Okay, so I decided to go ahead and renew my City of Heroes/Villains subscription and try playing that for a while again. I still have Guild Wars as an option on days I don't feel up to heroism OR villainy (which I imagine I'll switch between quite often, since i seem to be so bipolar). Fortunately Guild Wars has no subscription, thus why I was so quick to choose to play it. Even if I end up not playing it in favor of some other game, I can always go back to it without worrying about a subscription.
So, off I go to throw lightning at evil villains. Or possibly to stomp on some heroes, we'll see. All with my trust female sidekick. Or minion. I think villains have minions rather than sidekicks, right?
Peace out.
10/20/2008
10/18/2008
...meh
Well, I've been insanely bored lately. I know, I know, big surprise. Plus I'm sure you're also thinking "Hey, he hasn't posted in a month, and that's all he has to say? He's bored?"
Not much has really been going on though. I've mostly been going to work, then doing random stuff at home. I think part of my lack of posting is also due to the fact that I haven't played World of Warcraft for nearly a month now.
I know, I know, big shock. "Quit WoW?!" Well, I've just been kind of disenchanted with it lately. It's fun and all, at times, but there's a lot of problems with it for me. I spend too much time looking for a group to do something and not enough time playing the game. You can only do so many Battlgrounds on your own before you get bored.
What does it for me, in WoW, is the raiding. I seriously love to raid and take on those raid instances with a large group of players all working together.
It's the together part that's hard though. It seems as though there is a lack of interest in serious raiding.
This was before the expansion Wrath of the Lich King was announced for November 13th, I might add. Once it was announced, interest in the game seemed to die for everything. It's like everybody important decided to go into stasis until it was released.
Which, admittedly, makes sense. By now the Burning Crusade has been out over a year. People have seen basically all there is to see of it. They're sick of it, and they want something new.
Especially those of us who recognize how horrible the class balance is in player vs player combat. The game is remarkably well balanced when it comes to player vs environment. That's why raiding is so fun, because of the effort of bringing a group of players together to work through these challenges the developers have placed for us. And because everybody has something important to contribute that helps the whole group move forward. In PvP, it's more of an "every man for himself" mentality, and the classes that can't keep up (such as non-disc priests and non-healer shaman) just fall behind and suck majorly.
Unfortunately, most people just want to get gear, and as easily/quickly as possible. Nobody cares about playing the game, that's apparently not the fun part. Apparently getting stuff is the fun part for them.
Ya know, I like stuff as much as the next guy, but what's the point in having all that gear and all those items? You use it to play the freaking game. I most enjoyed the game when I was still undergeared and the game was hard for me. Before I got into serious raiding, I was doing Battlegrounds to get the (now obsolete) Season 1 PvP gear. I have lost all but one piece of that gear since I got it, replaced by Season 2 pieces and one Season 4 piece. When I was raiding with Nonlinear Dynamics, the first time I was raiding, it was all new material to me. Most people were probably there for the gear, but I was there to enjoy the instance. And just going through the content and struggling to beat it was fun for me. (Believe it or not, first time against Shade, I MOVED IN THE FIRE. WoW-junkies will know what I mean, and I am ashamed at this. Hey, I didn't have DBM at that point, so I have an excuse!)
I still enjoy raiding Karazhan, but you really gotta have a fun group in order to enjoy it. You can't have people acting like total jerks, and you can't have people goofing around and intentionally wiping the raid. I'm at the point where, at least as a DPS class, I could run through Karazhan blindfolded, without the benefit of Ventrilo. Tanking it is a little more involved (and for me difficult, because being an undergeared tank is apparently some sort of unforgivable sin), but take me through on Matuk, I'll get ya through to Prince. I know that place like the back of my hand. I'm about as good with Zul'Aman, but lately when people tried to take me I was busy with other things.
So, here I am in WoW, not exactly amazingly geared, but my skill combined with the gear I do have makes me an Enhancement Shaman that can impress. More than once people have complimented me on my ability to deal the damage, and I am quit proud with what I have accomplished in the game.
