Let's Play World Of Warcraft Chapter 5: You Are What You Eat (Dead Things)

Having at least temporarily assuaged my rampant base jumping urges in the last installment I suppose it's time to get back to the plot.

And this time it's a VEGETABLE PLOT.

You may recall that one part of the arbitrary list of things to steal and/or kill (delete as applicable) I was given were some pumpkins. Apparently there was actually a reason for this, which puts it up beyond most of the other crap I've been doing. Apparently we're going to infect the pumpkins with plague, and then give them back to the humans who won't be at all suspicious. This obviously far more sensible than, say, just injecting the pumpkins with plague serum in the fields. I mean, a rotting zombie come up to you all like "here frail human, take this totally normal pumpkin that has clearly not been tampered with in any way as a token of goodwill from the hordes of brain eating horrors that plot the downfall of mankind" what would YOU do?

Well I'll be damned. They ACTUALLY fall for it. Still, in many ways I suppose that makes sense. After all, the only sort of enemy force that could be locked in stalemate with whatever mentally challenged reprobates are running this around here is one that is even equally as stupid.

Wait, what?

Anyway, what's next on the list? Oh yes, the madwoman in the attic. Now, as you may be aware I spent a large amount of time recently jumping off a tower as that was infinitely more fun than whatever it was I actually supposed to be doing. At the top of the tower is a zombie woman in a cage.

Obviously. I mean, where else would you keep it? Anyway, I didn't mention her before as she wasn't exactly the most interesting soul to chat with. That is, the stuck up bitch wouldn't talk to me at all. Anyway, thing is I found a note about her on the body of a guard I landed on defeated in single combat that mentions little miss superior, so apparently I have to go check her out. Again. Even though I've already been up there like twenty times.

Whatever. Any excuse to go up the tower again. After finding out she's got her name in the papers her mood brightens enough for to actually put some effort into telling me to go away. Bitch wouldn't know gratitude if I beat her death with it. It's just as I'm trying to work out exactly how one might accomplish just this that a rather large and heavily armoured human captain stomps up the stairs and...

Walks straight past me.

I mean, there I am. Being a hideous abomination. In broad daylight. Right in front of him. But does he even notice? Nope. Unlike literally EVERY OTHER living being I've encountered he doesn't try to kill me on site. I'm not quite sure why it is this strikes me as offensive. Still, it's all academic as he wanders of to Bitchy McBetterthanyou and then promptly keels over dead.

Well, that was worth it then. Only one thing left to do know I guess.

WWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

My wanderings next take me (via killing X of Y for dubious reward) to the town of Brill. Much like the almost village I first encountered it only seems to have about 3 buildings. Only, you know, they're BIGGER.

It's here I pick up some work with the Royal Apothecary Society. Now, there does seem to be much royalty involved. Or indeed much in the way of actual apothecarizing. But we get to make virulent plagues out of dogs blood, so that's fun. Or would be if there was any. See, there's something up a little odd about the local canine population. Other than the fact that they apparently wear trousers. I am of course sent of to trudge the countryside killing dogs and collecting their blood. Only most of them don't even HAVE blood. They're like reverse vampires or something. The literal opposite of bloodhounds. It's all rather confusing really. I mean, what makes them go? Marmalade? Grass and woodchips? There's gotta be SOMETHING in there, right?

It's at whilst I'm trying to work this out that I suddenly instead learn how to summon a water elemental.

I'm... I'm not quite sure how I managed that. From dogs with no blood to harnessing the elemental forces of nature. Maybe it's just pretending to be a water elemental? Maybe it's actually a DOG BLOOD ELEMENTAL?

Anyway, having scraped up enough congealed filth from the corpse of dead dogs I nip back to town for another lesson in brewing plagues. I give the apothecary his shit. He pours it into a glass of beer and tells me to give it to the prisoner upstairs.

"Here frail dwarf, take this totally normal pint of ale that has clearly not been tampered with in any way as a token of goodwill from the hordes of brain eating horrors that plot the downfall of mankind".

