Friday, February 27, 2009

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.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

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

Monday, February 23, 2009

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.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

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.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

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.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

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.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

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.

Friday, February 6, 2009

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.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

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.