Recently rolled my smuggler as a bounty hunter-- not a reroll, but existing as two characters at once instead. Loving it so far! I think Vikke needs some mando'a in her vocabulary to really pull this off though...

( assorted silliness in mando'a )

I blame akaavi for being awesome and sith hats for needing mockery. :3

This one's a lot longer even though the character's been left hanging on Lord Adraas right before the end of Act 1. Smuggler's just got so much more personality than Trooper, and then there's the connections to my other characters through the legacy plan too.

I really hope they open server transfers to everyone in March or I'm going to have to start re-leveling her on Shien.

( I've a crew full of traitors and fools. We specialize in the hits that nobody sees coming. Nobody at all, not even the people who paid us. )

> Go to wow_ladies, beloved f!gamer community, several thousand strong.
> Read post about someone trying to start an "awareness project to open communication about women gamers."
> Post is weird and rambling and has minor grammatical errors.
> Post complains about people not being comfortable stepping forward to give their stories.
> Post has a header "(Mods if this isn't cool with you feel free to delete)"

...

> Resist urge to call poster out on being as hesitant as the people she's complaining about because of her header.
> Resist urge to say "Oh, another awareness project? Aren't you special."
> Resist urge to comment on likely success of weird and rambling awareness projects with no budget, team, platform, or defined goals.
> Resist urge to tell poster to get an editor.
> Resist urge to complain about sincerity of marketing speak vocabulary.
> Somehow actually manage to make all saving throws vs. being a jerk.
> Post links re: activity of female gamers that might be useful if the OP actually does anything non-weird and meandering.
> Leave post.
> Immediately fail all secondary saving throws vs. being a jerk.
> This post.

Being nice is a lot of work sometimes. I know there's no reason to turn someone away from a good cause if they're not doing damage, but man. Oh man. It would be so easy.

I have some feelings about the Sith Empire. (Spoilery through Ilum, so be warned.)

Feelings starting with: if SW was a realistic galaxy, these guys wouldn't last five minutes. ( or the equivalent of five minutes in a history spanning thousands of years, anyway )

And that is how I deal with playing a darkside imperial: Cheering them on to their doom. I just hope Bioware can pull it off properly when the time comes... They've already kicked the players out of the cold war in chapter three; if they just throw distractions at the galaxy for four expansions or something, I'm going to be pissed.

(Crossposted from tumblr)

KIN Raiders released their video of the world first Heroic Madness of Deathwing kill today, and it made me want to revisit my favorite progression raiding video ever. So here’s Paragon’s H25 Lich King kill.

Comparing the two videos, Paragon obviously has better editing (the fancy into) and the advantage of english voiceovers / translations, but I also think the LK fight has the advantage of inherent movement. Watching the 25m raid run in circles while yelling about aura mastery is a lot more exciting than watching them wail on deathwing’s left arm. Additionally, the adds in the first phase of the lich king fight had to be handled through a mechanic, while all of the deathwing adds need to be dpsed. Additionally, the LK fight has three distinct phases while the Madness of Deathwing has two, and the second is only at 20% and includes an ‘ignore everything, dps the boss’ finish.

It’d almost make me buy into the ‘Warcraft has the B team now’ story people like to rage about, except that the Ragnaros fight was more than crazy enough. There’s also the ‘the bosses were killed too fast’ whine, but when you look at the facts, pretty much every ungated boss ever went down quickly. The only way to stop that is with ridiculous gear requirements that’d make the fight impossible for players who aren’t at the pro level. As a sidenote, gating allows for players to gear up more relative to attempts, which is why the ungated bosses in Cata required more attempts than H-LK.

Now, here’s a guide video to the last boss in the Eternity Vault. (You knew this was going to loop around to Star Wars: the Old Republic eventually, right?) This is on the normal difficulty which is about LFR equivalent. I don’t want to spoil the fight, so I’ll do a very general comparison and you should stop reading now if you don’t even want that, but… Three defined phases, inherent movement, plus about five other mechanics.

When I saw players going against the first boss of EV in normal, it looked pretty boring. Same for the second guy, though when I was watching a stream of that fight more recently, it seemed like there were some new adds (or else the stream was on hard instead of normal). However, looking at the normal version of the Soa fight (the swtor video I just linked), I think I may have started worrying too soon. Slap an extra hard/nightmare mechanic or two in there, add some epic music, and this will be fun.

And this is TOR's first raid, not their last raid of an expansion. Though Nefarian was pretty intricate himself, 'course. :)

So right now, I'm on my laptop and can't play any computer games- no SWTOR, no BLC, nada. Just keeping up with the communities and watching streams to stay in touch.

The EU blc server just got moved about 20ms north of where it was originally. I don't know how this will affect my gameplay personally, since I'm US and a lot of my friends were west coasters who didn't enjoy EU to begin with, but there is one big issue. Apparently the move has had a serious effect on x6istence, the current #1 pro BLC team. Chipsajen is one of my favorite players to watch. If this move drives him away from the game... if it drives away a decent fraction of the current pro players overall... well, there aren't going to be so many good streams to watch for BLC anymore. And I haven't been watching many to begin with because of the loss of Kast and the lack of solid tournaments.

