My two sons are back playing, at least for a few days it seems!They have found a ‘private’ server which gives instant level 80 and some gear and are having some fun without paying a subscription. win,win in my book!Me, I’m not playing anything really, had a dable with Bioshock for a short time but not had chance to play much with it.Anyway, just a quick update for my one reader, you know who you are!So long,Dirky.
As the snow tried it’s best to fall this afternoon we did our second instance run in the WotLK, the Nexus. We were the same group as last weekends when we did Utgarde Keep.
- Asoth level 80 Death Knight
- Dirky level 71 Warlock
- Bbcone level 72 Mage
- Grizeldorg level 70 Shaman
- Truot level 70 Rogue
Apart from some stupid mistakes, mainly caused by my son Bbcone throwing a miniture zepplin to me to catch and then pulling a patrol which came from behind him we did ok.
The last boss proved a challenge. As our level 80 died I managed to get a couple of DoT’s on the boss just before it hit me across the room and killed me.
Thankfully, as you can see from the screenshots these DoT’s only just managed to finish it off! A nice dagger dropped which went to our Rogue, Truot.
Whilst in the instance I reached level 72
Phew it’s been a while I’m sure you will agree!
A quick update is in order I think.
Well I reached the max level on my sorcerer in Warhammer Online, level 40 about November 2008 time I guess.
But the big news is that I started playing WoW again!
My son Bbcone got the bug again and so we purchased WotLK and upgraded our accounts.
I’m taking it very slowly and just reached level 71 over the last weekend.
I’m not currently in any guild, I did not leave <And His Imaginary Friend> but when the guild leaders account was hacked the guild was disbanded by the hacker so everyone was kicked out.
As I never played WoW at that time I did not ask to join again. As I’m only 71 at present and making slow progress towards 80 there is probably no point me asking to join again.
I did my first WotLK instance run at the weekend, Utgarde Keep with some friends and my son Bbcone. It was much fun, though we had a few wipes on the last boss! 
Just over 2 weeks since Warhammer Online was released I have managed to finally reach level 20 on my sorcerer Dirky.
What that means is the arrival of a faster way of getting around the lands in the form of a large raptor mount. It cost me 15 gold and I bought it from the special vendor in the main city.
I’ve enjoyed the trip to level 20 so far, the guild is doing great and is currently Rank 9. We have our own website at http://www.abysguild.org.uk/ which I look after. We currently have about 65 members, not exactly sure on how many of those are active.
Not sure how many hours I have played in total but it seems a bit of a race at present to reach level 40, thats not something I really like, I’d prefer to potter around and take in the scenery a bit more. However each time I get killed by a higher level Order player I think to myself…’must level faster!’
Both my sons are playing the game and share an account at present, you can imagine the turmoil this causes at times :)The eldest Son of Bbcone mage fame, is levelling a healer class - Chaos Zeaolt and the younger son is levelling a Chaos Chosen as he likes the cool armour and weapons.So there we are, that brings you up to date a little. More news when I have it.
Having managed to get 6 people together and online in one place for long enough last night, Hastyr formed the new guild, Abyss.During this process we needed to get a random player with us to make up the 6 people which are needed in order to form a guild in Warhammer Online, I forgot I was not the group leader and tried to invite a random player after talking to him to get his approval.In Warcraft you would get a message telling you that you are not group leader or similar, well in Warhammer you get a message telling you that yor “Party leader has been informed” !Which I assume pops up a message on your group leaders screen telling them that Dirky tried to invite SoAndSo.Now thats nothing outstanding you might say but it seems so obvious when you think about it, is the small things and the attention to detail that matters.
Yes that’s right, 18th September 2008 saw the long awaited release of a new MMORPG; Warhammer Online - The Age of Reckoning.
My youngest son (nearly 9) has been waiting for this game for ages, so to make sure we got it on release day I pre-ordered a copy from Amazon and also turned up at the doors of Game shop in Lancaster at 9am with cash in hand.
Fortunately the Amazon copy arrived through the letter box on the 18th, so we had a copy each.
I’ll skip forward now about 3 hours of installing, patching (830mb) and a really messy registration process, all times 2! It was all worth it though!
The game is seriously good. I’ve not played it that long so far, maybe 4 hours total, my son and I are at level 8, he is a Squid Herder and I chose a Sorcerer. The Sorcerer seems to be kind of a cross between a mage and warlock without pets and the Squid Herder is kind of a hunter - in WoW speak. On to the game…
Good points.
- The UI of the game is outstanding, it’s customisable and gives you a whole lot of information.
- The graphics in the game are very nice, I think there has been more use of colour than in WoW and the model details are very good.
- The quest system is excellent, you get hints on the map telling you where to go and hints on where to hand it in at once completed.
- The public quests are great fun, you get to dip in and out of these when the fancy takes you and the rewards are nice.
- The battlegrounds seem very good, I’ve only played about 4 of these, the queue times are very bad at present, hopefully they will fix this. There is so much information flying up the screen it’s a little daunting but gives you a sense of reward reaching a new goal here and having a new encounter there.
Bad points.
- At busy times I have to wait 10 or 15 minutes to get on the server. Whilst playing WoW I can honestly say this never happened on the server I was on.
- There is a damn annoying EULA that you seem to have to agree to each time you play the game. Please fix this!
- Battleground queues are awful. Hopefully this will be sorted in time.
On the whole I think its an outstanding game, there are many things I have not explored as yet so can’t really comment on them.
