Aimless

Aimless is the best word I can come up with to describe the way I feel in the game at the moment, and have felt for a few months now. I thought I was just getting bored with the game, but as I've pondered my situation the past few days, I've come to the conclusion that I'm a bit lost and uncertain about my purpose in the game.

Raiding has always been my main end-game activity. I don't know how I should say this, but our raid group has changed a lot and after my three month break due to technical difficulties, I no longer feel at home in raids, despite the fact that I love raiding just like before. I've always been a lone wolf online and offline, and I find it difficult to integrate into groups. It's almost like I don't even want to. I think coming up with a new storyline with characters that I could play and level might help during these kind of times, but inspiration for that is also hard to find. I'm also relatively fed up with Moonglade, as I even transfered four characters over to Argent Dawn, but that's a whole different issue again. I can't leave Moonglade, period. Nor do I want to, since all the people I enjoy playing the game with are there. It's complicated.

With nothing better to update this time, I'll end the post with a couple of screenshots from Twilight Highlands. BioShock Infinite has been a huge deal in this house recently, and seeing those zeppelins and industrial pipes made me want to do something like this:

Happy news

I have finally got my good PC back. And that's not all! After getting a new fan, it runs WoW and other games a lot more smoothly than it did before - the same way as it did when I got it. No driver update or registry cleaning could match that, and it really made me understand how much effect the fan has on PC performance. I've been quite busy playing WoW and other games, namely Dishonored and D&D Neverwinter beta, so I haven't got back into blogging yet, but I was happy to sign up for next week's raids.

I also took advantage of the battle.net service sale that ended on the 10th of June. I threw my warrior Aleksej, my monk Dragomirov, my hunter Milkajelen and my rogue Desrosiers over to Argent Dawn. I had been considering such for a good while, and the sale was just what I needed to make the move, which really had two major factors behind it. For one, I wanted to roleplay those characters more and did not get the chance to do that on Moonglade. Second, I had run out of character slots on Moonglade, so I can now level more alts there. My main and guild still reside on Moonglade, so it's definitely my home realm, but I'm also getting used to dividing my time between the two servers. Life on Argent Dawn is a lot to get used to: high population and (E!)RP everywhere.

20 Days of WoW blogging #11

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Day 11 – Bad habits and flaws

Jealousy in more than one way. I can be quite jealous of various things - mounts, achievements, loot, status - and it's something I can't seem to get rid of even with time. What I can, though, is try to hide it the best I can, and keep it out of the way. Of course there's also the classic jealousy of one's attention, particularly if it's that special person, or someone else that I unjustly claim as my own somehow.

Then there's competitiveness. I always used to say I wasn't competitive, but the truth is that I am not competitive for as long as I don't feel threatened. It only applies to things I care about, but it can get really annoying to people who are close to me, as they might feel like I am always racing them in something.I suppose behind this lies my need to be noted for things and fear of being left behind or considered incompetent.

My pride is both a good and a bad thing. It's become an inevitable part of what I consider myself to be like, but often prevents me from solving arguments involving myself. I find it difficult to apologise, and try to come up with reasons why there's no need for me to do so. Thinking about it, I'm surprisingly narcissistic for someone that's actually lived under the tyranny of one very much like that.

I don't want to mention this, but I must. I'm horribly lazy. Whether it's on WoW or in real life, I rarely come to complete unpleasant tasks. You know, those that I should do, but just can't be arsed. This is a prime example of how I don't learn from my mistakes. Those uncompleted dailies or messy tables always find a way to come back to haunt me in some form.

A whole new spark

Good evening! After a long while, I come bearing good news.

In the absense of things to do, I've found an entirely new spark for WoW. I never would have admitted this while it was the present feeling, but I almost got bored of the game during the spring. I didn't particularly feel like logging in and I only really did so for the purpose of raiding. I had no projects regarding leveling or gearing up. But now, as I am unable to raid with my guild, unable to run dungeons, unable to explore the new heroic scenarios, I've been doing LFR on most of my maximum level characters. Nicasia and Vladan are quite nicely geared and well able to do Throne of Thunder, but in addition I am working on Raleigh's (holy paladin) and Jester's (brewmaster/windwalker monk) gear to get them into ToT as well. Raleigh is currently lacking three points. Jester's situation still looks a bit grim with an item level of around 465. Oh, and by "doing LFR" I mean relying entirely on the performance of the 24 other people - but hey, three, two and even one FPS is better than no FPS at all. Positive thinking all the way!

I do miss raiding a lot and I hope to get my primary PC back soon. I have given full raid leadership to a very trusted officer with whom I've been raiding since early Firelands, so there should be no more raid burnouts for me. I'm actually really looking forward to being "just a raider" without so much responsibility. Of course I'll still be doing the usual yelling of things and whatnot, but I'll be doing it because I like to do it, not because I must do it. What I am most of all looking forward to is not having to look after others so much, and being able to look after myself more when it comes to raid performance.

Something interesting I've noticed for the first time in my WoW life is that I feel ever so slightly bored of elemental shaman - which I find completely normal, considering I've had an elemental shaman as my main since late Wrath of the Lich King. I sure have respect for our offtank, who has had the same character as his main since he started playing in vanilla. I still intend to raid with Nicasia as I am able to, but I may look into the possibility of raiding with Vlad, for example, when possible. I had a ton of fun tanking and DPSing Dragon Soul with him in late Cataclysm. My gear lacks behind severely compared to the rest of the raid group, anyway, so it won't make much difference which character I am on. Nicasia will continue to be my main character, regardless of who I end up raiding with, though. We've got such a long history.

I am absolutely loving the 5.3 fact that you can choose to get loot for a different specialization! It's enabled me to work on Raleigh's gear through LFR. I wouldn't dare attempt to heal with craptop. I also think it'll be a good help when getting Vlad some new tanking gear, as I don't enjoy tanking LFR. So, yay for 5.3, yay for gearing up, yay for WoW.

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!