Corpse Camping

It was quite an exciting weekend for me.  But not the kind of exciting that might involve killing Ragnaros, no.  A real heart-pumping excitement.  The kind of excitement you can only get from corpse camping.  By the definition on Wikipedia:

“In some MMORPGs which have PVP (Player-versus-player) elements (such as Diablo II and World of Warcraft), ‘corpse camping’ is used to refer to a practice by an enemy player character (PC) kills another PC in player versus player combat and then loiters in the area of the dead player’s corpse. The mechanics for recovering one’s body differ per game, but generally a PC must return to the area where he died to recover his body or face severe penalties. Those who corpse camp take advantage of these rules by waiting for the dead character to return to life, usually in a weakened state, and then killing him again when his defenses, mana and hit points are not at full capacity.”

However, I didn’t use any MMO like World of Warcraft to do my corpse camping.  No, that’s not nearly exciting.  I decided to do it in real life.  With real corpses.

Bear corpses.

Because you should never trust any bear, even a dead one, you should make sure it’s really dead.  You never know when they’ll get a battle rez and pop back up to gnaw your face off.  Or steal your salmon.  Which is what I assume the bear was planning on Friday night.  So just as he was ready to come at me again.  I ran him over, skinned him (aggroing all the bears), and fled the scene to avoid retaliation.  Of course, his loot was terrible and typical…ruined pelt, tuft of hair, and bear organs.  Not my idea of a good time at all.

It went a little like this:

And in a matter of a split second, my car leaped over the bear, taking its loot and away I went. 

In all honesty, I was scared shitless, in fact, I thought it a good idea to make sure I didn’t have any loot in my car seat.  As it turned out, I was able to maintain control of the vehicle despite being airborne after hitting the corpse of the bear that the other vehicle (I presume) left behind.  By the time I saw the bear, I had just enough time to think “that’s a bear!” and BAM!  It was over.  Fortunately, the vehicle has appeared to suffer very little damage–THANK YOU TOYOTA!!  And my vehicles high clearance just allowed me to jump over it. 

I am a very lucky man to have had the situation end as it did.  The bear went square under the vehicle leaving behind some of its parts, blood, and fur.  The car seems to be running okay. 

I would never intentionally hit an animal, and I hope one would never intentionally hit me, but in this sad story, our little bear friend did not make it.  If there’s a bear heaven, I hope he makes it, and I’m REALLY sorry for adding insult to injury by running you over after you were dead. 

It’s been a week…

…since I logged in.  I’m sure my characters are wondering what happened to me.  Heck, I’m wondering what happened to me.  Actually I know that answer, and no, it wasn’t ONLY fishing. 

I’m in the transition of moving to a new place, but my new furniture hasn’t arrived yet so I’m still sleeping at the other place.  All internet and good stuff is set up, but I don’t have anything there yet.  But I spend the evenings cleaning all my old things so they are ready to go (most everything has been in a box or storage for the last year).  Also unpacking these boxes and finding places for everything.  Spending hours at Target looking at towels, shower curtains, and plant pots then going home and looking at the color of the walls again and holding up my phone pictures to see if I like them.  Then pulling out all my old art and pictures and running around the house placing them in new spots to see if I like where they are.  Then moving them, thinking about getting some new ones, and basically starting all over.  The same happens in the kitchen…will I like the plates here, or are they better here?  What’s makes the most sense for use?

I like having a clean-looking house and having things match and not look like a hodge-podge of hand-me-downs.  So this is the perfect chance to do just that.  So far it is coming together awesomely.  I’ll move the computer soon and the TV and then I’ll probably start hanging out there on weeknights just returning to the old place to sleep.  Less than 2 weeks until the furniture arrives…I can’t wait!

In the mean time, I was reminded there is a classic raid tonight, I have no idea who has signed up, so I’ll probably have to get online to plug it a bunch before we go, we’ll need tanks – at least 2.  We’re planning on doing Naxx-25 man.  If we don’t have enough people I suppose we can do something else…but here’s hoping!  I’m looking forward to the fall again, and spending time playing games and having my own space again.  Roommates are fun, but sometimes no roommates are just as fun.

Pictures of Naxx tomorrow!

