tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54973632511490573222012-02-17T11:44:32.693+11:00Because all the best people hang out on lawns.JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.comBlogger311100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-55521382196507983702010-09-26T08:13:00.000+10:002010-09-26T08:13:36.449+10:00

In this column, I'll discuss user interface modifications and some tips and tricks I have picked up along the way. I have developed my own addon (SavedInstances), and while I'm hardly an expert I certainly have glimpsed behind the curtain more than once. Those who played beside me back in The Burning Crusade will remember me as something of an addon-addict. I had several hundred installed at one

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-80424061903368200382010-09-17T06:52:00.002+10:002010-09-17T20:37:29.951+10:00

As previously discussed, I took a bit of a break from WoW for a few reasons: I was moving inter-state and didn't want to make commitments I couldn't keep, and a serious of guild collapses had left me emotionally drained. Since then I'd logged in just frequently enough to disqualify myself from any re-subscription discounts. This week, I put my tiny foot down and decided I that it was time I

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-26841659890239314332010-07-04T21:25:00.001+10:002010-07-04T21:28:23.044+10:00

Once the Heroes of Newerth free-to-play beta terminated (with the full release) I started playing League of Legends which is free-to-play. Having played both for at least a few weeks each, I feel I am in a position to share some observations (and judgements) on the subject. Gameplay Both HoN and LoL derive much of their mechanic from DotA, and there's no shame in that. They do differ somewhat

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-22752936321232482692010-06-14T08:44:00.000+10:002010-06-14T08:44:27.248+10:00

Well, it happened. I stopped playing WAR for a few weeks, because I was tired of not having a real computer to play it on (a luxury my better half enjoys in lieu of myself). This last week has seen a few key hardware purchases, however, and hopefully within a fortnight we'll both have decent rigs. This will mean, of course, that we'll be playing WoW together. /yay WTB AoE? So I logged back in

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-13498541585586389832010-04-06T20:33:00.000+10:002010-04-06T20:33:58.802+10:00

So, it would appear that my break from WoW is becoming more and more indefinite. Or should I say that my return to WoW is becoming less and less definite? Massively Distracted My partner and I have been playing Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning for the last couple of weeks and we are thoroughly enjoying ourselves. I am a Chaos Zealot, a scary and hunched-over religious creep who's name means "

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-3609952064085907722010-02-26T15:02:00.000+11:002010-02-26T15:02:45.147+11:00

My raiding guild stopped raiding a few weeks ago, and Obsolete was probably the most progressed guild I have been in. It might be the most progressed guild I will ever be in. So with that guild announcement, I have started looking beyond WoW for my entertainment and I definitely feel better for it. I've played through BioShock 1 & 2, saving Little Sisters and resisting the thirst for vengeance (

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-47137726560988686542010-02-10T16:36:00.000+11:002010-02-10T16:36:05.063+11:00

In a continuation of my Death Knight column (focusing on the class in general, as well as my very own Vocah) I am delighted to announce that my [Shadow's Edge] has now tasted 1000 souls harvested within Icecrown Citadel! NOMNOMNOM! I got a few hundred from a farming run (resetting the raid before reaching Lord Marrowgar) and quite alot during attempts on Valithria Dreamwalker. The next three

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-8057842980597117752010-01-29T08:23:00.001+11:002010-01-29T08:24:39.969+11:00

I finally completed The Sacred and the Corrupt last night. Great big thanks to Naboo, Gadiyus, Cloria and Prostyles, without whom I would have had an even tougher time coming up with all those darn Primordial Saronite. Of course, I wouldn't have been able to do this at all without my guild: Obsolete. Thanks to all who had a part in allowing me to build Shadow's Edge. :) I've already begun the

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-75833042113839468682010-01-23T12:10:00.000+11:002010-01-23T12:10:04.800+11:00

In an effort to become more self-sufficient in certain other endeavours, I decided to roll a Rogue. All the guides and all my friends cautioned against it, but I had long fantasised about specialising in Subtlety from the very beginning so that's the path I chose. As is my custom, I tend to focus on the single-point talents in my primary tree, then fill in the secondary talent tree, then come

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-5661012200900859782010-01-23T12:09:00.001+11:002010-01-25T10:12:16.578+11:00

I suppose it's a little strange having a New Year's resolution for WoW. Regardless, my new mantra this year is: Never lie to the Dungeon Finder. That means if I can tank and/or heal, then I am definitely ticking those boxes. DPS is so easy sometimes, but the Dungeon Finder only works if everyone contributes. Besides, playing an in-demand role can shorten your queue times significantly, so why not

