Last year I did not reach my goal with reading 40 books so I scaled down for 2013. But I have been enjoying reading so much that I am more than on track for a higher goal, so up to 40 it went. I really hope I will reach this goal this year. My reviews will be a bit more compact, and I will include a link to each direct review written right after I finished the book.

February

• Jackdaws by Ken Follet – This one came highly recommended by my SO who is a big Follet fan but for me it was just a 3 star book which on my scale means average, but nothing special whatsoever. It’s one of Follet’s WWII novels, about an unlikely group of British agents in 1944 trying to prepare the scene in France so that D Day will be a success. Too much build-up for the action, and flat characters failed to work the magic on me.
• Cycle of Hatred by Keith R.A. DeCandido – You can barely call this a book, it’s so short. It’s on my to-read list to read all the Warcraft tie-in novels because with Cataclysm that was the only way to get all the lore. Thankfully that’s not been the case with MoP, but I still want to read. The book itself almost read like fan-fiction. Setting’s after WC3, about trouble between Theramore and Orgrimmar, and Jaina and Thrall trying to sort this mess out and to find out who the Burning Blade are. 2.5 stars, rounding up to .
• The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan – Another goal of my list is to re-read all the Wheel of Time books and read the ones I haven’t read yet, now that the series is finished. I first read this book in the 90s, and my ‘re-read’ was to listen to the audiobook while commuting. World-building’s great, the female characters are still aggravating, and the whole Fellowship of the Dragon vibe I get from this book is too derivative of Tolkien for me to find it exciting.
• Elizabeth I by Margaret George – Now and then I enjoy historical fiction, and I heard that the Tudor books of hers were good, so I went for this one. Incredibly slow-paced, this book is certainly not the full story of Elizabeth’s reign. It starts right before the Spanish Armada is supposed to invade and then covers the late years of her reign. Lovely prose, and I was moved by Elizabeth’s fear of death and aging. What else happened? I’d be hard-pressed to tell you. And yet, I enjoyed it well enough.

March

• The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss – After a month of average books, I had high hopes on this one. They were only partially met. TLDR summary: I expected an excellent sequel, and only got a good one. I worry that Rothfuss will not be able to tie this series up in a way that will remotely satisfy me. And yet, the writing is fantastic, and the plot isn’t. tinged with bitterness, hah.
• The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown by Claire Ridgway – Free Kindle book at the time. There were so many references to her mother Anne Boleyn in Elizabeth I that I wanted to find out more than I remembered. This book is non-fiction and provides a timeline to Anne Boleyn’s execution. I enjoyed it.
• Enclave by Ann Aguirre – Dystopian YA novels are all the rage, and Enclave is another one, the first book of the Razorland series. Our heroine this time is Deuce, a young huntress of the underground enclave underneath the former New York. I liked the underground moments best, but Deuce eventually moves to the surface. There are zombies. There are the standard tropes of YA fiction, like love triangles. Not anywhere as good as Hunger Games, not as good as Divergent, but still a decent read. 3.5 stars rounding up to
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell – I loved this book so much. For me it was outstanding historical fiction. It details the story of Jacob de Zoet, a Dutch clerk come to the colonies to make enough money to be able to marry his fiancee at home. In 1799 he is sent to Dejima on Nagasaki Island, the single place of trade between Japan and the outside world. Colorful, with fascinating insights into the Edo period of Japan, I truly felt for poor Jacob, stuck far far away from home, and his hopeless love for Orito, the Japanese translator, and her fate.
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon – Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, this book topped off an excellent month of reading. I loved it so much that I cannot recommend it enough. Historical fiction, love story, drama, horror, all mixed into one. Set in Barcelona after the end of WWII, the 10-year old Daniel is gifted a book by an author called Julian Carax. He falls in love with the book and tries to find out anything possible about the mysterious author. Over the course of the next 8 years, he learns the truth, which puts him and those he loves in danger. Go read this book now!

April

• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – Expected to love it, but was left completely cold by it. Interesting, but I wasn’t moved by it. A dystopian society of religious nuts in the Republic of Gilead that lead their lives by following the Old Testament. Our protagonist is a handmaid, which means she is a vessel to be impregnated by the male head of house instead of the barren wife. The glimpses at the society were interesting, but I think she’s done better writing since then.
• Outlander by Diana Gabaldon – This book came highly recommended. I had seen it labeled as time travel story, which I had been looking forward to a lot. Unfortunately it’s more of a historical romance novel, and romance is just not my genre. It is 1945, and Claire is vacationing in Scotland with her husband. She stumbles through a circle of stones and ends up in 1743, just before the Scots rise up with Bonnie Prince Charlie. Meets a dude Jamie, falls in love, marries, has lots of sex. I did not like Jamie, and I could not connect with Claire. If you do not enjoy romance novels, stay away.
• The Book of Cthulhu by Ross E. Lockhart – An antholoy of short stories based on the Cthulhu Mythos. Some stories were awful, some were quite good. None were outstanding. Some stories really made me uncomfortable, but I consider that a hallmark of good Lovecraftian stories.

Do Pandaren get any cooler than Taoshi? I doubt it. Makes me want to roll a pandaren rogue everytime!

I am curious to see how the Kor’kron stuff in the Barrens will play out. When I first read about it at WoW Insider, I have to admit I thought ‘Oh wowza, they’re nabbing dynamic events from Guild Wars 2′. Which is nifty. There’s no denying for me that MoP got a lot of inspiration from the competition. More NPCs with voice acting, more story, more events. I’ll be curious to see how it plays out. As long-time horde player with a horde main since 2005, the Barrens are what I consider my horde homeland. I can still turn the music on, find a nice hill, and just gaze at the sunrise, misting up. I am that sentimental.

The Barrens. The oldest screenshot on my computer.

Of course with the events being placed in the Barrens, this means the ‘glorious’ return of the Barrens chat.

What am I looking forward to the most? Probably Heroic Scenarios. I hope they’re difficult but fun. The valor points reward is quite high, and I like the idea of bonus objectives for added challenge.

Maybe I should whine about raid difficulty more often

Just last week I used this blog to complain about Throne of Thunder’s odd difficulty ramp. This past week, we only had a raid on Sunday, so I didn’t have particularly high expectations. I am happy to say that I was completely wrong! For the first time ever we one-shot Jin’rokh. He’s nominally easy, and yet we’ve never been able to get him down without one, two or three wipes first. This time we actually got him down after two puddles, just bam! On to Horridon, who was a very smooth one-shot as well. Onwards to Council. On our firstkill, Sul Empowered and we got one Sandstorm, but this week he was dead before Empowering. Sul dying is like this huge weight lifted off the raid’s shoulders. Then we went to Tortos and two things happened:

ARC’s firstkill, May 19

I don’t usually pull DPS numbers like that.

