Thursday, August 26, 2004
  • I have returned from an adventurous vacation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which included fabulous sights such as Six Flags Great America and the Miller Brewing Company.
  • Pictures are floating around somewhere and may put in a surprise appearance on this site in the near future.
  • In other news, today I celebrate birthday #24. By "celebrate" I of course mean letting my parents take me out to dinner and then coming home to play World of Warcraft a lot.
  • I have also ironed out some technical difficulties besetting Jeremy's site, which means he now has no excuse not to update and post a lot of photo galleries. No excuse but that pernicious employment condition he's come down with, that is.
Monday, August 16, 2004
  • In order to keep this page from being consigned to the dustbin of history, I am struggling to update it at least once each week. For today I'm giving you a short World of Warcraft gameplay clip: David and I killing Lord Azrethoc the Demon Lord.
  • After this fight, we waited around for the big demon guy to respawn and then David enslaved him. He didn't have any cool abilities, but we posed with him for a nice screenshot, which I will dig up later on.
Monday, August 9, 2004
  • Orson Scott Card has an interesting essay up entitled Mud-Covered Presidents.
  • For my part, I'll talk for a moment about Doom 3, iD's latest FPS shooter.  I have mixed feelings about this game.  I enjoy it while I'm playing it, but after I've saved for the night and quit, I don't feel compelled to fire it up again.  Setting aside the hype, it seems that the actual game Doom 3 offers is relatively forgettable.  I can appreciate the designers' intent to pay homage to the classic original, yet the plot twists and sudden scares come off as tired and stale.  Graphically the game is unequaled, but graphics alone can only do so much.
  • Cooperative play would have sealed the deal and silenced all my inner doubts, but that was stripped from the game months ago and now lives on only as an XBox exclusive and a potential community mod.  The multiplayer options are quite sparse: deathmatch and team deathmatch, four players max.
Tuesday, August 3, 2004
  • Adventures in World of Warcraft PVP Combat, Part 2: the Sacking of Freewind Post.
  • Like many zones ostensibly controlled or at least contested by the Horde, the Thousand Needles is nearly bereft of occupants belonging to one of the four Horde races.  By my admittedly rough estimate, a grand total of seven tauren are stationed there; five atop a giant mesa in a settlement called Freewind Post, and two located far away in a cave along the mountain walls.  We may generously suppose that at any given moment an additional seven player-controlled persons are also in the vicinity.
  • The practical application of this is that although the Thousand Needles border the Horde homelands and should be quite defensible, the Alliance -- whose homelands are continents and oceans away -- have essentially a free hand to deploy themselves with no fear of Horde reprisal.  Typically such deployment takes the form of Alliance players casually slaughtering the lone guard and the handful of merchants that inhabit Freewind Post, and perhaps gunning down the flight master for good measure.
  • When I flew into Freewind Post yesterday, then, I was unsurprised to witness a night elf druid battling the erstwhile grunt charged with defending the outpost, and less than shocked to see that the guard was losing.  I immediately ran to his aid, though I had a five level disadvantage and the fight was almost certainly hopeless.
  • A brief skirmish ensued which resulted in my humiliating defeat.  The memory of an orc is a long one, however, and when I encountered the same druid out in the desert ten minutes later, the seductive siren call of vengeance again roused me to action.  Shapeshifting into my wolf form, I hounded a half dozen basilisks until they pursued me in a fury.  With my enraged attackers firmly in tow, I rounded upon the druid, who was in the unenviable position of killing a basilisk at that very moment.
  • Seeing one of their fellows involved in a mortal struggle, the basilisks quickly abandoned interest in me and set upon the hapless night elf.  From my vantage point a distance away I watched the carnage unfold.  Within seconds the druid abandoned his futile efforts at fending off the attackers and attempted to transform into a cheetah, so as to bound away from impending doom.  This desperate act of cowardice availed him nothing, as the basilisks stunned him and dispatched him soon after.
  • The mountain walls rang with my laughter.  Victory for the Horde!
Monday, August 2, 2004
  • Adventures in World of Warcraft PVP Combat, Part 1: Eric and Ben bait and destroy an Alliance warrior.
  • During the painstaking process of getting my new orc shaman to level 30, I had Eric (in the form of his level 41 rogue) help me with a quest called Helcular's Revenge.  (Warning: mild, inconsequential spoilers ahead).  The goal is to obtain Helcular's rod from the yeti, who apparently slaughtered this innocent necromancer and occupied his barren, cave-like domicile for their inscrutable yeti purposes.  It is rightly said that none may know the mind of a yeti.
  • In any case, having obtained the late Helcular's rod -- a feat of (Eric's) strength that left the snow-covered mountains covered in yeti corpses -- you have to charge it up in three magical fires and then bring it to poor Helcular's grave in Southshore, an Alliance town.  In previous patches this had the dramatic and hilarious result of reviving Helcular from his mortal slumber, whereupon he summoned in an army of 100+ undead skeletons who decimated the town, along with all its inhabitants and any Alliance players who happened to be questing there.
  • A somewhat predictable outcry arose from Alliance players, who enjoy whining about any in-game scenario that does not innately favor their faction, and in its present state the quest is, dare I say it, rather disappointing.  To be sure, Helcular still spawns, but he is promptly set upon by six level 50 guards and usually killed before he can summon even one bloodthirsty attack skeleton.
  • The plan Eric and I set forth, then, was to defend Helcular long enough for him to raise his diabolical army, at which point we would laugh gleefully as the Alliance town was razed.  Unfortunately we did not prove up to the task of besting even a single guard, so we had to beat an inglorious retreat and were both flagged as PVP-enabled for five minutes for our pains.
  • As we embarked on another quest together, I noticed a level 34 night elf warrior running up the road, and Eric and I hatched our fiendish plan:  I would run up to the warrior and stake myself out as bait, while Eric stealthed and circled around behind our intended prey.  What purple-blooded night elf, after all, could resist assaulting a cunning orc five levels his junior?
  • Though it took a few taunting remarks and rude gestures, the warrior eventually rose to the bait, waved farewell to me, and then charged and began raining deadly blows upon me.  Seconds later Eric stabbed him in the back and unleashed still deadlier blows.  Despite the warrior's cowardly use of an intimidating shout to drive Eric off, and a stun to prevent me from healing myself, we prevailed in our noble effort and won a solid victory over Alliance hubris.
  • Our battle was dedicated to Helcular.  May he never rest in peace.
  • Old updates have been moved to the July archives, as befits the arrival of a new month.