I get a distinct “trainwreck” vibe from the beta, and I really don’t see it changing. I strongly suspect that just like the kindergarten heroic tale known as Wings of Liberty apparently wasn’t written by the creators of the original Starcraft, so, it seems, the faction leaders of WoW are being written by the same 15-year-old boys who are the game’s primary target audience.

Imagine if, during an anti-terrorist operation in the Caucasus, FSB operatives discover Stalin’s secret grandson, who grew up there in the mountains under the influence of radio and TV programmes asserting that Stalin was a bloody dictator, and thus grew ashamed of his heritage. Then suddenly he is taken to the Kremlin, where Medvedev assures him that Stalin was in fact a national hero who single-handedly earned the Soviet Union a victory over the Germans in WWII. Stalin’s grandson—let’s call him Joseph Jr.—naturally grows proud, and starts participating in Russian political life despite having no qualifications or prior history of leadership.

In the meantime, Sarah Palin, who went missing two years ago on a diplomatic voyage to the UK, suddenly appears on the streets of Moscow, amnesiac and without possessions. Naturally, nobody there recognizes her either. At first she’s kept as a slave by a Moscow crimelord, but when she makes a daring escape with her two newfound friends (a Japanese martial arts master and a Serbian assassin), the crimelord realizes the error of his ways and approaches the Russian government, where he’s promptly appointed the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Palin and her companions hijack the crimelord’s personal plane and fly to England, where seeing Queen Elizabeth II restores her memory.

Palin flies back to America, where Barack Obama immediately proclaims her the rightful ruler of America and shyly steps down. She calls for a NATO summit and promptly drafts a new foreign policy centered around eradicating Russia, and nobody says a word, because, you know, Russians are evil and every honest American is totally cool with eradicating them. Then she goes back to England and, together with the Queen and David Cameron, meets Medvedev (accompanied by the crimelord-turned-minister and Joseph Jr. but strangely not Putin), and they start discussing the Russian-Japanese dispute over the Kuril Islands without any Japanese representatives being present. However, Muslim terrorists bomb the Buckhingam Palace and Palin, naturally, blames it on those pesky Russians. Joseph Jr., in turn, suggests nuking America to smithereens.

For now, however, the differences are put aside. You see, back in 1945, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, one of Hitler’s generals was building up a Nazi state in the Arctic, and just now, having built up an army of brainwashed Wermacht soldiers, he suddenly decides to conquer the world! Russia and NATO both invade New Naziland, with Joseph Jr. commanding the Russian army and Putin patiently dissuading him from attacking American ports. Meanwhile, a rogue general from Ukraine, who was previously funding bioweapon research with Yanukovych’s secret approval, unleashes a deadly virus on the allied army, halting the assault and letting the Nazis capture Obama, who was for some inexplicable reason present on the frontlines.

When they do finally make it to the Nazi general’s citadel, the Secretary-General of the UN, who is overseeing the joint operation, suggests hosting the Winter Olympics right there in the Arctic, and let the winners infiltrate the general’s chambers. They do so and kill him, and find Obama kept prisoner there, so they leave Obama to rule New Naziland to give orders to the Nazi soldiers and prevent them from nuking everything on their own accord. And so it seems that, at last peace is achieved…

But then Medvedev is called to a summit about the world ecological crisis in… let’s say the Philippines, and thus resigns in favor of his new Prime Minister, Joseph Jr.—who is then promptly elected President of Russia because, you know, Stalin’s axe-crazy grandson was the only logical choice. (*) Meanwhile, a secret Nazi nuclear silo that has been lying on the bottom of the Pacific since the early 1940s suddenly surfaces, and the ICBMs fly all over the world, nuking such disjoint places as Yokohama, the Hoover Dam, and a random patch of pine forest in Canada.

