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.