Random scribblings: Kicking habits and passing tests

Small update, since today so far has been an awesome day.

I passed the driving theory test in England.. I had already passed the theory test in Ireland.. but never got to take the practical before I moved back to England and due to the way things work I couldn't just take the practical here.. even though I had already passed a theory test! So now I have to book some lessons in preparation for the practical.. which I'm kinda worried and yet excited about at the same time.

Even though I had to come into work right after I had taken the test, it still didn't put a dampener on my day.. and even though I'm still at work now, it ain't no thang.. looking forwards to going home, having some excellent home-cooked food and having a celebratory sleep.

I just thought.. and the best thing about passing the theory test today, is that I can get back to playing HotS and D3 instead of taking mock tests ^^

On top of that.. the National Health Service is running a campaign in October to help people quit smoking it's called Stoptober, so I decided that after .. too many years smoking that it was time to quit properly! I'm kinda anxious about it but looking forwards to reaping the rewards of joining the non-smokers.

If you have any advice on fighting the cravings, feel free to throw it at me!

Just had to share :)

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Diablo 3: The Monk

As promised, I'm here again! This time with a little look at the class that I have been playing the most in the short spurts I've had at playing D3 recently. Unfortunately, most of my time has been taken up with working and.. being told what to do by she who must be obeyed.. so I'm whipped, what of it?!

I actually have something else on my mind too, I was wondering about the different sites that offer homes to blogs and considering moving across to a different one. I did a brief search and it looks like WordPress is the main competitor for Blogger; in one head to head, here, they say that Blogger is much easier to use and WordPress is much more difficult to get to grips with... so, being the lazy bugger that I am, I think I'll stick to Blogger! Do you have any thoughts? Let me know!

Enough about that claptrap! The Monk! The monk is a melee based class with some funky dunky spells to help them out.. if I had to compare them to a WoW class, I guess it would be the Paladin. They can heal themselves and groups(with an Aura) and dish out a bidda damage and also be quite tanky in multiplayer. Their main attributes are Dexterity and that's about it I guess, though it never hurts to stack the old hit points.

You can run with a couple of different styles with the Monk, you can use one weapon and shield and soak damage and bore packs of mobs to death(much like the WoW Paladin used to), you can dual wield one handers(which I think fits more with the way Monks look) or you can try and lift a mighty two-hander with your scrawny looking Monk fella.. 

I found working my way through the beginning levels to be easy, almost too easy really! Especially with abilities like Breath of Heaven and Serenity. Of course, late Hell things got a bit rougher, but still not too difficult.. even Inferno doesn't hurt too much.

Do I like it? Yah, I really like the play style of the Monk for some reason(probably because it's ez-mode balanced!!!). I guess I am still a sucker for running into a group of mobs and laying the smack down and enjoying the abundance of red mist that sprays around when you kill them all! But where are you at with your Monk?!?! I hear you cry in unison.. well, I'm glad you asked! Currently I'm just starting Act II of Inferno. My last session ended when she rang me and made me die to the first champion pack I encountered in Act II! :(

I have no idea if other people who play monks use the build I do.. I think, if I can remember rightly it's something like this and I really like it. It gives a ton of survivability and puts out a decent amount of damage.  Granted it's nowhere near close to the Witch Doctor's damage.. but who would expect it to be? I'm currently stuck with some alright gear.. working on getting upgrades in the ole inferno...

Time to stop talking and get back to ... watching my pc perform a CHKDSK... joy.

Ciao for now!

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Starcraft 2: The Day[9] phenomenon

Heyo all, welcome back to my blog! I hope you are all enjoying reading this as much as I am enjoying finally scribbling my random thoughts down! I realise I haven't done a post about Diablo 3 for a while, so after this one I think the next one will be dedicated to my Monk character.

So while I was playing around with the 2v2 games about a year or so ago, I discovered Day[9]. He was a pro-gamer in the Starcraft: Brood War and he did very well for himself! At some stage he started making shout casts and for those who don't know.. shout casts are where some guy gets a replay off two other guys playing a game.. then describes in great detail as much of what is happening as they can. 

