Rusted Proto-Drake

What sounds like sophomoric sex slang is actually my newest flying mount by way of Ulduar's ten man hard modes. The Rusted Proto-Drake is my reward for completing Glory of the Ulduar Raider Friday night. A task that I got started a month behind on and took the entire summer to complete. Granted if my focus had been solely on this achievement I probably could have done it months ago. The time constraints of a daily 6:30am Kaden wake up call don't really lend themselves to post 12:30am raiding with my ten man group. Thankfully there is no uber achievement in ToC 10 man, so my desire for a third 310% speed mount can wait until Icecrown Citadel. A Proto-Frostwyrm maybe?

Saturday night I learned that I no longer have das juice in the arena. To be fair I had a loose association with les juice in the past on my mage, but I was probably being carried. Apparently I can't even be carried these days. In my mix of Hateful and Deadly I tried to get carried to a Furious totem by my friend and possible* season 6 gladiator the Chort. All I needed was a 700 personal rating. Easy enough if the Chort's rating wasn't putting us against folks who would rather see my face on the business end of their boots. I would get rolled in seconds and he would almost solo the two folks rolling me. After about 4 to 5 plays of the same song I decided to get off the merry go round. Hey the Deadly totem can be bought for honor, perfect!

To wrap my WoW things up, I am toying with the idea of leveling my mage again. He is already 71 from the last time I toyed with said idea, but now I need a herbing alt. Tooling around on a ground mount in Northrend might sound fun to some, but I'd rather pick my flowers from the sky. It will most likely take a while (see Appendix 16.3: I Had a Baby), but I figure I can keep my Shaman swimming in flask for a while before I have to hit the auction house.

*I say possible because Chort might or might not have been screwed over by the recent arena calculation that has apparently gone horribly wrong. He will find out soon and when he does I will post here about it.

Healer for Life

I spent the formative years of my WoW youth as a dirty, distracted and dissatisfied DPSer. A Mage to be exact, at times a very good one (BC) and at others just plain bad (MC & BWL). It was easy to be bad though, in 40 man content I could be carried while mashing one button (Frostbolt) and watching TV. When Burning Crusade came out, it was time to shape up or ship out. Raiding spots went from 40 to 25 and no one could be carried like they used to. I learned to play my class and helped lead a moderately successful guild.

I got bored though. Knowing how to play my class wasn't enough. My class was boring. Outside of a few interesting fights in BC there was little to do as a Mage, but just mash buttons again. I ended up taking a seven month break from the game. When I returned it was not to reprise the same role of button presser down at the local factory. My new main is the Shaman that I play today. Life as healer is good, no numbers races, people actively seek you out for groups and you actually have to pay attention.

The last two paragraphs were supposed to be a reflection of why I enjoy healing so much, but it looks like they turned into why DPS is boring. Oh well random thoughts and snippets follow...

PvP/Arena
I know I lamented my role as a healer on an arena team a few weeks ago, but that was before new gear and a new team. Macaroni Machine is still the core healer combo that it was previously, but we have shifted and replaced our DPS. Our new make up is Mage (/w a Boomkin sub), Paladin, Warrior, Hunter and Shaman. It seems to be working out for the most part. We are all well geared, playing for competitive fun and don't yell at each other. The lowest the team ever got was 1491 two weeks ago. Monday night we finished at 1644 and the more we play and learn to communicate it should hopefully get even better.

Lore
I am thirty pages out from the finish of Night of the Dragon, so I won't review it just yet, but I will say that it is frustratingly bad so far. I never really knew what people were complaing about when they talked about Richard Knaak, but now I think I get it. Hopefully Arthas is good.

Progress
I am now known as Samichez the Undying, that is all.

Twilight Vanquisher

I've held my WoW nerd at bay, chained up and foaming at the mouth, for months now. There have been some small tidbits here and there, but no meat and potato meals. Well indulge me dear reader because it's about to get geeky in here.

On the 25 player raid front we have been pushing for The Twilight Zone achievement for going on three weeks now and finally got it last night. To define terms three weeks of attempts is two raid days a week for three hours each day, so roughly eighteen hours to get it done. It was by far the hardest challenge in WotLK that we have faced to date. Although I wonder about The Immortal and You Don't Have An Eternity now. They will be hard to do for sure. Here is some back of the napkin math, to give you some perspective.

