Benie's Games Blog

So I finally made a Worgen char. A Worgen Rogue. Now I’m having heavy second thoughts about his continued.. life in my character list.
One of the reasons I made a Worgen is to see the start area, with people. It’s unlike anything I thought, heavily RPing before the time of the Cataclysm and the Worgen attacking Gilneas.
You get bitten by one of them, and slowly turn into one. Now the Forsaken are attacking, and earthquakes are causing flooding and other chaos. The earthquakes are just before the Cataclysm struck.

Soon you save the day by destroying the Horde Zeppelin, and go with the Night Elves to their city. That’s pretty much where you’re on your own.

I went to GS to say hi to the new faces. They acted like they couldn’t tell the obviousness of my name, which is Beniehowl. I dueled a few people, and… lost more times than won, which was once out of all the defeats.
Most of the time I forget to shift into Worgen form before going all stealthy. Other times… I….. I don’t know why I suck so bad.

Anyway, went back to Benie and finally did those runs I said I was, in Outland. Went to Coilfang Reservoir and soloed The Slave Pens, and The Steamvault. Both were successful solos, which nearly is the proof I need that I can solo Botanica.
Later on I tried to do Molten Core. I get there, ask the BE for a port and it gets canceled the second I try. I try again, same thing. Then I notice an annoying message; “Normal difficulty is not available in Molten Core.”, aka, Blizzard made it Heroic only.

The more that I think about it, maybe it’s for a good reason. They know high levels will be able to solo the boss and get that weapon. And they know they can grind and use MC as an exploit. They won’t have that. They got to make you work your ass off like they do for everything.
Speaking of that, there’s something I found a way around of not having to work my ass off..

Wyrmrest Temple rep is that thing. I’ve been halfway from Exalted in months. Through Wowhead, I found a workaround that happened to be in my favor. There’s a BE in Dalaran that sells rep commendation badges, for 16 Justice points each. I would need 19 of those badges to become exalted.
I was on a cussing spree due to Blizzard still making you work your ass off to get these points (seriously, I get this shit in Wurm. I don’t need it here), until I realized… I had 374 Justice Points from the runs I did while getting to/being Level 80 in Northrend. That dungeon finder actually paid off for once. I could finally get that drake!

So I eagerly flew to Dalaran, met the BE and handed over my Justice Points for 19 Wyrmrest commendation badges, then flew to the temple. At first I thought I need to turn said badges in somewhere. Had no idea you’re supposed to right click to give yourself the rep.
So I did, and finally got exalted on the 19th one. Had alittle trouble trying to find the Quartermaster, but I got my drake!! 😀 NO MORE will I have to defend the temple!

Flew home on my new dragon, and did what I couldn’t do on my Nether Drake, which is cast /mountspecial and then run around. This shows the dragon roaring while running. Funny and Epic at the same time.

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As I mentioned before about the Worgen Rogue I made and him getting beaten, well.. when I came back home from not being able to do MC, my friend and other guy who was a Rogue were talking about the Rogue owned him. I watched the two duel, and everytime, the rogue won it.
All my friend said was to nerf Rogues.
This really upsets me. My Rogue couldn’t beat him, yet he can. So… why should I keep him around? I know very little on how to play a Rogue. As in, what to use and when.
Rogues are too fucking dependent on their gear, along with other melee classes. I was told years ago that Rogues are “WoW in Easy mode” by the same person who taught me what I know now. I find Hunters the “easy mode” class.
Others, find Death Knights easy (Blood DK’s anyway). I do not.

The same goes to my Druid. Sure, I got him up to 80, but he rarely dueled like Benie does. Druids I feel are more harder now to play, with this “Day/Night” thing I heard about that plays a critical role on how strong you are. Why couldn’t they just leave well enough alone? Leave it where I remember how to play, without having to learn this new shit?

That’s all I have to say about this matter. And.. oh yeah. Been a week since I came back to WoW. Cooleow and all of the people I got on my friends list have not shown up.
I still don’t know who hacked my account. But I’m trying to put all of that behind me by soloing again. On the two runs I did, I made a good profit. Though half of what I looted suggests I Disenchant instead of sell to the AH. I’m trying to get back the cash I had from buying the new mount and other things.

