just when i was getting to the good bit

so there i was - standing around in orgrimmar and wasting time watching one of my fellow guildies bounce around a bit. so i threw him a raspberry and soldiered into the bank for a bit of a browse of my stash.

whereupon i was politely informed i had better up a few levels or be ejected from the guild for misbehaviour.

well.

dang.

not really believing a word of this, i nonetheless fastened onto any reason to go out and kill stuff no matter how feeble the excuse. so i went hunting.

first i fell into a cave or burial place of some kind and began killing elves. what the hell - they die funny. then i got bored of getting lost in there so went for a walk down the road where i found some demons of varying fun factors, including some who kept pushing me on my butt, some which kissed my butt and died quickly and a few demonettes who tried to hypnoray me with their magnificent butts.

defying the hypno sex rays of these foul vixens from hell, i warred ever onward until i came to another big rock demon or whatever they're called. who cares? they're just like betty and barney when i'm finished with 'em - a bunch of rubbles.

okay, okay. bad joke. so sue me. or my manager.

if i have one.

no, scratch that, sue bill gates for giving me a forum.

anyway. i was about to smash this one's rocky butt when my isp had a meltdown. screaming and crying (the universe is against me as my offline life will attest), i waited ten minutes for them to fix things up then waltzed back in to retrieve my corpse. fortunately, i had slaughtered the very thing i'd gone in to slaughter and was standing about waiting for me to come back and get on with it.

which i did.

i was zooming through these demons and their stupid two levels above my feeble 28, when i was politely informed by the server that it would be going down in ten minutes.

argh!

squealing with rage, i halted at the mouth of a canyon of some description which just promised to be full of demons in dire need of some dastardly demon-butt-kicking axe-chopping smiting of doom at my able green fists, and began the process of summoning myself back to orgrimmar to meet with the guildies before leaving for the night, whereupon i was politely awarded a guild tabard - without ceremony despite the leaky bit in the side of my eye (which is only there thanks to some offline shenanigans).

suitably touched, i will now wear this tabard with pride as i, the iron mascot of the iron fist, wade hipdeep in the blood of my foes, totally and unreservedly confidant that no matter how messy things may seem - no matter how much blood, bone, slime or ichor is dripping onto me, that my armour will be kept clean by this maroon rag i'm now sporting about me like a butcher's apron.

brilliant.

absosmurfly brilliant.

i'm so proud.

now, if only the girl of my dreams could witness my achievement, then i'm sure she'd no doubt dump the stupid idiot who so thinks of her as a piece of meat and run squealing to my side - the ork who'd split the skulls of millions in her name.

and that, my friends, is what true love is all about.

that's not a dragon

so i found my first dragon and gave it a damn good killing.

recent hell in my offline life has given me a finer appreciation for the wholesale slaughter of creatures both fuzzy and threatening, so a dragon was something i was dying to give a good taste of my flavoursome axe to.

unfortunately, as you can see here, i was a bit misled by my informant as to the nature of said dragons...

i mean, these are not only fey dragons, they're also wee dragons.

very disappointing.

still. that didn't stop me from hacking it to bits.

i'm really enjoying running about the place looking for stuff new and wonderful to kill. my only hiccup so far has been wandering headfirst into a level 35 elite wandering forest protector or whatever he was called and getting totally raped by its sharp wooden claws.

lucky i run faster than he does.

my companion at the time, one esteemed lovepony, was unfortunately slaughtered in the engagement and i'm trying not to giggle at his subsequent remarks of "let's go find it and kill it."

or somesuch.

i'm so proud.

unfortunately, common sense ruled and we went and beheaded a centaur instead.

watersports

here i am, investigating the waterfall just out of orgrimmar. i mean, why not? after all, it's there...

i noticed first that it took a bit to get to the top of. i came from the ashenvale side, swimming down the river and exploring some sunken ruins along the way.

i don't mind this swimming thing. as an ork, i swim a bit like a frog. it's kind of funny.

standing at the top, i had a pretty good view, but couldn't get a really good foothold at the top of the waterfall, unfortunately, so this was the best snapshot i could get.

still, it was a lot of fun jumping off into the rocks, swimming off toward orgrimmar and letting my favourite horde guardette know about my latest foray into extreme sports - waterfall diving...

horses for courses

so i went hunting centaur.

i mean, i can't ignore a lady's request, can i? and she wanted me to find some centaur.

and kill them.

badly.

with great attention to the chopping motion of my axe.

i had a bit of a run to find them, but when i did there were plenty about pretty much begging to be sliced, diced, and served with bread.

this particular specimen came with a freebie - his very own little tree minion. i like tree minions. they're made of wood - the perfect material my axe loves to bite into next to the scales of something big and burly.

the game has become fun now, and i can only think that the hardest part of my new goal to kill as many different species as possible is that i do a fair bit of running through the landscape, jogging jogging and jogging some more in search of something which will bleed cheerfully for me.

for example, i ran into an area of the map on my way to some mountains and found myself surrounded by spiders so many levels above me that i couldn't even tell what they were or how much they could kill me.

they killed me a lot.

i felt like a sausage on a grill.

that brings me to the worst thing about the game - you can't run away.

there's no way you can run. for starters, my little ork can't run very fast. he pretty much waddles. and everything runs faster than he does. it runs up behind him, and ALWAYS stuns him so he refuses to run and instead walks and shambles along like the undead. it's extremely annoying.

makes me grumpy.

revenge of the orc

the other night, i was tuning in to wow, and decided i have a new goal.

i'm not going to concentrate on levelling up. that's a waste of my time. that's inevitable. and quests are boring me to tears.

but, i've noticed there's heaps and heaps of wacky animals about. there's all sorts of funky creatures out there and sometimes i can't find a quest involving them.

like, i found some chimaera creatures in one area of the map where i was supposed to be killing harpies - but i had so much fun trying to kill a chimaera which was four levels above me. i won that one on my third try - by an axe sweep. brilliant stuff, and highly entertaining.

so now i'm wandering the maps in search of new creatures to kill - in particular anything funky and flying or dragony. i want to kill a dragon. that's my goal - kill the creatures. unique and funky alike.
it began, then, with a hydra. summoned from the deep as part of some quest (probably one of the most interesting ones i've had yet), i did battle with it as it emerged from the ocean with a rage i held back with my trusty axe - with ease.

smashing it to bits, i entertained myself by kicking it while about me the idyllic sound of waves, gulls, and the desperate cries of the hydra's followers weeping as i destroyed their religion.

brilliant stuff.

now i'm about to go find some centaurs.

