Archive February 2011

So apparently there is a cap on the amount of gold a single character can have in WoW. The cap is supposedly 214748 gold, 36 silver and 46 copper according to the first (and only) Google search I did. I don't care to really do any more research on the topic since I am pretty much set in reaching the cap on my own.  About three weeks ago I really wanted to get my hands on a Tsunami deck so I could get myself a new trinket.  So I started obsessively playing the auction house as a jewelcrafter and blacksmither in order to raise myself 25k for the deck.  A little over a week later, I wanted to make myself Vial of the Sands, so I started playing the AH again some more until I was able to make a tad over 45k in gold to cover the mats for my new transformation mount.

Now I don't really have anything I want to spend with gold, so I've been collecting.  I had slowly worked my way back to around 17-18k, just lightly buying/selling but since I can't really play much of Rift or World of Warcraft until I'm back in California on Monday, I decided that I would take this weekend to see just how much gold I can make through the auction house.  Now weekends are typically not the best times to do this, since people flood the market with stuff, but it also means that elementium and pyrite ore is cheap, allowing me to pick up the mats I need to create Ebonsteel Belt Buckles.  The other only thing that I really play through the auction house is taking ore, prospecting it and selling the gems.  I don't have the greatest cuts to stay competitive, since I actually buy the cuts my character needs, but I have enough to do semi-decent, though my greens, blues and yellows are starting to be really bad.

Anyways, yesterday I had about 17k and bought a ton of ore before I departed for Orlando.  I prospected it all, made what belts I could and cut/tossed the rest of the gems up on the auction house.  Since I was mostly in the air yesterday and didn't get a chance to stay on top of my auctions, I only made it back to around 10k.  This morning I blew all of it on someone that was selling ore for cheap.  I ended back down to 900gp, but had tons of mats to make all sorts of goodies.

Now I'm sitting back at around 3000'ish after spending another 2000 or so on more ore.  The following screenshot shows just how many gems I'm sitting on and how many Ebonsteel Belt Buckles.  I plan on making a few more when Volatile Earth drops some more.  The screenshot also doesn't show the 100+ auctions I have live on the auction house right now.



All in all, I'm hoping to be around 50,000 with this lot, but it'll be fluctuating as I keep buying ore for cheap to make buckles and gems.  I've been capping out at the 200 auctions per day limit on the Android app.  I'll be sure to update my progress at the end of this weekend with how well it all went.  And of course I'll be sure to post up an indepth how-to cap gold as a blacksmither and a jewelcrafter.  It's really not that hard.

I'm currently sitting on an Airbus A321, US Airways flight to Orlando from Phoenix and enjoying WiFi for the first time in my life.  It cost $12.95 and it is quite possibly the best $12.95 I've ever spent.  I was able to throw up two news posts for Autoguide.com, ordered a Motorola XOOM and saved $200.00 bucks - use coupon code OCNNSB25 (thanks OchoChinco!), may still work - and logged into Rift to secure my character name and even got a couple of levels. I'm pleasantly surprised just how smooth and quick the WiFi is up here and how stable it is.  I don't think I've really dropped connection yet and I can't wait until WiFi is more readily available across all sorts of flights... and hopefully one day be available for free.  It sure as hell makes flying a whole lot less painful.

Will be posting this week/weekend my thoughts on Rift's head start.  I'll be back in Orange County, CA on Monday and hopefully my XOOM will be there waiting for me so that I can post up some impressions from that.

edit: Code no longer works for Xoom itself, but still works for accessories.

Unless you've been living underneath a rock the last week (because you're scared of zombies), you've probably heard the buzz on Dead Island's trailer.  And in case you haven't, you just might want to spare yourself the 3 minutes and 8 seconds to entertain yourself with what might be the best trailer for a video game ever.  Instead of your typical mundane "ONOES HERE COMES ZOMBIES" trailer, this one actually touches you... softly, at the heart.  You almost can't wait to jump into the game and butcher those zombies in the face for what they've done.

With close to three million views on the trailer (at the time of this posting), and plenty of discussions going on throughout the Internet on it, Dead Island is hyping itself up to be a very popular game.  And if you follow Deep Silver at all, you may know that they have a psychotic, yet genius, Manager of Marketing & PR, Aubrey Norris.  I still think the little girl in the trailer is based off of her.  Moral of the story, if you follow chupacaubrey on Twitter, you'll hear plenty of Dead Island news... among other things that are probably better left unsaid.

