A New Year

by on January 1, 2007 at 10:01 am
Posted In: Life

Since 2006 was the first full year where I had a Live Journal account, I thought I’d see what I did. I count some 55 posts, a bit over one a week on average, more than I would have thought. Of those, 22 are tagged ‘wow’, 11 ‘life’, 14 ‘gaming’ 1 ‘astronomy’, and 5 untagged.

I had thought there’d be less gaming and life in there. I also did more board gaming than even that indicates, since I’ve started writing my ASL experiences up on a forum dedicated to the game. I had also thought that WoW would actually be over half my posts, not under.

This last week has been busier than I thought. I had the week off, but had plenty to do. We were doing house- and cat-sitting, so at night I was generally over there with Smudge making sure Freya had time around people every day (…and enjoying a really nice TV). During the afternoons, I was engaged in helping program the web-comics database for BackBreaker. This is a project that started shortly after ComicCon 2005, and is finally finished (well, I’d like to see a little more bug testing done). This is a massive weight off of us, and I think it’s probably one of the best posting engines out there. Now… we need to finally do something about a new register program…. Sigh.

So, my free time for my week paid holiday mostly evaporated, but at least it has been largely relaxing.

On WoW this last week, we’ve seen the auction prices of Firey and Lava Cores tumble from 100+ gold to about 35 gold. Blanc also found the Black Dragonscale Leggings plan we’ve been trying to farm for up on auction for cheap. He spent pretty much all the money he had (with some help from Dunain and Farmishi) and completed Dunain’s Black Dragonscale set, and got the materials for the next couple of Dark Iron items for Blanc’s fire-resist set. I had started to think that Thorium Brotherhood rep was useless, now I’m looking at how to get to Revered in a reasonable time-frame again….

I’m hoping that gaming will be a little more regular this year than last. And I’m certainly hoping to suck Mark and/or my dad into some Federation & Empire online this year. (I really need something to leaven the constant string of defeats in ASL that Patch is handing me.) On the face-to-face end, we really need to gain an extra person or two, three is too much for many things, and too few for the rest.

WoW has eaten up more time than I’d sometimes like, but continues to be a lot of fun. With the expansion almost upon us, I expect that to continue.

I’m expecting this year’s gaming budget to be down, but then I wanted to get a few games other than the massive stuff I’ve been involved in forever, and I’ve done that now. I expect ADB and MMP will continue to get my money though.

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Christmas Haul

by on December 26, 2006 at 11:45 am
Posted In: Life

Well, had a very nice Christmas. Smudge’s parents came down the 24th, and we had a couple days with them. We’re also house-sitting this week, and we took them over there on Christmas Eve and show them some Circe du Soleil and Emperor’s New Groove on a set much better than ours (how… seasonal – still, they enjoyed it).

Christmas was a good relax-a-day for everyone. Played several rounds of dominoes, or more accurately, Mexican Train, which uses dominoes (they had a double-fifteen set, seems like overkill until you realize there’s five people).

Everyone seems quite happy with their gifts. Smudge is certainly happy with the deluxe edition of Final Fantasy XII I got her. (Found it first store, thought I’d be going all over the place to figure out what I could scrounge from picked-over stores.) It’s been a great advertisement for a new TV.

I got… way too much. My parents sent three different packages (mail-order), plus the more normal one+ from other people. Oh, and a pre-order I had made ages ago finally showed up about a week before, so I saved that for Christmas too.

More notable items:
DVDs:
Zulu (classic movie about Roarke’s Drift) – Thanks Smudge & !
Rurouni Kenshin #6 (finally filling an ages old gap) – Thanks Mom & Dad!

Books:
Mr. Lincoln’s Army (book 1 of 3 on the Army of the Potomac – I have the other two) by Bruce Catton (who’s a great author) – Thanks Mom & Dad!
History of the Goths (part of my ongoing delving into late Ancient history) by Herwig Wolfram – Thanks again Mom & Dad!

