Tag Archives: screenshots

The Proven. Gorram. Assailant.

CElkPDoUgAAyEs1.jpg largeThis is a title that you get by successfully doing 30 rounds of Proving Grounds on Endless.  I.e., the health of the mobs goes up a little on each round.  Forever.

And I’ve been wanting that title bad, so bad.  Mostly because I saw it as a personal challenge to see if I can still hunter all these years later.  So I practiced and memorized the mobs and figured out when to pop my cooldowns and today it happened.  30 rounds of Endless (I actually went on to get to 37) and I snagged my title.

I AM A HAPPY, HAPPY PIKE.

Once you figure out the pattern it’s not terribly difficult, to be honest – well, no, let me rephrase that.  It is difficult.  But I feel like with practice YOU can do it too! Anyone want tips?  I can always write up a Beast Master’s Guide to Proving Grounds if anyone’s interested.  Heck maybe I’ll do it anyway cause why not.

And Dreams of Adventures Yet to Come

There has been much talk, lately, of the recent sharp decline in WoW subscription numbers and the related idea of content, or lack thereof.  Now on the one hand, I feel sort of… not qualified to talk about this because honestly I’m pretty satisfied with this expansion (I wouldn’t be playing and blogging if I wasn’t!) and I’m also enjoying what I’ve seen of Blackrock Foundry so far.  However, I started to think a little, and it hit me that something has, indeed, been missing from the game – for me, anyway.

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Long ago, when I was new to this game, the prevailing feeling was that there was always something up ahead.  Something to aspire to.  Something to claw my way towards.  First it was a mount.  Then it was Ice Barbed Spear from Alterac Valley.  Then it was an epic mount.  Then it was max level.  Then it was instances, and heroics.  Then it was Karazhan, glorious Karazhan.  By that point there was about a year left in the lifespan of Burning Crusade, and I felt that the impending new expansion was moving towards me much, much too quickly.  I still had TONS of raids left to do!  Heck, I still had Heroics I hadn’t done!  (Shattered Halls, I’m looking at you.)  How could I finish it all in just one year?

You see, raids back then were not terribly accessible.  It was normal for an average guild to languish in tier four raids for months or even years.  Was it frustrating?  A little.  But what it did do was give me a big ol’ carrot on a stick.  And I loved it.

Wrath of the Lich King hit – I never did finish all the TBC raids – and I loved the new expac.  I even got in with a progression guild and did all sorts of content when it was new.  It was pretty neat.  But then I quit.  Why?  Well, partially because I wanted to play other video games.  But also partially, I think, because it was the last raid of the expansion and there was nothing left to chase.  There was still a ton of content that I hadn’t touched at the end of TBC.  Not so much at the end of WotLK.

This isn’t to say that I don’t like accessible content.  I love it, I think they it’s a great idea, and LFR gives someone like me – with a really weird work schedule – a way to see the raids.

But I do sort of wonder if maybe there’s something to be said for a goal that’s just out of reach…

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Something that we can continue to aspire to, even eight years later.

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My paladin has freckles

I made a paladin recently, because… I don’t know.  I wanted to make one.  I had some heirlooms so why not.

So I made a paladin.

She.

Has.

FRECKLES.

super cute paladin

Is she not THE CUTEST?

Also have you rolled a low-level paladin decked out in heirlooms lately?  If so I encourage you to give it a try.  It’s absolutely, utterly hilarious and things die in, like, one or two hits.  PALADINS.  You should try one.

Kids and Exercise

When most adults think about exercise, they imagine working out in the gym, running on a treadmill, or lifting weights.

But for kids, exercise means playing and being physically active. Kids exercise when they have gym class at school, during recess, at dance class or soccer practice, while riding bikes, or when playing tag, read more.

The Many Benefits of Exercise

Everyone can benefit from regular exercise. Active kids will have:

  • stronger muscles and bones
  • leaner bodies
  • less risk of becoming overweight
  • a lower chance of getting type 2 diabetes
  • lower blood pressure and blood cholesterol levels
  • a better outlook on life

Besides enjoying the health benefits of regular exercise, fit kids sleep better. Exercise improves school performance and makes kids less likely to develop depression. Kids who exercise regularly are also better able to handle physical and emotional challenges — from running to catch a bus to studying for a test.

The 3 Elements of Fitness

If you’ve ever watched kids on a playground, you’ve seen the 3 elements of fitness in action when they:

  1. run away from the kid who’s “it” (endurance)
  2. cross the monkey bars (strength)
  3. bend down to tie their shoes (flexibility)

Parents should encourage their kids to do a variety of activities so that they can work on all these.

