it was over pretty quick. My term on the board lasts another year by default and I think by then I'd like some time off - but with no one wanting to volunteer for the positions, I don't know if I'll get it.
Almost immediately after (that night? the next morning?) we were contacted by an owner complaining that their tenants were complaining one of their parking spaces had been plowed in "again." Ugh. They had mentioned this before and my reaction was "okay, we'll ask the snow removal guys to not do that." But we've only had one big storm this season and really their complaint is more along the lines of "still" than "again," no matter how they phrased it. As I didn't want to toss HOA money at getting the crew to come back by to clear out less than a full parking space, I took it upon myself to fix the situation. An hour Friday and a couple Saturday saw me blister a thumb, bruise and strain my arms, and dig down through piled/melted snow to the last few inches of ice above the pavement. Not perfect, but parkable - and I've seen them park there since. Sometimes... you just have to do something, I guess.
I did it because I felt it needed doing, it was the best way to get it done now without incurring unneeded expenses, and I felt I was capable (though I knew it would suck). I almost blew off the complaint when the owner started pulling the "I pay good money for snow removal" bit. Somehow, that argument just falls flat when he's one of the two people most behind in their payment of dues. I just don't have much tolerance for that sort of self-entitled attitude these days.
-
WoW is still in an odd spot. Saturday saw us poke our heads in at Magmaw in Blackwing Descent. We died. A lot. I still think we're not quite ready to be raiding Cataclysm content. The real frustrating part about it, though, is not knowing why.
Of the ten people we can pull together from a raid (which is probably about 12-13 actual people, but they aren't all on at once), a few are above the recommended gear level and a few are below. That, one would think, might even out. I presume we all know our class/spec reasonably well, though there's probably room for improvement for all of us.
But I just won't know why we're not clicking as a functional raid, and I'm not sure how to know. There's no information I can point to to prove lesser-geared members are insufficient, or player X is not being efficient, or our group composition is hosing us. I want something to grasp at to improve, but I don't know how to get the information for it. I haven't been running the World of Logs app in the background as I did at the end of Wrath, but then I was never able to make much of that data and I don't recall anyone else ever telling me they found it useful either. Even if the right numbers were there, I never figured out how to interpret them.
I am subtly bothered by some shifts in roles among our members. Ultimately, I'd like to see people playing what they enjoy, but it bothers me a little that our other primary Wrath tank is now usually playing dps or heals when I think they'd still prefer to tank, but aren't feeling confident enough for it. And we have one of our best (and most obsessive) dps players off-tanking, which feels like a waste of their expertise.
So... I don't know about raiding overall.
Heroic 5-man dungeons are still challenging. I have noticed them getting easier with some groups. Though inclusion of a lesser-geared alt or two can make them difficult again. I'm realizing I actually haven't seen them all on heroic all the way through. A recent run through Vortex Pinnacle seemed harder than I remembered - and it turned out I'd only done it on normal. I haven't even seen heroic Shadowfang Keep. We started my first run of heroic Grim Batol (I'd done it once on normal), but that ended up in failure at the second boss.
I tried out my paladin's DPS spec while doing some dailies and... wow, that's so alien to me. I'm still tempted to go Prot/Prot or maybe Prot/Holy. Retribution plays odd. While Protection has a rhythm of building up holy power and spending it, Retribution is so random with it. Due to talents, a lot of abilities grant a variable amount of holy power, so you can't rely on them as much and have to react quicker when you get a good streak. Ret's mastery is a really counter-intuitive change to be able to use a holy power ability at max power for less cost, which throws the timing off even more. I guess I could get used to it, but I can't even remotely claim to understand it (much less perform it) well at this point.
-
Guild Wars was sort of quiet this week. Most of the others were helping someone in early Prophecies content that I'd... sort of just as soon not see again. I've been working at the Hearts of the North stuff, which is mostly-single-player content that plays out some story after the end of the last campaign. Single player, but not quite solo. You track down items, each one unlocking a mission where you take control of Keiran Thackeray. So whatever you normally do, you get to play a ranger variant. And you get an assassin NPC along for the ride.
I played through the first one and this seemed simple enough. I wondered why people said it was difficult or unpleasant. Then on the second quest, I died (and thus had to restart the entire mission) multiple times because an enemy got lucky or the NPC didn't join in the fight, or whatever. Normally, if one person dies another can rez, but here it's "game over." Very unforgiving - and thus I begin to understand what dislike there is among other players for it.
I'm still cautiously optimistic about Guild Wars 2. Mechanically, it looks more interesting to me than The Old Republic, though time will tell for both games.
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