centaurs.

wonder what they look like.

i hope they die well...

fond new duds

well. as i slowly rise in the ranks of the horde, proving myself to be just the bees knees, my clothes seem to be getting a lot brighter. in some case, i'm not so pleased, but i was kind of happy with my new pants. at last the speedos are gone - replaced with these! green! aren't they fantastic?

the gloves are a bit too fancy for me, though. and not nearly green enough. right now i seem decked out in primary colours and i'm not too thrilled. love my shoulders and pants, though.

i want a whole green outfit. i saw some guy in an emerald outfit and he looked magnificent. i want that. i guess i can't get it off the rack, though...

oh, i made level 26 today!

to tank or not to tank

i was reading up on some of the forums at the wow site, but was unable to post my disgust there, so i'll post it here instead.

i'm a bit miffed by the whole tank conversation they had going there. some guy stated plainly that he thought tanking was for wimps and he figured he wanted to get in there and kill - in other words he wanted to be a warrior not a wall.

he was roundly assaulted by a bunch of walls - who basically stood around and took his words without giving much back.

i kind of dislike the concept of tanking myself. standing there and taking damage more than concentrating on dealing it. sure, you mightn't be able to dish the same as a mage, but why should that stop you trying? if you use your skills well enough, i'm sure you can manage to kill pretty effectively without resorting to standing there while some little bugger slaps you and you sit there saying, "yeah? well, keep hitting me, pal, and i'll get my friends to get your friends..."

all very sissy.

me, i leap in and swing.

i saw someone give my pet peeve comment saying something about us leapers would be the first to cry for healing in battle because we were getting kicked.

i take offence. i have never once asked for healing, and quite frankly i never play expecting it. i've always taken my healing potions and have them hotkeyed and will use them when i need them. but i'm usually, well, smart enough not to get killed too often. i haven't actually gone into a dungeon with a healer yet. i find them annoying. standing back, they get hit once and youhave to wait a year for them to run back into the dungeon. that's what happened the one time i was in a group with a healer. the healer got killed three times.

boredom plus.

you can try to look out for them, but in these cases we were getting mobbed from all sides and behind by surprises. not the healer's fault, but i couldn't see what was actually being contributed. i wasn't getting healed until after combat, and there seemed to be an awful lot of nothing going on - and a lot more running away and hiding miles behind the actual fight.

mind you, the healer WAS managing to snap up the goodies he could get from the bodies as we went and had an awful lot of needs going on...

so i don't like healers. well, maybe that's being harsh. i just don't use them. i prefer standing toe to toe - side by side with other fighters. so far, i liked having a rogue and hunter combination with myself. that worked out well. add a mage in there and it'd be brilliant.

just creeping along and sweeping the level apart. nice.

i don't like it too easy. too easy and you don't have a story to tell.

but tanking? man, that's for sissies. it's way too boring. to be honest, only one group started making demands on me, and i walked away pretty quickly. they seemed more focussed on retrieving some item or other, though, so i could see they weren't really enjoying the game as treating it like some kind of box-ticker. bored me to tears. they didn't want to do anything challenging, and seemed only to want to do things the easy peasy way - even going so far as to start calling for someone to hold their hands (a minimum of ten levels above theirs) - a tactic i find not only repulsive but defeatist.

if you can't do it on your own - then what's the achievement?

where's the story?

when you're telling your friends about how you went through a particular level, do you tell them about the level 60 guy who held your hand and fed you lollies all the way, or do you tell how many times you died until you made it through?

personally, i love to tell how many times i died. how hard it was. how i was down to no potions, no bandages, no food, no room to carry more loot, most of my armour bronzed and ready to break and STILL an hour from the main boss, before getting there and splitting open his fat head!

brilliant!

that victory dance - that roar - that cheer for the horde at the end! woah.

means something then, you know?

me? tank?

get stuffed. make way, loser, get out of my swing zone and here - have a few bits of linen to wipe the blood and gore off your pansy little shirt while i do the real work around here.

and if you want something to heal - go heal your sense of adventure.

another big axe

there i am - hero of the horde. bringer of axe destruction. bad karma for kobolds.

no matter how you look at it, that axe on that orc is murderously brilliant and kept sharp enough to cleave armour and slice n dice your favourite vegetables.

look how perfectly heroic that orc is - surveying his handiwork - a landscape of ruin. fantastic.

what a guy.

i should've called him ace. ace orc.

one big axe

oh. i guess one good thing to come out of that second adventure was some guy dropped a funky axe, and for the first time in the game i rolled a need. yay!

so, check it out. doesn't it look deadly?

it's way chunky. splits skulls like cheese.

episode one vs. episode two

right. let me tell you about this afternoon.

first, i got online not really wanting to do much to start with than check my auctions and see if i can buy a nifty new outfit now i've levelled up.

however, within seconds of logging on, i was thrust an invite to join a group. normally, i automatically click decline, but it was from lovepony, so i said ok.

they were at some place, and offered to taxi me over with a portal.

i said okay and within a few seconds was transported to a place i knew rather well. it's a stupid quest where you have to hold some pansy elf's hand while he escapes the dungeons of the humans. rather boring, all in all, but i went along out of gratitude for the night before. anything to help a friend out, you know. that's me all over.

i was a bit big for the level, and felt bad, so tried to let them do their thing and whatever, but i'm a warrior at heart and only want to pummel stuff, and no one seemed to care.
we made it back alright, then had to redo the quest because someone had messed up. so we did.

all fairly fun in a bounce along kind of way. not anything like the night before, but that can hardly be lovepony's fault - he was just doing quests. besides, along the way i had a succubus give me the eye, and a mage offer to mix me a potion or two. so, you know, a fairly eventful evening, and if only my sex life were as successful offline i'd be a happy man...

pleasantly spent, i decided to try another hard dungeon. this one was way on the other side of the map, and i had to go scrounging around in search of it. i was on my way, and saw a few people recruiting, so offered to lend a hand, which they all accepted. brilliant.

expecting another long slaughter of blood and destruction and painful scares, i was first to the portal and had to stand around.

lucky for me, there was this cute little blonde thing bouncing around giggling and blushing in my general direction, so the time was spent relatively easy. thankyou pitterpatter. though i couldn't speak the language of the invading alliance human scum, it was nonetheless a typical romeo and juliet moment with giggles.

she even jumped off the bridge - no doubt completely ruined at the thought of being unable to communicate with such a manly orc as myself and totally unable to come to terms with the fact she'd never find anyone like myself she threw herself to her death.

except she lived.

ah, well.

