Starting Tempest Keep: The Eye

March 19th, 2008 | Posted in blog posts, gaming | No Comments »

My World of Warcraft guild is progressing onward from raiding Karazhan and Gruul’s Lair. We’re moving on to tackle The Eye in Tempest Keep, a 25-man raid that is the starting point for Tier-5 raiding. It marks an exciting step for our raiding group because we are maturing quite a bit and starting to work together well.

To learn the first couple of bosses and to become more cohesive as a group, we’re raiding The Eye on two nights. Tuesdays and Saturdays. Tuesday nights we are working on learning to fight the first boss, Al’ar, and on Saturday we will work on the second boss Void Reaver.

The reason we are doing it like this is that there aren’t as many trash mob pulls to Al’ar so it fits well with our limited play time during the week. Yes, most of us have real life obligations to consider. But the weekend isn’t as limited on time, so we can spend more time on the arguably harder trash mobs to the second boss.

I know a lot of people focus more on Void Reaver first. You can actually get to him and skip the first boss, and Void Reaver is easy to the point that people call him “Loot Reaver”. But really the mobs you have to fight before him require a LOT of coordination we’re finding.

Anyway, last night we made our first attempt at Al’ar. People telling us that “oh you don’t have the DPS for this” and “he’s so hard, let’s just skip him”. I am happy to say that while we didn’t get him down, it wasn’t because of a lack of DPS or healing. We wiped because we’ve never faced him before and don’t know the fight very well. Our tanks were struggling to keep coordinated so we kept getting Flame Buffets hitting the raid, and some tanks couldn’t get away from the Flame Quills . Nothing that practice won’t solve even if we don’t change up our gear too much. It was pretty exciting.

I had the privilege of being the Warlock to stay on top of the threat meters. I removed the Blessing of Salvation buff, changed up some gear to output more raw DPS, and threw everything I had at Al’ar constantly. The reason behind this is that in Phase 1 you can’t pull aggro from the tanks but in Phase 2 the main tank needs to build up a lot of threat. So the idea is for me to get as much threat as I can, and as Phase 2 starts and Al’ar makes a beeline for me, the main tank Taunts him and I Soulshatter, dumping all my threat. It basically slingshots a ton of threat to the main tank. Quite a neat idea!

Doing that gave me the honor of easily topping the damage meters for that fight. I was quite pleased by that and look forward to continuing our progress in this raid.

Blog Spring Cleaning

March 17th, 2008 | Posted in blog posts | No Comments »

I think I’ve been spreading myself a bit thin here in the past few months. I have this unfocused blog which covers Java, Groovy/Grails, my gaming obsessions (mainly World of Warcraft), and a few random musings. All of it is peppered with daily digests of my activity on Twitter. On top of that, I also have a weblog on scribul.net, a weblog on uberhealer.net, my personal site timgourley.com, and so on. I think the fact that I have so much going on makes it so that I end up not updating anything, which in turn makes things not very interesting for you, the reader.

So over the next few weeks I think I will see some consolidation and focus. How that will be achieved is still uncertain, but I definitely want to try to create something people will be interested in reading. That means a lot of changes on my part. The amount of content, the quality of content, and the topics of content will all have to be addressed.

I’ve also been thinking a lot of about consolidation as it is concerned to data on the social web. Think about your average web 2.0 nut and the kind of sites he visits: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, and the list can go on and on and on. There isn’t a really good way for all of that to be consolidated yet. So if you are seriously interested in tracking someone you find interesting (read: you want to stalk), you have to keep track of a lot of different points of connection. There has to be a good way to centralize all of that.

We’re getting to the point where the web is a very social creature, and it is overwhelming at times. @istarman on Twitter brought up a good question about adding Geotagging to the mess and how suddenly it removes all semblance of privacy. Well, at this point I’m rambling, but there is a lot to think about when considering your online identity and how deep into the social machinations of web 2.0 you want to delve.

Personally, it is something I’m going to have to face and deal with pretty soon. It is spring cleaning, after all.

Thoughts of Grails and blog software

March 11th, 2008 | Posted in blog posts, development | No Comments »

I’ve been thinking about Grails again. There’s a very easy-to-use Grails plugin for creating RSS feeds (and Atom, and a lot more) for your application. I was surprised at just how easy it was to start from scratch and create an RSS feed from your existing domain model.

Seeing how easy using that plugin is, it made me want to revisit the idea of rebuilding this weblog as a complete Grails webapp instead of relying on Wordpress for everything. Nothing against Wordpress at all–it is an excellent blogging tool–but there’s something to be said about rolling your own and getting it to work. Call it a pride thing, or even just plain and simple hubris.

