Godless Gamer Girl

Just take a look, it's in a book!

2010-02-26T12:04:00.000-08:00

It is sad to see all the effort that the developers put into writing epic stories and questlines being ignored by players who are in such a rush to hit level cap. I am one of those people who is usually obsessive about reading each of my quests, and yet even I sometimes succumb to the "click and follow the arrows" easy mode questing when I am in a hurry to level.

I sometimes quest with my husband, who is notoriously bad at reading anything in a quest log. I can't count the number of times I've been leading him around doing quests, and then hear him say,

"This guy won't talk to me".

And then I ask "Well did you pick up the quest item on the table after we talked to the last NPC?"

"What quest item?"

"The quest item that the NPC said to pick up on the table right next to him. We were standing RIGHT THERE."

(insert vague excuse for why he didn't read the quest log here)

(insert my annoyed sigh of exasperation here)

(insert wasted time traveling back to first NPC to redo the shit he forgot to do)

Last night, we were running around doing some quests on Kerra Isle. One of those stupid "run back and forth between three different NPCs to deliver news" quests. We deliver some news to the Chief of the Isle. Then we run about 50 yards over to deliver some news to Queen Martah. Then she sends us to deliver more news back to the Chief. Hubby for some reason decides to read the quest log for probably the first time that evening and says "Where the heck is the Chief"?

Actually I don't think he said "heck". Probably something more colorful.

On the plus side, even though he doesn't read quests, he can kill the crap out of stuff really good so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Game migration

2010-02-18T14:40:00.000-08:00

It's happened again. Without fail, every time I achieve something major in the game I'm playing whether it be hitting level cap in LoTRo, EQ2, or getting my very first flying mount in Burning Crusade, my husband decides to switch games on me. I should have known that once I got my violet proto-drake our days in Azeroth were numbered. I worked for over a year to get that damn mount and now it won't even get ridden until Cataclysm comes out. Such a waste. Also going to waste - the 350,000g I've amassed that will rot on my WoW toons while I'm running around in Norrath in the Sundered Frontier.

Oh well, it will be there when we come back to WoW. Which we will.

Although EQ2 is a really fun game with a lot of things that WoW doesn't have (most importantly, detailed guild controls, guild housing and player housing), it lacks an intangible something.

In which I whine about goldsellers...

2010-02-04T15:54:00.000-08:00

Over the past several months, the goldseller activity on my server (and other servers too, if reports on JMTC forums are accurate) has flourished, in particular on the auction house. There is a series of level 1 mules selling popular crafted items. The level 1 mules change their names every 5-7 days, but their goods are clearly being acquired from established level 80 accounts.

Here is a partial list of what they regularly sell:

Enchanting scrolls (including rare ones like mongoose, crusader, agility to weapon and 2H weapon, etc)
Epic leg armors
Epic crusader orb crafted items
Popular meta gems
Cut epic gems
Scribe-crafted off-hands
Snowfall ink
Vellums

The gold sellers are typically online 12-16 hours per day and undercut within minutes of anything you post. Although I have not personally witnessed it, I have talked to another player who has seen them making trades with a level 80 death knight from a guild called CDR.

In addition to the auction house activity, they also spam trade constantly, looking to buy primordial saronite, uncut epic gems and other items purchasable with badges. I whispered a goldseller asking the price, and although it was considerably lower than the going AH rate, it was high enough to tempt someone who is too lazy to do dailies. 1900 for primordial saronite, which normally goes for 2300. 150 for cardinal rubies, which normally goes for 180, etc.

The frustrating thing is whenever they spam trade, I always say in trade "Please report spam Tjfkk. He's a goldseller" and for some reason, instead of being annoyed at the spamming gold seller, I get people flaming me instead. I usually get a "Cool story, brah", a "WTF does report spam do to them", and a "I'm not listening to someone named Vahjj".

Yea, my auction mule is named Vahjj. So sue me.

Axecop!

2010-01-29T19:05:00.000-08:00

Although this isn't really related to gaming or godlessness, this web comic impressed me so much I just have to share.

AXECOP IS FREAKING AWESOME

Created and written by a 5 year old boy, and illustrated by his 29 year old (and quite talented) older brother, this comic is the most original, funniest thing I have seen in quite some time. Reading about the adventures of Axecop and his sidekick Flute Cop (aka Dinosaur Soldier aka Avocado Soldier) takes me back to the days when I was younger and before video games killed my imagination.

