A Cure for Real Life

WoW is my usual Xanax of choice for stupid real life. It isn’t working right now and since I received Witcher 3 from my daughter and son-in-law for Christmas I thought I’d see if it would work better.

Yes, that’s me. I’m a total badass. The baddest, baddiest badass EVER. Not much resemblance to me IRL though, except for the hair.

Early going was rough, I knew my son-in-law was interested in Witcher and I thought I’d have to give it back to him. I couldn’t graduate from the tutorial. Same problem I usually have.

I was supposed to throw a bomb from a key that wouldn’t work. I finally figured out how to keybind it to something reasonable and passed! Yay! I can see the world!

What? Although I installed the game on my D: drive where’s there’s plenty of room it also put a LOT of junk on my C: to the point that my operating system would be squashed. How dare they!

That took me forever to try to regain some room. System Restore Points? Who need those anyway … and I managed to get the game to run from the D: rather than the steamish thing it installed. We’re in business!

Let’s see the world! Oh yeah … combat. Should have paid more attention. Impossible keys again and I want to see the world so I’ll just keybind one attack to my one key. I don’t need no stinking parry and dodge.

I called my horse. And I am not only smoking hot and a badass, I can vault onto my horse from behind. I know, how cool is that.

Ghoul attack! Ghoul attack! Crap!

How do I dismount … oh, okay.

One key, one key, one key!

One key really hard!

ONE KEY! ONE KEY!

Crap! I’m almost dead here!

I had to run away. Geralt of Rivia didn’t run away, I ran away. Then I got caught up in gathering. He’s probably getting really annoyed waiting for me while I pick flowers but it’s relaxing and the world’s so beautiful.

I know Geralt! Jeez, he thinks  I should make use of the combat tutorial again. You know, I’m starting to think you’re not a badass Geralt, you’re a smart ass.

Oh alright … maybe he’s right. Maybe I DO need to know how to parry and dodge. Anyway, greetings from White Orchard! Geralt and I may be stuck here … a while.

It’s kinda like being stuck in Elwynn Forest or Tirisfal Glades for the entirety of your WoW career. I know, Geralt will never live it down.

 

The Best-laid Plans of Mice …

and … well … me. Yup, I’m right here with me and even I never know what I’m going to do. I start a Wildstar subscription and end up here. I’m back in a Cantina in Coruscant. Yeah I’m not sure either how a Wildstar subscription did that. I like Wildstar but I guess I needed a beer.

Someday, SOMEDAY, I’m going to get a character to level cap but in the meantime I keep having to start over as I have no idea how to play the class I let sit there for a year. So far I’ve been surprised at the amount of people running around in the low levels with me.

So then another thing happened …

I know! WTF! How does subscribing to Wildstar, and liking it, do this? I’m out of control! And I mean that seriously, I REALLY have no idea what I’m doing in FFXIV. I couldn’t even figure out how to hide the UI.

I’ve been spending my time trying to find a mailbox. I finally gave up and resorted to Google. OH! That clears everything up! Find a Moogle. I probably didn’t need to start over here as I’m sure the character I made when I first tried FFXIV is probably still here just running around looking for a mailbox. I’ll have to check. But at least I have cool boots.

I want to be a Thaumaturge but I might have to rethink that and find a class with a starting city I can navigate. That and a description of mechanics for the Thaumaturge I read.

“… think of the Balance talent spec for Druids. The mechanics are very similar.”

Uh oh.

In Draenor Cat is amassing as much wealth as possible. A few months ago she saw a Magic Rooster Egg on the AH, but couldn’t afford it. I think she dreams of riding a giant chicken. As for the Horde side Sasche has become something of a homebody and refuses to leave Frostfire Ridge.

It will be interesting to see who wins out here but one of them has to and right now I have no clue … but then I didn’t know a Wildstar subscription resulted in playing SWTOR and FFXIV. Obviously I have a lot to learn.

 

A New Life …

Yeah … where? I’ve never cancelled my subscription before. In the past when things got boring at the END of an expansion I’d keep paying while playing another game as sort of an attaboy to the art department for creating my beautiful world.

Bored in under six months into an expansion? Keeping my subscription is the wrong message no matter how much I love the world. It’s unfortunately the only way I can express myself that a business will understand.

For the next month I will continue to get filthy rich from follower missions and fly around all the places I love. I hope something changes to make me feel it’s worth coming back.

So where to go? My first impulse was SWTOR. I’m in a guild there, maybe someone’s still around.

Jeez buddy, back off would you! Oh … crap I forgot about companions, I guess he’s with me. Okay, let’s see. What? Oh, got to pick my talents, attributes, whatever they’re called here.

Oh crap. I  forgot. I’d have to start over. Every time I come back to SWTOR I have to start from scratch. That’s why I have all these medium level characters spread around the galaxy. I’m not sure I’m ready for this. Let’s see.

