Good or bad… time will tell

I wanted to go out with a bang.  I know that the next month will see very little gaming from me and most likely even less time spent writing on this site.  With NaNo kicking off at midnight tonight, I plan on putting everything else (other than work) on the back-burner for the month of November and throwing all of my effort into that project.

I had hoped to get a couple of good posts in before that happens.

Circumstances just haven’t been on my side.

I ended up falling asleep early Wednesday night.  I was up at 3 AM Thursday morning and on the road by 4 AM.  I didn’t get home until nearly 8 PM last night and pretty much went straight to bed.  However, my phone started going crazy at 1 AM, so I was back up at 1 troubleshooting network issues.  That didn’t end until just before 4 AM this morning and I finally got back to bed.  At 4:30 AM this morning, one of my coworkers called to see if I knew about the network outage.

He got cursed at… a lot.

I finally got back to sleep around 5 AM, my alarm went off at 6 AM and I was back in the office by 7:30.

Through my sleep-deprived haze, I’ve been trying to think up a really entertaining (or at least mildly amusing) post to make as my last normal post for a month.  As I scanned more and more sites and discovered that the NDA for the new EQ2 expansion has been lifted, I thought that maybe there was a lifeline there.

I anxiously read up on what people had to say about the expansion… gobbling up their information and looking for some nugget to write about.

I wish I could. 

I haven’t been excited about this expansion at all.  The closer it gets to release, the more apathetic I have become about it.  After reading multiple sites today and finding out tidbits and impressions about it, I’m starting to miss just being apathetic about the expansion.  That apathy has transitioned into something that is a cross between resignation and anger.

Some people are excited about this expansion.  Everything I have seen or read about it makes me think that I’m just not going to enjoy it.

I had planned on pre-ordering one copy of the expansion and then waiting until I could really delve into it before deciding whether or not I want to buy a copy for my second account.  After reading what people have written about the expansion, I am leaning more towards not pre-ordering at all and possibly just cancelling my accounts until after NaNo is done.  Then, once December rolls around, I can revisit the game and decide if I want to even bother any longer.

So, my apologies.  Rather than going out with a bang and putting up some semi-interesting post before I vanish into a NaNo-induced haze, I’m going out with a snarl.  I can’t help feeling how I’m feeling and I just don’t like what I’m seeing with regards to this new expansion.

Resisting the urge

There are several thoughts that I keep starting.  I finish typing it all out and then just delete it and start over with a new title and a new subject.

Everything keeps taking a negative spin though and the whole thing comes across as bitchy.

I’m sure a big part of that is that I am tired.  I drove for about 12 hours yesterday… 6 hours there, worked for 4 hours and then 6 hours back.  I got home and tried to raid with the guild, but my body was already in bed and my mind wasn’t far behind.  Today, I honestly can’t recall much of anything that took place beyond the fact that we were in Mistmoore.

I think I’ll just cut my losses and not really post anything today.  I don’t want to try to force something and have it coming out wrong.

I’m traveling again tomorrow… an even longer trip than yesterday was.  So, if there is a post tomorrow, it will most likely be made tonight and be a continuation of the guild hall screenshot tour.

Tomorrow’s post today

I’m going to be on the road all day tomorrow (Tuesday).  I’m leaving at the butt-crack of dawn and probably won’t be back until the evening.  So, I’m going to go ahead and do a short post tonight.

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I would take some screenies of the Revelry and Honor guild hall and post them.  Tonight, as a part of my sluff off time, I did just that in between running harvest quests and tradeskilling.  There was so much that I wanted to snap screenies of and couldn’t make up my mind to narrow it down, so I pretty much took shots of everything.  Once all was said and done, I had over 40 screenshots. 

Obviously I’m not going to post that many… at least not in one post, so here are some of my favorite parts.  I might do more in a later post.

Shots after the break.

Time for some fluff

This past weekend was a marathon of gaming for me.  I got it into my head to hit 80 on Ray and nothing was going to stop me… not even my own stupid ideas that get me repeatedly killed in fantastic and comedic fashion.

I was off work on Friday.  I have a ton of accrued vacation time and we aren’t allowed to roll it over from year to year, so I’m taking a day off here and there to use it up.  I started out the day by working the quest lines in Jarsath.  As the day began turning into evening, I ran into a guildie who was doing the same thing.  He was a little further back in the questline than I was, but we grouped up and started working to get him caught up.  During that time, another guildie logged on an alt who was at the very beginning of the quest line.

We backtracked and got him caught up with the first guy and then worked to get them both caught up with me.  By the end of the evening (and by “end of the evening,” I mean 4 AM Saturday), we all had our hammer and Ray dinged 79.

On Saturday, I started out by running Fuzz through the haunted mansion in Loping Plains.  I wasn’t sure if I could zone Ray in with Fuzz, but I knew that Fuzz couldn’t solo it.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I could join Fuzz in the mansion.  Not only that but the quest was offered to Ray once again.  I was able to pick up the reward that I didn’t take the first time and there was an additional subquest once inside that yielded a very comical mask… either one that turns my head into Antonia Bayle or Lucan.

