Well That’s Enticing…

So, got the chance to chat with a few friends in the last couple days.  Nice to catch up with the WoW folk now and then.  In fact, the Mrs. sent me a Scroll of Resurrection that I actually was going to use.  Don’t get me wrong, I was greedy for the 80 boost of a character.  I wasn’t planning on sticking around for much more as I wouldn’t have the time.  However, my account came up as ineligible.  Why, you ask?

While I fully undertand your interest in receiving this promotion, the issue is that the eligibility date is to be inactive on or before March 4, 2012 with the current iteration of this promotion. So while you were inactive before March 4th, that was of 2013 and as there is no newer date/version of the Scroll of Resurrection that has a different/more recent date then 2012 your account still does not qualify.

So, yeah.  Blizzard hasn’t updated the Scroll in a year.  So if you want to bring your friends back at this point and get the nice mount…sorry about your luck.

2012 In Review Part One: The Stats

Got the annual WordPress helper monkeys report, and thought I would share it as the first part of a year in review.

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 160,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 8 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Rage: The Best And Worst Of The Week

Well, it’s been an interesting few days to say the least.  First off, I’m seriously long overdue on congratulating Kamalia on her spanking new Ashes of A’lar.  It was the result of something exotic finally dropping during a Laid Back Raid.  I joked in the days that followed that perhaps I should stick with organizing them but not actually attending (as was the case Sunday night).  Perhaps my not going is a good luck charm.  Some of the others disagree and for that I say thanks.

I’ve not been on a whole lot this week.  ‘Tis the season and all that wonderful jazz, but truth be told another hobby of mine took a great deal of my time and because I like to keep that stuff organized, I’ve been working on that.  But, in the meantime I have gotten a little bit of Warcraft action in.

Courtesy of warcraftpets.com

This morning, I joined Healblade and Shoryl and her friend Farron to delve into Blackwing Lair to hunt us some pets.  First boss dropped the egg, alas I rolled a 13 to Shoryl’s 77.  Looks like I have something to farm again as I think that little guy is awesome looking.

Speaking of pets, I went over 350 battles and managed to amass 18 rares.  I have no idea if that includes environment rares or what, but if it does it pretty much sums up my luck.  I’ve focused more on just getting various pets than their rarity, but even still.  Having said that, in less than twenty battles yesterday and today…FIVE RARES!?!?!

While I had battle pets on the brain, I thought I would visit the Blizzard shop for a couple of items, as I still had not purchased Mrs. Amateur’s Cinder Kitten.  Unfortunately I didn’t think of it until I was on my way to work.  So, when I went to checkout and entered my ID, this is what I got:

Due to suspicious activity, this account has been locked. A message has been sent to this account’s email address containing details on how to resolve this issue. Visit http://us.battle.net/account/locked.html for more information.

Not this again…

I go to login to hotmail, but that doesn’t want to cooperate in the sligthest (I sure hope it’s the firewalls here at work).  I curse and swear a bit (in the sense that Thrall’s a bit of a Shaman), and then get an idea.  Second account!  I repeat the process and low and behold I get the very same message.  Okay, so I’m definitely thinking it’s something work related.  But the good news is, gmail isn’t stupid and I can login to it.  So I go through the process, which involves resetting my password (can’t wait to likely have to do THAT again when I get home) and then head back to the shop. 

First happy moment?  The order is saved (man did I have to refrain from buying that Orc Shaman…still need that figure).  Second happy?  It allowed me to enter the information.  AMEN!  So my order is complete.  Alas, I can’t redeem my Lil’ Ragnaros until I access my hotmail account, but that’s ok.  So long as it sorts out, the rage will go away. 

I’d love to share what else I picked up, but prying eyes could be receiving hands…

Cross-Realm Hot Topic

I was quite excited the first time I saw someone pop a Blingtron4000, and then disappointed when Semblance here was too low to use it (80 and up, in case you’re curious).  Fortunately someone had the tiger out as well so she happily bounced upon it for a little while.  As she sat there rocking away, I was reading up on the latest on Cross-Realm Zones.  Before I delve into them, let me just say how much fun it’s been to fly out of Stormwind 8 feet past the gates and then sit and wait while the new zone loads, allowing me to work on Hallow’s End stuff. 

1. Time Zone Jumps
CRZ’s are currently capped where the realms that tie into the zone are no more than three hours apart.  I honestly didn’t know that and while part of the reason is for day/night jump limitation and the handing in of timed events, three hours is still three hours.  One solution being discussed is what sounds like a flatlining of the zone times.  Not 100% on how that’ll succeed, but it could be better than the current setup, that’s for certain.

2. Lag And Tech Issues
Resources, NPC’s, buffs and more can occasionally be non-existant when you change zones.  Blizzard admits this and is working on it.  Well, that’s a start.  As is finally acknowledging the horrid frame rate problem that many have reported (myself included) when hitting a CRZ.  A few people have suggested the zones weren’t ready to go live and these issues show that.  However, no one in their right mind should think this ever would have launched without any difficulty.  If they can sort it out, bonus for the game.