And that's another dead bastard to add the pile. Seriously, it's like they WANT to die.

After a little more sodding around with some taller dogs in trousers I'm sent off to check in with another apothecary.

DUDE. I will kill X of whatever you like if I can have your hat. No? Screw you then. What about his power packed giant assistant?

Wait. What the hell are you supposed to be anyway? Why is there a gay dwarf painted green standing around in a field in the middle of the kingdom of the dead?

You know what? Don't answer that. What is it stumpy here needs doing anyway?

He.... He wants me to chase CHILDREN around. Not even children. BABIES. Little fish people babies. Who look like this:

I.E. ADORABLE. And I'm supposed to run around after them. Not even being properly evil and killing them in a black sacrifice to our master Satan or anything. Just chase them around until they pass out.

I think we now know why sexdwarf here is hiding out in corpse town. Who knew that Murlocs had their own version of Dateline?

Let's Play World Of Warcraft Chapter 4: Times 10 To The Power

Dear diary, guess what I did today? What's that? Kill things in multiples of 10?

However did you guess? Slay the pumpkins, gather the farmers, battle the herbs and steal the warriors. Or something like that anyway.

But perhaps we should start at the beginning. After fleeing the last set of idiots who insisted on giving random and pointless things to do I find my way to the NEXT set of idiots who who insist on giving me random and pointless tasks to do. In order to punish a group of humans for living across the road I'm asked to go and kill their menfolk and steal their pumpkins.

Because nothing says vengeance like a lack of pumpkins.

Of course, all this is entirely futile. The human farmers have obviously found out about that whole not having to actually die if you don't feel like it thing, as they just keep coming back. Which is probably just as well, as considering how many of them there are and the fact that their farm is apparently only capable of sustaining a handful of pumpkins to eat the starvation and suicide rates are probably pretty high.

Speaking of which....

A high tower tucked away behind the farm and patrolled by a few guards with a deathwish.

Given that:

A - I am undead and thus immune to many things the living would consider fatal, and
B - Even if my body is destroyed somehow I can just pop back up after a quick jog on the astral plane, and
C - I am FUCKING BORED of killing these idiots and stealing their shoes

The logical conclusion is thus:

LOL.  Well, seeing as how I'm a ghost now anyway...

WWWWHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE..........................

Well, that was easily the most fun I've had yet. After spending a pleasant time killing all the guards, running up to the top of the tower and then jumping off I guess it's probably time to report back in. After all, if I don't go and say that I killed 10 farmers no one will actually notice the difference. What with them coming back to life again a minute later and everything.

Still, that's the requisite number of farmers "killed" chief. What's next on the menu?

Yeah. He wants me to kill some of the soldiers. The soldiers guarding the tower. The tower I just spent the last hour jumping out of. And in the process killed about 50 of the goddamn things. Of course, trying to explain to my current idiot that I've already exceeded his quota is about as much use fighting a bunch of guys who just keep coming back to life. But what can you? After all I need the money. I mean, it's POSSIBLE that one day I'll find a shop with something I actually want to buy in it. Right?

Okay, probably not. But if it's a choice between aimlessly roaming the countryside in search of herbs and mathematically precise groups of wolves with rabbits feet who wear gloves and their sword wielding bat friends or standing around doing nothing then...

WWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's Play World Of Warcraft Chapter 3: Slowly Comes The Deathmoose

In our last installment if you'll recall we went out to kill a random number of animals. Guess what we're going to do today?

Close enough. Only this time it's spiders. Variety is the spice of life. So I guess it's only fitting that monotony is the spice of death. Anyway, apparently giant spiders have infested the local gold mine. So, rather than clearing it out, destroying eggs or doing anything remotely sensible I'm asked to nip over, kill a handful and then come back having achieved nothing useful. Which, since I'm getting paid I promptly do.

Well, that was fun*. What's next?

