Good Greif
I hate to complain (never seems to change anything anway). But it’s been an exhausting last few weeks. So much work and travel. I think I went 3 or 4 days without seeing what my house looks like in the sunlight. Luckily I get to see Andrea once in a while when her and Luke stop by the radio station to hang out. Lately I’ve been so busy thought that even then it’s tough to spend any quality time.
Well yesterday my schedule was pretty clear, so I made huge strides in getting caught up! Felt good to not only be productive, but to be productive in the areas that I chose! I have a little checklist at work that I use to make sure I don’t forget anything, and I finally got back to where I need to be on that. Still some long term stuff that I need to get done, but I finally feel like I’m making progress again.
I actually left work a little early yesterday. It felt almost like a vacation day! I used my extra time to re-plant some peppers and corn in the garden, and start digging out the old pole that a satellite dish used to sit on. Eventually that will become my new fire pit! That’s gonna be a lot of work though for sure.
I actually sat down the other day and played some Guild Wars. The original. Actually had a lot of fun. Since all the main story is done, I now have to make sure I just pick a direction or goal I want to work on and go at it. Because it’s so easy now to sit in an outpost and just wonder what to do. So I decided I was going to go work on my Asura reputation so I can get another title and some Asura armor to add to my Hall of Monuments. When GW2 comes out, the more progress you’ve made in your HoM the better rewards you will get in GW2.
So there’s a little recap. Sorry I’ve been so absent. I really hope that it slows down soon because I don’t enjoy such a frantic pace to life. So from henceforth I’m dialing it back!
Beta is Over
I wish I could stay up for the finalie, but that’s going to be at 1AM. I don’t think I can handle that.
I’ve had a ton of fun this weekend. This game is seriously as good as I would have hoped and more. It’s fun to play, and the sheer scale of it, from size to the number of things there are to do, it’s just amazing.
It wasn’t without its flaws. It was a little tough to play together with Biebs as we’d end up in different instances of the same world. Something the development team says they’re working.
I really want to keep playing, but sleep, work and the impending end of the Beta weekend keep that from happening. But there’s supposed to be one weekend per month until release… when I can then quit my job, ignore my family, and forego bathing to play this game without end.
At the very end, Andrea showed me how to enable hi-res screenshots. I wish I had this the entire time! The pictures it renders from the game are absolutely jaw dropping! The amount of detail in this game is ridiculous!
I’m posting scaled down versions here, but CLICK HERE for an example of one of the screenshots in its full 5656×3308 glory!
Dead bears. It was us or them. They started it.
This is my kind of monastery. They brew ale!
Divinity's Reach in the distance. It IS as epic as it looks.
That same city, from the inside.
More Divinity's Reach...
And more Divinity's Reach. Seriously this place is gigantic, so from here on out it's all the same city in these screenshots.
This is the picture in full res above. I recommend making it your desktop wallpaper!
The upper city. The palace and senate are located on this level of the city. Along with this incredible garden.
What's the one thing this city doesn't have? A huge aquarium? Actually.. no. It already has one.
Dwayna Highroad. Everywhere you go the city feels alive.
Highroad looking across the city.
Crafting stations.
Durmand Priory. A guild that focuses on researching and preserving history.
Just another part of the city I found pleasant.
Undertaker's cart near a cemetery. I just can't get over the detail put into this game!
Another highroad. Look at the man to the left of my character for scale. The banners you see hanging wave majestically in the breeze. The screenshots only do half justice. In motion it's even more gorgeous.
Steps to the Senate.
Inside the Senate. I'm surprised they let me bring this big ass sword in.
Probably an attendance book of some kind.
Beautiful stained glass. In most games you are left to imagine what is inside a building like this.
In Guild Wars 2 you can go in that building and see for yourself! Behind each of those stained glass windows is a statue of one of the six gods. Beautiful artwork!
More inside the same temple. Notice the water pouring down the wall on the left. Again, you've got to see it in motion!
