This is Ordeth, my Draenei Shaman on the Jaedenar server.

Tomorrow, Friday March 21, will mark the one year anniversary of Timesink, party hats for everyone! In all honesty, I can’t say I predicted that I’d keep up with this for a year, but here I am.

Prior to Timesink, I had maintained a personal blog where I talked about various things, games included, but it was mostly about my family as we prepared for the birth of my daughter. I was always hesitant to talk about games there because I knew that it would be of very little interest to those that read the blog, in addition to my fear of outing myself as the geek that I am. In the meantime, I had a friend at work who would consistently bug me to start a gaming blog, more specifically, an EverQuest II blog. I call this friend “The Great Enabler“. Most of his sentences start with “It would be totally awesome if you…”, the key word being “you“. It would be totally awesome if you did this, or you did that. I usually resist “the totally awesome thing of the week”, but quite often, my will depleted, I give in. To date, I’ve been talked into playing the Mechwarriors clix game, Warhammer 40k, Dungeons and Dragons, and EverQuest II. I stood firm on starting a gaming blog however, and thought I’d get away with it too, but of course, given that you’re reading this right now, I eventually gave in.

At the time, we were regular readers of Aggrome, the first EQII related blog we found. When Aggro stopped posting daily about EQII, January-ish 2007, a great void opened up in my browsing routine, and as each day went by without a new Aggro post, the “Great Enabler’s” voice started to rise up again from the dark recesses of my mind. On March 21, 2007, I gave in to the pressure welling up inside me, and published Timesink. I had no delusions of grandeur, in fact, I figured the blog would be read solely by my “game buddies” at work, which would have given me a readership totaling three. Imagine my surprise when on March 30th, a comment was left on the site from a total stranger, Gaff, from the Trot Line blog. This was both a bit of a thrill for me, and quite nerve wracking as well. Someone other than my “circle of friends” was reading the blog. Soon after, I started seeing links back to Timesink on other blogs, and traffic to the site steadily increased, especially after a couple of my posts appeared on EQ2-Daily, and SOE’s Town Crier. Yep, I had hit the big time!

Now, a year later, the site has changed a little bit. I no longer play EQII and have started talking more about other games. To keep abreast of all things EQII, the “Great Enabler“, also known as Joe, has joined Timesink to post about his exploits in EQII. This will be a good thing for Timesink, as content should come sooner and more often. The downside to this is that the “Great Enabler” has started whispers of creating a podcast. NOT. GOING. TO. HAPPEN.

I still enjoy doing this blogging thing, and definitely still enjoy playing games, so between myself and Joe we should have lots of stuff to talk about here. Lots of games have been discussed on this site in the past, like Vanguard, Oblivion, and Company of Heroes, but EQII has certainly been the major theme to this point, and I don’t see that changing.

That said, there is one major MMO that has never been discussed here before…

“Your job is to click on the statues.” Seems simple doesn’t it? Let me break down what I really had to do.

Our raiding force decided to finally enter Venril Sathir’s Lair deep in Seblis. Feeling empowered after doing quite well in the Temple of Kor-Sha, beating everything except for The Overking, Selrach Di’Zok, Venril was a target that we were curious about and thought we would take a crack at. So there I was staring into Venril’s throne room watching Venril himself floating 3 feet off the ground with his arms folded glaring at our raid force.

“Just run up to him, Feign Death, and the encounter will reset so you can set up camp behind the boss and be in clicking position to the statues.”

I did exactly as instructed and there I was actually 2 feet away from Venril looking at 2 tiny statues tucked neatly behind an alter. “The statues will turn green at which point you need to click on them to disarm them. This will happen through the whole encounter so you have to be Mr. Johnny-on-the-spot.”

I moused over the statues for practice.

