Token Female Gamer

In other fabulous April news (quick before the month is over!), Geek and Sundry has  been renewed for season 2 and its already begun airing brand new shows!! The announcement went live very close to April 1st, thankfully it wasn’t a joke and Geek and Sundry will remain alive and youtubing for another year. (Yes, I just turned youTube into a verb!)

Much of the show line up has changed and though I’m sad to see Sword and Laser go, I am super happy that Space Janitors finally has new episodes. It is by far the most entertaining show I’ve seen on youTube, probably ever. Then again I don’t go in for most of the reality based stuff that youTube panders.

But the best thing to come out of this announcement was the message that Felicia Day shared in her announcement video. After lamenting the commodification and hate mongering that has become the Geek online life, she made a call for taking it back, to honor the Geek we want to be regardless of anyone else’s opinion. “Your Judgment is not my problem” sums is up quite well and is a sentiment that I can fully support. Go Felicia Day!

It’s been pointed that I may have been a little overzealous in denigrating my current World of Pandacraft raiding experience. Thus I would like to clarify that I do quite enjoy raiding, really.

What I am struggling with the most, is that my character feels particularly ineffective right now and that my ability to change this is being hampered mainly by my unwillingness to run 400 daily quests a day. (Many gear upgrades no longer come from the actual raids, but are instead purchasable via valor and require faction.)

The recent 5.2 patch also managed to nerf Warlocks into the bottom ranks of dps. Though the change was to bring the very top tier of Warlocks more inline with other classes, the middling and lower level Warlocks (like me) end up bearing the brunt of the changes.

This also means that I have to go back to the drawing board and figure out a new talent and glyph spec. Mostly I rely on the internetz for this tedious task, but currently no one seems to agree on what is the best Warlock Affliction build.

I also get to dump mastery as a stat, which I have been gearing for, and am supposed to instead aim for haste. Knowing me and how slow I am to accumulate new gear, I might just be able to hit the haste cap in time for the next big Warlock nerf.

Maybe I should just level a monk. Viva la Raid!

Right before Halloween, after taking a little WoW break from Guild Wars 2, I decided to log in again and maybe do some fun Halloween events. Well, my email was rejected for no apparent reason. So I emailed costumer service at ArenaNet saying that I couldn’t log in to my account. They got back to me a day later saying that my issue had been passed on to another department and someone would get in touch with me soon.

Then silence for a month. A whole month!! I really should have complained sooner and not waited, but I’m busy and they did say they would get back to me.  I finally emailed them yesterday. Though I tried to be polite, the month long silence made it difficult. But they came through and as of today have restored my account.

Turns out it was hacked. Well, I assume that’s what it means, since  I now have to verify my email EVERY time I log in, bonus hardcore security measures. Also my level 5 hunter is now level 80.

It could of course be that the ArenaNet people felt really bad for me that they left me hanging for so long and bumped my character up to max level. Yeah, probably not.

I will say that it is really strange having a maxed out character that I have hardly played. Having not invested much more then picking the character’s name, gives me very little connection to it, not only in how to play, but also in familiarity. And knowing that someone else invested time and energy to level, actually makes me feel a little bad. I’m not sorry that I  have my account back, but I am rather sorry for all the time that was lost by someone out there.

My Mesmer thankfully was left alone! Still level 28 with all her gear. She always was my main and I really enjoyed exploring the world with her.

So thank you Hacker for not deleting or screwing up my characters, for not messing with the guild, for not selling all my stuff. Hope you had a good time playing your free version of Guild Wars 2, time to buy your own copy.

This mysterious World of Warcraft hacking incident marked the beginning of almost daily server restarts. While most folks are not having their playtime interrupted, since Blizzard is keeping at 10am restart schedule, it has been the norm this past week.

Blizzard isn’t saying much about why the restarts are happening but the interwebz is alive with speculation. Much of the blame is falling on that particular incident. The leap of logic isn’t hard to follow as the timing seems a bit more then just coincidence.

As someone who IS affected by this interruption, all I’ve got to say is, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Now I go play Torchlight 2. Conspiracy? Maybe. =P

http://www.facebook.com/FeliciaDay

This Facebook Felicia Day post completely exemplifies how I have been feeling about games of late. Is there some sort of new holiday that I didn’t get the memo for, because games are coming out like its midwinter.

Borderlands 2 just released; I’m still deeply immersed in Skyrim (yes I know I’m just behind on that one); Guild Wars 2 is like a month old; Torchlight 2 is out next week, as is WoW: Mists of Pandaria; and the Marvel Heroes beta is going live any day now.

