Because the internet needs another gaming blog.

I intended on writing a post proclaiming my unending excitement for the Diablo 3 announcement because it’s one of my favourite game series of all time.  Upon logging in to my site though, I happened to notice that my stats for the past couple of days have been higher than they’ve ever been before.  My first thought was that I was being visited by some kind of spammer, but I soon realized that the traffic was coming from the official EQII forums, specifically this thread here, and also from the official Vanguard forums in this thread.

They were referring to my April Fool’s post saying Vanguard and EQII were going to be merged into one game.  Despite it being a very hastily (and poorly) written post, complete with a bush-league photoshopped image, I guess someone fell for it.  Yes, it was a joke, but if it ever comes true, just remember you read it here first.  Thanks for the chuckle… and the traffic.

The Everquest 2 posts have not been very frequent lately. Mostly because I haven’t been playing it.
 
After quitting raiding, the excitement I had with EQ2 had faded really fast. I completed a number of solo quests, got my fabled Band of Thuuga, got the fabled version of my class Epic weapon, and brought an alt to level 76. My wife was playing World of Warcraft and my friends were playing World of Warcraft as well. I was grinding faction in Kunzar Jungle with my alt when I came to the realization that I wasn’t having fun anymore.

What happened? I took me while to figure out exactly what happened but it all came to me at once.

When I was in the raiding guild and RoK came out, our guild officers and leaders put a deadline on when we had to be level 80 to be prepared to hit RoK raid content. My wife and I did our best to grind through the content. We were both kind of enjoying ourselves because the content was aimed at the solo quester. It gave us a chance to relive the old days of EQ2 when we were unguilded and we had to experience almost all the game content together in a duo. We blasted through RoK in less than 3 months. We found ourselves not quite level 80 with no more quests to do. The rest of our guildies, a little bit more hardcore than us, were already 80 and dragged us through heroic instances and eventually we dinged. We didn’t once stop to “smell the roses”; we ate up content like it was going out of style.

With raiding out of the picture, heroic quests out of the way, and all solo content gone there was nothing left for us to do except level alts. I had a Troubador that was in his 30’s and decided to bring him to level 80 along with my Shadowknight.

The minute I broke into RoK content I became extremely bored. I had done this all before. I logged in less and just came in to the game to check the broker, I tried to get into groups with my Troubador but being in that “no mans land” of mid 70’s I wasn’t strong enough for any of the instances that people wanted to run.

On a whim I loaded World of Warcraft on my PC using a 10 day trial account. I created an ugly looking gnome Warlock. I found the appearances to be aweful. I had described my character to my friends already playing WoW as a cross between Danny Bonaduce and a buttplug. After playing out my trial I went out a bought the battle chest at my local Walmart.
 
I am now an about to be a level 21 Warlock, mildly enjoying my experience. I find lots of things quirky and un-intuitive about WoW. I am so used to EQ2’s controls and interfaces I find thing really frustrating. I have fun playing though. I am also curious about how the game changes when I come into more contested lands and do the PVP thing.

Yesterday something really unusual happened. I logged into my EQ2 account after about a month of not playing. The same annoying people were making the same annoying jokes in 70-79 chat. The same people were standing at the broker. I went to the Character Create screen and made a new toon on a different server.  I had never left my server before and thought about not having my sugar daddy level 80 to finance gear, spells and supplies. It was very liberating. No one knew me. Blank slate. I started in Timorous Deep in which I had never adventured completely in and began a career as a Ratonga Dirge. I actually had fun playing. The time passed quickly and before I knew it I was level 11.

I think I realized that I didn’t hate EQ2. I just hated my server. I don’t know how long my little Dirge will last or if I’ll keep playing him. I may lose my mind the instant I walk into Ruins of Varsoon.

I am definitely going to stick with WoW for the time being to see how things turn out and give it a fair chance. I have some really good friends playing it and my wife likes playing it. For now that’s good enough for me.

I hit level 58 last night, and this is what I saw on the other side of the Dark Portal after taking my first steps in Outland.  Pretty cool.  I had told myself that I was going to wait until I was level 60 before visiting Outland, but I just couldn’t keep myself from doing so, I was too curious.  I ended up walking through Hellfire Peninsula, avoiding all manner of big, scary looking bad guys, and soon found myself in Zangarmarsh.  I was actually looking for Terokkar Forest so I could make my way to Shattrath, but I was glad I got lost.  Zangarmarsh looks really cool, and reminded me a little of Greater and Lesser Faydark in EverQuest II.

From the little bit I’ve seen, I’m very much looking forward to leaving the “old world’; it looks as though it’ll be fun questing in Outland.  This also means that I’m now just 12 levels away from the current level cap.  I’ve often heard that WoW is all about the end-game, so I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s all about.  My only concern at this point however, is that up until this point, I haven’t had a “real” group experience.  I’m level 58, and not once have I grouped with others aside from being run through a dungeon with a level 70.  I’m all for a solo-friendly experience, but that seems somewhat out of whack.

