Token Female Gamer

I’m finally feeling better, which means I’m semi productive in the real world instead of only being a computer game lump. Funny how most of my illnesses end up getting cured by playing lots of computer games, and maybe a little bit of sleep.

Since I missed it, happy belated May 4th (be with you), May 5th (Cinco de Mayo), and May Sith (revenge of). There, all caught up. =D

Game productivity, on the other hand, was high!

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New Years Eve at our house has evolved into an almost forgotten holiday and thus tends to be a quite affair. Having done the whole crazy, drunk, excessive, crowded party plenty of times, I find myself quite happy to leave it all behind for some snuggling and champagne. (Really! The idea of being sandwiched in amongst thousands of drunk, sweaty bodies is singularly unappealing.)

This year I took advantage of the guaranteed quiet evening at home and built myself a new computer.

For anyone who hasn’t kept up with my sporadic posting, my husband built himself a new computer as an anniversary present. And though I claimed that I would wait for a new computer until our next anniversary (I tried to wait, I really did!), I only made it as far as the New Year.

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Or better known as the 400 Unique Battle Pets collected Achievement in World of Warcraft! It is mine as of this evening. Mine, MINE, MIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNEEEEEEE!!

My reward? The sassy little Venus Pet:

But this doesn’t mean I’m done, as there are quite a few more pet achievements to get and around 150 more pets to collect. Though I am happy to slow down a bit, now that I’ve gotten the 400 Unique pets. Besides all the remaining pets are going to take more work; mostly daily quest grinding or an alliance character. =P

In general Achievements are something I avoid actively pursuing. This also goes for trophies or any other sort of meta marker that game companies come up with. The only exception I have found thus far is World of Warcraft.

To me, achievements are essentially random non story line activities (aka errands) that help extend the amusement of the game. Which makes perfect sense in a MMORPG setting, as the entire purpose of the game is get the player to come back forever more, wasting years of their lives away. It doesn’t matter if the achievements are as asinine as ‘carry four specific potatoes around the world, then cook up a batch of fries, and hand one to each playable race in the game’ because someone out there will have a good time doing it. People always need more to do.

But when it comes to non-persistent games, like Mass Effect+, Diablo+, Portal+, Halo+, etc, I just don’t have any interest in pursuing mostly idiotic goals for a few measly achievement points. Maybe if I felt a strong urge to replay games, this would be different, but as it stands I’m mostly a single play through sort of gal. I really appreciate that some games end.

The other fault with the system is that since developers design achievements and trophies, there is no standard for determining difficulty. In one game three achievements might take forty hours of game time, yet in another game three achievements might be unlocked in the first five minutes. This lack of uniformity makes achievement points an incredibly inaccurate form of measurement. And just like all systems that try to narrow the human experience down to a number, this score fails to accurately represent any gaming experience. So I mostly just ignore it.

Strangely enough, this lack of achievement consistency has resulted in a meta game where people play games solely for the purpose of achievement mining. They literally pick the game not for fun or interest, but only for the ease of gaining achievements so they can boost up their total achievement score as fast as possible.

Not that this is bad in any way; we all find amusement in different things. But my fun is had by simply playing games to enjoy them. The time I spend playing a game is a much better indicator of how much I like it.

There you go! That was a rather long winded way of saying that I sometimes go after achievements in World of Warcraft, but otherwise all the achievements I have are unintentional.

It seems like forever since I wrote or posted anything. The fault lies completely with WoW. I am merely a victim of a rediscovered fascination that prevents me from doing anything else. Down the Mists of Pandaria Rabbit hole have I fallen and been consumed by the world of battle pets; and am finding myself quite unwilling to leave.

But I thought I would at least share what my team looks like currently. The irony here is that it took me so long to finish even this small blurb that I had to update my battle pets image three time to remain current. A true testament to how my obsession with pets is causing some (totally minor) procrastination in the rest of my life.

Anyway here is my most current team:

I am really liking the Thor and Spider combo for leveling. Most of the low level wild pets are Critters or Beasts, which these two are good against. Onyxian Whelpling is there to battle anything else. =)

Oh and Battle Pets turns out to be a rampant achievement gain. Bonus is that since I have to travel around the entire world to find pets, I can finally complete the World Explorer achievement. I always did feel like World Explorer should be a by product of doing something useful, or more useful anyway. =P

Here are a few of my recent Pet achievements:

I will add that I am leveling my Warlock, its just slow going. This is mainly because leveling in Pandaria isn’t terribly exciting. Actually much of the rest of the game is very much of the same old. Thus much of my motivation for leveling to 90 is pets related. Pandarian flying will make pet collecting much easier, once I finally get my pets leveled up enough to go hunt on the Island of Pandaria.

Now back to my rabbit hole! <3

Time to celebrate because this is my 400th post! Considering that this is really more of a side project for me, I’m quite pleased. Four hundred posts over five years!

Thanks to anyone who has read even one post. =D

To mark the occasion I will be doing a 30 days of video games run in August. The plan is to post every day, which is going to be a bit of a stretch for me. Worth a try. And yes I know August has 31 days but the list I’m following only had 30. Will be happy if I can manage just to keep up!

Since our raiding group fell apart, a group of us has been working on some achievements. Really low key, once a week. We finally finished Glory of the Cataclysm Hero. Yaaay.

And I got my pretty new mount: The Volcanic Stone Drake.

Not sure if we will continue onward with Achievements. Maybe we can do some of the Firelands raid achievements. But it really seems like everyone is too burned out. That and too many other games are coming out.

I personally would love to go back and do some of the 25 man achievements in Icecrown and Ulduar. But I would need help. Can’t solo Ulduar raids, yet. Fix Warlocks pls! Want to solo Ulduar 25 raids. =D

While I have been off, playing every game besides World of Warcraft, my husband has stayed strong and forged on without me. (Its also possible that he just thinks all other games suck in comparison and arn’t worth his time.)

Whatever the case he has been working his way through various achievements and today he managed a really impressive one.

100 Mounts in World of Warcraft. Well 101 since the reward is a brand new mount, the Red Dragon Hawk.

Congrats to my fabulous husband. Had to share his awesome power of achieving. =D
(And yes, thats a picture of his female Belf Paladin.)

I’ve been on and off World of Warcraft for a bit now. The regular raid I was running with my Warlock went kaput, which pretty much began my WoW vacation. Well sort of vacation, since I have been getting on sporadically to finish up some achievements, like Glory of The Cataclysm Hero.

Last night, during said achievement run, one of the guys brought his priest, who happens to be in full Tier 13 gear. I have never before coveted a look quite as much as this one. The whole set together is incredibly awesome looking. Almost seems like an homage to V for Vendetta. Anyway that’s what it made me think of.

I have always played with my helmet graphic off. In general, my character’s pony tail is far preferable to look at, then any of the helm graphics. But bolstered by the priest T13 look, I turned helm graphics on, just too see what my Warlocks T13 helm graphic looked like. Couldn’t be too bad right? Wrong.

Tentacle coming out of my face. Yeah. So wrong. Warlocks get screwed again. ~sigh~

The ten man raid that I run Dragon Soul on normal with, finally killed Deathwing. So glad we finished it! The Madness of Deathwing fight is not my favorite. =/ And no, nothing great dropped. But hey we got a new title.

I’m assuming we will kill him a few more times, but am not sure what we will run after. This is the final raid of the Cataclysm expansion. My thrusday and sunday nights might open up, as running heroic versions of this has been somewhat poo pooed.

It may be Star Wars Online time.