Liebster Award – Kamalia’s 11 Questions and my 11 Answers

The badge of pride

I have been nominated for the Liebster Award by Kamalia et Alia. I read her questions and thought they were brilliant, so this post is me answering them. It got a bit wordy, so I’ll have to fulfill the rest of the rules in another post (11 personal facts + 11 questions for 11 new people).

Below are the Liebster Award rules:

The six Liebster Award rules

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Kamalia’s 11 Questions and my 11 Answers

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• 1) Tell me about a game or games — video or table or both! — that you are really enjoying right now.

I have really been enjoying this little mobile game, which is quite simple and has worked wonders in terms of reducing stress for me.

It’s called Tangled (found on Google Play) and the screenshot to the right was how it used to look before it was patched. Now it crashes on my phone whenever I try to play it.

The goal is to make the red line as long as possible, by turning hexagonal tiles to create a path. I loved playing this game when it actually worked on my phone!

• 2) What classes, races, or roles do you find yourself most drawn to in RPGs, whether in D&D, a single-player video game, or an MMO? + 3) When you make your first character in a new game, do you try to make a character that is in some way an avatar of your RL self, or do you make someone entirely different?

I prefer hybrid classes and I think this has to do with the fact that I like to keep a few doors open at a time. Originally I was drawn to elves, anything beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. Now that I’ve tried creating characters that are not a projection of an ideal self, but instead have their own story and motivations, it added another and very interesting dimension to me. In the future, I see myself going further down that road.

Hey, look at this gal! Not your standard beauty, but still good material for an interesting character. No, I’m serious!

In fact, I take great pleasure in toying with character creation modes. I don’t even care what game it is or if I’m going to play it any further – I love character creation modes! Usually I will first make a character that inspires me and looks cool. Then I will make the most hideous thing you can imagine, really getting all the sliders off to the extremes, scars, pinprick eyes, bad hair and probably also bad breath! I crashed The Sims 3 recently when making the most perfect evil-looking witch-sim you can imagine!

• 4) Describe a typical session of playing your current favorite video/computer game.

I’m in my bed, about to sleep, with my beloved smart phone and playing a mobile game, often a puzzle. Also, I’m playing one match a day of this mobile game called Robotek (found on Google Play). It’s a small strategic game, you vs. the AI. You win when you burn down the health points of the opponent using various attacks and small bots. It had a bit of a learning curve, yet I’d still recommend it.

Here’s me losing in Robotek.

• 5) What was the very first computer/video game you ever played? How old were you?

My first “beep beep game” was about moving a basketball player back and forth on the screen to keep a continuous number of balls from falling to the ground.

I must have been 6-7 years old when I played these really early hand-held games. We called them “beep beep games” based on sounds they made. They were extremely simple compared to today’s standards, inexpensive and had only one game mode. Attempting to beat your own high score, was all you could do.

Later my parents purchased a used computer from my mom’s coworker, who came and set it up for us. It booted in DOS and had an early version of Windows on it. This was when I started to play computer games on a PC.

The thing was, the computer did have games installed and a few games on 3,5″ floppy disks, but most of them were demos! As a kid, I didn’t know what a demo was (I was playing beep beep games!), and thus believed that Wolfenstein 3D, was actually called “Wolfenstein Demo”. I believed that the reason I couldn’t make the elevator go to the next floor, was the game being bugged.

Back then, I was too creeped out to play it on my own. When I look at the screenshots today, it’s so much more pixelated than I remember.

So I only played this with a friend. One of us would control the arrow keys for movement, and the other space bar for shooting. Of course this resulted in panicked screams whenever an enemy appeared. Even worse, somewhere along the line, I must have messed up the key binds, because we couldn’t get the main character to turn right anymore. So to shoot and hit the soldiers, we would have to spin left, often several times, until the gun pointed in the right direction again. That keyboard sure took a beating. In short – it was a mess!

• 6) Do you have more than one blog? If so, what is/are your other blog(s) about?

Yes, I have a Tumblr, but it functions as my inspiration log. It will probably be uninteresting to most people. There’s also WoW Roleplay Gear, although I don’t consider it a blog per se.

• 7) Name three non-WoW/game-related websites that you visit frequently.

I read several Danish news sites. I also read Sociological Images, I like how the comments often continue the debate and offer more facets to the article. People are mostly civil, which I appreciate. I don’t comment there myself though. If I want to pass time, I browse Thought Catalog. There’s a lot of trashy articles there, with the occasional gem. I avoid places like 9gag, who are notorious with omitting references and links to the creators, whose creative content they use.

• 8) What was/is your favorite animal to see at the zoo?

Anything feline. I’ve also had a laugh triggering monkeys to mimic my facial expressions. Do a wide open mouth (no teeth) and wide open eyes really quickly a few times, and they will do it too. Warning: other people (and monkeys), might find you a tad weird.

• 9) Cake or Pie? What is your favorite flavor of your preferred dessert?

All of it! I don’t like it too nutty, but fruity or chocolate, I’m a sugar junkie!

• 10) What toppings do you like on a pizza? on an ice-cream sundae?

The pizza here is notoriously bad! They put layers upon layers of meat on them. And I don’t mean, “ah lots of nice beef on my pizza” – no I mean, all kinds of meat: Shrimp, chicken, bacon and kebab on the same pizza (and a bit of horse, I’m sure). I prefer mozzarella, pesto, spinach, salad, smoked ham, that kind of stuff.

• 11) What is your favorite writing instrument?

I have kept a diary since ’95, and I use pens in all colors, even glitter pens – yay! Anything finely pointed will do.

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The remaining 11 personal facts about me and 11 questions for 11 new bloggers are in the making and will be published in another post!

