Let's Play World Of Warcraft Chapter 1: You're A Wizard Harry

And so it begins. At character generation I elect to roll an Undead Wizard. Partly because I'm me and Undead Wizards rock my world, and partly because it seems oddly appropriate having just died of old age waiting for the updater to finish.

Now, quite naturally I wake up in graveyard with some winged ethereal bint standing over me. You know, as you do.

Just another regular morning.

Having been torn from beyond the veil of death to once more walk the land of living I am then immediately tasked with a mighty quest. "Oh mighty Val'kyr! Black harbinger of the grave! What is this great task for which you have awakened me from my eternal sleep? What fell deed is it I must complete?"

"I want you to talk to someone. He's over there."

Okay... Well, maybe he'll know what's going on.

I'll take that as a no then. Having walked 10 feet behind the first person I met to complete my first quest, next I am tasked with walking 10 feet behind the second person I've met in order to complete me next quest. Only this time I get to go inside a building! Obviously, this is all scary and new, and thus I am given a companion to hold my hand in the scary crypt.

So, there we are. zombie warrior and zombie wizard. Ready to team up and face the nightmarish terrors of...

A table. Because that's all that's down there. They gave me an escort to make sure I found my way into the building that was RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. In order to walk down a flight of stairs and pick up a couple of bits of crap for the lazy bastard standing RIGHT OUTSIDE THE DOOR. Who is apparently far to busy standing around doing nothing to take the thirty seconds to pick up his own crap. I am too disgusted to even make a bone idle joke. I am beginning to suspect two important things about the leaders of the undead. Firstly that they think everyone else is CRIPPLINGLY RETARDED. Secondly that this is because they themselves are in fact CRIPPLINGLY RETARDED. Still, let's take a deep breath and get on with the task in hand.

OH WAIT I CAN'T DO THAT BECAUSE I'M DEAD. Still, never mind eh?

Still, we return to laughing boy in less time than it takes to type this sentence. Having brought him supplies so that he can allegedly patch up the local zombies, what do you think the next logical course of action would be?

That's right. We must now kill a bunch of the local undead. And by we I of course mean I, since my burly companion is apparently exhausted by the rigors of the tomb of storage and has gone of for a little rest. And so it's up to me to defeat a small percentage of the mindless undead who are quietly milling around the graveyard, minding their own business, bothering no one. Still, ours is not reason why. Ours is simply to set things on fire. So we do that for a bit.

This makes absolutely no difference to the number of harmless zombies quietly milling around of course, and probably wouldn't even if I'd been asked to kill more than six of them. But I'm getting paid to kill six, so whatever. After that pointless little exercise I'm then sent on to meet a new contact. The directions for finding him are a little more complicated than my previous quests. This time he's 10 feet to the LEFT.

Not only that, but he's standing on a tree stump, and refuses to get down. I guess he figures that being higher up makes him more important or something.

INFINITE POWER!!!

So the king of the hill asks me to go talk to some other zombies. Apparently they're having some difficulty adjusting to their new situation. Frankly they're not the only one. Still, after a quick survey one third of respondents said "oh well never mind", on third said "AAAAHHHH DON'T LOOK AT MEEEEEE!!" and the remaining respondents said.... well.

What the hell is that even supposed to mean? I've... I've got elbows. EVERYBODY here has elbows. Even the mindless zombies have elbows, and most of them only have one arm. I don't even know what I'm doing any more. Frankly I'm starting to wonder if maybe I wouldn't be better off back in the grave.

Having reported back my findings I am then assigned my toughest assignment yet. Luckily Zombo McUseless or whatever his name was from earlier has recovered enough to once again accompany me. Which is good to know, because there's no way I could do this alone unless I happened to be older than five. The next job is to walk down a path.

Scary I know. I mean, that's what? 50 feet of clearly marked pathway to follow? It could take anything up to thirty seconds! How will I ever cope with this mighty task?

Tune in next week when you will hear "with frightening ease".

Let's Play World Of Warcraft Prelude

So then, I decided to have a go at a wow trial account. Why I hear you ask? Simple. Like anyone who resorts to playing wow I simply hate my life and want to die. However, rather than simply taking the dignified route of autoerotic asphyxiation in a cupboard whilst dressed as a chicken my self hatred runs so deep I'd rather totrure myself into oblivion in the slowest most painful way possible. Hence wow. There are many things in life that can destroy a mans will to live, but not many that can similtaneously destroy his will to die and leave him in a souless limbo state. So, you know, let's give that a go.

After creating a fake email and signing up for the trial we then ready to start our first quest: Kill 2 days.

Yeah. fisrt we must download TEN GIGABYTES of data. TEN. Seriously. I'm not quite sure how it is this games supposed to be so addictive when the very first step is to go and do something else for 2 days. Still, what do I know about anything? I admit that according to the downloader you're meant to reach a point about halfway through where you can actually play whilst it's downloading the 8 gig of stuff you will never get to because you're only doing this to take the piss, but that really doesn't work out so good.

