Nobody Reads This

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

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Wow, it’s hard to believe quite so much time has elapsed since I last visited the left a note for the … 8 … people who still look at this on a regular cycle. Sorry about that. Things are a little hectic not least because University stuff literally appeared from nowhere and kicked me in the nuts but also because I made the fatal mistake of getting back into WoW when I’m at my busiest. Yay for that.

Two things today, I wanted to reflect on my recent WoW activity with a brief commentary on what I’ve been doing and how I feel about a few things including the levelling->Raiding transition and the other is a story over on the BBC about a poll they did on Radio 1 to discover the best game. Please do feel free to go read the top 10 so you are suitably horrified for the rest of this blog.

I’m going to assume you’ve read the results of the Radio 1 Games Poll and now know that Call of Duty 4 is the best game ever, a title coveted by many and seemingly reawarded every time a fad comes along.  I’m going to pass over the games I’m relatively happy with and just make a few comments regarding the fucked up entries:

• Grand Thef Auto IV (10): Are you fucking serious? This game was praised for it’s pretty nice engine but lambasted for it’s terrible gameplay, hateable characters and soul destroyingly dull plot. Are you actually serious? -_-
• Football Manager (2): Yes that’s right, FM is SECOND. The bricklayers and builders clearely voted en masse for this one. Sigh. I like sims! And I like football! And even I think FM is a bag of shite.
• Fifa 2009 (9): Yep, it’s Fifa. It’s like Fifa 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001 … but with exactly 1 more disappointment.
• Halo 3 (8): How did I know the OXM readership would listen to Radio 1?

Out of curiosity here are a few of the good games and where they placed:

• World of Warcraft – 4th
• Half Life 2 – 12th
• Deus Ex – 16th (Noticeably under Fallout 3)
• Pokemon Red/Blue – 18th
• Half Life 1 – 21st
• Command and Conquer

As you can see many of the truly good games ranked, probably appropriately considering that the Radio 1 listenership is quite young but at the same time: Who listens to the radio at the weekend? Predominantly people who are working one might assume. All those white-collar nerds (Like mahself) were probably raiding or trying to alt-boot DOS so they could check out a Microprose classic and did not even find out about the survey until they returned to work on Monday. Quite.

On the topic of raiding (See what I did there) my WoW activity has spiked now that I’ve dinged 80 on my Paladin. Around the 76 Mark I was loaned 500g by Rob to pick up my dual-spec and at the time I was levelling Prot and took off-spec Holy. Tbh, end game protadin is STRESSFUL. Although I generally know all the tacs wherever I’m going I frankly do not have the patience to deal with R-tards. When you’re tanking, it’s all a mile-a-minute and the shit can hit the fan quicker than you can reach for Holy Shield.

Holy is relatively tranquil. Amongst the peaceful sounds of Mik’s Scrolling Combat Text and the soothing glimmer effect that comes with flash of light it’s easy to forget you were fighting a reborn skeletal dragon. Although there is still an element of responsibility – After all I am responsible for whether you live or die – But it’s very much more of a supporting role calling any bonus tacs and pointing out any mistakes for people to improve on.

The Tank is the quarter-back and I’m the half-back. Obscure-American-Football-Reference.

Not long after I dinged 80 I was lucky enough to find myself in a heroic group with an extremely overgeared Prot Pally and a few of his Guild mates. That night we must’ve done 5 or 6 heroics in a row – Enough to come away with a new Epic shield. I accepted their invitation to join their guild and have been running heroics and raids with them ever since.

So far I’ve done OS10, Naxx 10 (All except Kel, they’ve downed him but people are making silly mistakes every time and I don’t join for the rerun) and heroics for most of the other instances. I’ve dinged Exhalted with the Argent Crusade (and got mahself a hat) and now over half my gear is epic 200 Item quality. No set pieces yet though, I passed on my only one since it was a fellow Holy paladin who was running in blues with me in my new Epic Spaulders that only dropped two bosses prior.

Since I dinged 80 and got some of my nice gear we’ve also been running old instances for giggles including Molten Core (2 resets in a row :>) and Onyxia. We also gave BWL a shot but I think some people are too undergeared for it, there were 6 of us which currently makes up: 80 Holy Pally, 80 Enh Shaman, 79 Feral Druid (tank), 72 DK,  72 Shaman, 66~ Mage.

My recommendation: Don’t go until you’ve got at least 3 overgeared top level people. i.e. If the druid could look after himself vs most of the mobs (and cover the Orb Nominee) and one person could be relied on to keep the adds off the boss then I think we’d be ok.

As is, both our attempts have killed the boss before the eggs could go down, and subsequent attempts included botched controls which lead to mass-conflag and a wipe. Going to let the Feral tank ding and get some nice heroic gear – After which I think we’ll be good to give it another shot. The DK is likely to be the next person to ding after which I think Mark will be trying to level his warrior (He’s in outland now, doing fucking well tbh) and Leslie has renewed her levelling effort and only has one or two levels to go until Northrend.

Fun Fun right? Anyway, I look forward to doing some heroics in the not to distant future that are entirely friend driven! We’ve already got 3 80s (assuming Jim dings today :>) which include a Tank and a Healer so we should be ok. Jim may need to invest some cash in premature enchants and gems to get his stats up though but for now we can certainly run some of the easy stuff.