Another day of sitting around GS, doing nothing. Do want to report of a few “changes” I will be doing. I’ll do that later.

After dinner, I flew to SW to do Tol Barad with WormBait, one of my pets, to level him up to 85.
For the dailies, most of them were like the ones I did before, except two were different. Both of them involved killing a key baddy.
Got him up by one level (he was 82. Got him up to 83).
As I was making my exit, suddenly the Alliance Base Camp came under attack by a small group of Horde who couldn’t wait for the battle to start on the southern island, and rather just do it now.
The Alliance however was ready to kick their asses back from wince they came. The fight was bloody and fierce, but the Alliance came through time and time again.
Soon it got so severe I had to get out of there, and came back through the portal.

Alittle later, I went to Tanaris to get some [Noggenfogger Elixir] from Gadgetzan, then went to Northrend to get more of those [Magic Eater]s from the Dalaran Sewer.
As I fished, Trade was quite active with people wanting other people for raids and shit, and promises of “getting your drake” for helping with an Uldarr raid thing.
This one guy starts asking people for ‘Bot’. My brain starts to think. “Bot, as in Botanica? I need to ask this person. Maybe he might know if I could solo it” and so I did. Instead, it wasn’t what I was thinking.
I apologized, told him (and the entire Trade chat later on) that I was hacked last week and what the hacker did to my account and managed to do Botanica 750 times. Told them my gear score (317 currently), and asked them did the hacker actually use this char to solo Botanica.
Got a few PMs telling me to contact the GMs to get my stuff back. Had to tell them that everything is sorted out there.

Then people start telling me that yes.. I can solo Botanica. I still don’t see it happening, but I’ll take their words for it. Tomorrow, I will head to Outland and try to solo instances I want to (The Slave Pens for one), and work up to Botanica.
Finally I got the 40 fish I wanted and headed home. Once there I met that guy who has depression and felt my pain. Turns out it’s not the same type of depression I have. Still, it’s sad that he goes through this. His depression is loneliness, and he said it only happens at night. It’s due to his friends leaving, which is understandable.

I told him that I was hacked as well. He asked if I ever bought gold before, and I… unfortunately had to say yes. He said that that’s how they get your password (which I don’t see how. Powerleveling, yes. But I never heard from gold buying). Told him it’s been a year since I last did it, and he said it doesn’t matter. But he didn’t answer my question of.. if that’s true, and the hacker got my password through my gold buying, then why did the person wait so long to do it? It’s like the person knew I was away.

Rest of the night was ho-hum, until some Horde showed up. A pair of 85 Taurens. And they were fucking pissed off for some reason. Remembering what happened last night, I did not flag once.
Started attacking on the road between GS and Northshire, then they went to the Inn and oh wow what a battle that was. Eventually the destructive duo gave up. When it was over, I saw Stormwind City Guards walking around the second floor of the Inn.

And about my luck of being buddies with Crunkdragon (of him maybe sharing some of his wealth to me) are starting to fade away. Today I tried to ask him if I could buy the mats for the vial, and he said the mats alone are 15k. Why is everything so expensive now? Everytime I look in the AH, there’s an item with a price tag of 10,000g or higher. Yet… I’m seeing more and more people with that fucking Sandscale Drake mount, tormenting me. They all say they made the vial. Not one I talked to actually spent the 50k.

So not fair. But I guess they deserve it for putting all the hard work/cash into making that thing.

The day was quite boring. Stayed in GS for pretty much all day. Started with getting mail from the AH. I knew what it was about.
Went to GS, checked, and sure enough the profitable Darkmoon Faire cards I put in didn’t sell. Gay..

When night fell, things got a bit more entertaining. I can’t remember everything that happened, though.
Started off with this guy named “Crunkdragon”. He’ll ‘play a role’ later on in this blog post.
He’s a 60 Human Pally. He thinks he’s better than anyone else and just seems a more humorous version of Bigbossofgs. He starts yelling at this Mage, who is yelling at him about doing a fist fight and the Pally was doing his bubble thing, yet Crunk was so full of himself that he beat the mage.

