I cast “Cone of Politeness”
On another subject, I played a few hours of WoW last night. World of Warcraft has a few different kinds of game servers: PvE, where you only battle other players if you and the other players choose; PvP, where if you enter certain areas, you can be attacked at any time; and Role-Play, where in-game conversations are expected to remain in the persona of your chosen character.
The point of all this is that I’ve begun yearning for a new kind of WoW server: RolePlay-21, where players don’t have to stay in character, but they all have to converse in-game with maturity, manners, and otherwise like people with fulfilling lives outside the Internet.
I’ll move all my characters over there like a shot.
Explosive Devices
How to identify a complete Trek geek, #117:
The use of “photorp” as a verb, e.g.: “They’re actually adverstising phaser eye surgery now, so I figure the next step is getting your eyes photorpped.”
In other news, the gnome mage/engineer Mirandala finally reached level 60 last night. Though this accomplishment is no longer as cool as it was two months ago, it’s still a wonderful milestone.
Hardcore World of Warcraft players manage this in 6 weeks – it took me about 18 months of casual play. If it’s an addiction, it’s one with a very weak hold on me 🙂
Elves and aliens lurking behind your icons
Yeah, I’m posting a ton of WoW stuff this week. Don’t worry, I’ll find other stuff to talk about soon enough.
So, I was looking at a official Blizzard Entertainment desktop pic for The Burning Crusade, and I started thinking, “I wish they had one with the great graphics from the cinematic.” Then I thought, “Hey, I have QuickTime and Photoshop, what else do I need?” and I threw together a little image.
Look behind the cut for a small version
News from the Azeroth front
So far, so good on my quest for 60. I made it to 59 last night… I kept dying a lot, though; I made my best progress when I stopped trying to quest, and just stood close to home base and kept grinding monsters.
(Many of them were level 59 boars, and I was unavoidably reminded of the South Park WoW episode where they grind boars to 60.)
The experience is good, but I still wonder if my armor repair bills would be lower if I went back to Winterspring. Maybe I’ll try it for a bit tonight. I doubt I can manage a level in a single evening, even if I play for several hours, but it would be nice.
Ironforge was a ghost town last night on Uther. Even the Dranei starting area, where I fiddled around a bit, was pretty empty. I think the whole server is in Outland right now.
On the way to work…
The cat, as always, is trying to get me to stay home this morning.
I am going to attempt to reach level 60 in WoW by the end of the week. I’m at 58.5 now, and this will probably involve questing and grinding in either a) Winterspring or b) Hellfire Peninsula. The XP per monster seems to be better at option (b), but I do run the risk of virtual-30-foot level 64 monsters wandering by, noticing my little gnome, and one-shotting her. Apparently, some guy in France made level 70 in less than 30 hours from release date (apparently by tagging monsters for kill credit, and letting several friends who ‘happened’ to be standing nearby Alpha Strike the poor critter)
There were lines from “The Princess Bride” flying around the office yesterday. I think that Prince Humperdinck is one of the best villians in fantasy; he’s smart, skilled, capable, is surrounded by competent, loyal minons, and his evil plan would have worked great were it not that the good guys were even more smart, skilled, and capable. I hate it when, as is usual, the villain’s really an idiot whose plan is eventually going to fail one way or another (what was Lex Luthor’s plan in “Superman Returns” really going to net him? A continent of un-arable blackened crystal and lotsa dead bodies? Whoop-de-doo).
That’s right up there with the storytelling sin of having the hero escape the villain’s fatal challenges by blind luck and the skin of his teeth, and then having the villain declare, “Welcome, Mr. Hero! Your presence here is the final element in my master scheme!” and I immediately think “Well, what the hell were you going to do if the sharks had gotten him? Retire?” (And don’t tell me that the villain was counting on the hero surviving the deathtraps – if the hero’s that competent, then he’s still a threat to the Master Scheme.)
“This could mean the end of the world! … of Warcraft.”
A couple weeks ago, South Park did an episode about “World of Warcraft”. I don’t keep up with South Park, myself – in fact, this was the first episode I ever watched – but I’ll admit there was some funny stuff in it. They got the game references almost completely right. (If you’d like to see it, and haven’t, it’s all over the web, with the apparent approval of the show’s creators. There is one rather unnecessary scatological joke, unfortunately.)
