J.O.E. G.A.M.E.R.

Since I joined the guild Enthusiasm there has been what can only be called “ups and downs”. For the best part, I believe everything happens for a reason, and it is in some way meant to be for the best. (this does not include physical violence, that’s usually not for the best. Actually this doesn’t include a lot of things, but meh, things usually work out the way they are meant to, one way or another… this isn’t actually sounding very good is it?)

Soooo.

Today I started on a project my boss has passed over to me, since now I’m single, I should have bags of time on my hands. Go figure. That said, the unexpected four hundred smackers payment for said job pointed me towards accepting. Anyway, the job itself is to create the companies website. Not a massively hard task, but more of a time consuming one, that will take place out of work hours.

*joy*

It in turn however has had some benefits, such as:

• I’m not thinking much about the recent breakup
• I’m not staring blankly at a wall as the TV blew up
• I’m doing something constructive
• I’m getting paid
• It gave me great reason to gawk at the sexy lady out my window cleaning her car (I’m not a stalker perv, she knows I’m here, we have spoken a few times, yet she still parks right in front of my window, waves at me, then proceeds to bubble up in hot pants and white t-shirt) Lord knows why I haven’t gone back there… to soon maybe, anyway… moving on.
• I’m getting paid
• With my laptop, I get to grab a tan at the same time as working
• Can go to pub at the same time as working

I could go on, but you get it.

I’m not sure how well the final project will turn out, but I am sure it will be better than the drivel the new chap at work has tried to do. There will be more on him in a later post. If i’m happy with the final project, I may even link it, so that you can check out my fantastic work etc.

Ok, work matters aside, lets get into the lighter side of the guild stuff. While on a “break” from all the hard work I was doing today, I jumped on WoW and vent to catch up on the daily goings on. Normally there is some silly banter, and a good laugh to be had. Today the subject had come up, just before I’d arrived, about how to compare WoW boss fights to married life or having a girlfriend etc. Let me break it down for you, with some visual aids to show what I was thinking as the conversation broke into hilarity rather quickly:

In the start there is the girlfriend debuff.

At some point the girlfriend enrages.

All you have to do is Nuke through it.

All you have to do is nuke through it

To avoid trouble, always have the right addons.

Avoid Whelps.

Generally at the end there is an achievement.

Watch out for the debuff becoming a perma-debuff, get the right raid member to dispell it.

Now I don’t know about you, but I had a giggle fit when we went down this road, I hope you did too. (apologies for my shit pics and explanation of what goes on in my mind, these are at best a loose representation)

So the last post I made was a little depressing. Granted, if in my shoes, you may have imagined yourself, as I did, circling the drain pipe.

So that was the last post. In this post we focus on the light at the end of the tunnel. I’ll be honest, none of the pants stuff has gone, infact it may have got a little worse, but all at the same time, I’m seeing much better things come round my way.

For example, I was stood up last week for a night out, with someone from work, and this week, they are all about the going out tommorow. I feel better for it.
Over the weekend I have my cousins wedding party, they are having the wedding in south africa, so the party is more like a pre-wedding party for family that aren’t going to fly to capetown due to work etc… This I see as a glorious opportunity to catch up with my family, have a good couple of beers, and maybe go out on the captains boat… cousin is a P&O captain.

Annnd last night a friend whom I’ve not heard from since going round the world, surprised me on facebook saying “she” was visiting the UK and would like to catch up! Win! I can’t lie, had some of the best times of my life hanging out with the people I met around the world, so I sort of jumped at the chance to catch up again!

So on balance, although I’m miserable with certain aspects of my life as of last week, I’m also quite happy and excited about others.

This is possibly the most bizarre mix of emotions I’ve dealt with in ages.

Anyway, been a while since I posted gaming related malarky, since it’s not really been a gaming last few weeks. Tonight however, my new Guild, whom are still lost in one of said previous post’s 13 not yet finished numbers, ran some raid items.

