So, for my birthday last week, I went ahead and bought Batman: Arkham City.  Having loved the original game, Batman: Arkham Asylum, I figured it would be a no brainer that I would love the sequel – and for the most part that’s been true.

Still, I had a bumpy ride and wanted to offer up a few thoughts.

Pre-order spiffs suck.  I know that a lot of people like them, but when they come in the form of codes that you have to go online to retrieve, that bugs me.  The whole idea of being forced to go online period bugs me.  If I’m paying full, day-one-launch price for the game – GIVE ME THE FREAKING GAME!  Don’t say, “Oh – here’s the game, but if you REALLY want to have fun, go online and enter in this 25-digit code to DL it…”

I saw the commercials for ‘exclusive Robin playable character’ at BestBuy when you pre-order and actually considered it until I realized you had to go online to get the content.  You may be surprised to hear this, but I have -never- hooked my XBOX up to the Internet, have never gotten an XBOX live account, etc and so on.  I just wasn’t interested in messing with it.  I also didn’t pre-order this (or any other) game.

BUT, I did -buy- the game at BestBuy, which, as it turns out, was enough to get codes for both Catwoman and Robin.

Sigh.

Now I had a pickle and a decision to make.  Did I want to have those characters in my game?  The answer was yes, but dealing with the XBOX Live stuff was not appealing, so I thought about it for a few days before breaking down and deciding to do it.

Let me fill you in on some logistical details: I have a wireless router/modem all in one.  Bought it years ago when Comcast kept telling me that my connection problems were ‘equipment’ related (at that time, I had one of their modems and then a separate wireless router.  I had the modem replaced multiple times and changed routers twice – still had connection issues (turned out to be the shitty Comcast wiring in the neighborhood)).  The router has 1 hard connection port on it, which I use for whatever computer I’m recording the podcasts on.  Everything else in the house connects wirelessly, including other computers and the TiVo.

So, I looked up a wireless adapter for the XBOX.  Ouch.  $70 on Amazon and I’d have to wait while it was shipped.  I had a RewardZone certificate for BestBuy, which I decided to use and purchase a Wifi adapter for the XBOX.  Only I forgot to print the cert before heading to BestBuy.  Sigh.  Paying full price, I took the little thing home, opened up the packaging (I hate the blister pack shit), unfolded the English instructions (there were several in other languages) and promptly read that you must first HARD WIRE your XBOX to the Internet to download an update before you can install the Wifi adapter.

Shit.

Digging through box after box in the basement, I come up with a Cat5 cord (the one I use for the podcasting is actually 50 ft long and passes through the floor and, therefore, would be a pain in the ass to use for this), hook up the XBOX and start the updating process.  Rather than be idle, I decide to go on the XBOX Live website and read up on it.  There is a free account, which is good, and I can retrieve the characters I want with that free account, which is even better.  The XBOX, meanwhile, is updating, restarting, updating, restarting.  I figure the best thing to do is just sign up for the Live account so all I’ll have to do is put in my login info once it’s done.

And I was wrong.

First, I put in the email address I use the most.  The website tells me that my email address is already associated with a Live account and takes me to a ‘sign in’ page.  Huh.  Wracking my brain, I try to think when I could have ever used that email address with anything XBOX related.  Did I create an account way back when I first bought the XBOX?  (Like, 5 years ago?  HAS IT REALLY BEEN THAT LONG HOLY CRAP!)  Trying some of the passwords I used to use all the time for stuff like this, I keep getting the ‘red words of doom’ telling me the username/password combo is wrong.  Huh.

Frustrated, I decide to use my backup email address.  Good old faithful.  Used whenever someone forces me to give them an email address in order to get something I want in return (I hate that).  I plug that sucker in and the website tells me that it, too, has already been used to create an XBOX Live account and takes me to a ‘sign in’ page.

Okay, WTF?  There is NO WAY I would use both of these email addresses!  I cycle through the trusty old passwords (I don’t use any of those anymore, btw) and keep getting the red words of doom.  SERIOUSLY, XBOX?  SERIOUSLY?

IT SHOULD’NT BE THIS HARD AND NOW I ALMOST DON’T WANT TO PLAY AS ROBIN ANYMORE YOU’VE STOLEN MY SENSE OF FUN AND WONDER (see what I did there?) BY MAKING ME JUMP THROUGH ALL THESE HOOPS ONLY TO HIT A BRICK WALL YOU STUPID PIECE OF MICROSOFT SHIT!

