Have you ever gone to the grocery store to pick up milk and bread and come home with way more than you went in for? That’s how I am. It’s a sickness really. I went into Gamestop on Friday night to go pick up Darksiders for the Xbox 360 and instead walked out with Darksiders…for the PS3 and of course, a new PS3. What’s wrong with me seriously? Ok so it’s a nifty little machine and we also picked up a few Blueray movies to watch on it too. I can’t believe how much quieter it is than the Xbox. Not a fan of the controllers after holding a much more weighted controller with the Xbox but I’m sure we will get used to that after awhile.

Truth be told I haven’t gotten to touch it. Josh has been hogging it all weekend playing Darksiders. Ever since the whole Divinity2 fiasco (what a piece of garbage) he has been making up his disappointment with this game and he loves it. I’ve sat by idly and watched him for a few minutes, when I wasn’t playing World of Warcraft and I have to admit it does look pretty cool. I’m sure in a week or two, when he has pried his melted finger tips of the controller I will get a chance to play with it. Until then I will stick to my level 80 priest and World of Warcraft.

I have been drowning myself in World of Warcraft lately and haven’t so much as glanced at my Xbox or PC games. Just can’t seem to tear myself away from it. My boyfriend Josh and I joined a new guild called Sevens Chop Shop and we have had a freaking blast since joining. Nevermind that we have actually been raiding on a regular basis again after taking a short break from WOW, but our new guildies are amazingly funny…except Veliena who just keeps using me for my magical floating abilities! Damn you!

I’ll definitely be making a more detailed post about our new guild later but wanted to make a quick post just to update. Oh and I have a little something to share. A was surfing the net this morning while at work….instead of working…and came across this ninja raiding video. I thought it was pretty funny (even if it does feature alliance  ICK). Check it out! Funny shit!

Ok so I am a little late, but hey it’s New Years, what do you expect. I spent New Years eve hanging out with my kids and boyfriend doing what we love to do…gaming! It was actually kinda cool. My two boys were in the living room, one on the big screen and the other on his own TV that he dragged in from his bedroom. They were both playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, which they absolutely love! My daughter Hannah was on her brand new Wii that she got for Christmas. Josh and I were both on our PC’s, also in the living room playing World of Warcraft. Anyone who would have walked into our house on New Years even would have probably laughed at how much of gamers we truly are!

We went and grabbed Divinity 2 over the weekend as well and in a few days I will give you guys a review on what we think of it. The game itself so far looks pretty cool, the graphics are decent and controls handle okay. Having a few issues with the auto save feature, but I will go into more detail once Josh pulls himself away from it and lets me have a stab at it.

Finally finished up the last achievement I needed to get the Merrymaker title for the Winter Veil achievements. Christmas in World of Warcraft is always fun!

I also have to add…this new dungeon queue system is freaking awesome! No more limits to running just once through an instance. Now it’s random and you can spam dungeons all day collecting all the little triumph emblems you can get your hands on. I’ve already geared my shadow priest up pretty well and will soon be working on her healer set as well. By the way, you can check out her armory at Syrilia’s Armory page. Oh and hey if you happen to be on the Zuluhed server and see me, feel free to say hi…unless of course you are alliance…then BRING IT ON BABY! After Syrilia is all geared out, I will be working on poor little Carissa. This poor DK is so undergeared she couldn’t step foot in Ulduar without being facerolled in 2 seconds. I have neglected Carissa and for that I hope she can forgive me    Soon…she will be epic!

As an avid gamer I can tell you that your graphics card (also known as a video card) is one of the most critical components in your gaming computer that will really allow you to enjoy the detail of any game you play on your PC. It is also one of the most confusing components to buy due to all the terms used by manufacturers such as pixel pipeline, bus type, bandwidth and memory. It can certainly get overwhelming to someone new to the world of gaming cards. The graphics card you choose is what will produce those beautiful lighting effects and incredibly detailed 3D graphics and give you a better gaming experience. If you are a serious gamer, you should try to get the best graphics card you can afford but how do you determine what the best is? I’m definitely no expert but  I am a gamer and I do know a bit about my own graphics card needs. Follow these guidelines and you will be able to make an informed decision on the best gaming graphics card for your system.

