Carpe Flux Capacitor

All posts tagged Carpe Flux Capacitor

Happy anniversary, Warcraft!

Posted by Peter (Devee) on November 23, 2014
Posted in: Blizzard and Battle.net, BlizzCon, Blog, Carpe Flux Capacitor, Devee, Gear, Glitches / Secrets / Hidden Things, Holidays, Journal, Mooglegem, Petros, PVP, Quests, Raiding, Transmog, World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Petros

Happy 10th anniversary, World of Warcraft! Happy 20th anniversary Warcraft!

Today seems like a good day to reflect a little. That’s Petros in the screenshot, my Night Elf warrior of S A D on Uther. He was my very first character. You can see that the guild is pretty dead; that’s fine, because I don’t know who anyone is. I think I joined because my high level friend was in it. I started playing WoW as soon as it was released and made this character to play with my roommate at the time, Antonio. Everyone out leveled me very quickly because I took things slow. I always ended up switching characters quite a bit. Before hitting 20 or so I switched to a tauren hunter to try it. I ended up liking Horde more. I then switched to a PVP server and made an orc hunter. Along the way, there were a few mages and priests that never hit 10. Eventually I tried my original character again, getting him to 23, before switching to my current server, Kil’jaeden. I started with a tauren shaman who got to his 30s and then made my current priest. My plan was to heal with Mooglegem until she caught up to my level and then switch back to my shaman. That switch back never happened.

Warcraft itself always reminds me of my friend Lloyd from elementary school because we used to talk about it a lot. Honestly, I’m not sure I ever actually finished one of the games. I mostly screwed around in multiplayer, but I was terrible anyways. Regardless, I knew the general plot. I don’t think the first two are really playable anymore, but the third one holds up. I should go back and play it.

World of Warcraft gave me a lot of great memories. It seems like such a different game now – not just because of the mechanical changes but because of the mindset. Once you see the game through to max level, it changes your perspective.

I remember being so amazed at the size of the game. When I finally got my Night Elf all the way to Ironforge, I had a dilemma. Do I set my hearth there, giving up the quest lines I was doing, or do I hearth back home and give up the long trek to reach the city that was so full of people I had to use my roommate’s computer so I wouldn’t crash? I wrote an article for WoW Insider on this subject.

I ran dungeons with a group of friends I knew in real life. I remember Antonio yelling at me not to attack things that weren’t aggressive. I wanted their skin.

When one of my characters first reached the Barrens, one of the quests said something about the Horde soldiers needing me to help them. It felt so cool. “I’m one of them now!”

hitting 80 with thrall

I finally hit the level cap for the first time in Wrath of the Lich King. I made sure to plan it so I could ding by turning in a quest to Thrall.

I joined a terrible guild to raid because they did a lot of old raids just for fun. They didn’t raid the current tier at all, but there was no stress of an application process. I got over that quickly.

Joining Carpe Flux Capacitor was a big deal. Who knew I was making such a great friends? I’ve met a pretty good chunk of the guild despite not living near most of them. It helps that I live in Irvine so some of them come to me for BlizzCon. It did feel a little odd at my guildmate’s wedding to say, “How do I know him? Oh, we play WoW together.”

8 hour warsong gulch wsg

Once there was a bug and the flag despawned completely from Warsong Gulch. I played in this one match, with breaks for dinner, for over eight hours.

Moogle made delicious cookies for everyone participating in our guild’s Secret Santa.

Bulleto, Mooglegem’s tauren hunter, made me a mechanohog. I tried it and killed the both of us almost immediately.

I was so excited when we finally killed Arthas after weeks of failing.

The quest line to get Quel’delar was one of my absolute favorite memories. I did it with Mooglegem, and we had a blast. I can’t use swords, so I received the Hammer of Purified Flame. I still have it, and it’s a popular transmog choice.

I’ve had a ton of wonderful memories in World of Warcraft, and I’m sure there are many more to come.

Mantle of Warchief stripped from Hellscream

Posted by Peter (Devee) on March 10, 2014
Posted in: Achievements, Carpe Flux Capacitor, Devee, Gear, Journal, Mists of Pandaria, Progression, Raiding, World of Warcraft. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Garrosh defeated

We finalled stripped the mantle of Warchief from Hellscream and liberated Orgrimmar! According to my count, it was on the guild’s 45th attempt.

I’m happy to finally complete normal mode. This might be it for the guild for a while; I know a number of people are looking forward to a break. I think the guild will take a break for a week or two and then see who wants to continue.

