Literary Challenge 1

     This challenge will be to write about your characters favorite object. This object must have personal value, but not necessarily monetary value. You can either write about how they across the item or why it is the valued possession. You can make it as a conversation between characters and npcs, or as a story about the object itself. It also doesn't need to be an object that is in the game.
      Fantasy character for this will be Airholen the Explorer. A World of Warcraft character.
      Science Fiction character will be Vice Admiral Danic. A Star Trek Online character.
      Modern Character will be Red Laughter. A DC Universe Online character.
      I will right additional ones if time permits.
      There will be no discussion of the previous story as there was none.
      I hope to see some comments and discussions on this topic. Tune in next time for the Fantasy news if I have nothing to say on Monday.

Pre-Story Teller posting

     So today is supposed to be a story, but we haven't had a Sunday Literary challenge yet. So no story. But I will say now is that I am excited about the prospects before me. I welcome anybody to write any thoughts as to what the challenges could be.
     Over at Star Trek Online they have a literary challenge that they run every two weeks. I plan on doing this for the first few Sundays. At least until either come up with cool ideas of my own or reader submissions come in. I plan to take the STO challenge and apply it to my characters from all three genres. Hopefully, people will like it. I think I will do one from each genre for sure, and additional ones if time permits.
      I hope people will like this new direction for me and join in. But time will tell. I know I will have fun.
      Tune in tomorrow to find out what the first Literary challenge will be.

Future plans of the Cast of Characters

      Hi all. I know that I have mostly been writing about what I have done with my characters. I also occasionally write about how the changes in WOW are affecting my play with those characters. But I wanted to take a step back for moment and look at what I have been doing, what I really wanted to accomplish with this blog.
      So what is it that I wanted to accomplish with this blog? Well, I want to talk about my characters from all games I play, not just mmo's, but all games. I wanted to write stories about those characters.
       So how do I get there? Well let's look at what I have done so far. I have a regular piece that talks about what I have done with my characters as a generic news. I have also talked about the WOW patches as I have experienced them as a player. All of this has been done from the viewpoint of player talking about the characters. I made a short stab at writing about the adventures of characters as they played the quests in WOW. But I stopped as I finally reached a point that it seemed like I was writing a wordy version of my Character updates. It didn't feel right. And with the lack of feedback on those stories, it didn't seem like a good use of my time.
     So how do I change things to make this different? I am going to rethink how I go about things. SO far I have been very WOW-centric. I need to change to encompass all of the games I play. I need to not only present information on changes in WOW but in STO, Neverwinter and every other game that I regularly play. And I want to write more stories involving my characters of things that is not about the quests and dungeons and such. I want to expand their back story and their personalities. I also want to talk about my process and my choices.
     So i have decided that I am going to break these things into segments. Assign the segments a specific day and proceed from there. SO here is my preliminary idea...

     Monday, No specific blogging. Gives me a day to just relax but also leaves it open for thoughts or news I just feel like talking about if the mood strikes me.
     Tuesday.  My regular Character updates that I have been doing. The news report on what characters I played and what progress I have made with them.
     Wednesday. Fantasy News. Blogs about fantasy games that I play and the recent news involving them. Like patches, hot fixes or just interesting tidbits. At least things interesting to me.
     Thursday. Science Fiction News. Blogs about science fiction games I play, like Star Trek Online, and news that comes out about them.
     Friday. Modern News. These will be blogs about games that don't quite fit in the above categories. Things like Champions Online.
     Saturday. Story Teller day. I will post a story based on a previously discussed concept from Sunday's blog. I will either post one of my works or from a submitter, if I get any.
     Sunday. Literary Challenge. Start off by discussing Saturday's story and then move on to what next Saturday's story will be. If I get readers submissions for subject matter and even character or characters to involve in the story, then these will be discussed and chosen from during this blog.
    
     Now the above outline is subject to change. And also will suffer from the interference from Real Life. So there may be days where things don't get done, or days might get doubled up on. Each character will have it's own post for his story. So there might be more than one post on Saturday to cover all of the stories I may have written.

     If all of this goes well, my next stage in this will be to create a podcast covering fiction written in these game worlds. I would like to get listener submissions that could read on the podcast. I would like to get even the authors on the podcast to discuss the story and anything else. I would also like to eventually get the writers of the novels for the games to be interviewed too. But I first will start off with my own stories. But before the podcast gets started, I will work at finishing up rebuilding my computer.

    I hope that you all will be excited about my planned changes. As always, I would love to hear feedback, good and bad, about what I am doing here. So please let me know. Thank you all, and plaese tune in next time for the Start of the New Cast of Characters format.

Weekly Character Update

Airholen the Explorer
     Ran the second wing of LFR again. Still no BIS. Still roaming the island and finding more boxes. Got a second Bonkers in the cave. Got some new boots from the LFR and waering them for now as they are iLevel 528 base.

Zombee, Danic, Sisteric and Grell
     Continuing the CE event. In about 4 days, Zombee and Danic will have it done. Grell will be in 5 days and Sisteric will be six days out. These missions have stopped most of my efforts to get the reps done.But at least the Nukara Points are generated from these outings.

      I haven't had time to play any other character at this time. What I have gotten to do is buy some parts for a new computer  and got the Hearthstone Beta key last night. I will say that I have enjoyed playing the Hunter deck, though I have not been very successful as yet. I have only played the PLay mode and the Practice modes so far. I have yet to try areana. I have gotten 200 gold so I will try that one evening that I have time to play it.

     Tune in next time to see what else I have to talk about..

