Mend Pet

Fun Guild Event 7: Themed Screenshot Contests

Brajana — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:00:03 +0000

With how slow things are getting in the game right now while everyone is impatiently awaiting the Cataclysm, it’s the perfect time to bolster your guild’s cohesiveness with some fun guild events! You can check out the list of fun guild events I wrote last year, or try this new one I’m adding to it:

Themed Screenshot Contests

This contest is perfect for this time of the season, because even your guildies who have temporarily suspended their accounts could participate if they’ve saved up some decent screenshots, and it can keep your guild forums active during downtime.

What you need to do is come up with some sort of theme appropriate to your guild. Some ideas are:

Best guild moment (maybe an important achievement or boss kill)
Best guildie mistell (because we all SS them for blackmail purposes, right?)
Screenshot of a suggested “guild headquarters/hideout” (good opportunity to explore all the cool hidden places that might be gone soon!)
Screenshot of “Guildiewhodiesalot” dead in some awkward/funny position or situation

If you get some solid interest, I suggest turning this into a monthly contest! Schedule the first 3 weeks of the month for submitting screenshots and allow the last week for voting. Of course, prizes are great motivators. Depending on your situation I might suggest a game timecard, a pet/mount from the Blizzard Pet Store or the right to redesign the guild tabard for the next month.

Twitter-sized Updates (a.k.a. Surviving the Lull)

Brajana — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:29:28 +0000

It’s that time again! That time when the current content starts to feel a bit stale, and all anyone can think about is the new expansion that is just barely over the horizon. Also, summer. I hear there’s sunshine and fun to be had outside, or something. *shrug*

So what’s a blogger to do? I could write about all the breaking news from the Cataclysm Beta that’s been coming out, but I am actually trying to avoid spoilers and wait to see it all myself when the time comes. I could rehash all my random dungeon adventures, but after a while they seem to all become the same story.

The blogging desire is still within me. Quite often I’ll sit down with a blank text box open and just try to type something. But there is very little inspiring to write about right now! I’m determined not to give up, and I don’t consider my blog abandoned, but I am just waiting for that divine intervention to start flowing through my fingertips.

Until then, I will try to post at least once a week. It might not be particularly inspired or helpful, but maybe it’ll give me a chance to keep my writing muscles in shape, and even give you a nice break from all the “ZOMG LOOK AT THIS STUFF IN THE BETA!”

Today, I will post Twitter-sized updates on various aspects of my life:

Raiding: Got to 10/12 in H ICC before our 10-man guild dwindled to a 3-man. Other games and activities have put us on a summer/pre-Cata hiatus.

Brajana: With no one to conquer raids with, my hunter is taking her own personal hiatus. Probably won’t see Ruby Sanctum at all!

Kaeira: My Prot Paly hit 80! Geared up and making it through Heroics. I make a fine tank, if I do say so myself! Still scared of raids though…

New Alts: Finally got a rogue past level 12! Hoppi the gnome (20) has been my new focus, in a friend’s guild where people actually still play.

Other games: Got a bit carried away with Steam’s sales. I’ve got a list of games to keep me busy such as Mass Effect 1&2, Torchlight, World of Goo!

Real life: Started a new job a few weeks ago. Adjusting to the un-unemployed life slowly… less recreation time, but the paycheque makes up for it.

No related posts.

Personal WoW Census: Armory App

Brajana — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:30:17 +0000

The WoW Armory iPhone app has proven quite useful for me – allowing me to update my raid event status on the fly, mostly. But what I’ve found especially interesting is the ability to look at a list of all my characters – even the ones on my old, inactive account and the ones below level 10. As you might know, I am quite an alt-o-holic. I love playing around on the character creation screen and running through those quick first few levels. I got curious to see if my attitude about favourite class/race panned out with my actual playing statistics, so I looked into the details.

I’ve removed all bank alts and counted Death Knight levels as if 55 is level 1, and compiled some fun facts:

Total characters: 28
Total levels: 684
Average level: 24.4
Most played class (by total levels): Paladin (3 characters, 166 levels)
Most played class (by total characters): Hunter (5 characters, 141 levels)
Least played class (both): Rogue (1 character, level 11)
Most played race (by total levels): Gnome (5 characters, 131 levels)
Most played race (by total characters): Draenei (7 characters, 41 levels)
Least played race (both): Human (0 characters)

The highest Draenei I’ve ever played made it to level 13.
Although I’ve got 4 Shaman, the highest one is level 7.
I’ve never gotten a Death Knight out of the starting area, although I’ve rolled 3 of them.
I have 6 characters that are level 11. That is the “make-it-or-break-it” level for my alts.
Despite my race preferences, I have the same number of Night Elves as Trolls: 1 each.
I have more Alliance characters than Horde characters! *GASP*

See, wasn’t that fun? Have you noticed any interesting patterns in your alts?

