The Return of BD

It's been about seven months after my last post - and that is mind-boggling. It's like having a seven-months gap in your diary, or memory... or in this case, your adventures. All those excitement, the highlights and achievements missing. Sigh... that'll teach you not to slack off, BD.

Anyways, I'm back (in blogging, at least). To be honest, I didn't stop playing WoW all this time - on the contrary, Aenur, Aelyra and Aerhandor has dinged 85 with Aergor, Aedruyn and Aerdread following not far behind. My toon priority's been shifted around, but currently it looks like all the mains will remain as mains. Only the question of which alts deserve a better position and attention remains.

To be honest, Cata is a bit of a let down for me, and maybe for a lot of casual players out there. With instances being an intensive time-consuming activity with random strangers who may or may not be friendly and helpful, and with barriers all around epic gears and achievements, we are reduced to spectators and minor participants of the so-called "hardcore" and "elites". Do I mind? Not so much. It rankles a bit at times, though.

That did not stop me from trying though. I've reluctantly entered PvP with Aenur, trying to get better gear through honor and PvP instead of instances and PvE. It's working, but the stress of all those matches is horrible - like trying to eat a whole, unopened durian. Thankfully, once patch 4.2 hits I should be able to get some nice T11 gear due to Blizzard's new honor-to-Justice arrangement and due to T11 now available with Justice points instead of Valor points. Which then would mean the same grind with Aelyra... =(

As for the alts... I've been spending a lot of time with Aedruyn, making him go through the Argent Tournament so he can get his Argent Charger and Hippogryph - it's easier now that he's level 81 and armed with Cata greens, gems and enchants (he 3-shots most mobs now). Aergor is now level 82 and is doing the Org's Cooking dailies as well as daily Truegold/Living Elements transmutes. And Aerdread is level 82, doing the Org's Fishing and JC dailies. I will push Aedruyn out to 85 once he finishes the Argent Tourney objectives... if the others doesn't ding 85 first.

The rest of my alts are the level 37 Shadow Priest Aerjin, who I recently become fond of, and the level 20 deleted-then-rerolled Combat Rogue Aerlyn (previously known as Aeyrin). Not doing much with them other than the Org's Cooking dailies, which is a slow but steady way of leveling them.

So, that is in short my progress in WoW. With this post, I hope to kickstart my weekly updates as well as putting my thoughts and opinions of my adventures back into the blog. With a few bloggers already deciding not to continue their blogging forth, I feel compelled to at least light up my own candle against the night.

General Notice of General-ness

Stang, I can't believe it's been more than a month since my last entry.

I'm still here, and I'm still playing WoW - even though the past few days it seems the lag is getting from bad to worse. And it's mostly due to that lag that I can't finish much of what I wanted to.

The other reason is my baby Adam. Want to know why? Try doing your dailies while your baby is cooing and making cute baby sounds in his cot right next to you - and if you managed to entertain him and at the same time not fall off a Northrend cliff, I want to know your secret.

Rest assured though, BD is still here, and all my adventurers are alive and kicking. I hope the lag dies down soon so I can get some tales or updates or anything up ASAP =)

2010: Year of Achievements

First things first - A very (albeit belated) Happy New Year to everyone and may you have the opportunity and conviction to accomplish all that you wish for this year.

I should've post the new year greeting and well-wishing a couple of days back, but since the 'Net connection was so stable I just had to take advantage of it =D

Anyways, I will leave adventurers' update to a later post. Today, I'd like to muse over the thing almost everyone would be doing come a new year - New Year Resolution.

I know most people just love to make New Year Resolution - "I wanna lose weight!", "I wanna travel and see the world!" or "I wanna buy a BMW M3 GTR with blue background and silver stripes!". The thing is, I also make resolutions. I'm not going to hide the facts - sometimes I'm good at keeping 'em, at other times I just fail at it. But it's one way that I use to keep track of my progress throughout the year and at the end of it, judge myself whether the year has been a successful one for me or not.

In case of WoW, the weekly updates of my adventurers is my way of tracking their progress, or lack of it. At the end of every week, I can evaluate whether the week is very successful/profitable/enjoyable or vice versa. It's my way of actually seeing for myself whether my RM120 per 2 months is worth it or not.

So, 2010 is the start of a benchmarking process. I have a few targets that I need to achieve in this year, and only one or two are a tad on the impossible side. Nevertheless, here they are in no particular order:

1) Getting the Black Drake from OS +3 10-man
This would be the goal for Aenur. I've always been partial to dragon mounts and have gone to great efforts to try to procure Netherdrakes for all my level 70 toons pre-WotLK. And in WotLK, both my Pally and Hunter have either the Red or Bronze Drake as their primary flight mount. This year, I'm set on slipping Aenur inside one of the OS raids and winning that Black Drake. I've been wanting that drake color ever since they announce it O_O

2) T9 (at least) for everyone
At the moment I'm writing this, Aenur has 4/5 T9 and Aelyra has 1/5 T9 equipped. At my best estimates, Aenur should be fully tiered by the weekend and Aelyra will follow in about 2-3 weeks time. That leaves Aerhandor and Aerdread, and frankly speaking both of them still has a long way to go (Aerdread is not even close to Heroic standards!). I got Aerhandor started on some reg ToC 5-man to gear up, but I still need to prep a gear list requirement for him. I hope to be able to accomplish this goal by June/July, regardless whether Cataclysm hits or not.

