Ender Dragon . . . again . . .

Hey all!  Let's talk games! (Just a quick catch up post for this morning!)

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Minecraft

It happened again!

I destroyed that big bad Ender Dragon in Minecraft again, and . . . it'll probably happen at least one more time.

My youngest son was asleep when I defeated this dragon, and I didn't think much of it at the time. Unfortunately when I told him about it after he woke up, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. "WHY DO I ALWAYS MISS THE COOL STUFF WHEN IT HAPPENS!"  Yeah, apparently this is the second time he's missed my defeat of the Ender Dragon.

*claps hands together* AGAIN!

It's ok . . . I know what to do, and THIS time when I fight him, I'm going in STRONG!

(Hehe, you just know I'm going to end up losing all my gear and using ladders and death after death to punch those stupid tower gems.)

NO!  This time, it's going to be epic.

Question. Would anyone be interested in watching a Twitch stream of me playing a game of Minecraft from beginning to "The end"? I haven't Twitch streamed in quite a while, but it could be fun?

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Wizard101

Brecken (aka Morgrim aka The Art of Warlord) returned from her long bout of Internet outage and is back for the attack.  Here are episodes 6 and 7 of our Let's Play for your viewing entertainment.





(Episode 8 is to release shortly and Episode 9 is in the wings. :))

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Pirate101

Yup! This guy as talked about on this thread.

. . . nuff said.

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DC Universe Online

Team Spode continues to fight the bad guys of DC Universe Online -- it's what we do. There was a brand new duo added with some great gear in Episode 21 that is all the rage now with the team. It'd be a good one for me to do a YouTube on.  Stay tuned.

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DOTA 2

I've once again been playing DOTA 2 on and off with my significant other and a neighbor.  I seem to have moved away from The Beastmaster and Lycan . . . these days I'm favoring Phoenix and (strangely enough) Medusa, who apparently is a very hard "carry" to play. Honestly, I play her more like a strong support. /shrug . . . you know me . . . I'm kind of a MOBA newb.

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Hearthstone

I got the Valentine's Day Back! woot!

Kinda bummed I took a break from the game and missed out on a few the past couple of months, but I've only been playing a few short matches a day lately to keep up . . . anyway, there's still plenty of fun to be had in Hearthstone.

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And that's all I've got this morning, but I wanted to take some time and resurface here on the blog to say hello and give you a brief overview of what I've been up to.  Feel free to say hello in the comments and let me know what you've been up to as well.

Also . . . if you have any game or topic you'd like me to hit on, let me know as well!

(p.s. I don't have any Galvanic Hammer Codes to give out. Sorry!)

Happy Dueling!

Game Redux -- Walk through, Play through, or Let's Play?

Hello all! Just going to catch you up on my gaming and whatnot. It's been a couple weeks now, and I hope you're all enjoying 2016!

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Wizard101

Brecken and Tarlac! Tarlac and Brecken! We're like peanut butter and jelly these days in Wizard101, friends!

Every five to seven days we've been putting up a new episode of our Wizard101 Let's Play. Which reminds me.  I've been getting stuck on whether to call these videos a "walk through", "play through", or "Let's Play."

According to this forum post, it seems I should be calling them Let's Plays? Um, what do you think?

Regardless . . . here are Episodes 3, 4, and 5:

And if you're behind and want to just catch the highlights, The Art of Warlord has you covered!

Episode 3 highlights
Episode 4 highlights
Episode 5 highlights

Hope you're enjoying the series.

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DOTA 2

Said what?! DOTA 2?!  DOTA 2!

That's right, I've been getting my butt kicked in a legit MOBA, and it's pretty freaking fun. A neighbor of mine invited me over for a LAN party, and he talked me through playing the game. I'm not very good at it, but against medium and hard bots, I'm on the positive side for wins. When I first started playing I was drawn to one particular hero and stuck with him through several matches:

Beastmaster.

Yup, I liked the double thrown axes nuke and the somewhat survivable wolf pet coupled with a pretty nice stun.

I think it was good to stick with one character for a number of matches. Now I feel like I've upgraded from Beastmaster to this guy.

Lycan.

I've always been drawn to "pet class" types of characters, and this -- like beastmaster -- is pretty awesome. For me, it's better because I never used the hawk to spy on other characters like I should have, and I think the trade off for Lycan is that he feels just a bit tougher. He's a jungler as well, so I can take trips through the woods between lanes to get gold and spread out the wealth from killing creeps.

Anyway, it's kind of strange legitamately trying to play a MOBA after years of taking a pass.

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Mytheon

I CANNOT believe this game is back from the dead. I was stunned to see it up on Steam for 10 bucks, and I couldn't help myself . . . not after all that Friendly Warcrafter business.

My Warcrafter is level 11 and making his way slowly -- slowly -- through the game. It's been on the back burner, but I gotta play this one a bit.

I still own my shirt after all.

