Sunrise vs Sunset

For a change, a RL topic.

On the 19th/20th, I decided I was going to stay up all night. Not for any particular reason at the time, but at around 2am, it became apparent I was going to watch the sun rise. Now, I have never seen a sunrise before. Plenty of sunsets, and I'm the kind of guy that enjoys them. But I always figured sunrises would be a boring 'oh shit the suns up'. I left my house at 5:46am, the interwebs said the sunrise would be at around 5:54am. Plenty of time to get where I was going.

I have a terrible sense of direction, I knew where I was going. There's a park about 500 metres down the road from my house, however I didn't know where the sun was going to rise from. I didn't really even think about it until I got there. It had already started when I got there at around 5:49, and I couldn't see much of it until I climbed a tree to see over the houses.

It was by no means spectacular. I enjoyed it, it was great, but it didn't have the colour contrasts, and other things the sunset has. All the colours were between white/yellow/orange. As I sat in the tree, I considered the comparison you could have between sunsets and sunrises, and I've determined that even though sunsets look much better, I prefer the sunrise. Here's why:

For a sunrise, it requires some form of dedication to it. Especially for me. It's not very often that I'm awake and willing to move at 5:30am. Sunset on the other hand, look out your window at 7:30pm, and there it is. A sunrise gives me a sense of accomplishment in this way. I'm awake early, and prepared for what the day has for me.

A sunset feels like the ending of something. Generally it's obviously the daytime, but I feel it's something more. It's a closing of the day, farewelling the sun while you go about your final jobs for the night and prepare to sleep. A sunrise on the other hand is welcoming a new day, a fresh beginning, the start of something new. It seems like it's almost a half empty/half full argument, when a sunset occurs, you're leaving that day behind, sometimes because you wont want to think of it again.

While I began walking home (which I didn't want to do, but I said I would be home by 6:10), it began to rain. I don't normally enjoy walking in the rain, I don't hate it, but it's not something I'd purposely do. However, at this stage I was ready for anything the day could throw at me. The rain didn't bother me a bit, in fact, I encouraged it to continue, so I could feel the early morning water on my skin, and the smell of the fresh grass and rain in the air. I was prepared for anything.

It's 6:39am. I'm finished with my incoherent ramblings, and hope that what I wrote made sense to somebody. Please let me know your thoughts.

I am prepared for the day.

My feelings on the new x-pack.

I made a comic, it pretty much sums it all up.

How much is too much?

After transferring to Nagrand and joining up with what I suppose one might call 'hardcore' I've come to a few realisations.

I prefer being casual.

I love raiding, don't get me wrong, but when I can't go out with friends, can't play sports after school, can't do anything, because 24 other people I don't even know are depending on me to push 6 buttons for four hours, it really makes me think, 'How much is too much?'. I don't regret transferring. I'm learning new things, I'm actually making progress (Al'ar down tonight), and I'm having fun while I raid. But I'm trying out for a university football team on wednesday (nfl football), and I was actually worried for a bit because it would break my 100% attendance; then I thought about it more. I'm 17 years old. I shouldn't be spending 68 hours a week playing a game with nobody that I know from school or other shit.

You ask other 17/18 year olds how they spent those years, they'll probably say;

Studying hard
Partying with friends
Playing sports

What do I say?

Playing an online game.

I'm sick of putting everything else out of the way to play this, I'm failing 4/7 classes at school, I don't play any sports when I'm not forced to, and I go out with friends on average once or twice a month. I need to get my shit straight and instead of wasting my time doing this crap.

68 hours a week. Lets assume I worked for 68 hours a week instead of this shit, and got paid minimum wage for it. It's around $43,000. If I sold my account? I'd be lucky to get $1000. Have I enjoyed the time spent on this? Yeah, I have. But I think I could be doing better, bigger things.

A lot will come down to this football team, if I get on, my attendance will drop to 50%, which is below the minimum, so I may be kicked. But will I regret it?

Fuck no.

Leaving Alexstrasza.

It was a big decision for me, but I think I've made the right one. Here's the copy+paste of my forum post.

Goodbye.

I'll be server transferring as soon as I can find a guild which plays oceanic hours and will accept me.

For a year and a half, I've called this server home, whether it was on Jezzastipsy or Bbqq, or even Tynis my neglected rogue alt. I've decided it's time for me to move on and find a place where I can actually make raids and achieve things.

So here goes my long winded list.

