Thursday, November 20, 2008

We Live! Busy though :)



Greetings from the New Xbox Experience!


We're still playing Wrath. We're both at 74 and trying to get to 80. It's fun, but I'll talk about it later.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

I know he's making fun, but...

BRK said something in one of his most recent posts, which I totally want to steal.

Paladins: Light, Might, and all that's Right.

He used it in the same virtual breath as calling them "cockroaches", but that's neither here nor there.

Monday, August 4, 2008

Return!

Life happened.

Here's what you missed:
* Weekend Camping: Goldfire gets a Dragon Kite
* Strael and Contrae raid Karazhan a few times
* A friend gives up on WoW and then returns a few weeks later
* Naxxramas Approaches: Saturday Run This Week
* My game gets announced
* And More!

And now that that's out of the way, I think I can go back to posting random stuff without feeling like I'm missing a lot.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Opps...

So apparently I'm an official WoW pusher. I have a really good friend who spent several of her college years on MUDS. She has been trying really hard to not do another one cuz she has a life and honestly enjoys it. (we both have an addictive personality when it comes to games) So last week I installed WoW on her fiance's laptop... At least now they aren't fighting over the television cuz she wants to play 360 and he wants to watch a program. Although he did threaten to turn off the WiFi when it was bed time the other night >_<
By the way... this is the same girl who got me hooked on Oblivion & Mass Effect. Turn about is fair play, right? And tonight I'm gonna help her get her druid bear form! So exciting!!

We are also going to see a concert tomorrow night with them (the same couple as above) at a super cool theatre (where you have a sit down dinner while you watch the show). I am super excited. The last time I saw Jonathan Coulton was at PAX 2007. Such a great time!

I have a new job. It has been 2 weeks and I still like it. I hope the job continues to be enjoyable. The best part: my Love drives me to work every morning (even tho my job is across the street... that is just too cute!) on his way to work. That means because he leaves for work early he gets to come earlier than he usually does! Plus we get to eat breakfast together and get ready together... I just re-read that and wow... I fear we are too cute. heheh... I just love him so very much!!

Last week a friend of ours lent us the new Smash Bros. game for the Wii. We've been trying to finish off the plot before tonight cuz we're scared he's gonna try to reclaim it when he comes over to watch Gundam Seed. We're almost done... I hope Gauntlet gets to come home a little early to play before our friends show up so we can finish it off!

and one last thing... Kirby!
(>^.^)>

[WoW] The Plan - Interrupted Progress

The Interruptions
We hit beta at work and Goldfire started her new job.

The Tank
Strael ran Karazhan, off-tanking and very off-healing... at level 68. He has some cool gear now for an okay healing set when he hits 70, and has some Badges of Justice to be saved as well. Unfortunately, the guild-mates were unable to be talked into bringing two level 68s, so Contrae and him were separated for a bit, which was very sad times.

The Healer
Parrista and Knigett two-manned Ragefire Chasm at 17/20, which isn't a huge feat, but it was one of our unwritten goals to help us learn our swapped roles.
They also finished up everything in the Ghostlands with the exception of Dar'kahn and his Lieutenants.

The Friends
We ran Scarlet Monastery. Completely. It was pretty fun, although there were a few issues.

The Alliance
Laheth purchased most of the new PvP rep-gear (not high enough to get the hat or the chestpiece, and I'm quite happy with his current head-gear). Also picked up a cheap Crystalforged Waraxe, and threw a tabard on him to cover up his red chest. He looks halfway decent now, which is a big deal for him.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

[WoW] The Plan - Progression 2

The Tank
No real progress: Beta approaches this week at work, and I've been spending many hours on it. Otherwise I would be having more frequent updates. Regardless, tonight we plan to do our part in the Netherstorm with Strael and Contrae.

