Another State of the Gamer post

How is everyone doing? I haven't been playing games for awhile so I can't really blog about games =(. I've been busy at work as construction projects are starting to pick up and at the same time me and the wife has been working on buying a house this spring.

I've been playing COD:WaW but only when I get a text from my old friends. No new animes to watch lately really so it's been kinda boring in that department too.

It's been 2 weeks now since I last logged on WoW. I can't really find a strong reason to push myself to log in, old guild went poof and most of my friends being gone ain't really helping. I have cancelled my account and I will be waiting till the Ulduar patch comes out and hopefully still have a raid spot in my new guild =p.

I have been watching alot new Tv shows though. We started watching NCIS Season 6 via netflix (it's HD!) and I must say the show is entertaining. Started CSI:NY and so far it's ok.

Also my interest in MMA has been renewed. I was a big fan of TUF Season 1 and also have watched some fights on UFC, Pride, and WEC. Over the past week or so I got a hold of UFC 90-96 PPV fights(don't ask me how!) and WOW these guys are beast!

UFC 97 is about a week away and I'm still contemplating if I'm going to shell out the cash for the PPV. I really want to watch Anderson Silva beat the shit out of Thales Leites and of course watching Chuck fight is just pure awesome. I think if I don't have any excessive spending this month I can get away with it =).

Got Hacked

Some bozo charged my debit card $147 to some company in London called Elustra LTD. Really?! I looked them up and no number and website to reach them ... nice.

I have been using my credit card online since 2003 and I haven't had this happened before ... so I guess I can eliminate what websites that I used for my primary suspects.

What's funny is how I discovered it. I was doing our monthly expenses early this morning and the fraudulent charges wasn't there yet. 30 minutes later I checked my account again and BAM! There it is! I called my bank and had my card cut off. I stopped by my bank during lunch time, got a new card and submitted the complaint and they said it can take 3-60 days till they can give me my money back.

I'll be doing a sweep on my PC again and now have to go thru all the sites that I have auto pay on ...

Also found a charge for $1 from Itunes ... I gotta call them up today and see what's going on. It's not about the $1(ok maybe it is a little bit) it's the principle!

State of the Gamer

I've been thinking about cancelling my WoW account for a month or two until Ulduar comes out but I'm not sure if I have already paid for the next month's bill ... if I did then I guess I'll just work on fishing heh.

This last weekend I've devoted alot of time into Call of Duty: World at War due to the new map packs and double xp weekend. I managed to get to my 3rd Prestige and currently on lvl 37.

I also tried out some interesting Perk Combos that other's have recommended. Check it out.

1st setup - this is my usual setup. Pretty standard.
MP40 with dual magazine.
1. W/e
2. Stopping Power +40% dmg
3. Steady aim/Martrydom


2nd setup - I've played with this setup last weekend and I must say even w/o stopping power the mp40 still dishes out enough damage. I really like this setup cause it tailors to my run n gun playstyle most of the time.

MP40 with Dual magazine
1. w/e
2. Juggernaut - +40% health
3. steady aim -

3rd setup - the ultimate stealth setup! I can't go rambo with this setup well ... I can but it's not gonna be pretty. This works awesome when I can flank an enemy and find a good spot to shoot them while theyre busy shooting someone else. I don't show up on the radar when I'm shooting or when they have a recon plan so it's been fun sneaking up on people.

MP40 with Silencer
1. Bouncing betty/claymore
2. Camouflage
3. steady aim

I've also played around with putting Double Tap on the 2nd perk, it's ok so far but I really think it depends on the map and who am I playing against to time when to use it. It's a nice change if anything.

I still have to get around completing challenges for about 4 weapons, I've been using MP40 alot which I know is not healthy =P.

COD WaW Patch First Impressions

Yesterday there was a patch and a map pack released for COD: WaW. There was some pretty nice fix like

*Improvements have been made to the global spawn system – players should never spawn within the line of sight of an enemy.

Well the only problem now is they spawn behind you! =)

All the rest of the fix seems pretty fair. I would have liked though if they

There was some issues/problems last night that I encountered though:

Xbox live account management was down - The day that a bunch of people needed microsoft points to purchase the map pack was the same day the server decides to crap out. Brilliant! Granted there is a sudden influx of people

Kept getting kicked out of the party - Well my screen says they left the party and when I asked them they said that I was the one who left hmm.

New maps not showing up! I get the fact that the game picks random maps for you but 3 hours of playing and not playing at least one of the 3 new maps ... whats up with that? Anyone able to play the new maps so far?

last issue is not a technical problem but more of a user ...

I seem to be having a hard time aiming my weapons. I blame it on my controller or slow reflexes in the past couple days resulting in a not so spectacular kill death ratio. It's either I'm starting to suck more or the players I'm meeting are getting more skilled OR both!

There is an issue with my controller's right stick. It's sometimes lagging behind or just slow, I can try a different one but that means I gotta use my wife's pink 360 controller ...

Did I mention it's DOUBLE EXP weekend again? Holy crap these guys are giving away exps like candy. Well I can't let this weekend go to waste then =P. Time to come up with another excuse play COD all weekend again ....

COD5 Patch day!

Thanks to http://www.ps3blog.net/ I learned about the details concerning COD5 patch.

Here are some details about the patch.

*All rifle grenades fired during the first 15 seconds of Search & Destroy will be duds to prevent griefing in that game mode.
*Improvements have been made to the global spawn system – players should never spawn within the line of sight of an enemy.
*Players who equip the Bouncing Betty and melee teammates in Hardcore game modes are now credited with a team kill penalty.
*Players are now deducted 200 points for team killing the bomb planter/defuser in Hardcore Search & Destroy.
*Martyrdom no longer causes “direct impact” grenade deaths in Hardcore modes.
*Players ranked higher than the maximum allowed in the Boot Camp playlist are no longer able to play in games with lower ranked friends in that playlist.
*“Bayonet jumping” has been disabled.
*Further improvements have been made to geographical matchmaking.
*The “New” icon clears when a player has viewed an unlocked weapon X360 only.

Overall good patch imo especially the rifle grenade and respawn camping issue also add to that there is a new Map pack. Hopefully what's left of my microsoft points will be enough to buy it.

Me and my buddy are thinking about playing COD4 in between COD5 games especially when the Double XP weekend comes around. It's usually just the 2 of us and another strong player would be very much welcomed to our duo party. So send me an friend invite if you are interested in playing either COD4 or COD5. See you guys online!

Blizzard's Mega Patch

I have started downloading and I checked earlier and it's at 40%. I have started this process couple days ago and it's getting around 2-3% for a good 4 hours that I let my PC download it for the past 2 days.

Anyone else having trouble with this?

In other news, I've been swamped at work and haven't really played some games this weekend. Me and the wife have been busy looking at houses/neighborhoods. The lease on our apartment is going to be up by June so we figured we start early in looking for a house.

There's always a first time for everything

Last night I filled out my first application to a Guild. On all the guilds I have been in I was one of the forming members, was asked if I was interested in joining, or I just simply asked if there was a spot and got a ginvite from there.

It really felt weird writing the app being my first time and all. I've always been on the other side watching raiders putting their self out there in the hopes of joining our ranks. I've never made fun of anybody though so I hope that's good Karma =). How was your first experience apping to a guild?

If I don't get in then I don't get in and if I get kicked out of my current guild cause of my application well w/e I don't care. I think I can get in to a decent guild if I really wanted to. The guild that I'm apping is one of the best in the server and 3 of my friends from Renascent is in there so a familiar face would be awesomesauce.

EDIT: You can view my first time app and laugh it up over here.

Also I logged in on Killzone 2 last night and I got a special Icon on my rank because I was one of the top 7-10% players last week, they change it weekly. Wowza! Really?! This is a first getting an award for being one of the top players on a FPS. Wasn't expecting that at all. I've only played for about 3-4 nights last week but I did get a streak where I was either first or second scoring massive points in kills. /cheers

You can also view my Kz2 profile over here.

Update - added a link for my app online and KZ2 profile.

Your asian aren't you?!

I keep getting that question especially when I was still leveling characters in WoW where I usually am one of the faster levelers and able to stay up for a long period amounts of time. Even now I still get it when playing shooters.

If you ask me I don't really know why asians in general have +5 to Fortitude in gaming and +10 in Farming gold. In real life though most small business are started by immigrants like me =P.

Well for those racist out there here is a pic for you to mull about.

XP/Progress bars and achievements

Well WoW has been kind of slow for me these past few weeks but ... I managed to finally finish some of the achievements/goals that I was slowly working on.

#1 White Polar Bear! - All I can say is finally!

#2 Exalted with Kaulak - took about a weeks worth but now I got my epic fishing pole!

#3 Get Northern Vanguard achievement - I was able to finish up Argent dawn last week.

