Flanders Field

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

—

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

—

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

 —

-John McCrae, 1919

This post is also most appropriate to participate in Blog Azeroth’s Thanksgiving blog event that I was invited to by a friend.

I’d like to start with my friends and family, because they accept me for who I am, in relation to gaming in general.  WoW has been a part of my life for past several years, that peaked into me making an actual blog about WoW.  I came out of the closet that I was a huge WoW geek a few months ago, and have since been public about this blog. I’ve gotten great feedback and support from them in regards to my passion for gaming, they’ve become one of the reasons that motivate me to write.  I also needed that kick in the ass when I’d get obsessed, being online for more than 5 hours a day <laughs>.  So, thank you for all your encouragement and liking that this is something I do in my spare time.

Gosh, there’s so much that I’d like to talk about, but I’m somewhat short on time.  You’ll also have noticed that I’ve given this website a facelift, so I’ve been working hard on it for the last couple of days just for you guys to enjoy!  I’ve certainly spent enough time on this site, and probably should get back to homework and studying.

To my WoW friends, I’ve really enjoyed running dungeons with you when I used to be online more often.  I’m sorry that I haven’t been on much because I’ve been so busy with school and having to work.  With what little time I have left that isn’t dedicated to my projects for school, I have been playing other games like Torchlight 2, Guild Wars 2 and Skyrim.  When I decided to step down from raiding and pretty much retire from WoW so I could concentrate what was most important to me in life, you told me you’d be here whenever I get the chance to be online.  You gave me your best wishes and encouragement for me to do well, I couldn’t have asked for anything more than that from my readers and friends in WoW.

Thank you for having my back tanking that gnarly boss so I could keep you and the rest of the raid team alive.  Thank you for making sure I’d be safe in battlegrounds where I’m a prime target as a healer and that I stay alive to continue keeping the team alive to kick some Horde butt.  I’m always here to root for you guys as you plow through heroic dungeons and progress to end game heroic bosses!  I am always up for dungeons when I’m online, it certainly would help me level (I’m 89 now!)  and I would also be glad for the company

Thank you everyone, and have a happy thanksgiving for my American WoW readers!

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

I finally was able to renew my subscription to WoW just after MoP came out, but things got very hectic with school.  So I haven’t been able to play it as much as I would have liked to, because I’ve also been enjoying Guild Wars 2.  I play on an extremely casual basis now, mainly only questing and grouping with other people.  I’ve only had the time to run a dungeon once on my Druid in MoP so far, and she just dinged level 86 yesterday.  This would be the first expansion I haven’t been on every day to max out my toons, farming for mats and running dungeons with guildies to get raid ready.  In fact, I have serious doubts I’ll be able to raid at all on a committed schedule like I used to.

I’ve been feeling really bad for letting some things slide after shifting my focus on school.  I thought I could do it all, but it turns out I’m not super woman, and do need my sleep.  The video production group I started with a couple of good friends back in March is starting to really take off, and as a result, I’ve been taking on more work than usual.  I’ve been enjoying myself immensely working with people on videos.  I can now say with certainty that this is what I want to do as a career choice, something to do with video production and working in collaborative projects with other creative people.

I haven’t been able to write much on any of my sites lately, or do any updating to fix things that got broken through updates on the back end.  The Comic Sans font in the header of this site mysteriously appeared one day, and this is a serious faux pas in the web world because the font is that ugly.  As much as that bothers me, I just haven’t had the time to open up this site to fix annoying things like that.  If I had money, I would probably just hire an assistant to do all of those things for me at this point!  Eh, well, I’ve managed to fix that today so that’s out of the way, but there are still some things that are broken here so you’ll have to bear with me

Aidrana before MoP at level 85 as a Restoration Druid

Aidrana Post-MoP at level 86 as a Feral Druid

After doing this for years, it feels so strange to be at the bottom of the barrel so to speak.  Almost everyone I know has at least one level 90 character (or a level 80 character in Guild Wars 2) and is already well on their way to start raiding.  I feel a little sad that I can’t play as much as I’d like to, but I’m okay with that because I know I’m always welcome whenever I log on.  I miss playing with my guildies and friends, but definitely don’t miss the grind that comes with the game.  What do I think about the expansion so far?

