Shiny !

When I first started playing WoW, one of the things I spotted while reading the manual was the legendary items. I said to myself then, they're shiny, I want one.

It's taken 6 years but :

(click for big pics)

Creating the Sulfuron Hammer :

I didn't equip it in fear of breaking something but here's what the purely purple Sulfuron Hammer would have looked like :

Nice, but not so shiny.

Ooo - what's happened there ? I see the ding of a guild achievement ...

And there we go :-) One achievement for the guild and something very Red And Shiny for me :-)

It's a item from the very first incarnation of Warcraft so the stats are pretty bad but. It's shiny !!!!!

I did most of the farming for bits myself with a few parts bought off the AH but there are a few thanks to in game people :

Allenis for donating a Blood Of The Mountain
Laina for being there when the Eye dropped and for letting me borrow his characters to make raid groups with so I could farm stuff
Benii for the same on the raid group thing
Alex for letting Laina out to play
And Violence Reborn for being awesome.

Don't think I've missed anyone out there :-) I still have a bit of work to do, as I owe the guild 1 Sulfuron Ingot and 1 Blood of the Mountain. But that can keep for when my shoulders aren't aching from too much game time.

It's not quite as tough getting this as when it was The Best Item In The Game as 3 of the bits needed you to be in a 40 person raid to get the item. One part has a 4% drop chance, with one chance per week. Another item is about 33-50% drop chance, again with just one chance per week but 8 (+1 for a pattern) needed. The Blood of the Mountain were easier, it's something like a 10% chance to get one with up to about 10 chances per reset of the instance. You'd need a 40 person raid together though, nowadays one character can go all the way through on their own.

The open world farming is a bit easier too, as there's less competition now that people have moved on to higher level places.

However, just because it's easier than in the old days doesn't make it any less Orange (Orange > Purple) or any less Shiny !

Shopping List

I have them.

I actually have a few of them now ...

No 1 - car. I'm still doing a "blink after the other guy" there, as the prices haven't dropped yet. But that should change in a week or so when the registration plates move on another step.

No 2 - pooter. This is another one like the car where I haven't been forced into a change of kit ... yet. I've had my eye drawn to a game called The Old Republic, which is a MMO set about 4000 years before the Star Wars films. I'm a Star Wars fanboi, have been for like forever. With the gaming that's been moderated a bit by a stream of mediocre games with Star Wars licenses. This looks like it could be something special though. And if it needs an upgrade to allow me to play it ...

I've had my current machine for quite some time. Looks like I've had my current PC since April 2006, although it's evolved a little bit since then. I'll be going from a dual core Athlon to a quadx2 core Intel, the improvement in cpu power will likely be 10x. Graphics will go from an AMD 4850 to an nVidia 560Ti. Not so much of an improvement there but still appreciable. Memory has its usual 4x improvement, going from 2GB to 8GB, same with the hard disc which will go 250GB to 1TB.

But that's a "wait and see", as I don't know the specs of this forthcoming and awesome looking Star Wars game yet.

No 3 - I've levelled my tank in Warcraft mainly for seeing if I can get a legendary item. Those things only get picked up by a very limited number of people on a server. I picked up one part today :-) And a mate picked up part of what will make a legendary for him too :-)

4% chance for each to drop and we got 2. That's out of 6 chances on the night. That's not all that's needed though. The shopping list this time is :

8 Sulfuron Ingot. I have 1 so far and they only come from one place. Or the server's auction house. If I get the rest of the bits, I'll spend some virtual money.
20 Dark Iron Bar. Sorted :-)
50 Arcanite bar. Got the bits for 17, the rest will need farming sessions.
25 Essence of Fire. Sorted :-)
10 Blood Of The Mountain. Got 1 so far.
10 Lava Core. Sorted :-)
10 Fiery Core. Sorted :-)

So we're still needing Sulfuron Ingots which will be expensive, Arcanite Bars which will need farming and Blood Of The Mountain which will be a 100% pain. Will see how long it takes to get those, hopefully not too long because I want to see my character with the legendary item :-)

Downtime - much needed

Having a little downtime here at the moment, which is much needed :

Putting mind+soul into what I do at work,
General physical exhaustion,
Old injuries haunting me again,
And new health issues making an appearance.

The first few of those won't change. I don't believe in putting in less than 110% to what I do. Even when outwardly it appears I'm slacking, there will be something else going on. The injuries just get managed and thankfully I still don't need any kind of painkiller medication to handle those.

Nah - it's the new health issues that are slowing me down right now. The issue with my leg is still there, although the ickiness factor has gone. I suspect that means it's healing underneath the scab. Hopefully it won't take too long to heal ... I'm staying away from cricket until it does because the way I go in the field, I'd rip that scab off while diving around. And as it took so long for the scab to form ...

Also having issues with my breathing at the moment. Nothing serious, I suspect I'd be able to run around the block if I needed to. But it's enough that it disrupts me when I'm trying to get to sleep, with the knock on effects that has.

Anyway. Health issues aside ...

