日常生活

So I activated my account for another month, partially to appease my brother and my friend and in a way myself as well because I've actually kind of missed playing..

I decided against playing my human priest, Moriam, instead focusing on the Horde side of the game (as I've done almost all quests for the Alliance).

I created a tauren paladin called Borkedhorn ('cus, like, he has a borked horn... get it?) and will focus on healing, something I haven't done (properly) for a long time. My goal is to try and get him up to level 85 before the month is over, but we'll see how that goes; I've never been a very fast leveler..

Edit June 24: Well it's moving forward; Borkedhorn dinged 30 yesterday. My friend (who also play a tauren paladin) and I started a guild called Need CafPow If Sleepy, a sort of homage to NCIS, and Abby in particular. We both love NCIS.

I'm currently on a break from WoW. It's partially because I got a little tired of it; the content ran out faster in Cataclysm than in previous expansions, but also - more so - because my computer was shitsludge. Not limited to WoW either; I could hardly play any games at all that has decent graphics. WoW don't require that much but still looked pretty bad. To top it off, I had that little problem with my OS a little while back.

I decided enough was enough with the BS that was my computer and went ahead and upgraded a bit - Windows 7, new cpu, new gfx card, new everything. Made myself a little monster, I did. (Well, my brother assisted with the assembly).

I was looking at a few games to try out with this new "wonder-machine" of mine, and happened upon RIFT. I had glanced at it in the past, but thought little of trying it because my machine would hardly run it. (It probably would, but I'm sick and tired of always playing with lower graphic settings). Now though, I decided to download the 7-day trial to have a peek at it.

As soon as I got into Telara (the world in RIFT) I felt a sense of recognition; pretty much everything looks and feels like WoW, only enhanced (I'm comparing it to a low to medium-setting installation of WoW), which made it pretty easy to get into. On the one hand we have this beautiful world, open for exploration and adventure. On the other, while I knew a lot (or at least some) of the backstory to WoW (having played Warcraft 1-3) helping me get the feel of Azeroth, I don't know a whole lot about Telara or the races inhabiting the world, and I'm not sure I have the energy to fully take on a new world.

As tempting as it is to buy RIFT I have decided against doing so. I probably wouldn't hesitate if it didn't cost as much per month to play as WoW does (give or take). It's good fun to play it, and the world really is beautiful (more so than Azeroth! ;o) but since I don't know anyone else playing that could "mentor me" I don't know if I would enjoy it as much. We'll see though, I might change my mind in a week.

Moving forward through the mmo-swamp, a friend of mine is talking a lot about the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic, trying to get me onboard to play when it is released. I'm still uncertain to whether I actually will, but I've agreed to at least try it out. I'm not a HUGE fan of Star Wars, but there are sertain aspects of the game that looks promising and fun. Maybe...

That same friend is trying to get me back into WoW, and I might, if only to see what it looks like in all it's glory (haven't really seen it with every setting maxed out). My brother also wants me back in the game; I'm the guildleader of one of the "bank-guilds" we have and he's having troubles accessing stuff in my absence.. ;D

It's been a few months since we took on the behemoth that is Dungeons & Dragons. We finished off the starter-set campaign and I bought a few of the books and boxes from the Essentials line. We then started out on a new journey to save the land.

But we didn't get very far. The roleplaying aspect of D&D turned out to be a little rough on all of us; too much were said and not enough got done, so to speak. And we found the character sheets and spells a bit hard to read out. All of us enjoy a good fight, but it got more complicated than it probably had to.

And that's where the D&D board game Castle Ravenloft comes into the picture -- It is a slimmed down version of D&D with the main focus on exploring the dungeons (in this case a castle) and fighting monsters. What makes it great is that no one is locked down playing the DM (which would always be my peril); everyone gets to control the monsters they reveal, which in my opinion is ingenious. I like that a lot, because now I can be part of the group of adventurers instead of hiding behind a DM screen.

I got the game a few days ago and my brother and I have played a couple of rounds to test it out. We both enjoy it immensely and I think Castle Ravenloft will be the favourite among my games for a long time to come. :-)

I'm planning on buying the "sequel", Wrath of Ashardalon which was released mid-Februari, as well as The Legend of Drizzt due for release in October.

I'm late to the party as always -- I got FFXIII a little while back. So far I've played about 14 hours. A lot of people are complaining about the game, but I quite like it.

I'm not a huge FF-nerd; I haven't played a lot of the older games, like really played them. The only ones I can think of are FFIV, V and VI on the SNES. And I used an emulator. And I cheated...

Compared to the older games, FFXIII is very linear, or at least have been for most of my 14 hours. Some of the enviroments can get a little boring because of it, but so far, for the most of it, that hasn't been a huge problem. I actually kind of like knowing where I'm going for a change.

Another thing I like a lot compared to the older games is how when you die, instead of being returned to the title screen (which pisses me off to no end) you're prompted with a dialogue asking if you want to retry the battle. It brings you back to the very moment before engaging in the battle, meaning you can adjust your gear or spend Crystarium Points or whatever before attempting the fight again. Very nice.