I spent some time crafting and doing various other things before heading back to Jarsath to continue on with the dwarf hunting quest line.  I ended up making it to the brother in Skyfire and reached the repeatable portion of the quest line.  By now, though, it was approaching midnight and the long night from the day before was catching up to me and I called it a night.

I spent most of yesterday crafting and helping a guildie level his baby assassin.  When we began, he was level 22.  By the time we wrapped up, he was 28 or 29.  By now, it was raid time so we went back to the guild hall to get ready to go.

I ended up 2-boxing the raid last night.  Sometimes, 2-boxing a raid is tedious.  Other times, it is fun.  Last night, it was fun as hell even though I was as busy as a 3-armed wookie.  Once the raid was over, I went to help with a fight for the swashbuckler epic.  At the conclusion of that, I got invited to a Chelsith run.

I had never been to Chelsith yet.  I was tired and ready to go to bed, but I also hadn’t reached 80 on Ray yet and I definately wanted to check out Chelsith.  I was 93% into level when we zoned in, so I didn’t figure it would take long.

It did.  The kill and disco exp in Chelsith isn’t very good.  It was still fun.  It took most of the instance before I finally dinged 80, but it did eventually happen.  Shortly afterward, we dropped the final boss and he dropped the Breastplate of Impetuous Strike which I won… which was very exciting.  I also found that I was MUCH more jacked up about hitting 80 on Ray than I had been on Rao.

It’s kind of funny.  Through several MMO’s and multiple guilds, I have become a bit jaded towards a portion of the gaming community.  There seems to be a large (or semi-large) portion of the population that is just selfish and all about themselves.  They don’t care about the people they game with… only how they can use those other people to achieve their personal goals until they can move on to the next tier of people they can use.

It seems like I have encountered a few of those in every guild I have ever been in… until this guild.  That jaded side of my personality keeps looking for it, but it simply isn’t there.  This is, quite honestly, the best guild and the best guild experience that I have ever had.

One of the bottom-feeder scumbags of the planet struck one of my guildies over the weekend.  He went to bed Saturday night excited over his accomplishments for the day and looking forward to logging on Sunday morning.  He logged on Sunday morning to discover that some accidental birth had hacked his account, stripped him of his gear, and emptied out his banks.  People like that should be purged from the gene pool.  They are taking up oxygen that could be better used by bacteria.

My plan for this week is to do nothing.  I’ll log on and I enjoy myself, but I’m not going to worry about leveling, grinding quests, crunching AA’s or anything else.  My initial thought when I dinged 80 on Ray was that it was time to work Fuzz, start on that ranger I’ve always spoken of grinding, starting the brigand epic, starting some tradeskill epics, or any number of other things.  I woke up this morning realizing that my guys need a vacation… time to take it easy and relax.

The point is that I am just going to take things easy.  Saturday is November 1 which means that it is the start of NaNo, so I’ll be spending less time in game as I attempt to grind out my little novelette project, so I might as well spend the days this week just being silly in game.  I’ve already come up with a couple of ideas for what I’m going to write and have started flushing out the ideas in my head.  The hardest part right now is just leaving it alone.  My habit has always been to start writing immediately when an idea strikes, but this time, I’m forcing myself to just jot down little bits and pieces in a notebook and then walk away.

One thing I am going to try to remember to do is take some screenshots of the Revelry and Honor guild hall and post them here.  The decorating is definately done.  We had some more things we wanted to do, but we have all but hit our item limit so a cease fire to decorating has been called.

I still like how things turned out.  The people who did the lion’s share of the decorating did a great job.

Is it just a myth or is it Fable 2?

I never played Fable.  I heard about it and really wanted to check it out, but most of my friends who played it reported that it was very disappointing and flat-out stupid easy.  They said the concept had promise, but there was literally no challenge, so I decided to save my money.

When Fable 2 was announced, I reacted to it pretty much the same way that I reacted to the announcement about Halo 3… so what?

Suddenly and without warning, I am having a massive urge to play the game.  Of course, it is only out for the Xbox 360 and I don’t own one and certainly can’t justify spending the $7000 they want for one.  Why, that is just outright robbery!  No one in their right mind…

What?  They now have an arcade version for $199?  Oh crap.

Like a yutz, I made the mistake of then checking out the list of games available.  When the console first came out, there weren’t any games out for the 360 that even remotely interested me.  Now, there are quite a few games out for the 360 that I want to play and, even worse, most of them are cheap as hell.

Oh, the temptation… and I am off today with a weekend to follow.  That’s a lot of time to do something financially stupid.

I keep trying to remind myself of that Xbox 1 way back when that I bought, played like 3 times, and then gave away.

Yeah… it’s not working too well.