Sunday, March 08, 2009

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 :-)

7 comments:

  1. I remember table tennis and Packman, even pinball, but have never played a video game. My kids collected Magic Cards. I play Scrabble and Netchick's Meet and Greet.

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  2. Not had a good game of Scrabble for far too long.

    I've touched the Magic Cards world in the past, as I had a little collection of friends at uni who were deep into it. That turned into a bit of an Arms Race though, as they'd spend silly amounts of money and time on improving their Decks. Fun game, shame about the powergaming.

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  3. I will send my brilliant college age son over, he will know exactly what you are talking about. hehe

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  4. Yay! Sometimes my greatest lament is that I didn't roll horde, sadly the friends who drug me into the game had already made that decision for me.

    Though... I must admit, my favorite class was Paladin and that's all there was back in 'the day'.

    Hey, if you ever want to try a RolePlaying server where folks REALLY roleplay (it's actually fairly fun) I've got very low levels (around 20) on Sisters of Elune, and they're blessed Horde. Blood elfs... I know... I'm a sell out.

    Anywho... check out Guild Site

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  5. David - don't worry about it, some people get blank looks when others talk "game" around them, I get blank looks when people talk things like "cooking", "fashion" and "gardening" around me :-) (lol!)

    Yep - pretty much always been Horde, although you do tend to jump into one side and stick to it. I went by the majority opinion from when we were setting up the Mercenaries, people seemed to get on well with Horde. I started a few off as Alliance but didn't take them too far, it's not the same without the people you know.

    Never taken Paladins too far, I've raided most with a couple of mages (Iceangel!), tanked with Bash mk1, shot stuff with Finlay the hunter and taken a Mr Shadow (priest) up to level 77 :-)

    Will check out the guild site :-)

    PS Iceangel 2 was a bit of a sell out ... The original one was undead, the second one was reborn as a Blood Elf.

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  6. Doh - extra bit - don't think I'll be able to check out that guild in the game ... US Servers vs European Servers :-(

    However, if you'd like a couple of guides, I wrote one for crash levelling cooking and another for fishing :-) (although the online ones will be better - i.e. they have pictures as well as Wall Of Text !)

    PS I'm tempted to try a tank like what's on that guild site ... There's a certain talent at the bottom of the Fury tree that allows you to use a 2 handed weapon in 1 hand. Big Choppa + Big Shield perhaps ? :-)

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  7. European servers would cause trouble. Interesting though, UK must get a choice cause one of my good online buddies was in the UK when I met him. It was hell for him to line up ‘times’ to play with us, but he did it.

    Yeah... one thing I've always appreciated with the Paladin class was my ability to diversify which they've really strengthened in WotLK.

    I healed from 1-63 and that was a bit of a mistake (healing is not so good for leveling by yourself as I'm sure you've endured with your priest). Then I went Protection (tank) spec and found myself really enjoying being the WALL everyone else hid behind. Nothing like taking 100-200 damage from something that would do 800-900 damage to someone else, not to mention I dodge, block or parry enough to take less damage than that.

    Lately I’ve tried my hand at our Retribution spec which is for DPS and have enjoyed it thoroughly. Nothing like dropping a monster with 10K health in about 10 seconds.

    *nod* I hadn’t heard about the 2h weapon 1handed… I faintly recall some rumors of it but that’s a pretty awesome bonus. You do need to try a Death Knight if you haven’t yet. Being a class who is used to BOTH of my status bars depleting in combat there’s something about being able to go… and go… and go and only worry about health (which they worry about very little). They are also superb at dealing damage and I pitted my lvl 61 against a lvl 63 elite last night and had him to 500 health (from 30K) before I croaked.

    If you have some guides you’d like to share I’d be more than happy to accommodate you on the forum (I built the site) which is the ONLY working link on that first page (upper left). When you sign up you have to wait for an admin approval so please just use a name I’d recognize and I’ll approve you and set you up with moderator rites. Honestly having a ‘guest’ writer would help and I’d be willing to accommodate you so that the website wouldn’t be so ‘guild’ based so you could bring in your own friends as well. Actually using phpBB (the underlying software) the sky is the limit. I could give you your own forum.

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