• 11.5 million people in the world play WoW;
• 35,273 guilds in US and EU are ranked which means roughly;
• 881,825 players in the US and EU have killed a raid boss in WotLK, of those;
• 59,075 players have done The Twilight Zone or 6.7% and only;
• 5,850 players have done You Don't Have An Eternity or 0.66% and only;
• 2,100 players have done The Immortal or 0.24%.

Granted those numbers are rough estimates given that some guilds have more than 25 people on their rosters. Regardless the difficulty of the last two achievements is pretty clear.

On the 10 man front we had been slowing down since Christmas, but picked back up this week. Our goal was to knock out all of the 8 man achievements and we did last night with A Poke In The Eye. Up next is The Undying which should see our first attempt Saturday night.

No good news to report on the pvp front. No arena team I have been on has yielded any results. Either I suck at healing in arena and should level my mage up or my comps plus the current nature of burst dps is running a game on me. In any case I keep trying to find the magic spice that makes the pvp meal taste good, but have not done so to date.

Around the World in 80 Levels

Well, I'm back. It was a crazy five days of leveling, raiding, pvp, a poor diet and no sleep. By Monday night I was siting on a pile of blues, my first emblem pieces and some sort of nasty sickness. I missed work and blogging on Tuesday unfortunately as a result, but I'm feeling much better this evening. Time for a brief run down I guess.

11/13/08: Showed up at my local Gamestop with my brother at 11:30pm (11/12/08). I was out of the mall and back at my house game in hand at 12:07am and on the boat to Northrend by 12:45am. Lots of leveling and yawns later and it was 11:45am and time for a nap. Near 12 hours of gaming can do that to the best of us. Three hours of napping later and it was time to level again. To be honest my mind was a bit of blur at this point, I don't remember what level I was and when.

11/14/08: Sometime around 4am I crashed hard, I went to bed and slept a deep sleep till noon Friday. I had planned to wake up five hours later, but the flesh was not willing. I felt much better than I had in days when I got on though. It was a little bit of catching up with my group, but we were unhampered.

11/15/08: Realm first 80 was secured by my friend on Saturday. Congratulations to Majargjr on realm first 80, shaman and troll. No, his name is not a coincidence we both named our toons in homage to our friend Majarg. Around 4am Saturday I decided to go to sleep as I had two level lead on winning the realm first Orc to 80.

11/16/08: I woke up at 10am and not thinking clearly reset my alarm to 12pm. The sleep was nice, but it ultimately put me an hour behind the realm first orc Magnuso, another friend and guild member. It wasn't my goal to hit realm first, but when it came down to the wire I tried to make the push. It was a lot of fun to 80, but really that is only the start. Level 70 gear is trash for the most part, as we soon learned in our first heroic. It was tough and the blue drops were outpacing our tier six.

11/17/08: Monday was more heroics and our first trip to Naxxramas 10 man. We cleared the arachnid quarter, downed Patchwerk and wiped till we were sleepy on Grobbulus.

11/18/08: Tuesday I was supposed to go back to work, but a sinus infection that had been building for 2-3 days took a toll on my sleepless body. I woke up sick as a dog and ended up sleeping most of the day. By the evening I was feeling better, but probably shouldn't have raided. We cleared the construct quarter and got our first pieces of tier seven.

Tonight I am heading back into Naxx with the same group of ten, but before I go I'll do the numbers.

Days to 80: 3.5

Purples Replaced: 15 (as of 11/19/08)

New Purples: 5

Coolest New Purple: Aegis of Damnation

Special thanks goes to...

• My beautiful wife for being supportive and understanding given my addiction to not just WoW, but all things geeky.
• My brother for calling to wake me up many times and leveling with me from start to finish, grats on realm first mage and undead.
• Chort for leveling with me from start to finish, I hope all of your family business is better now.

Divine Storm

Patch day was last Tuesday and it brought with it a ton of changes and new features in preparation for the Lich King. Outside of the cries of "My modz dont work WTF" for the first 48 hours it brought a lot of cool stuff to the game. For instance, did you know that in Warcraft lore even the most inexperienced retribution paladin could kill his enemies in two to three blows? It's true, well at least based on what we learned from the patch. I saw a blue geared ret pally kill my friend's warrior that walks around in full season 4. Blizzard has taken steps to nerf them since, but even still they're a can of rape.

