She’s sad that there was so little time to game as of late.

The Goals

I lacked time to game throughout November and December. Real life sort of ends up getting in the way at the end of the year. It’s something I’ll have to take into account for next year. Or try to remember to take into account. I always remember about it in hindsight!

World of Warcraft

There are a few achievements that I didn’t even begin to touch, such as “Well Read” and “Turkey Lurkey”. I worked on leveling my Death Knight towards “Quintessential Quintet”, though only got her about six or seven levels. Same with leveling my dwarf towards “Double Agent”. I did complete “Friend or Fowl?” because it was an easy two minute achievement.

I surprisingly ended up completing “Raiding with Leashes”, mainly because I didn’t need many pets to finish, and RNG was on my side. I haven’t been so lucky with “Raiding with Leashes II”, yet. I only grabbed myself a Menagerie Custodian, but I’ve been getting lots of Wolves and Custodians since, while trying to grab the Imp and Abyssal. No luck on any drops in SSC or TK.

Secret World Legends

I ended up rolling up my dragon for my new Let’s Play YouTube videos, and I’ve been playing a bit of her, trying to build up some back log of videos. I’ve never played a Dragon before, and have been having some fun. So, I achieved and even surpassed my goal of just rolling her up.

I also rolled up a RP toon to try to get into RP for the first time in a very long time (in MMOs, anyway). Sadly, I haven’t had much time to play her, but I’m hoping to rectify that a bit in the coming week so I can spend time gaming with folks, as well. I’m excited to get into her, though. I’ve a bit of a story concocted, but I need to spend a bit of time writing it up and putting it into the SWLRP mod.

Other

I ended up not touching my otomes at all, but I’m hoping to do a bit of that this coming week as well. I’ll be laying out some new goals to just finish out the month of December, and then starting fresh in January with a longer, updated, list.

I mentioned working on this achievement in my monthly gaming goals post, and I finished it sooner than I expected, to be honest. All I had left was the Viscidus Globule, Giant Bone Spider, and Stitched Pup, and I’d finally obtain Mr. Bigglesworth (putting me one step closer to Crazy Cat Lady).. but the RNGods have never really been in my favor.

Before I did anything, I decided to see how much they were on the Auction House, because I really didn’t want to trek all over on tons of different toons. However, after breaking down and getting the Viscidus Globule on the AH for 14k, I decided it was probably worth my time to just go farm the dang things. I know a lot of people won’t think that 14k is a lot, and it isn’t that much, but when you only have 300k gold to your name, one is kind of stingy. And at least it cut out having to trek over to AQ40 until I wanted to just get the achievement, or was working on transmog farming (which is low priority—pets first!).

I hit up Naxxramas on Chestnaught to see what I could get, and ended up with the pet from Loatheb (which I already have two of thanks to generous guildies), as well as the one off of Maexxna. Gluth was not kind to me, sadly. Nor were tier drops, for that matter. So since Naxx is so easy to get to, I’ll have to make farming both normal and heroic Dreadnaught Battlegear one of my first transmog goals. Anyway, the spider is gross. I’m super afraid of even Daddy Long Legs (yes, I know they aren’t spiders), so I put this guy out, took a picture, and put him right back. Blech. But at least I have him, now! And I’ll level him eventually when Squirt is back on the 30th (NA realms).

So, since Gluth didn’t put out for Chest, I hopped on my hunter, Hazelnutt, and decided to just hit up the Construct Quarter. She didn’t get lucky either. So off to the shaman, Shaelee! Only hit up the Construct Quarter up to Gluth as well, but she surprisingly ended up getting lucky. He’s cute in a kind of disgusting way. It was a bit annoying to try to run even old content as a healer, so I guess I’ll have to finally bite the bullet and get my enhancement weapon on her.

And so, I have finally obtained the adorable Mr. Bigglesworth! I also ended up with pretty much every 10 Man achievement on Chest on my run through. Which, honestly, is my top pet peeve in WoW. If achievements are truly supposed to be account bound, why on earth do I not get credit on the toon if I’ve already completed it on another! I shouldn’t be spamming guild chat with achievements I got back when it was current content when I was playing my Druid. That defeats the whole purpose, Blizzard. Fucking fix it. I don’t mind if I can’t get credit cross-characters for most achievements. That’s fine. Whatever. But I want the credit for the ones I’ve done, instead of a “Not completed on XTOON.” when I mouse over something.

