losers of the week

i just want to point out that these guys ruined my night. they invaded my kill with absolutely no respect for my fun and killed off an elite i was happily chewing into with no over-exertion on my part and gleefully getting ready for happy snaps when these guys zoomed in and finished up my kill!

i was trying to work out some issues in my head with wholesale slaughter and these guys came in, giggled at me, and killed my guy. i'm so mad about that. it was the rudest interruption i've ever faced.

in any case - GRRRRRRRRRRRR!

fire and steel

i've been working off some of the disappointment i have in regard to my life in general by randomly slaughtering anything in my path.

and, although i primarily grind along, now and again i seem to meet up with some of my guildies and go from there. i'm not into questing with randoms, and actually find many of them irritating. i get too many people wanting me to babysit them through a quest that's about five levels too high for them. i just have no respect for anyone who won't at least play a bit more sensibly and with a little more honour. i worked hard to get where i am and i'm not about to give anyone a cheating hand.

my guildies, however, seem to share my opinion, so i've gotten along famously with everyone there. as we go on a push to raise ourselves to level 60 and try to keep our commitment to stay iron fist and not slip over to one of the level 60 guilds (which i find highly irritating as they're an absolute pain in the ass to talk to with their god complexes firmly in place), it's becoming a very tight knit group which i like. it's small, sure, but it's tight and dedicated. all very pleasing to me.

today i went for a bit of a jaunt to kill some ogres near grom'gol, and then did a small quest which got me drowned as i tried to recover some piece of some tomb in an undersea ruin off the coast. pathetic quest that because i had to do it without trying to kill anything because the water was so deep that if i tried to kill anything it wasted my breath and i'd die. rather annoying, but i did the quest anyway. being forced to leave all those elites unkilled really did annoy me, though.

anyway. off to eat and then get back into the killing frenzy. i'm working off a lot of disappointment today as i learn the simple basic rule of life as it relates to me - all i'm good for is games.

just wish i could be the player and not the played...

new fashions from the dressing room

the new patch came in the other day, and everyone was scurrying about trying to get things settled back to normal. one telling example of this is the horrendous price of some things on the auction house. i don't care how many times i might die - i am NOT paying 3g for some healing potions. damn you all to hell.

zuh - resident demigod of the iron fist - then showed me an axe i might be able to buy one day. and have a look at it! it's all skully and big and double-bladed and stuff! oh, i weep with delight at its mesmerising gorgeousness! only the girl of my dreams has such an effect on me. could this, too, be love?

later in the night, however, i was shown the green axe! i apologise deeply but it was 2am and i was about to ding, so i just can't recall who showed it to me, but i thank them anyway because LOOK AT IT!!! it's so GREEN!

i think i love this dressing room thing more than anything else about WOW. it keeps you interested. you can SEE what you MIGHT look like one day as you grow up and that's a marvellous thing indeed.

it keeps me paying my monthly fee, anyway.

man oh man, look at those axes...

instances and incidents

never can get the hang of if i'm doing an instance or an incident. it's a blindspot term for me. i don't know why. in any case, everyone knew what i meant when i climbed aboard iron fist legend brah's excursion into uldaman.

we started out fine after a long and arduous journey to get to there thanks to my not having been there before. with the new patch in place this kind of journey should be pretty much obsolete which is fantastic. this night however, brah was kind enough to walk me there so i wasn't splatted by the locals - a distinct possibility considering where i was and my current level.

in the end, though, we made it, and we slid past the minor irritants guarding the entry and into the instance proper.

brilliant.

we had with us some guy called squawk, and he was the biggest of us warriors (of which i think there were three), so he strapped on a shield with great reluctance - although i don't know why as i figure if you survive does it really matter what you're wearing? in any case he ditched the board after a while anyway.

we did the first place and it was brilliant. just killed everything in sight with a great rending of splashy effects and sounds. just graceful. brought an honest tear to my eye. however, the second part where we needed to go to get mak's enchanting skills upped was just a trifle harder...

see, there were these scorpion mobs coming at us in what seemed a horde. they just ploughed into us - usually aiming at me for some reason and went totally berserk all over us. we survived well, with only myself struggling like a loon to keep swinging at the little terrors.

unfortunately, after this part we found a lot of level 40 something elites and i became obsolete - unable to score a strike. so, as we killed the goblin hugging machine (see photo), i pretty much only hung out round the edges picking off the lower level 38 elites instead. greatly disappointing.

