Holy banana bread, look what they've done. Now I am never going to finish my half-finished stack of games, with today's PSN updates and all. Best PlayStation Store update week ever; my credit card is rearing ready to purchase Mega Man 9 and WipEout HD as soon as I get home. Why must all games be released in the Fall? Why can't some of these wait until Spring or Summer when there is virtually nothing interesting to play?

QQ. Anyway, back to my list of half-finished games. Shadow of the Colossus is a fascinating, awesome, and not that lengthy of a game. So, shame the fuck on me for letting it rot for a month and a half. Being honest though? The controls and the camera frustrate me greatly. I'm not sure that I generally dig monster-of-the-week games either, but I will finish it!

Resistance Fall of Man and Neverwinter Nights are victims of WoW distractions. I might pick Resistance up again this weekend; I am around 60% through? I haven't finished Grand Theft Auto IV either, but that's more of a long term project. I pick it up when I am in the mood, do shit, play a few missions, and then set it down again.

I really do wish that WipEout had a demo though. But eh, it's $20.

Small update; Been busy. Oh hey, I had completely missed the fact that Brewfest started over the weekend (September 20th through October 4th). Every inch of my soul loathes Blackrock Depths, but there's a seasonal boss there that drops things so I might get in on some instance farming and do that, if other people are available.

• We were four minutes off from getting the fourth chest in Zul'Aman last week. So close! Someone will get the bear mount next week, before it falls off of the face of Azeroth! Oh, I also finally got Mojo, the much coveted pet frog after around 50 Hex Sticks...
• I pre-ordered my Wrath of the Lich King Collector's Edition off of Amazon first thing Tuesday morning. I think both Gamestop and Amazon have stopped pre-orders on it. I need to find room to place all of these ginormous game boxes.
• Let's recap my pre-expansion check list: [✓] Level Doombeard to 70, [✓] Get Mojo before ZA goes out of style,  [  ] Skill mining to 375: Almost, [  ] 5k gold: err...
• PopCap + WoW = This. Hah, I am so installing this addon.
• Still undecided on what to do with my badges. I am leaning towards throwing caution to the wind and blowing them all on shiny DPS gear, knowing that it may very well be replaced with the first green drop that I encounter....

I think I'll download the test client and try out a few builds on the PTRs this week.

Oh holy hell: The Wrath of the Lich King expansion has been confirmed by Blizzard for a November 13th release date. I seriously wasn't expecting that. In fact, I was banking on it being delayed until late Q4 or early Q1, because that is when I start going into winter season hibernation mode lol. Dammit, I am going to have to juggle WoW with Fallout 3 and possibly Rock Band 2. Where hath my time gone?

Small WoW update because I've been "busy."

• You know, I haven't really thought much about what Keiya's protection build will be under the new talents when the patch goes live. I will assume that is coming soon given the announced release date, background loader, and the PTRs. This assumes that we are still raiding when the patch is released.
• I finally got Mojo, the much coveted pet frog from ZA this weekend. It only took about 50 hex sticks.
• Doombeard will tame a core hound and name it Udon. Not the green core hound, the red ones from the Molten Core. Taming one has been a huntard dream since way back in the day.

It's probably relatively pointless to blow all of my badge gear on lolret items at this point, given that greens and low level blues will probably replace half of it. My ret set isn't so good that I will hang on to it for a while. I'm really not sure what to do with my remaining badges though. Some folks are buying gems and then selling them for cash. I need to double check to make sure they aren't useful when the expansion goes live.

Oh heyo, I like shared blog topics; They are fun to participate in and read. So this week's topic over at Blog Azeroth is "What will I be doing (when WotLK goes live)" We should all have a better idea about what to expect on expansion day from the BC release. I wonder how my experience will differ this time around. Specifically, how it will differ not being in the expansion beta. 

I will be refreshing the UPS shipping page every 5-minutes all day at work unless I decide to attend a midnight launch event. I doubt that I will do that though unless I took a day off work. I'm not that obsessed to the point where I would use one of my holy vacation days to play WoW. Well, yet. Oh, unless the expansion pack is delayed until 2009, and I really hope that it is, I will probably be letting Fallout 3 collect dust for a while lol.

I will most likely be trying to get my user interface to work. Something important will break. Something important always breaks no matter how hard I prepare. The goal is to redo it completely when the next patch hits, or at least streamline it to reduce all of the junk I keep installing.

Once I actually set foot in Northrend, I will be getting a guild group together to start running the bujesus out of all entry level instances. During the first few days that the Burning Crusade was released, Hellfire Peninsula was so congested that it was nearly impossible to get any questing done. We ran instances constantly and started questing over in Zangarmarsh, where it wasn't as crowded. I also expect Proudmoore to frequently die...

I will be achievement whoring. I should so make a list of achievements that I have and achievements that I can do the second WotLK goes live.

Dammit, I regret my disenchanting sprees. I am almost certain that at some point I had all or close to all of the plate DPS belts from the heroic instances, the Worgen Claw neck from Karazhan, and another cape. I unfortunately, don't have any of my spare DPS gear enchanted or gemmed since it rots in the bank, prot being so great for burst DPS and all :P. All of the gear alternatives were pulled off of the MaxDPS ret gear ratings.

Edit: Added the SSO neck per recommendation.

Gear that I will most likely keep
You know, with one more T1 item I can get get the dumb set bonus. WTB Gruul loot whoring run.

• Head, Shoulders & Hands: Justicar Crown, Justicar Shoulderplates & Justicar Gauntlets
• Chest: Netherforce Chestplate
• Wrists: Bladespire Warbands
• Legs: Vanquisher's Legplates
• Feet: Skullshatter Warboots
• Libram: Libram of Avengement
• Trinket 1: Hourglass of the Unraveller
• Trinket 2: Bladefist's Breadth
• Ring 2: Voilet Signet of the Master Assassin

Gear that I will most likely replace
I'm at 90% into revered with the consortium. I guess I can finally finish off my rep and then get the gems tonight. I don't have a whole lot of spare badges anymore, I blew a crapload on gems this past weekend. Besides, I'm not sure that it's worth blowing gems on DPS gear.

• Neck: Adamantine Chain of the Unbroken
  Option 1: Shattered Sun Pendant of Might
  Option 2: Haramad's Bargain 
• Ring 1: Mithril Band of the Unscarred
  Option 1: Angelista's Revenge (60 badges)
• Back: Skyguard's Drape
  Option 1: Dory's Embrace (60 badges
  Option 2: Blood Knight Warcloak (25 badges)
• Waist: None :(
  Option 1: Chain of Unleashed Rage (60 badges)
  Option 2: Girdle of Seething Rage (75 badges)
  Option 3: Veteran's Plate Belt (40 badges or some amount of honor that I don't have)

I'm down a couple hundred gold again. That dumb tankadin belt pattern from the Tier-5 instances finally dropped in SSC this weekend, so I crafted it for myself. Screw farming the mats, I'm not that patient. I never bothered getting it commissions because it is kind of a sidegrade to my current belt. I like having paladin tanking piece alternatives for the sake of threat, mana and what not (versus warrior pieces).

The Bulwark of the Amani Empire finally dropped in Zul'Aman. FINALLY. I carry so many damn shields: one for healing, one for spell damage, one for resistance tanking (+5 resist all chant), and one for raid tanking (with the stamina chant).

Oh! Apparently there is a "Twenty-Five Tabards" Achievement in WotLK for tabard collectors, yay! Umm, so can we get a tabard rack now? Please? I like color coordinating them with different armor sets (for example, my Frost Resistance set is blue so I would equip a blue tabard). I also very much like having bag and bank space. Oh vanity...