#IntPiPoMo Count: 20/50

So, while the Lag Boss has been fierce as of late, I’ve spent some time going through my bags and learning all the neat things I’ve gotten as Cosmic Rewards. I’ve ended up with a Corrupted Eldan Probebot, a Disco Snoglug, a Friendly Furrelope, the Li’l Beast, and an abso-freaking-loutely adorable Warpiglet, who is totally my favorite.

Well, he was my favorite, until a guild member found this cutie (see left) in a lockbox from a dungeon and sent him to me because they, “don’t do collectibles”. His name is Commander Paws. I call him Commander Cutie! He’s very expensive if you search for him on the Auction House, so as a payment, I’m helping said guildie get attuned. I think that’s a fine deal, and that I’m totally getting the better end of the bargain!

I’ve also gotten some mounts, and dyes, and all the in-game shinies have been pretty awesome! But I still feel that my Cosmic Rewards Points are off, so I might have to sit down and do the math. I’m probably wrong, but I’d rather be safe than sorry, because I know some of my SKUs from the box copies weren’t counting even with beta edits.

Blogs of Nexus

I’ve started a new weekly column called Blogs of Nexus, where I highlight the blog posts that have been made daily about WildStar. You can check out the first post here, and if you don’t see your blog, or a friend’s, that wrote about WildStar this past week, please pass their blog link onto me so I can make sure they make it into the next roundup!

Leveling Extravaganza

Because WildStar just wasn’t playable with all the lag, Chaide and I spent some serious time in Final Fantasy last week and this weekend. We took our “baby” classes from 14 to 21, did our level 10, 15 and 20 quests, ran Sastasha, Copperbell, and Tam-Tara a few times, and ran Halatali for the first time… twice!

Sylver also got me the Bomb Dance just because she felt like it, which was totally sweet, and I love it to death. Now I just need to be able to use Glamours… and at some point we should make an effort to unlock the esthetician… because I seriously need a new ‘do.

Gladiator Story

I’ve been enjoying the Gladiator story quest up to where I’ve done it. I kinda saw the twist coming, but it was still a good one. Also saw the “prior realtionship” coming, but I was glad it was so, and hope maybe they’ll get back together. The Ninja Miko’te was interesting, though a tad cliche. The battle also gave way to some seriously awesome screenshots.

Victory!! Or… wait…

Oh, that look of utter disgust on her face was perfect.

While cliche, she was still a badass and made me want to roll up a Ninja soon.

This guy, though… I’m interested in learning more of his back-story.

Especially because of that sword.

Oh man, Mylla’s determination to figure things out and make them right. I feel so bad for her and everything she’s currently going through. Aldis, too.

Halatali

Halatali was definitely straight forward, and kind of boring, in a way. The fights were all pretty much tank-and-spank, but that did make it easier to eat dinner while I was just spamming three buttons. And the “spamming” is nothing like I’m used to with WildStar, so it was a nice pace. I honestly wouldn’t mind running it again with a different class to use it as a level-buffer.

Saturday I spent a large chunk of the day putzing about working on various things. I’m 3k away from hitting max rep on Northern Wastes, so one more set of dailies with a rep potion should do it for max rep! And then I can work on some Crimson Badlands.

I also decided to just putz around in some Shiphands (now called Expeditions), and I ended up getting a new mini-pet!!

Isn’t he precious? My new cotton-candy Rowsdower. Hurrah!

We also had a guild meeting to discuss Free-to-Play, and address any questions or concerns folks had about it. It went really well, and we’ve quite a few new folks that seem to be an awesome fit for the guild.

Since Saturday, however, it’s been an interesting time in WildStar. Free-to-Play dropped, which is awesome, but it’s been hell trying to get into the server. Even as a subscription (now Signature) member with priority queues, I’m still waiting an hour some nights to get into the server. That also doesn’t include the necessary hot fixes, or random server hiccups.