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Raiding the Screenshot Folder

Brajana — Thu, 20 May 2010 20:50:31 +0000

With over 1500 screenshots saved to my WoW/Screenshots folder over the last 5 years, I decided to go back and pick out a few I haven’t yet shared on Mend Pet. I’ve narrowed it down to 1% of my most interesting shots and posted them in chronological order!

Since it’s such a giant list of images, I’m adding a click-through for once. So click and enjoy!

Brajana at level 45, proudly sporting her newly crafted +agi/+spi Scoprid Scale armour!

Attending the epic opening of the AQ gate. Run, little Night Elf, run!

Bat-on-a-Broom

Unemployed Halloween Costume Contest - My Mario costume.... complete with Yoshi and Peach!

Two girls, one spawn location?

I think I saw this as a lolcat somewhere...

Penguin power!

Nothing to see here...

XT-002 kill shot turned bunny party!

Yes, Mammoths are big mounts, but this is overkill.

What kind of an 'inn' IS this?!

Misdirection for hire, PST!

This is why it's taking me so long to level my healer...

Would hate to live here... have to nail everything down!

Abstract art... RAM STYLE!

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We now return to our regularly scheduled blog posts…

Brajana — Mon, 17 May 2010 14:00:48 +0000

Hey! Remember me?

It’s been a while, I know. I have excuses upon excuses to throw at you, like how finals came out of no where, and then my computer bit the bucket, and I had 2 weeks of computer-less vacation… but I won’t tell you about all that non-sense. I’ll just stick to the stuff that really matters.

Like my shiny new TITLE!

I’m now Brajana the Kingslayer since several weeks ago my guild and I finally took down the Lich King! Since then we’ve been progressing through Heroic 10 and are currently ranked 4th on our server (and 1st if you just count 10-only guilds)! Unfortunately, I’ve been absent from a big chunk of this progress.

The rare times I have had some time to log in, I’ve been working on my alts. Mostly, it goes like this:

Log into Ferguson, queue up to heal a dungeon.
Log out of Ferguson in frustration after barely making it through the dungeon with some failtank.
Log into Kaeira to level my tank, so I don’t have to deal with failtanks.

So, Kaeira is getting a lot more love than dear Ferg. I’m actually contemplating making him full-time Shadow, because maybe healing just isn’t my thing.

There you have it. A quick update to get the ball rolling again! Thanks for sticking around during my extended AFK!

What’s in a (Guild) Name?

Brajana — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 03:35:09 +0000

In the aftermath of a giant drama explosion, my young guild (Razorblade Arcade) has been forced to reform (minus our now former guild leaders.) It sucks, but that’s what it’s come to. Which left us once again with the horrible task of picking a name.

We spent a good amount of time throwing around suggestions, both serious and not-so-serious ones. And it seems that everyone has a different favoured style when it comes to names. I’ve managed to narrow down a few types, and I’ve realized which are personally preferred for me.

Serious, meaningful names: These names are generally one or two words and say something about the members of the guild or how they came to be together. Examples: , , .
Serious, meaningless names: These generally get picked for their dramatic effect, but don’t really have any importance to the players. Examples: , , , or often anything latin.
Funny, meaningful names: These occur when someone tries to fit an entire joke into 24 characters. Usually a crude one, at that. They’re also popular in Arena Team names. Examples: , .
Funny, meaningless names: Usually of a silly nature, things that make you giggle or curious about the origin of the name. Examples: , , .

So it turns out I’m not a fan at all of categories 2 and 3. The jokes are generally immature, and the drama names just don’t inspire any sort of interest in me.

We ended up going with . I am so indifferent to that name that I already forgot what it was at least once. To be honest, if I were searching for a guild to join, I would probably not even consider a guild with this name unless there was something really appealing about it (like the fact that all my friends are in it.) While name doesn’t mean everything, it does present an image of who you are and what type of people are within the group. Am I stereotyping? Possibly. But I am almost certain I would not want to be associated with anyone in .

