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!