I understand that things happen and a lot of this is stuff the devs are working on to the best of their abilities as fast as they can, but it’s a tad tiring, and it’s making it difficult to get in touch with the large number of guild applicants since Tuesday. But I know things will turn around, and I do have other games to play and TeamSpeak to sit in with my fellow guild members. So it’s all gravy.

I am happy that the Drop has been so well received, and I’m glad that folks are being as patient as they can be, but I just wish folks in general would get their heads out of their butts and just, well, I think I have a post that will sum it up quite nicely, so I’ll leave you with that.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD!

But I had some fun in WildStar! One of our guildies is working on attument and is at the Adventures stage, so we decided to hit up Malgrave to help him out.

It was nice to run some stuff with guildies, and it was even nicer to get Gold for the first time while in there! I’ve run Veteran Malgrave Trail quite a bit in my time playing WildStar, and I was glad to finally be able to get gold out of it! I also managed to pick up two new achievements I didn’t have, plus a title. We also got the Speedster run, which I already had, but we got it for the guildie who needed the run.

Birds of Prey

There was also a mini-pet that dropped, and I ended up winning the roll for him! It is the Vulcarrion Scavenger mini-pet, and apparently only drops off of gold runs. It’s a really pretty pet, actually. I’m hoping that the more we run it, we can get it for more guildies that need it, since only one person in the group out of the guildies there had it.

Raiding Fun

Raids seem to be like everyone is hitting burnout for various reasons, though the big one seems to be that we don’t yet have a full and complete group (second seems folks are dying for F2P!). I completely understand that real life happens–I myself am the prime example of real life happening and not raiding. But some folks have just stopped altogether.

But that’s okay, because we’ve some members that just hit 50 and are looking forward to raiding for the first time! We’re not a progression guild, so we’ll get there when we get there. We’re not going to force people to get to 50 and raid if they don’t want to, because it’s not what we’re about. But I am glad that folks have been having fun and are excited to try raiding out! It makes me a happy guild leader to see folks trying new things, and excited for new challenges and endeavors.

And it was great to see some folks who needed upgrades get some really great ones out of raid last night, even if we only got a few bosses/mini-bosses down.

Algoroc Done

I also spent some time putzing about in Algoroc. One of my goals for the month is to finish out either Algoroc or Celestion, and I was much closer to finishing out Algoroc’s achievements than I thought. All I needed was the I Like It Rare achievement. So I killed the last five Primes I needed, and I’ve finished it out!

Well, as much as one can finish it out before F2P. They’ve added in acheivements for Public Events on Live already, but the public events won’t come out until the 29th with F2P. (EDIT: I’m a scrub and didn’t realize that the events are already out there, at least in Celestion, so I’ll be checking out Algoroc again to finish those two out…) But don’t worry, I’ll be going back to do them because I’m a completionist. Now, onto Celestion! Let’s see how much I can finish before the month is over!

No no, not me. Bauxyte! Bauxyte is my Baby Warrior. I’ve been waffling on which alt I want to level next, as I keep discovering some are more fun then others, then changes come out, and a different one is more fun than another. But I always seem to come back to Bauxyte in the end. She’s not the first alt I rolled. In fact, she’s pretty much the most recent one.

But there’s just something about a sassy Granok lady in heavy armor, no?

Tuesday night was a normals night I set up. We ended up running just one STL and one KV while I was online, but it was pretty much all just toons at-level, and no level 50s helping out. Which made it a tad more challenging. But a lot more fun.

I even got a pretty baller shot of the final boss in KV.

Free to Play News

Last Thursday, Massively posted an article from E3 with some more Free to Play details. Other sites, like MMOGames, had details as well.

Suffice to say, there’s a lot of stuff coming down the line! I was originally going to write a whole big spiel on what I like and what I’m wary about. But, the more I sit on it, and the more I listen to the devs, the more I’m excited for the Free to Play transition.

Yes, I know, there will be some rough patches, but for a game I love to survive, a lot of these changes are going to help it do so–and become even better.

There were also announcements that Wildstar is going to be heading to China! The original article can be found here, and WildStar-Core also did a recap.