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Minecraft

The kids and I have been kicking it on local area servers lately. It was a little heartbreaking on one of them since we managed to somehow get all the way up to the part of the game where we want to the nether, farmed for blaze rods, and then were in the process of collecting eyes of ender -- had a pretty awesome village built too -- when BOOM . . . the file was somehow corrupted. I read through all the guides of how to try to save it, but I couldn't make it happen.  Oh well.

We started over a couple times, and we're back at it like pros.

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DC Universe Online

My Sunday night group continues to play DCUO . . . honestly can't believe we haven't given up on this game . . .

I'll have to write more on this later! I'm out of time for writing this morning. ;)

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. . . and aside from a new quest to get that valentine-themed card back in Hearthstone, that's all the news fit to print!

It'd be nice to stream some Pirate101 again here in 2016, and I'd love to see the chat room jumping again.

Happy Dueling!

Realmsconite, Beachite, Twitchite, Stingite

Heya all!

I just wanted to check in and let you all know what's been going down with TFN. October has already started off super busy, and it doesn't look to be slowing down anytime soon. Who's excited for Halloween!? *raises hand*

Here's what's been going on the past week or two:

REALMSCON

Those who were following along with my Twitter account were able to see a few fun things from the presentation that I tweeted out as it was happening. Of particular interest was this cool concept of Darkmoor weapons that MMO Team Lead Designer, Nathan Sumison, put up on the screen during his presentation about what all went into designing Darkmoor.

As soon as I put out that picture, I had a ton of tweets asking for the bow weapon. ;)  I went ahead and interrupted the presentation to let Nathan know . . . THE BOW IS AMAZING!

Jeff and Gary also gave great presentations! I said my two cents as well. ;)

As for Realmscon itself, it was every bit as cool as I remembered from a couple years ago. BobaTom was there. (That's when regular Tom sucks in his stomach and acts like a muscle kid next to Boba Fett.)

I was unable to attend last year, but Nathan did, and Realmscon is quickly becoming a yearly trek for our team. Where will we strike next? I was hearing rumors of Wizard World, but it might have just been the crazed ramblings of Jeff Toney. He does that.

THE BEACH

We also took the opportunity to make the Realmscon trip a little family outing for us as well. Port Aransas is simply amazing. Anytime I can put my toes in the water and stare out into the rolling waves, I'm good.

The beaches are clean and the place we stayed at was stellar! (Except for the chilling pool water . . . it was much colder than the surf.)

More like SUNrise and destroy, AMIRITE?!

TWITCH

Well, we had some fun in September, didn't we?  I made a few highlights that are probably worth sharing:

• I made amends for my cat hating comments by playing some cat games for Paige.
• There's the follower song . . . and then there's the country western version of the follower song.
• I actually took a Rogue to 20 in Realm of the Mad God. I must be insane.

Vanessa told me she's been playing another character on the side so we can stay on the same page in Pirate101. ;) Hopefully we can play some more Pirate101 this month. I'd also like to stream some Wizard101, DCUO, GW2, and Wildstar.

CALL OF CHAMPIONS

I think I found a MOBA I actually like!! I played a ton of this on our vacation. Call of Champions is by another Austin studio (A couple of original Pirate101 designers work there now btw) called Spacetime Studios.

Then again, I did just suffer a string of four defeats in a row this morning while I was typing this. LOL. At least matches only last five minutes, and I think that's what I like about this MOBA in particular. 

I've been playing a lot as the Avalanche character, but I may switch it up . . . that string of defeats is hurting!

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And that's all the news that's fit to print for TFN at the moment. I'm super busy at work . . . so that's always a good sign, right? You know it is!

Happy dueling!

#Blaugust Day 18 -- Free scary demons vs. MOBA noobs

I'm a sucker for free stuff, especially when it's free nerdy stuff. I'm the type of person that used to go to conventions with my mom and run around with a bag collecting all the free pencils, pens, erasers, key chains, and "convention swag" as they call it. This carried over into real life . . . anytime I go to a convention, the real goal is to get as much loot as possible.

. . . perhaps that's why the very mention of "free" is enough to get me to try something out. I like to think it's a weakness I share with many people. SHOUT OUT TO ALL THE POOR PEEPS WHO WANT FREE STUFF!

And that's why the announcement about getting a free Lord of Terror, Diablo Hero, in Heroes of the Storm has convinced me to at least download the game.  . . . and I usually avoid MOBAs like the plague!

I'm possibly the worst MOBA player in all of history, but free is FREE!

So here's the deal . . . the Uber Wife plays a lot of DOTA 2 (follow that link to DOTA 2 and tell me you aren't blown away by the $18 million prize pool for the International Championships). She has an online buddy that convinced her to download it a long time ago . . . she also claims to be the worst MOBA player of all history, but she actually LIKES that kind of punishment. (Truth be known she plays a pretty mean Jakiro.)

Shhhh, so my plan!

I'm gonna throw down the gauntlet and see if my wife will join me in a few matches of Heroes of the Storm!! Maybe our powers of Noobness will combine and create the perfect noob storm in Heroes of the Storm! Amirite?

Happy Dueling!

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This post is part of the Blaugust challenge -- Thanks to Belghast from Tales of the Aggronaut for hosting.