What will YOU do for the next month

This mostly applies to those of us waiting for GW2 final launch, but I wouldn't mind learning a bit about other members of the family and what they plan on doing

My progression through the betas went meh for the first weekend (issues getting the game installed, then issues with graphics), pretty sweet for the second, and now, after finally getting to play my race, and making enough progress to really appreciate the time put into areas of the game, I'm ecstatic for release. Only problem is... Now what... What will all of us do while we (im)patiently wait for a month.

Personally, I've got a pretty busy month up ahead. Huge supporter of local rock music so this weekend I will be attending an industry showcase to help support some of my favorite local bands and help them get sponsors, or maybe even signed. Next weekend I will also be getting my first tattoo, hand drawn by me, and going to aquafest. Mid august, a young local band (who's singer/guitarist is still only 16) will be releasing his very first EP and I will be there in support. The rest of my time (so far) will be spent enjoying any decent weather we get (since the Seattle area isn't know for its sunshine and warm weather...), sitting on Rift, socializing with my guild (since GW2 makes the stand still button mashing kinda boring), and working on drawing the Rockstar's UpRoar beast, which I will paint on my window for the show.

Playing Rift, studying for an IT certification (that I hope to get before 8/28), and doing some home improvements. :)

You mean besides cry myself to sleep every night? Go back to playing Tera and possibly some home improvements as well. Moxie, What IT certification are you going for?

» Edited on: 2012-07-23 08:20:39

It is also quite possible I start leaning G-Code, since I have access to CNC machinery for personal projects if I learn the coding for them.

i will be jumping around in sanctum before our real home of Rall launches. bwe3 was my first beta event because of issues with my system's delivery over the past couple of months. 8/25/12 cannot get here soon enough! :(

@Sarosan, Right now, A+. I'm tired of doing the retail/administrative thing, so I figure it's time to get some different (and hopefully more useful!) skills. :)

It all comes down to preparing my computer as much as possible, preparing myself for my duties as WvW head Draio, and preparing the house for Dan-shutdown-and-play-games mode. *I've upgraded my modem, router, and internet speed. *Updated my video card driver. Might update the sound. Updated all the suggested Microsoft updates as well. *Probably will do a couple defrags and clean my computer of unused video games as well. *Next up I need to figure out why my computer and my girlfriend's mac fight for the same IP address and how to assign them each their own. If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. *Get as much done at work so when I take off 2 weeks for GW2, I'm not slammed when I get back to work. *Clean the house really well, make a bunch of freezable meals the previous weekend so I don't have to cook much the two weeks I'm playing 'till my eyes bleed. *And hang out with real life buddies ahead of time. Arenanet knows full well my buddies outside GW2 won't be seeing much of me come head start release. *I also need to pin down exactly what 2 days I'm leading WvW with Ben (Fog) so he and I can cover 3 nights or so a week. Once I know more, I'll make a WvW preview post about it. But I'll plan this out with Ben and our other leaders during/after our next Elder meeting which is either this weekend or next (July 28th or August 4th). *And I need to finish my self designed poster board of the WvW maps. I have all the initial work done; I just need to put it together. (It's a map I'll be able to place markers on for where we send troops, how many, and who is leading them--something I really needed in Warhammer Online, but I'm finally doing for GW2.) And no, I haven't planned this last month out at all... :P

» Edited on: 2012-07-23 10:16:18

Dungeon Defenders and a bunch of other games I got in the steam summer sale. It turns out my processor can't handle my beast of a graphics card. CPU runs at 100% while the GPU only runs at 63%, so I'm in the process of building a new computer. Still need to buy the motherboard and processor which I should be able to afford by the end of this week. Also getting a SSD. These two factors should solve all the lag I had in WvW. 2 FPS is unplayable. Hopefully going from a dual core 2.7 GHz processor to a 3.7 QUAD core processor will allow my graphics card to run at max. Not sure how good my graphics card is on a scale, but it was expensive when I got it(250), its a AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series.