(deep breath)

Okay.  I search both email address inboxes for any mentions of XBOX Live accounts and just come up with some spam stuff.  Fine, whatever – time to move on.  There is another email address that I HAVE NEVER GIVEN TO ANYONE EVER so I will use that.

HOLY FREAKING CRAP IT WORKS!  I am able to create an XBOX LIVE account!  OH HAPPY FREAKING DAY!

Just in time, too, as all the updates are now done.  So I go through the XBOX menus and click on JOIN XBOX LIVE and start filling in all the information about my account.  I get through to the end and it says that the account I have entered is associated with another gamertag, would I like to create a new account?  No – I just did that you piece of shit.  CLICK CLICK CLICK – WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN’T USE THE ACCOUNT I JUST BUSTED MY FREAKING ASS TO CREATE?!

ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

STUPID F&^%*#G MICROSOFT!

*search website for phone number to call*

“Hello. I want to complain. I want to whine.  I want to smash things and call them Microsoft.”

(sometime later)

It turns out that I can, in fact, use the account I created – BUT IT WILL NOT BE ASSOCIATED WITH THE LOGIN I HAVE USED FOR THE PAST 5 YEARS ON THE XBOX ESSENTIALLY WIPING AWAY EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER DONE OH MY GOD ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME YOU STUPID F&^%*#G ARRRRGGHHHH!

“Hold on, there’s another solution.  You can click ‘Join XBOX Live’ on your console and use another email address to create the account under.”

“Oh, let me tell you about email addresses buddy!”

“Have you converted your email addresses over to Windows Live accounts?”

“What?  No!  Why do I have to do that?  Where does it say I have to do that?  IT NEVER SAID I HAD TO DO THAT IT SAID I HAD ALREADY USED THESE EMAIL ADDRESSES WITH XBOX LIVE!”

“Yeah, it’s not very intuitive (NO SHIT?).  You have to convert your email address over to a Windows Live account first, giving you access to (TONS OF SHIT I DON’T F&^%*#G WANT) and then we can setup your new XBOX Live account.”

“Has anyone mentioned that these extra steps ARE A PAIN IN THE ASS?”  (maybe)

So.  Three hours after starting this whole freaking mess, I have TWO XBOX LIVE ACCOUNTS, I have a Wifi adapter hooked up and working, I have downloaded my ‘exclusive content’ and I still want to smash things.

…luckily, there are a bunch of inmates of Arkham City who are willing to oblige me.  Okay, Bats.  Let’s break some bones, shall we?

"Selina. You look hot." "What? I can't hear you in this mask thingie." "What?" "What?" "I said - what?" "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" "ARE YOU SHOUTING AT ME?"

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I said I’d do it, I warned you – you didn’t listen, did you? Well, now it’s TOO LATE!

THE RETURN OF THE PODCAST IS HERE!

Episode 9 of the All Things From My Brain Podcast is here.

In this weeks massive, DOUBLE SIZED, MAXI-PODCAST, I am joined by a special guest on his very first podcast appearance as we discuss the iPad, about Apple, Google, Blizzard, Doctor Who, Dollhouse, Torchwood – and the fact that his youngest son may be stalking me via iPhone.

With Episode 9 I am dumping Podbean and everything is going to be hosted here on atfmb.com. If you’ve subscribed to the podcast via iTunes, that link is in the process of being changed and you’ll have to resubscribe – I’ll let you know as soon as that’s ready and available.

In the meantime, click below and stream to your hearts content or you can download via this link by right clicking and choosing ‘save as’.

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On the list of things that can distract one from writing the next great American novel comes Cartoon Wars: Gunner.

A HUGE fan of the original Cartoon Wars game (I wrote something up on that game last year), I was really psyched when I saw that they’d come up with a new game.  With the original, you had two towers on opposite sides of a battlefield.  bad guys streamed out of the enemy tower – all stick figures with cool weapons & big heads, and you had to fight them off.  Between battles you could upgrade to different kinds of soldiers.

With Gunner, they’ve amped up the fun and the upgrades.

You start out as a simple bowman:

As you fight, you gain gold which you can use to upgrade your bowman’s speed, power, range and skill (which I’ve done in the screenshot above).  You also have a host of other attributes that you can also upgrade in between battles – if you have the gold.

