Redwolf's Journal (continued)

I've had occasional (and usually brief) cable internet outages every now and then for the last couple months at least. It's easy to brush off: "well, it's working now." And it's hard to troubleshoot when you replace a cable and it works... until it doesn't. But it seems to be growing more common. And after getting home last night and having this trouble impede my ability to both remote connect to work to resolve an issue and to log on to WoW and do some leveling, I had to admit it's past the point of my troubleshooting and hoping. Finally called in today and there should be a tech out tomorrow afternoon to check on things. The phone rep I talked to seemed to think the symptoms sounded like a signal issue, though I'm unclear on what they'll try in order to resolve that.

A little more play, a little more perspective. A couple guild mates (I won't even name names) convinced me that just maybe it would be worth the effort to get my herbalist out to the Jade Forest to get some materials for my scribe. The new glyphs are all learned by random daily research, so the market for them is high - but rapidly tanking each day. Plus, y'know, it's better to have access to the glyphs sooner rather than later. I was not expecting to be doing this with alts, but once I got my deathknight's spec sorted (and with some handed-over crafted gear from my main), it's not too hard to run around and collect some materials. This had the very unfortunate side effect of distracting me at an inopportune time. I missed the last of Lorewalker Cho's vision quests, which turns out to be rather critical. So when I took my paladin back, I was missing the primary thread leading to 1) questing in new areas and 2) actually seeing what's up with Anduin. Afte

I've been keeping relatively low on general spoilers for the expansion. Oh, I knew about the talent revamp and the pet battles in a general sense, but I've not studied any of the zones or dungeons. So it was actually a surprise to me to see King Varian ordering a mission to find his son. Of course, first thing's first. Before the actual release, Monday marked the start of this year's Harvest Festival, so I had to take my paladin on her yearly pilgrimage to Uther's tomb. When the expansion went live, I made the rounds to train skills to the next level before reporting to the king. The opening quests involved a vehicle assault on a Horde fort on the shores of Pandaria. Technically... there were some issues. The sheer number of players doing it at the same time and the forced camera angle made it nearly impossible to see the targets in the latter half of the quest, much less actually hit them before someone else did. That's not a bug, exactly, and I did eventua

Watched in 2D! Basically a private showing, too. I guess noon on Sunday doesn't suit the whatever the target audience is, exactly. (Or given the poor box office performance, maybe there just isn't much of an audience between questionable marketing and an R rating.) Overall, decent action movie. Law enforcers (the experienced and the rookie) take on gangs in a dystopian future setting. It felt a bit low-budget, though, with a lot of the movie taking place in the cramped corridors of a high-rise megablock. They touch on the weirder elements of the setting only with Judge Anderson's psychic ability as there weren't any visible mutants. The narrow view doesn't really delve into just how fascist the justice system in the setting is. I can't really compare it to the comics, being unfamiliar with the. It feels less... Hollywood-ized than the Stallone version. The "slo-mo" drug in the movie gave an excuse for a lot of slow motion detail shots, some of which

Well, let's see... WoW is still in a little bit of a lull overall. We did raid Saturday, and managed a successful run through most of Firelands - even got Elly her firecat-form staff from Staghelm fiiiinally. That puts us approximately 3 FL runs and a Ragnaros kill away from having a Dragonwrath. Well, that's not going to happen before MoP comes out next week, but it's still an attainable goal. Though our last attempts on Rags went poorly, if we can get all the essences from the other bosses out of the way, we can focus just on him, which would help. It'll be interesting to see what effect leveling has if we keep poking Cata raids - numbers will go up, but the conversion from ratings will tank. The Theramore's Fall scenerio was released Monday, a day earlier than I expected. I have mixed feelings. As an introduction to scenerios, it works okay: they're 3-person instances that can have various objectives and can be run without the usual group restrictions,

... is a couple days off. Actually, I took a week. Now, maybe I should have pushed it back to align better with the release of Mists of Panderia, but a friend was going to be out of town for the weekend and we'd discussed me possibly house/dog-sitting while she was away, so that was excuse enough to schedule it over last weekend. This turned out to be a moot point largely since her nephew was staying over. I did spend a fair amount of time over there Thursday, offering food, company, oversight, and a couple walks. After that, though, he was around so I wasn't really needed. Brief experience. Actually sort of intense. Now, it wasn't bad , but I spent a whole lot of time stressing over whether I was doing enough. Heh. One part the obsessive side of my personality and one part my typical avoidance of responsibility for other living beings. It may sound silly, but it really underscored a lot of that for me, including the fact that I don't really want kids. Ah well. Di