*may not contain actual fun

Well, try to stay with me here. Seems there's some rebel zombies who want to attack the "village". Now, rather than going straight off to fight them I must first go and find the festering idiot man-child who has dogged my every step since I woke up in the graveyard this morning. Of course, he won't actually HELP in anyway. That would be a bit to obvious. No. He'll just stand by a tree, a nice safe distance from the enemy camp whilst I go and do all the hard work.

THANKS.

So anyway, leaving him to cower in a puddle of whatever it is that passes for cowardice in the undead I trudge up the hill and into the pitched battle at the enemy camp. There's apparently an infinite number of psychotic assholes leaping around. They were all like:

And at first I was like:

But then after a bunch of them suddenly appeared right behind me I was all like:

Ah. Dead then. Again. Well, all things considered I suppose it's a blessed release really. This whole undead slayer of random quantities of things bit wasn't really working out so well, and that whole bit with the rabbit footed wolves was far to confusing. Maybe it's better to just slip away into peaceful oblivion....

OH GODDAMNIT.

So now I'm the ghost of a zombie. Wandering around a twisted nether dimension completely bereft of anything resembling intelligent life. So, business as usual then. Guess I'll go for a walk and see where I died. I mean, what else is there to do?

Just sayin'

Anyway, where was I?

Hahahahahah. Look at that dead bastard. Hey, what does this do?

OH GODDAMNIT.

Not only am I once again cursed to walk the land of the living from the neck down, not only that, but now I find that the way to cheat death is to simply wander around the astral plane until you get bored, at which point you just pop back into existence? WHY THE HELL AM I A FUCKING ZOMBIE IF IT'S THAT BLOODY SIMPLE?!?!?! Seriously, did nobody think to mention this before? It's no wonder these here zombie bastards are so upset. Judging by the way they keep popping up from nowhere and the fact that I've killed their glorious leader no less than 5 times in a row I'd say THEY'VE worked it out. Wouldn't you be pissed of to discover you'd been turned into a festering zombie when you were but a short walk from being properly alive again?

Screw this noise. I'm going away for a while.

CONtretemps

So, I went to the London Film & Comic Con on Saturday. I'd never been to a con before, so it was an interesting new experience.

Well, that's not STRICTLY true. I have, after all, been shopping and spent far to much money before. Just not usually surrounded by quite so many nerds. There was quite a bewildering array of things on offer. I know there were talks and stuff as well, but it turned out the only one that I'd really have been interested in happened before we got in. Maybe if they'd actually bothered to list any of them on the goddamn website we could have arranged to go early. Ah well, such is life.

But the shopping! As I said, there was much. Many and various THINGS. And I didn't even get everything I wanted. There was some Yu-Gi-Oh stuff and Doctor Who minis that I was going to back for, but when the time came my mind and body were broken and I totally forgot. Which is kinda annoying. If you want a good idea of the breadth and depth of the prizes on offer, aside from the fact that we spent nearly a whole day trawling up and down the dealers aisles, allow me to demonstrate.

You see those cute Sanrio characters?

I NOW HAVE PORN OF THAT. In soviet Japan Rule 34 is Rule No. 1. And it's mandatory.

Aside from the Doujin stand and the wizards hats the other highlight of the day was, for me, getting a photo with Sylvester McCoy. Because to a child of the 80s Doctor Who fanboy like me he is unto a GOD. I'm not going to post it of course. Aside from the simple principle of putting a wretched visage such as my own online, the simple fact is that my idiot grin and rigid posture make me into the human equivalent of a massive boner. Which on sober reflection is of course entirely accurate. Even aside from being a massive cock most of the time at the moment my entire body was an erection.

Metaphorically speaking.

