Stormwind News Team 9 Meets SWTOR

Ironsally has been insufferable lately. If she isn’t pestering me to check the leaderboard at the new Ironman Challenge, she’s driving me nuts about interviewing my SWTOR characters. I told her I didn’t really think she’d like it in SWTOR.

Finally, I lost my patience and said, fine, I’ll see what I can do about arranging passage for the News Team. I feel sort of guilty because I just knew she’d get frazzled by the whole SWTOR thing but she wouldn’t leave it alone. Kind of mean of me.

Anyway, here’s Ironsally’s take on SWTOR … she didn’t stay long, didn’t even hang around long enough to meet my crew. I don’t think she’ll be begging to go back anytime soon.

What to tell your [Insert] when they say you play too much [Insert]

Went to see what Matty of Sugar & Blood had to say this morning and found this post. She has a link to an article that has some interesting justifications for spending so much time in-game, any game. I knew it! I knew it! I’ve bookmarked the article, I don’t need it for my husband who is incredibly tolerant of the time I spend playing games. I’m not sure if it’s tolerance though, or if he’s just happy to be able to watch sports, the military channel and the history channel in peace.

My daughter is a different story, she thinks her husband and mother are two giant dorks who spend way too much time gaming. Now I can refer her to this article, pointing out all the benefits of gaming. I think it’s worth it alone for the hand-eye coordination cause coordination irl is not my strong suit. I am not a beautiful, graceful butterfly irl.

I found this interesting because I have my own anecdotal evidence to add. I noticed this a few years back and I’m sure it’s the result of gaming. Do you see my little smuggler up there? She’s assessing the situation, in this case they’re just a bunch of wimps but nevertheless she’s always aware.

When my Druid visits an area for the first time, she stealths in and checks out the lay of the land. How are the NPCs grouped, who’s the most dangerous, can she take out one at a time or will they all aggro.

Awareness

I’m a jokey kind of ancient, a lot of what I say is not strictly true but this I’m serious about. My awareness of real life situations has increased and I know it has to be the result of gaming. I once had a client who had a personal security firm. He provided all sorts of training. Combatives Training, Tactical Knife, Baton and one called Awareness. Awareness was one of his pet peeves, he complained that his wife didn’t take her surrounding into consideration enough and if attacked would be taken completely by surprise. I know what he meant, most of us are raised in an environment that thankfully does not necessitate being on alert at all times. We have to be trained.

We have two dogs with some issues. I used to walk them without paying a whole lot of attention to what was going on around me. I no longer do that. Small children who like animals, have a tendency to run up to strange dogs squealing in delight … behaving pretty much like prey, not good. Our one dog is not aggressive but he is easily startled and he doesn’t kiss on the first date, he has to get to know you. Now that I’m aware of what’s going on around me I can take measures ahead of time to avert a situation that would frighten a child or an adult or result in a dog smackdown.

When I have one of those annoying times that I can’t order something from Amazon and I have to venture out irl to acquire it, I’ve noticed that when I park, before I get out I check to see if the surrounding cars are empty or have occupants. Do the occupants look suspicious? I did not take his class; I did not used to do this. I find everywhere I go I am scoping out the area exactly the same way I do in-game.

If you’re sitting in a Starbuck’s and a mommy type walks in and looks around, she may be assessing your position in the kill-order if things in there go south. She could be sizing you up like a pack of Murlocs, I’m not kidding. Kind of spooky isn’t it?

I know for a fact this heightened awareness has been beneficial in dealing with the dogs and I can only assume it’s the result of gaming, I don’t know where else it suddenly came from. So there, they can add awareness to that article.

In honor of Matty, who frequently is kind enough to provide a soundtrack for her posts I give you this, it started playing in my head about halfway through writing this post and I can’t get it out. I mean I like it and all but here, you take it. I have a mind like a diamond now.

Hawt or Not and Nar Shaddaa, Land of Plenty

I had a nightmare that woke me up at 4:00AM this morning. I think it was caused by movie indigestion. We had watched The Untouchables, one of my husband’s old favorites. In my dream I came home to find trucks backed up to our house and they were stripping the shingles off the roof. There were evil villain types hanging around and the cops were there too. The police were very sympathetic but kept telling me their hands were tied, nothing they could do, so I can only assume I was on the outs with Al Capone and he was retaliating by taking my shingles.