Am I selling this at a loss?

2010-01-28T08:45:00.000-08:00

If you run a small time auction operation, then you probably store all sorts of information in your head about the prices of mats versus crafted items, break even prices, etc. When business starts expanding, it gets harder to keep all that information straight in your head. Not to mention keeping track of price fluctuations every time there is a patch or other change in the economy.

One of the things I use to prevent selling at a loss is a spreadsheet that calculates costs for items that I commonly craft. I input the going rate of raw mats and it calculates the total cost, and the AH price needed to break even assuming a 5% auction house fee.

Note: I always input the going rate for mats, even though some of the items are things that you might choose to farm or spend badges on. Some people think of those materials as being "free" but they really aren't! You invested your time to get those items, and you could sell those items individually without the risk of tying them up in a crafted product (which often has higher deposit fees).

Take a look. This is a very bare bones version, but you can customize it to fit your preferred craft and use it to make sure you never post for a loss again. The price data that is currently displayed is what things go for on my server, horde side, but YMMV.

AH spreadsheet

One million gold!

2010-01-27T16:25:00.000-08:00

This past year I've been spending more and more time playing the Auction House. My major AH activity began when the inscriptions patch hit. I had been stockpiling herbs for months and I was one of the first people to post glyphs the day of the patch. I made several thousand gold that night alone. It was so easy and addictive, I started refining my glyph making processes, learned how to use auctioneer and batch post, and started making tons of gold.

While on maternity leave last year, (after a short pregnancy-related WoW hiatus) I set a goal of hitting 100,000 gold. It was surprisingly easy to do, especially since I didn't have to work and I was on a low pop server without very much competition. When I finally hit six figures, I splurged on a Kirin Tor ring, Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, and motorcycle. A few months later I hit gold cap. I'm working towards 1 million gold now.

When you have this much gold, it changes the way you play. I used to go farming for stuff when I needed it, but it is a far more effective use of my time to buy the items I need and spend the time working the AH instead. Now I am back to working full time and have a baby to take care of so I have much less time to play around on the AH, but it is still more cost effective for me to let others do the farming and stick with what I do best, which is buying low and selling normal (Thanks Markco at JMTC).

I've had some major setbacks in reaching my 1 million goal. Crafting 4 pieces of primordial saronite gear for my mage and priest cost about 50,000g, and then I loaned a bunch of gold to my hubby for his primordial saronite pieces. In addition, there are a large number of level 1 gold-sellers that flood the market with cheap goods, usually farmed via teleport hacks or account hacks. They delete their level 1's and start new ones every 5-7 days or so to avoid detection by Blizzard. I enjoy fierce competition as long as they are legitimate players, but it is becoming a lot harder to make a profit when I have to compete against gold sellers who are online 24/7 and are cheating or stealing to acquire their goods.

Lay down that frost

2010-01-25T06:35:00.000-08:00

Our guild was attempting 25 man Deathbringer Saurfang for the first time the other night. After a couple wipes a guildie (who shall remain unnamed) attempted to give the raid some instruction on how to handle the blood beasts.

I was told to "lay down frost" and "slow the mobs".

...I'm an arcane mage. (And no, they were not getting me confused with a hunter.)

So I think I was being directed to either frost nova the mobs in place (which I cannot cast at range as an arcane). Or maybe they meant for me to slow the mobs with blizzard (but an arcane mage doesn't have improved blizzard so that would be impossible.)

At any rate we downed DBS last night and I didn't have to "lay down" my frost to do it. Woot.

Play 20 questions with creepy computer

2010-01-24T20:20:00.000-08:00

Ever play 20 questions? Well get ready to lose. Check it out:

http://us.akinator.com/#

I guarantee this AI will creep you out. I even tried answering questions randomly and it guessed "PERSON WHO ANSWERED RANDOMLY".

You could pull some funny shenanigans with this thing. Call up your mom and tell her you hit your head when you slipped and fell in the bathtub the other day, and now you are constantly hearing voices that tell you what people are thinking. Then prove it to her by playing 20 questions. Hilarity will ensue.

If Jesus played WoW

2010-01-23T17:39:00.000-08:00

There is a raging debate as to what class Jesus plays.

He might be a mage since he can conjure bread (and fish feasts too).

He might be a druid since he can cast insect swarm and make locusts attack his enemies. Actually that's not true. His dad can cast it but I don't think Jesus ever trained that spell.