Thanks Peace Keepers, for taking me in at 40 and helping me all the way to 60.
Thanks Zeal, for giving me my first taste of raiding and having a great atmosphere in general, never change.
Thanks Identity Crisis, for the epixx. Thanks for the friends, the great times and all the raiding experience you gave me.
Thanks Prom Kings, for taking me in when I came to horde side, and showing me the ropes of horde raiding.
Thanks Equinox, for my free King's Defender.
Thanks Onyx, for all of the fun times you've given me whether it was with or against you. This is the guild I will never, ever forget, and I hope soo much that wherever I go can come close to measuring up with the entertainment and fun I had with you all. Thanks for letting me show you warriors can be > pally tanks. :p

Now for the people. Sigh, I know alot of people, so please, I beg you don't get offended if I don't put you down, it just means that I'm not in that thinking zone currently. I might come and revisit this and post more as I think about it.

Craze: Thanks for everything you've ever done. You've always been helpful, whether it was explaining a boss strategy to me again in whispers, or telling me how I can increase the pace on my bowling. You're a great guy, and keep doing what you do.

Jagoex: It has always been great to talk to you, always been willing to talk to me about stuff that I find I can't talk to others about. You're easily in the top 5 warlocks I've ever known.

Knoxx: Your stories are awesome, I'm glad I have them recorded. You're always happy to listen to people, and helped ease concerns. You're a great asset to Onyx as an officer.

Robbert: I LOVE YOU MAN. I'll be back to talk to you, I promise. You're by far one of the best people I've ever met.

Scholle: I hate you. <3

Proscriptor: Man, you're an awesome guy. Always happy to listen to me talking !@@%, and help me out with things when I needed it. Thanks alot.

Sixis: I'm not sure what to say for you, but it doesn't matter, I'll still be around to talk to you on vent.

Zyphre: I know you don't play here any more, but I'm sure you still read. You're a cool guy, always had fun with you.

Worldwidekid: I don't care what others say, you're another of the most awesome people I've met in this game. Don't ever, EVER change the way you do things.

Nard: Keep looking for the 0/0/61 without shield slam man, we'll find it eventually.

Ram: Dude, ease up on the forums a bit. I love you and all, but you take a lot of stuff too far and there are times when you do need to just shut up and cool off before posting.

Mashed: Your voice still turns me on.

Vende: Much love man, you're one of the best rogues I've ever met, and you never cease to amaze me. Keep up the great work man.

Boney: Dude, you so got me suspended from school. Not cool. <3 Best mage I've ever met, and you're a great guy. Don't lose touch with me.

Majinn: I don't know what happened dude, but, whatever. You were a great pally.

Cheezeh: Dude, I love you man. Great healer, never let me down when I needed a hand or... other favors. Thanks.

Bevill: Didn't know you real well, but I know you were the best warrior I've known on alliance.

Bixxie: You were pretty cool, but could say stupid things without realising it. Watch out. ;)

Luma: WRU?! :(

Glum: Hope you're having fun with whatever you're doing now, you were always fun to hang out with and play with.

Elanna: Keep a tighter leash on phase, make him log on more. :p You're a good leader, but you need to take others advice and suggestions more often, you'd be surprised how many work out. :)

Neert: Same as knoxx, but watch those stairs. I'll never forget that.

Thats all I can think of for now, more will come to me later, but for now I have to keep organising my transfer.

Thanks for all the great times everyone, don't forget me, I know I wont you.

I'll drop by from time to time, but this is a goodbye for now from playing here.

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For anyone that actually reads my blog, I'll keep updating now and then, let you know what's going on. Thanks again for the great times.

Horde Raiding,

This isn't another repeat of everyone else trying to get everyone else to believe their opinion on the state of horde raiding on our server, in case the title mislead you.

For a while now I've been raiding on my cow, generally as a main tanking role, sometimes off tank. I am not by any lengths the best tank on horde, or the most geared, but for now I'm doing well for myself. Although I've noticed that the huge difference between raiding on my priest and warrior, is my latency. The latency itself doesn't change, but the ability of playing at my best does. On my priest I would cancel a mind flay 0.7 seconds before it finished itself, because I knew that my latency would make it so that the cast would allow it to do the last tick of damage before starting the new one right away. I would hit vampiric touch and spam sw:p because I knew it would go off before the global cooldown could catch up. But while I'm tanking, I've found that I cannot use my latency in any way at all, to my advantage. It's a massive disadvantage to me, because I'm usually playing at around 600ms. This means, when stance dancing a 2.0 second fear, I have 1.4 seconds reaction time + the global cooldown that's just finishing. It ends up giving me around a .4 second bracket to push the button. This makes it alot harder for me to tank than most others.