Now level 55, I found myself in Winterspring last night, killing Ice Thistle Yetis for a quest, just east of Everlook. A few kills into my quest I noticed a level 55 Horde Hunter, Shebeast, in the area, killing the same mobs as I. I promptly had some food and drink, buffed myself up, then watched her to see if she was going to attack. I just wanted to work on my quest and was hoping to forgo the PvP dance.

We had each other targeted and just watched for a minute. She started heading towards me; I braced myself, but wasn’t too concerned because normally when a Hunter attacks, they send their pet. My fears were allayed when she reached me and proceeded to jump and hop all around me, in what I have perceived as the “let’s just leave each other be” dance.

Continuing my quest as she walked away, I pulled a mob and started to fight. Half-way through, another mob spawned right on top of me and joined the fray. After killing the two, I was low on health and mana and sat down to rest up. That’s when I saw the Hunter’s pet screaming towards me. Damn.

Shebeast then proceeded to corpse camp me for the next half hour. Yes, I know I could have just Spirit Res’d, but I chose to be stubborn. Or stupid, take your pick. Regardless, without fail, she’d attack me as soon as I revived, over, and over, and over again. I lost count of how many times.

Bing!
Choober has come online.
You whisper to Choober: Yo!
Choober whispers: Yo! What’s up?
You whisper to Choober: Some Horde hunter douche is corpse camping me.
Choober whispers: I’ll be right there!

Ah, good old Choober, my fearless level 70 Paladin friend, willing to sacrifice his time to make the long trek to Winterspring to lay the smack down on a punk ass bully. I watched Shebeast from the spirit world, hovering around my corpse. She would alternate between hopping up and down on my lifeless body while emoting a laugh, and hiding behind a rock, as if unaware that I was watching her the whole time. I couldn’t wait for Choober to get there; I just hoped the Hunter would continue to stick around long enough.

Just after Choober landed at Everlook and started making his way towards me, Shebeast began the familiar Hearthstone animation. Damn. She just needed to stick around for two more minutes, but she couldn’t even grant me that wish. She was gone.

But did Choober just up and leave? No, because he’s too awesome for that kind of shenanigans. After asking what I needed for my quest he rounded up a bunch of Yetis for me and killed them, basically completing my quest for me. I offered my thanks, and said he could take off if he had other stuff to do, but he came through for me again. “What other quests have you got here?” he asked. We then spent the next half hour killing a bunch of mobs I needed.

I was turning in one of my completed quests when I got jumped by two Horde players. Sure enough, Choober came flying in on his trusty steed and made short work of them. I felt so powerful, protected by my good friend. On the road back to Everlook we kept running into Horde, all of whom were promptly dispatched by my big buddy Choober and his mighty mace. Remember that Looney Tunes cartoon featuring Spike the Bulldog and Chester the Terrier? That’s what this was like. Choober my protector, my guardian angel. Choober the awesome.

So… have I sucked up enough for you to run me through Blackrock Depths?

After hearing from what seems like every single person I came across how awesome Rockband is, I picked it up for my Xbox 360 this past weekend. I had never played any of the “music games” before, so I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. My wife was even more sceptical. At $170, I was really hoping that “everyone” was right, and that Rockband really was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Unpacking the box, the first question I asked myself was, “where am I going to store all this stuff?” The second question I had, while unpacking the microphone, was “who’s going to sing?” I have no problem singing when I’m on my own, but there’s no way I was going to do it in front of other people. My wife was even more adamant that she wasn’t going to sing, and made sure I knew it. Many times over.

Saturday evening we had friends over and started a band, the Ginger Toupées, and had an absolute blast, rocking into the wee hours of the night. I can honestly say that it’s been quite a while since I’ve had so much fun; not just playing a game, but just fun, period. Barely twenty-minutes into it I was already pumping my Xbox Live account with points so I could download more songs. We all stopped worrying about who was going to sing, and just did it. We were even ready to run out to Wal-Mart (open 24 hours to serve us better!) to pick up another guitar so all four of us could play at once, but unfortunately we had all had a few drinks at that point.

How fun is it, you ask? Well, my wife, the one who would “never, ever, sing”, was soon dancing and bee-bopping around while belting out the tunes at the top of her lungs. It was quite a sight. We lost all track of time, and before we knew it, it was two in the morning. Yeah, Rockband is fun. Really, really fun.

Some quick notes:
Playing drums is awesome.
Playing drums on Nine Inch Nails’ March of the Pigs is wicked hard.
I’m amazed (and thankful) my daughter slept through our rockin’.
I wish all the songs were unlocked for local multiplayer.
I sure hope all this plastic stuff doesn’t shatter into a million pieces.