I’d have to consider a host of features that I currently rely on Wordpress to implement for me: posts (obviously), categories, tags, comments, spam filtering, RPC for remote posting via ScribeFire, RSS feeds for posts and comments, integration with Twitter, easy-to-use design templates, and so on. The list is huge when you look at it.

At the same time, if I write my own blog software, I want it to be full yet not over-flowing with options that it turns people off. I need to think about what a blogger needs from blog software and start from there. I can build up a set of basic requirements and start there. For instance, I’m wanting to aggregate a lot of my current points of presence on the web. It’d be nice to be able to go to one place and be able to update all locations, such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Should I include support for RDF? OpenSocial? True restful web services for publication?

It’s a lot to think on.

World of Warcraft: Guild Promotions

February 13th, 2008 | Posted in blog posts, gaming | No Comments »

Last night our guild held a small event to honor people who have shown they have what it takes to be promoted. We had a lot of people ready to be promoted from our lowest rank, Recruit, to a full-fledged Member. We also had two people promoted to the coveted Veteran status (grats, Yoshimie and Banemalor!). Additionally, we created new ranks for Class Leaders and added a few profession Artisans (points of contact for various crafting professions) to the ranks.

The officers (of which I am one of three) work hard to come up with fun activities and events the guild can participate in to commemorate such events. I feel it is important for team building, and helps make the promotion something special.

So last night we had a lot of fun. I came up with the idea to do a scavenger hunt. Each of the officers hid at a location around the map. We disabled mapping addons such as Cartographer so our exact location couldn’t be easily pinpointed, and gave out clues. We encouraged people to travel in groups and figure out the clues together. The prize would be 10g for each member of the group to get to our Guild Master, Hariel, the fastest. To prove they had reached the officer we told them to retrieve a particular item to give to the next officer.

The first clue was this: “Your search begins where the Titan’s sword had sundered the Old One’s skull.”

For lore nuts, this is an easy question to answer. The location is the Master’s Glaive, in Darkshore. It is the site of a gigantic sword sticking out of the skeleton of (presumably) one of the “old gods”.

I hid behind the mound, and as groups came to find me, I gave them this clue:

“In the feral lands twins stand tall and proud; inspiring awe of their majesty. Seek the Wishrunner and journey down.”

This clue led our groups to The Twin Colossals on the western side of Feralas. When I was questing through Feralas I was always impressed by the scenery in the area, and thought it would be a great place to send people.

The final clue was given by Seastorm, giving the location of Hariel: “Your journey ends where druids slumber, an emerald sleep in an emerald dream. In the sacred den in the glade of dreams your prize awaits you there.”

The clue is a reference to the Stormrage Barrow Dens, located in the druid haven of Moonglade.

Ending at this location is of significance because right now World of Warcraft is celebrating the Lunar Festival. During this time of year, an evil, large puppy named Omen can be summoned, and he destroys everything in his path. As our group assembled in Moonglade, we formed a raid and took on the beast. Last year at this time we tried and failed. But this year, we had a sweeping success and killed Omen!!

Congratulations to everyone, and thanks for making this such a fun event.

Tabula Rasa

January 22nd, 2008 | Posted in blog posts, gaming | No Comments »

Because I haven’t had enough new games to play here lately (heh), I’ve started playing Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa. I’ve been following the progress of the game since it was in Beta at the end of last year, and while intrigued by the idea of a Sci-Fi MMORPG that doesn’t suck, I’ve been too addicted to World of Warcraft to really make the plunge into another game.

So after reading some reviews here and there, last weekend I decided it was time for me to give it a try. And surprisingly, I am very impressed by the game.

Tabula Rasa is your standard MMORPG in many ways: You create a character and it has basic abilities and attributes. You have to complete a variety of quests from random NPC’s in the game ranging from “kill x number of these mobs” or “get x number of these items from some mobs” and even “escort random NPC loserbutt from this place to somewhere safe by traveling through a very hostile area.”

The differences between Tabula Rasa and other MMORPG’s are quite numerous, however. Quests often contain elements of choice in them, which can (supposedly) drastically change your standing with various factions in the game. It introduces a bit of morality that while not as in-depth as some games like Fable, adds a nice touch that games like World of Warcraft lack.

You don’t pick a class at the very start of the game. Instead, you start off as a Recruit (the Tier 1 class), and once you get to level 5 you can choose between becoming a Soldier or a Specialist (Tier 2). At level 15 you can choose your Tier 3 class of Commando or Ranger (if you are a Soldier), or Sapper, or Biotechnician (if you are a Specialist), and at level 30 you can choose your Tier 4 class, which is either a Grenadier, Guardian, Sniper, or Spy (for Commandos/Rangers), or Demolitionist, Engineer, Medic, or Exobiologist (for Sappers/Biotechnicians). It’s a neat tree that lets you choose as you go so you can make choices that fit your gameplay style a lot better.