The first step in choosing the best gaming graphics card for your system is to determine what the available bus type is on your motherboard. This is the slot that your card will fit into. There are three available bus types currently available.

PCI Express offers faster performance and can handle a higher amount of data throughput than any other bus type. Most new computers being released have at least one PCI Express slot on the motherboard.

PCI slots are generally known as the worst graphics card in terms of performance. PCI is considered very slow and outdated.

AGP is an improvement over the PCI slot; however, it is still not as good as the PCI Express slot. Most people would consider AGP slots to be old technology; however, there are still some fairly good AGP graphics cards available if that is what your motherboard supports.

The most important spec to look at when choosing your graphics card is the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). Many buyers believe the main spec to look at when buying a graphics card is the video memory size and while memory size does make a difference in your graphics card, it is more important to increase the speed that your GPU can talk to your on board memory than to increase the memory.  Manufacturers of graphics cards seem to enjoy confusing the consumer and have gotten wise to consumers who look at video memory first instead of GPU. They have practiced stuffing loads of memory onto cards with cheap GPU’s and fooling the consumer into thinking they got a great card. While it appears to be a good card to the consumer, when it comes to handling games they soon find out that all that memory doesn’t do them any good when the GPU can’t process it fast enough.

To measure the speed of your GPU, you will come across two terms: clock rate and pixel pipes. The clock rate measures how fast the data can be processed and is measured in MHz or megahertz. The pixel pipeline is the number of parallel processing pipelines on your GPU that processes pixels, textures and geometric data received from vortex shaders. Typically if you are choosing between clock rate and pipelines, the number of pipes should be considered most important.

Once you have your GPU in order, check through your current game library and find out what the video memory requirements are for them. In many cases, you can get by with 256MB on your graphics card but with the increased requirements of many of today’s games, a better option would be to look for 512MB memory on your graphics card and even 1Gig if your budget allows for it. Memory bandwidth is an even more important stat than the amount of memory you have on your card. Look for a designation of GDDR2, GDDR3 or higher number on most graphics cards. The GDDR2 has been around the longest but has been known to have overheating issues, while the GDDR3 provides not only a higher bandwidth rate but also reduced the overheating issues with less power consumption.

Make sure your system meets the power supply requirements of the graphics card you are looking at. Graphics cards can be very power hungry and can lead to major problems with your card if your supply isn’t strong enough including locking up or refusing to boot.  Check the side of the graphics card box for the manufacturers recommended power supply and compare to your computer’s power supply.  If you don’t meet the requirements you may find yourself upgrading your power supply as well. Keep in mind when you install your graphics card that your card will require additional power connectors because it can’t get enough power through the slot in your motherboard.

Be sure the graphics card you choose supports the other 3D rendering features you may need for serious gaming. Look for things such as pixel shaders, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering and any other features your games require. If you are missing any of the features that a game requires you risk having the game run slowly or not run at all.

Put your trust in others. Between the nVidia and ATI cards, you will find so many model numbers and versions that it will become completely overwhelming and you may be even more confused than ever.  How are you supposed to know if the ATI Radeon HD 5850 is better than the nVidia GeForce GTX 295? My advice:  read reviews, check shopping ratings and listen to other gamers about their experience in video cards. Don’t always rely on sales people in stores because many times they are out to sell you the most expensive card and not what you really need. Every year gamer magazines publish their “top picks” of various things including gaming cards. Find these with any basic Google search and don’t try to interpret all the different model numbers yourself. Check the resources below for some of the top graphics cards on the market right now.

* Be sure to note if yours is a PCI or PCI Express slot as they have different shapes and are not interchangeable.