then we were led out through a backdoor much to our confusion, by squawk, who then hopped his kodo and just rode off into the sunset with some obscure reference to meeting up with some iron fist reinforcements who had arrived at the front door to uldaman. why he decided to do that is a mystery but not nearly as mysterious as why he seemed to think the front door to uldaman was in orgrimmar...

in any case, i enjoyed the hacking (the little we had), and tried to meet up with shaniqua and shull who had arrived at the front, but i got lost, then cornered by a couple of elites and just couldn't break through as they began respawning all around me. i ended up hearthing and just getting grumpy at stuff instead.

then last night we went to the scarlet monastery. with brah, mak, shull and zuri it was an iron fist event, and as such a mostly successful one. we went down the first arm and just blew through it with ease, picking up some delightful stuff and then deciding to go right on in and doing the cathedral.

we destroyed everything in our path and had an absolute ball doing so in even some of the most hairy moments i've ever seen while playing the game, and my new skill sweeping strikes is just bloody well saving my life.

shull pulled masterfully at the cathedral proper and we learnt a lot through the experience, i think, and only died a few times when mobbed or caught by a respawn from behind. the killing of the bosses went fairly smoothly, but was definitely helped by mak doing a masterful job on the crazy lady at the end.

all in all, a genius night made poor only by my having to talk with the girl of my dreams as i struggle in my life to make sense of the world around me and the whole unfairness of it in relation to me, myself, and the happiness i should have had at her side but which seems terribly unlikely. well. it wasn't poor because of her, because she always makes me smile. but, poor because i spent a long time with her and everyone got tired of waiting for me and left. i'm really sorry, guys, but it's a sad time of my life for me.

a sad story made less sad only by the fact that it inspired me to run off into the wilderness and in a frenzy of speed and alarm to kill everything that moved with such dedication and focus that, somewhere around 2am, i exploded with that joyful mix of light and sound to become a level 38 orc warrior of DOOM!

brilliant stuff.

all in all a successful and highly entertaining evening.

so, as i leave you now, let me leave you with my last two poetic dedications from my levelling to 37 and then 38:

a whirlwind axe is a mighty weapon
designed by hell and built in heaven
see my axe - i'll swing it
see my level - i'll ding it
just like this second i turned thirty-seven!

and

i was bred to fight and raised to rage
for my axe and i had a war to wage
and though it's come late
i think it's worth the wait
cuz it ain't every day you turn thirty-eight!

hamming it up in razorfen kraul

so i was approached last night in a vague manner by a few iron fist guildies to join up on an excursion into razorfen kraul. considering i'm now a level 36 warrior orc of doom, i felt reasonably comfortable with the crawl through the kraul, and so hastened to climb aboard our five-man party toward furthering the reputation of the iron fist.

brahmabull and azzaa were in charge, eagerly recruiting myself and shaniqua into the mix before kicking a random to make room for oix (the twink - and i'm still a bit dubious about the whole twinking thing but i'll tell you about it at the bottom of this post) and getting underway in a most professional manner.

we slipped easily into the mix, downing boars by the meattruckload, and pretty much glud fairly comfortably through thanks to brahamabull's stoic leadership and supreme efforts to maintain his position as prime tank.

with azzaa prowling the herd and shaniqua obliterating everything in the way, i was greatly enjoying myself. oix bopped heads and stabbed in the back, and everything was brilliant.

i took these gorgeous pictures of our time with the boars, as we downed the big boar thing that got in our way with barely a scratch to our armour.

a few tense moments involving a bit of confusion - oix was in a bit of a hurry while the rest of us were just more concerned with sticking together - managed to stifle the caves for a little while, but it worked out in the end.

unfortunately, azzaa didn't get his axe which he'd been hoping for, but we're a determined bunch and will no doubt give it another try quite soon.

now to my concern regarding twinks. see, i haven't given it much thought until this past few days and it all began while i was enjoying an immensely fantastic and thoroughly rewarding session in stranglethorn vale with shull.

we were cruising through the area punching up trolls when a twink came running up to us (level 30 - vastly smaller than he should have been considering he was playing in an area of level 38 creatures), and he said hello via "invite me."

my first response was "why should i? and hello to you, too."