Its clear some of these will have to be relegated to the ‘will play in the future when I have time’ pile, which seems to just be growing and growing and growing. ~sigh~

Though I sound a bit whiny, I do think this is a wonderful conundrum to have, I guess I just wish I didn’t need so much sleep. Maybe no sleep at all. That would be a solid eight hours of gaming a day and awesome!

Diablo 3 is by far my biggest heartbreak in recent memory. Twelve years of waiting for it to be released built up a lot of expectations and doubts. And though I was apprehensive, I harbored a bit of hope that the game was at least going to maintain the Diablo legacy.

It took me thirty hours of playing before I finally gave in and admitted to myself how disappointing and un-diablo like the game really was. I kept hoping that it would be different at higher levels or playing a different character; needless to say it didn’t improve.

While I have lots more to say on this topic, I shall save the rest for the full review. Suffice it to say the game is so fundamentally changed that it’s hard for me to think of it as Diablo game.

One thing has become apparent, no matter how I clamor for evolution in games, ultimately I prefer a more continuous experience. There are after all reasons I liked the game to begin with, which makes drastic changes in a sequel a rather jarring experience and not at all guaranteed to be of my liking.

PvP or PvE = (Player vs Player) or (Player vs Environment)

PvE all the way, in fact I go out of my way to avoid PvP.

Here is the thing, I don’t like being pitted against other human players mainly because, even in the best of circumstance, someone has to lose, which usually leaves one rather pissed off and dissatisfied person on the loosing end.

Video games are all about having fun, that’s why I play them. While winning is a small part of the enjoyment, winning at someone else’s expense feels like a stab in the back after being stun locked, nothing heroic about it at all.

I truly don’t understand this competitive drive to be the best at ruining other people’s days, because that’s essentially what PvP amounts to. I don’t want my day ruined, why would I want to ruin someone else’s?

But then the whole culture surrounding PvP is incredibly distasteful; even if I could get over the whole ‘I’m winning because you aren’t, haha’ I would still avoid it like the plague as it seems to attract the worst sorts of assholes.

Bleh. Good sportsman ship and respect are sorely missing from the average PvPers vocabulary.

And don’t even get me started on how PvP screws with PvE all the time. While imbalance in PvE is prevalent, it’s not nearly as dire as when there is class and item imbalance in PvP. At least in World of Warcraft the solution always seemed to include far reaching changes, PvE be damned.

I could go on and on about this topic, but I shall spare you all. Needless to say I’m not the biggest fan of PvP, especially in gear and level dependent RPGs. =D

I’m not a big fan of cut scenes, mainly because it seems that cut scenes have become so ubiquitous that they are turning games into movies. And since I want to play a game and not watch an interactive movie, I find myself rather resentful of the overabundance of cut scene presence.

That being said, games were not always a matter of running from one cut scene to the next. Due to the limitations of storage space and computer processing power, developers had to limit their visual intermissions. Clearly I long for the days of brevity. =)

Never the less, I was just as taken with the beauty of new fangled graphics as any impressionable child. My first real memory of being in awe of ‘the pretty graphics’ is Final Fantasy 8. It was interspersed with high quality cut scenes, but never felt like the movie aspect was overshadowing the game.

FF8 was actually the first final fantasy game I played (I have played sequels and prequels since then) and I was really blown away by the entire game, graphics, cut scenes, story, game play, and all; instant devotion. =)

Most gaming television shows are rather trashy, but I have recently discovered a new low, the gaming competition reality show. I realize that I’m a bit late to the party as these shows have been around for a while, but realty TV is something I usually avoid like the plague, so bear with me.

I learned about them when I was looking up information on pro female gamers and these shows have quite a few lady gamers participating each season. Since I’m always interested in seeing more ladies gaming, I couldn’t help checking them out.

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I have never really suffered the fate of a gaming widow, since I am usually participating in the actual gaming. My husband and I have both done our share of ‘not hearing’ the other person, though my he claims I am far far worse.

But recently, said husband joined what I like to call the cult of NimbleBit, and for the first time in my life I actually understand, just a little bit, what all those ladies are complaining about.

At first it was Pocket Planes, an iPhone game (drug) that was going around his work like wild fire. While the game looks really cute (yes I have heard ALL about it), it requires constant updates. The phone actually beeps at you to remind you! EVERY. FIVE. MINUTES. I don’t think I have ever felt so violent against someone else’s phone before.

Thankfully he moved onto Tiny Towers, which doesn’t require such constant supervision. Really cute game, but still a totally pointless Sims like game that clamors for attention way to often.

And this is something he wants to share with me, so I may get sucked into the cult of needy and over dependent iPhone games. Thankfully I’m holding out. Skyrim has my back. =)

Now it’s just a matter of patience on my part. That or secretly delete the apps off his phone while he is sleeping.