ACK MONDAY

I started this blog on Friday and I am never going to find time to get it up here...sooo

Here ...

There is a comic...


And this video below is ADULT ONLY CONTENT... but freaking hilarious!!!


That is seriously all I have time for... I have an auditor in my office... I know I know I am whining about it... but the boss bought her lunch... he has bought my lunch once in 2 years...I am soooo considering super gluing his rear-end to his chair :D

blues

It's another Tuesday. I have little to say today as I am cranky.

Have you guys seen this Dr. Horrible Trilogy? Super fun. It's from the mind of Joss Whedon. He came up with this during the writers strike and got some fabulous people to help him put together this fun idea while everyone was off picketing. Download it on ITunes. I have included this link below for you to watch a teaser trailer. It's quirky, so if you aren't into that I apologize :D



Also, I have been meaning to post about the 3rd installment of the DDO fanfic going on over at DDOcast. Please check it out. Also, Adan has set up a myspace. You can find it here.

I didn't game last night. By the time I got home I was wiped and actually watched a little TV, talked to my guy and sacked out.

So many wonderful things are going on in the gaming world... news out of E3 was encouraging, Gencon is coming up for me YAY, and then there is all the yumminess in AoC and DDO...

I hear there will be snow in DDO in the summer update that we have no timetable for.

The test server for AoC is getting the new patches in a nice flowing schedule.

So, short and sweet today. I am off to pretend to work... :D

3 game weekend

I had a great excuse to do nothing but game this weekend...

For those who don't know, I have 2 cats. Wonderful creatures. I adore them most of the time.

I feed them every morning without fail. Friday morning I am getting dressed and they are weaving in and out of my feet. I tripped avoiding stepping on one of them and my foot kicked my wall. *Pop*

I broke the pinky toe on my right foot. It kinda snapped like the wishbone in a turkey at thanksgiving. Not as much fun though and I didn't make a wish.

*sigh*

It's the most incredible shades of the rainbow. Being as it is a toe, there isn't much that can be done for it besides not walking on it and buddy taping it to the next toe over.

I may have failed my save on the cat incident, but I managed to behave myself for most of the weekend. Kinda.

Zeff was back from Navy stuff, so I was able to spend some time gaming with him.

We got my PoM in AoC up to lvl 44 on Friday before my grumpiness and his tiredness made us both go to sleep. We had a blast though. I love hearing him yell at me "But where did you go baby?" as he watches my health bar go down to zero :D I drive him nutty.

We got up Saturday and I was not in tip top form. I think we both ended up watching movies and just talking. We gamed maybe... I think. I took a nap at some point. Then he went to bed early... Or maybe we played AoC both Friday and Saturday... I don't know at some point the pain haze hit me and I became brainless.

I have this thing when I am sick. I go all OCD on things. And since I had been sitting on my rearend all day, I got up that night while Zeff was passed out and cleaned...for hours...it was bad. LOL But parts of my house looked better and by default I felt better. Ok its quirky.

On the bad side it aggravated my foot. I woke Sunday so sore I did absolutely NOTHING all day except keep the general area around me tidy.

Zeff and I played DDO and ended up running a dragon raid on elite because someone needed the favor. I have to say it was fun but tedious at times. I don't pug things a lot. And I was with Zeff and some of my guildies, but there are times when pugging out a couple of people is just bad news. We got it done though. It was not pretty, a lot of mana pots were used, the loot was crap, the end reward even crappier, but Velah was dead. :)

Then we moved on to Diablo 2. I was determined to finish Act 2. There was a little issue though. The last boss was ummm OMG. I had forgotten about him. And of course Zeff had gone in before me and promptly died while I was in the kitchen getting a drink. I went in after him without setting up a portal. It was ugly. We eventually picked up the 10 or 12 bodies we had made, we kept running in hitting a portal scroll picking up one body and I would cast a spell and we would run.

Thank gods I am playing a druid and I have pets. Many dire wolves were sacrificed in the rescuing of my bodies.

I had forgotten the fun in corpse runs. We were both exhausted.

I did NOT get a segment done for the podcast this weekend because like a n00blette I took a nap and missed the deadline. Sigh. However its a great show this week with Tolero, or Merlask who used to be on the podcast but now works for Turbine, let us know some of the happenings at Gencon. Take a listen here.

The new Forgotten Tales went up on Friday. Somehow I missed that. Here it is below.


I am off to get some work done. I had to wear flip flops to work. That is just sooooo embarrassing. EKKKK!!!!

lagilicious

I played some Aoc tonight. I almost made my level YAY! Zeff will be happy LOL

But the lag monster kept eating me.

