Gaming Addiction: The first step is denial
The Xbox returned from repair yesterday! All working again, new DVD drive inside it.. tested it out with COD4 and it all works fine again!!
Actually very pleased with the service.. its been 3 weeks almost exactly since UPS picked it up which is exactly the turnaround time MS quoted over the phone. Anyway, I look forward to getting back to COD4 and TF2 ASAP! 
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Whilst I created the Tankadin with the aim of providing more tanking options to the guild at end game, I levelled it to the mid 40’s, rarely stepping foot in instances and with a guild boost when I did. Speedy levelling was the order of the day so I set my goals and got to it.
It then occurred to me, this alt is level 46, specced tank, geared tank, aiming to be tank at level 70… and yet I have never tanked an instance with similar levelled players. How the hell could I expect to tank any high level instance with no understanding of my abilities within an instance with people attempting to pull aggro off me?
At that I did some reading, made a macro for Righteous Defence to make it work like a ranged taunt (via target of target), set my bars out and adjusted my play style to a more mana conserving, JoC/SoR/Holy Shield/Consecrate standard with the idea of tanking ZF perhaps. After few days of trying to find the time to commit, checking LFG to find no-one available, or being asked to join groups as healer.. I was questing in STV, all thoughts of ZF at the back of my mind when I received a tell from someone asking to heal ZF.
I replied with the standard “would love to but specced prot/geared prot so doubt I’d be much use, thanks anyway” response and got on with my quest. Same person whispers back saying they also needed a tank.. a quick boat ride and a gryphon and I’m at the ZF summoning stone readying up to enter the first instance I have done in months without trusted guildies at my side.
Group is comprised of a Retadin/Rogue/Priest/Warlock and myself as Tank. Starts out well and I manage to get initial aggro on the first few 3/4 mob pulls and hold them down. As soon as I sit to regain some mana the rogue stealth’s and passes me to sap a target in the next group. Mostly this worked ok and I got some experience manoeuvring mobs around to a suitable position to consecrate without breaking CC. At this point it starts going wrong..
Every time I sit to drink this rogue gets faster and faster at the sap despite me asking for a mana break to get at least a manageable amount back to tank with. Eventually the rogue moves from just hindering mana users to regain any, to pulling aggro from bad sap targets. At this point I am painfully aware how much harder this would be had I not made my ‘taunt’ macro. It was already hard enough to tank with zero mana without having to chase mobs around and reign them in.
Despite this, the group works fairly well, the lock see’s the problem and busts out some solid AoE and the Retadin picks up any adds I cant.. we progress in this manner from start to finish with only one or two deaths from the Retadin (which I don’t mind as he ninja’d a one handed mace from me on the first boss and some tanking plate shoulders from the last)
When over I thank the group and HS back to STV and drop out of the group glad to be done with it to a degree. 30 min’s later I get a tell from a level 43 mage asking me if I’m prot specced. I reply yes and he asks me back over to tank ZF. Judging that this guy was 3 levels lower than me I thought I’d give it a go, hoping my higher level would help my tanking somewhat.
This group had another Retadin, two mage’s, shaman healer, all 2/3 levels lower than myself. Right from the go this run looks better. The Frost Mage has a 70 Protadin and knows to wait a second or two for consecrate to go down and the Shaman healer was well on top of his game with a nice amount of +healing. As predicted this run goes infinitely smoother than the last attempt, even the stairs event provided little problems to us……. till I accidentally threw a very idiotic consecrate down before the little goblin bloke opens the gates and we killed him leaving them locked. Everyone has a laugh about it thankfully and we agree to rerun the instance.
One mage and the Shaman has to drop however so we find a feral druid who was prepared to heal for us and a hunter who had never been in ZF before. Again, the run goes well, I got my mace from the first boss thanks to some kind words from the mage to the Retadin convincing him that I should get it (and earning the mage a solid place on my Friends List).. however when we reach the stairs event, the frost mage echoes something I said almost a year ago running ZF for the first time on my mage.. “I bet we can AoE the lot at the bottom”
I smile to myself and agree, as does the Retadin.. all 3 of us charge down the stairs and plow into the mobs, AoE spells blazing.. at that moment the druid exclaims in chat.. “DAMMIT! I wasn’t ready!” and down we go
On our return we take the mobs down via AoE in manageable pulls and kill the sub-bosses, but the NPC guys must have died on the stairs as the gate remained locked and no-one to open it so we agree to call it for the night.
All in all I had a great laugh, made some friends, and gained some loot and valuable experience tanking 5-mans. If only all PuG’s could be like that….
I managed to get some more quality time with Monster Hunter Freedom 2 over the festive period finally taking down my first Elder Dragon of the game, Chameleous. Well, technically it was a first round repel but it got me through the quest…
Its not the easiest of fights to say the least. The invisibility I can deal with to a degree… the two moves that give me problems the most are, the one that reduces your stamina to zero in one hit and debuffs you preventing consumption of rations or steaks, and the tongue attack that steals items from you when hit by it.