A sad time for one of my beloved games. *moment of silence*

So turns out I was in not one, but TWO Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic beta tests. Level 1 to level 33 sith warrior screenshot spam is now on the 'to post' list!

Now, the actual game will start early access on the 13th... 3 days from now! And the open release is on the 20th. But I am on my laptop until early January, which 1. does not have the power to handle swtor and 2. runs linux anyway. So I've got a month of watching spoilery videos and making plans and suchlike before I get to take more screenshots.

So here's the state my plans are in at the moment, pre-actual release data everywhere.

Republic Side	Empire Side
Captain Vikke Lambda Human Smuggler: Scoundrel Crew Skills: Cybertech / Scavenging / Underworld Trading Ereshki Zabrak Jedi Consular: ??? Crew Skills: Artifice / Archeology / Treasure Hunting	Darth Adinah Zabrak Sith Warrior: Marauder Crew Skills: Synthweaving / Archeology / Underworld Trading Rebekka Chiss Bounty Hunter: Powertech Crew Skills: Slicing / Scavenging / Armormech

The crew skill combos are kind of driving me insane. I've picked these four characters for maximum avoidance of repeating storylines and class mechanics, but it means ending up with everything that could combo well to gear up a new character split across factions.

But two and two characters is probably as much repetition of side quests as I'm willing to put up with anyway. One for the dark side and one for the light side on each faction, assuming I can ever resist going darkside on any character. The trooper storyline does not particularly appeal to me, nor do I sense any tasty dark possibilities in a jedi knight, and while an imperial agent does seem kind of cool, I don't really need to overdose on lightning with a sith inquisitor.

The necessary cross class endgame consumables seem to be biochem for flasks, plus slicing, artifice, and cybertech for mods. To be fully self sufficient, you'd have to roll all on one faction: biochem/bioanalysis/diplomacy, artifice/arch/treasure hunting, cybertech/scavenging/underworld trading, and slicing/?/?. Investigation seems like the obvious mission pairing for slicing in that case, plus one of whichever gathering skill supports the other profession that makes the most gold.

I wonder just what sorts of schematics investigation comes up with anyway? If it's armor stuff only, slicing/double gathering is probably a better choice for the 'self sustained' model. If schematics can be easily found on the auction house, ditto that.

edit: took out some character-specific pondering after deciding to swap cybertech and slicing characters due to 1. companion bonuses being left in and 2. wanting to make my own mods for fashion purposes. So now Empire side is all gear, Republic is all consumables, and Rebekka is dependent on Adinah for rare mats. That's fine.

I don't turn in to the KtK stream so much these days, because without Kast, the commentary is pretty boring. But I love using the tournament/observer system to get in there myself. Follow camera on Chipshajen = Fuck yes. Hell fucking yes. Especially now that he plays Alchemist and Psychopomp both. His use of EX space, sometimes following it up with a perfect Soul Link combo... Meteor Shard as a defensive knockback like Alch's Clarity... <3 <3 <3

Gotta say, the double vanguard in the first round of this week's final game was kind of ridiculous though, and not just because they totally wrecked Chips with their ultimates' AOE. That was straight up boring to watch, you know? But then everything after it was AMAZING. Oh my god, so amazing. Second round, Chips just barely fighting off ranid & stalker as a psychopomp. Third round, GameSense bring out their double healer comp and Made a Team have to adapt again. Seriously, I remember when swapping comps up got people killed like 100% of the time in KtK. And fourth round went down to 2v2s and 2v3s that were tense as fuck. A 2v3 finale! The whole time, the two teams kept up a friendly banter in [all], which made it even more fun to watch. Cheers especially to Prestoqt for being adorable, fanboying the other team. D'awww.

I have got to watch the BLGaming replays on that match.

( pictures from offsite requests )

Also, posted a new bit of warcraft art on my DA.

Sometimes I feel like I'm actually getting better at art. Very very slowly, getting better. So very slowly.

Eh, I'll probably dislike it in a few days anyway.

After the long break, I've found I'm pretty terrible at BLC again. To the point where I even get kind of grumpy when so many people are calling me a noob. I KNOW I'M A NOOB. THE GRADE IS RIGHT THERE, NEXT TO MY PROFILE. GODS. But there are still some awesome moments to be found in the game!

For example, a few days ago, I actually got a smm rager to apologize to me. How often does that happen?! And today, I was playing Ravener on my smurf, and the round was down to me and two Gunners from the other team. And I reflected both of their executes, killing both of them at the same time, and winning the round. If only I could have saved the replay! It was just... so perfect.

I guess I have to play more hard bots and focus on my aim more in standard games. I'm down to theoretical grade 7 in SMM and that is just sad.

p.s. Did not win anything in the avatar drawing contest. Boo.