Usually 4:30AM is fine, that’s usually when the dogs wake up but at 4:00AM no one was awake so I had some time to reflect. It was kind of cheeky of me to use the word nude yesterday. It was a legitimate search term but yeah, I wanted to see what having the word nude in a title would do. What it did was increase traffic five-fold. If you’re a WoW blogger and you’re looking for ways to increase your traffic, Blog Azeroth’s Blogging Tips, Tricks, and Guides is a great place to start, but I just wanted to add an Ancient Tip, use nude, naked, nekkid in your title. I’m not sure if it matters what it’s paired with. I don’t know if nude vrykul would generate more traffic than say, nude goblin. But anyway, there’s my tip. Yes, I’m a cheater, on second thought just do what Blog Azeroth says. I must have been hanging around Al Capone too much.

Oh yeah, and Ironsally was furious that her final ding was unseated as the post with the most page views by the word nude. I feel like she’s planing some extravaganza to regain top billing. I can’t help but be a little concerned about what she’s up to. I guess we’ll find out.

Hawt or Not

So to atone for having possibly sounded like I was mocking anyone’s chosen sexual fantasies, I decided to head out to Northrend and seriously consider the hotness of Vrykul. Okay, going to Icecrown wasn’t such a great idea. He is hot? Well who the hell knows, he’s all bundled up in layers and he’s drunk as a skunk and smells like a brewery. To give them a fair shot I then headed to southern Northrend and found the gentleman below.

I don’t know about you but I think there’s some potential hotness there. I like the whole braid thing he’s got going on and the tattooed arms but hon, really, what is up with that ugly sneer. Didn’t your mother ever tell you your face might freeze like that? Or sorry, is that what actually happened, you mean that old wives’ tale is true? It might work with the Vrykul girls but if you want wider circulation you really should work on that. So anyway, yes, I see your point. Apologies for giggling at your search term, I think they’re pretty hot myself.

Nar Shaddaa, Land of Plenty

I got to Nar Shaddaa and I was a little concerned. My bounty hunter has Bioanalysis as a crew skill and I was afraid since it was urban I wouldn’t find any nodes. I was pleased to find there are all kinds of biohazards lying around in the trash bins. I also had the urge to dust off the classic movie, Bladerunner. Nar Shaddaa reminds me of it, just not so dark. Kind of a cross between Vegas, the worlds in Firefly and Bladerunner. My problem on Nar Shaddaa was I couldn’t find anything. This huge place must have a trainer at least. I saw other people inquiring as to trainer location and being told to use their map filter. I used my map filter and got nothing. No mailboxes, no trainer, zip. So I decided to investigate the old fashioned way, on foot.

I don’t know if this is a personal problem or whether other people might have it, but I found your map and filter are not always reliable. I came to a stop to take a breather on my search for a mailbox and realized I was standing right in front of one, although it wasn’t showing up on my map. The same thing often happens with quests. I’ll have taken loads of quests and I don’t remember where they were and there are no visual hints directing me to their location on my map. I found going to any taxi location usually gets the green quest location pointers back.

So anything and everything can be had in the lower promenade around that golden Hutt on Nar Shaddaa. If you’re having trouble finding it on your map just run around the perimeter of the promenade, believe me the Hutts have it all.

Oh and I love the mail you get. My bounty hunter is always getting mail from some NPC or other she’s cut a break. She’s so light she shines now. I’m finding SWTOR so immersive that I just realized I forgot about the two flashpoints after Black Talon and now they’re green. I’ll have to see if I can do them before they go gray. I tend to get fixated on my character’s class story. She went to Tatooine at level 23 and got her butt kicked. I was all the way back to Nar Shaddaa when I remembered I had two cooldowns that might have made the difference. I had forgotten them as she never really needs them. Oh well, she’s level 24 now so she better get back to making some money so she can come up with that 40,000k. As soon as she hits 25 she’s heading back to Tatooine with her speeder and her two cooldowns and she is going to kick Borga’s butt or at least give it another shot!