Now, I think a lot of his success stems from him being a naturally funny guy.. alongside the fact that he knew his stuff when it came to Brood War. He put out a LOT of content. He plugged in his webcam and talked about Starcraft for an hour or so for five nights a week, a feat he is still pulling off to this day(barring when he is out of town).

His shows have varied topics, usually as he states "It's day9 daily, where we learn to be a better gamer" and they actually do help and some of his thinking and suggestions can even be applied to other games. I would attribute my rise from Bronze to Gold to having watched his streams almost religiously for ages! For the most part now, the daily is analyzing games that he thinks are interesting and might help his viewership in their aim to get better. 

In my opinion, the best thing about his show is Monday's version - Funday Monday. Where he generally imposes a restriction on his viewers and asks that they submit the replay to him and then the next week he will play the best replays on the Monday show and generally laugh at how terribly awful the games are thanks to his restrictions. Usually he has a comic spurt at the beginning of the show where he discusses something about his day or past.

From hearing him talk about it, I found out about a professional team who had a website, which had a wealth of information on the game and a whole host of pro-gamers who stream their practice games live. I never thought I would find so much enjoyment from watching people play a computer game but with Starcraft I can't help myself, whenever I get a free moment I tend to head over to http://www.teamliquid.net/ and flip on a live stream. Of course I have my favourites and I tend to only watch Zerg players... cause well, Zerg 4 lyf.

If you are interested in hearing more about Day[9], I would highly recommend his daily #100 which can be found here - http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-daily-100-my-life-of-starcraft-3505715 - It's quite a long video but he talks about how he got started in Starcraft and how his life has been changed by this game.

Please subscribe for regular updates! :-D

Ciao for now amigos!

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Starcraft 2: The middling

So, where was I? Oh yes! I remember..

So I was left with Zerg! Why not? The general creepiness of the race seems to suit me.. or so she who must be obeyed tells me!

After I had completed the campaign, I was ready for the ladder! Or so I thought, I dutifully played my placement matches and got the wondrous Bronze league! Though, as with most who got placed Bronze, I thought myself far better than that! I was at least Gold, maybe even platinum in my mind!

I ended up playing quite a few matches and having double the wins that I had losses, which only went on to prove to myself that I was better than Starcraft 2 was giving me credit for! Then, after a series of being cheesed which thoroughly annoyed me, I stopped playing for a while. Maybe one or two seasons went by and still I didn't play.

Then one day, Chris again I think asked me to play some games with him. So I did and it re-kindled my interest in actually playing and I plucked up the courage to do my placement matches and got placed in Gold. I don't know how.. maybe it was the many hours that I had spent watching Day9 (http://day9.tv/), he inspired me to change how I played but more about that later!

Armed with my newfound knowledge on how to play the game, I played a few more ladder games but mostly I just played random 4v4 games, they can be so much fun! Especially when you get placed with some awesome players and they all just trash talk each other for the duration of the game. At one point, during an especially good month of working night shift, we had 5-7 people all playing each other on lunch! This was the first time I played Shaun, who had never played against a person before and picked Terran as he'd done the campaign.. in our first game I promptly proxy hatched in his base and spine crawler rushed him.

Eventually though, my enthusiasm for playing dropped off, mostly just because I was so busy working and doing the whole being social thing. Another couple of seasons passed and someone else from work started to really get into playing Starcraft and asked me to start playing with them. Shaun was back and gunning for me. He now played Zerg like me and at that point I think I was a little above him in skill.. can't say the same now though I think!

We played together quite a lot, 1v1s and 2v2 team games.. I think they are some of the fondest memories I have of playing competitive Starcraft games, just sitting on Skype chatting while blasting out match after match. Around that time, we decided to start our very own funny little team. We used up our name changes and became team Bad Micro. We thought and still think we are so clever! Because this made my Starcraft moniker BMMacDaddy and as anyone who knows a little about Starcraft will know, BM also stands for Bad Manner. We had quite a few people talk crap to us about our name, to which we would always respond politely and happily notify them that it meant Bad Micro, but secretly we enjoyed the little smack talk that would erupt from our name.

