Category Archives: General

WoW players raise $2.3 mil for Sandy Relief

Aside

Warcraft players raised $2.3 Million for Sandy relief through puchased of entirely option in-game widgets and toys. At last a feelgood aspect of MMO games, instead of a typical angry rant. 2.3m for any charity effort is bloody nice work, and not bad considering we’re a bunch of no-life basement dwellers; with violent tendencies.

Kind of makes you feel good. See we do have souls. Kek.

World of Warcraft Players Raise $2.3 Million for Sandy | Geekosystem.

The balance that a few strange days brings

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These are strange days (and a post not really much about wow, but all about gaming life). My gaming took a dive on the week end when we went away briefly for a break over the weekend. Its by-the-by that is was family focused and also very much fun. I loved the fact we got away for a bit, saw some family, and was also looking forward to the Sunday and Monday night gaming. New level 90s have so much to do in Warcraft. Sunday came around and I played till late and crawled into bed just in time to rest before the working week. We had a slight hiccup on Saturday with the newborn’s health, but didn’t think much of it by Sunday night. It was great.

Monday started as normal and then my 5 month old was hospitalised and everything melted away to stress. You get a new perspective when your kid is in a hospital resuscitation room with a few doctors and nurses around, they all looked concerned, and the outcome was not clear. I’m not used to being powerless to help and the most useless person in the room, and when the doctors start saying those long sentences which mean “I don’t know yet”, you get stressed. I get it now; the stress about late reports, staff issues at work, or even playing an addictive video game is meaningless to the stress of a sick baby. It was a new experience for me as a new parent. Frankly I was telling the world to **** off until I knew more.

Now that she is home again my stress is far lower, and all the things I missed seem largely still irrelevant. A late report? Big deal. Missed a few meetings? Get over it. Nobody bloody died. I saw families in that hospital who have real issues to grapple and the trials which hit the average office worker are just silly by comparison.

What I hope is that I can maintain the apathy for how important these things actually are, as I noticed that I was communicating clearly and sharply when I was really stressed, and that communication got results. Being outside the detail granted a perspective and authority that I liked, and all that changed was me in my reaction to the stress of the events. I’ve always advocated a healthy work and life balance, and extended that to gaming too. Nobody should ever feel pressure to play when they have serious stress to deal with (duh). I did in fact play online on Monday for a short period, but all I thought about was family and it was to get to somewhere which was an escape. My brain needed to be distracted from what was going on.

I tonight is another game night where a week ago I was planning to play a lot. Now I’ll play it by ear, see how sick, stressed, etc the family is, and then perhaps login. What is odd is that before the weekend I would have also worked all night to complete a set of reports for my job, and now it really does seem immaterial. In terms of work, life, and game balance I think I’ve changed views a little. There will be weekends soon where I get to work overtime and give a lot of effort for my job, but for now relaxation is the order of the day.

Happy gaming, and good health.

Playing many games, casually.

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I’m in that happy state where I get to play many games. World of Warcraft has taken a significant backseat due to real life events, and along with that I’ve chosen to look into the MoP Beta and the Diablo 3 Beta. The odd distracting iphone game gets a look too.

Playing of the big three games very briefly and casually is actually more satisfying in the short term than trying to play one game solidly. Initially I would doubt that to be true. In a nutshell I think being moderate has pushed my expectations, and I now find the small elements of fun amongst a range of games. For now its working. I am looking forward to the official release of Diablo so that I can see the full content and play online with some friends that it is hard to hook up with in other games. I would still like to get SWToR loaded and play that in the future when my PC has been upgraded, as the content was impressive enough that I think it will be a fantastic distraction.

There is also a set of play-by-post tabletop RPG games that distract me, and between them, the healthy posts from the players, and the rest of life short stint gaming is still working. So for now a quick 15 to 30 minute session will do, with much gnashing, power-ups, and gear to be swindled from the nefarious foes.

Happy gaming folks.

I’d love a D3 beta key!

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Just saw the news that D3 betas have started the second round of offers; a lazy 100,000 keys – wow. As a player with an “annual pass” its fragg’n disappointing. I’m not playing wow much at the moment as I need to be distracted often, but D3 is a game where I think it would be plausible to play in small blocks (based upon D1 and D2).

Kudos to the lucky 100k folks, and to Blizzard – make with the key gents. Ta.

A modest charity effort – Iron Man Mode

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Here is a tale of a group of gamers who are nutty enough to play popular games in Ironman Mode – that is using only 1 life. All so that folks will be chuffed, amused, and then donate to the excellent charity called Child’s Play.

“Clueless idiots playing the best games ever made…with only one life.”

Yup, they’re gamers being gamers, for a good cause. Go read about them – Iron Man Mode. Anyone who is willing to be that self deprecating is ok by me.

The dearth of time abounds, please standby

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The end of the year is a time when hobbie time seems to evaporate, leaving me frazzled.  This year is no different with work deployments, shopping needs, appointments, training courses, and some such all stopping online gaming from happening.

I’d not be exaggerating to say that I’ve played less than 2 hours in the last two weeks, and about 10 minutes in the last 8 days. In fact yesterday was 5 minutes, which counts the loading screen.

I’m sure that the new year will see far more regular playtime, and a few more posts. For now at least I’m enjoying reading about how much fun the raid team are having – I’ll be blogging about the game again soon.

Happy (free time) holidays.