Games:
Onward Christian Soldiers (my preorder) – Thanks GMT! ~_^

Misc:
A kind of cloth, thermal lunchbox (I’ve saying I need one of these so I’m not carrying soup in the same bag as books…) – Thanks Smudge and Baron!
An adorable statuette of a fox looking a a ladybug on the tip of his tail – Thanks Mom-God!

…and there’ll probably be a couple more things in the next week or so.

Last year at this time, I was mostly celebrating my new bed, and the fact that I was officially moved in. If I can make better progress on cutting down the extraneous stuff in my room this next year, I’ll be doing pretty well.

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You know, I might just be getting the hang of this….

by on December 18, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Posted In: MMO

Had a BRD and a Scholomance run this past weekend, I did both with Farmishi.

Saturday, was yet another BRD run. Farmishi did her last quest there, Jail Break. Then we went and did the vault. Then we decided to hunt down the Dark Keeper who has the key for the ‘extra’ bit in the vault, who it turned out was enjoying himself in the Grim Guzzler.

We were a little nonplussed to find him buried in the corner and surrounded by patrons, and quite unhappy with us. So… we decided to try approaching him, pulling him out of the corner, and having a few words with him in the storeroom. This is effectively what you do when confronting Ribbly Screwspigot, and only his guards bother to help out.

Well, this guy is a lot more popular. We got all the patrons in the area after us, and… well, it wasn’t pretty. We did take a nice chunk out of the crowd though. We went back in, spotted the fact that the guard had indeed come in, and were in front of the back door now. Grumbly, a little overeager to get a drink for the remaining patrons, hands in his “do one silly thing” card and charges right in front of them. ^_^; Two deaths (me and Grumbly), two rezzes, and back to pondering what to do.

We make another attempt at them, but the social aggro on the patrons is quite large. (Gee, what do you expect: “Fight!”) The bad news, was this time much of the dungeon respawned, and we had to fight our way to the bar again. So we get back, finish off, grab the key, fight back to the vault, and get… a Traveler’s Knapsack. Yeah, all that for a white 14-slot bag. Bag space is good, but I don’t think anyone’s that desperate. (We do seem to have gotten the weakest loot possible.)

We cleared out the guard in the bar pretty easily. Pulled them down to where there was no longer any patrons, and only picked up about three extras.

Other than finding out just what all those warnings in the write-ups about the bar are about, it went very soothly. We had the best Lyceum run ever.

The Emperor was something else again. First he joined in in the last fight before tackling him. Wipe. Then, we’re doing well, everything’s fine, and Blanc suddenly takes about four hits and goes from top-of-form to dead. Wipe. Third time’s the charm, and Blanc got a nice Santa Hat for his troubles. ^_^

Sunday was a Scholomance run. For us, it went very well. For us in Scholomance, that is. Offhand, I recall 3-4 wipes.

What’s interesting is where we didn’t wipe.

We went in with Blanc, Farmishi, Blondiewood, Jariedthe, and Thermidor. So, no priest, and a bit down on DPS from our normal set (since even while fighting undead, Farmishi is just no substitute for Dunain on damage output). There were definite upsides, but I was a little worried going in.

However, we were all really on top of our game last night. We went for Jandice Barov (who, after our last two encounters we try to avoid) because of a quest, and took her down fairly easily. Knowing what to expect definitely helps. We also got Lord Alexi Barov very cleanly on our first try, and he’s someone who’s tied our party in knots before. In fact, the entire final sequence of bosses went very well for us.

Gandling looks kind of silly in a green Santa Hat though. He also was a bit tough. Farmishi was the only person in the party who didn’t get teleported away during the fight.

The runs have been finishing a bit late, so Farmishi is going to need to run around and turn in quests during the week.

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And a mighty Ding!

by on December 12, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Posted In: MMO

A couple of adventures to write about:

Last week, Blizzard released Patch 2.01, which means that they’re officially updating the engine to account for the changes in Burning Crusade. There were some unfortunate side-effects, such as boats that go to places that don’t exist yet. But one of the biggest things for everyone is that the talent trees have changed again. The new talent trees now go up to 41 points for the ‘best’ thing, instead of 31 points (the old ‘best’ is right where it was, the 41-point talent is a all-new ability). This means that a lot of characters will no doubt be less “broad” than they were, spending ten points for their new ability, and loosing 10 out of whatever secondary set that had been developed.