Enjoy the trailer after the break.

Decided to take some new photos of the Prius today. Check out more after the jump.

I have played an awful lot of MMORPGs in my lifetime. Starting with Dark Age of Camelot, I also played Shadowbane, Star Wars Galaxies, Final Fantasy XI, Neverwinter Nights, Lineage, Lineage II, City of Heroes/City of Villains, Matrix Online, Guild Wars, World of Warcraft (of course), RF Online, Warhammer Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Age of Conan, Champions Online, Aion, Free Realms, and most recently Final Fantasy XIV. Unfortunately out of this lengthy list of MMORPGs, the only games I ever invested a serious amount of time into was Dark Age of Camelot and World of Warcraft. The rest probably got anywhere from one to three months of my attention before I reverted back to either console gaming or WoW. Not that many of these games were bad, I play MMORPGs and enjoy them because of the friends I play with and the majority of the time, many of us lose interest in the games due to the lack of polish or overabundance of bugs. Worst is when the company does a horrible job supporting its product with a lack of patches and bug fixes. Nonetheless, I don't mind spending a few bucks on a new MMORPG to experience the world, game and character development just to break the routine of whatever farming I may be doing in WoW to pass the time.

I'm hoping that Rift: Planes of Telara might hold my interest for more than three months. And I'm anticipating it just might based on what I've seen in the beta thus far. Read more about my initial, albeit quick and short, impressions of Rift after the break.

Picked up my car from HKS on Monday with some new goodies. The Matte White Wraptivo Aimgain Tunerzine Prius is now sporting a set of HKS Hipermax S-Style II coilovers and their Racing Suction intake kit. The car was previously dropped on TEIN H-Tech springs, but with the kit and wheels, the stance just couldn't cut it anymore. A huge thanks to RJ de Vera for setting it up with HKS, and a huge thanks to Ryan and Jon for taking care of the car and giving it the look and handling capabilities it needs. I'm well aware the Prius isn't exactly a sports car, but having a nice set of suspension sure makes the drive a little more lively. The interior is currently gutted out of the car and at Infinite Auto Design to get reupholstered with a fancy double-diamond stitched pattern in preparation for its photoshoot with Super Street.



Check out more photos after the break.

March will be an exciting month for me. Not only will it be my birthday, but there's a nice collection of releases that I hope to get my hands on, so expect March to be a starting month for me to start writing some real reviews on all sorts of goodies.

I'll be kicking off the month on March 1st by getting Rift, taking a break from World of Warcraft. For those that haven't read or seen much on Rift, I'll be posting up a Beta impressions shortly as I try to sneak some more time in to play some more. After having played so many MMORPGs in my life, Rift is sort of refreshing, taking the best elements from various MMORPGs and combining it into one. It's definitely not groundbreaking or revolutionary, but the way they handle character classes makes it a sure buy to at least explore for a few months.

Even though I didn't play a ton of Dragon Age, I'll probably be picking up Dragon Age 2 to check out during Rift downtime.

I'll be extra excited for March 22nd, when Dissidia Duodecim comes out, the sequel to Dissidia, Square Enix's treat to Final Fantasy players. I'm a huge Final Fantasy junkie, so I'm looking forward to spending a lot of time unlocking everything - just like I did for the original Dissidia. Expect some lengthy posts on that one I'm sure.

On the 27th I'll get my hands on Nintendo's 3DS, which has been intrigued me since the day it was announced. I'm all about new technology and glasses-free 3D on a portable gaming system is most certainly new technology that I can be interested in. So be ready for a huge write up on my 3DS impressions including videos and photos on launch day.

Then to close on the month on the 29th I'll be picking up The 3rd Birthday for PSP. For those unaware of what The 3rd Birthday is all about, it's the third installment in the Parasite Eve series. The first two were released for Playstation and were an interesting survival horror type third-person shooter game. It's been well over a decade since I've visited the world of Parasite Eve, so it'll be interesting to see how Square Enix has evolved the series and whether or not any actual effort was put into the development of the game. I'll be pretty disappointed if it's just a mediocre product simply cashing out on whatever they can on the series.

Until then, I'll be updating throughout the week catching up on my World of Warcraft adventures over the last few months and Rift Beta impressions.

This time I promise I'll keep this one regularly updated with all sorts of blogs and posts about tech gadgets, gaming, cars and work related stuff along with just general ramblings from my brain.  For now just stay tuned as I'll be updating soon with a whole lot of stuff I've been meaning to write about.