Really? I couldn’t pick something I’ve still got installed? Typically, my choice came down to what world had I liked the most and WildStar won that one. Tota is at level 50 and I don’t remember ANYTHING about how a Stalker works so her cousin is going to start from level one to help her remember and I find I’m fine with that.

The final entrants were SWTOR, FFXIV, GW2 and WildStar and I took a day to decide but double-jumping around a beautiful world sounded like what I could use about now.

 

Real Server Maintenance … I Know! Beta!

So, what to  do … what to do. I’m not used to a real server maintenance, it’s been a while. I know! I have some beta keys!

So yeah … thank you Blizzard I really do appreciate the Heroes of the Storm invites for my “friends” to make a team. It’s just … hahahahahahahahaha … I can just see it. Me trying to convince real life friends to play. Oh sure, you can do it. It’s just like … um … Candy Crush … oh you don’t? Okay Solitaire? Mahjong?

I looked into Starcraft which I knew nothing about to see if that beta might be more me, but as far as I could tell it involved resource gathering. I just want to run around willy-nilly killing stuff and possibly looking good while doing so.

So it looks like I’ll go with the Echo of Soul beta. Yup, I’ll try that!

Uh oh. Yikes. I have a problem playing an eleven year old girl dressed like a dominatrix. Let’s see.

This is weird, if I want to be a Warrior or Assassin I have to be a guy? The casters are all girls? Maybe I’m missing something. Never mind, lets get rolling. Here’s me! My name is Hugh. When I first saw him in the character screen he reminded me of a young Hugh Grant. Hugh Grant with a really, really long-ass sword.

First test for me is can I find the keybinds easily because if I can’t I’m probably not going to make much headway. Yes! Keybinds taken care of now we can move out.

Pluses, Hugh has a pet already! Hugh has a mount already! Those are two big pluses especially as it resolves his sword problem when he mounts up and the pet goes around looting for him. Very nice.

Downside, doesn’t seem to recognize the keys I have bound to my mouse buttons but there may be a way and I just haven’t found it yet.

Hugh is level eight now. I’m not sure what kind of a beta this is as absolutely nothing’s been wrong, no glitches, no problems. It’s really weird. He’s got about another hour left to impress me.

The ONLY problem Hugh has is that we’ve not been able to figure out how to sheath that big-ass sword. WTF Hugh! Look, even the game is saying WTF are you doing dragging your weapon around like that with a big !

I didn’t feel too bad as every other Warrior I saw was also dragging around a big-ass sword. I’m not thrilled about it but it beats the hell out of being an eleven year old dominatrix.

Onward Hugh! Your future depends on it!

 

A Lifetime of RNG

I know … pathetic. Through circumstances beyond my control I am now reduced to having to show screen shots of real life. I have had to spend WAY more time irl lately than I think is even healthy. Really, enough with the freaking real life already.

As I was wandering around irl I noticed something. Areas of our neighborhood have guardrails to keep people paying too much attention to cell phones from falling a fair distance. Kind of pointless because they just go fall off where there aren’t any guardrails. I noticed that where the rail shades the grass, or rather weeds, it’s darker.

I KNOW! This is what I’ve been doing instead of playing, jeez. Anyway, on close inspection it turns out that clover must like the shade because that’s what the darker area was.

So yeah … big whoop … clover. But it IS a big deal. It brought back memories, as a child I  spent endless hours looking for that one, that elusive, FOUR LEAF CLOVER. I searched endlessly with the optimism only a seven or eight year old has. Might have even been earlier because I remember my gang and I going to the “bacon lot” to hunt them.

Two sisters who lived in the house behind me and the boy from next door and me hunting that clover. Over and over. When we got tired of riding our bikes around with playing cards clothespinned to the spokes, off we’d go, once again, clover hunting.

OMG! It was real life RNG! I’ve been trying to defeat RNG my whole life and didn’t even realize it. I was playing the RNG odds back there in the bacon lot.

I still play rl RNG every time I’m stupid enough to buy a lottery ticket. And here I thought game designers came up with it. Apparently those designers must have hunted clover too.

I have as yet still not found my four leaf clover but I do have one. My high school sweetheart gave me his. I still have it.

Okay … alright … maybe I’m practicing some revisionist history. Maybe I wheedled it out of him. Fussed and whined and begged. It’s an RNG drop … you do what you got to do.

 

Wildstar, I Hardly Knew Ye

Yeah, I’m being dramatical. Wildstar’s not dead or anything but I felt it wouldn’t be right to just leave without saying goodbye. There’s Totatu, she just hit level cap and she’s surveying her kingdom … but apparently it’s not enough. She hit level cap and that was it.

She managed to make it to level 50 during the free month which seems kind of like shooting yourself in the foot. I’ve read accounts by others saying leveling was taking too long so it might just be me. I really like the game so I subscribed for a month. Kinda like a, way to go! Great game!

