Return to Azeroth

After playing Warcraft for almost a year, it was time for a break.  Meaghan and I hung up our swords and cancelled our accounts.  Our original guild, which had consisted almost exclusively of friends from work had fragmented as people moved on and then finally after we were forced to move to a different server.  After losing several members who were both fun to go around with and friends we saw regularly, some of the fun seemed to die.  Also, the guild was struggling and so a big push emerged to get everyone going again but the side effect of that was that I was left feeling a little burned out.  However, after a few weeks off from playing our MMORPG, Meaghan and I became curious about The Lord of the Rings Online.

Curiosity of course led to near immediate purchase of the software and before long we were busily exploring familiar areas from Ered Luin to Thorin’s Gate.  A friend of ours from Warcraft who lives in San Francisco joined us in LOTRO to make a group of three and for the last few weeks we’ve been having a lot of fun together.  However, such experiences led to a hankering to once again return to Azeroth and so this weekend I reactivated our Warcraft accounts.  I played a little few hours this weekend and both Meaghan and I had a lot of fun going around our old haunts together.  The guild has changed slightly, but several old familiar friends are still there and it was good to talk to them again.

I woke up this morning at 6:15 when my alarm went off and after thirty minutes of Dance Dance Revolution, I headed upstairs to relax for a few minutes in Azeroth before jumping in the shower and starting the morning routine.  Warcraft is really good escapism for me, and its a great way to relax and clear my mind before starting a day.  This mist was low over Shattrath City this morning (the Warcraft world game clock is in real time, so it was dawn there too) and I grabbed a couple of screenshots to share before logging off and getting ready for work.  Then I headed to Zangermarash (with the structures that look like big mushrooms) for a couple more both with my DreadSteed (summoned demonic steed) and Thooghun (a summoned demon pet who acts as an awesome bodyguard).  Thooghun is an enslaved pet who does the brunt of the fighting for me in Azeroth.  Check out the Arcanite Reaper (huge axe) that he uses.  My DreadSteed took forever to get and cost an enormous amount of gold in getting all of the materials necessary to launch an assault on the netherrealms from which you may steal one, but he is worth every moment of it.  Walking around Azeroth sucks, whereas having a flaming armored steed really cuts down on travel time!

Vaelorna is my main character.  She’s a level 63 Human Warlock, demonology spec’d, with specializations in herbalism and alchemy.  Meaghan plays as Maedea, a level 41 Night Elf Rogue who rides on a white spotted Nightsaber called Fangsworth and looks totally awesome.  She’s a complete DPS (damage per second) machine and I can’t wait for her to reach level 58 so we can quest through the Dark Portal in Outworld together.  I’ll try to get some pictures of Maedea and Fangsworth later this week.

It’s good to be back!

Lunchtime Walks & DDR

My latest contract finds me working in SouthEast portland, which is conveniently located near Kavi where my friend Davida works.  We have been threatening to venture on lunchtime walks together for a couple of months, but the fact that I was working in West Beaverton made meeting up for lunch problematic at best.  It can take the better part of twenty minutes to get across town at that time of day, which is more than half the lunch hour when you factor in the return journey.  However, now we are located only a scant ten minute drive away and even more importantly a very walkable half mile apart.  We met last Wednesday for a noontime bridge parambulation that culminated in SW Portland and a rather neat little deli; time just enough to order a sandwich to go and start the return leg.  We managed to fit a good walk into just under forty-five minutes and I was back at my desk within the hour.  We’re hoping to be able to walk at least once a week and (for me at least) to help shed some of the winter pounds that the gnomes seem to attach to my stomach while I sleep.  Understand, I don’t gain weight, my body is a temple and I keep an uttermost watchful eye on it.  However, every so often a wandering night gnome will come along and attach several pounds to my sleek frame in complete mockery of the extremely healthy beer and hamburger dinner I had the night before.

As it is, severe gnomage has resulted in my need to shed a couple of these untoward extra pounds and I’m hoping that the lunchtime walks will be a step towards that.  Not to mention that I have a nasty habit of taking sub five-minute lunches at my desk with a couple of sandwiches.  Walking will mean that I take a proper lunch break and get some fresh air too.