So that was pretty awesome. It finally feels like our pace of progression is picking up. We managed to squeeze in one pull of Maegara and wiped at the 3rd rampage, but that made me cautiously optimistic that this won’t be so hard after all. Fantastic raid nights are such a lovely thing.

The DPS spec with 2 sub-specs

I am currently playing a dual-wielding frost deathknight. My mainhand is a 502 Worldbreaker’s Stormscythe off Jin’rokh in LFR, my main-hand is a 496 Kilrak, Jaw of Terror off Sha of Fear. Because I play dual-wield, my stat priority is that of the masterfrost playstyle: strength, expertise and hit til cap, mastery, haste, crit. According to Noxxic’s DPS Tools, no other spec scales as badly as DW frost. Ever since I saw that table, I have been depressed about my choice of weapons. In fact, I have blown many mogu runes on trying to acquire a 502 2H weapon, to maybe give Unholy a shot or be a 2H frost DK. But you know what? Noxxic’s DPS tables can go suck it, because I still manage to be top 5 on most fights in LFR. Sometimes even number 1. I am one of my guild’s top 3 DPSers, and our number 1 is another class that supposedly performs poorly, Windwalker monks. I have found that sometimes it is for the best to not look at rankings and similar and just play.

I will continue to be DW frost, because I am good at it. I know as 2H frost I could do higher single-target DPS. Yet the moment we have fights where I can cleave, and that’s still most of them, I get a chance to shine. My DPS on Tortos is only that high because there were bats, Whirling Turtles and Tortos himself to DPS.

I must admit I am not a fan of the two vastly different playstyles in one spec. Should Council drop their 2H weapon next raid, being a clear upgrade over my two 1H weapons, I still wouldn’t be able to use it straight away. 2H frost uses a completely different stat priority: strength, expertise and hit til cap, haste, crit, mastery. I have done the transition multiple times in T14, and it always requires extensive re-gemming and re-forging. It means replacing every single gem. I can’t just simply switch weapons. Is there any other WoW spec where choice of weapon basically dictates a different stat priority and a different rotation? Plus the use of a swing meter to actually play well? I can’t think of one. I myself would prefer if it was similar to fury warriors who can play either Titan’s Grip or Single-Minded Fury without different priorities. But alas, it is as it is.

Now excuse me while I go look into recommendations how to best make more gold with 5.3, because the blacksmithing PvP gear is finally slowing down dramatically.

Happy patch day, Americans!

The entrance to the circus

The show lasted 2.5 hours, plus a 15 minute break, and despite my bum aching quite severely on the hard benches (free tickets didn’t get us plush velvet seats in the front, bugger), it was a fantastic show I would highly recommend to anyone who happens to be in Germany and in a town where they perform. Not that it’s very likely for most readers, but… My personal highlight was a group called Opening, trapeze artists from Kiev who all have giant mohawks. They were absolutely incredible.

Those were some power mohawks, I tell ya.

Roncalli doesn’t have any wild animals. It’s mostly artistic elements broken up by comedic moments. My SO, who is a giant pony-lover, had seen ponies in the flyer, so was all excited when after the break there was sawdust in the ring. And then we got this:

They were also incredible. I mean, really. I don’t get excited about ponies but…

Good times.

Wednesday is for LFR

I recently recruited my friend Fi and her husband to my guild. I am totally to blame for them playing WoW in the first place, as I gave them WoW as a wedding present in…2005, I think. Time flies. The two of them have never raided and I lured them to the dark side. Fi is now finally ready for raids, and so yesterday was the big moment. But I wasn’t there to hold her hand through it, so I did LFR with her to explain the differences between LFR and normal, Heart of Fear being the target raid. From all I heard she did fine, but sounded like a bundle of anxious nerves after the raid when I came home. I feel slightly guilty now because I feel responsible for her. Have you ever recruited someone to try raiding and then they hated it or did not like it as much as you expected?

I only did the first part of ToT on Yata, so today I have to do parts 2 and 4 for another shot at shoulders. Grrr, shoulders. I will be halfway through Revered with Shado-Pan Assault, so I know there will be shoulders in my future, but I want shoulders now! I hope queue times will be okay today. They’re terrific on Wednesdays, EU reset day, 5-10 minutes even as DPS.

Today shall also be the push to get the priest to Outland, but I need to get my pet battle team ready for Outland as well!

Thoughts on raiding difficulty

Earlier this week I linked to Zellviren’s post about how normal raiding is too punitive. I am now reading the summary of an interview that the Convert to Raid podcast did with Ion Hazzikostas, the Lead Encounter Designer. I am heartened that Blizzard is recognizing that the current raid model is not quite fitting the bill for more casual guilds. My quote of choice: ‘There is a group of players that wants to do group raiding, but they aren’t well served by the current difficulty choices. This would include the friends and family type guilds that don’t remove players because they aren’t performing at their best. In Wrath of the Lich King, 10 player normal difficulty raiding served these players well, but there is now a gap between Raid Finder and Normal difficulty.’ Unfortunately he then went on that they need to keep 25-man and 10-man difficulty similar, which is not so heartening. At least he admitted that the tuning going from Jin’rokh to Horridon is a disaster is not as smooth as it could have been.

I am not unhappy with our raids, because despite the multitude of wipes, we’re having a good time in fun company, much like Spinks describes in her latest blog post. I just wish the difficulty progression was more like going through ICC or Ulduar, with a ramp-up, without running smack into a mountain-side.

Board game updates

I got a ton of recommendations here and on Twitter yesterday, so now I have a bucket list of games for us to try. For anyone that’s also interested, here are the recommendations I received:

• Race for the Galaxy
• Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
• Escape: The Curse of the Temple
• Kingsburg
• 7 Wonders
• Arkham Horror
• Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries

That should keep us busy for a while! I might try to go to the Spieliothek for some of those. It’s basically a library for board games where you can rent them for a very small monthly fee. As some of the more opulent board games can be quite pricey, it’s definitely worth a trip. I’ll keep you guys posted how boardgame progress is going.

Steam game of the week

I finally settled down on a choice what to play and went with The Longest Journey. An oldschool point-and-click adventure by Ragnar Tornquist, the mind behind The Secret World. So far I can say that the story and the characters are fantastic. Honestly, wonderful characters. You control April Ryan who lives in the 24th century, in a metropolis called Newport. She’s an art student jobbing in a cafe, plagued by particularly vivid nightmares. Around her, strange things happen, and there’s the mysterious Cortez, who seems to know more about what is troubling her. There are many conversations, and the characters are all very interesting. I have a fondness for the lesbian landlord of April’s, unsurprisingly.

