One year of Adventures special: Nica IRL

It's been exactly one year since the first post on Adventures of the Hex Machine saw daylight. Happy birthday, blog! In honor of my first year of WoW blogging, I decided to introduce the person behind Nicasia the Hex Machine, or should I say, her partner in crime.

Although on WoW, my primary game, I've been an elemental shaman since the summer of 2010, I am a rogue in real life. A human subtlety/assassination rogue named Olivia to be exact, or as the URL of my personal blog indicates, "that rogue Liv." I'm from southwestern Finland, which makes Finnish my mother tongue. I became a rogue at the age of 13, when I found that stealthing around was a great way to avoid unwanted attention and remain unseen. Yet there were moments I couldn't hide, perhaps the work of Nefarian (BWL), which resulted in me getting ganked a lot. So I've been a rogue for pretty much seven years now, as I will turn 20 next month. When did I get that old, seriously?

Which of my characters do I resemble the most? Elias Desrosiers is what I would be like if I were male. Nicasia carries my passion, Raleigh and I share a lot of personality traits, Vladan's burden is partially my own. Every character of mine represents something of me, which is why they sometimes feel like my virtual children, or creations the same way a child would.

Some of my favorite blog moments/posts from the past year include Ress please!, my MoP beta memories, the wedding of Sol & Lykke and the launch of Pandaria.

Although I've been quite an inactive blogger the past few months due to real life things and my primary PC letting me down, I'm very thankful for my first year of WoW blogging and I'm eager to see what the rest of those years are like. Thank you all for reading and visiting the Adventures, and stay tuned for my future shenanigans.

Just as I thought I was finally back for good...

...I decided to run Dishonored and realised that the same memory circuit shutdown issue is still there. It no longer occurs with WoW (apart from one time), but it does with Dishonored, so I will have to take my computer back to the store yet again, hopefully to receive a whole new machine, since the Acer people don't seem to be able to fix this one. I am only slightly fed up with the endless (re)installation of Windows, driver updates and software installations.

Before that happens, I do have some time to enjoy a bit of raiding (hopefully!) and work on my gear that is lagging behind so very horribly after the WoW break that I never planned. The guys and girls in Menagerie, my right and left hands and ribs and spines have done such a brilliant job running the guild and organising raids without me. I couldn't do it without you anyway, but I'm very proud of each person that has participated in running the guild during my absence and I owe much to those people. Meanwhile I had a brilliant time in England and will likely start planning my next trip soon. Should you find this interesting in the slightest, there is a post in my personal blog that contains some photos from my trip.

Sadly Adventures will not be updated often at all while I'm not able to play WoW properly, but I should get semi-back into my normal blogging habits once all the technical issues are fixed.

Back, not quite in business though

Turns out I was able to reinstall and run WoW on my terribly bad old laptop, "craptop", after updating as many of its drivers as I was able to. As expected, the play experience is far from desirable with less than 10 FPS standing still in an empty room. As you have probably already figured, raiding is not an option for me before I get my primary PC back. Until then, I may redirect you to my attempt to maintain a personal blog number infinite+1, called That Rogue's Broken Keyboard and Other Lame Excuses. Despite the name, it's pretty much Finland-exclusive.

Lanfranco and I were responsible for this year's April fool's guild message of the day in Menagerie. A Menagerie ghost roleplay event was to be arranged in Hearthglen, Western Plaguelands (a very strategic location for Menagerie). Everyone taking part would be required to remain dead throughout the event. The idea of ghost RP first came up in a humorous recruitment advertisement we posted in the Moonglade trade chat once. Last year's April fool's message asked everyone to add 'lol' in the end of each message they posted in guild chat, or they would get a warning.

It's likely I won't be posting anything to Adventures while in England (9th - 24th of April), but when I return, I will have my good computer back. Below is yet another video that gets posted late.

I wasn't sure if I would ever post the next one, but decided to do so anyway. It's my first ever, and due to technical difficulties, also my only experience in the solo dungeon loot scenario...whateverthedevil thingy. I'm looking forward to doing smoother loot runs in the future!

¤$%"@#£&#¤!! PERKELE!!1

Siiiiiiiiiiigggggghhh.

No. Windows reinstallation did not help. Emptying the PC of everything did not help. Updating all drivers did not help. I am still unable to play WoW; the machine keeps shutting down after a minute or a few. Guildies and friends have offered me help in our Facebook group, which is much, much appreciated. However, it looks like I will have to take the machine back to where I bought it, as it is likely an issue with memory circuitry. And that means I will not be playing WoW for some weeks, probably not for another month, since I will be abroad from the 9th of April till the 24th.