There are six highroads in Divinity's Reach, each named after one of the gods. At the end of each road is a beautiful sculpture like the ones seen in the temple above. This is a statue of Lyssa.
And that’s just one small part of the small part of the game I was able to play.
Early Morning Gaming
Staying up late playing Guild Wars 2 these past couple nights has really made me realize how different my sleep schedule is now compared to how it used to be. I’m no stranger to late night, even all night gaming sessions. On more than one occasion the cue for me and my friends to go to bed was the pre-dawn light filtering through the window blinds.
The past couple nights I’ve been up until about 2 am playing and by this time, I am just beat and have to drag myself to bed. Then this morning I found my self awake 5 short hours later at about 7:30 like it was time to get up. In my past going to bed at 3am was the norm. Especially when I was working the night shift in Junction City. I’d get home at about 10pm, stay up until 3 am. Then sleep until 10am or 11am. That was normal for me.
Now if it’s 11pm, not only is it past my bedtime, but I’m beat. Of course I’ve been waking up 6:30am and “easing” into the day.
But regardless of how this messes up my sleep for the week to come, it’s worth it. Guild Wars 2 is an awesome game so far. I’ve played a lot of it, but there’s still a lot that they haven’t unlocked yet. I’m excited to play even more tomorrow. So I’d better actually get to sleep for tonight. I’ll post some feedback once the beta weekend is over.
It’s Awesome
I largely have no idea what I’m doing. But so far Guild Wars 2 is a blast!
Here’s a few pics before I go to bed. Haven’t stayed up until 2AM gaming in a LONG time!
There's dogs in Guild Wars 2.
The lighting and shadows were most impressive on this giant lizard.
PODCAST – Collector’s Edition
Just realized that my last post was my 1,000th post on the blog! Way to go me, and those who have contributed over the years! I don’t even think I have a thousand VIEWS! Haha.
I forgot what I even used for the last Podcast’s mystery song, so I had to go back and listen. The answer is: Ending Theme of Mario Kart 64.
Topics for this Podcast Include but are not limited to:
- Hell Month
- Guild Wars 2 GET
- Podcast Music
- Mystery Song
- Blasphemous Stage Clear (For Andrea)
Catch-up Post
Okay, well, here we go. I’m running a remote today so I have a little time where I’m tied to the studio here and can’t go anywhere so figured I’d try to get a post cranked out.
Starting middle of the week BEFORE last week, we started streaming coverage of a murder trial here in town. We were going to do video, but couldn’t get the equipment together, so we were at least going to stream audio on our website. Well after the trial was scheduled to start, apparently they were running behind, however someone flipped on the microphone before they were supposed to and the name of a juror went out over our internet stream. So the judge flipped out and banned us from the trial. So that day sucked.
Then, feeling like we got the raw deal on something that wasn’t our fault, got our lawyer involved. That moved about as fast as anything you can expect to move in the legal system. So right about the time I’d given up hope, we were let back in. And by now we’d finally got our video equipment.
So I spent about a week with half of every day sitting in an van by the courthouse monitoring our stream to make sure that nothing like that happened again. Sufficed to say, I was WAY behind on all my work for the week, which included updating about 500 items for our radio auction, and getting audio edited for upcoming charity radio-thon fund raiser. I ended up working 15 hours on Friday to get all the stuff done I HAD to do because we were hitting the road for the weekend.
I did a lot of relaxing at the in-laws’ house over the weekend. That was much needed. And we got to see Titanic in 3D. I’m still not a huge fan of 3D movies, but they did pretty good converting a movie that was originally shot in 2D, I thought. But still, it was the same old movie I remember. For some reason I thought the ship looked smaller in 3D… oh well.
So that brings things up to this week. Not as hectic as last week for sure and I’m thankful for that. Still a lot to do, but I’ve been fairly productive. I would have been more so, but I got really sick Monday night. Terrible sore throat and the chills. I told myself if I didn’t feel any better when I woke up, I’d stay home. Luckily I felt quite a bit better by morning and headed in. One of the nice things about my job is I was able to go take a nap on the couch downstairs when I wasn’t feeling too swell. I’m glad Andrea and Luke didn’t catch what I had… at least not yet.