*The tips and suggestions in this article are designed for gamers. If you aren’t using your PC for intense gaming and graphics, these cards will be over kill for you and more expensive than you probably need.

Graphic Card Recommendations…

EVGA 01G-P3-1180-AR GeForce GTX285 1024 MB DDR3 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card

Diamond ATI Radeon HD5870 PCIE 1024 MB GDDR5 Video Card 5870PE51G

Diamond ATI Radeon HD5850 PCIE 1024 MB GDDR5 Video Card 5850PE51G

Well I was really hoping I was going to spend all weekend playing this new game I picked up at Gamestop this weekend called “Damnation” and tell you today how much I enjoyed playing this. I had high hopes for an awesome new multiplayer game especially since it had a sort of steam punk theme to it, which I love.

But…this game was HORRIBLE. At first glance when it loaded, it looked great. The graphics were fairly cool, although not super detailed but the opening sequence looked promising. And then I started to play.

So what didn’t I like about this game?

Cop-op mode disaster – Let’s start with the co-op “featureless” mode. You can’t even easily find your partners. I kept hearing “over here” but no sign of where “over here” was. Would have been nice to have a sort of “beacon” option to be able to find your co-op partner as well as the guy leading you around.

Enemy battle – The enemy’s when they appeared where pretty stagnant. They basically stayed in one place shooting at you. Not a whole lot of moving around or even making it hard to see them. And there weren’t even very many of them. However, you would think that would make it easy to hit them right? WRONG! The aiming control was so lacking I could barely hit anything. Even moving the sensitivity option to it’s lowest setting it was tough to get a lock on an enemy to actually shoot it. I’ve played several shooters before and have no trouble aiming, but this game I found to be impossible to enjoy as a shooter.

Where do I go from here? – No idea! I tried following the main leader guy around but literally I had no clue on the point. No idea where exactly I was supposed to go. It seemed to be a constant battle to figure out where to climb, jump and grab onto, not really much of a strategy.

Were those actually actors? – They could have at least paid some college kids to come and act for the game rather than grabbing the stock boy out of the mail-room on a slow day. I mean come on…I felt like I was listening to my high school English class reading some boring novel with no emphasis on the story at all. This was by far the worst acting I have ever witnessed in a video game.

Don’t forget the glitches – Within the first 5 minutes of playing the game had 2 major glitches. First, the “help” menus that popup seem like a good idea, until you get one that sticks and won’t go away. I tried everything including doing what it said to do and even selecting the option to reload at the last checkpoint; nothing would make it go away. And of course it is right over my reticle for aiming so killing anything was pointless until I completely shut down the game and came back in fresh. The second glitch and definitely the most frustrating to happen so early on in the game was “getting stuck”. Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s hard to find every single place that a player might get stuck, but in the opening area to actually get “stuck” on a wall, unable to move or jump off is just silly. Save mistakes like that for later in the game.

I didn’t even want to provide a link to it in this post because I would hate for anyone to get it, but I figure I should just in case anyone wants to find more info about it.

I really don’t see a single redeeming quality in this game…except that it’s themed after the steampunk era, but even that doesn’t save this game. This could have been a great game if they would have taken the time to test it, polish it and make some major improvements. What happened? Did they run out of money?

Whatever you do, don’t waste your money to buy or rent this garbage. Luckily, we bought it as pre-owned game from Gamestop, so I will definitely be taking advantage of the 7 day return policy.

I’ve been working on collecting all the different mounts from World of Warcraft on my Priest and my Deathknight. At first I was mainly doing it on my Deathknight, but I rarely play her, so I’m gonna stick to my priest for awhile. I know there are tons of mounts available but this guide is only going to include the ones I obtain so I have first hand knowledge of everything. Feel free to leave me a comment if you have ideas for mounts I should start going for…otherwise I’ll just go down my list and work towards them as I see fit.

