Day 6 - In Which I Share a Little About My Workplace

So this is my current workplace/desk. Exciting right. Welcome to life on the road. I kind of wish I'd planned ahead. I'd have gotten a picture of my office desk. It's pretty cool actually. There is a fitness enthusiast at work who requested our facilities guy raise his desk somehow, for which he produced a set of riser boxes. Having, at the time, recently read a few articles stating basically that sitting for 8-hour days is killing us, when I saw it, I asked if I could have that, too. So since October, I stand at my desk, which is about 4.5 feet (137 centimeters) tall. My desk also has more papers and a bunch of Lego Star Wars figures and mini-ships, from the advent calendar they put out this last Christmas (which I got half off after the holidays). And a laptop and peripherals, of course. I'll get a picture of it when I get back (if I remember) and post it here.

Right now I am on the road, teaching. It's been exhausting, more so than most of my trips. But the weekend is only a day away. :D

Day 5 - In Which I Share My Favorite Items in Games

This entry of the 20 Days of Blogging struck me as a bit odd. I could easily say that my Asus G73 laptop is my favorite game item, but it is not IN-game. Neither is my wedding ring, though that is pretty awesome, too, and sort of fantasy-, if not gaming-related.

So. In-game items:

For WoW, I'd have to say my Violet Proto-Drake, awarded for completing all the holiday festival achievements. At the time, the only other way to get a super-fast flying mount was to win a drop in whatever the current endgame raid was. I'd say I worked at least as hard as they did to get all of it done; and it was well-rounded, too, involving PvP, group instances, and solo achievements.

A close second was not an individual item, but my minipet collection. I loved pulling out rare companions and having people ask where they had come from. My favorite of those was Miniwing, which was ironically very easy to obtain through a quest in eastern Terrokar Forest, near the Bone Wastes.

From STO, I love my Nebula-refit starship, the U.S.S. Peregrine. I had loved the Nebula class since the last shot of Star Trek Generations of the Farragut rising above Veridian III, and was disappointed that it was not one of the possible ships when STO launched. That the ships are customizable means that a lot of the ships I have are "favorites." But this one is the mostest favorite.

I don't really have any one favorite item from other games. The topic prompt took me a little by surprise, honestly. I am a bit of a hoarder, my banks are often full of stuff I no longer need. Come to think of it, so is my garage.

Day 4 - In Which I Recall My Best Gaming Memories

I'm having a really hard time with this one. It's not that I don't have great memories of playing MMOs, WoW in particular; but many times, it's more the general feelings associated with those games that are great. It doesn't help that I am currently working longer hours, so my brain is a little befuddled.

When I say feelings, I mean like how it feels to fly in my STO starships, whether interstellar space or in battle around a planet. It's just fun and freeing; I pan around my ship looking for awesome shots, like the one in the blog masthead above.

Or how it felt the first time I realized I was powerful in WoW. Rowanblaze the priest was in in the Hinterlands at around level 40, and multiple wolves of about my level attacked. I defeated them all and survived. It was great.

The opening crawl of MY story during beta in SWTOR was exhilarating. I was so excited to discover the adventures that lay ahead. I was also excited to hit 50 in Rift together with my lovely bride a few weeks after we were married. It was something we'd accomplished together.

Many of of my best memories were of playing with good friends, like running through lowbie areas on brand-new characters with friends I'd met in Germany. Or introducing a girlfriend or two to the genre and playing with them. Chatting with guildies as I taxied from one zone to another. Downing the final boss in Kharazan, really many raids where we could joke with each other and cement friendships.

I think that's the greatest thing that MMOs can still do, is bring people together across great physical distances to laugh and have some fun together, whether it's an endgame raid, or a little PvP, or just playing roles in some remote tavern on Telara, Kalimdor or Tatooine.

Just a Quick Update on the 20 Days of Blogging

Hey Everyone, all two of you. :P

I maybe seem to have slacked off the last couple days. However, the neglect of the blog is due to travel for business and preparation for said travel. I plan to return to the 20 Days tomorrow evening. Which means that, unless you're a night owl, you'll see it Wednesday.

Day 3 - In Which I Recount My First Day Playing WoW

At first I thought this question from the 20 Days of MMO Blogging was going to be hard. But then memories came flooding back. It wasn't really that long ago, was it?

Some others played other MMOs before they played WoW. Not me, I enjoyed real-time strategy games like Age of Empires and SimCity (yes it was a strategy of a different sort. These were all solo ventures as well. My internet at the time probably would not have tolerated online gaming. By 2006, however, I had upgraded to cable internet, and a friend and coworker of mine, with whom I had actually done a couple Star Trek-related podcasts, (he was the "Big Fan," I was the "Loremaster") was a huge World of Warcraft fan. He tried a few times to get me to play, but "I am not a gamer," was my typical response. We were taking a professional class and one of the other students had also played WoW, but it was her husband who was the big player. She would tease me and my friend about being nerds and gamers. "I am not a gamer," was again my response.

Finally one fine Saturday in June, my buddy brought over his discs along with a 10-day free trial key and said, "Just load it and play." So I did. The opening cinematic--remember, this was June, 2006, just before the Rise of the Necropolis patch in Vanilla WoW--Was EPIC! Deep bass preceded the words "Ten Years ago. . ." The male choir intoned their chords as the narrowed eyes of a dwarf faded in. He squinted into a blizzard as he surveyed the mountains, then beckoned his faithful companion bear and headed toward toward what I later realized was the entrance to Ironforge. More characters appeared, the Night Elf druid shapeshifting into a panther, the Tauren shaman, the Forsaken warlock and the Human mage, the raging Orc warrior. All to the strains of a full orchestral surging soundtrack. Absolutely EPIC.

To this day, I think the Original WoW soundtrack is the best game soundtrack I have heard. I also think the the cinematics while becoming more epic in scope, have lost the sense of personal adventure I discovered in that first Vanilla Intro, and even the Burning Crusade Cinematic, with its focus on player characters.

When it came time to create a character, I chose a dwarf hunter, because I knew I wanted a bear companion. Despite the more exotic pets that became available with each expansion, I still kept that Ice Claw Bear I had named Arcturus, "the Bear Guard." But that was yet to come, back then a hunter had to get to level 10 and then learn how to tame beasts in a short quest series.

I created my hunter and clicked the button to enter the world of Azeroth. I watched and listened to the introduction of the dwarves as the camera traveled through Dun Morogh to Coldridge Valley and settled into the typical point of view slightly behind my avatar. I could practically feel the chill of the wind as I set out on my first quests. It was just fine to be the little adventurer, I didn't need to be a big damn hero. I still needed to learn my way around this big huge world.

I think I got to Kharanos that first day (level 6 or so?), but I don't think I did much beyond that. Levleing was slower then, both for me personally and for the game in general. I was newbie, learning the ropes of the game, while my character explored the big world. Repeated visits to the early levels, and Coldridge in particular, were much shorter as my skill as a player improved, regardless of the class or level of my character. I also came to realize how small Coldridge Valley and Duin Morogh really were.

There was a sense of exploration and wonder about the Azeroth in those early days. When I finally got a new computer and saw the snow glisten in the sunlight, it was breathtaking, hyper-real. MMOs are still fun, but the sense of wonder is long gone, unfortunately, as my skills and experience translate easily to other games.