Just as you upgrade, so do your enemies, going from simple spearman to bowman, gunman and monsters of all sorts – jumping spiders, leaping tigers, fire spitting dragons – even guys in battle armor.  To fight them, you need to upgrade out of the bow and arrow phase and into something a little more powerful.  Lucikly, you have tons of choices.

The very next thing (in affordable gold) that you can buy is the semi-automatic rifle.  Slow and steady, this thing blows away most of the bad guys and, just like the bow, has it’s own upgrades to increase it’s power.

While playing the game, I also got the next step up in weapons – the twin automatic pistols.  Then I decided that I needed to jump to the end of the book, so to speak.  So I stopped upgrading everything and I started hoarding gold until I could afford this: (80k gold)

Yep. It’s a BattleSuit. A mech, even.

And it’s friggin suhweet!

“Oh.. that’s right. I’m just a harmless looking guy standing over here minding my own business… that’s it… come closer…  closer…”

“BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Your main weapons are, of course, your guns, but you also have some other stuff to play with.

Each weapon has it’s own ‘mega weapon’. The Twin Pistols, for example, has lightning that ZAPS the bad guys.  The Bow has flaming meteors that fall from the sky and the BattleSuit drops bombs.

Some added stuff – your weapons (except for the bow), heat up.  If you look at the image above, you’ve got three icons in the upper left – each is a different weapon (you can have 3 equipped at any one time).  You can switch between them by tapping the icon or pressing the button with the arrows circling it.  If the weapon you’re on overheats, you automatically switch to the next one.

The red button on the left controls your gunner, who can run left, right, up and down – the battlefield is wider than your screen, so you can run back and forth across it.  The blue button is your ‘fire’ button and you can shoot left or right as needed and, with certain weapons, you can fire while running.  This is handy as you can run right to escape, and still be firing left or behind you.

Standing still you are the most accurate and your automatic weapons will fire faster.

Overall, this is a great game to play.  You can jump in, fight a couple battles, save the game and come back later.  Perfect for break time

Cartoon Wars: Gunner is for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  You can get it at the App Store for just $0.99, which is an awesome price (Clicking this link will launch iTunes and take you right to the games page).

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I grew up in a mostly Catholic family.  I say ‘mostly’ because we were Catholic, but we didn’t really go to church much.  Well, I went to church – I had to because it was right there at school and all.  Through the 8th grade, anyway.

When it was time to begin High School, I didn’t want to go on to a Catholic school.  I probably should’ve.  They never really let me get away with much, not like I would in the next four years of public school, anyway (another story for another time. Maybe).  Still, I was determined not to head into the Catholic High School if I could avoid it.  I had several reasons, not the least of which was the fact that my best friend would not be going there; he was heading to public school.

I appealed to my mother on many different grounds; my best friend was going to public school, I hated wearing uniforms (really, really hated it), I never wanted to see a pair of corduroy pants again in my life, I would be miserable (especially in the corduroy pants and the 110 degree heat (115 in the summer)), I would complain every day, loudly and, of course, think of the money you’ll save by sending me to public school!

I’ve no idea what swayed her, but I did end up going to public school for the next four years, where I met quite the cast of characters.

There was T (I’ll not include names to protect the innocent); as big and tall as me, if not more so.  He played football for a couple years but our team sucked so he ended up quitting.  He said ‘medical reasons’, but I’ve always thought he was tired of getting his butt kicked by visiting teams each week.  We had school spirit!  We went to many games and screamed our heads off while we lost magnificently.

There was A, who couldn’t seem to keep his story straight.  It changed a lot.  Probably still does.

There was D, my best friend at the time.  I’d never really seen him out of our school uniforms before (blue shirts, dark pants) so imagine my surprise when he showed up that first day in one of the loudest, Hawaiian type floral print shirts I had ever seen!  He wore those all that year and part of the next, I think.

C came later – a year behind us.  Quiet, artistic, loyal.  This ended up being the core of our little group – the five of us.  There were some others here and there, but this was the core group for years.

I can’t remember exactly what the catalyst was, but I think we started hanging out and playing all sorts of different board games like Risk and Axis and Allies and the like.  Someone mentioned D&D and we were intrigued.  T brought me a couple of books (that I still have) – Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules – Dungeon Master and Players edition.  They were red, with dragons on the front and all this cool stuff on the inside.  I was pegged to be the Dungeon Master, they the players.