Later, I saw Jakhedhunter on. He remembered me and I remember him. Told him I got hacked last week. He said it must’ve been “that noob hacker” that tricks people into giving their passwords to do something. I told him that isn’t him then. That it’s a person that must’ve knew me, and my password. He then had to log out. Added him to my friends.

Next, I was with this group of people, discussing about what other people think. I started talking that what people say causes me to quit WoW. This one DK seemed to understand me.
We talked for awhile, he told me to just use the ignore feature for ones that annoy me to get better gear, do heroics, and crap like that. Told him “You can ignore the person, but you can’t ignore what they say is right”.
Told him I was a soloer. He said to just do what I like doing and not let anyone stop me. Where have I heard that before? Soon he had to go, and I added him to my friends.
Then I tried to ask if he knew the “roar” feature for dragons, that I had before I got hacked, but logged before he could reply.

Then later on, this 85 Druid shows up. He’s the main of Crunkdragon. Anyway, I’m with this small group, talking about bigboss, and the guy turns into a dragon. I didn’t realize it ’till later on and freaked out.
I asked him how in the fuck he came up with the 50k, and he said he makes them. He also has the largest sum of gold I’ve ever heard in this game. 375k. All from selling those vials. Said he got in trouble with Blizzard about it, but didn’t explain how he keeps how much he has a secret. It’s best not to in public, anyway.

He even let me ride on him. It was quite fun (not the sexual way, you perverts). I can imagine this being useful in the future, if I ever wanted to dual client. Have my alt on my back.

I tried to ask the guy if the mats could be bought on the AH. He never responded. But I have a better idea. If I become friends with him, maybe he’ll be nice enough to go half with me. I give him cash and half of the mats needed to make the Vial of the Sands, and he gets the other half of the mats, and makes the vial for me.
So he has to log and I thank him for showing me how awesome that mount really is, and leaves.

As the ‘final finale’ of this night, the Horde begin attacking. It’s night, so it’s a perfect time… for an ambush. I’m sitting there idle, watching some guys duel. There’s a Level 37 Worgen Druid, flagged, who’s dueling the other guy.
He wins the duel, then loses his life when suddenly an 85 Undead Rogue strikes and kills the flagged Worgen. And he did it without alerting the guards.

Alittle later, I see this Level 42 Blood Elf, flagged, south of GS. My brain is thinking “easy kill! easy kill!!”, and start running after and shooting her (and get flagged for PvP). Little did I know I was running right into a trap.
She hops down that little cliff and stops. I wonder why she did but keep attacking, then try to summon one of my pets. And then it happens.
Suddenly without warning I’m being slaughtered by that 85 Rogue. I try to put up a fight, against all odds, and get him down to half health, then I try laying down a freezing trap to hopefully freeze the SOB to run away.

It did freeze him, but only for a second, and I died. When I got back to my corpse, I waited alittle bit, hoping if I could detect the Rogue so he won’t do another surprise attack on me. Finally I respawn, then fly away to GS.
In GS, I dismount, thinking I’m safe. I’m in GS. No Horde would dare come here and risk not being shot at. No sooner than five seconds later I get sapped by that bastard Rogue. And then again, I get slaughtered. The guards don’t respond. No one tries to help me. I was pretty much left for dead. And when I die, someone has the nerve to say “raped”.
About two minutes later, a Shaman decides to resurrect me. The second he does, I’m in the air again. And I stay there until finally my flag drops. Did thank him though.

The Rogue isn’t seen again that night. The thought of that happening to me is still.. traumatizing. Why didn’t the FUCKING guards do anything? Why did they just let me die where I stood?
I could had used Feign Death, but that only works on NPC’s. PC’s aren’t fooled by it. Well.. most aren’t.