After leveling your character, if you decide you want an alt, you don’t have to start over from scratch. As you level you gain a number of “clone credits” you can use to create a clone of your character. That clone is the same level of your main character, has completed the same quests, etc. You can then decide to change the sex and class of your clone (and in the next major patch, splice in alien DNA to create a hybrid, woot!). This way you don’t have to start completely over. The downside is that your clone won’t have any good gear or any money to speak of, so save and plan in advance!

Combat is a lot different. You don’t lock onto one target and spam different abilities. Instead, you have to actually aim at your target before you fire, make strategic use of cover, and react to enemy AI that is more involved than in other MMO games. Enemies will attempt to flank you if in groups, and they will come to the aid of someone in need a lot more intelligently than others. Crouching while aiming improves your chance to hit and the amount of damage you can do. Also, if you kill a mob and move on to another one within a few seconds, you will get an XP modifier, making quick grinding an attractive option.

Another neat feature is that instances are scaled based on the number of players in your group. So you can actually solo some of the instances at low levels if you are having trouble finding a group. This feature alone has really kind of thrown the traditional “gotta have a tank, healer, and DPS to run this” paradigm out the window in a lot of cases until you get into considerably harder content.

My main character is currently a Specialist named Charlie Ashwell on the Cassiopeia server. I plan on making him into a Medic for his Tier 4 class. So if you feel like trying it out, look me up!

Uberhealer

January 16th, 2008 | Posted in blog posts, gaming | No Comments »

For a little while now I have been bored with my Warlock on World of Warcraft. He’s level 70, has tons of epic gear from Karazhan and from crafting, and our raiding progress, while steadily improving, is kind of slow, so getting better gear won’t happen very often. I can only do the daily quests available to me so many times before I want to beat my head into something.

So I’ve been leveling a bunch of alts trying to figure out what I really enjoy playing. DPS has been fun for me so far but I want to be more useful to the raid than that. So I rolled a tank and leveled to 30 and I really enjoy that. After getting to 30 I decided it was time to seriously try a priest, so I created Aidyssa, a female priest with the goal of being a healer.

Now I realize what I’ve been missing in this game, and I am in love. Healing is by far the most fun I have had in the game since I started playing a few years ago. The exhilaration I get from thinking quickly and reacting to the group’s actions really gets me going and I’m finding a lot of the content I was bored with is now fresh and exciting.

I think I’ve found a new main toon.

So I scoured the net looking for healing resources, and found several good ones, but nothing quite as in-depth and cohesive as The Warlock’s Den does for warlocks. So I decided to create one myself and see if I could put together a community of like-minded individuals who are totally obsessed with healing. At the same time I want it to be as free from trolls and spammers as possible. So now I am proud to introduce the world to a new set of forums:

Uberhealer - forums for World of Warcraft healers

If you are reading this and are interesting in learning more about healing in WoW, or if you want to contribute and spread your knowledge, feel free to join us and become an Uberhealer yourself.

Wood Laminate Floor (Part 2)

January 16th, 2008 | Posted in blog posts | No Comments »

We haven’t had the same progress on the living room floor that we had going this weekend. Between work and other obligations we only worked about 30 minutes on Monday and two hours last night. But we are finally in a groove and I can say that we will most definitely have the floors completed this weekend.

We borrowed a miter saw from some friends of ours (thanks guys!!) and that has made life so much easier cutting the boards to length when necessary. I did use this opportunity as an excuse to buy a cheap table saw for cutting the last boards to the proper width (with a rip cut–which is a cut through the length of the wood).

So now we have a little more than a third of the floor covered with the new wood flooring. It is really starting to shape up:

It isn’t taking us very long now to get a row complete so progress is going to continue quickly until we hit the fireplace and have to start making miter cuts. But even that won’t take long at all, really. I’m looking forward to finishing it up and getting the trim back on the walls and moving the furniture back in. Then it will be time to shop for a cool rug to bring the room together (insert The Big Lebowski references here).

Wood Laminate Floor (Part 1)

January 14th, 2008 | Posted in blog posts | No Comments »

After talking about it for years, Lori and I finally decided to rip up the carpet in our living room and replace it with a wood laminate flooring. The living room receives a fair amount of traffic, so it would be nice to have an attractive surface that is really easy to clean. We decided to go with wood laminate instead of real wood mainly because the maintenance is easier and also because the materials are a lot cheaper than real wood. Also I prefer the smooth surface to the sometimes-uneven look of wood.

So after getting the materials and letting it acclimate for about a week, we ripped up the carpet in the living room and got rid of the padding. Here is what the floor looked like after removing the old flooring:

There was a lot of glue on the padding that caused bits of it to stick when we pulled it up, so we had to use a floor scraper to get all the remaining foam and glue up. After that we swept the floor and scrubbed trouble spots and let it dry.