Joseph Jr. kicks all non-Russians out of Moscow and then declares war against NATO. He tells the Ukrainians to invade Romania without using the virus (which they then promptly use anyway, because Yanukovych suddenly decides to turn into a cackling evil overlord), and launches an invasion fleet against Japan despite it not even being a member of NATO, taking all the Kurils and Hokkaido but losing southern Sakhalin. Putin watches Joseph Jr., facepalms, but does absolutely nothing.

Meanwhile, one of the nukes falls over the Alps, causing some disturbances in the crust or something like that, and makes a new volcano erupt, flooding Switzerland with lava—but not before one of the bank owners evacuates the entire population on his personal passenger plane. (Apparently it had space compression technology or something.) The plane then flies into a fight between Russian and American jet fighters, and an American pilot shoots it down just for being there. The plane falls onto a no-name island in the Pacific, and it coincidentally turns out that the Americans were holding Medvedev (who was en route to the Philippines) as a prisoner on a ship around there. The Swiss rescue him, then the bank owner arrives and announces that they are his slaves. Naturally, they fight back against the bank owner’s personal little army, culminating in a battle between two giant robots, and when the jerkass bank owner is defeated, Medvedev installs him as the leader of Switzerland-in-exile, conscripts them into an alliance with Russia, and refers them to Joseph Jr., who gives then the newly-claimed Hokkaido to settle on. The Swiss use uber-experimental terraforming technology to reshape the island into a giant two-headed eagle.

If this summary sounds like everyone on Earth suddenly regressed to the mental age of 15 and got high on hallucinogens, I wholly agree. Then why is this essentially the plot of the recent two WoW expansions?

(*) It is rumored outside Russia that his opponents in the election were a convicted mass murderer, the ghost of Hitler, and a basic campfire. The campfire almost had it, too.

As for the comedy, that is a part of the setting, and has been since the first Warcraft, orcs and humans. There are some who would prefer that this be Lord of the Rings or Conan, to whom the only suggestion can be that those games exist.

~ Scurvy

BLIZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARD!!!!!

The response to, “How do you keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paris?” is not “Erect a giant, impassable wall between the farm and Paris,” it’s, “Make the farm more attractive.”

~ Sleutel, wow.com

In this dream, among other things, Yunaris invited me into an Ulduar 10 PUG.

Tiinalria had to say about this, “Behave well, and you’ll dream that he invited you into a TOTC 25 PUG!”

“Everyone knows” that female characters in WoW are constantly /kissed, /flirted and otherwise hit on by male characters. Right?

Depends—and I’ve seen that kind of separation noted by at least two testimonies, one of which I’m quoting below.

I’m a female who plays mostly female characters. Whether or not you get attention from male players who want to shower you with “gifts” depends, like rl, on if you act like a tramp or not. The sexier, flirtier, more helpless you act, the more you will attract that sort of organ-driven male player to give you things. I’ve been gaming since the early days of table-top and at 44 have been, or am in, almost every major game in the market and its the same in each and every single one.

Playing a female who does not need to be rescued, does not flirt, does not act all coquettish gets you precisely nothing and thats fine with me. So before you assume that every female character gets more stuff because of the sex of the character, know that it has nothing to do with the sexual representation of the toon, but on the flirty, slutty way males play those females.

I will also tell you that most women can tell which females are being played by males after hanging out with them even a short time because they play women the way their little pubescent little dreams WANT their women to act. Most women, women of any quality at all, do not act in RL the way most males play their female characters.

Source

From the Stormwind Book of Laws:

§15: Being a pillock.

Watchmans discretion. Appropriate punishment, which may involve the watch simply ignoring the presence of the citizen in question.

In retrospect, putting a link here from the Watch Records site was a mistake (although it’s not like this site is secret anyway). I’ve removed it.

Just be warned that it contains some pretty disturbing personal stuff, which might semi-consciously affect your perception of my character even if you don’t want it. If this warning doesn’t stop you, then sure, go ahead.

I can recall scenes from video games, but when I try to imagine myself as my WoW character, my mind immediately starts filling in graphic details that weren’t there, without any conscious intervention.