How does guild name effect you? Would you join or avoid a guild based purely on the name, or does it not concern you at all as long as the guild is what you’re looking for?

I proposed the question on Twitter, and got quite an array of responses, including:

Rilgon: As long as it’s not anything that blatantly violates naming conventions, no consideration. (#)

Krizzlybear: Ideally, all things equal, I will join the guild with the most hilarious name. (#)

wowcynwise: It’s important that it be correctly spelled and either innocuous or authentically funny. There are a lot I look at and go “no.” (#)

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Blood Queen Chandelier

Brajana — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:30:26 +0000

I don’t know who her decorator is, but I love what they’ve done with the place!

It’s amazing how much beautiful scenery is missed by never looking up or down. Make sure you take some time to get a good look at new places!

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Face to Face with the Lich King

Brajana — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:28:31 +0000

Wednesday night, Razorblade Arcade took advantage of the raid lockout extension feature to finally push through Singdragosa. With new Frost Resistance gear for our tanks and an improved block placement strategy, we were able to get her down on just the second attempt… and that left us with just the Lich King.

That’s when I realized – this is the last boss! We’re about to BEAT THE GAME. This is really significant to me, as I have a nasty habit of not finishing games of any type. Whether it’s because I don’t want it to end or because something new takes my inerest, I just never seem to reach the “final boss”.

World of Warcraft has been no different. In Vanilla, I was no where near the end of the game (mind you, not many were.) In Burning Crusade, I wasn’t even ready to set foot in the final raid dungeon. But Wrath has opened a lot of doors for a lot of people, and I am glad of that. There’s a feeling of conclusion to a story this time around, and I am a bit humbled by it.

I’m both excited to finally kill the last boss, and also scared to be finished. I know there will still be plenty of things for me to do, alts and hard modes waiting to be taken on, but this really is the end of the core story until the next expansion.

This demonstrates the strengths of this expansion. Yes, I’ve had issues with how raids have been released, and the 10 vs 25 setup has had it’s faults, but I think Blizzard has accomplished what they set out to do: All players, no matter how much or little they play the game, have the ability to follow a whole story through questing, dungeons and all the way to the final encounter.

I really hope they’re able to build a similar feeling with Cataclysm, even though they can’t have quite as interesting a villain to focus on as Arthas.

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Playing Deaf

Brajana — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:16:52 +0000

Last night I raided from someone else’s computer. His computer is way better than mine, and I think you could fit my monitor into his at least twice. So visually, it was pretty sweet.

However, he’s got some issues with his sound card. Everything has this annoying echo. So while I tried to play normally for a bit, I eventually gave in and turned my game sounds off – I even turned vent down and could barely make out a word from it.

I am not used to playing without game sounds – and it really does change the game for me. For example, I have become accustomed to hitting Feign Death whenever I hear Omen’s “WATCH YOUR THREAT!” sound. Sure, I still had the flashing red on my screen, but it just wasn’t enough.

Even the sound of my arrows going off helps me know that things are going right. If I don’t hear my arrows shooting, I know I need to pay more attention – am I web wrapped or stunned? Am I facing the wrong way?

It’s amazing how I’ve adapted my play style to use my various senses. I found myself getting a bit overwhelmed by how much I needed to watch the screen, when usually I leave some things to be taken care of by my ears.

Next challenge: Play with my monitor turned off and use only audio signals.

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Average Wait Time for BGs

Brajana — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:30:00 +0000

When was the last time you queued for a battleground? The other day I decided to try Isle of Conquest, and I hopped in the queue. And that’s when I realized how spoiled the new Dungeon Finder has made us: it’s “Estimated wait times” are actually pretty accurate with that system. But for BGs, the queue timer has been useless since the day it came out.

Here’s where I think it fails.

See that Last 10 players note? What does that even mean? It’s a ambiguous. For a BG like Isle of Conquest, which requires 40 people per side… how does the average over the last 10 players help me? It doesn’t. This number means nothing. All it does it give people a false sense that they might get into the battleground in that time, while in truth only about the last five people to queue had wait times below that time. The other 35 had to wait much longer.

They seem to have managed to get the estimation working for Dungeon Finder, why they haven’t just ported that system over to the BG queue is beyond my ken. In fact, it might be simpler because there are no roles defined or needed, just numbers.

They should either improve this estimation or remove it entirely.

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