The next thing we did was to lay down a moisture barrier. The moisture barrier is a plastic that feels about like a trash bag, but slightly heavier. The barrier has a self-adhesive, but we felt better taping all the seams ourselves.

After the moisture barrier was put in place, we had to put down padding because the boards we bought did not have any padding of its own. The padding was a bit more difficult because we had to make sure that nothing overlapped to cause unevenness when we put the boards down. Here’s what it looks like on the floor:

You can see in the pictures above that my cat Fiver has really been enjoying the work.

After the padding, we put down about 5 rows of boards. I would have gone farther last night, but the tapping block I was using to tap the boards into place broke. After work today I have to get a new one and we can continue. In the next part I’ll have more pictures with the flooring down as we finish laying that and get the trim back on the walls.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

January 11th, 2008 | Posted in blog posts | 1 Comment »

I received a lot of new video games during the holiday season, one of which I am currently obsessing over almost as much as World of Warcraft. Yes, I know that is a bold statement, but it is true. I stayed up pretty late last night after raiding Karazhan playing this stupid game.

I’m talking about a game called Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords.

Puzzle Quest is a turn-based RPG. You have a character with a specific class that give you special abilities, health and mana, and trainable attributes. As you progress in levels and gain money, you can purchase upgrades to your citadel, buy a mount, use companions, and more.

The combat system is what is unique to the game. Combat is very much like playing Bejeweled, which really is what makes this game fun. You are presented a square filled with different colored circular tiles. The tiles can be colored, with each color representing a different type of mana that is used for your abilities. You also have tiles that grant experience, give you money, wildcards which act as point multipliers, and skull tiles which deal direct damage to your enemy.

Much like Bejeweled, you have to get three tiles of the same type in a row to activate them. So if you get three red tiles in a row, they leave the game board and you get +3 red mana. On your turn if you have enough of the right color of mana, you can use different spells/abilities that will either buff yourself or cause damage/debuffs to your enemy. Combat is ended when either you or your opponent reaches 0 health.

The storyline is kind of cheesy, but the quests are fun and always result in a challenging opponent. The AI is pretty intelligent and you will spend a lot of time cursing it for seeing a 4-in-a-row that you didn’t see coming. (Getting 4 tiles in a row results in a free turn).

I have the game on the Nintendo DS, but it is also available on the PSP, Wii, PS2, PC, and even on the XBox Live Arcade. It’s cheap to pick up and very addictive. I heartily recommend it, especially if you are looking for a new game for your portable gaming device.

First Thoughts on Burnout: Paradise

January 2nd, 2008 | Posted in blog posts, gaming | 2 Comments »

Last night I downloaded the demo for Burnout Paradise on the XBox 360 and tried it out. I’m a big fan of the Burnout series (although not as big a fan as my wife is!).  We have copies of the game on just about every console we own.



For those not familiar with the series, Burnout at its core is a racing game. You get cars you can modify and race, etc. But the twist is that this game focuses more on creatively crashing cars and causing damage than actually racing.  In this way it is the exact opposite of games like Forza Motorsports with is a racing simulator.  My favorite event in Burnout is the Crash Party, where you launch your car into a busy intersection and try to cause the most amount of monetary damage possible.  It’s quite a form of stress relief. 

I was really excited to play the latest incarnation of the game and downloaded the demo as soon as I could.

This game is kind of a departure from previous versions.  At first I was a little underwhelmed.  Instead of getting a menu where you can choose the event you want to do, you are thrust into a city where you have to find different areas to change your paint scheme, refill your boost meter, or repair damages to the car. You also have to drive around to find different locations for your events.  So in a way it feels like Burnout meets GTA.  Not exactly what I was hoping for.

One neat feature though is that if you have a camera you can take a picture of yourself and it becomes your driver’s license photo.  That becomes more fun if you are playing online and you can see who you took down, or who took you down.  It adds a little more personality to the game.

Another cool feature is that even though this is a demo, you can play online!  So people on Xbox Live, download the demo and let’s try out some of the online stuff.

The thing about this game is that I want to drive really fast. I want to beat up other cars. I want to crash in spectacular ways.  I don’t want to have to drive around looking at a mini map to find an intersection for a particular event, slow down enough to hit the keys necessary to start the event, and then go.  At first I was  thinking I wouldn’t like it and would skip this version of the game.

However as I played the demo, I started to warm up to the idea of the city environment.  While different from previous games, I don’t think it is a bad idea.  Just different.  I think once the full version of the game comes out and there are actually more than like 3 events you can do it will be a lot more fun.  So right now I’m taking a “wait and see” approach to the game and will re-evaluate it after playing the full thing.