Monthly Archives: March 2013

Camp NaNoWriMo

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Every November, bar one, since 2007 I’ve gone a little nuts and tried to write a novel in a month. 50,000 words is the goal which isn’t bad for a first draft, as first drafts do tend to balloon a bit on revising. I wrote a little bit about this last November and now I’m going to be writing about it again. “Hey wait a minute! It’s not November!” I hear you exclaim. Yeah that’s very true but this year I will be taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo.

Camp NaNoWriMo is a smaller program run by the Office of Letters and Light, the not for profit that operates NaNoWriMo. Rebels writing anything other than 50k words of a novel aren’t shunned in November, but they aren’t actively supported either. However, at Camp whatever you decide to write, and whatever word count you decide to strive for, is supported. You can put your custom word count goal onto your page, something that is missing (but should be added for overachievers) from the main NaNoWriMo program. This year Camp is in April and July. Today it’s March 31st, the first day of April’s session is tomorrow.

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Triple Spec – A Dream Come True?

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Triple spec has been datamined in patch 5.3. Ghostcrawler has tweeted about it saying that it’s “not announced yet” and to “take anything datamined with a pinch of salt”. So I’m trying not to get too excited. However, I’m pretty sure that on one of these site posts I put a wishlist, and triple spec would have definitely been on it. It’s something I’ve been wishing for ever since my paladin became my main. Towards the end of Cata I was respeccing multiple times a week as I maintained gear sets for all three specs. It wasn’t the gold cost that I objected too, rather the pain of changing my ui each time. I kept a screen shot of each spec for easy reference, so it was doable, but a real pain. Not to mention needing to do it within a raid, and, if I respecced the spec I then had to change back too, I’d then have to hearth out and do it again.

So I’ve wanted triple spec for a long time. Every time I ever mentioned it I’d be told that it would never happen, that it was unnecessary, that a line needed to be drawn and dual spec was good enough. If blizz changes this, what does that mean? What does triple spec mean for the game?

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Busy, Busy, Busy

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Since the last post 5.2 has dropped and I’ve been busy with that, I’ve also been busy with a hell of a lot of raiding. I can now add to my T14 retrospective the seven fights that I hadn’t seen back then. We’ve also started on Throne and have got the first two bosses down, making progress on the third and it’s exciting, and really awesome, to be part of a proper progression team. I’ve also got into PvP a bit, my new raid leader likes to PvP and agreed to run some arenas with me for fun. I’ve never really done this before and it’s really nice to see another aspect of the game, it’s hard and we’re losing as much as we’re winning, but it takes practice.

The one downside, in fact the only downside that I can see, in Mists is that it’s such a time sink. I had been gearing my Brewmaster Monk up, and had got 5/6 MSV with it, but I can’t do it anymore. I can’t do all I want on my main and keep alts, or even one alt, well geared. My friends can do it, I know more than one person who has at least 3 alts 485+ ilevel and probably more. However, most of what they do in game is the gear treadmill. I find that quite repetitive and boring. I’ve never liked gear for itself, more for what it allows me to do, therefore the acquisition of it is a necessary evil rather than enjoyable in itself. Hence why I’ve decided to drop my alts. Oh I’ll still level them all to 90, and I’ll still play them (and therefore gear them slightly as a side effect) but I won’t play them to gear, I’ll play them just to have fun.

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The Missing Month

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I didn’t write a post at all in February, oh I attempted too, but I didn’t really have anything to say. Actually that’s not true, I had a lot to say but nothing I wanted to post. The guild I’d started just before Mists launched was in trouble, I desperately wanted to stay playing with my friends, but 5 people didn’t make a raid team, and trying and failing to recruit, and pug, and make progress, was killing me. We were going nowhere fast and I didn’t see a solution. I just wanted to play with my friends and for all of us to be happy, but it was looking like a pipedream. This was what was consuming me, when it came to the game this was all I could think about. I stopped doing pretty much everything else, but trying to raid, and worrying about the roster. My anxieties about it might have made words flow, but they didn’t make readable posts. Thankfully this problem is now in the past.

All five of us have joined another guild, this guild has sort of consumed my guild and another one, so three become one and hopefully that one will be all the stronger for it. I know people from both, have raided with these guys in the past, they are extremely nice and I’m really positive about the potential for the future. We get to stay together and we get to raid, and this is all in time for 5.2.

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