Been back into Warcraft lately. It's a curious place to be because of issues that are hitting the raiding at the moment. The raiding we do has a maximum of 10 players involved. I've only really been involved lately when the team is short of people. Dunno why but they don't seem to want me in there as a first choice person. Perhaps that's a perception that's based in paranoia but it's there all the same. Adding to that is much discussion that's happened around reserve players for raids. There's still more to come there, as the rules behind the reserves situation only seem to be only inside the head of the person picking the teams. And as a normal member of the guild sees them, they don't make sense.

Let's just say, it's not the way I'd have run a raiding team. And I'm talking from experience there, having juggled the pots and pans and tried to keep everyone on side and happy. It's not easy. It's not working at the moment in our guild, as there's a few (including me) people who are just not saying we're available right now because we don't know what's going on with the team stuff. With all that stuff going on, I have no real interest in raiding at the moment.

Ok, that's that little bit of angst out the way. Needed to say it.

I feel I've taken my main character (Iceangel) as far as I can take her right now, any improvements to come will come from raiding. I've got no real interest to play the character, although comparing her to when I started in WoW, it's like a God meets a minor imp.

I'm currently playing my warrior, Bashara 3 (the first was a tank on The Maelstrom server, the second was a druid on Auchindoun). Bash has now got to the maximum level and could in theory go through all the instances. There's still a fair bit of work to do as where you'd like to have a couple of gear sets for the different jobs, what I have now is a mix of tank and damage. Which achieves neither ... I'm going for tank stuff first because there's no real challenge involved with putting out enough damage to crush solo content.

Yep. Warcraft has a hold of me at the moment, when I'm not watching stuff off blu-ray/cinema or watching cricket. England no1 in the world ! Woo hoo ! It's well earned. That team has it all right now, with strength in depth too.

Being on hols means I'm more free to buy stuff off Amazon :-) I have trust issues with the postman, so I like to be around if deliveries are likely. This time around it was 4 blu-rays : Sucker Punch, Battle : LA, The A Team and Knight & Day. I've only watched Sucker Punch and Battle : LA so far of those. They had their critics at the cinema but what film doesn't. I enjoyed 'em both the second time around.

Sucker Punch - style over substance. The Real World backstory is still rather lame but the Fantasy World action sequence are amazing out of this world showcases that still work well on the small screen.

Battle : LA - Aliens invade. USMC saves the day. Still loud, explosive and gritty with the viewer not knowing who or what is going to survive. High body count here ... Won't be a classic but is still an excellent action movie. It doesn't try to be what it isn't, it leaves lame comedy aside, it avoids the temptation to go District 9 over the top, it just looks to be an action spectacular. And it succeeds beyond measure. I'll think I'll still be rewatching this one when District 9 is stolen by the Dust Bunnies.

Both excellent films, will the Apes movie (who's gonna say that whole title ?) live up to it ? We'll find out on Thursday.

Signing off for now, time to either dig up Uldum in Warcraft or take the next step in liberating Arulco.

One for the WoW people :-)

First raid for a while.

And it feels good to get a guild first :-) Here we go :

(click + open for full HD 1080p goodness :-)


PS This is a shameless excuse for getting the screenie somewhere I can put it on the WoW forums :-)

Just finished : How To Survive In A Science Fictional Universe

Bought this one as the last in a 3 for £x in Waterstones a while ago ...

A while ago ? Guess it's taken that long to read it ! This one is by a relatively new author called Charles Yu who certainly has a style I've not come across while reading for a while.

It's fairly free form and dips very heavily into the world of metaphysics and a certain amount of philosophy. I'll say right here that I'm not the most cerebral person, my brain tends to deal better with the absolutes of engineering and science. I can deal with the fluffier descriptions of an Iain M Banks Culture novel, as it makes sense within itself and stays consistent. This book tends to a making it up as it goes along style.

What's it about ?

How To Survive In A Science Fictional Universe is all about Time Travel, with a hefty dose of metaphysics thrown in. It's broken up into Modules with chapters making up the modules. There's usually a bit of third wall breaking extra narration/explanation thrown in between the chapters.

I hate to say it but in my first days/weeks of reading this one, I was getting a hefty sense of Wanted style deja vu with regards the utter self loathing the main character seemed to have. That turned Wanted into a not particularly pleasant film and it's similar here too. It does liven up though when the Main Event of the novel kicks off.

Main Event - guy returns to his time machine, only to find himself exiting his time machine. Guy shoots future self, time loop is initiated. The rest of the book has the protagonist figuring out how to get himself out of the time loop.

Can't say I enjoyed this book, although a person more into metaphysics or philosophy may love it. It took me a couple of months to read a 233 page book and there's something wrong about that. The author's style and readability leave something to be desired, like can we please have paragraphs less than 2 pages long ?

Hopefully he'll keep on writing, because there's the nucleus of a good author here. But I won't be rushing out to buy the next Charles Yu book. Next on the list is a book full of mindless explosions, courtesy of Space Marines.