But that Rogue.. he was good. Hell. He could had been hacking. The guards did not respond, and he was visible right in the middle of GS.
I don’t like my ass being handed to me, but for no one to assist me… not even the 85’s.

I want to think, it’s just a game. But I cannot.

I almost gave up on my Archaeology profession today. After finding out why I wasn’t seeing anymore Fossil digsites, I had to go for the others.

Before I could, though, I had to eat my dinner. When I got back, I couldn’t join the server. They were all down.
Checked the day. It’s not Tuesday. So why are they all down? So I went to the forums. A GM said the servers aren’t actually “down”, but something isn’t allowing them to show up on the Realm List. Every now and then you see a single server come up, then go down.
It took a good half an hour until they finally showed up.
I couldn’t connect. So I tried shutting off WoW and trying again, similar to what happened when Cataclysm was released. And I got right in.

Finally back ingame, we go to Kalimdor to continue fragment digging, thinking if I do Night Elf fragments, then eventually I would start getting Fossil fragments. Took alot longer than I hoped, but I got a couple.
Went to Un’Goro. Finished off another useless, yet quite profitable Common artifact that was worth a whopping 100g, then I saw it.. “Fossilized Raptor”. 100 fragments to make. I wanted to jump for joy.

Took a long ass time going through more Night Elf and Troll artifacts, occasionally getting a few Fossil digsites.
Soon I had 79/100 when I was back in Un’Goro. Went to Tanaris for another Fossil digsite. Got to 90/100.
I thought for sure I probably won’t have the required fragments ’till tomorrow.

But if you believe in miracles, one came up. After finishing off another Troll site in Tanaris, another Fossil site popped up in Dustwallow Marsh. Literally ran for it, and finally had the 100th fragment and got the mount.
I also got the Artisan Archaeology achievement. Due to this, sites in Outland have been unlocked for me. I can now get Draenei and Orc fragments there. Two being in Nagrand, and one being right in the faction-controlled island of Halaa. No doubt I have to wait ’till the Alliance has control of it.

But what will I do now that I finally got the Fossilized Raptor? Well, there’s … something else that caught my eye today. Something very expensive, but.. I say well worth the price tag.

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I mentioned before I was thinking of dropping the profession. Went back to GS to rest for awhile. I have noticed no one is buying any of the Darkmoon Faire cards in the AH, and time is starting to run out for them. So I went to SW to check up on them.
I then decide to check this Mounts tab. Inside, you can get that Touring Rocket I’ve been hearing about, that you get for recruiting a friend who buys an account.
But there was one mount in there, different from the rest. It was a potion. “Vial of the Sands”.

I hovered over it, and… my jaw dropped to the floor when I read what it does; “Teaches you how to transform into a dragon”. Even as I type this, I WANT THAT THING!!! 😀 Unfortunately, it’s way out of my price range. Nearly 50,000g.
But seriously. Turn into a DRAGON.. that has to be the most epic thing I’ve ever seen or heard in this game. Even seen proof through Youtube. You can actually have someone ride on YOU, for a change.
If I had my hands on that, the first thing I would do is to make a macro, and use this;
/y DRAGON FORM!!!
cast Vial of the Sands

I would set up another macro for going back into “human form”. And also, going to GS and yelling “Hey, look at me! I’m a dragon!! WOOT!!!”
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What is strange is it seemed like the thing was just implemented today. What I mean is in Trade, they were talking about it. A guy who got back from also having his account hacked, got the fucking thing for free. FREE. LUCKY son of a bitch! And what did I get? Lame Darkmoon Faire cards that won’t fucking sell in the AH. 😛

As I was leaving, some guy in General asks for a price check for the vial, and some other items. Told him that the vial is worth 50k.
He PMs me, asking me if I wanted it. I said “ahahah.. I wish”, and said that I don’t have 50k.
He said that I could get it with real money. Yeah, I can. But hello.. it’s against the TOS?!
I nearly said “Ehh… I’ve done it in the past. Going to play legit for now on”, but stopped myself and instead told him “Yeah, if you want to get in trouble with Blizzard.” His response was “ok my bad”.

