Saturday, March 04, 2006

Fun in the world of Stormreach

You may recall that some time ago I pre-ordered Dungeons and Dragons Online:Stormreach. It's equally possible that I never mentioned it, and that you don't recall that. It's also theoretically possible that you knew this because you're stalking me, but not because I mentioned it, and hence are able to recall it for different reasons.

That's not the point.

The point is that I'm back into the world of online gaming. Before any of you say "But Max, you swore off MMORPGS" I'm going to stop you and point out that no, I didn't. I said I was going to stop playing World of Warcraft. I made no rules in relation to duration of withdraw or any other game. That said feel free to credit this as a relapse. I'm actually not soaking as much time with this as I used to with WoW, I don't spend much more time playing it then I would spend doing other non-productive amusement things anyway.

All that having been said it's story time.

I've been known in nearly MMORPG I've been actively involved in as a fairly amusing person. While I always feel somewhat on the spot when someone says "That's Slyz, he's kinda weird, but he's funny." After that you have to have something clever. I've gotten past this though by recycling a phrase which I made up during one of these things

*Flashback style screen wipe to my old world of warcraft guild"
Lacei: Slyz I'm depressed
Slyz: That sucks.
Talmara: Come on slyz, she counts on you to be funny
Slyz: What? I can't just be funny. It's not something I can turn on and off, it's more of a spontaneous thing. I'm like a pet, sometimes I'm amusing, but sometimes I just pee on the rug.
*end flashback*

So anyway the pet thing serves me well. I've found that in DDO I'm in the company of a great deal of other people who have learned to enjoy the game as a game. To many people in WoW take it too seriously. Below are some of the greatest moments of this.

Zerad, Human Cleric: I'm up to 20 wisdom
Zaftig, Halfling Bard, Me:Nice
*we're waiting for the rest of our group to meet us. He does the dance emote, the dancing in this game is sub par, but is still a classic timekiller. It's also nearly mandatory that everyone else join in.*
Zaftig: You'd think with a perform skill of 12 I'd be a better dancer.
Zerad: 20 wisdom doesn't make me a ballroom dancer
Zaftig: Hmm. I'd say something about having a high dexterity and charisma, but I can't think of any combination of flexible and everyone likes me that doesn't sound dirty.

It's also worth note that the name Zaftig is a weird kind of joke. I only met one other person who understood it. The reason it's a joke is because Zaftig is a yiddish word that means big, but that character is a halfling, meaning that I'm about 3' tall and wouldn't weigh more then 50lbs.

For this next instance you need to know about voice chat. This is essentially a conference call between every player in the group built into the game. It uses your computer's microphone and speakers. You also need to know that the exception to the bad dancing rule are the warforged. Warforged are giant metal sentient golems. They do the Robot, which is both deliciously amusing, and not a half bad dance.

*We've just destroyed about 30 kobolds that attacked en masse*
Mobius, Elf Wizard, Me: Burn!
Tyalk, Warforged Fighter: Hah! Got em.
Mobius: that was close
Tyalk: Yes, and this calls for a victory dance.
*Tyalk jumps up and beings doing the warforged robot dance, and suddenly techo music comes from my headphones. I later found out that he had held his mic up to his speakers while running iTunes as a multi-task, but it was amazing how well he got it to sync up with his characters dancing*

The last one isn't really an instane, it's just a person. The characters name is spelled xleyex. It's pronounced Lex, which I know because I've heard him say it over voice chat. It's also worth note that the character is a human female bard. Overall a kinda cutsey character avatar. The player however is a 30+ year old male who speaks in a deadpan voice highly reminiscent of steven wright. If you don't know who he is google him ,well worth it.

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