It is however a game from the year 2000, and runs in a small resolution which on my screen means I get a tiny window in the corner of my screen. I will have to look into fixing that, because that’s no way to play. I mean, I don’t want fullscreen, the pixels would be an eyesore. Also, it’s a point-and-click adventure game. I suck at those. I am not ashamed mentioning I frequently have to use a walkthrough. I am currently in chapter 2 and have to get into a movie theatre. I got stuck and went to a walkthrough, figuring out I need items from April’s job and from the subway tracks. I didn’t spot anything in the subway station earlier, and it never occurred to me that I would have to go to other non-related locations to pick up items. Sigh. I hope I am not the only person in the world who enjoys adventure games and yet sucks at them.

Over the years I have mentioned multiple times that I find Rift one of the nicest MMO experiences out there. I was a subscriber for 9 months after release, and went back on a trial basis last year. It’s a great, highly polished game with tons of interesting features and cool classes. Unfortunately the playing experience is maybe a bit too close to WoW and so I never really went back full-time. When I read about the F2P transition next month my first thought was ‘Wow, how awesome is that?’ It means that a ‘WoW tourist’ like me will have the opportunity to go back whenever I please, without any pressure, and without any obvious restrictions that would make it unpalatable to me – like say, SWTOR’s reduced amount of action bars, come on. Of course that’s easy for me to say. I am not a current subscriber, and some of those might feel entirely different about the transition, like Liore, whose opinion I value greatly. She is bummed, and probably for good reason. Non-cosmetic gear for sale in a cash shop smells like pay to win to me. On the other hand, if it’s solely catch-up gear so people can start raiding with their friends, maybe not so bad. I guess only time will tell, but as always, I wish Trion Worlds well, because ultimately, they always struck me as a good publisher who worked hard on making Rift very polished, with an incredibly high pace of new content delivery. Come June 12, I will likely download the client once again and dip my toes in. I always thought chloromancers were nifty.

In WoW news

No 5.3 this week means I can mostly just putter around again. This coming week I will purchase the last piece of DPS gear for Yatalai with VP, and then I am done with that. I don’t have the energy to do the valor grind for tanking gear and instead will use any future VP for upgrades. With an ilevel of 509, I am chafing at the bit to be rid of my next to last piece of gear from T14, my Shoulderpads of Misshapen Life. I predict another week of me blowing two Mogu Runes on Iron Qon and Tortos in LFR to replace the shoulders, to get…gold. I have heard complaints about the loot system a lot, and because I have been a lucky beeyatch it’s never bothered me, but T15 is not very kind to me. Double-gold, all the time. Lame!

As I was valor-capped by yesterday, I decided to work on Raiding with Leashes some more. Gluth was a disappointment again, but I burned him down in no time. He was my only problem boss in my first solo Naxx attempts (aside from those two annoying guys before Thaddius), so I was pretty pleased with that. From there I decided I would try my luck with Blackwing Lair. According to forums, Razorgore is sooooo ez-mode, and everyone who can’t solo this a lesser player. Well, don’t let it be said I am that. Three wipes later, I started considering myself a lesser player. Most of the adds aggroed onto Razorgore, and when I hadn’t even cleared half of the eggs, he would die. Incidentally, so would I. Our raid leader Savitr was online, and confused about why the adds didn’t latch onto me. He recommended dismissing Razorgore instead of having it drop off. What can I say? That did the trick. Once I dismissed him, all of his friends ran over to me, I took control again, and once there were too many adds again, I dismissed again. Success!

Of course I’ll have to do it again next week, because neither Razorgore, nor Broodlord Lashlayer coughed up any pets. At least I got Chrominius!

I spent the rest of the day playing the little disc priest who could. She’s now level 57, and Outland is looming ever closer. As much as I love TBC it pains me to say that at the thought of Outland, I am bored already.

The Godmother won at WoW blog posts yesterday. Her post about attunements of old made me very nostalgic for them. It reminded me of the Onyxia chain for horde. It was a flipping pain in the arse, it was for sure. It was also one of the most satisfying experiences I had in the game. I fondly remember turning Rend’s head in to Thrall. I felt like a hero. I don’t feel like a hero today, even though Wrathion has me jumping through crazy hoops. Yet, I do not know if this same feeling can ever be brought back to a more modern WoW audience. We’ve all been spoiled by the game.

Two people, what to play?

I like board games. I really do. I love opening new boxes, and the prettier a game, the happier it makes me. Board game nights are always highlights for me. My SO LOVES board games. She’s excellent at just about any board game. The only board game she didn’t fully warm up to was Dominion, which is a shame, I like it a lot. If she could, my SO would play board games every night. Did I mention she’s good? She’s really good. This means for 2-player games, she usually dominates every game so hard that I find little enjoyment in them. She’s a top-notch programmer, her mind works completely different from mine. When it comes to games, she’s a Vulcan, cold logic, and the goal to crush her opponents.

So I come looking for help, Interwebz. If anyone who reads this knows any really cool 2-player games, please leave a comment. Somewhere out there must be the game where I won’t be crushed every single time I play with her. Right? We enjoy Kingdom Builder, but I don’t like it as a 2-player game. Qwirkle didn’t work at all, because she’s like a friggin’ computer when it comes to it. She actually wrote an AJAX-version with computer opponents and multiplayer support in her spare time. The Settlers of Catan card game is good, but it takes an eternity to play.

Must look harder. Last night we played Yahtzee, and that’s at least a game we can play without me wanting to flip tables.

Tonight we’re going to the circus. I haven’t been to the circus in like a million years. Seriously, since my childhood. I hope it’s going to be good. I am skipping raid night for it, so it better be good!

The inside of the cave looked similar. Fantastic respawn rate though!

On top of the plentiful amount of ogres, I think I walked out of this with about ten stacks of adamantite ore, which will sell nicely. I think the episode wasn’t over before I had finished the grind. I was at 7k/21k through Revered, and it took me exactly 150 warbeads plus slaughtered ogres to hit Exalted. I am currently reading Christie Golden’s Rise of the Horde, which fills my old-school, TBC-loving, horde for life heart with joy, along with a desire to wish that my WoW farm was in Nagrand and not in Pandaria. Mag’har of Draenor is an achievement every orc should strive for, if you ask me.

A bit too bright red for my tastes, but hey, here’s my dragonhawk!

WoW-wise, the rest of the day was spent playing Yamaline the disc killing machine priest. I mean, seriously? I recently leveled an affliction warlock to 56, and killing things on her was sort of a slog. Which might me an issue that affliction is crap for leveling. And yet here’s my little pandaren who goes through mobs like a hot knife through butter. Questing has been very pleasant on her indeed, a nice break from having to deal with idiots and abuse in instances. I might have to switch from questing to pet battling full time though, because wowza.

Nearly 8k experience for a pet battle? I’ll take it!