In addition to walking, I’ve been feeling a distinct hankering for some Dance Dance Revolution recently.  I bought the XBox 360 version: DDR Universe but have so far been less than thrilled by it.  The responsiveness of the software doesn’t seem quite as crisp as the PlayStation 2 titles and the career mode is simply an exercise in confusion.  The song list isn’t as peppy as I’ve been used to in previous titles, but the biggest frustration is that I’ve had to go back to a soft mat to play it.  I bought the hard dance pad a couple of years ago so that I could tackle the most difficult songs in the DDR games.  The soft mats are great for the easy and medium songs, but can be a struggle with the Hard settings and are an exercise in twisted ankles by the time you reach Extreme difficulty.  Made of a mixture of foam and thin plastic, they slide all over the floor when you’re feet are flying through Max 900 on Hard.  The plastic cover and foam get crinkled too, which means that sometimes the arrows fire without anyone stepping on them or failure to register at all when you’re hammering them with five toes.  The hard mat is a solid wooden and metal frame with raised plexiglass arrows that have a very quick and firm response.  (Yeah I’m a DDR freak and I don’t care; I love it!)  When I bought the hard mat it came with a control box that supposedly could be switched out for any console.  The idea being that you buy the mat once and then buy the cheaper control boxes for each console you want to use it with.  However, the company hasn’t yet released a box for the XBox 360 and have no plans in the near future to do so.  So I’m back to being stuck with the soft mat.  Poo!

With that in mind, I’ve set up the hard mat and PlayStation 2 downstairs in the living room and I’m going to go back to playing the four great DDR games I have on that platform.  The song lists were far superior IMHO anyway, and using the hard mat is simply indispensible.

Epic Waste of Time

Meaghs and I rented Epic Movie last night.  I generally enjoy spoof movies like Scary Movie, Not Another Teen Movie, as well as the less popular Hot Shots movies.  These types of movies aren’t for everyone, but I think you’d be hard-pushed to find anyone who would laugh at Epic Movie.  From start to finish it was a colossal waste of time, the only redeeming feature being that it eventually ended.  Some movies are stupid and funny, other movies are funny because they’re stupid.  Even further out there movies can be funny because they’re soooo bad.  Epic Movie was just bad.  I felt like I was watching a presentation being given by someone who really doesn’t want to be on stage but is sticking to their lines and act in an attempt to be cool anyway.  The type of performance where you just feel sorry for the people up there because you know at some point they’re going to watch themselves and wonder where it all went wrong.

To stick to the all-important policy of attempting to provide solutions whenever identifying problems, I have come up with a list of things that you could do instead of watching Epic Movie that would be a lot more fun.

Number 1: You could buy a brick from a hardware store and bang yourself in the head with it.  Better still, you could find a pre-assembled collection of bricks and just bang your head against that instead.  A typical usage is to repeat until vision is blurry and ringing in ears modulates to high C, then collapse in an awkward position on the floor until consciousness returns.

Number 2: You could schedule two hours of your night to not-watch Epic Movie.  For this you will need: a two-hour window with no interruptions, a TV that isn’t turned on.  Grab some popcorn, turn out the lights, close the door, and turn off the TV.  Then stare at the blank screen for the next couple of hours and come away having not watched Epic Movie.  Success!

Number 3: For the techies out there, you could visit the Top 10 Free Time-Wasting Sites on the Net.  Although this option might actually present some entertainment so you are advised to embark only at your own risk.  We don’t want to climb too high too quickly after all.

That was about as far as I got in my list before I realized that the movie was claiming more hours of my life while I write gripe about it.  Meaghs and I still had a good night, although we were a little miffed that neither of us had spoken up in the first half an hour or so to ask the other if we could just turn it off.  I was mostly falling asleep anyway and only vaguely recollect watching the last thirty minutes, and it was nice just cuddling with Meaghan, but next time we really ought to just turn off the show and claim back the last 90 minutes of our evening! :)