Geometry is Fun

Besides the Savage demo that I played into the ground back when, Geometry Wars on xbox live is the demo I have spent the most time with in the past twenty six years of my life. It is addicting simplistic fun. It requires no time investment or story telling, it is as its sub name implies, retro evolved. I picked up Geometry Wars: Galaxies for my DS for my families trip to Pittsburgh to see the Steelers stink it up over the past weekend.

My six hours in the car with it were pure bliss. The challenges were hard, but not to the point of frustration and the satisfaction of passing the point mark was great. It only got better when we started passing the DS around the car to try and beat each others scores. Rather my score was unbreakable and everyone else competed for crumbs below me. In any case I even got my Mom to give it a go, she even beat my wife on both of their first attempts.

Thinking the pinnacle of Geometry Wars goodness had been reached on the car ride up, I was even more impressed when my cousin pulled out her DS the following day. My brother (Tazer) and I played a ton of coop and versus modes and I was completely sold on this simple little concept of a game. Smart, catchy and full of one and done fun. Too bad I don't commute on a subway or bus, I would get a lot more love from my DS and GW:G in general.

Expanding the Scope

This blog has ostensibly been my World of Warcraft journal for coming up on a year now. Occasionally I have dabbled into other games here, but I usually reserved that for my other blog. As of a week ago I shut down my other blog to focus my full attention to this one. As of a week ago I still planned to be playing WoW for the foreseeable future. Times change and people do too, get use to it kids.

So now what is a WoW blog to do without WoW? Write about other gaming I guess. I have a slew of 360 and Wii titles to catch up on, an arcade machine to build and a new computer to finance and construct. I got Crysis for Christmas and installed it only to have it try and end my computers life. The demo ran fine for the most part so to have the retail copy kick the crap out of my PC was a surprise. Time for some speed this March!

I picked up Ritual of the Molemen by well the Molemen. I am six years behind on this album and really enjoying it (the album not the time lapse). I also picked up Rob Sonics old album as I was introduced to the new one first. It is good, but kind of hard to enjoy in the face of his new album which I love.

Keep It In Your Pants

My World of Warcraft account has been well feed, drained of all waste and put back into hibernation. As of yesterday I am WoW free again. I'd wager a guess and say that this hiatus will last as long as it takes Activision Blizzard to release WOTLK.

About my leaving I will put it as simply as this...

It is really disappointing that Blizzard continues to focus on content (Patch 2.4) that only a very very small percentage of it's player base will ever see. There will be no new arena venues or battlegrounds until the next expansion and that frustrates me to no end.

To move on, Juno was a fantastic film, my favorite for the year by far. I bought the soundtrack last night and I never buy soundtracks. I Am Legend was a supreme disappointment after the first half of the film which was really good. Now that I don't have a WoW account I picked up netflix again, yeah tons of anime to watch!

Arcade Project
I got my IPAC in the mail the day before Christmas and well it looks cool, but it will really shine once it actually serves its function. I picked up a pack of crimp on connectors for the wiring which thankfully will allow for a solder free project.

Site Watch
The Totally Rad Show (2nd only to Diggnation) just launched the 2.0 version of their website.

Sharpen the Blade

Like a fine blade waiting to dice up a Christmas goose my game needs to be sharpened first. I have grown leaps and bounds ahead of what it was, I was a joke pre-BC and then pre-WE. I still need to be fine tuned though. The shape is there, but until you chisel down to the details you really can't appreciate it.

I came to this realization last Thursday, when our 3s team went 3-7 and dropped to a scrubtastic 1615 rating. If I can't carry my own weight and event the weight of others at times I will never achieve greatness. I should define greatness first I guess. Greatness for me is 2k plus. If I rock a 2k this season I will buy a miniature of my character for all to see.

So now there is a goal, but no path to said goal. My initial intention is to start dueling, any and everyone outside of Orgrimmar. This was something I shied away from in the past, but it is the only way I will start to learn other classes abilities and how to counter them. The only foreseeable problem is the lack of players and there for lack of duelers outside of Orgrimmar. I will either try and drum up some competition on Nazjatar or jump over to the PTR with the big boys.

Arcade Project
I started a SNES arcade box or rather bought the materials for such a box forever ago. In the past few weeks I decided a mini Mame cabinet on wheels would be a lot more fun. So for Christmas I just ordered an IPAC from Ultimarc that will hopefully arrive soon enough that my time off will be productive. Pictures incoming hopefully!

The Dual Box Duelist

WTF How does this happen?

The title is catchy, but it really should have been "The Quad Box Duelist". This is by far the craziest thing I have read in a long time. I can't image playing 5v5 with two players and five characters. How does one even coordinate that many task at such a high level of play? My hats off to the dude that did it and ouch for the teams that he defeated. I figured you could LOS the hell out of a team like that or at least burst down one of the mindless drones, but I guess I have no clue what it is like.