I’ll Never Forget

This last week, my roommates dog struggled battling a disease of the blood.  Her body decided to attack and destroy her red blood cells.  While sometimes this can be overcome, she did not win the battle.  While she was not my dog, in a way she was.  Since I moved in here over a year ago, she has spent every night either sleeping in my room or in my bed.  We’d spend hours playing WoW together, usually her growling or barking when I’d loot gold–she didn’t like the clinky noise.  She was my buddy, and I’d get home from work and say “Come on, Charlie, time to go play video games!” And she’d race me up the stairs and into my bedroom where we’d hang out for the rest of the evening. 

This, for me, has been a terrible loss.  One I would equate with losing a best friend.  And so while I still can see though the tears, I will share this picture.  One of Charlie hanging out under my desk.  That face of hers I was too familiar with, and will miss forever. 

Vacation

I was working on this post about Shaman and hybridism and blah blah blah.  It was awesome.  But now I didn’t finish because it’s been a crazy week!  I will do it when I get back…like, in June.  Later all!

If I catch RL Mr. Pinchy, I’ll be sure to get a screencap. 

Lies, All Lies.

So I promised pictures today and comments on outfits in WoW.  I will get to this later this week because I just didn’t have enough time with the holiday weekend and being away. 

Also, just an FYI for those that don’t know, I might be blogging a little less this summer as a result of playing less.  I spend most my weekends on the water, fishing, and as it is that means that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I am usually not home and therefore not playing WoW.  So I might have fewer updates as a result.

But I do promise images and such this week.  I need to dig through my old screenshots and take some more… good times, I can feel it!

Oh, and we’re doing ToGC this Wednesday for the achievement for the guild, should be an interesting time!!

“Allies Off”

This past weekend, I headed outta the protest crazed Capitol to spend the weekend with my two brothers in central Wisconsin.  This is the second time we’ve gotten together to specifically just hang out with us, no parental units.  There are many great things about having a family with all boys, there are many horrifying things too, I am sure.  But for our family, it meant that we all really enjoyed the same activities, so second to our passion for fishing, it the passion for video games.  My parents have pictures of us with bed head in our footie pajamas sitting in front of the TV in the kitchen holding Atari controllers playing what looked to be “SeaQuest“.  It was a passion we all shared and there were many a fight and bargain over play time.  There was even a schedule once where we had to switch off every 20 minutes when playing SimCity 2000.

So from our humble roots with some cat and mouse game on some Texas Instruments machine to our current complex model games like Civilization 5 or whatever and the rise of internet gaming we’ve come quite a long way.  We definitely all grew up with video games and enjoy them.  Somewhere when I was in high school my older brother went off to college, and got a Mac.  He got a better one two years later and so during the summers we’d have two PCs at home for gaming.  And thus began the LAN parties.  Our game of choice (maybe the only one?) was Warcraft 2.  We’d ally up and try to crush the horde–and just as the horde was about to be defeated, you’d see those words which you had secretly been preparing for all game:  “Allies Off”.  These words basically signaled to you that your ally basically had cancelled their end of the deal and now it was war.  We had so many awesome times playing that game that soon “Allies Off” was used in casual conversation between us to mean, “Look bro, we’re not friends anymore, be prepared for some punches.”  Ah, memories.

In February 2010, when we got together for video game weekend, we got my older brother some Warcraft 3.  Yes, I know it’s terribly out-dated, but he didn’t really play anymore Warcraft after 2.  So it was new to him.  We loaded up and away we went.  It’s really funny seeing how we all picked factions, and how we played. 

My older brother is REALLY defensive when he plays–using farms to make walls (Warcraft 3 doesn’t have walls like Warcraft 2 did – he misses them) and lots of towers and basically plays hanging out near his resource gathering.  And he plays as humans because then the units have names he can recognize.

My younger brother plays VERY aggressively.  He always picks the Night Elves and is always telling us we are behind, where are our troops, we are slow.  His heroes also die the most because he “goes for it” where the other two of us play more conservatively when entering battle.  My younger brother tries to solo everything–for glory maybe, mostly we just call him a noob.

I play far more supportive and am a hybrid of the two, striking when I know I can take advantage of a situation but also cooperating with my brothers.  I started playing the orcs to compliment my brothers choices.  If my older brother makes priests to heal, I’ll make shaman to cast bloodlust.  It works out nicely. 

