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Explore Dragonblight – Explore Dragonblight, revealing the covered areas of the world map.
So I explored all of Dragonblight. Got this in the process of doing the quests.

Might of Dragonblight – Complete 130 quests in Dragonblight.
This wasn’t as hard as I originally thought it would be. There was a cool little quest line involving Wrymrest Temple where I finally hit 130.

5 Daily Quests Complete – Complete 5 daily quests.
The last quest in that Wrymrest line is a daily quest. I ended up getting this achievement by doing the “battling dragons” quest. There’s another achievement you can get if you do this quest solo in under two minutes. I’ll have to try for that one later.

Nearest and Dearest – Complete the Love is in the Air storyline quest beginning with the Dangerous Love quest.
This is part of the Love Is In The Air event. After completing this quest and getting my blue dinner suit I decided to not focus on the special events until I hit the level-cap of 80.

I’m at level 78 now so it should only take a couple of more weeks. Maybe by the time Children’s Week comes around I’ll be able to devote the time to completing all the achievements for that.

After hitting level 80 I have my work cut out for me. First, I’ve got to tame a cat. You’ve heard the line, “you don’t take a knife to a gun fight.” Well, in World of Warcraft you don’t take a bear to a raid. I’ll have to see if there’s any level 80 cats in Sholozar Basin or elsewhere. I really don’t want to spend the time leveling up a cat even if it’s only a few levels. If I’m lucky enough to run into a spirit beast… oh boy. I hope I don’t die trying to tame it.

After getting the cat, I need to finish raising enough gold for my epic flying skill. Flying in Northrend is really cool but at only 60% speed bonus it’s also kind of slow. I’m in the middle of Grizzly Hills currently. I should have plenty of quests left over after hitting 80 that getting cash instead of experience for quest rewards should supplement my mining and skinning nicely.

Explore Borean Tundra – Explore Borean Tundra, revealing the covered areas of the world map.
Not hard to get at all. I got this one during the course of completing my quests in this zone.

Nothing Boring About Borean – Complete 150 quests in Borean Tundra.
I found the quest achievement for Borean Tundra easier than Howling Fjord. Maybe that’s because there were fewer group quests in Borean Tundra. I easily got this one without having to consult wowhead for the location of quest givers.

D.E.H.T.A’s Little P.I.T.A. – Uphold D.E.H.T.A’s beliefs by completing all of the quests up to and including the ‘Assassination of Harold Lane’.
Ah, Harold Lane. That guy from Nagrand who was always laying around coughing and getting people to go kill stuff for him. I never liked that guy much anyway. Always seems a little slimy to me. Anyway, at level 76 I might have been able to solo this but I didn’t want to take a chance. A guildie who happened to be in the area helped me out and on the way we ran into a couple non-guildies who also needed this quest. So we attacked Harold with a four man group. Two hunters and two druids. He went down pretty quickly. My question now is… if I go to Nagrand is Harold going to be there? Will someone else have taken his place? I never completed his last quest in Nagrand on this toon so is that lost to me forever now? Maybe I’ll have to fly over there just to find out.

Yesterday, Sandmoose the Blood Elf Hunter completed the following achievements.

1000 Quests Completed: Completed 1000 quests.
That’s a lot of quests. Still it feels like I’ve done so much more than that.

Armored Brown Bear: Obtain an Armored Brown Bear from Mei Francis in Dalaran.
It’s only 750 gold and doesn’t have any other pre-requirements. This is an achievement anyone can buy provided you can get to Dalaran.

Lunar Festival Finery: Purchase a festive pant suit or festive dress with Coins of Ancestry.
So I went around and collected a few Coins of Ancestry for the Lunar Festival event. I wish there was better stuff to buy though. Running around to all those elders is time consuming so you’d think there’d be some better items.

Sandmoose the Blood Elf Hunter is one of my two main characters in the game. My other main character is Sandmoose Night Elf Warrior.

Since I have owned my PlayStation 2 for a year now I have learned it has several advantages over the PC when it comes to gaming.

First, the initial system purchase is much cheaper. You can get a PlayStation 2 for $200 today. For a computer capable of playing current games you’re likely to pay about $2000. The math is simple. You’re gaming PC is going to be 10 times more expensive than a typical game console!

Now think about how long that PC is going to be able to play current games. In my experience — and I have a lot of experience — a gaming PC will last about 2 years. At the end of two years current games will probably be running slow enough you’ll be begging for an upgrade. In contrast, the lifespan of a typical console system is approximately five years. About 2.5 times longer than a gaming PC.