» Edited on: 2012-07-24 05:19:47

grats wolfie, cyu soon on sanctum of rall

I'm leaving town tomorrow for business and I will return on the weekend. Then I fly out again the following week. I'll spend the rest of the time playing games I purchased on the Steam summer sale event. Browse forums and look at all the images and vids everyone captured and analyzed for this past BWE. I'm also going to prep some meals for the house that require little if any work so the household won't be up in arms with my game time the first 3 days.

great post everyone. re: gaming: Rift: i hope to get Roxanol to level 50 in pvp prior to gw2. she is currently 42. i also plan on raiding with Mok's group whenever i can (schedule allowing). i want to improve on my keyboard skills as a dps. (huge difference in motor commands for me.) i will figure out if i will use my G15 keyboard or Corsair Vengence. i have to install an OS on my main Seagate drive as it turns out that my solid state drive i bought & built to be my OS is too small for the ugly beast of microsoft. re: RL: graduate school starts up in August too. :( and, to ensure i don't flunk out, it takes precedence over gaming. i will be preparing for my master's thesis topic and finding an advisor. i will be doing a thorough house cleaning and purging stuff to Salvation Army. i will be completing the art projects that i've been enjoying this summer and have some new pretty jewelry ready for me to wear. and of course, work - all praise to work - which pays my ISP and art bills :)

I will be playing Rift (and continuing past GW2s release.. two games at once! oh yeah!) As for real life.. well my job is in easy mode now (thank you drought, you killed all my hard work) so i will be waiting for Far Cry 3, Halo 4 and CoD Black Ops 2. As well as managing my flotilla of children with my wife.

@Drigr That is awesome you are into the local music scene there in Seattle. I am in Indiana and I am into the local music scene of Seattle too! I love the old time busker music coming out of the northwest and my favorite street band right now is the Crow Quill Night Owls out of Port Townsend, they are freaking amazing. Especially the resonator guitar player. He is one of the best guitarists I have ever heard. Check em out if you haven't seen em yet. It might seem common place to hear old ragtime music on the street corners there but there is just nothing like that where I am from. Hearing those dudes and the other busker folks playing the old Charlie Patton and Mississippi Sheiks songs has made me a huge fan of the old school... really, really old school. As far as what I am doing... probably playing Rift and Dayz when I want to be scared out of my mind, working on elevating my finger style guitar skills from awful to bad and generally enjoying life.

@Astril - I'm big into the local rock stuff. Found an all ages place (a pizzeria no less) that is 60 miles away which puts on awesome shows. Bands I'm following from around here are Klover Jane (great band, well known locally, but they're all got real lives, keeping them local), Riot in Rythm (great group of guys, won some awards in cali and NY, starting to branch out, playing in oregon), Jason Kertson and The Immortals (absolutely amazing, 16 year old guitarist/singer, mentored by Dave Mustain, featured on 99.9 KISW and King 5 News multiple times, releasing his first EP the 17th), The Fail Safe Project (constantly touring the NW, not sure about national fame yet), Amadon (line up changes seem to be holding them back), and Fall From Grace (awesome band, depending on who you know, getting national attention, only one of the listed bands to have their CD in my FYE) OMG I can't believe I forgot about The Crying Spell. Possibly one of the most important bands to me. This band is basically where going to local rock shows transitioned from my dad to myself. He was listening to them when they were a small little band with 50 fans filling bars. He invited them to come play at our house, we built a stage, and they came and rocked our back yard. Since then, they have toured in europe TWICE. Once with The Killing Joke, and a second time for themselves.

