Whirly: good to go

At 57 we are coming to the end of World of Warcraft. What should we do next? It’s has to be fun, not work, not a grind.

We could continue running instances, attempting those things impossible so far. We could complete quests, collect gear and mark time until some future expansion. Though, the prospect of a ding drives me, not loot.

We could start over, Horde maybe, different classes. I’ll admit it appeals to me, but it’s just doing the same thing over again. In what way would it be different or better?

We have never participated in PVP as a group. We’ve all tried it individually. I can’t say anybody enjoyed it. There is no overwhelming desire, as far as I can see, for us to go PVP. The new battle grounds seem much like the game ”Counter Strike” and I didn’t like that. We could try it for a week or so. Re-specializing for PVP, practice amongst ourselves and go give it a try. Who knows it might be something.

We are constantly on the lookout for new games. There appears to be nothing on the near-term horizon to get excited about. D&D online, Pirates of the Burning Sands, a few others maybe, but nothing is yelling, “Play Me.”

We have played most massive online games. There doesn’t look to be any interest in returning to them.

My guess is we’ll do a little of each.

Warriors solo fine. Actually, it was clear that, playing casually, I was making faster expererience than our regular 3 person group doing elites in an instance. What’s the point then? Those instances aren’t easy.

There is no point. No more point than playing cards with friends or bowling in a league compared to playing solitaire or bowling by yourself. It’s just an opportunity to join with like-minded friends to enjoy a shared challenge.

This is the thing that non-online folks miss. They, “just don’t get it”, the whole online community thing. If you want to play canasta at midnight on Christmas eve there are people online with that same desire - that’s a guess, I know nothing about canasta.

We had a fantastic night in Blackrock Depths tonight. We wiped 3 times, but they were iffy fights at best. We won every fight we should have. We lost just those 3.

Unfortunately, although close, no one dinged. Mark suggested we each solo to ding before our next fight-night, Friday.

I haven’t soloed my warrior in almost 50 levels, I’m a little nervous. They say everyone can solo in WoW. I’m off to find out with some soft, low 50 mobs. Wish me luck.

I am the greatest World of Warcraft Warrior ever, my every pull a thing of beauty. My group members are awed by how I control a fight. That would be in my fantasy fantasy world. In my real life fantasy world I sometimes have off days. I have bad pulls sometimes, I lose control of the fight sometimes and sometimes my back hurts.

Tonight was a sometimes kind of night. We died 5 times in two hours. The boys seemed in good cheer, but it was not easy. The only thing we could do was soldier on. Soldier and run back from the graveyard. That was our lot this night. I’m fairly sure that I’ll be the greatest fantasy Warrior tomorrow.

I discovered an under-reported danger lurking in the house last night. You don’t hear about the peril of reading in bed, but it’s real and excruciatingly painful. I simply, don’t try this at home, reached over to turn out the light when my back went out. I was able to roll on my stomach and slide off the bed feet-first. This left me on my knees beside the bed as-if to pray, that was convenient. I needed both prayer and cussing to stand.

It took me nearly 15 minutes to stand, get dressed and flag down a passing wife to request pain pills and a glass of water. She quickly provided help, but not without mentioning my not being very “supportive” when her back was causing pain a few weeks ago. She won that round decisively.

I watched two movies from the 1950’s this weekend, Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” and Federico Fellini’s “La Strada”. I usually find Kurosawa and Fellini moves hard to understand, mysteries beyond my reason; not these two gems. They both touch on what a life is made of and how we each find our reason, our purpose to live

Ikiru: A minor government official discovers he is dieing of cancer. Not from his Doctor, who refuses to tell him the truth, but a fellow patient in the waiting room. He is unable to reveal this diagnosis to his co-workers or family; finding understanding and compassion in a stranger and a young ex-staff member who has quit from boredom. He eventually finds the meaning of life, via sake, from a toy rabbit.

La Strada: A young girl is sold to an insensitive traveling entertainer by her impoverished mother. She is torn between her hatred for this cruel man and the joys of her new life as a performer. When they join a circus she is attracted to a charismatic clown. The clown and her companion instantly dislike each other. Torn between the excitement of the traveling circus, the warmth of the clown, and her now jailed traveling companion she chooses, love?

Both films have a slower pace than we see today. If you can’t muster a decent attention span avoid these moves. You’ll find them terribly dull.

A strange thing happened on the way to re-activating my EVE account. I believe WoW is the best online game, but lately, I’ve been getting a little bored. After looking at what’s available, I decided to return to EVE as a second game. I’ve enjoyed it in the past. Other things have pulled me away.