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-27202165415651555322010-01-13T10:47:00.000+11:002010-01-22T15:05:38.042+11:00

I've been religiously hatching my Mysterious Egg every single week since convincing The Oracles that I could be trusted with them. My weekly ritual (the inspiration for my neglected addon: EggTimer) has involved breaking open my Cracked Egg filled with hope, falling rapidly into despair when the contents are revealed, taking the long flight over to Sholazar Basin to get a new egg, and then

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-61317506395652105152009-12-23T07:46:00.001+11:002009-12-25T12:25:55.261+11:00

There's a great little post over WoW.com: Further explanation for Icecrown's delayed gating. I'm about to shamelessly rip it off, but at least you know. :) Muradin Bronzebeard, the dwarf that accompanied Arthas to Frostmourne and was long thought dead, is part of the leadership heading the assault on Icecrown Citadel. His all-star team of international lock-picks and door-openers consists of

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-6329379252539568252009-12-16T13:47:00.001+11:002010-01-22T15:05:38.044+11:00

A short time after Vocah (my main) reached the level cap, I swapped Mining in exchange for Blacksmithing (retaining Engineering, don't you worry) and started work on Hus so I'd still be able to gather ore when I needed to. I was sitting on two level 80 toons long before 3.1 and I had completely forgotten all about my Burning Crusade main that I left back on the blasted remnants of Draenor. With

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-63115025892228188112009-12-08T10:53:00.001+11:002010-01-22T15:05:38.045+11:00

After reading Vok's post over at Unreal Realities, I got to thinking about this last content patch and what it meant to me. I thought I'd take this opportunity to go over the goals I wanted to accomplish and just general feelings about how the game continues to shape up. Patch 3.2 brought us the "Call of the Crusade". Right off the bat I was quite a bit less nervous and much more excited than

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-4272738786202420532009-12-04T07:33:00.000+11:002009-12-04T07:33:04.775+11:00

I recently finished the Well Read achievement. Hooray for me! I do feel like I completely missed the whole point of the achievement though. I certainly went all around Azeroth clicking on books, but I must confess that I did not actually read any of the text. It was so easy to simply click the Quest Helper check-box on the achievement and follow the dotted line to completion. However, I do

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-29141184779812855182009-11-22T00:46:00.006+11:002009-11-22T00:51:55.476+11:00

I have recently found myself spending most of my farming time (in World of Warcraft, you silly, I am no agriculture-Gnome!) playing the closed beta of Heroes of Newerth. HoN is a Defense of the Ancients clone that is its own standalone game. In case you've never heard of DotA or HoN, the gameplay has the standard God-perspective that most real-time strategy games use, and you command a single

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-25664686729599320702009-11-19T10:49:00.004+11:002010-01-22T15:05:38.046+11:00

If you've spent enough time in WoW, especially in parties and raids, you'll have learnt how to identify a character's class simply by looking at its colour. Each character class has its own distinct colour, so that they can easily be identified in the Raid window and throughout the user interface. Below is a table of the character classes in WoW with their corresponding hexadecimal colour code:

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-59193067032448273232009-11-05T23:28:00.000+11:002010-01-22T15:05:38.046+11:00

It seems Blizzard took their first steps into a world of microtransactions. This has been covered in tonnes of places, and my friend Vok mentions it over at Unreal Realities, but in case you've been busy tinkering with your gadgets you should know that Blizzard is offering vanity pets for cash (not in-game currency, US dollars or Euros). I love vanity pets. I spent a month farming for the

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-34015275985185509442009-10-25T00:50:00.002+11:002010-01-22T15:05:38.047+11:00

I've been discussing this with friends recently and it just occurred to me that this is exactly the sort of topic that would make an ideal blog post. Allow me to just start this post by saying that Cataclysm excites me more than Patch 3.3. Now that my bias is disclosed, allow me to elucidate further. These are the following parts of the next content patch that I care most about: new APIs for

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-79732861486896165772009-10-23T09:58:00.000+11:002010-01-22T15:05:38.048+11:00

I have been fairly anxious all week, this being the in-game holiday known as Hallow's End. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the achievement for participating in this holiday was the last one I needed for What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been. The reward for completing this year-long commitment is an "extremely fast" Violet Proto-Drake, which is the only extremely fast mount that can be obtained

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-10238812553482363572009-10-08T20:47:00.000+11:002010-01-22T15:05:38.050+11:00