In short order, we were hooked.

This was the very first creative endeavor for me.  It got the juices flowing, so to speak.  I started creating campaigns and tweaking existing ones from books, adding my own little twists and creating my own brand of chaos.  It was a blast.

…and a lot of times, we played in the library during lunch.

No one seemed to mind.  We took over a corner of the place every lunch hour, gathering people to our campaigns as time went on.  Some played, some just watched.  Everyone had fun.

You wouldn’t think that a public school library would be a good place for such a thing and yet it seemed perfect at the time, and perfect now that I think back.  The Librarian didn’t seem to mind as long as we were quiet. I guess I thought any adults would have a fit if they found out what we were doing, so when it didn’t happen, I was a little stunned.

A teacher even asked me in class one day and quite unexpectedly, “Do you play Dungeons and Dragons?”  I wasn’t sure how to respond.  A lot of people thought that it was evil, somehow.  That the game itself drove people to worship Satan and whatnotall.  There was the famous story of the kids who started ‘playing for real’ and someone died or something in a cave (they made a tv movie about it so the story spread).  Of course, that was the exception and never the rule, but people still believed that anyone who played that game were sacrificing goats in their basements or something while defiling virgins.

I grinned sheepishly and said, “Yep. I’m a Dungeon Master.”  I fully expected some sort of deluge, which would have devasted me as this was a favorite teacher of mine.

She looked at me and smiled, “I thought so. You seem the type, very intelligent.”

Higher praise I could not have received.

Contrast this to another experience several years later when Magic: The Gathering was the game of choice.  We invaded a small coffee shop where one of my cousins worked.  She’d told us of the atmosphere and the comfy sitting areas where people would meet, play games, chat, etc. and had invited us to come by and hang out – all in an effort to boost the little shop’s business.  We brought our cards to play, but the owner was so disturbed by the games ‘obvious demonic influence’ that he banned us from returning.

Sigh.

Those early days of creating campaigns and, sometimes, creating things on the fly because my players did too well or moved too quickly through an area, helped to shape my voice in writing today.

I wouldn’t trade that time in the library for anything.

~P

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Well.

As you may or may not have figured out by now, I am most definitely an Apple head.  I’ve got 2 iMacs at home and an iPhone in my pocket and I love to discover new games and apps to play with AND I love to share those finds with the kind folks who read this blog and listen to my podcast.

A bit of an old school gamer, I am quite the fan of a side scroller.  S’why I like the games coming out on iPhone so much – they are simple to figure out, fun to play and, for the most part – they scroll sideways!   It’s also why I bought the Sega pack for my X-Box – SONIC!  ALTERED BEAST!  HECK YEAH!  But let’s get back to the iPhone for a second.  I was trolling the lists to see what was making the rounds in the Top 25 the other night, and I came across something that looked interesting.

Enter: Cartoon Wars

Cartoon Wars is a side scrolling game that you can scroll back and forth on, if that makes any sense.  The concept is simple: you have a castle and the computer has a castle.  You have mana and the computer has mana.  Use your mana to create your army and then attack the other castle and its army. Scroll to the right to see your forces attack the enemy.  If the enemy beats you back, you’ll find yourself scrolling left again pretty quickly.

It gets better.  Taking down the other army brings you gold.  Taking down the other castle also brings you gold.  In between battles, you can use your gold to upgrade your units or purchase new types of units.

You start out with your standard fighter dudes – they’re the stick figurey guys with the white heads shown above.  Next, you can purchase Ninjas, Gunners, Wizards, Dark Angels -the list goes on.  Each new class of fighter costs a little bit more mana – could be 10 (normal fighter dude), or it could be 400 (Dark Angel, I believe).  And each unit can be upgraded – so you can take a training Ninja and turn em into masters – depends on how much gold you have.

You also have a turret on the top of your castle that can shoot massive arrows out into the enemy forces.  Control of that thing is a little tricky.  I really thought I had it but then I upgraded the weapon between battles and everything went to hell and my boys got SLAUGHTERED!

So, Cartoon Wars is part strategy, part side scroller and though I didn’t know that I would like it, I find myself getting a bit addicted.  It’s taken over as my break time entertainment during the day.

