Unreal Realities

Long, short, funny, fünkŸ, can you be bothered?  Really, what’s in a name? 

For some, not a lot, for others though, the ‘game starts’, even before the game starts in the level 1 starting area, at the character selection screen.  Class and race can at times be difficult enough to decide on, and then consider, male or female, gnome, dwarf, night elf, hair, earrings, facial expression.  Move onto an MMO other than WoW and character customisation can become an even larger part of the game (a muscle here, a loincloth there, to jetpack or not to jetpack?!). 

Finished with abilities and aesthetics, then its onto the name-game.  I’m a terrible decision-maker, and not the most creative person in the world so this is usually where I find myself staring at a flashing cursor trying to come up with something witty and clever.

I enjoy the starting screens, the opportunity to customise something (even if only slightly), to add my own stamp to something you I will potentially be having a long relationship with appeals to me.  But name selection makes me shudder – I want to think of something good!  And in game there are times where name selections make me laugh, and other names that make me cringe. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I was pontificating about how fantastic I am as a DPS in Cataclysm, having switched from Healing in the previous two expansions. It wasn’t meant to come across as “omg I’m so leet”, more of a “thank god I’m not shit”, but I didn’t quite hit the mark.

Regardless, I’ve been travelling very well, secure in the knowledge that I was above the curve and getting some extra grunt out of a middle of the road DPS class. Toppling the meters is always fun and I’m happy to admit I’ve been epeening a little in our raid group.

Those days are over now however. A few personnel changes, coupled with 4.06 and some raid drops to a few of the other DPS in my group, has seen me pushed from the top rung. Occasionally I still finish the fight on top, but it’s now the exception not the rule. Number one is very much owned by our Hunter, Dimble, now and I’m fighting for the second spot with our new Rogue, Pancakechick. In fact, for the first time, the other night I found myself out of the top three completely after a fight – I can’t remember the boss – our Shadow Priest sneaking past me. And considering we have an under geared Fire Mage and Enhancement Shaman, not to mention a Boomkin that’s been tanking about to return to DPS land, in our group I could soon be bringing up the rear. If the interwebz are to be believed, all of these classes should out DPS me. Read the rest of this entry »

Around the time of 4.0.3 I wrote about how frustrated I was with the endless harassment by Horde when trying to level my Hunter. Not world PvP, but griefing. My thoughts on it are quite clear and I started to respond by reporting every wanker I thought was going too far.

With the release of Cataclysm, it was time to jump back on my main. I don’t get griefed to much on Serevok, for two reasons. One, the bullies like to attack folks much lower than them, two, I win more than I lose when jumped. Horde is generally not an issue on my Shaman.

The Alliance, however, is. I thought I went a little report mad with 4.0.3 but that was nothing compared to the amount of reporting I’ve done since Cataclysm launched. Seriously, my ignore list has been full three times and, in the early weeks of the expansion, I was reporting people three or four times a day.

I know what you’re thinking. Vok, are you really such an uptight, vengeful priss? Well, I don’t think so. Read the rest of this entry »

This expansion sees my Shaman taking a different approach to raiding. I started raiding in The Burning Crusade and, from Kara to the Lich King, I’ve healed in raids. My Shaman was originaly created after I struggled to get into raids on my Mage. The Alliance was thin on Shaman and Healers were always sought after in raids, so I made the switch to get in and see what all the fuss was about.

I soon fell in love with both raiding and healing.

I was a class leader, then an officer and eventually Guild Master of Obsolete, a successful 25-man raiding guild, all as a Resto Shaman. After Ulduar I gave up the 25s raiding, leaving Obsolete to form Unreal Realities and raid tens content rather than 25s. I was raid leader of my tens group within the guild and, thanks to what I learned from mistakes made in Obsolete, a pretty good one. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello folks! Well, it’s been a (long) while now between blogs and it’s time to change that. Basically, I have just not had the desire to post recently for a couple of reasons. One being time, another effort and, most importantly, I really haven’t had a whole lot to say. Thanks to some peer pressure (read: endless nagging and the realization that there are people that actually miss the blog) I’ve kicked back into gear.

