Reasons why you want to watch Forbidden Kingdom!

1.  Jackie Chan and Jet Li, of course.  Their fight in the temple is a thing of beauty.  Sure, they kick major butt in the movies, but it’s also easy to tell that they both have serious skills in real life, just from watching their speed, balance and form.  They seem to enjoy working with each other and the choreography makes both men look good. Plus, even in the non action scenes they work well together.   I’d love to see them do a few more movies together, hopefully with them being the focus of the plot.  Which brings me to…

2.  Michael Angarano.  He accomplishes so much in this role it’s hard to name it all.  The stuntmen look great because they make his weak martial skills look badass.  And he really never looks any good just on his own, they really needed to give him plenty of time to train for this if they wanted him to look any good.  His romantic chemistry makes Hayden Christensen in the new Star Wars movies look like Brad Pitt.  Even average actors would look good next to him thanks to his craptacular skills.  But it’s all ok.  Don’t let anyone fool you, he’s really the side kick of all the other characters.

3.   The homages.  There are so many references and homages to other movies.  The White Haired Sorceress is Lian Ni Chang from Bride with White Hair (a movie referenced by the sidekick earlier in the movie).  A Karate Kid theme pops up now and then, both in the training and the begining and end plotline.  Jackie Chan again plays a drunken fighter.  Jet Li again plays a monk.  Both among their most famous roles.  Quotes from Bruce Lee appear all through the movie as well.  And like any good Chinese movie, main characters do die.

I tend to agree with reviews that call it more of a kids movie, the violence is bloodless even if someone dies.  I like that they didn’t cop out on character death.  And that they didn’t do the sterotypical ‘new kid after little training becomes badass’.  I’d recommend this movie.

We now return to your regularly scheduled WoW blogging.

Shattered Sun Offensive Dailies Pt II: Off The Island

My last posting was a quick and dirty  guide for the quests on the island.  Now let’s get back to Outland and have some fun.

The general trend for the Shattered Sun quests is easy.  This doesn’t change on the Hellfire peninsula where you have to fly up to the north to a plateau.  Once there you find the Magistrix and start your quest.  Destroying the gate is the easiest quest.  You need to activate the fireball you are given and run around killing the fire elementals there.  Not only do you get some nice motes along the way, but you don’t need to be the one who kills the fire elemental for the credit.  Everyone in the area is rewarded, so even if someone else tags the mob first there is still incentive to help finish it off fast and move on to the next.  Once your lil ball of fire has grown up to a big, surly unstable orb, then you run back to the gate and let nature take it’s course.  Killing the Felbloods is a little more tricky.  You have to kill demons in the area and collect their blood.  Once you have four, just start using the crystal on the Felblood initiates to depower them and destroy them.  With enough competition this can be a little frustrating, especially as a warlock since my DoT’s don’t immediately tag the mob as mine until the first damage ticks off.  In a case like this, you locks better hope you have shadowburn.

In Nagrand you can do the Multiphase quest, where you non engineers get to see a little of what engineers can see with their special goggles in the area when looking for motes.  For this you are heading down to the south to the Osha Circle and then just flying around spotting the little fiery balls.  Land, measure them, mount, rinse, repeat.  With an epic flying mount (You do have your epic flying mount, right?) this can be done in a couple minutes.

Now, the smuggled supplies quest in Blade’s Edge is more like a great looking for untrustworthy SO.  When you phaseshift things look very cool.  Kind of like wearing the One Ring from Lord of the Rings, only less scary.  Certainly the mana worms there won’t scare you, they die easy as pie.  Your real competition here is ninjas.  Not the fun, black pajama wearing guys that flip out and kill people.    Your goal is collecting the supply boxes.  Your real obstacle is not the words, it’s the other players lurking in the area, waiting for you to engage the worms so they can run in and ninja the quest objects you are bleeding and suffering to get to.  Maybe it’s just my server or the times I do this quest, but I see alot of this and it gets very frustrating.  If I was on a PvP server I could at least attack them.  Serves me right for being such a carebear.  If you are ever running short on time for your dailies quests though, this is the one you want to skip.