i waved goodbye and then my companions rode up eager to bleed.

unfortunately, one of my companions was so far beyond us it was almost ridiculous. at level 40, he was having no trouble cleaving into the crowd, and i sort of felt obsolete. ah, well.

the others seemed more concerned not with fighting together and dying together, but in what they could loot, and what was the loot at the end of the run.

one of them was sneaky with the need button, and i'm pretty sure no one was falling for the "i slipped on the wrong button" excuse he was giving.

other than that, it was a quiet run through, with nothing to hold us up thanks to a level 40 pretty much splatting everything in the way for us. a big yawn-a-rama. i guess i was spoilt by the pure adrenaline of last night's run through wc.

in any case, there wasn't much happening, and yours truly won the final item after needy guy was forbidden to press need. i guess he knew someone there because he listened to the threat.

all the same - i don't know what to do with something like this. it's soulbound and worthless to me except as gold, so i don't know what all the fuss is about, really. at one stage the rogue was asked to open a locked box and then everyone rolled to see who'd get what was in it.

personally, i don't mind if he took the lot (not that he did). i mean, he opened it.

anyway.

that was my day. i'm hoping the evening will bring something a lot harder now...

wailing on the caverns

i began the day with a promise to myself that i would get the wailing cavern incident completed in wow.

brilliant idea, i thought. especially because i have been unable to creep all the way in on my own so it would involve a bit of that thing i don't like much - socialising.

the good thing, though, is that the amount of people wanting to do these incidents is quite high, so often you don't have to advertise yourself - you just have to be there. hang out around the front and tag yourself onto a group or something.

the problem with this logic, however, is there's an abundance of quests for such places. each one may require you to go in, kill only a few of a type of monster, and leave it at that. some people going in have already completed the main quests and are only interested in stepping foot in the front door so to speak.

i call this type of player: bastard.

the hardest thing to find is someone willing to go all the way. considering the size of wc, it was going to take some time. i was prepared for that. i had coke. i had licorice. i was ready, dammit.

however, i've gone in four times with various groups, each one dedicated to going through, but each one disbanded, fragmented, or was suddenly joined by gigantic level 60 characters because they'd "make it easier."

well, i don't want it easy! i want to go through hard, dammit! i want to fight - fight and bleed and die and come crawling back for more!

after all, this is a game! the game isn't to JUST show off your high level. it's to show how hard you worked to get there. imagine the stories, such as this one, which you could tell your children. or, at least, the low levels...

for example. we started as six. actually, at one stage we were seven. but some quit. see, they'd say yes, jump into our group, then disappear as though the very thought of crawling through blood and bone frightened them. how sad.

for them!

yes, we had four of us. one of the guys i'd already hooked up with once before so i was comfortable with having him around. he was enthusiastic, professional, full of good ideas, and didn't have an ego to go with it. he stuck through til the end last time, so i was quite thrilled to see him again. that's massacretrol, and if you ever see him around - stay close by him when you're in a fight and he'll get you out alive.

we had two guys join us who were a few levels above us. not too much above to make it easy, but enough to make us feel boosted.

one of them quit after a few seconds.

the other came in.

we got about five steps in, when one guy starts screaming at us about something, and i get pinned up against a wall by whatever the hell he's screaming about.

i kill it.

turns out it was something he was trying to tame. brilliant idea but i don't know how he was going to manage that while he was dead and it was attacking the rest of us. apparently we were supposed to stand there and let it kill us.

brilliant idea.

throwing a major wobbly, he abandoned us and called us names before sulking away like the little child he was.

unimpressed, i asked if we could go kill stuff now we had that guy out of the way. afterall, he probably would have run off once he'd tamed the stupid thing. good riddance, i thought.

so, i asked, can we please kill stuff?

massacretrol heartily approved, and off we dove down one of the corridors and into the arms of death.

our leader, lovepony, did a brilliant job, trying to keep us together despite our rogue over-powered warrior running ahead of us all the time without heeding the calls to wait for some mana recharging. needless to say, that guy only came in for one quest, achieved his goal, and then left anyway.

we were down to three.

and, might i say it, the best three.
we had barely touched the beginning of the game. hadn't even done a third of it. and there we were: a druid, a rogue, and a warrior - creeping like silent death down corridors, pulling and charging, and ducking and weaving.

it was brilliant.

in that first third, there was only one death. in the second third, two. in the final stage (the closest to the end), we died twice.

dying in wc isn't a good idea. it took about fifteen minutes to run the gauntlet that is the maze with goo blobs spawning here and there by the look of it. hard to get through. but, considering how few times we died, it wasn't a problem at all - just a good excuse for the survivor/s to have a drinks break.

yes, a fantastic effort considering our levels. it was a perfect display of teamwork, only ruined by some slightly overenthusiastic charging on my part when i beat the sap twice (once managing to reward myself with a suicide). the three of us had to take it slow, picking them off in twos and threes and sometimes getting ambushed. absolutely the most fun i've had in a game like this in a long time. just the sheer closeness of it all - and the quiet brillaint professionalism as we all did our bit.

as you can see, we had a lot of fun - desperate and sometimes tight fun. the fights were brutal, sometimes brutally tight and close to death. we were held together, however, by massacretrol's seamless skill and lovepony's determination to keep us together and alive.

i got a few chops in, and for that i was thrilled. i also managed to level to 24, which is totally unexpected.

all in all, i had a wild night. i can't say how long that took us, but i think it was a couple of hours. the three of us had to take it slow, picking them off in twos and threes and sometimes getting ambushed. absolutely the most fun i've had in a game like this in a long time. just the sheer closeness of it all - and the quiet brillaint professionalism as we all did our bit.

slicing.

dicing.

murdering in the dark.

love it.

me vs. some xt-4s

haunted by many a trek down gleeful caverns in dungeon siege, i was totally delighted to stumble upon a small area totally devoted to more goblin madness, and found two trundling dreadnought-style goblin machines plodding around with their saws on just like those machine guy guys did in ds.

i have a fondness for that game. why? because the eye candy was delicious. the views you could get were simply amazing, and i remember calling a friend of mine the first time i was swamped by spiders clicking down from the ceiling - me screaming down the phone "you gotta buy this game - it's awesome! my god!"

and there was a quaint atmosphere about the game even if you didn't like the lack of click click clicking of your mouse to keep you busy. i liked it, and i won't back down from that opinion.

so, i stumbled on some goblins doing their best to be ds, and just had to go their little xt-4 machine and give it a damn good wallop.

which i did.