That's all from me for now, next time I'll go into more detail about how Day9 changed my Starcraft life, introduced me to watching professionals playing and where I am at now, with Starcraft 2.

Ciao for now!

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Starcraft 2: The beginning

With the Heart of the Swarm beta going on, I wanted to talk about how my love affair got started with Starcraft 2.

So how and where do I start! I have been playing starcraft 2 since it was early beta, on and off I might add.

It all started because ... Well because I got into the beta automatically because of work. I had never really played rts games all that much, I mean I messed around with games like command and conquer and warcraft: orcs and humans. The latter I only played a few times because I didn't have a computer and had to go round to my friends house to play.

I had no idea how the game worked, sure I knew you built workers and an army and then you killed your opponent but that was it. As you might imagine, I was terrible. At that point in the beta you couldn't play the single player mode so I ended up playing like 5 games on the big bad internet. I think I lost them all, surprise surprise.

My excellent start to playing starcraft 2 instilled in me something which I battle even now, the dreaded ladder fear. I'm not sure who else may suffer from it.. its not so much that you are scared of playing on the internet, more I think that you are scared of losing to someone you don't know. As crazy as that sounds.

At that point, I had an excellent playing buddy(Chris), who was just as terrible as I was. We played quite a few really bad games against each other.. I think I might even have some of the replays saved from that time.. if you are interested in watching some terribad Starcraft let me know and I'll let you have them!

I think it was then that I found that I couldnt play Terran and Protoss was a girls race, which left me with zerg...

It's time to get ready for work, so I will carry on with this later!

Ciao for now!

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Diablo 3 how to: Setting up the Real Money Auction House

First off.. wow, this has been a long time coming! I've been living back in the UK now for about 2 months and we only got the internet set up hmm, about a week or so ago thanks to moving into a newly built house share - BT and the landlord being utterly crap, managed to somehow fudge getting it set up for way too long.. and even now, the speed is garbage. I actually think I have poo'd faster than this internet.

Let's get to the meat of this one.

So, you found a nice shiny rare or legendary that you think someone else in the world may be able to give a better home to than you and you want them to have it.. but not for free, I mean, nothing in this world is free right? You could put it on the Gold auction house, but really.. you don't need gold! You need the cold hard pixels of cash. Real cash that you can see on your screen..

So, how do you set it up? First off, you need to decide which way you're going to do it. There are a couple of different ways you can interact with Diablo 3's real money auction house. Battle.net balance and PayPal.. I personally use PayPal because well, you can't claim your Battle.net balance as cash you can only use it to "buy" other Blizzard features like World of Warcraft Paid Services or even digital versions of the other games!

In order to use the Battle.net balance you need either a physical or mobile authenticator attached to your  Battle.net account, you can buy the physical from the Blizzard Store or download it onto your mobile/cell via itunes or your marketplace ie. Google Play.

In order to use PayPal you need to sign up for the Battle.net SMS Protect service, you can find the FAQ here. They(Blizzard) highly recommend attaching an authenticator to your account, no matter if you are using the Auction House or not!

Once you have that all set up, you're ready to get back in game and sell sell sell!

Please bear in mind, they do charge you a fee to use these features.. they are as follows:

For Equipment (weapons, armor, accessories, and other unique items)

• Transaction Fee (Gold Auction House): 15% of final sale price
• Transaction Fee (Real-Money Auction House): 1£ GBP per item / €1 EUR per item
• Transfer Fee (when sending proceeds to PayPal or other authorized payment-service provider): 15% of amount being transferred

For Commodities (gems, materials, dyes, pages, recipes, and other non-unique items)

• Transaction Fee (Gold Auction House): 15% of final sale price
• Transaction Fee (Real-Money Auction House): 15% of final sale price
• Transfer Fee (when sending proceeds to PayPal or other authorized payment-service provider): 15% of amount being transferred

For me, I haven't actually made that much from it(about 15 euro)... I guess partly because we moved over to the UK and it took me forever to get access to a scanner and send my passport and a bill to Blizzard to update my country of residence and partly because I'm not very good at the game.

Ciao for now, I'll be back soon!

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