Because the internet needs another gaming blog.

I’m late to the party with this, but better late the never I suppose.  Cuppy over at Cuppytalk asked the blogging community to show her our gaming setups.  So here is mine in all its glory.  I have to shamelessly admit to cleaning off my desk before taking this picture.  It had previously been littered with papers and other miscellaneous junk.  Anyway, on the far left you can see an old tv I plopped on the desk during last years Stanley Cup playoffs.  It was just going to stay while the playoffs were on, I said.  It’s still there, acting as a resting place for my headset.  On the wall is a whiteboard which I used to use back when I was programming a fair bit.  Now it just serves to hold my favourite picture of my daughter. 

The monitor, although not a fancy schmancy flat-panel LCD, gives off an awesome picture, and I’m just not willing to part with it yet.  The speakers are Logitech 5.1 which quite literally shake the house when I crank them up.  Now that we have a baby, that happens approximately never.

The shelf contains an array of toys and other collectibles.  Buried behind them, out of sight, is a picture of my wife and I.  Ah yes, the priorites of a geek.

Towards the right is where I keep my newer games, or the ones I’m actively playing (as I like to tell myself, despite the fact that Everquest II is really the only game I actively play).  Next to that is the keyboard and monitor to a cheapy computer which allows me to have a browser accessible at all times while playing.  I usually run my parser on that computer, or eq2i, or sometimes Ventrillo.

Finally, here’s a full shot of my “command center”.  The computer in the foreground is where my wife does her playing.  It’s actually a pretty sweet setup, and works very well for us.  If I want to two-box, I can pull her monitor over to my right, in front of my game boxes, and plop her keyboard and mouse on my desk above my keyboard.

Not in the picture are my bookshelves that house my many programming books (some of which I’ve even read!). 

So there you have it, Timesink headquarters.

Davyydeous joined a group that was already half-way through the Acadechism the other night, and grabbed the Sir Pumpy statuette for the Knights of the Round quest, which is part of the larger Sword of Destiny quest line. Just one more statue to go in Mistmoore Catacombs and I’ll have all fifty of them.

There’s not much to say about the Acadechism itself, it’s a fairly small instance that a higher-level group can blow through without much difficulty. I believe I’ve said it before, but I love the scripted sequences that you sometimes see between NPCs; in the case of Acadechism, between Emperor D’Vinn and Zalalise, an agent of Mistmoore. I find it helps immerse me in the zone more, that there’s actually something going on in this world. The one problem I do have with it though, is that I sometimes find it hard to follow the conversation. Knowing full well that these NPCs are going to turn aggro, I find myself speed-reading the speech bubbles to take in as much as I can before they do.  It’d be cool if these little exchanges were actual voice recordings rather than, or in addition to the speech bubbles.

I missed most of the conversation in the Acadechism because I was fiddling around with taking a screenshot, but I found the dialog on The Athenaeum lore site. By no means am I a “lore junky”, but I do find myself browsing that site as well as History of Norrath from time to time. I find the History of Norrath to be a good site for someone like myself who never played the first Everquest but is interested in some of the events that transpired during that time frame. Finally, the History and Lore section of the official forums can also be a treasure trove of lore, and a quick look in there gave me a pretty good idea of who Emperor D’Vinn is and what he’s up to.

I’ve sat here in front of my editing screen for a good ten minutes trying to think of a way to end this post and just can’t think of anything elegant. So in the spirit of The Sopranos series finale…

How can I comment on the Stanley Cup Finals on a blog about MMO’s without being off-topic? Here’s how…

So the Anaheim Ducks defeated the Ottawa Senators and won the Stanley Cup last night. This, as an Edmonton Oilers fan, pains me to no end. Normally, I would have no problem with Anaheim, because they’ve got a few players I like and even their coach Randy Carlyle, and GM Brian Burke are favourites of mine. Obviously, being a Canadian, I was hoping Ottawa would pull it out, but the main reason I hated seeing the Ducks win the cup was because of he who shall not be named, jersey number twenty-five, CFP.

For those who read this and don’t follow hockey, I’ll spare you the details of why last nights result pains me so. For those who do follow hockey, and want to know why an Oilers fan would be seething right now, just read this post at Covered in Oil. That should explain it perfectly.

Upon hearing that CFP got to raise the Stanley Cup over his head, Davyydeous, in a fit of rage, headed out to Bobby McQuibble’s hometown, Windstalker Village, and slaughtered every living person there. Anyone that could be attacked tasted his steel, right down to the poor little pigs and cows innocently chomping on the grass. Every single Windstalker citizen, the guard patrolling the village street, and even Mayor Woodbridge was left to lie in a pool of their own blood. They never stood a chance.

All of this is because of you number twenty-five. I hope you’re happy.

Ordeth and my wifes Warden, Saryan, were heading towards Nektropos Castle when we came upon Koylinite, a level 30^^^ Heroic Gargoyle just minding his own business in the middle of the road.  As you can see by his health bar in the screenshot, his talk of mounting my head in the yard was nothing more than an idle threat.  I love it when the mobs talk to you though, it adds some personality to them.  Sadistic as it may sound, my favourite has to be the fairies, who say things like “Ouch, my wing!” while you’re hacking away at them, and my personal favourite, “Will my death satisfy your bloodlust?”  No, little fairy, no it won’t.

Anyway, after killing Koylinite, we realized we weren’t going to have time for a Nektropos Castle run, so we just decided to do some exploring in Nektulos.  We headed up north of the Valley of the Lost Souls and were quickly swarmed by quite a few wasps.  No problem for the fearless Coercer and his trusty Warden however, and we set to dispatching the buzzing creatures, only to be discovered by Gurndundl, a level 29^^^ Heroic named giant.  I saw him just as he saw us and started his charge.  Ordeth quickly fired off his Mezz spell which was resisted.  With all the wasps still on us, I knew we weren’t going to be able to handle the giant as well so we started to run.  It was too little too late however, as our dynamic duo soon found themselves stomped into the Nektulos Forest floor.

We quickly revived, spat the dirt out of our mouths, and immediately headed back to get some giant-sized revenge.  We made sure to clear the area of wasps, all eight billion of them, then settled in to take on Gurndundl.  He wasn’t so tough this time around, now that he had our full attention.  We hacked and slashed away at his ankles until he could stand no more and went crashing down to the ground.

With that done, our adventures for the evening came to an end.