then i found an xt-9, and repeated the performance, but this time snapped a few happy snaps to keep you all amused.

as you can see...

my time with the new guild has been an interesting one, and i was voted in as iron fist mascot and given an official ranking to reflect this (which didn't last long but was highly amusing).

i've also made a new ranking, scored a fantastic new axe, raked in a wicked new set of shoulders (finally some spikes!) and have the total audacity to still run about in a pair of tarzan-style speedos.

it seems a good pair of pants is hard to find. i did see a nice pair up for sale but whoever's selling this one seems to be under the belief that everyone around level 21 is either twinking, or has some kind of brilliant profession happening so can afford some ridiculous sums of money.

personally, i'm not getting into the whole profession side of the game. i much prefer wandering around and slaughtering stuff. much more amusing. i just don't want to stand around making things, collecting bits and bobs and trying desperately to craft some simple and unamusingly absurd amount of stupid stuff just so eventually i might be able to craft something decidedly average.

i am, of course, in the minority. the price of some things is highly entertaining to say the least and it is nice to see capitalism is instinctive. who says games can't help educate and prepare you for the ruthlessness of the adult world?














anyway. as i slaughtered the delightful and amusing goblins, i crafted the following poem, which i'd like to leave you with:

i'm -insert wow name here-, the orc
i killed some xt-4s
i really really liked it
so i hope they send some more!

server maintain brain strain

the thing i've noticed is the total bane of my existence has become that "the server will be shutting down in 9 minutes for a period of 6 hours..." message.

man!

what the hell am i going to do while they upgrade or repair or tinker with this thing for 6 hours? 6 hours!

it's like they're running this place with goblins.

ddo was doing it, too.

i'm pretty much sticking to wow at the moment. not because i think it's better than ddo quest wise, because i think wow is so concentrated on thoughtless repetitive quests which bore my brains out, but because of the playability factor. it's such a simple game to play. despite having to click around like a maniac, it's really not hard to play. the movement controls etc are just plain instinctive. there's no real difficulty - once you get the hang of keeping your axe-weilding psychotic little orcy faced at whatever he's smashing.

my guild experience is still positive. there's no one around my own level online playing, so it's still a solo experience for me, which i like. i'm enjoying just saying hello.

that, and they were voting me as mascot for the guild.

mascot.

the iron fist mascot.

i kind of like it...

fashion vs. ac

so i'm browsing the auction house, checking out the newest accessories i can wear now i'm 20 (legally able to vote if there were an orcy voting place of doom), and i fell into a trap that i don't normally fall into.

that's right - the ac trap.

basically, i was comparing stats (wow has a nice easy manner of allowing this by showing a pop-up when you pause your mouse over something - very handy), and found a pair of pants much better than my own. they gave me strength and a higher ac. the highest ac i could seem to wear for my age. ac, i figured, was incredibly incredibly important.

now, jokes about why i'd be getting some extra strength from a pair of pants (rolled up socks aside), i decided to make a purchase. they were, afterall, going for a song. a bargain basement price. totally consumed by my need to up my stats, i didn't even twig to check out my pants to see what they looked like, first - something completely out of my character, i assure you. i'm normally a very fashion conscious orc...

i also bought a magnificent pair of gloves, which i tried on first. yay! very nice and black and stuff.

so i go to my post box, pull out my fresh pants (still damp from a recent kill by the look of them. at least, i hope it was blood...), and pulled off my other pair (who cares if anyone gets a look at my butt? it's a good butt. i work out...), and slipped them on.

shock.

horror.

absolute morbid dread.

i'd spent my last trickle of silver on a pair of hairy speedos.

crap.

and that's why you should always try before you buy. i usually try things on, see if they're awesome enough for me to be running about in.

i mean, speedos?

me, in speedos?

not a good look, i tell you.

so here i am, wandering about in my speedos, killing stuff and it's a lot easier. it's easier not because of the extra ac and strength bonuses.

it's easy because everything i kill is rolling about on the ground giggling at the silly orc in his hairy speedos. how embarassing...

guild war(craft)s

so there i was - jogging through the wilderness, scoffing ccs and sipping coke, and wondering what was next now i'd finally hit that level 20 goodness, when i saw a curious message i've seen a bajillion times but never felt like answering.

something about another guild recruiting people for their little group.

scoffing and scoffing, i requested info. i mean, why not. i was jogging and had nothing else to do. unfortunately, the guy was rather polite and friendly without being pushy. so, i thought, hell, and accepted an offer of joining my very first online guild.

woo!

how impulsive of me.

so, i listened in for a while on their guild chat, said the hello, and then watched as everyone began logging out (!) and moving on for the night to better things. as if there ARE better things. i mean, really.

abandoned by my own guild.

except about four of them hung about, and wanted to do a dungeon together. they were all 45+, and one 31, so i ran off back into the petty wild to hit more horses or something, when they kind of demanded i join them. at first i wanted to say no. i mean, a level 20 doesn't get much out of such a thing i thought - except to prance about in the background trying not to be a burden by dying.

but, they seemed to want to hear nothing of it, and so i went along. why not? it's the online equivalent of just going out for a beer with the mates, i guess.

well, they dragged me to a different continent (see pic of me in zeppelin), and first i got on the wrong zeppelin and ended up on a different continent altogether, which got a few giggles. oh well - at least the view was good.

totally comfortable with my newbieness, i jogged through the new damp forests of the undead and joined with an awesomely large group of guys totally kitted out and comfortable with stuff. they walked me into the place and i took a few hearty swings at some bad guys at the entrance, and didn't even hit once. but what the hell, i lived.

inside the dungeon, i managed to die only about three times, and everybody else had a go when i think i may have accidently tripped the bad guy into life (though i swear to you i was nowhere near him!!!), and got us all slaughtered. no one even made a small whinge, and everyone just laughed and ended up telling me to hang back next time they went in that area.

suitably chastened, i sat back and enjoyed the show, collecting xp and feeling like a flea. these guys were all very nice about it, though, and the loot i was picking up was a lot to me, but probably not that much to them. it was all terribly polite and fun, even just to watch. now and then i waded in and tried to get a few shots in (once, i even did 6 points of damage, and i swear i once did 80 something using that ability which gives you a free swipe when the bad guy dodges! wooooo!), and even managed the odd hit.

in the end, it was a walk in the park, and just a nice bit of fun.

content, i have decided to continue with the guild, who have a sensible name (iron fist). after the rounds and rounds of people sending invites (without even saying hello - pet peeve #1), all possessing the stupidest, misspelt, or weird slang guild names, i finally thought - ah, one that seems to fit in with the whole orcy horde thing quite nicely.

