Induction and more..

Oh hai there!

So yesterday I had my induction at the college.. it went fine.. but as soon as I walked in I was taken aback at how young the class was! They, for the most part have just finished their leaving certificate.. now I'm not sure what age they are when they do that over here since I'm not a native! But I'm guessing 17? Maybe 16??

The day was pretty informative. The first part was mostly just the tutor telling us how to get thrown out and giving us our schedules. After that there was a tour of the college which was okay, apart from the fact that nobody in my group could hear the guide since there was another group in front of us also on the tour.

We then sat around in the canteen for about an hour, we were given a free coffee or tea if we wanted.. so this was a high point in the day for me, cause well, free coffee. We were waiting to be told we could go get our student ID pictures taken... joy. I don't know anyone who has a decent picture for their ID's, though 90% of my sample group is well, me.

My actual course starts tomorrow.. the first lesson is Software Development.. quite intimidating really! Though if you were to ask me face to face I would probably just say that I am excited about it.

Apart from this - the big news that I haven't covered here is that the new expansion was announced a little bit ago for Diablo 3 and it's called Reaper of Souls. In this expansion they will add a new class, the Crusader, they say they were going after some sort of battle-scarred Knight kinda look and tried to give him plenty of ranged options alongside his melee. New story, new monsters, new zones and of course a new level cap.

On top of that there is loot 2.0 as they are calling it.. which is a bit of a loot reset. Then there is the paragon rework that they are implementing, I personally haven't read that much about it but from what I've gathered so far, paragon is going to be account wide and you can distribute the points as you wish? I'll have to have a deeper look at it and report back! Of course the expansion has not been given a release date as of yet and Blizzard has, when questioned about this, given it's usual answer of soon™.

I suppose it would be remiss of me not to mention that Diablo 3 was released for both the X-Box and the PS3 and that it was very well received. A lot of review sites have stated something along the lines of "Blizzard's Return to Consoles is a Smashing Success", I wouldn't know.. cause I won't buy it on console. I own an X-box 360 and have around 6 games.. and I must have spent roughly 20 hours playing it since I bought it like 2 years ago.

On the other hand in less Blizzard but more console related news.. I and several million other gamers are eagerly awaiting the release of GTA V, which so far promises to be a worthy successor to San Andreas, my favorite of the franchise so far. It's release is slated for 17th September, 6 long days away!

That's it from me, Ciao for now pals!

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Steam Summer Sale and Streaming games

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Well hello there!

First up, it's the start of the Steam Summer Getaway Sale! The first sale I saw on Steam was last Christmas and saw me buy around four games and that was only because I caught it halfway through! Still more than I've ever bought it one go! You can find more information on the sale here! Though it's currently experiencing some heavy load right now so tends to time-out!

Today's deals are as follows and are available for the next 20 hours:

Bioshock - Infinite -50% (€24.99)

Defiance -66% (€10.19)

Hotline Miami -75% (€2.12)

Call of Juarez - Gunslinger -33% (€10.04)

Don't Starve -40% (€8.39)

Left4Dead 2 -75% (€4.99)

Endless Space - Emperor Edition -60% (€10.19)

Scribblenauts - Unlimited -75% (€4.74)

Antichamber -66% (€6.45)

Toki Tori 2+ -34% (€9.23)

That's enough of that for now! I might carry on posting up the days deals, if you're interested that is! I have also heard that Green Man Gaming also has Bioshock Infinite up for half price.. but you can also use their -20% off digital games code for it too!  (GMG20-F202F-UI40F if you're interested!)

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So, as you know I started streaming my random playing of video games. It's quite enjoyable! Well, it means I get to play games more often than I was. I'm mostly playing Starcraft 2, DotA 2 and Diablo 3. Though I have streamed X-COM: Enemy Unknown and my first ever attempt at playing the first Bioshock!

Setting up the stream was quite easy, once I kinda knew what all the things meant.. though it looked intimidating to me when I first glanced at it. With a bit of digging and trial and error I found that the program I wanted to use was the one I mentioned in my earlier post, Open Broadcaster Software... after I had already purchased a personal license for X-Split. Major d'oh moment.

I had set up an account on twitch.tv years ago when I tried to stream with my old PC.. and failed terribly, due to it's horrid specs and my absolutely lame internet connection. I think I already gave the link to the post on Team Liquid that gives a pretty darn good explanation on how to set up the broadcaster software and link it to your Twitch account. If not, let me know and I'll dig it out for ya'll!

Or maybe I will do a detailed post on setting up each of the accounts, who knows! If people want it then I'll do it!