Next on the list

#1 Level up fishing so I can get the achievement "Skills to Pay the Bills".
#2 Raise another faction to exalted - Preferably Oracles for a chance to win the green proto drake.
#3 Level up another alt

Plan that got aborted
My plan for the weekend was to play Killzone 2 with my fellow clan mates and finish up Naruto: Broken bond so I can actually ship it back to Gamefly and get a new one but alas all that planning was went out of the window when I found out Saturday afternoon that it was Call of Duty:WaW double points weekend! It's too bad I found out Saturday afternoon ... if only I knew about it earlier like Friday night I could have amassed more points

My Carrot on stick ... whats yours?

All of my actions in game be it WoW or shooters was dictated by one major variable ... rewards or a sense of accomplishment.

In CoD you can rank up all the way to lvl 65 and have a bunch of achievements that you can do. After hitting lvl 65 you can then "Presitige" mode erasing all your achievements, unlocked guns, perks and starting over at Lvl 1 in exchange for a different icon besides your name! You can do this up to 10 times and get a different icon each time depending on how many times you have "presitiged". Doesn't sound fun right?

A gamer addicted to XP Bar

This is a really great example how I am sucker on games that have xp bars

During my first playthrough I thought I would stop at 65 and not Prestige. I wasn't even lvl 65 yet but I have already finish most of the in game challenges(like achievements). As soon as I hit the max lvl I then decided to just keep prestiging. Seeing my progress bar reset for in-game challenges and xp to level up was not as bad as I thought. It gave me something to look forward though. The only thing thats sucks is losing my weapons but I'll manage.

Note though that 90% of the time I only play when my friends call me to play the game. When I'm by myself it just feels like I'm grinding for points. So because of the double xp weekend me and my buddies spent about 10+ hours playing this game. Kinda silly? Yes. Immature? Yup. We had fun? Hell yeah.


Coming Soon
Also my project for recording games might come to pass on the month of April. I already spend 40 bucks for a Bluetooth headset so my next extra expenses will be taken from next month's budget. Anyway expect some videos from the games I am currently playing be it WoW or console games.

Finding the right guild and the right loot system

My old GM from Renascent left the guild that I am currently in. It was because the Loot council mentioned that they would give Betrayer of Humanity to a DK alt instead of giving it to him until he proves himself. Sounds fair right?

Well the catch is he was recruited not just a raider but to help lead raids. So he is more like a sub officer or some sort. And in the raids that he was in he was helping on raid leading specially when doing Sartharion with drakes. So you would think that any guild that wants to progress pve that those efforts would be enough to warrant an upgrade to a main raider rather to an alt right?

I remembered that this guild is more of a pvp centric guild. Where most officers are heavily into arenas topping the BGs as high as ranking 2nd overall. And of course I found out that the DK alt is in their Arena team! AHA! Now the plot thickens...

My GM left right after the Naxx raid last Wednesday night. I don't blame him really.

I really dislike guilds doing loot council who has no clear purpose or hidden agendas. That loot system worked for us because we had leaders who know what they were doing and were genuinely committed in being the best PVE guild.

I have gotten several tells about applying for another guild so I checked out other guilds. To my surprise I already found 3 guilds who are recruiting DPS warriors. Now that's news! I really have a good WOW rap sheet(lol?) and I believe I can easily get into one of them if I really tried especially with my experience and current gear.

The problem is I don't want to be labeled as a guild hopper ... maybe I'll try sending my application via pm on their forums. I also have to check if I will get along with them.

I really don't want to be with jerks and players who think they are the shit, calling other players nub, baddies, stupid etc. I don't like it for 2 reasons. First, it's just not cool acting your the best and the rest are scrubs. Second, I was in the best pve guid ... and I find it really funny hearing it from them calling other names and then when the raid starts they have no FUCKING clue what to do or how to avoid fires and lava waves.

I will prolly hang out with this guild for a few more days or maybe I'll be here for a good while ... I don't know. I'll look for other options this weekend.

Me and multiplayer games

One of the best things about Multiplayer games are the players, at the same time they are one of the worst things that has happened to the same games.

When my old guild decided to implode I was really thinking about quitting WoW. Losing my friends was really a bummer and I really don't wanna bother applying to another guild, server xfers etc. I was really glad an old friend hooked me up with a new guild where about 5 players from Renascent are members. It's not much but it was enough for me to keep playing. Just doing daily quests ain't going to cut it.

I got a whisper from a priest from my old guild asking me what was my plan. I really felt bad because I know he still wants to play but like me a couple days ago he is guildless. I wish him all the best and hopefully he founds a place to call home.

Meet my new Clan! The Mockers

My buddies who are playing Call of Duty(COD) are only on 1-2 nights a week and I would really like to have another group to play with on top of my COD team. I decided to purchase Killzone 2 last Friday and so far it has delivered. But I really want to meet other players, be more social, get some clan action going on.

I searched for a ps3 blog and voila I found one that is looking to add members to their clan to play with/against each other. I got the Clan invite yesterday and I gladly accepted. Heck I even bought a bluetooth headset to talk to my new clan, the headset btwy is awesome. I bought the used one to get 10% off and I got another 10% cause I had a Gamestop Card wooot! Saved me about $15. They had their first games as a clan last night but I didn't make it because Naxx raid was scheduled first >_>. I'll definetely be there next time though.

I will still play COD:WaW when my friends are online but I will be devoting my free game time in playing Killzone 2 in the next few weeks. If you have killzone 2 or planning to get one and you want a clan to hang out, check out our Clan see if it fits you.

Killzone 2 First Impressions

This is not a MMORPG post but if your interested in what I have to say on PS3's latest shooter read on!


Pros


Addictive ranking system, medals and ribbons. Give me an XP bar to track my progress and I'm in! Perfect carrot on stick. The medals and ribbons ala achievements are just plain awesome. The game also gives a special badge that you can show off if you are one of the top 1,3, 6 and 10% players in the game, they update this weekly.


Playstyle choices - Killzone 2 accomodates most playstyles. From Rifleman, to medics, engineers, snipers, and squad leaders. You'll start out as a Rifleman but as you rank up certain badges/classes will be available to you. Last night I decided to be the Medic and it was hella fun. I had my assault rifle ready but as soon as one of my teammates go down I'm right there to revive them! I just recently unlocked the Engineer badges where I can set up bot sentrys that will guard an area the only downside is I only get a shotgun, I can always pick up others people gun though.


Stunning graphics. Easily one of the best looking First person shooters out there. Seeing your shadow as you run thru an alley just makes you smile.


It's just plain fun. Maybe because it just released last friday but I don't think no one can say that this game failed to deliver. Yes I do get frustrated in playing this game from time to time but it's not because of gameplay mechanics but rather it was me who was trying to Rambo my way in thru 4 opponents.



Cons


My biggest gripe is that I can't remap my buttons. Seriously most players will use the default control scheme but for players like me who like to reconfigure control layouts ... please give me an option.


My 2nd issue is the framerate. There would be times that frames AND controls feels sluggish. This is not game breaking though. I only encounter this when I'm on a 32 player mode and everybody is just everywhere not all the time but 1 in 8 games would be my guess. To counter this sometimes I would pick games with the max of 16 players which is just perfect.


Last but not the least are the spawn points. You know it really sucks to run for a mile just to get back into action but I have a good guess why they did it *cough spawn campers*

Overall

It's not perfect but gameplay, pace, graphics is just right. It's another damn good reason to keep playing first person shooters. I give it a 9/10.




Progress so far


I haven't played Killzone 2 as much as I would have liked last weekend because my buddies from COD:World at War are evil and wanted me to play with them. So I did and we had tons of fun.


That being said I still managed to get to the rank of Captain and get 8/8 Good conduct medals, 8/8 body count specialist, 8/8 kill specialist, 1/8 sidearm specialist heck I even managed to get a 3/8Medic Ribbon!


I plan on spending more time playing this week. Finishing the campaign mode would have to take a back seat as I would like to ride the wave of the influx of players on the first few weeks aka more nub kills. I would also like to complete the 8/8 Medic ribbon so I get the medic's secondary ability. From there I will level up my engineering badge then sniper! A headset would be nice but $50 bucks(blue tooth) is kinda steep.


I'll do another review a month from now to see where the game has gone, hopefully the game is still in good shape and I'm done with the campaign by then.

Homeless ... again

On my last post I mentioned that I joined a reformed guild which 90% of it's members are from my old one.

Well last Friday night ,when I logged in, Herc had no Guild tag! Apparently the guild broke up only after a night or two since being formed. Talk about being unstable. I talked to a couple of friends I knew who were in that guild and they said people just started leaving and they had some officer problems/disputes.

At that point I wasn't really sure if playing WoW would be an option for me even if Ulduar comes out. I logged on Sunday around lunch time and I saw one of my friends from Renascent, he was also in the guild that broke up. I asked him what happened and he pretty much said the same thing. I told him that I was disappointed at what happened and the fact that I was homeless.

