Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Disney buys Lucasfilm ? That... I... what...? New movies? LucasArts and other things like Lucas Licensing are subsidiaries so... uhh... are they going too? Does that mean Disney will have copyright control over the entire Star Wars franchise? I can barely grasp the ramifications. That could be... very good or very bad for Star Wars to be out from Lucas' personal thumb. Addendum: Maybe I should be quite so surprised at the parties involved, given the invasion of Lucasfilm properties in Disney parks (Star Tours, Indiana Jones), but that's still a big thing.

Urgh. Major, wearying drama last night on Faire. All because Orion realized (OOCly even) that Jezra and Jericho have been sexually involved. Now his big hangup, so he says, was less that it happened and more that he felt lied to about it. The generational difference seems to be a minor squicking point with him, but he seemed to be focusing more on how he went out of his way to make his character assume otherwise when he shouldn't have. Urgh. As far as the in-character situation goes, I really don't see how it matters much. While you insist Orion would have done things differently earlier, it hardly seems worth the retcon. Yes, perhaps he would have expressed zero interest in Jezra before sending her to talk to Tash - a conversation which resulted in Jezra writing off any chance of bedding Orion anyway. So whatever "tension" remained between the characters, I /she didn't perceive any real possibility of sex between them since that night. Would it have chang

Another week. Thinking about... things, past and present, has had me feeling down much of the weekend. I'm still trying to shake that off. Getting early voting out of the way is a bit of a relief, though I'm still getting political phone calls. Grrr. And it sounds like my new boss has been hired, starting November 9th or so. Here's hoping for a painless transition. WoW Well, as a guild, we're still a bit fragmented, with people all over the place as far as what they're doing. On one end, we have someone coming back from marriage/honeymoon/RL stuff who's still level 85, and a few level 90's who are new (due either to not playing much or bouncing between alts). On the other hand, we have a couple people hitting up challenge modes and raids with people outside the guild. There's always some degree of tension between the people who want to go faster and those who don't. But, as I was pointing out to our guild leader, we aren't really "behi

So I finally finished the skimming/editing through logs of the old Exalted game, sending copies to some of the players. I found a great many more - I had emailed them off my work computer at the time and never pulled them down off email. Still, my coverage isn't complete due to failed logging or absence or whatever, but most of the main points are there. About the only major event missing I noticed was the finish of the fight with the First and Forsaken Lion. I came up with some 114 primary session logs. Whee. While most of my previous comments stand, I have to acknowledge another aspect of the pacing that made things difficult. Not only did I feel the drive to do things rather than socialize increase as goals piled up, but the feeling I got from others - both IC and OOC - was that sitting still was boring. A couple days of "downtime" for the characters, and people were going stir-crazy wanting to move. I'm not sure if that was the other players' reaction to

Even (if not especially) in gaming. That's the conclusion that comes to mind thinking about recent (and old) games. Certainly, it's more widely applicable than that, and the relationship is not a simple 1:1 thing, but I'm convinced it's there. WoW this weekend was less productive than, perhaps, I expected. About three hours of hanging out among guildmates resulted in one hastily-formed, chaotic kill of the Sha of Anger (with a whole bunch of non-guild, naturally), two heroic dungeons, and two non-heroic dungeons. I have to say I dislike the Sha fight, though it could go a lot more smoothly if people were coordinated and had an idea what was going on - still, I'm glad to have done it and even if I didn't luck out and get tier pants like someone else did, I'm happy to have gotten the quest boots out of it. The heroics were done with a couple "gogogo, do this for the achievement" types whose attitude does not aggrevate me as much as it does some

A friend recently reached out and asked for logs of the Exalted game that we were in online a few years ago, which has had me going through them - partly to clean them up a bit, and partly to remember myself. It's... interesting. I can see the life I felt in the early sessions. I remember really liking my character and looking forward to accomplishing great things in a world of spirit-gods and virtually-immortal chosen. There were a lot of neat characters and Exalted is full of "awesome" if you can wade through the mechanics. Unfortunately, I've noticed a few gaps in my log coverage. Tainted Whispers, a fairly important NPC, made her first appearance in between a couple, so following my logs she just sort of "appears." I'm also missing some of the "duels" with another circle, which is sort of sad. And I can also see the cracks in the game. While I liked Five Days Darkness and his gift to the PCs was useful, he swept through and totally i

No Saturday raid. We're fairly close to having ten people in the guild at max level (actually, it looks like 12 characters are), but when some of them can't queue for random heroics yet, I suspect we'd be squished in raids. That's okay. I'm ultimately more concerned about the usual when it comes time: getting ten people together, including 2-3 playing healers.So, general recap time. I've only leveled one character to 90, though I've capped primary professions with a second character and I'm close with a third. There's a limit to what I can do with them due to the use of spirits of harmony in some recipes and several patterns requiring rep with new factions. Most of my time in-game has been spent on dailies recently. I've made revered with Klaxxi and Golden Lotus, and exalted with Tillers. That unlocks some valor point gear (I plan to pick up pants in the next few days) and all 16 farm plots (usually devoted to songbells/motes of harmony).

