Various Screenies

Welcome to Lovely Un'Goro Crater! We Hope You'll Be A Crater Too!
The Princess Trumped
Contrae has a Pony and some very pretty Robes

Gong! Carrots for Everybody!
Spinning with Herod

Sunken Temple Defeated

Moments before going to Outland

So, basically, this post was me finally sharing some shots I've had lying around. A few of which were actually taken so I could talk about them on the blog!

Alright, well... the servers are being maintained right now, so I can't continue leveling my engineering or making enough gold to plow through the Paladin mount quest. I guess I could head in to work or something.

Azeroth in Brief - Follow-up

Strael and Contrae are now both 58, after a successful Sunken Temple run. Our hunter friend, however, is only 57, so we're holding off the Dark Portal run until he dings.

Carry on.

Azeroth in Brief

I keep wanting to grab pics and do a post, but I've been busy. So, I'll just sum things up for now:

• Laheth has his Season 1 Shoulders - They look good, and they were definitely an upgrade. Unfortunately, now that they are on, it highlights that most of the rest of my outfit also looks clownish.
• Strael, Contrae, Hunter-Friend, and Warrior-Friend finally have all their quests ready to delve into the Sunken Temple. Humorously enough, all but the warrior are now at 57, so it should go by really fast. And then we can hit the Outlands, which our hunter friend has never seen.
• Laheth is about a quarter of the way to getting his standard flying mount. Frustrating that as a non-flying, non-fishing, non-cook the only daily quest I have accessible is battlegrounds.
• And there was probably something else I can't think of.

New Armory Listing

I know I was complaining about how long it takes for the site to update but still... I talk about em and I figured you might want to know what I was talking about!

So I'm an alt-aholic... we just added a few of my characters... Just the ones I play the most, not even all my high level ones. I have MANY more! *blush* I play a lot of WoW ^_^

Happy Birthday to Angela!!!
There, with that said... I hope you are having a fantastic day out there on your day off! Enjoy it shopping or doing something just as fun!! ^_^

The WoW Armory is really slow to updating. Strael and Contrae are around level 55 now! I even respec'd out of affliction (but I kept the insta-cast Corruption). Gonna get a new pet. We'll see how I like it. Also, saving up mats to make my new Robe of the Void. I sure hope it's worth it! Got most of it except I need 15 more demonic runes and tons more essence of undeath. Anyone wanna donate an essence or 3?

Shoulders for Laheth

~2000 honor and 4 Arathi Basin marks of honor left to obtain. I just can't stomach any more AB tonight, and the honor will come much easier from pretty much anything else.

Also, I'm counting this as my final NaBloPoMo post (since I started a day late) even though I missed one, and it's short because I'm not sure I'll have a chance to post again today.

In the words of Yakko Warner: G'night everybody!

Musing about DLC

Today, we're going to talk about DLC. DLC stands for Downloaded Content. This ranges from free user-created modifications and maps on the PC to purchasable PS3/Xbox360 add-ons for games. I'm mostly going to be talking about PS3/360 stuff, because I was thinking about it this morning.

So, Rock Band just came out, and extra songs available for download showed up either the same day or right after. Now, this is a good thing, but people still clamored about the fact that the developers/publishers could have been withholding this stuff from inclusion in the game to get people to pay for it after and that it's not fair.

...And you know what? They could be right or not, but it doesn't matter. Let's look at two possible routes.

Route A - Harmonix/MTV had the songs ready but didn't include them
The game was designed with the idea of having downloadable content available at some point. So, some set of people were already deciding what sort of stuff to include post-shipping, and the best thing to do in that instance would be to develop some of it concurrently with the project, so that the systems were assured to be in working order.
And you know, from what I've heard, the game is a complete game before getting anything extra, so there's really no reason to complain if they chose to think ahead and prepare things for the future. There's profit to be earned from micro-payments, and although I may not like paying for them myself, I wouldn't mind getting paid for them.

Route B - Harmonix/MTV did not have the songs ready
This is the one that will confuse some people initially. How could they have not had the songs ready but they were by the time the game came out? Most people won't think very in-depth about that, but as with almost every product imaginable, games are finished MONTHS before they hit shelves.
They have to be manufactured, marketed, and packaged. And even before they are "done", there is usually a content-lockdown in place around beta, wherein no new content is supposed to be allowed in the game other than bug-fixes and localization. There's almost always some stuff that gets put in, but the guideline is there to prevent introduction of new bugs and extending testing times.
So, it's entirely possible that the game was locked down and then the extra songs were worked on after that period.


Either way, there's nothing to complain about. It's cool that they already have content available, because otherwise you end up with a menu option that goes to a blank page, and those suck.

More PSO

Surprisingly, we made it up to the end of the Caves at a mere level 10. Of course, the boss one-shotted both of us, so we're not quite up to taking him down.

Goldfire is still enjoying her hunter lots, especially now that she has a Sword and a Partisan to play with, so she doesn't have to worry about not hitting guys before I take them down.

We're probably going to play it some more today (I took yesterday and today off -- sick days), although I'm not sure when we're going to start.

Leveling with Friends

So, our hunter friend, who was practically the same level as us, decided that he was going to take a break for a few days. In preparation for this, he ran through "a couple of the Hinterlands quests" and managed to hit 50.

Huh. Well, Strael was at 48, and Contrae was at 46. So, we ran up to the Hinterlands ourselves and got a level each.

But! We've been eying a few other games to play sometimes, so now we'll probably be a bit behind when we run with him next. Not that a few levels is a huge difference, but it creates a little rift in my head.

Anybody else have issues with this? It's only sort of tangentially related to what the Egotistical Priest was talking about the other day (Although I now realize that the title was stolen almost directly from her).

Oh well. I'm going to play some more PSO with my beautiful bride.

Woo! PSO!

Last night, I decided I wanted to play something other than World of Warcraft for a bit. So, I sat down in front of our rack of games, and asked my wonderful wife if she wanted to join me in playing any game. She said sure, and we settled on playing some Phantasy Star Online for the GameCube (split-screen FOR THE WIN).

Now, I've dropped easily a couple hundred hours in this game in the past. I have a level 131 ranger (RAmarl for those who know what I'm talking about), a couple other characters ranging from 14 to 50, and I've beaten practically everything that you can offline (I can never remember if we took down Olga-Flow on Ultimate... I think I did solo, but he hit my friends Force too hard even at level 129, so we weren't able to knock him out) and yet I still enjoy the hell out of it.

So! I rolled up a ranged guy (woo!), and she made a close-range girl, and we got to it.

We died. A lot. But she enjoyed herself, and so did I, and that's what really matters. Plus, she's really enjoying raising her very own MAG.


Yay!