he seemed to find that amusing, and promptly responded with "come on! invite me plz."

as he died three times in front of us, i still refused to invite him. i did send an invite only because shull felt sorry for him, but he didn't seem to respond to that. perhaps he missed it. in any case, he repeated his demand and i finally gave up as he died yet again and said, "dude, you really might want to think about going to tarren mill for a while."

to which he responded, "and you should consider inviting people more often!"

should i?

i fail to understand why i should babysit twinks, aiding them to leech off my back while they reap the rewards of my efforts. i figure if they're so impressed by their collection of items far beyond what their character needs, then they can bloody well fight on their own two feet - not on mine. their equipment is beyond mine but they still want to stand behind me.

we had another twink in an instance with us the other night, and he seemed more intent on needing items than actually doing anything remotely useful and it got to the point where we just had to hearth out and leave him to his own devices despite the whining pleas following us out.

i guess what i'm saying is i really don't care if people want to create twinks for themselves. i guess it's a brainless way of starting a character and involves less hard work, but at the same time i really don't feel like being imposed upon to make their lives even more easy in the same way i wouldn't lend money to paris hilton.

on a positive note, i'm glad that at the moment in our guild, as some of the higher level guys run away and join other guilds, there's a bunch of us around the same level who are determined to stay together. i'm very comfortable with these guys, and think it's been simply brilliant lately.

grimloch turns 36

i've had an enjoyable rise from 34 to 36, and have been helped greatly by some of my favouritest ever people in the world - the guildies of iron fist. they're an amazing bunch of guys and girls, and the general feeling of this guild is second to none. i've yet to be involved with any gaming group so totally dedicated to just relaxing and being friendly as these guys are.

i had help from zuhimmi to get my fantastic new axe - whirlwind. and brahmabull was there to show me the way to my alltime favouritest bestest ever landscape of the game today in desolace which is truly one of the most spectacular places ever designed with pixels.

and then there are my regular questing partners, shaniqua and shull the troll twins, who just make questing a pure delight with their easygoing grinding natures slotting in just fine with my 2h-axe technique. it's been brilliant, and i've had a lot of fun with them both.

i've been killing giants and centaurs lately, and even went to kill some demons and their gateguarding demons of doom who all died with the greatest of ease beneath my new furious axe of doom.

you can also see my constant companion, my tabby cat, in this photo of me in desolace as i consider which of the many centaurs to slash to ribbons first.

i've started two little alts. one of them is a priest (soon to be shadowpriest and pvper of my trio), and the other is a warlock - who is an immense killing machine just splatting everything in sight for weeks. in fact, i can't wash the blood out of her shirt.

my only problem so far is a constant lack of cash, but i'm working on that. i have my priest learning the art of enchanting and my warlock the art of alchemy. grimloch needs potions, you see. and i'm sick of paying for them.

in any case, i've enjoyed this past week as you can tell by the way i'm chopping into that demon there who seemed to be of the opinion that a good set of pants makes up for the fact he's not wearing any chest armour. the silly fool. i put a few good thwacks through his sternum and that ended that silly idea.

so, before i go, here's my new ode to my latest levellings:

from the heart of winds, this axe is mine
it whirls through stuff and makes them die
so ooh and aah
and drool and gasp
for this axe just hacked me up to thirty-five!

and:

in desolace i got my kicks
and found a giant whose skull i split.
with my whirlwind axe
i kill all in my path
and here's your proof - i'm thirty-six!

giantkillers of the iron fist

resident iron fist warrior from hell, brahmabull has been a great help to me since i joined the guild, and last night went out of his way to help me with my quest to get that big whirlwind axe, and also showed me a new place to go killing in, called desolace.

we trudged for a long way to get there, but as we came into the valley, and i saw the landscape, i fell in love with it. the total grey of it all - the rank yellow pools of slime and the sound of wind and a seeming echo of crows. it's a dead land, and i really think a few more undead style things would have made this place perfect.

i was busily trying to run behind my fellow guildie when i noticed a huge - and i do mean HUGE - shape waddling across the landscape. it was a giant! and boy, was it ever! it was huge!

my first instinct was to rush in and start swinging that axe of mine with the frenzied pace of a man possessed.

however, with the patience of an inhuman orc god, i put aside the emotional turmoil that had gripped me since the girl of my dreams clawed the last remnants of my heart out of my chest a mere hour before, and gave myself over to a colder more calculatingly homicidal side of my nature and examined what it was i wanted to kill.

