The Grand Experiment

Over the years I’ve developed a certain false assumption about blogging.  For whatever reason I have felt that in order to sit down and write anything…  I had to have something exciting or somehow epic to write about.  This combined with the fact that I have picked up a plethora of design and managerial responsibilities at work, has lead to these massive lapses in content.  There have been multiple times lately that I have wanted to blog, but felt I had nothing really to blog about.

So instead of doing a massive “what happened to Bel” post, explaining all the shit I have gone through since September 11th of last year…  I am just forging forward into unexplored territory.  Usually I have a bit of free time in the mornings as I drink my cup of coffee, or as I try and wind down at the end of gaming each night.  My experiment is just to sit down and write about what I did the previous day…  even if I find it immensely normal and unexciting.

Cute and Potentially Disturbing

2013-04-25_174531As soon as I got home last night, I sat down and reserved the new Raptr reward pet for Rift.  I am really digging the rewards system, in that so far I have gotten some pretty nifty things through it.  Last promotion they offered the Dwarven Smithy Goggles that I had been coveting ever since they gave them out as a reward at PAX.  This time around they were offering a really bizarre in game pet that looks exactly like the Raptr mascot.  Pictured above, I am not 100% sure if it is really adorable, or really disturbing looking.  In game it almost looks like the various balloons that are available during the anniversary event.  In addition I am wearing the Stone Spaulders that are another promotion this time around.

I’ve used Raptr for years without much expectation for reward.  I just liked the fact that it was a really solid multi-protocol IM client that seemed not to tax the various games I was playing.  When they started giving me rewards for the games I played… that was just icing on the cake.  Yesterday I had used the /tweetpic functionality in game to post this shot on twitter… and I got a response from a live Raptr employee, which was a really nice touch.

The rewards presently available that you should check out…

The Monkey King

A few weeks back my friends managed to get me playing a game I had never played before, and thought I never would.  Over the course of the last few weeks I have been joining them almost nightly for 5 player games of League of Legends.  I had been absent from the game for a few nights, mostly because my internet connection has really gone to shit.  But I was coaxed back into the fold last night.

Once again my internet was being shitty, and I was warping all over the maps…  but I still enjoyed myself.  I’ve developed a particular affinity for Wukong, the Monkey King.  I really like leaping in an doing massing amounts of damage only to throw up a decoy and escape away into the shadows.  I am not particularly good at any champions so far, but I am mostly passible with Wukong, Garen, Darius, Shen, Alistair and Volibear.

There is a definite pattern with the champions I end up liking.  One of my friends… the one who got me hooked on the game has successfully created a roadmap of all of the champions he feels I will be happy with.  So far, one by one he has been right, with the exception of Blitzcrank.  After a warm-up map against bots, a 6th friend logged in and we decided to do 3v3 twisted treeline.

I had never done this map before last night, and while enjoyable… it really feels super claustrophobic.  The other bad thing I noticed about it is that if one side gets underfed…  it just snowballs as running around the map catching up on minion kills doesn’t really feel like a possible thing.  Even with the frustration, playing with friends is always fun… and it cracked me up as certain players definitely disliked killing their friends.

Classic “Home” Tour

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Finally the constant lag, and ending up in the wrong place… fighting the wrong thing in League of Legends got under my skin enough to cause me to call it a night.  One of the big things I do lately… is follow whatever whim happens to hit me.  While I cannot really explain it fully, I had a whim last weekend to play one of my oldest characters.  Lodin is the Dwarf Hunter that I spent all of classic World of Warcraft raiding with, and had neatly put to bed with the release of Burning Crusade and my transition to tanking fulltime.  I had made various attempts to level him in the past, but really never got any traction.

Over the course of the weekend I managed to push him from 75 to 85 and actually enjoyed myself.  One of the realizations I have come to is that World of Warcraft is the fast food of MMO gaming.  It is bright, and happy and very enjoyable… so long as you don’t think too much about what you are consuming.  It is the second part I always fail at.  I end up thinking about how half assed so many of their implementations are.  The transmogrification system for example is hands down the worst version of cosmetic items, in ANY game.

Since World of Warcraft is so much more of a casual experience than League of Legends, I figured I could tolerate the shit internet a bit better there.  While I have been super nomadic since leaving the game, the guild I founded back in 2004 is still extremely active.  I had intended to go out to Jade Forrest and continue my push to 90, but logged into the statement coming across guild chat “It’s Bel’s Fault”.  I assured the guild member that I am certain it was in fact my fault, but inquired exactly what was my fault this time.

Turns out they decided on a whim to run old raids to show a friend that was relatively new in the game.  Not that they actually needed my help, but a trip down memory lane is something I am almost always down for.  We proceeded to clear Karazhan, Magtheridon, Gruuls Lair, and ended the night taking down Kaelthas in Tempest Keep.  All of it was stupidly easy, and posed no representation of what it was like to do those instances when they were real… but it was still fun seeing it all again.

A Wild Blog Post Appeared

It is now 6:48 am, and I have run out of coffee.  I started writing at roughly 6:00 am, so it appears that the experiment worked.  I did in fact have enough time to prattle on about what happened last night.  I did nothing terribly interesting, but I did manage to piece together a narrative of the events.  Right now most of my gaming nights look just as spastic as this one.  I’ve been ping ponging back and forth between whatever games end up suiting my fancy.

Right now I don’t really intend to set down permanent roots until Elder Scrolls Online releases.  I’m currently plotting my return to guild leadership with that game.  In essence I miss the camaraderie of House Stalwart, and while I can’t be 100% happy returning to World of Warcraft and assuming the hat there…  I feel like ESO is the game we all want to play.  In effect I feel like I want to “get the band back together”.  I’ve tried this before in the past, but in all of those cases I tried my damnedest NOT to be the guild leader.  I wonder if those guild excursions failed, because I was not putting the same effort into making sure things were happening.

I could ramble on about this past for hours I am sure, but right now I know that pretty much everything for me until the release of Elder Scrolls Online is going to be “appetizers”.  If folks are interested, I have been using Tamriel Foundry as a way of planning for the Elder Scrolls House Stalwart instance.  I really loved the pre-launch guild building tools that were provided by SWTOR, and this gives a very similar feeling.  As always it is like pulling teeth to get any of the Stalwarts to actually sign up for anything, but we have 8 signed up…  and even more in the recently launched Google Plus community

Makes me feel all fuzzy inside thinking about the potential of the game and guild.  As far as the blog goes, I will try my best to keep this experiment up.  It seemed to work, and I had enough time to write a really long post.  I will attempt to keep writing even if I don’t particularly find it interesting myself.  If you have made it this far in the post… thanks for reading.

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