Honestly I don't really mind the bizarre Nemesis The Warlock vibe at all, however the concept of framerates is but the fevered dreams of a madman as your bandwith is assraped by umtygigs of extraneous bullshit. So I guess we'll just have to come back later in the week.

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapeter 13:Chosen

Maris hated prophecies.

To be fair, when it came right down to it he hated a lot of things. Maybe even most things. The problem with most things was simply that they tended to get in the way of what you actually wanted to do. Most things were, simply, a distraction from ones goals. Which were simple enough. Maris was, at heart, a wizard. Or would be if he had a heart. Which he didn't, but he never let the absence of any major organs worry him. Organs were, like most things, simply another distraction. Like most wizards, all Maris really wanted to do was stay at home and read black and ancient tomes of forbidden knowledge, study the magical arts and learn some new spells. Admittedly most of the ones he ended up learning were explicitly violent. But those were the ones that came in most useful when someone was trying to interrupt. They also came in pretty handy on the rare occasions he ran out of arcane secrets no man was meant to know and had to go out looking for more. This was, he felt, the ideal way of life for any self respecting student of the magical arts. The simple fact that he was dead just meant that he theoretically had more time time to do it than most.

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 12: Piety

There were days when Maris wondered if he'd done something to offend some god or other who was even now exacting some tortuous and needlessly overcomplicated revenge. To be fair, in his line of work it was kind of hard not to offend the odd Deity, and there were an awful lot of them to choose from. For a start he was unnatural undead construction of bone and malice, which did tend to upset most of the various life and nature types, as well as a handful of the more boring gods of death. There were just so many of the damn things. More or less every culture had their own version of god for more or less everything, all with their own particular sets of rules and edicts. It was all so terribly complicated. Most of the time you just had to hope that whatever you did that found favour with one lot was enough to protect you from the ire of all the others you'd upset in the process. Or maybe that the gods had slightly better things to do than watch your every movement. Particularly the naked ones.

Of course there were those that might claim that there were no such thing as gods, but they were mostly just followers of Aethistocles, the god of doubt. There were other, saner scholars who questioned the existence of the church of Aethistocles. But that, the high priest would say as they sat back looking smug, was entirely the point.

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 11: Smash

"You see, the thing about a Greater Deathhulk is, they're really built for sieges rather than hand to hand combat" Maris explained to the Skittering Rat-Thing that sat next to him on the edge of the pit. He wasn't quite sure where the Rat-Thing had come from. Presumably it had followed him down from the upper levels.

"I mean, sure, they can obliterate pretty much anything in a single punch, but they're a little slow."

A great crash echoed up from the depths of the pit, as if to punctuate this statement

"Gk kggkgkg gk" chittered the Rat-Thing in agreement.

Old The New School

So here we are at last. The big mid season finale. The last big hurrah before the interminable wait for the second half to kick off later this year. Of course, as Doctor Who fans one thing we've learnt to do is wait. Through hiatuses and cancellations we've honed our patience. So a matter of a few months should pose no serious problem. Right?

Well... Kind of. if nothing else it'll give us an extra period of wild speculation, rumor, and inevitably a couple of spoilers. So... thanks for that?

But enough rambling about the unknown future. What of the episode itself?

On Why Heresy Miniatures Is Clearly The Best Miniatures Company Of All Time.

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Seriously though, go buy their stuff. The minis are pretty cool as well.

Gloat

Cliffhangers. If there's one thing we as Doctor Who fans love it's cliffhangers. The concept is deeply ingrained into the very fabric of Doctor Who.

Any excuse to use this pic

And one of the great things about this season is that we're getting some bonus ones. Whilst the 45 minute format has undeniably been successful, the limited number of 2 parters in each series has created something of a cliffhanger shortage. And whilst quality is obviously preferable over quantity it doesn't hurt to have a bit of both. Enter series 6. Can you believe that only 2 episodes in this half haven't ended on a massive cliffhanger? Isn't it absolutely MARVELLOUS?


And of course, this has been a cliffhanger that will live in legend. Who can honestly say that they saw that coming?

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 10: Knotted

There were many bizarre sights to be seen in the depths of the dungeon. Strange and terrible things that sent men mad, dark and wonderful vistas that sung in the souls of those lucky enough to escape them.

The Unclean Rites Of Zod, where the Fungal Formless met to dance under unseen constellations and make sacrifice.... The Razordiamond Cavern, where light itself echoed from the shattering spires of crystal and the Golems that formed themselves from the cast off shrapnel.... The Altar Of Agromishaad, which no man had seen and lived, but which at least one woman had described as overrated....

The sight of a rather bemused looking Barbarian Warlord, tied up with what looked like measuring tape, being led around the traps, past the patrols and into the forbidden depths was, it had to be said, a new one.