I started off the day rather depressed. Now I'm getting into the realm of pissed/weary. I don't like restoring computers to factory defaults on the best of days. When it doesn't fucking work that's even "better." I was hoping I could get to a point where I could have all the required programs and take it home to deal with the length installs while able to do something else myself, but it's taking a whole hell of a lot longer getting to that point than I envisioned. Use the OS reinstall disk that came with the machine? Sure, but that doesn't have any drivers. Wait, what... the... fuck? Image Recovery option? Well, that'd be great if there was an image. Make an image off another of the same model - okay, I'll just burn that onto... upwards of 20 DVDs? Uhh... okay, there's a portable hard drive, maybe... it has to be converted to NTFS first? I simply cannot catch a break here. And that doesn't even get into the bizarre screen lighting

These days, I understand more of the politics and finances involved, but some things just feel worth it, however hard it may be to truly justify. I fell in love with the look and marvel of the SR-71 years ago. Expensive, yes, but that's one incredible piece of machinery. The pictures and some of the tales of one of the pilots here almost make me tear up. That jet was some awesomeness, no doubt.

Yay! One long journey over. Saturday night, our guild finally assembled a Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest. With several of us at level 90, we were able to stomp through some group pulls that would once have been lethal and made good time through the bosses. We even had another druid get a firecat-transform staff from Staghelm. And while it felt like more, it looks like we were even able to take down Ragnaros on our third attempt of the night. Or course, our guild leader had to redo the final turn-in quest in Stormwind because the first time he was still in a raid (which prevents interaction with most quest objects), but that just means twice the pagentry with dragons over the city. And thus, we've officially "finished" Firelands. And let us never speak of it again. Actually, it's not that bad, though I would wish any place we spend that much time in again might be a little more diverse visually at least. And now I wonder what we'll be doing with our raid nig

Almost to our second weekend in Mists of Pandaria. It's an interesting (good or bad?) time. People have different definitions of "casual versus hardcore," but our guild has never been bleeding-edge. No, there are people who've already cleared the first raid on normal and are chomping at the bit to hit it on heroic next week. Some people have gamed the system to increase reputation levels up to revered/exalted already and farmed materials to make epics. Some people hit level 90 on day one. And while some of us push pretty hard, none of us are quite at that level of involvement. "Slow down," as the pandaran NPCs often say. But... we do have five members (even if only 3-4 show up frequently for raiding) at level 90 and working on reputation and dungeons. While I haven't done any heroics, at least one person has. I've only seen a couple scenarios, but some have run several. I am keeping up with my couple favored reputations and their dailies, though

Yikes. This haunted house experience sounds thoroughly disturbing, not that I think I would sign up for such a thing. It does, however, make me wish I were in a World of Darkness (or similar) game. It sounds like an awesome starting point for a seasonal scenario...

These days, I'm frequently poking around review sites, or Amazon recommendations, or local store shelves for possibly-interesting reading material. Lady of Devices is one such book I picked up, thinking it sounded like a neat little steampunk underworldy tale. In the end, it was more good than bad - enjoyable, but it didn't live up to expectations. I think part of that stemmed from how short is was at right around 200 pages. Here's what the back cover says: London, 1889. Victoria is Queen. Charles Darwin’s son is Prime Minister. And steam is the power that runs the world. At 17, Claire Trevelyan, daughter of Viscount St. Ives, was expected to do nothing more than pour an elegant cup of tea, sew a fine seam, and catch a rich husband. Unfortunately, Claire’s talents lie not in the ballroom, but in the chemistry lab, where things have a regrettable habit of blowing up. When her father gambles the estate on the combustion engine and loses, Claire finds herself down and ou

So let's see... Options include: - A bunch of gear available at revered with various factions that sells for valor points. That's going to be slow-going, though, as I'm not going to be capping VP weekly for a while and each piece is something like 1250 to 2250. - There are some good options from what looks like faction-based quest chain endings in certain zones. I'm not sure of all the requirements, but I suspect you need to be revered with the factions for those quest chains to open up, still this makes them probably more available than the VP gear. - There are a few crafted options at item level 450. That seems to be the "gearing up for heroics" stage. There's less at 463 and up, though. As for seriously pre-raid stuff, the only ones I can remotely count on use living steel, and it's going to be a while before we see much of that. - I think I can rule out BOEs at this point, as the world drops will just be too expensive and luck to get one myse

... To borrow the line from Alysrazor. That's probably one of the most immediate and striking benefits of hitting max level - being able to go train up the new flight skill. Suddenly, you can be almost anywhere on the map and safe (by being elevated above the mobs). You can drop in and get out of busy areas relatively reasily. You're not limited to the set flight paths when getting around. And, yes, you can trivialize the flow from one area to another. It's something I came to understand back when I first gained the ability to fly in WoW. I don't begrudge being forced onto the ground for a new continent - it doesn't make a lot of sense in-game, perhaps, but I feel it really is good to experience things that way before being able to fly over everything. So, yeah, I managed to hit level 90 with my paladin last night - second in the guild, though I've certainly not put as much time in as the people with level 87 monks running around. Saturday night's raid w

I spent a fair chunk of Saturday afternoon with a cable service technician. Thankfully, his testing device could see the unstable signal almost immediately - that's always better than having a tech show up and not be able to find any problem. He replaced a couple splitters, put new ends on the cables at the box outside the building, and still saw some problems. Next, he was up on a ladder, clipped to a power line (well, a cable on the telephone pole, anyway) and trying to replace a couple parts in a box there. In the process, he downed cable service in the area for several minutes - oops. He wasn't actually able to replace the piece he wanted to, but he apparently reseated the original. After all that drama, he did some further testing and got a much better, and more consistent, signal. So while he's going to try to get a full line tech out this week to see about improving things further, everything was within spec when he left and I've not been disconnected since.