On top of that I got the 150 collected battle pets cheese, so now I have a Celestial Dragon of my own, hooray. According to WarcraftPets, 72.4% of my battle pets are uncommon, which just goes to show you how very little patience I have when it comes to collecting pets. The moment I see an uncommon pet I snag it and am done with it. Then I go read comments on Breanni’s site and see people who went for like 200 battles to get a rare version. I did use a couple battle stones to upgrade a few pets I really like. My current team that I am leveling so I can take on the Pet Battle guy in Feralas is Mini Thor, a rare Yeti and my lovable maggot.

I am still working on Raiding with Leashes but am slightly discouraged by my inability to solo Razorgore. Unfortunately I got ZERO pet drops in BWL the one day I had a guildie help me with Razorgore. I might try again, maybe it’s just a matter of me learning to solo this, but I am not convinced. I got one of the Molten Core pets, but MC is not a problem to solo anyhow. Naxxramas and AQ40 see me missing one pet each, off Gluth and Viscidus. Hardest work was probably Twin Emperors because it took me like three tries to actually understand that being a dual-wielding frost DK is probably the worst class you can be for this fight. Seriously terrible. With our mix of spells and physical attacks, I found I didn’t have enough oomph with either to outdps the healing they receive. 2H would have been better because Obliterates are all physical. In the end, I played it safe and went with the ‘I win!’ spec blood in my DPS gear, and down they went.

The RL battle pets

I am the feeder of three cats, two striped ones, Luigi and Jenny, and our tuxedo Merlin. They’re all not normal in their own way. Luigi is obsessed with non-stop contact to hands. A life where he is not petted constantly is empty and hollow to him. Jenny is a prissy Princess with hygiene issues. She feels she clearly shouldn’t share a litter box with stinky boys, so in protest pees in the shower and big potted plants. Needless to say, we no longer have big potted plants. Oh, she also licks walls, windows, and rocks. Worst, this is contagious and Luigi now also passionately licks windows and the shower walls. Last but not least is Merlin. We often refer to him as Kiffer-Katze, a pothead kitty. He’s a bit on the slow side and lets you do things with him no other cat would tolerate. My SO has a famous act where she slides in using him as her air guitar. He likes being vacuumed, on low. He leans into the breeze of the vacuum. Which cat does that?!? He regularly gets his crazy five minutes where he will bounce up walls, and his favorite sleeping place is my SO’s armpit where he sleeps like a baby on his back. Sometimes she will tie him into a baby-sling like blanket and he loves it. Needless to say, we love all three crazies quite dearly, and worry our heart’s out when they have to go to the vet. Jenny is our biggest problem kitty. She is prone to get really sick, and it took us til last year to find out that she has a feline heart disease, HCM. Merlin is usually our robust boy, but for the past couple weeks he’s had this big lump under his left eye. We finally took him to the vet and when they tried to take a tissue sample, relaxed pothead kitty turned into a ferocious tiger because he thought getting poked with a long needle right below his eye was really uncool. I don’t blame him, really.

Please meet Merlin. He fits into any box, honestly.

Yesterday, he went into surgery for it, and we are very relieved that it turned out to be a harmless adenoma that was removed. He also got his teeth cleaned, hooray. After I picked him up again from the vet, I no longer had quiet WoW playtime because he was full of neediness. Also, they did not tell me that the adhesive tape on his leg needed to be removed the moment we got home, so by the time my SO came home, his right foot was like…three times the size of his other foot. I still feel like a terrible cat mommy that I did not notice that straight away. Today, his foot is back to normal, his behavior is as normal as we can ever claim that he is, and we can breathe easier.

Game of Thrones

I am currently in the process of catching up on Game of Thrones. Remember, the show I recapped for like the first three episodes? I don’t know, I kinda stopped watching halfway through season 1, and still don’t know why. I gobbled up the rest now and am almost caught up completely. It’s a great show that really brings the books to life, but I am not 100% sold on the changes they did. What’s up with Robb’s storyline? I guess they really wanted to make him seem like this noble, fantastic King in the North, with the beautiful wife and a lovestory to match it. Also, in season 3 it really struck me that I doubt they can pull this off with their younger actors. Go back watch season 2 Bran, and then turn in again for season 3. He’s enormous now, and his voice has completely changed. Same with Arya growing up. By the time the show ends, they won’t be able to pass as kids anymore, at all.

Unsurprisingly, I am going with Brienne and Jaime being OTP. I really think Brienne’s actress is fantastic.

Am I the only one wondering what the success of the show is doing to GRRM? If I were him, I would really feel the unbearable pressure of having to knock out the rest of the story much faster than he’s been in previous years. Not that I am complaining, because I would rather continue reading than waiting years and years again.

What to play next?

This week of vacation I want to use the time to actually play something that’s not WoW. But what? The Witcher 2′s desktop icon is staring at me every day. I thought the prologue was tremendous when I played through it, but then when I reached the first town in the playthrough, my joy went poof. I don’t like the combat, and I do suck at it. I felt there were a multitude of quests, but not enough guidance where to go for them. Yup, that’s me, being ruined by mostly linear gameplay. Sorry, sandbox lovers, but I like following a thread through games. Running through the woods for ages without finding what I need for the quest makes me stop playing instead of being inspired to search some more. This is the prime reason I have never considered buying Skyrim.

I have a couple more games I could play. The Longest Journey started very nicely. I have both KotORs. Also, Deus Ex and a ton more. Hell, I never even finished Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood nor Arkham City. I just need something that totally grabs me, in the way L.A. Noire did.

Maybe by tomorrow I’ll be able to tell you that I managed to find something.

Belghast of Tales of the Aggronaut has recently returned to blogging, writing something every day, taking his time to do that, and the thought appealed to me. Just write something every day, to get back into the habit. A couple days later Jaedia asked me on Twitter if I would return to my blog, and that decided it for me. I don’t know yet what exactly I’ll write about every day this week, but I have a week off work, and I am going to use it!

Six months ago I made the decision to quit my US WoW-account. I re-rolled from scratch on my EU account, horde-side on Argent Dawn and have not really looked back at all. This isn’t news because I have posted about it before, but six months later, I am still equally happy. My guild is full of nice, generous and relaxed people and I am having tons of fun hanging out with them. So much in fact that I am going to fly to the UK in June for a pubmeet of the guild. I never felt like an outsider or newcomer, and am looking forward to meeting all those great folks I am raiding with, including finally meeting Spinks, always my blogging heroine.

The main

Yatalai in full T14 glory. I loved that set.

Yatalai remains my main character, a dual-wielding frost Death Knight. I have settled happily in a DPS role which is both very relaxing after years of main tanking and at the same time quite challenging because I always try to improve my performance. I think great DPS is equally as important as great healing and tanking. High DPS output throughout a fight will make everything easier for everyone in the raid. To challenge myself, I have a friendly DPS rivalry with our raid leader Savitr, a kickass Windwalker monk who plays at a very high level. He’s leaving me a bit in the dust gear-wise at the moment, but on cleave-heavy fights, like Horridon, I can beat him. We also have an excellent mage, so I feel in very good company trying to perform well.