I thought I would torture myself with another Villa quest. What was I thinking?

I tried several different ones. All with the same result. Lag. Lag. Lag.

Frustrating to say the least.

I think I am going to just play AoC with others. I die to much with the lag monster eating me all the time.

On another note... did anyone else catch the announcement out of E3 that EA and Bioware are making a Knights of the Old Republic with MMO leanings? Thats right people. You read right. W00t.

I adored Kotor 1 and 2. I finished both of them. Of course the ending of Kotor 2 left something to be desired. I think I recall throwing my mouse against the wall and shattering it. I was a little PO'ed at the time. :D

I hope they do a good job. This is just one more game to add to my list and to keep on the radar for down the road.

I played an hour with my static group last night in DDO. I ran a little late to group. EEEKKKK

We ran some fun favor in the harbor since we were missing Zeff. Our cleric seemed to enjoy nuking everything in sight. Blade barriers abounded, destruction and slay living were eating his spell point pool and I think he may even have a led a kill count or two :)

And I have news...

*drumroll*

Rowan WILL BE ATTENDING GENCON!!!

Yes.

I can go this year. I am very excited and ready to show the boy geeks that girl gamers really do rule :)

I am off to try and sleep. It's so bleeding hot here on the East Coast right now. Bleh. I am wishing for fall and we haven't even coasted through August yet.

Game on!

AoC deaths

I decided to play some AoC tonight...

Zeff is off playing Navy and kinda commanded me to get another level on my PoM before he got home this weekend... grrr

So, I am lvl 43. I still had the Villa quests out in the noble district. I figure, well they are solo quests... I can go do those.

MISTAKE

First there is the lag issue with those instanced zones for me.

I decided to do the one where I kill the Chef. No problem. He is a cook. He will have knives. Big whoop.

I died about 4 times going through it. A guard would trip me, I would lag...and then I would be dead... fun! (ok not really)

Finally I slog my way through the villa towards the Chef...who has been eating wwwayyyyyy too much for his own good and is HUGE! Oh he has knives alright. Sharp ones. He would knock me down, stab me 3 times and I would be dead.

It was frustrating...very very very frustrating.

With the lag, I never knew if my healing buff had worn off, if I could drink a pot or if the timer was still going, if my damage spell was working... it was just terrible!

5 deaths later I killed the portly chef and cheered.

I go to turn the quest in. There is a double turn in. Awesome. More xp...

BUT THE TURN IN IS BUGGED!!!

*growls*

It is nights like there that honestly make me reconsider loving this game.

I spent an hour or so with chain dying.

I complete the quest only to have the turn in bugged.

With the way the quests are run, you can only have so many in your quest log at any one time. So, now I have this extra one I have completed but I can't get rid of it. Kinda aggravating.

I don't mean to always sound so down on the game, but I come home to relax from the stress of my day. Not to create more stress over silly bugs.

I am hoping some of this gets worked out soon. I have had friends leave the game in droves. They simply say between the lag, the bugs, and the lack of high end content its not worth the time and money.

I don't want to prove them right, but night after night of this, well... when it is not fun why do it?

On another note...

The new podcast is up and I did an interview with Impaqt from the forums about clerics and rogues... its a good one and worth listening to... I have been playing DDO almost 2 years and I play both classes, but I still have a lot to learn. You can listen here:)

Also when you click on the link here it will take you to the second installment of the on going story over on DDOcast... awesome stuff. Well written, interesting and just plain fun.

I think I am going to shove off to bed. I got The Other Boleyn girl in my netflix today and want to lay down and watch a few minutes before I dream.

PoM...

I got to play some AoC for a few hours last night. My guy and I decided to play our higher ups and we had fun playing characters we hadn't gotten to concentrate on in a while.

I leveled Rowanheal the Priestess to 43. YAY. She is by far my favorite Age of Conan character. She nukes, she hits, she heals. Course, since I am playing her, she dies fantastically as well.

I seem to have a little zerg in my bones. I can't help myself. I think it drives Zeff bonkers. I can hear him over my head set going "Hunny I would come help you but you ran off... where did you go?" Mind you, this is in response to me running off wily nily and then screaming over the headset and making his ears bleed.

Good thing he likes me! LMAO

Overall my PoM made me remember why I love the game.

I am still having one issue with it though. Every time I go into a "bound" zone, an instance that even though I am grouped only I can enter, my connection to the game goes from green to yellow and the lag is horrible. It makes me abandon those quests because I just can't run a caster like that. She is too squishy. I am getting hit in real time and in my lag time I am still at full health. When you don't have a ton of hitpoints to start with and you are wearing a robe, you die quick.