Anyway, as cool as that was it did sadly lead to the only major problem of the day. Which was trying to collect the damn thing. Picture if you will a thousand sweaty, exhausted and cheesed off individuals, clustered round a small table, desperately trying to collect their pictures as the clock inexorably counts down towards chucking out time and NOBODY HAS A CLUE WHAT'S GOING ON. Eventually I managed to recover mine with 10 minutes to go. Which was rather cutting things fine. To say the situation lacked organisation is rather like saying the cold void of interstellar space lacks a breathable atmosphere. I'm not convinced they were quite prepared for the Karen Gillan sessions that had completely sold out well in advance of the day thus not really providing them any reasonable excuse, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, despite the trauma of the last hour and a half or so it was actually quite a fun time out. Which baring in mind my rather fragile mental state is pretty impressive. May have to try it again some time.

Once mind, body and wallet have recovered, anyway.

Let's Play World Of Warcraft Chapter 2: Back In The Village.

And so, with frightening ease, we find ourselves at the gates of the village of Deathknell. Who, frankly, need to have a serious talk with whoever it is that's running their tourist board.

Bring the whole family!

I mean, I get that the major features of the place are graveyards and mildly disinterested undead wandering around, but Deathknell? Really? The whole setup seems pretty odd frankly. There are a whole THREE buildings in use. Outside of the stockade surrounding these 3 buildings there are plenty of disused structures, but no one seems in any hurry to occupy them, possibly due to the hordes of harmless skeletons that wander aimlessly around  like pedestrians in search of something that isn't another bloody starbucks. Seeing as how there's lots of them, and seeing how they're harming no one, the first thing I'm asked to do is kill an arbitrarily small number of them.

His name was Albert. He was only looking for a picnic site.

This of course serves no readily apparent reason. The blading deathmurder I unload into these hapless deadites doesn't seem to significantly reduce their numbers. AT ALL. As soon as you've finished burning one of the hapless sods 3 more wander by, idly wondering if you're doing some sort of street theatre or something.

He was so cuddly. And now he's dead.

It's not ALL murder though. Whilst I'm wandering around the outskirts of town (I.E. actually the middle of the village) I'm also tasked with gathering dead bodies. Which seem to grow like mushrooms in these parts. Although perhaps gathering the bodies of the slain is not a strictly accurate description. If we're being completely honest here my job is to point out dead bodies to my idiot companion.

Who apparently has never seen one before and therefore doesn't know what one looks like. And can't remember even after he's carrying like six of them piled on his back.

After escorting the festering man-child back to what passes for civilisation in these parts (I.E. 20 feet up the road) I collect my reward and am given an important communique.

Hmm, a summons from the Mage Trainer Isabella. Clearly this be important for her to send a scroll all the way to the head priest guy. I better prepare myself for a long and arduous trek. Where in the world could she possibly be?

Oh fuck you. Fuck you right in the ear. You're telling me that the person STANDING NEXT TO ME had to write you a letter to for you tell me to go and see her? WHEN SHE'S STANDING RIGHT THERE?!!?! When she could have just asked herself? Gods, even if she's shy why not just ask you to ask me? WHY THE LETTER?!!?!?! If you waste enough paper do you think you can make a zombie tree or something?

Anyway, after repeatedly beating my head against the wall I have a quick chat with my wasteful and socially awkward new chum. She then tasks me with a quest to buy spells from her, proving both that maybe not everyone around here is quite as stupid as I'd previously thought and that I'm clearly in the wrong line of work.

After politely declining her offer to help out a certain Nigerian prince she apparently knows, I head off out of town to find out if punk is dead or not.

Turns out it is, but it's willing to pay me to mutilate animals. Thus confirming everything your mother ever told you about those nasty boys down the road. I'm not quite sure why exactly it is he's just hanging around on the road into town, but I'm going to guess he's handing out flyers for his mates band. Anyway, like most people I've met so far he asks me to kill an arbitrary amount of the local fauna. And then cut off bits of them and bring them back because.... apparently you make armour out of wolves feet now? It's either that or he's got a fetish. Either way I'm not sure I want to think about it to closely. So I pop off and set a few passing wolves on fire and then saw of their legs only to find....

THE WOLVES HAVE RABBITS FEET.

I think I'm done here.

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.