Totatu has an Elite Mineral Deposit at home and all she did was login a few times a day and mine and then sell it … for a month … that’s all she felt compelled to do.

I tried another alt but I just wasn’t feeling the Engineer, my favorite by far was the Stalker so why didn’t she want to play.

The world is beautiful, I enjoyed seeing new zones. Music is well done, I really liked the combat although if you took ALL my alts deaths in WoW and lumped them together I don’t think they’d surpass Totatu’s deaths.

When I first heard about double-jumping I thought, big whoop. I was so wrong, it’s one of my favorite things and managed to get me to actually not hate jumping puzzles. Nothing could make me like the logic puzzles. Nothing.

There was a LOT of bugginess in the world story chain. A lot. Imagine having to do logic puzzles that you could not fudge and a jumping puzzle over and over and over because the quest bugged at the end. Frustration level off the chart. But that wasn’t it either.

Because I play when most people are at work or school I’m usually alone in the world. Early in Wildstar you could find people for group quests but later levels the population thinned out at least on my server, so I was pretty much alone which I’m used to.

And I felt alone. Here’s the weird thing, in WoW I never feel alone. I know, I know … no I’m not losing it. I know they’re NPCs but I’m all alone trying to find a rare Moccasin in Swamp of Sorrows and I stop by Bogpaddle to sell some junk to a Goblin and I get, I got what YOU NEED from him and I’m not alone.

I know! I don’t know how Blizzard imbued this sense of life I get from the NPCs but they did for me. I have yet to get that from any other game I’ve played … so yeah … I’m off to the Swamp of Sorrows again for that stupid rare snake but I won’t feel lonely. I got my buddy in Bogpaddle to check in on.

I will say if a disaster befell Blizzard and the World of Warcraft was no more, I think Wildstar would be my backup plan out of any of the games I’ve played. I could mine, decorate my house in between double-jumping around the world.

So Moccasin, you’re on notice. I’m coming for you! I will not be denied!

 

 

Persona Non Grata and a Wildstar Tip

Aw … come on Cat, I said I was sorry. Really, it’s not like you to hold a grudge this long. Cat? Cat? Sigh. She’s really mad at me this time. I logged in to find Cat outfitted with an un-gemmed iLevel 496 hat on. I remembered selling a helm before I logged out. Oops.

I had sold her upgraded gemmed helm … by mistake … a thing I do frequently. But the reason she won’t speak to me is because I made her go to the Timeless Isle and start gathering coins again. For a whole day … which she didn’t like.

Yes, it took a whole day for the hamsters that power my mind to get up to speed. Eureka! I know! Item Restoration! So she’s all set again but still mad that it took me a day to get my memory powered up. It’s not like her but I guess maybe she’s feeling grumpy too about our  long wait for Warlords.

So far be it from me to hang around where I wasn’t welcome. I went to visit Totatu in Wildstar, I had a vitally important mission for her. She COULD NOT continue to run around wearing an ugly gas-mask. We MUST find out how to hide helm. It’s of the utmost importance, right up there with acquiring plushies for our house.

Success! We found a Protostar Appearance Modificator egghead guy in Thayd and you select Costume 1 and yes!!! You can turn off your helm! Mission accomplished!

Yeah … it occurs to me that I might want to mention to Totatu that just because something dropped for you, you don’t have to necessarily use it. I mean I would but I’m already persona non grata in WoW maybe I’ll just keep this to myself. If Totatu gets mad at me the only destination left to me is real life where there’s cleaning and stuff to do. Yeah … giant eyeballs aren’t THAT bad.

My Wildstar … um … Day

Due to an attack on me from real life my Wildstar Weekend turned into more of a Wildstar day. We had a rocky beginning but I figured trying to get in five minutes after the beta weekend started was the problem. I waited a bit and connection woes settled down and I could get on with getting off the ship and down to Nexus.

Oh wait … I should introduce you first. Okay … aside from the hair, that is pretty much NOT a representation of the rl me. In my defense I was in a hurry to get into the game and when I picked “body type” I was zoomed into her face … no really. The next character I made, I made sure to zoom out. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry I could have spent hours in there, lots of customization available for your character.

Yeah see? Next character I got pretty much spot on … that’s me, the short one. Although I’d decided I would play an Exile I thought I should give the Dominion a shot at winning me over. They didn’t. I abandoned him before I even got off their ship. Their choice of music was driving me insane while I looked for stuff I couldn’t find, so I bailed.

In my previous post Sprowt commented that she encountered some trouble with finding where to reread quest objectives, FIND quest objectives and other issues. I had the same problems until I found a little teeny, tiny button that opened your quest log. I later found a big button in the lower left corner that gave access to pretty much everything. So now I knew what I was supposed to do … sort of.