Although the machine runs WoW and other games well, I am certain I will never buy a laptop again. I wouldn't have bought one last time if I hadn't had the need. I had to change my location every now and then, and a laptop was the obvious choice. However, my next computer, which will likely come around in late-ish 2014 or early 2015, will be a proper gaming computer.

So, this is just a little update about my situation regarding gaming equipment. I will pop around with more news and WoW-related posts even during my absence in the game. Have a fabulous spring if you are in the northern hemisphere. For people in the southern hemisphere I wish a fantastic autumn. If you only experience two seasons, I wish you an excellent either of the two, probably the rainy one.

20 Days of WoW blogging #10

Check out Spellbound to learn more about the challenge!

Day 10 – Blog/website favourites

Some of the first WoW blogs that I visited were It's for My RP Spec! and The WoW Debutante. It's a real shame that the former is no longer active, and the latter one's author stopped playing WoW. Both inspired me greatly to create a WoW blog of my own. Before coming across them, the thought of blogging about WoW felt nearly absurd, but once I read them more it began to feel like something I'd love to do myself.

Although guides and other informative stuff is useful and handy, as a blog follower I prefer humane blogs over "professional" ones. Don't get me wrong, I read both types regularly, but I love to read blogs for the people behind them. The more the blog represents the author themselves, the more personality it has, and the more interesting it to me. This I've certainly adopted as my personal blogging style as well, but that is mainly because I have no potential to write a more professional blog. I can only guide you towards listening to heavy metal!

Some WoW-related websites that I visit regularly or for certain purposes include Icy Veins, my number one helper when learning a new class or spec. Icy Veins is also my personal favorite when it comes to class guide sites; WoW Professions that I couldn't do without when leveling most professions; Wowhead for news and information regarding items, titles, events in particular, and Wowpedia for lore.

20 Days of WoW blogging #9

Check out Spellbound to learn more about the challenge!

Day 09 – Your first blog post

In case this means my first blog post ever, I must say that is too far in the past for me to remember. My guess, however, is that it was a blog on the Finnish blog hosting site Vuodatus and likely contained boring things regarding my uneventful life. I was a kid back then anyway, what else could you expect?

Nicasia and Lanfranco in the first background image.

On Adventures my first post saw daylight on the 6th of May 2012 looked like this. The blog had a different layout then and went by its working title Gloria, gloria Nicasia. The name changed to Adventures of the Hex Machine a couple of months later. The first post introduced me and made an attempt to describe what I am like as a blogger. Mainly it was just rambling that I tried to keep together somehow. Overall it was a pretty good first post, considering it was written by me, heh. Since then I have also learnt to remember to name posts!

The blog's first background was the result of a great idea and bad editing. I made a kind of a promise to myself in the first post:

My goals for this blog include not posting anything empty, which to me means something without even the slightest meaning or story behind it.

And I have kept that promise. WoW is far from being just a game to me, and that is all this blog is about: my experience in the World of Warcraft.

An unplanned break

Hello everyone!

I've been an extremely inactive and indifferent blogger in March, for a reason. I hate vague explanations that strive to invoke curiosity within readers, and I don't want anyone to think that is my aim. I will, however, say that due to an event, a big and sad change has taken place in my life. I decided I wouldn't write about it yet at least. Perhaps I will one day, but for now I will not, and I won't stress about it. It's enough as it is. I intend to just live one day at a time, and learn to live with the change.

I haven't stayed away from World of Warcraft because of that only. I encountered an issue that caused my PC to shut down after spending a few minutes on the game. I am hoping a Windows reinstallation will fix this, so I am currently working on that. It's something I was planning to do anyhow, so now I have a very good reason to complete the project. It just takes a while to save all the files and things I want to save.

As I leafed through a few screenshots on my old laptop, I got reminded of how much I enjoy World of Warcraft. That was why I decided to try to get back to the game as soon as possible. Those screenshots featured absolutely horrible graphics, because the PC was horrible for gaming. When I played on that machine, I thought the bad graphics made my playing experience worse. Now that I play with good graphics primarily, I realise that I couldn't have been more wrong.

All in all, I will be back in the game soon. I will finally begin to gear up properly - I've done a horrible job so far! I also heard Menagerie has done a great job progressing through Throne of Thunder in my absence. Well done, you all!

I think I was working on the Felwood quest achievement then.

This made me want to re-mog Vlad's stuff.