The reason I stopped myself is he could had told a friend, who would had told his friend, who would had told a GM and had me busted. I’ve learned to not trust anyone. I bet he didn’t even have the item. Probably pasted the name from the AH.
Then again, he was a Level 1, with the word “bank” in his name. Obvious bank alt.

So, that’s what’s been going on today.

Spent almost all day today digging up fragments to put them together into artifacts. Came up on an interesting one. A ‘Fossilized Hatchling’. Requires 85 Fossil fragments to ‘make’.
I had this artifact for awhile. Didn’t really pay attention to it until I was in Tol Barad Peninsula. I knew nothing about the place, but heard it’s one of the new battlegrounds. However, the northern island is contested. Meaning both factions can access it and not try to kill eachother.

Tried to fly there. Failed. Was like some kind of invisible barrier. So I went back to SW, remembering seeing a portal going there. Wowhead mentioned that it’s the same way as going to the Isle of Quel’Danas (through a portal or a FP).
I got to the portal, but wondered if it was a good idea since the Horde were in control of the southern island. When I saw a few allies show up put of the portal, unflagged, I decided to go for it.

When I arrived, I wasn’t flagged. Was in an Alliance Base Camp, with a bunch of daily quest NPC’s around.
One of them said that he finds strange that they’re constantly getting orders every night at 3am. This is a joke, since dailies reset at that time (CDT anyway, 4am here).
I noticed I couldn’t fly. Had to use ground mounts. And that’s when I saw it. A guy on a mount I’ve never seen before. It was a boney raptor. Looked really cool. Was called a Fossilized Raptor.
Remembering the hatchling artifact I had, I checked Wowhead and sure enough, you get it from Archaeology. I knew what I had to do. But I wanted to do these dailies first. They were pretty fun, and it was pretty good practice of not having played WoW in a long time.

When I got out, I went to every Fossil digsite I could find to grind up on artifacts. Finally Solved it and .. well.. I wasn’t actually expecting a cute little hatchling; but the hatchling to grow up.
Since then, I was obsessed on “unlocking” the Fossilized Raptor mount by going to every Fossil digsite I could find. Alas, it never worked in my favor.
I read that finding the hatchling alone is a rare feat. I find getting the fucking raptor is rarer.

Now I’m “out” of Fossil digsites. But actually, I’m not. Turns out, all I have to do is go to the other digsites and do them, to get Fossil digsites back.
There’s some kind of number that it’s based on. The number doesn’t reset like daily quests do. It’s based on how many digsites you didn’t go to. It expects you to even it out by going to other ones before allowing you to go back to what you wanted.

This means hours of boring digging, and flying.. don’t forget the flying. I’m sure Drago’s wings are really tired by now.

Been going here and there today, after getting the good news from the GM. However, I still need to do away with the Darkmoon Faire cards.
I want to sell them on the AH, but I fear Blizzard won’t like this. Near Thunder Bluff, they have the Darkmoon Faire going on there, so I flew there to see if I could redeem the cards to that guy that tells you about them. I cannot. So they’re useless to me.

I don’t remember everything the GM said. I was too happy to care. Something about to sell them at a vendor. Nothing about that it’s OK to auction them. I could make alot of money, but I would be doing the same thing that hacker would’ve done if Blizzard didn’t stop the person.

Just seven minutes ago, I sent Blizzard another ticket. When I hit the Submit button, it showed 11 hours and 37 minutes as the wait time. UGH!!
So I got an idea to just put the cards back into the bank. As I ran into SW, I notice the ticket jumped to “will be serviced soon” in just five minutes. Freaked me out and made me happy at the same time. MUCH… much better wait time than yesterday. I assume it’s a way to apologize for not reaching me on Monday Night.
Anyway, the ticket paid off. The GM, going by the recent conversation they had with me, said I could go on and do what I wish with the items. Sell them. Keep them. Put them in the bank…

Boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew…

Do whatever. I thanked him and told him that I wanted to make double sure if it was OK. That’s when he told me they keep records. This is good, because I don’t.