iron fist.

very sensible and very reliable. modest, but strong. salt of the earth type stuff.

brilliant.

just what my character would like, i think.

all in all, a highly successful and intriguing evening. i'm not usually into the whole sociable thing, and i can't see myself doing many things with everyone (they're all so much more powerful than me), but it's nice to have a few familiar faces to say hello to when you're in. i'm not someone looking for powerful magic items and stuff i shouldn't have at my level (twinkies), so i think i should be fine.

guild. me. i joined a guild! who'd have thunk it?

ghost of a texas ladies orc

so. there i was - finally joining a group of guys to go do a dungeon. the wailing caves, if i recall correctly.

there were six of us, i believe.

we were armed, spelled up, and dangerous.

of course, there wasn't a healer among us, but who needs those? really? annoying little sprouts.

we went into the wailing caves (or caverns or whatever), and descended into the dark.

well, i descended. some had already run through.

we got into the dungeon proper, and killed two guys. i died in the process and had to run back. hey, come on, it's my first time. i was virgin, alright? i didn't know what an elite character was. turns out it means they're ten times as hard to kill as anything else the same level. very hurty.

by the time i got back, two other guys had quit, and one was saying he had to go. of course. right in the middle of a dungeon crawl they all began...

so, there's three of us left. a rogue and two axe-wielding warriors. yay. exciting.

anyway, we ploughed through some more, but none of us had done the dungeon before so couldn't say how much further we had to go, when the rogue said he had to leave because his parents had come home...

mental note: get some ages on the players i'm thinking of joining with.

so then us two poor warriors, already hammered from repeated deaths, went back to the crossroads to get our gear restored and to do some more questing. fell in with another group of guys - a few shamans, another rogue, and a necromancer or mage or something. and we did a quest to retrieve some slow-paced elf ponce who pranced all the way back to camp while we did the hard yards thwacking some remarkably easy targets (the mage complained he had no one to shoot).

we got back to town and everyone except the rogue quit.

so there i was, shrugging with a rogue (who just loves the /silly command - apt for a rogue) as to whether or not to do anything else, when he piped up, "hey, want to collect eggs?"

so, off we go to some spider place to collect eggs or something. and get hammered by these maggot things and scorpions and crabs with little level one critters as pets. a couple of deaths later (caused by accidental mobbing due to respawning creatures), we were caught by another group wanting to do that first dungeon i'd done earlier but hadn't finished.

so, we said okay. we were finishing up with the eggs, and had about six or so on a group trying to do the wailing caverns, when the guy who had originally started the idea quit and then so did his mates, leaving just me and the rogue again.

so we finished with the eggs, popped back to town and said goodnight.

this whole trend toward disappearing midway through a quest, even before you actually pass go the first time - annoying.

however, i really did enjoy ploughing through with that rogue, and previously the warrior.

neither time did we have a healer, and i think that adds spice to the game. i don't mind running all the way for my body again. it's kind of amusing in a way. and makes it more challenging.

finally, i'm pretty disappointed in myself for not watching my health bar. i died so often tonight all because i was too busy concentrating on which button to click next that i wasn't paying enough attention to my wounds. can be a problem, i think, especially when you get to feeling a little too cocky. i also have to say i'm not overly fond of the cooldown effects with healing potions. that's ridiculously long. especially for combat and i can't exactly run away from combat very often - being a slow orc. i find that most annoying. wouldn't mind if i could run away, but i know i can't, so don't even try.

anyway.

back to it. just wanted to type this before jumping back in.

been playing wow today, because i wanted to get to level 20, which i have. it's not bad being so big, but i really want some decent gear if i'm to continue with this...

and then there's guild wars...

and then there's guild wars. i don't think i've played a more irritating game. i thought ddo looked secondrate and amateurish compared to what should be considered 2005-06 standards, but i tell you guild wars outstrips the title of most like hexen i've seen in a while. the character animations are laughable, with a running gait resembling the old hexen cleric, and the action sequences look like something ripped from mortal kombat.

the absolutely annoying pop-up boxes during conversation with a lagtime of an hour is just plain distracting and frustrating. just when you think the npc has finished yapping at you, another one pops up as you walk away.

just hasn't grabbed me, i'm afraid. plus, not having played it before, every time i get to a new part of the game (which is every few minutes), it wants to download a crapload of data. ranging from anywhere upward of a couple of hundred k (usually 5 meg+), it gets just irritatingly ridiculous. you end up minimising the game all the time just to find something else to do. in fact, i'm pretty sure if i had wow going at the same time, i could set my orc jogging in the direction he's supposed to go while i kill a dungeon in gw. then, when i've done the area and need to load a new one, i could zip back to wow and should be about at the place i'm supposed to be - do my thing, and by the time i'm done there, i should be almost finished loading up the next part of gw.

win win.

perhaps i'm being a bit of a picky individual, but i always thought the most important part of a game is the beginning. get me interested. hook me. stun me with something. if you can't deliver on the graphics, catch me with the plot, or something. show me why i should be playing for more than a month - especially when you want my credit card.

i've been dying for a good game which can feed me a whole new life. since oblivion, i haven't found anything to grab me for more than ten minutes. in fact, i'm still loading up oblivion inbetween breaks. love the game. it's intensely absorbing.

i'd be playing nwn, too, but i'm waiting for nwn2, so that just puts a crimp on it. although i used a wizard in nwn, and haven't played a rogue... maybe... you know. for the sake of roguing...

i guess what i'm after is a game which suits my style.

i want to sneak. i feel like being a sneak. i want to slide around corners and maybe stab stuff. if not, i want to sneak and steal their crap right out from under them. i'm wanting to do that whole dnd thing. whipping into secret passages and whipping out again. a ghost - unseen and whispering through the dungeons on shadowy wings.

wow. ddo. gw. they've each got something. but nothing very meaty to hook me in. maybe i wanted them to. maybe i wanted too much to love them, that i built them up too high.

especially ddo. which i was kind of in my head imagining a more nwn feel - something a bit more intuitive in controls and more professional in look.

strange thing with ddo. you'd think they'd have much more professional games. they always seem to be pretty amateurish, though. even the movies based on dungeons & dragons were crap, though. it's like they go out of their way to only endorse products which are built in nerdy kids' basements with leftover bits. poor guys.

anyway.

disappointed, but still trying hard to keep it up - i'm off for a bit more of a journey into ddo, and then to bed.




i made it to 17 with my orc, though, on wow, so i guess maybe i'll make it to 20 afterall...

