Reporting Live From Not-San Diego!

   Hey, all! Gladdstone here reporting to you live from the hustle and bustle of the desk in my bedroom. The energy in the room is practically tangible, and the costumes are absolutely incredible. I'm currently cosplaying as Exhausted Blogger With a Hint of BO and Maybe He Should Take a Shower Tonight Man.
   Bitter jokes aside, I'm not in San Diego, and am in fact on the opposite side of the country in a god forsaken town in upstate New York. Lots of corn, some drugs, and plenty of rain. Don't get me wrong, living in upstate New York isn't all bad-it makes you appreciate going on vacation all the more.
   Joking aside, some really cool stuff has come out of the San Diego Comic Con this year, nothing earth shattering, but some interesting stuff nonetheless. My personal favorite, of course being the release of the trailer for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

   Now, if you'll excuse me. I need to change my pants and clean up the blood because that trailer made me shit bricks.
   Something has always really struck a chord with me throughout every Lord of the Rings movei, and that's the soundtrack. And the music in the new Hobbit trailer is no exception. Absolutely fantastic as always. Martin Freeman is, of course, brilliant in the few lines he delivers in the teaser.
   My only complaint about the trailer is the same complaint I've been giving for the past two Hobbit movies and that is there is way too much CGI and I absolutely can't stand it. The original trilogy did so well balancing real effects with CGI, but with the hobbit, it's almost like they just decided to film the whole thing in a warehouse with 15 actors. All the orcs look essentially the same, and all but featureless, and the "cool stunts" just look stupid. The barrel scene in the last movie had me shaking with rage for a solid 20 minutes.
   Despite all this, I still manage to love the movies with every fiber of my being. Maybe it's just because I grew up on Tolkien, and nothing could keep me from loving what he does. Then there's the fact that Martin Freeman and Sir Ian McKellan are two of my all-time favorite actors.
   One of the most fascinating stories to come out of San Diego this year, however was the cease and desist letter sent by Comic-Con International to the Salt Lake City Comic Con over the usage of the phrase "Comic Con." Now, I'm no lawyer, but that seems to be a giant load of crap to me.
   Now, several people have speculated (and I agree) that this was sent mainly due to the fact that SLCC is quickly threatening to overtake San Diego as the largest comic book convention, right in their own backyard. Although it is still the third largest convention (New York Comic Con is the second largest, and guess who's going this year?), the San Diego convention is limited to 150,000 people due to size constraints. The convention has, in fact threatened to move if this isn't changed, but we'll have to wait and see. Part of me doubts they'll move, as they seem to be a pretty permanent fixture to me.
   The last story I want to briefly touch on is Comixology now offering many comics DRM-free from their site. As always since Amazon purchased it, there are still no in-app purchases rendering the whole thing a pain in the ass, but this is certainly a good thing. Notably, neither Marvel or DC have gotten in on this deal as of yet, although if we see some bigger names such as Dark Horse hopping on the band wagon, they may be forced to follow suit.
   To be honest, however, I haven't even opened the app since they got rid of in-app purchases. I tried the website and the whole thing was just a pain in the ass. Not only did you pretty much have to know exactly what you want, but this prevents you from stumbling on those little indie companies that the app was really for to begin with.
   As it stands, I still won't be using the app until they bring back the in-app purchases, and frankly, I don't see it happening anytime soon, if ever. So, screw you, Amazon.

Tacos,
Gladdstone

Return of the Gladdstone

   Hey guys! Wow, it's been a while since I posted. I'm really sorry about that, things have been simultaneously super busy and insanely boring at the same time here, and it's killing me. But now with things winding down a bit, I have a little more time to be posting.
   So to get you all caught up on what I've been doing the past two weeks, we'll start in WoW (because Blizzard). Monday or Tuesday of last week, I got an email in my inbox from Blizzard. I think to myself "Oh, a newsletter or something, let's see what they have to say..." WRONG.
   Guess who got their WoD beta invite?
   Awwww yeeeaaaahhhh.

BOOM

   So anyway, after completing the obligatory flipping of shit I immediately logged onto Battle Net and downloaded all the extra crap I needed (leaving less than 4gb of memory on my hard drive. I guess it's about time to do some spring cleaning). Several hours later, because my internet connection is terrible, I was logging into the WoD beta, and then promptly booted out. I struggled with that for about two days before finally getting in. I decided, because my main is on the Alliance side, I would check everything out on the Horde side so as to preserve the fun on my mains a little bit more (not like it won't be fun on my troll shaman still, but ya know). I chose to roll myself a level 90 orc warlock, because I've always wanted a warlock but never really put in the work for one. I figured maybe if I played a level 90 one in the beta that would give me the kick in the pants I needed to finally level one. Which it did, and I am now leveling Finwik, the gnome warlock.
   Anyway, after dealing with all that "how the hell do I play this class?" shit and getting a bit settled, I wandered around for a while trying to figure out how to get to the new content. About an hour later, I finally thought to turn around from the Warchief's Command board and noticed two gargantuan NPCs. Yeah. So I got the quest and went into Draenor and let me just say, everything about this shit is awesome. Everything looks fantastic, you can search your bags now and that is the absolute greatest thing ever, and the new quest log is just fantastic beyond words. I can finally look at the map and keep an eye on what's going on around me. The only thing I would still like to see with the interface is the ability to drag the windows around the screen so I can see certain areas and have more windows open.

Smell that? That's me soiling myself.

