A Late Spring Cleaning

Well, I'm taking a hiatus from WoW. The housework and my other creative works have suffered long enough. I've been WoW free for over two weeks now- and heck if I didn't mop the kitchen floor two days ago. I won't mention when the last time that occured was. I can almost see the laundry room shelves again now that they aren't crammed with finished laundry. Yes, this means I'm using the closet now for more than storing my old art. Utterly shocking.

So, the technical issues aside, the XBOX is functional on my hubby's PC. Aside from having to adjust the volume each time the TV function is turned on, works fabulous. Rented Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Bloodrayne 2 a couple weeks ago.

I loved Bloodrayne a couple years ago. I see where things are a lot more fleshed out as far as graphics are concerned now with 2, but I think Majesco kinda goofed up. Rayne went from dhamiress to simply vamp trash. Please people, I can forgive seeing polys fight and flicker with the sometimes buggy in-game cloth, but what gives to making Rayne look like she belongs on a street corner? The addition of a side-kick is amiss too and a poor story crutch.
I found a lack of plot for the most part, frustrating "puzzles", button-mash fests, and full of time sinks. At times the game was too easy as a result of aspects and auras that went beyond the original. At least the original I didn't have to pull up a game guide to figure out how to get past the many ill-thoughtful encounters.
All in all, I don't see how anyone finished this game in a resonable amount of time without cheats. The design is flawed. I enjoyed a couple of things, but I absolutely hated the Carpathian Dragons. Most of the game they had little to no use. No skill needed here people, just normal teenage zeal. The only reason to pick this up is if you want to see Rayne do a couple new decapitations. Learning new 'combat' moves is there only to imply charater progression.

Rental Only, Kiddies.

Hubby on the other hand, hogged KotOR2. We haven't until recently even seen the first one (we purchased after he completed KotOR2 if that's any indication to how much he loved it) so this was a gamble. He stayed up until eight a.m. some mornings playing. I haven't seen him play like this since we first bought Neverwinter Nights. He loves his character, the supporting characters, being able to break things down to make medpacks, making lightsabers... After we returned the rental, he saw reviews saying KotOR 2 was pale in comparison to the original.

Misfortune to us, KotOR 1 apparently has fewer ways to play the character, a clumsier inventory system, and other such non-finesed features that plague first release titles. I don't doubt that he would have enjoyed it better to have played them in order, that way it would have looked like an improvement as opposed to obviously backward. He hasn't played in a couple of days.

KotOR 2 = wait til the price drops and snap this puppy home!

I saw the E3 release of the Dead or Alive 4 trailer... utterly jaw dropping. CLOTH!! PARTICLES!! PHYSICS!!
You can tell they used motion capture too.
I want an XBOX 360. and a tuner card for myself so we don't have to fight over playing it or the XBOX. I still love my Soul Calibur 2.
*cries* Square is crazy.

Kameo look pretty interesting too despite some of the chibi-ish game art.

WTH I Don't I Know

Not sure what's in store here, my game card will run out soon. June I think. Who knows- now that we have the HDTV card in my husband's computer, we're playing on our XBOX again. Rented a couple of games last night. Provided he can resurrect his computer from the 12 gaming blitz that occurred last night, maybe this will simply be a gaming section rather than just WoW.

We (hubby & me) talked about it. He's a little fed up at the increasingly EQ-like tendencies that Blizzard is starting to have. Catering to the raiding guilds mainly, as well as the poor implementation to the Alterac Valley battleground and the Honor System effect on the PvP populace. Me, he realizes that I havne't played the hours he has and that I'm still happy with the game since I'm not railing against the endgame time. I want to hit 60, but what's the point when its going to be taking away from my time with him and money we can spend on things to do together?

It just sucks a little, I hate getting to look forward to something as if it is set in stone only to have it taken away from me. Yeah, yeah, that's life, cope, deal with it, blah blah. I've got what I think of coping in my left pocket. And probably the sentiment means about as much as the lint in said pocket. Just so long as I know that, right?

Botheration. Not as if I don't have plenty of other things I can do with my time. I may moan and groan about stuff, but in the end, you have to keep it all real with the stuff that matters. All the rest is just stuff.

I'm still entitled to say when something sucks.

FIX YOUR ACT BLIZZARD!! I WAS HAVING FUN!

Finally- Progress!

This is probably the one area where I AM getting anywhere in my life. Jeez.

Well, I not only hit 53 this weekend, I plowed the road to 54 too. Probably am an 1/8th of the way through it. New equipment.

Head Arcane Cover
Legs Councilor's Pants of the Eagle
Gloves Arcane Gloves
Bracers Breezecloud Bracers

And I sold my Six Demon Bag... didn't do enough damage for me to warrant keeping up with the recharge timer to switch out with the Boot Flask. I love that thing.

In other news, switched guilds again. Hopefully everything gets strightened out with the membership, I don't really care for some of the characters that are with us. What can you do? It's not like I'm an officer.

Good news- we finished up Season 4 of CSI and until Season 5 comes out, nothing really to watch much other than movies we have missed. So my First Aid is capped, I need to run by Thereamore and get the heavy runecloth bandage recipe. Still haven't gotten tailoring capped since they messed up the trade windows.

