It’s weird how something like this can have even a minor psychological effect on me, the player. Here is this character that I spent several days of my life controlling, more than I’ve played almost every other videogame out there, and now she’s going away. For instance, I don’t want to dualbox anymore. I really feel like the multiple characters can be extremely powerful in ideal circumstances, but as soon as something goes wrong (like an add), things go really wrong. I don’t want that kind of stress… it’s tiring, and only really worth it if you’re gaining tons of experience.

I wrote letters to some characters as Gomp when she was signing out for the last time, and it was actually kind of sad, as stupid as that sounds. For instance, she sent all of her money to Jess’ character Bedrest (who, after a little playtime tomorrow, will hit 30 and need mount money). Her sentiments were basically:

If you ever see Homp again, tell her that I’m thinking of her, whatever part of me that’s left to think. Never let her forget that this face we share is evidence of something greater than a simple referred friend; that we successfully helped each other to reach an unthinkable goal.

So, goodbye, Gomp. Goodbye forever.

For the moment I’m not really sure where they’ll be spending their time. Finished up most of the quests that are worth doing in Un’Goro (the only thing I want to do there now is kill me some Devilsaurs). Thanks to the ever-awesome Daddywarbuck I finished off the Linken quest line and waltzed through the Cauldron quests in the Plaguelands.

Also, with Jhonen imminent, my days left in WoW are certainly numbered.

I should, however, point out that I have now reached my original goal when starting up WoW again last month. I’ve gotten a character past level 55, which will allow me to roll a Death Knight when the expansion comes out (otherwise, I would have had exactly zero reasons to get the expansion). That means there are now a few new goals left for me to really achieve:

1. Get the mages to 59/60. I have to do this in order to use the full benefits of my Refer a Friend abilities by autoleveling my gnome warlock.
2. Get at least 1 character to 70. I’m not sure who it will be, although I’m leaning toward grinding one of the mages through Outland. Honestly I’m looking forward to playing only one character again!
3. Play more with the “casual” group (Juls, Mel, Jess, Jack, and myself). We’ve run a few instances and it’s been great! We could probably level the entire way through the game that way if we wanted (they all get triple XP if we play together). Unfortunately people keep going out of town, and leveling portions of the group will undoubtedly lead to the death of the casual team (I’ve seen it before, as soon as some of the team breaks rank the other guys get left behind and usually won’t catch up!).
4. Play a new character! I really want to make a decent tank, but I might just hold off that urge until the Death Knights Cometh. There are also more servers out there for me to hit up (I’d really like to spend some time on a PVP server), so maybe my altoholism will continue to run through my veins.

So that’s where we are! I never thought I’d make it to Outland, but it’s like RIGHT THERE.

Also, we ran our “casual” group through Blackfathom Deeps on Saturday. We were underlevelled but got surprisingly far! Unfortunately, Juls and I lit several of the fires at the end of the instance (the ones that bring lots of badguys into the room), and we didn’t have enough AoE to deal with that many enemies at once. Ended up summoning one of the mages to do the deed and blizzard them away to nothingness. Still, that party is pretty well balanced (priest, warrior, paladin, warlock, hunter) and fun to play.

But now for the real meat of this post! The first time I flew from Stormwind to Ironforge I made a pact to some day go into that searing gorge and kill me some of those Lava Spiders and giant robot guys. Every single time I’ve made that flight they’ve been listed as Level ??. But yesterday I was cruising over the Searing Gorge and I saw that the spiders were level 46-48. That is to say, killable. I made it my mission to go there, find them, and destroy them. I brought upon them such a frozen hell as to never have them question my superiority. I’ll be in the fifties this week. Not sure if I’ll continue past level 55 (the original goal I had was to level to the point where I could make a Death Knight when Lich King drops) and on through the portal, but I do know one thing. As soon as I hit 50 I’m heading to Un’Goro Crater and taking some freaking screenshots of the only other zone where I want to kill things, but have never been able to reach.