That goes for all DPS, everyone is hitting harder these days. It's because classes are balanced to level 80, but we are still level 70. Great for the pew pewers, but hell for a healer. I can barely keep up my dps friends against two targets. If there are three it is game over and this is in battlegrounds not arenas. It will be a long month till the expansion hits, but I'll be going elemental to level as a saving grace. In the mean time I have achievements to keep me busy and gold to make. Ah yes achievements, bane of my existence on Xbox Live. I have already spent a week running around Azeroth doing things I would have never done otherwise. In the end they are fun, optional and might get me a proto-drake!

Raiding got stepped up to the plate and took a hard swing with the nerf bat. Bosses have had their hit points dropped by 30%. Coupled with the increased DPS gear has been made less of a factor. If your team can coordinate on new fights expect some new kill screens on your guilds homepage. It's nice to see Blizzard taking steps to avoid what happened with Naxxramas. Meaning it came so late in the shadow of the expansion that a very limited number of the player base saw it. Hopefully more people will see Sunwell, but I wouldn't be suprised if it was a 10 man dungeon when we are all running around at level 90.

Albino Drake Update
My brother caught all the Pokemon he needed and got his Drake a few days after the patch dropped. The man is crazy and made even crazier in that he is now trying to get a skunk.

C.asuals R.ule E.verything A.round M.e...

C.R.E.A.M; get the money; dollar dollar bill y'all...

The Wu assuredly had no clue what an MMO was back in 1993, because the internet as we know it didn't exist. They knew their video games though. I spent my summers in high school playing the Dreamcast/N64 and watching hip hop artist play the same systems on MTV (riveting television I know). They also knew about the power of currency, hence cash ruling everything around them. Blizzard got the same memo, as they have been making money hand over fist for going on four years.

It wasn't a difficult formula that made their first swim in the MMO ocean such a success. Take all the good things about old MMOs, drop the annoying parts, reward instead of penalize and polish to perfection. They didn't foresee having the population of a small country playing their game though (...Tunisia, WoW, Hungary...). So the initial product offered slower leveling, 40 player raids and an honor grind fit for a pimple faced shut in.

Burning Crusade brought faster leveling, 25 player raids and a more casual honor grind. The development focus for end game content still seemed to be hardcore focused though. Now Wrath of the Lich King is coming in a month and every raid will have a 25 and 10 player version and they are nerfing B.C. raids before the release. The game is leaning slightly more casual, but no were near what it should. Well according to the numbers at least.

World of War put up an article comparing the number of active players to ranked players to end game raiders yesterday. It is some back of the napkin math for sure, but roughly 1.5% to 2.5% are seeing the end game content Blizzard is building. That means at best 97.5% of WoW players aren't seeing all of Blizzard's hard work. There are some carrot on a stick shenanigans involved, but Blizzard seems to be waking up to their larger audience. Not on a Nintendo scale, but I'm sure hardcore raiders will need a box of tissues the first time Arthas gets ten maned.

My Kingdom for an Albino

See that dragon (drake) it is white, looks slick and is hard to get. How hard? Do you have 75 mounts laying around in preparation for the expansion? You do, good your set for your Albion Drake come November 13th. Oh, you don't have 75 mounts, well lets see what it takes for the typical Horde player to sit atop a Jim Gaffigan colored dragon.

Mount Name	Quantity	Cost	Total
Blue Wolves	3	10	30
Purple Wolves	3	100	300
Blue Hawks	4	10	40
Purple Hawks	3	100	300
Blue Skeletals	3	10	30
Purple Skeletals	2	100	200
Blue Raptors	3	10	30
Purple Raptors	3	100	300
Blue Kodos	2	10	20
Purple Kodos	3	100	300
Total	29		1550

So without ever traveling to Outland you can grab 29 mounts for the cost of 1,550 gold and some capital city reputation grinding. A trip to some a lot of battle grounds can also reward you with mounts for the cause.

Mount Name	Quantity	Cost	Total
Frost Wolf	1	0	0
BG Mark Mounts	5	0	0

That's six more and they are free, but they'll take a ton of your time to attain. Maybe you already have tons of marks filling up your mailbox though. Then it is time to head to Outlands, but bring your cash and get ready to grind.

Mount Name	Quantity	Cost	Total
Riding Talbuks	4	70	280
War Talbuks	4	100	400
Dark PvP Talbuks	2	0	0
Nether Drakes	6	200	1200
Nether Rays	5	200	1000
War Hippogryph	1	2000	2000
Blue Windrider	3	100	300
Purple Windrider	4	200	800
Total	29		5980

Time for a recount, we are at 64 out of 75 mounts, 7,530 gold and a healthy portion of your WoW life. Want to break 75 before the expansion drops? Things are about to get expensive and/or you're going to be poop sockin' it in instances for a while.