3. “We’re Blindly Happy With It.”
Sorry, I don’t know how else to paraphrase it.  The exact quote from Rygarius is as follows:

Despite a few lingering technical issues, we’re happy with how CRZ is populating the leveling areas with other players, and helping to once again foster MMO social experiences in the 1-85 content.

For the most part, I think some players would agree with this.  In the grand scheme of things, I might be one of them.  But the cynic in me can’t help but think node and mob stealing, npc pvp camping and more are not the MMO experiences I would want to be fostering. 

In fact, just recently Cheetah Dave was questing in Theramore and a Horde Druid was just camping a pirate needed for a quest.  He was doing nothing else, except sitting there at level 85 killing this pirate that anyone else in the zone would need.  Fortunately he had someone like myself who invited him to my group so that he could visit the quest location, but was guaranteed to do it on my server -which the Druid wasn’t on.  Not everyone has that option.

I’ve backed off the quasi “sky is falling” opinion I had when the Cross Realm Zones first came in, but that doesn’t mean I loathe them any less.  They have their place in the game but until a number of issues are fixed, being able to turn them off should be an option and probably the most viable.  Alas, that is the proverbial wishing on a star based on Rygarius’ latest (and still appreciated) comments.

Stop Shrugging Me Off

Here I am some twelve hours later and Saintvache still cannot be logged into.  I opened a ticket this morning explaining he is the only character that is having this problem and that it started during the server chaos last night.  I tried disabling addons and every other usual trick for such an occasion.  Nothing worked.  I was surprised to get an in-game mail reply to my ticket.  Then I was irked.

“Thank you for contacting Blizzard Entertainment Customer Support.  We have reviewed your ticket and are confident that our support site will be able to assist you in resolving this issue quickly.”

This is the third time in the last four tickets I have opened with Blizzard that have either been useless or (in other cases) provided me with the wrong information outright.  These generic replies are not only annoying, but it’s also frustrating because I need to now submit another ticket to actually get the issue resolved.  I get that the tech guys are busy, especially with Mists coming, but the generic response only causes the queue to be even longer and no doubt irritate the player base.  If that weren’t enough, the support threads I found relating to the issue were to have a GM move the character out of Northrend!

edit: Someone moved him to Brill and problem solved…now to upgrade his gearscore so he can do Theramore…lol

Weekend Update

Well, I’m back to the land of Windows.  I won’t say too much negative about it, other than I forgot how slow it is by comparison…and it took some time to get my video card active .  Up until this morning if you saw me on at all, it’s been on Mrs. Amateur’s computer and I thank her for that.  So now that World of Warcraft runs, Guild Wars 2 is soon to follow.

Yeah, so much for waiting until Christmas.  I didn’t even make it two weeks after release.  As I suggested on Saturday, it was just one of those days.  There were additional factors outside the computer problems I was having that resulted in a day that I was more than happy to move on from.  I spent most of it trying not to shut down, or absolutely explode.  It sounds materialistic, but picking up GW2 cheered me up.  However, I won’t even crack the plastic on it until I get Warcraft running.  If for whatever reason I get grief and can’t actually sort it out (which I doubt horribly), then I can return the sealed copy.

In the time I played WoW, I managed to get Liouxpold almost exalted with Netherdrake.  If I login today then I should succeed just fine and end up with another mount.  Speaking of mounts, I’m enjoying the cross-account mount feature for my toons…and yet I am seeing things like the Ashes of A’lar way too much now.  It’s uniqueness is fading, even though it’s probably the same person I’m seeing it on.

On the flip side, Claws hit level 11 as a guild -thanks entirely to the new system.  Granting rep and xp to lower level toons was seriously long overdue.  After I finish up the Netherdrake rep, I’ll hopefully be doing my part again.

This Complicates Matters

This is what the hard drive on my backup laptop appears to have just done.  We knew it didn’t have a whole tonne of life left in it, but were trying to use it just as a backup.  For those in Laid Back Raid last week, that’s what I was on when I was getting the 0 fps.  I managed to get that to go away and was able to be moderately productive until about 20 minutes ago.  WoW crashed while I was mailing a Glyph and then about three dozen write fault errors appeared on the screen, the computer rebooted and did it again.  Two thirds of the icons are gone from the desktop and the whole system is…interesting now.

So what does this mean?  Well, for starters more emphasis on getting WoW up and running on this computer.  I think I’m going to do a full install again and just hope for the best.  I’m really not keen on having to reinstall Windows just to play WoW.  I’ve really come to like Linux.  A lot.

In the short term, Alliance Laid Back Raid for tonight is Black Temple.  I think our raiding network is connected enough that none too many should be left out if I can’t get sorted out in time.  If I can’t get sorted out then what I might do is hop on Mrs. Amateur’s computer long enough to invite people I think are only on my Real ID and then log off so she can go.

edit:There’s no formal Laid Back Raid tonight.  It’s just been one of those days and I don’t even want to open my computer again today.