» Edited on: 2012-07-23 14:41:56

Let's see . . I have a road trip for a week with some gal pals, a 2 week cultural festival for evening entertainment after that, then a family vacation, capped off with getting our son ready for another school year. Squeezed in there we have some house renovation work to finish and if there is any time left I'm still in SWTOR with a few family and RL friends. Come head start I'll be more than ready to sit still and enjoy a new MMO. :)

@Moxie: I hear that. I keep putting off the A+ mostly because I don't see it as much of a challenge. one of these days I just need to do it though. More certs. are never a bad thing. :)

» Edited on: 2012-07-23 15:16:58

Oh and Drigr, the time for good weather in the Seattle area is NOW... ...well not RIGHT now per se since it's cloudy, but in general the weather is pretty awesome in the summer. :P August & September are our best months to be sure. BTW nice to see another Seattlite in Gaiscioch. We're starting to get quite a few.

Oh I agree Vampire, we have had an awesome last couple of weeks as far as summer goes. nice out, sun shine, but not the scorching 90 and 100+ weather the rest of the country has been getting. But it is typically so rare, that a nice sunny day > anything else in the world. Only kind of a Seattlite, I think I would be considered a.... wait for it... Lynnwoodian (ain't that a mouthful?)

sig test/ bwe3 was such a tease

I live in Houston...so there's nothing good about our summers. Plan to work out and lose some weight in the next month too. We'll see how that goes. :)

Try to convince the wife that three years is too long to be using the same laptop. Research some builds and PVP tactics for the Engineer - I freakin love this class (or maybe it's just the cute little Asura) Playing Secret World in the meantime

@Onchu: I was watching Alake play Rift one day and was showing her some of the GW2 stuff when she said, "too bad I won't be able to play it!". It was then I decided to build her a new computer. That and it's just sad to watch someone game on a laptop period. Let alone, and old one. Now she can play Rift and GW2 :)

» Edited on: 2012-07-23 17:32:35

I just built this system a few weeks ago and love it. Intel i5 2500k cpu Asus P8Z68 V Pro Atx Motherboard PNY Geforce GTX 670 16gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3 Ram 1TB Western Digital- Caviar Black Corsair Enthusiast TX850m power supply Corsair Hydro Series H100 Corsair Obsidian Series 550D Mid Tower Case HP 24x Internal Double layer DVD burner Corsair Force 3 90gb SSD During the beta weekends I got a warning that one of my cores was at a 100% usage so during the up coming month a am going to try figure out why I got the warning. I also need to explore my options with a different ISP (I get 2mb down and .5mb up). I currently have DSL, as cable and FIOS are not avaliable where I live. Yep, I dont quite live in B.F.Egypt but you can see it from here. As for the rest of my time I am sure my kids will find someting for me to do. :)

@RustedCrown Didn't have the money to go GTX 670 or half the other stuff you went with, but I built alake: Intel Core i5 2500k 8GB Crucial Ballistix DDR3-1600 500GB Hitachi HDD Corsair VX 550w (had it sitting around) Zalman ZX9 Case Gigabyte Radeon HD 7770 OC Burner, cpu cooling, all the other usual stuff. I work at a place called Micro Center so I got a decent discount. That video card makes me jealous. At some point I'll have the money to upgrade my 6870 and her 7770.

» Edited on: 2012-07-23 21:14:25

Gaming: Playing through TSW until GW2 releases. RL: Studying for my law finals well in advance and working, that takes 60-80 hours depending on the week and workload. Spending time with Pnub and other friends in advance. Pnub will be ingame with us, the others will become distant telephone/text friends until I am at least level 40. Spending time with my cat for the same reason. He will no doubt form a support group with Pnub's cat to keep each other company! (I have done much family visiting already in preparation.) Doing every bit of cleaning and errands I can think of to ensure uninterrupted playtimes. Doing more training/gym fitness bootcamp than usual to allow for pounds accrued whilst sitting on my ass gaming from August 28 :P Gaiscioch: Elder meeting about launch, finishing a PVE project ready for release. Finalising a date for a PVE event and Oceanic time events. Reading up on GW2 forums and finalising ele knowledge/builds/ideas. Smiling to myself because we have a server named Sanctum of Rall!

