This is a complete babble entry, not going to bother editing this out of general laziness.
I found my twin in Ulduar :P. Years ago, there used to be another paladin of a similar level with the exact same face model, hairstyle and color running around the server. I don't see too many Keiya doppelgangers (though its not like I actively look).
The Midsummer achievements started today. I just need to complete those as well as the Brewfest achievement set for my lovely violet drake. There are lots of interesting retribution changes upcoming in patch 3.2. Umm, I was going to pick through the paladin portion of the patch notes, but I'm a little late and don't really have anything to add that hasn't been posted several times over.
A few things: I am though looking forward to the deep sixing of Seal of Blood/the Martyr, no more being a healing drain! The Exorcism change is a little odd, but it should screw up my DPS rotation, since AoW should proc before it cools down. I don't have an opinion on any of the other changes because I haven't read much of the theorycrafting.
Everything else is business as usual with the guild, raiding and all that jazz. Ulduar progress is a little slow because our attendance fluctuates. I think some of it is flakiness, some of it is raid burnout and some of it is real life happening. We are serious raiders in the sense that I expect all members to be competent players willing to show up prepared and ready to try their best. We're not really hardcore though, or even close to it by standard definitions.
We raid twice a week, thrice if you count 10-man Wednesday because it allows people to maintain a healthy balance between their real lives and their gaming hobby. Friday and Saturday evenings are also our only viable 25-man raid evenings since we have always traditionally had a fairly large representation of Oceanic players.
But despite attendance, we are a good group of folks who enjoy each other's company (Hell, I've been guilded and playing with some folks for 3 to 4 years or so). I've always been somewhat picky in regards to recruiting people and maintaining the guild atmosphere. I really don't appreciate drama. Grown adults should know better o_O
I started running again. In college I used to go to the gym and run/lift weights for 2 to 3 hours a day, 5 to 6 days a week. That sort of dropped as I got busy during my final quarters of my senior year and well, dropped off altogether after I had graduated (no more free University gym). Does anyone use the Nike iPod gadget? The statistical nerd in me kind of wants one...
Oh one more thing: Happy Father's day :)
You know, I had these grand plans of actually posting and updating this on a regular basis throughout the month of June; I even typed out a few post drafts. But then The Sims 3 came out (as well as several other things) and I started semi-obsessively playing it. As such, I feel obligated to post about it.
The Sims 3 in a way feels fundamentally different than The Sims 2, though at heart, the same. For one, sims aren't trapped on their lots anymore. The entire neighborhood is one seamless area, allowing sims to visit neighbors and go into town without having to load areas. Time also progresses universally throughout the neighborhood, so no more going out for a full day, only to return to a lot that hasn't changed since you left.
You now live in a persistent world. It's fluid and growing; the new Story Progression feature keeps it as such. Sims outside of your active household will also grow up, fall in love, have children, live their lives and die. Gone is the need to micromanage every single household in order to avoid the awkwardness of being the same age as your great great great uncle (accidental incest is bad).
Story progression though does have strange moments: Computer spawned babies apparently need only one parent. For example, I created a small family consisting of a father and son, moved them into their own house and then left them to their own NPC devices (I wanted interesting neighbors). Several days later, a baby popped out of nowhere. I guess this is the way that the game balances itself, which is alright though someone artificial feeling.
The game feels geared towards a single family play. You can swap households, but doing so feels a bit cumbersome in that it requires quite a few mouse clicks (go to the edit neighborhood screen, click change active household, choose the household, etc). When you swap households, short term wishes are reset and you run the risk of story progression doing something negative to that family unless you toggle it off. If you were one of those Sims 2 players who insisted on having absolute control over every household, this change mightfrustrate you somewhat.
Daily life feels like much less of a grind, much of the sim needs and daily micromanagement has either been streamlined or reduced, leaving more time for storytelling and antics. Yours sims don't need to pee or shower as often and you are able to throw out trash and put items away yourself, rather than having to wait for your sim to do it.
Your Sim's current 'state' is based off of a new moodlets system. Certain activities and conditions will give a buff or debuff to your mood. Each moodlet lasts for a certain duration; Being in a good mood positively influences work performance and social interactions.
You can also change the color and texture of virtually every surface and clothing item in the game. Even so, there is a distinct feeling that EA is holding back on items for the sake of eitherre-releasing them in an expansion pack or on their online store. Where's the piano and hot tub?
The Sims 3 also runs notably smoother than The Sims 2, even on very large lots with a surplus of items. Keep in mind though, that this is the base game, minus any expansion packs. We will see if this performance improvement holds up in a year or two...
Anyway, there are dozens of fun changes and game mechanics that I skipped over (the traits system, collectibles, body shapes, etc). In short, it's fun. So fun that it has ate up my urge to do much of anything else during the period of free time that I set aside for gaming and stuff like that. If you enjoyed the other Sims games, you will most definitely enjoy The Sims 3.
Oh well, I'll attend BlizzCon one of these days. This summer isn't a great time for me to go anyways because of various real life circumstances.
We're still running a bit short for heroic Ulduar. In the mean time though, we're progressing through Ulduar 10. The tier-8 leggings are more than kind
of ugly. Keiya doesn't like dresses! I do though, really like the way
the chest piece looks. But then again,I've always been a sucker for plate midriff.
Over
the past month or two, I swear that at least half of my favorite WoW
blogs have went inactive; What is with that? Speaking of blogs, there
is some Grade A internet drama occurring over here regarding this person. What a strange and elaborate thing to do for no meaningful gain.
Even though I could care less about who a person chooses to portray for their interwebs avatar, hiding behind the identity of a hot gamer girl for the sake of gaining a larger reader base is uber lame. Stealing another person's identity and pictures is kind of wrong and creepy :/.