The biggest thing, though? THOSE PETS! I WANT THOSE PETS! And it looks like we should be getting them…

Stream Part II

Yesterday, there was a stream where they covered (again) the changes coming, and answered some questions.

In particular, Steven Engle (Meerkat), covered stat changes in a Reddit AMA. Which is, admittedly, a huge topic of debate for folks. While I do have some hang-ups on the stats, I’m hoping things are going to go well. Meerkat is pretty adept at what he does, so I’m going to trust that things won’t get too “dumbed down”. (I’m also working on an article summarizing the AMA for QueueTimes, so look for it in a few days! EDIT: You can now find the article here.)

Dungeons are getting a bit of tweaking, and there’s going to be group content to level through instead of questing, if that’s your cuppa. Honestly, I like the questing, but I am glad that there’s more content streamlining for the guildies that do like to get some dungeon-time. Especially since it gets the guild Influence.

I am, however, excited about Alpha-Sanctum! It’s going to be the new level 15 dungeon, and introduce a lot more of the start of the Drusera quest-line early on, which is actually one of my complaints with the game..

As for the Sprint changes? I’m not as sad as I originally was. You can still use Sprint in combat, but you will have to use the default key for it. Otherwise, out of combat, you can toggle it on or off for a constant buff. My big concern was if Sprint was going to be pointless in Combat.

There were some updates on the Loyalty program, but nothing more than things they’ve released in various articles and such.

They also covered quite a few questions that were a tad difficult to keep up with (being at work and all), but they usually load the Streams up on YouTube later, and I’ll link to it if they do.

In particular, I’m looking forward to the Deep Dive articles that the CM and Dev team will be putting out for all of the changes. They’re what I’m looking forward to the most.

Last night was a fairly chill night in WildStar. I worked on some guild management stuff, and then helped out some guildies with attunement by running a Vet Siege of Tempest Refuge and a Vet War of the Wilds. A Skeech Shaman happened to drop in the WotW run, and I won the greed roll!

Lookit him! Isn’t he so cute! I mean, as cute as a Skeech can be, anyway. Plus, he’s just as tall as my Aurin.

Strain-Corrupted Jabbit

I also ended up procuring a Strain-Corrupted Jabbit from the guild bank. While I was dropping dyes that were repeats into the bank, I saw a Jabbit sitting there, and according to the logs, he’d been there over a week. From what I’ve read, he’s one of the more common drops that most folks have handed off to alts already.

But, since I’m not an MMO monogamist by any means, I didn’t have him yet. But now I do. While he’s not my favorite model (because anything Strain-related is kind of creepy and shudder-worthy to me), I do think it’s cute how he looks around when he stands on his back legs.

Protogames

We also ran a quick Protogames to get the shoulders for a guildie who’s back from hiatus, and to help a few of us get some more challenges for attunement on them. I’m hoping to get in a few more runs and then I can start working on my DPS version. I did get enough Glory to possibly purchase a tanking helm, so that’s nice. I plan to look at that and fiddle with my Glory vendor sometime this week.

First time trying this room out. I got to be the beacon runner!

Screw this room and the robots.

Tonight we have a guild RP event, and the devs apparently have an in-game surprise for folks tonight at 9:30 EST. So I’ll be staying up for that, and taking lots of screenshots. I’m interested to see what it is. I hope it’s not imminent death by Rowsdower or something…

Boss Train, Woop Woop!

Saturday I hopped into WildStar for an officer meeting, and then a scheduled Rose Bowl event!

Not only did we do Rose Bowl, however, we started a World Boss Train. It was a lot of fun!

I even got to do R12 for the first time! I’d love to do both again!

We actually downed King Honeygrave!! He’s an extremely buggy boss (no pun intended) and can reset randomly sometimes. So it was awesome to get him down for the group. Unfortunately, I didn’t get credit for him (and I didn’t get credit for the other buggy boss over in Farside, either). So I’m hoping Carbine does some magic fixes on both so I can go back and snag them without glitches!

Saturday while I was out running chores, I also stopped at a Game Stop and picked up two more box copies of WildStar hoping our luck would win out. I got the hoverboard from my box, so I sent it over to Chaide as it was the last thing he needed. And he happened to get the Snarfelynx out of his box which is the last thing I needed. So now I have my fat farting cat! And a title! Hurrah!