Right then and there he said he would get me in the guild he was in. He told me the Guild Master in the guild he's in is in hes 5v5 team. He then went on that the GM wouldn't wanna be kicked from his 5s and that they were rank #2 on our Battlegroup. Keep in mind, this guy likes to talk shit alot. He talked to the GM, gave me some positive feedback and a few seconds later the GM whispered me.

He told me that they already have 2 Fury Warriors but he would force one of the guys to be Protection mainly because of my gear and background(good rep from being in the former best guild in the server). I took the offer(sorry other dps warrior =/) and joined my new guild.

What I wasn't expecting when I joined though was my old GM from Renascent is also in this guild as a council/raid leader. I guess he was offered a spot in the guild to help lead raids. I thought he was quitting but it doesn't matter now. Him quitting or not the break up of Renascent was going to happen.

Back to my current guild. We did Malygos and Sartharion 2 Drakes. The execution and strat was different add to that about 50g worth of repairs and it was pretty much the same =P. Granted the skill level and experience is different but I don't care anymore if we get server first. The raid are scheduled on Wed-Thursday. Only 2 days of raiding! Works for me.

So here's hoping this guild won't go BOOM after 2 nights or 2 months.

So it Finally Happened

After failing to get a raid together last Wednesday night, the Guild leader finally called it quits. I didn't show up for that raid. He said he was done with the game and is going to cancel his account.

I logged in last night with the GMOTD saying that the guild has reformed and that I should message old officers to get the guild invite. The guild leader was online the time I logged in so I said my thanks and goodbyes. I left the guild shortly after our conversation.

For a brief moment my toon was guildless. I joined my old comrades new guild. I don't even know the Guild name! A good bunch of active raiders are in the same guild so it felt like home even though we are under a different tag. I got promoted to the rank of Raider so I guess I still have my spot.

I'll give this guild a shot as I don't have the energy to apply to another guild and all that good stuff. Raiding 2-3 nights a week ain't bad anyway, plus getting an extra Betrayer of Humanity would be awesomesauce.

In other news, Killzone 2 releases today! Even the wife will go to Gamestop with me to pick up the game. There has been so much hype about this game and we all know what happens to game that are hyped to death they can either a.) crash and burn, only to survive with a few subscribers/players or b.) live up to the hype and 99% of the population are happy.

Sadly most end up on A. I'm not expecting this game to be the next Messiah, the one to save First Person shooter games(even though I would like it to be!). I am expecting a solid game though on both the Solo and Multiplayer part. I still haven't decided wether to play the campaign first then rank up on online or play the multiplayer first then slowly play thru the campaign in between games. Either way

I will definetely be posting my first impressions next week.

Daily quest and my first hate message

I am currently in training till tomorrow, I just stopped by the office today to check my e-mail.
Anyway, the guild is still intact or what's left of it. I haven't seen the mass Exodus that most officers were planning to, maybe they just decided to leave on their own , quit the game, or just suck it up ... I don't know.

There will be a raid tonight. I'm not sure if I want to go.

Daily quest

I've been doing the JC, cooking and Kaulak daily quests in the past week. Good source of money but I'm mainly after the tokens, northern spices and fishing pole respectively. I think I got about 5 days left or so to get Exalted with the Walrus people.

Oh yeah I got ganked by a lvl 79 DK and a lvl 70 mage ... twice!

What I'm up to these past nights

Well the wife and I have been watching CSI Miami on my Xbox via netflix which btwy is awesome on HD. We finally caught up with the current season now we are going back to Season 6 to watch some episodes we might have missed. We currently have The House Bunny and Michael Clayton Blu-ray from Netflix so we might watch that in the next few nights.

My first hate mail/message:

As I was playing Call of Duty:World at War last night I got a message which says "PUSY!".
Now the reason he sent that was I was on a tank the first 5 minutes of the fight and I went 23 kills and 1 death.

I replied "LOL cry more nub". I guess I was looking for a fight. He replied with a voice message this time saying I was in the tank the whole time bla bla bla to which I answered "your such a bad player if you cry about tanks, deal with it! Sticky grenades and satcher charges are your friend"

He then sent me another voice message, I didn't quite get it but I think he agreed with me with a little bit of QQing?! I was expecting him cursing me like your typical teenager whose e-peen got roflstomp but nope he didn't gave me that satisfaction.

If I see him later tonight I might invite him to my party so I can teach him how to play =P. I felt sorry later but seriously don't qq ... do something about it! Adapt to your situation!

I'm usually friendly(sometimes too friendly) playing online games but that message just rubbed me the wrong way.

Another First Person Shooter on the horizon is Killzone 2 for PS3 which is going to be released this Friday. I can't wait! COD: WaW will still be my main FPS game but when my friends are not online I'll be blowing some heads off in Killzone 2. My PSN ID is spybreak4u add me if you are getting this game this weekend. My Xboxlive Tag is also Spybreak4u for anyone who wants to play COD:WaW


Last but not the least
Thanks for all the nice replies on my last post regarding the guild. I really appreciate it <3

Guild Drama! How it turned Sour

It was inevitable I suppose.

The guild started strong, getting 3 server first and titles (in less than 3 weeks) that no one else in the server would ever get(Conqueror of Naxx, Magic Seeker, and Obsidian Slayer). Now it's on the brink of breaking apart.

I don't really know what happened but here are some of the factors in my opinion:

1.) Losing the race to get first in 3 Drake Sarth server kill - This is not the main reason but one of the factors that slowly killed our guild.

2.) People got bored - Clearing all 3 instances in 2 nights in 3 months get's REALLY REALLY boring.

3.) Domino Effect - When people start posting that they are done with the game that gets contagious.

4.) This Drama - Last but not the least this "incident". Check this out.

GL posted in the forums was made asking if people still want to continue raiding, he also mentioned his account was cancelled and will only reactivate if the guild lives on. A good amount of raiders did respond they still want to continue.

The raid formed up the next night and it was full on time! The officers were in charge. That hasn't happened in awhile. 30 minutes later the Guild leader logged on. A few minutes later he left the guild with the gbank(all the gold and mats on it). He logged on his alt and started demoting every officer that was in the raid.

We found out later that when he logged on he asked to get invited in the raid. The raid was full and

10-20 minutes later he invited his main toon back to the guild and gave the gold back.

That move alone I guess was the final nail to coffin. Raiders were uneasy and really wasn't sure where the guild is headed to. A good amount still want to raid and for those people a shaky guild isn't their best interest.

Uncofirmed Info:

A secret source has informed me that the only reason the GL opted to keep going with the guild was that he tried to join our rival guild but got declined.

The Coupdetat

After that little incident, rumors started spreading that a majority of the officers and a good amount of the core raiders was going to

One of my friends and fellow dps warrior already joined another guild. He asked me if I was angry, I replied not at all! Why would I?

I told him "you have to look out for yourself first". He wanted to raid and the environment of the guild that he was in was no longer in line with his goals.

What's my position in this issue?

/shrug

I wanna see how this all plays out for the next 2 days. I will prolly stop raiding for now till Ulduar is about to come out and then I'll go from there.

I didn't like the rumors about the GL appint to our rival guild add to that the fact that he left the guild because he didn't get invited to the raid that was full.

Will I leave the guild and join the coupdetat guild if formed?

I don't know. I guess if most of the core raiders are in there I would join. I gotta be realistic though. I gotta see if that new guild will have a stable leadership that can lead it thru the new instance. I don't have the energy to app to another guild so playing with the people I know is really ideal for me.

I'll make another post in the next few days if anything major comes up.

How I made 2k gold in 2 days by accident

Sounds like something you see on an Ad right?

For most people 2k gold is pocket change but the interesting part about my experience in the past 2 days was it wasn't in my plan.

It first started when I decided to drop mining and pick up Jewelcrafting. My main reason for this was from a min/max standpoint. I wanted to maximize my stats as much as I can and I thought Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing would be a good combo. I guess I was just trying to secure a raid spot when Ulduar does come out.

My project was finished after 5 days. It was a long process but I'm very pleased with the uber gems that I can now carry. Woot!

Then I remembered all the items that I sent to my disenchanting alt and AH alt ... which is well over 150+ items. Instead of letting them rot on the mail like I usually do I decided to just sell them at the Auction House with the goal of getting at least half of my investment back(around 500 gold was the goal).

2 days later my alt has acquired well over 1900 gold from the AH from all the "junk" and excess materials from leveling JC. I sold a bunch of low cost mats and gems around 99 silver to 3 gold. There were 3 things as I was leveling that stuck in my mind and I think helped me boost my AH profits.

