The Shiny Side

Great googly moogly.

Has it really been almost a year since I’ve posted? Wow. That means it’s been almost a year since I last played World of Warcraft. Ho-hum! Despite having an account that was active until January, I hadn’t logged into the game in quite some time before that, probably October of last year. That seems like a lifetime ago.

So, why suddenly post now? What is the point in reviving a blog that was mostly about WoW when I don’t play?

I have a secret!

…. I’m not tellin’!

Oh, okay. You convinced me!

Your beloved Turtle has returned!

That’s right! After such a long time, Jaarka is back! More importantly: TURTLE IS BACK! Rawr!

I reactivated my account last night and popped on for a brief moment to add Roz to my RealID friend list, and also got a re-invite from Trout to get back into <Crits and Giggles>! Ah, it’s like I’ve never left!

…except that they’re working on killing the Lich King and I’m still in Trial of the Champion gear.

>.>

icanhazpurplez?

It’s great to be back!

Side note: default UI… EWWWWWW!

I’ve been out of commission for a while, eh? Well, let me catch you up quickly.

The server died out for a bit. Apparently hard drives make awesome paper weights after catastrophic failure. Luckily, my a-maz-ing web guru managed to recover all of my data beforehand. Yay!

Lately, I’ve been really under the weather. Like… with the flu. Bleh. I couldn’t even look at the computer for 5 minutes without my head wanting to explode. No fun at all.

So, here I am, recovering (still a little sickly, but I’m pushin’ through!), and I stumbled upon something really awesome: Hunter Tier 10 HD Previews!

This comes courtesy of MMO Champion.

Well. Hmm. Apparently I can’t upload photos on the blog right now. Ah, well. All part of the recovery efforts! That link will take you to the post where you can see the new Hunter sexiness, as well as Warrior, DK, Druid, and Rogue previews.

I was going to throw down a post yesterday to describe my excitement over Talk Like A Pirate Day (and Pirate’s Day in WoW), but I actually was really busy with work and other pesky real-life duties.

However, I will instead point you over to Need More Rage’s Amazing Post celebrating the day. I LOL’d more than once.

Yarrrrrrrrrr!

Direct2Drive is turning 5 years old!

The digital game distribution website has decided to throw a big sale to commemorate the occasion. Every Monday for the next 5 4 weeks (I missed the first week, ohnoes!) they will update their sales page with new games that are only $5 each. I’m not talking just about crappy games no one wants, I’m talking Grade A titles here, people!

The schedule is as follows:

This week - ACTION
Week 3 - RPG/MMO Games
Week 4 - Indie Games
Week 5 - War Games

This week’s most notable titles (imho) include The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, BioShock, Sid Meier’s Pirates!, and Max Payne 2. If you have missed out on any of these games, $5 is well worth the price of admission.

What do you guys think? I’m interested to see what kind of MMO deals they have for us next week. If I can get another copy of WoW for $5, I might just have to get a second account. Heck, maybe they’ll do something crazy and offer something brand new like Champions or Aion for dirt cheap. Would you bite if they did?

<Warning: This is a bit of a whine post. Kinda. Just something that’s been bothering me lately. I wanted to give you fair warning ahead of time!>

Gems. Jewlcrafters cut them. You pay for them. They give you stats. The end? I’m not so sure…

This week I will start doing 3v3 Arena with a couple of my friends. While we were doing some battlegrounds last week (which I was rocking, by the way - top 3 in AV in five battles!), I was pleased with our performances. As a Mage, Priest, Hunter trio we have a lot of burst damage, some decent crowd control, and healing. Really, we have it all except for a meatshield, and I can pretend to fill that roll. Deterrence ftw?

So after these battlegrounds that really pumped me up about our chances, the priest decides to take a look at my gear.

“Wow. Look at all of those empty sockets.”

Well, yeah. I really only started getting my PvP gear two weeks ago. Hitting the honor cap, I decided to buy up a set for when we did the arena. However, that’s not a full excuse, as my normal PvE gear also had unfilled sockets. Why? Personally, I’m of the mentality that if I can craft something for (nearly) free, why the heck am I going to pay 300g+ for it on the AH? I mean, really?

So I explain this and we move on. We rock more PvP. We’re having a great time.

This week rolls around and I find out that I will not be able to participate in the Arena team if my sockets are still empty. Wait… what? I’m already rocking it out my own way, and you’re going to kick me off of the team because of a couple gemless pieces of gear that I bought specifically to do Arena with you? Umm…

This is the time when I ask you, the few and faithful readers, what your thoughts are. I know that gems can help a lot, but is it enough to make or break a team thatbadly? I know for a fact that I’m geared up better than some of the other people on the team (you can have more than 3 on your 3v3 team… kind of like subs on a bench), and yet I’m not going to get to participate because I got the better gear, but they’re not socketed?

“You can’t Arena with us with empty sockets. I don’t care if you have the crappiest gems available, socket your gear.”

Oooookay, then. So that’s what I did. I popped over to my oft-forgotten mage (who’s a 359ish JC) and made the cheapest, lowest, crappiest Outland green gems I could. +12 AP here, +3 Crit there… it’s pretty sad. I’m actually kind of embarrassed of my gear now, where as unsocketed they looked just fine.

The kicker - now that I have those crappy gems in, I’ll be allowed to Arena.

Wow, really? Glad that extra 30 AP and 6 Crit really is going to swing our team around. Um… okay.

Am I overreacting, or do you think I’m justified in my gripe here?