Justin Germino Ramblings

There are some really cool rewards for taking the time to explore 100% of the maps in Guild Wars 2, and these include Transmutation Stones which allow you to merge the appearance of one item with the attributes of another for the same item.  Really this is a cosmetic thing which allows you to keep the look of one armor piece but replicate the abilities of a piece you liked better but didn’t look better.

Some of the Vista’s are very hard to figure out how to climb too, but most of them involve circling the area to find the right path that will lead you to the top of a peak, house, tower so that you can claim the Vista and unlock it.  There are also a ton of location points and waypoints to unlock on each map as well.  You earn experience for each thing you unlock and you earn the master reward only when you complete the entire map.

So far I have only 100% completed Wayfarer Foothills and Hoelbrak for all the discovery, but intend to have a few more maps done within a week or two if I can find the time.

-Justin Germino

This weekend will be a very hectic one as I start packing and assembling furniture for the move.  Yes, I haven’t really been broadcasting it too much but have let it slip a few times on Social Media, but I am moving again.  This time I am moving only a few miles and staying in Casa Grande.

It will be an extremely hectic September and October, as we plan on moving in during fall break starting 1st week of October.  I am going to be spending time over the next several weeks boxing items, assembling items and prepping to do a lot of landscaping and yard work.

Unfortunately this means my blogging time and Guild Wars 2 time will be even more limited, so hopefully I can write some extra posts during the weeknights to prevent there from being any gaps or outages on my blogs.

I hate moving and this is the 5th time I would have moved since 2001 when we bought our first house back in Mesa, AZ.  We sold it in 2002 and have been living in Casa Grande ever since, and this would be our 3rd house in Casa Grande.

-Justin Germino

Our youngest Boston Terrier who is just over 20 weeks old (5 months) has already grown so much that he is about 19 pounds already.

How could this little Guinea pig sized creature:

Grow into this in only 20 weeks?

He is so cute though but still has some trouble potty training, mostly he can hold it now longer so he doesn’t have as many accidents but going through the doggie door to wee-wee out in the backyard is still a bit of a stretch for his brain to comprehend.

We love him anyway!

Took the family to the theater on Saturday last week to see The Odd Life of Timothy Green which was a really nice and creative family movie from Disney about a couple who so desperately wanted a kid that a boy sprung from the garden after they buried their "trait wishlist" in the ground.

The movie showed the innocent nature of the boy and the mistakes parents make trying to make their kids lives perfect, but it also illustrated how much care and love surrounds a child who is wanted.  I was amazed my two boys sat through the movie without being bored and was glad we went to see it as a family.

It did deal with some pretty rude/mean people, family and showcasing how people ostracize, minimize and tease those who are different but it handled it well and showed growth for all of the characters in the film.  The ending was predictable but terribly sad and I won’t say I didn’t shed a tear myself at the end.

"I wasn’t scared, it’s allergies." ~Mike

I also finally got around to seeing The Woman in Black over the weekend and I thought it was a really good movie.  Haunting but not overly scary, it reminded me a little bit of The Skeleton Key in it’s pace and style but was very well done. 

This movie has a dark tone throughout and keeps you on the edge of your seat.  I won’t even spoil it but I liked it until the end and though some of the plot’s are predictable for haunting type films it was very much enjoyable.  My wife dislikes horror/scary movies and still would have preferred not to watch it as it was too creepy.

-Justin Germino

One thing I really like about Guild Wars 2 compared to it’s predecessor is that when you find ink or dye for your clothing you permanently unlock that color rather than get 1 use out of that dye.

You can freely change or dye the color of your armor, or city clothes anytime you want and as often as you want without penalty or paying any extra fee.  You start off with a small selection of common dyes, and find dyes as treasures or monster drops on the maps.

I have found about 7 different dyes so far in Guild Wars 2, and my son found a “pink” color.  They seem to have a splendid array of color names and types, and I wonder just how many Guild Wars 2 dye colors there are built into the game to find.

So far I have only found 1 Uncommon Dye and 4 Common Dyes, but enjoy changing my characters outfit and look on a regular basis as I get new gear.  When you put on new armor, it assumes the previous color of dye you selected, but I like changing it up to reflect that I got a new armor recently.  As you can see from the above pic, a greenish/purple outfit is my ranger’s look.

I have said this before, but Guild Wars 2 offers such a vast amount of customization from the character faces, bodies, clothing, features and colors plus the amount of races and classes that rarely do you see another character who looks just like you unless you deliberately dye yourselves as a group.

This is something many other MMO’s are just lacking, the ability to create a character as unique as you are and you can change your colors as often as you want without penalty or paying extra copper/silver/gold is a great feature.  The game would be cumbersome if you found 1 dye and can only change 1 piece of armor color losing that dye when it was used.

What are some of your favorite colors that you have found in Guild Wars 2 so far?

-Justin Germino

Update: According to the Guild Wars 2 Wiki there are 391 dyes so far identified in the game.

I recently held a very successful Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3 Giveaway contest, with it gaining very close to 25,000 entries.

But this pales in comparison to some of the mass contest collaborations I see happening with popular coupon and mommy bloggers.  There is one for a Dyson vacuum that has over 500,000 entries for example and they know how to run massive contest collaborations.

