Whirly: good to go

Mike and I played LoTRO for a couple hours this morning, it sure is a good looking game. We dinged 13 doing a little of this and a little of that. I know 13 doesn’t seem that high, but we’ve been playing only Saturday mornings. We are both playing Hunters. At 13 we purchased tracking, it’s very slick. You press the tracking button, you do a little tracking dance as if looking around, a list pops up with the things within your tracking range. You click your choice from the list, and get a mini map marker that leads you right to it. We also picked up an animal fear spell - perfect for a Hunter.

I just want to mention Craig, Alaska one last time. They were gracious hosts. It was a very pleasant visit. My count of restaurants reached six, there may be more. I look forward to returning.

I had a 2 1/2 hour layover at the Ketchican airport. I headed over to the cafe, in the waiting room, where the teenaged employee was flirting with two customer dudes. It turned out, she was going to make them root beer floats the slow, flirty way. I’m an old man, and completely invisible as far as she was concerned, so I put my pop back in the cooler, and wandered off. Later, I returned, selected a pop and stood waiting at the counter. I was within slapping distance of the young lady, though no slapping occurred (a pitty). She wasn’t doing anything, other than perhaps day dreaming about the fine flirting earlier. Eventually, she realized I wasn’t going to leave easily. I got a, “Can I help you?” I asked for the wrapped, cut-vegetable plate in the cooler. She removed my choice and stepped over to a co-worker to giggle at the vegetable plate for a bit. If you every pass through the Ketchican airport, bring your own snacks. Unless you are a young dude who likes root beer, or crap service.

I’m off for the next few weeks, headed into the wilds of Canada, camping. No computers, no gaming, I’ll take my Palm TX for town visits. Some day I’m going to take a computer-gaming vacation and just play for three weeks straight. Naa. I can’t play for more than three hours without getting antsy. See you when I get back.

Once in Craig, Alaska you find it’s not quite as backwards as you though it might be. My Hotel has satellite TV and Internet access. What more could you want? Well, that and hot water. I’m working at the local school district. They have given a MacBook to every student grade 6-12. How modern is that? They are a little short on places to eat. Pizza, sandwich, seafood restaurant - I’ve eaten at them all. Oh, there is a cafe where you can get breakfast. I ate there too.

Something I’ve noticed in smaller towns in Alaska is how polite the teenagers are. Today a young lady said, “Hello sir” as I passed. In Juneau the best I’ve ever gotten was, “Hello mister OLD MAN.” In small towns everybody knows who you are. If you lip off to an adult, your parents are going to hear about it. I grew up in a small town, Kodiak. I guess I expect better.

If you are looking for a nice place to live, this is one. It’s not very exciting, not so far anyway, but the folks are pleasant. Pleasant, Internet, hot water, what more could you want? Well, that and tacos.

I’m heading to Craig, Alaska (population 1500 ish) next week for work. As far as I can tell, my hotel room doesn’t have Internet access, so my online gaming life will come to an absolute dead stop. I expect to have Internet during the day, so eMail and such will still be possible. I’ve checked a book ‘Ordinary Wolves’ out of the library for reading. I’ve loaded a couple stand alone games on the laptop I’ll be taking. Its an Intel MacBook Pro with BootCamp Windows XP installed. I’m considering taking my digital camera along to document my adventure, but I’m thinking cell and laptop are enough technology for one trip.

One of the games I planed on taking was Freelancer. I played Freelancer back in the day, but never finished. I tried it last night on the MacBook and after my first shooting encounter the laptop was too hot to touch near the air exhaust, below the screen. I’m afraid I’d cook the MacBook if I continued to play, so I’ll pass. The other game, Galactic Civilization II, isn’t as graphic intense. I’m hoping it will be ok. If not, I can do some python programing, or play blackjack.

After my week in Craig I’m heading to Yukon Territory, Canada for three weeks of car-camping. My off-line gaming life will come to an absolute dead stop. The only technology I’m taking is my iPod shuffle. I found a cigarette-lighter usb-charger to keep it running.

I want to take a cheap guitar with me on the camping trip. I’ll leave it at work when I get back, it’s always nice to have a guitar in grabbing range. I checked the local pawn shop for something reasonable, price and quality wise, with no luck, so I ordered a Martin Backpacker guitar for $170, it’s not bad. I’ve been selecting tunes for my iPod to learn on the road. I never seem to have time to play anymore. I guess I spend too much time playing computer games. No electricity for three weeks should solve that problem.