So with that out of the picture, rewind the tape back before this happened.
I went back to Vashj’ir to get the “Explore Cataclysm” achievement. I missed just one area I didn’t explore, in the Abyssal Depths (had to copy/paste the name. Can’t spell it).
When I got there on Drago (my dragon), I noticed how… eery quiet Local chat was. No one was saying anything. Still, Drago kept flying until finally reaching the area, and I got both achievements. The “Explore Vashj’ir” achievement and the “Explore Cataclysm” achievement.

I then decided to go swimming. Take a closer look. So I dismounted, got on my seahorse, and headed down into the abyss.
Again, it was like I was all alone. Went in a few places, and there was no one there. I still remember when I was leveling here, this place was fucking packed. It was quite easy to get a group to defeat non-soloable mobs there. But even doing soloable quests was a challenge, with all the people.

Now… it’s a ghost town. Not even the “newbies” who were carrying on about how to get inside of Naspirah, and how to talk to it, were saying anything. It was just… dead. Even as I type this it freaks me out.
It also deeply concerns me. As in, eventually I’ll make my Druid and/or my Tauren Hunter go up to 85 as well. How are they going to get the help they need? Especially my Druid. Cat Form in water doesn’t really work out for me. Maybe it’s time to dual client again?

When I entered the Shimmering Expanse, preparing to get back to land and go home before the sun sets, there was just one guy asking something; asking about where’s the quartermaster.
I had to ask “Where is EVERYONE?!” He didn’t say the reason why, only asking me where’s the quartermaster, and then grouped me.

Kinda wish I didn’t say anything, but I had to know where everyone went. Spent 15 minutes trying to look for the quartermaster. This guy, another Level 85, is getting on my nerves, following me like I know where the person is. I tell him to check Wowhead, but it doesn’t help him. Finally I found the person and he gets the items, then tries to give me 35g for no reason.
I sent him on a wild goose chase by accident, and he wanted to award me? I told him to keep it and he did, thanking me and then hearthed out.

Back on the surface, I tried to wonder how long have I been gone, and what happened to everyone. I believe four months. I still don’t know what happened to everyone. It shouldn’t had died off this quickly.
It could be that the majority of this server, doesn’t like questing in Vashj’ir. I personally enjoyed it. It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.
But… it’s just down right strange. Not even the start area has people in it. Could be that the area is phased. In other words, you can’t see people, but they’re there because they’re at a lower level than you.

I eventually went back home as the moon started to rise, and the rest… has already been mentioned.
I’m still waiting for Cooleow to get on so I can ask him if he knows anything about the hacking attempt. So far he hasn’t. In the back of my mind I’m beginning to suspect he might be the hacker, but that’s just wrong. I have no solid proof.
Cooleow is a spaz, anyway. I doubt he would be the hacker.

After Amnesia giving me back-to-back nightmares (not of the game, however), I wanted to play a quieter, happier game. So I chose WoW.

Trying to get into WoW was rough at first, due to angry putting his fucking parental control hands all over everything. Had to reinstall Steam because of it. WoW was nearly the same way, but it would had been alot worse on me.
Though it was a simple fix. wow.exe didn’t have the permissions I needed to access it. Fixed it.

When I finally got in, I knew of two things that would happen;
1. Server Maintenance (came back on Monday, and Tuesday is usually the day).
2. A patch.

Only the second thing was true. Harmless “Rolling Restarts” for the first one. The patch took just under five minutes to complete. Now knowing the current version, 4.0.6, I went to wow.curse.com to find updates to the existing addons I was using back then. Found updates to all except one, but that’s ok.

Came back in. Logged in using my new keychain authenticator, and saw Benie was in The Botanica. I assume the hacker was preparing for another run.
When I finally got in, I first notice my loadout (my GUI) was screwed up and changed. Had to take time to re-set it back to how I had it, and mostly got it back. There was a few things missing from it.