He might be a priest since he's got a powerful guardian spirit to watch over you when things get rough. Well, some people call it a holy spirit. To-may-to, to-mah-to..

He might be a shaman because he's got self rez. Although he must be playing on a really laggy connection because it takes him three days to cast it.

Or he might just be a fail paladin who mis-clicked DI.

Pregnancy and WoW

2010-01-22T09:43:00.000-08:00

I got pregnant in November 2008, the night before WotLK came out. (Must have been server downtime or something) It was my first pregnancy, and I didn't really know what to expect. I was hoping the morning sickness wouldn't be that bad. Imagine my surprise when I discovered my morning sickness was linked not with the morning, but with playing a certain video game. Yes, that's right. I had WoW sickness.

All of a sudden I found myself unable to play WoW without becoming violently nauseous. This lasted for the first trimester of my pregnancy. It was the weirdest psychosomatic illness ever. If I played WoW I got sick. If I heard WoW music, I got sick. If I watched my husband play I got sick. And I know this sounds crazy, but if I even THOUGHT about WoW, I got sick. Oddly enough, the effect was much more pronounced with WotLK content than old world or BC content. I could think about running Deadmines without too much nausea but if I thought about farming Sons of Hodir faction it would turn my stomach. (yea I know, it has that effect on everyone, right?)

Being extremely addicted to WoW, with a new expansion having just been released, I cannot begin to tell you how much it sucked having WoW-sickness. I managed to hit level cap on my DK and raid a bit of Naxx before the illness made me completely unable to play, but my poor mage, priest, pally, and hunter were stuck at level 70.

I could play any other video game without problems. I started playing Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption, an old single player RPG that some of you may remember. My husband was still raiding several nights a week and I had to avoid watching him. I also made him turn all the in game music off. The music in Grizzly Hills and Dalaran were the worst. If I heard even a few notes of the background music in those zones, I would be instantly ready to regurgitate my lunch.

Then, gradually, as the first trimester passed, I found myself able to tolerate thinking about WoW and watching my husband play a little bit more. I was back to playing around March or April. There were still certain things in game that would cause me to get ill, but for the most part I was able to function.

But, to this day, whenever I hear Dalaran music my stomach still twists. I guess the brain does funny things when you have a baby spawning inside you.

Waiting for the WoW killer

2010-01-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

After quite a bit of game hopping this past year, I have decided to just play World of Warcraft with the occasional sprinkling of single player games like Dragon Age: Origins and Zuma. Yes, I know, how boring, how utterly MAINSTREAM. I should be playing some obscure Asian MMO that is so much better than WoW and is free to play, right? Who cares if it only has 2000 subscribers and the game client crashes every time you open your inventory? It's still better than WoW, right?

Something I've learned from playing many different MMOs is that WoW evokes some very visceral responses from people in general chat. Play any other game, be it EQ2, Conan, Aion, Vanguard, Lotro, or Hello Kitty Online, and if you dare to so much as mention WoW in chat, you will be instantly assaulted with enough anti-WoW venom to kill a whole cave-full of ogres and poison all their little piles of poo too. Everyone likes to hate on WoW, but the truth is almost every MMO gamer has played it, and almost everyone I've know who has stopped playing it has come back after cheating on it with some other floozy MMO.

Every time I play another MMO, I find myself comparing it (usually unfavorably) to WoW. It is hard for a brand new game to be able to compete with a game that has had so much money poured into it to make it as polished and widely appealing as possible. Whether it be a clumsy user interface, a cumbersome loot distribution system, broken crafting/harvesting, a barely functional auction house, unattractive or jerky combat animations, inconvenient fast travel options, or buggy gameplay, there is almost always something about a new MMO that makes me wish I was playing WoW. The new game might have a couple aspects that are better than WoW (usually player community, graphics, and game lore) but it usually isn't enough to balance out all the negatives.

I'm still waiting for the WoW killer.

Saga of Heroes (who have a really hard time looting corpses)

2008-06-19T10:49:00.000-07:00

I canceled my Age of Conan account and reopened my Vanguard account last week. I played Vanguard at release and it was pretty much unplayable due to all the bugs and instability. But 18 months has passed and the game has come a long way.

Tons of content and quests, so many places to explore, beautiful scenery and amazing music. The game still crashes occasionally, but it is fairly quick to log back in, unlike Age of Conan, where you had to sit through about 5 minutes of file scanning, loading, intro videos, more loading, and even more loading.

