I absolutely hate the word “blog”

Grant and I started playing World of Warcraft a little over a year ago. And it’s no secret that I’ve gotten into it since then. But recently, that kind of escalated.

We finally hit level 70 with our respective characters, which (for you non-gamers) is the highest level achievable in the game. And ever since hitting level 70, the game changed significantly.

Now we’re totally hardcore in a way we never were before — Blizzard was so right on it with making satisfying end-game content that we never run out of cool stuff to do. And in fact, instead of feeling like we need to complete lame quest chains for the sake of XP, we can just abandon anything that annoys us and know there’s plenty else to do. Sure, some of it is repeats, so it can get dull — but you learn and hone your strategy and grouping techniques the whole time, so it stays pretty fresh (at least so far).

Couple that with the fact that we were crowned guild officers shortly after achieving 70 and, well, we’re pretty WoW-tastic these days. So for you non-gaming Imaginary Readers, I just want to warn you that there may be some more video game drivel coming up. In fact, I’m so WoW-focused that I’m even creating a tag specifically for WoW.

Just thought I’d warn you all, since there’s something of an anti-WoW stigma out there — even within the video game industry. Just the other day, an old high school classmate I randomly added on Facebook messaged me to say I’d better stay away from WoW and that it was a huge waste of time. Not that I can argue, but… hell no! We have so much FUN wasting our time like this. And I feel like my learning curve in the past month has more than quadrupled.

ETA, since Grant was jealous that he didn’t get a screen shot too:

Cute how he had to awkwardly crop in part of the WoW logo in order to fit his GINORMOUS BLAZING SWORD, eh? That’s my man.

Now I don’t mean to claim that we’re the first, nor the best, of the Rock Band mockery centers. Certainly, there are a plethora of superior attempts* at mocking the most breakable hardware ever shipped. But alas, we don’t just Photoshop here — we show you the real thing. Apparently Grant and a couple of our drummer pals are just a little too rockin’ for the game’s max tolerance level.

The pedal smashup happened a few weeks into our ownership of this magnificent game, and we got a new one shipped to us pretty quickly. Then, we broke the drumsticks (although there’s no real photographic evidence — you can feel the crack but you can’t really see it too well).

And then, of course, we broke through the actual PAD. We didn’t even notice for several weeks, because Grant tried to do some Rock Band arts & crafts to quiet the rat-tat-tat sound of the cheap plastic drumsmacks.**

And mind you, this is AFTER we already broke the guitar, and dealt with a USB hub that arrived broken. Yep, the mic is the only component so far that hasn’t kicked it, and we’re just counting. Let’s just say I’m glad they have as liberal a return policy as they do — although the “2nd Day Air” promises are still unfulfilled over a week later. Come on, EA, you owe us some instruments!

* H/T Something Awful
** Note to Imaginary Readers: Don’t bother attempting to do this. The end result is bits of felt all over your apartment, super-sore wrists from reduced springback while drumming, and the possibility of not even realizing when you crack your drum set. While they help a little with the noise, it’s not worth the tradeoff.

Trumpet is just not a fan of our favorite new video game. When we rock out, he seems to think we’re in distress and need his help. This is especially true when there’s singing involved, and even more so when one of us is singing while playing guitar or bass. In fact, just this evening he jumped on the table in front of Grant (while G was belting out Creep by Radiohead) and started licking Grant’s fingers during his Expert fretwork. Thanks, kitty!

In fact, the very first week we got our microphone stand, Trumpet expressed his displeasure at Grant singing while playing even more strongly, as evidenced by the following incredibly shitty cell phone pic, taken hastily before he descended:

Sometimes when I’m crooning particularly enthusiastically (and not so melodiously), I’ll feel him hugging my leg and pawing at my knee (no claws), sort of pseudo-mounting it in distress (and not horniness, trust me. His feline amorous advances come in another form, which caused me to sleep with a spray bottle of water in bed with me the whole time Grant was in Japan, so I could deter him from humping my leg without fully having to wake up.)

He only seems to really freak out like this during the long, drawn-out, higher-pitched stretches, like that whole “Sheeeeeeeeeeeeee’s ruuuuuuuuuunin oooooooout the dooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooor…” bit, and the entire 30 Seconds to Mars song. And thankfully, Grant and I are the only people he’s comfortable mounting/licking/etc. When guests come over to rock out, he just contents himself to sit there and yowl along. I wish I could upload audio for that, I really do.

Okay, so I’m not really a videogame fan like dear Grant is, but this is just too good not to blog about. A friend of ours who’s at Valve worked on a very cool game called Portal, which was released last week. Now obviously, not being a hardcore gamer, I’m not of the same caliber as Penny Arcade or even less official gamer blogs, but I still enjoyed it so much that I felt like I had to provide you Imaginary Readers with my input, particularly after I heard the theme song that airs during the final credits after you beat the game.

They just do so many great little touches throughout this puzzle game — I don’t want to spoil it by being too explicit in the details, but it was a lot of fun for me, even as a spectator/backseat gamer. The game includes delightfully funny VO and really interesting gameplay/puzzles that sort of made my head hurt, but in a good way, like trying to do integrals after not even balancing your check manually in seven years. And it’s damn fun to look at, which is even more exciting since our friend apparently was responsible for a bunch of the cool portal effects. Woo!

And the name of the creepy company in which you play the awesome funny entertaining game is Aperture. COME on! This is quality stuff. I’m pretty sure if I actually tried to play, I’d be crying out begging for Tetris within ten minutes — but hey, as spectator gaming goes, this one gets a ten for me. Way to go, Valve.

Grant and I have been spending a leisurely afternoon playing World of Warcraft for the first time in ages, and we came across the most delightfully entertaining bug.  Edited: my photo folder got disappeared in some recent tech updates, but basically, Grant’s character stayed on the wind rider well after he landed, and he appeared to be riding around on it, gliding through buildings and over bridges and whatnot. Only when he mounted on his horse did the weird creature go away, sadly. Good times.