I can’t really decide yet, because I’ve been spending most of my time questing, so I can really only evaluate this part.  But before we get into it, you should also know that I hate questing.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve always just run dungeons over and over again to get to my desired level.  It was easy because I was always the healer on my last few characters that I levelled.  I levelled this way on my druid, paladin and then my priest in that order over the last couple of years.  I didn’t feel like doing the same quests over and over again on my toons, so I tried to run dungeons whenever I could.  It was another reason why I got into healing, because the queue time for dungeons were generally much shorter than it is for DPS players.

Running dungeons right now isn’t the best option for me because I don’t really have the time, so questing is more effective in terms of experience gain and getting gold.  I’ve been patiently questing, but oh geez, Blizzard might have out done these quests, because there’s just so many.  Dailies are starting to pop up, I noticed that after doing the Tillers’ storyline, I now have to do farming and profession related dailies.  As much as I dislike doing dailies, I might be able to swing this in my favor for getting experience quicker.  I’m a little disappointed that Blizzard didn’t add a way to interact with NPCs dynamically like you can in Guild Wars 2 and in some other games.  You just walk right up to the quest giver, or the general area of the quest, you get a dialog box to press a key to accept the quest.  I don’t ever have to click on a NPC to get my quests!

I liked that you get those types of quests where you are looking at stories from different characters, but you can’t skip ahead when you’re doing them.  I can see how it could get a little tiresome after levelling a couple of toons though.  I haven’t had any problem playing Feral, and still have most of my gear from level 85, which is really nice.  I was mildly concerned that I’d be facing the same things that I did in the beginning of the Cataclysm expansion with mobs that hit hard and severe mana issues in healing people.  But it’s looking somewhat stable so far in terms of gear progression with the greens.  Playing in 85 heroic gear is somewhat comparable stat-wise to the new level 86 green and blue gear that drop, so I haven’t replaced much of my gear yet.

It has been generally enjoyable just logging on for a bit at a time to play to take a break from everything that is reality.  Speaking of which, this post has gotten long enough, so I’ll wrap this up and send a thumbs up to Blizzard for this exciting new expansion!  I haven’t found anything so far to complain about, and everything looks par to what I was expecting to see in the game.  I’ll be on occasionally, you’re always welcome to hit me up to run a dungeon or to hang out with!  Company is always welcome

Canada is supposedly a progressive country, so why is it that we have been waiting 8 years for this?

It stops here!  Today, in 9 out of 10 provinces, Deaf Canadians are banding together in rallies Canada to send our message across that this service is essential.  We need this service to be able to place phone calls in our language-  American Sign Language (ASL).  The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that Deaf citizens have “a right to the assistance of an interpreter,” in situations where they do not “speak the language in which the proceedings are conducted.” TTY devices do not allow for ASL or LSQ access, instead forcing consumers to use English or French. VRS, on the other hand, ensures that Deaf individuals contribute to their workplace, their community, and their families with equal efficiency. Deaf Canadians would like Video Relay Services as an option for telecommunications, in addition to type-written telecommunications.

As it stands today, I’m unable to call my family or call a restaurant to order some take out.  I haven’t been able to do so for years and God forbid if I ever need to call 911 and I’m unable to.  This is exactly why I’m going to the rally downtown in Calgary at 11:00AM to join other Deaf people in our protestations.

Here is a press release and another open letter by the Canadian Association of the Deaf to CRTC if you want to read for more information on this issue.

If you want to help out our cause, there are a few ways!

If you have Twitter-  you can use the hashtag #SayYEStoVRS2012 and use CRTC’s twitter handle @CRTCeng.  You can attend any of the rallies in provinces across Canada, there are information on the Internet if you want to stop by and add your voice to ours!  Or leave comments on here, I would be sure to forward it to CRTC through letters or over the Internet.

Thank you for taking your time in reading this, even though it’s not related to gaming at all.  It was too important not to share news like this, and we need every bit of support we can get.  I hope that all has been well for everyone!

Steel Series Merc Keyboard and Razer Naga Epic Mouse

I have no problem running WoW on full settings, although I have yet tested it in raids or 5 mans.  Right now, my concern is setting all of my new addons up and getting used to playing with my new mice and keyboard.

