That's Pretty Ripped

Whoa. Was watching Sco's stream and noticed the poster on the wall behind him. Wasn't sure how to ask who it was but someone else in chat did for me: Zyzz.

Some Scenario Insight

Finally pulled myself away from all the Borderlands 2 streams to get Theramore Tabard Farming going back in WoW. The long queue time hasn't been bothering me as I find other things to do. Each toon has needed some clearing up both in inventory and bank along with dropping lingering quests to fill up with dailies. 

When the priest got into the Scenario I quickly discovered that there's no Vote Kick. I'm sure all the griefers instantly realized and enjoy this as here was my first time grouping with one: Drovosek-Scarlet Crusade. He couldn't have been AFK as I believe there are no longer LUA means of accepting queues. But he just sat there. The entire time. Was hoping that since he didn't collect a banner at the end he wouldn't get credit but no dice. He bugged out after the boomkin and I did all the work. Fucking brilliant design Blizzard.

Naturally I wanted to take advantage of this griefer-friendly environment so I loaded up the second account. Here's where I made another discovery. This was the first time I queue'd for the scenario on that account and the queue popped instantly. I suppose that makes marketing sense. Give everyone ultra-priority if they don't have the achievement on the license yet. But this sneak plus the population cap they are enforcing makes the queue times insane.

I felt bad letting my hunter sit there at the docks until I tabbed back to my priest where that warrior was doing the same. Karmic balance. Another fun fact: after thirty minutes of queue time the display stops showing the god-awful estimate. Clever!

First Scenario Live, Yawn

Didn't see any official announcement so I was surprised when a guildie got the Theramore's Fall achievement. Opened up the Instance menu and sure enough it was active. Ended up being in the queue for a little more than twenty minutes. Not that big of a deal since I have to get quest logs full for release day.

 

The load screen looked all exciting. I haven't read any of the books so I wasn't sure exactly what was going to happen. But there was enough chatter on the beta and clues elsewhere that I knew Theramore took a big hit. After the load screen you go right to a video where Goblin_Caption_001 laughs about dropping some sort of bomb right on the steps of the central tower in Theramore. There was no back ground or story leading up. Just... bomb.

Then I'm in a group with another elemental shaman and a hunter. All of us are DPS--wonderful! No more reliance on the Tank/Heal/DPS triad. Which begs the question... what was the queue time for? Not waiting for the right combination obviously. It was probably some sort of server load balancing. Guess that's okay. There wasn't any lag or connectivity problems so I suppose that it nice. But it seemed like there should have been less of a wait.

It was all pretty simple though my shaman is one of my best geared toons. The other hunter and shaman didn't do too bad it seemed. Each class and spec has survival tools that should be taken and used. That is, if you're able to quest solo you would be able to do this scenario fine. I think I will try another with the Priest in heal mode. Will it be faster or slower?

Group composition aside there was very little story there. Had to kill some captains and clear off the docks. Jaina sends us to kill a seige engine right out of Isle of Conquest. Then you grab a few  banners then meet back up with Jaina. Kill a boss then done. You're led around by the nose via the tracker in the top right. That's it. No follow up video or extra sequences. Really no lead-in or introduction to the Mists of Pandaria.

Overall I have to say... meh. The Cata opening event wasn't terribly dramatic but it seemed more fun killing mini bosses and getting xmog gear. And it's no where near as fun and immersive as the Dark Portal opening. Blizzard probably wants to spend time on content that's going to last longer than a week or two. While I can understand that I'm still left with... meh. I was disappointed enough to complain on the scenario blog entry. Admittedly the tabard is something to keep around and I'll get it on all my 85s. But .. yeah.

France Wins So Off to Cards

Stephano really worked it. The commentators kept reminding everyone that he'd done forty hours of travel plus he didn't have his keyboard/mouse. After losing his upper final he did appear to be taking things more seriously when it came to final map selection. The never made it to Daybreak as he stomped through both Entombed Valley and Ohana. Both games were under twelve minutes iirc. Crazy. Less than two months until the Grand Finals come up in China!

So time for a little break from the Eurotrash. Legacy Round 5 of 9 begins shortly over at Star City Game's Open Series at the Stan Lee Comikaze Expo in LA.

Another EuroWCS Final Match

Well damn. Vortix came back from the lower bracket with wild aggression. He took out Stephano's queen hella early...