I left the dungeon and Outland, and headed straight for GS. It was night. Managed to land near “my house” without being seen, then made a ticket that the guy on the phone who unlocked my account told me to do once I got back.
Once done, I ventured over to GS to check my mail. There was several messages from Blizzard, restoring everything from the hacker attack. And then I saw the Darkmoon Faire cards. I personally have no idea the hacker got its hands on them, but there were many. I then noticed I got the Core Hound pet; the “reward” for buying the authenticator.

Went back “home” after that. Time ticked on by, and I waited for what seemed like hours. One time it said there was 20 minutes left. Then it jumps to 21 minutes…
Eventually had to copy/paste the ticket in a .txt file since I had to go soon.

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Today, I made the ticket again. 7 hours.. UGH. However it seemed like I only had to wait five hours. Eventually I got the idea of making a screenshot of my bags and bank and do whatever I want, and when the GM responds, I can use the screenshot to verify of any changes.

So I flew to near Southshore, where there was a Dig Site marker right over the river. Since it’s now Horde territory I had to go in low to not be spotted by Horde flyers.
When I got there, I noticed “Your ticket will be serviced soon.”, and tried to fly back to GS. When I reached the Wetlands, the GM responded. I landed and started my conversation.

It really didn’t take much (if any) convincing that I’m me, and the GM said that “this is your lucky day!” and said I could keep the items! I thanked the person, did the survey, and then went on of what I’m doing now; working on my Archeology skill.

Now I’m finally off the hook and all “restrictions” have been removed from me. Thinking of going back to Outlands to really see if I can really solo Botanica.
But from what I’ve seen when the person changed my loadout, the person “laid” all of my abilities “on the table” to use them. Meaning, my current loadout probably won’t do good in there. But it doesn’t hurt to try, right? If I need more cash (to pay for repairs from dying alot), I’ll go to the high level areas and grind (or sell the Darkmoon Faire cards the hacker collected).

No more gold buying for me. I’m playing legit for now on.

During Steam’s “Potato Fools!” sale, I bought Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I’ve heard stories from the guys in the DMT that it’s shit scary, but it’s a steal for $10 so I went on and got it.

Just started playing it. Even on the first level, there’s things that scare you. Doors that suddenly open on their own. Dark, small corridors. And you never know what could be lurking behind that.. SHIT!!! *holds mouth and gets down behind a wall, whimpering in fear*

It starts off as you. You are named “Daniel”.. well.. you think you are. You’re in some sort of castle in Europe. It’s the early 1900’s. You’re all alone… but, actually you’re not. You have no idea how you arrived at this castle, but there has to be some reason. You see this strange purple trail leading off somewhere and wonder where it goes.

Evil is hiding behind every turn. Before you know it, you got the feeling that something is coming up behind you. You have no way to defend yourself. No weapons. All you can do is run and hide like a pussy. But it’s either that or be eaten by a Grue (a cookie for whoever gets it).

You can Use objects to block a door if you feel you’re being pursued, or try to hide in dark areas. All you can do is hope the thing doesn’t see you, and eventually goes away to look elsewhere.
Sometimes you can hear the sounds of something munching on your brain. This is your Sanity going down the shitter. Dark areas lower your sanity, and light areas raise it. Staring at monsters also causes your sanity to drop, and you to scream like a little girl and run the other direction.

You got these tinderboxes. Think of them as matches. They can light things like candles, stoves, and anything else. Everytime you light something, it consumes one. But sometimes it’s best not to light them, because a scary thing cannot see you in the dark. And also it’s been said that monsters (the scary things) are attracted to light sources.
You also get a lantern that you get in Level 2, but it’s kinda hard to find (was for me anyway). It consumes Oil, and it’s unfortunately scarce from what I’ve seen. Expect to run out constantly.

I tried to look for a trainer to hopefully increase my odds of survival and make the game less scary for me. Unfortunately, there isn’t any updated trainers. The “latest” one causes my game to crash when I hit the Esc key (or crashes when I load a save), as this game only has one way of saving.
The next best thing I could do is look for a walkthrough. Hopefully reading that would tell me where the scary parts are. This will probably lose some of the “thrill” of being scared, but I rather sleep at night!