The Healer
Parrista wandered over to Brill and aided them somewhat, whilst Sonnik was clearing out Karazahn last night. This also lifted the informal ban on allowing Knigett to perform quests for Tranquillen/Silvermoon City. Which is what Goldfire is occupied with right now.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

[WoW] The Plan - Progression

The Tank
Strael: Stayed up too late and dinged level 68 last night. Also, thanks to support from my guild and my wife, I am now the proud possessor of Tankatronic Goggles. So very cool!

Secondary Goals:
Spec: Redo talents for a recommended tanking build. I plan on trying out the one which is recommending on our guild forums by my good friend and fellow tank.

Gear: Gear up for Karazahn. Possible route: Off-tank for late-night Kara tuesday once I hit 70.

Flight: Save enough gold for flying skill, and build my own Flying Machine.

Guild-mate's goal for me: Tank Magisters' Terrace for his alts so he can get up to Exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive with them as well. His primary (a protection paladin) is already Exalted.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

[WoW] The Plan

Goals are important, but goals without planning are harder to achieve. So here are my goals, in brief.

The Tank

Strael:
Currently a little more than half-way through 67. The goal is to gain at least 1 level each week until 70, including this week.

The Healer
Parrista: She will support my wife's Paladin while he aims for 20, and beyond if she is near enough in level to him. Other goal? Learning to heal, and seeing if I like it.

The Friends
Red Moon Requiem:
When our friends have time, Vandren and Jillien will run Scarlet Monastery with them. It will be entertaining.

The Alliance
Laheth:
Pending extra playtime after the Tank, the Healer, and the Friends, this hunter needs some good gear. He's pretty much on hold until Wrath of the Lich King PVE-wise, so my thoughts are to get him some nice PVP gear and run around the battlegrounds. He has 1 piece of Season 1 honor gear, and purchasing the rest is supposedly going away when the next Arena Season starts. Realistically, this means I should focus on another PVP set for him, possibly the new cash/rep ones.

The Rest
They have no goals, and splintering myself further is fool-hardy at this point.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Hi everyone!! Remember me?

I feel kinda bad that I have not posted in a very long time.

So as my loving husband mentioned a few posts ago... Sonnik & Strael joined a new guild. A very active guild. This has turned into a very time consuming activity. I never realized how many requirements go into playing the end game. When my other characters hit lvl 60 pre BC, I just stopped playing them and played a new character. I've never been around the vast opportunity of all that end game content.
I've also never really had purples before. (I got the Leigh of Lillys from Sunken Temple) Other than that... one run thru Kara and I got a completely new outfit!!
I finally followed around a group who killed all the guys needed so I got access to Ogre'la. Enter dailys.... never did any of those either. Now with the 2.4 patch... You'll never see me again. All that daily work to rebuild the sun well?? I can't wait to participate. Course its patch day which means all the servers are off line... sad times.

[WoW] Quick Post 2

Still haven't gotten around to a more meaty post, and it will probably take some more time. We have another build due out tomorrow, so I'll be staying late both today and then. Which is a shame, since 2.4 hit.

Quick Notes!
  • Sonnik has cool stuff from Karazahn. She had a very nice run.
  • Strael and Contrae are either very near to 67 or at it. Hooray!
  • [2.4] I look forward to respeccing to a better tanking spec without having to repurchase skills.
  • [2.4] Sunwell Plateau comma woot.
  • From the hearsay, I need to grind some Battlegrounds with Laheth or else I won't be able to finish the S1 Arena gear, since when S4 hits it will disappear. Sad times.
Right. Back to work before lunch. Lunchtime gaming was N+ last week, and is Army of Two this week.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

[WoW] Quick Post

No meaty post yet - I'm too sleepy for that.

Sonnik can now enter Karazahn. Hopefully she'll get her hit rating up a little higher and then get invited on a run sometime.

Strael is level 65, and is trying a new talent spec. Shifted a couple things around... still not super-pleased with it, but I'm going to hold off on respeccing him again until 2.4 hits, because re-purchasing all the prot skill upgrades hurts. I'm bad enough at saving up cash that I don't want to drain it on respecs right now.

