Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Probably spent 15 minutes or so on WoW Saturday night, as I was informed some folks would be gone. Less of a turnout than I expected given how late I heard about it, but so it goes. And nothing in GW Sunday, as we've finished Winds of Change and that leaves... uhh... errr... yeah... Achievement-hunting maybe, though I really care very, very little about that. Stuff granted in the sequel is not going to be what makes or breaks the game for me. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that Guild Wars 2 will stand or fall (at least in my own interest) based largely on how the game looks after a couple months of play. Actually, there's little risk in that prediction, as it's pretty much true with any MMO. Players level one or two characters, probably enjoy the story therein (such as it may or may not be) and then are faced with what the "endgame" holds. GW2 is betting a large bit of that on its dynamic events as the primary gameplay factor outsi

So it sounded like a good plan , but it appears Gabefinder won't be able to go now that her taxes are showing a payment needed rather than refund owed due to details over the last year. Well... I fully intend to go regardless. I've booked rooms in Anaheim, I've secured the time off... I don't want to let that slip by. Going alone, I'm pretty sure I'll have to add a night somewhere along the way going down and back, but that's doable. I really wanted the company. And a chance for her to see Disneyland having never been would be really nice, but even if I'm committed to handling all the base costs myself, the thought of paying for food and admission for a second person over several days is... a bit much. And even if I could technically swing that (which is questionable in itself), there might be an uncomfortable sense of indebtedness and that wouldn't be much fun. So... disappointing, but what can you do? Press on...

In WoW , I got to see the Firelands for the first time in a couple months. Yay. With a couple people pulled from cross-server to join in, we downed five bosses in the evening. It wasn't exactly smooth or fast, but it's nice to do something and it got our new-to-current-raid-healing healers some practice. At least a couple upgrades were had for people. And some of us inch closer to exalted reputation there. In GW , we're done. Again. Finished out the last handful of missions for Winds of Change. At least one one messy and harder than it should have been due to lack of understanding in advance on our part on how to properly defend an area, but we didn't wipe. That one mission was tough, but more forgiving than some of the earlier ones. Next week? Uh... no idea. Talk about doing an Underworld conquest run. Me, I just want GW2 to be out already. Don't want more hype, just the game. I did go ahead and let my SWTOR subscription lapse for now. I've actually spent

I generally don't think demos are worth commenting on greatly themselves, but ME3's got me thinking. Oh, technically it looks pretty good. It seems to behave about like ME2. What bugs me is the story setup in the intro. Details of the Mass Effect games' beginnings, so I don't really consider these thoughts to be very spoilery. ME2 drew me in immediately. Watching the Normandy go down was emotional. Watching Shepard die and be brought back gave the feeling this was a big thing. Admittedly, I really wish the game had given more time to the repercussions of his/her being rebuilt, but the story had me right from there. Reconnecting with my favorite characters from the first game was icing on the cake. ME3 starts with Earth being invaded by the Reapers. Okay, story-wise we knew that was coming. It sets the tension and threat. It gives an immediate fight for survival sort of like the Normandy's destruction. So why does this bother me? This bothers me a lot becaus

First up, Blood of the Demon , sequel to a novel I read about a year ago. Some progression, some revelations, but... eh... not improving my view of the series. Maybe lessening it slightly. It's a little heavy on the romance-y relationship aspects, playing the female lead between two males-of-interest. I still sort of like the demons here, though I didn't see any major reveals about them and their place in things as with the previous book. So the series goes back on my "maybe" list going forward. Then there was Angels of Darkness , an anthology. The first story had vampires working for angels in territorial control over real world areas - I understand the author has a series of this. Waaay too romance-heavy for me, with two newly-met characters having deep reactions to one another and... yeah. The story itself wasn't enough to win me over. Meh, at best. The fourth and final story in there, on the other hand, went fairly heavy on the romance, but it was between

So, we got our first significant (I believe) milestone - another skill point and a chance to rearrange a few things if desired, but not actually another point of refresh. To me, this technically occurred when the group reached safety after the ferry raid at the end of the previous session. For better or worse, advancement in the system seems fairly slow by default. Our other wizard player missed the one session that got me thinking outside the safe-and-sound box as far as casting goes. My instinct with evocation is to not go over Conviction/Discipline, so as to keep the chance of cleanly casting good with only one mental stress as a payment. But working around the ferry, and especially fleeing at the end, got me thinking "well...it's only stress and consequences." If you need a big effect, that may well be worth it - better to take down someone who's going to beat you to a pulp than plink at them while the inflict... stress and consequences on you. Casting over Co