On the topic of gear, I’m really sad/glad to say that I’m pretty sure it’s my favorite part of the game. It scratches this primal itch in my brain that starts up when I realize that the benefits of levelling up would be even awesomer were my stats higher. Plus that rare drop feels special! Much more special than that expensive crap on the auction house… This leads me to believe that I will really enjoy the game at the level cap, which is both exciting and depressing! “Halfway” there, by the way. The girls are about to hit 36.

As for the group buddies we started the week around 14 but after some questing we entered into the Deadmines (my first instance since coming back to the game last month). Let me tell you, I miss playing instances! Group tactics and razor’s edge difficulty spell for a pretty fun evening. The triple XP characters all levelled twice in the actual instance (so they’re all at 19 or 20 now), and we all got tons of new gear. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to Do The Deed, Seal the Deal, Mark the Territory, so to speak. We got all the way to the Ship, and were slain by Captain Greenskin and his Elite Doomsquad. Granted, I couldn’t hold aggro as my Paladin (needed to train some abilities and stuff), and yeah, Colin fell off the boat. We probably could have finished it off but all the mobs would have respawned and some of us were tired of playing at that point. Still, we did remarkably well, I’d say. We’ll be back to take out that Van Cleefy Weefs someday soon.

Doomsnuggler is now holding a fish in his offhand.

• Richard Champalbert bought us the End of All Strollers. Seriously, this thing is like a Cadillac mixed with a Dinosaur mixed with an F15.
• Jack got us approximately 15 copies of Sneak King, which I guess are like diapers or something. They have their own display case, which is nice, since now I can display Sneak King as she was meant to be seen.
• Alex gave us back this Toilet Me Elmo doll that I gave him a few years back as a joke. Rad!
• My personal favorite gift was a plush Ultraman hewn from Godfelt delivered by Juls. I want to hide it from the baby and just tell him he can’t have it!

All in all a very successful party sponsored by our housemates. To everybody in attendance, be you friends or family, you have given us the strength to go through with this whole parenting thing! Either in your support or your examples as parents not only could we not have done this without you, but we would not have done this without you. Thanks!

The master plan is to play with our group at a casual pace, and powerlevel the mages when I’m bored and nobody’s around. As soon as they hit 31 I’ll start granting levels to other characters I have on the server, essentially levelling 3 characters at once (albeit, 2 of them are identical mages, but that’s not really a problem since I’ll eventually spec and gear one differently than the other). If nothing else making a trial account and dualboxing some characters to 20 can be really awesome! If you level 2 characters to 20 on both the recruiter’s and the recruit’s accounts, you end up with enough stored levels to autolevel a 3rd character on the recruiter’s account to 20, ending up with 5 20s for the price of 2 (well, for the price of 2/3s of a character without triple XP, at least). Sure, a 20’s not exactly STELLAR WOW POWER, but it’s good to have a few guys sitting around for when new people start up and want to run Deadmines or something. If you can do this in 10 days you don’t even end up spending money on the recruit’s account!

Granted, that’s not how I’m rolling. My recruits all have legit accounts now and are played by people other than me most of the time. But still, incredible. Unfortunately my Undead Mage (Ouchdown) is getting neglected while I’m powerlevelling all these Alliance characters, but the bonus XP lasts for 90 days so I might even have time to level some Horde grinders before all is said and done.

So I really think Mage is for me! This was confirmed as soon as I got Frostbolt last night, and all of a sudden my character felt awesome. It’s also a good low-maintenance class I can play while teaching Jess and Jack how to do quests and get they kills on.

The boosted XP is kind of ridiculous. In a party of 4, we’re earning XP that is almost equivalent to soloing from kills. But with 3 DPS classes and a priest we’re killing stuff pretty fast! The level meter might as well just animate. Quest rewards are much higher, too. Unfortunately, it seems like we don’t have to do nearly as much questing, at least in the beginning. In the process of doing one quest we’re earning so much experience that all other quests in that chain are too low level. And grey quests won’t provide the triple XP. Personally I don’t think that matters, as in a few more levels we can start hitting up instances, and it seriously feels like we’d never have to do open world quests again.

For each person you refer who upgrades to a retail version of World of Warcraft and purchases two months of game time, you will be able to give a character on the account you sent the invitation from an exclusive in-game zhevra mount. This unique mount can be claimed through the website, is only available to Recruit-A-Friend participants, and can only be applied to a single character.