Good investments

First one was me buying a stack of bloodstone for 2-2.5 gold each(20-25 gold a stack). I then cut a Bold Bloodstone and sold them for 9g 99sil. To my shock the first 5 actually sold after a minute and I wasn't even done posting items on AH. 2 days later I sold around 40 bold bloodstone from 10g to 12g(I tested how high could I go). If you do the math that's 400% Return of Investment + my JC skills!

Second was prospecting ores. I saved a bunch of saronite ores on Herc before I dropped mining, around 200 ores I think. If I knew I would be getting that much gems from them I would have cleared my bag sooner. This article does an excellent job in explaining how you can get profits thru prospecting ores.

Third was disenchanting rings and necklaces. I have sold 3 stacks of infinite dust last night and I felt poor for the guy I was undercutting. It was his fault though. First he posted A LOT of them flooding the market ... second was he put them for 48 hours. Which means I can easily undercut his gems and the best part was I was the only one during that 2 hour time frame last night posting dust.

I wish I had done the switch sooner. Most likely I will continue to take advantage of this proffesion, not full time but enough to keep me afloat.

I took up JC for the gems for the additional stats but the added bonus of making gold at the same time is very welcome.

900+ ores, 1k gold and 8 hours later

Actually I think it's more than 8 hours as it took me most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoon to FINALLY get 350 Jewelcrafting. Hooray! I did it just before the raid and even managed to get 3 Dragon's eye thanks to a friends help <3.

Friday was all about mining ... and mining and mining on my DK and Warrior gathering thorium and Saronite ores respectively. Come Saturday the excruciating pain of leveling jewelcrafting from the ground began. I got up to 280ish then called it a day. I then finished it up on Sunday.

The worst part of all of that is the process of sending items back and forth in between 3 characters add to that me running to the mail box everytime I run out of space.

Determined to get at least some of my investments back I sold a bunch of stuff(from leveling JC) yesterday on the AH. I easily did about 100 post. At the end of the night I got about 950 gold from all of my AH post that day. The items I was posting weren't expensive but ranging anywhere from 2.5 gold to 20 gold.

To break even, in my opinion I need to make 2k - 2.5k gold. I included the ores and oppurtunity cost. I will no doubt post another set tonight. Hopefully by the end of the week I reach my goal.

Oh and of course Betrayer of Humanity drop that Sunday run! The week where I agreed to get switched to group 2 =). My fellow warrior has to be pissed about that since I left it up to him which group he wanted to go and of course he pick group 1 last week ha ha ha. There are 2 items left that I need from 25mans: bracers from Gothik and the cape from Kelthuzad. I'm still working on my fishing though maybe I might work on it while watching tv ... I need a wireless keyboard so I can just sit on the couch.

The guild bank provided the Abys Crystals and after a few minutes after the raid I got it enchanted with Berserker. I also have berserker enchant on my offhand now and I know they both can stack but I'm wondering if the static 110 AP on the offhand will be better since berserk on offhand will proc less.

WoW is pretty boring atm and it's been awhile that I spent this amount of time on it during a weekend. I would do achievements or arenas but it's not really an interest for me right now. I guess the best thing about WoW is there are small stuff that can keep you entertained or at least give you a goal even when your are playing casually. An example for me would be leveling JC, posting on AH and leveling fishing.

Netflix via Xboxlive kept me entertained while leveling JC and selling stuff at the AH. I get bored really easy if I'm just doing 1 thing on my PC. I started watching Numb3rs Season 4(yes I know I'm a geek) while playing WoW and so far It's been entertaining.

Project Status

I mentioned on my last post about me dropping blacksmithing for jewelcrafting for maximizing my tradeskills as much as I can.

I'm currently at Tanaris right now on my DK mining some mithril. I think I need about 120 mithril ores then I have to move onto thorium. I must say that the extra mount speed bonus from the Unholy tree is really helping me out.

I've also flew around Borean Tundra(on my warrior) to get some cobalt ores for prospecting in the future. I'm prolly going to do another fly over on that zone and then head to the infamous Sholazar Basin to get some Saronite.

I didn't go to the main group this weekend in clearing Naxx, I'll be going with Group 2 instead. It was in the GMOTD that this Sunday will be the last Group 2 Naxx raid. There are no details yet but what it means basically for me is if Betrayer doesn't drop this sunday, my chances on getting one will be cut in half since I have to group together with another Fury warrior who also needs it.

Back to my project. I really want to finish it before this Sunday or the latest before the next Naxx raid after this week's reset. I would be gaining around an extra 60+ Str from both JC and BS.

Maximizing Tradeskills or just plain Crazy?

I currently have blacksmithing and mining but I am in the process of getting rid of mining for jewelcrafting. This would really help on min-maxing my stats. I know a good amount of players in my guild has 2 crafting proffesions and gathering proffesions on their alt so I figured I'd joined the club.

Making all raiding members min-max their proffesions will not work in my guild. The only time it worked really well and everybody in the guild was up for it was waaaay back in the 40man raids where we ended up getting in the top 5 U.S Horde guild when Naxx just came out. Those days ... are over. Even with Ulduar coming out gear check won't require everybody to be 100% min-max to clear it.

Right now I am leveling up mining on my lvl 62 DK. All I can say is ... finding Tine ore is a B!tch! I'm stocking up materials on the way so the minute I drop mining I can immediately proceed to leveling JC.

I figured getting extra sockets from blacksmithing and extra stats gems from JC is a really good combo be it tanking or DPS.

I must admit that this decision has got to do with my friend, who is a fellow TG warrior, is beating my Bloodthirst by a good margin. Granted there are small(and I mean small) differences in gear but I can't let the gap widen or else I'll find myself on the bench come Ulduar. That would really make me a sad panda, I live for the first boss kills after a dozen or so wipes =). There's something about learning an encounter, adapting and beating it.

The drawback of course is losing my gathering proffesion AND having to level up my alts in order to max them. My druid who is almost lvl 71(enchanting and skinning) and my dk lvl 62(mining). I have invested about 2 hours into this endeavor and it looks like I need around 6 hours more!

Hopefully I can finish this project of mine by the end of the week.

Betrayer of Humanity

Didn't drop last night! I'm the one next in line for it and no luck for 2 weeks so far. Plus on our quest for the Immortal achievement we mega failed at our first boss, Noth. /bonk

I noticed a slight increase in my dps last night but something was off. I was missing alot of white attacks and even some yellow attacks! My hit was only at 4.27% + 3% from talents which leaves me not hit cap by 73%.

I still can't figure out that why I can't reach 8-9k Bloodthirst crit like my fellow Fury warrior. He's up by 80 AP and I can't find anything else. I only did 4700 dps at patchwerk last night where he did 5200 with his group last Wednesday.

I was crit and rage starved for most of the fight and some unlucky miss streaks. I can try and put icewalker on my boots instead of the 32 AP, other than that I can't think of anything else. Maybe I can switch my Mirror of Truth trinket for Grim Toll for more Hit but that will leave me with less crit. I guess I have to sit down and look at my options this weekend before the next raid reset.

Raid schedule changes

After 2 months of clearing Naxx on Tuesdays with the added bonus of lag ... our officers finally moved clearing Naxx with the main raiders on Thursdays. That took awhile, seriously. We are aiming for "The Immortal" title. Most of the group has already received their "The Undying" title so it's really possible that we get it this week.

I haven't really log on WoW unless raiding or do a daily quest or two. I've been dabbling on other games and so far it's been a fun experience.

When Ulduar comes out I can see myself changing up my night schedules just like what I did when still learning 25man Naxx(only lasted a week). So here's hoping it takes us at least 3 weeks to clear Ulduar although in reality it will be cleared in a week or 2 and I really don't see anything wrong with that since there will be encounters like Sartharion where we as a raid have the option of tougher difficulty and better loots.

New season of Heroes has started! Wooo! Big fan here . . . can't wait for them to kick Nathan's ass. Also I wonder how Cylar is going to go about now. Is he going to side with the good guys now or go alone and take on the guys who wants to round them up? The latest episode of Gundam 00 S2 was pretty nice also. The ending was a bit sad but now I wonder if Marie's old personality will come back for revenge mmmm... The episodes of bleach and naruto was meh. This is why I prefer Animes that ends after 25 episodes ... just get it over with! Also survey says that audience usually starts losing interest on a series around the 19th-21st episode. So if there is no sign of ending or you are just showing fillers then chances are they won't watch that series anymore(not only limited to anime series).

Been busy at work so far which is nice. I sent back Fallout 3. I like the game but ... I just don't have the time right now to devote consecutive hours of gaming. I feel like Fallout 3 is one of those games where I tend to forget what was the last thing I did and my next goals are. Right now I just want to fire up a game almost mindlessly and go from there(i.e. First person shooters, WoW daily quest ... uh oh!). I think I'm getting Resistance 2 or Rockband 2. Either one of them should be fun.

We just got a Wii

Actually it was the wife's idea. She brought it up 2 weeks ago about she wanting to have a Wii console. I think it was the Wii fit and playing classic mario games that led to this.

