*snore fest*

I got in a little bit of gaming time this weekend.

In DDO, I did a raid night with my guild. Ok, it was drunken raid night. I was not drunk. I ended up nursing one glass of wine for 5 hours. It's too hot to drink. I just want some cool iced tea.

Anyways, I got into the new raid, the hound one. I like the new encounter area. Pretty cool. I was running my cleric and was a little afraid I would not do a good job, but I did decent at keeping people alive. Well ok, there were a few deaths, but not all of them were my fault...and that other cleric we had just was like chain dying. I gave up trying to heal him or raise him after the first one.

I found this raid to be...BORING!!! I don't think this was just because I was on my cleric either. Number one, I was running with a tight group of guys. They know what they are doing, so we did NOT have issues. Some solid fog, a little charm monster...a few heals thrown around and we were done... I think I might have even nodded off at some point.

The only highlight of the raid was Aerren the rogue being dominated... and the jokes which entailed.

No raid loot for me, but I did pick up a plus 2 wisdom tome as an end reward.

We took a short break to PVP in Yaga's Dodge a thon, but he was absent due to RL stuff and so I just killed my friends a few times with comet falls.

We then ran the other new one...

By now I was really not very excited... the first new raid had kinda been a let down... I mean I like puzzles, I can't solve one to save my life but I like the complexity... and a raid should bloody well be complex.

This other new one, whose name escapes me at this time of this writing, was a hack slash heal fest of uber proportions. Still playing my cleric, I found the repetitive nature of heal scroll, mass heal, heal scroll to be a little trying.

We beat this one easily as well. There was no puzzling, no thought really. The strategy? Have a nice barbarian tank, have a caster solid fog the devils, orthons and bats, and just stay alive with enough spell points until the overly inflated hit point boss is dead.

*yawn*

Once again I had no raid loot. And I think I just picked a weapon to sell from my end reward list.

Oh and I ran a 20th, 40th whateverth of my Reaver on my cleric... no plus 3 tomes of any kind, nothing she didn't already have 2 of, so I just took a treason so I could dual wield them when being silly. LOL

Over all, I remain unimpressed by this new Mod. Actually, I was heartily disappointed.

I wanted fun, interactive, thinking, strategy and well somewhat interesting.

I got hack in slash yuckiness.

Sigh.

I did play some AoC trying to help a girlfriend get her first character off of newbie island. I have been playing a bear shaman for this character. I find her super underpowered at low levels. Thankfully I have seen how kick ass they are at higher levels or I would just have dropped her.

Over all I kept busy this weekend thanks to fun friends who kept tabs on me :) *hugs* to all of you.

Oh, and for those wondering about Rowan's RL fun, yes Rowan met a fabulous man. For the purposes of my blog he will remain his gamer tag... Zeff...Yes, Rowan likes gamer men :D This one plays both of my games... how lucky am I?

Zeff is in the Navy, and sometimes this means he is away from his home... which means my blog is one way for him to check in... hence my warning to you all that my blog may become a little more sprinkled with personal goodies from time to time.

Ok, did I cover it all?

Yuppers... thats it for now... I am off to dig in some more of these files for the audit...

Ohhhh Rowan did a podcast this weekend... check it out :)

Diabo 3

HOLY CRAP...

It's coming... really ... honest... omg...

DIABLO 3

You have got to go click that link and look. I am soo excited. I went to post this blog and was so stoked I hit enter before typing anything but the DIABLO 3 title.

So thats all I have really.

Oh... and this...Should have posted the new comic yesterday. Sorry...


OMG *drools* Diablo 3...

TNT Tuesday is here again!

It's another Tuesday.

I have had some of you ask why I have not been blogging as much lately.

Part of it is because I rarely choose to make this blog terribly personal. It's always been about gaming topics, or podcasts, other peoples work, but only on extreme occasions have I blurted out my life on here.

I think that is going to be changing a little bit here in the future. So for those of you who don't want all the inner thoughts, I will apologize now.

Also, I have been a slacker on my podcasting, I haven't been gaming much and so there hasn't been as much of that type stuff to tell you guys about.

I know I know... but we all have to have a real life every once in a while. I have been due :)

I still haven't really played AoC in well... about 2 weeks now. I do keep it patched in case I want to play. I have logged into DDO. A few sporadic hours here and there when I play with friends.

I have my static group tonight though :) I love playing with them and that hasn't changed at all. I have a permanent player who has been added to the group, so we are 5 again. 5 adventurers against whatever the devs have come up with... and let me tell you after seeing one of the puzzles in the new quests out in Three barrel Cove, some of those Devs have devious minds and waaaaayyyyy too much time on their hands. :D

Here is a video that has been circulating...I know its based on WOW, but seriously this is just funny as heck! Click on the link to view it... it won't embed for some reason :( (or maybe it is working...*shrugs*)

WeGame.com - WoW Videos

Also, I was reminded last night, I have not posted the new Forgotten Tales. Here ya go :)



Alright, I think that is it for me today. I am still slogging through the myriad of file boxes here in my office... Sheesh, audits are the pits.