We raid twice a week in our progression group, but we’re not super-pros. Our stumbling stone in T14 after I joined was Wind Lord in Heart of Fear, and so we didn’t finish the tier until patch 5.2 had dropped. I still find T14 oddly tuned. Mogu’shan Vaults had the tough Stone Guards with lots of personal responsibility, then a fairly easy middle part, the fantastic and challenging Elegon encounter, and Will of the Emperor which was…not a fitting final boss for this raid. Elegon deserves that crown much more. Heart of Fear in general seemed quite tough, and I did not actually finish it, as I wasn’t along for the Empress kill. After weeks of wiping we entered Terrace, and pretty much rolled through it easily. I don’t think any of the bosses took more than two pulls, including Sha of Fear.

You have no idea how much work it was for us to get this sucker down.

T15 is again oddly tuned. I hear that people are saying the latter parts up to Lei Shen are quite easy. I don’t know really know, because we’ve been stuck in the first part for two months now. Jin’rokh is a good DPS check, but he’s followed by Horridon, which is this massive brick wall we smacked into. Our last kill, number 3, a oneshot, was the first time that I actually thought ‘I think we finally got this fight’. Kill number 2 was almost as much work as the first kill. Council I found a little bit easier, but not much, and we only got this last week. We started on Tortos last week, and on a certain level I find this fight again easier than Horridon, but we’re not close to killing him just yet. 3/12 after two months. I think I am inclined to agree with Zellviren, and think Blizzard has made normals too punishing for the casual raider. Casual raiding does not mean being satisfied with LFR. LFR is a means to an end for me: to get enough gear to improve performance in normal raids. I am only missing one piece of gear from ToT LFR, shoulders, and that’s the only reason I am doing LFR. I did not do parts 1 and 3, because it’s not fun enough for me to play like that.

Alts and other activities

I have a second level 90, Yagara, the Mistweaver Monk. I was quite intrigued with monks when they were released, but am not sure Blizzard hit the mark with them. I did not find the Windwalker melee anywhere as enjoyable as say, frost DKs or even warriors. Part of it for me is that the combat doesn’t provide me with the sound feedback that I like. The ‘swoosh’ of a Blackout Kick is not as awesome as the sound of an Obliterate or Bloodthirst. Mistweaving also did not quite do it for me. Again, mostly me. As far as healing goes, I like reactive healing or proactive healing like disc. I don’t like HoTs which is why resto druids are usually a short-lived experiment for me. Enter the Mistweaver, a healer with a channeled heal, two different kinds of HoTs, and one emergency reactive heal. Oh, and fistweaving. Which was sort of nerfed to the ground with 5.2 and does not even come close to Atonement. Not even close! So here I am, having a healer of the style I enjoy the least, and who doesn’t really seem to fill any niche. I don’t think I’d be decent at tank healing. Raid healing seems quite strong, but my experience is mostly LFR, which is a giant snoozefest full of healers eager to boost their numbers through copious amounts of overhealing. I usually cast Renewing Mist and Chi Wave on cooldown, and then if there’s any sort of raid damage, I start Uplifting. If there’s a lot of raid damage, I use Revival. If I get really bored and there are a lot of people clustered, I use Spinning Crane Kick, Spin To Win! I get bored just reading about it. I took her to the first 3 parts of ToT LFR and then decided that maybe Mistweaving is not for me. At least I tried. I healed one 10-man raid on alt night, Heart of Fear, and that was a million times more fun than LFR. We’ll see. She’s there, and I can still play her when I feel like it, but currently, I am more driven by my latest alt project: Yamaline the disc priest.

You know disc is the flavor of the month when you have multiple disc priests in 5-mans. Atonement in 5-mans is just awesome, even though the 5-mans get worse and more abusive, the higher you level. I went from 1 to 49 in full heirlooms just through dungeons and herbing, and decided that I was done with that after yet another fail Zul’Farrak group where DPS pulled willy-nilly with the statement ‘Hurry the fuck up, I don’t have forever’. Why queue for 5-mans if you are in such a freaking hurry in the first place?

My only pleasant ZF experience. Tank dropped early, so we four-manned it with a voidwalker and two hunter pets.

Disc is so much fun that once I start questing, I will likely not even get a shadow spec for now. While herbing I easily defeated multiple mobs at the same time, which were 3-4 levels above me. 5 stacks of Evangelism + Atonement=hax! Seriously, so much fun. I am itching to play her some more. I started playing a lock as well, but she’s on the back burner for now. My fuzzy-wuzzy panda is more fun.

Chercolis the Fabulous Banker

One of the concerns I had when I started over was that I would have to adjust to a life of being poor again. On US-Bronzebeard, I had over 200k gold and an army of alt crafters. On Argent Dawn I had nothing. Needless to say, my worries were for nothing. As my GM might say, most of my worries are always for nothing.

The gold state of my characters, as of this morning

I started quite small when I arrived on the server, selling limited supplies recipes that I bought off vendors. I still sell those regularly, they’re a nice, steady income. Yatalai is a blacksmith, and with MoP something has happened that I never thought would happen: blacksmithing is a profitable profession. Now that crafted PvP blues are also excellent pieces for PvE for fresh 90s, I made a lot of gold with them. The Covenant set sold quite nicely, and the Crafted Dreadplate stuff was extremely profitable for a couple weeks. Income from that is finally slowing down as just about every blacksmith has learned all the plans and the market is now flooded with pieces way below my threshold. I tried to get into the transmog market for a while but I don’t have the patience for it. It takes forever for some pieces to sell, and I like immediate rewards. I recently switched to buying underpriced Cata and MoP greens. I buy everything with a decent suffix (avoid Tiger, Beast and Whale at any cost) that is priced below 75 gold, and flip them. Works fantastically well. A disappointment so far is JC. Everyone on Argent Dawn seems to be a JCer, which means that most cuts sell for less gold than the uncut gems cost. Even Primal Diamonds are not worth it.

Yes, greens really sell that nicely. I think I need to up my fallback.

