Casual Huntering

Posts Tagged ‘Ramblings’

I’m kind of caught in a conundrum as to what to do with my gaming time these days. I know we still have a little bit of time before Cataclysm comes out, but essentially we have a gear reset coming our way.  Do I focus on my level 80 characters and get them better geared? Do I focus on level my alts? Should I just turn the game off and get out more? Decision decisions decisions.

It was one of my goals to have at least 3 level 80 characters when the expansion came out. So far I got my level 80 hunter and my level 80 deathknight. New project is my druid (or actually my wife’s druid who was left on my account when we created a new account and such). Right now the druid is level 38 with very little rest XP stored up. How would my time be better spent with the few hours I play in the morning? I’ve been kind of doing whatever random fancy pops in my head, which means I’m not getting a whole lot accomplished. My brother keeps telling me how easy it is to get geared up for raiding these days. I agree with him, it would probably be easier if I did a lot more randoms, more than I’m doing now.

My little brother has a different perspective in the game than I do. I think sometimes he forgets that I have 3 kids and I have extremely limited time to get on a play. I get an hour in the morning and once or twice a week at night (should sound reasonable I’m sure). There is no way I’ll ever keep up with him. He’s single, he’s one of our best/top raiders, and he has a lot more time on his hands than I do. Plus he’s all about raiding and getting through content, which is fine, but he doesn’t understand that there are other motivations out there. He kind of scoffs at the obsession with the holiday events that my wife and I have. He definitely thinks RP is silly (as does most of my guild on Deathwing). And he thought my mount collecting habits were a little weird as well (except the rare mounts, he loves the more rare mounts).

Well, what are you guys going to do before the expansion hits? Are you going to keep raiding? Are you going to turn your focus on Alts? Are you going to take a hiatus and play Starcraft 2? I’m trying to decide what to do here in this game that we call warcraft.

I’ve been writing on here a little less lately. Well, actually, I’ve been posting less, but I’m still writing just as much. I’ve been trying to write a bigger post for non-WoW players “Should I let my kid play WoW?”. It’ll be longer than my usual, but I think people should get an objective opinion with all the facts (including the positive ones). I’m a little sick of WoW being considered immature and bad for you like drugs or something.

Anyway, this post isn’t about that though, its another ramble post of what I’m doing lately in the game. Basically, I’ve been working on leveling my deathknight’s jewel crafting. I finally hit 450 earlier this week, yay! I’m in the process of learning how to make money with this profession. So, now that its leveled that I’ve been trying to figure out what else to do.

My wife’s DK is up to level 67, and we’re about to take her to Northrend. I’m going to be starting 25 man ToC tonight with our guild. I thought that I’d be done with guild raiding since they dropped our 10 man ToC group, but we’re still up and running. My DK is to horribly ungeared, but my hunter will be able to go.

Anyway, my students just got here so I’m done with this post for today (no editing, yikes I hope I didn’t say anything stupid).

(No the Picture doesn’t have anything to do with the post, I just like my turtles.)

Here I am sitting in yet another meeting, much of the meeting doesn’t apply to myself, but here I am. So what am I doing to keep myself mentally sane?? Yeah, I’m hand writing a post for my WoW blog. We’ll see if I can get off my rear end and actually get this typed into the computer. We’ll see. Wow, these parents are a little upset, very interesting, I’m very glad that I’m not the one running the meeting.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking. I try to avoid it, but sometimes I do think. When is World of Warcraft going to end and what are the players going to do. WoW can’t last forever, eventually it’ll have to come to some kind of conclusion, right? (Unlike this meeting, which is looking like it is going to last indefinitely). But with a game as popular as Warcraft, its life span will likely be very long. We have already had 5 years and we can probably easily be having 5-10 more. Maybe 10 years is excessive perhaps. Right now the technology is already outdated. Newer games are looking pretty good (have you seen any videos for Aion?). More and more games are likely going to siphon off players, come on its bound to happen. Some day another game with eventually exceed WoW in their number of subscribers. Someday.