Machinima.com has an article about the episode, where the show creators discuss working wth Blizzard. Among other trivia, the episode was apparently filmed in the Burning Crusade alpha-test server.
Edit: And since I’m discussing the intersection of South Park and geekdom, here’s a parody snippet that we children of the 80’s will find familiar…
And sell the rest at the Auction House
Quote of the night from World of Warcraft general chat:
Player 1: How do I do [thing that’s clearly impossible in game]?
Player 2: Huh?
Player 3: You can’t do that.
Player 1: Yes you can, I’m sure of it.
Player 4: First, learn the Herbalism skill. Then, pick us all some of what you’re smoking, and we can all go do [thing] together.
The flooded dragon podcast planet of Freon
A year after having it loaned to me, I have finally picked up and read “Eldest” by Christopher Paolini. This book is the sequel to “Eragon”, which I found to be enjoyable, if lacking in originality. “Eldest” is more of the same; I’d suggest it to any reader I know, with the caveat that they shouldn’t expect anything mind-blowing. The writing is good, and the characters are interesting, which is more than many fantasy books can claim.
Still, one day I want to read a high fantasy novel where the elves are short-lived and highly industrial, if not technological. Perhaps the ancient lost civilization that left behind all the ruins and dungeons could be one of humans, or lizard men, or Things We Barely Understand instead of the freakin’ elves again. And hey, how about hippie, type B dwarves that live simple lives of farming and woodcarving? You get my drift, here?
We lived through Ernesto – our house was never in danger, though I did lose power halfway through my morning webcomic troll. Driving to work was a dumb idea – two different blocks were flooded, and when the tires stop making the “zzziiiisssshhh” noise and begin making the “blubble-blurble-splep-blobble” noise, the water’s too deep – but dumb luck saved me, and the drive home was a little better. The yard looks a bit battered, though.
The International Astronomers Union voted last week that Pluto isn’t a full planet, but a “dwarf planet”. They did this in part because Pluto’s moon, Charon, is almost the same size as Pluto and might have deserved planet status; and a more distant body in our solar system, “2003 UB313”, is even larger and might have been awarded the same privileges. “2003 UB313” has been nicknamed “Xena” by its discoverer, and no stuffy astronomers’ group is going to sit still for “Planet Xena”. (The nickname is unofficial, but may well stick.) (And yes, Xena has a satellite… Gabrielle.)
Pluto, Charon, Xena, and the asteroid Ceres all qualify for “dwarf planet” status under the IAU’s new rules. I say Pluto still deserves the love, and we all know what’s a planet and what’s an asteroid, whatever they say. Manned mission to Planet Xena!
Podcast recommendations of the day: Taverncast, for WoW players; not only is the material useful and interesting, but it’s presented in a very light-hearted, entertaining manner by the hosts. Also, Geek Counterpoint, for those with a science bent; much drier in tone, but still well-presented and interesting – my interest was caught by the episode on inflatable spacecraft. Seriously.
The Hyundai is very mad at me right now. The dash clock and stereo are cutting out intermittently (and separately), the a/c has stopped working (and with it, my defogger, which has made driving in the rain interesting), and my temperature gauge is running high. Given how much of the car is factory-sealed, that may mean a trip to the dealership. 🙁
I may finally attend a NekoCon this year, given that it’s right on my doorstep and all. Thinking about it.
tzel’s looking a little blue
Sometime this week, I must enter the World of Warcraft and seek Telf.
One of the many podcasts I’ve been listening to is an hour of house music from a French website at www.rlpmix.com (actually from iTunes, but anyway). Two amusing things; the Starfleeters in western Virginia used to know a guy with the initials RLP, and it’s fun to think of him surfacing as a French DJ; also, when he reads his website on the audio, he pronounces it “DOO-bleh-vay DOO-bleh-vay DOO-bleh-vay dot r-l-p-mix dot com.” “W” and “J” – the two awkward late-comers to the Roman alphabet.
I do think that “web.domain.com” would have been much easier to say in daily discussions than “www.domain.com”. Too late now.