I discovered that the WoW addon for the Razer Naga Epic mouse doesn’t work well with other interface replacement addons in game.  I got LUA errors when I tried it out with Tukui and ElvUI, the sides of the mouse would not work either.  After testing different things out, it looks like it’ll work with Bartender and Dominos.  Thing is, I totally love Tukui, and loathe having to set everything up with Dominos and Bartender.  I will have to keep messing around until I can figure out how to make it work with Tukui.

Also to note that I have set the bottom of the mouse to 123 from NUM, so that it isn’t using the number pad on my keyboard, but instead the 1-9 row- the default that WoW uses.  With everything disabled, it works fine- it’s something else that’s the problem.  You’ll probably be seeing me relogging a lot when I’m online, to load and reload addons until I get everything right!  :)

Aside from that, I am so happy with the new set up.  Everything looks wonderful, and I’m really looking forward to getting my new software for editing.  I’ll finally be able to work without any limitations like waiting hours for a video to render or trying to make Fraps capture a semi decent video without lagging too much.  I played other games like Diablo 3 and Mass Effect 3 with my new mouse, and I still need to get used to it.  I’m so intrigued with the new mouse that I want to get damned good with it.  I love the fact I can freely use my left hand, unbound from the 1-9 keyboard, and have a custom keypad specifically for MMO gaming on my keyboard.

It also comes very natural to me, of course, because ASL (American Sign Language) is my main language.  It doesn’t feel awkward to me, it’s just that I need to retrain myself to use everything to its fullest potential.  I stayed away from modifiers because I hate having to press multiple keys at the same time at any given point in any game.  Although, I’m fine doing that outside of gaming, like in Photoshop or for general use on the computer.  I have small hands, so it’s awkward for me to try to reach so far away with my pinky finger and pressing another key with my main index finger.

But.. with the new keypad, everything is positioned so that I can instead bind CTRL and SHIFT to one of those buttons beside my thumb.  I can just use my thumb if I want to use modifiers, and that would make my life complete.

Steel Series Merc Custom Keypad

Setting everything up is turning out to be much more complex than I initially thought it would be.  I’ve decided to redo my interface for WoW, so it works better with my new hardware.  I’m thinking that I’ll end up using Bartender and Grid for now, but I would really like to find a way to make the mouse work with Tukui.  I really love the look of Tukui and it works really well with everything else like Recount and Clique for my Druid when she’s healing.  Tukui isn’t for everyone though, it works great out of the box but if you want to modify it, you have to work with code in the LUA files for Tukui.

This is what my Druid’s old UI looked like.  The addons I had at the time were Power Auras, Tukui, DBM, Clique and Recount.  I occasionally used Healers Have to Die in battlegrounds, but that was all the addons I would run when I raided.  I eventually got rid of Grid and left it up to Tukui to handle unit frames and dispelling.

Old UI screenshot

I’ll be sure to take some screenshots of my new UIs and make a post about it!  In the mean time, I have a lot of work to do.  I’ve decided to work on my Druid and Rogue for MoP when I do play.  I really miss playing my rogue, and would love to be able to pew pew things again.  Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore my Druid, but I want to kill things again.  I rolled a rogue in Rift and specced for Ranger/Marksman, she’s like a hunter in WoW for those who is not familiar with Rift.  Playing my rogue has been very enjoyable, or if you will, a plain DPSer mowing down mobs

I also can’t wait for Guild Wars 2 to come out too.  It’ll give all other MMOs I’ve been playing a run for their money, because I can only dedicate to one at a time.  Because I’ll be playing Guild Wars 2, so if I end up loving it, you’ll be seeing some posts about it here at misspewpew.com.  I’m still going to write, it’s just that WoW won’t be the sole focus anymore.  Yeah, this site is going to turn into a general gaming site, because I still want to play games and write about it.  I decided that I shouldn’t feel that my site should be limited to WoW as its main focus, since I’m not that dedicated to the game.  I’m not now, and won’t be later, so it makes sense to me to go with the flow with whatever game I end up sticking with.

I’m also due to return to school at the end of August, and have a ton of other projects going on outside of gaming.  It’ll also be very difficult for me to be consistent in my posts, as I also maintain several other websites when I’m not busy with this site.  So you can also expect my posting schedule to be on a casual (read: erratic!) basis.  I’m definitely looking forward to returning to school and regaining some sense of normalcy after a long summer.

I hope you’ve had a great summer so far too!  What are your plans for the upcoming fall?  For me, it’s school, managing projects and working part time when I’m not busy with everything else