However, I don’t think WoW will die at this point, just because someone has more subscribers, duh. There are people playing Ultima Online and the first Everquest aren’t there? MMOs don’t die so easily (unless they suck to begin with and were never able to get a following). When do you think blizzard would finally pull the plug on a dying MMO? Are they going to let the game go for the next 15-20 years?? Are they just going to wait till the game is no longer making money, I guess that would make sense.

Well, then there’s always the talk of the next blizzard MMO (which may very well take them 10 years to get finished with). When do you decide that the newest game out there will pull you away from Azeroth? Is it the graphics and playability? I personally think that one thing that keeps you and me in a particular MMO is the relationships that we’ve forged. I myself don’t feel that I’ll leave WoW for a long long time. Not until the people I play with leave. Maybe if my guild on my home server told everybody, “hey were moving to X MMO for Y reasons, go buy an account and come join us.” At that point I would strongly consider it, and maybe if the WoW twitter world all decided to up and change MMOs. I guess there would have to be one bad @ss game out there for such a migration to happen. (And the meeting is still going strong, almost an hour long with no end in sight).

I also wonder, if eventually I’m going to leave WoW, then why am I bothering with all of this work. Ha! I guess you should be enjoying your self as you go, enjoy the journey kind of thing, and I have, I really have. Anyway, what’s your take on this? How much more life do you think Azeroth has for us? What would pull you to a new MMO?

So, its a good thing that I’m a hunter because my pets are soooooo very entertaining for my kids. They love to watch me run around with my kitty. Just this morning I had my 3 year old on my lap watching me run around killing things to level my new kitty. She was making comments on just about everything. (Oh they also really like my mounts and vanity pets).

The only problem with having my kids on my lap when I play is that they think they want to “help” me play. This means they start hitting random buttons (for one I jump a lot more often), but other buttons are pressed as well, like the character screen, your bags open, you try to randomly reply to someone. Oh its all sorts of fun having kids on your lap while playing.

Now when I manage to pull aggro for all 3 of my kids (which I do very very easily when I’m at home, I’m a kid aggro magnet or something or other), then you have all kids attacking you while trying to play. The boy is the scariest because he goes to turn off the surge bar for the computer. It tends to be a damper for you gaming experience; however, its pretty amusing if you keep the right perspective.

Do you guys have any WoW kid stories? Please share!

I’ve been thinking about the definition of a casual gamer lately. I mean come on, I claim to be a casual gamer, I even named my blog after it.

So, what is a casual gamer then? Is this anyone who isn’t in a super hardcore raiding guild? Well, that would be just about all of the people I know (or who are probably reading this blog – I imagine the word “casual” might shy some away from here to begin with). Maybe a casual gamer is someone that can only raid 2 or 3 times a week, or … maybe not. There isn’t a hard fast rule, or a magical number of hours played in a week that draws a fine line, one that separates the causals from the hardcores.

No really, what makes the difference between hardcores and casuals? I don’t think its just the time spent (however that does make an impact). Hardcore doesn’t equal full time player just as casual doesn’t equate to part-time player. Instead, I think, its a state of mind or a player’s gaming style. Using this definition I would probably consider myself a “part-time” player instead of a casual player. Why would I say this? Well, for one, I write a freakin’ WoW blog. The very fact that I’m writing this probably kicks me out of the casual camp altogether and makes me a bit of a paradox, or a least a misnomer. I might not have ran Naxx yet, but I have quite a few WoW podcasts on my iPod, my Google reader is full of other WoW blogs, and I even have a WoW shirt that says “I’m not addicted to WoW, I just want to finish it.”

Perhaps I should rename my blog, “The Part-Time Huntering Blog”. I’ll have to think about that. So, here’s the question. What do you consider yourself? Hardcore? Casual? Part-time? Something else?

So, I’ve finally dinged 79 recently. Now I’m in the last stretch to 80 (fans gather in eager anticipation). My brother all ready pretty much has a schedule laid out for us once we hit 80 of heroics gearing up for Nax. I have been pretty much clueless as y’all talk about this raid and that. I honestly haven’t done that much research in the matter, partly because I want it to be new (to me at least) and also because… well, because of boredom. Not that raiding is boring, but to read about raiding that you aren’t able to do as of yet, yeah that’s a little much.

