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| Tommy: | Did you hear I finally graduated? |
| Richard: | Yeah, and just a shade under a decade too…all right. |
| Tommy: | You know a lot of people go to college for seven years. |
| Richard: | I know, they’re called doctors. |
Just in time for 2.4 too, where it will quickly be obsoleted. Sigh.
Ancient Sun took its first baby steps into SSC on Saturday night. We managed to down Hydross, and cleared through to Lurker (who looks like he’ll be cake for next time) before we ran out of steam. The stat report is here, and yes, that is me at the top.
Two Street Fighter links for readers today:
Busy, yet highly successful.
Ancient Sun often has trouble getting enough people together to properly run Zul’Gurub. As much fun as it is to kill the same two bosses over and over again, it does tend to get a little repetitive. We were once again short on numbers on Friday, so we ran Upper Blackrock Spire instead, and got me (and several others) attuned for Blackwing Lair. It was a much needed change of pace (for me), and was greatly appreciated.
Ancient Sun also belongs to a loose association called the Allied Guilds which functionally creates a larger pool of L60 player characters from which to draw for high-level instances. I jumped into my first Allied Guild instance run on Sunday (cocked-up raids in EP don’t count), and it was quite the experience.
These runs are most often (from what I hear) run by Mirax of Swords and Staves fame. Mirax and his compatriots lived up to their reputation: they behaved like fucking children in Vent. However, since it was mostly directed at each other, I was happy to let it slide, because they did keep things on point, and set a pretty brisk pace. What’s more, I got to see parts of ZG I hadn’t yet seen, downed two new (for me) bosses, and snagged some phat loot for myself in the process. We didn’t manage to down Hakkar, but not for lack of trying.
All in all, a successful weekend, and what will probably be my last hurrah in WoW for a while.
In vaguely chronological order:
Best wishes to everyone in 2006!
James and Colin took me through SM for the first time last night. When it was all said and done, one of the quest rewards was the [Sword of Serenity], which I just couldn’t pass up, despite not even having the skill to wield the item.
Damn you, Blizzard! Damn you and your bloody effective viral marketing!
Who needs sleep anyway?
I don’t play many video games these days; up until this past weekend, Halo 2 had not left the drive of my Xbox since it was released. The single-player story mode of Halo 2 was great, but I have long since finished it. The online experience has never truly captivated me, due in large part to the asshats I always seem to end up playing with/against.
I had been craving a comparable single-player experience, so Kev loaned me The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. This is the first franchise-based game I have ever played that has got the atmosphere right — and by right, I mean spot-fucking-on — through some synergistic combination of motion capture and carried-over voice talent. When you back away from a Nano-Med station in the game, you are Vin Diesel/Riddick. The game is a little short, but that is only really an issue because it is just so damn fun. Highly recommended.
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You may also find the Random Vin Diesel Fact generator amusing, although probably not as much as I do. Props to Hoye for the link.
A few little things, lest they fall through the cracks:
January is always a family-centric time of year for me. I have two brothers who were born ten days apart at the end of the month — yes, in different years — so I end up seeing a whole lot of everyone.
Tonight, the family assembled to celebrate Bob’s birthday. Bob’s a little picky when it comes to food, so while my gift of homemade chocolate ice cream covered off dessert, for dinner, we headed to La Favorita on McArthur for some seafood indulgence. Oh my, was it ever good. We went the seafood platter route, which resulted in a truly prodigious amount of cooked aquatic life showing up at our table. At first I couldn’t even see the crab legs with all those pesky lobsters piled on top of them, along with the scallops, and mussels, and shrimp… I probably exceeded my mercury quota for the next decade, but I did my best to make sure that no mollusc was left behind. Highly recommended.
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Until now, I’ve been concentrating almost exlcusively on the single-player online experience of Halo 2. This past weekend, I started playing more of the team-based games, largely because Dan happened to be online and sent me a party invite.
I enjoyed playing the team variants with Dan and his friends because they all seemed focused on the mission objectives, Playing with the general Halo populace leaves something to be desired, though. At the lower levels, it was quite easy to dominate people or even whole teams who had no idea what they were doing. But as I started to increase levels to where I seem to naturally plateau (around level 10), some really annoying issues started to crop up.
Most matches pit teams of 4 against each other, but that doesn’t mean they will end with 4 players a side. Quite often, players seem to bolt from games if the team gets down by a few kills, leaving the remaining players to fend for themselves with reduced numbers. Good bloody luck, is all I can say. I’ve also had a real problem when the matchmaking server has put me in a match where I have one bar of connection quality while everyone else is at full. Due to the level ranking system employed by Halo, if I quit out of that game, I am automatically ranked last for that match (unless others also quit), but if I decide to play it out, I have little hope of being competitive while the other players run circles around my lagging ass. It can be incredibly frustrating.