and it was big.

and elite.

i sighed with regret and resolved to return in a few more levels and lay this guy out on a rock and cut out his magnificently huge heart.

feed it to the crocodile things around here.

we got the flight path and headed back to do some exploring and kill some centaurs. a slight letdown after the giant. along the way we saw yet a second such giant, and i was resolved to ignoring him, too, when another warrior, mingdao, entered the area and proposed to my good pal brahmabull that we slit its gizzard and feast on its blood.

i was a bit puzzled but managed to follow up a few seconds later as the attack began. it wasn't until i was a few hacks into the giant that i realised what was wrong and spat a curse.

mingdao was a pro. he'd duped us both. see, he hadn't partied up to kill the giant. as he died under the giant's mallet of doom, the iron fist reaped the whirlwind and slew the giant with our mighty axes cleaving the bastard into smaller more manageable bits.

a great victory for us, the iron fist, and the horde!

and our companion, mingdao? well, he slimed back to life and claimed the booty. after all, he'd done the sneaky unorcy thing of acting like an alliance elf (i bet he has alliance alts, and probably most of them paladins), and getting in the first swings to steal the kill and its booty. when questioned as to the nature of the booty, he claims he found a mere three silver and no items at all.

i'm not convinced.

not at all.

grumbling, but not letting it ruin our evening, we found some centaurs and went chopping for a while to round out a great evening.

hopefully tonight i will have my axe, and that in itself will be a story of its own...

of hard won battles and nude trolls

i was rather ill offline during the beginning of the week, so i've had a lot of blue double xp to play with this last night or two. fantastic!

previous to that i'd had some nice adventures with shaniqua and shull again. both these two troll ladies have been walking me through the quests and trying not to giggle when i stumble over my own feet.

as you can see, i also found the loch ness monster, which i thought was extinct! i found it floating off the coast of ratchet and it looked in dire need of being reminded of the fact that prehistoric 'saurs really do belong in the past - so i hit it on the head with my axe until it agreed.

as you can see, it was in full agreement by the time i swam away again.

my excursions with the troll twins was going along merrily last night, too. and we managed to hook up to do a quest involving finding some magical staff, imbuing it and then tossing it down in a graveyard amid some big bully alliance. a next to impossible task without a really really good healer, i think.

asking around my guildies the other week, you'll remember me saying how i did this one - nude.

so, after much giggling, i told the troll twins what they'd need to do to complete the quest.

suspicious of my intentions, they nonetheless derobed and waited while i stood there gawking and wiping the drool off my chin. here was a moment most orcs dream of - a moment alone with two underdressed troll babes. i was very polite, though, and didn't take any pictures.

as you can see.

finally, i managed to up a level tonight. with a little more help from my favourite troll, shull (who went to see the cat empire the other night without me!). i ended up hanging my axe on a raptor in stranglethorn vale for my 34.

and, in honour of all these events, let me present to you my poem:
near dalaran, i kicked guards' asses sore
and hurt their little wizards even more
i saw a troll dance
and two lose their pants
- so much fun to turn 34!

happy birthday to me

i just couldn't think of anything better to level up on than the necks of ogres, so i visited their little lair which was right next to where the yetis were. i stumbled around like a drunken orc chopping wildly to the point where i died from inattentiveness just before i exploded into level 33 with a bang and a gush of ogreblood.

highly amusing and twice as exhilirating.

my guildies applauded as i reeled off yet another stroke of genius with an orc poem devoted to my killing prowess as proven with my levelling, and i was richly rewarded with a hearty round of awe-inspired jaw-dropping cries of devotion by my fans.

well, they would have if they weren't afk.





















and, as per request, here's my level 33 poem:

i was born both big and green;
my axe chops necks - not logs from trees
so stand and cheer
bot not too near
cuz i've just killed my way to thirty-three!

the troll twins

okay okay, so they weren't really twins, but it sounded good when i thought it.

two new guildies joined today. shaniqua and shull. i've known shaniqua for a while, and toured through a few places with her before. it's always been a delight, so when i found out she was in our guild i was thrilled. i gleefully hitched my orc axe to her wagon and followed into the hills to murder some centaurs again in search of goodies. unfortunately, i hexed that quest up good by not carrying the quest key i really needed.

