“Is this event awesome?” That’s the question one of my guild mates asked in chat some 13 minutes after the Guild Wars 2: Lost Shores event started. Due to so server issues right when the event started it ended up being fairly laggy for myself and a good number of my guild mates. The solution proposed on Twitter by @guildwars2 was to leave the map and come back. So, thats what several of us did, only to come back and land on an overflow server where the event was already finished.

So, no so far the event isn’t awesome it’s not done yet though so there is still hope… Now, I need to decide if I should continue playing or get back to working.

We’re trying something a bit different on the 25 Cent Play Podcast website, adding written content, embedded YouTube videos and of course as well as the normal show. I’m getting set for the first piece of written content now, a look at XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I hesitate to call it a review, but it is, I’m even going to give it a number and everything. I’m a bit nervous about it since, I’m very out of practice writing and on top of the 2K was nice enough to give me the review copy. I wasn’t able to play until launch day, so I spent as much time as I could, without getting in the way of work or my wife, playing. After that it was a matter of trying to get back into the swing of writing again. I’ve set ten to fifteen minutes aside everyday, so I can throw something up on 750 Words, just free writing to try to get back into it. Oh well, we’ll see how it goes I guess – after all, I’ve got another title waiting in the wings already…

For now, I’m going to relax then give another proofread tomorrow before posting it.

eSports.

I remember way back when watching (or at least reading about since it wasn’t really easy to watch) Counter-Strike or Quake matches thinking that we wouldn’t really see this thing, watching people play video games, take off. Yet, here I am sitting in my home office on a day off watching the first day of the League of Legends World Playoffs.

I’m watching the stream on Twitch and for now the site is reporting that about 207,444 people are currently watching along. The games are also streaming on at least a couple of other sites so the total stream numbers won’t be known for a while, but they will be huge. Riot appears to be classing up the joint too with some impressive production. We had a close look at it during PAX Prime and they surely mean business going into season 3. There have been a few small missteps this time as the games are being played in an outside arena so the sun and wind are a bit of a factor.

It was bound to happen eventually, I think, with the shift over to streaming the last few years completely bypassing the need to go after a television audience. We’ve talked a bit about it on the podcast and I’m sure after this weekend we’ll be coming back to it again next Tuesday.

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This past Sunday while I was playing Guild Wars 2, I remembered the spare $10 burning a hole in my PayPal account. So, I figured why not use it to buy some gems to use in-game. I mean then I could unlock an extra character slot or maybe some more bank or bag space (it fills up so fast). After thinking about it for a bit, I pulled the trigger and purchased 800 gems. It was a standard PayPal transaction, so I did unfortunately have to leave the game for a moment but everything worked nice and smooth. There have been some reports around about people not receiving gems for a while after buy, lucky for me though, mine were there seconds after the transaction completed.

800 shiny new gems, now I just needed to figure out what to do with them. Jumping into the section of the trading post that requires gems I decided I didn’t want any of the items that didn’t really fit in the game. What were they thinking with that decision anyway? Sun glasses and boxing gloves? Anyway, I thought about buying a couple of boosts and quickly decided not to bother. In the end I bought two packs of mini pets for 300 gems each. After opening my new gifts I had six new pets, but one was a duplicate. That was kind of disappointing but really not unexpected.

Shortly afterward, I started to wonder just how much work it would be to get mini pets off the trading post – and as it turns out, not much. I jumped into the trading post sold my duplicate mini pet for about 20 silver and turned around and placed two buy orders for a couple of more common fine (blue) pets. Since I had placed my buy orders about 50 silver higher than the then top order it they completed in a matter of minutes. So far so good, but now I had no money. There was, however, a quick solution for that as I happened to have 250 copper ingots sitting in my bank. The ingots I listed on the trading post priced to bring in about one gold, this would set me up with a nice chunk of change – which I was about to blow on little virtual “pets” for my little virtual guy. Using the funds from my ingots I was able to place buy orders around nine more pets. At the time, prices for the fine pets, ran from about six silver to around 16 for the mini Jungle Stalker – it’d have to wait till I had a bit more coin.

I had gathered my earlier 250 copper ingots over the course of just playing the game, stopping at nodes to mine as I passed them. I figured I could spend an hour or two in the lands around Queensdale and easily pick up more copper ore. I restocked my mining picks, bringing along 500, it takes two copper ore to create one copper ingot. For the next maybe hour and a half, I gathered all the copper I could find out in the field. I wish I had timed it better but, I wasn’t thinking about the post when I started – just all the shiny new mini pets I’d have. Of course, there could be better places in the game to “farm” copper and I’m sure I didn’t run the most efficient path around the map but I did end up about 380 pieces of copper ore when I decided to call it quits for the night, after all running around like that isn’t exactly exciting. Before logging off though, I want back to the Trading Post and placed a few more orders. I checked the next morning and most of my orders had been fulfilled, a couple I had to replace at slightly higher prices as someone had come along after me and placed an order one copper higher than mine. When all was said and done I had a total of 31 mini pets, 26 then made from my time “farming” which I’m was about two hours of “work”, plus the time I had spent getting the first 250 ingots. Currently, of the “Set 1” mini pets I have all the fine (blue) ones and ten of the masterwork (green) ones. The prices start to ramp up rather quickly once you’ve hit the master work level since the rarity increases so, it would probably take a bit more farming to get enough money to continue purchasing.

So, what was the point of that? Well, that’s for you to decide, if you’ve got spare money burning a hole in your pocket and no time then by all means buy gems – and convert them to coin, which I would have done if I knew upfront I was in the market for pets. Or if you have some spare time and the want, then take an hour or two and gather up enough materials to sell for a few silver. Of course you don’t even need to “farm” you can just simply play the game, over the course of playing you’ll easily amass enough coin and gathered materials that you can get whatever you want, mini pets or other.