Trader Joe, you done did me wrong. Again! (RL, WoW)

[thistlechaser]

I have developed a strange obsession with pretzels. Not the thin crunchy kind, the big thick soft ones. Somehow I had never had one before in my life until a few months ago, now I want to eat nothing but them. So, when I heard of pretzel bread/rolls, I really really wanted to try it. One day (this day, in fact!) Trader Joe had pretzel rolls on sale, so I went in just for them.

I had stopped going to Trader Joe a while back. Quality sucked, prices were through the roof, things were rarely as advertised. So, I can say with some confidence, no matter that I've never had a pretzel roll before, that these are not pretzel rolls.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. These are dense, soft, and sweet, but no other flavor than sweet. They're good, but they're not pretzel-y at all. (They're also 300 calories and 60 carbs for one roll! That's twice the carbs you should have in a meal! Arg!) I'll probably finish them (slowly, a half-roll at a time), but I won't be buying more from there.

In the land of WoW, we had our revenge on Naxx! I had gone once before, but the semi-random group we were with had some serious issues and things fell apart. Tonight it went smooth as heck! The shoulders I was after didn't drop, but that's not exactly shocking when something has a loot pool. We got the The Dedicated Few achievement, which I had really wanted (it tickles me, it reminds me of the guild I RP with, The Loyal Few). Plus a lot of good stuff dropped, so yay!

My damage wasn't great, wouldn't have been great even for WotLK (6.8K), but there were so many packs of trash and things would be dead before I could target something and /whine /whine /whine. But I only died once and all the bosses died, so it's all good. It's strange, but I swear I was doing better damage in WotLK. I'm stretching my memory here, but I think Haken (DK) and Thack (druid) were doing 8K on average. On the holiday boss this year, Haken was barely hitting 4K (Thack didn't do it), all my hunters did about 6K. I guess... both Thack and Haken had their best armor from doing instances, and now they're in quest greens, so I guess that makes the difference. ...I'm rambling!

Anyway, before Naxx, I got Reed to 20. He got 5 or 6 levels (I forget which) in an hour and a half through instancing. Amazing. But man, people in pugs. It was so so so easy to remember why I stopped doing those. Such godawful people. Fag this and gay that and tard and calling female bosses "ho"s.

Oh well. Hopefully RP tomorrow! And maybe the farmers market for pretzels!

Comments

[ani-mama.livejournal.com]

They just opened a Trader Joe's in Spokane. I haven't been to one in 7 years, but I thought it used to be pretty good?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I used to think they were sort of good, until we got a Sprouts.

All of the fruit and vegetables I got from TJ were always moldy, without fail. (Though when I posted about that previously, someone said the TJ by them was fine.)

I find the general quality of stuff to be lower than the supermarket, plus they have a lot less, and it costs a great deal more. So unless something is on sale there and not available anywhere else, I never go.

But they're a popular chain, so it could be just me!

[kelen.livejournal.com]

Not just you. The one near me is much the same. Over priced, poor quality stuff I can get elsewhere. I was not impressed with Trader Joes. In face there's a grocery store down the street, a very 'normal' one that blows Joes out of the water in terms of quantity and quality of product. They have stuff from nearly every nationality. Stuff I've never seen anywhere else! They are awesome. ..Ahem, enough praise for the grocery. ;)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I wonder how they have such a following? Especially with places like Sprouts around (they're sort of like a mix of LJ and the supermarket -- the size and prices of the supermarket, with TJ's sort of stock of things).

Wacky.

[gconnor.livejournal.com]

I think making your own pretzels is not really that hard... check out http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/season11/pretzel/pretzel_tran.html

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Once I almost bought a kit to make them, but I worried it would be too hard. That doesn't look too too bad though.

[ashmedai.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.