I will be changing a few things around visually here on the blog in the next few days, so if you log on and it looks funky, give me some time. I am so techy challenged it will take a while for me to just figure out how to move things in the columns where I want them. Actually, I will end up screaming for help from one of my techy friends.

*waves* Hope you all are staying cool! Game on!

Tech Support

I am having one of those days at work where all my vendors systems are down for the count.

Being a proactive person and not a reactive one, I call tech support. "We are currently experiencing extremely high call volume. Please try your call again later."

*growls*

It's the same thing I hear compaints about from everyone in AoC. ( since someone asked the command for GM help is /petition.)

It seems they don't have a whole lot of GM's on the ground right now. So you can put in a request for help and wait for hours with no response. AoC does let you see how many people are in front of you in line. Problem is people are watching themselves be bumped in the que and then suddenly their petition is closed without explanation.

Combine the bad customer service experience with the plethora of patches, updates and nerfs, and many many people did NOT choose to play the game full time. It was fun for a visit, but not somewhere to call home.

I haven't really sat down and played it in a week or so now. I have my own reasons. Mostly that I have real life things to do these days. But still, it got me to thinking today if the new shiny was off of AoC for me. My subscription for the next 30 days will be charged this week. I am not questioning whether or not I am going to continue playing it. No, I still love the game and there is so much to do, but I have been hopping onto DDO a little more.

DDO always draws me back. I can't put my finger on why.

What are your reasons for sticking with your game of choice?

On the office front, my desk is surrounded by file boxes. I actually nodded off at my desk this afternoon. I think all the paper bored me to sleep.

Usage based Internet?

Oh holy crappola...

AT&T has announced they feel that Internet usage caps and fees based on our usage are inevitable.

I guess I may have to agree here as much as I hate to.

For those of you shaking your head, Keen and Grav put this great article together on it.

If you’re like me you probably have little understanding of how much 1gb of bandwidth can get you. I found a nice explanation of how much just ONE GB can get you:

• View 26,000 Web pages OR
• Send 105,000 e-mails OR
• Attach over 2,000 Microsoft Word documents (of about 10 pages each) OR
• Receive up to 1,000 digital photos OR
• Download more than 200 songs OR
• Stream 18 hours of music from the Web OR
• Download 1.5 movies (or 2/3 of a movie in High Definition) OR
• Play games online for 240 hours (or 10 days)
  

From Keen and Gravs blog

Yeah so ummm... OUCHIE! I download music from Itunes or Amazon a lot. I download the occasion game demo. Both my games do regular patches. Sometimes I wipe my drive and reinstall from a digital download. I sooo play my games and spend alot of hours...probably about 100 a month on average. I send e-mails. Play on my myspace, read documents, make documents, scan the Internet for information, record then upload my podcast, then download the finished product.

This just means my wallet is about to shrink from a cherry tomato to a sun dried tomato. EWWWW

Its scary as heck to think about how dependent we all have become on the Internet. Shoot, I order my pizza, books, magazines, music, gifts for friends, IM like crazy, Teamspeak and Ventrillo for voice communication, Skype, Xfire... all of it done on the Internet. When I had an outage in February I felt lost.

So, am I going to need a usage minder on my internet so I don't go over my limit and have a hellacious bill? And yes, that was a pained reference to learning how not to be a chatterbox on my first cell phone.

Interested in what everyone else thinks since this has been the hot topic of the day.

I am off to look at more files... this audit is going to be the death of me.

Yawny Monday

I have had the yawns all day. I can't blame gaming for it. I think I only logged maybe 10 hours this week... maybe.

Mainly its because I have had something wonderful going on in my personal life... and yes that is all you are going to get out of me on that subject :D

Gaming wise...

The new podcast is up. I didn't do a segment this week, but you should listen anyways since Jerry FINALLY tied the Devs to their chairs in front of a speaker phone for the next Ask the Devs session. You can link to the podcast here.

I did play some DDO this weekend. I played my lowbie cleric and ran with my gf and another lowbie wizard. The three of us played through waterworks together. Totally fun. I hadn't really had a chance to see how the monk performed and I had a blast listening to her tell me all about the class and her finishing moves and her ki.

Stormreach seems to have hit the summer dulldrums though. It happens every year in every MMO I have ever played. There is lull during the summer. Families are traveling or outside fishing, boating, swimming, sports activities... the works. Playing an MMO just isn't real high on peoples radars.

Here in the Northeast the summer sun has been a total WITCH with a B, so I will admit to huddling indoors alot to avoid the sweltering heat.

But I have not been gaming heavily.