I finished up the Blood Amber quest, and I have yet to use any of my salve. I'm a little angry. The one windblossom I saw had already been healed. I got berries of it though. I guess they give you items now instead of giving you a clickable buff. Oh well, at least I have been skinning the dumb animals all along, so I have 16 salve waiting for whenever I find these plants.

I also finished Find Ranshalla when I was 53. The last escort, Gaurdians of the Altar... whew. Do that one with a friend or when you can hit things that are possibly 59. Durn Wildkin. Starts out with Ambersky in Teldrassil with this quest - Favored of Elune?

I want a sprite darter.

In irritation, they have messed up one of the quests I'm on.
Annals of Darrowshire
I can't find the stinking books, aparently they are bugged according to posts.

Almost done with this quest line too.
Fragments of the Past
Pain in the butt too. Oh jeez, the next part needs enchanted thorium. BAH. And it looks like the reward I will be vendor trashing. yuck.

Other quests in log:

Retribution of the Light
A Final Blow
A Taste of Flame
Shizzle's Flyer
Roll the Bones
Muigin and Larion
Chasing A-Me 01
Defenders of Darrowshire
Target: Dalson's Tears
A Plague Upon Thee
Falling to Corruption
Timbermaw Ally
Are We There Yeti?
Enraged Wildkin
Beware of Pterrordax
A Matter of Time
All Along the Watchtowers

I've Got Your Goods

Didn't even bother trying to log on yesterday, but I had happy news. My husband went up in rank to just below knight, master sergent I think. So he's been happy getting his PvP on, and made a new hunter character to toodle around with. Yay for game happiness.
I know we'll log in tonight, the guild has a Molten Core raid scheduled to try and take on Magmadar. Again. GL guys. Attempt #5 to level into 53 tonight, as well as make that stupid mooncloth. I could have already made two by now- spilt milk anyone?

Not that far off from capping First Aid and Tailoring. Fishing is way off though, I have no idea which zones have fishing above journeyman or higher. :(
Skinning is capped, but that's all she wrote.

Gear List Currently

Head - Red Mageweave Headband
Neck - Gemshard Heart
Shoulders - Rotgrip Mantle
Back - Bonecaster's Cape of Intellect
Chest - Darkmist Wraps of the Eagle
Shirt - Lavender Mageweave Shirt
Wrists - Bloodband Bracers
Hands - Lunar Handwraps of the Eagle
Waist - Serenity Belt
Legs - Darkmist Pants of the Eagle
Feet - Highborne Footpads
Ring 1 - Woodseed Hoop
Ring 2 - Lavishly Jeweled Ring
Trinket 1 - Thunderbrew's Boot Flask or Six Demon Bag
Trinket 2 - Linken's Booomerang

Weapon - Glowing Brightwood Staff
Offhand - ----
Wand - Fizzle's Zippy Lighter

Treading Water

I didn't get far again last night. For various reasons, my husband is growing dissatisfied once again with WoW. Mentionable items include frustrations with the honor sytem implementation, lack of incentive (he's been lvl 60 for over 2 wks.), and personal grievances with other players in paricular.

Now, I play because I find it fun, but mainly as a fun thing to do with him in my spare time- which is limited to less than six hours five days of the week.

On the whole, we both miss each other's company and for days at a time we won't log on at all. Twice a month we go grocery shopping, and normally go to dinner and a movie once a month. Depending on what night we get our Netflix movies on, our fancy dictates if we watch them all night and part of the next or whatever. And most nights lately I've been the one cooking dinner- he's been cooking dinner for the past two or three months himself without much break from me. I normally get cleaning done in a couple hours on Saturday, and do laundry/dishes while soloing. So most weekends I get around 20-30 hrs of playtime. Or rather, free time to play, watch movies, read, go driving, etc.

This is why I'm only level 52 and he's been 60 for a while. He averages about 60 hours a week of waiting for me to get home and spend time together. Most of this time was spent in-game, making it not very novel.

So we rented In Living Color last night for Blockbuster. Before that, I was going yet again to Burning Steppes, but ended up wandering around far south of that in Blasted Lands (btw-the incomplete and jumpy linked in-game maps SUCK). I really really hate how both zones resemble Searing Gorge. Argh.

So I hearth to Lagforge (Ironforge for those of you who don't log on in peak hours)to help husband with a rogue alt that he is disproving various grievious comments made in a group conversation earlier. That didn't work out too well since I was trying to cook at the same time so we wouldn't break our diet and get fast food. We'll leave it at that. That's about the time we decided we needed to rent something amusing to get our minds off all the b.s. lately.

I'm never going to be able to wear my Arcane Cover. *weeps*

Haven't I Been Here Before?

I didn't even make my mooncloth yesterday.
In fact, I was going to travel to Burning Steppes to do the turn in for Taste of Flame. The Black Dragon Molt that I had gotten for doing the Kalaran Windblade series was to go to a neutral dragonkin in that zone. I accidently went to Loch Modan about to enter Searing Gorge instead before my husband lovingly called me momo and turned me around.

Yesterday was the start of that Orphan's Week thingie... so in Stormwind I picked up my Orphan Whistle. Since I was there.

That was as far as I got. We stopped and watched movies til I had to go to bed.
But at least my quest log is full up again.

And no I'm not 53 yet.

%$#*