And now it’s today. I’m waiting for my paycheck to come in. Not something I usually “wait” for, but I got a small bonus on this check which I’m going to use to pre-purchase Guild Wars 2 which went on sale yesterday. I don’t want to wait too long because I don’t want the collector’s edition to sell out. Supposedly very limited supply.
So there ya go. That’s why I’ve been absent from the blog recently and I should be back to posting more regularly now!
Crusin’ Podcast
Okay, other than the intro music, this Podcast has nothing to do with the Crusin’ series.
Topics include:
- Waking Up
- Busy Saturday
- Vanquishing
- Drivers in a hurry
- Podcast music
Again another mystery game music challenge at the end of the podcast. This one should be fairly easy.
Weekend is Over
Well it was a good weekend all things considered. I had planned on not leaving the house at all, but that didn’t work out as I got called to do a computer sidejob. Seems a computer all on its own reset itself back to the factory default, wiping out everything. I’ve never heard of a system recovery being done automatically, but I guess with computers you never rule anything out. Tough I’m often more inclined to believe computers do what you tell them to, which may not always coneincide with what you want them to do.
I did re-affirm one of my long standing beliefs though. Never delete your e-mail. Ever. I dug up an e-mail from 20 some months ago that I had when I’d worked on this same computer before. And without that I’d have been on the phone with software vendors trying to get keys back. Because no one saves any documentation with their computer! Nay, that would be foolish.
At any rate, that was the only real hiccup on the weekend. Andrea, Luke and I just chilled here at the house mostly and played a lot of Guild Wars. We didn’t get everything vanquished that we had hoped, but we probably got 3/4 of the way in. Andrea’s been logged in for over two days now, and if mine hadn’t crashed mine would have too.
There were some casualties over the weekend though. My old reliable SOCOM headset finally bit the dust. That thing gave me a decade of reliable and quality service and was almost never used for the game SOCOM. I’ll be sad to see it go, but maybe I can use this as an excuse to get a new microphone.
So here’s some screens from the weekend of vanquishing. Be sure to click read more if you want to see them all!
TGIFFFA
Thank God It’s Finally Freakin’ Friday Again!
I’m really looking forward to the weekend. It’s the first weekend since probably November that I will have nothing to do. We aren’t going anywhere, and I don’t have to work (crosses fingers). So I’ve got big plans. Okay, maybe not BIG plans.
Need to do a few odd things around the house. We want to seal up the windows in the guest bedroom to keep bugs from crawling in this spring like they did last year. Probably should go a head and bug spray the house while I’m thinking about bugs. Honestly haven’t seen too many creepy crawlies since we moved in. But don’t want to give them any ideas.
One thing I’m really hoping to do is a Vanquish campaign in Guild Wars of Kryta, Northern Shiverpeaks and Old Ascalon. That will take a while, and there will be lots of AFK time as I’ll be bouncing back and forth between the game and hanging out with Luke. Andrea might even join in. It’s sure to net a lot of cash and hopefully some good items too. But that’s something that might take the whole weekend on and off. Plus I still want to get in some time with Zelda and Mario 3D Land.
I’m also working on another project on the side that I’m not quite ready to disclose yet. I like the way its starting, but I don’t know if I’ll have the follow through to complete it for one, and two how it will turn out when it’s done. So if you never hear about it again, know that it must not have turned out well! Haha.
I hope your weekend is fantastic. I’m hoping to Livestream a lot of the Guild Wars vanquishing this weekend, so check the Livestream tab from time to time and see what’s up.
Podcast for reals yo.
Heavy gaming talk in this podcast. Lots of stuff about Super Mario 3D Land, Guild Wars & Guild Wars 2, plus more Skyward Sword, but no spoilers!
Podcast music as always.
Vanquishing
I just can’t stay away from Guild Wars. I haven’t blogged much lately because I really haven’t had much interesting to say. Not that this is interesting either. But figured I’d post some screenshots from my vanquishing session from earlier tonight.
