Category: Gaming

Be Nice Eh

It’s funny how over time, we as gamers will change to fit our surroundings. Let me elaborate. Yesterday I just about forgot that I am – when it comes right down to it – a very nice person. I decided to partake in my first ever World of Warcraft raid. It was a pick up for Illidan which means it was an older raid (Burning Crusade) but still worth an achievement that I didn’t have. The player organizing the raid was paying anyone with a gear score higher then 5k to join. Something should have clicked in my mind right away but it didn’t. As soon as everyone was in the raid instance, the raid leader calmly announced that he would be looting all gems since they were “BC gems and going towards his BC bank tab”. Someone joked that this was the method of being a polite ninja. The raid took far longer then anyone had thought, and chat was something I actually had to turn off. Perhaps my age was showing but when raid is filled with discussion of getting high it just completely turns me off. In fact the raid leader mentioned that he had to AFK to go partake in this activity. I’m all for people doing what they want, but why do they feel the need to tell everyone in the world around them?

There were no wipes, and eventually we DID finish the instance. Except the raid leader chose at that time to ninja log with the gems and not paying anyone who he had promised with the 5k+ gs. Suddenly I found myself in the middle of 23 very angry players. Then I took a deep breath. This wasn’t me. I don’t care about money in game, and stuff happens that I’m not going to like. So I left the raid group and went about my day. Yes, it was a horrible thing for that raid leader to do, and it probably tainted my look of WoW raids for the future, but it’s not the end of the world. I can continue to feel good about the fact that I am not like that. That I am a relatively good person, with a pretty kind disposition.

The problem is in games these days that seems to be an incredibly rare state of mind. It’s so easy to scream and yell and stomp our feet when something doesn’t go our way. A player once asked me for a little gold for a mount when I was afk. It wasn’t much, so I sent it to them once I had returned. I don’t know if they ever received it but I never heard from them again. It didn’t bother me because their reaction wasn’t the one I was looking for – the only thing that mattered was my action.

As a gamer some times I need to take a step back and remind myself of who I am. It may seem a little odd, but to me it makes perfect sense.We can become so absorbed in our surroundings.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

A Little Consideration

I’ve never considered myself a “WoW snob” before – but maybe I am. There are two group situations that REALLY piss me off to the point of saying something in group to the people involved. This is not how I would typically handle a situation, but I find myself unable to stop.

Situation 1: You’re a tank spec’d class like a warrior or a paladin and you’ve got a good set of tank gear but you queue for random dungeons as DPS. You personally can not parse more then the current tank, or even the heal spec’d priest. This was the situation in Heroic Pit last night. I understand that people want to earn emblems for both sets of gear but if you have nothing but tank gear and are unable to keep up dps (we’re talking 1-1.5k here) you’re not doing anything but hurting the group you’re in. It was incredibly disheartening for me to be out parsing as a healer in my heal gear (and I don’t have raid gear).

Situation 2: You’re so uber and aware of your own awesomeness that you just run around without any consideration for anyone else in your group, especially the tank. There are a few events in Heroic Pit that I have seen happen time and time again. Number one, after the first named there are these jumping leaping ghouls that like to bound around. If you happen to be an over zealous character without regards to anyone around you, chances are you bound off down the path and these ghouls see you, find you, and make short work of you. Number two, did you know you can skip a few of the encounters on the hill after the 2nd boss? The trick is that the entire group must run up the hill TOGETHER and you must stay AWAY from the hill until you are all ready. Approaching causes the mobs to spawn. They will not spawn until you get close. Even after telling the group that we would move as a unit, a few of those awesome unique players decided that they were too good to listen and ran off on their own. Then trained a few groups onto us remaining players, wiped us, and then left group.

I don’t mind new players. I think it’s cute, and I’m always making “awe, so cute we have noobs!” comments in guild. I don’t mind people who can’t parse as high as I’d personally like as long as they’re not parsing low because of something easily within their control like queuing for dps as a tank. It would be fantastic if every group I entered was filled with players who listened and were aware of their surroundings (HOW many times do people have to pull the mobs by the slaves in Pit “accidentally” as they work on their quest that they never did in regular mode. Just speak up and let the tank know you need the slaves! They’ll clear for you instead of you acting like bait).

Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s about to happen any time soon.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Disconnected

There’s a certain irony in my game play lately. On one hand I’m quite content with my adventures in World of Warcraft which makes for some pretty boring blog posts (there’s no drama after all) and on the other hand it leaves me feeling incredibly disconnected from the small community of bloggers and friends that I’ve ‘met’ on twitter. After all, I’m not playing Civilization V, I’m not exploring FFXIV, I’m not looking forward to the CCP/White Wolf recently announced vampire MMO, I’m not eagerly awaiting any MMO (SW:TOR, Secret World, GW2) or game (DA:2) and I don’t have a strong opinion on any of the drama that may be going on. That’s right, for the first time ever I’m simply enjoying the games I am playing (WoW and Minecraft for the most part).