But one thing that boggles my mind is that they haven't fixed the buggy looting yet. I would think that loot is one of the most important things to fix in an MMO, and yet it is SO painfully annoying to manage group looting that I have been shying away from grouping with guildies and running solo instead. Fortunately, there are workarounds for most of the bugs now, but it is still annoying.

Here are some of the problems:

1. HOLD HANDS WITH YOUR GROUP LEADER

If a mob drops a rare and your group leader is out of range, you are unable to loot it and unable to start the roll until the group leader comes into range. The workaround for this is to ask the group leader to pass leadership to you, start the roll and then pass leadership back. But what if your group leader is AFK? Have you ever watched a gear upgrade despawn right in front of you, and been unable to do anything about it? Not fun.

2. HARVESTERS BEWARE

If a group member kills a mob while you are harvesting a node, you are either interrupted and have to start over again, or your harvesting ends early, resulting in a smaller yield. Also, if your harvesting node yields a rare and the group leader is out of range, see #1 above. Very annoying for harvesters. I harvested my first ultra-rare yesterday, and the group leader was out of range and I couldn't loot it. Fortunately, he was sitting right beside me IRL so he passed me leader and all was well. But not everyone has the luxury of having their very cute and sexy group leader sitting next to them.

3. TOO MUCH LOOT, NOT ENOUGH ROLLING

If two rares drop at the same time, you can only have one roll window up. So you have to wait for everyone to roll on the first item before you can start the roll on the second item. Not too bad right?

Wrong.

Here's why: Sometimes the roll window is buggy and doesn't appear. When this happens, the first roll never gets marked as complete, and no one in the party is able to start rolls on anything else.

Fortunately, there is a workaround for this: The group leader types /groupc, which manually ends the roll. However in a fast moving group where the leader isn't on Vent or isn't keeping a close eye on group chat, you can miss out on quite a bit of loot before the situation gets straightened out. And if the group leader walks out of range of the mob with loot, you then have issue #1 to deal with as well.

4.I'M NOT GREEDY, I'M NEEDY

Sometimes only the "Greed" button is available during the roll, even if the item is equippable by you and is an obvious upgrade. So if it is BOP, and you need it, you have no choice but to greed. If someone else doesn't need it, rolls greed and wins, you are screwed. No real workaround for this that I have figured out yet...

Taking all these looting issues into account, I am still having FAR more fun playing Vanguard than I had in Age of Conan. Age of Conan didn't really have too many looting issues - but that might be because 99% of the loot was crap and no one wanted it anyway. But that's a topic for another day...

Not ready to say goodbye

2008-06-17T14:34:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago I noticed that Nippers, my 15-year-old kitty, was coughing and looking a bit under the weather. The vet told me she needed some major dental work, and also gave me some antibiotics for her cough.

After the course of antibiotics, her cough disappeared, and so I scheduled her for her dental work. It went very smoothly, considering her age. She was back to her normal self within about a week, preferring to eat dry kibble even though she hardly had any teeth left!

I started bringing her to work with me where she quickly made friends and impressed everyone with her wonderfully calm and sweet personality.

Then suddenly, about two weeks ago, she lost all interest in food. I stopped taking her in to work, thinking maybe she was stressed, although she always seemed bright eyed and eager to go on new adventures. She started losing weight, hiding under the bed, which is VERY unlike her, and refused to eat even the most delectable tuna and treats that I offered her.

I brought her in for x-rays, and discovered that her chest was filling with fluid, a condition that has a very poor prognosis for a cat of her age. Her white blood cell count was elevated, which could indicate infection, but could also be cancer. Her heart also looked enlarged, indicating possible heart disease. The doctor prescribed antibiotics on the small chance it might be an infection, but I think she did it more to give me comfort and peace of mind than actually thinking it would help improve Nippers' condition.

At this point, all I can do is treat her symptoms, make her comfortable, and give her all my care and love. I hope that the meds make her feel better, but only time will tell. Nippers has been part of my family for most of my adult life, and losing her is something I cannot bear to think about.

I worry too, about Rarri. Nippers gave birth to Rarri on April 27, 1995, and he has been her loyal companion for the past 13 years. They sleep together, groom each other, and he gets nervous and unsettled when she is not around.

What will happen on the day when we have to take Nippers to the vet and say our final goodbyes? Will Rarri forever wonder why I carried Nippers out the door one day and she never came back? Will he always be looking for her, hoping she will come home so they can cuddle and lick each other's faces? I think that cats can understand death if they see it, but if Rarri isn't there during Nippers last moments, how will he ever know what happened?