Setting out to kill every enemy in this frigid land.
Here's a fortress, but no one is home. Even the outposts are starting to be just as vacant in this game.
View of a homestead across the chasm.
Overlooking a beachside settlement.
Another small village. I just love the detail in this game. There was no need to put a village here, and most people won't even notice. But they did it anyway. It's the little things like this that make this game so immersive.
And vanquish complete! Took about an hour to kill around 200 enemies.
Merry Christmas 2011
Merry Christmas! It’s 9:30 Christmas Eve and little Lucas just woke up from another nap. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get one in today too. Luke’s first Christmas will be exciting as we’ll be in Wichita for Andrea’s family’s Christmas. I know Santa has some presents waiting for him there!
I’ve played quite a bit of Guild Wars the past couple days. It’s been exclusively the quest Strength of Snow which is only around during the Winter’s Day Festival going on now. It’s pretty mindless, but sure has netted me a whole stash of holiday items. I figure I’ll play some Guild Wars while the festival is around, and once it’s gone, get back to beating Zelda Skyward Sword.
I hope your Christmas is a joyous one. Thank the Lord for his Son born on this day! God Bless!
It’s such a good feeling
What an outstanding day it’s been! Started off by not having to wake up to an alarm. It doesn’t take me long to wake up once I’m out of bed, but that initial roll off the mattress is always a killer when you have to do it. I used to be able to sleep until well past noon back in my slacker days. Now I sleep until 8am and I feel like a king or something. Helps I guess that I don’t go to bed at 3:30am anymore.
So up and around easing into the day with a cup of coffee. Thinking about how its nice not having all sorts of “floaties” in my beverage since the water softener has been working. After a cup or two I figure might as well go mow the yard before a hot day takes over.
Too late. The temperature wasn’t bad but it was a crystal clear day and even at 9:30 in the morning the sun was beating down and making some hot work of pushing the little mower around. I should get me a riding mower some day, but this works and I get some much needed exercise. One of the most rewarding feelings is looking back at a freshly cut lawn, I think. Just so nice and neat. Like a green carpet.
Anywho, after that and hosing off the outdoors Andrea and I played a little Guild Wars. She’s working on getting one of her characters through all three chapters and I’m taking a character through the first game for the first time. So were helping each other. Knocked out a couple missions today. Got the bonus on one but not the other. Oh well, something to come back for.
Andrea is more tired these days. Don’t blame her. Growing a baby is a lot of work! So while she was napping, I tried to think of something to do. Decided I would take one of the extra florescent lights above the garage and relocate it above my work bench. Good news is I think I wired it up safer than before! And now I have some much better light to work with. I still need to find a place for everything in the garage though!
By now its late afternoon, Andrea ie up again do so we go shoot some hoops in the driveway for a while and head back in for supper. One of the things I’m trying to do is cook more stuff that will have leftovers. We don’t get to come home for lunch anymore so if we don’t take something, its either go hungry or spend crazy money eating out. So I cooked up some shrimp and rice stir fry. Made lots so there should be a couple days worth of leftovers.
So productive, satisfying, and relaxing. Those are the words of the day. Actually ready to face a busy work week after a weekend like this!
A few more Guild Wars locales.
I haven’t posted one of these in a while. Gotten back into Guild Wars again recently. Lately as I’m going around I’m taking the time to appreciate some of the scenery. The artists and designers really created some breathtaking stuff. Well breath taking for a 3-5 year old video game anyway.
The original Guild Wars: Prophecies is over 5 years old. In the video game world, that is ancient. Still... the original has some of the most beautiful and detailed scenes. Sometimes in places you walk by all the time. Here is Old Ascalon City.
Autumn in Ascalon.
The second chapter: Factions is most people's least favorite out of the three games. However I find the world to be absolutely beautiful. Most of my favorite scenes come from Guild Wars: Factions.
Plauge or not, living in Kaineng City would have to be just people living on top of people. Some of the towing structures are towing shacks that look like they'll topple if you look at it too long. Others are quite a bit nicer... like this one.
