Month: January 2006

Just come out of another day’s WoW. Did I say I was giving that game up ?

Heh – I guess I just can’t help myself when young ladies ask me to do something. (I got summoned into today’s Molten Core rescrub)

Time for dinner 🙂

Which is to get down to 13 stone. Just weighed myself at 13 stone 1, down another pound or two, so I’m going to have pizza to celebrate. I only have pizza once a week or so, so that should be ok.

I still have a bit of a belly but that’s why we were given stomach muscles. Aye – it’s to let lazy people like me suck that tummy in 🙂 Target weight on my current build is 12 and a half stone but I may try and get all the way down to 11. That’s probably a good weight for me, without trying to bulk up my upper body. My weight has always been above average because I have oversized leg muscles. I’m built for sprinting 🙂 What I’m a little bit wary of is that going all the way down to 11 stone may lose me some strength for batting. We shall see.

Starting to get my agility back too – those leg muscles aren’t having as much inertia to overcome. Seeing it steadily come off has cheered me up a bit, especially as people have been noticing. Must be cos of my jeans being too big now. I no longer go out in public without wearing a belt.

(rumble)(rumble)(growl)(rumble)(rumble)(EARTHQUAKE)

Diet later. Pizza NOW !

PS I’m taking back the bad stuff that I’ve said on earlier blogs about Sarai. I had the chance to listen to her on Teamspeak earlier in a Molten core raid and she don’t half sound rough. This is a bad time of year for her anyway and the stress of being Guildlink’s spiritual leader must be really getting to her. I just wish she’d talk to me a little more, maybe I could help cheer her up. I got one Welcome Back whisper in game earlier but not much more. But that’s ok, cos leading raids is hefty … hefty enough for me to be not volunteering for it.

The moronic masses still haven’t figured out who was playing the character Flameberry (mine!) tonight …

Ok – 5 had but 4 of those had been let in on it at work. The 5th (Towwy) got it on his own 🙂

I started off a new character last night, called Flameberry. She’s another mage, this time a troll (troll girls are the best looking Horde race). I’m curious as to what the higher damage, less defence Fire specialisation is like to play.

Anyway, Flame started off at a bad time yesterday, so I couldn’t bring her into the guild. That came today, while my dinner was cooking (burning!) in the oven. I quite enjoyed watching the people in the guild guess who I was 🙂 Only two of them guessed it, one of whom knew already. One other fella, Towwy, got it too. The rest were mostly miles off. Muahahaha ! And that’s despite me announcing my intentions over the Guildlink forums. I think a big smokescreen comes up due to this character being a mage and my main character being a mage. Not many people make two of the same character.

I’m just curious to see how long it will take to get the character to the level 60 experience cap. Means I might neglect my Eve character but there you go. I’ve already neglected my City of Heroes character enough for the free period to run out … Shows how much that game kept me interested. Eve is well worth keeping an eye on for the long run though.

PS Must be a good day today because I wasn’t expecting to see Miss L in the office. But there she was, worrying herself sick due to events over the next fortnight.

I’ve only had this past 9 months experience of online multiplayer games and I’m still surprised by the number of casualties they seem to rack up.

Firstly, we had Makai who left and went back to Eve (another MMO). Then Bolbit, who we were hoping would be our end game warrior and then my “retirement” over the Xmas period. After a while, you realise the toll games like World of Warcraft can take. I’d come to the point where I couldn’t handle the attitudes of some of the players and being ignored for a few instance runs was the last straw.

And we’ve seen even more examples this week, when a character called Noobster blew his top pretty spectacularly, causing himself and others a lot of hurt and upset. He quit the game for a whole 3 days. Yep – he got over his problems in just 3 days. Gotta hand it to him, that’s some recovery and I’m still wondering how he did it. Except he hasn’t, in the few posts he put in on his “comeback”, he was still displaying the same stressed addiction that causes his blowup. That’s the thing about addiction, you aren’t aware of the damage it’s causing.

We’ve also seen it with Sarai, who has announced that she wants to step back from the position she’s had with Guildlink for the past few months. With the Mercenaries (well, me and Zaphyr) immediately jumping in to say Good on ya. I see it as a recognition of what I’ve been subtly trying to tell Sarai over the past couple of weeks, that WoW is a game that consumes you. Not just your time but your soul as well. It turns you into a pale shell of what you should be. Especially if you have the weight of expectation on you, which is what Sarai has. She’s the one who sets up the website and Teamspeak server, as well as the one who pays for it. The “I abdicate” came after one too many ungrateful so and so’s complaining at not being picked for raiding activities taking place over the next 3 days.