But I've hit some sort of brick wall in progress ever since Epic Liberation Front stopped raiding. We were so close to Archimonde attempts, but then the raid leader just gave up, cause he was sick of having problems finding good tanks.
Since then I've been attempting to build up my old guild Hordecore Pwnstars into at least a low-level raiding guild, doing Karazhan every week. Rather, I should say I was doing that until I stopped playing. But nobody was coming together to try and make it work. It was like me and two or three other people from the guild who actually put forth the effort, and we had to add random non-guildies to get a raid group going.
It certainly wasn't for lack of people, we had plenty of people in the guild who could raid, and I'm not talking about the lowbies. I set up a web site, Hakuro set up a Ventrilo server for us (which I organized rather beautifully if I don't say so myself), I scheduled days to go raid and made sure to let people know when I want to raid. I very much encouraged people joining the forums so that we could share information, especially times that people were available to raid. I worked hard on gearing up Moonspirit, because I wanted to tank my guild through Karazhan. I did manage to get to the point where I could main-tank Kara, and I just needed to get every pull down pat. Pulling successfully in any instance is something of an art, and I still hadn't perfected it when I stopped playing. As far as I could tell, and nobody was telling me any different, except for the people who hate my guts, I was doing everything I needed to do in order to have a successful raiding guild. All the pieces were in place.
But most people wouldn't show up for a raid. Almost nobody signed up on the web site. Half the time, when a level 70 player joined the guild, he would quit a couple days later because he didn't see us doing anything. Some officers/recruiters (won't give any names) were still recruiting lowbies to the guild, even though I wanted to get nobody below level 65. (I understand that some people in the game are amazing enough to level their character to 70 super quick and get into raiding to support the guild, but most people aren't like that and in fact suck major ass). I would get people saying they would show up, and sound all enthusiastic about raiding, but then they wouldn't even be online. I was passing up bear runs through Zul'Aman, with Lustrius I might add, in order to get these raids together. Now I feel like that was a mistake.
Frankly, I grew disappointed with the WoW community. And now I just don't know what to do.
I want to do amazing things with a guild, and lead it on to raid instances and massive PvP efforts, but it's impossible if I'm the only one trying to make it happen. If everybody else is just along for the ride and expects me to do all the work, my efforts are going to fail. Raids and PvP premades are group efforts...and unfortunately, the WoW players tend to care only about themselves and how they can get gear with the least effort. Self-centered bastards, each and every one, and I have some personal experience with a certain WoW player who's the epitome of self-centered.
So I kinda just stopped logging in without saying anything. The only regret I have is abandoning my good friend Demina, but I have no other real friends in there. Acquaintances maybe, but not friends. And certainly plenty of enemies. Maybe I'll try playing again after the expansion comes out, but I'm going to give that a month or two first. Blizzard is notorious for very buggy launches. Plus, I don't want to deal with being killed by hundreds of Alliance players. Enhancement shaman are going to be slightly weak until they get new gear cause of some major changes to how their stats work, leading to less attack power from Strength.
Admittedly, I've been annoyed with PvP in WoW ever since I first tried it. I'm a Shaman. Cynicism and bitterness comes with the class. Because Shaman, with the exception of Priests, are the weakest class in PvP. Especially the spec I happened to pick as my favorite, which is Enhancement. The game is simply not balanced for PvP, and I've ranted about this more than once.
Admittedly, Blizzard is attempting to take steps to fix that, but they have no idea what they're doing.
Ironically, the game I've been thinking about switching to is Warhammer Online, which was released September 18th. I've heard a lot of good things about it, mostly in reference to it's Realm vs Realm style of PvP and Public Quests. Most people say it plays like WoW when you first start out, but then you start to notice the differences. What I have heard has very much impressed me, and I just might very well start playing it by Christmas time.
