Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces

It seems that the path you don't want to take, is often the correct one. Transitioning from always playing the straight up plant your feet and attack whats in front of you to playing the things that mess with people's heads to obtain their goals is quite a leap. Never before have I considered myself the kind of person who would enjoy the more subtle roles that, while potentially being less noticed, are often so much more important.

As I have been playing my rogue more often, I have found a more increasing liking for PvP. The ability to remain unnoticed until the opportune time to strike presents itself is very satisfying (Well, until someone else gets that same opportunity with you at the receiving end). It is surprising to me that I find rogue so exhilarating to play. Hell, at one point I was literally yelling with excitement after killing someone in PvP. I have never been a fan of the slow pace of energy, or the feel of how combo points worked with the rotation. It wasn't until recently, with my growing distaste for my paladin, It's lackluster performance in a competitive DPS environment, how I have so many opportunities to excel at so many different roles, yet only actively partake in one of them, that I figured I might as well give a pure DPS class another go. My warlock was rather unsuccessful in this regard, more-so in that I didn't care for the feel of it, than it actually under performing for what I feel it could do. At the moment, my rogue is level 66 and subtlety is fuckin' awesomely fun to play, in all aspects of the game.

On a related note, My spying is nowhere near as bad as it used to be. Learning how to manipulate people's assumptions of what they THINK a spy will do and use that to your advantage is one key I have found very helpful, in both avoiding a fight, or just trying to separate an engineer from his sentry long enough to sap it and get him on his way back to fix it. My old fallback of the soldier now feels foreign to me, and I have noticed myself more often hopping on my spy when I am having difficulties with someone, which I consider a very, very positive change.

Kaìten

Between A Rock and A Hard Place

After a brief hiatus from World of Warcraft and a somewhat forgetful self, I have returned with phat new lewtz. After a long absence from the game, my friend Penguin has returned on his hunter, bringing with him my paladin returning from his venture to the far off lands of Aerie Peak. Okay, enough of the RPing bullshit, down to business. I have been playing my rogue recently, and have rather taken a liking to subtlety, specifically in PvP but also in PvE. Two-Shotting clothies is quite entertaining, and at one time, I managed to actually two-shot a DK in the 55-60 bracket. Once again My Paladin is back on fenris, and is again Lynxblade. I am in a raiding guild that is currently 6/7 and have been having a good time with the fights, not so much with the paladin. I was rather disappointed looking back at my previous performance compared to where I am now, I feel like the gains in hindsight are so much less than they appeared, and that what gains I have made have been more from gaining a familiarity from playing my Retadin and learning the encounters, and less about the giant leaps in gear that have occurred. By comparison, my Warlock used to do so much less than my Pally, but is now almost on par, even with the significant gear disadvantage. Regardless; Ragnaros, that mace will be mine.


During my extended break, I did play quite a bit of TF2. Getting several new weapons, most notably a Strange Knife, Revolver, and Scattergun. Never before have I had a strong interest in playing a scout, however after doing so, I find it hard to return to the slow pace of the soldier. In addition, I have found that sniping is rather entertaining, especially with the OP new rifle known as the Machina. Bodyshotting people and killing them in one hit is awesome, but I feel like an asshole for doing it. (AWP Anyone?) Regardless, the times seem to be changing in more ways than one, guess I'll have to see what happens, but as of now, rerolling (Again) seems to be a not so distant option, waiting for the opportune time to rear it's ugly head.

A Step Above The Rest

I was reading MMO-Champion earlier and decided to watch the Paragon World First 25H Ragnaros again. I wish I was 5% if the quality of player that comprises that guild. Their precision in the execution of mechanics and the calm they maintain with the immense pressure placed upon them really shows what is expected to be a top tier raider. I watched in amazement at the difficulty of that encounter, it's no wonder it took them 500+ wipes to down that bastard. Not that they'll ever read this, but, massive grats guys, you've earned it. Your raiding is honestly a work of art in my eyes and you have put in so much work and dedication to this game.

