Archive for July, 2008

Hi hi! Im back!

I’m slackin…I know. I’m probably like most people – start a blog – write in it every day for a week, then once a week…then once a month…then….Stagnant!

News: Son got back from Canada at Camp Bil-O-Wood…he loved it and wants to go back! He came back and followed Dad into WoW. So we both are WoWing again. Guild is having it’s ups and downs in attendance. Still working out pretty good though. Summer can be tough on guilds with people on vacation and all. Plus its been a long time since the last expansion, so things can start to get boring for some, just like I got bored and stopped for 8 months….and 13 months before that 🙂 Does help alot to have some friends that you play with regularly AND talk to outside the game as well.

I have met person who is turning out to be a lot of fun and very similar to me. Kinda came on as a surprise…very unexpected but very much a welcome surprise. Known her for about a year and have been getting to know each other more and more each day lately. <3

Also have been working on a book my dad wrote on How to make a Windsor Chair. He is going to teach a course at an art center, so I am making it look all nice. Need to get that DONE!

Return to World of Warcraft

So, I did return to WoW. The guild is growing. I’m now an officer. Been running around with a few members and had a good time. There are still moments when I will just stand around in a town and have no idea what to do, so my WoW boredom isn’t totally gone. Still it is nice to hang out with old and new friends. It’s fun to watch a guild grow and progress. We have started to run instances together to learn each others play styles. Thus if you ran around with me, you know I will make you work extra hard to hold agro and will try to attack 2 mobs at once any chance I get! But you would also learn that while I push the limits, I know how to get out of trouble when I do push too hard. (not always though X.X)

My newest goal for when I am not raiding, is to gear up my Warlock Cynders for PvP (player versus player combat) Will take quite a while. If you dont know about WoW and getting gear…you fight in a battle ground in a team of 10 to 15, sometimes more, against another opposing faction team and try to capture flags, or control territory…and if you win – you get honor and tokens. If you lose – you get a little honor and 1 token. With the honor and tokens you gain – you can trade them in for armor and weapons. So, my goal is to fully outfit myself in PvP reward gear – so for about 150,000 honor – I can get the full thing and hopefully be alot harder to kill. Looks like I can get about 2000 honor a day without feeling burnt out or spending HOURS in the game. Thats alot of days to hit 150,000.

I’m not a very good PvP’er, but it can be fun to compete against Real Live characters instead of the normal Non-Player creatures in the world that don’t have much of a brain.

So – Here is me now – Cynders – In my normal gear for everyday questing and raiding. I changed my talent spec too… Destruction doesnt seem to have enough tricks or backup plans so now I am SL SL – which is Siphon Life/Soul Link – hybrid of Affliction and Demonology making me a bit harder to take down while I annoyingly DoT and Seed everyone in target range.

Also started some new arena battles. That is where you are paired up with another team…2 vs 2, 3 vs 3, or 5 vs 5. Matches don’t last long…especially against me. So Adon, Shoklar and Cynders started up Royal Defense again ( 3 vs 3), and then Adon and I (on Tish) started a brand new 2 vs 2 called Eye Candy Chicks. We got some help from another member named Blacknova, who does know how to PvP, and has helped get our rating up higher than it should be 🙂

Last Week – Royal Defense won 11 in 29 and Eye Candy Chicks won 4 in 13. We really need to learn to PvP 😛

PvP records for my toons:
Tish – Lifetime Honorable Kills: 2280
Cynders – Lifetime Honorable Kills: 5767

Tish and Cynders

Blog/Podcast Spot on Jokaydia

Jokay asked me to freshen up an old spot on Jokaydia I so – we present to everyone…

The Resident Blog/Podcast Spot!
Loading URLs into the blog images

After Brainstorming a bit and knowing what was needed, I decided to make a communication tower as the focus/landmark. Not quite as dramatic as I had originally wanted…I at first wanted an easy landmark to spot if you were somewhere else on the islands…like the lighthouse, or the Edublog Awards building. You can still pick it out while looking over the landscape since it does sit higher than the rest of the items on the Sim. I made the tower on my Sim in Rust Spot. It looked tall, it is over 30 meters high, but when I got it back to Jokaydia, it wasnt visible at all. Plan B! Stick it on the roof of a building!

Top of the Tower

Time to build! I started by removing all the old wood of the existing deck, and removing the ponds and plumbing, I recreated the same basic layout Jokay originally had in place. It has the same pathing as before with the layers a little different. I knew I wanted the build to be about 15 x 15 so I created an area to fit that size while not blocking anyone’s access. Jokay has a style she usually follows with all her builds…I tend to not have a defined style, but I usually go techy, metal, rust, neon, and I like to have open air spaces. The modern techy style wasn’t going to go well here 🙂 It turned out what I hope is a mix of Jokay’s and my style mixed…letting it fit easily into the island setting without being so different that it becomes an eyesore!

So this spot will be used to showcase any of the residents blogs, podcasts, or websites. An added value of making Jokaydia your home in Second Life!

Blizzard Authenticator – Become Hackproof

So this past weekend Blizzard released the new Blizzard Authenticator. It is a little keychain size device that generates a random 6 digit number. This number is needed to log into your WoW account. With all the account hacking and key loggers out there, people have been getting their accounts stolen and all their items sold off for gold, presumably for the resale of the gold for RL money.

What you will do with this device is log into your WoW account in the normal fashion, but then you will have to push the button on the authenticator, and then enter the code it generates in order to get all the way logged in. This makes it impossible for anyone to ever log into your account unless they have the item…including YOU! So don’t lose it!

The cost is just $6.50. Should it be free? Probably. I can see it taking a blizzard a few man hours to investigate an account hack, and then figuring out what was stolen and then having to restore that account back to how it was. More than $6.50 for sure. But not all 10 million accounts are going to get hacked. I myself have ordered one. I would have liked to have seen blizzard give these away to loyal paying customers. Ones that have stuck with WoW for 1 or 2 years. But then again – $6.50 to protect your account that you have invested literally months of time developing isn’t too bad.

So now, how many online games, online worlds, and bank accounts will follow suit? Are we going to be stuck with 10 different number generators we need to use each day? I’m thinking we need a standard! But then, as we approach that, will that just make it easier for the hacking world to clone our device and break into all our accounts. 10 years from now, will we be needing to do a biometric scan of our finger, then a retinal scan, then a random generated code, then a password just to log into SL? Woot! fun fun.

So Azzura….Whats this blog about?

So far, from what I have blogged about already, you can tell I mess around in Second Life, and I always seem to be playing at least one MMO short for MMORPG which is…Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. I love gadgets, games, computers, science, Sci-fi, some art… I’ll talk about the few odd things that happen in my RL world now and then also.

I’m basically at a computer 2/3 of the day working or playing. Easy to reach if you have questions or problems. Maybe some things I talk about will interest you…they might not be something your into, but maybe you can find a hidden meaning in my rants and pull something useful out of it. Who Knows?!!

Ill leave off with a thank you for taking a peek and a bigger thank you if you keep reading…and a huge thank you if you link to me 😛

On with the blogging