1. Characters on both accounts can summon each other once per hour.
2. While adventuring with your linked friend/family member, you will each gain triple experience.
3. For every two levels the new player earns, the new player can grant one free level-up to a lower-level character played by the veteran player.

Is quest experience tripled too?

Yes, but only if the quest was not trivial (gray difficulty) for either character.

For each person you refer who upgrades to a retail version of World of Warcraft and purchases his or her first month of game time, the account you sent the invitation from will receive a free credit of 30 days of play time.

Hooooooolyyyyyyyyy Crap. I will be writing more about how this goes as things progress. But WoW at triple speed, PLUS extra character levelling, PLUS it’s only about 2/3s the normal price of playing (thanks to 30-day credits). That’s a video game right there. That’s how they get from 10 million to 20 million.

UPDATE: Jess has agreed to play with me, at least through the trial. Can you guys IMAGINE.

About a month ago I was reading about Death Knights in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion and I really, really wanted to play one. But there was a small problem; I’d never reached the required level 55 to create one. So I started up again. I created an undead mage named Ouchdown. Several other people, now long past Just 70, show up from time to time to level their Horde Alts and I’ve been genuinely having fun with the game. I know now how important it is to really enjoy playing your class. At first I was put off by my mage’s frail body and his relative simplicity (compared especially to Druids and Warlocks), but after putting enough points into frost (and getting Mana Shield and Blink at level 20), I can say that playing a mage has been the most fun I’ve had. Since I’ve been back I leveled Pewpewpew to 30 and have just had him sitting there accruing rest XP, and as of a couple days ago I’ve got Ouchdown at 30.

But something was still missing. I still didn’t have any way to get a panda.

But Juls did, and he had quit back in 2006 (pre-expansion). He’d gotten a dwarf hunter to 60 and before signing off for good he sold off all his gear and mailed away the money. But he kept his panda collar. And his box for the Collector’s Edition. This past week Juls traded me his CE box and gave me access to his account. I know, I know, this technically violates the EULA, but it’s not like I’m anywhere near the same league as a guy who bots or a guy who buys a fully geared out level 70 character. The first thing I did was make an Orc hunter named Hugman who runs around with his best friend, a panda cub. I also tried my hand at dual-boxing (expect another entry on this later).

I had never seen Outland. And with Jhonen being born really soon, I doubt I’ll get Ouchdown or Pewpewpew to 60 any time soon. And I really want to see that content. I logged in and tried Juls’ character out. He still had a pet wolf, thankfully, but his armor was lower than my level 30 mage. I renamed him from Trygger to Barkbark (Hugman and Barkbark are eternal enemies) and moved him over to Farstriders, the server we’d all played on since Burning Crusade dropped. I had to get him a ranged weapon, and the cheapest one with the highest level was a bow on the auction house. Awesomely, Juls had never trained bows (or crossbows), so I had to find a bow trainer and basically start from scratch in Hellfire Peninsula.

After about two hours of questing with help from my friends Mel and Colin, Barkbark is up and running with about half of the armor he needs, and will hopefully finish off all the pieces with a few more hours. He can actually survive fights now, which is awesome.

I’m going to work on Ouchdown for a while, though. I want to earn that high level for reals. Also, to those of you close to me, I beg of you to force me to buy the Lich King Collector’s Edition, because if I don’t do this we’ll all regret it later. Just ask Jess who heard me complain about the WoW:CE for the last 3.5 years.

His name was Pewpewpew. We had some fun questing! We did the Dead Mines a couple times and Blackfathom Deeps. I played until level 27 and then something took me away from the game; I think it was a busy time at work. Looking back, yeah, that was just about the busiest I’ve been here that Spring. Anyway, Pew took a rest, and I eventually unsubscribed. 27 was the highest level I had reached at this point. All the characters I had played with stayed on until 70 after I dropped out.