So we take a looked at our monthly finance spreadsheet to see where we are at and we've both been pretty good even during the holidays, really surprising. We don't have any kids/babies(yet) so it's really really easy to save/invest money. So financially it was ok for her to buy a Wii, I wasn't up against it anyway I'm up for some Nunchucks action. Wooo!

The wife stopped by couple minutes ago to drop the Wii that she bought and here I am staring at this white box wondering what other games I can buy to enjoy this console. Zelda comes to mind and that's it! I gotta do some research on the hot games for the Wii and prolly gamecube .. hmm prolly the re-worked Metal Gear Solid 1?

Tonight after the wife knocks herself out playing Wii Sports I'm going to download nintendo classic games, particularly super mario brothers 1 and 2. Should be an exciting and fun weekend.

Blizz threw a bone at me

Well to be specific I got the Jawbone(I know .. I tried), a 2H mace from Heroic Maexxna. I'm grateful and all but the problem now is to min/max my weapons ... I have to:

1. Re-enchant Armaggedon with +AP(it has mongoose atm).
2. Enchant Jawbone with Mongoose because it's going to be my main hand.

And then ... when Betrayer does drop(I'm next in line) ... I'm going to have to re-enchant Jawbone with +110 AP then put Berserker on Betrayer.

That is alot of enchanting and re-enchanting!

I might give in today and do it anyway ... sigh

I also got Fury of Five Flights last night from 3D Sartharion. I'm going to replace Grim Toll despite the amount of ArP it gives me, the hit it provides is meh. I thought about replacing Mirror of Truth for it but the crit and proc just outweighs Grim Toll alot. I'm looking forward in using this trinket next raid reset will be interesting how much AP I can push for.

Fishing

I guess I've been out of the loop in the fishing business since I just found out about the fish food that gives +40Str. Seriously! I'll be afk fishing tonight hopefully this will end the mammoth massacres(80 AP food) that I participate in during non raid days.

Fallout 3 ... the first 30 minutes

Fallout 3 arrived yesterday afternoon in the mail but I didn't get to play it till around 10 p.m. after a session of COD5 with my old friends.

Switching from a fast pace FPS game to an RPG game is really a drag at first but I finally calm downed after a few minutes into the game.

I've finished the initial distribution of my stats and honestly I have no idea what I was doing. Still undecided wether to boost my physical attributes frst or the hacking/stealth ones. I guess I'll find out later when it's too late hah.

I first started out as a baby setting up your character's physical trait then to toddler distributing my stats. Later on it was my 10th bday, meeting new characters and the introduction of some of the game's mechanics.

Then I'm a 16 year old taking an aptitude test to determine what kind of job I would hold ... I was told I was going to be a chaplain! Maybe it was because I answered all the questions of what a "good" citizen would say. I don't know if I can take the test again.

The last part where I saved was I'm 20 something years old who just woke up realizing that I need to run for my life! I saved at that point and called it a night.

Things are looking interesting so far. I prolly won't have time tonight since it's raid time.

Pro tips for COD5 Veteran

So I guess your a masochist for wanting to finish any campaign in the Call of Duty Series in Veteran mode.

Here are a few advice that I can give based on my experience with the latest installment.

1.) Use Cover and crawl alot - You will learn this really quick on your first level on veteran.

2.) It pays to be agressive sometimes - One negative thing about COD5 campaign is sometimes they put you in the worst part to get out of chokepoint. There were multiple times that I had to charge forward while taking quick headshots along the way so I won't get cornered by those pesky grenades.

3.) Make good use of your teammates - you can take advantage of this by trying to find "invisible line" that when you cross it your teammates advanced. While they are advancing they just miraculously get better at aiming and kill your enemies alot quicker.

After they advance then decide from there if you can advance again. If that is almost impossible then I suggest start picking off enemies and start crossing that invisible line once more.

This might be considered a cowardly act but I do like it better than me getting my face blown off in a matter of seconds.

4.) Smoke grenades - these are a life saver. Don't waste them but at the same time don't be too cheap! Use them wisely.

5.) Throw back grenades - COD5 is known for being World of Grenades. It really gets ridiculous. Only thing you can do is throw them back. Luckily most grenades in campaign takes awhile to go BOOM.

6.) After a frustrating session, save your game and try again the next day. This has worked really well for me. I tend to think abit more clearer the next day when I'm not all agitated.


Tough COD5 Veteran Mission tips

1. One on One Sniper action - this one took me an hour to beat. The trick is get a good place to hide where you can only see 1-2 windows. If anything you can shoot at his shoulder when he is up against a wall. Your bullets go thru walls remember?

2. Destroying Flak 88s - one of the most retarded missions. One advice will be don't forget to use the Panzershrek laying around. They will show zero on the ammo count but don't forget it's already loaded

If you are stuck on a mission even if its not on veteran mode feel free to ask.

I have finished all but COD3 of the COD series on veteran mode so far this one seems to have the most grenade spamming bots in it. Be prepared to get frustrated. I'm not exaggerating when I say you want to throw your controller at your tv out of nerd rage. But please don't, big screen tvs are not cheap! Unless you want an excuse to get a new tv. *wink

My project for recording my Xbox360/Ps3 games will have to be postponed in another month or so /sigh. It's a bummer but I have to allocate my time/resources to something else.

I have 2 main reasons for this project.

1.) To share with my brothers and friends to show what I've been up to.
2.) To help other gamers on tough levels. I know there are standard videos on youtube but who knows I might help a poor soul out there.


In other news

The wife is thinking about buying a Wii console. I was all acting cool and all saying it's up to her but I'm really excited hah. Best part is it comes with the wii sports games.

Also finished MGS4 on normal and I got the Pigeon Rank at the end. It's a rank you get when you finish the whole story w/o killing anybody. My next goal will be to go thru the game w/o being detected. Will be a tough one but I know I can pull it off.

I'm about to start school again, going to join the late start classes but it's all good since I'll be getting money from my G.I. Bill regardless.

Code Geass series review

Wow what a ride! Seriously! This anime will be easily on my top 5 best anime series. I'm not surprised this series won tons of awards last year.

The wife and I really had a good time episode after episode. This is one of the few series that we have watched together(cause if I skip ahead she'll get mad).

They really had strong characters. Probably too many characters but nonetheless the main characters are pretty solid and they are not your typical cliche characters. The story was pretty good. The plots and twists in the entire series was just out of control. Voice acting and music were also A+.

The overall pace is alright but at the end of season 2(last 7 episodes) it felt things were going way too fast. Season 1 was more ... hmm whats the word ... organized? Although sometimes it felt like I didn't know where the story is headed Season 2 is still strong.

The ending although sad(I almost cried ... almost) nicely wraps up the series. I don't really want to give away too much.

For those not familiar of animes. This isn't like the shows you watch on cartoon network. It's the opposite. A good anime will have a good story, plot, interesting characters, and good animation. If it doesnt make you want to watch past the first 2 episodes then it's a good indication it's a bad one, at least for me.

If your interested in watching the series you can download them thru torrent or you can sign up on sites like www.narutofan.com and download the series from there. If anything just download the first episode and go from there =P. Remember Code Geas R1 = Season 1 and r2 is season 2.

I'm back to watching Gundam 00 2nd Season which is shaping up to be another winner.

Picking my Gaming Genre

The first game I played involving a controller was Mario Brothers on a FamiCom/SNES one of the oldest consoles that was released. So I guess I got a thing or two on platform games.

I was introduced to LAN gaming and First Person Shooters playing Counter Strike back in 2000. Now this game was addictive. Best part was my 2 younger brothers was also into it, it was also the worst part. Our parents would know where I was at cause of them two! We would join city tournaments and we usually end up 3rd place-5th place. We would go city to city looking for good players and would challenge them sometimes for money. It was a fun experience

My 2nd LAN game was Diablo II. My first dose of RPG games. Click, click, click and click. It wasn't an MMORPG but it was immersive enough.

I was also into Real Time Strategy games. Command and Conquer Generals was my favorite of them all. We made a network during my Technical Training School days at the Air Force. Kept us out of trouble for the most part.

From LAN games I started poking my nose around online games. Some of the games were Killzone, NBA live series, C&C Generals, Champions of Norrath, and Counter Strike. Eventually it would lead me to a game called World of Warcraft, my first MMORPG back in 2004.

By playing games that promotes multiplayers I came to learn and love different game genres.

I guess interacting with other gamers was more fun for me be it killing dragons or shoving an MP40 up their asses.

Currently my favorites are MMORPGS and FPS online.

Now most FPS has a progress bar with rewards just like MMORPGS! One of the notable ones that started this trend was COD 4: Modern Warfare. I'd still play the game even w/o the xp bar though what they did was brilliant. I get to see some progress, do some achievements, get better guns later on and still pwn nubs!