Oh, we did AQ40 last night in a pug. I got 2 new mounts out of it (even if I can only use them for AQ, at least they count towards the achievement). I’m up to 62 mounts now, still need 38 for the Mountain of Mounts achievement. I still have a lot of huntering to do for that.

I’ve noticed that the google searches that make their way here are mostly about hunters. I haven’t written too much on huntering as of late. I should get back to that a little more. I probably will when I’m level 80. I did get one google search that found me by searching for “casual bobs“. Well, you found one, although I’m not sure sure what that entails. Maybe it could be a title for some future achievement. Casual Bob Aoirselvar the Brave. Hmm, I’ll have to think on that, its kind of catchy.

I’ve been playing the game for almost 3 years now and I’ve had my fair share of neglecting RL for the game, but I like to think that I’ve found a much happier balance in life at this point. The game use to be an issue of conflict between me and my spouse. I would play too often or when she needed help with the kids. She still reminds me how much she hated it when I would play all morning on Saturdays. More recently I’ve cut back my playing time and this has greatly decreased contentions concerning this game, and added more balance overall to my life.

In my opinion there are certain things that should always supercede playing WoW. If you have a family they should always come first, you probably shouldn’t lose your job or fail a class because of the game. Your health and personal hygiene would be bad to neglect as well (lol – don’t forget to eat & bathe).

The people who don’t do this make the rest of us look bad. These idiots give gamers in general a bad name and are the reason people do studies that claim that WoW breaks up marriages, makes students drop out of school and increases the crime rate in the lower 48 states. Its pretty common sense if you think about it.

Yes, I understand WoW is more than a video game for those probably reading this blog. Most non-WoWers think of our game as something that should be easily set aside like a nintendo game. They don’t realize that we consider this game more of a hobby. We all have hobbies, our just consists of killing demons and dragons and stuff with our guild on-line.

Now, I have kids, young kids. My oldest is 3 years old, and I have 2 others that are younger. I have come to the point where I try not to play when they are awake. So, I play in the morning before I go to work and intermittently after we’ve put the kiddos to bed. We got a second account so that my wife and I could play together. Now its together time instead of contention time (of course those times when our computers are being stupid we are still contentious, but not with each other). Now its much more balanced. Of course we aren’t raiding (we’re still level 78), but we’ll get there. We’ll never be hard core raiders. We’ll never be doing the hardest raid. We’re okay with that. We are much happier this way and we can always talk about WoW through out the day if we want.

Now, during holidays all of this balance stuff is kind of thrown out the windows for us. Its a good thing there aren’t holidays all the time.

I wanted to confirm that the Hatch on Lost is definitely in the Northrend. I read about this on OneAmongMany’s blog when Will wrote a guest post there. This revelation answers so many questions in regards to where the stupid island is. No wonder no one can find it, the Lich King has control of it, and its stuck in an MMO on Northrend of all places.

But this also brings up some questions.

Like what time are we at in the game? Apparently the timeline for WotLK is before 2003 or so, but after the Darma Inititive landed on the island. So, Azeroth is somewhere inbetween 1970-1990 or so. You see the hatch hasn’t imploded yet. Oceanic 815 hasn’t crashed yet (well, maybe they have). But then we still might be able to see our friends Jack, Locke, Hurley, Kate, etc, etc, (if you watched the new episode this week).

Another question, what are our heros from Lost doing in Azeroth?

Now that gets me wondering about what class all of those characters from Lost are going to be (now that we have found out that the island is really Sholavar Basin).

Hmmm, Jack has to be a paladine. He’s noble, crys a lot, and hmmm, probably would look good in plate. Oh and Jack should be able to heal, he is a doctor.

Sayid has to be a rogue with all of the assassin work that he does.

Locke, well, duh, Locke is a warlock, mostly just because of his name. I might also be a deathknight given certain events that have taken place this season.