Sarth, the meanest dragon I’ve bumped heads with in a while gave us *cough* several good runs before we downed the bugger. And I also got some nice loot to boot. It seems everytime I go out with these guys and gals, I managed to ding at least 3-5 new achievements.

You won’t see any complaints here, let me tell you that!

It was a grim battle to start with, incuring a good 40 gold in repair bills, but boy it was worth it!!!

You could say I’m a little at the low end of specc’d gear. As such, combined with my inability to follow a strict rotation to maximise my DPS, my DPS is still awfully low, especially compared to those that I’m running with. With time, this will improve, no doubt about that, but I think it’s worth a mention that I’m so happy everyone in the Guild aren’t bothered about my noobiness, at least not bothered enough to tell me More over they are happy that I’m keen.

And that fills me with a warm feeling. Yes I’m somewhat wank, Yes i’m nowhere near as consistent as everyone else and Yes, none of that really matters, because it’s all about the fun.

Sure it would be nice to not have to heal my silly bum all the time, it would be nice to see my input actaully carve some difference into the raid events, but until then, just keep going, as we are in it for the fun.

Can’t tell you how great it is not to be dropped, or told i’m to crap to come along. I don’t know the people in the guild personally, which in a way is a great way to get to know them, what I do know is that my initial and on-going impression, is that I’m super lucky to even be in their presence.

Too much?

Yeah they are cool people.

/happy.

In the event anyone gets round to reading this, I’ll enlighten you on my blogging timetable. Not daily, very rarely weekly, most likely to be monthly updates are headed your way. There are a few reasons behind this, the main one being if I find something to say, often the very same week, someone else has said it better. This obviously has a slightly detrimental effect on my blog, apologies for that. When I do have something to say, its highly likely to go through several stages of editing, much like this post, and take at least a day if not longer to actually get produced fit for your eyes. I’m not a perfectionist, I am a typo king, and even now, on the final edit of this post, there will be mistakes.

It’s how I role.

Ok, so less about my posting techniques and more about whats been going on. I’ve been playing loads of WoW with the new guild on Argent Dawn, specifically playing mainly solo, running around in dungeon finder PUG’s and leveling faster than I ever have with a mage, let alone another alt I’ve ever played. I am quite late to the dungeon finder party, as it were, since I’ve been used to doing the odd quest on my one and only lvl 80 and wandering around, never playing high lvl content or actually furthering my lvl 80 at all. My little mage has now got the best gear possible with the smallest amount of effort, just because I walk into a dungeon that is found for me and complete it with a bunch of randoms.

This makes life easy, less organisation, and running content at my level, for silly experience and lots of rewards. The main downside I’ve noted, and it’s apparently not uncommon is the cold cup of tea at the end of a run, because it’s been so engrossing. I occasionally get an invite to guild events and dungeon runs, and bite the senders arm off.

I can’t get enough of this guild and the experiences I learn. Essentially it’s the most fun and easy going bunch of people I’ve had the pleasure to game with, sure I have my mains guild, and all the other gamers I play with, but this bunch have something else, maybe it’s just because its new. Who knows, but I enjoy it a lot.

Lessons learnt via running around taking my time in dungeons is quite possibly the second best thing I can get out of it all. Like last night, there is me, the highest level player pulling silly agro and making the tanks life impossible. The tank was a superbly patient chap, who was about 6 levels lower than me at the start, which really didn’t help. Still, we all played on and things went well. I was convinced to jump on vent with this bunch, not something I was sure I should do. I mean essentially they are all strangers, and I’ve only met them in game a few times, no “real life” contact, so I’m a little hesitant. This is something you would never expect from me once I open my gob, but still, the thought of crazy people learning stuff from me was a little worrying. Anyway, since it was so late, and the other half had gone to bed, using the mic was a no no, so I went in regardless of worries, since all I would be doing is listening, like some creepy perv.