Naw, anything "pretzel" has to taste pretzel-y. Boo Trader Joe. *thumbs down*

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

Nah, that's pretty much par for the course for pretzel rolls. They look like pretzels but taste much sweeter. So boo to the rolls, perhaps, but in this case Trader Joe's is in line with what I've found the rolls to be like other places.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oh, huh, that's too bad. I expected them to be... thicker, chewier, like the crust would have actual bite to it (like biting into a big, soft pretzel, there's some resistance).

Sad!

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

If you heat the roll in the oven for a little bit, it should get crispier and be more like a pretzel, but it'll still taste sweet.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

That had been my thought, too!

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

My memory is a little fuzzy but I think that was respectable DPS for the content. Like at the time when Naxx was new that was good DPS sort of thing. Most people didn't start breaking 9-10k+ until the buff in ICC.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oh, hrm. Well, hey, I'm all ready for WotLK raiding now! :P

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

Just remember that kind of DPS won't fly in ToC! You're going to have to pick it up for that raid! :P

You get a chance to do ICC yet? I don't remember a post about it but it is certainly a fun raid. I personally want to know more of the later fights in Ulduar, I never got far in that progression because I started raiding after it was old content ; ;

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind doing ICC, but no, I haven't yet. I would like to see it, and I'd love the frost wyrm mount!, but the idea of killing the Lich King makes me all sniffly. :P Silly but true!

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

I would say something about killing the LK...but spoilers!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

OH NOS! YOU DON'T MEAN HE DIES, DO YOU?!

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

Well, more to what happens in the actual fight. I'm sure you've seen the ending cinematic by now but I don't know if you're actually seen the end of the fight yet :P

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oooh. No, I don't think I have. I have seen the cinematic from the statue though.

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

You're misremembering. That was way above what was possible when Naxx 2.0 was new. 1.2k was considered good enough to start doing heroics. I pulled around 2k in Naxx 25 and while I sucked, I also wasn't the lowest dps. When Blizzard is saying that stat scaling has gotten out of control, they are not joking even a little bit. I started out doing around 1k dps at the start of 80 (while bad and with a spec that had just gotten horribly nerfed, but still) and now, midway through 85, I'm reaching as high as 28k. It's not /just/ stat scaling, it's also talents that have affected it as you can now frequently see people pulling over 1k dps in Outland randoms...but yeah. Numbers have gotten way, way big.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

It's funny, I had been thinking about the numbers before they made that announcement. The XP numbers though, not damage/stats. I don't know why we need, say, 30,000 XP for a quest. What do the extra zeros do? Why can't we get 30 or 300, and have the amount of XP needed to next level be something reasonable?

I know people like to see big numbers, but it just seems so silly.

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

Well, if you only got 30 or 300 experience per quest at high levels, what would you get at low levels? One? That would feel pretty bad from the context that most people who play do have some history of gaming, probably with RPGs at some point. If you ever get that little xp from things in other games, it only lasts a couple of levels (and mind, that's per mob, not quest) and then quickly goes up. There just wouldn't be enough room to have any sort of progression between levels let alone account for mobs and other things giving xp too. Now, the 60-75k xp you get from quests in Twilight Highlands is too high. In fact, it isn't that the goal numbers have been so high that has felt bad to many of us, it's that leveling from 80-85 goes so ridiculously quickly.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

In FFXI, you got 10 XP for killing a mob at lowest levels, and at max level 300 a mob was very good XP -- 200 was more common. (This is dated now by a couple years, things have likely changed.) Players were fine with those numbers.

It's a little hard to translate FFXI-WoW, since in FFXI there wasn't really quest-based XP. (I can't recall if quests even gave XP, I think they must have, but you leveled through killing mobs.)

My point is, players get used to whatever the norm is. If 200 XP had always been the amount of reward you get for a quest at 85, then it wouldn't seem like too little.

There just wouldn't be enough room to have any sort of progression between levels let alone account for mobs and other things giving xp too.

I see what you mean on that though.

