Ongoing gaming....

General gaming first...

My Wow account is still inactive, although I have logged in a few times to help my wife on a few upkeeping jobs on her account. Such as "take a look at my garrison and collect the herbs and ore"; And I do seem to have done a little bit more on one of her hunters (yes she has multiples of things, the less I say about that the better as the mage situation is well over the crazy cliff). A few times I've been boosting lower level charecters....
So I suppose I haven't really given up wow if I'm living it through her account the odd time.
Wow light it is. I can live with that for now....



Star Trek Online over the last while has seen me log in to check on the daily assignments. These are essentially the same as wow's missions for minions. Get your people off working for you. The STO version missions have multiple rewards and most all rewards are very useful, even if there is "just" currency. It's fun because I've levelled up my main character about 6 levels without undocking a ship. He is now level 51.
I did go back to a level 25 mission that was causing me problems at the time and sadly the mission scales with the character so I got my ship handed to me in a thousand pieces a few times before I docked back up. 
Maybe I do need to find a fleet to join and see how that goes. But that would require me getting back into a game for a longer period than I really want to do right now. The itch in me to play it more is growing but it's not something I need to scratch just yet.

 

Blizzards hearthstone has made a recent comeback for me and not just to get a wow reward but to play as enjoyment of the game. It's simpler than the likes of magic the gathering (at least to me), turn based which I really love, and fun not to mention that it's free.
Even the missus is playing this as well. (anything from stopping her level another mage).
It's a game that has the just one more go, 15 tries later.

Star Citizen is progressing well but over the last two big releases/patches there has been two annoying bugs that have gotten to me, both related to each other in my experience of the hanger.
They happen when I go to get into my hanger's little buggy (no pun intended), the greycat, my character runs up to the buggy bumps into it and then the buggy starts to jitter and slide across the floor. That's not good. 

Then once my character is in the buggy his left hand is twisted back on itself in a very alarming manner.

Ouch!

Hows that supposed to help my driving.

Star Cit seems hell bent on moving forward with ever increasing goals and getting more done but the little things seem to be left behind.
Maybe it's not something worth fixing at the moment or its part of something much bigger that's all being worked on...
To me its the small things that are putting me off and annoying me about the game. Not that it's much of a game at the moment. I know it's still early day's and this game has so (soooooooo!) much expectation heaped on it.
I found this very good playthrough of the newly released tutorial on youtube. Well worth a watch and it stops me from droning on.

Hearthstoned........

I had been grinding away with rated matches once I had finished my last round of NPC's.

It took some time but I eventually got a win.

 

Promoting me to Angry Chicken with one star.

After this match I reordered the deck I had for Hellscream. Taking two of all the lower end cards and only selecting the higher cards that had taunt and abilities that helped other lower cards.

The next win came in a very touch and go match, but I got to clear the main threats and hammer home attacks on the player.

 

Star number two for the Angry Chicken

The third match followed the next day with a lot of luck due to a lack of my opponents cards with taunt.

This upgraded me to Leper Gnome with one star.

And gave the third victory I needed.

For the mount I wanted.

Nice...

The match making does tend to be very random in it's pairing, as a starter the last thing you want to see is a person that's 4 or 5 levels better then your current rank.

The best tactic I found was to get lots of smaller minion cards on the go with a lot of taunts as well. One or two lower level cards that cost 2 or 4 mana summon two 2 health taunt cards, these are great to divert attacks.

Better also to trade cards at the start I usually change anything that costs 5 mana or over to see what I can get. 

The first two turns are really for mana gathering but can also show what kind of opponent you will be facing in the cards s/he plays. You'll soon see if they are waiting for mana generation or playing smaller cards to get you with the death by a thousand paper cuts.

Never give up, you never know what the next card you'll be dealt can bring.
Better to take your time and think about what is happening and how the card combinations can work.

The most cards I had to face off against was this defeat:

 

Totally hammered from the start.

From the wiki the game is free and seems that it will always be even when out of beta. Microtransactions may be it's payday. Free or not I don't know if I'll go back to playing it. Maybe if/when its out on android or if there is another "special" mount to get.... time will tell.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearthstone:_Heroes_of_Warcraft

All rounder....

The long weekend here for Paddy's day was over in the blink of an eye. I think I need a week to recover from it, not that I even drink.... or party hard.... or got up to anything strange.... but am still shattered.

Lots of gaming was still done. The jury is still out on weather it was all productive in-game time.