I won loot from my bonus roll – a tier token! I turned it in for the fifth and final normal-mode healing tier piece. I don’t think I’m going to use because my off-tier is better in that slot, but I’m glad to have the option

Normally I include a montage of our deaths before the kill video, but with 43 failures, it would take me a while to edit them and render the video, plus it would make the video pretty long. You’ll have to live with the kill video alone. Of course, I doubt anyone really cares to watch our kill videos, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. Unfortunately, I had WoW’s audio routed through my speakers and Mumble through my headset, and somehow FRAPS only picked up Mumble. No WoW audio in this one. Oh well.

You can read more details about the kill on the Carpe Flux Capacitor kill announcement.

Devee of the Horde

Posted by Peter (Devee) on November 20, 2013
Posted in: Achievements, Carpe Flux Capacitor, Devee, Journal, PVP, World of Warcraft. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

of the Horde

It took me a long time, but I finally got my 100,000th kill! You can now call me Devee of the Horde. It seems crazy how much I slowed down. I PVP’d a lot while leveling, spending much more time in battlegrounds that actually trying to level. After I hit 80, my first level cap, I began running heroics and old raids. When I applied to Carpe Flux Capacitor in December 2009, I had 37,787 honorable kills.

50000 HKs

In February 2010, two months after joining Carpe Flux Capacitor, I had 50,000 HKs. After that, it took me close to four years to reach 100,000. Whoops. It always felt like there was something I needed to do to improve my gear for raids. I let myself down!

Elvion

My 100,000th Honorable Kill was Elvion of Thorium Brotherhood. I’ve been playing a lot of Temple of Kotmogu recently. The small arena really lends itself to killing. I guess it’s as close to a 10v10 arena match as we’ll see. Now, do I set my sights on the 250,000 HK achievement? I’ll keep PVPing, but I’m definitely happy to have the “of the Horde” title!

 

 

Guild dinner at Blizzcon

Posted by Peter (Devee) on November 11, 2013
Posted in: Blizzard and Battle.net, BlizzCon, Carpe Flux Capacitor, Diablo III, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, Reaper of Souls, Warlords of Draenor, World of Warcraft. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

guild dinner at blizzcon

BlizzCon was this weekend, and I found the announcements pretty exciting. Despite living just twenty to thirty minutes from the convention center, I didn’t go. I think it feels less special as a convention because it’s so close, but I do watch the stream. I’ll be posting about some of the announcements and my feelings about them later. I have something more important to mention first!

What would World of Warcraft be without people with whom to play? Some of my guildies came down, and got to hang out this weekend. I’m second from the right, in the red shirt. I stole the pic from my guild leader, so hopefully she doesn’t mind. I went to dinner with three out-of-towners and Mooglegem on Friday night, and Saturday night the group of us above went to dinner. That includes four people I met (in person) this weekend, which was great.

In the photo, you might notice a cookie jar between a glass of water and a beer. Moogle baked cookies and brought them with her in that jar. While we in line at a restaurant, she handed them out to us. A girl behind us got excited, asking where we got the cookies. Moogle explained that she baked them and brought them with her. She seemed sad, and Moogle offered her a cookie. She got really excited, accepted, tried it, and then told Moogle how good it was! Later, when we were seated, Moogle offered cookies to our waiter and waitress. The waiter took one fairly early and thought it was great. It was later in the meal when the waitress accepted, and she also told Moogle how good she thought it was. A few minutes later, a different waitress came over to us, telling us that she didn’t know who baked the cookies but that her coworker shared a piece with her and she thought they were amazing. Moogle gave one to her too. Everyone loves cookies!

As for the content from BlizzCon itself, I was pretty impressed. I think Warlords of Draenor sounds very exciting and the changes are, generally, good ones. I’m also pleased with what I saw of Reaper of Souls. I’ve never played a MOBA, but I’m optimistic about Heroes of the Storm (and the trailer was fantastic). I’d actually not played Hearthstone in a while, but the convention made me excited to play once more. Adventures sound particularly cool! And I guess StarCraft was there. I don’t play it. I’ll post more in-depth about the announcements in the future!

Feng down

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 19, 2012
Posted in: Carpe Flux Capacitor, Devee, Journal, Raiding, World of Warcraft. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Feng

Last night we managed to kill Feng the Accursed! He went down without too much trouble, and we had time to spare! One person had to leave, and we didn’t have someone to fill the spot, so he switched to LFR. We played a different sort of game there. Once we recognized that dying was best because it meant you didn’t have to do anything, I just spammed heals on guildies to keep them alive despite their best efforts.

