Because the internet needs another gaming blog.

I was doing a bunch of questing in Stranglethorn Vale lately, and it didn’t take long to realize that its reputation as the zone most likely to get ganked in is well deserved.  There must be something in the air there because it’s definitely far worse than any other zone I’ve been in up to this point in my character’s short life.

Generally speaking, I’ve found that higher level characters (the ones listed as ?? when I mouse over them) leave me alone most of time.  Not so in Stranglethorn Vale.  I can’t count the number of times an uber toon has one-shotted me while travelling through the jungle, minding my own business.  Getting ganked doesn’t bother me in itself, I knew what I was getting into when I decided to play on a PvP server.  What does annoy me though, is when a max level character one-shots me, then proceeds to dance around my corpse emoting all manner of insults like he’s actually accomplished something.  Then to top it all off, and further demonstrate his mastery of all things WoW, he camps my corpse waiting for me to revive.  Is WoWs end-game really that boring that a max level character has nothing better to do than to camp someone 20+ levels below him?  I’m not saying this behaviour is unique to Stranglethorn, but it’s happened to me there far more than any other zones.

Just the other day I was working on a quest which had me killing a bunch of pirates south of Booty Bay.  I was level 44 at the time, and the mobs were a few levels below me, so I was engaging two at a time to speed things along.  During the middle of one fight, with two mobs on me, a level 42 Horde Rogue popped out of stealth and started attacking me.  Through a fair bit of luck, I was able to distract the mobs with an Stoneclaw Totem (taunts surrounding mobs) and disposed of the Rogue.  I then turned my attention back to the mobs I was working on and killed them too.  I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Continuing my quest, I proceeded to kill more pirates.  Towards the end of one fight, my health half gone, my mana all gone, that same Rogue popped out of invis again and attacked me, this time successfully so.  Figuring he’d be content with his revenge, I revived and continued with my quest.  Several more times, the Rogue kept coming back and attacking me, but only when I was engaged with other mobs with dwindling health.  In a word, he’s a coward.  I finally gave up and moved on to another quest.

The next day I was back in Stranglethorn working on another quest, in a completely different area of the zone, when once again, Mr. Roguey McDouche popped out of invis and attacked me while I had other mobs on me.  It took me a second to realize, but when I saw his name, Sneekya, I actually said out loud, “holy crap, it’s the same %*$#ing guy!”  He was now level 46, while I was level 45.  I see that now, from linking his armory page above, that he’s level 52, so I’m guessing I won’t be running into him much any more as he presumably tackles the higher level zones.  Still, that said, I now consider Sneekya my rival.  If I ever see him again, I’m going to attack him; I don’t care how much higher level he is.  Of course, I’ll only do so if he’s got a bunch of mobs on him already.

Recently a few friends and I have started holding a monthly gaming night, where we get together and play a good old fashioned board game.  We had grand plans to sample all manner of games, such as all those crazy board games coming out of Germany, but for our first game night we ran an introductory Dungeons and Dragons adventure, and it appears as though our monthly game night has now turned into a monthly D&D night.  I think it’s safe to say we’re all hooked.

None of us had any real experience with pen and paper D&D, but I had the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Game which I had purchased a while before during one of my many “I must buy something” moments, and we decided to give it a try.  The Basic Game does a great job of simplifying the rules enough to be able to jump in and start playing while maintaining a distinct D&D feel.  It’s perfect for anyone who has looked at the actual Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide and tossed them aside; dismissing them due to the dizzying array of rules staring back at them and the amount of time it would take to read them.

We’ve had a couple game nights and have completed the adventure included with the Basic Game and are sufficiently motivated to tackle the real deal.  To that end, I’ve placed a pre-order with Amazon to purchase the upcoming 4th edition of D&D, including the three core books and one adventure module for character levels one to three.  They’re set to ship June 6th, and to be honest, I’m quite excited to get them, and I think that, without a shadow of a doubt, qualifies me as a geek.  Hardcore.

