Is finally within my grasp. Cali is Level 69 as of last Thursday, and some light weekend play has seen her halfway through that level with two of three settlements in Blade’s Edge Mountains cleared. This of course leaves the questline-ending group quests from Nagrand (Durn, Cho’War, and Gurok among others) and Levixus in Terokkar before I can put those two areas to bed. I’m interested in all three quests as well because they each have a killer Holy Paladin piece as a reward. The Levixus one in particular. I could really use that hat.

I’m excited about level 70 as well. Any level that is going to get me both Sanctity Aura and Avenging Wrath as well as entry into the Heroics/Raids arm of the game is Good Stuff. As it stands I’ll be a little upset if I don’t eventually make it through Kara at the least. If I don’t finish Purple Judgment before Wrath hits I’ll be beside myself. Partially because Wrath isn’t even street dated yet and could be three-six months away.

On a WoW related tangent: I have a short list of things I wish NPC escort quests would feature:

1. I want them all to follow ME for a change. That turtle in Tanaris does this, and it makes the quest feel more like I’m the Big Bad Paladin helping somebody out rather than running frantically after them trying to help them make it to the finish line undisturbed.
2. I want them to accept my heals/buffs. I’m a paladin. I can do these things. The Defias Traitor can be healed, but that Blood Elf in Northwatch can’t. If he’s going to run headlong into three Theramore Marines, I’m sure he’d like a Holy Light.
3. I want them to appear on my screen as a party member/pet. I’d love to be able to watch their health without a mouseover. If you already have a pet this would necessitate some supplementary pet slot. I’m not upset by this.
4. (Entirely Optional) I want them to buff me. I freed a NElf in Terokkar Forest the other day. In addition to her brain-dead behavior (more on that later) she’s a druid. She casts moonfire, roots, etc. Why can’t I get Gift of the Wild or Thorns?

The aforementioned elf escort thing: I break her out of the cage she’s in. She walks out of the room and then proceeds to follow the road out of town. Let me let that sink in. She’s supposed to be a recently freed prisoner, and she WALKS DOWN THE HEAVILY PATROLLED PATH! The one that goes RIGHT BY THE WARLOCKS!! Is this supposed to simulate Stockholm Syndrome? Are there “Keep off the Grass” signs that she’s obeying that I can’t see? The tower she was held in is the Southeast corner of the settlement. Going southwest between two buildings would be the best way out, bar none. And I’m not even going to bring up the efficacy of Cat form stealth in an escape situation.

Getting away from the escort thing and on to a different tangent: How about using escort quests as an ersatz Henchmen system? You go pick up an elf in peril and instead of despawning after the escort quest is finished, she follows you around for a while until you turned the quest in, helping you out with stuff you need doing and accomplishing this intelligently (putting you on Follow, stopping when you Sit, UI like a warlock pet etc) then non-pet classes would have a hint of what it is like being a pet class. Pet classes would be playing Warcraft (The RTS), what with having two “pets” but hey this won’t be happening in the Arenas or AV or anything so I don’t see how it would do anything other than making all those “Group [2]” quests solo-able. Now as soon as you enter the Allerian Stronghold or Shattrath I imagine they would say “Cool, I’ll take a griff to where I need to go” and leave. So it wouldn’t come into play with dungeons, lets say they can’t leave zones. And you can only have one, so it wouldn’t be like you are running with a full 5-man while questing.

You can already multi-box to achieve similar results. Those that didn’t follow the wikipedia link I provided and don’t know what Multi-boxing is: it is the tactic of getting multiple computers and multiple WoW accounts, levelling up two characters then using a KVM switch to play both simultaneously. This can get you a helpful henchman, but requires infrastructure (two computers and a switch) and two WoW accounts (twice the monthly fees). This is not really an option for sane people.

The only problem I can see here is that if you make solo play easier and put more Blues in the reach of casual players, you really play hell with what farmers can do. You basically double their effectiveness at ruining other people’s gaming experience.

