Back to Azeroth ...

Or more accurately, back to Kalimdor :-)

I've broken the games drought, heading back into World of Warcraft. Kind of like a fresh start though, as instead of getting my highest level character up to a point where he can join in with the group stuff, I've been playing my latest Bashara. The reason for going back in is a touch of boredom, I tend to get bored of doing one thing all the time and I guess I've needed to pry my attention away from disappointing televised sport.

The original Bash was a girlie troll and her job half the time was Bodyguard. The way most Massive Multiplayer Online games are arranged is that the groups in the game need : Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer. Over my time in the game, I've done the Tank & Damage Dealer jobs quite a bit, with a taste of doing the healing job. My Bashara's are always Warriors, which can either do the Tank job or Damage Dealer job. It's a different Damage job as I did on my Iceangel characters, as Bash likes to get "up close and personal".

Here's Bash mk1, caught in a rare moment of idleness while waiting for a Zeppelin.


That's Bash in gear from a little while ago, with the original Mercenaries of Darkness tabard on show. I've retired that character now, she's happily sunbathing on a beach somewhere. The new Bashara is a cow, literally :-) I haven't got any screenies though of Bash mk3.

One reason I keep coming back to WoW is the people, you just don't get the interaction in a single player game that you get in something like Warcraft. Most of the time, I'll be doing my own thing and barely acknowledging what's going on (think Tunnel Vision!) but you get some magic moments. Plus one thing that does make me grin is being able to answer questions that crop up :-) My knowledge of newer Warcraft is pretty limited but I know a lot about the original game. I tend to be a bit solitary but can get very lonely, the multiplayer aspect takes the edge off that loneliness.

Oh - those warriors I like tend to wear Platemail armour, so seeing :


Tends to get the tank noticed :-) The fella in the dressing gown is Furil, who used to be our Chief Bodyguard. The character in the foreground there shouting "tank in a dress !" is me :-) It's my original Iceangel the mage going around in typically unconventional outfits, although this predates me having a Pointy Hat stapled to my head.

There's a lot of variation in Warcraft as well, although a lot of characters tend to just race through to the end game and not really notice what's going on. Blizzard also introduced a lot of pop culture and in-jokes, like a little robot called Servo who uses lines from the 6 million dollar man. Some of them take more finding than others, like :


Yep - that's a certain famous sea monster and that's the Mercs posing in front of it :-) We did this one in the hopes of getting some free passes into the beta testing phase for the first expansion. Beta testing is where you can try out new software before it's ready for release. The objective is to spot and fix all of the bugs before it gets unleashed on an unsuspecting public. Not too sure if I'd have taken advantage of that as any Beta progress would have been reset when we bought the game and I hate doing things twice. But I was very happy to tag along to get Bash mk1 (that's her on the left side of the pic) into the entry that we did above. It would have been Wrong to not have the ex Guild Master in the picture.

The Mercs were still functioning fairly well when that picture got taken, although their ex-GM was suffering. That's from quite some time ago and the situation's been reversed ... At the time of the picture, the ex-GM was getting torn up mentally by some out-of-game issues and the Mercs were doing fine. Since then, the Mercs tore themselves apart as a combination of lack of coherent leadership and a few idiots on the inside and I've come to terms more with who I am. I'd like to think I'm a more relaxed and mature person now, having answered the questions posed by a few whittling issues I had.

Wow - that's a lot of wittering on for a post that was supposed to be short & sweet with a few pictures in ! I guess that must show how enthalled I am with the cricket at the moment. Cricket can sometimes turn into a "wait for things to happen" trench warfare and that's what we have with the current West Indies v England Test Match. Could be another draw, hopefully not. Unfortunately it could be remembered more for the shortcomings of the umpires than the quality of the play. A game needs to be remembered for the players, however the quality of umpiring in cricket lately means the decision makers are being talked about when they should be invisible.

On cricket - the Sri Lanka tour to Pakistan was big news for all the wrong reasons this week. Good to hear that no players were killed and I hope they all can play again, however the 6 deaths to terrorism in that incident is 6 too many. Hopefully Pakistan will figure out who is misbehaving in their country so they can lock them away.

Last over of the day coming up, which means it's close to the time when I'll disappear back into the game again :-) Time to close up with one last screenshot :


The scene is Black Rock Depths, in a mountain in the middle of Azeroth. The 3 big guys and Polobuhj on the end are an example of why I was really proud of the Mercs. Of the 5 in that picture, only 2 were English. From starting as a work's guild, we built something that attracted and kept people from all over Europe. So it must have been a good place to be around :-) Bash mk1 is the one making an exhibition of herself, front and centre.

PS That is a platemail bra, although I only realised after quite a few weeks ! It was the best thing available at the time in terms of stats, that's my story and I'm-a sticking to it :-)