Heck, this is just the login screen.
Waterfalls are always cool. And there's no shortage of them in Guild Wars.
I don't want to go in there... do you? I have a feeling that's not a fluffy rabbit hole.
Gateway to Istan from Guild Wars Nightfall. How do they even imagine awesome architecture like this?
I’m Kind Of A Big Deal
You’ve gotta love some of the “titles” you can earn in Guild Wars. Amongst being “Not Too Smelly”, “Slayer of All”, and a “Drunkard”. I’m also now, “Kind Of A Big Deal” (Anchorman inspired). So I’ve maxed 5 different titles. Of course there’s 40 possible titles… so there’s a lot of folks that have done a lot more than I have.
Supposedly things like this are supposed to contribute somewhat if you decide to link your Guild Wars account to the upcoming Guild Wars 2 game. The more stuff you have in your “Hall of Monuments” the better goodies you’ll get upon the launch of Guild Wars 2. To what extent it is worthwhile, remains to be seen.
For now it’s just been kinda nice to have time to play Guild Wars again. But to be honest, now that I’ve achieved KOABD… I think I’m going to get back to Final Fantasy XIII. Haha!
Concerning the Norn:
They were straight-faced vikings who felt superior to humans and who took honor to the extreme in Eye of the North. Now they’re the goofball drunkards who take honor to the extreme in Guild Wars 2? …So they’re dwarves, basically, but 9 ft tall.
-user izari (GW2 Guru)
Ghosts of Ascalon – review
I finished my new book last night. It’s based on the Guild Wars universe and really sets the stage for Guild Wars 2 to come out in a several months. Some places are familiar if you’ve played the game, and the book offers a little deeper perspective on the magnitude of certain events that took place in Guild Wars the game. But you certainly wouldn’t have to have played the game, to understand the book.
In most ways I thought it was a great book. Not a masterpiece, but a nice read and well worth the $7.99 asking price. It’s of decent length, but also a fairly light read, so the pages go by pretty fast. The book does a great job of painting the new landscape, 250 years after the end of the first game. But it also illustrates the relationship between the races and the respect, or lack there of had for each other. The biggest complaint I have about the book is there’s a lot of times information feels a bit forced. ”What? You haven’t heard about the Foefire? Well legend says…” There’s times were there’s some obvious lines or settings thrown in to appeal to the existing Guild Wars fanbase. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing, I guess I just prefer those moments to be a bit more subtle, than “You’re standing on X, where Y happened Z years ago.” Okay, so it’s not THAT blatant.
All in all, if you’re a Guild Wars fan, I’d call this a “must read”. It’s far and away better written than a common “Fan Fiction”, but it does feel written with a very deliberate purpose. To fill in a bit of the Lore gap between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. That’s a lot of information to cover in one novel, and at times, it shows. All things considered, I’d give it an 8/10.
I’m A Shining Blade.
For those who haven’t been keeping tabs (can’t think of anyone in my circles who would be…) the folks that make Guild Wars kicked off a little viral marketing campaign last month at the Game Developers Conference and ComiCon by handing out these little propaganda fliers. The fliers had a little barcode in the corners that linked to a page on the Guild Wars website. Later a rival “faction” vandalized the page and the one-upmanship continued for a few weeks while fans picked sides of either the authorative and powerful White Mantle, or rebellious and liberating Shining Blade.
"Vandalized" White Mantle poster.
As fans chose sides some decided to role-play into the movement a bit, bringing familiar political spin to the legend and lore of the Guild Wars story. All of which took place up to that video being posted tonight on the GuildWarsGuru.com forums.
It’s been fun to watch, and it’s all leading up to some new content and a nice side story for Guild Wars 5th anniversary coming up this month. And for the record… Dismantle!
Getting back into Guild Wars again.
Well, as pointless as it is, one of my favorite things to do in the game is “farming”. For the Guild Wars uninitiated; Farming is basically killing the same enemies over and over in order to get the money and items that “drop” when you kill them.