But around Thanksgiving in 2006 I was bored one weekend and renewed the subscription. The expansion was looming at the time, and lots of people I knew were getting back into the game. Two friends from work and I started up new characters on a RP-PVP server getting ready for Christmas. Three Tauren Druids named Bullthazar, Calfspar, and Milkior, walked the Barrens looking for a King. We only played a few sessions but it was still remarkably entertaining (and this was not just because I had created a “/yell TELL ME, %t, HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD NEWS?” macro that I would use whenever we started a fight). When we went on the druid quests, we would sometimes encounter very high level Night Elf players, and most of the time they wouldn’t kill us. They would bow, and we would bow back. It turns out, I actually liked this game, quite a bit. Oh yeah, and another guy showed up named Beeflehem, which was an added bonus to our Christmas Story.

I learned two things in our time as the Wise Men. One: this game is more fun when you quest with friends; you level up faster and you die significantly less. Two: the priest class was not for me. While I never really liked playing a Druid, I had way more fun playing one than a low level priest. After Christmas, though, we sort of tapered off. I’d log in every now and then and use the GOOD NEWS button on NPCs, but we never played these character seriously again.

The morning the game was released, I walked over to Best Buy from my office. Got there at about 9am, right as they opened. There weren’t people lined up or anything. I walked over to the World of Warcraft display, and there was some dude standing there. This guy, this terrible awful guy, asked me if I had pre-ordered. I said “yep!” and he told me that pre-order people had to pick up copies of the game at Customer Service. I stared at about 10 copies of the Collector’s Edition for too long, then I asked if they had those over at the Customer Service area. He said “yes.” I walked over to Customer Service. There was a reasonable line already there. Perhaps a five minute wait. Everybody was picking up copies of World of Warcraft (regular editions, mind). I got to the front and said I wanted a Collector’s Edition. The woman said “you have to go get one off the shelf,” and I said “oh the guy said I’d get one over here,” and then I ran back to the display, but lo, Dear Reader, the Collector’s Editions had been devoured in my absence. The employee guy was gone. I would never have an opportunity to buy a CE version of the game; I had a wedding to go to, and a job to stop getting paid at. Didn’t change the fact that the part of my heart capable of loving video games (according to medical researchers, this part of my heart is several sizes larger than the national average), was broken.

So, don’t ever reserve products at Best Buy. Also, don’t ever talk to the employees there unless you are trying to trick them into giving you a deal on a TV.

But I really, really wanted that Panda.

My friend Juls had managed to get his copy of the CE, thousands of miles away in Florida. We met up (in the game) and he had the panda and it was awesome. I spent about 40 hours on a Dwarf Priest in those early days, not having any idea how to play, panda-less, newly married, and I quit that January (only paid for one month after the free month). I didn’t have any fun, really. I got to level 19. Was this because I was a dwarf priest, or because, deep down, I knew that I could never have a panda?

But games (yes, even board games!), especially video game platformers, are different. Failure failure failure success is the general pattern of video game playback. Games are Two Dimensional media, as the axis of player control can drastically change the output displayed on the screen. Perhaps the programmer decided that it will take 10 minutes to get from Point A to Point B when in execution each player could experience a different scenario. Simplistic platformers (think Super Mario Bros. 1) have nearly infinite solutions to the route from Point A to Point B. While this sort of jumping around (pun completely intentional) is possible in books, movies, or whatever by skipping around, it is generally not considered to be a valid way of experiencing the media in question. I will conveniently ignore that possibility! Time to refocus on video games!

Imagine Super Mario Bros. where you can travel back in time, effectively removing the threat of pits and enemies. How would you make this game challenging? This is the basic premise behind Braid. Since the user can’t kill their character, no matter how hard they try, the game designers had to completely rethink the basic concept of Point A to Point B. And it comes out this week. At a mere $15 you are practically breaking into Jonathan Blow’s house, tracking mud on the carpet, leaving the seat up, and using a giant magnet to steal all of his magnetized valuables. While the story can feel kind of… wimpy at times, just pay attention to the number of mechanics introduced here that WILL appear in countless games of the future.

With Braid, Time Travel can become a major part of your life.