The trick is in the collaboration and in what is called "micro-sponsorship" this is where a collection of 30-60 bloggers get together all chipping in $5 – $10 and it pools to be able to purchase larger prize in the $199 – $300 range.  So everyone contributes a little, in exchange they get 2 or 3 social media accounts listed in the Rafflecopter widget.

To prevent bogging down 1 widget with hundreds of entries to scroll through 1 at a time, they instead create pages on their blog and list 10-20 facebook pages to like on a single page, you do all the follows on a single page and you get a pool of entries in Rafflecopter.

Like all pages on this link = 25 points for example.

This creates a mass amount of entries and somewhat simplifies the process, but it doesn’t really allow the contestant to be choosy at an entry by entry level as much.  With a Facebook like limit of 5,000 I think, you join too much of these and you can max out your FB likes pretty quick if you go off and like brands often.

The other thing I find with Rafflecopter is validation is very difficult, I only run contests with a few sponsors because it is hard to validate every entry.  You can fake Rafflecopter entries and claim the entries without liking the fanpages you are supposed to.  The only way to validate is see if you actually liked the fanpage (if that entry is the winning entry) but if you don’t own the fanpage you don’t have access to see all who like it, so you have to contact the fanpage owner and ask them to confirm.

I imagine if these type of co-hosted blogging contests do validation, they must deal with a lot of manual entry validation before finding a valid winner in many cases.

Though this frustration pales to the amount of traffic and entries, when you have 60 blogs cohosting the contest, and they get a follow link for cohosting you now have 60x the number of articles online promoting the same contest with 60x the number of social media profiles pushing the contest.  This can add up to some huge traffic and visibility.

I am going to further investigate on gaining more visibility and entries to upcoming contests, in particular my Laptop giveaway needs to have a return on investment that is worth the cost of the prize and all the work involved.

One of the things I enjoy doing is helping other bloggers on my spare time in addition to running my own blogs, I do some consultation for hire but mostly I just answer questions and give free advice across Twitter, Google+ and various blogging related Facebook groups.

It really makes my day to see the appreciation people have and when a message like this comes across my tweet stream it makes me glad to help others.

I have always enjoyed helping others in a technical fashion, it comes from my tech support background and nature.  Even though I don’t do direct technical support at my day job anymore, I ensure that customer support and focus are the key to everything we do.  I believe providing the best service and always putting your best foot forward is important and helps you stand out.

You don’t have to be the best at what you do, but if you give the best service and your customers, clients and peers all respect you and see the level of effort you put in, you will have fans, clients and customers even if you aren’t the best.  Besides, the best may be just exactly what you are doing and that is providing the customer service level that exceeds all others.

-Justin Germino

I was reading that the Amazon Android App store is now available in the U.K. which makes me think that either the Kindle Fire (which is sold out and there may not be any new ones made) or the new replacement for the Kindle Fire may be offered to U.K. in addition to U.S. markets soon.

This is a good news and the Kindle Fire was a break out success for Amazon and the 7" tablet as a whole, it was the Kindle Fire that showed that there is a big demand for 7" tablets but Google came out with the Nexus 7 which is the dominant leader in price/performance in the 7" tablet space and may be for quite some time.

Amazon may have an edge in content however, with its Amazon Video, Kindle Library and other content offerings it has more to offer than Google does in terms of content right now (other than Google having way more Android apps and games in it’s Android app store).

We shall see what the next Kindle Fire will have and can do, I wonder if it will hold it’s own against the Google Nexus 7 or innovate by offering something better for the price?

-Justin Germino

Lots of house work to do this long 3 day weekend but there will be moments of game time I am sure in between.  My kids have been excited all week to have some Guild Wars 2 romps for more than 45 minutes at a time and we likely will go at some point to see The Odd Life of Timothy Greene at the theaters too this weekend.

I find that my gaming time is interfering with my blogging, and I haven’t been feeling so great this past week so I haven’t stayed up at night to write articles and catch up on blogging related activities as much so my personal blog has no posts in the queue which is unusual for someone who has posts queued at least 3 days out on all my blogs.

In the meantime, perhaps some much needed rest is needed as well.

Hope some of you are having some good barbeques going on!

-Justin Germino

Guild Wars 2 does something to help level the playing field (no pun intended) when players go back to easier area’s of the game or help and assist other players who are much lower level in a weaker area.

There is something called Dynamic Leveling in Guild Wars 2, where your character has your true level, but then they also have an effective level which is scaled down to the max for the area +1

When your level is marked down, your abilities all take a penalty as if you were that lower level, you don’t lose any gear but you are effectively weaker.  In some area’s you can have 1,100 HP and then when you teleport to a lower level area, your hit points suddenly drop to 500 max hit points.  This is a little jarring at first but is an excellent way to keep balance in the game and prevent higher level characters from dominating group quests and world events which would be completed far to quickly and easily by a higher level character.

I think it is a great system and works out really well for the game, it allows me to jump in and help my 8 and 5 year olds wherever they are and not overpower the opponents they face.

It does not dynamically adjust up your level, so no hope of going to a level 40 area with a level 15 character and expecting not to die in one hit!

-Justin Germino