“Has Privacy Become a Luxury Good?”

by robjewitt (flickr) Creative commons

Ever since Edward Snowden (bless him) blew the proverbial whistle, privacy concerns has been proven to be even more serious than anyone dared to believe. And I’d like to make a small case for one of the problems I see in Wow.

I remember reading a forum post back in 2012 about the activity feed on the WoW Armory.

The WoW Armory logs the activity of every character above level 10, who has also been active within the last 6 months. It logs the date of the last 50 entries.This can be viewed by anyone online, and you can not opt out of it.

It was a player asking for the ability to simply opt out of having the activity feed public:

“Am I the only person who think it’s uncomfortable to have everything you do, and when you do it broadcasted to the world?

Maybe I don’t want family/partner/boss/co-workers/stalkers/etc to know exactly how much I play or when I play for a number of reasons.

I want privacy features, I want the choice to disable the activity feed.” (link)

Is this really a lot to ask?

- Apparently for some! Because people in the thread were completely hung up on the suspicion that this guy might be playing WoW when he should be working. The answer to that is – that’s why we need privacy to begin with – because it’s none of your damn business what he does in WoW or when he do it. We don’t even need to have the discussion about why he wants it to be private in the first place – privacy is a human right!

Besides, to make a point, I have played WoW when ill – as in – legitimately ill. I did some pet battles, some farming, just something to take my mind off of the blazing flu I had going.

But you can also imagine how, under certain conditions, that could have been construed as me not being ill enough, if this information was in the hands of the wrong people.

You also see this argument about privacy often:

via http://smarterware.org/6008/online-privacy-check-yourself-before-you-wreck-yourself

Basically, you are responsible for your own privacy. Which means you’d have to censor yourself – don’t play WoW when ill lest someone find out and use it against you.

Great! That will make the internet a fun, free and democratic place to hang out!
- Artist Inti Orozco

Another consequence of this line of thinking, would be the question author Julia Angwin asks: “Has Privacy Become a Luxury Good?“

“As more privacy-protecting services pop up, we need to consider two important questions: Can we ensure that those who can afford to buy privacy services are not being deceived? And even more important, do we want privacy to be something that only those with disposable money and time can afford?”

She spent $2,200 last year on privacy protection measures, some of which weren’t able to live up to their promises. Besides, is it fair that one has to be a tech-expert to work around this stuff? I feel bad for my ol’ man then.

I see my friends on Facebook using nick names and falsifying their personal information, in order to diffuse their online tracks. My own strategy has been to just leave as much blank as possible. This means Facebook constantly asks me where I grew up, where I went to school (all the way back to kindergarden, Facebook wants everything!) and what movies and music I like. I sometimes enjoy watching Facebook squirm in the absence of my data, but then it also annoys me – “quit asking me private stuff, Zuckerberg, I don’t wanna date you!”

Edward Snowden, though!

• Related post: “Feeding the Zuck” on Irez.me

Pandaria Secrets and Hidden Locations – The Secret Aerie

Pandaria has a lot to offer when it comes to secrets and hidden locations. One of them, “Riches of Pandaria“, I interpret as a recognition of exploration as a play style by Blizzard. Some of these treasures are placed slightly off track – finding The Hammer of Folly near the Black Market Auction House, for example, will also reward you with a great view over Western Jade Forest.

Last night I found a great hidden location. I had noticed when traveling through the Ancient Passage to Kun-Lai Summit, that the tunnel had several offbeat tracks. So I came back later on a level 90 character to see where they lead.

And it leads to The Secret Aerie! You can see the tunnel symbols on the map of The Veiled Stair below showing the Ancient Passage entry and the Secret Aerie exit.

When you come out of the tunnel, you’ll stand in front of a small shallow lake. There’s a boat and a small shrine, but not much to see otherwise, except the strong pink hue of the area.

From the lake, you’ll see bamboo bridges leading upwards. This means it is theoretically possible to get there by land mount, but this path and the surrounding mountain pillars are populated with quite a few hostile level 90 sprites.

At the top, there’s two village houses and a Hawk Trainer working on a boat with his hawk supervising.

Why on earth this guy, being a “People of the Sky”, is building a boat at this location, is a riddle to me!

Another peculiarity of this place, is what you’ll find inside one of the houses.

Two hawkmasters, a gryphon hatchling flying in a circle and Hoggle, the pug and its prize-sized poo! I mean, I assume it’s the dog who did it, although it is a rather large poo for such a small dog…

So for your own sake, run out of there! Proceed to the area behind the house. Here you’ll find another unnamed hawk trainer, perhaps practicing a special trick with his hawk circling him.

Continue on to the cave that you can see to the right in the picture above. This is where you’ll find Hawk Master Liu standing in the center of the cave with a flock of hawks flying above him.

This guy will actually talk to you! When I spoke to him he just said “Welcome Ironyca. We have been watching you for some time. You are a gust of wind that heralds the storm of change.” Another one of those stalky NPC’s…

On Wowhead you can read that if you have finished the quests in Townlong Steppes and thus met Hawkmaster Nurong, he will instead say: “Word reaches me you served with my brother in Townlong Steppes. How is the young fellow? Did he ever tell you how he lost his eye?“

There’s one more thing to discover here and again you have to look around a little to find it. Instead if describing it here, I’ll just tell you to go and explore a little on your own (if you haven’t been here before) and follow the narrow path behind the hawk trainer balancing on a barrel.

I don’t know what the purpose of the place is, on Wowhead commenters are not sure either, but one of them noted that Hawkmaster Liu has unique voice acting, so he is probably going to be significant at some point. It’s also possible that they are connected to Shado-Pan.