The news:

• Sold the Vespa!
• Jess is still pregnant, but apparently Jhonen is ready for deployment.
• Been playing WoW again! Playing on Farstriders with Pewpewpew (Gnome Warlock) and Ouchdown (Undead Mage). Hit 30 for the first time! About to hit it for the second time. I’m really thinking I might make a go of it, at least get to 55 so I can play a Death Knight when the expansion drops. I’ve rerouted almost all of my look at the internet time to this task, and it’s strange that playing a game can feel productive.
• Braid comes out next week! Finally!
• Worked on a Wii game for a few weeks. Man, the Wii.
• Pretty much stopped programming for fun for reasons I can’t really discuss! I might work something out soon, though.
• I now have a twitter for day to day chatter. I’ll set up a wordpress plugin for it soon.
• Florida is still too hot to inhabit.

Oh god I want this, originally uploaded by bburbank.

I went by the local vespa dealer today. They had one of these in stock, in the color I wanted. Out the door price was kind of high, but I could probably cover it. It was beautiful and the guy said they don’t think they’ll get any more of that model and definitely not in that color. This thing would do 75MPH on the highway, was fully automatic, and was slightly more comfortable than the really expensive chair that I’m sitting in right now.

My ad slogan: “I just want to kill myself and ride a Vespa LXV150 through heaven.”

* For the record, the game that I was the most excited for pre-release (of all games ever made) was Metal Gear Solid 2, a game where I watched the trailer probably hundreds of times over the course of the way-too-long wait.

** In the first trailer for MGS4, there’s a section where Snake puts a gun in his mouth. I’m hoping the game ends with him doing that, and then a hint appears at the bottom of the screen “Press X to Kill Yourself!”

• Command Prompts (mostly DOS here, but probably Unix too)
• Standard Definition (NTSC) versus High Definition (also, “widescreen”)
• 2D Fighting Games
• Point and Click Adventure Games
• Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games
• Polaroid (RIP)
• C++ (it’s gotta’ happen some day)
• the Gameboy
• Games without tutorials (PLEASE PROVE ME WRONG, VIDEO GAMES)
• The USSR and the Cold War
• Racism (this is pretty nice, actually)
• Compact Discs
• Drive-in Movies
• the Space Program
• Star Wars?

It just occurred to me that Happy Meals will probably be fine, though. They will be the last thing that God destroys before shutting off the lights on his way out. The last bits of life on the earth (probably crabs and bugs) will make their homes in discarded Happy Meals on the beach, the only proof that once I was a child.

There’s something impulsive and wilfully, blithely destructive about Link’s actions in LA. He is just going around destroying the world brick by brick, he knows he is doing this because every dungeon boss says so, but he ignores them completely. While the townspeople treat him as a nice fellow and are completely oblivious of what he is doing to them, and Link doesn’t bother to explain.

This being in part Link’s dream as well, it is natural for him to keep going through the motions of his day-to-day waking life. Beating up monsters, solving block puzzles, finding the entrance to the next dungeon. But the usual positive consequences don’t follow.

Like Shadow of the Colossus, LA exploits the player’s compulsion/obligation to keep completing the gamey tasks to achieve something bittersweet and morally ambiguous.

All this perhaps has something to do with why although LA is thick with calculated gamey bullshit, it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as in modern Zeldas. Likely in part inadvertently, the game integrates the gaminess into its theme. Remember the scene where you are sitting alongside Marin on the beach, gazing into the distance? Instead of a bright blue sky and sea, there is the dull gray of the GB. Marin talks from her heart but you can only answer with either yes or no. When you finish the conversation and she offers to accompany you, you lift Marin above your head like a sword or hookshot and a text box says “you got a Marin!”. Somehow none of this really undermines the poignancy of the scene though, rather it contributes to its unreal, dreamlike aspect.

UPDATE: I don’t like that very much… I’m going to write a straight up chiptune on my DS and hopefully have this done by the deadline this evening.

I was reading a blog this morning and somebody mentioned the JR Yamanote Line and I felt extremely homesick, which was weird since I’ve never lived there, but I guess Tokyo of all places feels the most like home now. I guess, arguably, it’s one of the few places I’ve truly lived, as in life.