I have just discovered a massive link between two of my favourite hobbies and signature geek properties! Michael Dorn, Worf from the Star Trek franchise, did a lot of the voice work in World of Warcraft, the MMORPG that I play!
The Christmas festivities are over, the New Year hangovers have subsided and 2008 is nearly a week old. This seems like the perfect opportunity to take a look back at 2007 and the people, events and ideas that made it.
Christmas and New Year are always a time for reflection and nostalgia and this year was no different. My family was all together for the first time in a while, including some of the new additions. I had an enjoyable time with several highlights – firstly, I caught up with some old friends and relived some of those moments from my youth that I miss. I also had a good time Christmas Day as I actually felt part of the family for the first time in many years. The end of December was also a good time for me, I spent it with Liz and her family and really felt accepted.
Anyway, back to my review of the year.
January
January was an interesting month, fisrt it saw the blossoming of a new friendship, one that would lead to something quite special – although i didn’t know that at the time of course. This month saw the final plans for the new academic year’s housing plans and all the arguments that surrounded that decision. This is probably the time that I cemented my friendship with a number of people whom I now consider my closest allies.
January’s exam period was hard for me, not just for the obvious reasons, but because it saw the dawning in my mind that I had lost my passion in Materials Engineering, that the course was no longer the inspiration I required. I began to toy with the idea of leaving university, or at least changing course.
February
I don’t remember much of February apart from starting at McDonald’s and buying a new car. I also went to Langdale in the Lake District with my mum.
March
March was an interesting month, I saw Barenaked Ladies in concert in Leeds which was amazing, visited Sarann in the Lakes and most importantly I started this blog.
April
Now here is the definition of a rollercoaster ride. I reached some of the lowest points of my life but also touched some of the highest highs. I ran Rationalist Week, spent a week in a self-destructive spiral of drinking, partying and depression, I met a girl and fell in love.
May
May was a busy month. Liz and my relationship went from strength to strength, went to see Soweto Kinch and The Who live in concert and Blackpool won in the League One play-offs and got themselves promoted to the Championship.
June
Festivals were the order of the day/month for June. I went to Sunrise and Farmyard Party to work in a chip van with Sarann. I had a great time but it meant not seeing Liz for a lot of the month – the first real test for our relationship. I think we ended up stronger than ever! Chris ended up in hospital with a serious bout of appendicitis and I spent a lot of time helping Matt sort out his car.
July
July was quite boring compared to the surrounding months.I went to Workhouse in Wales, had minor computing issues and moved in with my new housemates – Sarann, Michelle, B and Chris.
August
Always a quiet month, with uni still a month away and the excitement of breaking up long since faded away. I spent most of the month taking stock and seeing what was what in my life. I did go to Solfest, however, which was definitely a personal highlight of the year!
September
I made only seven blog posts in September, which gives a good indication of how little I did. I did start a new course at university though and turned twenty-three – which also explains the lack of blogging! The combination of Fresher’s week and birthday celebrations will do that to a man.
October
A difficult month for me. A lot of things happened in my private life that left me somewhat adrift. I did get a new computer though, which is always nice!
November
November saw things pick up a bit with the A-Soc London trip, Atheist Week and the discovery of the Lancashire Hotpots! London was worth all the effort that I put into it, it turned out better than anyone had predicted and nothing really bad happened. Liz and I went from strength to strength and I even managed to find time to do some uni work!
December
A month of WoW and family. Not a lot to report on really, except what is already included at the top of this post. It was a good festive period all in all. I think it set me up for 2008 quite nicely.
I was having a really rubbsih day yesterday. Liz and I had had a minor fight, the WoW marathon had taken its toll and my poor diet over the past few days had really made me feel unwell. Coupled with some festive blues, I was having a depression day.
The cure came form the most unliekly of sources, the Wizard of Oz. Michelle and Sarann managed to perusade me to watch the DVD and be sociable. I did. It worked.
The film just has an innocence and naivety that you just don’t come across these days. That type of film just doesn’t exist on modern day life. Even kid’s films are laced with adult humour and context, there is just no innocence left. Dorothey et al showed that glorious trait – the pursuit of fun and happiness devoid of any negativity. No payoff, no compromise. Just plain old, traditional fun.
1000-0000
The final fourteen hours of game time saw us ready for the final test. The Deadmines.
We managed to get to the start of the first Alliane Instance by 2000 after some general questing, levelling selling on the auction house. The team that took on this monster of a dungeon consisted of:
Lutherinn – A human paladin, level 20 – tank and general dogsbody.
Xmeltrut – A human mage, fire school and level 19 – dps.
Rhayge – Human warlock, level 17 – dps.
Phedre – Human priest, level 18 – healer.
Vern – Gnome rogue, level 16 – dps and sapper.
It was hard.
