Of Raids, DCs and prolific swearing.

I sit in Blackrock spire... alone... The crumpled bodies of dragon whelplings lie around me in great piles and as I look askance at the corpse of a great dragonguard I begin to wonder... Will I get back to the group before the hordes of whelplings respawn? I warily lay a sharpening stone to my sword and watch with growing worry as hundreds of dragon eggs appear before my eyes.

For the past 30 minuites I've been hurling acerbic comments in the direction of Blizzard's servers and spamming my login at the World of Warcraft welcome screen. Now that's I've finally gotten in i'm just sitting here waiting to be picked up by an eighty who will run me deeper into the raid to meet back up with my party.

This time does give me a rare opportunity to reflect on my relationship with this crack-like game. It started, like most dubious ventures, on a dark night. It was the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. I was heading down across the Georgia line with my girlfriend to buy it at the only midnight launch in the area (we don't exactly live in a cultural hub). She had been a long time player of the game and I had been a long time watcher. As a gamer and an aspiring game journalist I had been interested in this worldwide phenomenon for quite a while but had never been brave enough to venture into dark waters of an MMO. I really have her to thank (or blame, your choice) for getting me into it. WoW basically became an extended date for us. I rolled a Retribution Paladin and she a Mage, a classic combo. I took the aggro, wading in with my gleaming sword in hand and the battle cry of the Sin'Dorei on my lips as she blasted our foes into tiny magical bits.

I had not fully grasped the allure and power of MMOs. This wasn't just a world where overweight nerds in their basements lived out their fantasies of being a warrior charging into battle with maul swinging... this was a world where overweight nerds in their basements lived out their fantasies of being a warrior charging into battle alongside soccer-moms who lived out their fantasy of being a badass mage tossing fireballs into the middle of a horde of teaming orcs. People liked this... experience because it was a release. People read books to escape from reality, this let them take it to a whole new level. No wonder Blizzard is hauling in the equivalent cash of a summer blockbuster every month from their 12,000,000 customers.

When I game I get into it. I become that character, I invest a part of myself in the story of that game. This worked for my purposes as I would find a game, spend every spare hour I had working towards it's completion and then step away feeling like I was coming up for air. Thankful for the experience but glad to be done. Evil had been defeated and I was free to live my life once more.

Enter WoW.

This was a game that had infinite possibilities. It had depth, it had mountains of lore hidden amongst the crannies of it's vast landscape, it challenged me to climb a mountain to the level cap of 80 from the humble beginning of my Paladin at lv1. And what did it promise me at the end? A proud "job well done" as it handed me my life back? Alas no, it offered more opportunities. Daily quests, rep grinds, and raid after raid. Then, when those got too easy and took less than five hours, I get to tackle heroic raids. The fabled status of lv80 was only the beginning... god help me. I realized that this was the only game I had ever played that I felt the need to control, to restrict. I don’t know if this is entirely at the feet of WoW or if this is the first signs of this Mat-uri’-ty thing people keep telling me about...

What I do know is that I’m finally back with my group and I have some bosses to down. We’ll kill them all and take their shit. For the Horde!

Once more... With feeling!

I always have trouble when I start a new blog (yes I've started enough of them that this has become a common question). Where do I go with it? What will the tone be? What in god's name will I write about? I've done the personal blog thing, the straight-laced tech journal which dissolved (or was elevated depending on your taste) into the sarcastic tech commentary blog and now I'm staring at a frighteningly blank page with this one. So I feel that this initial post has much weight, as if it will be the deciding factor in weather or not this becomes a blog that I continue to post on for the foreseeable future or yet another endeavor that falls to the wayside and gets lost in the deep recesses of the internet like so many others. So my plan, such as it is, with this blog is… to have no plan (genius I know). To simply write about things that catch my interest and things that I’m currently doing. I feel the need to write and this seems to be the best medium for it.

I’m a geek at my core, I was obsessed with computers and video games by the age of 11 and I would gladly go to war against anyone who dared to besmirch the name of Nintendo or it’s adjuncts. My obsession has been slowly refined over the years, reaching it’s peak about 6 months ago when I was sure that gaming journalism was my one true calling. Unfortunately that fell through after I spent a month designing my wordpress blog game-vector.com, found that I couldn’t get it listed with google and promoting it was going to be a long uphill battle. I applied to a few sites but got no responses effectively killing my initiative in that particular arena. Now here I am once more starting up in hopes of it turning out better. I think the problem is that I enjoy writing but lack the hardheaded determination to keep writing when I fail to get feedback. Pageviews are nice and all but until people actually start talking back and adding opinions it doesn’t have the dynamism that I long for in discussion. As anyone who knows me will tell you I positively revel in debate and conflict (though surprisingly could never get into the forum troll scene). Attacking my views or opinions is a sure way to spark my interest in you. A freak of nature? Maybe. But life certainly doesn’t get boring.

My resolve with this particular venture is to write something every day be it small or grandiose. Most of it will likely treat on geeky subjects. Between bizarre experiences in World of Warcraft, the tech industry with it’s many ridiculous news snippets and my first Dungeons and Dragons campaign that I’m planning to DM in the coming weeks I should have ample material.