» Edited on: 2012-07-24 04:05:15

Looking for work... funny how bachelor's degrees aren't in demand in Boise, ID. (if someone happens to know of non-retail/non-food service jobs in Boise let me know, basically anything where I don't deal with the general public). Awaiting GW2 release and playing TSW. Oh and, counting the days until August 25th.

Dungeons and Dragons Online on Cannith server currently takes up the odd hour here and there.

Working like a crazy person for the next week or two, then taking most of August and September off work. I've got a long list of chores and a short list of trips planned, then it's GW2 time! :)

I'll be ending my current employment of 6 1/4 years, finishing up home renovations to get my office in place, and starting up my own business. So it's actually a good thing for me that GW2 isn't out yet that way I can focus on getting things going and have the flow settled out (as much as it ever will) by the end of august.

@Sarosan greetings from another Houstonian! * Seeing if I can afford upgrades to my 5y/o rig. It has served me well, but GW2 is taxing it somewhat (Sylvarian character select gave me some pretty, yet disturbing gfx effects!) * Making a decision on main class and names prior to Early Start. * RL trying to build my client list (ongoing and hard as heck!)

Yeah, I've decided on my character name and race but not class. All the classes I played were pretty awesome. Had a ton of fun on the Ranger. I don't know...decisions decisions.

I am going to learn how to get a really cool signature for my forums post, Oh and hang out with my husband, Jar!! =)

The cool signatures can be found here: http://www.gaiscioch.com/get_signatures.php (Membership > Custom Signature) I'll spend a lot of time on this website since it has too many cool buttons everywhere and I need to press all of them. Getting into some events with the guild for my free Rift days. Also got EVE and DIII to play. Keeping up with my 7 am wakeup times and start running in the morning. Reading "Atlas Shrugged". I have a large stock of CSS videos to watch here, and a C book to read. And a project to work on. With college coming closer, I'll have to research some companies, patch up my resume and probably finally get a LinkedIn account, as well.

By: Desrie Treubh "I am going to learn how to get a really cool signature for my forums post, Oh and hang out with my husband, Jar!!" I am lucky! I like to hang out with her as well! We will continue to play Tera as well. Half considered getting back in RIFT for a bit... but our toons are defiant.

Browse the Gaiscioch forums, and hopefully make an acquaintance or two before GW2 comes out. That way I feel like I know some people once the game releases. Oh, and a work trip to bath, maine for a couple of weeks. I hear lobster there is cheap. then back home just in time for pre-release.

I'll be getting the house and yard as squared away as much as possible and spending a bunch of time with my fiancee and our cats. On the gaming front I'll be concentrating on getting Dhonar to lvl 50 and getting settled in with the guild, dabbling a bit into GW1 to soak up some Tyrian lore while attempting to get a few points in my HoM, and spending an inordinate amount of time on the interwebz reading and watching videos about GW2. I really can't wait until Aug. 25th to get in game and explore a brand new world with all of you awesome people.

Looking like I've got a pretty busy work schedule ahead, at least until August 12 (picked up alot of work hours and added in a live theatre show), so I expect the time will fly by quite fast. Fortunately, I bought a brand new computer in preparation for Rift's release, and it seems to be coping with Guild Wars 2 quite well, so nothing to prepare for there. I'm just hoping now I won't have many work shifts in the first week of release. One thing I do need to remember to do though is to preorder a copy of the game for my wife. Really hoping GW2 will be the game that hooks her (and drags her away from those dreadful facebook games), after both Warhammer and Rift failed to do so. On the plus side, with no subscription, no great loss this time around if she doesn't take to it.

My work schedule just got swamped as well. About a month and a half to two months ago, work got so slow I went unemplyed for a while. Started up again with missing a day here and there til I was back on a 40 hour week, now I am at the point where I'm working mandatory overtime. Very pleased with my boss for getting us a sales woman so we now have a bunch of new work coming in. Getting paid "by the part" today cutting down bolts. 1.5k bolts.... one of our newer customers can't find them in the right material at the right length.