Case in point: Dunain. He’s always been Marksmanship-spec, and now he’s lost some of his Survival and Pet training trees to the new Marksmanship ability (Silencing Shot – I’m not exactly mourning the choice). However, there’s a lot of overall changes to the Hunter talents, Dunain definitely isn’t quite the same as he was before. Overall, I’d say he’s doing a bit more damage than before (at least his critical hits have picked up a bit).

That night we did an impromptu Lower Blackrock Spire run. We started with three, picked up a fourth, and went back to three for the final bit when I went to bed (after doing the final boss – they were going back after the puppies). Still a bit late for me, but a lot of fun. We did well, and while we didn’t get what we specifically wanted, Blanc still got a good item.

This weekend, we did a raid into Upper Blackrock Spire. We’ve only recently gotten a key, so this was completely new for Blanc and I. We also had Grumbly (our guide), Blondiewood, Noxlux, Asclepius, Thermidor and Jariedthe along, as well as a out-of-guild hunter that Grumbly knew (I forget the name).

So, we did most of the Spire with 9 people, and did very well. Sadly, our spare hunter had an earlier bedtime than I did, and we lost him before getting to the end parts. We actually did quite well, and got The Beast. Blanc had a good night: Rend Blackhand dropped a Dungeon 1 piece for him, and The Beast dropped, and Blanc won, Finkle’s Skinner on the first try.

That left us with eight people and General Drakkisath. That did not go so well. Of course, I’m amazed that we got to him with barely any snags at all on our first try, and undermanned. And having a hunter (me) who’s completely unused to kiting doesn’t help. Main judgment is that we need the two extra people for DPS, and then we’ll see.

And in other news, last night I went adventuring with Farmishi and hit level 60 with her! (And immediately spent 60-70 gold on new skills….) The paladin talent tree hasn’t changed much, and since she was never meant to hit the bottom of any one tree (Protection/Holy split), she hasn’t changed much, but a lot of the special effects on spells have changed.

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The Seven Years War, in two years

by on December 10, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Patch and Mark and I got together yesterday for some boardgaming fun. Instead of the normal SFB, we played Soldier Kings. It’s a simple multiplayer game of the Seven Years War that I’d gotten for cheap some time ago. As a multiplayer game, it would solve some of the problems with having a three-person group.

As with many multiplayer games, its obvious that it gets better with more people (it can take as many as eight), but it was still fun, and we hope to play it again. The three player version we played uses Spain, France and England; that is concentrating on the part of the war that involved the colonial powers. We did a couple turns to get used to the system, then started over with me getting England; Mark, France; and Patch getting Spain.

Unit density is a bit low. None of us felt we had enough to get on with doing what we should be doing, much less react to what the other powers were doing (which is probably historical enough…). The first year went well for Spain, and we had to work at making sure Patch didn’t have the points needed for an automatic win that winter.

For the second year, I had a decent plan, and things started off well for me. However, there were two critical flaws: one, we had only kept Patch from winning, we hadn’t really nailed him down far enough to keep him from easily qualifying for it again; second, my plan (which I’d seen more as consolidation in some of the not-so-great areas) put me on a direct collision with Mark/France.

Worse, I succumbed to temptation and diverted a force on its way to India to taking French West Africa. Further collision with Mark, and the aftermath was part of a really bad summer turn for me. So, Patch grabbed up more valuable territories in the Fall, and Mark and I were out of position to do anything effective about it. For me, a large part of the problem was the fact that I was still in the midst of reorganizing my naval deployments, so the RN was unavailable for transport duty.

So, Patch won because England and France were unable to refrain from going after each other….

We’re looking at our next meeting being on Jan 6th, and if we can find a fourth (or fifth, or sixth…) we’ll play this again. Otherwise there’s a historical SFB battle that I’ve been looking at doing.

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