Seige of Timeless Loot, Part 2

                Now, my Rogue has been roaming around on the isle. I have had a lot of time to check out the various places that my Hunter has been too already. And now trying to sneak about to find new places. This has been able to push up my iLevel faster than I ever did with my hunter. But I have only pretended to start on the legendary cloak quest.  I guess I should really track this and get it done quickly, but it so much more fun as a rogue to sneak about and grab those chests.

                Decking out my rogue in mostly Timeless gear has been a great way to get my alt into the game again. So my plans, now, is to get my Tauren Paladin leveled 90 quickly and then start her roaming the Timeless Isle to get her upped the same way. I think once I have a Horde toon gathering Timeless Tokens, I will be able to level all of my toons and get it done this expansion. I hope at least. Most of my toons will be timeless geared decked out, but not BiS gear. It should keep my relevant enough to be fun. Maybe I will eventually gear them to Tier 16, but it won’t be a priority.

                The first wing of LFR was fun too. Between 2 different runs I got all of my BIS gear I am going to get from them. The mechanics and time spent fighting those four bosses felt appropriate and worth it. And the rewards were more than just gold, which has been a better move over previous tiers. Wing two of the Siege is way better, I think. The fact that you actually have to think about the mechanics and what you have to do I thought was awesome. But this past week they nerfed that. I haven’t tried the LFr since the nerfs, but from what I have read, the ease of killing the bosses has gotten waayy easier. Not sure that is a good thing. But I won’t say for sure till I have given it a go. Now, my Hunter still needs two pieces of BIS gear in wing two. And All I have to do is keep running this till I get it. I am just hoping that it’s not one of those tier 15 weeks till you get what you want events. I hate RNG for loot. And I wish it was done away with. But that’s a topic for another post….

                So all in all, I love this new expansion. I really only have minor problems with it so far. The fact that I can gear my alts quickly in this patch makes me feel so much better. And the Raids are good, and entertaining.

                So what do you think of Siege of Ogrimmar? Good? Bad? Let me know. And tune in next time to see what else I may say.

Siege of Timeless Loot, Part 1

                So, it’s been 4 weeks now that Siege of Ogrimmar Patch 5.4 has been released. I think that is long enough now for me to speak my piece about the Isle and what changes the patch has brought to my characters and play style.

                First off, the new area is called the Timeless Isle. And Island where time stands still. From the moment I have gotten there, I have been having fun roaming the island killing things.  My hunter has killed almost every creature on his own (High Priest of Ordos eludes me yet). The slaying of Rares is fun, but sometimes they are killed faster than I can get over there.  

The only thing I see has being bad is Celestials and Ordos, the world bosses. No one seems to want to take them on. As a casual player, and coming from a very small guild, I have no one to draw upon to group up with to take these characters on. And I can’t do it by myself. And so I have yet to fight Ordos, and haven’t had a shot at the celestials since the first week.  Previous world bosses always had players going after them. But these guys never seem to have any pugs forming for it. Why this is I am not sure. But with all the new options to get gear, including flex raiding, I feel that the desire to do these bosses without guildies has been reduced or even removed. In fact, I think that there is a lot of changes in this patch that is pushing players to do more with their guildies than with pugs, which really hurts a player like me. With extremely low membership in my own guild, and not knowing very many players in the game, I suffer from the lack of content I want to do because I am not as socially connected in WoW as others. LFR was a godsend to me because it allowed me to experience raiding on a time schedule that fits within my home life.

There are chest that are strung all over the island and give you coins and a chance at epic tokens.  These tokens give iLevel 496 all the time or iLevel 535 with a Burden piece. The Burdens are hard to come by but are nice to have when you can get them. Both my Hunter and Rogue have had no real trouble getting the tokens. And these tokens are bound to the account which means I can transfer them to my other characters to hold on to till they get to level 90.

But the biggest change has been to my Hunter talents. The loss of Silencing Shot to my Beast Master has been a hard pill to swallow. Counter Shot is not that effective, and the cool down on it means I can never keep a caster from not casting a particular spell like I could with Silencing Shot. In fact, all that Counter Shot accomplishes is forces a spell with a casting time to start over again. In the end, Counter Shot actually just lowers my DPS with no real effect. I can accomplish the same interrupt with just doing lots of damage, even better it effects all spells he is casting all the time and I am DPSing him down at the same time. On NPC’s, the Counter Shot doesn’t seem to stop elites from casting and normal seem to just cast another spell, not even missing a beat. I am going to have to trade out binding shot for intimidation. Hopefully this will have a better overall effect for my survivability.

I think this is good enough for today. I will continue my analysis tomorrow. Tune in to see what else I have to say.

Weekly Character Update

Another week has gone by and another update has come.

Airholen the Explorer
    Continued exploration of the Timeless Isle has found a few new chests. I did finally get Bonkers from the chest guy. Rode an Albatross to get to a chest on a high mesa. Killed a couple new rares and continued on my quest to get good gear.

Brewmaster Asmodea
     She has started on her search of the Timeless Isle loot. She is half decked out in Timeless Isle gear. Also have found a few chests. Still working on getting her iLevel up high enough to get into the LFR for SoO. Getting close but not quite there yet.

Zombee, Grell and Danic
     Have completed the Crystal Entity event three times now for the special event. Have not put any effort into the Rep Grind because of it.

Sisteric
      My system crashed while playing this guy in an CE mission. Lost everything, including the ability to get the crystal shard later that day. So I am only 2 shards along the way on this special event.

     So that is the week of activity for me. Tune in next time to see what I have to say next.