I had a hell of a time getting off that damn ship. I couldn’t figure out where to go, what to do. I think I’ve been spoiled by pointy arrows and really sparkly quest objectives and tabbing out to look up quests on Wowhead. I made a second Exile later in the day and zipped right through the relic room. This time it wasn’t crowded with people so that may have been the problem.

FINALLY! Planetfall! And it’s really beautiful. Questing woes settled down once I hit Nexus. I still fumbled about until I learned to use the map but things were going much more smoothly. I think part of my problem might have been playing a game for so long where I know all the quests. I had to backtrack repeatedly because I did not FULLY read the quest text. My fault.

I didn’t get into my path, Scientist much. Too busy killing all the things. Wildstar has an interesting combat system that I really liked. I have a button that implies I can double-tap to dodge but have yet to manage to make it work. I might actually have to resort to research on this but I wanted to try the game with pretty much no knowledge and see how it went … see if Wildstar can be derp approved. I have to like a game first, then I do research.

The world so far is beautiful, high on my list of must haves. I liked the combat system and had no trouble getting used to it. Important, as I don’t like spending all my time dead. I did die for science once. I wanted to see how annoying it was. I got the option to pay to rez where I died or rez at the nearest holo-crypt. Minimally annoying although that might change at higher levels.

While I did not get as much time as I would have liked, I did get enough time to know that yes, I would buy Wildstar. I had fun.

If Looks Could Kill and Wildstar Weekend

Apparently looks do make a difference to me in deciding what to kill. I hadn’t really noticed before but Rose goes around smacking the crap out of everything and Cat doesn’t. While Cat was on the Timeless Isle I don’t think she was up at the top except to open the chests.

Rose “looks” more intimidating to me and Cat looks … like a kitty … and it appears subconsciously it affects the way that I play them. I should have been rolling Tauren Male Warriors all along. Doesn’t seem to be in play with casters, just melee. I seem to decide what they can do by my visual perception of their strength.

They are EXACTLY the same except that Rose hasn’t caught up to Cat’s iLevel and yet Rose tackles things Cat wouldn’t. Weird. Oh wait, I lied. Rose has her Tauren racial Endurance I guess that 5% is what’s doing it.

So I’m at the point that I have all the alts on the Isle getting them dressed in preparation for Warlords. I’ve found that the cap for my non-LFRing crew is iLevel 538 so I’m trying to get them all there … oh yeah … except for Death Knight. Gear makes no difference, there’s no point. She’s awful, so at least with crappy gear she’ll have an excuse. Yes, really. I’m doing it for you Death Knight. You’re welcome.

So it’s slow around here. Almost a year ago I signed up to be in the Wildstar beta. Nothing happened. Pffft … whatever … be that way then. And this week I got the code for this weekend! Yay!

I used to pre-order everything, but my track record of losing interest RAPIDLY has made me less inclined to order something I haven’t experienced. I’ve been studying up too. I don’t know if it was their intention but one video I watched, I swear the character was channeling Kaylee from Firefly. Okay, then I’ll be an Exile.

I let Cat pick the race. She picked Aurin. Yes, I will have furry ears and a tail. I should have seen that coming. Class is going to be Esper. Conjure deadly apparitions! Mass butchery! That’s so me!

So we’ll see how this goes tomorrow, if I find I have trouble looking around because I “perceive” she’s too weak I’ll make a Granok rock-man Warrior. Like Rose.

Cheers and Put your Money Where your Mouth … oh

Finally! In all the years I’ve been a member of the Brew of the Month Club I have never once felt the urge to travel to Ironforge to purchase ale until now. I made a special trip just to buy a case of Stranglethorn Brew. I mean who wouldn’t want to be menaced by Angry Jungle Gnomes. Oh! Oh! Please don’t get me little Gnomes! I hope I acted appropriately frightened, don’t want to hurt their little feelings.

Yeah … I know … crazy. Well see, what happened was I read a post at Wow Insider about a former WoW developer talking about WoW being too easy. I certainly agree with that but I don’t know how else Blizzard could have handled it. Leveling to 90 would be a daunting task for someone just starting. Maybe give people a Flask of Accelerated Experience and let them decide if they want to zip through levels or not.

But of course HIS new game, FireFall gets everything right. Oh yeah? Put your money where your mouth is buddy, we’ll see about this. It’s like he threw down a gauntlet … I HAD to pick it up. Just had to.

What? Oh, it’s okay … What? Well, I really can’t say. I’ve been stuck in the tutorial since I arrived. I can’t pass it. It’s too hard. LOLOLOLOLOL. I have yet to manage flying around with my jetpack, shooting through hoops while firing fireballs out my …  can’t manage it so far.

Don’t let it go to your head Mark Kern, just cause it’s hard for me. I’m pretty sure my fourteen year old neighbor could do it just fine. Okay, breaks over. Back to school.