Instance Drops	Quantity
Fiery Warhorse	1
Qiraji Crystals	4
Amani War Bear	1
Deathcharger	1
Brewfest Kodo	1
Raven Lord	1
Brewfest Ram	1
Razzashi Raptor	1
White Hawk	1
Zulian Tiger	1
Ashes of Al'ar	1

Three of the crystals have a high drop rate, but the rest of the mounts are like winning the lottery. I wouldn't rely on them dropping as part of you quest for a creamy dreamy white drake. There is also the option to pick up and level engineering which will net you two flying machines and any empty bank account. Your last options are the expensive ones, there are roughly five mounts that are randomly distributed through the WoW trading card game. They're made available in a number of ways to the average WoW player.

1. Actually buy the cards and hope to get lucky (expensive).
2. Ebay the card(s) you want (expensive).
3. Buy from a guildmate with in game gold or sexual favors (expensive).

So what is the net net on all of this pre-WotLK pokemon collecting? There are currently 85 some odd mounts in game at this time, but only 64ish are readily available to all players. You won't be riding any flying mounts until level 77 anyway and there are bunches of mounts coming in Wrath. My advice get as many of the 64 as you can right now,maybe solo some trash in AQ40 with a friend for some crystals and wait for Wrath to drop and make the Albion Drake even easier to get.

Oh Yeah, Football is Back

Autumn brings cool weather, my birthday, the best holidays, apple picking and football. Football means a reason to watch Sports Center, baseball is boring and they don't cover hockey any more. Football means fantasy leagues and pick em' pools. Football means there is always something to do on Sunday. Football means traveling up to Pittsburgh to see the boys in black and gold take the field.

This year I was less than prepared to be in football mode. One second it was hot as hell, my mind was other things and then football was here. After a Sunday of watching games, checking my fantasy teams and two Monday night games forth coming I am in full on football mode now. Bring on the tailgating, beers and foam fingers. Well actually no don't bring on a lot of that stuff, I am still a social recluse when it comes to all things. I might crack a beer, but it will be in the privacy of my own home with the drapes drawn.

WoW it's WoW
Nothing too exciting to report. I started doing 2v2 with Luke and we are both learning a lot. I'm still attending and looting gear from 10 man raids. Finally, I've decided to get WoW rich before the expansion drops (Novemberish), so I got some pointers from a friend, installed a few mods and started picking flowers between BG ques. My goal is 10k by November 1st.

40k, the Pedo Hobby?
I ventured out in the rain Saturday morning to pick up my Assault On Black Reach kit from my local Games Workshop. Admittedly I knew the weekend was probably a bad time to go. Teenage boys play 40k and teenage boys don't have school on the weekends. So walking into the retail store to a standing room only mix of teenage boys and man children made me ashamed to be interested in the hobby. Not so ashamed that I couldn't pick up some more brushes, paints and preorder the new space marines codex. I'm still intent on building, painting and playing a full army, but my resolve to go into the story on weekends has been dissolved.

The Castles of Crash

It feels like this game was announced in 1993 and has taken fifteen years to be developed. Twenty three delays later and it finally came out today. In actuality it was announced at Comic Con in 2006 and took two years to complete. This games art style and simple concept scratched a gaming itch I have had for a long time. It is a throw back to the Golden Axes, Streets of Rages, Bad Dudes, NARCs, Double Dragons, etc, etc ,etc that I grew up on. My heart yearned for a coop online beat 'em up and Behemoth delivered.

The art is style very similar to their first console game Alien Hominid which I never played, but always looked to as an example of art I like. It looks simple enough, but has a hand drawn quality that adds depth and punch. The gameplay is in the same simple vein, but grows in complexity as you level. At the first level your control scheme is weak attack, strong attack, magic attack, jump and block. As you develop your character, dependent on where you put points (strength, magic, stamina, agility), you unlock new abilities allowing for unique builds. I have two characters going right now, one with a strong emphasis on magic and stamina (think arena mage) and one with more of a balance of magic, strength and stamina (think ret pally or enhance shaman).

The depth of character development, play style, weapon choice and pets (yes there are pets) makes for a more hearty beat 'em up meal than the microwave gas station burritos of the past. With full coop online, ranking and a pvp arena it is well worth the fifteen dollars on Live. I'd even drop a few more bills if the downloadable content that is forth coming was as tasty a treat.

