Wulff

Ordered these cuties in last night. Hopefully I can do a good job of painting them.

What's up guys, it's your boy Tobias coming straight at you with three broken fingers from the obstacle course today with more autistic anime opinions! You motherfuckers better appreciate this shit because it's going to take me like an hour to write this with 1½ hands while drugged to shit on pain meds... Actually nevermind, you don't have to appreciate this at all, considering I am doing this mostly for my own entertainment and this is the only place I can get an audience to sate my burning desire for attention. So over the past ~3 days following the release of Overwatch I've completely isolated myself from all my friends and watched anime on my own in the evenings instead of socializing and being a real person. I am a spiteful asshole and when I can't play Overwatch myself, I definitely don't want to be around people who can/are playing it and are constantly talking about it. You know when you're with your friends and they've all seen this cool new movie that you haven't seen and they won't shut the fuck up about it for five minutes and you start wondering why you even bothered coming to hang out with them? That's what I'm talking about. Check your privilege please. Now that we've gotten past the not-so-subtle jabs at my friends and a healthy dose of self-deprecation, I'd like to take a moment to thank my good friend Alex for asking me if I wanted to hang out and watch some anime today. That was nice. Thanks man. Anyway, here's what I will be talking about today: Three short OVA that I think are pretty known among more serious anime fans and probably very unknown to your average fan. Pale Cocoon Is a single 22 minute episode OVA. I'll tell you right now that if you hate open endings, you should stay away from this one as the ending is very much a message that is up for interpretation rather than any sort of conclusion. Pale Cocoon is set in the far future and follows two young individuals who can be best described as futuristic archeologists. In this world it is clear that something has happened to the Earth, causing humanity to retreat into this massive underground construction for survival. Here Ura and Riko work for the "Archive Excavation Department", digging up old files of pictures, video and sound from the old world and trying to reclaim lost knowledge. It's a story about the different outlooks on life that people carry and the decisions we all make that end up defining us. I very highly recommend it, as it is very well animated and carries a somber atmosphere not commonly found in anime. Denpa Teki na Kanojo With two episodes á la 40 minutes, Denpa Teki na Kanojo is much longer than Pale Cocoon and also very different overall. This OVA feels very much like your regular anime, at least to begin with. Juu Juuzawa is a high school student with delinquent tendencies who unwillingly gets wrapped up in the hunt for a local serial killer. Things escalate from there and the truth of the matter is that Denpa Teki na Kanojo starts out as pretty standard fare but ultimately evolves into something very, very dark. I interpreted this OVA as a look into human psychology on a surface level (AKA It's not really a "DEEP" anime, but it's very interesting regardless) and uses common anime tropes to give the viewer a sense of familiarity, only to have something gruesome happen shortly after. Is it a mind-boggling genre-breaker that should be viewed by all? No, definitely not. It is however suspenseful, well animated, disturbing and comes with a pretty good cast of characters. Honestly I would recommend this OVA to most people. It also has a lot of cute girls... Just saying. Read or Die Read or Die is spread over three 30 minute episodes and is honestly the kind of anime I would love to own a physical copy of. It's just so... Fun. I feel like I cannot talk in length about this OVA, because it would spoil a lot of the joy that comes with having this interesting world unravel before you as you watch it the first time. It has a great mixture of action, violence, comfyness and that spice of oddness that tends to come with Japanese animation. Honestly, Read or Die is just cool. Not much else to say about it. Many anime try to live by "the rule of cool" but very few manage it without coming across as super obnoxious and overly random (READ: Blood Blockade Battlefront). Read or Die nails it. Bonus Meme