posted on the ddo website

i'm new on ddo, with only a lev2 rog (untwinked - i have no friends).

so far it's been okay soloing. i like soloing. i figure if a game can't handle soloing, it's inherently broken.

personally, i love sneaking. i'm not like assassin sneaky. i like just sneaking past. that feeling of triumph and "ha ha! you can't see me!" is the best.

i figure as a rogue, i should be able to do that. haven't had much trouble doing it so far, but more monsters seem to be able to see me than don't, sometimes. and sneaking past mobs seems exceedingly difficult the way they're positioned.

impossible, sometimes by the feel of it. i, too, spend a bit on health potions which never seem to bring me up far enough to recover a hit anyway. pointless potions.

being mobbed as a rogue is just a sign that it's time to run like hell. which i do.

i'm more disappointed that i can't open doors, open locks, disable traps etc while close to badguys without then standing up when i'm finished and turning to the mob as if to say "hey! look at the cool thing i just did!" that annoys me. i'm sure i have more sense than to do that.

i mean, if bilbo baggins was able to walk through a door without too much trouble, i figure i should be able to.

i'm fairly happy with the solo so far, despite the game looking like an arcade game from the eighties at times. i'm sure it'll get harder. hope you can still sneak past stuff, though.

i found, though, one particular quest gave me issues. it was the one where you had to defend a box from 15 odd thieves. as a rogue, that was quite an effort. i played it through three times and gave up in disgust. i was basically zoning in from behind, stealth hitting a guy, then getting out and getting all stealthy again - repeat. until the last mob came in - four or five of them, and i'd get, well, molested.

abandoned the quest, shouted at the walls and went for a walk.

came back, and did the quest and it was uber easy for some reason.

i guess those dice rolls went in my favour this time...

i find that's usually the case. the dice rolls. sometimes i get a lot of loot, and sometimes i get none.

i kind of like that, though. means each level isn't a basic repetition. not when you're uber young, anyway...

to level or not to level

ok. let's get it out in the open.

i hate levelling up.

to me, it's the stupidest way to design a game.

i hate being a newbie. the worst time for me in a game is the beginning. nothing makes me cry more than when someone says to me, "let's start the game again from scratch and go as some kind of team or something?"

no way.

go to hell, monkeyboy.

i don't want to be godlike, don't get me wrong. dying doesn't bother me. it annoys me, but it doesn't bother me. i just want to feel comfortable.

i want to feel i can walk down into a dungeon and hold my own - whatever that is.

i don't like feeling like a newbie. i've played enough games to warrant not having to feel that way. i hate that some ass can walk up to me, decked out to the nines and his character all maxed out and can sneer down at me because i'm still wearing a generic outfit. i mean, offline i don't shop at target, so i don't see why i should online, if you know what i mean.

it's again, what i liked about oblivion. i got my assassin outfit not much into the game, and never needed to change it.

the worst thing about wow, is that every level up you pretty much have to change your entire kit. and that's expensive. ridiculously so. so you end up falling behind, and then get beat up more, which becomes more expensive on the repair, and the heals, and you end up getting annoyed...

and levelling up used to be great. you'd be tacking on points to new skills and feeling all uber and all. now i just feel like, yeah, whatever. i don't care anymore. too many games do that.

which is, again, why i think oblivion was the uber game. it just did it all in the background and instead of you choosing what went up, stuff went up according to what you actually used. so, you use a dagger as i did, and the relevent skills went up. you ran about sneaking all the time, and your stealthy skills went up. you picked locks, and your skills went up. that's brilliant.

i understand people want to customise. so do i. i am so totally dedicated to the fashions of my characters (it IS important if you enjoy the roleplay aspect), that i will sacrifice the ac for anything that makes my character suitable to its style of play. i hate and despise people who have the gall to say they're playing a roleplay game but seem more dedicated on levelling up, acquiring an uberweapon and ignoring the fact that their outfit looks crap because they prefer having uber ac.

i mean, show some pride.

levelling up becomes not only a pain in the butt, but it's also detrimental to the whole roleplay aspect of the game. it discourages roleplaying, in my opinion.

what happens is, you want to roleplay. you want to go on a dungeon crawl. like in ddo. see, i'm a rogue. i want to slide down the corridors, looking for those secret doors and traps and wishing they had a pick pocket option. i want to spend an hour doing a dungeon that seems to take some people twenty minutes.

because i want to explore. find any secret stuff.

but, i find the secret stuff is getting less in these games. unless they're gimmick cow or chicken levels.

i want more secret doors and locked treasure chests. i want some challenges. the worst thing is, as a rogue, getting to the end of a nice corridor, having slipped past everyone and everything, to be told now you have to kill not just the boss but twenty of his just-spawned minions, too. what?

can't i just swipe his funky thing and get the same xp?

no.

you can't.

because these quests are shit.

and everyone wants the xp, so they ignore the fact you want to explore, or take your time like in some kind of fantasy novel. no. they just want to "hurry up so we can finish this because it'll give me the xp i need to level up. i don't need more than 100 points, so i don't want to waste time hitting all the barrels. besides, mummy's calling so i have to get off the computer."

well.

fuck you, fucker fucky! assist the happy time! as noodleboy would have it.

levelling up has taken the priority away from the game and into the realms of self-improvement.

take it away.

one hit kills, i tell you. give back one or two-hit kills. especially for sneaky assassins and axe-wielding barbarians. maybe swords should have three. magic users - some should definitely be one. but more than that is boring. and xp should be class specific.

as a rogue, i should get points by sneaking past stuff, not killing it. or opening stuff.

as a mage, i should get points for casting, not killing. for learning. for solving.

as a warrior - for killing. and maiming, too.

ddo has tried. they give you xp for finishing the level, regardless of the how. you just get bonuses for other things. i'd have liked to have seen a rogue bonus - bonus for killing no one other than the required guy.

or a bonus for stealth kills alone and no mishaps that way...

brilliant.

all this levelling up shit. it's killing my party. i find i've become a solo player. i wasn't one to begin with. i was a team player. i loved fps and rpg parties. i really did. but i'm sick of them now.

mind you, i think part of it has to do with the loose form of english people seem to use in these games.

i had some idiot on ddo the other day. nothing new. he just messaged "u want to do shsje?"

i'm guessing shsje (or whatever it was) was an acronym for something. i told him i was new, and didn't know what shsje was.

so he messaged back, "u done skahesh yet, then? it's after that."

very helpful fucker.

i ignore assholes like that.

by the way. show me some respect. the word is "you're", not "ur". and "you", not "u".