For the most part its easy enough to avoid one or the other attacks, but get caught out with the stamina reduction and a few tongue attacks dodged too late and suddenly your at zero stamina with no rations or steaks left. Obviously if you use a hammer this fight ramps up in difficulty if you get hit/come out unprepared so bear that in mind and get plenty of meat cooked up.
My strategy was, using Devil Slicer long sword hack the crap out of it whenever it popped into view or its breath/shimmer gave it away. While it was invisible it was generally moving away from me then charging back so some deft rolls are in order here. The attack pattern seems to have it retreating invisible then charging visible two or three times, then its close quarter work for a while… shaking tail attack limits the angles you can attack from so keep it short and sweet with lots of rolls to get range… the spit attack is long range and once used to the animation its easy enough to get out of the way and stay out of the area of effect.. the tongue attack is a little harder to predict and tends to pop up right after you finish a roll, expect to get hit a few times with this.
Now, for all I know there could be a way to remove its invis, or stop certain attacks by breaking its armour in some way but I’ve not found it yet…
After my success with Chameleous I worked on my offline guild hall rank some more unlocking a new tier of quests and crafted a few new items.. all in all, a very productive return to this game this holiday
….and a Happy New Year from Eckyman!
A 19 year old was arrested recently after making threats to “shoot up his school” over Xbox Live.
Apparently, during a Call of Duty 4 game, Allieu Shaw threatened to shoot up his school and detailed how he was going to do it.
Understandably this worried another player in the game, who proceeded to report Shaw to the local police department. Authorities arrested Shaw the following day at his school.
Although Shaw has insisted he was joking about the threat, and a search of his house resulted in no weapons found, he has been suspended by Frostburg State University and faces a maximum of one year in jail and a five thousand dollar fine if convicted…
Firstly, good on the guy who reported him in the first place.. You cant take chances these days and Id hate to have that on my conscience had the kid carried out his threat. Secondly, what kind of socially inept asshole makes threats like that? The racism, xenophobia, and mother jokes on Live are almost tolerable.. mass shooting threats just don’t fly at all..
This is exactly Lives problem right now.. idiots and com’s ruin your experience. Thank god for the preferred player system because without it online play would be a nightmare.
The latest news on Valves plans for TF:2 is circulating the blogosphere at the moment and I’m impressed with what I’ve heard so far..
Firstly the patch will fix "several game-play exploits, improves bandwidth usage, improves stats reporting, and fixes some menu bugs." Secondly the patch will add Valves own video tools (the ones used to make the trailers for the characters) to the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game which really is brilliant for me as I enjoy filming my antics and messing around editing the footage, but the best is yet to come..
Valve also confirmed they are working on new maps for downloadable content! No details on release dates or any info on the maps as yet, but just knowing they have plans to continue support for this great game is info enough for me.. really, go buy it if you haven’t already.. Doesn’t matter what platform, its all good!
If games are addictive than so is couching out in front of the TV night after night for hours on end..
If violent games encourage violent behaviour, why are members or the English football team saying that we’d have better footballers if the kids weren’t all playing video game football? If there so influential to kids then we would have tons of kids flocking to sports, skateboarding, the police force, the army, exploring space, raiding tombs, wielding swords in supermarkets shouting about the Frozen Tentacles of Iceland and the epics it drops when killed…. or is it only GTA that’s influential to the kids?
..if Violent games are so bad for children regardless of content, why do games like Americas Army not only exist, but are used as tools to recruit underage kids to join the armed forces?
Why is it, movies like Hostel and Saw featuring realistic scenes of intense violence and gore in full high definition quality, are considered more acceptable to adults than Manhunt 2 with its blurry, not-so photo realistic graphics?
Yeah I don’t get it either…
Another Kara update. I actually got to go in, saw the first boss go down and had a few attempts at Maiden this time!
We were scheduled to raid it last Sunday but our MT and one DPS class had gone in with a PuG and were saved to another groups ID so we had to call it.. last night, despite missing our off tank we managed to find a replacement and get everyone inside Kara within an hour of the start time. First attempt at the trash clear leading to Attumen, an unlucky aggro on a patrol led to a wipe, then again on the last set of mobs and when we ran back and zoned in.. trash had respawned.
Half of us zoned out and headed for Stoneard for a repair, the other half stayed for summons.
Once we got back in there, we cleared the Attumen trash on the first attempt, then dropped Attumen without any deaths, neither healer went /oom, no-one pulled aggro from the tanks.. for our troubles, 2 epic healing bracers dropped. One for the Shammy MH, one for the Pally offhealer! Very pleased with the performance, had a lot of fun, and progressed the healers kit a little which is great..
From there we decided we would try Maiden next as for some reason people thought Moroes might be too much trouble. After losing our way at first (and clearing out a lot of spider trash mobs) we return to the entrance hall and go up the stairs for Maiden.
Trash pulls were easy and caused us little problems. Maiden was a little different
First attempt, someone got too close while the kill strat was being explained, starting the event before we were ready.. everyone wipes, rezz’s and runs back. Second attempt, as the kill strats are being finalised in chat, someone else gets too close and starts the event. Some people try to run out of the room to reset the encounter but not everyone sees the call for reset go up in chat. Third times a charm, strats laid out, positions taken, we start the encounter.. everything was going well at first but then repentance knocks out ranged, I Ice Block out of it and nuke, pull aggro and wipe hard. Meanwhile, both healers are silenced, the pally didn’t get chance to BoS anyone to break the stun effect, offtank goes down to the Holy Ground thing, main tank goes down soon after.