Pen15 Fan Club Rides Again
After the relative success of Paper For My Daddy on Sunday night and my recent gear upgrades, Majarg and Pen hatched a plan. Start a 3v3 team with two restoration shaman and an arms warrior. The product of this scheming was the resurrection of the Penfifteen Fan Club. The P.F.C. last played as a three DPS frost mage, elemental shaman and destruction warlock team for all of season two and the beginning of season three.

It is unclear how far a matrix like this can go, but we went 11-2 last night with one of our losses attributed to a disconnect. Two healers makes for grueling matches sometimes as our warrior tries his best to solo burst someone down. We have double totems, shocks, nature's swiftness heals and bloodlust though. With two earth shocks and a pummel we are a healer/casters worse nightmare.

Greens No More

My baby shaman with the new car smell is starting to grow up. Between honor grinding and ten man raid content I have amassed a decent set of healing gear. As of last night I exchanged my final piece of green gear with a purple, Cord of the Ring->Guardian's Ringmail Girdle. First that was a huge upgrade and second I can no longer be mocked for wearing a horrible pun. I still have a cloth helm that needs to be replaced, but it is nice to shift my focus to rings and trinkets.

Just shy of ten months to the date of Zul'Aman's release and my first and only trip to the 2.3 dungeon, I went back in to full clear it this weekend. Granted I was with seasoned vets this time and they were carrying me for the most part, but it was nice to see the instance in its entirety. Even nicer were the 23 badges I picked up and monster healing shield. Hopefully I proved my worth to the nine other guild members who took a chance on me and I will be invited back. Lord knows I could use the other gear that drops there.

Finally a lot of my time has been spent in battle grounds lately, think 95%. When I am not doing dailies for cash I am honor and mark farming the night away. So any break from that norm (see above) is most welcome. Last night we played ten games on our 5v5 team (appropriately nicknamed fail fives) Paper For My Daddy. We end up going 6-4 after a rocky 2-4 start. The team is essentially built to fail with me as the lone healer and two of our DPS speced for PVE. The take away for me is an opportunity to heal under real pressure. Something that doesn't happen when I am playing Xbox while farming marks.

Site Watch
After finding a good 40k community site (forums, guides, etc) I went looking for a news site and found Bell of Lost Souls. It is a great place to keep up with 40k news and rumors and has been added to my list of sites I check daily.

D is for the Dramas

Not unlike notes passed in class between teenage girls, World of Warcraft is an excellent medium for the drama. Last night the guild I currently sit on the outskirts of (I'm new) had a bout of the dramas that almost had the guild leader quit permanently. The details and dirty laundry are inconsequential and I only heard about it through third party accounts any way. Having experienced plenty of guild drama in my days as a guild officer and through countless accounts on WoW news sites, it is safe to say that it comes with the territory.

It is easy to chalk it up as the law of large numbers, not this one, but putting 10-250 people together in a group (mostly 15-30 year old males) and expecting them to gel and accomplish goals. Jealousy, greed and people who just plan don't get along are just some of the scenarios that can play out on a day to day basis. As an officer managing that many personalities can be stressing to say the least.

An interesting comparison of game genres is the juxtaposition between first person shooters and MMOs in regards to group cooperation.

1. MMOs give rewards for a large groups accomplishments to a small number of its participants. Over time the group as a whole is rewarded, but getting everyone on board for the concept of the whole before the parts can be difficult. It is a system that can harbor jealously, unhealthy competition and greed. Outside of high level sponsored FPS teams the only reward is winning and maintaining a win to loss ratio.

2. While there is a reliance on your fellow gamer in first person shooters there seems to be less emotion tied to it. Granted this is not a statement that can be made across the board given leagues like CEVO and LANs for monetary prizes. Every raid group in WoW from the lowly Kara only group to the fourth Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury Sunwell raid has to rely on each other to achieve victory. Factor in the consequence of failure being lost rewards and wasted time and you have a potential powder keg on your hands.

3. Finally the idea that there is continuity and a lack of finality in MMOs that is not present in FPSs. Week in and week out everyone is building up the same character or toon in an MMO. Over time small things can build into large drama, the concept is called gunny sacking, not this kind, this kind. FPSs leagues are usually set up in seasons, like the NFL, no prior match has any bearing on coming matches and when the season is over there is usually a period to take a break before the next season. MMOs and the guilds that play in them usually have no off button. It is a race to no finish for the life of the game.