AOC is still going well. My guild has really been working on building our guild city. It's coming right along. And our guild has been growing by leaps and bounds as well. As a reminder, you can find me on Thog, and my guild is THE IMMORTALS... and yeah... my main is a clericy type names ROWANHEAL... ohhhh big surprise there right?

I have an audit at my office coming up. Geez, I feel like I won the wrong lottery. So I am off to go through 3 years of financials and files. YAY ME.

Hope everyone is having a great Monday and well if you have some extra chocolate, send it my way.

Oh and before I forget. This video below has been making the rounds for couple of weeks. Totally funny.

Sunitis

I have been guilty of being a slacker lately. Both in my gaming life, my blogging life, my forum life and generally just pretty much all my electronic hubs.

I miss you all and I apologize.

What have I been up to? I ain't gonna tell you but its better than pixels :D

So I haven't had the thought to go gaming in like 6 days. I think that is a new record for me.

We all know the East coast got that ugly heat wave. I think my plan was to come home and not have to move for about 3 or 4 days as the heat crushed all willpower.

If this is summer's trend, I am going to be miserable.

AoC is still fun as heck...I made 40 and started my crafting skills. I chose Alchemy... at least I think I did... I was being distracted at the time... LOL

I am going to hopefully get in some gaming this weekend. I haven't even touched the DDO icon and know I need to get in game before the podcast tomorrow...

*rubs her tired eyes*

Anyone out there doing anything interesting... I feel like a vegetable left too long in the steamer...kinda limp with all the flavor bleached out...

I need a nap.

So Turbine is no longer going to be doing the Weekly Development Activities. I am pretty ticked about it. In fact I am downright peeved. Bleh.

A little birdy, IE JERRY, has said we WILL have ask the devs on the show this weekend.

I am off to try and talk my boss into letting me go home early and sleep.

Game on!

Aggravation

New Mod 7 came out for DDO on Tuesday.

Many exciting things have been added to the game. Some of them are just window dressing, like UI changes, quivers, collectible stacking in our bags in larger quantities, auto-gather, a redo to the map and a host of other small but appreciated changes.

We got a revamped Three Barrel Cove. I have always thought this was one of the best character areas in the game. I mean who can resist a pirate? The new area is for lvls 3-9 and there are 5 new quests out there for people to run. There is one with a super awesome puzzle in it. Course I will never be able to solve it being as I am puzzle challenged, but its fabulous to look at :)

There are 2 new raids.

And there are Monks. Finally this core class has been added to DDO.

And that my friends, is where my happy go lucky blog ends.

I am going to be ranting HEAVILY about this Mod on the podcast this weekend, so I won't bore you with it twice, but suffice it to say you should put on a flame suit to listen to my segment this coming weekend.

Oh and Argo is in the rear in getting the raid unlocked on the server. Seems we are all totally uninterested LOL. Could be because alot of the raiders I know are playing AOC right now... well ok I am guilty of that as well :)

I have thunderstorms here and may take the rest of the night off of gaming to sit down and watch a few movies I have had laying around for a week. Netflix is fantastic considering I will not watch a movie for awhile, then when I am ready they are there waiting on me.

Almost lvl 40 in AOC, almost... I can taste it.

I am off to order a pizza and enjoy.

Age of Conan

YAYAYAYAYAY... I was about to despair of having any pink items in Age of Conan and then BAM... the boys, who are powerleveling like mad and leaving me in their dust, found me pink robes...

Look at the pretty Pink robe... and my drinking cape matches it perfectly... It doesn't have the best stats on it, but that alright... it's PINK!


I am still loving the game. We put down the plot for our guild city this week and I have been gathering resources like mad. It's an expensive undertaking and time consuming. Personally I think I like it this way.

The game still has bugged quests. We spent about 2 hours waiting on a spawn on Sunday. We still had fun since we were all grouped together and killing things, but still, 2 hours on a broken quest feels crappy.

I am almost lvl 40 now. Experience wise the game has slowed a bit and you are going to need to group to get things accomplished. Maybe thats because I am a clericy character, but I am finding I take a lot of damage really fast and can't keep from dying when I am on my own.

I have my static group tonight in DDO. I am excited since he new mod dropped today. Monks are going to be live and the invasion has begun. New raids, new UI options, quivers, collectibles... so many fantastic fixes.

Summer has finally breached the Northeast. We are going to be in the 90's over the weekend. I miss the heat. I grew up in it down South. One thing I like about where I am now is I have 4 seasons. I get to enjoy all of them equally, and while summer is not my favorite season, fall is, I find I am looking forward to shorts, tank tops, flip flops and ice cream from the little stand in town.

Everyone has been out in their gardens or walking the dogs and the tennis courts are back open and boats are out in the water. Soon all the summer festivals will start around here and my time ingame will be shorter as I get out and do the movie nights, historic home and garden tours and fireworks shows...

I am off to kill a few more beasties in Hyboria before patching my computer for DDO...I can't wait to go play in Stormreach. I am finding I miss it.