Fun night.

 

Dragon Soul and Destroyer’s End

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 4, 2012
Posted in: Achievements, Carpe Flux Capacitor, Devee, Journal, Raiding, World of Warcraft. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

I was previously only 5/8 in Dragon Soul because my guild stopped raiding. When a guildie asked me if I wanted to run a normal mode Dragon Soul last night, I was excited. It’d be a chance to do it on normal mode even if it is super nerfed now, and it would also be a chance to practice after the patch. Nate took a little convincing, but when he realized that not being set up after the patch wasn’t a good enough excuse, he swapped over and joined us.

I don’t care if it’s late. I’m still taking a killshot. Here’s Blackhorn dead. I had never actually got to do any attempts on him previously. While I had studied the fight, the mechanics still confused me. (Consider that it’s also been many months since I studied the fight too.)

Then gem had to ride Nate around. I think she really liked being able to do that. Shhh, don’t tell his wife that he let gem ride him.

Spine of Deathwing was an absolute blast. While I do feel like it’s anti-climatic in that it’s the same process repeated, I still find it really cool. Rather than being in a room fighting a raid boss, the location is the actual boss. This isn’t the first game to do it, but it’s definitely fun.

While Mooglegem didn’t make it to the end of the fight, we did successfully put down the Madness of Deathwing. I also won the Maw of the Dragonlord! Someone offered me 500g for it, but I wanted to keep the mace. How exciting! Now I can be Devee, Destroyer’s End.

 

 

 

Blog Azeroth: The nicest thing someone’s done for me

Posted by Peter (Devee) on July 2, 2012
Posted in: Blog Azeroth Shared Topics, Carpe Flux Capacitor, World of Warcraft. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 9 Comments

Every week, Blog Azeroth proposes a Shared Topic for World of Warcraft bloggers to discuss. This week’s topic was proposed by frinka of Warcraft Street.

What is the nicest thing another player has ever done for you in-game?

How about sending me a full computer, a video card, or TOR? Wait, that wasn’t in-game. Unfair.

There was the homemade jam that I was sent. Wait, that’s the same problem.

Okay, how about letting me roll on and win the Black War Mammoth because the raid leader already had it? He said he would have ninja’d it otherwise. Wait, that wasn’t nice.

How about the guy who let Moogle have the Sinister Squashling because she really wanted one? No, that wasn’t for me.

At first I couldn’t think of what to write for this topic. However, I quickly realized it was because there was no one single action that was the nicest. My guild’s acceptance, friendship, and teamwork as a whole is probably the nicest thing. It’s people constantly passing on gear, insisting that someone else take it. It’s the planning and worrying the our guild leader and raid leaders have to do. I couldn’t count the number of ways that I’m reassured that my feelings matter.

I guess you could say I like my guild. I know this is sort of stretch to fit the topic, but it’s how I feel.

Last week’s topic was also proposed by frinka.

Knowing what you know now about the game, what name other than World of Warcraft would you give it? Why?

My favorite response was by Mia of Chronicles of Mia.

She suggests a number of names, including Warcraft: Evolution or “possibly change Warcraft to Azeroth.” Azeroth: Evolution and Warcraft: Evolution both seem like cool names to me!

New Computer and TOR!

Posted by Peter (Devee) on March 19, 2012
Posted in: Carpe Flux Capacitor, Journal. Tagged: , , , , , , . 1 Comment

Or: Why I Have the Best Guild

As I’ve mentioned previously, my guild is pretty empty in World of Warcraft; however, most of the members have been playing The Old Republic together. My little Intel i3 laptop with integrated graphics can hardly play WoW, so I didn’t want to spend money on TOR when I knew I wouldn’t be able to play it.

Eventually, my friend Kristine shipped me a copy of the game. The idea was that if I couldn’t play it now, eventually I’d get my computer fixed and upgraded and would then have a copy. Mooglegem and I excitedly planned our characters and spend hours in character creation only to find that my computer could most definitely not handle TOR.

Did my guild shrug it off and tell me they’d see me later? No. They shipped me a computer.

Nate had an extra computer he wasn’t using, so he shipped it last week and I got it up and running Friday night. It’s a Gateway FX7026 with a Core 2 Quad CPU at 2.50 GHz and 4 GB of DDR2 RAM running Vista Home Premium 64-bit. I had some trouble getting it to run at first, but after a recovery it’s working. It’s crashed a couple times while playing TOR, but I hope to have that fixed soon (and even if I can’t, it’s not a huge deal).

