And We're In.... Sort of

Hi.
Me again.
Inside your RSS reader, clogging it up.

And yes, new patch downloaded, and installed.
New login screen (win, /tickle [target=frostwyrm]).
New music (hey it's really cool, a lot better than the BC theme, possibly even better than Legends from WOW classic).

And... Aman'Thul not up. Only Oceanic realm up is Frostmourne.
US realms coming up one at a time though.

So I'm just sitting here listening to the music.

*twiddles thumbs*

Anyway, hopefully next time I'll have some sort of content-based post for y'all.


EDIT: 9:50 am (NZDT) and Stonemaul is up (level 7 rogue) and Nagrand (level 9 shaman), but I don't think the patch affects them much.
In the meantime: new hairstyles!
And about 6 realms just went down again, gutting to those who made it through.

EDIT: 10:17 am, Aman'Thul and The Forgotten Coast are still down. Completed my first achievement ever (Darksentinel @ Nagrand is now a level 10 shaman /moo).

[Notwow] Quest for Progress

Has anyone played Progress Quest? It's a little single-player RPG that takes the grinding out of RPGs. Which means that it just runs in the background spouting random RPG-related text to the GUI, with the net effect of looking like Kingdom of Loathing played by a bot.



You start it, it runs. It quests for you, kills stuff, empties bags, buys new gear, and you can watch those little Progress bars... progress. Slowly. And after a while, very slowly. And while this is doubtlessly more interesting than whatever work you're meant to be doing, homework you're procrastinating about, or blog you're trying to read, it's still a bit single-minded (GRIND GRIND GRIND!).

I'm thinking we can do better than this. Hereby introducing Quest for Progress. The non-interactive RPG of the future. It's so futuristic there won't even be a QFP1, but we'll move straight to QFP2. There will be a single player option that can start as soon as your computer loads, and a MMONIRPG (massively multiplayer online non-interactive role-playing game), with over 2 people per server!

This game will be so awesome that if you close it and then load it again later it will extrapolate what would've happened while it was off. No more losing game-time when a tornado takes out some pylons!

Further features (which in fact may or may not be implemented):
- no more spending ages deciding on a class, they're all the same anyway so QFP has the option of assigning you one automatically (defaults to "Village Idiot")
- no more spending ages deciding on a name, QFP has the option of assigning you one automatically (also defaults to "Village Idiot")
- the same goes for race, except that "Village Idiot" is not a race
- better quests: escorts, debaucherie, highland games, marry an heiress, earn a Darwin award, engage in massive public quests
- more realism: QFP will occasionally create an alt for you, and level that one instead (defaults to "other Village Idiot")
- PvP: QFP will include player-versus-player combat (well, QFP-versus-QFP combat)
- NPCs will have names, they may not be very good names, but they will exist
- trophies: QFP will randomly award you completely meaningless things for doing stuff you had no hand in doing (we're basing this on a beaureaucratic model). Other QFP 'players' may or may not view these.
- new hairstyles!
- new dances!
- destructible buildings (actually, no, that won't be happening)
- realm versus realm combat (also a nono, sorry)
- bugs!
- false promises!
- ambiguity!
- lag! (although not sure how we'll do this)
- free beer on fridays! (we are, in fact, working on this. But only on fridays)
- salvation and forgiveness for your sins! (QFP creators hereby forgive you for all sins committed before last summer)
- the wrong release date (next week, honest)
- colons in future titles, because more colon makes everything better!
- and many other things we'll add when we see that they work for other companies (currently considering Google ads)

Quest for Progress 2: we hope you'll join us
Your village called, they want their idiot back

EDIT (not really):
Our lawyers have forced us to add the following disclaimer:
Things QFP might not have (read: probably won't):
- monsters
- graphics
- spells
- items
- a way to install it
- features

Blizzard should do Genetics, aka Hunchbacked Hobo's Decapitator

So, in the last post I was complaining about how I didn't really like the names that Blizzard use for the latest arena gear sets (Brutal, Hateful, etc... - read the post, it's not long). And I'm sitting here in my biosci lecture (Gene Expression and Gene Transfer), and the names given to some of these genes/proteins are just plain awesome in some cases (a real pain in the arse to remember, though).
Here are a few, a knowledge of German or access to a German translation service might be helpful:
krueppel
knirps
hunchback
piggybac
tagalong
snirp
eve
hobo
snail
and a whole bunch more I can't recall right now (I might have passed 356 last semester if I had remembered them).

But this leads me to how much more awesome the names of the arena would be if Blizzard had a geneticist as head of their naming department, e.g. Hunchbacked Hobo's Decapitator, or Krueppeled Snail's Chain Spaulders.

And yes, I'm bored in this lecture. For those of you wondering, there is some proper content on the way, once these tests/essays/assignments are done.

Things to do while waiting for Wrath

So, you're waiting for Wrath to come out.
You've stopped raiding.
Essentially, you're like this.
And you don't have beta access because you sold it for the price of a new computer (I wish).
So, while doing the dishes, I thought up a few things to do:

- Get epic flying. Finally. (Currently about halfway there).
- Level an alt. Got alts already? LEVEL MOAR ALTS! Level that paladin who's sitting at 61 because you couldn't bear grinding in HFP, even as ret (or alternatively wait for Wrath to come out so you can do play around with ret).
- Grind some arena gear.
- Grind more arena gear.
- Get to 2200 rating so you've got a nice shot at a gladiator title. It will last you a long time, and give you a nice fuzzy feeling as you quest around Northrend.
- Realise that to get 2200 rating, you probably want to get to 1500 first.
- Get back to 1400 rating (omg this week was bad).
- Gear an alt for arena.
- Get an alt epic flying.
- Stack up mats for Inscription. Seriously, grab a hunter alt, grab herbalism and skinning or something, and stock up.
- Bellwether at 4Haelz recommends finding a raiding guild to join in preparation for Wrath content.
- Catch up on sleep. 8 hours sleep a week during maintenance is not enough, especially when they just do rolling restarts.
- Earn some irl money, pay some bills, write an essay, acknowledge your spouse, claim the "missing person" reward your parents are offering... all those things you've been meaning to do but never got around to (because you were too busy sleeping during maintenance).
- Steal somebody's beta access.
- Play Warhammer Online.
- Start a blog.