Bruce, at work, recently purchased an HP RX3715, it’s a hand-held Windows CE device. The killer app for him was its universal remote; he has an issue with a button eating rabbit at home /shrug. It also has wifi, something I’m interested in. I played with his for a while and found it to be the least intuitive thing ever. It has some nice features, it’s impossible to figure out how to use them.

The other wifi handhelds I’ve been looking at are the Palm TX and Palm Lifedrive. I was shocked when I found a Palm TX at Fred Meyers, it was $24 more expensive than from New Egg, but available -right now-. I’m a big fan of instant gratification, so, after a good long think, I got it.

I’m very impressed. It’s a major improvement over my Tungsten E and, unlike the Windows CE device, I’ve been able to do stuff including write this article. I feel too poor to re-activate EVE now, soon perhaps.

When playing solo I believe in running instead of dieing. It seems quicker to run and come back than die, run back, rez, heal, buff and what ever. I thought Id go over each class and discuss their running technique when the situation become iffy. I call it their get out of jail free card. I went over the plan in my head, but it wasnt till I made a list of the classes that I realized I have no idea what they do. It seems like a dumb plan to me now but its the only one Ive got. Ill start with those I know and work downwards.

Hunter: If the fight is over there, with the pet, you can simply run. If you get out of range, your pet will pop and you need only whistle him back. Hunter also gets run-fast, but are more vulnerable to stun while in that mode. If all else fails, pick a good spot and feign death, let the pet die, wait till the mobs reset and stand up. You dont even have to run back.

Druid: At lower levels you put on bear form, for the extra AC, and run. Druid also has Natures Grasp that when a mob hits the Druid he has a chance of getting rooted. Ive used it, but what ever happened was behind me so I dont know if they ever get rooted. At 30 Druids get run-form. Thats a nice get away.

Warrior: Ive not played my Warrior solo for a long time, but if youve got an ae stun, use it then just hope your high AC gets you out alive.

Priest: Ive only played to 25, but a Priest, on the run, is very survivable. You get fear, plus shield and self healing.

Warlock: Other than just plain leaving the pet, I dont know anything special. I usually try to have the pet follow me in case he survives I wont need to burn up a crystal.

Mage: That AE ice is amazing for a head start. They also get a port-ahead spell, but I dont know how that works.

Shaman: The only trick I know is to toss out a slowing totem. Ive also tried a taunt totem. I believe they get a run form at some point.

Paladin: My least played. Invulnerability would seem a nice place to start.

Rogue: Burst run speed. They also have some stuns.

How can three level 56 players die in Uldaman? Well, they ganged up on us, that’s what happened, the first time anyway. We needed to stop in for Mike to train Enchanting, but we figured we’d run on in and kill the boss mob. We’ve only tried him once before and that didn’t turn out well. We thought with our higher level and greater experience we’d kick his butt. Didn’t happen.

Archaedas has lots of friends. I’m not talking ten or twenty, lots. He calls his friends out one at a time. Our plan was that I, the Warrior, would keep the big guy busy while the Mage and Priest takes care of the adds. I switched to the smaller guys once when they got behind, but the plan was working great until Archaedas called up 4 medium sized guys after which he continues calling up the smaller guys. We lost control and went down.

Both times we died we found a complete instance re-pop on our return. We didn’t have time to go all the way back in, for the big boss, so we killed two or three mini bosses and called it a night.

Loot drops were crazy good. We received a bunch of green things to sell. It was a fun night though the experience was pitiful.

Brad McQuaid, of EQ development infamy, has recently written about his position on instance-dungeons. It’s getting wide circulation and created quite a discussion. Turns out, I have a few things to say as well.

Old-school dungeons were great places to meet new friends and create epic enemies. An infinite range of experiences awaited you each time you logged in. An ever-changing chaos that, perhaps, you could squeeze an evening of pleasure. There were no guarantees; frustration might be your only reward.

We don’t have time for that. We three, play for 2 hours, 3 times a week. Spending those few hours wandering the world, searching for an available spot, is drudge work we’d rather avoid. Instances give us the opportunity for challenging play without the crazies and frustrations.

Sure, we’ve knowingly given up some great things, but we prefer to get our fun from a well crafted instance, a database full of mobs, a random number generator and our skills. It works often enough to keep us coming back. Both dungeons and instances are available to us. Our online gaming dollars choose instances.