It’s such a good feeling
What an outstanding day it’s been! Started off by not having to wake up to an alarm. It doesn’t take me long to wake up once I’m out of bed, but that initial roll off the mattress is always a killer when you have to do it. I used to be able to sleep until well past noon back in my slacker days. Now I sleep until 8am and I feel like a king or something. Helps I guess that I don’t go to bed at 3:30am anymore.
So up and around easing into the day with a cup of coffee. Thinking about how its nice not having all sorts of “floaties” in my beverage since the water softener has been working. After a cup or two I figure might as well go mow the yard before a hot day takes over.
Too late. The temperature wasn’t bad but it was a crystal clear day and even at 9:30 in the morning the sun was beating down and making some hot work of pushing the little mower around. I should get me a riding mower some day, but this works and I get some much needed exercise. One of the most rewarding feelings is looking back at a freshly cut lawn, I think. Just so nice and neat. Like a green carpet.
Anywho, after that and hosing off the outdoors Andrea and I played a little Guild Wars. She’s working on getting one of her characters through all three chapters and I’m taking a character through the first game for the first time. So were helping each other. Knocked out a couple missions today. Got the bonus on one but not the other. Oh well, something to come back for.
Andrea is more tired these days. Don’t blame her. Growing a baby is a lot of work! So while she was napping, I tried to think of something to do. Decided I would take one of the extra florescent lights above the garage and relocate it above my work bench. Good news is I think I wired it up safer than before! And now I have some much better light to work with. I still need to find a place for everything in the garage though!
By now its late afternoon, Andrea ie up again do so we go shoot some hoops in the driveway for a while and head back in for supper. One of the things I’m trying to do is cook more stuff that will have leftovers. We don’t get to come home for lunch anymore so if we don’t take something, its either go hungry or spend crazy money eating out. So I cooked up some shrimp and rice stir fry. Made lots so there should be a couple days worth of leftovers.
So productive, satisfying, and relaxing. Those are the words of the day. Actually ready to face a busy work week after a weekend like this!
A few more Guild Wars locales.
I haven’t posted one of these in a while. Gotten back into Guild Wars again recently. Lately as I’m going around I’m taking the time to appreciate some of the scenery. The artists and designers really created some breathtaking stuff. Well breath taking for a 3-5 year old video game anyway.
The original Guild Wars: Prophecies is over 5 years old. In the video game world, that is ancient. Still... the original has some of the most beautiful and detailed scenes. Sometimes in places you walk by all the time. Here is Old Ascalon City.
Autumn in Ascalon.
The second chapter: Factions is most people's least favorite out of the three games. However I find the world to be absolutely beautiful. Most of my favorite scenes come from Guild Wars: Factions.
Plauge or not, living in Kaineng City would have to be just people living on top of people. Some of the towing structures are towing shacks that look like they'll topple if you look at it too long. Others are quite a bit nicer... like this one.
Heck, this is just the login screen.
Waterfalls are always cool. And there's no shortage of them in Guild Wars.
I don't want to go in there... do you? I have a feeling that's not a fluffy rabbit hole.
Gateway to Istan from Guild Wars Nightfall. How do they even imagine awesome architecture like this?
I’m Kind Of A Big Deal
You’ve gotta love some of the “titles” you can earn in Guild Wars. Amongst being “Not Too Smelly”, “Slayer of All”, and a “Drunkard”. I’m also now, “Kind Of A Big Deal” (Anchorman inspired). So I’ve maxed 5 different titles. Of course there’s 40 possible titles… so there’s a lot of folks that have done a lot more than I have.
Supposedly things like this are supposed to contribute somewhat if you decide to link your Guild Wars account to the upcoming Guild Wars 2 game. The more stuff you have in your “Hall of Monuments” the better goodies you’ll get upon the launch of Guild Wars 2. To what extent it is worthwhile, remains to be seen.
For now it’s just been kinda nice to have time to play Guild Wars again. But to be honest, now that I’ve achieved KOABD… I think I’m going to get back to Final Fantasy XIII. Haha!
08.24.10Concerning the Norn:
08.18.10They were straight-faced vikings who felt superior to humans and who took honor to the extreme in Eye of the North. Now they’re the goofball drunkards who take honor to the extreme in Guild Wars 2? …So they’re dwarves, basically, but 9 ft tall.
-user izari (GW2 Guru)
Ghosts of Ascalon – review
I finished my new book last night. It’s based on the Guild Wars universe and really sets the stage for Guild Wars 2 to come out in a several months. Some places are familiar if you’ve played the game, and the book offers a little deeper perspective on the magnitude of certain events that took place in Guild Wars the game. But you certainly wouldn’t have to have played the game, to understand the book.