*Yawn* Back to work.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

[WoW] So much to talk about

Brief run-down, with more in-depth posting coming soon:
  • Vandren (my Belf Hunter) and Jillien (Goldfire's Belf Mage) broke off of our old and pretty much empty guild and formed a new one with just friends. The new guild is named Red Moon Requiem, which is a name with quite a few meanings wrapped up in it.
  • Strael and Contrae are finishing up Zangarmarsh... ran Slave Pens and Underbog (which I kept calling Underblog, because I'm hilarious).
  • Strael and Sonnik joined up with another, and very active, guild (Angst) to try and do some high-end content. Our in was my good friend Mightbe, and his sometimes holy, sometimes prot paladin Flowana.
  • Sonnik is only one Black Morass run away from being Karattuned. She finished up Durnholde last night.
  • We've been playing pretty hard-core even for us recently. I'm hoping that it isn't going to burn us out, since I know Goldfire is really looking forward to trying her hand at a raid, and I would love the opportunity to try tanking in end-game situations.
  • Also, Strael is 325+ Engineering. Getting closer to his roflcopter. And the Zapthrottle Mote Extractor is happiness in one tiny item.
  • And finally - I need to research and ramble about talent specs and gear.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Woo, LEGO!

I am ridiculously looking forward to both LEGO Indiana Jones: The Video Game and LEGO Batman: The Video Game.

The only real issue? Both are coming out this year, and we have had a 3-year streak of playing the LEGO Star Wars games over Christmas break.

So, since Batman will be out in September, that'll probably be our Christmas game. I'm thinking of seeing if we can play Indy the middle of this year around my birthday potentially, but we'll see how it goes.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Azeroth: Progress is Made

Chimmery and Tremmery, the gnomish brothers, have come out of retirement and run around making little power-boat noises. Apparently, a day's worth of questing (I was sick at home for part of this week) was enough to get both of them up to legal driving age, and they now possess a pair of Red Mechanostriders, which is awesome.

In addition, Sonnik braved the wilds of Netherstorm and achieved her final level before Northrend. A quick hop to Shattrath and following directions from there and she is terrorizing the skies of Outland on an Official Horde-Approved Wyvern Flying Mount.

And finally, the paladin firm of Starrlia, Starrlya and Starrlea has been methodically clearing the Plaguelands of the undead. They've started at the Western edge and are hoping to reach the Eastern area soon.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

The Continuing Adventures of Me

Recap:
Wednesday - Get hit by car.

Since then:
Thursday - Took the day off. Went out and had a lovely dinner date with my wife. Steak dinner is very nice, especially when discounted via gift cards ;)

Friday - Got a ride in to work from my producer, and got a ride home from my best friend. Hung out and chatted, then went to sleep. SUPER EXCITING DAY TO READ ABOUT.

Saturday - Played WoW. Broke a thousand gold with Laheth (Yay! 1/5th of the way to the epic flying mount skill), although I'm running out of non-daily solo quests to do. Then had some friends come by and with our combined might we went out and purchased Rock Band. Tested it out to make sure it worked, and then watched Stardust, which was a fantastic movie.

Sunday - Played Eve Online with friends. It was the equivalent of a fishing trip: We were looking for macro-farmers or gankers and we were going to try our hand at giving them a hard time. Not very altruistic, but it would have been entertaining enough. Unfortunately, we found nothing for hours upon hours and then had to run away from a guy who was way better than us at fighting. That was pretty much all that happened on Sunday. It's a good thing I'd already decided I didn't care enough about the game to continue past the trial period.

Monday - Played Rockband. All day. Sang for half the time, and my awesome wife played guitar. Then we swapped instruments. Managed to get Bodyguards, a PR Firm, and got inducted into the Hall of Fame. Then we checked out the online community site, and came away with dissatisfaction. Seriously, it should give us the option of generating wallpapers or something, I don't know.

Ongoing - I am sore. Ankle, shoulders, sometimes my arms, and my neck. Mostly my neck. It means I need to turn my head less than usual, and sleep on my back with pillows propping me up. Bah.