Something that I found really cool, is that Twitch allows you to link your YouTube account to it, to allow you to upload footage directly from Twitch to YouTube.. and it's pretty fast! Though, I think there is something up with the YouTubes at the moment and it's not been letting me upload stuff since last night! :'(

I've not really been streaming one game in particular, I guess that's the character hopper in me taking over.. you know, when you make a character on a game, in my case it was World of Warcraft and being unable to stick with it for any length of time.. I've been hopping between SC2, DotA 2 and D3 regularly and not really sticking to one.. which I think I need to do in order to get really good and build a base of viewers or something?

Oh, I also managed to build up the courage to beat off my ladder anxiety and complete the placement matches on the US servers and placed .. silver. Not too bad.. though my intention was to lose the placement matches and then work my way up from the bottom.. but that message got lost somewhere between my brain and my hands.. and I won a couple of the games. Anyway! Here is one of my ladder games for your viewing pleasure!

Recently my Starcraft streaming efforts have been going towards completing the campaign achievements, it's been really fun so far but I can tell it's going to get annoying!

Anyway, that's me done for now!

Ciao for now buddies!

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Starcraft 2: IEM and slow internet

This will be a short one! My PC arrived yesterday! Oh my days! The tower is huge! Much bigger than my old one, that right there tells you that it's better.. cause bigger is better right?! While I'm writing this, it's downloading stuff on my nice and slow interwebs.. joy, it just did 10,001 windows updates. Ok, that may be an overestimation but still.. it was a lot! I love getting a new computer, but then I also hate it very much.

I've downloaded steam and D3.. oh! With the graphics cards I got, they gave me a key to Tomb Raider, so that is also downloaded - going to give that a bit of a play later. They also told me I'd get keys to Bioshock: Infinite and Crysis 3 but they have yet to arrive. I'm excited to see what Crysis looks like! Currently downloading SC2.. C'mon! It takes so long! Now, I know I complain a lot about my internet.. so.. take a look at this! Note: This is without any downloads running.

Apart from that, I watched some of the first day of the Intel Extreme Master's Starcraft 2 tournament. Instead of deciding to use the Wings of Liberty, they decided to go ahead and use Heart of the Swarm(which is released in 7 days!!!). At first, I was quite sad as from the games that I saw played - two Protoss Vs Zerg, the Zerg buddy lost :(

However, there was one hero waiting in the wings of liberty to take up the mantle of ultimate Zerg buddy... LiquidRet. He is part of Team Liquid and has been for a long time! The guy has put a lot of effort into playing HotS and it showed. I won't spoil any results for anyone, but safe to say it was really enjoyable to watch! If you are interested, you should check out the VOD's from today's games!

Time for me to try out some of them games!

Ciao for now!

p.s. I was about to post this and then saw this new blog post by Travis Day about Diablo 3's itemization - very cool read and some promising thoughts in there. Find it here.

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Starcraft 2: HotS and stuff

I figured it was about time I did a bit of a natter about Starcraft.. and I guess it's the perfect time to do it, with Heart of the Swarm being released in 9 days and the beta was closed on the first of March(I think), which was two days ago! Since I've been spending a bit more time checking out twitter, I have seen a lot of pro-gamers tweeting that they don't quite know what to do to fill their time now that they can't play HotS.. I don't have that issue, mainly because I haven't played it for quite a while!

Apart from that though, for those who have been living on another planet, the new HotS trailer was released the other night and here it is!

I am mainly looking forwards to the campaign being playable and to see what has changed in the overall SC2 experience. Heck, I guess part of my time till HotS is released will be spent checking out the features that were implemented into WoL, that I never actually knew about! I'm sooo out of the loop!

The changes I'm talking about are patch 2.0.4, the full patch notes can be found here. The main ones that piqued my interest were the following:

Anyone can now create or join a Clan and participate in private clan chat, post news on Clan affairs, and more. Clan tags are pre-pended to character names of all players who join a Clan.

The very idea of clans is pretty cool and the fact that clan tags automatically pre-pend onto your name just rings out as awesome to me.

Players will soon have the freedom to select any game region to connect to and play.

Global play, wayhay, now I get to test my mettle against those pesky non-foreigners.. who will no doubt destroy me at any and every turn!

The overall AI play experienced has been greatly enhanced.In a custom game, players can now elect for an AI player to follow a specific build order, such as Full Rush, Timing Attack, Straight to Air, and more.AI players will now report key information back to their player allies, such as when they are scouting, attacking, expanding, and retreating.Additional AI improvements, including the ability to issue specific commands to AI partners, will be coming in Heart of the Swarm.