please. just speak english to me. it only takes a few extra seconds. although, i guess to these people a few extra seconds is a few extra xp they can't afford to lose...

have axe now what?

so, i got this axe, right. and i want to hit stuff with it.

there's plenty of stuff to hit with it.

i went out to some mining place and thwacked some goblins with it. one of them was supposed to drop some gemstone or something, but after an hour of them dropping like flies and respawning and dropping like flies, i still hadn't got a gemstone. in any case, i had my axe.

so what to do with it?

well. that's where i really really don't like blizzard anymore.

i'm one of those gamers - umm, what do you call us? oh yeah! lazy.

i'm lazy.

i never play a mage on a game which is paced like a fps. i just don't like all that switching between spells and getting hammered just because i can't remember what i hotkeyed my fireball to and i've just run out of my icy blasts. so, i never played a mage on diablo. well, i think i did on the sequel, but that's just because she was a sorceress who looked pretty mighty in those short outfits.

damn. now i really do sound like one of those nerd perverts.

trust me, i never bought a tomb raider game in my life.

anyway.

basically, i don't do mages. my first real mage was in nwn. but in oblivion, i just play stealth assassin. and in ddo, i'm playing a rogue. i'm a simple guy. mostly i play warriors. i mean, what's more fun? sitting there sifting through your inventory and spellbooks and hotkeys, or wading in and smashing?

wading in and smashing, of course! so what's wrong with the warrior in wow, you ask? well, they turned him into a mage. either that, or someone played too much mortal kombat as a kid.

i now have to sift through my stupid hotkeys and click away like a maniac on different buttons just to stay alive and do damage. i mean, ridiculous! i want to clobber! that's what warriors do! they clobber! they don't sit there thinking about clobbering and how to clobber, they just clobber!

wham! bam! thank you for coming - and is this a bit of your skull you left on my shirt?

that's what warriors should be.

maybe they thought that was boring? but, if you didn't make it that you had to hit each creature twenty times before they died, it wouldn't be!

i'm sure blizzard are the same guys who made diablo. aren't they?

in any case. bored.

i hate that i click on something and then have to wait an hour to do it again, by which time i'm already halfway to dead and my base attack is doing shit. which it shouldn't be because look at that frikken monster of an axe! that should be cleaving through their skull and swiping that smirk off their faces, or at least splitting it in two.

that's something else i hate. i hate that i can run around with a big bloody axe that looks like that and some pansy can be running about with a single little sword (knitting needle), and a shield and not only will he be dishing out almost as much pain, but he'll have three times my frikken armour! man, that's so wrong.

an axe like this should be a one hit kill and that's all there is to it. three if it's one of those big oversized chunky lizard dragons or something.

i mean, really.

if you can't tell, i love axes and despise shields. they're so boring and ugly to look at. yep, shields are for wusses.

why me?

i've not played world of warcraft enough to get to a level 60 character. hell, i haven't even made level 20. i have a level 16 and a level 13 character and to be brutally and bluntly honest, i don't think i'll be continuing long enough to make 20 let alone 60.

see, i love the animation. i love the smooth feel of the game. the scenery does get a bit boring, though and begins to look a little too much like those old cartoon episodes of the smurfs. i love the way this orc swings his axe, and i really dig those shoulder things. but, i find, i'm just bored.

i'm so bored bored bored.

every quest is something like, run out and kill these furry animals. twenty of them. then come back and get a paltry few coppers for the ten years it took to do that.

the map is ridiculous and stupid. nothing's marked on it. i had a hard time finding stuff in the city unless it was something the guards knew about. and i know there's all kinds of funky addon thingies to make maps easier, but why should i need those? i guess i was spoilt by oblivion (best game EVER), which you could click on your quest and it would pop a flag on your map telling you where you needed to go rather than spending an hour running around a general area on the map hoping to stumble onto some small crate hidden under some crap. boring! i spent most of my levelling up time jogging through empty wastelands with nothing to look at.

there's much made of the costume design. you can customize everything, says everyone. but, the problem with this kind of game is you can only do that when you get to level 100 or some nonsense. unless you can afford a lot more than a newbie unsocial unguilded guy like me can. everyone's wandering around in their jumped up gear, but i find it's not so easy to get such things when you're a simpleton who just wants to go out into the wilderness and hit stuff on the head with an axe.

i guess what i'm saying is, i'm really sick and tired of being forced into collecting absurd amounds of gold in order to make myself look funky. whnat's wrong with picking the colour of my armour off the rack? i want green, dammit, i don't want this stupid grey crap. why make me buy it?

the game tends to rely on your social skills. to get through the cool bits, you have to join up now and then - and i find this a pain in the butt because the kinds of people who tend to infest the place really aren't much fun to play with in the first place.

the verbal fighting that goes on, with twelve yr old kids calling each other names, attempting to outdo each other with vague generic insults is just plain annoying and distracting when you're attempting to skulk through a darkened cave in pursuit of evil.

and what was more annoying was how you skulked down the cave, splatted everything in need of splatting and then some kid shows up running out of nowhere, splats the main boss, swipes the treasure and disappears without a thankyou after i've cleaned the whole frikken cave. then i have to stand about like a loser for the stupid badguy or magic chest or whatever to respawn so i can kill\loot before fighting my way back out the cave now everything else has respawned with it. totally shat me that, because it was such a common occurance.

all the quests, too, were just plain boring. nothing new. nothing interesting. boring.

again, i was spoilt by oblivion, i think, which had some genuinely interesting quests. the assassin quests alone made the game worthwhile, with some rather neat and often surprisingly humorous quests. you'd think there were only so many ways you could make an assassin-style quest, but i think the writers of oblivion deserve all the ranting i can write. now, if some of these other games took a leaf out of their book...

but i'm going to leave that rant for my swipe at ddo.

yes, basically - i love the graphics. love the technical aspects. love the concept.

just can't get into the character, though. there isn't any character. there's no flow. there's no real freedom. just an endless boring trudge through the wastelands in search of bits of animals.

boring.

i don't care if, at level 50, i can finally move on from animals to mad cultists and intriguing dungeons. i don't care about then. i care about now. and i'm sick of fighting animals. boring boring boring.

i mean, really. jogging across some stupid hills like a moron to get such a meagre amount of treasure - i'd be lucky to buy a health potion with it, really.

big yawn-o-rama.

back story

i've always been a big fan of fantasy rpg games.