I believe that I do fairly well for myself, all things considered, I have around a 700-800 TPS output on boss fights, my gear's up to a good level for what I'm doing, with around 14500 health and 15200 armor unbuffed. After reading Jades post about dedication with raiding and such, I stopped to think about my frost resistance gear. Looking back at it now, I can really see who is dedicated not so much to raiding, but to helping others in the guild and helping to get gear to allow progression in general. I wont name any names, but a few people were a great help, putting in more effort than I did, even. But, the majority did nothing to help. It has also made me realise I didn't do so much to help others, as I should. So, I'm doing my best to rectify that and help out others to get what they need. I believe this is my strong point as a raider, I'm dedicated to get the job done, not in the sense that, as I said, I help others out. But I push myself to do my best and be my best at all times in raids. I try to be there early every time, I take potions for myself and even some for others. I wake up at 7am to go to progression raids where we generally spend a good portion of my sunday wiping repetitively.

I do this, not to help the guild, and I'll be the first to admit it, I'd do it for most guilds. But I do it because I enjoy raiding. The reason I didn't say I'd do it in all guilds, is because if I wasn't enjoying raiding with them, I wouldn't want to be there.

So in conclusion, buff Australian raiding, nerf the mats on resist gear, and for gods sake... Less stance dancing.

It's been a while.

Because I'm bored out of my goddamn mind, I may aswell start blabbing on about random shit like I always do.

It's been a while since I made an actual post that was informative in any way, actually, this could well be the first one. A lot has changed, over a month or two. I'm now in a new home, because Equinox had problems with me, apparently. However Onyx has taken to me well, and it generally seems like people are liking me.

I went away for two weeks. I realised how stupid a lot of American people really are.

One situation:

Random Guy: Hey, where are you from?
Me: I'm from Australia
Random Guy: Where's that?
Me: ...
Random Guy (to his friend): Where's Austria dude?
His friend: You mean Australia? That's where Steve Irwin was from!
Random Guy (back to me): Oh, where Steve lived?
Me: Yeah, actually, I live on the same road as him, real small country, everyone knows each other. We spent a lot of time together watching kangaroos hop down the street.

*I walk away*

Now honestly. I have no trust whatsoever in your education system. I did realise, although this may amaze you, the hygiene is much better there. Mainly in the bathrooms are the big differences, but I wont go into that.

I've had quite a few changes in my social life on WoW. I've gained some new friends, lost some old ones, but most importantly, developed on existing ones some more than others. All in all though, it seems like that's just how it works. In fact, I have little to no contact with any of the people I considered to be my friends when I first hit 70. Though, I think I have some friendships now, that wont leave me even if I was to stop playing.

Whatever.

This is just...

A post to make everyone that says I don't update this stfu. There, I posted.

On my way out.

Well, leaving for LA tomorrow morning, will be on the plane at 10:50am my time, meaning I have to get up at <6am (le suck). Going to miss everyone, but it should be a fun break, spending a week in hawaii and a week in Orange County, CA.

I will most likely have no communication with anyone that I know at all, RL friends, in game friends, anyone. So if I missed you in game, this is goodbye for a short while. I think I saw something about mobile blogging, if I can find a way to do that, I might keep you all up to date on my happenings.

So, everyone - Goodbye, see you in a short while.

Music and me.

I've found recently that music plays a huge part in my life, even without me realizing it. I heard a song on the radio, (Blink 182 - Feeling This) and it actually took me back to a portion of my life. To be precise, it was when I was playing another game but getting bored with it and beginning to experiment with private servers and hacks and such.

It amazed me how precise of a memory it gave me, and since then I've gone through all of my music and each song reminds me of a time. My life is virtually categorized by music and songs.

Kanye West: When I was between level 20-40 on my priest, for a short period of time playing a hunter to 20.

U2/Train: When I was level 60, and joined my first raiding guild. The first time I listened to my new CD was when I was going to run UBRS.

Yellowcard: 40ish-50ish, my girl at the time got me into it and I couldn't stop listening to their songs.

Jet: After I was 60, while I was in Peace Keepers. I had rolled a night elf warrior, and this was the music I would listen to while I was leveling.

Jack Johnson: While I was raiding at 60 with Identity Crisis

Grinspoon: Also while I was playing this other game, they had released a new part of the game and my girlfriend wasn't talking to me, for various reasons.

System of a Down: I listened to this alot throughout WoW, it's hard to define a particular time.

NoFX: Wasn't to do with gaming, it was a time where I got obsessed with a few sports, golf in particular.