For example, one day my character was sitting on a bench in the Cathedral Square, and nothing interesting was going on. I felt bored and sleepy, so I closed my eyes and tried to draw the scene in my mind casting myself as the character. And then, even though I only “fed” my imagination the basic picture, it went more vivid. The bench itself is basically a glorified grey cuboid in the game, but in my mind it became more realistic, with random irregularities on the surface, litter thrown around, and I even imagined what it felt like to touch it. The same occurred with other details of the scene I focused on, although the “big picture” was blurry.

Two parts.

In the first one, I was playing a deep immersion game based on Darths & Droids, which was apparently mixed in my mind with Dmitry Puchkov’s Storm in the Glass—to the point that, when we got to a point when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan reached a hangar resembling that in Enter the Matrix (?!), Puchkov could not continue writing for the game until David Morgan-Mar and company produced more material for the comic.

The second part re-enacted the east coast of Eastern Plaguelands, as it appears in the non-instanced zone: the Ruins of the Scarlet Enclave, with Acherus hanging above it in the sky. I do not remember what I was doing there, though.

To no surprise, it had two settings blended into one.

The dream was basically a modernized “retelling” of certain parts of the biblical Book of Genesis, most notably the creation of the world in six days. However, it was also intermixed with the death knight starting area, complete with Acherus-style teleporters that I kept using, and pleasant seaside scenery—a coast with a cliff, seagulls (if I remember correctly), for some reason a playground, and one of the aforementioned teleporters. Much like the Havenshire coast—before the destruction, that is.

There was something earlier that was related to “my gender thing” (as Madclaw called it). From what I remember, I was in that scene in female mode, and it also included Niobe from The Matrix in her usual red outfit. (Best thing of all? I know why!)

In the main (WoW) part, which imprinted in my memory, consisted of me clearing an instance with Sephi and some other guildmates. I say “an instance” but it was clearly Zul’Farrak, it was just never referred to by name in the dream. And it mirrored the actual memory of us doing so yesterday.

We traveled to my grandfather’s home, and I engaged in my usual lament about having nothing to do there.

Somehow, I kept switching between that apartment and an environment much like WoW (apparently Tanaris), where, however, I was physically present. I was to retrieve a hidden stash by distracting Horde guards from it.

The stash, and everything that followed, was related to the history of the French Revolution and especially the demise of King Louis XVI. I replayed that information in my head as I was making a picture collection of sorts, representing various stages of the revolution up until the Reign of Terror.

I was playing WoW almost the entire dream. I believe Nyoma was in it and took her part in something important that happened before I briefly woke up. I should have written that down immediately, and it feels like the information is there and just needs a small nudge to come up.

Among the last scenes was an assessment on my sexuality, which was, however, inconclusive.

I finally downloaded and installed the thing—hopefully it will stop dreams about it.

On to level 55.

Having nothing to do, I went to bed earlier than usual—at 23:28. I spent that time on another WILD attempt, which I can now call semi-successful.

I started with the usual full-body relaxation, from the toes to the head, and as soon as I reached my eyes, I concentrated on the visions and stopped paying attention to both my body and external distractions. Eventually, after some hypnagogic imagery, there was a very short blackout that I don’t remember, after which I ended up not feeling anything, just moving along the road from the Gorodok shop to the Trade Center as a kind of disembodied observer.

And then TWANG! I dropped out, and suddenly weird but pleasant feelings of “electrification” started running through my entire body. I waited until they calmed down a bit, then recalled (with effort) the scene I dropped out of and continued to induce the vision. To avoid thinking about my limbs, I just imagined floating in the air on the street and pushing myself forward with force of will.

Twice along the way, I started feeling my imaginary arms—dream arms, if you will—going a bit back and forward while I could still feel lying in my bed. And both times, it once again ended in a TWANG! and weird cessation of the sensations that vocabulary lacks the words to describe. Also, there were three cases of “near-blackouts” when for a split second I thought I was about to lose my consciousness—before, that feeling rarely occurred when I was feeling sleepy after not getting enough sleep.

