The Diary of A Simple Man

A couple of days ago the closing song "Still Alive" from Portal popped up on my main Pandora station. I liked it so much that I looked into buying the game. Best Buy didn't carry it, according to their website. Game Stop did, and had it available as an instant digital download - for $20, plus a mandatory $3 surcharge for being able to download it again (if it got erased) for 18 months from the date of purchase.

So I went directly to Valve, the company that makes Portal, and downloaded it for $9.99. Game Stop are crooks!

So we lost power for about an hour last night - right while I was playing WoW, and not in a safe area! Fortunately when power returned, I turned out to be still alive. Did a few quests with someone, and only died once - but I can see that it's definitely a good idea to have a larger party to do many quests with.

We did have a scary moment. We'd worked our way fairly deep into an enemy area, and these enemies were stronger and more agressive than I was used to. We paused for a while to drink and eat, and the enemies started respawning behind us - four of them, almost certainly too many to cope with! My companion lagged out and froze. I wasn't sure what to do. Just then, two enemies respawned very close to us. I was able to kill them, but my companion was disconnected at around that time. Fortunately that didn't last long. Once we were reunited, we got what we needed and got out of there.

We went to Stormwind. I'd completed my "Mage's Robe" quest, and picked it up. It looks like a damned lavendar dress! I'll see if I can get a screen capture.

It was really late, and my companion logged off for the night. I was going to, too - but I was SO close to 18th level! So I ran over to Westfall and killed some creatures that were just about my level. I was surprised at how quickly I leveled up. I also worked on my technique: when fighting single creatures, it was no problem to freeze them with Frost Nova and then finish them off.

Unfortunately the spells I got at 18th level seemed kind of lame: Fireball 4, Amplify Magic (seems REALLY useless) and Remove Curse. But I didn't get a chance to try them out.

I ended up getting to bed at 12:15. I really have to stop doing this.

I got another late start last night, and when I got on, nobody I knew was online. So I played my Tauren shaman, and did quite well. Didn't die once, and completed a lot of quests; I got up to level 13. I was particularly proud that I was able to sneak into a mine, kill a supervisor, and grab his clipboard; that required some careful movement!

I got a new weapon as a quest reward, a Goblin-smasher. I didn't realize that it was a two-handed mace, though, and that my skill in staves didn't translate. A little time spent killing 5th-9th level monsters soon brought both my Defense and two-handed weapons skill to the current maximum, 65. I'm not sure if I can train that.

I've shifted my home base to the main Tauren city. Quests are starting to point me to the Barrens. I went there once, prematurely, and it seemed very dangerous.

I'm still wondering how (or if) the quests will segue into "darker" quests. So far the worst I've done is kill some humans and dwarves who were desecrating our land with mines and stealing our water. I wonder if Tauren get "evil" quests?

I suppose the undead do. I'll try an undead character eventually. I imagine that will be too scary and evil for Sebastian to see, though!

P.S. - My mage has been taking the Deeprun Tram to the Ironforge area; that's where the quests seem to be more appropriate for him right now. Unfortunately I've died a few times. I'm also going to be bringing my main fighter over there, too.

I'd like to give Teri a short tour of WoW, starting at Goldshire, and then heading into Stormwind, the Deeprun Tram, and take a griffin back to Stormwind from Ironforge. I suppose it would just bore her, though.

Or there's a small chance that she might decide to try the game...nah.