Site Watch
I finally found a good 40k community site after slogging through tons of sites that looked like they were built in 1996. They have a ton of up to date guides and what appears to be a very large and active membership.

WoW Dumpster

The monster is back! Run and hide the kids, I am playing World of Warcraft again. Last week I jumped in feet first to my four year on again off again romance/abusive relationship with the game equivilent of black tar heroin. I have retired my mage to collect dust and maybe get turned into a collectibable that collect dust (j/k, I like napping on the couch, but not sleeping there). So in place of my glass canon I rolled a shaman (a.ka. Jesus). Dr. Majarg M.D. is the podigal son of the original prodigal son, Majarg. He is in every way brighter, faster and stronger than his fore father and will hopefully do no wrong by my hand.

The game plan is to get a toon up to 70 and semi geared before the next expansion rolls out in late 2008 or early 2009. There will be ten man versions of every raid dungeon and tons of 5 man content as well. I vowed to stay away from pvp since it is what I burned out on last time, but only the twisted hand of WoW time will tell.

Nostradamus
Back in October of 2007 I made an argument for more strict personal rating requirements on WoW season 3 arena gear. My thoughts got picked up on WoWInsider and the post garnered the most traffic my blog has seen to date. Most people thought it too strict to place requirements on all items. Season 4 rolled out yesterday with rating requirements on everything save gloves and the off hand. It is nice to see Blizzard and I are on the same page.

Lore Splosion
Christie Golden in her second blog post announced her newest collboration with Aaron Rosenberg, Beyond the Dark Portal. Carrying the same name as the Warcraft 2 expansion pack it covers the same plot that the game did. It is currently resting on my night stand half finished. Christie is also writing a new novel on the origin of Arthas. That and a script for a new WoW manga that is coming in August. The WoW comic is on issue 8 and finally picking up steam and lurking some where in the depths of Hollywood is the long announced and never updated live action movie. It is good time to be a lore nerd.

The Anti WoW

I was not a big fan of massive multiplayer online games before I fell victim to WoW. I think I mentioned previously that I had a brief experience with Star War Galaxies. I had also tried out City of Heroes for month as well and left in frustration. Needless to say I had a sour taste for the genre before getting into the WoW beta in October of 2004. I was bowled over by Blizzards master piece, they took all of the fun elements of SWG and COH, cut the fat and polished to a fine gloss.

The experience wore thin though, prompting my departure five times in the last three plus years. Not any thing I would directly attribute to the game, but it is designed to become even more of a time sink once you reach the highest level (if you let it). Progression raiding can take up to 6-7 days a week, maintenance raiding 2-4 and that doesn't include farming for materials and repair cash. The pvp was fun, but became redundant. Hence my most recent retirement.

So what does it take to get a hardened MMO rookie to try another MMO? I'm shooting at 1 for 3 at this point so I'll say it takes a lot. The Agency is the first game to have such potential. It is the casual MMO that Blizzard tricks new WoW players in to thinking they are playing. It is anti WoW. Relying on action style game play with a RPG twist. The premise being two factions that coexist in an action movie style world. There is U.N.I.T.E which is your classic bond style organization, super slick, nondescript covert action in a tux. ParaGON is the polar opposite, mercenaries with big explosions and a cigar clenched tightly in their teeth.

It can be both a FPS and third person platformer and the graphics ring of The Incredibles and Team Fortress 2 (No One Lives Forever as well). If done right the game could be a smash to play and for SOE's coffers. I have a few concerns though...

1. SOE's track required includes so many missed opportunities that it is hard to count, Everquest was their last and only successful game.

2. Similar to Huxley's lofty goals, The Agency is attempting to conquer new fronter by melding multiple game types and genres. There has not been a game to accomplish what they are attempting and the biggest title in the space (WoW) is just a refinement of an already proven model.

3. The game is being developed by Sony and as such it is coming out for the PC and PS3. It is not unreasonable to project red headed step child support for the PC, even though the PS3's market is limited.

In any case watch some developer walk throughs and some of the other trailers and see how cool it is for yourself. I will be here on the bandwagon, fingers crossed and playing my DS till we see if it can live up to its hype.