That's just about all I can think of, but I thought it worth mentioning that I've discovered a huge portion of my life that's been lying there for so long unnoticed. I mean, I've always loved music and that's a part of me, but I didn't realize it played such a huge role in my life and mood.

Currently, I'm listening to Hilltop Hoods, as most people on vent would know.

My Wishlist.

This is mostly for my own use and memory for what I'm looking at getting from kara, but if you read this and see there's something I've overlooked or that I made a mistake with, let me know.

Attumen:

Nothing

Moroes:

Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable
Moroe's Lucky Pocket Watch

Maiden:
Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden
Barbed Choker of Discipline

Opera:
Eternium Greathelm

Curator:
Wrynn Dynasty Greaves
Warbringer Handguards

Illhoof:

Aran:
Shermanar Great-Ring

Netherspite:
Mantle of Abrahmis

Nightbane:
Panzar'Thar Breastplate
Shield of Impenetrable Darkness

Chess:
King's Defender - Looted June 30th


I might have messed up with some links, I got lazy when I did this. I started off planning on making fancy colored links and everything for them all, but yeah.

I discovered the answer...

to a question I've been asking myself for a long time. Why do I keep playing this game?

I found myself asking it during a lesson today, P.E to be exact. I was playing Soccer and playing as the goal keeper. As much as I sucked at it. Someone kicked the ball for goal, I caught it then dropped it and it went over the line. Then ALL of the other guys were teasing me, and making fun of me. It doesn't piss me off or anything, because I know that I could own any of them in a fight. But it makes me sad that kids are so cruel, and how rough high school actually is on people. I know a lot of people, who are in my position most days of the week, and it makes me realise why these people aren't social, why they spend lunch times in library's and such. I honestly think if I got put under all that shit, I'd crack and someone would actually like, really get hurt. Not like, broken collarbone or anything, actual like, hospital shit.

So my answer was that I keep playing, because it keeps me happy, keeps me sane, lets me have a place to escape from all of that shit. So why the hell do I hang around throughout all of the drama? Because I know that deep down, no matter what you really want to think, it doesn't mean anything. You can insult me all you want in game, talk all of the shit that you want, but it doesn't make you a better person, or me a worse person. I play the game to enjoy it, when I'm running raids and playing with all the people that I actually like, I'm having fun. That's what keeps me playing, throughout any shit that happens. That's why if someone's talking crap about me in a raid, or possibly telling me about how I'm under geared or anything, it's not going to affect me at all. I'll do my job to the best of my ability, because I enjoy it. If I went out and played a rugby match, I'm not going to play half heartedly because I want to win, and I love playing the game, this is no different to me.

I've been getting my marks back for my exams, and they're looking pretty good so far, so I can probably hang around for a while longer. Even though I was watching porn while I was supposed to be studying for my R.E exam. So far I've had a high of 98% for maths and a low of 77% for biology. So I'm doing good. Which may also be why this post seems like a goddamn essay, I've had to practise writing them for the past 3 weeks.

This brings me to think about how I do so well in my exams, when I don't study for them at all. My teachers tell me that I'm one of those kids that everyone's jealous of because I have a natural ability to learn quickly and easily, without having to force myself into remembering things. Brings me back to raiding and WoW. I can walk into almost any raid instance and be told about a fight once, and I will know what to do. Sometimes it may take me a double check or two so I'm sure, but that's it. If there's anything that makes me a good player, that's what it would be. I have a pretty good reaction time, however due to a perma-500ms, it's like my reactions are half a second slower.

Oh GG I've gone and blabbed on about shit all, for the past like, million words. Why can't I concentrate on work this well? Eh, loldps ftw.

Want to know how...

I got suspended from school?

Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTWe-8aC5GM

Yes, I was the kid in the box. No, the other three guys didn't end up on the better end of it.

One of them actually ended up with a broken collar bone. Enjoy it.

No explination needed.

Not writing a long post, not in the mood.

Listening to my emo music, sitting in my corner. Not really, but I probably could. Had an alright weekend of raiding/grinding and such, made some g's and got some valuble raiding experience, which is what matters to me. Glad to see PK and Halcyon have some good co-op work in gruuls lair, and all that.

I'm not playing my priest right now, so stop asking if I am. If you want to know why, I purely don't feel like it, and I enjoy tanking, as bad as my gear supposedly is. On that note, there are a few people that should be kinda glad that people don't get under my skin real easy, right now, but not naming any names.