I usually do my gaming on Consoles when I'm not chasing dragons and trolls. The thought of playing shooters using a controller couple years ago was horrifying. Thankfully the Xbox360s controller is perfect for shooter games.

I can't really pinpoint why I like MMORPGs. It's certainly a mix of things. I like doing quest, just getting lost on my pixelated adventurer. I also like the thought of beating a scripted encounter with good coordination and strategy which results in a feeling of accomplishment and phat purple loots.

I also like a good action/adventure game from time to time, Uncharted:Drake's Fortune is a good one and of course how can we not mention the Metal Gear Solid series. Single player RPG games are "alright" I don't really finish them as I usually get sidetracked by doing tons of sidequest. I think I got Fallout 3 coming in the mail by next week so we'll see how that goes. I haven't really played Fabled or Fabled II. I tried Oblivion but damn that game is too long and too open ended. I only finished Final Fantasy X under my belt.

It's been awhile since I played some RTS games. Now that I think about it I might reinstall C&C later tonight. There hasnt been alot of new release for them(RTS games). I personally think it's dying and it is past its era. With Halo Wars coming out though who knows /shrug.

You know what's really tough to find? Finding gamers who are into both MMORPGs and Shooters or at least the same games that I play. I get a feeling of being a loner whenever I ask in guild chat who plays some FPS.

Loot System Discussion EPGP vs DKP vs Loot Council

Oriniwen discussed about how their guild has handed loot distribution. They used EPGP system. You can read all the juicy details here.

The emphasis of this Loot system is rewarding people with the most effort but at the same time trying to equally distribute loot amongst all raiders.

Here are some problems that Orin's encountered with DKP. I will also write down what we did as a guild back in Vanilla WoW when we were doing 40man Naxx.

1.) People hoarding DKP and disappearing, then later show up with their UBER MEGA DKP points.

EPGP Solution - 10% decay every week.

The only problem, although minor, is the players who raids and werent just lucky to get any items cause of RNG and this could go on for weeks. They are still in the same ladder position but their buying power went "poof".

What we did in Vanilla WoW

You need at least an 80%(I think it was 85%) attendance in the past 2 weeks to be able to loot/bid. This was really needed when we were learning 40man Naxx back then. But on the other hand, players got those DKP points for a reason. We believed that you did your part when we needed you so we didn't use dkp decay or anything. 80% restriction did the job though so current players won't throw a fit.

Also DKP points acquired in Naxx and MC/BWL/AQ were in different database. There were tons of old players who had tons of dkp when we were still doing MC/BWL/AQ. The concern was brought up so everyone starting from scratch in Naxx was just the only way.

I can see alot of guilds in Wrath separating Tier 7 and Tier 8 DKPs to give those new and upcoming members a chance.

2.) New members winning items over old members with negative dkp.

EPGP Solution - new members can't bid need unless they have earned x amount of EP.

What we did in Vanilla WoW

Simple. If they are only trial they can't win over main raiders. Plus they can't loot anyway till they have enough % of attendance unless it's going to be sharded.

Upsides of EPGP

1.) They can reward people who are not in the raid.

We also did that too. People just had to farm certain amount of mats that we need for pots etc and that would translate to DKP.

2.) Penalize people.

Any system that has points which directly translates wether people get loot or no can be used as a disciplinary tool.

I can see some areas where people can take advantage though. Just like what Orin said if no one else is going to bid why pay the full price? Just go greed with 50% of the price. You can expect the same problem if an item can only be used by 2-3 people. They can conspire to just greed so when a ring or token drops where theyre up against 5+ players they have more to spend.

Overall I think with the right officers and raiders this will play out as one of the most fair loot system.

We just tweaked our DKP system a little bit and you'll see alot of those going around in various guilds changing it according to their needs.

What my Guid does(no it's not better)

We use the dreaded Loot Council. Hurry run for the hills! We don't use DKP anymore.

Then you might ask why the hell did I went thru all that post defending DKP? Well I wasn't really defending I was just comparing how we handled the same issues they had.

Our loot council doesn't really focus on equally distributing loot at first but rather it adjusts to what the raid needs for progression so that we can beat it in the shortest amount of time.

We also did it with Four Hourseman back when it was a 40man Raid. Tanks were priority to get their set piece bonus. We could have killed him anyway w/o loot council but we just killed him earlier maybe 2-3 weeks early cause of what we did instead of waiting for another set of tokens to drop.

We did it when 25 Naxx came out gearing tanks first.

We did it again when learning 3D Sartharion. We funneled our upgrades to the dps classes seeing that's what we needed to make the final push.

Our officers are pretty good in assesing if we need more heals or dps on a certain encounter. It was actually the holy paladin officer who voted that dps classes gets priority until we get the kill for 3D.


We do have a system in place called the Gear Score Sytem to aid the loot council.

Here are a few rules in our Gear Score System.
1.) Everyone is expected to have the best gear outside of raiding. Like your wearing a blue gear instead of the X drop from a heroic Y or the one from the Emblem of Heroism Vendor. If you don't thats minus .5 GS.
2.) Gems and Enchants. If you don't have the best in slot for your class/spec that's minus .25 per gem and enchant on each slot. Also take into account how you distribute your gems for bonus and meta gems.
3.) Everyone starts at 10GS. You at least need a minimum of 8 GS to raid. I think it's 9 now.
4.) Fucks ups will result in minus GS.

An exception would be spending 1.5k gold enchant on a weapon that you'll be replacing in a matter of weeks. Another one would be putting +10stats on a blue quality chest(but your suppose to have farmed emblems for your t7 chest anyway!)

How does it work?

What happens is if you want the item announced in Raid Warning you sent a tell to the officer and link the item that you will be upgrading from.

And from there who knows? Actually I think they have been fair distributing loots. Our GM tends to reward consistent raiders by funneling loots to them. There's been so many nights where I got 4+ gear in one run.

After we have cleared naxx and malygos the next week there were no more tank first priority

it's a fair game from there. For offspecs it's usually random roll unless a person respecs back and forth often for the guild.

Sometimes I do question how they distribute loots but I can't really do anything. So far it evens out in the long run and everyone gets their upgrade.

Loot council will always have drama and is the most susceptible to corruption. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. They do loot council because they can afford it. Sometimes I wish they would do dkp but that would go against the main goal of the guild, to get server first kills.

EDIT: I don't think loot council will work on a guild that is not progressing or doing well. How would they expect me to pass an item to a tank where we have been stuck on that encounter for a month? I pass loots cause I want to beat clear a dungeon faster and in return we get loot faster.

And they would all go down

Well hopefully everyone had an awesome patch day. It was really bad last night. I disconnected about 5 times during the raid grrr >_<.

We did DK wing, avoiding Abom wing due to lagfest for the first 2 hours. But I guess it wasn't just on Abom wing! What should have taken 3 hours took 4 hours.

We managed to at least get this achievement last night

I really liked the changes they implemented for Fury Warriors. So I did a couple of things to my gear before the raid.

- bought the emblem of valor boots and put AP replacing my Iron spring jumpers which had alot of hit

- went and bought glyph of Whirlwind cause it adds dmg now instead of an additional target.

- regemmed chest and neck piece. I just exchanged socket colors but jsut taking more advantage of the +ap on the ring ditching the +hit from the chest.

It was really laggy last night. Good dps plate drops.

Check out the max tick for my deep wounds though. New personal high for me.


This was from Thaddius where I did 7800+dps with +dmg buffs but still that's some sick DOT.

I got this one from you know who


Pretty nice belt, I'll be putting a gem(16str) on that belt and then removing the expertise gem from my leggings for 16crit.

I also got this one from Malygos last night


Best boots till Ulduar really.

All these small upgrades here and there will come to play when the new instance comes out and it's back to me fighting(or justifying) my spot in the raid. Should be fun!

Betrayer of Humanity dropped last night and as planned(or as they planned)it was handed over to a Ret pally /shrug. It's not a whole waste but we'll see tonight on 3 drake sartharion and next week on how I'll be keeping up on dps with my so-so weapons.

3D Sarth tonight hopefully wouldnt last longer than an hour. I'm eyeing for that helm mmmm....

3 Day Weekend Plans

Polar Bear

I'm not giving up on you Mr. Polar Bear! I'll still do my dailies just incase the RNG gods finally smiles upon me.

Movies and Animes!

We got just received War and Hellboy II Bluray from netflix so we might knock one of those out tonight. Prolly Hell Boy. I'll do a /random 1-2 to decide.

Going to watch Code Geass and Gintama(reffered by Brandon). I find it relaxing actually especially when the wife is also into it.


Achievements!

Going to work on my xbxlive achievements. I want to reach around 18k or close to 20k(currently at 16k+) before I make the switch to playing a game on PS3 if its released on multiplatforms. Going to work on those trophies.