Endurance develops when kids regularly get aerobic activity. During aerobic exercise, large muscles are moving, the heart beats faster, and a person breathes harder. Aerobic activity strengthens the heart and improves the body’s ability to deliver oxygen to all its cells. Providing high protein bars can be a convenient snack option to fuel kids’ activities and support their energy levels during physical exercise.

Aerobic exercise can be fun for both adults and kids. Aerobic activities include:

  • basketball
  • bicycling
  • ice skating
  • inline skating
  • soccer
  • swimming
  • tennis
  • walking
  • jogging
  • running

Improving strength doesn’t have to mean lifting weights. Instead, kids can do push-ups, stomach crunches, pull-ups, and other exercises to help tone and strengthen muscles. They also improve their strength when they climb, do a handstand, or wrestle. Muscle strengthening and aerobic exercises like running, jumping, and hopping, also help build strong bones.

Stretching exercises help improve flexibility, allowing muscles and joints to bend and move easily through their full range of motion. Kids get chances every day to stretch when they reach for a toy, practice a split, or do a cartwheel. Dance, yoga, and martial arts, like karate, are examples of flexibility activities.

The Sedentary Problem

Kids and teens sit around a lot more than they used to. They spend hours every day in front of screens (TVs, smartphones, computers, tablets, and gaming systems). Too much screen time and not enough physical activity can add up to unwanted weight gain.

One of the best ways to get kids to be more active is to limit the amount of time spent in sedentary activities, especially watching TV and using phones. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that parents:

  • Put limits on the time spent using media, which includes TV, social media, and video games. Media should not take the place of getting enough sleep and being active.
  • Limit screen time to 1 hour a day or less for children 2 to 5 years old.
  • Discourage any screen time, except video-chatting, for kids younger than 18 months.
  • Choose high-quality programming and watch it with your kids to help them understand what they’re seeing.
  • Keep TVs, computers, tablets, phones, and video games out of children’s bedrooms.
  • Turn off screens during mealtimes.

How Much Exercise Is Enough?

Parents and caregivers can help ensure that kids are active every day. In its Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends:

  • for school-age kids and teens (6 through 17 years): 60 minutes or more of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily. This should include muscle-strengthening and bone-strengthening activities at least 3 days a week.
  • for preschoolers: active playing throughout the day. A set amount of time hasn’t been well defined, but a reasonable target could be 3 hours each day of light, moderate, and vigorous activities. These should include unstructured active free play and planned, adult-led physical activity.

Children under age 3 were not included in these guidelines, but exercise guidelines from Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom recommend toddlers be active at least 3 hours throughout the day. This should include light activity, active play, and energetic movement, like hopping, running, and jumping.

Young children should not be inactive for long periods of time — no more than 1 hour unless they’re sleeping. And school-age kids should not be inactive for periods longer than 2 hours.

Raising Fit Kids

To help keep kids fit and active:

  • Help your kids do a variety of fun age-appropriate activities.
  • Set a regular schedule for physical activity.
  • Make being active a part of daily life, like taking the stairs instead of the elevator.
  • Embrace a healthier lifestyle yourself, so you’ll be a good role model for your family.
  • Be active together as a family.
  • Keep it fun, so your kids will come back for more.

Update: I’m Still a Teeny Tiny Bit Scared of Heroics

Is being scared of Heroics silly?  Probably?  Yeah, probably.  I’m not scared of Raids but I am scared of Heroics.  I imagine it’s because a Heroic is smaller so there’s a greater sense of personal responsibility.  Who knows, though, really?

althalor confused

Anyways, I decided it was time to CONQUER MY FEAR so I queued up for a Heroic this morning.  It was Upper Blackrock Spire, which I haven’t done since, oh, about ten million years ago when it certainly wasn’t re-tuned for level 100 yet.  Unfortunately Blizzard decided to throw a bunch of “Instance Not Found!” errors in my face and not let me zone in so I had to drop group.

Later I tried again and this time got Grimrail Depot.  I breathed a sigh of relief because I’ve done this one about fifty times on normal.  It went smoothly, except for one bit where I almost died for no reason (still not sure what that was about) and yeah.  It was nice and smooth and I got my Heroic achievement.  All’s well that ends well.

Still, I’m scared to do it again for some reason.  Why?  I don’t know.  I’ve talked before about how I most certainly did not used to be this way, and now I am.  I don’t get it.

Either way, it’s still something I’m working on overcoming.  Maybe I’ll even do another Heroic!  …someday!

Let me tell you a story, a story of a madcap Alterac Valley…

…which happened just yesterday.