So we are all running blackfathom depths or stockades if I remember correctly, and the tank, who was like I mentioned earlier, a very cool chap, asked if I had a spell called counterspell. As it turned out I did, but being the noob mage I am, I hadn’t got it on the old quick keys. He suggested I use this spell on the casters that sit miles away, which are usually the ones that cause other mobs to gain agro and come annoy the group to often. We practised a couple of times, and the spell is now on button number one. Why? Because it is quite possibly the most useful crowd controlling group spell I will need to use ever. (sheep I like but not essential these days it seems).

After this awesome lesson I picked up we ran on a little more and finished up. All in all a great evening of WoW for me as I learnt some good stuff I can now put to use in PUG’s, guild runs and knobbing about. Awesome beans. Getting back to being on vent, all I was doing was listening. This has some sneaky advantages in some ways, firstly you can learn a little bit about the people waffling on. What I learnt initially was the group from our guild was composed of chaps and ladies from all over Europe, sometimes originating from the other side of the world. On top of that, these people were possibly in the same boat as me, by that I mean they hadn’t met each other and spoken to each other before. As I was later to learn our healer and the tank were actually good friends, still the rest were in a similar position as me.

This situation initially caused conversation to go over where we were all from, etc. Quite an open friendly bunch, which made me enjoy the whole thing even more. Next conversation drifted onto where we originated from, heritage and what not, some interesting thoughts bubbling away in these peoples heads. We went from there to talk about how crap English education is to castles and how things should be more like it used to be, with less kids in school attempting law suits against teachers etc.

Why am I telling you this. Carrots that why. Our conversation got onto food and some interesting facts, amongst which were carrots, and to be more precise, black ones, and how the orange one became popular. Not something I thought I’d be listening to why pouring fire into some mobs veins. Still a welcome change to the norm, and some good laughs to!

This post is dedicated to said tank and healer, who I spent some time listening too, way into the early hours. Great chap and lady, I will be chasing them up for conversation again.

Today with the new guild of social bunnies, we attempted RFC. I also ran it yesterday with a similar bunch from the guild, however, back then we were all roughly level 12 ish and carried nicely by an awesome healer and druid combo.

In that earlier run, I was an agro king, it seems that setting any mob on fire, just doesn’t sit well with them.

So back to today and I’m actually in a group with Tam, our blogging hero. Tam was around level 12 and I level 16. I scoffed to myself a little as I had exactly one hp more than him at the time. That made me feel proper sissy.

Anyway, Tam was tanking as his pally, I was burning/sheeping things.

The down side we all later found out was I was the king of agro. Even buffing in combat caused me to gain agro. I had to sit at the back in my “sissy robe” (stolen!!) just to wand and I could still pull then.

For this I felt exttremely guilty, as all these seasoned bloggers/readers/awesome people in our little run found, agro of that kind usually causes a wipe.

Several wipes later we killed the end boss and went and did one more before we had to break up for food.

To those in the RFC run, Passiflora and I deeply apologise for the noob fest in which we dragged you through.

Having joined the ranks of the community blogger guild that Tam has finally got round to suggesting, therefore granting me the perfect excuse to hang out with the better people in wow and avoid those rather distasteful ones, I find myself actually enjoying wow more than ever before.

Rolling a Mage, a class I’ve never played, while wandering around aimlessly talking to awesome people, and having no certain goals in mind, I’ve raced ahead (to my surprise ) to level 13 odd in two 40 min sittings. While no mean feat for the hardcore, this was a sweet realization for me, as I hadn’t even noticed the time or levels go by.

I also quite enjoy burning things.

I can see this swinging my wow love hate affair right back into action. Something the other half my not be too happy about. She’ll come round right after I tell her all about Kumquat.

Way to many righteous orb webby links going in here, so I’ll add a favourite stop of mine here, with much respect seeing as since I’ve followed the crazy bugger, he’s managed over 100 pets and gold cap etc. I am clearly not worthy of attempting these feats.

On an entirely different and personal love note, if you go by the name of Marko, then kinda go and **** ***. <3