Wow-dot-comed

Last Friday I had a blog post featured on Wow.com.  Granted this is not the first time my blog has been mentioned, in the past It was just a minor link.  This time however they did a pretty flattering write-up on my GroupCraft series of posts from the last few weeks.  I have to say I was pretty shocked and amazed, and truth be told still more than a bit taken back by the mention.

As a result I got "wow-dot-comed”, which for a Warcraft blog is much akin to getting “slashdotted”.  For the weekend my readership shot up by over 900%, which equates to over 16,000 unique users.  I am unable to wrap my head around this notion fully yet, but on the most basic level I guess this means I am doing something right.  Hopefully folks can deal with the rambling topics that fit their way in-between my informative ones.

Honor Thine Campfire

Well it is once again time for the Midsummer Fire Festival, and boys and girls find themselves running around like mad trying to either honor or put out bonfires.  I started in on the first bit of this early yesterday morning, and by the end of the day had completed the Eastern Kingdom achievements.  I figured that if I broke it down into several smaller chunks I would not suffer from the hatred and loathing that so many of the previous events have ushered in for me.

In truth, I don’t really mind events like this one.  Sure it takes large blocks of physical time to visit all of the bonfires, but it is purely based on player effort and not luck.  It also gives me time to sit back and revisit the old world, a place where I rarely travel anymore save for the trips to the Ironforge auction house.  Sunday I was taken back by the sheer marvel of what various pieces of the old world meant to me as I leveled through out.  The game world in warcraft is truly amazing if we just take the time to notice it in our rush to get somewhere else.

I’m hoping to get some guild help on the stealing the flame quests which take you into opposing faction capitols.  That appears to be the only real stumbling block for me, since I play on a server where PVP only exists if forced by the players.  Wowhead has a great blog entry, with links to quests and locations of all the bonfires, which should prove useful to any player trying to complete all this madness.

Now for the massive disappointment.  It appears that the Lord Ahune event has remained completely unchanged.  I realize its probably unrealistic to expect blizzard to go back and updated every one of these “boss” encounters to be viable for the latest expansion.  Based on the fact that they DID update the loottable for the Headless Horseman between his last two appearance, I did however expect that there be something either added or modified to the event.  Based on early reports, the items dropping seem to be exactly the same as the previous year.  Oh well at the very least this gives players a shot at getting a Scorchling pet if they did not get one last year.

360 Degrees of Not WoW

One of the things I have been trying to do lately, in order to stave off burnout is to do something OTHER than play wow on a pretty regular basis.  Previously I had written about taking a weekend away from the game, to explore Fallout 3…  which I might still add is amazing.  With my recent Birthday I indulged in the purchase of a doodad I have been wanting for a long while.  So I am finally joining the rest of the gaming public by starting to play an XBox 360.

Believe it or not, I have never played ANY Xbox titles be it classic or 360 prior to this Sunday.  I had been a console junkie for years, and have every major console platform leading up to the PS2.  However around that time, I fell off the planet as far as these titles were concerned.  Yes this does in fact coincide with my entrance into the dark world of MMO gaming.  I’ve recovered some of these roots with my PSP, and playing my PS2 while at the lake and otherwise unwired.

I attempted to make a brief foray into the console world once more with the Wii.  While it is ridiculously fun, it doesn’t really provide the true “gamer” experience I once savored so much.  Many of the titles seem to be more gimmick than game play.  So I am looking to Microsoft and the Xbox to give me back some of that console diversion I was missing.  The fact that I could stream movies 24/7 through it with a Netflix subscription was a very solid secondary reason. 

However I now find myself far more interested in the XBox Live Arcade titles than the shiny disc games.  Carcassonne has already accounted for many lost hours of strategic goodness.  I have to give an apology to Ysinnia of Limb From Limb…  I have given her immense amounts of crap over the years for her husband’s “bored game” nights.  It was them who introduced me to this great game, when I was up visiting family in the area they live.  While I won’t guarantee more crap in the future…  I am having to eat crow now because the game is amazing, and even more amazingly translated onto the Xbox.

I figure I will eventually add a xbox gamertag link on the side panel of this site, but for the time being if anyone out there wants to friend me I am “eXeterTBC”.  I am playing Street Fighter 4 offline right now, as I attempt to remember how to play the SF franchise with a certain measure of skill.  I have to admit that it was rarely disarming when I first booted up the game, to keep getting spammed with challenges from live players.  I kept trying to sit down and play a nice computer match, only to get my ass kicked over and over by a kick who has unlocked Akuma.  After a few minutes I figured out how to turn that option off and was back to pleasantly beating the game and unlocking characters for myself.

Humbled

I feel once more like I need to take a quick moment to thank all of you who helped make this blog a success.  I am overwhelmed on a daily basis by the regular readers and support I have gotten from the WoW Blog community.  I will do my best to continue to write something worth reading, if you continue to read it.

 

Thanks