The Circus – PONIES

Last Updated on Thursday, 16 May 2013 11:55 Written by Kadomi Thursday, 16 May 2013 02:00

I think today is going to be an Erasure day. I loved that album, sure did. I am so 80s. As mentioned yesterday, we had free tickets to the Circus Roncalli, one of the contemporary circuses à la Cirque Du Soleil. They had a beautiful location right by the river in the park in Düsseldorf.

The entrance to the circus

The show lasted 2.5 hours, plus a 15 minute break, and despite my bum aching quite severely on the hard benches (free tickets didn’t get us plush velvet seats in the front, bugger), it was a fantastic show I would highly recommend to anyone who happens to be in Germany and in a town where they perform. Not that it’s very likely for most readers, but… My personal highlight was a group called Opening, trapeze artists from Kiev who all have giant mohawks. They were absolutely incredible.

Those were some power mohawks, I tell ya.

Roncalli doesn’t have any wild animals. It’s mostly artistic elements broken up by comedic moments. My SO, who is a giant pony-lover, had seen ponies in the flyer, so was all excited when after the break there was sawdust in the ring. And then we got this:

They were also incredible. I mean, really. I don’t get excited about ponies but…

Good times.

Wednesday is for LFR

I recently recruited my friend Fi and her husband to my guild. I am totally to blame for them playing WoW in the first place, as I gave them WoW as a wedding present in…2005, I think. Time flies. The two of them have never raided and I lured them to the dark side. Fi is now finally ready for raids, and so yesterday was the big moment. But I wasn’t there to hold her hand through it, so I did LFR with her to explain the differences between LFR and normal, Heart of Fear being the target raid. From all I heard she did fine, but sounded like a bundle of anxious nerves after the raid when I came home. I feel slightly guilty now because I feel responsible for her. Have you ever recruited someone to try raiding and then they hated it or did not like it as much as you expected?

I only did the first part of ToT on Yata, so today I have to do parts 2 and 4 for another shot at shoulders. Grrr, shoulders. I will be halfway through Revered with Shado-Pan Assault, so I know there will be shoulders in my future, but I want shoulders now! I hope queue times will be okay today. They’re terrific on Wednesdays, EU reset day, 5-10 minutes even as DPS.

Today shall also be the push to get the priest to Outland, but I need to get my pet battle team ready for Outland as well!

Thoughts on raiding difficulty

Earlier this week I linked to Zellviren’s post about how normal raiding is too punitive. I am now reading the summary of an interview that the Convert to Raid podcast did with Ion Hazzikostas, the Lead Encounter Designer. I am heartened that Blizzard is recognizing that the current raid model is not quite fitting the bill for more casual guilds. My quote of choice: ‘There is a group of players that wants to do group raiding, but they aren’t well served by the current difficulty choices. This would include the friends and family type guilds that don’t remove players because they aren’t performing at their best. In Wrath of the Lich King, 10 player normal difficulty raiding served these players well, but there is now a gap between Raid Finder and Normal difficulty.’ Unfortunately he then went on that they need to keep 25-man and 10-man difficulty similar, which is not so heartening. At least he admitted that the tuning going from Jin’rokh to Horridon is a disaster is not as smooth as it could have been.

I am not unhappy with our raids, because despite the multitude of wipes, we’re having a good time in fun company, much like Spinks describes in her latest blog post. I just wish the difficulty progression was more like going through ICC or Ulduar, with a ramp-up, without running smack into a mountain-side.

Board game updates

I got a ton of recommendations here and on Twitter yesterday, so now I have a bucket list of games for us to try. For anyone that’s also interested, here are the recommendations I received:

• Race for the Galaxy
• Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
• Escape: The Curse of the Temple
• Kingsburg
• 7 Wonders
• Arkham Horror
• Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries

That should keep us busy for a while! I might try to go to the Spieliothek for some of those. It’s basically a library for board games where you can rent them for a very small monthly fee. As some of the more opulent board games can be quite pricey, it’s definitely worth a trip. I’ll keep you guys posted how boardgame progress is going.

Steam game of the week

I finally settled down on a choice what to play and went with The Longest Journey. An oldschool point-and-click adventure by Ragnar Tornquist, the mind behind The Secret World. So far I can say that the story and the characters are fantastic. Honestly, wonderful characters. You control April Ryan who lives in the 24th century, in a metropolis called Newport. She’s an art student jobbing in a cafe, plagued by particularly vivid nightmares. Around her, strange things happen, and there’s the mysterious Cortez, who seems to know more about what is troubling her. There are many conversations, and the characters are all very interesting. I have a fondness for the lesbian landlord of April’s, unsurprisingly.