This isn’t a real blog though – just letting you know that the real blogging is on the way back. I’ve got a few things I’m building up to, so here’s an idea of what’s to come:

• An update on Pirates and our recent struggles;
• Why I hate everyone that uses the WoW forums;
• DCUO;
• Serevok – Part II. Another attempt at some geeky roleplay;
• Reported Part II – The Alliance Strike Back;
• Unreal Realities 2nd guild drinks;
• Guild progression and why we (still) need housing;
• SWtOR – the game we’re starting to forget;
• Rift – being like WoW is a GOOD thing;
• DPS – Thank god I don’t suck at it;
• Raiding with your loved one/s – will it end in tears?
• How to make 10s raiding work;
• A new expansion, new guildies – but I miss the old ones;
• Leveling an alt and why it’s so painful to do despite, or because, it’s so quick.

They’re a few of the ideas kicking around at the moment and they’re definitely ready to be banged out on a keyboard. So, watch this space!

I headed back to work today after nine days of WoW madness today, a little short of what I was hoping to achieve with my time off. Don’t get me wrong, I got a lot done, but there are a few loose ends I really wanted to tie up so I could drop my game play back. It was not to be however, so I’ll still be cursing at queues for a while yet. Here’s a brief look at what I got done and what I couldn’t quiet manage.

Got done:

All Justice Point upgrades purchased.

Archaeology maxed.

Engineering maxed, with super awesome goggles made. Read the rest of this entry »

I have played so much WoW in the last week it’s not even close to healthy. Seriously, way, way to much. And I’m not finished yet. For various reasons I missed both the TBH and Wrath launches, so this is my first expansion launch, I plan on milking it for another few days yet.

I leveled to 85 with my partner, Pancakechick on her Rogue. Tuesday night was horrible but Wednesday he slowly made our way through Hyjal and starting Deepholm. We finished that up Friday night and started Uldum. We did about half the Uldum quests before heading to highlands, hitting 85 around 10 o’clock Saturday night.

Since then I’ve been trying to leveling Engineering, finally capping it last night. Today I picked up my first epic, the Engineering goggles. Very, very happy with them.

I’ve also been hitting the heroics. The PuGs have been terrible – not because of the lack of ability or knowledge of people, but the lack of patience. Everyone wants to kill every boss with ease and there has been a lot of rage – and me reporting a lot of people.

Archaeolgy is something I’m completely in love with but I’ve been slow to level it with all the other things I’ve been doing. Hopefully I’ll be able to spend some real time with it over the next few days now.

And now, I’m finally feeling like I can relax a little. I’ve been going as hard as I can because I want to be raid ready as soon as possible and drop my WoW time back down to it’s pre-cataclysm level. There is still a bit to do, but I’m getting pretty close.

Next week there will be a lot more blogs going up. I’ll be stuck in the queue like everyone else then and there is plenty to talk about. Right now, however, I’ve got a digsite to explore!

Well, if that’s the release night of an expansion, I’ve seen it. Being an Australian WoW player finally paid off, it was launched at 1830 my time. And I was there.

I relogged in Goldshire to avoid the load screen of death in Stormwind and it worked well, I was able to take the new flight path straight to the new trainer and get my Azerothian Pilot License. Flying in Stormwind is a little weird at first but wow, Azeroth looks amazing from the air.

From there it was profession training – First Aid, Cooking, Fishing, Engineering, Mining and the new Archeology. Then it was off to Hyjal! Read the rest of this entry »

Here it is! The second half of our interview with Hero Ping’s Reebz. If you missed the first part, you can find it right here.

UR: So how much lag should we be expecting to disappear here?

Reebz@HP: For the other Aussies out there, I’m a Telstra user and I went from 480-550ms to 175-195ms. Crazy speed increases. It’s going to be different for each person based on your city, ISP and quality of connection, but that being said – I’d be surprised at anyone that didn’t half their ping, probably more.*

UR: So, for someone not at all technically minded like myself, how hard is it to set up and run?

Reebz@HP: We’ve made it as streamlined as we possibly can. You’d need to struggle to turn the PC on to struggle with HeroPing. You download the application, install the application, run the application, and that’s it. No messy configurations. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Train Flying in Azeroth
2. Report the griefers on the trainer trying to prevent me from learning how to fly in Azeroth
3. Train Archeology, cooking, fishing and first aid.
4. Take the portal to Hyjal
5. /leave general chat
6. Train Mining and Engie
7. try to complete quests with hundreds of others trying to do the quest
8. Give up and Hearth to Stormwind
9. Take the portal to Vashj’ar
10. /leave general
11. try to complete quests with hundreds of others trying to do the same quest
12. Give up and Hearth to Stormwind
13. spend the night on archeology because questing is just not possible