Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Because lies sound so nice

I've been havin problems sleeping again. So, I spent a few hours buyin stuff offa Amazon's digital download center.

I'm at a weird time right now. I'm still havin fun with the game. However, drama intrudes. I rather like the guild I'm with right now, but they ain't goin anywhere past uld 10 anytime soon, no matter how hard they recruit.

And I can accept that. Raids starting at 11:30 my time... more of a pain. However... I've been running a bit with one of the more sucessful raiding guilds on the server. And while their vent chat tends to freak me out a bit, they get crap done. And I play better with em. I finally got my mage over the 5k dps hump. (inna 25 with an ele shammy anda boomkin)

So, I've been considering a move... and then, outta the blue I getta invite to a different raiding guild, also in the top three on my server/faction.

Personally... I prefer the social dynamics of the guild I'm in. But from a l33tist asshole standpoint, I'd really like to do serious endgame crap at least once before I stop playing this game.

So... I learned a new trick with my mage. Which is probably old hat to most of you... but I'm just (finally?) getting my head around the potential of mirror image. I've been pretty good at surviving raid wipes, and avoiding death when I pull aggro, but that was due mostly to inspired use of ice block and invisibility. I really didnt know that mirror image pretty much wiped all your aggro off for 30 secs or so.... so now, when I pull aggro with the mage, I pop mirror image before ice block.

Course, this is mostly trash fights. Boss fights, I don't pull aggro unless the tank goes down. (Which is usually how I find out the tank is down... enemy number one, baby...)

Allright... so lets do some pop culture. Ripper reviewed the new WoW book. And I gotta say rip... let go of star wars. The first three were alright up until the empire got taken down by teddy bears. The second three were so horrific... and well, lets leave that.

There was a movie a while back that pretty much rocked hollywood. The Score, with Robert DeNiro and Ed Norton. And when I say rocked... i didn't mean in a good way. The most significant part of the movie was Ed Norton's character... who pretends to be mentally handicapped to rip off a place.

The reason this was controversial was that hollywood had just given a buncha oscars to people that played handicapped characters. And here was norton, mocking them, by playing a vicious bastard pretending to be handicapped for money. See the joke? After that... not so much interest in 'special' roles...

Anyway, I've been holding off recommending this fantasy series. People spout things about "character development." The First Law series is to epic fantasy what Full Metal Jacket is to John Wayne war movies. After you read it, you will feel violated... and curse every epic fantasy series you've ever read. The point of the series is to destroy every epic fantasy cliche, one at a time, in excruciating detail. "Lost Prince?" Yeah, right. Quest to recover an artifact of ultimate power? Are you insane? Ancient wizard who ISN'T a complete bastard? You probably believe in the easter bunny as well, eh?

The most sympathetic character is a torturer. And I mean that... at the end, I thought that the only character worth a damn as a human being was... well, the torturer.

Character development? Reminds me of the old animaniacs cartoon, that would end with the "Wheel of Morality."

Wheel of morality, turn turn turn
Show us the lesson that we should learn...

My favorite?

"Elvis lives on in our hearts, in his music and in a trailer park outside Milwaukee."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the pointer to the First Law.

Just read the extract on the author's web site and boy am i ever sold :)

Cheers mate,
Grmble

Beaker said...

Just started reading the First Law books myself. As an avid fantasy reader its rare to find a set of books that rise above the usual average novels in the genre, but so far so good :)