In other news, I also read some older blue posts regarding the return of Valor Points to Tier 11 raids. As someone who is now a member of the casual player base, I must say that I don't like not being able to pug Firelands content (Trash doesn't count, sorry). I realize that raiding guilds and hardcore raiding guilds want to each have their own defined place, but I rather liked being able to at least squeeze out the first few bosses back in ICC. I don't want to be able to pug the entirety of the content, I would just like to not feel like i'm a whole patch behind the curve. In addition, the pugs that do happen for the previous tier have such ridiculous ridiculous requirements placed upon their groups, that you pretty much had to do it before they nerfed it for the casuals anyway. I was running that shit with a 352 when I got into Exilèd anyway, Why do I need a 360 and have the achieve to do it now? It defeats the purpose of making it doable by a larger group of people, especially considering the loot in these raids is max 359.

After my last post I went and played some Team Fortress 2 (Seeing a pattern here, might have to mix it up a bit in the future), I decided that I wanted a new gun for my soldier, and initially worked towards the Liberty Launcher, however upon meeting the requirements to create it, I had a second thought and went with the Cow Mangler 5000. At first I didn't particularly care for the new gun, and thought i'd regret crafting it, however after learning some of it's nifty little tricks, I can honestly say I rather enjoy this new addition to my arsenal. If only doing ZA/ZG was as fun as getting "geared" in Team Fortress 2.

I'm done for the day, have a good one.

Kaìten

Keeping your head above water

After yesterday's gratuitously long post, I feel like I would like to keep these rather short. Yesterday I decided to remove my pewpewlazor hat and put on the OMFGHealz cap. My prior experience with healing was back in ICC on my paladin, so the whole concept of needing Spirit to keep your heals flowing is rather new to me. I almost immediately discovered that my current gear was not adequate to even so much as maintain spamming the efficient heal for the duration of a Regular Cata dungeon's boss. I left with my tail between my legs, determined to get more healer-oriented cloth. Nothing like failing at something to simple to bring down the mood, examining potential ways to improve my healing set (Needs alot of it), I decided to stick to shadow for the remainder of my gearing experience. I joined a Zul'Aman and was rather surprised by the damage that my poorly geared gnome could pump out. Re-examining the recount, I apparently had a 90k Mind Blast and had done 16k on Halazzi.

Feeling rather done with WoW for the day I moved on to some Team Fortress 2. Last night I had a rather good run as the Spy, getting some memorable moments. I back-stabbed two heavy-medic teams within 10 seconds, and got away from the rather upset Pyro that decided he wanted to ruin the moment. One of the most satisfying things in that game has to be finally getting revenge on that guy who's been kickin' your ass all day long, and proceeding to dominate him. I learned something from this game that I feel I can apply to all aspects of life, play in a way that strengthens your weakness, instead of one that uses your strengths.

Kaìten

There's a first for everything

Hello there, I suppose with a first post, a introduction is in order...

My name is Peter. I am a high school student and a noob to blogging. I play videogames (Specifically World of Warcraft) fairly religiously. Not endorsing this habit by any means, nor am I saying that I am some pro or that I think I deserve to be anywhere i'm not. I just simply decided that it might be a interesting and different experience to create a place for me to talk about them.

I started playing videogames fairly early on in my life, starting with a Nintendo 64 back in first grade. The rest is a rather vague montage of different consoles and games. In the more recent years, I have become more and more interested in MMORPGs (Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games if you aren't familiar with them). I was first introduced to MMOs by Final Fantasy XI. I started playing this when it was ported over to the Xbox 360, and after some time transitioned to the PC because typing on a D-Pad was a bitch, and the PC allowed for much simpler communication. The combat was rather slow, but I had friends and was used to it. Two years and 5 level capped jobs later, I had become bored and wanted something more engaging. I wanted to play endgame, but unless you were already in a endgame linkshell or had cash out the ass, it wasn't likely that you would be successful. 

After quitting FFXI, I returned to console gaming on my Xbox 360. I found refuge in  First Person Shooters for some time, enjoying the rather fast paced combat that contained the simplicity I was familiar with in FFXI. Some time later, a kid I hardly knew from school who had discussed his liking for videogames with me during breaks approached me and asked me to play a MMO with him. I accepted his offer, having grown less enthusiastic towards FPS's, often becoming upset at the game for reasons beyond anyone's control. I started as a Paladin named Lynxblade on the US-Fenris server.