In the world of PC gaming, as time goes on system requirements for new games climb higher and higher. In other words the newer games will tend to run slower than older games. In the console world developers learn how to exploit the capabilities of their hardware better as time goes on. This means newer console games tend to look better and run faster than older games.

We’ve noticed something very pleasant about our PlayStation 2 over the last year. The games just work with zero hassle. No installation. No deleting stuff from your hard drive to make room. No troubleshooting driver problems. No patches. No tweaking your system for better framerates. No hassles at all. Period. Just put the game in and start playing.

Depending on what console system you choose you’ll have access to some of the best games in the world. This is a rather subjective area but I doubt millions upon millions of PS2 owners can be wrong. Let’s just take a look at a few of the games that have come out since the inception of the PlayStation 2.

Those are just a small few of the many solid AAA titles out there.

However, the kind of games you’re not likely to find on console system are real-time strategy games like Warcraft III or Age of Mythology. You’re also not going to find any online role-playing games like Everquest. Some people play these types of games almost exclusively and for those people a console system really can’t offer all that much. It should be noted though that several online role-playing games are in the works for the PS2 including Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest. It will be very interesting to see how these games are received on the PS2.

If those kind of games are important to you then no gaming system is really going to satisfy you except for a fast PC. You could argue that computers are important enough to our everyday lives that almost everyone is going to have a PC anyway so why shell out extra money for a console system? The problem with PCs is that unless you have a current system (less than two years old) and spent at least $1500 on it your machine probably isn’t any good as a gaming system. If you’re not concerned about gaming on your PC then you’ll be able to double the life-span of your computer (assuming you don’t upgrade your OS and software beyond the capabilities of your hardware) and/or spend less money on it to begin with.

This may sound like hearsay coming from someone who used to write a monthly column for PC Gamer. The truth is I’m really being won over by the PlayStation 2 for the quality of the games, ease of use, and low cost. The last few years of PC gaming has been kind of boring to me aside from a few stand-out titles like WarCraft III. Combine that with trying to stay on the upgrade treadmill and over the years a fun hobby has become frustrating and tedious.

With that said, I do have a powerful laptop that’s a capable game machine. I’ve enjoyed many hours of WarCraft III and am eagerly awaiting Sony’s PlanetSide. Of course, by the time Doom III comes out this laptop will be considered “old” and probably won’t run it at acceptable speeds. But I probably won’t care because id Software has proven themselves to not be very innovative when it comes to gameplay. However, there will be a constant supply of amazingly fun games on the PS2 for me to play that will look great, perform well, and not require the purchase of a new system.

Maxis has taken one of those most original and fun games of all time and turned into what is quite possibly the most boring and tedious game of all time.

In the original single player game you control the lives of your little sims. They make their beds, wash their dishes, watch TV, and tickle each other among other things. When it’s time for your little sims to go to work you send them off to work and you do don’t see them again until they return. Time fast forwards until the work day is over and your sim comes home with a fat paycheck. With the new money maybe you can buy that new couch you’ve had your eye on. Or might be able to remodel the entire kitchen if you’ve been saving up. It doesn’t take too long to accumulate enough money to do big things with your house. The majority of the time you spend in The Sims is doing the fun things in life like interacting with family and friends. You can goof off by lighting some fireworks. Invite some neighbors over and have a barbecue. Relax in your hot tub. Dance the night away in front of your expensive stereo system. The various expansion packs give you even more things to do when your sim is not at work. The key phrase here is “not at work”.

In the The Sims Online there are no jobs like in the original game. You can’t just pick up the newspaper and accept whatever job it offers you. You can’t sit down at the computer to look for a job either. You are completely responsible for making your own money. There are a few ways to do this. One way is by working at solo job objects. An example of this is the painting easel. You do a painting and when you’re finished you click on “Sell Painting” for some cash. How much cash you get depends on how high your skill level is and how many other people on the same property are performing the same task with their own job objects. In my experience if your skill level is about 4 and there are nine or ten other people performing the same task you can expect to make $800 for every 30 minutes of real time. Considering how expensive things can be in this game that’s not a lot of money compared to the time you spent earning it. It’s not like working at these job objects is terribly exciting either. In fact, it’s incredibly boring. You click on your object and then spend the next 4 or 5 minutes of real time watching your little sim do it’s little task. When your sim is done you’re just going to do it over again.