It’s available in the iTunes store right now for $0.99 and is worth it.  Check it out in iTunes: this link will launch iTunes.

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With a crazy amount of Apps available through the App Store (something like 27,000 – and the majority of those are supposed to be games), the iPhone is quickly becoming a viable game platform.

HeavyMach on the iPhone

The old school gamer in me is relishing the return of the side scroller.  Some of my favorite games were ‘Contra‘, ‘Gradius‘. ‘R-Type‘, ‘Metroid‘, ‘Castlevania‘, ‘Sonic the Hedgehog‘ and, of course, the juggernaut: ‘Super Mario Brothers‘.  Seeing a slew of new variations on the old themes is pretty cool.  I’ve been playing HeavyMach, a side scroller where you’re the tank and you just have to blow everything to hell.  It’s simple.  It’s fun.  It’s a no brainer.  I’ve no doubt that they are selling copies like mad.

Now, iPhone isn’t the only hand held device to give a home to the venerable side scroller – I know that the PSP and DS have a lot of titles that fall into the genre, it’s just that I don’t own either of those systems – I own an iPhone.  And they make it so easy for me to buy games.  Feel like playing a new game?  Click the App Store button, browse, find something I like and DL it – I’m usually playing within a couple of minutes.  For a culture that is into ‘instant gratification’, that kind of response is just phenomenal.  No stores, no lines, no stupid cashier telling you that you’re entitled to 6 free issues of Sports Illustrated or Entertainment Weekly as part of your purchase today (yes BestBuy – I mean YOU!).  Just DL and have some fun.

I’ve been impressed overall with the games being released through the Ap Store, and I’ve said before that I can see the iPhone and iTouch becoming the next gen game platform.  And with companies like EA Mobile putting out high profile titles (Madden, Tiger Woods, Need for Speed to name just a few), I think the only way for the system to go is up.

The ONLY thing I can see holding the iPhone back as a platform is the cost.  For most of the folks I talk to about Apple products in general, they always mention the prices as a hurdle for them, and one they aren’t willing to jump.  The iTouch is priced lower for doing everything the iPhone does except make phone calls (okay, you also have to be connected to a WiFi network because there’s no cell provider network), and that helps, but I really think Apple needs to look at how they can lower prices across the board (desktops, laptops, phones) to increase their market share – especially with a recession going on and no light at the end of the tunnel just yet.

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I love Blizzard, I really do.  I think they do so much to keep their user base entertained, engaged and coming back for more.  The one area where I feel they fail utterly is: population control.

Let’s paint the picture for you: you’ve been working all day, maybe it was a crappy day.  You come home, do the dinner thing, don’t want to watch tv – so you decide to login to your favorite MMO: World of Warcraft.  You get yourself something to drink and maybe a snack, pull up a chair and enter in your login info.  Connecting, handshaking – all that sutff that flashes by and then you see it – your server is Full.  You’re going to have to wait.  How long?

Well, that depends on something I like to call ‘Big Magic, Much JooJoo…’

It starts off telling you that you’ve only got about ten minutes to wait, but then it starts changing – 30 minutes, five minutes, 40 minutes, 10 minutes, 35 minutes – it keeps pulsing back and forth.  Whatever, you’re in for a wait.  Just yesterday (saturday), I waited an hour to get onto my server only to find myself booted off again within a half hour while questing in Zangarmarsh.  It was very sudden – everything just sort of froze, and then I was kicked off.  I logged back in and was face to face with the freaking queue again, telling me it would be 30 minutes before I got back in, so I closed the program and played some Xbox instead.

Blizzard’s answer to this issue is two fold; on one hand, they offer ‘free transfers’ on ‘select realms’ to ‘lower population servers’.  I don’t believe I’ve ever seen my server’s name, Earthen Ring, on any of these free transfer offers.  The second choice is a paid transfer to another server.

Both of these solutions have the same big problem: I don’t want to move my characters to another server.

Your server is a community, one that you’ve become a part of and that has become a part of you.  To leave it would be like moving from your town to another, leaving all your friends and family behind.  Who the hell wants to do that?

I don’t understand the logistics behind it, but I wonder why Bliizzard doesn’t simply increase capacity on high population servers?  I’ve been on Earthen Ring since the beginning, since I bought and installed the game.  I don’t want to leave it, but I’d sure like to be able to login and play.  The queue has been around, off and on, for a very long time.  Usually during ‘high peak’ times, late afternoon/early evening, but I’ve been noticing it later and later in the evenings and almost always on the weekends.  It’s getting ridiculous.

