Year: 2006

This is Iceangel, reporting from the depths of the Stranglethorn Vale jungle in southern Azeroth.

I, and 19 other intrepid explorers, are delving into the depths of the much feared Zul’Gurub region. Our mission ? To fight our way through hostile snakes, trolls and Damn Big Stone Things to tame a dinosaur, take a few cheeky pictures of the god Hakkar while he’s not looking and to pull the whiskers off the Panther boss.

The scene is set, everyone is here and my fellow mages have made supplies for the rest of the group. Nobody’s going hungry or thirsty in our team. And we’re going in … Hmm – resistance is being observed from some big snakey things … Or rather it was, they take one look at Towwy and just melt into a melted pool of frost … Onwards the group moves, fighting as we go. The natives are definitely restless but their resistance is futile.

We soon reach the “Panther boss” and our Revered Leader Sarai tells us the plan. The “Panther Boss” isn’t actually a panther but has pets. How many pets ! Blimey ! We’re outnumbered … Unfortunately, this is where our resistance turned futile. Even after unleashing hell, frost mage style (our hell is frozen over), we couldn’t cope with that many panther pets. We only escaped when it appeared that Miss Panther tired of feeding us to her panthers and refused to appear again … I think next time we’ll see a note pinned to the wall saying “Do not feed the animals, they ate so much last time they exploded”

Next step – onwards to the moat. What is there in the water ? We expected fish but we did not expect a THREE HEADED HYDRA ! It was about 40 foot tall. If you’ve ever been chased by the T Rex King Mosh from the Un’Goro crater, you’ll know the kind of size I’m thinking of. Oh and what is my friend Skycn doing to that other fish ? He turned it into a sheep. That’s not right. Poor fish will take ages shaking itself dry.

My fellow explorers and I were starting to get tired by this stage of our journey, there’s only so much conjured water you can take before you start to flag. (We need to petition the Blizzard Gods to add conjured coffee to the inventory)

We didn’t manage to capture any trophies from Gahz’Rilla or any whiskers from the Panther princess but I can’t remember a more fun expedition. Even though we weren’t getting much success, we were giving it our best and knowing that we could well afford to express the good humour in which our expedition was held.

Already looking forward to the next one, although I don’t think I’ll get the sun tan in the dank Dustwallow Marsh that we get in the more southern Stranglethorn Vale. Next expedition – we’re heading to the part of the map that says “Here be Dragons…”

Call it a character flaw ? 🙂

I figured I needed a bit of time out of the house after work today, so it was a trip up to the local Mall.

My wallet survived Screenselect. It survived Game. It survived HMV. But it did not survive Virgin’s 5 dvds for £30 offer … It’ll forgive me on payday.

What did I get ?
2001 – wanted this for ages.
Batman Begins – as re-imagininginings of characters go, they did well here.
House of Flying Daggers – beautiful film, martial arts.
Sahara – the Cussler-ites didn’t really like it but I thought it was good popcorn mentality fun.
Team America – not seen but heard lots about it.

You’re a sucker for the young ladies, Son 🙂

cq

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 …