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Well, a boring circle. That’s for sure. I’ve been working on WoW and so forth this week. I’m also getting better with my exercising. My Kendo isn’t where I want it to be, so I figure I’ll have to upgrade my exercise routine. I’m doing at least one round of the 15 Pushups->15 Situps->15 Pushups->15 Crunches->25 Squats routine and then a Two Minute Chi Kung with 1 Minute Horse->Bow->Cat->Scissors stances. Every so often I feel the need to do the PSPCS routine a second time (with 2 hour breaks between these bouts of self destruction) and then 21 minutes of running. The Elliptical machine at work breaks workouts into quarters with running forward, backward, forward and then backward again + a five minute cooldown period. So 21 minutes is (Factor of four)-Five so I don’t have to memorize a weird time to change running direction. I still walk the dog one mile in the morning and then three or four in the evening. I’m lucky, my “block” (more of a V shape) works out to about one mile so it is easy to judge. This morning I upped my walking speed from “Plodding Invalid” to “Old People Mall Walking” for the heart rate and leg workout What I’m concerned about now is my Kendo footwork. My teacher is capable of gaining something like four or five feet with a quick forward step, landing balanced and wrecking my day. I can’t really compete here because his mode of movement makes his effective reach HUGE. I’ve only been doing this for about eight months or so (I used 210’s medical condition as an excuse to quit going to Kendo, and my own laziness after moving in March led to a severe degradation in my workout regimen), therefore I don’t expect to trounce my teacher. I’d like to be better than I am though, so workouts need to work on what I need for Kendo. That being strong shoulders, a good Core, quick footwork and stamina. My Chi Kung works on stamina. The rest of the routine works on strength. I need to practice my kata and cutting drills, then I also need to work on movement. I’m tossing around the idea of getting ankle weights to really work the momentum control aspect, but I don’t really have a windsprint routine yet so that’s on hold. I don’t think my stride is too short, I’m 5′9″ and fairly average in limb proportion, so launching isn’t really an issue. Stopping is a bit of a problem. I jump forward and then do the scooting stop that leaves me leaning forward overbalanced. So that needs to stop.

As for Warcraft, Calicity is plodding along nicely. She’s about a third of the way through level 67, my gold supply is pretty OK (over 100, which is good for me but bad in general) and my supplies are mostly at full. I need more mana pots. I’m thinking about carrying more than one stack or getting some Injectors. But my Elixir supply, both Healing Power and Adept’s is full. My question is: is nobody making Greater Int Elixirs anymore? I rarely see any at auction.

You heard it here first: Calicity will make 70 before the new year. Not only that, but she will be wearing Purple Judgement by then. That shouldn’t be too hard. She just needs to make two and a half more levels, get Heroic keys from three factions (Bronze Dragonflight, Honor Hold, and Cenarion Expedition) and then run some heroics. Heck, the Mask of Penance and Brestplate of Many Graces don’t even need the heroics. Though I’d have a hard time PUG-ing those dungeons with crappy gear and my current level. Ah well, if I should happen to see enough Serenity people on when I’m on I might say something. Doubtful though, I’m kinda laconic that way.

I still need two Hardened Adamantite Tubes, two Dawnstones and the BoP Primal Nether to complete my Kickass Engineer Goggles. This would obsolesce the Mask of Penance anyhow, so that isn’t something I need to work towards getting.

Cali is running as Shock Jock right now, and I have to say, the Mage/Shaman playstyle is fun. It is also easy to gear for, as Holy paladins are far less MAD than other flavors. They just need Spell Damage, Spell Crit, MP5, Int and Stamina. They also can give Spell Hit a good home, but Hit is capped and thusly has a max effective value. After a while, stacking more Hit won’t give any improvement, but unless you’ve somehow got 100% crit (and let me know how you did that), Crit will always be in fashion. And Spell Damage/Int/Stam is always good. More of that means more damage and more survivability. It is easy peasy to gear for SD/Int/Stam. Especially now that 1/3 of the +Healing on any given piece of equipment also works for +Damage, you can rock decent +Damage in a healing set (Like Purple Judgement, for instance). So I think I’ll be Shockjock for the foreseeable future. I’m very impressed with the improvement to Ret and Prot though, so who knows?

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Well, as I said last time, the writer’s strike is going to delay 24, so we’ll have to go a bit longer to get our fix of Jack vs. The Terrorists. So thank God Collegehumor.com managed to uncover the unaired 1994 pilot. Thrill as Jack has to find a payphone after being paged by CTU! Gasp as he uses AOL dialup! Without further ado:

Yeah, in the interest of loading times I hate to embed two things on the front page. You have to admit though, that’s pretty funny.

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So, anybody want to cross the picket lines? This writer’s strike has claimed its first victim (I guess, I haven’t really been following it up until now). And that victim is Jack Bauer. Terrorists, assassins, hell the entire Chinese nation can’t take the guy out, but one little dust-up about residuals from online and DVD sales, now that causes some problems.