Got some ogri'la rep, quests bugged out on me one day letting me do them twice, which (assuming there's no grindable rep with them) could actually give me the highest rep on the server with them. I don't know of a way to get rep with them aside from daily quests as of yet, so if you know, tell meh!

Had some fun this weekend, and during the week, and that's what really matters. My exams are over, so no more playing almost all day. We may even see a decrease in play time if I didn't do well. However, as limited as my raid times were, I enjoyed it - So thanks to Jade and PK, aswell as Halcyon for letting me play.

ps: that was much longer than I had intended.

Oceanic servers? What?

Let me start off by saying, I hate this night, realm shutdown night. Like, really really hate it. Mostly due to the fact that the realms go offline at around 8pm my time. I figured while I should be studying, I'd take the time to write up something else.

People ask me very often why I didn't originally play on an oceanic server, this is the story of how I ended up here instead. My friend who got me into this game, plays on Agrammar, and I attempted to put a character on that realm but they were not allowing new characters to be created on full servers. I hit the button to recommend a server, and that's what came up. Alexstrasza.

My plans were to play on this server until they opened up this other server to allow me to create a char on there. Sadly this didn't happen until I was level 18, which at the time was a big deal to me, so I stayed. This was my first character ever, my priest. Shortly after hitting 60, I became aware of oceanic servers and looked at leveling a new character on one of those servers. However after talking to friends that had played on oceanic servers, they said they were no different. Alot of the people on those realms were still American looking for lower population servers, and because the servers were located in the same place, I would have the same latency (at the time I was on dial up. Average ms of 1200.). This made me decide I would stay where I was.

Server transfers became available and the first thing I did was looked at transferring, but now I also had the excuse of having friends on the realm along with the old reasons. I've now decided that I probably wont ever go anywhere, I love our server no matter what crap it throws out.

So off of that topic, I finally got Bb to 490 defense, 510 in fact. I still have a fair amount of health, which can still be improved by enchants and several gear enchants. I'm really hoping that I might get a shot at kara this week, assuming my schedule allows. My exams are almost over, I have one useless one and an English exam which is a little more important. Once this is over, I'll have a few days before I have to go back to school again. Hopefully this will be my window of opportunity. If not, it could be a few weeks sadly.

That's all for me tonight, maybe I'll go study for my Religous Education, maybe I'll go watch some porn. Who knows. Whatever it is, wish me luck.

So I finally caved in.

I've been contemplating it for a long time now, and I'm kinda glad that I've done it. I made myself a blog.

I'm not sure how often I plan on updating this - and it may not be as interesting as others (loljade/jago), but it's somewhere for me to vent my anger and let people know how I'm feeling.

Okay. So right now, I'm chilling with Boney in shatt, just talking about the game and stuff. He's cancelled his account now. That's another friend of mine that's decided to leave, the numbers are dwindling and it saddens me. Right now, it is my mid-year exam week. I'm really unhappy with myself, as tommorow, I have two exams. One of which is incredibly important - but I havn't studied for either of them. Why? Simply because I've been too busy playing an online game. This to me, defines addiction. I'm more worried about how much defense my toon has than my marks at school.

If I ever was contemplating quitting, now is the time which is pushing me the most.

So anyway, I'm sure none of you really care about what's going on in my real life, so I'll tell you more about my in-game agendas. MY (yeah that's right Majinn) warrior, is getting geared to tank raids (eventually). I need 8 more defense and I'm just about set to start. There are alot of slots in my gear that can still be improved, but this will give me a very solid base. However I'm having alot of trouble coming into this last 8 defense. All I need is one more piece of armour (LOL U) and I am un-critable in raids. Mech hates me. Shadow labs hate me. Every goddamn instance that could drop it for me, hates me.

If I was to start tanking raids, this would theoretically mean that I have taken part in every aspect of the game. Currently I've healed, ranged DPS'd and melee dps'd, so tanking is the only thing left I havn't tried. So far in 5 mans instances and such I'm enjoying it alot and I feel like I'm doing fairly well at it too. There's still quite a bit that I can improve on, but I'm doing okay.

Majinn, Zurosk and I killed two 5 man bosses for quests yesterday, which was great fun, especially running around avoiding the three giant elite demons and praying he wont spawn another. There's soo many things that I have done in this game that I enjoy and wont ever forget, that's one of them. I really think that the thing that keeps me playing this game is the people. Not just my friends and guildies and such, but also the people I don't like that keep me entertained and laughing at their futile attempts at insults and starting drama.

Well this is the first of possibly many more to come, so I hope you stick around to read them, and that I didn't bore you too much!