With the WoW expac coming out in less than a month, I feel kinda bad about letting WoW go, because I look forward majorly to the changes of the game, but I've just been too jaded lately. The game may change, but the people probably won't. If I do go back to playing WoW, it won't be until 2009 at the earliest.
For now, I went and bought Guild Wars, because it doesn't have any subscription fee, which means it's a cheap way to feed my gaming addiction until I can garner the guts to go after the bigger fish of Warhammer Online.
Okay, so I've pretty much just been rambling on about WoW as my thoughts come out. I feel kinda bad now, because I know a lot of you don't play WoW and never plan to, and thus have almost no clue what I'm talking about.
Well, hmm...I could mention that my brother totaled the Intrepid. He's not hurt, but the car is gone. Of course, two days later my dad went and bought a used car for him, with the intention of my brother paying him back. I swear, I never get that kind of treatment. Of course, I'm just the son that dropped out of college to them. Never mind that I'm making progress to undo that and get back where I should be.
For now my plan is to save up enough money to at least start paying for my own used car so I can stop relying on my family's vehicles. Admittedly, I've thought about going down to the bank and trying to grab a car loan, cause I probably have enough for a down payment already. But I really don't want to rush things, especially any big financial decision. Rushing is what got me into this mess to begin with. Now if only my parents could stop rushing me.
Once I have a car I should be able to get my own apartment, since I'll be able to drive myself around town without relying on anybody's charity. The problem with that is I'd be paying insurance, gas, rent, and food at that point. Plus I'll need to start paying back some of my old loans in February. I haven't taken the time to calculate all that, because I have no idea how much insurance or gas will cost until I get the car. Rent will be $600-700 a month, which is probably more than half my paycheck at this point, so I'm obviously going to need some help with my expenses.
This means I'll need to find some sort of housemate to share my apartment with, which will probably end up being LJ. I don't really know anybody else in town well enough to trust them as a housemate. It needs to be somebody I can get along with after all. And at the very least I can trust her to pull her own weight, cause she has too much pride to live off me. Not to mention the fact that I look forward to being able to spend the night with her!
I could probably type up more things, more plans and thoughts and all that junk, but I'm at the point where I feel like I'm rambling about stuff randomly. Trust me, I have more ideas in my head I could ramble about, but I think I've stretched this blog post to it's limit. Maybe I'll share more later.
Peace out.
P.S. Once I get my own apartment, I am totally shooting for this: clicky
Not much has really been going on though. I've mostly been going to work, then doing random stuff at home. I think part of my lack of posting is also due to the fact that I haven't played World of Warcraft for nearly a month now.
I know, I know, big shock. "Quit WoW?!" Well, I've just been kind of disenchanted with it lately. It's fun and all, at times, but there's a lot of problems with it for me. I spend too much time looking for a group to do something and not enough time playing the game. You can only do so many Battlgrounds on your own before you get bored.
What does it for me, in WoW, is the raiding. I seriously love to raid and take on those raid instances with a large group of players all working together.
It's the together part that's hard though. It seems as though there is a lack of interest in serious raiding.
This was before the expansion Wrath of the Lich King was announced for November 13th, I might add. Once it was announced, interest in the game seemed to die for everything. It's like everybody important decided to go into stasis until it was released.
Which, admittedly, makes sense. By now the Burning Crusade has been out over a year. People have seen basically all there is to see of it. They're sick of it, and they want something new.
Especially those of us who recognize how horrible the class balance is in player vs player combat. The game is remarkably well balanced when it comes to player vs environment. That's why raiding is so fun, because of the effort of bringing a group of players together to work through these challenges the developers have placed for us. And because everybody has something important to contribute that helps the whole group move forward. In PvP, it's more of an "every man for himself" mentality, and the classes that can't keep up (such as non-disc priests and non-healer shaman) just fall behind and suck majorly.
Unfortunately, most people just want to get gear, and as easily/quickly as possible. Nobody cares about playing the game, that's apparently not the fun part. Apparently getting stuff is the fun part for them.