It is however a game from the year 2000, and runs in a small resolution which on my screen means I get a tiny window in the corner of my screen. I will have to look into fixing that, because that’s no way to play. I mean, I don’t want fullscreen, the pixels would be an eyesore. Also, it’s a point-and-click adventure game. I suck at those. I am not ashamed mentioning I frequently have to use a walkthrough. I am currently in chapter 2 and have to get into a movie theatre. I got stuck and went to a walkthrough, figuring out I need items from April’s job and from the subway tracks. I didn’t spot anything in the subway station earlier, and it never occurred to me that I would have to go to other non-related locations to pick up items. Sigh. I hope I am not the only person in the world who enjoys adventure games and yet sucks at them.

Another one bites the subscription dust

Last Updated on Wednesday, 15 May 2013 11:49 Written by Kadomi Wednesday, 15 May 2013 02:00

The big news yesterday was something I had somewhat expected ever since Scott Hartsman left Trion Worlds in January:

Over the years I have mentioned multiple times that I find Rift one of the nicest MMO experiences out there. I was a subscriber for 9 months after release, and went back on a trial basis last year. It’s a great, highly polished game with tons of interesting features and cool classes. Unfortunately the playing experience is maybe a bit too close to WoW and so I never really went back full-time. When I read about the F2P transition next month my first thought was ‘Wow, how awesome is that?’ It means that a ‘WoW tourist’ like me will have the opportunity to go back whenever I please, without any pressure, and without any obvious restrictions that would make it unpalatable to me – like say, SWTOR’s reduced amount of action bars, come on. Of course that’s easy for me to say. I am not a current subscriber, and some of those might feel entirely different about the transition, like Liore, whose opinion I value greatly. She is bummed, and probably for good reason. Non-cosmetic gear for sale in a cash shop smells like pay to win to me. On the other hand, if it’s solely catch-up gear so people can start raiding with their friends, maybe not so bad. I guess only time will tell, but as always, I wish Trion Worlds well, because ultimately, they always struck me as a good publisher who worked hard on making Rift very polished, with an incredibly high pace of new content delivery. Come June 12, I will likely download the client once again and dip my toes in. I always thought chloromancers were nifty.

In WoW news

No 5.3 this week means I can mostly just putter around again. This coming week I will purchase the last piece of DPS gear for Yatalai with VP, and then I am done with that. I don’t have the energy to do the valor grind for tanking gear and instead will use any future VP for upgrades. With an ilevel of 509, I am chafing at the bit to be rid of my next to last piece of gear from T14, my Shoulderpads of Misshapen Life. I predict another week of me blowing two Mogu Runes on Iron Qon and Tortos in LFR to replace the shoulders, to get…gold. I have heard complaints about the loot system a lot, and because I have been a lucky beeyatch it’s never bothered me, but T15 is not very kind to me. Double-gold, all the time. Lame!

As I was valor-capped by yesterday, I decided to work on Raiding with Leashes some more. Gluth was a disappointment again, but I burned him down in no time. He was my only problem boss in my first solo Naxx attempts (aside from those two annoying guys before Thaddius), so I was pretty pleased with that. From there I decided I would try my luck with Blackwing Lair. According to forums, Razorgore is sooooo ez-mode, and everyone who can’t solo this a lesser player. Well, don’t let it be said I am that. Three wipes later, I started considering myself a lesser player. Most of the adds aggroed onto Razorgore, and when I hadn’t even cleared half of the eggs, he would die. Incidentally, so would I. Our raid leader Savitr was online, and confused about why the adds didn’t latch onto me. He recommended dismissing Razorgore instead of having it drop off. What can I say? That did the trick. Once I dismissed him, all of his friends ran over to me, I took control again, and once there were too many adds again, I dismissed again. Success!

Of course I’ll have to do it again next week, because neither Razorgore, nor Broodlord Lashlayer coughed up any pets. At least I got Chrominius!

I spent the rest of the day playing the little disc priest who could. She’s now level 57, and Outland is looming ever closer. As much as I love TBC it pains me to say that at the thought of Outland, I am bored already.

The Godmother won at WoW blog posts yesterday. Her post about attunements of old made me very nostalgic for them. It reminded me of the Onyxia chain for horde. It was a flipping pain in the arse, it was for sure. It was also one of the most satisfying experiences I had in the game. I fondly remember turning Rend’s head in to Thrall. I felt like a hero. I don’t feel like a hero today, even though Wrathion has me jumping through crazy hoops. Yet, I do not know if this same feeling can ever be brought back to a more modern WoW audience. We’ve all been spoiled by the game.