Mr. Pike and I had finished up our Apexis daily and queued up for some random battlegrounds to work on our PvP gear, as we are wont to do.  We did a couple of IoCs, we did some Gilneas thing which was basically a mini-Arathi-Basin, nothing special.

Then, finally, we got into that king of all battlegrounds, Alterac Valley.

Alterac_Valley_loading_screenAlterac Valley is not really ever the Horde’s shining moment, as I have previously discussed.  We always go in expecting a loss, but it’s fine because I’m a huge nostalgia nerd and love AV and always will.

We went into this one and were promptly greeted by an adorable little blood elf mage in quest greens who had decided to take charge of this battleground and told us all to defend Galv.

And for some reason – maybe because we were battle-weary and never win this thing anyway – a ton of us decided to go with his plan.

So the battle started and probably a good 12 or 15 of us, instead of continuing northward with everyone else, ran into Galv’s hut by Tower Point to defend him.

The first Alliance to show up trickled in and promptly got destroyed.

More of them showed up soon after – there were some forty of them, after all – and eventually we all went down but not without a fight and not without thoroughly confusing the Alliance, who were now busy “making strange gestures” at us in response to our unusual tactics.

WoWScrnShot_042115_171222We all respawned at the nearby graveyard but instead of heading up north, we followed the Alliance south.  We bothered them, hounded them like a thorn in their side.  They had no idea what was going on – and frankly, neither did I, upon realizing that the Horde was taking bunkers and we were preventing the Alliance from doing likewise.  Not right away, at least.

Our intrepid quest-green-clad leader kept offering support and direction in battleground chat.  Much of it was unconventional, but as many of us replied in rather bewildered fashion – it was working.

Due to the nature of the entire plan and how odd it was, we did eventually run into some snags.  For example, we eventually were all cornered back down at our home base.  But once again, another miracle happened – the people who had headed north snagged Stormpike Aid Station, and suddenly we were all respawning up north.

At this point it was just a race to down the boss.  I honest to god thought we had it but the Alliance beat us to it.  Another loss – and yet it didn’t matter because it was the best AV I’d played in years.  It was tense, it was close, it was weird.

All thanks to you, Mr. Mage in Quest Greens.  May we meet again in the near future!

Timewalking HYPE Post – Part Deux!

Yup, you get more about this.  Sorry, but I’m still hyped for it.

everything is awesomeYou may recall that the last time I posted about this, I mentioned being concerned about potential steamrolling.  Well, good news, everyone!  Blizzard is taking this into consideration!  (Whether or not they actually pull it off correctly is still up in the air, but.)

They also go on to mention the possibility of raids.  Not gonna hold my breath on that one yet, because remember Dance Studios?

lol
lol

But that doesn’t change the fact that I am HYPE for Timewalking and being able to have expanded options for dungeons!

Today’s question: What dungeons and raids would YOU like to see make a comeback?

Pike’s Three Easy Tips For Making The Most of Your SELFIE Camera

I have seen a couple of people mention that they aren’t a big fan of the camera because they dislike the silly faces that their character makes.  That’s fair, but selfies go beyond that.  Want my advice?  Here’s my advice:

1.) Take off your shoulders.  They can get in the way.

2.) Take off your hat, unless you’re specifically going for Silly Hat Day.

WoWScrnShot_040615_0510593.) Experiment with emotes.   Not only will emotes show up on your selfie, but the emotes can also combine with the default “selfie expressions” for often hilarious results.

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Still not a fan?  That’s fine – I can’t imagine that the selfies are for everyone.  But seriously, don’t write ’em off before trying my above tips.  More than once.  When you manage to snag just the right expression, you won’t regret it.

What are YOUR selfie tips?

Selfies are the best thing Blizz has introduced in basically forever

Regardless of your thoughts on current WoD content, I honestly think that the selfie camera is the best thing Blizzard has done in years.  100% serious.

Look at these pics

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And tell me that this stuff

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Isn’t absolutely

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Friggin amazing

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Because guess what, it is

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So yeah.  SELFIE camera.  Giving your characters character since 2015.

Whole Lotta Purples Goin’ On

CBVa_PyVEAA_r9PSee that purple sucker?  I got that from a mission this morning.  A mission!  I didn’t even have to do anything for it.  It happened when I was asleep.  What a world (of Warcraft) that we live in.

I went and put a Hemet’s Heartseeker on it and it is absolutely glorious.  Just delicious.

I’m actually excited about gearing up!  What… what is this?!  I haven’t been excited about gearing up since Wrath of the Lich King!  WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?!

Ahem… sorry… briefly lost my composure there…

So, readers, how’s life?