Anyway here are my library of games that I might play this weekend:

Left 4 Dead. I still have yet to finish one of the levels cause of some unfortunate pairing with FPS challenged players . I think thats a nice way to putting it =P. This will be my main game for the weekend.

I'm also playing COD World at War campaign on Veteran but I'm stuck on the 2nd to the last mission. Talk about grenade spamming these guys have an infinite amount of them when playing Veteran. I might have to back down and play the last 2 missions on Hard mode. Prolly play some coop missions online too to change it up abit. When my buddy that took a vacation to hawaii comes back I'll no doubt spend a good amount of time on this one.

I don't really find the motivation to play the multiplayer part longer than 30 minutes unless one of my RL friends logs in. I guess thats where it comes down to for me.

Gears of War 2. Campaign was no doubt a blast but I'm not touching the multiplayer again till the patch rolls outs this month. I'm really disappointed with Epic on this one. Like COD I'll prolly do some online co-op missions this weekend. Hit me up if you want to play Campaign Co-op.

Guiter Hero 4. Although it's not the best game of the year I and the wife do have a good time when we rock out. I'm still getting used to the drums. Whenever she's on the vocals I switch back to lead guitar but we tend to avoid this setup when its around midnight hehe. I'm prolly going to rent Rock Band 2 since the peripherals from GH4 "should" work.

Metal Gear Solid 4. I'm still mad/bitchy/enraged that there are no trophies/achievements arrgghh... if they release them this month I have no problem playing thru the game again. I'm still playing the game although this time my goal is to not kill anybody but to use Tranquilizer gun on everybody including all the bosses. It's been tough so far but oh man has it been a blast.


Too many games so little time /shrug. I will probably only end up playing 2-3 games that I mentioned and it won't be a 4 hour marathon either.

That's it for me this week. I'll be back on Tuesday.

Code Geass, Death Note and Media Server

I've heard good things about Code Geas R2 so I decided to give it a shot. I watched the first episodes(couple days ago) and it was interesting enough that I thought I'd watch the whole first season before going in too deep.

So I started watching the series right from the beginning last night and I must say I'm impressed. It wasn't your typical anime with the typical plot and storyline. I'll know if an anime is worth my time in the first 2 episodes and this one definetely kept me wanting for more always wanting to hit play on that next episode.

No amount of graphics/designs can save an anime with a poor story or uninteristing characters. The key is to get your viewers involve/interested not just amaze them with all those explosions(I'm looking at you Holywood!).

The wife even got into it even though she started watching at episode 3. We watched the series all the way to episode 9 last night and even though we wanted to watch more(at least I did) it was time to go to bed.

I also finished watching the final Episode of Death Note yesterday.

This has got to be one of the most intellectual animes out there. There is no distinction of who are the good guys from the bad guys in this one. The writers left it up to the viewer to decide that. I highly recommend this one.

I only had about 20 mintues to mess around my 360. I played some Devil May Cry 4 but wasn't really into it. Something is off I can't quite put my finger on it though.

Oh did I mentioned that I watched all those animes at my TV thru my PS3? I use Java PS3 Media Server. All you need to do is install the program on your PC and it detects your PS3 if they are in a network. From there you don't need to worry about codecs and stuff. Just browse your computer thru your ps3 and pick a movie/song to play! Pretty awesome. I can't wait for more programs that will fully utilize the PS3's power.

Sartharion with 3 Drakes finished!

Finally!

Sartharion with 3 Drakes is crossed of my to do checklist.

Last night I was late to log in but for some reason one of the players in the raid kept dieng so they subbed me in, dammit I thought I was going to be able to watch TV while waiting outside the instance!

The second attempt when I got in the raid was where we got the kill.

Our MT died while transitioning from 2nd to 3rd drake but the tank for adds quickly picked him up. He blew shield wall and last stand while the MT was being rezzed and buffed. For melee the fight required us to move all the time which was really annoying. I think we did a good job though with our dps and us not dieng on firewallsm, voidzones, and taking care of the adds when taking the portal.

I also got another title from the achievement last night, check it out.

So .... uuuh we don't have anything to kill until Tuesday >_>. That's fine with me I wanna finish some questing myself =). Sorry no video like I promised I'll try next week though who knows it might help some guilds defeat this encounter sooner rather than later.

If you have any questions regarding the fight I'd be happy to give my 2 copper.

Why we fight

Recent discussion at Tobold was the question why Sartharion 3 Drake was unpopular

Common answers were (I summarized it)

Sartharion with 3 drake is not worth the effort, gold, time, learning curve, getting yelled at, frustration for getting those extra items.

This is actually true when you look at risk vs rewards but I'll elaborate later why we do it.

This is the hardest encounter ingame (excluding doing achievements like Immortal) but I guess you didn't know because you were too busy to whining how easy WoW 25man raiding is.

Some comments mentioned stopping at 2 drakes get those extra loots and just ditch the last drake for the mount.

If your guild can do 2 drakes chances are your pushing for 3 drake regardless of the risk vs reward factor. I don't personally buy it but I guess if you guild stops at 2 drakes /shrug thats how they roll.

WHY WE RAID

It's not all about loot

I don't wanna come out like a self righteous prick. But really sometimes it's not about the loot.

Of course I raid because I want to see improvements on my character like getting purple pixels. I'm not gonna lie I want purplz too you know.

But I guess like most of my guildies I wanna put those Epics to use instead of just looking pretty at Dalaran.

What good are those epics that you looted off the easy 25man raids when you are not going to use every bit of stat that they have to its fullest?

We keep wiping the floor with Sartharion 3 drake because at the end of the day it's how we decide to play the game. We want to see progress, we want to beat this boss because we know we can do it.

My argument is give those same players who say they won't do 3 drake some sort of handicap to beat and they will gladly finish the encounter and complain that it was too easy and they were robbed off the true experience. WTF?

Also take note that most of the people that are saying 3 drakes are not worth are using the word I more. While people who attempts 3 drake usually have my guild, in our guild, and we more often =P.

What does this mean? I'll leave it up to you.

Are we being elitist? No were not it's just how we decided to play the game. Infact we believe all guilds should try 3 drake sartharion.

If you can't do 3 drake Sartharion don't hate and drive people off from doing it and at the same time labeling the ones who do as jerks or w/e.

This will all be trivial when Ulduar gear comes out so everyone will get to beat this encounter anyway sooner or later.

Naxx and Sartharion(again)

We started to pull at 8:35 pm EST.

We first ventured into Abom Wing

Patchwerk

Well me and the other fury warrior pull 4200 DPS which isn't bad at all but we ended up 9 and 10 ... LOL?

We didn't get in too early cause the 2nd tank wasn't hit yet so we were afraid to go in.

BUT STILL ... 9th and 10th? I can't wait till Blizz nerfs Rogue's HAT Spec. You guys know how rigged this spec is? It is just ridiculous right now. I just can't wait for the patch. It won't fix all imbalances but it should help a little bit.

The rest of the night was Offspec night

All items was rolled for offspec(if not sharded) it was insane. I won a tank ing bracer so I guess I'm ok =P.

I was messing around with Java PS3 Media Server while raiding(It shows how bored I was) and it is amazing. I'll post more about this later.

Tonight it's going to be 3 Drake Sartharion.

Why are we punishing ourselves you ask with very low risk/reward factor?

Well it's not certainly about loot. I guess it's more of a status symbol. For myself I just want to beat this encounter cause I'm just that competitive. I don't give a rats ass who gets the mount I just want this encounter crossed out on my things to do.

We gave up

Apparently Blizz coudn't help us out with our raid ID problems.

Last night we decided to give up for the week with the 3 drakes and just kill Sartharion with 2 drakes without our 4 main raiders due to the ID issue. It was meh loot like always we sharded like 2 items.

Everyone was more excited about the dragonhide bag and loot of spoils.

So tonight were just going to knockout Naxx and Malygos and then HOPEFULLY get that long overdue Sartharion 3 drake kill.

Recording Games

As our guild gets closer to getting our first Sartharion with 3 Drakes I wanna make a footage of it or even the attempts.

Hopefully I can pump some videos out by next week so some of my 5 readers can see it!

Moreover I want to start recording the games that I play on xbox360 and ps3. I'll do some research on that this week. It shoud be fun.

Has anbody have experience on this?

Raid ID problems and anime/game thoughts

Well since Tuesday we only have attempted Sartharion once ...

Tuesday - too much lag so we went to naxx

Wed - our only attempt of the week so far. We managed to kill 2 drakes consistently but also kept wiping on the third drake consistently! Mix of firewalls, adds, void zones and debuffs makes this fight chaotic the first few minutes.

Thurs -We finished malygos off earlier that night but invisble/ninja raid id fucked us over at Sartharion with 3 drakes.

Fri-Sat = off, that's what I like about this guild

Sun - still having raid ID problems

and ...

Monday - we'll see tonight if our raid ID problems has been resolved.