Two people, what to play?

I like board games. I really do. I love opening new boxes, and the prettier a game, the happier it makes me. Board game nights are always highlights for me. My SO LOVES board games. She’s excellent at just about any board game. The only board game she didn’t fully warm up to was Dominion, which is a shame, I like it a lot. If she could, my SO would play board games every night. Did I mention she’s good? She’s really good. This means for 2-player games, she usually dominates every game so hard that I find little enjoyment in them. She’s a top-notch programmer, her mind works completely different from mine. When it comes to games, she’s a Vulcan, cold logic, and the goal to crush her opponents.

So I come looking for help, Interwebz. If anyone who reads this knows any really cool 2-player games, please leave a comment. Somewhere out there must be the game where I won’t be crushed every single time I play with her. Right? We enjoy Kingdom Builder, but I don’t like it as a 2-player game. Qwirkle didn’t work at all, because she’s like a friggin’ computer when it comes to it. She actually wrote an AJAX-version with computer opponents and multiplayer support in her spare time. The Settlers of Catan card game is good, but it takes an eternity to play.

Must look harder. Last night we played Yahtzee, and that’s at least a game we can play without me wanting to flip tables.

Tonight we’re going to the circus. I haven’t been to the circus in like a million years. Seriously, since my childhood. I hope it’s going to be good. I am skipping raid night for it, so it better be good!

Ogres are for killing

Last Updated on Tuesday, 14 May 2013 10:56 Written by Kadomi Tuesday, 14 May 2013 02:00

If yesterday’s return to blogging accomplished anything, it was a desire to actually finish one of the things I started in WoW, namely the goal of obtaining 100 mounts. I gave my reputation panel a long, hard look, and the Mag’har grind just seemed by far the easiest. I have a two monitor setup, so one monitor I fired up episode 5 of the current season of Game of Thrones, and on the other monitor I slaughtered ogres. Many ogres.

The inside of the cave looked similar. Fantastic respawn rate though!

On top of the plentiful amount of ogres, I think I walked out of this with about ten stacks of adamantite ore, which will sell nicely. I think the episode wasn’t over before I had finished the grind. I was at 7k/21k through Revered, and it took me exactly 150 warbeads plus slaughtered ogres to hit Exalted. I am currently reading Christie Golden’s Rise of the Horde, which fills my old-school, TBC-loving, horde for life heart with joy, along with a desire to wish that my WoW farm was in Nagrand and not in Pandaria. Mag’har of Draenor is an achievement every orc should strive for, if you ask me.

A bit too bright red for my tastes, but hey, here’s my dragonhawk!

WoW-wise, the rest of the day was spent playing Yamaline the disc killing machine priest. I mean, seriously? I recently leveled an affliction warlock to 56, and killing things on her was sort of a slog. Which might me an issue that affliction is crap for leveling. And yet here’s my little pandaren who goes through mobs like a hot knife through butter. Questing has been very pleasant on her indeed, a nice break from having to deal with idiots and abuse in instances. I might have to switch from questing to pet battling full time though, because wowza.

Nearly 8k experience for a pet battle? I’ll take it!

On top of that I got the 150 collected battle pets cheese, so now I have a Celestial Dragon of my own, hooray. According to WarcraftPets, 72.4% of my battle pets are uncommon, which just goes to show you how very little patience I have when it comes to collecting pets. The moment I see an uncommon pet I snag it and am done with it. Then I go read comments on Breanni’s site and see people who went for like 200 battles to get a rare version. I did use a couple battle stones to upgrade a few pets I really like. My current team that I am leveling so I can take on the Pet Battle guy in Feralas is Mini Thor, a rare Yeti and my lovable maggot.

I am still working on Raiding with Leashes but am slightly discouraged by my inability to solo Razorgore. Unfortunately I got ZERO pet drops in BWL the one day I had a guildie help me with Razorgore. I might try again, maybe it’s just a matter of me learning to solo this, but I am not convinced. I got one of the Molten Core pets, but MC is not a problem to solo anyhow. Naxxramas and AQ40 see me missing one pet each, off Gluth and Viscidus. Hardest work was probably Twin Emperors because it took me like three tries to actually understand that being a dual-wielding frost DK is probably the worst class you can be for this fight. Seriously terrible. With our mix of spells and physical attacks, I found I didn’t have enough oomph with either to outdps the healing they receive. 2H would have been better because Obliterates are all physical. In the end, I played it safe and went with the ‘I win!’ spec blood in my DPS gear, and down they went.