Ya know, I like stuff as much as the next guy, but what's the point in having all that gear and all those items? You use it to play the freaking game. I most enjoyed the game when I was still undergeared and the game was hard for me. Before I got into serious raiding, I was doing Battlegrounds to get the (now obsolete) Season 1 PvP gear. I have lost all but one piece of that gear since I got it, replaced by Season 2 pieces and one Season 4 piece. When I was raiding with Nonlinear Dynamics, the first time I was raiding, it was all new material to me. Most people were probably there for the gear, but I was there to enjoy the instance. And just going through the content and struggling to beat it was fun for me. (Believe it or not, first time against Shade, I MOVED IN THE FIRE. WoW-junkies will know what I mean, and I am ashamed at this. Hey, I didn't have DBM at that point, so I have an excuse!)
I still enjoy raiding Karazhan, but you really gotta have a fun group in order to enjoy it. You can't have people acting like total jerks, and you can't have people goofing around and intentionally wiping the raid. I'm at the point where, at least as a DPS class, I could run through Karazhan blindfolded, without the benefit of Ventrilo. Tanking it is a little more involved (and for me difficult, because being an undergeared tank is apparently some sort of unforgivable sin), but take me through on Matuk, I'll get ya through to Prince. I know that place like the back of my hand. I'm about as good with Zul'Aman, but lately when people tried to take me I was busy with other things.
So, here I am in WoW, not exactly amazingly geared, but my skill combined with the gear I do have makes me an Enhancement Shaman that can impress. More than once people have complimented me on my ability to deal the damage, and I am quit proud with what I have accomplished in the game.
But I've hit some sort of brick wall in progress ever since Epic Liberation Front stopped raiding. We were so close to Archimonde attempts, but then the raid leader just gave up, cause he was sick of having problems finding good tanks.
Since then I've been attempting to build up my old guild Hordecore Pwnstars into at least a low-level raiding guild, doing Karazhan every week. Rather, I should say I was doing that until I stopped playing. But nobody was coming together to try and make it work. It was like me and two or three other people from the guild who actually put forth the effort, and we had to add random non-guildies to get a raid group going.
It certainly wasn't for lack of people, we had plenty of people in the guild who could raid, and I'm not talking about the lowbies. I set up a web site, Hakuro set up a Ventrilo server for us (which I organized rather beautifully if I don't say so myself), I scheduled days to go raid and made sure to let people know when I want to raid. I very much encouraged people joining the forums so that we could share information, especially times that people were available to raid. I worked hard on gearing up Moonspirit, because I wanted to tank my guild through Karazhan. I did manage to get to the point where I could main-tank Kara, and I just needed to get every pull down pat. Pulling successfully in any instance is something of an art, and I still hadn't perfected it when I stopped playing. As far as I could tell, and nobody was telling me any different, except for the people who hate my guts, I was doing everything I needed to do in order to have a successful raiding guild. All the pieces were in place.
But most people wouldn't show up for a raid. Almost nobody signed up on the web site. Half the time, when a level 70 player joined the guild, he would quit a couple days later because he didn't see us doing anything. Some officers/recruiters (won't give any names) were still recruiting lowbies to the guild, even though I wanted to get nobody below level 65. (I understand that some people in the game are amazing enough to level their character to 70 super quick and get into raiding to support the guild, but most people aren't like that and in fact suck major ass). I would get people saying they would show up, and sound all enthusiastic about raiding, but then they wouldn't even be online. I was passing up bear runs through Zul'Aman, with Lustrius I might add, in order to get these raids together. Now I feel like that was a mistake.
Frankly, I grew disappointed with the WoW community. And now I just don't know what to do.
I want to do amazing things with a guild, and lead it on to raid instances and massive PvP efforts, but it's impossible if I'm the only one trying to make it happen. If everybody else is just along for the ride and expects me to do all the work, my efforts are going to fail. Raids and PvP premades are group efforts...and unfortunately, the WoW players tend to care only about themselves and how they can get gear with the least effort. Self-centered bastards, each and every one, and I have some personal experience with a certain WoW player who's the epitome of self-centered.