   I won't ramble on anymore about that because there is other big news to get to, which is the launch of the new Hearthstone adventure Curse of Naxxramas on Tuesday of this week. I nearly shit my pants in excitement and proceeded to complete all three bosses in just under 2 hours (I'm not very good). I still have both class challenges and the Heroic to do, but I've been saving those for this weekend. To be honest, I may not even be able to do the Heroics because I've been watching streamers like Amaz do them, and it took even him a solid 2 hours to beat Maexxna on Heroic, so we'll see if I can nail down that cardback ever. Suffice it to say, though, Curse of Naxxramas felt absolutely incredible to go through, and if Team 5 keeps up this quality of work for the (long) life of this game, I will be playing this game until the day they shut down the servers and the zombies take over the world.


   San Diego Comic Con is going on this weekend, so you can probably expect a giant news roundup on Monday from all of that, hopefully including some video clips and whatnot. I've never gotten to go, personally, but maybe one of these years that will change.
   I think that about covers everything I wanted to talk about for now, so I'll just leave you all with one last note for Java. Fuck you guys, I do not, nor will I ever want your goddamn Ask toolbar. No one wants it, no one uses Ask, just stop trying. All you're doing is inconveniencing your customers for a few dollars. #rantover.

Tacos,
Gladdstone

WoW and Tchaikovsky

   So I've determined there is just too little going on during the summer, and I am going to cut out Wednesday posts until mid-August when marching band starts-then who knows? I might need to add a fourth post on Saturday just to cover everything.
   It's been an exciting week in World of Warcraft for the newly sprouted Nerds Under Fire guild on Blackwater-Raiders. We just hit level 4 the other day and we say a big uptick in recruitment. With any luck, we'll be pulling together some raiders for a 10-man team soon. The goal is to have everything in place for the release of WoD, however.
   Big news coming out of Hearthstone as well, as the Curse of Naxxramas pricing has been announced. The expansion will be available in five parts with a new wing costing either $6.99 or 700 gold per wing. In addition, for the the first month or so, there will be a launch event during which the first wing will be unlockable for free, after which players can purchase the other four, either individually, or as a package. A guide to the bundle is posted right here.

   To break it down even simpler, all five wings will cost $24.99 for those who don't take advantage of the launch event. For the rest of us it will cost $19.99, $14.99, $9.99, or less depending on if you choose to use gold or not.
   It is important to note that although you may buy all five wings at launch, you will not receive them all immediately. Rather, they will be rolling out at the rate of one wing per week. Upon completion of the the normal tier raid, the Heroic tier will be unlocked for free.
   Back here in the real world, Tiana just returned from her week long art camp up at Pratt University. It sounded pretty amazing. I, on the other hand, have sat home playing WoW, and practicing violin. I'm not even kidding. That has been basically my entire life this week.
   Seriously, that's all I've got to say about that.
   ...
   Well, bye.

Tacos,
Gladdstone

Relatives Gone, Back to the Blog!

   Hey, everybody. After a brief hiatus for having family in town, I'm back with plenty to talk about. I've actually considered cutting these back to just Friday updates for the summer, seeing as there isn't too much going on, but I'm going to give it another week or so before I do anything.
   Having forgotten to announce it in my last post on Friday the week before last, I had family in town all last week, hence no blog posts. I just didn't have the time. They're gone now, though, so finally back to my regular posting schedule.
   So recently, I've really been hankering for a good JRPG. The bad news, however, is that I have approximately $0. Since it's launch, Square Enix's new game Bravely Default has been a grandslam among fans of the genre, but I still have yet to pick it up. Recently in Japan, however they released a demo which includes the first four chapters of gameplay. That is one hell of a demo. The demo then has an upgrade fee of what converts to about twenty dollars American. No news on whether or not this demo will be available in the US (please, please, please!) yet. As of right now, the Nintendo E-Shop is undergoing maintenance, unconnected to this, of course, but preventing me from attempting to see if this demo is available. Hopefully by Wednesday I will know, and possibly be playing the demo.
   Speaking of games I can't play because I don't have the right system, as of 17 July, 2014 Playstation owners who preordered Bungie's Destiny will be able to join the beta testing. You lucky bastards. I still don't own the Playstation 4, and I just can't justify buying the PS3 when the next gen console is only a hundred or so more. However, for those of you who are lucky enough to have a PS4 and have preordered this seriously kickass looking game, you will be able to begin killing things at 10:00pm PT. For those of you with the Xbone, you will be able to join the beta on 23 July, at 10:00pm PT. The beta will be offline July 21 and 22 for "scheduled maintenance" and then it will end on 27 July at 11:59pm PT. However, it does appear as though Bungie intends to do multiple phases of beta, akin to the Wildstar model, so you should be able to get in plenty of buggy gameplay before the game officially launches on 9 September.
   Moving onto something I haven't talked about in a fair amount of time-Hearthstone. The July Season began 7 days ago (duh) with it's featured Curse of Naxxramas cardback. Even without the announcement from Team 5, it's pretty obvious that they are pushing to have Adventure Mode out at some point this month, and not a moment too soon, I say. I've been getting my ass handed to me in ranked play for long enough and I can't even look at the arena button at this point. I think we're due for something new to come along and shake things up.
   Personally, I'm still running my budget Zoolock deck, but I also threw together a little aggro mage. The trouble is, I can't seem to get out of the control mindset when I play mage decks, so I don't think it will work out in the long run. I'm also still on a quest to make a viable priest deck (Amaz is my hero). I don't know why I love that hero class so much-I don't even have a priest in WoW-but I really love the way it plays and I'm dying to be able to play it well.
   I've also been practicing my violin a lot recentyl, I finally memorized Beethoven's 5th Sonata Op 24. My left arm is absolutely killing me, though. Everything below the elbow is just really sore, and I can't figure out why. I really don't think I've been pushing myself all that hard this week. Regardless, I think I'll lay off for a day and play some more of dem vidya games.

Tacos,
Gladdstone