I’m on Sarai’s side on this one and have tried to pass on the message. However, I think she’s still ignoring me still for some reason I’m not telempathic enough to receive. Heh – maybe I have guessed the reason 😉

Why am I still playing ? I’ve found and got back some of the fun, now that the GL Responsibility weight has been lifted. And I’ve had a definite feeling of being wanted, which is far better than the feeling of being ignored that I had before Xmas. Maybe I just don’t care anymore if that particular person wants to talk to me. But I’ll still worry about her all the same, because that’s who I am.

And, I still have Eve. Eve’s set in a completely different world, with different people. Because it has more complex groundings in how it works, it attracts a fair more mature crowd. It probably attracts them because it’s slower as well. All the kids go to play the flashy stuff like WoW, EverQuest and City of Heroes, so all the mature people go to Eve to avoid the kids.

So tonight’s message is – Have fun ! Ignore Responsibility.
Cos Responsibility is a heavy weight that should be left at places like work.

PS Must remember to see if I’m still subscribed to Eve – the free period runs out soon …

[chuckle] I only meant to go into WoW for not too long in order to get my warrior up to the max level and/or get a job done with my mage. That was at 6pm and I’ve just come out at 11.30 …

Oops !

Got a fair bit done though, got through a few quest series that will open up access to some very nice kit. Completely missed Aginoth’s debut in Eve though. Sorry Agi …

Time for dinner. [checks watch] Uhoh …

I hurt …

Which I deserve 🙂 It’s my body’s way of telling me that I’m a lazy git who should be in training or at least getting regular exercise.

What’s the problem ? The wicket keeping from last night means a lot of crouch, stand, crouch, stand etc. Plus there’s short, sharp sprints on slippery floors. And bowling, which exercises the shoulder. So I have sore quads (upper front leg) and my right side is a bit stiff. What it means is that I have to concentrate on painblocking in order to walk around. But I’m not too bothered about that 🙂 It’ll steadily slacken off over the next few days and it’s nowhere near being permanent damage. I got away with potential cramp – my left calf felt like a piece of iron yesterday but I got enough water in me to prevent it from going BANG.

What I am concerned about still is my neck and my ribs. My neck is a carry over from my dislocated shoulder and I really should get it looked at. I get the feeling that the fella who did physio on my shoulder originally caused the problem in my neck. The ribs still feel as if I’ve been jammed in the side with a spiky thing due to an attempt at making a throw easier at the end of last cricket season.

Heh heh heh – I can still, walk, talk and turn a game of cricket around though, so that’s one way of saying – “I’m still here ! Ready to kick butt and take the names of the people I run out”

Next game – 6th Feb and I’m looking forward to it already. Despite the likelihood of a repetition of the soreness I have now.

Game tonight 🙂 4pm until 5pm at work’s gym. I play for the team around the corner, which has lots of decent looking young ladies working for it. We’re “Small Swings”, the other side were the “Sloggers”. Bit of a contrast already in what the two teams go for I think …

They batted first, which means I stand behind the stumps, waiting for the batsman to miss it. There were lots of accomodating people tonight who just wandered down the wicket slightly, letting me stump them. A wicket takes 5 runs off the score so that was being rather profitable 🙂

Everyone has to bowl two overs and mine came in the middle and end. I have a shoulder problem, which means my bowling isn’t as reliable as I’d like (used to be a strike bowler for a village team) but I managed to keep the nasty ones to a minimum tonight. 10 runs and 5 runs off my overs. The other side got 55 in the end off the 12 overs, which is not something to write home about. My batting record is I think 54 in 4 overs … I think my bowling suffers from not having my wicket keeping to get the stumpings 🙂

We batted next and cos I’m not anywhere near fit yet (down to 13stone 2 last night ! from 14stone 2 a few months ago) skipper let me have a break, having me bat in the middle. First pair got 37, my pair also got 37 and our last pair got 44, making our total 118.

Handy win 🙂 Not as spectacular as we could have been, the ball can make the game a bit of a lottery. It’s good to know you can make a difference though 🙂 We had 2 outs for -10 runs in all, they had 11 outs for -55 runs in all. When you also consider that you don’t score off those balls, the actual loss for us was something like -14, with the average loss for them being -77. My keeping must have gained us about 6-7 of those outs.

They really were being that suicidal.

It’s real good to know that when your main skills aren’t that effective (I’m work’s opening batsman and should be a main bowler), that you can contribute in other ways. That’s tonight’s game – both sides played pretty well, with us having a better run with things. It was also played in excellent spirit, which is the most important thing about these games.

PS I’ll add a Blog post sometime summarising the rules 🙂 They’re a little bit different to the outdoor game.

I might be gamed out … I’ve signed myself up for Guildlink runs Thursday, Friday, Saturday. That’s no guarantee that they’ll actually pick me though …

we’ll have to drag you back to Civilization IV this weekend