Here they are, please find these useful! (Note that the link leads to the album I have created with all I have found.)
It was a choice between this really large size, or a size so small it was unreadable, with nothing in between... Frustrating, but what can you do? At least it can be easily read from here!
Well this one at least can be a more reasonable size! A guide to fat substitutions in baking? What can be more useful than this when you want to make healthier dishes?
A general baking substitution guide, another handy item to keep nearby.
The last of my favourite substitution guides is this one here, a general missing ingredient guide. Useful to anyone and everyone. Unfortunately no matter what I do it seems I cannot get rid of the large gap here, in the editing phase it shows no space between the image and the text...
And now onto a bit about gaming, and well what I have been up to lately while not studying for chemistry.
Well as some of you who read this will know, I play video games, and quite a bit of time is spent playing MMOs. With my injuries, this is about the limit of what I can do. I want to reorganize my house, and get it cleaned up, but that has to wait a bit until this last cortisone shot works a bit anyway.
In the world of MMO gaming, I have recently, along with my husband and a couple friends, begun to play World of Warcraft again for the first time in 3 years (I thought I had escaped!). During the 3 year hiatus from WoW we all played Star Wars: The Old Republic, pretty much since beta days. That is a long time in that game, but there are just a few thing that it lacks, that WoW has. The main one being a feeling of community.
SW:TOR was good for a while, but it really was the people that make the game undesirable to play. SW:TOR has better customizations for gear, you just move mods and enchancements into pieces that you prefer the look of (this is a lot of fun). The operations bosses also have some very interesting mechanics that keep the fights interesting. The devs put in some mechanics that I have not seen in wow, and it was a lot of fun while it lasted. The character creation is more customizable as well, and allows for nicer looking toons, and they kept a more traditional talent tree that WoW has moved away from! There is also more story to the game, and the story, especially the class story lines are a lot of fun to see.
With all those reasons, why would I return to WoW? It seems like SW:TOR has many things that are done better, and while these are fun, they are not what will keep you playing the game for hours on end. Despite the better story in SW:TOR, leveling is better in WoW. Why? I can't really explain it, but I don't mind leveling in WoW, whereas I hate leveling in SW:TOR.
Another thing to look at when comparing the two is the monthly subscription price. They both run off the same scale, $14.99 a month for month-to-month, $13.99 a month for 3 months at a time, and $12.99 a month for 6 months at a time. Even with those being the same, SW:TOR costs more to play overall. Why? Because EA charges taxes on top of the exchange where Blizzard does not. It comes down to WoW being $1 a month cheaper to play than SW:TOR. This adds up to be a fair bit in the end, especially when you only log in to run operations for 6 hours a week (or less as the last few months have maybe averaged 1.5-2 hours a week when you include all the cancelled operations).
I got a huge reminder yesterday while my husband and I were farming rare spawns for gear and enchanting mats. A very friendly level 90 mage helped us out, as well as gave me mats, enchants, gear, and flasks. I asked what they would like for them, and all they said was nothing. Its people like them, that I have run into repeatedly since I began playing the game 8 years ago that make the game what it is. I have also had conversations with complete strangers in the game, some about random stuff, while others have told me about new and upcoming features to the game that they thought I would like. Its easy to find people to talk to in WoW, and that is nice, it gives a reason to keep going back to the game.
Don't have a guild in WoW? You will receive a guild invite frequently until you finally choose a guild. In SW:TOR on the other hand you have to advertise who you are in trade or looking for guild channels, what your gear and experience are like, and maybe one day you will find a guild. Will the people there be friendly and helpful, or people you can work well with to see new content? Maybe, but to achieve all of that.... Not likely. Where most of this has been observed, rather than experienced, it seems to be a constant thing. Heck, the guild I am in won't even try out some of the players looking for guilds when we are short people. Why? They don't want to deal with new plays, or pugs. Instead they pull people from the opposite faction to create characters and level then run operations with us after they have finally reached the max level. Then comes gearing someone else. Again... Personally I think they should recruit some geared players and try them in the operations and see if they are a match for the guild. Not many people agree with this or share this viewpoint though. In all the years I played WoW I never had trouble finding a good guild, I would always have a full friends list, and someone to talk to almost any time I logged on.
In SW:TOR 90% of my friends list consists of real life friends or guild mates only because you can't just select whisper from the guild menu (very annoying by the way!). This makes the game less enjoyable. Sometimes guildies will talk, but after a week or two, they stop saying hi, or talking. Why? I don't really know, but it is something that always seems to happen. I have been in the same guild for 2 years, and seen many people come and go, and watched the operations team change on an almost monthly basis.
When you need help with something in WoW, quite often someone will help. In SW:TOR, you spend more time hearing if I could solo it so can you type responses to help requests. With general chat always being like that, you don't want to ask for help. Ask guildies, you can have better luck with getting help, but often only if they are trying to do the same thing, so it will benefit them to help you. And to use the dungeon finder or find a pug? That is the worst thing you can do most of the time in the eyes of others. Never mind that these tools can be used as a means to recruit new members to the guild and maintain an operations roster with a couple back ups that would allow you to run operations on a more regular basis.
Overall the community is much better in WoW, and there actually is a sense of community. I may not like the lack of story in the game, or this new talent tree crap that is just that, its crap. But it is still more fun to level, and leveling does not feel quite as much like a boring chore. And hey more guild benefits too!
Hopefully this long rant can be of help to someone out there looking at these games, or that someone just finds this interesting. Does anyone else feel the same way about these games? Or have anything they find to be good or bad?
Now for the big decision, continue to play WoW, or resub to SW:TOR tonight for the scheduled operations, that may or may not even happen. Decisions, decisions...
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