We tried it twice more after that but couldn’t get the rhythm of going up a step so Holy Ground broke Repentance, then back down again, so called it right as the spawns came back.
All in all, great run, I had a lot of fun plus saw Kara for the first time, and pleased with our Attumen kill. Wont be long till we get Maiden dropped with any luck..
So, last night was our first Kara run. Or at least it was for everyone but me. Was supposed to be online for 7:50 for invs and to get started, at around 6ish my internet cut out, never to return for the rest of the night.
Spent an hour on the phone with some idiot at BT with no satisfactory conclusion so had to concede defeat and give up which really put me in a bad mood for the night.
On the plus side, our virgin raiders reached Attumen, whom they then proceeded to down on the first attempt with only one death as I understand it.
Yes, its a gear check, yes its only the first boss, But considering no-one had any raiding experience I thought they did very well to get the first boss down on the first night in the place.
Disappointed I missed the guild first though. So frustrating to have months of planning and work blown at the last minute by outside interference beyond my control.
Technorati Tags: World of Warcraft Kara
I took my first steps into the world of EVE online recently.. Taking advantage of the 14 day free trial, I downloaded the client (less than one hour to grab from the official site), installed and set running.The first thing I noticed was the lack of a hefty set of patches. I had assumed upon installation it would be the same deal as other MMO’s in regards to updates but was pleasantly surprised at being able to jump right into the world without delay. The intro movie held me up longer than the install did which is saying something in today’s world of PC gaming.
The little reading I did on the official site whilst downloading the client, indicated it would be a very, very bad idea to skip the tutorials and now I’ve had a little hands-on time I’m inclined to agree heavily. The tutorial missions lead you by the hand through the various aspects of the UI. Navigation, targeting, combat, trading, mining are all explained to a degree and you can check the tutorials at any point if you forgot something.
Once basic tutorial missions are over you are introduced to a new Agent, who supplies you with new Missions to complete for pay/rewards. I noticed after taking my first quest that extra reward is offered as incentive if you complete the mission before a certain time. For my first mission I had an hour and a half to complete it for an extra 20 thousand ISK (EVE’s currency), that was almost as much as the initial reward.. Its safe to say, it is in your best financial interests to complete missions by the given time. The other thing the game shows you at this point is that missions from Agents only last so long in your Journal (quest log). Taking the same missions as an example, if memory serves me rightly, I had 3 days to complete the mission before it expires. If you allow a mission to expire you lose standing (reputation) with the Agent who supplied it. If you complete in time it increases your standing and in turn leads to bigger, more rewarding missions .
At this point I was docked in a space station and took the chance to look over the trading and market settings on my UI. It seems very well implemented with a completely player driven economy. People mine asteroid belts and refine ore to be sold. Other people then take that refined ore and craft ships or ammo or weapons I assume, which are then also sold on the market. Blueprints for crafting these items can be acquired via some way I’m not too sure about just yet..
Before heading back out on my missions I was prompted to perform some training to initiate a skill-up. I chose to up my Frigate Pilot skill enabling me, hopefully to obtain a Merlin craft which seems a well rounded Frigate class ship. This is done a lot differently to other games. Skill-ups work in real time. For example, the next level of my pilot skill was estimated at taking just over 2 days to fully train. I set it going and the training continues whilst I’m offline. This is interesting as it means even when I don’t play, my character can be improving. The other interesting thing is, while you can pick your race/background at character creation, and to a degree this has an effect on your starting attributes, your free to train any skill available to you. The only deciding factor is time. With enough time you could theoretically train every skill in the game. Basically this means that although I started life as a combat pilot, there is nothing to stop me piling some points in mining and trading and then shifting focus from PvP to trading and mining.
UPDATE: Played a bit more of this, upgraded to a Merlin and now have it decked out with missile launchers and turrets. NPC pirates are real easy to kill in this thing now and I’ve completed the starting set of encounters available so i guess its time to move down into lower security space, perhaps some PvP. Ideally I’d prefer to group PvP with a friend of mine also trialling the game so I may wait till we can both get on together and form a fleet.
All in all, I quite like EVE. Mining is quite relaxing, the space scenery is worth checking out, combat isn’t all I hoped for.. I had visions of manually piloting the space ship in some elaborate, space dog fight, but in reality you only have to target a ship, set the orbit value to a range you can fire guns from and basically set and forget. Its more strategic then hands-on and most of the time is spent targeting the next pirate up and managing ammo/reloads/locking next target down. Its not easy by any means, multiple opponents require a lot of targeting and orbiting so you cant just sit back and watch it. Still… I had hoped for something a bit more from the combat. I’ll reserve judgement till I can get some PvP under my belt.
I think I’ll probably grab a months subs to this game and the odd game card now and then depending on the price..
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