Random tail-end update and gratz for getting this far: I’m coming down to Gosport next week but I will be busy for most of it. I can probably hang out once or twice but I’ve got important University stuff that I need to do. We shall have to meet up and spend hours in Burger King again Also WoW will be on the back burner this week as I prepare all my materials for coming to Gosport.

Enjoy yourself, and GL with levelling Mark.

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

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And so it has begun, I got off the levelling train at the terminus Ding-city yesterday evening and officially celebrated with a tour-de-force around the Eastern Kingdoms. (For clickthrough links, click to enlarge) 

• First we travelled to Orgrimmar and released fireworks and much cake was had by all. 
   
• Next we took different routes and travelled to Stormwind – I not sucking at WoW was first there
   
• We headed for Stockades – For some of us it was a gruelling task. I got there with only one death
   
• After waiting for Mark for 20 minutes and killing nubs stupid enough to attach us, we obliterated Stockades.
   
• Next we headed for the Deeprun tram and travelled to ironforge.
   
• We got mugged more than once, but I set myself the goal of completing 1 lap around Ironforge.
   
• I discovered Improved Aura affects Crusader Aura
   
• Rob and I headed back into the Deeprun tram
   
• We evaded an angry level 80 Rogue
   
• We ran through Stormwind
   
• Down through the docks (Which are pretty awesome)
   
• Around the coast of Westfall
   
• Into Deadmines – Which we emptied out in about 3 Minutes
   
• Then Rob and I parted ways, I went to Silvermoon.
   
• Travelled back to the Belf starter zone and up to the Monument on the western cliff.
   
• I ate the last slice of my cake, where the game began for Liadrin

 

And that my friends, is how you should celebrate your ding

Regards,
James.

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

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Just to let you know, going to be very busy this weekend and early next week so Blog posts will be slow/missing for the next week.

I’m still around though and the best way to keep up with me is on Twitter in the mean time (See right).

Cheers,
JamesR.

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

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I just came from a heated exchange on a Tech Blog where Apple and Windows fanboys berated each other and compared e-penis specs all the while having a good laugh at the newest ‘Laptop Hunter’ ad. I certainly like to think I’m above such petty fanboy nonsense (Unless it’s for giggles…) but I do definitely have a point of view. I don’t like Apple and I don’t like Macs and let me tell you why.

 

Microsoft is a software vendor who sometimes get’s too big for their boots. They produce software and a few other bits and pieces (like the 360, for all the $ that has made them…). Their primary audience is people who got on board when they were the only viable platform and they continue to market directly at them, they also retain a huge market share over businesses (As it’s a standard prereq for working in IT whereas Apple s/w is not).

Apple is a hardware vendor at best and a gadget vendor at worst who have made their billions by using innovation produced elsewhere and being a reseller portal for it. That seems pessimistic but even should you disagree this isn’t my primary gripe anyway. They utilize current trends (and often set them) and laugh all the way to the bank with their brand premium which is affectionately known as Apple tax.

Microsoft thinks they rule the world but everyone more or less just laughs behind their back as their market shares slowly reduce in every market. User friendly linux distros (May as well read OSX) as well as Mac OS (May as well read linux distros) stealing their OS market is the big problem. They have had a bad 5 years with Vista being an overwhelming failure but XP (even with its faults) is still sturdy as a rock.

Now here is where I start to lose interest in Apple … They behave like a church and I’m 100% sure there are people who believe Steve Jobs is the second coming of Christ. Apple fans believe that Apple have and will never do any wrong; that OSX is the best thing Apple has ever produced and that using anything other than an iPod, iMac or iLife is pure nonsense. I know you are probably thinking that this is the fanboys not the company but Apple have created this culture and nursed it to become nothing but an exercise in milking the proverbial tit.

The second thing that I despise is that whilst the Apple culture is a fairly abominable group of narrow-minded individuals the people in their financial/pricing department are even worse. Just like any church you are required to mortgage great sums of time, money or energy (sometimes all three) just to be a ‘real’ member. In Mac culture there’s nothing wrong with using a 5 year old Mac but you are still inferior to the chap with a Macbook Air (even if your specs trump his). If your iPod has a mono-screen then I wouldn’t even get it out in public and God (read Steve Jobs) forbid … Should you get out a Non-3G iPhone.

I hate rabid fanboy’ism on both sides but supposed PC fanboy’ism is usually nothing but Mac hate. I hate Macs and I might say it but the false assumption from the other side of the fence is that I love Microsoft and I fucking don’t! If there was a working alternative that ran 90% of my software there is no way I would by another licence of Windows ever again. People can do everything they need to do on both systems, if not from an embedded stand point then from a Virtualization one.

You have to wonder what the Linux professionals think to all this … Laughing at your Apple tax and laughing at your faulty Windows installation, whilst they run a new Linux Distro with all the same features capable of emulating both and likely more efficiently. Ultimately if you think one platform is truly any better than another from a spec POV then you deserve what you get on those hate threads. Let’s all grow up and realise that there is no one-size fits all solution but also that you don’t just have to wear one.

Regards,
James.