I have no problem proclaiming my geekocity loudly and proudly here on my blog; I’m going to assume a certain level of geekitude in anyone who visits a gaming blog, so I’m pretty safe here.  Apparently I’m just a big chicken at work though.  While at work the morning after our last D&D night, Joe and I were chatting about something or other, when one of our co-workers asked what we had done the night before:

Joe/David: “Oh, we just got together with a couple of other guys.”
Co-worker: “What’d you do?”
Joe/David: “Uhhh, just, you know, played some games.”
Co-worker: “Oh yeah?  Video games?”
Joe/David: “Ummm… no… just… board games.”
David, thinking: please just drop it, move on already
Co-worker: “Cool, what game?  Risk or something?”
David, thinking: seriously, stop being friendly
Joe: “No, not Risk, it’s, uhh… well…”
David, thinking: don’t say it dude
Joe: “We were playing Dungeons and Dragons.”
David, thinking: come on!

And with that, I returned to my desk.  Can I still call myself a geek, or have I lost the right to do so?

On Friday night I was at a party at a friend’s house. After a few drinks and food, one of the guys there said to me, “You ever play Guitar Hero?”

“No. I’ve heard about it. Isn’t it just Dance Dance Revolution with a fake guitar?”

“Lemme show you”, he said as he turned on his big screen TV, clicked on the surround sound, and fired up his PS3.

Flash forward 2 hours later.

“THIS IS FREAKIN’ AWESOME!”

The car ride home was spent with me talking about how much fun we had playing old Poison songs and trying to master “Slow ride”. Ofcourse I was the ultimate noob playing it and the host amazed us all by pulling off the most difficult songs, never giving into my requests for him to play Slayer.

On Saturday night I was at a different friend’s house. As we arrived he said, “C’mon downstairs we have Rockband fired up.”

“No shit! I just played Guitar Hero last night for the first time. It was freakin’ awesome.”

“Wait till you try this”, he said with a smirk.

Flash forward 2 hours later.

“THIS IS FREAKIN’ AWESOME!”

The car ride home was spent with me trying to figure out the the finacial means to acquiring a big screen TV, a surround sound, a PS3, and Rockband. Oh yeah I NEED 2 guitars so I guess I also have to get Guitar Hero as well. Having fun is so difficult sometimes.

Since leaving raiding my productivity in game has been awesome.

This weekend I finally finished my Shadow Knight epic weapon quest. I wasn’t planning on doing this quest but the opportunity to do Maiden’s Chamber came up.

I have been working on an alt lately, a Troubador, and have been stuck at lvl 74 for what seems forever. While questing in Kunzar Jungle a call came up from a guildie for a Crypt of Agony run. At level 74 the XP was pretty good, and after not screwing up at all I was asked to continue onto Maiden’s Chamber. The Discovery XP alone was awesome and I soon dinged 75. Drusella, the main boss, was too much for the group and I brought Warghoul in the tank the final encounter. I got the update for my epic weapon for killing the boss and quickly organized a Vaults run. Another update down. One named away from finishing, I convinced the group to come to Neriak with me to complete this quest that had taken me over 4 months to complete.

After a cool encounter with a giant Shadow Knight I found my sword under the bed of the Princess in the Royal Palace.

I quickly adorned “Sedition” with a 3% chance to block and I’ve been slicing though mobs ever since. To test the power of my newly acquired weapon I decided to progress on yet another epic line of quests to get the Fabled “Band of Thuuga”.

I put the Troubador on auto follow along with a Defiler and have powered through this quest. In 1 day I am on the last couple of steps from a really cool item for each of my toons. If there are any SKs out there that read this and have not got your epic weapon yet I urge you to make this a priority. Aggro issues have gone down tenfold. It’s really easy to get aggro control now on mobs and the DPS I’m putting out is unreal. I can only imagine what the fabled version of this can do.

Kind of makes me want to get back into raiding just to see how I parse.

I’m going on vacation, Las Vegas the destination.  Unless Joe steps up and posts some cool EQII stuff, there won’t be any updates to the site until at least Saturday, the 17th.  Later!