As you can see in the screenshot above, I use TradeskillMaster for auctions. It’s insanely powerful. It cuts down on the time spent at the auction house and can do so many things. My crafting routine is very simple. I log on my banker, collect the gold, leave him by the auction house and log on Yata. Open TSM_Crafting, click on Restock Queue, and it will queue all the items I need to restock the AH with. Log back onto the back, click on Crafting Mats, with a couple clicks have him buy the mats for Yata’s crafting. Head to the mailbox, click on Auto-Mail, and the ghost iron and living steel bars automatically head Yata’s way. Log her on, open mail, find an anvil, click on Craft Next til the queue is empty, find a mailbox, click on Auto-Mail and all that I have crafted heads to the banker. Also, all the cloth that’s in her bags heads to my tailor. Etc. This whole process takes less than 5 minutes. The only TSM plugin I don’t like is TSM_Destroying. I like using Panda for that instead. The rest is all wonderful. The screenshot above is TSM_Accounting, btw. Combined with the addon in-game I use the TSM app. Instead of running an auction scan in game, the app downloads the latest auction info via Blizzard’s API once an hour. Additionally, it can access any Dealfinding list you have created in-game in TSM and alert you on your desktop when a new deal is up in the auction house. When I am not in-game, I go to the WoW website to purchase it on the auction house, or if I am actually playing, it’s a sign that my banker needs to come out and play. The TSM app also gets the latest files from WoWUction, which is another fantastic gold resource.

Pet Battles and Mounts

I never actually saw this coming, but pet battles are strangely addictive. It’s not actually the battles that are the most fun for me, but the completionist aspect. I like collecting pets. I’ve been slowly going through all the zones trying to collect the uniques, at least as long as they’re in a level range that my team can actually beat. My highest level pet is a level 16 rare maggot. I never thought I’d say this, but maggots are kind of awesome. The way it Leaps at its foes, so awesome. Don’t judge me.

I wish I was as good at collecting mounts. I am now sitting at 97, when all I want is that nice dragonhawk. I find myself struggling with the TBC rep mounts, because I usually don’t feel like grinding. I am halfway through Revered with the Mag’har, and have a lot further to go with the Sha’tari Skyguard. Only friendly with the Cenarion Expedition. Haven’t even started Netherwing yet. The drop mounts are eluding me on this account. No mount of the Ravenlord, no Ashes, no blue proto. I did get both Malygos drakes, and am just four achievements short of the red proto. I started the Argent Tournament, so in just a couple weeks, I will have my Dragonhawk. If I remember to do those Tournament dailies. Ugh.

Other games

I have been so absorbed by WoW, to my SO’s great regret, I feel, that I have not had the time to play other games. None of my Steam collection, despite my grand plans. I think this week I’ll change that up a bit. I recently dipped my toes into Neverwinter, to create Yata the halfling trickster rogue. All I can say is that I had more fun playing Neverwinter than I ever had with Guild Wars 2. And it’s free! At the same time, it was not captivating enough to make me play all the time. I did enjoy the Forgotten Realms setting that I have such wonderful memories of. I GMd an FR campaign a lifetime ago, and some of my best computer game memories are the old SSI gold box games set in Forgotten Realms. Curse of the Azure Bonds, aw yeah. Plus Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, etc. Good times.

That’s it for now. More shenanigans tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

I didn’t meet my Goodreads goal of 40 books last year so I went with 35 this year. I am however quite convinced that I might make it 40 this year, if January is any indicator. I managed to read four books in January, though some of them were favorably short.

I started off with Feed by Mira Grant. Highly recommended by many of my friends, I had been looking forward to it for quite a while. I loved the play on RSS Feeds on the cover. I had incredibly high expectations, and I have to say they weren’t really met at all, sadly. The setting is in 2040, many years post Zombie apocalypse, which seems to be its own genre now. The three main characters are Georgia Mason, her brother Shaun and Buffy Meissonier. They are a team of high profile bloggers in a world where blogging is the prime source of reliable news, their site called After The End Times. Georgia is a newsie, a news blogger, her brother is a so-called Irwin, poking zombies with sticks, and Buffy is a fictional, releasing poems and other fiction. The team gets the opportunity to join the up-and-coming Senator Peter Ryman during his presidential campaign, as exclusive bloggers. Though the campaign is very successful, it is overshadowed by incidents involving zombies, like a huge-scale attack in one of the towns the campaign stops at. The bloggers keep digging up dirt, and are soon deep in the middle of a conspiracy in regards to the origins of the zombie apocalypse. It sounds more exciting than I actually found it. The story is mostly told from the first person perspective of Georgia. As newsie, I kinda found the story through her light-sensitive eyes very dry to the point of boring. The whole presidential campaign read more like a political thriller a la The Pelican Brief or any other Grisham, and not like the exciting horror story that I had expected. Maybe I am raw from the Obama campaign in 2012, and it’s more enticing to read as American, but I for one kinda don’t care about American elections that much, at least in not so much dry detail. In the latter parts of the book, things finally start to happen, and that’s where the book hugely improved for me. I originally gave it 3.5 stars, but in retrospect, thinking back, I really didn’t like the whole package that I got, making Feed an average to me.

Next up, we have Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay. I actively avoided Kay since hating on his Fionavar Tapestry books that I read in the 90s. Just not my style of fantasy. In the meantime he seems to have changed his focus to historical fantasy, the fictional retelling of history in fantastic worlds. Under Heaven is one such book. It roughly follows the events of the An-Lushan rebellion in the late Tang dynasty in feudal China. Our protagonist is Shen-Tai, younger son of the famous General Tai who had won a great victory for his people, the Kitai, but regretted the price of lives that the biggest battle took. When the General died, Shen-Tai went off to officially mourn him, by burying the Kitai and Taguran dead at the site of the battle, away from civilization, for two years, bringing peace to the ghosts there. As reward, the Tagurans award Shen-Tai a present of 250 so-called Heavenly Horses. Horses are prized greatly in the Kitai Empire, and none more than the Heavenly Horses. In one instant, Shen-Tai is transformed from humble young man to important member of the Empire, in danger of assassination and of being used in political plots to gain access to those horses. Political intrigues eventually lead to the downfall of current Emperor, and Shen-Tai is at the heart of it all as it happens around him. I really enjoyed this book even though it didn’t quite match the Asian mythology profile that I had been aiming for. Characters were interesting, and I enjoyed Shen-Tai and his younger sister. Villains fell a bit flat, Wen Zhou being a somewhat boring character. Still, I enjoyed it, and I am mildly excited that Kay is going back to this setting sometime later this year.

My personal highlight in January was Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I don’t think it’s for everyone, but I loved it. It’s the story of pretty much the worst marriage one could imagine. The first part of the book is told from the view of Nick, smalltown Missouri boy who moved to New York, was a magazine writer, and found the perfect wife, Amy. They fell on hard times, both losing their job, and then Nick’s mother fell sick, so they moved to his hometown in Missouri where he opened a bar with his twin sister. When the book starts, it’s their 5th wedding anniversary, and things don’t seem so well for them. When Nick gets to work, he gets the news that Amy has gone missing. When police looks into her disappearance all signs point at Nick being involved in her disappearance, possibly murder. Did he kill her or not? It’s hard to tell for the reader. It’s certainly obvious he bore her no love. So what happened here? I loved this book, despite its utter absence of characters being remotely likeable. Nick is quite douchey, for sure. It’s a book with a seedy, gritty underside, full of mature themes and words. As a psychological thriller I enjoyed it greatly. Hard to put down! I think it deserved it’s Goodreads award 2012 for best thriller. for me.