what a dullorc.

shaniqua and shull were very understanding, though. i'm sure in their heads they were rolling their eyes and saying "stupid male." but there you go. they were nice enough not to say it aloud.

from there we jogged off to kill some ogres. i love killing ogres as you know. they make a delightful thump. we rampaged through the ogre lair and quickly chopped them to pieces. revelling in our superness, we decided to hit some dwarves in their little hole in the mountain.

that's pretty much when things started to get a bit hairy, and i'm not talking about me because i'm not hairy in the slightest.

as you can see, we make a rather pretty trio. well. two of us are. okay, there's four including the cat, so that's three pretty ones and one decidedly dopey looking green one. still - i AM green and there's no arguing with my axe.

the dwarves, however, decided to try.

we slammed them. absolutely slammed them.

then got overrun by a couple.

and died.

we ran back to our corpses to find everything had respawned.

ick.

we got overrun.

and died.

you see, we'd been drawn to a twilight zone of dwarfy terror as the respawn rate here was insane. climbing deeper into the dungeon, our health and mana potions dwindling along with our armour, we slashed, hacked, and fireballed our way into the bowels in search of some demonic little runt of a dwarf surrounded by perverted little holy priests in dire need of having their stupid dwarfy heads cut off.

which i did my best to do. sleepy, fussy, angry, respawny - no matter their cute little names i chopped them and fed them to shull's cat as best i could inbetween dying.

if it hadn't been for shaniqua's gorgeous sheep spell, we would have died so many more times. she also made me some of the most insanely cool potions i've seen - not being one to see many potions. in fact, the last cool potions i ever saw were hers, too! and shull's huntress skills were doing their best to keep me alive too. i was so many times on the edge of death when her cat would leap in and save my orcy hide.

in the end we slurped up the main boss with an ease that bordered on the ridiculous and settled down to go through his pants in search of stuff.

and found 31 copper pieces and that was it.

totally devastated, i sat in a chair to sulk, as you can see. shull announced bed - obviously not celebratory so i added no stupid male jokes and instead chose to climb wearily to my feet and begin the slow fight out - whining to shaniqua all the way about how i really thought we could hearth out now.

shaniqua scored a brilliant little staff for herself and on the final kill, shull fluked an awesome bow she was running about with waving in the air and squealing like a baby magpie about. i don't quite know what i got out of it other than a few more deaths and a joyous amount of killing beside two very nice trolls.

all in all - a highly successful and enjoyable evening. i hope they do more stuff to me.

i mean, with me.

cp, i dedicate this kill to you

so i had an awful weekend. a really awful one. and today wasn't all that much better.

angry at the fact the girl of my dreams thinks life as a muppet is acceptable, i found i had no way to vent my frustration in any shape or form other than a speed-driven massacre of a night in wow. and why not? that's what it's for!

so i slipped the mouse on the table, a coke in my fist, and thought i'd catch up with a yeti or two. give it a damn good thwacking with my axe so i can make it understand the futility of life.

first place i found myself in was a dark room. after a good private cry, i sprinted into the mountains in search of those elusive yeti again. damn their eyes - i was gonna cut them out, too.

unfortunately, i found my alltime ever favourite hunting gound of today had been taken over by some feeble little elf who was busy killing the creatures who had obviously been spawned for my pleasure alone! how dare he!

i made some rude gestures and just couldn't believe my eyes as he interfered on my kills, getting in a few good thwacks on yetis who were plainly dying beneath MY axe! such rudeness i have never seen, but it's pretty much what you expect from alliance scum.

my heart still reeling from the excess damage it had taken over the weekend (girl of my dreams is a level 60 mage when it comes to dealing damage on my heart and soul), i didn't let it get to me. i just ran down the mountain and found some brown yeti in desperate need of having their insides emptied out all over the lawn.

i obliged.

many times.

in fact, i was so obsessed with slaughtering as many of these hairy lumbering logheads as i could get my fists on, i didn't notice myself levelling up. in fact, it was such a surprise when my screen exploded with that levelling colour and sound that i nearly dropped my axe.

in any case, i can only dedicate this swift rise in levels to the girl who has stolen my insides and used them as a coathanger.

yes, i dedicate this kill to you, cp.