I've been a little distracted lately, so I have not yet had the opportunity to post until now. Firstly, I'd like to introduce you all to a new friend I made recently: Grunty is so very cute! Almost as cute as a Gnome, and possibly even cuter in some cultures. Yay! I paid AU$50 to watch BlizzCon 2009 over the live Internet stream. Many people will say that I am a crazy person for spending

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-41936411438898818592009-09-23T23:20:00.002+10:002010-01-22T15:05:38.050+11:00

Okay, this will be short and sweet. This latest patch is disappointing for the following reasons: The Northrend Beasts encounter is still causing far more network traffic than it ought to. This means some raiders who can ordinarily play through the other four encounters will still be mysteriously disconnected throughout the first one. I have a theory about "invisible snobolds"... "New" armor does

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-19694619715548206452009-09-18T16:45:00.000+10:002010-01-22T15:05:38.051+11:00

I miss The Burning Crusade. There are many little things that bring a related tear of nostalgia to my eye, but obviously the primary object of my affection is my old guild: The Pacemakers. I guess being in Outland reminds me of all the good times. Which is partly why I spend (what many consider) too much time there, doing silly things like: I also happened to finish the grind for this little

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-89301764433448792582009-09-14T12:21:00.000+10:002009-09-14T12:21:03.746+10:00

Bit off topic today, but I need to rant and complain a bit, so bear with me. My car is a cheap little second-hand Hyundai but I depend on it for my personal freedom, something I am sure other vehicle-owners can understand. I noticed recently and with increasing frequency that the engine was starting to overheat. I took it to get looked at (the diagnosis itself costing me $110) and it turns out "

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-87772876247814896002009-09-06T19:54:00.000+10:002009-09-06T19:54:29.788+10:00

Part of good journalism is selling your article with a misleading headline. The observant among you will note that the conspicuous absence of a "world of warcraft" label. Here we go: This weekend we had the third in a series of Dungeons and Dragons sessions. I went and snapped up Player's Handbook 2 as soon as I could and to my delight it introduced the Gnome race and the Druid class.

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-17666136312931995562009-09-01T10:48:00.008+10:002010-01-22T15:05:38.052+11:00

Okay, I'm trialing with yet another guild. If word gets out that I'm some sort of cursed "guild killer" then I'm sure I'll not be darkening any doorways again, but for now the prevailing theory (and one I hope is true) is that the game has changed too much and some people are just getting over raiding. Even in the new guild we have "staff shortages", but these aren't sufficient to prevent us

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-87807257542997995002009-08-26T18:03:00.005+10:002010-01-22T15:05:38.053+11:00

Well, I've now witnessed (but hopefully not been the cause of) the collapse of two raiding guilds. Yikes. Dyslexics Untie seemed like they'd make it work but we had a sudden lack of raid interest and it was tough putting together a full group. Oh well, life goes on. And it is times like these that the cursed (pronounce that "e") among us go looking for new habitats. I do have to wonder, how many

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-81111149822168974082009-08-23T22:30:00.006+10:002010-01-22T15:05:38.054+11:00

Hooray! That last achievement has taken about a month to knock out. I'd been in many groups where we were concentrating too much on the casts, as well as groups that prepared in advance for failure. In the end, in order to overcome Oceanic latency, our winning strategy was just to blast Moorabi as quickly as possible, so that we'd see a minimal number of (easily interrupted) casts. So, here I

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-91441923777919175492009-08-15T00:30:00.004+10:002010-01-22T15:05:38.054+11:00

So, I was invited to a quick run at Karazhan tonight, and I was very pleasantly surprised: Even though my devotion to The Oracles may never pay off, I do find myself fairly lucky with some of the other rare items. When in lowbie-zones, I frequently strut about on my sea turtle while under the effects of an Orb of Deception. :)

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-89257271132852308732009-08-12T09:34:00.005+10:002010-01-22T15:05:38.055+11:00

I was going to post sooner, but I thought it best to have at least a week of real experiences before doing so. Now that I'm an "expert" on all things 3.2, I can deliver my brutally honest verdict. :) Engineering I've always been a massive fan of this profession. It was quirky and largely pointless, and that was a big part of the attraction. It was fun because it didn't really try to be a

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5497363251149057322.post-81688741016776537642009-07-30T21:28:00.004+10:002010-01-22T15:05:38.056+11:00

So very shortly after the meltdown of my old guild, a few of us sought out a new guild. I feel somewhat guilty, as being an officer in The Pacemakers felt more than a mere responsibility or commitment, it felt more like a relationship. We worked so hard to make things work. Just like a real-life break-up, I have to wonder how long a player ought to wait before finding a new guild?Anyhow, the new

JokeyRhymehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04600684381643093386noreply@blogger.com0