My dreams are starting to get more and more realistic and it's honestly becoming a problem. I dreamt tonight that I was part of some kind of invasion force and I was walking about this fucking massive staging area, tons of soldiers, vehicles and equipment all over the place, everyone was running or marching off somewhere. I was looking for my group and was getting really worried that I couldn't find anyone. Then suddenly I heard someone call out "Dritte Kompanie!" which was weird because people weren't speaking German in general, it was just this guy yelling in German so far. Whatever, I had found where I needed to be, because I was third company and so I started marching towards the guy and there are a bunch of other guys who start moving in his direction as well. Eventually a large group had gathered around this guy and he yelled at us to form six even ranks. I formed up in the back rank but everyone started pushing me forward, I don't know what the fuck was happening. So I got pushed all the way to the front rank, no big deal. Then suddenly the lieutenant pointed at one of the guys in the formation and said "How do you say "Austria" in German?" The soldier he singled out didn't know and he was then told to get the fuck out of there. He then asked the question again but to everyone in the formation, rather than one guy specifically. I immediately piped up and responded "Österreich, sir!" and he was about to commend me on my answer when we suddenly noticed two guys had broken formation and were doing those really exaggerated movement patrols that royal guards and shit do. You know those really stiff and elongated movements? Yeah they were doing that right next to the formation square. At this point the lieutenant was done with our shit and just ordered us to move up, and we did. So turns out that we were already in a combat zone because as we moved further away from the main staging area, sound of artillery and general fighting could be heard. We weren't being shot at directly or anything, we could just hear it in the distance. Third company had been ordered to use a tunnel that intelligence had discovered under a farmhouse in order to get behind the enemy's fortification. They believed it was a tunnel that had been dug by partisans before the area had been lost to them. So we get to the farmhouse and the lieutenant appoints two people as sappers because apparently parts of the tunnel had collapsed and needed to be cleared with explosive charges and those two guys ran on ahead to work on the tunnel. The rest of us eventually got to the farmhouse and made halt just outside of it. After some time, the two guys appointed as sappers came back out and said that they had failed to clear the tunnel, because no one had actually brought any explosives. The lieutenant then ordered us to get in there because we would just have to dig our way through with the shovels we had. For some reason, the door to the farmhouse was partially destroyed and was being blocked by something on the other side, so everyone started doing the whole "Call of Duty vaulting over waist-high obstacles" thing to get through the partially destroyed door. Now if there's one thing I've learned in Basic is that you need to make shit as fucking simple as possible because otherwise some retards will eventually hurt themselves, so when I jumped that broken door, I immediately got some guys to help me move the shit that was on the other side so that we could actually open it. So we get the door open and the company starts pouring into the farmhouse. The lieutenant then orders us to fix bayonets because we were going into close quarters down the tunnel and we needed to be prepared for anything. Everyone immediately started fumbling with their bayonets and I remember being really puzzled at how loose and rattly my bayonet felt, even though I had attached it properly. I was getting one of the other guys to look at it when we suddenly heard someone yelling and screaming in panic down by the entrance to the tunnel. One of the other soldiers had cut his finger on his bayonet when he was trying to attach it and was now in a state of panic, insisting that we were all going to die in this war and that we should run as far away as we could right now. I turned to the lieutenant for orders on what to do with that man, but I think we had broken the lieutenant at that point, he was sobbing into his hands. That's where my dream ended.

New episode of Habanero tonight, I'm excited.

That they were correct in changing one of Tracer's poses in Overwatch.

Someone unironically linked me to an Extra Credits video in order to prove their point about a video game topic just now

sounds good, i'll be there

I personally am not a fan of the current raid difficulty levels either. I wish Blizzard had enough creativity in them to make "hardmodes" function the same way as they did in Ulduar, which was the first and only raid to ever have such a system. It's a lot more fun to actively engage with something in the game world to trigger a hardmode, than it is to toggle a difficulty from a dropdown menu on your interface. The issue you mentioned with content becoming obsolete in terms of progression is an issue this game has struggled with for a long time, it started happening in The Burning Crusade and reached its current level sometime midway through Wrath of the Lich King. It was less of an issue in Classic mainly due to there being no real way to progress into the higher tiers of raiding, without first doing some of the older ones. Many fights were little more than gearchecks and some fights were downright impossible unless you farmed materials for crafted resistance gear from some of the earlier dungeons and raids. Even in TBC we left content in the dirt at the later stages of the expansion. I remember very clearly when the Black Temple patch hit, we in Crimson Bloodline pretty much stopped doing Karazhan, Magtheridon's Lair and Gruul's. When it came to recruiting new people into the guild who weren't geared. we'd usually run them through The Eye or Serpentshrine Caverns to help them collect some gear. The only times we touched some of the older raids, were times when a new person got unlucky with drops in boosts and just needed any and all gear we could get in order to be useful. The same thing happened when Sunwell Plateau hit, we pretty much stopped running TK and SSC and favoured gearing people in Black Temple, which we already had on farm. Unfortunately I can't think of any solid way around this issue, it's something that has plagued WoW in varying degrees for close to a decade and has only gotten worse with Blizzard implementing various "catch-up" mechanics, most noticeably the Timeless Isle in MoP and Tanaan Jungle in WoD. Another major issue I have with World of Warcraft in its current incarnation is how trivialized the levelling experience and questing in general has become. Levelling a fresh character in Classic, TBC and even Wrath of the Lich King was quite an undertaking on your own and felt a lot more rewarding (in my opinion) than what we get today. I'm not saying I want to have to sit and drink after killing three enemies like you used to in Classic, but I would like for people to have a little care when they're out in the world. I think pulling 3+ enemies should at least force you to expend some cooldowns, I think the old zones that had elites roaming through certain areas added a lot more intrigue to the levelling, I think the systematic destruction of group quests in the game is a damned shame. I also wish that professions still had the same flair they used to prior to WoD. Despite people complaining about feeling obligated to spend time on their professions (God forbid investing some time into your character I guess) because the rewards they offered were so good, I think Blizzard made a very bad judgement call by gutting professions like they did. I liked the little flair that the various professions used to have. Unique gems for Jewelcrafters, ring enchants for enchanters, extra gem slots for blacksmiths, special spellthreads for tailors etc. etc. Now professions are just boring and can be levelled from 1-700 in less than an hour in many cases. It's a fucking wonder we got to keep crafted items actually. There's a lot more to discuss, but I think I'll leave it be for now.