So we end up quite balanced because we have an offense, a defense, and a support squad.  This let’s up be successful and cooperate well.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get many games in on Sunday our day of intended Warcraft 3 dedication because we had to leave early due to poor weather.  So instead last night we connected via Battle.net.  That was pretty fun and again we were successful.  My older brother being more defensive and slower is hesitant to take on Computer (Insane) and when my younger brother set up the game with two of them he called him Gafrage (Delusional). 

Though my older brother never got into WoW, my younger brother did, joining a hardcore raiding guild in BC but stopped shortly after LK claiming rogues were broken.  But it was funny how even then the personality differences were there.  My older brother tried WoW a bit, playing a paladin because he thought he’d be able to survive longer, my younger brother a rogue because he could kick-ass, and I primarily played my priest to support, though any class I rolled has usually had the support spec instead of the highest DPS spec. 

Anyways, we kicked butt at our Warcraft 3 games effectively working very cooperatively, which is not the same as when we played 3-player Super Mario Brothers Wii–which usually ended up with people either being bounced into or thrown into pits.  Ahh, brotherly love.  They are total dorks, but I wouldn’t trade them for the world.

Pwnd.

Real life pwnd my desire to hit 85 last night.  Tonight or this weekend!  I promise!  I will finally make level 85 on one of my toons.

2011: Ready or Not!

I am finally back in the Midwest, I can’t explain how much I love these states.  As much as they get poked fun of and for as far out of the “newest” fashions, electronics, etc.  We’re good people.  And after spending the weekend in Boston with all the Massholes (Massachusetts Asshole) I am glad to be back home where people smile, say please and thank you, excuse themselves, and generally seem less angry.  Oh and even though you might think we have that crazy “Fargo” accent, it’s not like dropping the R off every word.  It’s like the whole city has a speech impediment.

Anyways, it was after that trip to the East Coast (and I apologize to any of you nice people who do manage to live out there) that I realized I’m just too nice to ever live out there and for all that I complain about people or things here, it’s really home.  Thank god for my people who appear a little more logical, hardy, and genuine.  Seriously Boston, you do NOT need a scarf when it’s 50 degrees out, it just makes you look like a self-absorbed boob.

Okay, rant off…for now.

The trip to Boston though didn’t leave me anytime for WoW, so I hadn’t logged in since Thursday and even last night, just getting back from vacation and trying to do some laundry left me with little desire to really focus on the game.  I’m hoping to make some more headway tonight.

I really have been lagging behind!!  I keep trying to push myself, but the more I push, the less fun I have, but hey, if I make it to max level within one month of the expansion release, it will still be an earth shattering record for me!  With LK I didn’t reach max level for almost 3 months!  So I’m way ahead of schedule now! 

I’m glad to be back in my old routine, I may lead a boring life to some, but this Midwestern style suits this creature of comfort just fine.

Busy Weekend, Again

Sadly, not the WoW type of busy weekend!

We had classic raid night tackling both AQ10 and AQ40.  Both were a joke but we weren’t in there for anything but achievements, which we got!  Three for the guild actually as this completed our Classic Raid achievement for the guild as well.  We’ll start doing Outland Raids after the new year. 

Did a little more archaeology, but didn’t have the time to put into it as I really needed to start leveling the Warlock.  I did more of Vashir and he dinged level 82 before bed.  I had planned on working more with him on Saturday and/or Sunday night. 

As it worked out, I was up early Saturday to help my brother move, and by the time it was all done for the day, I flopped into bed at 11:30pm.  A REALLY long day hauling furniture around and lots of driving.  Sunday I woke up early to the dog leaving me a floor present which I promptly cleaned up and then was awake, but had other things to take care of then a band concert at 2pm.  I finally logged in around 4pm only to fall asleep at my computer at around 7pm.  I decided a nap was needed, but that nap soon turned into putting on the pajamas and getting under the covers and the rest was the emerald dream. 

So sadly I didn’t get to put in the time this weekend that I wanted to.  I should be able to get more play time in this weekend and am hoping to get to 84 before Christmas.  We’ll see!!  It may mean stopping focus on Elgar’s archaeology though.  At least for a little while, though I am so close to 525 that I really want to push for it.  We’ll see.

