Token Female Gamer

TFG Raptr stats on May 8th 2013

As of today, I have officially been a Raptr member for an entire year. Though I originally created the account to help me keep track of game played times, and it does that decently well, its keeps track of all sorts of other useless information, like achievements and types of games played.

I have to admit I find the break downs of all my games quite fascinating. Not sure what it says about me, other then I have played a lot (a LOT) of World of Warcraft.

Turns out that I have played 1,128 hours of games in the past year, which is exactly 47 days. That’s quite a bit more then I expected. From what I can tell that encompasses 35 different games. Also more then I expected.

Maybe in the coming year I will finally use those game hours for something productive, like find a cure for boredom. Oh wait. Already did. Ha!

<3

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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For its 13th anniversary, celebrated this past March, EverQuest finally went free to play. How it managed to maintain a large enough player base to support its continued existence for thirteen years is beyond me. Whatever the case, it is now free to play, which of course meant I had to go back and check out my characters.

But since its been so darn long, finding passwords and email accounts and user names turned out to be a bit more challenging then expected. After a bit of back and forth with costumer service, I now have access to both my old accounts.

My characters are all still there and I have no clue how to play them. I can’t even remember what spells did what! My hopes of having it all come flooding back were quickly extinguished by the realization that EverQuest has changed a lot in the past seven years.

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April Fools Day online is great, because I get to observe without having to participate. Plus most of the online jokes tend to be funny and avoid being cruel. It also means that around mid march I start becoming suspicious of all news announcements that seems even a little strange.

Of course when April Fools Day does roll around and all the jokes are revealed, they inevitably only show up on the actual day and mysteriously vanish the next. I know this, yet still harbor a little bit of doubt, or maybe hope, each year.

Here are my top four “Let this be an April Fools joke” pieces of gaming news.

SimCity is most unplayable single player game of all time.

LucasArts gets Disneyed, I mean shut down.

Blizzard announces a card game….to play online. An online card game. Like Magic the gathering. Online. Still waiting for them to say this is a joke.

My World of Warcraft Warlock’s dps. Its a joke, sadly not relegated to April Fools Day only. Not news so much as QQ. >_<

As for ‘real’ April Fools, youTube was the clear 2013 winner. Best contest ever!

Any news items you think should have been an April Fools Joke or at least sounded like one?

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!

Mist of Pandaria (MoP) is the latest expansion to the ever popular World of Warcraft Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. With a brand new continent, new playable race and class, new talents for all classes, Pokemon and Farmville, the ever expanding world of Azeroth has gotten just a bit more crowded.

Following a rather extensive WoW break, I dived into Pandaria with tempered enthusiasm. Between the disappointing Cataclysm end game and Pandas becoming the new playable race (Blizzard swore that would NEVER ever happen), I found my expectations understandably depressed.

But now, with a little over four hundred hours under my belt, it’s quite clear that I liked the game better then expected and that a review is far past due.

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The release date for the Zerg expansion to StarCraft 2, Heart of the Swarm, is just around the corner. It was clearly time to get ready! Which is what I did yesterday, not that it too much time. Blizzard is incredibly efficient at taking my money. Just went online and ordered the digital collectors edition. Only reason for the collectors is BATTLE PETS!

Check out this cute little dude:

Anyone else planning on playing?!

Proof that Puzzles and Dragons hasn’t been taking up all my time, my World of Warcraft Monk made level 80. Actually, I’m a bit delayed, she is level 81 already.

Not that its taken all that long, leveling in WoW has speed up to such a degree that its actually fun. Or maybe the fun should be attributed to the Monk class, as the amount of overpoweredness that is bundled into this class is ridiculous.

My goal had always been for my Monk to catch up with my husband’s Monk so we could forge ahead together. This finally happened some twenty levels ago. We have since been almost exclusively running dungeons together. Amazing experience, mostly because all the quests for the dungeon are found at the entrance. Then its just a matter of completing the dungeon, and the quests on the way, and levels just seem to fly right by.

To make the entire process even smoother I went with the Brewmaster talent spec (tank), while husband went Mistweaver (healer). This combo makes the wait time, when queuing for dungeons, quite minimal.

Turns out the Brewmaster and Mistweaver Monks are actually really decent at dealing damage, which means I’ve simply stayed in Brewmaster even for the minimal questing we have done. Clearly, Monks are super awesome to level in any talent spec (yes even healing! ~insert sounds of thousands of priests crying here~). I have also completely forgotten how to play Windwalker (DPS talent spec). Oh right, faceroll Spinning Crane Kick!

It’s probably worth noting that my lack of writing motivation has been somewhat supported by my newest World of Warcraft endeavor, a Pandarian Monk. The original plan hadn’t really involved getting quite so attached, as I made her mainly to get the Pandarian only battle pet. (Gotta chatch them all!)

Yet I was having such a good time playing this new little monk character, that I just kept on going, even after securing the pet. Leveling her has been a breeze. Not only does she have 45% bonus experience from heirloom items (thanks to my higher level characters), but she also gets a unique to monk super buff that gives her 50% bonus experience for up to two hours. It’s the fastest leveling to date and I have to say that I am quite enjoying it!

As of this writing my monk is level 45 and though I have mostly run dungeons with her thus far, I have spent her 40s in Feralas hunting for the illusive Sprite Darter world drop pet. No luck thus far. I shall of course continue to use her leveling as an excuse to mine for pets. I even chose her professions for pet gain, jewelry and mining.

Anyway that’s a rather long-winded way of saying, monk leveling is fun, but I’m not giving up pet collecting or my warlock quite yet. Though I have to say that my poor warlock has been having the worst luck with loot upgrades. She keeps on getting only glove upgrades. Ah well.

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