why'd i have to fall in love with a girl who didn't even know i exist? i guess it's true and level 30s shouldn't be raiding with level 60s. they'll only get damaged.

real damaged.

real fast.

well.

there you go - a real lesson for today.

and the levelling poem? well, here it is:

see my axe all shiny and new
swung at necks, it cleaves right through
and i just got tougher
and a whole lot rougher
because look at me - i'm thirty-two.

the abominable orcman

so i kind of flew over the landscape on my way to tarren mill, looking for something interesting, when i spotted what looked like a mine in the hills above. interested in mining its goodness, i headed on up the hill and noticed a few ogres in the distance who were quite a few levels above me. a bit TOO well protected from my flavoursome axe of doom.

so i headed round a sneaky bend where i found some lions and a few stray humies in need of their bits sliced and diced.

i taught them all manner of my favourite new cheffing techniques, including one i like to call the double-triple-inside-out-quadruple-chop-with-flourish.

brilliant stuff.

cheerful, yet a bit disappointed at killing animals yet again, i wandered off toward the mine. along the way i saw a stray lion who looked a bit starved so decided to put it out of its misery with a few well-timed swings of the ol' axe.

as i was gleefully spilling lionblood, i noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye. i tried to get a good look but between the lion clawing away at me (ungrateful wretch - couldn't it see i was doing it a favour?), and the distance, i couldn't quite make out what it was.

but it DID look killable, i was pretty sure of that.

i soldiered on up and found a small canyon leading into a snowy part.

and there.

what was that? movement?

i looked closer, peering through the snowy haze. and i saw it!

i swear it was there - i'm not making this up!

i stepped up closer. i grinned and couldn't believe my orcy eyes. yes, it was true! all those stories were true! the yeti really DOES exist, and here it is! see? there! right between the two hills! i still can't believe my eyes!

what? well, lucky for us i took the cynical nature of my audience into consideration and did the only logical thing i could do to get further proof of the yeti's existence.

that is, i charged it, slit it up the middle, and took photos of it.

and here, in delightful colour, is the undeniable proof that the yeti exists. see? i even took a photo of its feet. and they're pretty big, aren't they?

i looked around for someone to show this corpse off to but couldn't see anyone around, but i DID see something else worth seeing.

more yetis.

dozens of them.

maybe hundreds - in all the excitement i couldn't count.

i charged.

and charged.

you see, when meeting new species, i am always aware of my obligations to the horde, and to promoting a civilised meeting of minds. teaching capitalism to such primitive monsters is no easy task, i'm telling you.

yes, you heard me. i was teaching them the basics of capitalist theory.

that is, i owned them.

all of them.

every single frosty one.

ahhhh - such bliss!

a night out with talhe

went to shadowfang keep last night. why? well, i know i'm a little old for the incident, but i'd heard you could make a bit of cash there as it dropped some fairly good stuff you could throw on the ah and forget about. i only meant to go in and see how things looked in there and get out. however, i was telling talhe about my journey, and she popped up out the front and demanded entrance. never one to disappoint - and always one looking for a reason to kill stuff - i popped out and pulled her in. another guildie, azza, also asked for a hand in, but he was off in the gulch and would be a while.

in the meantime, talhe and i wandered further into the keep. i'd already wiped out everything up until the last few buggers in the courtyard, so we continued from there.

first thing we did was die as i annoyed all the horses and they dived on me.

brilliant way to impress my newest party member. watching me get wiped out by rogue stablescum.

from thereon in we did well, pretty much wiping our boots with corpses in some very close but flavoursome fights. it was a fantastic effort. even though my level is 31, hers was 25 (turning 26 i believe), and we managed to guzzle down elites like they were blades of grass.

then azza joined in.

first thing i do is get us killed. seemed like a tradition. get a new party member and die with them. brilliant.

we'll call it a team-building exercise.

in any event, it turned out a little harder than we thought. we were a hunter, a mage and a warrior with an axe just ploughing through. i found it difficult to survive because i didn't expect to be going this far in and hadn't brought more than two healing potions. i'd really only gone for a peek and should have gone for healing potions when talhe joined.

sadly, we got almost all the way through and she had to leave. then azza and i died some more and watched our armour go that delicious shade of red which means we had to pause and consider our future.

it was a sad and miserable end to an otherwise very hearty and delightful expedition. i'm sure i could have made it all the way through with just a few more bottles of potions. the times we died we died only barely, with creatures left on the weeniest of health points. those jars of juice would have made all the difference and i'm really annoyed i didn't have any.