“Everybody in the raid MUST keep their power between 40% and 60% at all times, other wise Venril will cast a shit storm on the raid.” Basically, during this fight I would have no clue as to what the rest our raid was doing. I can only hear Ventrillo and the sounds of battle behind me. My focus was the statues and my power. I heard the call for the first pull. I put on my “Sprint” and watched my power begin to drain. All at once, both statues began to glow green and vibrate. Smokey fumes erupted from them like an old steam pipe ready to blow. I disarmed them.

“Warghoul! WTF! Your power is way below 40%!”

In my clicking haste I forgot to turn off my power draining Sprint. I turned it off and clicked my Manastone which didn’t do a whole lot so I clicked my Power Shard increasing my power a little past 40%.

“WTF! Adds! Warghoul! Did you disarm the statues?”

Apparently I had missed the statues changing green in my concern for keeping my power levels in check. The statues were farting noxious gas and convulsing, “Adds” spawned and systematically assaulted my guildmates. I watched the raid window as my comrades fell one by one and their screams of pain echoed behind me. I clicked the statues frantically as if my late disarming would take away the previous 10 seconds. I sheepishly apologized to my guildmates and stated that clicking statues isn’t as easy as it sounds.

After countless pulls and “Mendor Bots”, the raid was called leaving Venril victorious and our guild’s spirits in the shitter. Various reasons were had for the wipes but I can only take credit for the first one.

Yeah, that’s right, I’m a nerd. After seeing it on a number of other blogs, my curiousity finally got the better of me and I found out what D&D character I’d be. The results are posted below, but before I get to that, you may have noticed the new look for the site. I think I’ll be sticking with this theme for a while, mostly because I like it, but also because it took way too much time fiddling with CSS to make sure it works right with Firefox, IE7, and stupid IE6. You may also have noticed the first post by Joe, right before this one. Since I’m no longer actively playing EQII, Joe has volunteered to step up and post about his exploits in Norrath.

That said, I know you’re dying to know, so without further ado, here is the D&D character I would be, which happens to fall in line pretty well with the kinds of characters I like to play in RPGs:

I Am A: Lawful Good Human Paladin/Sorcerer (3rd/2nd Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-14
Dexterity-17
Constitution-17
Intelligence-16
Wisdom-15
Charisma-12

Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment because it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Primary Class:
Paladins take their adventures seriously, and even a mundane mission is, in the heart of the paladin, a personal test and opportunity to demonstrate bravery, to learn tactics, and to find ways to do good. Divine power protects these warriors of virtue, warding off harm, protecting from disease, healing, and guarding against fear. The paladin can also direct this power to help others, healing wounds or curing diseases, and also use it to destroy evil. Experienced paladins can smite evil foes and turn away undead. A paladin’s Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast. Many of the paladin’s special abilities also benefit from a high Charisma score.

Secondary Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Level 80 Human Shadow Knight
Level 73 Alchemist
Status: Main, Active Raiding

Warghoul has been my main since I started playing Everquest 2 just a few weeks after release. I am by no means a hardcore player but I have pretty much seen it all in this game. I was there when a death meant you had to collect your corpse and I was there when killing Darathar was actually a feat not many could do. About a year ago I joined a casual raiding guild which has allowed me to see end game content that not every casual player would see. We are currently raiding tier 8 content and progressing slowly but surely towards Veeshan’s Peak, currently in The Temple of Kor-Sha. In between I am having fun playing an alt that I will introduce at a later time and progressing towards getting my heroic epic weapon. It seems helping guildies get their epics has put me behind the curve of the rest of the guild but I am always happy to tank.

Being a Shadow Knight in Everquest 2 at the moment is bitter sweet. Raiding guilds do not go out of their way to recruit SKs or any other plate fighters other than Guardians, which has left the game a little short of level 80 tanks. I have been given the role within our raiding force of being DPS with the occasional task of stepping in to tank upon demand. This has forced me to carry 2 specs and lug 2 complete sets of armor and weapons around Norrath with me at all times. Some say that the SK is the jack of all trades and it is proven true to me.

I can say though that I love playing this class. I hope to bring some tales to this blog that will continue Davy’s EQ2 coverage as well as my opinions and maybe even a little guild drama.