Long Weekend

Posted by Stropp on January 26, 2009

Just a quick update since it’s getting late and I have to go to work tomorrow. Sigh. Sometimes I think virtual Mondays are worse than real Mondays since you’ve had that extra day of freedom. And since the temperature tomorrow, in fact all this week, is predicted to be above 41 C, I’d rather be in air conditioning. Well, the office is air-conditioned, but it’s the time between office and home in the heat, and the carpark is less than shady. When I get into my car, the temp approaches something like the inside of a nuclear reactor.

Anyway, enough weather ranting.

I had quite a bit of gaming time this Australia Day long weekend. I mentioned in a post on Saturday night that I spent all of Saturday board gaming with friends which was a blast. I didn’t have any time to play any computer games.

On Sunday I started playing World of Warcraft and in just a few hours I leveled my Death Knight, EvilMo, up to 59.5. That’s a pretty good rate of leveling. I remember my last run at 60 took a lot more time between 59 and 60 than it took from 58 to 59.5. 

I did most of that in Hellfire Peninsula. When I completed the DK area quests, I was directed to Stormwind and was given a quest there by the King that lead to the Western Plaguelands. Since I was already 58, I decided to dump the old world quests and go straight to Burning Crusade.

Once I got to 59.5, I felt I’d had enough and switched to playing Atlantica Online.

Atlantica Online is a free MMOG from a Korean publisher, and plays in many ways similar to a Japanese RPG, but thankfully without the 20 minute un-skippable cut-scenes. I’d started playing this game a couple of weeks ago, but decided to create a new character called ManChild to test out another ‘class.’

Not that class seems to make much difference since you pick up mercenaries along the way. So if you choose to be a Swordsman, you can select a Gunner, Spearman, and Cannoneer as your mercenaries. If you choose to be an Archer, you can select a Swordsman and Axeman. As you level you get to have more and differnet types of mercenaries in your party. These all complement your strengths and weaknesses.

The play-style is turn based. You have a turn to attack your enemy’s group, then they have a turn to attack yours. All turns must be completed in under 30 seconds, so the action is reasonable fast paced.

It’s quite a different style of MMO gameplay, and while I don’t think it will be my main MMORPG, it’s a decent diversion when I’m feeling like I want to play something different.

Then it was off the computer to watch the Doctor Who Christmas special and Dexter S3.

Monday, public holiday, what else but WoW. I logged in to Stropp the Shaman, found the CoWs online and finagled a guild invite for EvilMo. Logged him on and, shazzam! EvilMo is now a Casualty of War. I then spent the next few hours leveling him up to 60.5 while reading guild chat. Ding!

Before I finish up this post, I have to say I’m pretty impressed with the Death Knight so far. EvilMo is pretty darn tough. I’ve been taking on mobs two to three levels above EvilMo’s level and his health bar has barely registered a dent most times. On one occasion, I had him in a spot where wandering mobs kept coming into aggro range and at times he was fighting four or five at once (inc pets) and at the end of that, EvilMo had a third of health left. And I love the Magic Lasso of Doom. Nifty stuff.

Will this keep up. I hope so.

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