People keep showing up flagged! WHY?!

/rant on

I never get this.  I’m on a Normal-RP server.  I’m out having some fun doing the new dailies.  And people are running by flagged.  Usually with friends.  If they want PvP they could pop over to a battleground.  But no, they are prancing around in front of me flaunting their flagged status.  Sometimes they will run into my line of fire when I move to attack something, like they are trying to trick me into accidently targeting them with my attacks or trying to get caught by my fea AOEs.  In brief, they are getting their bloody minded PvP in my wholesome PvE!  And sooner or later I’m not going to be able to resist picking spots to start introducing them to my magical friend Unstable Affliction and his pals Corruption, Siphon Life and Curse of Agony.  I’m assuming they want PvP and don’t care how they get it, but then why roll on a carebear server?

Ok, I feel better now.

/rant off

A quick and dirty guide to Shattered Sun Dailies

I’ve been having a great time with the new daily quests. They are not tough at all, but they are new and fast and there is good variety. And they fit together really well.

For example, once you get to the island you get all the quests. The first two to do are the flying quests. Thanks to the hot fixes, bombing the dead scar is dead easy now. Once you know what to target, you can do it in one run without any trouble. Land and take off again and now you are stopping the reinforcements by firebombing their ships. This takes like 10 seconds but killing the 6 reinforcements can take a little longer if there is competition on the ship you land on. Don’t be shy about swimming to another ship that has less of a crowd for the 6 kills.

Once you are back, run ten seconds inland and you’ll start seeing the wretched. Kill them until you get your four mana remnants from the horrid little junkies. Of course, if you are a blood elf you are two steps away frpom being a magic junkie yourself so take this as an object lesson in the dangers of magic addiction. Fall to far and you too will be fodder for other people to kill and loot. Happily in this same area you can also destroy the erratic sentries and ‘fix’ them. Convenient, that. While here you’ll also be taking a ley line reading from the crystal in the big building in the lower area. And if you kill a few blood elves that count toward Taking the Harbor, so much the better.

Go north a little and you find demons to kill. The respawn rate is scary, I’ve literally stood in one spot and killed a demon as it kept respawning over and over. The Emissary of Hate you need to stick a banner in also just happens to come out of the portal you take a ley line reading from. Wow, that was easy.

Finish Taking of the Harbor, this can be tricky when there is alot of competition. And I’ve noticed as a warlock I have to use Shadowburn alot to avoid kill stealing when I tag a mob and someone else decides they want it a second later. Head east to kill Darkscale Myrmidons for their keys. The keys open chests. The chests give you ore. Take a slight detour to the shrine in the water and you just completed the ley line quest as well.

Yay, you’ve just done your part for the Shatter Sun Offensive!

Ghod, I’m depressed

So I’m getting some ideas for writing.  I’m getting really enthusiastic about it.  I mean, this could be the greatest novel since <insert your favorite novel here>.  A world changing piece of literature that puts all others to shame.  Then I look at the submission guidelines for Eos (Harper Collins).  ‘No unrequested manuscripts allowed.’  WHAT?!  Other companies must be more lenient.  I mean, someone has to accept manuscripts.  Nope.  Not Roc books.  No one.  They have to ask me to send in a manuscript before I can send in one.   And why would they ask me to send anything in if they have no idea who I am because they’ve never read any of my stuff?  So, does this mean I’m defeated?  Absolutely not!  I’ll post short stories online or something.  Polish my craft and make them all regret not giving a chance.  Then I’ll sic my succubus on them for some real pain!  I will not be defeated!

I mean, what’s the point?

I’m back from my enforced absence. I’ve just started playing so canb’t make any comments on the new content from 2.4 yet. But while I was away I got an offer that has stuck with me.

I guy I know asked if I wanted to play WoW on a private server.  Huh?  They have private servers?  Is that like private clubs that are so exclusive that only the best and brightest players can get in?  Do you pay extra for the priviledge to roll on a server that only lets in real RPers?  I know some people who would love that.  Or is this like one of those New York bondage clubs where you have to know someone to get in and it’s all ERPs?

NO!

