Eric: Ha.. well.. that's why unmodded Oblivion sucked, but modded Oblivion was one of the best SP games of all time. ;) I was getting that feeling with WoW until a little bit ago when I found an area with some SERIOUSLY nasty baddies. 2500 hit points each?!

Will have to try the random dungeon thing out later.

I've sort of stumbled onto an "instance" .. holy hell these guys are tough! I love it! I'm assuming these aren't meant to be played solo.. lol. But I don't care, I'm having to fight for my life every time I engage one of these guys. Their 2500 hp to my 700 is a bit of an advantage in their direction.

It's some kind of depths or something or other area.. lots of murloc things. The night baddies are.. bad. Very hard to kill unless I get a crit or two on them.

I should be able to be on later tonight, the wifey and daughter are going out clothes shopping so it will be me and the boy. I can get him set up with some dinner and a movie and hang for a night, sure. May be interrupted here and there, though. LOL.. that might piss some 1337 gamers off. Welp, will do the best I can.

| Dungeons, FTW!

1) Go to Darnassus and check the 'job board' near the bank/hippogryph landing pad. This is a new feature to Cata that gives you a quest in your next appropriate zone. Find the zone, turn in the quest, and you should be pretty good to go.

1a) Yes, there are zones that will curb stomp yo azz. It's not like your beloved Oblivion is before hacking it, the zones don't level with you. ;)

2) Also, remember that Actiblizzard made leveling through the old content easier by design. They want you to get into the new stuff just as bad as Johnny wants to get there. :) That means that there is probably some mob nerfing going on, but as you advance levels the challenges will come. Again, jump into the random dungeon queue. This will make you a member of a team of 5 that have their different roles and you will (usually) be required to be (somewhat) at the top of your game. As you level up, the dungeons become trickier as well. Dungeons, FTW!

3) I should be on tonight... anyone else? :)

| Gen Con!

I didn't get time off for it! :( But they gave me the week off before Kubla, so I'll definetly make that one. I really wanted to friggen do Gen Con. For those that are going, how many days are you going to be gone? Is it like wed-sun?

Thanks for the 411. I'll see if I can look up a more challenging zone.

Also, a general question.. when I hit a target with mark and aimed shot, I do right around 300 pts of damage, sometimes as much as 600+ (assuming this is a critical roll).

I have the follow-up skill at 20% damage bonus for 20 seconds after each kill.. so this ramps it up into the mid 300's for the most part. I feel like my dood is hitting very hard (lots of 1-shot kills on almost anything).. but as a noob, don't want to get over confident.

Is this "good" for level 19/20? Just expected? Or, below where I should be?

Art, if you follow the quest paths, you will find things to be on average a little soft for your level, and by the time you finish all the quest chains in a given zone, you'll be a couple levels higher than the minimum starting point for the next zone. (Which is kinda weird... but better than it used to be, when you'd finish all the quests and then have to grind it out to get tough enough for the next zone.)

Basically it's designed to gently guide you through. If you want things to feel more challenging, look up the level range for one of the higher zones and bop over to it when you're a bit underpowered. Things 2-3 levels higher should provide a decent challenge especially if you try fighting a lot of them at once.

You can also try PVP. PVP is way crazier and tougher. Also, it doesn't provide XP, which is a good thing because you can do lots of it without leveling past the quests. One thing I wish you could do in WoW is shut off or throttle XP gains in dungeons.

This is also a downside of being on a PvE or "care bear" server. On the world PVP servers griefing or ganking can sometimes be a problem, but for the most part I think it's pretty fun and adds to the tension a bit.

Edit: And in late breaking news, Pumpkin is in for GenCon! YEAHHH! Haven't heard if GWAR is gonna make it this year or not.

Eryck:

Went ahead and signed up for the month. Only costed meez $22.

You have 30 days to get me addicted, sir. LOL

Dunno if I'll be up much more tonight (I am le tired). But can try to hook up with you maybe tomorrah after I put the family to bed?

Any places I should try to visit during the day tomorrow, (or places I should absolutely stay away from)?

Other question/issue: seems like everything is leveling up with me in the world. Is that my imagination, or accurate? When I'm level 40, will stags be level 38, or whatever? Are there places I can go right now where I will run into monsters that will absolutely stomp my face? I guess that's one of my ongoing weird-feel questions I'm having... Seems like the level of difficulty is being maintained just below my level? (and therefore, easy as pie?)

Regarding PvP.. I guess I could try that. No doubt I'll get stomped repeatedly by the vets, kind of like playing against the 10 year olds in the arcade that kill you in 3.2 seconds in Street Fighter with a 39-combo move.

| waaar maachineesss!

(sung to the tune of "Space Marines")

I joined a Warmachine league out in the East Bay, played my first session tonight and am happy to report sweet, sweet victory. It was a much different feel than the league Enron and I played last year where we were immediately demoralized and destroyed by the warmachine-playing killbots that occupied that particular store. People were friendly, the store (Endgame) is a much more generally hospitable place to spend time, and most of all, my caster was able to shoot the other one in the head. So yay for me!