But mostly I just love her.

In other news, I have actually already been working on my podcast for this week. I know, shocking isn't it.

Ohhhh and today is Forgotten Tales Day!

Here is your comic... wait don't pass out, I know... I am even posting it on time :D




I shall take this new found energetic initiative I have and go pack my things early so I can get home. I feel the need to kill things. Tonight my friend Akla is leaving DDO, so I will be in game saying my goodbyes. I will miss him. A lot. He always made good sense, was fun to play with and he possesses a sharp wit.

Have a great weekend and be safe *waves*

TNT Raids and WINS!

Last night my static group got it in their head to run Tempest Spine. There is only the 5 of us, and I was not sure we could accomplish this, but we went anyways...

Our machine gunner rogue, Battle Cleric, Fighter, TWF Ranger and myself the badly built sorc went out to House J, bound in the tavern because we were fairly sure there would be a death or two, then ran up and took the quest.

We took it slow. None of us have uber weapons, few of us even have plus 4 stat items at level 11 and we don't have access to heal scrolls or raise dead scrolls. We have to be careful.

We did fabulously.

I was leading us. Terrifying thought right? Rowan knowing the way is just wrong... LOL

We had the intel to pop the runes we needed to. Our rogue is built for repeaters and traps , but she is only level 11 and she doesn't have a super intel score.

We fought on getting to the Fire and Ice part. Here we had a little trouble. I have seen groups of twelve have trouble here when they are running this for experience and are at the level of the raid... Many many deaths later we managed to get everyone in one spot, plus kill the two reavers... *phew*

With our equipment beginning to deteriorate we pressed on... killed some clay golems, swam down and went after the beholder... and we won... mind you most of us were dead, but our fighter managed to pull it off... which, being Zeff, he totally reminded me about :)

We ran on with our healing potion pools shrinking and some now broken equipment.

I PKed the other beholder (yay me) and ran them down across the bridge.

Here we had our first party wipe. Apparently none of us could roll to save our lives against a slay living casting drow. ROFL. I got 3 of us to rez out and we ran back. Not too bad.

We got all the way through to the end with few other issues. I, by now, was 4 beers in and laughing.

I forget how hard this game is when you don't have all the major plus 5 weapons, or the uber stat items or raid loot and maxed ability scores from having eaten 6 tomes.

We buffed for the end fight. And we almost all got thrown off to our death below, since we all took off our feather fall :D Our ranger managed to die on the platform with the big baddie so we left him up there to stare the meany down while we all made the run back.

And I scorching rayed the little jerk to death on re-entry.

GO TNT!

I realize its not a huge accomplishment to some but for our crew it was MAJOR! We were tired, our gear smashed to smithereens, our potions gone and our wands depleted, but by gods we had done it.

AWESOME TIME!!!

This is why I love DnD.

In other news, I found this great article today thanks to Massively. Totally hilarious in some ways and offensive in others as a guy writing for PC Gamer magazine goes out to try and find online love in an MMO. You can read it here.

There is an online story arc going on over at the DDOcast website. This is a fun read and I can't wait to see where this is going to go. Check it out!

Well thats it for me guys, I am off to dig through a box of candles my guy sent to me. My office smells soooooo good right now between the candles and the flowers :) *girlish sigh*

Bear shamans OH MY

You will notice a new badge on my page today...

Age of Conan's Stratics site launched over the July 4th holiday weekend.

I have always loved stratics.

When I played Everquest, my first MMO experience, I used stratics religiously. Fabulous site full of quest answers, class build sections, gear updates, crafting news... it was always a one stop shop for staying in the know for my then favorite game.

The one for Age of Conan is awfully new. They are looking for staff writers, people to do updates for them, participation from the player base in general. So if you are interested, here is a chance to get in on the ground floor of something pretty fun.

I spent a few hours in AoC last night. My guild has been shrinking. I am not the only one to notice this. It's happening game wide as people play through their first 30 days for free and then make the decision not to pay to play.

The list of wants and dislike is endless. A lot of it is bug fixes that are needed, lack of end game content, and sometimes we have to admit to ourselves that something we thought was going to be great is not so much!

I have backed off a ton in my online game time. Part of this is the new guy in my life who is, thank the gods, a gamer himself. Honestly though, AoC needed a breather. I needed to remember why it was fun to play it. Once the new shiny had worn off, I got tired of the bugs.