I always imagined dual boxers excelling in a raid environment. All of the challenges are code controlled and broken up by moments to plan and get your head straight. It is you against the developers in what are essentially coordinated puzzles. PvP is a different beast though. It is man vs man in a game knowledge, twitch reaction, skill based test. How one man outwits five other human controlled players is beyond me. I want him on my team though. I wonder if he needs a mediocre frost mage?

P.S.
I got new kicks!

The Prodigal Son Returns

Majarg is back! Our 3v3 team from last season has reformed and is in fine form. We went 5-1 last night and stopped to do our BG dailies. Hopefully we can pick back up tonight and push the rating a lot harder. Even though our only loss last night came at my hands, I think I have become a much more rounded player than I was last season. Coupled with all my new spell damage (100+) I am hoping that we can really push past 2k and play with the big boys. The rock, paper, scissors nature of the game may be the only thing to hold us back though.

My main hand is in sight...now I just need to take it!

Apparently the influx of new players from a bunch of over populated realms has the leaders of FBD in a tizzy. They reformed the guild and put up recruitment threads for raiding. I must admit that I am out of the loop and missing the "Soft N Pink" tag. I also came to the conclusion that it doesn't really matter what guild I am in though when I'm just pvping. So maybe we'll start up the penfifteen club this week and wait to be reported.

Project Beesta
Nothing special with my druid leveling project, I jogged over to Ghostlands after reading this. Apparently the barrens suck and now everyone knows it. I should have my boots and wand this week allowing me to focus more time on Beesta.

RMP & RMD FTW

I guess the title of this entry could have been RMP > RMS. Considering you have to win two games for every lose to advance in rating and half the teams we played were rogue, mage, priest and the occasional rogue, mage, druid, we had a tough go last night. We started with a win and then traded the rest of the night to end at +1, with a record of 7-6 and a 1615 rating (up from 1603).

All hope is not lost though, rogue, mage, shaman is great against 3DPS teams and a ton of other combos. However with Majarg out of the hospital with a clean bill of health, we will most likely be running warlock, mage, elemental shaman again. It might be tough to go 3DPS ourselves considering how many rogue, mage, healer teams there are this season. Only time will tell though, hopefully we can sharpen our rush down strategy to a fine point and get to 1850 with in 2-3 weeks as I had planned.

Project Beesta
I realized two nights ago that after this week and only 11k more honor I will be done with s3 honor gear. What is a non-raiding, pvp mage to do then? Roll a druid of course! With the prevalence of druid & X teams this season (where X = lock or warrior) I figured it was time to toss my hat in for a second pvp character. I'll see how this goes as I have 4-5 characters all at level 7 and had hoped to level them all to 70 at one point in time.

Site Watch
Check out ArenaJunkies.com if you get a chance. I first discovered the site when I was trying to figure out my season 2 title. I thought I might get duelist, I was wrong, rival FTW! It is much more than a title calculator though. They have the best pvp forums I have seen and one of the coolest features I had never heard of. Ask a Gladiator is a forum where any scrubby arena player (yours truly) can ask a question, but only gladiators from the previous season can answer. Very cool.

New Feature
You may have noticed the item descriptions on hover for some of the gear I have been linking lately. WoWHead went live with a script that allows for this feature to work. It is only 4-5 lines of code in the base of the this blogs html. Pretty cool...

Ex: Warglaive of Azzinoth

P.S. I fought a rogue with both of the above mentioned legendary swords in an EOTS and I wasn't impressed. Oh they looked cool alright, but I expected her (night elf female) to hit like a truck. Ebay maybe?

Three Boss Minimum

During my hiatus from this bee log we (FBD) did go to Zul'Aman the day it was released. It was the most fun I have ever had raiding. Everyone was giving there full attention and effort into the trash and boss fights. I could trust the healers, tanks and dps to all their jobs and use consumables without having to go behind them and double check. It was like pre-BC raiding back on Mal'Ganis again.

We ended up downing three bosses and going back for more attempts on a fourth boss the next day. The drops weren't to great, although the badges were nice, but it was a ton of fun. We got to see new content with out the aid of boss mods and strategy guides. It was like we were our own little Nihilum for the day. Except they would have full cleared in the PTR and full cleared day one...

Arena Notes
Majarg is in the hospital with some of the worst luck I have ever heard of. Needless to say they would not wheel a gaming pc into his room, so my favorite elemental shaman and brooklynite was MIA this week. Pen, Brain and I rolled Resto Shaman, Rogue, Mage to a 11-4 record and a mere 1603 rating. Season 3 is starting out tougher than I thought. If we really push this coming week and get to 1851 I can pick up my S3 dagger though. Thats right no more staff, I want all the spell damage I can get.

Ranking Notes
Oh, I know the best geared horde mage in the US, his name is Manly. I used to play with him pre-BC in a guild called Shining Force back when I was on Mal'Ganis. Pretty cool guy that I chit chatted with on vent a few times before taking a break when Naxx came out.