As of patch 2.3 the game has got easier, so we thought Deadmines would have suffered. It has always been a tough instance – good storyline, excellent quest progression and some simply amazing low level loot but full of level 16-20 elites. Well the miners had had their elite status removed, but had increased in quantity. The number of casting patrols had increased and the reset time was now two hours. It had gotten easier in one respect, but by the time you had taken everything else into account I felt it was much much harder and a lot less forgiving to the new player.
After two hours we had wiped several times and Vern had left us to try something else. We attracted a level 19 twinked night elf hunter to the group but we still struggled, especially with the constant respawns.
In the end we gave up with 30 mins of game time remaining.
We had drinks and skinny dipping in Stormwind to take up the remaining time and Chris officially closed the marathon at 0000.
Final game time for me was: 1 day, 11 hours, 56 mins and 5 seconds (35hrs 56mins) of an available 3 days (66hrs).
Means I played more than 50% of the available game time. Which I’m slightly impressed with – although I thought, and it felt like, I had played more.
Now that most of the group are up around level 20, the next marathon should see us play most of the mid-level instances seeing as level 20-60 has been made faster and easier to obtain.
Roll on the next one.
1000 – 0230
I managed nearly twelve hours of game time today. rushing through to level 17, doing all the pre-deadmines quests and farming for gold.
The pace is still relatively slow but most people are ready for DM now with the exception of George who had his CHristmas party today. I am sure we will all manage level 20 by end of play tomorrow.
I was wondering whether I will continue this protection specced paladin after the marathon, bearing in mind I have a level 41 paladin on another server (although a different specification). I am getting used to the character now and I am loathed to give up on him, but as I mentioned I have a similar character and I have played most of the quests to death.
Anyway, I am starting to feel the pain of the marathon now. I have slept for less than 10 hours in total since we started and barely eaten – except for the A-Soc dinner this evening.
1000 – 0500
The first 24 hours are over and we are now well into the second full day. Players dropped like flies during the first few hours. We lost Phil to family commitments and MC to work. Liz was still having connection issues so we didn’t see her much online.
Chris, Michelle, George and I finished off Elwynn Forest and moved across to Westfall. The pace picked up slightly for a while as we hit levels 12 and 13. Things started getting a bit patchy after Michelle had to leave for a Chinese lesson and then other people heading off for other commitments around 6pm.
2300 saw the four of us pretty much back online to carry on where we left off and now we are hotting levles 15 and 16 in Loch Modan where we are kitting up for Deadmines, the lowest level instance for the Alliance.
I ams till surprised by how we are going, but then we seem to have farm more items and quest drops per quest than is relative to our group size (ie we are having to kill more than just four times a solo level). In good news, however, Liz managed to maintain a steady connection for an hour or so and has managed to progress through most of the Elwynn Forest quests and with careful play could probably catch up in a few days. Unfortunately, there are less than 36 hours remaining.
0000 – 0400
Day 1 of the Chrismukka WoW marathon has officially ended. The marathon started at mignight and will last for 72 hours, stopping only for sleep and server maintenance.
This first session saw myself, Chris, MC, Phil, Michelle and George power through to level 8 or so. We probably would have managed more had we not had some connection issues early on – meaning we lost a player 
This is a relatively short post as we are still fairly close to where we started – lets hope we can pick the pace up tomorrow at 10am when the servers restart.
We have covered the human starting area and most of the first zone. For those in the know we have just taken out Princess and explored Jasperlode mine.
Just a quick post to say that we have working internet at home now, which means that I can post more and generally be more of an online nuisance to the world from now on!
The internet isn’t perfect, we are still having modem vs router issues and are currently running multiple DHCP servers and the port forwarding is a bit screwed but we can all get online and play WoW. Which is the important thing!
Right, so I have been a World of Warcraft convert for nigh on six months now, add to that my nerdiness when it comes to Star Trek and my love of computer games etc and you would think that I am already somewhat of a geek. You would be wrong!
This last week has seen me introduced to a trading card game called Magic: The Gathering. I have never been a huge TGC fan, though I did get quite into the Star Wars one several years back. However, I am hooked on Magic now. I bought myself my own deck on Saturday and have already started yoinking cards from Si and MC to put together my very first home made deck. So I am currently playing a Black/Red pre-made deck and am trying to balance out my zombie heavy Black deck. I am looking to try and put together a wierd ass Green/Black or Red/Blue deck next – they look like fun.
Will update on my finalised decks soon.
Since Liz and I started seeing each other I have been neglecting my WoW characters an awful lot. Today I finished re-downloading all the patches and finally got back into Azeroth. I currently have four characters on Turalyon and have today started a charatcer on Arathor. It is so good to be back into the cut and thrust of MMORPGs, I have really missed the escapism, the fantasy and the comaraderie that being part of it brings. I have not missed the social degeneration that comes from endless hours locked in your room whilst you battle your foes.
Ah well, my new orc will keep me busy for the next week or so 