Who would have thought.

Weekend Adventures

Yesterday was a pretty good day game wise. My Spriest picked up a dps trinket from Heroic Pit, and also managed to snag a main hand weapon from the first named, allowing me to finally use the off hand from Halls of Reflection for both my heal and DPS spec. During the instance, the healer (a druid) decided they would leave. When the healer in my group leaves I always switch my talents and queue as the healer – I know I can heal every zone just fine. We finished the instance without incident. I also healed Halls of Reflection (heroic) twice. I was looking for the healer trinket from the second boss, but it hasn’t dropped yet. One of these days I’ll get it. Both instances went just fine.

I really enjoy having both a heal spec and a dps spec. Afterward Toargo and myself completed a few older dungeons. Magister’s Terrace (heroic) for an attempt at the mount (which still has not dropped for us) and Netherstorm instances so that I can work my faction and finally be able to complete those on heroic. Even though I’ve out leveled the zones, I enjoy working on the achievements.

I’m still working on collection the 200 brewfest tokens I need. I absolutely hate the ram repeatable that sends you into the city to act as a crier so I tend to stick with the two that I know I can do, the Dwarven one (although my server has been losing the battle these days) and the repeatable ram one that doesn’t have a blue ? over the NPC’s head so it’s hard to tell that it’s there. Also no mount yet in my brewfest bag that I do daily but I’ll keep trying.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Adventures in Minecraft

In a gaming age where everyone wants the best and most amazing graphics it came as a huge personal surprise to me when I fell in love with Minecraft. It captured my heart more then any other game I’ve played lately, and I stayed up far too late holed up in my cave, avoiding zombies (and those Creepers.. damn those creepers). For those who may not be familiar with this title at all:

Minecraft is a sandbox game which allows players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. It is currently in development by Markus Persson, aka “Notch”. The gameplay is inspired by Dwarf Fortress, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Dungeon Keeper, and especially Infiniminer.[1][2] The game has two variants, Alpha and Classic, both with single- and multiplayer options. Classic includes only the building aspects of the game with unlimited blocks, while Alpha includes monsters and a much greater variety of crafting available, as well as requiring players to mine their own blocks. Alpha is currently the latest release of Minecraft, and will move into beta sometime in September 2010. Minecraft was developed for about a week before its public release on May 16, 2009 on the TIGSource forums, where it gained a considerable level of popularity. It has been continually updated since then. (-Wiki)

I first heard about the game on twitter, and then in more depth from Ark and his amazing videos. Very worth checking out if you’re skeptical about this game. I’ve been playing on survival mode, and spent far too many hours in game already. You’re basically dumped out in a world in the middle of no where, with no tools. You have a certain amount of time to get yourself situated before nightfall. At night – THEY – come. Zombies, skeletons, creepers, spiders. Where ever there is no light, THEY will come. THEY hurt. Badly. I spent a few attempts trying to get a world that I enjoyed. The first few had too much water for my liking. Eventually I found a good fit. I dug myself a little hole as quickly as I could – and could not find any coal. No coal means no torches means no light means ZOMBIES at night.

I spent my first night shaking in my little tiny cave with no door, I left one square open so I could tell when it was daylight. I heard all of THEM outside, groaning and drooling and scraping the walls of my tiny little enclosure. When the sun came up I tentatively stepped outside only to have a creeper (which does not vanish with the sun unlike skeletons and zombies) drop onto my head and blow the walls of my little cave into bits.

Ouch.

I managed to find my way back to my home (it helps that my spawn point is not too far away and it’s at the top of the largest mountain around) and this time spent the day searching for coal. Rewarded – I realized I had no tools to HARVEST this coal. Dang it! Back to the cave because it was starting to get dark out.

Eventually I got the cave set up the way I wanted. I created some paintings, some storage chests. I have a lot of supplies stashed away for when I lose what I’ve found. I’ve spent more time customizing my cave then anything else right now – but that’s how I like to play. I’ve created a pen and fenced in farm animals from outside, sheep for wool and pigs for bacon. Cows which I can apparently milk, if I had a bucket. Exploring has been done steadily but slowly, being secondary for me to the creating aspect of the game. I love how creative I can be.

If you haven’t checked out the game yet, I highly recommend it. Of course if you’re completely hung up on graphics you may not enjoy this game at all but personally this is one sandbox I’m glad I dove into.