Speaking of titles, I also finally redeemed my Anniversary gifts for my title, and toys, and Rowsdower! He’s all candy-fied! He is mine! And I shall call him my Squishy!

Saturday night we also hopped over to FFXIV for a bit. A good friend we gamed with in WildStar (whom we met in EVE and have kind of game-hopped with them until WildStar) has a FC over on Lamia. We had initially played there but left due to some complications with folks who have since moved servers. So I rolled up a new Magnolia Chestnut that’s going to try to main a Bard.

Honestly, I plan to play much more often over on Cactuar, but I do plan on every-so-often spending some time continuing to play with someone Chaide and I would consider family. And who knows, maybe I can get two different raiding environments. (I find it funny I look forward to raids in FFXIV but could care less about raids in all of the other MMOs I play…)

Wars and Podcasts

Sunday was some Star Wars. I did two flashpoints, put on gear that will last me through to level 50 (so long as I consistently change out my mods and such) and tried to fiddle with my spells. It’s a tad overwhelming the number of spells, so I’m looking for any help folks might have for a Marksman Imperial Agent!

I was also the guest over at Strange Tales from Outerspace (Episode 48) on Sunday! It was a lot of fun! If you missed the livecast, the podcast will be up sometime tomorrow, and I’ll be sure to link to it… so long as you don’t mind listening to my sailor’s mouth, haha. I vaguely recall someone in chat calling me “sassy” and I had a great chuckle about that. It kind of comes with the territory of being a Ginger. ;P

I’m also finishing up edits to the next Yardcore, and expect to post that baby sometime today. If you’re playing WildStar over on Entity, I’m looking for more volunteers (Exile or Dominion), so please hit me up and we’ll set a date and time to record!

Yesterday marked the first day of May, and therefore, the first day of the Newbie Blogger Initiative for 2015. What is NBI? Well, Belghast did a really great write-up of what it is and why you should participate in it over at MMOGames, so check that out!

What does it mean for the blog? Well, it means that I’ll hopefully be posting a bit more. Especially since Murf at Murf Versus has come up with a, well, challenge, essentially, called the #NBI2015Safari that I’m looking forward to participating in.

I do have to say that completing NBI may be a bit of a challenge for me this month, because I have so many IRL obligations. But I’m looking forward to the challenge of working in the time, possibly pre-writing posts to put up (I hate scheduling them, because then I forget to post them via social media, and I like doing that), and finding other times to write them. Like maybe trying to write them on lunch again (if work slows down a bit, that is).

Meeting with the Resistance

On Monday, Chaide and I spent a few hours putzing about in Final Fantasy. We started off continuing our progress on the main storyline. So, we were set out to try to become friendly with Ala Mhiga.

Which led us to Meffrid, whose clanmate was dying, but the townsfolk couldn’t do anything for him. How tragic. I suppose I could do something for him. Here’s his medi–he ran away? Okay, I’ll go find him.

We then returned to Little Ala Mhiga with tidings from Meffrid which got us the in we needed. Gundobald told us of a Masked Man who’s been seen near Little Ala Mhigo and asked us to investigate. So we did as commanded. One of the people we chatted with was Wilred. Chaide and I looked at each other after investigating him and said, “He’s the one, and he’s going to realize he did wrong, and regret it, and make it up to his people.”

And then Wilred immediately tried to attack us. We reported back to Gundobald, who sent us after the lot of younguns who were making trouble and probably going to get themselves killed.

Bertliana

What really got to me was a short dialogue between Bertliana and Gundobald.

It alludes to the fact that Bertliana has been raped (possibly even gang-raped), but Gundobald really doesn’t have any emotional dialogue about it. In fact, after you go around investigating what the young folks are up to, only one character has any outrage at the fact aside from Wilred. And that’s another un-named female. Not to get on a tangent about anything, but that just really left a terrible taste in my mouth.

If you’re going to put something like that in there, have appropriate responses, or leave it out altogether, Developers.

Fighting the Amalj’aa

So, anyway, now it’s time to go catch up with Wilred and see what trouble he’s gotten into.

Infant Imp