I hope you're ready for the triple-whammy because until someone explicitly requests that I stop posting in this thread on my lonesome, I will keep posting. Lately there has been a lot of buzz about the C&D letter sent to the Nostalrius private server dev team and the subsequent termination of the server and its large community. A petition signed by hundreds of thousands of people, prominent streamers and youtubers coming out of the woodwork and giving their two cents on the subject matter (Sodapoppin and JonTron, to name a few) and even an old WoW developer taking the reins of the petition to roll out official Blizzard "Legacy" servers. One comment/complaint that I see a lot is that in the current incarnation of World of Warcraft, the game is dead, too instanced and there really isn't any "world" in World of Warcraft anymore. People love to link videos captured both in Vanilla WoW from 10 years ago and from the Nostalrius private server filmed a couple of months ago that contain footage of dozens and dozens of players from the two opposing factions, the Horde and the Alliance, duking it out in the world. So-called "World PvP". People say that the concept of World PvP is dead on retail, but I beg to differ. I play on an EU RP server called "Argent Dawn" on retail. It contains one of the healthiest player populations in the game and has historically been a very lively server since all the way back in Vanilla. The reason for that is that people who like to roleplay in World of Warcraft, as nerdy and cringy as it might sound to the average person, genuinely breathe a lot of life into the game. Regardless of long content drought, RP players continue organizing events within their guilds, between their friends and even large-scale campaigns that involve the entire server. This week I have been participating in such an event in my limited spare time. This video was filmed a few days ago, at the beginning of the event. More than 3000 players and the associated the guilds they belong to are involved in this event. It is being managed by dedicated "DM's" on both the Horde, the Alliance side. There is even a large neutral faction, representing Cenarion Circle druids and Shado-Pan operatives, among others. There are well-thought out rules and resource systems put in place by the people hosting the campaign and you can contribute by creating your own events and exploring the dense Krasarang jungles, fighting off the rising tide of Saurok hostile NPCs or by launching assaults on the opposing factions bases. All in an attempt to gain control of the region and win the campaign. Here is a map of the zone And here's the megathread on the Argent Dawn realm forums, if you want to see for yourself just how massive of an undertaking this whole event is. http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/17610904190 My point being that there is still a living, breathing world to be found in World of Warcraft, it just might require you to step out of your comfort zone a little bit.

I agree. I'm not very pleased with the trend that has ben occurring over the past ~8 years of shooting games straying further and further into "the future". I don't mind the idea, but the problem is as ever, that because it's popular and it sells, every company starts doing it. I was very curious where the Battlefield series was going to go after its most recent installment and in my opinion, this is probably the best route they could have gone. It won't compete with Verdun. They are targetted at two different demographics. Verdun is in the same vein as Red Orchestra, a very unforgiving, brutal and genuinely tactical shooter that slaps you in the face from the moment you step onto the battlefield. The Battlefield series will be way less hardcore, as it has been historically. The Battlefield brand appeals to the mainstream and they would be shooting themselves in the foot if they tried to move into something similar as Verdun and its extreme unfriendliness to the casual crowd. This new Battlefield will blow Verdun out of the water in terms of sales and media coverage and Verdun will remain a relatively obscure niche game, as it currently is. Mind you, I think Verdun is an excellent game, it just wasn't created to compete with Battlefield and Battlefield won't be competing with Verdun because it doesn't need to.

