Okay, I’m afraid. South Park is doing an episode about World of Warcraft. I almost wish I had cable so we could watch this episode.
I just know Cartman would be one of those obnoxious players that I always wanted to shoot when I was playing.. >.<
I know, it’s been quiet around here. I wish I could say I had been really busy, but I can’t. What I’ve been is horrifically uninspired. It’s a problem that’s plagued me all winter, save for a few minor breaks that spawned Vesper and Wings. I’m not sure if it’s the strangely schizophrenic weather we’ve had, the fact that I’ve been working 40 hour weeks as a part time (read: no benefits) employee since October, or some other strange mis-alignment of stars, but my creative centers seem to have (hopefully temporarily) deserted me. I haven’t had the mental capabilities to work on my RoR app or to squash out the odd IE quirks remaining in Wings. Even less have I felt enough coherence and interest in a topic to write; hence the silence here.
Today is still relatively uncreative. The weather was in the 70s yesterday, but now it’s back in the 30s - this kind of rollercoaster weather is just horrible. God needs to stop playing with the thermostat, damnit. That said, the “Written 2 weeks, 3 days ago” timestamp on the last post drove me to attempt to write something.
So. What can I say? Oh, I finally got a character to level 60 in WoW (my orc warrior). Of course, now that I’ve done that, I find myself with very little drive to play, because I can’t seem to get into the cycle of getting better gear so that I can go to a different place and get still better gear, but only if I’m willing to put up with 14 or 39 other people while I’m doing so. Instead, Jon and I have created a set of newbie characters on an RP-PVP server (a druid and a priest), in hopes that the PVP experience might spice the game up a bit for us again. So far, it’s been fun. Maelstrom, the server we’ve been playing on, is fairly quiet, with minimal do0ds. We have yet to get to the first contested area, though, so the future remains uncertain. We joined with a handful of other level 10s last night to zerg a mid 20s rogue who was attacking one of our quest NPCs. My first honorable kill on Maelstrom, isn’t that sweet.
One kind of neat thing about my warrior: she got level 60 on the same day that the Gates of An’Quiraj opened. Too bad the lag was so horrific that she got trapped behind the Gates before the event really got going, forcing me to give up on the game for the day. Shame too, the event looked pretty neat.
Other than that, I’ve been looking forward to Battle for Middle Earth II, a new real time strategy game using the Lord of the Rings license. I got to play with the beta demo for a while, and it seems really cool. The graphics are gorgeous, as is the sound, two things I don’t usually associate with an RTS. Plus, you can summon Boromir! What more could you possibly want from a game? 
Or, y’know, you could summon a Balrog or Sauron, if their styles suit you better. I’ll probably pick it up this weekend and tinker with it some. Hoorah~
A guy going by the name Dayne over on the WoW warrior boards posted a great guide to being a warrior. I have taken his words to heart. Beware.
Quoting the full text below the “fold” so it doesn’t get lost to forum pruning at some point in the future.
This painting is one of the best pieces of Warcraft fanart I’ve seen yet. Just.. wow. I really want to use it as a desktop wallpaper, but I suspect my coworkers would think I was some sort of Satanist or something. *grumble*
I’m not sure why, but I especially love the swoosh of Arthas’s cloak and Illidan’s ponytail. Hee. <^_^;
Can the elf in red with the blindfold and wicked double-bladed weapons in this screenshot possibly be Illidan? I didn’t think he was in the game yet, and red doesn’t really seem his color, but darn that looks like demonhunter gear..
I put up a forum for our World of Warcraft guild - hopefully some of you members will actually use it.
Return - A Warcraft Motion Picture has got to be one of the best crafted video game-inspired movies I’ve yet to come across. A lovely story, nice voice acting, stirring music - this movie is more than worthy of its win at the “Blizzcon Movie Contest 2005″. If anyone ever makes a movie from WoW (hey, they made Doom, why not?), I hope it is imbued with the same spirit as Return.
Conqueror in a War of Virtual Worlds - New York Times
“It may continue to grow in China,” Mr. Pachter added, “but not in Europe or the U.S. We don’t need the imaginary outlet to feel a sense of accomplishment here. It just doesn’t work in the U.S. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
The above quote comes from an article speculating whether World of Warcraft is helping or hurting the game industry and refers to the sheer number of gamers who play WoW. My big beef with the quote is the idea that Americans are somehow so successful as a people that they don’t need games anymore. We’ll ignore the trend towards more work for less money, fewer promotions, fewer jobs at all.. We’ll ignore the concept that many jobs are little more than data entry or monotonous factory work, where little sense of accomplishment can be found - no matter how hard you work to diminsh the pile of forms to enter or pieces to sew, the pile magically grows back overnight. Americas are amongst the most stressed people in the world, yet they have no need for an imaginary outlet where they can actually accomplish something in an evening? Am I just missing something here?
WoW finally caters to the fashion conscious. I especially love the picture at the top of the warlock in the wedding gown with his succubus.. o.O
Vharie has reached level 40. Flaming poneh ftw~
It’s kind of sad, in a way, how much more enjoyable WoW is once you’ve reached 40. Having a mount makes such a huge difference. I don’t mind running all over the place any more, because it doesn’t take nearly as long to get there. Plus, my felsteed is just darn cool. I feel like I’ve beaten WoW - I finally have my own pony.
Hopefully I can keep myself from getting too much experience, since I’d like to do some Warsong Gulch runs while I’m at the top of a level bracket. I did a few duels the other day, against Omasu and a random extremely well-geared rogue who wandered by. Somewhat surprisingly, I had far more problems with Omasu than the rogue, even though rogues are the bane of most PvP fights. And once I pulled out my succubus, I was practically unbeatable. I’m not usually very good at that kind of thing, because my hand-eye coordination isn’t the best, so it was a lot of fun to get to kick some ass for a while. Vharie is basically built to be a “tank-mage”; she has tons of hitpoints and lifedraining abilities that make her extremely difficult to kill. My problem against Omasu originally was that he could interrupt my Drain Life spell, thus preventing me from healing and doing damage both. Once I got my succubus out, however, we started doing enough damage that he was more worried about healing himself than trying to finish me off or interrupt my spells; of course, that only increased the amount of damage I could do in the meantime. And the rogue couldn’t finish me off before I killed him, since my succubus broke up his stunlock chain with seduce. It was interesting to see that the build I’ve been working towards actually works the way its main proponent on the forums has claimed it would. I guess we’ll see how good it actually is if I can ever get into a WSG match.