SUPER BOWL, PRESIDENTIAL RACE, AND WARCRAFT POST #4

Dad's Jambalaya, as usual, was fantastic. Favorite ad was the Diet Pepsi MAX ad with Chris Kattan making a cameo near the end. And regarding the game itself, WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?

Next subject.

I wish I could have voted, but I was sick with the flu that day, and I probably could and should have braved the cold to vote.

My state of Massachusetts went for Hillary Clinton, which is not surprising since my neighbors in the 5th district already have no qualms about voting for the wife of a former high-ranking politician.

I was planning to vote for Edwards until he dropped out, at which point I backed Obama, along with Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. But I could live with Hillary for president.

And Mitt Romney took Massachusetts in the republican primaries just before dropping out. I'd like to imagine he's the least evil of them, but no, all of them are quite evil indeed. More on that in detail another time.

Next subject.

Now, it's at this point that I realized that I haven't written too much in detail about World of Warcraft since well before the expansion was released. And with another one on the way, I might as well before I suddenly have a lot more to write about.

Blizzard is becoming a bit more like Microsoft as time goes on. I didn't realize this until Blizzard released, as part of their base UI, a module called Floating Combat Text. This module was an attempt to integrate a popular user-created mod, Scrolling Combat Text, into the base UI.

I, for one, don't bother to use FCT, because SCT is much more customizable. FCT displays all events (that Blizzard thinks needs to be tracked) in either green text or red, depending on whether they're good or bad, and they only scroll up the screen. SCT offers customizable events, which can be made to display in any color; and the ability to send text notices to one of three panels, which can be scroll up, down, at an angle, or along a quadratic path so that they flow like water from a fountain. Maybe it's a bit less memory intensive to use FCT than SCT, but I would rather get a memory upgrade. (One more excuse for buying tech.)

It was not until this one case that I noticed this is not the first time this has happened. A few other features, that were not part of the original UI and that were first done by the mod community, include quest objective tracking, display of multiple action bars, and target-of-target frames. The fact that these are now part of the base software reminds me of the case of Internet Explorer being built in to Windows 98 and later incarnations.

Omni the lv 70 human priest hasn't been doing much except daily quests, in the hopes of eventually buying an epic flying mount. The only daily quests that I've been able to find that don't involve a lengthy pre-quest-line are those for PvP and for Cooking. The nice thing about the cooking quest is that in addition to a chunk of change, you get more food to do more cooking with. Sure, you may become overloaded, but that's what alts are for.

And the PvP quests have finally given me an excuse to check out the new Eye of the Storm battleground. Believe it or not, I still haven't set foot in Arathi Basin. Sooner or later, once the random quest ends up sending me to AB, I'll go, but until then, I'll keep hoping the Alliance can win Alterac Valley once in a while.

Keahrde the dwarf hunter is also 70. Two down, seven to go. The only objectives I have for my lv70 characters are to maximize whatever trade skills I chose for them and to get as good a blue weapon as possible, maybe an epic if the opportunity arises. Keahrde's almost through fel iron and moving on to adamantium. Not sure whether to go for the Wrathfire Hand-Cannon or the X-54 Rocket Ripper...

Asmira the human paladin is 68, with at least half a level of experience, so she can now log out anywhere and still be running on rest experience. After spending levels 60-61 as a retribution paladin and constantly wishing for a better and better weapon, I decided to go back to the original "blockadin" spec she had for most of the pre-expansion leveling. It's a bit slow, but there's virtually no down time between battles.

Rashida the night elf druid is 64. Not much I can say about her except that she will probably be the next character to get to fly, simply because it's so much cheaper to get Flight Form (and it's available two levels sooner).

Jorbin the human mage is 61. If only jewelcrafting were cheaper to level, I'd be making all kinds of neat trinkets with him, but such is not the case.

Sasuk the human warlock is 50. I'm hoping his felguard starts becoming more useful in a few levels, but for now it's not doing enough damage to keep aggro. I'd hate to spec out of full demonology simply because it's not working.

Finally, Exadab the night elf warrior is 40, Qledwa the dwarf rogue is 32, Vesper the night elf priest I created specifically for shadow spec, is 24, and Tolaria the draenei shaman is 13.

I stated, a long time ago on another blog (still up on JoeUser if anyone really cares) that I had 6 objectives, and all of them still stand, though some are slightly modified.

1. Reach lv60. Now that the level cap is 70, this is more than taken care of, and after only a few Karazhan runs, Ive got a few purples as well, so Omni's slightly pimped out.
2. Full devout set. I finished this a while ago, and a few of the pieces have since been traded for Virtuous. Now the goal is probably to collect the full Hallowed set, which is the Outlands dungeon equivalent, and it's easier to achieve since there are only five pieces (two of which I have already), as opposed to Devout's eight.
3. See the world. Completely fill in the blanks on my world map. Flying mounts make it even easier to get those odd places in Outlands, but I still need to get a better look at the new islands where the Draenei start sooner or later.
4. Master all the professions. This will have to be split between 6 characters but it can be done: Omni's an Herbalist/Alchemist, Keahrde's a Miner/Blacksmith, Asmira's a Skinner/Leatherworker, Rashida's a Tailor/Enchanter, Jorbin took up Jewelcrafting, and Qledwa is an Engineer.
5. More 60s. Well, 70s now, and so far I'm on the right track.
6. Epic mounts. Omni is epic mounted, as is Keahrde, and Asmira just recently finished her Charger quest. Rashida is next in line, but she might be able to get Flight form first. As for epic flying mounts, I'll focus on getting one for Omni, but the rest will have to settle for normal ones.

Back to the game.