Death Pizza is old news. Kel and I have formed a new 3-man arena team with our other friend Darren: Death Sausage. Our team now consists of a warrior, paladin, and a priest.
We played ten games last weekend — the last weekend of arena season two — and managed to win two of them. Not bad for a first batch of matches, considering Kel is undergeared and we’re all new at working together in a PvP setting.
The third arena season begins today. Let’s see how well we do.
My buddy Kel and I have reformed our two-man arena team for WoW, called Death Pizza. My pally and his warrior played our first ten matches on the weekend, winning two of them! This was quite an accomplishment given our lack of arena experience together and Kel’s lackluster gear. I’m not sure how my new ret-spec is going to affect how well our team will do, but I hope we’ll be able to secure a few wins each week to keep us in the 1400 point range for the time being.
After week of playing on the 2.3 patch of WoW, I have a couple of opinions to share.
1. The Retribution Tree is now viable for the Paladin class.
I used to play a ret-pally until about March or April when a friend convinced me to go prot after a patch nerfed the retribution tree a bit. I had a good spec (18/43/0, I think) and was pretty much indestructible, but it took forever to take down anything. With the changes in the 2.3 patch — like longer-lasting Vengeance and a six-second Crusader Strike cooldown — the temptation to return to the ret tree was too much. Yesterday I respecced to 20/0/41 (bye bye Avenger’s Shield, *sniff*…hello Crusader Strike!) and am loving the speed at which I can dish out the pain now. So, I’m back to playing the most disrespected spec of the most despised class: the ret-pally!
2. Alterac Valley sucks now.
Blizzard made a huge mistake in changing AV, in my opinion. It was the best battleground; a unique mix of PvE and PvP. Sadly, they took out all the lieutenants, changed the way marshals/warmasters worked, and messed up the honor rewards. It’s just not as much fun as it used to be. Oh well, maybe I’ll start to like it again in a week when I’ll need to start earning honor again (blasted 75,000 honor cap!).
3. Daily quests are a great idea.
The addition of more daily quests for the battlegrounds, dungeons, and cooking(!) gives players a reason to experience a wider variety of gameplay. Personally I think the daily quest mechanic (or some improved form of it) will most likely be what keeps the game alive in the long term (in addition to new content and system improvements, of course).
All in all, the 2.3 patch gets two huge thumbs up from me. These improvements — not to mention the new ten-man raid instance and the introduction guild banks — have, overall, made the game more enjoyable.
The first two DVD volumes of “old school” episodes of the show Sesame Street come with a warning stating that the episodes are meant for adults and are not appropriate for children. This is because the producers of the show — Sesame Workshop (formerly the Children’s Television Workshop) — feel that characters like Oscar the Grouch (who is perpetually grouchy) and Cookie Monster (who smokes a pipe, then eats it during a spoof of the show Masterpiece Theatre) model inappropriate behavior for kids.
I do admit that I’ve been grouchy in the past, and, yes, I’ve tried smoking a pipe, but, well, hmmm…maybe Sesame Street’s bad role models did affect me after all. In fact, just the other day, while I was talking to a friend, I repeatedly ran up to him, shouting “Near!” right in his face, then running twenty feet away from him and shouting “Far!” And whenever I finish counting something, I laugh like “ah, ah, ah, ah!” while lightning flashes.
I’m not going to worry about it, though. The hairy brown elephant-thing that no one else apparently sees tells me that these things are perfectly normal.
P.S. Sesame Street “Old School” Volume 2 is on my Christmas list!
This can’t be real! A video game sequel to the Ghostbusters movie?!
“Harold Ramis, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd are getting back together and revisiting their roles to make a sequel to Ghostbusters 1 and 2 – in video-game form… Both Aykroyd and Ramis are teaming up for scriptwriting duties and are going far beyond just the typical licensed add-your-voice-to-the-game-you-had-nothing-to-do-with formula.”
AWESOME!
Every once in a while I get a craving for tortillas and cheese dip. Tostitos puts out a delicious salsa con queso, regularly found in just about any grocery store. However, they also sell something called “cheezy dip”, which comes in small containers and it usually sold in convenience stores. The other day I bought some of this “cheezy dip”, thinking it was the same as their salsa con queso.
Big mistake.
After the first taste of the “cheese dip” I immediately realized something was wrong. This was not the deliciously cheezy treat I had been expecting. Upon inspecting the container of said dip, I made a horrifying discovery: Tostitos brand “cheese dip” is just cheese-flavored margarine! That’s right, margarine. Good ol’ hydrogenated vegetable oil appeared second on the list of ingredients, right after water. Next in line was maltodextrin (a starch), then another kind of starch, then salt, followed by “natural flavors” (i.e. various spices), and then cheddar cheese. More ingredients followed, but I just wanted to highlight how far down the line cheese actually was.
Contrast this to their salsa con queso where monterey jack cheese is third in the ingredient list, right after water and milk.
This “cheesy dip” sold by Frito-Lay North America, Inc. is nothing more than a disgusting salsabomination. Yes, I made up a new word to describe this stuff; it’s that bad.
Do not buy Tostitos “cheezy dip” unless you like eating mal-flavored (another new word?) margarine. Yuk.
The Amazing World of Don Dueck 