After that, I looked at the clock and saw that it was 00:14, and decided to just fall asleep as usual. I remember enough of the dream that followed to write it down. Which I’ll do in the next post.

First, I accidentally saw some Russian TV series (of the usual variety with boring camera shots and wooden acting) that used the opening music from Stargate Atlantis overlaid onto an original video sequence. Needless to say, I was enraged.

Later, I was wandering around the microdistrict looking for a place where I could buy the European WOTLK. (Because—and that’s a real life fact here—only the Russian version is present in retail stores. Mind you—now this is from the dream once again—I checked an Internet shop before, but its delivery time was listed as one to two weeks, and I was understandably unimpressed.) I found it in a fictional location that has already been present in one dream before that—in that one, it was the site of a WoW-ish battle between some dwarves and… a different clan of dwarves, I think, although I don’t remember.

In both dreams, that fictional building displaced the square with my former school and the nearby hospital and kindergarten. This may be another emerging stock location. Its distinctive feature is a white hallway with windows at one side and doors at the other, resembling the school and hospital from Evangelion, as well as the actual school that the building replaces.

In this particular dream, one of the rooms behind the doors was a medical-looking office, in which I bought a WOTLK box using my Visa Electron. Incidentally, along with it, I also took another card out of my pocket: the white keycard I use to open the door at work. They commented on that.

And once again, I found myself unwilling to wake up because it would mean losing the newly-acquired game. In all seriousness, this has to stop. Today I’ll go to the nearest academ.org office, buy a WebMoney card, and just buy the bloody key online. Screw the box, and screw Blizzard retailers.

Added: While I could find neither the means to buy WebMoney cards nor the means to transfer from a Visa to a WebMoney account, amazingly enough, Blizzard made it possible to upgrade the account online. At long last… Now I’m looking at the download screen instead of playing the game for the 3 hours remaining before I sleep because I can’t play the TBC client with a WOTLK account. “Thanks”, Blizzard.

Sephi mentioned offhand in guild chat that she would like to marry a “pretty draenei male” in-game.

But in all seriousness… “pretty, draenei, male” is like “cheap, fast, high-quality”. It’s a “pick any two” thing.

And once again it’s related to my activities in WoW just before going to sleep. It’s seriously getting irritating.

Helik (I think it was Helik) wanted to hold this week’s guild meeting in Un’Goro instead of the traditional Forest Song, so, while hopping through Un’Goro, I pointed out that many guild members will be too low-level to get there safely.

Occurred almost entirely in WoW, in my traditional deep immersion gaming fashion.

Erales lamented my inability to follow him to Northrend, so, eventually, I gave up and upgraded my account to WOTLK just to be able to visit Northrend, even though I was too low-level for it. After that, as we were standing in Stormwind Harbor, it turned out he didn’t like the zone where the ship went—so I teleported us both to Menethil (simply by thinking about it!) to board the ship bound for the other zone.

However, before we could, I noticed that my character was somehow level 64 (so far, only 48 in reality), which meant I was eligible for a death knight. I went to the character creation screen and started creating a draenei DK—fortunately, the random appearance that was there from the start more or less matched the one I wanted to play.

As I was waking up, I found myself unwilling to, on the grounds that all that would cease to exist and I would find myself once again with a TBC account and no death knight.

Shattrath is empty. It’s actually weird, after all the time it took me to grow accustomed to the Terrace of Lag. Everyone is in Northrend now—I’m only level 48 so I don’t care about the expansion much for now, but I can only imagine how lagadelic it is at the moment.

Well, at least it means that I can lead friends to Shattrath and roleplay there relatively uninterrupted now.

The old world is flooding with death knights. Stormwind, as the de facto RP hub of Argent Dawn, has suffered particularly. I’ve already met several stereotypical ones, one Mary Sue description, and roleplayed with one “nice” DK. I’m tempted to walk to a random draenei DK and ask how the heck this race-class combination makes sense.

And why did everyone decide they’re all undead, anyway? What are undead DKs, then—doubly undead?