Improving your skills works the same way. Pick an object to use it and stare at your sim. Since it takes an really long time to increase your skill points you are going to spend hours watching your sim perform the same repetitive task over and over and over again.

There is another way to get money and that is by having visitors come to your property and stay there. Every 24 hours you get a visitor bonus depending on how many people were on your property and how long they stayed. However, the only way you can attract people to your property is to have things that let them improve their skills or make money. That’s all anyone really cares about. Making money and improving skills. This means you have to have purchase a lot of skill objects and job objects. Most popular properties have at least fifteen to twenty of these types of objects which cost between $1000 to $2000 each. In other words, it will cost tens of thousands of dollars to set up a property that people will want to visit.

Of course there are people with properties like this. These are the people with no real lives who spend every minute of the day playing this game! The problem with most current massively multi player games is that they reward those people who spend a ridiculous amount of time playing them while making life difficult for the more casual gamer. The Sims Online is supposed to be the first massively multi player game that appeals to the masses. Most casual players who pick this up are going to be in for a rude awakening when they discover the only thing they can do in the game is to spend hours doing the same boring things over and over again for a small amount of money. The idea of building your dream house is next to impossible unless you spend countless mind numbing hours at a chalk board or painting easel. Most of the elements that made The Sims fun just aren’t in the online version. It’s all work and no play. That’s a real shame since I was really looking forward to an online version of the original game that Emily and I could play together.

Oh, did I mention that once you have ten skill points they start to decay. Ya, really. I’m not kidding. This is one of those features that game designers love but players hate. Designers think it makes the game more realistic and thus more appealing. Players see it as taking away something they worked very hard to get. I have to side with the players on this one. It takes a really really long time to improve your skills in the The Sims Online. If you got ten points and managed to keep yourself awake though the whole process I think you deserve to keep those ten points forever.

So far I haven’t seen any reviews of this game online. I’m very interested is seeing what the gaming press has to say about The Sims Online including the magazines at my own company. Do I just not get it or does everyone else think this is boring too.

Just last night we saw a commercial for The Sims Online where some hipster sim walks into a dance club, slaps five to all his friends and dances with an attractive girl. Emily and I laughed. It would have been more realistic if the guy walked into a room where everyone is just sitting down reading a book. Or if everyone was lined up at identical workbenches making little wooden gnomes. I wonder how many copies they would sell if the commercials showed that?

As on online game things have the potential to change drastically over the coming months. I imagine if enough people complain and cancel their subscriptions that Maxis would be pressured to make drastic changes to add some fun into the game. All I would ask for is jobs like in the original game and skills that don’t decay. I really think those two things can make The Sims Online a much more fun place to be.

Last Sunday was a Warcraft III Fest day at the Tillman’s. As always we seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time getting everyone up an running on the network. There were a couple of problems.

First, my laptop couldn’t see any of the other games on the network even though I could ping the other computers and they could ping me. After much pain and frustration we figured out what should have been apparent from the very beginning. I was running version 1.01 and everyone else was running version 1.00. Since it would have been to much trouble for everyone else to download and install the patch I had to re-install Warcraft III to get back to version 1.00.

The second problem was with Hulk’s WindowsME laptop. Actually, it’s his company’s laptop but it seems to run Warcraft III so why not bring it to a LAN party? The problem is that he couldn’t specify a static IP address without crashing upon reboot. Quite an annoying problem but it was easily fixed by… are you ready for this… upgrading his machine to WindowsXP. LAN gaming with Warcraft III worked fine after that but let’s just hope he doesn’t run into any problems at work.

All-in-all we got about two games played. One big 6-player free-for-all that saw Hulk and myself getting taken out pretty quickly. Carl was later incapacitated due to lack of additional gold mines but no one bothered to destroy his primary base so he was left in the game with no way to produce units. The final battle took place between Warren, Joe and Alan. Joe and Alan made an informal alliance to take out Warren and just when it looked like they were making progress Warren’s machine froze.

The second game pitted the team of Hulk, Trent, Alan and me against Joe, Warren and Carl. The interesting thing about the map we chose was that all additional gold mines were clustered together in the middle of the map. Whoever controls the center controls the game. The opposing team was the first to the middle and despite our valiant efforts we just couldn’t dislodge them for their position. Plus it was getting late and some of us had to go home and get some sleep.

I think that sometime in August we’re going to have an all-day Saturday fest at our house. We’ll start in the morning and have some barbecue for lunch and continue the carnage as late as we can stand it. It should be a lot of fun.