So I kinda just stopped logging in without saying anything. The only regret I have is abandoning my good friend Demina, but I have no other real friends in there. Acquaintances maybe, but not friends. And certainly plenty of enemies. Maybe I'll try playing again after the expansion comes out, but I'm going to give that a month or two first. Blizzard is notorious for very buggy launches. Plus, I don't want to deal with being killed by hundreds of Alliance players. Enhancement shaman are going to be slightly weak until they get new gear cause of some major changes to how their stats work, leading to less attack power from Strength.
Admittedly, I've been annoyed with PvP in WoW ever since I first tried it. I'm a Shaman. Cynicism and bitterness comes with the class. Because Shaman, with the exception of Priests, are the weakest class in PvP. Especially the spec I happened to pick as my favorite, which is Enhancement. The game is simply not balanced for PvP, and I've ranted about this more than once.
Admittedly, Blizzard is attempting to take steps to fix that, but they have no idea what they're doing.
Ironically, the game I've been thinking about switching to is Warhammer Online, which was released September 18th. I've heard a lot of good things about it, mostly in reference to it's Realm vs Realm style of PvP and Public Quests. Most people say it plays like WoW when you first start out, but then you start to notice the differences. What I have heard has very much impressed me, and I just might very well start playing it by Christmas time.
With the WoW expac coming out in less than a month, I feel kinda bad about letting WoW go, because I look forward majorly to the changes of the game, but I've just been too jaded lately. The game may change, but the people probably won't. If I do go back to playing WoW, it won't be until 2009 at the earliest.
For now, I went and bought Guild Wars, because it doesn't have any subscription fee, which means it's a cheap way to feed my gaming addiction until I can garner the guts to go after the bigger fish of Warhammer Online.
Okay, so I've pretty much just been rambling on about WoW as my thoughts come out. I feel kinda bad now, because I know a lot of you don't play WoW and never plan to, and thus have almost no clue what I'm talking about.
Well, hmm...I could mention that my brother totaled the Intrepid. He's not hurt, but the car is gone. Of course, two days later my dad went and bought a used car for him, with the intention of my brother paying him back. I swear, I never get that kind of treatment. Of course, I'm just the son that dropped out of college to them. Never mind that I'm making progress to undo that and get back where I should be.
For now my plan is to save up enough money to at least start paying for my own used car so I can stop relying on my family's vehicles. Admittedly, I've thought about going down to the bank and trying to grab a car loan, cause I probably have enough for a down payment already. But I really don't want to rush things, especially any big financial decision. Rushing is what got me into this mess to begin with. Now if only my parents could stop rushing me.
Once I have a car I should be able to get my own apartment, since I'll be able to drive myself around town without relying on anybody's charity. The problem with that is I'd be paying insurance, gas, rent, and food at that point. Plus I'll need to start paying back some of my old loans in February. I haven't taken the time to calculate all that, because I have no idea how much insurance or gas will cost until I get the car. Rent will be $600-700 a month, which is probably more than half my paycheck at this point, so I'm obviously going to need some help with my expenses.
This means I'll need to find some sort of housemate to share my apartment with, which will probably end up being LJ. I don't really know anybody else in town well enough to trust them as a housemate. It needs to be somebody I can get along with after all. And at the very least I can trust her to pull her own weight, cause she has too much pride to live off me. Not to mention the fact that I look forward to being able to spend the night with her!
I could probably type up more things, more plans and thoughts and all that junk, but I'm at the point where I feel like I'm rambling about stuff randomly. Trust me, I have more ideas in my head I could ramble about, but I think I've stretched this blog post to it's limit. Maybe I'll share more later.
Peace out.
P.S. Once I get my own apartment, I am totally shooting for this: clicky
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