Today - At work, working.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Ah, driving.

I got rear-ended! Boo!

Now I have to deal with all the insurance and crap.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Azeroth: Chores and Desires

So, I've started playing WoW more regularly again.

On Sunday the Starrl*as finished up their Timbermaw Hold grind, ran into Winterspring, and are almost done with their Linken's Boomerang quest chain. Fun times, but a lot to cram into one day.

Last night I blew the dust off Laheth and took him into Skettis to do his first Skettis Skyguard quests. It was actually pretty frustrating... I ended up dying a couple times trying to kill those named ghost bird-men and had to grab another set of dust to finish it off, because I got caught with about 5 adds and couldn't jump off a damn bridge to get to safety. Seriously, it's a bridge, and it looks like I should be able to jump over the stupid rope, but I couldn't.

Busting those eggs up was alright, except that there were at least three other people in the area doing the same dang thing. I think I'll go back and finish up Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley quests next time if there is going to be overlap.

Also! Desires, like it says at the top of the post: I want to get the full set of Gladiators armor, but I'm going to not push for it until 2.4 hits... just because the lack of diminishing returns on honor (and being able to use it immediately) is going to help my peace of mind so much more. It sucked playing a bunch of matches where we were getting rolled until I had enough potential honor (with a generous buffer of a couple thousand extra) only to learn the next day that even with the buffer my actual honor was a few hundred short. That's what I get for trying to play defense -- screwed over.

Right, got sidetracked. Summary: Gladiator Set is the goal. I have the shoulders already, and I have 48 AV tokens, 3 WSG tokens, and 3 EotS tokens in my bank. I think I need about a hojillion of all of them to grab the shtuff, and then I'll look into weapons and rings and all that jazz, because I should seriously upgrade my Survivalist's Pike by now, although my Lohn'goron and Valanos bows are pretty nice.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Totally Forgot the Title

So, I was thinking of putting something like this at the top of the page, but the template is super-weird to modify, and I'm not sure that this is quite up to snuff yet. I am certainly not a pixel-artist myself.
I'll tool around with stuff some more later though. I like the current layout, but I want to personalize it more.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Ooh. Shiny.

Redone, using the WoW Armory official links.

Parrista and Knigett:


Strael and Contrae:


The Celestia Sisters:

What to talk about?

Haven't been playing WoW recently, and that's mostly what I talk about here...
...been working: Just hit a milestone last week.
...been playing 360: We ran through Marvel Ultimate Alliance over the weekend. Goldfire ran as Thor and Ms. Marvel, while I used Deadpool (and occasionally Spiderman) and best-friend ran as Thing.
...beat Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright: And Justice For All recently. That was fun. Now it's on to Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations. Looks good thus far, but I'm always a fan of going back and exploring more information about characters that I like.
...role-playing hasn't happened in a while, due to Work and Holidays and Football and More Work.

Yeah. I should go back to jotting down ideas to talk about and then writing about them, although I'm sure everybody (all 3 of you) who visit here love hearing about games I've played recently :)

Friday, January 18, 2008

Hi Internet!

How's it going? Pretty good, you say? That's nice.

Oh? You want to know what I'm up to? Just working and waiting for my build to finish so I can see if I broke everything. Looking forward to lunch in half an hour, where we will continue our quest to save that Dyluck guy in Secret of Mana. Also, thinking about WoW and role-playing and listening to Jonathan Coulton.

Also, thinking that I should totally link to Scott Campbell again (despite him being linked on the side-bar) just because he has this picture on his blog:
How awesome is that? Very, that's how.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Next Wednesday

Laheth has his flying mount, marking the first time I've been able to go airborne on my account.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Goals Are Fun

I tend to accomplish more if I write stuff down and pursue it. So I'm going to do that. For video games.

Mega Man ZX:
Game completion. Play while Goldfire is ahead of me in Mass Effect with major spoilers all the time.

