On Gaming Video and Streaming

I've been trying to record videos during my play sessions.  It's a lot harder than those crazy kids on YouTube make it seem.  Talking to yourself for two hours while playing is pretty taxing.  I'm mostly trying to get enough content to do some editing and come up with something watchable.  One of those projects is pretty ambitious, I'm doing candy buckets without audio and my plan is to edit it down to just the pickup from all the innkeepers and put some funny music or something behind it. I got some footage of me doing silly things in the costumes they put on you too. But that requires me to do alllllll the buckets. I mean technically I don't have to, but that's my aim.  That also gets me enough candy for some prizes I don't have. I did Kalimdor last weekend, that netted me around 130 candies and took me around 2 hours, so I figure I have 4 more hours to go, and hopefully will snag 300 more candies to get this year's pet, the horse butt from last year, and something else.

The main thing I'm on the fence about is the camera broadcast.  That seems to be an integral part of what you see in gaming now, but I don't really have a good setup for it, and apparently I have a bad habit of touching my nose all the time. I'd have to think about what to wear, what's in the background, posture, messing with my cats and texting while on screen, things like that.  It's stage presence.  But it's not a bad skill to learn, so maybe I'll give it a shot.

Holy WoW it's been a long time

So I was going through some old emails having a good old reminisce about the past session and what the heck?  I 100% forgot this blog was a thing, and 1000% forgot how many posts I wrote on here.  I'm actually surprised Blogger still exists 8ish years later, most internet things I've participated in since then have gone goodbye in a lot shorter period of time.  That aside, since I'm playing again I guess I should go ahead and start posting again.  I know all the cool kids are streaming now, but the few videos I've recorded aren't very good.  Maybe using little snippets in a blog is more my speed.

It's too daunting to cover everything that's happened since my goodbye post back in 2011, so I'll give the timeline for now and draft up a few posts to cover the more interesting parts when I'm in the mood.  Even though I'm inspired to do this, I do want to have some actual game time tonight.

I had to look at my account history to get the dates right.  I apparently bought Pandaland and renewed my subscription in September 2012, then transferred Zully and Yokanolu from Alterac Mountains to Fenris in Feb 2013.  This would have been a move with what was left of the Eye for an Eye crew.  I don't remember if the guild itself moved or not.  I'm still in the "i4ni" Diablo III guild, and Conn's thing is streaming PUBG.  So it still exists, in a way. I do remember spending a lot of time out in the world then, I have full reps and a lot of mounts and achievements.

I must have stopped playing again around April 2013 when DIII came out.  I bought WoD in December between Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry.  I feel like I played WoD sporadically for a few months then unsubbed again, Blizz doesn't keep monthly fee tracking older than 2017 apparently, just other purchases.  So I'm going to say I played WoD for a little bit, got bored having no-one to play with, and didn't come back until well into Legion.  I really don't remember much from then, and Zully was my only max level character from that era.  So really, from Apr 2013 - Apr 2017 if I was subbed at all, I played very little.  But then, as these things go, my IRL friend was in a raiding guild with some of his other IRL friends so a few of us from our friend group joined up again.  Most of them quit again within about 6 weeks.  I've been playing steadily ever since.

I'll pick up in following posts with my escapades in Legion, stuff about that raiding guild that has come and gone, some wacky adventures with my Canadian friend, and how things are coming along in BfA.  I'm actually a little disappointed hindsight that I didn't think to start this blog up again while I was raiding last year.  I'm actually really happy I wrote down all the things I did, it's been fun reading it.

An Open Letter to my WoW Buddies and Other Interested Parties

I think it’s time for me to admit that I’m not interested in playing WoW anymore.  Things were a blast when I had time to raid and got to spend time with my guildies, but I just can’t do that anymore.  I haven’t raided (or even been on Vent) in months now.  I’ve enjoyed the questing in Cataclysm, Blizzard did a really great job being more immersive with their storytelling, but in a way the x-pack ruined the game for me.  There was something nice about being able to do 1-25 over a weekend just to blow off some stress.  I didn’t need a catastrophe in my fantasy world, there’s enough of that out there in RL.  It’s just not the same now.  Also, with not raiding, I see no point in grinding the dungeons to do heroics to do what?  Sit in Orgrimmar and listen to Alaw’s horrible rapping in trade chat?  No thanks.

And honestly, I really just want to play games by myself right now, or face to face with my IRL buddies.  And go outside and ride my bike.  And work on things in my community groups.  WoW served a specific purpose for me for a long time, and I just don’t need it anymore.  I might as well not pay Blizzard money I could use for something else I’d rather do.

It’s been a great five years.  I’m not deleting all my characters or anything drastic like that.  I probably won’t even uninstall it.  Heck, I'm leaving my Horde flag on my car window.  I am going to let my account expire, so don’t expect to see me around.  I want to play some Civ V, pick up Dragon Age 2, and work on that 45 mile bike ride.  Good luck in your defense against Deathwing everyone.  With guys like you out there he doesn’t stand a chance.

My account expires tomorrow.  So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Racial Diversity FTW

Why yes, I did roll an alt when the Cataclysm hit.  It wasn't one of the  new combos though.  I decided to re-roll my lvl 28 Orc hunter, and I'm actually really glad I did.  It all started in the Valley of Trials.

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31 Days till Cataclysm

I've been pretty successful over the last few weeks in getting myself set to go for Cataclysm.  Yamira is 80 and about 3/4 geared.  That was made possible by the roaring success of my glyph business after 4.0.1 hit.  I must have been making about 5k a day once I got my addons straightened out.  It has dialed back to about 5k per week, even with that bastard Woodwitch camping the AH all day long.  Now that I'm pushing 50k it just doesn't seem to matter anymore, and I've managed to find a sweet spot for the high end glyphs where they always sell at about 300% profit, though it's probably to glyph resellers.  I'm fine with that.

I actually ended up gearing Yamira for Feral.  Yes, I'm tanking now.  The main thing that made me feel OK about gearing for it was that, apparently, bear and cat gearing is the same, it's all in the gems and talents.  I've been enjoying cat form too, so if I ever decide tanking isn't for me it wasn't a complete waste.  Not that the gear will stick around very long after the cataclysm.  I've got the basic tanking down, it's not too hard as a bear, but I really need to get some keybindings done and my cooldown tracker set up again.  I'm considering trying PowerAuras for cooldowns, but I think I like TellMeWhen's persistence in the interface.

I wiped out all my addon settings when 4.0.1 went live.  I haven't reloaded anything that changes the look and feel of the interface, except Vuhdo.  I think I can permanently ditch a few of the really heavy duty add-ons like MSBT, and I'm not going to re-install Omen, Recount, or (gasp) Deadly Boss Mods unless I feel I really need to.  The boss cues blizzard gives us are so blatantly obvious now DBM seems redundant.  Then again, maybe I just know the boss fights so well at this point they don't matter.  I won't be raiding for a while, so it won't be as critical.

I'm finally getting excited about the new expansion.  I'm tired of Wrath.  I barely leave Dalaran anymore, except to do the event quests.  I'm very disappointed that I missed the Echo Isles chain with Zully.  I got about halfway through it and called away to do something, and it was removed before the expansion hit, before I realized it was going away so fast.  Well, whatcha gonna do.

Finally got my Classic Raider achievement, and did Zul'Aman.  I'm hoping for a Black Temple or SSC run sometime soon.  I'd really like to get my Glory of the Hero done as well, maybe the guildies will help me out with that this weekend.