Lentils and Arena

I kept my nose clean from WoW for two weeks following my cold turkey break. What can I say I'm a softy for arena coverage and call of duty is a great game, but only compelling enough if my friends are playing. I haven't reactivated just yet, but I have till the 22nd of this month to make that decision. For now I will try and get on an active 2v2 and 5v5 team and try and convince my 3v3 teammates (Warlock, Ele Shaman, Mage) from last season to be more active.

I am also unguilded for the time being and will be on the search for a pvp guild to up my prospects. Spamming the trade chat for prospective teams just seems like playing darts with a blindfold on. Ice veins is the cat's ass by the way. Couple it with bloodlust and I have a sub one second polymorph at my disposal.

So that covers the arena, what about the lentils?

Crystal and I are back on a healthy eating kick for our 2008 weight loss goals. This means trying out health and tasty new recipes. Which always leads me back to 101 cookbooks, my favorite cooking blog on the interslice. On my most recent trip I decided to give the lentil soup recipe a go. It was filling in its smell and taste was quick cook for a cold night. Next time I will chop the kale up finer, but this one is going in the permanent cook book.

Site Watch
SK Gaming has a newish global arena ranking site up that is worth a look for sure. Check out the player ranking to see an all in calculation of who the best players in the world are.

Keep It In Your Pants

My World of Warcraft account has been well feed, drained of all waste and put back into hibernation. As of yesterday I am WoW free again. I'd wager a guess and say that this hiatus will last as long as it takes Activision Blizzard to release WOTLK.

About my leaving I will put it as simply as this...

It is really disappointing that Blizzard continues to focus on content (Patch 2.4) that only a very very small percentage of it's player base will ever see. There will be no new arena venues or battlegrounds until the next expansion and that frustrates me to no end.

To move on, Juno was a fantastic film, my favorite for the year by far. I bought the soundtrack last night and I never buy soundtracks. I Am Legend was a supreme disappointment after the first half of the film which was really good. Now that I don't have a WoW account I picked up netflix again, yeah tons of anime to watch!

Arcade Project
I got my IPAC in the mail the day before Christmas and well it looks cool, but it will really shine once it actually serves its function. I picked up a pack of crimp on connectors for the wiring which thankfully will allow for a solder free project.

Site Watch
The Totally Rad Show (2nd only to Diggnation) just launched the 2.0 version of their website.

Sharpen the Blade

Like a fine blade waiting to dice up a Christmas goose my game needs to be sharpened first. I have grown leaps and bounds ahead of what it was, I was a joke pre-BC and then pre-WE. I still need to be fine tuned though. The shape is there, but until you chisel down to the details you really can't appreciate it.

I came to this realization last Thursday, when our 3s team went 3-7 and dropped to a scrubtastic 1615 rating. If I can't carry my own weight and event the weight of others at times I will never achieve greatness. I should define greatness first I guess. Greatness for me is 2k plus. If I rock a 2k this season I will buy a miniature of my character for all to see.

So now there is a goal, but no path to said goal. My initial intention is to start dueling, any and everyone outside of Orgrimmar. This was something I shied away from in the past, but it is the only way I will start to learn other classes abilities and how to counter them. The only foreseeable problem is the lack of players and there for lack of duelers outside of Orgrimmar. I will either try and drum up some competition on Nazjatar or jump over to the PTR with the big boys.

Arcade Project
I started a SNES arcade box or rather bought the materials for such a box forever ago. In the past few weeks I decided a mini Mame cabinet on wheels would be a lot more fun. So for Christmas I just ordered an IPAC from Ultimarc that will hopefully arrive soon enough that my time off will be productive. Pictures incoming hopefully!

The Dual Box Duelist

WTF How does this happen?

The title is catchy, but it really should have been "The Quad Box Duelist". This is by far the craziest thing I have read in a long time. I can't image playing 5v5 with two players and five characters. How does one even coordinate that many task at such a high level of play? My hats off to the dude that did it and ouch for the teams that he defeated. I figured you could LOS the hell out of a team like that or at least burst down one of the mindless drones, but I guess I have no clue what it is like.

I always imagined dual boxers excelling in a raid environment. All of the challenges are code controlled and broken up by moments to plan and get your head straight. It is you against the developers in what are essentially coordinated puzzles. PvP is a different beast though. It is man vs man in a game knowledge, twitch reaction, skill based test. How one man outwits five other human controlled players is beyond me. I want him on my team though. I wonder if he needs a mediocre frost mage?

P.S.
I got new kicks!

