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

I Don't Get Paid Enough For This

   We've looped around to yet another Monday-not that it really matters to me, I'm on summer break. Saturday was fairly uneventful, but Sunday was amazing.
   On Sunday, I took a day trip with Nik, Tiana, and Amanda W. went to Dorney Park (an amusement park in Pennsylvania). It was about a three hour ride, and it was so much fun. Tiana's mother drove us down, which was better than me driving because:

          a.) My car doesn't even work.

          b.) That's a damn long drive.

   Now the only trouble was I am not a ride person, and neither is Nik. It's less that I'm afraid, and more that I just don't get anything at all out of them (although I am also scared). In the end, they made a deal with us. We would each get to give the two of them a dare if we went on any non-roller coaster ride they picked having two vetoes. It was difficult at times, because I don't cope too well with things like g-force. The last one was this massive freaking swing. I almost backed out, but I did it and it was awful. Tiana actually ended up feeling pretty guilty afterwards because I had a minor panic attack on the ride. Although, I only hyperventilated twice, and it was fun to spend time with my friends. We had a really great time.

   The only thing I had to do today was pull a four-hour shift at work. That was pretty easy, though other than one douche.

He does not get paid to deal with your shit.

   First of all, let me point out that every store has different policies, and every state has different laws. In New York, you cannot sell alcohol to anyone without an ID regardless of their apparent age. That being said, most of the time, I will just ask people their date of birth as long as their obviously over 40 or so. The date of birth is just because I have to punch it into the computer.
   So basically what happened is this guy came in to buy some sort of beer or something and I asked his his age. He wasn't from New York, and for some reason he got really pissed off. He stared at me for a good 10 seconds, glaring at me before saying "are you fucking kidding me? I'm 55, idiot." Thanks, bro. Thanks. That's a totally reasonable reaction you gigantic, self-centered douche.

Want want want want

   Seriously, people. We cashiers get paid minimum wage, which by the way is not even remotely close to what we get to put up with every single damn day-also not even close to livable. So please, if you can't be nice, at least try to be a little polite to your cashiers, and your baristas, and all the other poor shits that have to put up with this stuff.
   All right, now that I've vented a bit, it's time to move into a little bit of news. Still waiting on my Warlords of Draenor beta invite, and actually, while I'm on the subject, I still don't have my Heroes of the Storm beta key, either. To be honest, I think I'd rather get the latter. Odds are I wouldn't play a ton of the WoD beta, probably just enough to report some bugs. I would really prefer to wait to experience it for the first time when it launches. But with Heroes, it's more skill than seeing things, and I'd like to be at least fairly decent at it when we finally get the full game. But no, apparently I'm not allowed to have either of them. Curse you, Blizzard! Although, to be fair, I did get into the Hearthstone beta as soon as it started, which was pretty great.
   Thanks for tuning in and listening to my griping for another week.

Gimme My Key!

   We have once again reached the greatest day of the week-the promised land of the calendar, Friday! And that means...time for a blog post!
   Truth be told, I really kind of miss being busy with school. I don't like sitting around all day, and it seems like my friends are never available. I sat around all day Thursday contemplating getting in the car and driving off a bridge. So. Boring. Luckily, tomorrow is graduation, and I'm performing at that with the band. Do you know what that means? Pomp and Circumstance, Pomp and Circumstance, Pomp and goddamn Circumstance. Over and over until one by one, the entire band hangs themselves. So, yeah. Good time.
   Then Sunday I'm going with a group to an amusement park for the day. I'm not usually one for rides, but I do enjoy getting out of the house for the day, so it will certainly be a fun time.
   Speaking of fun, the Warlords of Draenor Beta went live today! This is a big step in the right direction. IT could mean that we may get the actual expansion within a fairly reasonable amount of time, possibly even in time for Christmas, which seems to be their goal.
   I'm signed up for the beta on Battle Net and I've put in for just about every beta key I could get, so with a little luck, there will be a review up within the next month or so.
   Not so much fun would be my car breaking down today. I was supposed to go up to Charlie's after work, and I ended up having to get a ride from a relative because there is something seriously wrong with my car. It sounded like it might explode, and it wouldn't start.
   As such,  have to be up early tomorrow so I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut this entry a bit short. I'm going to have to be up trying to fix my car so I can get to graduation on time.
   Until Monday!

Tacos,
Gladdstone

Thanks, Geico

   Happy Wednesday, everybody. I was going to say happy hump day, but that stupid damn insurance commercial has pretty much made it a crime to use the phrase "hump day." Thanks, Geico.

The true face of evil.

   Today was my first official day of summer break and it felt pretty good. It was nice, although I did have to work. They haven't scheduled me to work a Wednesday night in a while, and I forgot how freaking busy it is. I go from work, to my violin lesson, then I come home, write this blog, then there's usually an update to be done on the Nerds Under Fire site, and then there's audio editing to be done, and then I get to go to bed. Today was made even busier because I had a rehearsal before I went to work. So as you might imagine, I'm a bit drained at this point. 

   Regardless, I'm feeling pretty good. If you've been on the site during the day this week, you'll notice things will start to move around every couple minutes, and don't stop for two to three hours. I've been trying to find a layout I like, but I just can't quite seem to nail it down. I've been trying to set up a slider to show my recent posts, but Blogger has been thwarting my every attempt. So if anyone has some helpful tips, or just the code that would be great. 

   In light of the recent lull in Azeroth, I've found myself in Telara in the past few days. For those not familiar, that would be the supposed "WoW killer" Rift which went free to play within a year. 

   Now don't think that I'm slamming the game. It's an excellent game, but I don't like the term "WoW killer." At this point, I really think the only thing that will kill WoW is itself. From my point of view, the only way it will ever die is it will just slowly dwindle out over the course of the next decade or two. Moral of the story-WoW is here to stay for a long, long time.

   Back to Rift, I must say it's really quite good, and they really have an excellent free-to-play model from what I've seen so far. You can pick between two factions, each with three races. From there you can pick from the four base classes-warrior, cleric, mage, and rogue. Now that seems like a small amount to choose from, but from there you can select your "soul." This essentially determines how you play the game. There are four roles in the game-tank, DPS, healer, and support. What's really fascinating about this game, however, is any class can be any role (that is, if you purchase the expansion). Without the expansion, for example, mages can support, DPS, and heal. However, if you purchase their expansion you can tank. 

   Now I'm just going to take a break here to let that sit in.

   Yeah, you read that right.

   Mage.

   Tank.

Remember what happened last time?

   I nearly purchased the expansion right there and I hadn't even gotten into the game yet. 

   Once I was in the game, itself I was quite impressed. Everything runs very smoothly, and the art style, while a little darker than WoW's, it's quite pleasing, and the graphics are extremely good looking, even on the lower settings. 

   I haven't even leveled beyond the starting zone yet, so you can expect a lot more to come, but I certainly expect to play a lot more of this game over the summer, especially seeing as it's more accessible to my friends that can't afford the $15 a month to play WoW. I highly recommend this game.

   Hope to see everyone back for Friday!

Tacos,

Gladdstone