well, at least i've learnt my lesson today. always expect the long haul. it is, after all, a game of addiction...

another flightpath

i found myself a new flightpath out of undercity - via bats! woah. ain't these guys so awesome?

was a long night of fun last night. ogres. bats. stuff.

i'm kind of hanging out to hit level 40 so i can start wearing plate armour. i have a few little quests i have to do in regard to my warrior, and i guess i should try getting them done this weekend. at least, i hope so. one of them means i have to journey into razorfen kraul and that'll involve a group incident again. i'm not really a fan of such things, but it breaks the monotony, i guess. keeps things chipper.

in the meantime, however, i think i'll go take another bat. i really love the journey out of undercity. so cool. so very tim burton and the sewer pipes look brilliant. all that glowing green slime!!! so nice...

another day another massacre

i was getting close to levelling up, so decided to take a jaunt to a place i like where there's lots of ogres - boulder'gor.

i kind of fell in love with killing ogres. they're like the mudmen things in diablo. the first diablo, that is. when you get to the caves and they run about grunting and dying so nicely. pure warrior kills. straightout hack and slashers. and they look so big and die so well.

so, i ran all the way there, hopping and skipping along, joyful in mood and hurty in spirit. i'd had a long day looking at the girl i love and knowing she doesn't love me, and so i was in a desperate mood to kill some stuff.

lots of stuff.

any stuff.

so long as it died with in a loud and violent manner.

ogres = perfect!

unfortunately, what i had was a team of pesky alliance clods running around like a bunch of frilly dudes with their little gnomes and dwarfs running about like silly little anklebiters.

and they were killing MY ogres!

damn them to somewhere dark and funky where evil things get done to their armour.

i took great delight, then, in following them around, and as they killed i'd pick off the closest next ogres to them, so they were forced to pretty much run more than i did. it was a challenge, but it worked. as soon as i saw them moving toward something, i charged it. stole their stuff, so to speak.

yay! my way of annoying them.

in the end, however, i was content to just level up and journey back to orgrimmar.

and, in tribute to this marvellous moment, i composed the following thing:

in boulder'gor where the ogres run
alliance tried to ruin my fun
but i was greener
and a damn sight meaner
and killed their ogres by the ton.

- behold! i'm now level 31!!!

my night out on the town

i was taken out for a night on the town again by my guildies. they grabbed me to grom'gul and made me walk in the jungles until we found an arena. gurubashi arena. we went there to await a spawning of a chest of some kind which would contain all sorts of goodies.

we weren't the only ones there, either. a bunch of alliance wussies showed up and were busy stalking the jungles in search of easy horde meat. that meat being us, we did our very best to hold our own, and i believe we were doing okay considering we were vastly outnumbered by about four to one at one stage.

an incredible and breathtaking experience which showed the true courage of the alliance as they competed to take out myself and one of our other guildies. i being a terrifyingly high level 30 and azza being a hugely threatening level 24 or something daft. naturally, we were the blazing fires of our guild and had to be stomped first with such skill and effort by the gathering level 50s who seemed to squabble over who would get the right to slit my gizzard.

but i wasn't going easy. no way.

seen here is a mage, so we can't show you his name. he's a level 50. and guess which orcy got the final killing blow in on this one?

that's right! me!

mind you, as i took this photo, some level 60 steamed up behind me and let my insides out all over the path, but it was worth it to get this photo of a level 50 mage who felt the thrill of getting his head chopped off by my little level 30 axe...

finally, the chest spawned.

a veritable horde (no joke intended) of alliance zoomed in on the chest, and my fellow guildies (by the way there were only about six of us), raggedly swiped at them all.

alliance, being alliance, decided to show us their prowess, determination, and sheer intelligence by turning on us to wipe us out.

meanwhile, as per plan, our resident rogue (and public enemy number one on the alliance hitlist), hyacia the magnificently deadly, did a smooth little stealth behind the lot of them and filched the chest right out from under their alliancy noses!!!

it was a supremely beautiful moment made even more beautiful by the frustrated howls and demented berserk rage of the alliance as they scrambled around in circles desperate to find something to blame while we stood around giggling like loons.

an absolutely fantastic evening out.

i recommend it.

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...