The Prodigal Son Returns

Majarg is back! Our 3v3 team from last season has reformed and is in fine form. We went 5-1 last night and stopped to do our BG dailies. Hopefully we can pick back up tonight and push the rating a lot harder. Even though our only loss last night came at my hands, I think I have become a much more rounded player than I was last season. Coupled with all my new spell damage (100+) I am hoping that we can really push past 2k and play with the big boys. The rock, paper, scissors nature of the game may be the only thing to hold us back though.

My main hand is in sight...now I just need to take it!

Apparently the influx of new players from a bunch of over populated realms has the leaders of FBD in a tizzy. They reformed the guild and put up recruitment threads for raiding. I must admit that I am out of the loop and missing the "Soft N Pink" tag. I also came to the conclusion that it doesn't really matter what guild I am in though when I'm just pvping. So maybe we'll start up the penfifteen club this week and wait to be reported.

Project Beesta
Nothing special with my druid leveling project, I jogged over to Ghostlands after reading this. Apparently the barrens suck and now everyone knows it. I should have my boots and wand this week allowing me to focus more time on Beesta.

RMP & RMD FTW

I guess the title of this entry could have been RMP > RMS. Considering you have to win two games for every lose to advance in rating and half the teams we played were rogue, mage, priest and the occasional rogue, mage, druid, we had a tough go last night. We started with a win and then traded the rest of the night to end at +1, with a record of 7-6 and a 1615 rating (up from 1603).

All hope is not lost though, rogue, mage, shaman is great against 3DPS teams and a ton of other combos. However with Majarg out of the hospital with a clean bill of health, we will most likely be running warlock, mage, elemental shaman again. It might be tough to go 3DPS ourselves considering how many rogue, mage, healer teams there are this season. Only time will tell though, hopefully we can sharpen our rush down strategy to a fine point and get to 1850 with in 2-3 weeks as I had planned.

Project Beesta
I realized two nights ago that after this week and only 11k more honor I will be done with s3 honor gear. What is a non-raiding, pvp mage to do then? Roll a druid of course! With the prevalence of druid & X teams this season (where X = lock or warrior) I figured it was time to toss my hat in for a second pvp character. I'll see how this goes as I have 4-5 characters all at level 7 and had hoped to level them all to 70 at one point in time.

Site Watch
Check out ArenaJunkies.com if you get a chance. I first discovered the site when I was trying to figure out my season 2 title. I thought I might get duelist, I was wrong, rival FTW! It is much more than a title calculator though. They have the best pvp forums I have seen and one of the coolest features I had never heard of. Ask a Gladiator is a forum where any scrubby arena player (yours truly) can ask a question, but only gladiators from the previous season can answer. Very cool.

New Feature
You may have noticed the item descriptions on hover for some of the gear I have been linking lately. WoWHead went live with a script that allows for this feature to work. It is only 4-5 lines of code in the base of the this blogs html. Pretty cool...

Ex: Warglaive of Azzinoth

P.S. I fought a rogue with both of the above mentioned legendary swords in an EOTS and I wasn't impressed. Oh they looked cool alright, but I expected her (night elf female) to hit like a truck. Ebay maybe?

Three Boss Minimum

During my hiatus from this bee log we (FBD) did go to Zul'Aman the day it was released. It was the most fun I have ever had raiding. Everyone was giving there full attention and effort into the trash and boss fights. I could trust the healers, tanks and dps to all their jobs and use consumables without having to go behind them and double check. It was like pre-BC raiding back on Mal'Ganis again.

We ended up downing three bosses and going back for more attempts on a fourth boss the next day. The drops weren't to great, although the badges were nice, but it was a ton of fun. We got to see new content with out the aid of boss mods and strategy guides. It was like we were our own little Nihilum for the day. Except they would have full cleared in the PTR and full cleared day one...

Arena Notes
Majarg is in the hospital with some of the worst luck I have ever heard of. Needless to say they would not wheel a gaming pc into his room, so my favorite elemental shaman and brooklynite was MIA this week. Pen, Brain and I rolled Resto Shaman, Rogue, Mage to a 11-4 record and a mere 1603 rating. Season 3 is starting out tougher than I thought. If we really push this coming week and get to 1851 I can pick up my S3 dagger though. Thats right no more staff, I want all the spell damage I can get.

Ranking Notes
Oh, I know the best geared horde mage in the US, his name is Manly. I used to play with him pre-BC in a guild called Shining Force back when I was on Mal'Ganis. Pretty cool guy that I chit chatted with on vent a few times before taking a break when Naxx came out.