The RL battle pets

I am the feeder of three cats, two striped ones, Luigi and Jenny, and our tuxedo Merlin. They’re all not normal in their own way. Luigi is obsessed with non-stop contact to hands. A life where he is not petted constantly is empty and hollow to him. Jenny is a prissy Princess with hygiene issues. She feels she clearly shouldn’t share a litter box with stinky boys, so in protest pees in the shower and big potted plants. Needless to say, we no longer have big potted plants. Oh, she also licks walls, windows, and rocks. Worst, this is contagious and Luigi now also passionately licks windows and the shower walls. Last but not least is Merlin. We often refer to him as Kiffer-Katze, a pothead kitty. He’s a bit on the slow side and lets you do things with him no other cat would tolerate. My SO has a famous act where she slides in using him as her air guitar. He likes being vacuumed, on low. He leans into the breeze of the vacuum. Which cat does that?!? He regularly gets his crazy five minutes where he will bounce up walls, and his favorite sleeping place is my SO’s armpit where he sleeps like a baby on his back. Sometimes she will tie him into a baby-sling like blanket and he loves it. Needless to say, we love all three crazies quite dearly, and worry our heart’s out when they have to go to the vet. Jenny is our biggest problem kitty. She is prone to get really sick, and it took us til last year to find out that she has a feline heart disease, HCM. Merlin is usually our robust boy, but for the past couple weeks he’s had this big lump under his left eye. We finally took him to the vet and when they tried to take a tissue sample, relaxed pothead kitty turned into a ferocious tiger because he thought getting poked with a long needle right below his eye was really uncool. I don’t blame him, really.

Please meet Merlin. He fits into any box, honestly.

Yesterday, he went into surgery for it, and we are very relieved that it turned out to be a harmless adenoma that was removed. He also got his teeth cleaned, hooray. After I picked him up again from the vet, I no longer had quiet WoW playtime because he was full of neediness. Also, they did not tell me that the adhesive tape on his leg needed to be removed the moment we got home, so by the time my SO came home, his right foot was like…three times the size of his other foot. I still feel like a terrible cat mommy that I did not notice that straight away. Today, his foot is back to normal, his behavior is as normal as we can ever claim that he is, and we can breathe easier.

Game of Thrones

I am currently in the process of catching up on Game of Thrones. Remember, the show I recapped for like the first three episodes? I don’t know, I kinda stopped watching halfway through season 1, and still don’t know why. I gobbled up the rest now and am almost caught up completely. It’s a great show that really brings the books to life, but I am not 100% sold on the changes they did. What’s up with Robb’s storyline? I guess they really wanted to make him seem like this noble, fantastic King in the North, with the beautiful wife and a lovestory to match it. Also, in season 3 it really struck me that I doubt they can pull this off with their younger actors. Go back watch season 2 Bran, and then turn in again for season 3. He’s enormous now, and his voice has completely changed. Same with Arya growing up. By the time the show ends, they won’t be able to pass as kids anymore, at all.

Unsurprisingly, I am going with Brienne and Jaime being OTP. I really think Brienne’s actress is fantastic.

Am I the only one wondering what the success of the show is doing to GRRM? If I were him, I would really feel the unbearable pressure of having to knock out the rest of the story much faster than he’s been in previous years. Not that I am complaining, because I would rather continue reading than waiting years and years again.

What to play next?

This week of vacation I want to use the time to actually play something that’s not WoW. But what? The Witcher 2′s desktop icon is staring at me every day. I thought the prologue was tremendous when I played through it, but then when I reached the first town in the playthrough, my joy went poof. I don’t like the combat, and I do suck at it. I felt there were a multitude of quests, but not enough guidance where to go for them. Yup, that’s me, being ruined by mostly linear gameplay. Sorry, sandbox lovers, but I like following a thread through games. Running through the woods for ages without finding what I need for the quest makes me stop playing instead of being inspired to search some more. This is the prime reason I have never considered buying Skyrim.

I have a couple more games I could play. The Longest Journey started very nicely. I have both KotORs. Also, Deus Ex and a ton more. Hell, I never even finished Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood nor Arkham City. I just need something that totally grabs me, in the way L.A. Noire did.

Maybe by tomorrow I’ll be able to tell you that I managed to find something.