splat

well, it's that time of night.

bedtime.

but, before i go, i'd like to say hello to a few people. basically, hello to rah, zuh and hy from iron fist. you've made me feel very welcome.

also, to talhe - nice to see you on here! hope we get to do some splatting!

also to massacretroll - slow down, guy! i like doing incidents with you so slow down!!!

anyway. that's it for tonight. as we remember one poor satyr who became a martyr for his cause, let's take a moment to think about all those poor sprites who gave of their necks to my axe to help me get to the level i have achieved without any help or hindrance. thank you all for my purely simple armour and weaponry which serves me well even though it lacks pretty colours other than a few greens here and there.

i'm proud to have made it this far.

mister 30

i celebrated my 30th levelday today with a rousing run in the rain as you can see. looking very forlorn, i trekked the roads to the hillsbrad foothills in search of little miners i could steal some stuff from.

highly amusing.

to celebrate, i composed an ode.

you all know that i'm dirty
and you know how my axe is so hurty
and you know that i'm sweet
and look sexy in green
but did you know i just turned thirty?

as you can see, it was a tender moment shared by my guild, the funky iron fisties, who then proceeded to invite me on my first raiding excursion to some forgotten sea shantytown in the middle of nowhere.

brilliant idea.

i swear, they just love to watch me die.

and die i did.

thrice.

finally, routed by some level 60s, we decided to take heed of the sudden announcement of the server being shutdown for a restart and i ran like hell through the unfriendly elfy forest in search of an inn.

i found it with one minute and thirty seconds to go before shutdown.

just enough time to swill an ale, flirt with the barmaid and bed down for the night.

as you can see, my flirting technique leaves something to be desired. i'm not good at it. my heart is filled with the girl of my dreams who has spurned me for another man.

hence the axe and the need to express myself with the spilling of blood. preferrably someone else's blood.

and lots of it.

enough to make an ocean equal to that of my tears. and that's what love's all about, my friends. the hopeless and relentless quest for oblivion in the face of unwavering opposition - all for the feeble dream that she might take even a little notice of my achievement and give me one of those smiles that so blinds me and makes my very insides weep at the beauty of it.

beside that smile angels are but the commonest of goblins with feeble moth-eaten wings.

happy levelday to me. i celebrate it here, in the rain. alone.

a ghost.

calling her name on the wind in hope it carries far enough to be heard above the insipid careless kododung her goblinman is currently squeaking into her ear.

another set of 'pads

oh, i forgot to show you my new set of 'pads. ain't they sweet?

see me comin' down the street!

i like this new set. i'm not fond of the sort that look like they're smooth bits of leftover cars. i love this type - spikey or fluffy.

mind you, the big spots on them remind me of a moth - and i guess this is a good thing. that way any stray dragons a few levels too high for me might mistake me for a level 60 warrior and think i'm way too tough to pick on.

anyway. i love them because they're green.

sharptalon and the gulch

so - a new adventure.

i got home last night in a blur of emotional distress and needed some gaming - serious gaming - to get me through the night without resorting to the old "slit wrists with broken bottle and hope no one hears me crying in the bathtub" thing.

thank god for wow.

anyway, i decided that i would destroy something i tried to kill a few levels ago. namely, sharptalon, that slow-flying crazy thing which haunts the area outside splintertree post.

i solemnly announced my intention to my fellow iron fisties, and went in.

i swung my axe for all it's worth and splashed it with a million bits of rage-driven stuff and finally sat back on a rock to survey the damage.

and what a damage it was!

what a fight! so much fun.

after that, i decided to try my hand slaughtering demons and a few more satyrs. brilliant.

but then, around 1am, i started getting a bit bored. i trekked to orgrimmar and did a bit of a peruse of the auction house, but nothing grabbed me.

then i realised i'd gone up a level and should think about talking to the warrior trainer and getting any extra skills to play with. which i did - but there wasn't anything i hadn't already bought that i wanted. damn.

then i remember warsong gulch being spoken of lately. apparently it's double honour weekend - whatever that is, so i wondered just what the hell the fuss was all about.

i clicked a guy and asked him. he asked me to join a queue.

i joined a queue. to what, i didn't know. finally a button came up and asked me if i wanted to join the battlefield.

i shrugged, clicked okay and found myself in a room. woah.

hadn't expected that.

on climbing out of the room, i found a battleground resembling something from my old quake days. sparing a small tear of nostalgia for tf, i wished i had my sniper rifle. instead, i leapt off a small hill much in the same way i used to leap off the ledge in 2forts, and joined the carnage.

i was always good at quake. really.

loved it.

was a better sniper than anything else, but nothing got me off more than slipping down corridors blasting my way to the flag and then blasting my way back out again. that tight feeling as you land the flag and turn to find your enemies just arriving late from the chase is just breathtakingly surreal and there's nothing like the kill die respawn cycle to keep your adrenaline pumping hardcore jellybean-sized bubbles of energy into your brain all night long.

so, i kind of leered as i ran toward the battle, mostly in pity as these poor puny looking fellows were about to get a damn good dose of my steely axe of wrath.

i leapt on one little gnome guy.

and died.

woah.

so quick.

something, you see, i hadn't taken into consideration, was the fact that i suck at this.

the mechanics are completely different when playing pvp than they are pve, so i was completely and totally unprepared. to put it mildly, i got owned. bigtime.

growling at my monitor, i was ejected from the battleground at the end like some kind of embarassed newbie. i was stunned at just how badly i got my warrior ass kicked.

so i did the only thing i could do - based on my day of emotional trauma and psychological distress in regard to the girl of my dreams being completely unattracted to a nerdy weed like me - i went the hell back in and gripped my axe a little tighter in my fist and prepared to give some ownage right the hell back.

and i did.

after about three battlegrounds i started to get a nice feel of comfort. most games were pretty haphazard and distressingly chaotic. no sense of teamplay or anything. but that kind of added to the spice, i think. i had more fun in the chaotic games than i did in the ones where we won comfortably. one game went for about an hour - with one guy complaining endlessly about the deadlock which remained at zero flags to both teams for well over fortyfive minutes.

the killing seemed endless, and i managed to rack up a decent amount of kills. i wasn't in the top five, but i was slowly edging myself up over the course of the night, wading in and swinging about, picking off the weeds stupid enough to wander about like me - on their own. i mean, let's face it - i'm the king of zatoichi-style. i don't care who you are - you're mincemeat if i get you on your own.

of course, i discovered that rogues suck, and paladins are annoying. i discovered that ranged weapons are a pain in the butt. it seems you can't miss with a range weapon, but melee combat becomes similar to axe-wielding desperate moments from quake in that you bounce and spin around an awful lot trying to deal while avoiding and i seem to use a whole lot less fun skills than i'd like.

i got killed a lot. an awful lot. but i like to think i held on okay. i felt comfortable. i felt pretty good.

so, tonight, as i wind down for the evening, i'm about to do it a little more.

i mean, why not?

have axe will lop heads off, after all...

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...