We’ve all had them, bad WoW days. I’m not talking about horrible PuGs or multiple wipes or guild drama. What I’m talking about is taboo to discuss in a game where so many players need/must-have bigger and better e-peen so as to proclaim to the world they are OP.
I’m talking about times when your brain or your hands just can’t cut the mustard. Yes, you’ve had them: days when your skill just wasn’t there. When your keyboard rebels against your every wish and the mouse has a mind of its own. Your brain acts like the Kungaloosh has had a real-life effect on you. You forget your spell order or your shot rotation. You can’t keep track of your pet’s attack status even though you know (and your friends tell you, of course) that you’re so not a huntard or a locktard. (See what I did there? I just made that up!) Or maybe for just a second you forget that you can slow down or push back attackers during a frenzied fight — long enough to die embarrassingly. Then there’s that lonnnnnnng drop off Thunder Bluff, am I right? (I’m not sure what the Alliance equivalent is. Maybe Allies are lucky that way.) You know you’ve done it; we all have. You get that ice-cold lurch in your stomach as you flail through the air on the way down and you say — either out loud or in your head, but you know you say it — “This is not going to end well.” And, of course, it doesn’t.
I had one of those days in WoW today. I felt like I was playing with mittens and fuzzy goggles on. Either I knew which keys to press and just flat-out missed them, or I got that brain-lock, deer-in-the-headlights feeling of not knowing what to do next. And then, of course, there was the standing and facing in the wrong direction part. Now that is embarrassing.
I don’t pretend to be a great player of this game and I never did. (I actually don’t want to be one of the “greats,” but that’s another post.) But normally I play a perfectly competent elemental shaman so it kind of demoralizes me when I have a day like today. It makes me want to either stay away from the game for several days or level an alt so it’s “okay” to fail. What do you do when you have a bad WoW day?
This is a strategic card game that involves color and number matching. It’s very colorful and the music is soothing. It’s the kind of game I could really use — something relaxing and pretty that doesn’t stress me out or use too much of my brain. Status: Need more demo play to see if it’s worth buying. If I did buy this game, I would also want to upgrade to Xbox Gold so I could play against folks on Xbox Live.
What a goofy, silly platformer! Clyde’s notes to himself are hilarious and the sheer absurdity of the game is good fun. I like the gimmick of being able to clone Clyde to do some stunts that you can’t do with the current Clyde. (Kinda like Batman’s different suits in LEGO Batman.) Just silly enough to make me laugh but not too silly that I get lost trying to figure out the gameplay. Its playfulness reminds me of Toe Jam & Earl, back in the day. Status: Still playing the demo with an eye toward buying it.
At first I loved the visual style of this puzzle/platformer, but after only a few levels, I started to get frustrated by the puzzle-building and jumping mechanics. Status: Did not purchase. Might fiddle around some more with demo but I don’t really see myself purchasing this game.
If you’re curious about when I play these games, join me at Raptr or follow me on Twitter.
Shamans were given a free (forced?) respec today as part of the changes in Patch 3.0.8. My previous build was Elemental with some smatterings in the Resto tree so that I could be more efficient at off-healing. Turns out my guild is full of brilliant healers and other DPS hybrids who have more healy power than me, so I decided to ditch the pseudo-resto posing and just try to max out my DPS.
I liked what I saw in the first few levels of the Enhancement tree so I specced 14 points there instead of Resto. Respeccing plus the good things this patch brings for Elemental Shaman left me with some hefty improvement on my spellpower numbers, especially crits. Prior to the patch I’d been averaging 4500 on Lava Burst crits, but now I’m averaging close to 6000, with 6500 not that unusual. Wowser!
Sorry for not being able to link a live build. Seems that neither Blizzard’s nor Wowhead’s talent calculators have been updated yet so I had to take a screenshot.
My haste is now off the charts, too. I don’t even really need to wait for Lava Burst to cool down before using it (although I usually do to get some more damage out of Flame Shock).
When I used Elemental Mastery today, I noticed that it had changed. It stays up longer now, almost as if the buff is only timed now and doesn’t count how many spells you cast during the time (before you could only get the effect on 2 spells). I still see a counter on the buff but I don’t see the buff go away before the timer is up. I wonder if this is a bug or the new way the spell works now. Anyone see it in the patch notes? I missed it, apparently.
Since moving the blog, I’ve had to start over reaching readers and my traffic is very low at the moment. However, I am impressed by all the different countries and languages who have come by to visit. In honor of you, the Game Dame readers, as well as a salute to the global appeal of video games, I offer the following messages to my international friends…
Välkomnande och tack själv! Min groda är en hatt.
Willkommen und danken Ihnen! Mein Frosch ist ein Hut.
La bienvenue et vous remercient ! Ma grenouille est un chapeau.
Velkommen og takk skal du ha! Meg frog er en hat.
Welkomstgroet en merci! Mijn vors zit te hoed.
Please forgive and feel free to correct my non-English spelling/grammar above.
Eep! Raptr let it slip that I’ve been cheating on WoW by always Tweeting the Xbox360 games I’ve been playing.
If you don’t follow me on Twitter then all this might sound even crazier than the normal gibberish you get on this blog. But if you do follow me (and you’re welcome to do so), Raptr will send little updates throughout the day on the games I happen to be playing. (My gamertags, etc. can be found on Raptr if you want to follow along.) Not just that, of course. You also get (now what would you pay!) all the other boring tweet-prattlings that I can fit in 140 characters or less if you subscribe to my Twitter feed. You’ve been warned!