Mass Effect:
Complete next story segment so that the wife doesn't explode with wanting to tell me about it.

World of Warcraft:
Run Ramparts again with Strael and Contrae and a pick-up group. No real reason, other than to see it without the idiocy (yes, PUGing to be less stupid)... and to get that stupid letter that I forgot to pick up (I think dude's corpse was under his dragon).

Farm (bleagh) for a few things with Laheth: Money for flying mount; Honor and Marks for more gear.

Train up Engineering (Strael) and Leatherworking (Laheth). Laheth needs some high-level gear stuff, and Strael needs to get closer to being able to make his zoom-o-copter.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Xbox Live Problems

It's always sad when Xbox Live has issues. I like being able to check on my wife's progress in Mass Effect via her Gamertag while I'm waiting for things to happen (building, downloading, et al).


Oh well. At least I can watch her progress on my Friends page, if not her actual profile.

Incoming Patch

Double Trapping is Back, Baby. Woo!

And faster pet leveling? Guess that means I'll boost Daybreak up to 70 sometime!



There's probably some other cool stuff that isn't hunter-related, but I'll check that later.

Monday, January 7, 2008

Ranting (WoW)

Note: Explicit Lyrics

Corpse-Camping
Why the fuck does anybody camp a corpse? Stop being an asshole and go do something else if a person doesn't respawn in a few minutes. You frustrate my wife and you piss me off.
NOTE: If you're 6+ levels higher than your target then you're not just an asshole, you're a bully. Nobody ever liked the bullies in school. You do know that, don't you? You're the guy who has to reform after a couple years so that you can accomplish anything worthwhile in life.

Assuming Shared Etiquette/Loot-Rules
State what the rules are prior to when they are going to be used. Some people do use the built-in Need/Greed rules even for Bind on Pickup. If you Need it, you fucking click the Need button.
I'm fine using other systems, but don't you get on your damned high fucking horse and yell at my wife for making your own damned assumptions. And if you are the only one pissed off, and everybody else is trying to explain it to you/calm the situation down, and you refuse to listen? Up Yours.

Mittens

Occasionally you may read me mentioning that somebody seems to have mittens. I am, in no uncertain terms, saying that they are slow in the brain.

These are the kind of people that have mittens attached to their sleeves year-round.

Ramparts

A Ramparts run should not involve:
3 deaths in the first 3 pulls.
Over an hour of time spent.
A near 100% failure rate on trapping.

We ran it with our hunter friend and 2 of his guild-mates. In total, we had a Protection Paladin (being the healer) played by myself, a Beast Master hunter (as the only crowd-control), and three Demonology Warlocks (one of which was played by my wife).

At the end of the run, we (Goldfire and myself) disbanded from their group and logged off. It wasn't fun, and I have no remorse for those who upset my wife.


Seriously, I need to send my hunter friend a couple pieces of strategy (kiting, trapping with positioning in mind, chain-trapping) and I also need to explain about mittens, because this group had 'em.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Two Thousand And Eight

What I did over Christmas Break
by Gauntlet

Over Christmas break, I did lots of fun and enjoyable things.

We went to Leavenworth, and bought cheese and fudge. It was snowy and I got a hot chocolate.

We went to Deatholme with our mid-20s hunter and mage and wrecked the place up for our low-20s paladin friend.

The wife and I rented Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga for free (because our Hollywood Video likes to rent us super-scratched movies that we have no hope of viewing) and got 980/1000 gamer points in 5 days. That's everything except playing it online, since neither of us wants to pony up the cash for Gold memberships since it's pointless right now to us.

We went to my brothers and the wife and sister-in-law made Christmas Kringle on Christmas Eve. It was tasty and I liked it.

At our friend's for New Year's Eve we played Rock Band on the PS3. Drumming is hard, and I can't sing along with The Hives very well. Main Offender didn't sound the same as on CD, so I'll have to look into that.


In short (although you've already gone through all the long to get here), vacation was fun.