Blood Elf Hawkstriders (7 Mounts) (You must be exalted with Silvermoon to be able to purchase or be a Bloodelf)
You can purchase these right outside the doors to Silvermoon from Wineastra (61,54) in Eversong Woods.

Normal Rides (60% increase) – 8 Gold Each
Red Hawkstrider
Blue Hawkstrider
Purple Hawkstrider
Black Hawkstrider

Fast Rides (100% increase) – 80 Gold Each
Swift Pink Hawkstrider
Swift Green Hawkstrider
Swift PUrple Hawkstrider

Wolves (7 Mounts) (You must be exalted with Orgrimmar to be able to purchase or be an orc)
You can purchase these in Orgrimar from Ogunaro Wolfrunner (69,12) in the Valley of Honor

Normal Rides (60% inccrease) – 8 Gold Each
Timber Wolf
Brown Wolf
Dire Wolf
Black Wolf

Fast Rides (100% increase) – 80 Gold Each
Swift Brown Wolf
Swift Gray Wolf
Swift Timer Wolf

Skeletal Horses (6 Mounts) (You must be exalted with Undercity to be able to purchase or be undead)
You can purchase these in Tirisfal Glades from Zachariah Post (59,52) in Brill

Normal Rides (60% increase ) – 8 Gold Each
Black Skeletal Horse
Blue Skeletal Horse
Brown Skeletal Horse
Red Skeletal Horse

Fast Rides (100% increase) – 80 Gold Each
Green Skeletal Warhorse
Purple Skeletal Warhorse

Raptors (6 Mounts) (You must be exalted with Darkspear Trolls to be able to purchase or be a troll)

You can purchase these in Duratar from Zjolnir (55,75) in the Sen’jin Village.

Normal Rides (60% increase) – 8 Gold Each
Emerald Raptor
Turquoise Raptor
Violet Raptor

Fast Rides (100% increase) – 80 Gold Each
Swift Blue Raptor
Swift Orange Raptor
Swift Olive Raptor

Kodo (6 Mounts) (You must be exalted with Thunderbluff to be able to purchase or be a tauren)

You can purchase these in Duratar from Harb Clawhoof (47,59) in the Bloodhoof Village.

Normal Rides (60% increase) – 8 Gold Each
Gray Kodo
Brown Kodo
White Kodo

Fast Rides (100% increase) – 80 Gold Each
Great Gray Kodo
Great Brown Kodo
Great White Kodo

Netherwing Drakes (6 Mounts) (You must be exalted with Netherwing to be able to purchase).
You will get your first netherwing drake free upon completing the quest line to becoming exalted. Others can be purchased from Drake Dealer Hurlunk in Shadowmoon Valley on the Netherwing Ledge (65,86)
Requires Epic Flying (280%)

Azure Netherwing Drake – 200 Gold Each
Cobalt Netherwing Drake – 200 Gold Each
Onyx Netherwing Drake – 200 Gold Each
Purple Netherwing Drake – 200 Gold Each
Veridian Netherwing Drake – 200 Gold Each
Violet Netherwing Drake – 200 Gold Each

Red Drake 1800 Gold Each (You must be exalted with Wyrmrest Accord to be able to purchase) You can purchase from Cielstrasza on Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight (59,53).

Ice Mammoth 1000 Gold Each (800 Gold Exalted) (You must be revered with Sons of Hodir to be able to purchase) You can purchase in Storm Peaks from Lillehoff (66,61) in Dun Niffelem.

PVP MOUNTS

This is an area I am just getting started in but if you are an avid PVP’er these should definitely be on your list!

Frostwolf Howler (100% increase) – Purchase from Grunnda Wolfheart (Frostwolf Supply Officer next to the blacksmith) in the Alterac Valley Battleground for 50 Marks (AV).

Red Skeletal Warhorse (100% increase) – Purchase from Raider Bork (37,64) (Mount quartermaster) in Orgrimmar for 30 marks of Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley.

Black War Mammoth (100% increase) – Purchase from Stone Guard Mukar in Wintergrasp for just 300 Stone Keeper Shards.