It supposedly takes 50+ hours to beat the game. Knowing me - and I do know me - that's probably closer to 70+ hours... So far so good though. :)

Sometimes it feels like we don't have enough cards to play with. But then I remember all the cards we're no longer using in our decks and I die a little inside. There's plenty of them.. u__u

I feel some reluctance in buying new cards, even though I don't mind some new cards to play around with, using the word 'some' rather loosely. I've ordered a New Phyrexia fat pack and the Duel Decks 'Knights vs. Dragons'. They both look pretty neat. :-)

Edit May 19: Upon ripping open one of the nine booster that came with the fat pack I found Karn Liberated - a bloody Planeswalker! Pretty rad and oh so over-powered. (If you didn't know, I'm not a huge fan of Planeswalkers).

If that wasn't "bad" enough; when I opened the last booster I found yet another one. I mean, for real, what are the odds..? At first i was a little bummed that I didn't get a different Planeswalker at least, but then I found out he's the only one in the expansion...

My brother and I took the duel decks for a test drive and I started out with the Knights. His Dragons won... We swapped decks and tried anew; the Dragons won again. We concluded that the Knights are inferior. Or we're just lousy shufflers...

I'm not keeping up to date with a lot of things, important things...such as game releases. Portal 2 is due for release this thursday and fck if I'm gonna miss that... I sent an order for the game as soon as I got home from work.

Oh, and I totally missed today's Woot!. Sold out before I even had the chance to buy it. :-( Major bummer on that one, because 1) it's a fricken' Portal tee. And 2) It's a fricken PORTAL TEE! A pretty cute Portal tee at that. Fffffff- D:

Edit April 20: Well, waiting another day meant I could buy it for $5 more. No real harm done, I suppose. And I got a mail saying the game (you just lost it) is on the way. Meep! :-)

I'm having a pretty good time playing through Mass Effect 2. It's really quite an enjoyable journey and the story is very interesting. I mean there are some irks, things that I miss from the first game, and a few other that bug me to no end, but apart from those, it's all good.

I'm playing a female Shepard, because I think she's nicer to look at. ;-) I decided not to follow up on my saved games from ME1, partially because I'm unhappy with the romance there. Silly me...

My biggest beef is how they've added "ammunition", even if it's not ammunition per say. In ME1 the weapons had infinite ammo and they overheated after frequent use and you had to wait a few seconds before you could fire again. If you weren't overly trigger-happy, this was no issue.

ME2 comes with weapons changed to incorporate the use of "thermal clips" to avoid overheating. That basically means that when a weapon is overheated, you just pop the thermal clip and insert a fresh, cool one, allowing you to keep shooting. The problem is that you have a somewhat limited supply of thermal clips, essentially making them ammunition -- once you're out of clips, the gun won't fire. I'm running around with a sniper rifle with 8 rounds, tsk..

I got a coupon code from CDON.se a while back and after a long and hard look at the games available I decided to order Alan Wake.

I have a bad habit of leaving games unfinished behind me, but I'm determined to play through both the main story and the DLC.

Because I love me some mysteries. :-)

Edit March 19: I beat the main game the other day. Damn thing had quite the anticlimatic ending. The road there was a lot of fun though, however repetitive, fighting the same type of "monsters" throughout the game and the linear design of the maps.

Could have been better off with trickier puzzles as well -- I felt almost as cheated as when playing Resident Evil 5...

I still have the DLC to play though though, it may make up for the lousy ending.

I've been a proud bearer of the Loremaster-title for a good while now. Questing is one of my favourite things to do in WoW and I was rewarded that title after doing a lot of quests.

...A lot of quests.

It was hard work, really, spite the low level on a lot of them (1400 of them to be precise). The old world wasn't very inviting in terms of questing, with quest givers and objectives spread far apart, all over the world.

Outland had more of their quests tied to their respective zones, branching out with a few "breadcrumb" quests to take you to the next quest hub, and it got even better in Northrend. With Cataclysm this has been perfected even further, and with the latest patch, questing in the old world got tons better.

You're now taken from quest-hub to quest-hub in a very user-friendly (and leveling-friendly) manner, covering a bit of each zone at a time. You don't get the feeling of running around like a chicken with its head chopped off anymore. It's a huge improvement and I like it a lot. :-)

Now, because of all the changes to the world -- what with Deathwing emerging and spreading havoc across Azeroth and all -- a lot of the quests in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor have been altered or removed. They have also changed the Loremaster requirements for those continents to reflect the quests completed in each zone, like in both Outland and Nortrend, instead of just showing the 700 quests per continent.

What does this mean to me? Well for one, I get to go around the world completing new quests. And a lot of the quests are SUPER fun to do! :-)

While I was questing in Blasted Lands, I came upon a small Worgen village called Surwich, located in the newly revealed southern parts of the zone. It's not a big village at all, only a few houses and a few NPCs, but DAMN the architecture struck me hard. It looks awesome in every way and I just read it being described as "a cross between nineteenth century London and Hollywood's version of Transylvania".

It truly looks gorgeous, and I can't wait to experience more of it. :-)

Sure, it's been reported before, but this is a screen I've taken myself, just moments ago. From the live server, at that. All servers are down at the moment, but will be back up in a few hours, and there will be MAYHEM spread across the world. I can't wait. :-)