Any updates to the AI is pretty sweet, it got pretty tiresome playing against the AI when all it did were the same tactics and all that happened when you ramped up the difficulty was that it ramped up the speed at which it did the same tactics, really.

In other news, my pc still hasn't arrived yet :(:(:( though it should be delivered sometime tomorrow! Hopefully just before I get home from work.. though it will probably be delivered right before I have to go to work... then I will have to go to work and actively have to not think about my new pc and what I could be doing with it.

I've been playing a bit more Diablo 3 in the past week, I started doing something new.. leveling hardcore characters.. after doing a bit of research I found out that the best way to do this is to level 3-5 at the same time.. so I'm leveling a Witch Doctor, a Barbarian and a Demon Hunter on hardcore.. oh, did I forget to mention that I will be limiting myself by not using the auction house for the duration of leveling.... ohhh and did I also forget to mention that I will be attempting to do this while set to Monster Power 10.

Daunting task! At the moment, it's going pretty easily.. though they are only between levels 7 and 12.. the plan so far is that I will level one of them up 5 levels, then swap to the next and so on. I am allowing myself to trade between the characters however.. which is why I picked the three classes I did, as the Barbarian's main attribute is Strength, the Demon Hunter's is Dexterity and the Witch Doctor's is Intelligence.. so any drops I get, I will be able to use on at least one of my characters!

I'm looking forwards to it, exciting times!

Though, with my new pc I am getting free copies of the new Tomb Raider, Bio-shock: Infinite and Crysis 3.. so I'm not sure whether or not I will be playing those, or trying out some new things on the beast! I can't quite do what I really want to do just yet as my internet connection is still a big pile of tripe.

That's all from me!

Ciao for now!

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Diablo 3: Monster Power and stuff

Oh hi there!

So, over the past few months there has been a lot going on in my life that I won't go into here. Needless to say my posting had been infrequent and that's something that I have been addressing! Hooray for me. The outlook is looking quite a lot better than it has for a while, but I can honestly say I am nowhere near saying that all is rosey and perfect. There is still a lot that can be better but I am doing my best to make that happen.

What have I been doing gaming wise? Well, I guess the first thing to mention is that I am getting a new pc. It's getting delivered on Tuesday and I am super excited, more excited than an average 30 something year old should be at getting a new pc. I might post up some specs if you are interested but for the most part I guess its safe to say that it's pretty okay and it will hopefully enable me to get started on a new project related to gaming.

I picked up Diablo 3 again a few nights ago unfortunately it was on a maintenance night so I was unable to play any of the characters that I have worked not very hard on! So I swapped over to the US servers and decided to try a new character.. a female Barbarian. I figured why not, since I already have a level 60 Barb and kinda know and like the play style.. So I started playing and then remembered about something called Monster Power.

What is Monster Power? Well it was introduced back in October 2012 and basically it increases monster health and damage but also increases your magic/gold find and experience gain. I don't think I was in one of my D3 phases at that point and when I got back into it I couldn't figure out how to change it! To the point where(bearing in mind I hadn't read anything about it) I thought that I might have to have completed inferno on the character in order to enable it.

So I had a revelation when I changed over to the US servers for this new character, for some reason I opened up the options while in the game and noticed the option to turn it on! If you're interested, it can be found in the Gameplay section of the options menu. Once ticked, the next time you change the quest that you are on, you'll see that you have a new option - next to the difficulty level. For more information about Monster Power, you should check out the D3 Blog post about it here.

On the level 6 odd Barbarian, when I changed the monster power to level 10, I noticed no real difference in the difficulty. When I next logged on, I tried this on my level 60 Monk(with ok/bad gear), monster power 10 was actually unplayable. The first mob on act 1 inferno had like 200 million hp(ok maybe not that much but it felt like it) and considering my Monk does like 40k crits.. it took like 5 minutes to kill that first mob, though I was never in any danger of dying to it! I think the highest level that it was about playable for me was roughly around Monster Power 3 or 4.

On the other hand, I have a level 26 odd Wizard that I had been meaning to level up.. so I swapped over to it and changed from Act 3 to Act 1, Quest 1 with Monster Power 10.. of course I ploughed through the first load of quests with no troubles.. I've yet to really have any problems with it but I'm still only in the first Act. I intend to write up more about the Wizard in the next couple of days, when I have played him a bit more. I actually quite like the play style of it at the moment.. lots of zappy lazers.. pew pew.