Okay, anyway, since Christmas, I’ve been having a blast playing a plethora of new games, each of which Raptr dutifully reports on Twitter. (But despite trying all these new games, I’ll have you know I still managed to get Slig to 80 and Solareclipse to 70. Pah!) What follows is by no means a formal review of these games, but rather just my first impressions.
The sparkly goodness of jewely matching games + light role-play. You can cast spells to get rid of jewels on the board. The storyline is pretty cheesy and somewhat hard to follow, but choosing puzzles based on a map and foes with different spells from yours is a pretty cool enhancement to a puzzle game. Status: Purchased. Level 14 Knight character.
I actually gave this gift to my husband for Christmas. He really enjoyed the LEGO Star Wars games. For some reason I am enjoying Batman a whole lot more than Star Wars. Maybe it’s because the storylines are new to me, there are a ton of different powers you can try out with the suits, or that you get to play the villains. I suspect it’s all three! Status: Finished Mission 1 for Hero and am halfway through Mission 1 for Villain.
Hubby, in turn, gave me The Orange Box for Christmas. What a fun collection of games! I love the guide’s voiceover as she “helps” you through the Portal experiments and the cerebral nature of the game. This is a pure first-person game but for some reason it doesn’t induce my simulator sickness. Status: Level 11.
Wow! What an immediately immersive game! I never played any of the Half-Life games but throwing your character into his predicament with no backstory, leaving you the player to not only survive but figure out what’s going on made the game feel incredibly realistic to me. (Obviously, Bioshock owes a lot to this game.) I experienced a wide range of emotions, particularly in the beginning of the game. There are only two down sides for me. One, I like games that at least give you an option to solve problems through stealth rather than adrenaline-fueled shoot-outs. Two, I can’t play the game for more than about 30 minutes at a time because I get sim-sickness. Status: I’m only in Route Kanal because of the short play periods.
Tomorrow, I’ll continue availing you of my non-WoW game adventures with Lost Cities, Cloning Clyde, and Braid…
Well, since I brought up the awkward subject yesterday, I figured we should just get it out in the open. Go ahead, it’s okay, really. Tell me what do you think of the Sentry Totem? Explain in the comments why you answered the way you did. After a few people respond, I’ll let you know my own thoughts.
It’s a scoop! Coming in patch 3.0.8, rumor has it that shamans will finally be rid of the useless Sentry Totem. Instead, we’ll get a Totem of Fishing! It adds +300 to your fishing skill, so you can pretty much fish wherever you want to now. It also pulses to draw fish toward it so your frequency of catching fish improves.
Fishing ganks got you down on a PvP server? Well, drop this puppy and anyone who comes within a 10-yard radius gets hit with a drowning debuff that gives them 3 seconds of air before they die — just like they were underwater! (Don’t forget to protect it with a Stoneclaw Totem.)
Like all shaman totems, it buffs your entire party. So why not create a fishing raid! You and 49 of your closest friends can boogie on down to Stranglethorn Vale and fish to your heart’s content.
I also heard that in this upcoming patch Blizzard intends to release a new extremely rare mob off the coast of Burning Steppes, called Doby-Mick. If you catch it, there’s a 0.01% chance that it will drop an epic Tabard of Haba Shmaeli, a fishing tabard that makes you look like you have an ivory pegleg and grants rep with the Nazjatar in heroic dungeons.
I finally got my own domain with self-hosted Wordpress! The hugest, most ginormous thanks goes to Matticus for hosting my domain and getting me a great discount. This is the second amazing favor he’s done for me (networking for my Azeroth Advisor job is the other one) so hopefully once he graduates I’ll be able to pay him back on these wonderful good deeds of his.
Please update your feed reader if you use one, but also take the time to check out the new look for the site! It’s pretty fresh and full of awesome, methinks. (Proud mamas are so annoying, aren’t they?
Even more annoying, here’s a tease about tomorrow’s post: discovered in the upcoming patch notes — the new Totem of Fishing!
So my current headset, which came bundled with my computer, stinks. It’s not the sound or anything, it’s the comfort. Because the thing hangs off my ears instead of wrapping over the top of my head, my ears hurt after about 15 minutes. The headband is too short to put on top of your head even if you wanted to wear it “incorrectly.” Trust me, I hate this thing.
Anyone have suggestions for a nice comfortable headset/mic combo that they use while playing WoW?
Here are some amusing easter-egg type things I’ve found in WoW if you read some of the books lying around on tables and floors. Click for larger images.
This is the last page of a guide to being undead which can be found in Ebon Hold, meant to explain their current situation to new Death Knights. I have to say, it offers some sage advice.
This next book is somewhere in The Scarlet Enclave in the Death Knight starting area of the Western Plaguelands. It’s an attempt by the Scarlet Enclave to keep tabs on the status of all Death Knights. On the last page of the book you’ll find your character’s name at the top. Hilarious! Since my character was a Tauren, I wonder if that “comments” section is different for each race. See if you can find the book and tell me if you comments were different than mine.
And lastly, because I’m doing some cleaning-off of my hard drive, I found this delightful picture of Slig wearing Whitemane’s Chapeau from days gone by.
Lost Cities
Cloning Clyde
Braid
Puzzle Quest
LEGO Batman
Portal
It’s a scoop! Coming in 