Just going to put this... Right... Here. EDIT: So outside of the obnoxiously fragmented editing, the shitty cover of Seven Nation Army and the obvious "bullshots" used to construct this trailer, I think DICE and EA are definitely grasping onto an interesting concept and Battlefield 1 has the potential to be super good. I mean let's be real, there is a motherfucking zeppelin teased in this trailer. Fucken' siiiiiick.

That looks like a modified Tuk Tuk vehicle, which I can tell you right now is not a standard piece of driving equipment in RDA. The LMG in the picture is also not loaded and there seems to be a civilian scooter parked in the background together with other vehicles spread around haphazardly. My immediate guess would be that this isn't actually the army and rather some people goofing off privately. That being said, the image of someone leading the charge from that thing is great. EDIT: I think I may have found the vehicle pictured. It's from a 2013 military show. TITLE: Tactical Ultra Light Battle TUK

His name is Karsten Leifman, so idk you tell me.

One of the technicians on base is a massive computer enthusiast, his personal space is packed with old computer parts and floppy disks. Outside of tinkering with computers in general, one of his favourite pastimes is obtaining and running infamous computer viruses using virtual machines and disposable (in the name of science) old physical computers. He willingly runs these viruses in a controlled environment and records pretty much everything that happens, both on video and with notes. He showed me some of this yesterday and I must admit, even though I am a technological illiterate, seeing some of those things in action was very interesting. He showed me the "Living Death" DOS virus, the "Melting Screen" worm and the "HATE" DOS virus. Watching him navigate through the PC with command prompts and explain all the carnage these things were wrecking was very eye-opening for me. The Melting Screen one was quite cool and he got rid of it with relative ease, the Living Death virus complete trashed one of his old computers though, which was pretty scary.

You're turning Japanese. Stop watching anime and consuming Japanese products in general.

tonight is pizza night

It causes a Starstorm spell to happen around you every 8 seconds, provided there are any enemies (I think it might just be heroes, but I am not sure) in vision and range. It has no cast point (unlike Mirana's regular Starstorm, which does have a short cast point), costs no mana and is independent of your actual Starstorm spell in terms of cooldown. I honestly didn't think it would be very good, but after seeing it action, it's decent imo.

Position 1 Axe is probably viable now PA was and still will be a shit hero AM will probably be building Vanguard now WK will be even more unplayable vs Diffusal heroes Drums are back to being meh Octameme Core is less of a meme now Lifestealer will no longer become an Ancient Creep at level 6-7 Lifestealer is probably going to be pretty strong regardless Terrorblade might honestly be a meme hero this version Invoker probably won't build Ring of Aquila anymore Sange & Yasha will probably be core on Strength heroes Silver Edge might be core on Slark now Veil of Discord is now slightly less dope, but still pretty dope Dragon Lance Enchantress is worse now, but still probably core on the hero Bloodstone might actually be worth buying for the first time in like a year Echo Sabre is probably going to be less good than people think, but it still sounds hilarious on heroes like Spirit Breaker. Expect your mid player to cry at you to buy him Tomes of Knowledge if you're position 4/5 Armlet is really fucking good now Bloodseeker, Storm Spirit and Mirana Aghanim's Scepter are all extremely underwhelming and you probably shouldn't buy them I still refuse to believe that the reworked Earthshaker Aghanim's Scepter is actually real, fuck you Snowtoad Hurricane Pike is probably Drow Ranger's new best friend, despite subpar stats Invoker is less strong, but still strong. Macropyre continues to get buffed despite all the other issues Jakiro has as a hero Kunkka is a lot better in lane now with the base armor buff Lich might be good cancer now Morphling Replicate buff is actually pretty significant Necrophos will now be less obnoxious to play against... Slightly less Nyx Assassin continues to regenerate health at an absurd rate Omniknight got nerfed (FUCKING FINALLY) Puck now goes too fast Riki got some decent buffs, the hero probably still won't be viable Aghanim's Scepter Shadow Fiend might be a real thing now I still can't figure out what the fuck IceFrog wants Silencer to do in this game Viper can now build Skadi and stack it with his Poison Attack... Think about that

hell yeah nigguh

Found a screenshot of my old raiding Priest on Ragnaros. I was super excited to finally have THE Spriest trinket drop from MgT HC. Memories of better times ;_;

