Nobody Reads This

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

Wow, it’s hard to believe quite so much time has elapsed since I last visited the left a note for the … 8 … people who still look at this on a regular cycle. Sorry about that. Things are a little hectic not least because University stuff literally appeared from nowhere and kicked me in the nuts but also because I made the fatal mistake of getting back into WoW when I’m at my busiest. Yay for that.

Two things today, I wanted to reflect on my recent WoW activity with a brief commentary on what I’ve been doing and how I feel about a few things including the levelling->Raiding transition and the other is a story over on the BBC about a poll they did on Radio 1 to discover the best game. Please do feel free to go read the top 10 so you are suitably horrified for the rest of this blog.

I’m going to assume you’ve read the results of the Radio 1 Games Poll and now know that Call of Duty 4 is the best game ever, a title coveted by many and seemingly reawarded every time a fad comes along.  I’m going to pass over the games I’m relatively happy with and just make a few comments regarding the fucked up entries:

• Grand Thef Auto IV (10): Are you fucking serious? This game was praised for it’s pretty nice engine but lambasted for it’s terrible gameplay, hateable characters and soul destroyingly dull plot. Are you actually serious? -_-
• Football Manager (2): Yes that’s right, FM is SECOND. The bricklayers and builders clearely voted en masse for this one. Sigh. I like sims! And I like football! And even I think FM is a bag of shite.
• Fifa 2009 (9): Yep, it’s Fifa. It’s like Fifa 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001 … but with exactly 1 more disappointment.
• Halo 3 (8): How did I know the OXM readership would listen to Radio 1?

Out of curiosity here are a few of the good games and where they placed:

• World of Warcraft – 4th
• Half Life 2 – 12th
• Deus Ex – 16th (Noticeably under Fallout 3)
• Pokemon Red/Blue – 18th
• Half Life 1 – 21st
• Command and Conquer

As you can see many of the truly good games ranked, probably appropriately considering that the Radio 1 listenership is quite young but at the same time: Who listens to the radio at the weekend? Predominantly people who are working one might assume. All those white-collar nerds (Like mahself) were probably raiding or trying to alt-boot DOS so they could check out a Microprose classic and did not even find out about the survey until they returned to work on Monday. Quite.

On the topic of raiding (See what I did there) my WoW activity has spiked now that I’ve dinged 80 on my Paladin. Around the 76 Mark I was loaned 500g by Rob to pick up my dual-spec and at the time I was levelling Prot and took off-spec Holy. Tbh, end game protadin is STRESSFUL. Although I generally know all the tacs wherever I’m going I frankly do not have the patience to deal with R-tards. When you’re tanking, it’s all a mile-a-minute and the shit can hit the fan quicker than you can reach for Holy Shield.

Holy is relatively tranquil. Amongst the peaceful sounds of Mik’s Scrolling Combat Text and the soothing glimmer effect that comes with flash of light it’s easy to forget you were fighting a reborn skeletal dragon. Although there is still an element of responsibility – After all I am responsible for whether you live or die – But it’s very much more of a supporting role calling any bonus tacs and pointing out any mistakes for people to improve on.

The Tank is the quarter-back and I’m the half-back. Obscure-American-Football-Reference.

Not long after I dinged 80 I was lucky enough to find myself in a heroic group with an extremely overgeared Prot Pally and a few of his Guild mates. That night we must’ve done 5 or 6 heroics in a row – Enough to come away with a new Epic shield. I accepted their invitation to join their guild and have been running heroics and raids with them ever since.

So far I’ve done OS10, Naxx 10 (All except Kel, they’ve downed him but people are making silly mistakes every time and I don’t join for the rerun) and heroics for most of the other instances. I’ve dinged Exhalted with the Argent Crusade (and got mahself a hat) and now over half my gear is epic 200 Item quality. No set pieces yet though, I passed on my only one since it was a fellow Holy paladin who was running in blues with me in my new Epic Spaulders that only dropped two bosses prior.

Since I dinged 80 and got some of my nice gear we’ve also been running old instances for giggles including Molten Core (2 resets in a row :>) and Onyxia. We also gave BWL a shot but I think some people are too undergeared for it, there were 6 of us which currently makes up: 80 Holy Pally, 80 Enh Shaman, 79 Feral Druid (tank), 72 DK,  72 Shaman, 66~ Mage.

My recommendation: Don’t go until you’ve got at least 3 overgeared top level people. i.e. If the druid could look after himself vs most of the mobs (and cover the Orb Nominee) and one person could be relied on to keep the adds off the boss then I think we’d be ok.

As is, both our attempts have killed the boss before the eggs could go down, and subsequent attempts included botched controls which lead to mass-conflag and a wipe. Going to let the Feral tank ding and get some nice heroic gear – After which I think we’ll be good to give it another shot. The DK is likely to be the next person to ding after which I think Mark will be trying to level his warrior (He’s in outland now, doing fucking well tbh) and Leslie has renewed her levelling effort and only has one or two levels to go until Northrend.

Fun Fun right? Anyway, I look forward to doing some heroics in the not to distant future that are entirely friend driven! We’ve already got 3 80s (assuming Jim dings today :>) which include a Tank and a Healer so we should be ok. Jim may need to invest some cash in premature enchants and gems to get his stats up though but for now we can certainly run some of the easy stuff.

Random tail-end update and gratz for getting this far: I’m coming down to Gosport next week but I will be busy for most of it. I can probably hang out once or twice but I’ve got important University stuff that I need to do. We shall have to meet up and spend hours in Burger King again Also WoW will be on the back burner this week as I prepare all my materials for coming to Gosport.

Enjoy yourself, and GL with levelling Mark.