Alter Egos

So this weekend was kinda busy, and I got distracted by an old video game that I had:  Sims 2. 

I did manage to finally get exalted with the Kalu’ak on Elgar, it was one of his long-term goals that I always neglected.  It is probably going to be his last hurrah achievement as tonight I have cleaning of the guild bank and personal banks to do and a friend is coming over so we’ll probably be rerolling for fun.  Tomorrow is the big Cataclysm, and there will be too much to do with that.  I better remember to pick up a copy.  So the final item on my to do list is purchase Cataclysm.

On Friday I wrote a post about GearScore and epeen, but after reading it to myself a few times, I decided that guild members might take it offensively so I have decided not to post it.  Instead I will say that I am looking forward to Cataclysm where 25-man and 10-man loot is the same. 

And though none of you play the Sims 2 or even if you did you probably play WoW most the time (I like to take breaks for other games as well:  Civ 4, Sims 2/3, Warcraft 3, SimCity 4), I am going to share some of the hilariousness of that game.  That game is really centered around the relationships and life of your characters.  I made three college characters; brothers: Elgar and Ross Winterhoof, and their roommate Monona Floy.  Elgar majored in Biology as it seemed like what priests might need to heal, Ross majored in psychology as it seemed like something maybe warlocks would know, and Monona majored in art, because mages like pretty things…though maybe physics would have been more appropriate. 

It was funny in college as Ross didn’t get along with anyone else in the dorm and on his own free will started beating people up and shoving them around, on account that he had few niceness points.  Warlocks should be mean.  Elgar seemed to get along with everyone, and Monona wanted to sleep with everyone…especially the school mascot and the dormitory maid.  Ross didn’t have many friends, and at the suggestion of my roommate, we had him talk lots with the lunch lady.  Eventually she convinced me to flirt with her.  She didn’t like it.  But after much persistence warmed up to him and then we had them kiss.  She got the first kiss memory icon above her head and my roommate was so happy because clearly she had lived a sad life alone serving college kids lunch and now some young guy came along and made her happy.  I wanted to barf.

Elgar’s story was pretty un-eventful.  Monona however didn’t take long to improve her grades from talking and later sleeping with her professor.  The dorm rooms are quite small, so whenever she had a gentlemen-caller we had to clear out the room to buy a double bed for the big show.  Bored with the professor, she soon started making out with the school mascot, which was really odd since he had a giant llama outfit and head on.  After sleeping with him, (he finally took the head off) he hung around the dorm for about 2 days doing homework and napping on the couch.  It seemed like a most awkward hook-up ever that the dude didn’t just leave the house.  Nothing but heartache for him. 

She then started to pursue (at the advice of my roommate again) the pink silk shirt wearing cleaning lady, I mean man.  They started chatting, hitting it off.  Soon he would ask to hang out after he was done working.  This worked out well and soon the make-outs were pretty consistent and finally one day he fell in love and we knew the double bed scene would be soon (also, major game flaw that you have to be in love to actually have “WooHoo”? – sometimes it just takes a few stiff drinks, let’s be honest).  So anyways, he asks to hang out, we say yes, get the bed ready and she goes to relax.  She invites him to join her.  She waits, he’s in the women’s restroom because that’s where he was cleaning when he finished work.  He’s just walking around it.  She asks him again.  No dice.  It finally dawns on me that perhaps because he’s a man, he can’t walk through the women only door to the restroom.  No worries, I’ll just remove the door and replace it with a normal door.  But hmmm, the build mode for the college doesn’t allow me to change the structure of the building.  Oh crap.  So I have her go up to him and just ask him to leave.  But he still won’t leave the bathroom.  He showers, urinates, and sleeps on the floor, then mostly just cries and paces around.  The next day, he’s still there, and a new cleaning man shows up, when he enters the ladies restroom he prays for his friend who is passed out on the floor.  We start to feel really bad.  He’s stuck there.  And in two days after being trapped in a women’s dorm room at a college, he dies.  It’s Monona’s first murder due to her sexual desire.  We are shocked, but also kinda find the whole thing tragically hilarious.  We buried him in the front yard of the dorm and put in some nice flowers.  After college, she ended up marrying the mascot and becoming a musician in a recording studio. 

We’ll see what happens next…but not this week, this week is Cataclysm.