I wonder why they didn't drop the price on WOTLK. IT's already 2 years old. Bliz is lame since they know that they could get MORE by making it a stepping stone for it if people wanted to upgrade to cataclysm. Way to suckle the addiction tit. Seriously lame. Ever heard of the maturing product cycle curve?

39 bucks. Do i want to upgrade? or the cata bundle fo 65 hrrmmm??????

On another note, I read one of Jons earlier post. Yeah, warriors kick some serious ass. I was playing an old toon of mine, 20ish level. In TBC and before i had to be extra careful not to run amuck and get swarmed. Now, I barely work up a sweath, and the creatures gets ripped to shreds with 2 -3 hits. I had a 1 hit kill once. Total Vanilla.

| Random Dungeon Tool

Jump in there if you can. If I can finish up my work tonight fast enough, we I'll jump in there and we can do some random dungeons!

Also, queue for some PvP. You think there is no challenge preying on the low green/gray level mobs? Try the most dangerous game of all....

Welp, made level 20 and played for a bit before realizing XP accrual stops exactly AT 20. Whoops.

So I guess it's decision time.

Dunno, lol.

| w0w

The immortal, self-repeating franken-WoW is back in force it would appear. eLzar plied at me for years to get into it and it just never hooked me. As much as I wanted to like the game, especially since all the Actionteam were horribly addicted and going on group raids. Unfortunately, I just didn't see eye to eye with the game. eLzar even sat me down for a few hours and played side by side with me. That being said, I can appreciate the draw. I have definitely had my video game addictions in the past.

I would love to be involved in some Actionteam online gaming party action, but truth be told, I don't seem to have any spare time right now. Between work, wedding arrangements and studying for my stupid real estate license, I am lucky to play 15 minutes of video gaming in a week.

D>M>

Hey, how 'bout that. The patch fixed things, and I can log in now.

I've run out of Exclamation Point people in the area Eric and I were playing. So, I went on a jog down south and have found a group of folks in need of help, lol.

ALthough, I'm back to gathering berries again at level 19.

I WANT to love this game, to feel the addiction.. and I'm not getting sucked in. =(

I'm killing almost everything in one-shot (aimed shot with hunters mark) I run into, including mini-bosses? At most, it takes one opening shot and a single follow up shot. Is that right?

I don't think I'd pay to play this game, unless you guys are in it. Seems to me that's the only real compelling reason to join up. Do we have a regular night? Can we make one? LOL

Or, let's fire up some NWN2 or OMG MINECRAFT! Heh.

If I want to play some single-player adventure/fantasy games, I think modded Oblivion is an unbelievably better product. Meh, what to do, what to do.

In all seriousness, anyone interested in getting a Minecraft server going? It's only like $15 and unlimited funzorz. Can make scenarios (capture the flag, defend the castle), just build awesome defenses against the zombie and skeleton hordes, or have exploratory missions into the wild! Just make sure you get a nice texture pack, the stock stuff is terrible, lol.

Jay-Lee: Personally, I probably wouldn't buy glasses like that. I believe the health benefit to wearing something like that, but glasses aren't comfortable to me. Maybe if they were extremely unintrusive I would consider it, but even now, I can barely deal with wearing glasses for a 3D movie. It just irritates my face.

You made me think about how much time I spend staring at screens and it's really obscene. :( At work, that's about 9 hours straight, and then when I'm home, if I'm not on the computer, chances are I'm looking at the tv or my phone. That's awful.

WoWers: You don't push me away from WoW Elric! It's a fun game. I was in good guilds that did high level instance stuff and pvp. I saw all kinds of hilarious drama, even crazier than shit on "The Guild". Enjoyed it all.

But since then I've just gotten more into gaming in general and I prefer more varied and challenging experiences. I paid my hundreds of dollars to the blizzard machine, and now I think I'm done. I can't see past the well engineered time-sink which makes me feel kinda dirty. If they take the billions of dollars they make and create a new game, I'll be stoked! I'm there Day 1! But for now, I'll just keep checking back, hopeful!

I'd have to go with not so much on the gaming glasses. I already have prescription reading glasses I can use if I'm feeling eye strain. I'd be surprised if there's a big market for these?

Regarding WoW: There's some kind of patch / download thing happening right now. I'm hopeful that it will fix mah problemo. I guess we'll see in about 10 minutes.

Regarding Beer: I think my new favorite beer is W'11, KGB. Damned GOOOD beer.

Excellent summation of Defense by the Wow Expert! Had me convenced at 1.

on another topic, talking about beer etc, this has nothing to do with beer. Just want to get some opinions, thoughts, negativity, /ignore, I had a company make me a pair of computer lenses for a frame that I made. I'm making a prototype computer glasses, which is pretty popular these days.

It reduces glare, eases strain, reduces fatigue, by changing the tint, as well as focusing the distance between the screen to the distance of the pupil.

Just taking a poll. How many of you guys would buy something like this? Just curious. OK - blast away, (it sucks, boba idea was better, beer is good, etc etc.)