On the good side, it appears The Sara Connor Chronicles will air instead for a while. So I get to see River Tam as The Terminator. Which is pretty cool. I mean every cloud has a silver lining. I wonder if this means that the new episodes of Jericho will get airtime earlier rather than later. They have seven episodes that act as a wrap up to the first season (I guess to make up for the hiatus) and those are seen as mid season replacements in case anything should happen to drop. Seeing as the whole season needs reworking, I wonder if we finally get to see the ending of the New Bern standoff. I hope so, but then my love of post-apocalyptic fiction knows no bounds.

I was going to save this for Friday, and do a sort of “Movie Trailer Fridays” from here on out, but I’m pretty jazzed about this film, so you get it one day early. I guess I’ll do “Bleach Thursdays” tomorrow to restore balance to the Force.

Here we have the (very loose) adaptation of Mark Millar’s “Wanted”. The whole “Man finds out his dad was Bullseye-caliber assassin and inherits his powers” thing seems to be preserved, I wonder if they keep the transparent ripoff of Batman and Superman villains thing intact. That said, it looks rather Matrix-like. I do like the Matrix though, and if one half of the production team can stop from living as the submissive to a high-priced dominatrix and eventually becoming a woman long enough to write a decent compelling screenplay that is more than a rehash of cliches, unlike the Wachowskis, then I’m there. Hey, its got that gun that shoots around corners, and that’s good enough for me.

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Seriously. I had a great idea a few weeks ago. Follow along with me. A large, stadium style movie theater, but instead of boring ass seats, have three-sided bar style booths. You order your meal (or a menu is provided to work with the movie’s theme. Eg: Fistfull of Dollars + Spaghetti, El Mariachi + burritos, 7 Samurai + sushi, Kung Fu Hustle + Kung Pow, and so on) get some food, some brews, and sit down to watch a movie. Wire the booths for surround in the manner of a drive in, and you’ve got a semi-intimate but still somewhat raucous occasion. It would be understood that screaming for Psycho or cheering at Evil Dead would be not just acceptable by expected. A real get-the-audience-involved sort of occasion thing. Like “Rocky Horror” but less weird. Well, less continuously weird. Not that there wouldn’t be a market for costume/audience participation bits. That would also be cool. Something with big anime shows + cosplay or something.

This would of course be built on to my dream retail wonderland. A sort of comics store, video arcade, indy/vintage movie house, bar, coffee house etc. The kind of place I would kill to hang out at. Not every screen would be the pub sort of setup, only one or two. I would still want a few “standard” screens to be able to do a Godzilla movie marathon without having to come up with some insane menu choice.

Sadly, it seems that at least the bar/theater thing has already been thought up. Its cool, I don’t hold anything against those guys. It isn’t all THAT innovative, and it would lose money the way I’d run it. Or rather it would lose money in a town with as few people as we have here, two comic stores (at least), ten movie theaters, and too many bars to count.

Martin, 210 (who needs a webpage) and I hung out last weekend and I got to sample the creme de la creme of recent XBOX gaming. I have to say from an anime perspective, Ace Combat was pretty wicked. And Halo 3 looked sweet. Halo actually made me wish for a saved video function in WoW. Something sellable though, a Recording Crystal or something, that would allow a player to hit up the AH and get “C’thun Cleared” or “Illidan Downed” or hell, “Hunter Shot Rotation 101″ hit the Use button and watch as an omniscient observer the proper way to do things. Something better than crappy, blurry old FRAPS that would allow a viewer to actually float around, see where people are standing from more than the behind the shoulder view of standard video cap stuff. A saved film that would actually allow you to “enter” the tank, healer or DPS and check out what they were doing.

How this would interact with custom UI’s, I don’t know. Possibly hide the whole UI and just use a variant of Scrolling combat text.

The prospects for Machinima are pretty compelling as well.

I also got to check out Portal (wicked sweet. I may have to pick up the Orange Box.) and Disgaea Portable. Man, I want a PSP and Disgaea. I want both of those very badly, but honestly I can’t think of a place where I’d play it. I mean I love Disgaea. I love it long time (250 hours at last count) and so you know I’m partial. And the strategy selection for the PSP is hot like fire. But really, where and when would I game? I drive everywhere (and don’t mind driving), when I get places I’m either eating, hanging out with my Fiancee, Kristi’s parents, or my own parents. In all of these situations, burying my nose in Disgaea would be a social faux pas. I guess I could play at work, but I get enough flack for reading on the job (not to mention web posting) I’d hate to see the boss’ face while I grind to beat Adell. Whenever I’m home and Kristi is playing another game, I’m playing WoW, so no dice there. It really is too bad, because I’d love to play it.

And if that is my biggest problem, then I’m getting off pretty light.

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