What makes it somewhat pointless in this game is that most things are cheap, and the best items aren’t all that rare. Anything particularly valuable in this game is only because it has a different, or rare appearance, even while it may have the exact same statistics as a more common item. Blah blah.
But recently I’ve gotten the skills together to farm a new area, and I have to say it’s the most effective farming I’ve done in a long time! I didn’t make the video below, but it shows where and what goes on. Sorry if the music sucks. I don’t have speakers at work.
Mini Gwen
She follows me wherever I go!
Well I’ve been stock piling gold in Guild Wars for a few months now and finally got enough to buy one. But apparently I had enough a long time ago, as the mini Gwens are going for about half what I thought the were!
There’s really no point to the mini pets other than to show them off. Some are more rare than others and this one happens to be one of the harder to find ones. It has appeal to me, because it harkens back to the early days of Guild Wars when I first started playing. You meet Gwen in the first area and she follows you around oblivious to all the enemies attacking you. Somewhat comical.
So now I need to figure out what the heck I’m going to do next in this game!
Some of my favorite Guild Wars scenes.
Well, since we have no digital camera, and it’s going to be Thanksgiving before we can get it back…the blog will be a bit devoid of pictures. To counter the giant blocks of text that will surely take over, here’s a few of my favorite views in the game of Guild Wars!
Standing on a precipice in "The Falls".
Another view.
Extravagant sewers in Kaineng City.
Peaceful Shing Jea country side.
How nerdy am I?
Well let me tell you. I’m playing Guild Wars last night winding down from the day. And I’m getting close to heading to bed, but I find out that there’s a Polar Bear minipet that you can get from one of the chests for the special Wintersday event they did for Christmas/New Years.
Aww…look at that cute little guy! I love the mini pets in this game, but this one was special. There’s only a couple known to exist out of the 4 million or so players, so prices were astronomical that these things were going for. One person offered a price of 1500 ecto…or about $100 REAL US Dollars based on the exchange rate in game currency is being sold for. That’s pretty crazy if you ask me! So I ended up staying up later than I anticipated, trying to get my hands on one of these polar bears to sell. No such luck as the odds are apparently those of winning the lottery.
Oh, it gets nerdier.
So this little guy caused such an uproar, that I’m just sitting in one of the towns trying to convince myself to go to bed before midnight. Then all of a sudden the Guild Wars “Community Relations Manager” comes online in the town I’m in, and starts asking if anybody has seen the polar bear because SHE hasn’t even seen it. The real nerdy part is I snapped a screenshot of my standing next to this video game “celebrity”.
I’m lame, I know. But at least I’m not obsessed with the game or anything. I mean I was in bed by 1:00!
I’ve got skillz.
Well in Guild Wars you can get “titles” for certian accomplishments. Some of them more meaningful (relatively speaking) than others. For instance if you beat all the missions you get the title “Protector of Tyria”. One particular title I am persuing is “Drunkard” which you receive for being ‘drunk’ for 1,000 minutes. It’s a pain in the butt because you have to double click an ale every minute for 1,000 minutes to get the title. I thought it was pretty dumb that I had to sit there for 1,000 minutes just staring at the screen, double clicking every 60 seconds.
So with the help of a piece of software called AutoHotkey I was able to write a simple little script that double clicked every 60 seconds for me whether I was there or not! Why do all the mundane work when a computer can do it for you right? I had to go back to the days of old, back when I programmed a coin toss program where you could bet whether or not it would be heads or tails on an old Ti-86 graphing calculator in High School. I figured if I could do that, I could make a computer click a couple times every minute.
So wait, I paid money for a game so I could make a computer play it for me…wha?
More Guild Wars stuff.
Been playing the new expansion lately. Got me some sweet “slim spectacles”. Apparently they’re tough enough to be considered “armor”!
“Hmmm….probably a trap.”
Loving the environment though. Kudos to the artists.
So that’s about it. Didn’t have much else to post about. So you get a GW update. haha. Sorry all you non-nerds!