Some might say that he is just a cat, he doesn't have emotions, he won't know the difference. But for those of you who have lost a pet, and had to comfort the survivor without being able to speak his or her language...I suspect you would not agree.

How I met Nippers

2008-06-17T14:21:00.000-07:00

I met Nippers on a chilly February evening in 1995. She was a scrawny stray kitty with dirty matted fur and huge ears that stuck out like big satellite dishes on her head. I put some food out for her and she wolfed it down in a few minutes. I'd never had any pets growing up, and I was a little disappointed that she showed little interest when I tried to pet her.

The following day she returned to my porch to eat the food I put out, but she was wary of coming inside and didn't care to be held or petted. After about a week of being rebuffed, I resigned myself to being a mere food provider for this cat, and decided to stop trying to make friends with her.

It was only then that she decided to adopt me.

That evening, instead of warily watching me from the porch as she ate, she walked right past the food dish into the living room. She thoroughly explored the apartment, laid down on the bed, and officially became a part of my family.

Guess who I met?

2008-06-17T12:02:00.000-07:00

I met Scott Adams, Dilbert cartoonist and best-selling author.

I work for a little dog and cat charity, and he graciously agreed to do a photo shoot with his 19-year-old cat, Sarah, for our 2009 celebrity pet calendar. Sarah likes to lick Scott's face like a "toothless, starving angel trying to lick a pork chop".

Stephanie Secrest and I showed up at Scott's office and greeted Sarah, an adorable black and white tuxedo kitty who loves Scott to death but is a bit shy around strangers.

Scott was very kind and warm-hearted. I think men who love cats are the best kind of men.

What I haven't mentioned up to this point is that I have been a huge Scott Adams fan for over ten years. I'm a DNRC subscriber, I have all his books, and I read his blog every day.

I was absolutely terrified about this photo shoot.

Not because he was a celebrity. I work for a celebrity, and have to deal with them occasionally as part of my job.

I was terrified because the last time I met a celebrity that I was a huge fan of, he turned out to be a total asshole. Of course, that guy was a musician. My guess is that rock star types are more likely to be assholes than engineer/writer/tech geek/cat loving types.

I was immensely relieved to discover that Scott Adams is a genuinely nice, down to earth, sweet guy who loves his cat. And, without reservation, his cat loves him too.

That pretty much says it all.

MMO's are like wine...and AoC isn't ready to drink yet.

2008-06-16T16:20:00.000-07:00

MMO's are like wine. Play them too early (i.e. at launch), and you end up with a foul taste in your mouth. It is so much better to give the MMO time to mature and ripen, to reach its full potential.

Sadly, a lot of us MMO fans are like winos. We don't care if it isn't ready. We want it, and we want it NOW. It's easy to get intoxicated with the rush of leveling a new character in a new game. Part of what draws gamers like me to an MMO is making consistent progress and improvements to your character. We all love the warm and fuzzy feeling we get when we hear the level up noise, learn a devastating new spell, or defeat a foe and rip the epic pants off its still warm corpse.

But what happens when the game you're playing consistently thwarts those warm and fuzzy feelings once you progress past your newbie levels? What happens when you search high and low for the ingredient needed to progress to the next level of crafting, only to discover that it hasn't been added to the game yet? What happens when you discover that many of your talents that you painstakingly allocated points to are hopelessly broken and you can find no communication from the developers on when to expect a fix? What happens when you fight for hours in a dungeon with 5 other people, defeat the final boss, only to discover that he drops yet another brown skirt...and you've been wearing a brown skirt for the past 60 levels? Or, even worse, he drops no skirt at all, because the developers haven't bothered to itemize the dungeon?

I'll tell you what happens. For a few days, or weeks if you are a patient sort of person, you desperately scan the forums, looking for a post from a dev that sheds some ray of hope on the abyssmal situation. You read the fanboi posts, the troll posts, the "Go back to WoW if you don't like it" posts, the "Funcom sucks" posts. And slowly, a great weariness overcomes you.

Playing the game becomes a chore, you feel as if you are going to work when you log in. The joy is gone. Even the camaraderie of your friends and guildies does little to lift the misery of playing an unfinished game.

And then you reopen your Vanguard account and live happily ever after. At least, that's what I'm hoping. I'll let you know how it turns out.

P.S. Nerfing Bear Shamans?!?! WTF Funcom, you suck.