The guild system is very exciting, you get to capture buildings and keeps and plant your guild banner on the structure. At a certain level you get your own guild area for meetings etc. I’ll post another mini-review when I have had time to play more…
I just dug this photo up whilst looking for something else recently. It was drawn for a pre-play briefing session held by my son (12) Bbcone for some farming we were doing at Dalsons Tears, just outside the Bulwark.We were either farming Argent Dawn rep or Runecloth or something else.Click on the image for a much larger view. 
Some of the writing on the board:-
- Warning - when poisen is on you keep away from the group players, HAZERDUS
- Remember - Actual game play may vary. Can cause seazures, loss of sight
- Several ‘Escape points’ are marked on the field.
- Lets do this!
- After pull, SoC I blizz (this is a bit hard to read)
It was fun at the time!
Well as I said in my previous post I would not be updating things here as frequently as I have been done.
Simple reason is there has not been a lot to report.My eldest son Bbcone has not been playing much at all over the past few weeks, though he has logged on now and again just for a social chat with his guild, oh he also did some bosses in Karazhan with them, which surprised me.
He has talked about trying to get his palladin up to 70 before WotLK comes out, then he will level it to 80, not sure how much he means it but it will be interesting to see.
My youngest son (8) has recently started levelling his palladin, which he is enjoying, however he likes me to watch him which I’ve not had a lot of time to do recently. It’s currently level 27.
I logged in last weekend for a few hours on and off as it was AV weekend, so I boosted my honor from 8k to about 14k, not much but it all helps…. for what I’m not sure!
I noticed that my guild has had a lot of new people join over the past few weeks, in fact there must be a good 10 people I had not heard of before.
I hope it’s going well for the guild. So there we go, thats your update for now.
Well my prior post may have given it away slightly but if not, I’ve decided to have a rest from raiding for a while. Not sure how long just yet but for several reasons I am putting it to one side for a while.
I think the following post I made yesterday on my guilds website will explain it better:-
Well guys, you may have noticed I’ve not been raiding over the past 2 weeks or so. I’m here to explain my absence and more.
I suppose basicaly it comes down to time, or lack of it at present. I’ve not had enough free time really to be able to spend 3 or 4 hours twice a week raiding. Also my son Bbcone has practically given up playing WoW (more details of this on my blog) this has had an effect on me in an odd way, hard to describe.
There were often times when he would be at my side when I was raiding, which was fun but for the past couple of months he hasn’t done this and it’s not been the same really. As I say it’s a hard feeling to describe.
In a way its made it harder to justify with ‘her who must be obeyed’. As now it’s seen as a pastime that only *I* take part in and not the two of us. It’s a game the two of us have played for 2 or 3 years together.I’m not giving up WoW totally, just taking a break from raiding, I hope that ok? and I can stay in the guild?
I’m going to spec for PvP which is something I can just do for 20 or 30 mins when I get chance. To me raiding is kind of a commitment and also requires reading up on new boss tactics, wathing the videos etc and this is something I cant get my head round at present, so I would feel if I wasn’t giving 100% to the raid then I would be letting it down, not my style.
So for the time please don’t invite me to raids as I would politely have to turn you down, which I don’t want to have to do.
Thanks to all you guys who have been so great to me since I joined last November. Many thanks to Darkpact for being a great CL, hope this is ok with you m8.
cheerio for now,
D
So there we have it. The guild, And His Imaginary Friend have really been fantastic and I’ve enjoyed my time with them and hope to do so in the future too. They have some great members and are very friendly and always willing to help. They are progressing well and I’m proud to have seen 99% of their progression in 25 man raids. The guild is now in the top 10 guilds on our realm, Laughing Skull EU, which I think for a non hard-core raiding guild is excellent going. I wish them well and I’m sure I’ll be back to some raiding at some point in the future.
This does not mean I won’t update the blog either, just not perhaps with I got my final peice of Tier 5 loot last night type posts…..
Well, knock me down with a feather, I never thought I’d hear my 12 year old Son utter those words but utter them he did last week. It came as a bit of a shock but I’d seen it coming over the preceding few weeks I guess.
There was a time when he would get up in a morning, extra early to do his daily quests, then he would come home from school and jump straight on the PC (or my Mac) to continue with some more quests. Or he’d be running some instance on one of his alts he liked to keep leveling. I’d smile when I saw him in Scarlet Monestery over and over and over again!
Then he moved more to the PvP (Player versus Player) side of things on his level 70 mage Bbcone earlier this year. It was hard for him to get in a decent raiding guild with many of the raids going on late in to the night, so PvP seemed a better thing for him to be doing. He’d be in some battleground or other for hours on end or playing arena games. Then along came the Arena Tournement Realms and he wanted us both to subscribe to that so we could play together.
We did this and for a while we would play together, he stopped logging on his mage on Laughing Skull and only logged to play the Arena realms. Maybe 2 months or so ago he would only play for 30 mins after getting in from school then he was off out with his friends playing football or on their bikes.
The weather was nicer and the night lighter so this was a good thing. Then the playing stopped all together, he’d come in from school, go on MSN for 10 mins or Bebo and then be off out playing.
I think he’s just got to the stage where the game has become boring for him and he has done so much with it, kind of ‘Warcraft Overload’ I’d call it. So there we are that brings you a little news from Dirky HQ. It also leads on to my next post sometime soon about my WoW feelings……..
watch this space.
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