Day 09- My first Blog Post

My first blog post was posted 22nd of July 2009, after weeks of planning. I was living in Sweden and was finding myself swapping Norwegian words for Swedish ones more and more often. I had, and had for a long time even after moving back to Norway, a hard time not using Swedish in my daily vocabulary,  which made fellow Norwegians look like question marks. As for today, the only word I use frequently is “mysa”, which is a word we lack in Norwegian. Means something like cuddling, but not necessary with another person, can be cuddling / relaxing in front of tv, lying on beach enjoying sun, can be anything that’s comfortable and enjoyable really. I really like the word, so it will be the last Swedish allowed in my language 🙂

Anyway, it was important to me not letting all this Swedish get into my head, so I wanted to start writing something. I like how there are no setup, no rules for writing in blogs, you can write in any style you want, essays, articles, facts, fiction, anything. Makes it fun. Was only natural to write about wow, which was and still is my hobby number 1, but I wanted to make it about wow but also with a hint of my and my own life, sort of like a red thread all through to make it more personal. And I think I have been sticking to that, maybe it even has taken more and more over.
My first blog post was an introduction including a video I really like. Quality is bad, but song is so sweet. Remember when shadow priests were always placed in groups with casters and healers to provide more mana? In  BC times and further back? Well, this video is about that 🙂

Edit: Seems think link is not compatible with WordPress, boo! But it can be found here. Instead I’ll post the video I was originally going to post in my first blog post, really old but really good 🙂

Brb Ice Cream Truck…! and other raid excuses

Raiding is serious business!

Lately, we are struggling getting enough sign ups for our 25 man raids. Seems we always land on 22-23, and need to ask people to use alts, go off spec, need to ask non-raiders to help out, waiting for people who might come online later, etc. It’s like a big puzzle, and I don’t like it a bit. Ok, so we are perhaps not by definition a hardcore raiding guild. But when you apply here, you do accept raiding three nights a week and let people know if / when there will the times you can’t make it. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that people sometimes have real life things coming up meaning they will not be able to raid. But funnily enough, it always seem to be the same people! So far, my mum has never decided to celebrate her birthday at Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday between 21 and 00 pm. There have been no in-laws to be visited at these hours, nor any kids throwing up. I try to make my late work nights not happen on same days as raiding by planning ahead, and my broadband is behaving nicely, keeping me online and lag-free at 99 % of the time. 9 raiding hours a week is not a lot, I have no problem squeezing in a full work week, 3 visits to the gym, seeing my family and some friends maybe, without having to decline one or several raids.

Maybe it’s easy for me to say since I don’t have a family of my own, but then again many people who do are there for every raid. Always the same 10 people who can’t make it, sometimes more often than they can. And it bugs me!

Not a valid excuse!

Sometimes people come up with more original reasons for not raiding than the usual birthday, family issues and work nights. I have heard “my kids used up all the broadband capacity so I can’t raid for at least 3 weeks”. One guy said the fan he kept behind pc to keep it cooled, not a built-in fan but the ones which blow cold air ar you,  was broken, so he also needed two weeks off, otherwise the pc would get over heated, shut down all power, not only in his house but possibly in the whole village. Lol? What medieval village would that be?

Maybe they simply came over this site. A raid excuse generator when the regular ones are getting thin. Description goes like this:

Are you sick of raiding for the hundredth time on the off-chance you might get loot? Is there no loot left for you in the game, but you’re stuck running the same instance with the guild that got you all your loot?

Of course- excuses for not raiding is just the start. Then comes all the weird reasons for having to leave a raid! Only two days ago our new trialist, a paladin healer, left before first boss was pulled with the message “Omg my family is accusing me for something I didn’t do! I’m being kicked off laptop!” And there he went. And that’s pretty much a normal excuse compared to what other raid slackers have said before. Here’s a selection from my own Crescent Dawn:

• Party in car next to my house, can’t focus / stop aggro / dps the right target
• Forgot to equip jet pack, wiped raid
• Sorry the dog was on my keyboard, pulled everything
• Not ready for ready check, lactating baby
• Sorry I could not find my target in the middle by the stairs
• Rolled down from sofa, hit autorun, fell off cliff and died. Need repair.
• Damn, spilled my beer on my keyboard, so I went to get a new one. How did you guys do?
• Soft ice machine broken. Need to go.
• My modem is on fire! Need to go!!!
• My neighbour’s car is on fire! Need to go!
• Fire alarm went off, I’m a fire fighter so I need to go.
• I need to go to Singapore. Now.
• I need to go chop wood now. Yeah, I know we are in the middle of Sindragosa, but it’s -20 inside.
• (10 min later, guy who went to chop wood:) Guys, I need to go. I strained my arm chopping wood.