It’s someone setting up a server at home for a few people and modding the server.  The selling point made to me was that we could level from 1 to 70 in a few hours, without having to put in the work to get to that level.  So…why would I want to do this?  It would take all the challenge and sense of accomplishment out of the game.  All the fun and socializing.  I’d only be talking to a few people.  I’d get to level 70 and get my epic mount in no time at all.  I’d miss out on the fun sad quests like when I got to put the tainted treents out of their misery.  Ok, I got frustrated trying to kill the guy in the crypt at the end of the Blood Elf area but when I finally got him it felt great!

I’d miss out on the jerls I swear at, the annoying gold farmers, the cool new friends I didn’t expect to make, and the old friends I love to talk to.  No battlegrounds.  No big raids.  I just don’t get the appeal.  I tried to explain why this seemed pointless to me but he didn’t seem to understand.  I think for him it was really about beating the game.  For me it’s all about having fun and a private server like that would suck all the fun out of the game.

My New UI.

2.4 is out! and while I don’t have much time, I decided to have some fun with a new UI. Zul UI Remix 2.5 really suits my style. Three little windows for General messages, Group and Raid messages, and Combat messages. Omen on the left, quests on the right. Places for both targets and focus. And I like the ergonomics of the UI. Can I use ergonomics? It’s not really where type, it’s where I have to look. The bottom button bars are what I use for combat. The left is on my keyboard keys for attack spells, on the right is my keypad for instant defense like all three fear effects, soul shatter. I don’t use any special gadgets for play and I rarely use the mouse for anything. And since the icon for me, who’ve targets, focused, and my groups and raids are all in the same area as the buttons I never need to look around the screen to keep track of everything.

Zul UI Remix is not the coolest looking UI you’ll ever find. It’s not like racial theme UI’s like the elven one with the leafy borders. It doesn’t have any fancy borders and lots of colors. The gray with little touches like color coding classes is really pretty boring looking. But for a UI that makes the game easier, has all the information you need right on the screen, I’d recommend it. Just remember if the buttons look wrong type /bongos and load the answer profile. I had to ask to find that one out and I was installing into a pristine WoW without any mods.

This is probably my last message for a couple of weeks. We’re doing our big move this week. And I really really hope to be back online in just a couple of days. Wish me luck!

The big move

No, I’m not moving my website.  But I’m getting dragged offline way to much while we get ready to move to a different part of the country.  It’s annoying, frustrating, it’s cutting into my WoW and general online time something fierce. The good news is the move should be done early in April and soon after I’ll get my internet connection back, will have no friends in the area, and so should have more time for WoW.

2.4 coming up on the port bow, Yar!

WowInsider had an interesting article on the upcoming 2.4 and the interest in it, or lack there of. 2.4 is coming! Fire! Plagues! Sunwells! QQ! A properly accessorized Kael’thas! For my part, I am looking forward to the patch. The Sunwell content my guild won’t be getting to for a bit, sadly. We’re still pounding away on Kara and with our move (moving to a new state, not moving the site) I don’t have nearly enough time for raiding. But more daily quests is a good thing. Welfare blues for PvP is a good thing. At least I won’t be totally pwned while saving up honor and tokens for my welfare epics. Warlocks were not crippled by nerfs, which is good. There are cool new items. I’m probably not jaded enough to want to give up WoW until the expansion. For me the expansion was my chance to play a blood elf paladin, which was the real reason I’ve even started playing WoW. If I’d already been playing for years and finished all endgame content, I would probably have been bored as well while waiting on the expansion, instead of cluelessly running around with my mage and slowly figuring out there is actually some strategy in WoW.

So in short, I can’t wait for 2.4.

Holy Crap!

BRK was nice enough to link to my blog. Sure, he linked to alot of other blogs but I know I was right at the top of his list. Even if I was right in the middle of the list. This is super cool for me though since reading BRK was what got me started bloging in the first place. So now I’ll link to him. And maybe he’ll link back to me. I’ll send the 6 people who read my blog to him. He’ll send his 6,000 to me. And it’ll start this hugely unbalanced death spiral of linkage that will eventually result in the destruction of the internet like an out of control top wobbling before it crashes.