In most ways I thought it was a great book. Not a masterpiece, but a nice read and well worth the $7.99 asking price. It’s of decent length, but also a fairly light read, so the pages go by pretty fast. The book does a great job of painting the new landscape, 250 years after the end of the first game. But it also illustrates the relationship between the races and the respect, or lack there of had for each other. The biggest complaint I have about the book is there’s a lot of times information feels a bit forced. “What? You haven’t heard about the Foefire? Well legend says…” There’s times were there’s some obvious lines or settings thrown in to appeal to the existing Guild Wars fanbase. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing, I guess I just prefer those moments to be a bit more subtle, than “You’re standing on X, where Y happened Z years ago.” Okay, so it’s not THAT blatant.
All in all, if you’re a Guild Wars fan, I’d call this a “must read”. It’s far and away better written than a common “Fan Fiction”, but it does feel written with a very deliberate purpose. To fill in a bit of the Lore gap between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. That’s a lot of information to cover in one novel, and at times, it shows. All things considered, I’d give it an 8/10.
04.19.10I’m A Shining Blade.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hudy71ywdGw]
For those who haven’t been keeping tabs (can’t think of anyone in my circles who would be…) the folks that make Guild Wars kicked off a little viral marketing campaign last month at the Game Developers Conference and ComiCon by handing out these little propaganda fliers. The fliers had a little barcode in the corners that linked to a page on the Guild Wars website. Later a rival “faction” vandalized the page and the one-upmanship continued for a few weeks while fans picked sides of either the authorative and powerful White Mantle, or rebellious and liberating Shining Blade.
"Vandalized" White Mantle poster.
As fans chose sides some decided to role-play into the movement a bit, bringing familiar political spin to the legend and lore of the Guild Wars story. All of which took place up to that video being posted tonight on the GuildWarsGuru.com forums.
It’s been fun to watch, and it’s all leading up to some new content and a nice side story for Guild Wars 5th anniversary coming up this month. And for the record… Dismantle!
Getting back into Guild Wars again.
Well, as pointless as it is, one of my favorite things to do in the game is “farming”. For the Guild Wars uninitiated; Farming is basically killing the same enemies over and over in order to get the money and items that “drop” when you kill them.
What makes it somewhat pointless in this game is that most things are cheap, and the best items aren’t all that rare. Anything particularly valuable in this game is only because it has a different, or rare appearance, even while it may have the exact same statistics as a more common item. Blah blah.
But recently I’ve gotten the skills together to farm a new area, and I have to say it’s the most effective farming I’ve done in a long time! I didn’t make the video below, but it shows where and what goes on. Sorry if the music sucks. I don’t have speakers at work.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEIDoJvfT3k]
Mini Gwen
She follows me wherever I go!
Well I’ve been stock piling gold in Guild Wars for a few months now and finally got enough to buy one. But apparently I had enough a long time ago, as the mini Gwens are going for about half what I thought the were!
There’s really no point to the mini pets other than to show them off. Some are more rare than others and this one happens to be one of the harder to find ones. It has appeal to me, because it harkens back to the early days of Guild Wars when I first started playing. You meet Gwen in the first area and she follows you around oblivious to all the enemies attacking you. Somewhat comical.
So now I need to figure out what the heck I’m going to do next in this game!
11.3.08Some of my favorite Guild Wars scenes.
Well, since we have no digital camera, and it’s going to be Thanksgiving before we can get it back…the blog will be a bit devoid of pictures. To counter the giant blocks of text that will surely take over, here’s a few of my favorite views in the game of Guild Wars!
Standing on a precipice in "The Falls".
Another view.
Extravagant sewers in Kaineng City.
Peaceful Shing Jea country side.
How nerdy am I?
Well let me tell you. I’m playing Guild Wars last night winding down from the day. And I’m getting close to heading to bed, but I find out that there’s a Polar Bear minipet that you can get from one of the chests for the special Wintersday event they did for Christmas/New Years.
Aww…look at that cute little guy! I love the mini pets in this game, but this one was special. There’s only a couple known to exist out of the 4 million or so players, so prices were astronomical that these things were going for. One person offered a price of 1500 ecto…or about $100 REAL US Dollars based on the exchange rate in game currency is being sold for. That’s pretty crazy if you ask me! So I ended up staying up later than I anticipated, trying to get my hands on one of these polar bears to sell. No such luck as the odds are apparently those of winning the lottery.
Oh, it gets nerdier.
So this little guy caused such an uproar, that I’m just sitting in one of the towns trying to convince myself to go to bed before midnight. Then all of a sudden the Guild Wars “Community Relations Manager” comes online in the town I’m in, and starts asking if anybody has seen the polar bear because SHE hasn’t even seen it. The real nerdy part is I snapped a screenshot of my standing next to this video game “celebrity”.
I’m lame, I know. But at least I’m not obsessed with the game or anything. I mean I was in bed by 1:00!