Anime thoughts/reviews

Macross Frontier

I mentioned last week I was going to finish the last 4 remaining episodes. Overall the anime is great and the story was better than Macross Zero.

It ties up with the original macross series so the references made to them was just nostalgic.

Sadly I think the ending could have been better. Some fans say the story took a nose dive halfway thru the series. IMO it was fine. The way they ended umm... I dunno it's just me but I want some closure dammit!

*SPOILER ALERT*
It would have been nice to know who Alto(main character) picks. Rick Hunter(robotech/macross series) chosed Lisa at the end instead of Minmay. So I expected a closure like that /shrug.

I really think he's in love with Sheryl since he made that promise before that fight but the director keeps showing hints that he might also be in love with Ranka.

Well dammit pick one already!

If it was me I'd go with Sheryl, she can be stubborn sometimes but Alto can get thru her. Ranka is like Alto's little sister so that's another reason.

Anyone got comments about this anime?

Imma look for another series this week to finish.

Game thoughts/review

Left 4 Dead

Holy crap this game is so much fun. Killing zombies and fighting for survival is fun by itself but it gets amplified when your with a good team communicating/helping at each other.

I had so much fun with 3 other players who I just met. You have to trust your each other because you can't go Rambo in this game. If you can't find other players online you can have bots help you. The bots do a good job for the most part at least in normal mode but I just prefer another player.

Of course there are players who are inexperienced on shooters. I try to be patient but IF YOU KEEP DIENG CAUSE YOU CHOSE TO GO DOWNSTAIRS BY YOURSELF while the others up upstairs taking a stand against a HORDE of zombies and then later you cry cause you got killed ... geez dude.


Exteel

I got the idea on trying out this game from tobolds blog regarding Mech games. It's a 3rd person MMOFPS game. You level up and stuff =P. More to come this week but so far I like what I'm seeing plus its free.

Ninja Raid IDs and Gaming updates

Well we killed 25man Malygos last night while waiting for other main raiders, nothing good drop(at least for me).

When it was time for 25man Sarth we encountered a problem regarding people zoning in different instances.

It looked like the game assigned Raid IDs to some players Wed night but it's not showing up. We are aware of the bug that you get saved to the instance if you kill a drake while doing Sartharion even if you first tagged the main boss.

After the 10th disband and reinvite we finally gave up .... arrghh! the players who kept zoning in on a different instance submitted tickets to GM and hopefully we can get some stuff done on Sunday and Monday.


Macross Frontier

Lately I have been watching the anime Macross Frontier. I'm really surprised I only saw this last week, I guess WoW can do that to you.

I'm a big fan of the original macross series(started watching when I was a kid back in 1998) so watching the first few episodes reminiscing how it went with the original series was nothing short of exciting.

I'm at episode 21 and right now things just got out of control, in a good way. The twist, love triangle and how the characters are growing are just spectacular. But with 4 episodes to go ... I'm kinda sad. I wish there were more cause I just can't get enough.

I first watch the original series because I love mech, fighter planes turning into robots is the shit. But now that I think about it, the thing that kept me watching was first and foremost the love triangle story then the dogfights followed by their colony's struggle for survival.

I'm going to watch the remaining 4 episodes tonight. Hopefully it ends it with a high note and I'm sure it will leave me longing for more. I might buy the Blu-ray collection, not sure yet though since it's already in my computer.

I highly recommend this series if your looking to find a good action/love story anime.


Left 4 Dead

I'm really excited about this game. It's about you and other 3 people/bots trying to survive and get out from the city that is infested with zombies. This game is focused on multiplayer. So it's going to be me and the wife or me and 3 other players online. There's also ala team deathmach mode where other players take the role as zombies and their goal is to eat your brains! Either way it should be fun times.

This game just shipped yesterday and I and the wife can't wait to play it. Should be here by Saturday so thats what we will be playing all weekend.

Sartharion 3 drake update

Last night we finally made some progress but not enough to get the kill ...

We were stuck at killing the first drake and wiping while taking on the 2nd drake.

After a few minor adjustments in the last few hours last night we were able to kill 1st drake well before 2nd drake comes down and consistently kill the 2nd drake.

So tonight we might be looking at a kill!

As a guild we should have done this weeks ago but the lack of people showing up from the main group is keeping us down. We have more than enough gear we just need people to show up and bring their A game.

Now or never

Well finally the officers decided that we won't be doing anymore Naxx until we get some really good progress on 3 Drake Sartharion.

We did the event for 2 hours but our tank keeps getting insta gib and alot of people are dieng cause of the Firewalls and Void zones, including me! Well not so much void zones but Firewalls. I guess I was just focusing so much on pumping as much dps as I can that it's too late by the time I move to avoid it.

I heard there was a way to make DBM make a sound/alert when Sarth Churns for the firewalls. I'll mess around that tonight.

I'm running out of northern spices so I'm going to just use another food buff besides my 60 AP Mammoth meal until I get about another 10+ or so.

So tonight I expect a huge repair bill, lots of food buff being consumed, lots of yelling ... well there is no yelling actually but rather a subtle I will kick you from the raid/guild if you keep doing that statements =).

WoW Rep and Console Game thoughts

WoW Reputations

Well I finally hit Exalted with Sons of Hodir. I know, I should have had it a month ago but I have
been slacking and had been missing days to do my dailies.

I will still do the easy dailies though for some quick gold while I'm out there killing mammoths for my food buff.

White Polar Bear Mount

I'm still doing the daily for this mount as much as I can. Sometimes I even only log in just to do these. Only takes a couple minutes to do and who knows that bag might contain my first ever bear mount!

Oracle Dailies

I might start grinding rep for these folks to get the egg that has a chance to hatch a Green Proto Drake.

Does anyone know how many quest is available to do for these guys?

Where do I start?

What's the average time to complete all the dailies for this rep per day?

Thanks in advance if anyone replies.


Console Game Thoughts

Well I've been playing a lot of console games lately and here are some of the games that I spent a good amount of time

Metal Gear Solid 4

Gameplay:

A solid action game where you decide how you play the game either thru stealth or just rambo your thru destroying/killing everything in sight.

If you choose the stealth way you have tons of gadgest and Close quarter combat moves that you can do. Anywhere from using your OctoCamo(Camo suit that adapts with your surroundings, distracting guards by noises, choking/knocking them outor even throw a Playboy magazine at the enemy guards so you can slip past them unnoticed!

If you decide that stealth is not your game. Then this game has tons of weapons for you. There are over 60+ weapons in the game but like other sites have said they didn't sacrificed the quality for quantity.

Visual: Amazing. Easily one of the best graphics out there. Check out the videos. The flawless switch from cinematic to game is one of the praised features of the game. I was always amazed by how gorgeous this game looks, really capitalizing on the PS3 capabilities.

Sounds: A+

Replayability: If you wanna have another run at the campaign with no kills/no alerts or w/e your into then this game has tons of replay value. I myself will be working on the no kill campaign first then the no alert feat.

Pros
A well deserved ending for our legendary hero Solid Snake. This game pretty muchs sums up the Metal Gear Franchise in the past 10 years. Gameplay is just too awesome and however you play this game it will get you and the next thing you know you'll be sticking to walls and crawling under covers in real life before you know it.

They really set the bar on this one. Sometimes I blame this kind of games cause I get spoiled by them. The camera angle that fans have been crying about in the past installments has been fixed!

Boss fights are well done and like what you expect from Hideo Kojima expect some laughs here and there.

Cons
Long and I mean really long cinematics. Thankfully you can skip it the next go around.

Conclusion
I love this game! Maybe I'm biased but if everyone else in the net loves it then it might be doing something right.



Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Gameplay:

This game is a mix of a Tomb raider game and Gears of War =). Really can't go wrong with that. Like any platform game you figure out a way to jump/climb your way to an area add in the puzzles you have to solves and at the same time the action is just like Gears of War where you find a cover and then start shooting. There are some melee combos that you can do to get more ammo out of the enemies that you have killed.

Visuals: One of the best out there. Most action games are set on a dark setting/end of the world but here you spend most of your time in the jungle and ruins. Really nice eye candy.

Sound: Awesome! Really fit for the nature of the game.

Replay value: The only reason I will play thru this again is for the harder modes or Trophies(Xbox360 Achievements equivalent). I might give this game another go but won't be for awhile.

Pros

I was really grabbed by the story and it was though I was watching a movie as I play the game. It felt like it was Indiana Jones meet National Treasure's Ben Gates.

I finished this game on normal mode around 8-10 hours of game time which wasnt bad.

Cons
Some of the fights gets repetitive but what action game doesn't?
I wish I could have carried more guns.

Conclusion
I really enjoyed playing this game. Definetely deserves a rent or even owning it wouldnt be a bad idea if you are going for the Trophies.

I can't wait for Uncharted 2 this year!