I’m not entirely sure what happened, but somehow WordPress posted two different versions of my last post. The RSS feed and the front page shows one version, but the post page itself shows a newer version. I think maybe ScribeFire did something to it. Anyway, I added a paragraph to my answer for question 20 at the last minute and this is what it was supposed to say: 20. Do you identify as a gamer? (281 words.)

Okay, okay, here’s my answers to the Cannot Be Tamed Gaming Questionnaire. I found many of these questions pretty silly. I feel like writing my own questionnaire with hard-hitting, insightful questions like, “If you were a ferret, what kind of video game controller would you use?” **1. When did you start playing video games? **2. What is the first game you remember playing? Somewhere around 1980-ish. I don’t remember if I had an Atari 2600 or a TRS-80 Color Computer first, though. (1107 words.)

By accident I noticed that Neverwinter released a new update called Tyranny of Dragons, in which they added the very cool-sounding new class Scourge Warlock. In terms of gameplay, however, I found the SW a little on the “meh” side. I feel like they might have borrowed a lot from the Control Wizard because it felt very similar to me. (My first level-cap character was a CW.) The main attack is the same kind of triple-bolt spell that the CW uses. (363 words.)

UPDATE 10/24 - Before you run to the comments to disprove me because of that one time you were ganked in a situation where you probably should have expected it, let me explain the purpose of this post. I’m not saying that ganking is impossible in ArcheAge, especially after level 30 (though I would argue that “ganking” is the wrong term to use after you’ve reached level 30). What I’m saying is that it’s extremely rare if you stay in safe zones, and you’re not going to lose anything if it happens, so there’s no reason not to try the game. You can level all the way to 50 in ArcheAge without ever leaving a safe zone, and maybe without ever engaging in combat. (One could argue that it’s actually faster to get to level 50 by farming and trading than by questing.) Also, your mileage may vary depending on which server you play on. The “original” servers like Kyrios and Naima and Kyprosa are probably more populated with people who came to ArcheAge just to gank people. Now back to your regularly scheduled post. (1143 words.)

Alternative Chat is asking everyone 10 questions about WoW for a documentary. Most answers that I’ve seen have been coming from semi-hardcore WoW players, but I thought it would be fun to give answers from a non-hardcore WoW player. Plus, it’s good material for a blog post! 1. Why did you start playing Warcraft? I started playing in 2006 after I saw the infamous Make Love, Not Warcraft episode of Southpark. I had had a WoW trial CD (yes, a CD!) sitting around for a long time prior to that from (I think) a video card purchase. I was scared to try it, though, because I had previously played Asheron’s Call way too much and I was a little worried I would get sucked into WoW in the same way. (Turns out I didn’t.) (1006 words.)

It seems like years ago that I bought The Witcher 1 & 2 in one of those deep-discount Steam sales. I spent about 15 minutes playing The Witcher 1 (enough time to watch the opening movie and then get to where I could feel the intense pain of the combat controls), and then never played it again. Lately I’ve started to see some buzz about The Witcher 3, and I see that it’s now available for pre-order on Steam. To my mild surprise, among the blogs I read, the announcement of a third Witcher game has been roughly akin to an announcement about the return of Firefly to television. People seem to love these games, and they are dying for the next one. (523 words.)

I just wanted to drop in and say congratulations to everyone participating in Blaugust: Belghast’s challenge to post every day during August. Clearly, I’m not participating, because I’m being a lazy bum this summer. Would that Blaugust had occurred in Blarch or Blay or Blune. Even if I hadn’t taken a vacation, my daily schedule has been turned upside-down so much that I’m struggling to find the right way to write anymore. The carefully constructed, complicated routine I used to use is out the window now. Now when I want to write something, I just sit down, open up WordPress in whatever computer happens to be nearby, and write. But it feels extremely weird to write that way. (251 words.)

I don’t really have anything to say about it, though. I just wanted my cleverly-crafted post title to draw you into my blog lair. Ha-ha! I social-engineered you! (I’ve been reading about copywriting and headlines today. Sorry.) I will say, though, that I’m a little surprised Warlords of Draenor is shipping so early. I figured it wouldn’t be out until December. I haven’t heard anything but “it’s not ready” from beta testers. (72 words.)

I suppose I should finally reveal the results of my July Camp NaNoWriMo experiment: Total failure. I was doing all right until things at work took a turn for the stressful, and then it became impossible to write in the evenings. I’m sure you can imagine that it’s hard to be creative when you’re totally drained. I tried to set myself up for success anyway, by changing my target word count from 50,000 to 15,000. (You can do that in the summer NaNoWriMos.) That goal was well within reach until things at work took a turn for the even-more-stressful and exhausting on top of it. So I wimped out and gave up. I ended up completing a little over 10,000 words. (234 words.)

July was a rough month for me, professionally speaking. To make a long story short, I’m unemployed now. Consequently I’m forcing myself not to spend any money on games, so I cancelled my WoW subscription and I’m sticking to bought-but-unplayed Steam games. But before I did that, I made it to level 88. Ding! Valley of the Four Winds was kind of a weird place. Lots of giant mutant vegetables and Monty Python-esque cute, furry, dangerous creatures. (99 words.)