What is the dog doing on keyboard ? Put it down! I have a cat, but she knows better than jump up on furnitures while I’m watching her. And why are the kids up right before midnight anyway? Put them to bed at normal time, maybe? And…get decent internet, stop playing with fire, liquids and sharp objects! At least for those 9 hours a week. Just so the rest of the raid can actually kill something. Pretty please?

Finishing with some raid excuses seen and heard around the World of Warcraft:

• omg hold on the kids just covered the dog with honey and peanut butter
• ex-girlfriend smashing my cable modem
• GTG MY SON GOT HIT BY A BIRD
• brb fishtank is on fire again
• brb there is a strange light outside my house (never come back after this one)
• afk drunk hooker just walked in the room.
• Afk guys, cops are here (never came back)
• Sorry guys gotta go, my cows got out of the paddock and are running loose on the neighbor’s farm
• Over vent “brb guys, i have a problem with my (long pause) goose
• ZOMG BRB ICECREAM TRUCK

What to say, really? Guess best thing is to lol at it 😀 Ever heard some bad excuses during a raid?

One who (d)Rifted away

It has only been 10 weeks but it feels like more, the incident who remarkably reduced my real-Id activity and made Azeroth a little bit more empty. I am talking about one of my closest WoW friends leaving game, some refer to him as the great hunter Silverhawk, to me he will always be just Tom.

Tom and Epixx

Feels like ages ago the night where our two young paladins ran the down the golden hills of Westfall, our shields reflecting the moonlight, surrounding us in a soft, shimmer glow as we slaughtered everything that was foolish enough to get in our way.

We didn’t make it much further than this, well expected since I always knew Tom’s presence on Bronzebeard was temporary. His hearthstone was set far away, on another realm called Vashj. Some ore, a handful of gems and a stack of linen cloth in my backpack is everything he left behind, but only physically. We may not have faced the greatest adventures together, considering our greatest encounter was a sharp-toothed, furry thief, also knows as Hogger, but there was laughter, fun and most important of all, friendship. Good memories, which no backpack is large enough to carry.

Tom and Tribecius (!)

It is not the first, and probably not the last time I have seen it. It happened with Lord of the Rings, Age of Conan, Aion and now Rift. New games are released, leaving Stormwind’s trade district a little less crowded. For a while. Then it’s usually back to normal, with a few exceptions, those who don’t come back at all. Little did i know Tom was going to be one of these exceptions, swapping Azeroth for Telara, without looking back. I am only one of many who feels his absence, but I follow his adventures on his blog, and he also made a little guest post for me, writing about his Rifting. Enjoy!

So, here I am again writing a guest post at my favorite blog… I am one of those who chose to move from Azeroth to Telara (RIFT) and stay there. I went to Telara with a few of my friends but some of them went back to Azeroth. I guess they missed the place… I on the other hand didn’t.

The only negative thing I can think of changing game scene is the fact that you lose touch with most of your old friends as we kind of stop communicating when you move on. I guess gamers are more acquaintances than friends really. 6 years in WoW and then moving on… feels like you left the family behind in search of a new life. The odds for me going back to Azeroth has gone from high probability to zero in less than 2 months.

I was über bored of World of Warcraft when I heard rumors of Rift and the longing for something new and exciting was more than enough for me to sneak by and check out the beta. 2 hours into beta I preordered RIFT and cancelled my WoW account and I haven’t looked back ever since. I giggle to myself every time I get phishing mails about WoW now… Tho now I get both phishing scam mails from Blizzard and Trion (well, people who think I’m stupid enough to believe they are Blizzard and Trion that is).

So why do I like Rift better than World of Warcraft ? Well, first of all I feel like a total noob again since everything is new and all… you know the feeling you had when you first started out exploring the world of Azeroth and all that. It is a good feeling… Secondly I think the professions in Rift are more exciting as you have the possibility to add stats with augments and change the color of the armor.