 Initially I wanted to play Protection (The tanking spec). After my friend had grown rather upset of how slow I went, he "kindly" suggested I try Retribution. I respecced and equipped the shiny sword I had just found in Razorfen Downs. I began playing it, hit a 3k Exorcism, and was hooked for life (Stupid reason, but in FFXI the highest number I personally ever saw was a 2200) Thanks to the gift of Recruit-a-friend I was level 80 in a little over a week.. I remember I was never too confident that I would ever be ready for the endgame content, given my history with FFXI. To my surprise, I was ready in about a weekend, and went in to my first Icecrown Citadel raid. I used to think dungeons were fun, man.. I was speechless after the enjoyment of my first raid.

Skipping ahead a few months, My friend and I had grown rather disappointed with the lack of personal progress we had on the Fenris server and assumed it was the overall quality of the server, not that either of us were so good that we could be a top end raider, but we still wanted to have the experience. We packed up our mains and hopped on over to Lightbringer and joined the guild The Exiled. We both got on their 25 man team however, we were split for 10 mans. He had made it to the top 10 man team and I was in the bottom. We were both disappointed with how little we had gained by moving servers and returned to Fenris with our heads down. We made a guild and resumed raiding with our friends until Cataclysm.

The night Cata dropped I was ready to rock, deciding to change it up and play a Warlock that I had recently leveled to 80 in preparation. I thought a change would be nice as the giant overhaul to Paladin was rather overwhelming and unfamiliar to someone who was used facerolling. Our group hit the gates running, all trying our damnedest to get server first for our respective classes. The downfall was we had a poor plan for achieving this that ultimately ruined any chance we might have had of reaching these goals. We intended to do a dungeon off the bat to get a jump over everyone on experience. Later that day and in the day following our group reached the level cap. We got heroic ready and began the gearing process. I remember having a blast doing the heroics due to their unfamiliar difficulty and the feeling of being on the cutting edge of the players, even if it was just for my server. This faded as the guild was swept with drama and broke.

After a month of disappointment in my personal performance on my warlock, I decided to give my paladin another go. I proceeded to level and gear it, feeling that happiness that I had remembered feeling so long ago on that night I first walked into a raid with this very character. Following this, I decided it was time to get off my ass and get into a raiding guild. I gemmed out my gear and applied to the 2nd guild on server, Exilèd, who was 12/12 at the time. To my surprise I was accepted and given a Trial position on the condition that I cap my professions. I raided with them a whopping 3 weeks before the guild leader Hydroc quit the game due to reasons unknown to me. I returned to the ever deepening hole that is becoming a casual player.

The weeks kept going and I made no attempt to return to a raiding position. My friends slowly began to quit, one by one. Partially due to the immense hype of Rift and partly due to the disappointment they felt in the changes that were made in Cata. The most prominent of these losses being that my friend, who I had grown rather close to in the year we had been playing together daily. Odd, I never realized it until just now, It was almost like we met in the game and RL was just a side effect. Afterwards, a friend moved my pally to a different server to play with him, and I began leveling a priest that just recently reached 85. I changed the name of my Paladin, hoping that starting over, without the reminder of what used to be, would somehow bring me more enjoyment out of the game. It didn't.

Hmm, I think that might be the longest thing I've ever written, and I haven't even started yet. Regardless, on to the now.

In the past few days, I have been focusing on gearing up my priest and attempting to play some games outside of WoW. Dissent (My Priest, Aerie Peak-US) is officially geared enough to struggle through the daunting pressure of being under geared for Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub, but thankfully the worst of the becoming raid ready is over. For the outside WoW gaming, A friend of mine and I recently completed the Co-op campaign in Portal 2 and another friend and I beat Dawn of War II and have been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2. I personally have been trying to play the Spy more in the hopes I might be able to be mediocre at it someday. It's always fun when you get on a good run and everything seems to line up in your favor. Most memorably for me is the backstabbing of a heavy medic combo that was about to enter our intel room. It's amazing the satisfaction that comes from figuring out or completing something so simple, such as a puzzle in Portal or simply getting that last piece you need to push you up to the next stair on the staircase of gearing.

I'm not sure where this might take me, the format I will present it in, or the outcome from doing so. Please bear with me and offer any feedback you may have. In the words of Tobuscus,

PEACE OFF.

Kaìten