diablo rocked my world and i can't forget the many nights spent hooking up via modem with a friend of mine, battling through dungeons all night in an effort to zap that diablo guy and slam into the harder levels. it was a great atmosphere in that game, particularly the first few levels, and it is one reason why my msn to this day rumbles out "aaah, fresh meat!" whenever anyone comes online. brilliant stuff.

these days, however, the two games which make life worth living are neverwinter nights and oblivion. you have to adore them. the feel of both games is just right. nwn for if you like it d&d style - dungeony and scripted. oblivion if you prefer character development and awe-inspiring customization of play. my, i can never decide and find i switch between the two.

which is why i think i've put all my hopes onto ddo. i'm not overly impressed with the actual gameplay, and the quests can be artlessly generic, but it's got that feel that tried to mingle oblivion and nwn - albeit unsuccessfully.

see, i think the true key to playability isn't a scripted style or necessarily an abundance of quests. more just an ability to focus on your character and its interaction with those around it - whether that be world or other players is entirely up to the player. such to the point that i'm not, technically, a fan of single play games, yet if find my alltime favourite is a single player game. the fact that i've spent so many hours drifting through oblivion (and morrowind) is testament to the absolute genius of the game.

i mean, you can't find yourself bored. you can't feel pushed into a role and forced to be the good guy even though you seem to have an evil option in your character sheet. it's wide open to almost creating your own life inside the game and if it were turned into a mmporpg, i think you'll find it would kill off all other pretenders to the genre.

poor furry eyes

played heaps more of ddo. i'm kind of liking it more than i liked wow. sure, the controls, handling, and graphics are nowhere near as smooth or professional, and certainly not up to par compared to other games on the market, but it's got a nice way of questing.

i tried not to think about anything today.

mostly, i succeeded. going to have a break and eat some leftover lasagne while watching a movie or something.

stay flinky.

dungeons vs. warcraft

so here i am - stuck on two mmporpgs. i can't decide which i like better. is it world of warcraft, or dungeons & dragons online?

see, both have something going for them. wow is smooth, polished, and rather cartoony. you can run about smashing stuff with axes and hollering gleefully as you go. it's great eye candy and pretty much the usual simple stuff blizzard are well capable of dishing out. nothing complex - just dash in and smash away until stuff dies.

but, that can be a bit of a disadvantage, too. see, with blizzard, they seem to love making stuff hard to kill. so, you can run up to a simple little monster and spend half an hour killing it. sure, you're in no danger of dying. in fact, you could right click on it and walk away under normal blizzard circumstances. like in diablo, you could just pretty much hold the click mouse button down and watch tv until the monster died. don't get me wrong, i loved diablo. still do. but it's pretty annoying to spend an hour hacking away at something, sometimes.

ddo, though, you can kill stuff in one hit. one hit! bam! dead! i'm playing a rogue in ddo, though. i mean, i wanted to play a cute little elf chick (i kind of admit i love they way they slink along and how they look in cute little leather outfits. i'm sure the designers spent so much time designing elf chicks that it's the main reason the other races all look pretty ordinary...). so there i am, suited up to kill. i sneak along, pick locks and steal stuff and stab anything that moves. yay! and it dies. i mean, it's not easy. traps can kill you in an instant. creatures can kill you just as easy. in a way, it adds to the experience. you end up holding your breath as you wind yourself around a supposedly empty corridor, trying to see where a trap might be hidden, or hoping you're not spotted by that stupid creature up front.

my main problem, though, is i'm playing a mmorpg and i really don't like socialising. i like roleplaying, but not many people do that. they're so busy trying to up their stats or get some neat thing, or kill some boss, that they're not much interested in the roleplay side of the game, whereas i like to think of myself as some kind of zatoichi. in it for myself. just plodding along in the shadows. i'm one of those who firmly believes i have every right to pick the pockets of other players. i should be able to swipe a good bit of their booty. i'd like to go through a huge long dungeon crawl with everyone, pick the lock on a big chest of booty, and swipe the lot, leaving the dungeon before they got a chance to say "what the-?"

which is why in wow, i completely ignore anyone who suddenly whips up some invite in my face, or a challenge in my face without having had the plain courtesy to say hello. so far, only one person has said hello before whipping up an invite to group thing.

ddo, however, was a little more pleasant, but only a little. i was actually asked about a quest. very polite, too.

the thing is, i much prefer solo missions. i prefer squeezing myself down an alley without having to worry about what the guy behind me is doing. is he safe? can he handle that little monster i can't be bothered dealing with? and why the hell is he just standing there doing nothing throwing healing spells at me? i don't want to be healed. if i needed healing, i wouldn't be here. i'd be home wrapped up in my blankies. i'm quite capable of taking care of myself, so hey, take your fingers out of your wandhole and actually lend a hand killing!

i like playing warriors. warriors rock. wade in and kill. i love hanging out with other warriors, and we all wade in and kill stuff. i hate hanging out with healers. they're annoying. they whinge every time they die and don't really help out in the long run. sure, it's nice to get a bit of a heal during the heat of battle, but it's hardly necessary if you know what you're doing and actually planned your life that way to take care of yourself instead of relying on some idiot weakling who's going to prance about with a little biddy mace and toss little spells at you while you're doing all the hard work.

of course, my alltime favourite game this year has been oblivion. it's awesome. if it were a mmorpg, it'd do more than rock. it'd blow my mind. something so awe-inspiringly open as that deserves to be massive.

oh, what to stay with?

i want to build up some character, but i'm dividing my time between these two games. i'm thinking ddo is probably the one, despite its irritatingly amateur controls. pressed up against a wall, i can't see what i'm swinging at, and the creatures look stupid when they die on top of crates after shuddering themselves up there. floating in mid air.

and the camera doesn't swing around like it should, allowing you to get a good look of the action while you're doing your stabby business. wow is much smoother to play, but isn't as atmospheric or solo-friendly. i mean, i understand the concept of mmorpg, but i prefer ddo, where you can solo a lot, yet still get the benefits of a nice big dungeon crawl with a gang.

yes, ddo looks nicer. looks more creepy. looks more spooky. looks awesome.

though wow's voodoo-tim burton style is quite amusing at times, too.

oh, the choices. the evil choices. still. look at my elf chick. isn't she cute? quite the cutest elf chick in a computer game i've ever seen, and i was always fond of my oblivion one.

mind you, wow's orcs just look so cool. like little hulks. hulk smash!

jeez. i better go start making lasagne...

the first one

this is the first post, and as such should be roundly ignored. it's a complete waste of space, time, and money. there's absolutely nothing here worth reading.

not a thing.

my underpants are frayed, and i have no thread to fix them...