Wussing Out and Stuff
While I had intended to ride my bike in to work to avoid the downtown traffic issues completely, even going so far as to cover the distance yesterday to make sure I wasn't too out of shape and that my bike was fully functional, the total cloud cover this morning gave me pause. A further look at the forecast with possible thunderstorms around 8 am and 5 pm and... yeah, no. Back to the car. Ah well.
Saturday's raid night went fine. Knocked out Alizabal and all of Dragon Soul without any real issue. We lost got a little out of sync on Ultraxion and had a death or two at the end, then lost someone on Spine during a roll, but I think we still one-shotted everything and even single-tanked Madness (whee, two-hander waggling!). No time in Firelands, though, so unless our guild leader finds a PUG group to gather essences with, there's no real progress toward Dragonwrath this week. That's still on a tight time table compared to MoP release, and will still require a Ragnaros kill to pull off.
So, Saturday the pre-purchasers should be able to get into GW2 (assuming server stability), before the official opening on the 28th. So I'm going to need to figure out what I'm actually going to be playing there. I still like the concept of a charr guardian, but I just wasn't getting into the gameplay of it. Feh.
And the 28th is also "unlearn what you have learned" day in WoW, with patch 5.0.4, which will drop in all the mechanic changes (but not new zones, pandas, or increased level caps) from MoP. It's possible the Theramore battle will open up in some way, but I've been avoiding details of that. Usually there's some in-game event(s) leading up to an expansion release.
After someone online mentioned it, I watched a playthrough of the first couple chapters of Dust: An Elysian Tail. I remember reading about this indie game that "hit it big" and ended up an XBox Live Arcade release. Now I wish it weren't exclusive. The cute, furry art style could be a plus or minus. The gameplay doesn't show a lot of variety, but it seems to be quick, responsive, and action-packed. The characters and story... well, that's what I'm a sucker for, and what I want to see more of. It's light at times, making references to other games and media, and then sometimes it's very serious. From what I've seen, though, it seems to balance those differences in tone well. Alas, with no X360, I shan't actually get a chance to play it myself.
Let's see... recent reading has been light. There was Magic Lost, Trouble Found, a little fantasy novel that felt a tiny bit juvenile. It felt to me like the author overused the "character thinks to herself, thus explaining for the reader" technique. While I liked seeing goblins as part of society (living among humans and elves in a city), they cause so much trouble over the course of the book it's a bit hard to believe. Okay, but I don't feel highly motivated to follow up on the series (I think it's a series).
Then there was Kitty and the Midnight Hour, another quick read at less than 300 pages, though of the urban fantasy variety. A werewolf who "comes out" about it on her radio talk show for/about the supernatural is an interesting idea to me. You get a situation where even the characters can raise the question of how to reconcile werewolf/vampire social rules with mundane law. And speaking of such social rules, the werewolf pack dynamics were rather disturbing to me - pretty much in the same way as another book or two I've read with a female protagonist placed in a submissive spot within a pack. Heh. I guess I'm just more squicked by the emotional/psychological aspects than the physical. But I'm kept from writing off this series by virtue of seeing the main character actually rise above and get herself out of the situation. So it makes up a couple points there, and I probably will read more.
Saturday's raid night went fine. Knocked out Alizabal and all of Dragon Soul without any real issue. We lost got a little out of sync on Ultraxion and had a death or two at the end, then lost someone on Spine during a roll, but I think we still one-shotted everything and even single-tanked Madness (whee, two-hander waggling!). No time in Firelands, though, so unless our guild leader finds a PUG group to gather essences with, there's no real progress toward Dragonwrath this week. That's still on a tight time table compared to MoP release, and will still require a Ragnaros kill to pull off.
So, Saturday the pre-purchasers should be able to get into GW2 (assuming server stability), before the official opening on the 28th. So I'm going to need to figure out what I'm actually going to be playing there. I still like the concept of a charr guardian, but I just wasn't getting into the gameplay of it. Feh.
And the 28th is also "unlearn what you have learned" day in WoW, with patch 5.0.4, which will drop in all the mechanic changes (but not new zones, pandas, or increased level caps) from MoP. It's possible the Theramore battle will open up in some way, but I've been avoiding details of that. Usually there's some in-game event(s) leading up to an expansion release.
After someone online mentioned it, I watched a playthrough of the first couple chapters of Dust: An Elysian Tail. I remember reading about this indie game that "hit it big" and ended up an XBox Live Arcade release. Now I wish it weren't exclusive. The cute, furry art style could be a plus or minus. The gameplay doesn't show a lot of variety, but it seems to be quick, responsive, and action-packed. The characters and story... well, that's what I'm a sucker for, and what I want to see more of. It's light at times, making references to other games and media, and then sometimes it's very serious. From what I've seen, though, it seems to balance those differences in tone well. Alas, with no X360, I shan't actually get a chance to play it myself.
Let's see... recent reading has been light. There was Magic Lost, Trouble Found, a little fantasy novel that felt a tiny bit juvenile. It felt to me like the author overused the "character thinks to herself, thus explaining for the reader" technique. While I liked seeing goblins as part of society (living among humans and elves in a city), they cause so much trouble over the course of the book it's a bit hard to believe. Okay, but I don't feel highly motivated to follow up on the series (I think it's a series).
Then there was Kitty and the Midnight Hour, another quick read at less than 300 pages, though of the urban fantasy variety. A werewolf who "comes out" about it on her radio talk show for/about the supernatural is an interesting idea to me. You get a situation where even the characters can raise the question of how to reconcile werewolf/vampire social rules with mundane law. And speaking of such social rules, the werewolf pack dynamics were rather disturbing to me - pretty much in the same way as another book or two I've read with a female protagonist placed in a submissive spot within a pack. Heh. I guess I'm just more squicked by the emotional/psychological aspects than the physical. But I'm kept from writing off this series by virtue of seeing the main character actually rise above and get herself out of the situation. So it makes up a couple points there, and I probably will read more.
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