So, I've generally been digging the story in Guild Wars 2, even though it's a little formulaic. Some of the branches are actually difficult choices, though they impact the player/character experience more than the game itself. Last night, though, I hit my first main complaint with the story. Mind you, this is a notable spoiler that you'll want to avoid if you're playing, up until after the Battle for Claw Island - the level 50-ish story quest(s). Not only did they kill off my favorite character in the game, but they completely "chumped" him! From what I can tell, this story is a point where all players come back to. Regardless of chosen order, you'll end up with your "mentor" on Claw Island when the undead invade. Regardless of your chosen order, your mentor will stay behind against overwhelming odds. I've only seen the Order of Whispers playthrough, but my understanding is those basic events occur regardless. I can understand the na

Well, I've reached level 34 or so with my thief, and I feel I have a pretty good sense of the game overall with a couple exceptions. I have not done any PVP, and may not. I have not run any dungeons, though I have heard second-hand that the first one (Ascalonian Catacombs) is both difficult and time-consuming, making it sound like something I'd rant to tackle with a full group of guild members and an evening to spare. I've done relatively little crafting. And if there's anything else to the "end game" then I'm not there yet. With that out of the way... The game is good, but it's not everything it was hyped to be. Pretty much as I expected. The absolute best, funnest point for me is this: when running around in the world, you can seemlessly join in anything going on and be rewarded for it. Every MMORPG should try to adapt this concept right now . Unfortunately, the key word there is "adapt." This works so well partly because of the zone-

So, I've not given up my ravenous devouring of novels during night-shift weeks, by any means. The last few books gone by have all involved werewolves... First up was Dead Iron , which involved more than just werewolves, at least, though one of the main characters is one. It's set in a steampunk frontier town that's heavier on the gadgetry than I usually see (goggles linked to weapons? Smartlinks?) and magic to boot, with witches, undead, at least a couple variants of fae-like beings, and "glim" - a substance harvested by airships at high altitude that seems to contain some magical energy that can do several things, including powering and granting a limited intelligence to clockworks. That's a lot. The ideas are pretty cool and work reasonably well together. What doesn't so far as I'm concerned is the scattered viewpoints. The point of view alternates between something like five different characters, including the primary villain, and that detracts fr

Rrrgh. Where to start? Perhaps with "I shouldn't have stayed up so late last night finishing that book?" That makes sense. Though I really did need to distract myself with something. MUCKing wasn't working. MMOs weren't working. And while I wanted to just go to sleep early, that wasn't happening. I was given this nice, holiday weekend and I just haven't been able to enjoy it. Too many toxic thoughts killing my mood... A lot of it comes around to the usual "mid-life crisis" questioning of purpose stuff. That invariably comes up when I'm depressed. It's frustrating because I'm consciously content with my life. I'm mostly healthy. I'm more financially-stable than most people I know. I don't really have any desire for children (heck, I don't even like people a lot of the time). Yet part of me still clings to that subtle influence of upbringing that taught life is going to school, getting a job, getting married, and rai

Has it really been six years? Wrrf. Long time to be playing a game. Last night was... not good. Our worst raid night in some time, even though we filled out the slots. We went into Firelands and the night was full of fail that ended up with only having downed Beth'tilac, Shannox and Rhyolith (and Alizabal in BH). Not pretty. Why? Well, I can't point to any one thing, but I can see some of the issues: - Second-tier alts along instead of mains in a few cases - Changed rotations/effects that people aren't used to yet (leading to complaints about running out of mana, etc.) - Addon issues with them not working or throwing up errors - Some just inexplicably bad performance (deaths to Smouldering Devastation, mis-targetting on Rhyolith's feet, and I don't want to count how many of Shannox's traps people stepped in) That may bode ill for any further attempts before people settle into MoP, I fear, but we'll see. As for myself... well, I'm not graceful w