The fact that they have more stuff to do in-game than Azeroth is also a huge plus. I have only done 2 dungeons in Rift till now because I’m to busy going for Rift event invasions and looking for artifacts. Artifact hunting is insanely addictive and it’s nothing like the WoW Archaeology where you feel like eating a bullet from all the travelling for nothing. In Rift you actually see the artifacts, they are hidden among rocks, in bushes, on mountain tops etc. Basically it’s like puzzles.. when you have all artifacts of a set you hand it in and get rewarded with a lucky coin, a bag with goodies (sometimes epics) or potions. You can also get books with lore which you can add to your collection.

The rewards you get (like surprises from chests, achievements and artifact bags) are always an item that suits the class you play when you loot it. This means that you’ll never get plate or cloth if you play a rogue. Sure in dungeons it drops randoms as it does in Azeroth and you can be unlucky with drops… but not on the single player scene.

Right now there is a 3 stage event going on in Rift and they had to postpone stage two of the event with a week because the server couldn’t handle 100 people in the same zone fighting the same boss… not really a big surprise. An epic fail event if you will… I personally was a bit disappointed with constant disconnects and stuff but I don’t care. I still love the game (which is new so you have to forgive the few flaws the game has as it will be even more awesome in time). Trion is way better at hot fixes and updates and service than Blizzard is. The servers are down in shorter periods and the updates are not set to one day of the week. They added new content less than a month after release… now that was unexpected.

I still don’t have a clue why some of the people would go back to boring Azeroth after trying out a day or two in Telara. I guess the main reason is they miss the people back in Azeroth. Personally I’d rather have fun in Telara than be bored shitless in Azeroth, friends or no friends. I wish I had 4 more friends playing tho so that I could get to see some dungeons.. but for now I’m more than happy to be an artifact/Rift hunter.

New levels of geekiness

Easter is over, and I think I, by forcing myself to the gym, have burned all of my beers and most of my Easter eggs. Unfortunately it seems that several guildies think we still are in holiday mode. Right before the easter week, we had about 30 sign ups for raid nights, now it’s hard to gather 25. Very annoying, very frustrating. We have cleared all content on normal 25man now, it’s time for further progress in heroic modes. Some people probably sense the incoming wipe nights with its high repair bills and frustration, which makes me very disappointed. Raiding is not supposed to be easy all the time, and the ones who are just in for a free ride, well… They should find somewhere else to play, really.

Now that steam is out, for the last month I have been kinda bored in-game. Apart from raids I almost haven’t been online at all. Then, in all my boredom I made a worgen mage just in lack of something better to do, which I actually found really fun! I did a few levels in battlegrounds and the evil part of me enjoyed annoying people by sheeping them, let them think they got me before slowing them down with all kinds of frost spells and then arcaning them back to the dark side, so hard that they jus twant to run back and hide deep into Undercity! Mwahaa! Wicked me shows no mercy. Anyway,  this led me to the idea of getting some pvp heirlooms, so I started to run some battlegrounds on Tribeca just for this purpose. Only somewhere, somehow, I started having so much fun in pvp that I decided to buy gear for myself instead. Even more fun since quite a few of our guildies are also into smashing hordies, and together we have been rather unstoppable. Well. At least on one occation.  In either way, it certainly gave me a new hunger for gaming.

I also quite enjoyed the Noblegarden event, I did all the world events the first year they were available, so it didn’t feel that repetitive anymore. I was only going to pick up a few eggs so I could have two spring flowers for making a, *cough* cheerleader outfit. Forgot resto shammies can’t dual wield, so that was a waste. Then I thought it was be nice if my hunter could have a spring circlet every girl should have at least one of them in her wardrobe, and then I felt bad for the lock who didn’t even have an egg basket! Before I knew it I was the most efficient egg hunter in Goldshire, totally in control of all the egg spawn points, rushing around picking them up faster than lighting, causing egg aggro all over.  Now all my girls can parade around town in bunny outfits. Attention freak as I am.

My super cool friend Heidi once (when I wanted to buy a shaman hoodie!) said I should embrace my inner geek. So I am. This time by purchasing the new remote chat that works with Iphone. Meaning I can now join guild chat from phone, without actually being online.  I am almost as attached to my Iphone (I really use it for everything!) as I am to game, so a combo of these is powerful and a bit dangerous. My boss has already told me to put it down and reminded me I am not paid to play. Party pooper! Should I take him seriously and try cut down on my  freshly renewed interest for game and all that comes with it? Probably not. Going to follow wise Heidi’s advice instead  😀