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Apologies first for double posting, I have a habit of creating and editing posts quickly, errors do get through, including miss clicking when correcting posts that are "out". Dang the update and repost options.
With luck when I do re-edit a post in future I will update rather then repost.
Publish and Save are also a little too close together for comfort, fingers crossed I avoid that mistake.

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Wow in general contained bouts of the usual farming/dailies; And getting used to my new level 90 rog.  I've not gotten the numbers I'd like with Assassination so I may turn him over full time to a combat spec. My other half boosted her hunter to 90, it was a toss up between a hunter and her Paladin.... Hunter won through ease of use I think. I'll not really mention the abuse during tanking on the pala....

10 More living steel will see my Hunter get his Sky Golem..... must plant more ore....

Even with the timeless Isles gear the divide between the epically equipped has never been larger. It used to be that if you had epic purples you were (almost) set... now its the shade of purple you have that makes the difference!

The weekend saw my Hearthstone mount goal completed. I'll post that up in detail separately.
Once I had finished and gotten the Hearthsteed I logged into wow to be greeted with this:

Talk about timing!

So I collected the mount....

Got the achi....

Then re-subbed for 6 month's..... that's a lot of money Blizz has gotten from me in the last week....
1 special edition of WoD expansion, 1 normal edition of WoD Expansion & a 6 month sub, thank crunchy it was pay week.

I got to handin a lot of the gear for transmog's and then used them to transmog my hunter...

Still needs a lot to complete the look...

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I did a fair amount of battlefield 4 as well, some good matches and some bad matches, all kept me coming back for more.
I've just gotten to level 31, unlocked all but the recon class's perks and am about half way through that. I am not a fan of the Sniper rifles, although I can appreciate the skill involved. Much better to flank the snipers overlooking whatever point and bayonet them.... I find that quiet therapeutic especially after they snipe me and dont' move from their perch.
I'm also trying to find the best role for each class with the best layout of gear per map/match type, but I think mixing and matching between spawns is "fine".
As I play the recon class I seem to be leaning more towards an Engineer type of play sytle, upgrading the carbines and using the C4 against tanks and such. I think I'll have to take my time in larger games to actually start being a sniper/dedicated marksman properly. Overall I'm very happy with the Assault/Support and Engineer setup.
As some stage I need to finish off the single player campaign after the last save game corruption just to be sure I can get access to more unlockables.

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Eve was again the usual PI/POS and skills updates.

My main main has reached the longer term skills around the 21 Days+ mark. I think I'll have to redo a list of skills that alt's have that he does not. That's another "thing" I have, if an alt is all level 4's in say armour skills, and on comparison I see that my main only has level 3's in the same skills.... that's a stop the press moment.

My second main had done enough missions to get the 120k LP needed to buy the Stratios cruiser bpc.

I have to say that owning both the frig and the cruiser has been a bit of a double edged sword. Actually owning the ships has proved different. The gaining of LP and the making of isk has been good. As they say the want is not as good as the have.

Better to use a Buzzard than the SOE frig, I can see the use of the cruiser being better, as a Buzzard upgrade, but I can't think of a case where I would actually use it instead.
For now they are fitted collectors pieces.

I'll do a lot more soe missions so that the second main gets more sec statues/isk/loot and LP to buy the main main a bpc as well.... (another "thing" I do, cant' have one char with and one without).
Once that's done I think I'll be concentrating on epic arc's on both characters. Then moving on to Incursions with the main.

My Null alt finally got a chance to setup the plasma planet, with a lil more luck I'll get the final product rolling out properly by the end of the week.

Hearthstone.....

I played hearthstone last night. I had read/seen information about it before but as I'm not into card games I didn’t pay much attention to it. That is until a friend said that you can get a free wow mount from it!! 

It's in open Beta at the moment and looks pretty polished.

 http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=8345/hearthstoned

It's a little quirky and fun and was easy to get into unlike others I've tried. I got the npc starter opponents all done with only 1 loss. I then moved on to the class specific hero's, defeated the hunter but as it was late I ended that but I'll return to it and keep going until I get 3 wins in a row to get the mount. So I'll have to see how the online pvp goes.

The mount my friend got was the blue one, I'd like to get both.... may not happen.

and this pic of them from MMO Champ flying looks like they have cool wings:

Here is my last npc play through in quick-pics:

Nice of them to say so....

 

Open Beta is here:
http://eu.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/12440010/hearthstone-open-beta-is-here-22-01-2014

Worth a try even if your not into wow.