Is there some great wall that prevents Blizzard from increasing capacity on any given realm?  It can’t be a money issue – with 11.5 million subscribers at $15 a month – I think they have enough money.

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So, I spent a good chunk of my weekend playing World of Warcraft – something that hasn’t happened in a really, really long time. I have to admit, the new Death Knight class is mostly responsible – well, that and the fact that I have a character who is actually making money for a change.  More on that later – first, Death Knights.

I already posted a bit about the changes in this expansion so I won’t repeat it all here.  I will say this: the starting area for the Death Knights and the quests you are given are quite engaging.  I’m actually -reading- them and finding myself interested in what comes next, which is really unusual.  I’ve gotten used to the one click quest accept option – where you click the questgiver, the quest pops up with fast text and you just click accept and go onto the next one.  In this case, I found myself reading, quite carefully, everything being said.  There’s a definite arch to the Death Knight story when you start and by the time you get to the end (I won’t spoil it for you), you feel like you’ve really accomplished something and have been duly entertained while doing it.

Seriously, kudos to Blizzard because man, I don’t read the quests anymore.

In other news, despite having a level 60 Mage for quite some time, (63 now I think – never leveled him to 70 with Burning crusade), I have lived in a state of perpetual poverty within the game.  I’ve always struggled to make enough to cover my repair costs, to be brutally honest.  All of that seems to be changing and I’m not sure why.  I’m not doing anything particularly different than I have in the past except that I’ve been playing my Paladin a lot more lately.  Maybe that’s the key – Alliance side will buy anything?

In even other news, I watched Kung Fu Panda over the weekend and I have to say, it was fantastic.  Really entertaining – I highly recommend it.  Caught another episode of ‘Legend of the Seeker’ – I’ve got it Tivoed so I don’t have to remember to watch it.  It’s still good, but they keep changing more stuff.  For example: Kahlahn revealed now that she was raised by the Sisters of the Light, not with the wizards at the Wizard’s Keep in Aydindril and that, when her mother died, her father used her and her sister (not really her sister in the books), to force people to do what ever he wanted them to do (again in the book, he died from the shock of her mother’s death, who had taken control of him with her Confessor’s power so he would give her strong children).

How these changes will affect the story line (especially the parts in the books where a Sister of the Light kidnaps Richard and forces him to go back to their Palace), I’ve no idea.  It’ll be interesting to see where they go with it and how they diverge from the books (further).

In still MORE news, the Star Trek trailer has gone live and is shiny.  

And, lastly, the turkey has been taken from the freezer and is now slowly thawing in the fridge.  T-minus 4 days!!!

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I have been playing Wrath for a couple days now, and I have to admit – Blizzard has done some pretty nifty things.

Some examples come from the Death Knight starting area and quests.  

The Eye.  The Eye quest lets you take a giant floating eye for a ride down to spy on the Scarlets.  Your whole UI changes – it is really, really cool.

The next surprise for me was when you get to steal a horse.  Again, the UI changes – it surprised me and was a lot of fun.

Next, the cannons on the ship.  You get a quest to sneak behind enemy lines, board a ship and turn their own cannons against the Scarlets.  OMFG – the fun!  It reminded me of the first time I did the bombing quests in Outland.  SO FUN!

But none of that prepared me for the best surprise.  Normally, starting areas remain just that – starting areas.  You do your quests and move on, other people come on and do the same quests – the area remains the same.  Not so for Death Knights.  I completed the first quests and found that, for me, the starting area had changed!  Now, the Death Knights hold it – so I see a battered area, full of Ghouls and Plaguehounds.  Holy crap, it’s COOL!

This way of creating a logical progression – how the quests are about conquering the land and then you actually see it conquered instead of having to pretend – that is just simply amazing.

Well done, Blizzard.  Well done.

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So – I got and installed The Wrath of the Lich King.

I must say, so far, it’s pretty freaking cool.  Meet Kurmudgeon:

Kurmudgeon is a level 55 Death Knight (they start at level 55).  His story is a simple one in that he doesn’t really have one.  I needed an alt and I’d used him a very long time ago so he was resurrected as a Death Knight.  We’ll see how it goes. 

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