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

That kind of experience just wouldn't work, no matter if it's normal or not. If quests gave that little of a reward, no one would do them. You are in the minority. Most people quest to level at least partly because it's the most time efficient way to do it. The kind of thing you're suggesting just doesn't give a reward good enough for the effort. Handing out xp like candy has probably gone too far, but what you're suggesting is nothing but grind...and that's exactly why eastern MMO's are not popular here in the US, because they're grindy. Heck, WoW used to be rather grindy too, and I couldn't stand to play for more than a couple of weeks at a time because it was so horribly boring.

And I've got to say, whenever you mentioned the kind of xp that was granted in FFXI, it sounded absolutely horrible to me after being a gamer for most of my life. The effort versus reward in that game was completely screwed up. WoW's probably gone too far in the other direction in some aspects, but I'd rather have a jackpot every time I push the button than a single tiny dry pellet.

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

Ya, I only really remember the numbers from like ToC-ICC. I just remember doing Naxx while overgeared and just tried working the numbers backwards. Ya, I'm definitely with you about stat scaling. It's kind of ridiculous to go from like 50k hp on a tank at the end of one expansion to like 200k+ before the end of the next.

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I happen to remember because it was when I started raiding and actually learning how to play and stuff, so it was kind of a big deal to me. It was actually really funny to me late in Wrath to see I'd actually only gone through it something like half a dozen times when I thought it was this major thing I was at for ages.

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

Ya, it feels like I beat ICC maybe 3 dozen times even though I only actually killed the LK once.

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

Heh. I know I did everything in ICC up to Sindragosa and the LK more than that, sadly (and Sindy went down months before the LK did, so even she was a ton). I've been absolutely baffled by all the whining about raid lockouts being shared. Can't say I'm sorry not to be killing the same bosses three or four times a week as I run through on my main in 10 and 25 and then whatever else on alts...

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

I was actually happy when they announced that the lockout would be shared since it caused my GMs plan to make us raid 4 days a week (2 on each) to crash and burn. I can barely withstand 2 days of raiding, wiping, blaming each other, and wiping again. 4 would have made me go insane.

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was long since tired of trying to field both a decent 10 man team and then to try to find a 25 too? Ugh. I really hope they don't give in to the whining on this. I don't even like 25's, I don't want to do them anymore!

[aliceinazeroth.livejournal.com]

I like Trader Joe's for fancy specialty stuff I don't need and that's about it.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they do have a few good things. I LOVE their chocolate covered pretzels. Mmmm.

[priestpluswolf.livejournal.com]

Hey, completely unrelated- but you play allyside a lot right? Could you do me a favor and keep an eye out for a level 1 mage named Alba?

I desperately want the name, and if it's just a bank alt maybe they'll let me have it.. if they ever log in. But since I spend all my time hordeside it's hard to keep an eye out. ;_;

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Actually, nope, sorry! I'm lucky if I get logged on to Alliance side more than once a day for just a couple minutes.

Have you checked with a GM? Unfortunately the name-freeing rules have changed, so you won't automatically get it now, but you might get lucky.

[priestpluswolf.livejournal.com]

Last time I spoke with a GM.. dunno when, they hadn't been idle. .-. so the GM couldn't do anything about it.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Aww, sorry!

[teaandfailure.livejournal.com]

BOO those are indeed not pretzel rolls. I crave them sometimes, we had a restaurant in my old city that had a great sandwich on one, but they closed.

The only thing TJ has done me wrong on so far is some salmon dish, but I think I am just not a big fan of salmon, and the salad. The salad is always nine snillion days old and it turns gross before I can use it all.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I guess it very much varies by location then. I'm glad the one by you is good!

And I shall continue my search for pretzel rolls!

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

I strongly suspect you're misremembering your Wrath dps. I didn't pull 8k dps until I was into ICC and some of the buff had been added. 8k dps was almost unheard of until ToC and was way above average even then. Where you didn't even raid, you didn't really have the gear or the practice to pull that high. Heck, I'm continually amazed at the number of people I run into that can't pull 8k dps /now./

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Hrm. I very well could be misremembering!