Last post

Well I made to one more day of WoW posting. I can say with certain delight that I will continue to play this game and explore it as much as I can. I owe much to WoW for making me curious again about mmorpg's.

This time I was rather busy building up my experience points. I finished all my quests in Campo Santo (or Holy fields I guess...first level of the undead) and I also beat another quest in the Remol region. In Campo Santo I only had to find some missing cargo and in Remol I had to fight some nasty zombies. From my fights I discovered that I had but to hit the fight button often and I could hit my enemy much faster. I thought I'd try this because another classmate, Andrea I think, was repeatedly doing that in her fights the first time and I thought that was just a particularity of her race in the game.

Well I've had a good time playing this game and now it's time to pack and make my analysis paper. I feel that in closing this blog I close yet another chapter in my time making videogames. I think I still got it in me to play games and also continue an academic life while still being able to make games.

If there is one thing I've learned it's that there is certainly a lot I can give to the world, making games.

Here's to the future.

Possibly my last post

This is probably my last post as time is up on the analysis paper.

This time that I played I went back to playing with the intercontinental airship service (temporary name). I searched at least 2 other lands, and another one was inaccessible without a certain expansion pack (rise of the Licht king I think).

All the other lands were equally as difficult to roam about, beyond the towns. The easiest enemies were at level 10 and they still massacred me. I like at least that you could get to see new worlds and try out what was on the other side of the horizon.

In one of the new countries I decided to explore a reef so I tried my luck at swimming. Took me awhile to figure out that presenting the center button or both left and right buttons on the mouse made you go forwards. I was happily exploring a new submerged world until I was massacred yet again by underwater marauders...I guess there is no such thing as paradise in this game.

Upon reviving from this unfortunate encounter I found myself in a new cemetery, much closer to the beach, but I was surrounded by alligators. I vainly attempted to swim far beyond the beach but the alligators could swim too :( . Then I decided to wait and resuscitate in the water, but as soon as I thought I was home free I found myself again with those damned marauders. I gave up trying to walk my way back to the airship so I used the stone yet again to go back home.

I guess for now, completing quests on my continent is all I can do to really advance.

A whole new world

Seems this time I bit off more than I could chew. Having completed one more quest I decided to level-up by fighting some monsters that were slightly stronger than me. I successfully got to level 6 and decided to accept more missions from the Guards at Remol.

Utter disaster. I died 3 times trying to fight some dead guys under a bridge and I got killed by accident on the road while I was distracted (yes, another player massacred me).

I got sorta pissed after I became the laughing stock of the office, so I decided to venture off and kill some tough animals until, lo and behold, a funny tower was up a hill. I got to the top and discovered that this was some kind of airship port...

Being that I was hungry to explore more of the game, I happened to get on the blimp-ship (whatever) and before I knew I was taken to another continent altogether. I saw the sun for the first time in this game. Lush green jungles as far as the eye could see. Different People.

I went down to the beach of this new village, made an exchange of a few items (never done that before) and decided to see how tough the local fauna was...

Never before had I been killed 6 times in a row and next to the cemetary (which was far away from the village). My friend told me that the angry gorilla was just gonna keep killing me if I just moved, so he suggested I go back home using the home stone (or something like that). I was back in Remol in the blink of a loading screen and I decided to leave the game at that.

I accomplished little this time and I saw too much :P

Back from the dead (trial ended)

While the posts are getting a bit shorter, a lot has to do with my dwindling time to play.

I was able to successfully upgrade my account to further play WoW for another 30 days (and then some), I guess I am now a fully fledged world of warcraft player.

I decided to go back and finish some of the earlier quests. The way back was quite a long journey on foot and I remember my friend Phil once mentioning the use of horses in this game...sure could use one now. This gave me time to admire the world. When I first designed a 3D world for my game, I cheated using heightmaps and real satellite data of ireland, but whoever made the maps in WoW must have had quite a lot of time to venture of in woodlands and stuff...quite convincing scenery.

I got stumped on one quest that had to do with burying the remains of a guy I killed earlier. I decided to go hunting on google to see if they had any pointers on finding the blasted tomb. Seems this grave wasn't so obvious so it was a good thing I looked it up. If there is one thing I'm greatful about MMORPG is that everyone is online (not like the old days where you had to buy magazines and walkthroughs in Babbages)

One quest done, first on my new 30 day adventure. Time to go to sleep.

Shopping and upgrading (friday)

This post should've been made on friday (but I got too caught up in other social/work matters).

Basically on this day I met up with one of my buddies from the class, Phil, and he just talked to me how we could group, share items and go about fighting together. I was too concentrated on finishing up some other tasks in the initial world of the undead so I told him I'd meet him later at the second town.

I'm my way to the mines, I got lost and ventured way beyond the boundaries of my level. Needless to say I got my ass handed to me by some powerful enemies (who for no reason attacked me) and ended up dying twice (and I learned that not all clustered houses necesarrily represent a town or a safe haven). I decided to resurrect from the grave of the second town but I was still a few levels too low to participate in any quests there.

I went back to the first town to finish my errands and got myself acquainted with pawning a few items and getting new weapons and armor - I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of this MMORPG thing (at this point it feels like a normal RPG).

After getting a few missions done I was finally sent to the second town (Remol I think) to start doing some chores there. One thing let to another and I found myself in dire need of some level upgrading, but I was finally having some wholesome fun and I'm excited about what else I can find in this World of Warcraft.

One nice thing about my whole adventuring that day was that I caught the attention of one of my coworkers and she wanted to get in on the adventure (working for a videogame company has it's perks). Might as well convert the entire company to Warcraft fellows :P

humbly finished one quest

I didn't do much today. I felt very sick and slept most of the afternoon to recover a bit. I decided to just wrap up the mission to get wings and fangs for the mistress that heals other undead in town. I got my item pouch full so that hinted me that I could now sell my items for gold and cash in on some weapons.

I guess I'll do some of that tomorrow, shopping.

New character

So today I tried out a suggestion by one of my friends. Get together and form a team on World of Warcraft, but by creating a new character in one place.

We agreed upon the Undead. So I went out and made my new character, an undead warrior, called Azrhaeljp (just now I think I got the spelling wrong, as I meant to name myself after the Angel of Death, plus my initials).

I leveled up a bit and tried to complete a few quests (having been used to the whole initiation with the night elf character) and it was fun to play in this new setting. I played the quests for about an hour before I got to a new one which seems difficult...bats and other flying creatures don't let themselves get hit easily.

I noticed the effects of a bottlenecked connection with this new character. Everything was slow, even picking up items from dead enemies was slow. I'm starting to get hints about the underlying rules of the client-server structure. The game is starting to get interesting from a Computer Engineer's point of view.

Much later my friends added me and I was waiting for one of them to spawn from the grave...but that was just before class started and I also noticed I have a trojan running somewhere in my laptop.

(lucky for me I have this installed on my work computer)