Last but not least, I read Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris. It’s his first novel from 2005, and has all the trademarks of a Sanderson novel: unique, interesting magic system, and skillful world building. As it is his first work, his flaws stand out more than they did in later books. Elantris is the name of a city that used to house divine beings. Normal people were transformed through an event called the Shaod, granting them magical powers that allowed them to turn dirt into food and heal the gravest of wounds and sicknesses. People worshipped them, until a catastrophe happened that took the magic away and turned all Elantrians in nothing better than lifeless zombies. The main character of the story is crownprince Raoden, Prince of Arelon, the country that contains the city of Elantris. He is taken by the Shaod, which means he gets locked into Elantris. He meets others inside the city, and begins with trying to improve the situation inside the city instead of turning into savages suffering inside. He begins to look into what could possibly have caused the loss of magic. On the outside, Sarene has arrived, Raoden’s fiance and now contractually bound widow. She discovers that the Fjordell Empire is trying to take over the country of Arelon by forcing it to convert to its state religion, Shu-Dereth, through machinations of the priest Hrathen. The different viewpoints ultimately mingle and end up in an exciting, action-packed climax. What is it with books like Feed and Elantris that start slow and then go all out? Characters are the big weakness of the story. Neither Raoden nor Sarene nor Hrathen are particularly memorable and unique, unlike the setting. It does make me nod with appreciation when comparing The Way of Kings with Elantris to see how far Sanderson has come. He will return to the Elantris setting, and I can’t wait what a more mature Sanderson will do with the world now. Though, really, instead of going to Elantris again, I really want the next Stormlight Archive book. Is that too much to ask? Elantris gets 3.5 stars from me, which rounds up to .

And that’s it for January. February will probably be a slower month, as I am slogging through a very slow historical novel right now.

Enter Mists of Pandaria. I have been a fan of 5-man content forever, harkening back to the days of The Burning Crusade. Yet, over the years, after the advent, I slowly fell out of love with this kind of content. The anonymity, the rush instead of smelling to stop the roses, it really doesn’t make heroics an attractive pastime anymore, unless I go in with guildies. Do I really have a reason to do them if I want to progress casually? I think the answer is a definitive no. My main Yatalai is doing quite well for her these days. Item level of 487, lots of purple pixels. My personal progression pretty much went like this: hit 90. Crafted myself a full set of 450 tank gear and 450 PvP gear. Ran maybe half a dozen heroics to have the ilevel to be able to venture into the LFR version of Mogu’shan Vaults. Through a few lucky rolls walked out with quite a few epics within the first two weeks. I capped valor every week through dailies, Sha, LFR and scenarios. Shortly afterwards had the ilevel for the other two LFR raids. Continued to cap valor easily with the additional raids. Once you have the gear for LFR, the only incentive to run heroics are the valor points. If I have to deal with strangers, I’d rather brave the 10-second DPS queue for a quick 40 valor points in a scenario than the possibly aggravating ordeal of a heroic with a bunch of rude people. I have no need for the gear that drops, unless it’s a lucky offspec tank drop. That’s pretty much my only reason that heroics might be attractive, because my tank gear is still pretty crap, ilevel 453.

In summary, my progression model: crafted gear -> heroics -> LFR -> 10-man raids. Valor cap achieved predominantly by doing dailies, LFR and scenarios. I am not alone with this perception, because Azuriel feels LFR is the better LFD, for example.

I was a huge opponent of LFR when it dropped in 4.3, and it was actually one of the reasons I quit for 10 months. Dragon Soul LFR at the start was chaotic, full of ninjaing assmunches and people yelling at each other. Basically LFD gone bad, multiplied by 5. It was not without trepidation that I ventured into Mogu’shan Vaults for the first time, and I was pleasantly surprised. It does of course help that I find the MoP raids so far a lot more fun than Dragon Soul. You still end up with rude people at times, and on some bosses things can fall apart quite quickly (I am looking at you, Garalon) but most of the time I go in, one-shot a couple bosses, and usually walk out a little bit richer in gold and experience. Sometimes even gear though it doesn’t seem to happen as often as I would like. I am pretty sure everyone feels that way though, about the loot. I get my own sense of progression through LFR. I remember my first MSV raids, with me usually being below 10 on the damage meters, and now, a few weeks later, I usually end up top 3, sometimes even number 1. It also prepares me for the actual raid encounters. There are differences of course. I wouldn’t dream of DPSing through Feng’s Epicenter in my guild raids. I think it’s excellent training, giving you a general idea what’s going to happen in the normal difficulty raids.

Clearing raid instances with strangers, rar. Do Sha-Touched weapons really exist?

I feel that everyone who wants to see all the content, finally gets a shot at doing all that. There’s really something for everyone now. I mourn for the times of TBC, the 5-man challenges and the kind of server-community you had back then, and yet I can’t help but admire the MoP system.

After all this praise sung for LFR, this brings me back to my original point. What’s the role of heroics, I wonder? In 5.2 the current valor items will be reduced in price. Heroic bosses will award 100…justice points. Does anyone use their justice points? I bought one item with it when I started gearing, and that’s been it. People in my guild will sometimes run a heroic, but not that often. Some of the raiders haven’t even seen all heroics. They feel vaguely pointless. I don’t know, it’s kinda sad to see the format go to waste when I have such fantastic memories of them, but at the end of the day, I don’t really feel the urge to run a heroic when it’s just me queuing. Makes me wonder what Blizzard’s thoughts are. We are getting new scenarios in 5.2, but no new dungeon anytime soon.

As an aside, one of these days I will have to try a challenge mode dungeon.

First game on my list is L.A. Noire. I bought it in the last summer sale, and played it once. On my old computer, it had incredibly choppy performance, and the first car ride had me so frustrated I gave up on it. Then WoW was down one weekend in December, and I decided to go back to it. New computer meant no more choppy play, and I have to say that this is a very good choice that I made.