So I am kind of curious: I wonder how many people think I am male? Most people I encounter in WoW do until they hear me flap my mouth over vent (for a while I semi-refused to speak. I think that made guild members suspicious LOL). The way I write and act, at least online and amongst close friends isn't particularly feminine. I find that mildly amusing lol.
I have been greatly looking forward to the release of The Sims 3, which is this coming Tuesday. The Sims (TS2 that is) I guess, is kind of like a gaming mistress. I have
on-and-off love affairs with it when my other gaming staples aren't
doing it for me. It's actually one of the only games that I have (kind
of) consistently played on a long term basis. I am pretty fickle about
my games and tend to move onto the next fix quickly.
There might be a few posts and
possibly a review on that topic as well as another dump of random
cellphone pictures.
raidNot much of a "redo" since it looks more or less the same as version
3.0 except for the smaller button grid and the unit frame change. I
went with Pitbull because of its layout flexibility. X-Perl was
becoming and eyesore with the plethora of windows that needed to be
displayed.
I tried to compress all interface elements to the
edges as much as possible, because I dislike having junk stay in the
center of my screen. I also wanted any unused elements to fold or fade
away when not in use so that I didn't have a giant black bar of death
obscuring precious screen real estate.
Class buffs, auras and oh
shit spells are grouped and auto-barred on the top left round buttons
so that I could keep all of the paladin blessings off of my bars (giant
waste of space). Consumables, food buffs, mage food, tradeskills, quest
items and stuff like that are autobarred on the opposite side.
idleThe
chat log will fade away after 30 seconds of no activity. The combat
log, general chat and trade chat are tabbed. Recount and Omen are
docked to the far right. recount visibility is hotkeyed on my G15 and
Omen will automatically appear upon enter ring combat.
I like
having my bajillion buttons and my combat information displayed, but I
also appreciate clean interfaces and to some extent simplicity. So this
layout is a compromise...I guess. (Addons listed below)
I need to find a stronger detterent for comment spam. It's starting to return...
There is a working Wowhead loot link filter for Drupal if anyone is curious about how to use the [item] bbcode tags. The old module died quite some time ago and there hasn't been a good working alternative until recently. I also finally got around to re-doing the guild homepage and migrating it from the ghetto fugly vBadvanced portal over to Drupal. Yay!
Guild business as usual. We finally have a fairly stable 25-man Ulduar run going on the weekends now. We were low on folks for the past few weeks since returning from our short pre-3.1 raid hiatus. We are though a bit short on tanks, I guess I should finally gem, enchant and upgrade the trash pieces in my tanking set for the sake of being viable for off-tanking. I have a metric fuckload of badges to burn.
So I've been really super lazy about my professions for the past oh, several months? I am 5 points shy of the skill cap on both blacksmithing and enchanting...which was somewhat alright until the epic patterns started dropping in heroic Ulduar (by our loot rules only max level crafters are eligible to roll). I have all of the mats that I need for both professions rotting on my banker. Shame on me.
Tangent: If you haven't seen the new Star Trek movie, go and see it. It is really quite good, independent of me being a huge Star Trek fan. JJ Abrams retained the spirit of the old series without the Trekkie fap. /wants to see it again.
Note to self: I really need to enchant and gem my off-spec healing set.
Actually, I really really need to find myself a better healing weapon
since I am still using the one from Maiden inKarazhan; Haven't gotten a chance to roll on a healing weapon in a long ass time (being prot/ret, I wouldn't of course roll over a legitimate healer). I guess I can craft this, since I already have alll of the mats.
Hodgepodge: Peggle for WoW, complete with a Peggle
loot rolling system, guild scores, talent trees, duel modes, etc. New
favorite raid downtime activity! I've been really bad about doing the
Argent Tournament dailies lately as I've skipped most of them this
entire week for one reason or another.
I'm looking for another raid fram add-on that's cleaner than X-Perl; trying to reduce raid and targetting clutter, especially with vehicles and ToT. I might give oUF a spin tonight.
Obligatory and occasional non World of Warcraft related post :P. I've
gotten back into watching anime lately and for once, kept tabs on some
of the this season's lineup. These are the shows that I am definitely
going to continue watching, though I might end up dropping K-On in lieu
of patch 3.1 and all.
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood:
If you haven't seen the original
Fullmetal Alchemist series, it's no big deal; Brotherhood isn't a
continuation, but rather a remake following the manga (I think).
Except for Ed
and Al, I think all of the voice cast has changed. The only difference that I
noticed was in Colonal Mustang's voice, but it wasn't a real big deal.
What else can I say? FMA is one of my favorite series. *fangasm*
Valkyria Chronicles:
The anime adaptation of the Playstation 3
game of the same title. I'm usually suspicious of RPG to anime
transitions, since most end being cheesy and awkward.
This one though
was quite good. The animation, character designs, and music are more or
less identical to that of the game. Good introduction to the series, looking forward to watching more.
Cross Game:
I wasn't going to watch Cross Guard because I was
under the impression that was a sports shounen series, but it was
highly recommended by several people so I gave it a go.
Very impressed
by the first two episodes. It's looks to be a good slice of life show;
the baseball is secondary to the characters and interactions.
Eden of the East:
Not quite sure what this series is about yet,
but the first episode had intrigue, very high production quality,
action and most importantly, penis humor. I can't really ask for much
more.
Oh, I'm too lazy to look this up at the moment, but the character
designs in Eden look very very similar to those in Honey and Clover.
I'm betting that they were designed by the same person.
K-On:
I enjoyed watching this show even though it's cliche moe at best. It's cute, I like the premise and rock bands are awesome even if they are cheesy and girly.
My guess is that they perform some kind of awesome concert at the end of the series. Unless K-On gets really bad, I'll probably continue to watch it.