Stephano did try to rally by pushing some 'lings into Vortix's natural. Ended up not working out as it gave Vortix time to build up roaches.

So barely twelve minutes it's GG.

So now it's final final match time. They threw up a five minute break so it's time for more Gangnam style. *lol* Would be fun to be in Stockholm.

WCS European Final Match

DreamHack.tv really has done great with the event. On the last break they played Gangnam Style which started the N3rd party...

Glad they saved Tastosis for the final commentary. Neither of them get too crazy when shit starts hitting the various combat/build fans.  At the start they do the filler chatter but once in play they are interesting and/or precise. Kaelaris and Apollo are doing the after-game which is fine. Keep them on the couch. *snicker*


 

Almost eight-five thousand viewers. Incredible! The stream has never lagged for me both days. Of course I've been happy at 480p. Noticed that most people in the chat say 720 is doing well too.

The first game was all tense at fiften minutes in. Not even at twenty minutes when Stephano did a massive roach push in a three-pronged attack which completely knocked out Vortix's economy. That could have been Cloud Kingdom though. Daybreak is a bit bigger so it will likely go longer. Whatever. Pretty sure the second game belongs to the Frenchman. Or the main USA player as the trolls in chat would claim...

Really wish Lucifron would have taken his little brother out. Terran vs. Zerg is a lot more interesting imo.

Nothing to LFG in Four Days

I haven't had all five WoW accounts going in years. It was fun to do the bot swarm in pvp. Also enjoyed the challenge of macros and coordination to solo content. Thought about trying that again a few months ago when the end-of-xpac lull set in. Yet I've had other things to keep my spare time occupied so never got around to it.

On Thursday I decided activate one to do the Scroll of Resurrection thing. Figured I'd get an 85 going on the Horde server my friends from Dark Whispers are on. It got me a free Cata upgrade for the second account along with a mount for the primary account. Could also spend time in-game without being bothered by Battle.net friends. *snicker*

I'd heard the XP requirements for 80-85 had dropped and wow have they ever! Created a Goblin Shaman then used the SoR to pop him up to 80 with resto gear. The queue times were a little slow during the day but not bad overall. Thursday got to 83. Didn't have as much on Friday but still got half-way through 84. Saturday I hit 85 in short order then started the JP farm. Very little questing which surprised me. Queue times started balancing out at 85 so I switched over to DPS.

The AH had a few bargains so I got into the End Time series pretty quick. I wasn't able to gem and enchant everything correctly since the prices on certain things were insane. Even if I had the money I wouldn't spend 500g on the +15 Chest Enchant. Thankfully glyphs were mostly reasonable.

Today I hit the 372 gear score for LFR after five instances. Still had five 333s on: head, shoulders, waist, legs, and trinket. Took almost forty minutes to get into Siege of Wyrmrest Temple. I never broke 10th place but the group moved through it all fast. Since I was DPSing the only bit of loot I got was a healing trinket. *rolls eyes* Only took about fifteen minutes to get into Fall of Deathwing and Spine, as always, was dicey but the group pushed all the way through. So with 1 day, 10 hours played my Goblin experiment completed.

Starcraft WCS European Finals

Really enjoyed watching the World Championship Series the last few months--mostly because I won't pay to watch games on MLG. *snicker* I still don't play SC2 but it's been fun to watch. Currently watching Lucifron vs. Lowely. Hope Tasteless and Artosis are back for whomever Stephano faces from the lower bracket...

The chat is as trolly as ever... calling Lucifron "Harry Potter" because of his voice and glasses. Looking like he will move on to face his brother Vortix. And I'm betting he'll win only to get thrashed by Stephano again.

Stephano is just ridiculous. He always seems so calm during interviews or on cam. Crazy on the field.

Advanced Hacking or No Sleep

Been up a lot lately and admittedly need some sleep. But I got a legit looking eMail from Arena.Net saying my account eMail address had been changed yesterday. Tried logging in at their main site and sure enough got a name/password error.

Now strangely enough I was able to log in over at the GuildWars 2 site. Changed my password there without any errors coming up. But then tried to log into the forums and got this....

So yeah. There's some hacking or anger going on somewhere between NCSoft and GuildWars. Glad I'm not playing at the moment, heh! Would still like to know my account is safe...