I think that's about all for now.. though keep your eyes peeled for some new content coming pretty soon after Tuesday.

Ciao for now!

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Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

Heyo all!

So, I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about the Beta that is going on for the next part of the Starcraft 2 legacy.

Basically, it's a few new units for each race that will be available in multiplayer and a whole new campaign story, this time instead of from the Terran perspective, it's told from the Zerg(WAHOO!). Needless to say because I love the story/playstyle of the Zerg I am really looking forwards to it.

At the moment, you can only play the multiplayer because they need to balance the new units so they aren't like super duper overpowered in the competitive side of the game. But what do I think about it? Well, the new Zerg units are well, quite okay.. but there is at least one change that I am really really happy about.. and it doesn't even really effect the game in general..

As Zerg, all your units move faster on this stuff called creep.. you need to spread the creep with your Queen unit by planting these things called Creep Tumors. In Wings of Liberty these things couldn't be planted on anything like a ramp.. and when you spread them the next one just sorta appeared.. but now... now the spreading has an animation.. it looks like a snake travelling over and above ground to the next point you clicked! And you can put them on ramps!

Not even really a huge change.. but it made me stupidly happy. Perhaps more happy than I should have been about such a small change.

One thing that I was really sad about, was that they had said that one of our units; The Baneling, which explodes in a mess of green goo and happens to be one of my favourite units would be able to move while burrowed under the ground(Note: in Wings of Liberty it could already burrow under ground but couldn't move and was lovingly called the Baneling Land Mine). But it seems they have removed this ability :'(

This is the first of many posts about the Beta, I will most likely go into more details about the new units for each of the races.. or maybe just make one post dedicated to each race and throw info at you about them like that.

In other news.. I have managed to finally get Battle.net SMS Protect off my account and have got it updated to my new phone.. hopefully now I'll be able to start selling stuff in Diablo 3 again!! If things even sell there anymore. I guess I'll find out! Wish me luck!

If you have any feedback or have something you'd like me to tackle let me know, also please follow me on Twitter @McKnublet and subscribe etc!

Ciao for now!

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Productivity Vs Me

Howdy doody!

So, today is my fifth day of non smoking..annnnd the cravings are pretty bad. For the most part my coping strategies are that I am avoiding all the things that used to make me want to smoke. Though, I can't escape the dreaded work.

So what have I been doing? Well, I played some HotS Beta.. but mostly when I have been playing games, I have been whipping butt in Diablo 3. I figured it was beyond time and finally got my Barbarian to level 60. It was easy once I got some better gear.. which I bought from the gold auction house using the profits of my other level 60 toon's.

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed playing the Barbarian, it's quite like the Monk but a lot more bulky, doesn't look like he'd snap in two if some group of monsters looked at him sideways. Also that pretty much all of the sounds of the maneuvers you use are very gratifying.. it sounds like it hurts! Which afterall is why we play such a bloodthirsty game.. because it sounds and looks so bloody!

I'm not going to go into too much depth about the Barb, I'll leave that for the post specifically about them but I just wanted to let you all know what I've been up to!

I had a day off work yesterday and for once I was quite productive... shock horror! I fixed my darlin's bike after going and getting a new inner tube, I bought a new lock since the nice guy at the post office depot snipped my old one for me*, bought some food and hit level 60 with my Barb!

I'm actually stupidly good at procrastinating, like a lot of folks I guess, which doesn't help when I am wanting to do stuff... you know, like work.. and writing blogs.. and well, everything! So it's always a bit of a surprise to me when I actually manage to get stuff done.

I think the next post will be about the HotS Beta, which I have managed to keep quiet about till now... wait for it, it's coming!

Ciao for now!

*Though I am thankful to that guy for helping me, I could have been anyone just trying to ram keys into a bike lock! He could have just helped me steal a bike... though it was indeed my bike and I had been there for... some time.

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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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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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Moving and stuff

Right at this minute I am homeless and will be till Saturday.. thankfully we have somewhere to stay in the interim. Though I have no access to my computer or the internet other than on my phone we are making it work. We have been watching the first series of a show called Suits, which is surprisingly good! We also have a few episodes of Bones to watch! I realised yesterday that I will have to do without any Diablo 3.. till I don't know when!! Can't check my auctions either, though I doubt any sold.. nothing has sold since the first item I managed to sell. We will survive I think, but only just... And she who must be obeyed may very well kill me if she has nothing to distract her from how annoying I am.. so if this is the last anyone hears from me... I want Chris to have my BBQ, Shaun to have my laptop...

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