3) Level Aergor and Aeyrin to 80
Aergor is at level 55 and Aeyrin the Rogue is at level 34. I've done a look-over on both of them and may decide to push Aeyrin first since she has the advantage of having Heirloom pieces with her. That, and the fact that I desperately need a high level Alchemist for transmutation purposes. I'm waiting until Aelyra can snag enough Champion's Seal to get the Heirloom haste trinket before starting to level her. As for Aergor, I'm doing him the old-fashioned way: Double XP and craftable gears... unless I change my mind =)

4) Make a Tauren Paladin and level him to 80
I have 3 Hunters on my active list and 2 Paladins. Taking out the bank alts, that would leave me with 2 Hunters vs one Paladin. And since I prefer playing a Paladin than a Hunter, the fact that I have more Hunter than Paladin leave me with no choice but to roll another Paladin alt (justifying altaholicism - I should write a book on this). But since my in-game character logistics are quite well-established, I'm planning to purchase a few Heirlooms in preparation as well as crafting items at certain levels for his use. By the time Cataclysm arrives I should have all the necessary resource to powerlevel him to 60 by year end. I'm still trying to decide on a name though... maybe Aeryastrasz? Aeradin? Aer-something?

Let see how much of these I can actually accomplish, ya? ^_^

...umm, hello again?

I can't believe it's been almost three months since I last logged in - my, how time flies!

I have a very cute and quite healthy son now in my life, and my wife is doing fine after the delivery surgery (yes, it was a Caesarean). Work is piling up, but that's to be expected come year end - budgets to be looked into, rates to be reviewed, contracts to be renewed... On the other hand, I did manage to grab a brand new PC tailor-made to my request. Unfortunately, due to budget constraint at the time (coupled with the 'no WoW at the moment' thinking) I opted to not install the WiFi network card. She'll cook, but she'll not surf >.<

I was impressed with the stark difference in performance, to be honest. My old PC took almost 5 minutes to start (from switch on to Windows) and could not run some of my games at default video settings - I always have to turn them to Low.

With the new PC, it goes from switch on to Vista in less than a minute. I got to finally play Company of Heroes at home, I can play NFS Most Wanted with the graphic settings cranked to Very High, the older games were almost 'instant-start-up' and hassle free...

...okay, enough gloating, methinks =p

I'm planning to re-activate my WoW account some time in December, subject to situational changes in the house. My wife has no objection to it - with the compromise that I stay up during the night for diaper sessions - so it's a matter of getting a reload card and installing that WiFi network card.

So... here's to hoping that Aelyra, Aenur, Aerhandor, Aeyrin, Aerdread and the rest of the gang will be able to continue adventuring in Azeroth (and beyond) in a few weeks' time.

Important Notice!

Due to some technical issues, I'm temporarily halting my WoW play with immediate effect.

...well, actually, I was forced to halt my play =P

The long version:- I have a seasoned PC of my own, from way back in 2004, that I used to play all manner of games that I bought (including WoW). However, as time passes the PC was unable to cope with the more modern game requirements, so I upgraded it in 2006 with additional RAM and a secondary hard disk. In June 2009, the power supply blew and I was forced to borrow my mother's laptop. I installed WoW on a portable hard disk and used it to play WoW on the laptop.

Last week, however, the laptop died - of a corrupted Windows. My mother, being slightly less than knowledgable of matters such as corrupted systems and such, blamed me and the game and decided that once the laptop is repaired (cost borne by me), I will have no more access to it.

Oh, and I forgot to mention - after my own PC died, I was planning to buy a new PC to replace it but my mother thinks it's a waste of money and rants about me not choosing the cheaper option (i.e: repair it). The old PC was an Intel P4 with 516MB RAM and a 250MB primary hard disk... post-upgrade. You would not want to know the spec pre-upgrade, trust me.

Sigh. And to make things worse, my gamecard subscription ends this month.

I had a quick chat with Mommy Ztormcloud (one of the guild officers, and the one I knew since day one in TTH) and planned to shift whatever resources/mats I have on all alts into the guild vault, so anyone can use them. Why? Well, I'm still positive that I can solve the PC-less situation, but with the baby coming soon I forecast that the PC will be arriving on the same time as the baby - which means BABY FIRST WOW LATER moments =)

TL: DR version:- RL stuff has hit the fan, so I'm taking a break from WoW effective today. BBL!

Oh, and sorry I could not make the story like I promised. >.<