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I’m in Level 3-1 now (I think anyway). The Laboratory, trying to find the fucking key for the Wine Cellar to mix up a chemical that will remove some kind of organic tissue to gain access to the Refinery. Yet I’m being told “The darkness…. is coming……”, and I read about “A shadow is following you”
And to make things even more down right frightening, the entire room begins to shake every four seconds.

But… to say this is the scariest game ever created? I find that far-fetched. AoM:DC (Afraid of Monsters: Director’s Cut) is scarier. Amnesia doesn’t have zombies with spazzing heads running up to you (“at night @_@”) and whacking you. I haven’t gotten past Level 1 yet.

I happen to check my mail today, wondering if Blizzard sent me anything about what happened with the hacking attempt. All I got was a message stating I need to renew my subscription. So I went through Paypal and reinstated it.

One message stands out from the rest; “Important Duke Nukem Forever News”, from March 24th. It has a video in it.
And here’s that video. Let me say I’m not surprised. The guy said it best when he said “This is Bull*hit!!”…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6fFKkmIrWM

As you saw, the new release date for the US is now June 14th. International release on June 10th.. how in the fuck. Why is the international release being released four days before the US release?! That’s just not right…

We’ve been waiting for 14 years, and they had the nerve to extend it even further? And all they can say is; “We’re sorry”.

First I had to deal with CraftBukkit having broken plugins, now Notch secretly released Minecraft Beta 1.4! Secretly as in he didn’t post about it in his blog, nor did he even post “update coming soon”. I saw a Twitter entry about it, which lead to the Mojang website. Took me by surprise, along with alot of people (and I’m sure even the Bukkit Devs).
And guess what it has? No fixes. Just alot of broken SSP mods… of course I will not be updating.

There’s no useful additions, except the first forest creature (instead of a barn animal); the Wolf that is tamable and can be commanded to kill other animals. I personally don’t see a need for the animal. There’s no other reason to update and risk broken mods.

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And here comes the triple whammy. Afforess claims that intersection and cart kill blocks are working on his end. Had to quote my post, he saw it, and said “I’ll fix it when Bukkit is updated to 1.4”
I was all “WAIT, WHAT?! You can’t do this to me! I’ll have broken mods!! Release the fixes NOW!!”
That’s what my brain wants to tell him. But I cannot actually say that, unfortunately. I’m supposed to… appreciate what he’s done and wait, know plugin devs have lives and they don’t have to do anything. The only time I appreciate a plugin dev is when the plugin works, and works all the time!

I mentioned before the two issues weren’t serious. And really, they weren’t. I could deal with them. But with the surprise 1.4 update that came out of the blue, and Afforess saying he’s going to wait ’till CraftBukkit is updated for 1.4…, the urge for them to be fixed increased tenfold.

Fortunately, there’s a workaround for intersection blocks, discovered by me. Setting ‘IntersectionPrompts’ to 0 gets intersections to prompt the player again, but it makes intersection blocks only useful for intersection-controlled signs. And Afforess, after having to PM him to nearly beg him not to wait, fixed the issue with cart kill blocks not doing their jobs (only I got the fix, since only I reported the issue. He didn’t release the fix to the public yet).

On a lighter note (yet still bugged), Dynmap has been finally updated. FrozenCow released a “beta” version (not an official release) so the thing would stop crapping out errors in the server console.
Works in 1.3_01 (used a copy of the configuration file to make sure I make the same things angry did to set it up for me), but I’m not seeing myself in the map. This may be the fact I don’t have 1.4. Everything else is working, and I do see changes done by me.

On the side of waiting for mods from minecraftforum.net to be updated, the mod devs seem to be in no hurry to update them. The users of the plugins is of course in reverse, some demanding for updates. I’m not the only spoiled brat in the world. lol

Zombe’s Modpack probably won’t be updated ’till the weekend. Along with ModLoader and Zan’s Minimap. Once that happens (and the bastard Notch doesn’t just decide to release Beta 1.4_0#.. again by not giving us any fucking warning…), I’ll update.