Sawyer is a, I don’t know, I want to say he’s a warrior. I don’t have any good reason for it. Maybe a hunter without a pet, because he’s pretty good with a gun.

Faraday is some kind a mathmatical wizard, so he gets to be an Arcane Mage (what does arcane have to do with math, I don’t know, go ask a mage).

Kate is a druid, a kitty druid. Doesn’t she already seem like a cat? Cats like to run, Kate likes to run, right? And if you take the “e” off of her name than is spells Kat. So there you have it.

Well, what else would Juliet be? Of course she’s a holy priest, because she’s our healer who can’t seem to get off that stupid island.

Okay, Miles will be our Deathknight, not because he’s particularly scarey, but because he talks to dead people. I guess if we had a Necromancer class he would have been that.

Desmond is our awesome sorcerer or something, master of something or other. I’m going to say he’s a fire mage, because hmm… he had a fire in his heart to get back with Penny. Okay, that was a stretch.

Jin has turn out to be one of my favorite characters. He has his fishing skills all the way up. What class is Jin? I’m going to say that he’s our Shaman. Mostly because I see him doing Melee combat and hmmm… he…uh… well, I need one of them to be a shaman, right?

Oh, evil and coniving Ben. I wouldn’t put it past him to be working right along side with Arthus himself. Ben I’d say is a warlock. He’s evil, but often makes others do his work for him.

I’ve decided that Hurley is a hunter. Why? Well, no good reason other than that Hunters are awesome and Hurley is awesome. Dude.

Well, there are several characters that I’m missing, but I best get back to work. I obviously got a little too carried way with this post. Maybe not.

Well, we haven’t been able to play since last Wednesday when our internet connection started acting all funny. Finally got that working then the router started being stupid, got that working then the other computer was being dumb. aghghghghgh. Finally both computers are working, internet is working, router is working. What then? WoW won’t work on the old computer because of the system restore. So, I got done reinstalling WoW on the older computer this morning, I’ll have to work on getting all the updates this afternoon.

On top of that, I went from 40 fps (frames per second) down to 5-11 on my newer computer. I’m trying to run things like Malware bytes and Spybot Search and Destroy. I’ll have to scan the computer with AVG tonight. We got a on that computer last week, but so far we haven’t been keylogged. I think we’ve gotten rid of it, but I’m still having flucuating performance on WoW.

So, I haven’t played as much as of late for the above reasons, but I did get my DK to level 69. Now I have lines from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure stuck in my head. /sigh.

So, we’re recently learned that Jeff Kaplan has given up his lead position with the World of Warcraft team to work on the secret new MMO that Blizzard is making. So, this leaves so much room for speculation. Hmmmm….

Most people think this means World of Starcraft, or the Universe of Starcraft (which I think sounds better) and there are just endless possibilities with this. Yes the Sci-fi MMO has already been done, and many argue, not very well. But when has Blizzard ever done anything haphazardly. I think could make a sci-fi MMO be freaking amazing. They wouldn’t develop the game if they couldn’t. But someone on twitter told me that they heard from this guy who heard from this other guy who… well you get the picture, that Blizzard’s new MMO won’t be based on any of their current games. Really? I don’t know.

So, if that’s the case what does that leave us with? Bliz can’t do another fantasy because that would pull away from the WoW crowd unless its a completely different spin.

They could do some kind of vampire MMO? /ponders the notion… Naw, that would be too close to Twilight and all of those silly Edward lovers out there.

Could it be historical? No, that makes me die of boredom just suggesting such as ridiculous notion. Sci-fi still sounds good if you ask me. The mounts would be awesome. ooOOoo we could do some robotech or firefly based MMO. I’ll have to ponder that.

But what are they really doing???? Oh, I’m dying to know. They would have to do something completely different than WoW of course. I really haven’t tried any of the other MMOs out there, so I don’t even know what has already been done. WoW was my first and so far only MMO. And of course we probably won’t know for another 5 years or so.

So, what are your speculations about this future secret Blizzard MMO? Do you think it will really be a WoW killer?