L.A. Noire is the closest to an old point and click adventure an action game will ever come to. It clearly has many action elements, and is all 3D with some sandbox elements, but at the heart of the game are the cases, the investigations, and the interviews with suspects that make this game so interesting to play. L.A. Noire is set in Los Angeles post-war, beginning in 1946. The main protagonist is Cole Phelps, a patrol cop who was sent home from the war early, and who is now trying to be the best cop possible. He sees the world in black and white, and he definitely is a career guy. When he gets the chance to assist with a homicide case he takes it. The Patrol Desk cases mostly serve as a tutorial for the game and set the scene. You learn how to investigate crime scenes, which is pretty straightforward. The default setting will give you an acoustic warning if there’s evidence. Some of them are red herrings, things that won’t help, but some aren’t. I also set it up that you get a looking glass symbol when there’s evidence. Apparently if you use an XBox controller, it vibrates as warning, which seems a lot more intuitive than the ‘pling’ sound you get. If you find enough evidence, there should be hints leading you on in the case. As long as you’re still on the patrol desk, you have to drive to all locations yourself, which I found tedious. Driving with WASD is awkward and I didn’t enjoy that part much. Once you move on in the game, you can have your partner drive you to the locations, which takes you there straight, instead of having to drive through the very realistic streets of L.A. yourself. I think I once drove around for 15 minutes before I finally made it, as the city is just that big, and according to sources is very realistic for the time.

Other game elements are more on the action side. There are car chases, or chases on foot, big shootouts, or fistfights. As I mentioned above, the car part is really not that great, IMHO, and so I was very happy that there’s a switch if you fail an action sequence three times, it will just move you on as if you had been successful, without impacting your case rating. I had to use that a couple of times. Then there are the interviews. You will often have to interview witnesses, suspects and the like. The special motion capturing that the game uses creates frighteningly realistic faces. When you see pictures of Aaron Staaton, you seriously believe it’s Cole Phelps you are looking at. Interviews are mostly driven by Cole himself. As player, it is your task to look at how the interviewed person responds, and to choose Truth, Doubt or Lie. It’s pretty obvious in most cases to see if someone is not telling the full truth. Shifty eyes, facial tics, restlessness, not looking you straight in the eye. It’s harder to discern if Doubt or Lie is correct. If you choose Lie, you need to have hard evidence backing up your story, and if you pick the wrong evidence, the case might slip from your grasp. Ultimately, you always make an arrest, but you don’t always get to feel good about it. The better you do at finding evidence and conducting the interviews, the better your case rating. Nothing screams fail as a measly 1 star showing you pretty much effed it up.

Is this Cole Phelps in Mad Men?

Or Aaron Staton in L.A. Noire? You tell me!

Cole Phelps is a rising star, and moves from the patrol desk to Traffic, and then later even Homicide, the Golden Boy of the L.A. Police Department. I know some people consider Homicide the weakest of the desks he works for, but for me, it was when the game really had me in its grip. Most cases are gruesome, and full of mature themes, particularly the homicide cases. The game does not shy away from the seedy side of human nature at all. There’s rape, even male rape, necrophilia, a pedophile, and a dark swamp of corruption and abuse. On the homicide desk, I first got the feeling that the price of success is too high, that feeling that someone is playing you and you keep making successful, and yet false arrests. The final case of the homicide desk is quite brilliant, a quest for clues through major landmarks in L.A. If there is one complaint I have, it’s the homicide cases are maybe a bit too disconnected from the main story arc of the game.

Every desk Cole Phelps works at finds him with a different partner, and they’re all quite memorable. From good stand-up guy Stephen Bekowski to drunkard Rusty Galloway or the sleazeball Roy Earle, they’re all very well-acted and quite memorable. You’ll run into your former partners again throughout the game, and I felt quite connected. They’re good. I probably liked Hershel Biggs the best.

The cases are framed by the backstory of Cole Phelps in the war in Japan, his rivalry with Jack Kelso, a fellow marine, and his growing interest in a German Jazz singer at one of the clubs in Los Angeles. Cole’s backstory eventually mingles with his current cases when he starts investigating drug trafficking of stolen morphine from the war. It’s all connected, and the finale of the game left me as bitter and disillusioned as Cole Phelps might have felt in the end. If you enjoyed L.A. Confidential, or Chinatown, I think you would enjoy the story of this game.

I managed to complete L.A. Noire in 35 hours, because I like to take things slow, but I think most people should manage to squeeze out a good, solid 30 hours of gameplay out of it. Longer if you drive yourself, hah! At the last Steam sale, it cost about 5-7 Euro, and for that, it’s a steal. If you are interested in crime stories, get this game. It’s damn good.

My final rating: 5 stars out of 5

1) Blog more consistently. Aside from the occasional MMO post and my Goodreads book reviews, 2012 wasn’t that great a blogging year. I admit to missing the glory days of WoW blogging when my warrior blog actually saw a lot of traffic, but those days won’t come back, and I won’t blog like that anymore. Still, I want to aim for at least one blog post a week that’s actual content, if not more. Some of the things I have in mind are directly related to resolution number 2. Others involve possibly blogging more about WoW again. Now that my chosen class is death knight, I find that there’s a dearth of blogs about them out there. I felt kinda on my own learning how to become a decent frost death knight. Maybe others feel like that as well, who knows? I might post gear guides and such. Maybe. We’ll see. I want to, for sure.

2) Play more Steam games. It’s always the same. Everytime Steam does one of its huge sales (usually in summer and around Christmas) I act like a nerdy monkey and buy games. Every day I open the Steam shop, boggle at the sales and buy something. Gone are the days where gaming meant you had to pay a lot of money. One of the first games I ever bought was Ultima V. It cost me 79 DM back then. Nowadays, I buy games for under 10 Euro a pop, and they’re often not that old yet. People are ready to shell out a lot of money for cheap games. In this regard, Steam is revolutionary. Never has gaming been more accessible. What this means for me personally: a Steam library full of games I have purchased and then never touched. I know I am not alone with this problem, because many people buy Steam games on impulse simply because they are cheap, yet never play them. I plan on moving away from this. My resolution: play all unplayed games in Steam Library for at least an hour. If I like the game, I will work on actually completing the game. I will blog about my game reviews. I am going to start this week, with my indepth review of L.A. Noire.

3) Meet my Goodreads challenge this year. I am a huge fan of Goodreads. It introduces books to me I might otherwise never have heard of. I love reading, and it’s great to be able to discover books based on my friends or based on books I already love. Last year I challenged myself to read 40 books, and failed this, ending the year at 38 books. Close, but not good enough. My challenge goal for this year is 35. Definitely doable. Hopefully I might be able to up it. I think I’ll stop posting my reviews from Goodreads over here though. I might instead do a monthly summary of books I have read instead.

4) Find a new show to love. I always wanted to blog about it, and never got around to it. Last year I fell in love with the show Chuck, and inhaled all five seasons. I love it. It’s made my life a happier place. I wish all the best to all the former cast members of Chuck and fervently pray for a Chuck TV-movie. For 2013, I want to find a show that I might love just as much. Taking any suggestions! I am going to try out White Collar, based on many recommendations, but I am eager to hear more.

That’s pretty much it for now. Feels good to have direction for this year. May you all have a great 2013!