The computer was missing the side-panel, which would make heat an issue. Again, what did the guild do? You’d think they’d inform me to buy one, but Kristine ordered one and had it shipped to my house. On top of this, Justin upgraded his video card and shipped me his old one. It will arrive tomorrow.

Simply amazing. I’m so lucky!

Taking a Break

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 6, 2012
Posted in: Devee, Journal, Raiding. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

It looks like Carpe Flux Capacitor is taking a break from raiding. The last few weeks we’ve been unable to raid due to lack of attendance. Our guild leader took a vote to see if we wanted officially to take a break. The idea is that if we don’t do this officially, we’ll continue to waste our time showing up, and then the people who have been showing up will get tired and quit. While I want to raid, I agree with her thinking; I voted in favor of the break as well.

There’s a lot of joking that The Old Republic killed us, but the people who are playing ToR all login for raids. We’ve just been dwindling, and not everyone makes it every week. I think LFR is contributing. There are three reasons to raid.

  • Gear for the next raid
  • Experience the fights and lore
  • The actual “game” of achieving progressive challenges

Being that Dragon Soul is the last raid of the expansion, there’s no reason to use it to gear up. We will not this gear to be able to do the next raid because Mists of Pandaria’s greens will be better than what we can get here. I don’t agree with this point because it seems to me that if we only raided to be able to do proceeding raids, then why raid at all? Still, I believe this is one of the reasons people raid, and one of the reasons why we don’t have the attendance now.

As for experiencing the fights and lore, LFR killed this. We’ve all experienced Dragon Soul already. Yeah, there are obviously mechanical differences (and I’d really love to see Deathwing roll), but the story is the same. We’ve seen it. There goes that incentive.

What’s left is pure game. Doing normal mode solely for the challenge of pushing ourselves. This is all that’s left. Even if we finished normal mode, this would push us to do heroic as well. It doesn’t look like this reason is enough.

In general, I like LFR, but I think it contributed to this. Regardless, it’s done it for me as well. I like the idea of raiding, but the break is nice too!

Dragon Soul 3/8

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 17, 2011
Posted in: Raiding, Videos. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

I realized I never posted kill shots! Oh no! Here we are after having killed Morchok.

And now you get to see an off-center kill shot of Yor’sahj the Unsleeping. He must have been tired.

This is our newest kill shot from Tuesday! We killed that dumb Warlord Zon’ozz!

And another video from Zaghar! Woo!

Happy Winter Veil!

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 15, 2011
Posted in: Holidays. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Today marks the first day Winter Veil! As Greatfather Winter walks across the land, his billowing cloak leaves behind a wintry veil. By welcoming him into our cities and hearts, we are rewarded with a great Feast of Winter Veil!

Here you can see me celebrating with some hot chicks. Um, I mean Moogle, Harley, and a non-guildie we ran into who likes to celebrate!

And for our Secret Santa, we have five whole people who signed up! Wooo!

Loot Rules for Tier Pieces

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 13, 2011
Posted in: Raiding. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

This patch introduced the Looking for Raid tool, which is great. It allows people who weren’t able to raid previously to raid. It allows people who already raid to minor upgrades faster. Because tier pieces from LFR will satisfy set bonus requirements along with normal mode pieces, it allows raiders to reach their four-piece bonus faster. However, this creates an interesting problem.

When a tier token drops in normal, should a raider who already has the LFR version pass on the token to allow someone who doesn’t have tier 13 for that slot at all a chance? This would help people reach their set bonuses faster as well as give pieces to people who need them the most. However, there’s another side to this. What if person A runs LFR every week, and person B never runs LFR. Person B might have an initial advantage because they’ll get the LFR T13, but in the long run, person B will be better off because they’ll be able to collect 4-piece normal T13 while person A is stuck in LFR T13.

I was thinking about this yesterday so I brought it up with my raid leader / guild leader. As it turns out, she’s been thinking about the same problem. It’s a difficult one, and she plans on asking how the raid team feels. Many of us already pass on loot to let less-geared members have gear. I think we’re all a nice bunch. However, I don’t like the idea of having to always pass on all my tier gear. Last week we ran the LFR all together during our raid time. If we keep doing this, perhaps it won’t be a problem.

I’m still not sure how Carpe Flux Capacitor will handle this. We’ll see how the raid team as a whole feels. I’m sure various raid teams out there will handle this differently. I’m curious what others are planning to do.