Ahh, Much better. We found a groove that took us easily through the evenings play. We had a few multi layered quests we’d been working on that we hunted down and finished. We gained a few titles, “Killer or Rats”, and the like. Plus, in our wanderings, we’d picked up a few adventuring opportunities, that when completed, added to our stats. Like “+1 to hair”, We hunted some of those down as well.

We ran into some trouble and died when we picked up three mobs, at least one of which, was elite. We didn’t know he was elite, or that there were elite mobs in the game, until we returned and took another look at him. We had to go through a bunch more to complete our goal. At one point, we were finishing one of the elite mobs when another jumped us. A level 14 Hunter, working the hill ahead of us, came running down with another mob who added to our trouble. The Hunter stood watching as his mob almost killed us. To his credit the Hunter eventually helped. Mark came this close to dieing. We all wanted to cuss out the Hunter for training us, but didn’t. I now think he might have been innocent. The add might have been a walker and the Hunter was simply moving down the hill to avoid him. That would explain why the Mob jumped us while passing. We should have thanked the Hunter for his help, naa.

Further up the hill things got hotter when we ran into a bugged mob. He was stuck in one spot and would only attack us when we got close. Unfortunately, we were picking up a lot of mobs at the time and we couldn’t rest, and gain health and mana, between fights because we were still in combat with the bugged mob. Luckily we completed our task about then and were able to use our map to return home. With all the experience gained by killing and quests we dinged level 12. We’ve got plenty to do next time. Hopefully the game will move us along to bigger things when we are ready.

We went on an old fashioned walk about. Working our way through quests is a pain, so we ignored them in favor of just wandering around. Sometimes we killed something, or discovered something, that moved a quest forward - great. Otherwise we just took a look, killed what was available, and moved on. Mark and I went down once, but if there is a death penalty, other than equipment wear, we were unable to find it. We returned to Mike just in time to battle the re-spawned mobs that jumped him. The fight that killed us wasn’t anything epic. I was just sloppy. Moving us forward too fast.

I had a good time exploring the zone. You can’t explore forever though. We’ve now seen what that zone has to offer. Another trip around would be grinding. We’ve got to find something interesting enough to keep us going. I feel we, maybe it’s just me, are in the doldrums with nothing to look forward to. Maybe I’m just in a crappy mood. I’ve got another week of play before a forced month of no gaming. I could lie and say I was spending that time in prison or something even worse, but truth is, I’m going camping in Canada. I’m not in a bad mood because of the camping trip, I’m looking forward to it, though I’ll miss the boys and our fight nights. It’s probably this bad tooth that’s bothering me. Stop whining.

Back to the doldrums. As boring as WoW and it’s repeated trips to the same instances were, we knew where we were going and what we were doing when we got there. We could easily plan a years play ahead of time, one instance then the next. How exciting is that? In comparison, with these new games, we have no idea where to go next. It’s easy to spend a whole game-evening with nothing to show for it. No accomplishments , no challenge. It’s different, but is it better? Beats me. I just want to have a couple of hours of fun with my buds. That and this tooth to stop bothering me.

We played Lord of the Rings Online for the first time as a group. It wasn’t that much fun, but I don’t think any of us expected it to be. The first few days, in a new game, are spent learning the mechanics and the basic skills required. We worked through a group of quests that any of us could have soloed. The hope is that the quests will guide us to more challenging content eventually. We all dinged level 8 and I hit 9 turning in quests at the end.

Mike locked up once while we were running down the road requiring him to reboot his computer. When he rejoined us, his maps incorrectly showed Mark and my positions, making it impossible for him to follow us via map. It corrected when we entered an instance. Those were our only major bugs of the night. I was frustrated trying to learn how to play the lute. I purchased the lute-skill and a lute, but I couldn’t equip it. It was a bit expensive for a newbie with little cash. I was looking forward to playing some tunes. I don’t have enough cash to be wasting any. I’ll figure it out eventually.

Mark has reactivated his WoW account, the bum. He’s soloing a Warrior to meet Mike and my parked 44s. I guess he wants to go back to WoW.