DROPPED MOUNTS

Bronze Drake (Epic Flying) – Can be looted from Infinite Corruptor in Heroic: Culling of Stratholme. This is a guaranteed drop if you defeat him within 25 minutes of starting the instance.

OTHER MOUNTS

These are other mounts that don’t require reputation to purchase or obtain.

Swift Zhevra – Not for purchase exactly…just a nice reward mount for recruiting a friend into WOW once
they become a paid member.

Acherus DeathCharger – Ok not much to say here except at level 55, Death Knights get one for free!

Black War Bear – Achievement rewards for the “For the Horde” achievement when you slay all of the alliance city leaders.

Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade – Starts at 950 Gold but goes down with reputation. This is a Death Knight only mount, but the cool part is it has regular flight speed and it scales to epic!

Albino Drake – Reward mount for the Leading the Calvary achievement.Just get 50 mounts and voila, it gets mailed to you.

Shadowmoon Valley Flyers (7 Mounts)  Purchased from Dama Wildmane (29,29) in Shadowmoon Village.
Blue Windrider (60% increase) – 100 Gold Each
Tawny Windrider (60% increase) – 100 Gold Each
Green Windrider (60% increase) – 100 Gold Each
Swift Green Windrider (280%) – 200 Gold Each
Swift Purple Windrider (280%) – 200 Gold Each
Swift Red Windrider (280%) – 200 Gold Each
Swift Yellow Windrider (280%) – 200 Gold Each

Ah the good old days of stomping down a boss with all your favorite guildies!

I’ve been an avid World of Warcraft gamer for the last year and a half and I absolutely loved playing. “Loved”? Yes, I took a short break from it. I could actually feel myself becoming submerged into that world and leaving my real life behind me. It seemed playing WoW was all I wanted to do. I took a break from it and got back into reality. But it’s been 2 months and I think I’m ready to head back into my all time favorite MMO. But I plan to go at things a little different this time.

- I will not be running a guild this time.
- I will not give up movie nights with my man in exchange for a raid
- I will realize that gear is not everything…neither are achievements.
- Must remember that all those people on WOW I will never meet in real life so they shouldn’t be so important

Any other advice for my submersion back into World of Warcraft?

My boyfriend Josh and I have been busy playing several new multi-player games and some single player as well. But lately we have been pretty wrapped up in an awesome multiplayer game called Borderlands. If you haven’t heard of it…well you must be living under a rock or something. For couples, this is what I might even call the perfect couple game.

Borderlands is a shooter game, if you can’t tell by the cover. Obviously you must like shooters if you want to play this one and enjoy it. The graphics remind me a lot of being inside a comic. Lots of line drawings rather than photographic detail. There is a great combat system behind the play of it and a TON of loot that seems to be pretty random as far as what drops. Each of the 4 character options have a special ability skill that they get at level 5 and helps you along the way. For me, I chose to play the female character Lilith, who is a siren. She does this really cool phasewalk that gets her out of sticky situations but also does a good bit of damage to enemy’s when they are around. Josh of course picked the soldier (he has this whole “protect me” thing going on I think). His special ability includes dropping a pretty sweet turret on the ground the can do lots of things like shoot enemy’s, heal us or even replenish ammo. Very cool character.

Playing Borderlands as a couple was and is still a ton of fun. We get to watch each others back, heal each other, help each other with quests, beat the hell out of boss’s together and get lost in this little world together. Josh and I are on our second playthrough currently and we also just got the DLC from Xbox called Zombie Island. Zombie Island was fun but really quick. We completed the whole thing in 2 nights of game play. There also seemed to be a few glitches in there but hopefully they will get them patched up pretty quickly.

Overall, if you are looking for a good game to play with your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend or love slave, Borderlands is an awesome choice! Or if you’re just your average gamer girl, you will love stomping your way through this game on solo mode as well. It’s quickly becoming my new addiction!