So another part of my lack of drive in WoW has to do with gearing. Back when 4.3 was coming out, I went through and looked at what gear options there would be. And now... Well, I don't have them all, but I have filled all the slots where the valor point option gives primary defensive stats. I could be valor capping every week (as I was for a little while) to fill out all possible slots with 397 gear. I could be doing LFR to try for 384 tier pieces. But... why? I'm well over the threshold for starting in Dragon Soul, and that's the only place that might be at all challenging from a gear perspective. I'm better-geared than all but two or three guildmates as it is. While I try to be ahead as best I can in case I'm needed, if the guild isn't actively raiding then there's no need for cutting-edge, raid-level gear. And while I was really psyched about the paladin PVP set look, the available blue coloring isn't nearly as striking as the (requires arena rat

In a weird place at the moment. Weird, yet normal? WoW remains on the brink, yet this seems like the first weekend out guildleader saw what I've been seeing for weeks - that our current roster just isn't up to "real" (in the sense of pushing into relevant progression) raiding. Come our usual time, we have about 6 people on - which we ran a few 5-man dungeons with this time around. After an hour or so we might cap out at around 8 level 85 characters. With just a little luck, that includes two tanks and two healers. If everyone were rock-star perfect, we could probably do normal 10-mans with that. People might have improved via valor point gear, but from what I saw the last time we were in Dragon Soul: 1) the currently-available healers probably can't successfully dual-heal Firelands/Dragon Soul and 2) we'd also probably be light on DPS. It's something I'd be willing to try, but I don't expect it would end happily. This time around, we PUGged a c

Should be doing offline gaming tonight. I'm not sure the opportunity will arise, but I sort of want my wizard to incinerate something (and that's not even the violent lashing out that it sounds like). It appears we'll be missing one or two regulars, so I'm not even sure if we'll be roleplaying, but it'll be something. My experiment on Furryfaire is not going overly well in my perception. My character has manage to fall in with two (of the half dozen or so) other present, but it's still hard to make any solid connection with them. One bounces between off-putting suggestive affection and "aren't I just cute and kid-like?!" while producing crystals with magical properties out of thin air. The other seems a little mentally-flighty and appears to be able to paint things into temporary reality. While I acknowledge making a shy techie hoomiku is not the best way to be a social butterfly and make friends, being around those two is a good way to feel

This week's been a blur with work. Monday wasn't too bad. Tuesday through Thursday were almost full-day training sessions on new circulation software. For the most part, it actually went well. We got most of the usage covered. Most of it made sense to the right people. And most everything worked, even if the data set we were using is far from final. Mostly. Wednesday morning, after having set everything up downstairs, I was told we'd have to move because of a "small electrical fire." Uhh... So scrambling to relocate all the equipment set us back a little. It turns out the ballast in one of the fluorescent lights had shorted or something, melting plastic and making a bit of a mess as well as a very bad smell. I'm not sure if there was actually flame involved. This was frustrating, but what can you do? There was also one piece of the admin tool we were looking at that was responding painfully slowly for reasons we have yet to figure out. And another where

I pretty much ignored the Superbowl. And got up today to a respectable amount of snow on the ground - thankfully light enough that it hasn't been back-breaking to clear. WoW was an evening of dungeon-running for me. Our guildleader got in a Firelands raid to get a little bit more progress toward Dragonwrath. An hour or two after our usual start time, we had a good number of people on (8 85's and 2-3 lower-level), but I think it would have been a rough group to raid with, light on the healing, and several people weren't real interested anyway. The vague possibility is there. GW was the Canthan New Year, so we did a few holiday quests and hung out for the finale, opening a bunch of prizes to get... not one celestial dragon so far as I know. Ah well. No telling what we'll do next week. Winds of Change side quests that I didn't pay any attention to? Some more time with SWTOR , mostly solo but with a little paired trooper/smuggler play. There seem fewer non-inclu

Okay, some of these crack me up, mostly ones that apply in my own case. So "begins" another year for me. Yesterday actually kind of sucked until about five, but with some well-wishing it turned around into a fairly pleasant evening. Not much else to say at the moment.

... simmer with a low-burning rage all day if I want. Apparently. I don't know whether to actually say I'm pissed , but I'm definitely grouchy after getting caught up in the perpetually-renewing conflict between certain friends. That led to me going to bed in a bad mood. Which led to me getting up in a bad mood. Which has led to me going through my day - you guessed it - in a bad mood. He feels unsupported, undermined, and needled. They feel picked on and threatened. None of them seem to realize (or at least to be willing to admit) how they're aggrevating each other, and everyone's probably taking things too personally and lashing out in their own ways. I don't care "who started it." Hell, there is no who started it anymore, it's been going on for years. Ultimately, I suppose it's just a clash of personalities - a situation where, for whatever reason, they simply can't/won't understand one another enough to get along in more than