Going to necro this thread because I am among the deluded few who still has an active subscription to retail, though it is more because my laptop doesn't run many other games more than anything, as I have little love for Warlords of Draenor. Tonight I tried my hand at Challenge Mode Dungeons for the first time ever in my WoW career. I played VERY casually during Mists of Pandaria, the expansion where Challenge Mode was first added and missed out on the opportunity to do them back then. That is something I have always regretted after discovering the ton of really awesome transmog sets I missed out on (and now they are no longer available in-game, QQ). So I figured that I would at least try and get them done in Warlords of Draenor, so that I would be able to enjoy some cool weapon transmog items in the future. (Because these ones are also very likely to be made unavailable to anyone who hasn't unlocked them during WoD) I didn't really know if CM runs was something that people regularly pugged for or anything and I just kinda started advertising for a full CM Gold run in Trade Chat. After about 15 minutes of posting in trade, I was whispered by a dude from the guild "Shadowstalkers" on my realm Argent Dawn. Unfortunately I failed to screencap our conversation, but it went something like this. "Hey we need a Rogue for a full CM Gold clear, do you have 2-3 hours available?" "Sure, but I've never done any kind of CM content before, is that a problem?" "Not a problem at all, what's your item level?" "710 in my Combat Gea-" "Actually it doesn't matter, we just need you to cast Shroud of Concealment and Sap." "O-Okay..." I got invited to the group and it turns out that it was a group consisting mainly of alts from this Shadowstalkers guild and the average item level was actually pretty fucking low. The reason they were running it on their alts, was because you can only unlock the transmog weapons on a character who has completed the Challenge Mode: Gold meta achievement. So even if you had done it on your main character, any other character on your account would still be unable to receive the transmog gear unless they did the meta achievement again. Anyway, I didn't really know what to expect. They just told me to bring the best buff food and flasks possible and stack a ton of invisibility potions. The next ~2hr 45min of playing World of Warcraft is probably the most fun I have ever had in this game. Challenge Mode really lives up to its name, it is a real challenge. Every player in the party needs to concentrate and stay on their toes for the duration of the run. Spells and ground effects are deadly and the dungeon monsters hit like trains, to the point where if you somehow draw aggro for more than a second and aren't a tank, you will most likely die. The dungeons are mostly the same as they are in their normal, heroic and mythic versions in terms of mechanics, but new monsters are added to some dungeons and some bosses have different mechanics to look out for. Going into that blind was super fun and the encounters I had done so many times on heroic/mythic became fun again because all the timings were so tight and new spells were thrown into the mix. Playing a Rogue in CM dungeons is also a treat, because you are an integral part of the group. You aren't just an expendable faceless DPS anymore as Rogues have a ton of tricks and tools that really help secure great times for CM dungeons. Shroud of Concealment, Sap and Distract allow you and your group to skip a ton of trash if you know how to do it right (Which was explained to me on the fly as we were doing the dungeons). I can say with a lot of certainty that the group of alts I was playing with would not have made the gold score timer on at least half the dungeons, had I not been there. Of course Rogues aren't MANDATORY, but boy do they make the runs a lot more smooth and easy. In the end we managed to complete the Challenge Mode Gold Meta achievement with relative ease. Turns out that the Shadowstalkers were actually Mythic raiders and so even though their alts were a bit undergeared, their personal player skill more than made up for it and I am now the proud owner of the Challenge Mode transmog gear. Though you can't see it in this still image, these blades have a really cool unique animation to them. They look cool enough on their own, to be fair.

Man today sucked. First of all, I thought us recruits were scheduled to leave for a field exercise today Monday, but as it would turn out, we're not going anywhere until Wednesday. So I had basically packed up my shit for no reason and I have a lot of shit. Second of all, there is a position available as a recruit that is called "Gruppe Leder" in Danish (Directly translated = "Group Leader"). It's a position you can volunteer for when you are first assigned a group within the company and all it really does is add a bunch of extra work onto your day for very little benefit. It's not a new rank you obtain, you're still just a recruit and you hold no superiority over your fellow recruits. What a Group Leader does is basically a lot of the legwork which the Sergeant would have done. The Group Leader is responsible for the group to be where they are supposed to be on time, responsible for people maintaining their duties and also more simple stuff like collecting paperwork when the group has been on any kind of exercise and submitting it to a relevant officer. It's kinda like being your class representative for the student council in a school environment. Anyway, with that explanation out of the way... The Group Leader for my particular group was kicked off the position due to instigating violence last week (She got into an actual fist fight with another recruit) and today my Sergeant approached me and told me that he believed that I would be suitable for the job. I think I could have said no, but saying no to anything in the army is such a foreign concept and I just instinctively accepted. Just fucking kill me now.