I still have to restart my game at least once or twice a game session because a quest dialog is broken, or the lag boots my whole party from the game...thankfully we use teamspeak and can coordinate whats happening to whom when, but then when you log back in, often you are bugged. I experience not being a member of my guild, even though I am an officer, and not being able to party with my friends. It's as if I got stuck somewhere out there in la la land, and I can't get back.

To fix this generally I completely log out of the game and have my team mates tell me when I drop off the grid. Sometimes it's as fast as 7 to 8 minutes... sometimes my character will be stuck for over an hour and even logging in another one doesn't fix the issue.

All of this aside though, AoC is a solid game. The developers are working very very hard to help with bugs and fixes and being communicative...I appreciate communication.

I still love the game, I just think I am not going to be playing it 40 hours a week...maybe 20 or so when Zeff is off playing Navy.

Speaking of Zeff, a huge thank you for the Pink flowers... the man is a charmer...they showed up at my office for no other reason than he wanted me to smile. Now how is a girl supposed to resist that I ask?

But back on topic, I played my bear shammy, who is named Rowanpaw (weak huh), last night and finally got over the hump. She hit 15 and I had enough feat points to get the new feat I wanted for 2 handed weapon DPS... suddenly she was a killing machine. I was flabbergasted by the difference. Shocked really! She had been a burden up until level 15 and I was seriously contemplating deleting her...

And, if I were frank, her lack of ability at low levels is partially why I have been so cranky about the game lately!

So YAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!! This character just might stick around for a little while longer :)

Tonight is static group night in DDO. We will have all 5 of us together. We all have some crazy schedules this summer, so I am enjoying having everyone in one place while I can.

Alright, I am off to look over this report for the dreaded audit one more time... and stick my nose in my pretty flowers :D

Have a good one and Game On!

Icky Tuesdays

It's that day of the week again... you know the one I am talking about... yuppers... TUESDAY! Ewwwww

I have been gaming a little bit more lately.

I loaded up an oldy but goody this weekend. With the announcement of Diablo 3 from Blizzard, I felt obligated to play through Diablo 2 again. Of course, I didn't have all my disks... so off I went to my local store and picked up the Battle Chest.

Came home, loaded it up and got my guy to do the same. It took a little while for me to remember how to use battlenet...but we got in game and spent 5 or so hours killing and looting.

I had forgotten about the joy in that game. It's easy to play, user friendly, intuitive, the loot table is fair, you can customize your armor and weapons with add ons you loot, and the quests are fun.

I had a blast and so did Zeff. I am hoping to find some more time soon to visit Deckard Cain and listen to his craggy old voice tell me a tale which will lead to my impending death. :)

I also have found some time for both DDO and AoC. I normally can't play more than one game really well at a time, but the two are so dissimilar I am not having much of an issue with it.

My bear shammy in AoC is still too low a level to really be useful. I hear they get better at 20. I have been leveling awfully slow though. I seem to spend more time lost lately than actually completing my quests. Zeff is good about keeping me on task though. Knew there was a reason I liked having him around.

No static group tonight since we have gone to Wednesday's. It feels weird to not be seeing my friends tonight. I will have to go home and play some AoC and make up for it with different friends. I have crazy ones in AoC...

The new Forgotten Tales went up on Friday. Yes Yes Yes I know I am a slacker of great proportions, but here you go.



Also, I did my segment for the podcast last weekend. It was a relationship segment... you can listen here.

Things are going well here. I am looking forward to some vacation time in August. The heat is barely tolerable, but then I always whine about the weather. The house is too quiet sometimes. I miss people occasionally, not often mind you, but sometimes I like the noise of someone else's puttering echoing off the walls.

I am off to wrap some things up on my desk and then head for home. Game on!

Video Wednesday

Well I am totally covered in files and such here at the office. Plus the boss won't leave, so I will post some fun videos for ya'll to enjoy!

Oh and tonight is static night... I know I know for last year and 7 months it has been on Tuesday's, but our machine gunner rogue has night classes... *rolls her eyes*... its cuz she's so intelligent!

So I will be killing in DDO tonight, although I will be minus Zeff who is off doing things of a military kind... and he is missed.

Onto the video extravaganza!

You all know that the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons is being rolled out. There is a ton of stuff about it, but below are a couple of videos that had me giggling.







HEHEHEHEHE

Funny right?

Lessah of DDO fame has a new video on permadeath!



*rubs her hands with glee*

Now onto my personal Favorite...

The new Hellboy movie is coming out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Check this out... and yes... he names his gun what? Big Baby... SWEET!

Now I have to go back and dig in some more files. Pray for me!

Game on!