The weekend in review

After spending the last weekend painting our stairway walls and ceiling, which required me to get on the step-ladder on the landing half way up the stairs and use a roller on an extension and still just be able to reach the ceiling, I was wiped out. Liz wanted to paint this weekend as well, she wants Amber's room painted, as well as the final stairway wall, but it didn't happen. We had a relaxing weekend instead :)

Saturday evening we went out with Liz's parents to a Chinese restaurant that is an old family favourite, called Mr. Chopsticks, located in a corner mall at Santa Anita & Lower Azusa in El Monte. Seems like we've been there at least once a month during the last 7 1/2 years, on average. The food is pretty good, and while they do have the Caucasian favourites, beef w/ black bean, orange chicken, kung pao chicken/shrimp, etc, they also have some more traditional Chinese dishes which are exceptionally yummy. I love their shrimp with walnut in orange butter sauce. We get it every time we're there. The check finally arrived at the same time as the "after dinner plate of oranges" and both were placed on the table next to me. Liz's mom reached across the table for the check so I picked up the plate of oranges and offered them to her. Well she was trying to get the check, but she wanted some orange too, so she took an orange and I went and paid for the dinner. They'd invited us out and intended to pay for dinner but I thought it would be amusing if we paid for it instead. Well I thought it was funny :)

Last night I joined my sister, her husband, and a member of their guild online in a dungeon in the World of Warcraft. That doesn't mean we were locked up. Think of Dungeon in a Dungeons & Dragons context. After we completed the Dungeon my brother-in-law and I set off to do some more quests, kill some more critters, and maybe go up a level. My sister's character is many levels higher than us so unless we need her assistance in a Dungeon (which requires several people working together) usually I'll just hang out with her brother-in-law, or my niece who has a low level character and likes to play with my high level Hunter/Ranger character and his pet Tiger.

After a good bit of questing I was standing by a tower in a low level area (lvls 10-20 normally quest there) when I saw two Horde Rogues (we were playing Alliance characters) come in and start killing the NPCs in the area. The server we play on allows Player vs Player action, but most people just group together and kill the computer controlled monsters or NPCs (NPCs also include the towns' villagers, blacksmiths, innkeepers, etc). When you attack one of these NPCs, you get flagged as a PvP character. Now what most of the newbies in the World of Warcraft do not realize is that a PvP character cannot normally attack you unless you attack them first, which switches your PvP flag on, allowing them to retaliate. My character was only lvl 18. The Horde players were ?? to me, but as I saw them kill a couple of lvl 60 players I figured they were lvl 60 themselves. My Hunter is a high level but still only lvl 48. I msgd one of my Guild members, a lvl 55 and told him of the situation, explaining that the Horde Rogues were killing the low level players, who were just doing what they thought they had to and defending the land from the invaders, and getting killed in one hit by players 4 times their own level.

*aside* When one or more players set out to harass other players by killing them and stopping them from enjoying their game, we call that Ganking or Griefing.

I wasn't the only one reporting to my Guild what was happening. I've been using my headset to talk to my bro-in-law as we adventure, which is way better than typing as we fight, especially in the middle of a fight, so my bro-in-law was also letting his Guild know about the Griefers, and I'm sure the lowbies getting ganked were calling out to their Guild members for help too. When two of my Guildies said they were coming in, I logged out and logged back in as my Hunter. By the time I got to the area where my lowbie character had been earlier the tables had been turned. There were a dozen very high level Alliance characters making mince meat out of the Rogues. While my Hunter would have been carved up by the Rogues if I'd taken them on by myself, as a support character I have some very useful anti-Rogue skills, such as a Hunter's Mark which prevents the Rogue from Stealthing (going invisible) which allows him to backstab you and potentially kill you in one hit. I also have a Flare ability which can be used to detect Stealthed characters if they're in the area where my Flare goes off. Now I felt for the little lowbie characters who'd been ganked by these Horde players, because when I first started playing I had exactly the same thing happen to me, and I felt compelled to fight back against these Horde players who'd dared invade our land, and I got backstabbed to death for my effort, several times.

Last night helped my brethren kill the Griefers five times, including one exciting chase half way across that area. I'd Marked the Rogue so he couldn't Stealth, set my Tiger on to him and cast Dash on my Tiger to give him an extra burst of speed, which helped him catch the Rogue. Being a Hunter I naturally have a Rifle, or at least as a Dwarven Hunter I have a Rifle. If I were playing an Elf I'd naturally have a Bow. As such, although the Rogue was far ahead of me, I was still able to get off a shot every now and then as we chased him down. I'm sure he didn't appreciate us running him into the ground then beating him senseless, because after we killed him he was last seen running for the hills back to his own lands.

With the fighting over I had to push myself away from the computer and take a big, deep breath and let the adrenaline run its course. I've been playing World of Warcraft for several months now, but killing real players (killing their characters, that is) is a HUGE rush. It reminded me of back in the day when my friends would come over and visit and my bro-in-laws would come by, and we'd all network our computers and kill each other multiple times in hour long Doom & Quake deathmatch sessions. The women folk would enter the room and hold their noses, apparently the testosterone levels in the room were too high for their sensitive noses ;)

This morning Liz took the little ones to her parents, then we bummed around for a little while until it was time to head for Long Beach and the Queen Mary. We joined Xinh and several of our friends who we haven't seen for the longest time for Brunch, which seemed a little more expensive than I remember, but maybe it's just that we haven't had Brunch there for some time. Apparently the Queen Mary is haunted, and as we were getting into our car afterwards liz said she heard someone scream like they'd seen a ghost, or perhaps they succumbed to the hype and thought they'd seen a ghost.

After we got home Liz had a nap, then we prepped Amber's room for painting, which involved moving her crib into our room for the next X days until the painting is done and the paint smell has dissipated. We discovered I had to remove our door in order to get Amber's crib into our room, but there's only two hinges on our door and the pins slide out very easy so it was a simple process to remove it and rehang it afterwards.

Now it's only 9:15, and I'm a little tired, and I've got work tomorrow, but am I going to go to bed now? Heck no, the World of Warcraft awaits. For years I've searched for the perfect game. World of Warcraft isn't it, because the perfect game doesn't exist yet, and it won't until we have fully immersive games a la The Matrix, but, World of Warcraft does come very, bloody close to being the perfect game :)