NPC Comic

I love the world events in WoW. They always get me in the game no matter how busy I am. It’s that feeling that something special is going on for a limited time that really sucks me in. I’m so close to completing the Meta achievement: What a Long Strange Trip it’s Been, but I got goofed up last year when I was in living in Los Angeles and my laptop broke during Children’s Week. I hope to rectify that unfortunate situation this year.
Out of all of the events, I hated Love is in the Air the most. Loads of players had trouble getting enough Bag of Candies to drop to get the Be Mine! achievement done. I got lucky and got everything I needed for the Love Fool title. But flirting with guards every hour just didn’t do it for me, and despite my diligent checking in every hour, on the hour, the Truesilver Shafted Arrow that summons the permanent Peddlefeet pet never dropped for me. I’m a pretty avid pet collector, so I was sorely disappointed.
So of course I’m so glad to see the retooling of the Valentine’s themed event this year. No more checking in every hour. Now we can acquire charms on our own time, which we turn into bracelets, which we turn in for Love Tokens, which we use to buy stuff – like the Truesilver Shafted Arrow! I should finally be able to get my Peddlefeet pet tonight. Best of all, the charms can be gotten by killing any mob that isn’t gray for you. This has really encouraged me to finally do those Sons of Hodir dailies to get my rep up to exalted, since I have the added incentive of the charms dropping.
And then of course there’s the new boss fight which drops epic necklaces, an interesting new pet, and the most rockin’ mount in the game. I’ll be trying for the mount every night if I can, but I won’t get too bent out of shape if I don’t get it. After two years of fighting the Brew boss daily with no mount to show for it, I’ve learned my lesson in handling disappointment. We did the fight yesterday and saw neither the pet nor the mount drop.
WoW.com has a great guide to the updated event.
Are you participating in the Love is in the Air this year?

Saturday Sketch Dump is the weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse of the making of NPC comic. Click on the images to view them at full size.

Shameful Encounter

Separate Ways

Dark Noon

I don’t follow football. There. I said it. Surprised? Probably not. I fit all the the classic stereotypes of someone who doesn’t watch sports. Geek? Check. Girl? Check. Liberal urban vegan? Or as my dad would affectionately say, “hippie commie pinko?” Check.

Not that there aren’t liberal urban vegan geeky gamer chicks out there who DO follow football, I’m just saying, you know, you’re probably not surprised that I don’t. My mom and brother don’t either, so my poor dad is often alone in his enthusiastic outcries against referees or cheers for his favored team.

But once a year, Super Bowl Sunday comes around, and I find myself at a chili party, or hosting a chili party, since our friends seem to think it’s a crime to not put our oversized 55″ HD TV to good use. I look into the teams, I remember how the rules work from my junior-high dance team days, and sort of kind of care for a few hours. Though honestly the big draw card for me are the commercials. I just love seeing what businesses deemed worth millions of dollars for the air time.

This year, however, we might actually be skipping it. The chili party friends aren’t having their party this year, and our friends seem more interested in watching the Puppy Bowl. I can catch the commercial highlights on YouTube. So I’m either having friends over to watch the Puppy Bowl or playing World of Warcraft (leveling my deathknight) or playing Star Trek Online (leveling my liberated Borg engineer.)

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NPChloe is the weekly inward musings of one pensive and game-loving feline, Chloe. The words and art below have been ripped directly from her diary and spread out on the internets here for all to see.

I’m slightly embarrassed that Bink found me out, but I refuse to feel ashamed! I’m merely fostering a positive body image through exercise. The fact that I enjoy exercising with mice is evidence of my mature attitude towards our natural prey. Bink just sees everything in black and white, that bonehead. We’re not talking now. I realize that reconciliation should be attempted, how could I possibly forgive him? He ate one of my new friends!

Speaking of my new friends, I’ve noticed them acting a little…strangely. I’ve been training them to operate the keyboard part of playing World of Warcraft, and they aren’t taking to it very easily. They usually just do aerobics on the keyboard or stand still and stare off into space. It’s a little eerie actually. I tried to capture the blank look in a drawing, but I don’t think I quite mastered the exact feeling of chills down the tail their odd looks give me. We have another raid tonight on the druid, so I better go get them in tip-top condition.

Boardom is the regular blog feature in which Mary geeks out on table top games.

Eat poop, you cat! is my new favorite party game. I played it two Saturday nights in a row, the first at a friend’s birthday gathering, and the second at our place for a board game night. It requires only paper, writing utensils, and your own creativity. A stop watch helps too (or in our case, an iPhone). Here are the rules. Everyone gets a sheet of paper and a writing utensil. We happen to have a lot of legal (8.5″ x 14″) size paper laying around, and we found that to be the perfect size, since we wound up using its entire length. But regular letter size paper is fine. A lot of us preferred pencils to pens, and that’s really up to the individuals.

Ok. Once everyone has what they need, each person makes up a sentence and writes it down. A sentence like, say, “Eat poop, you cat!” They pass the sentence to the person on their right, who then proceeds to draw a picture of the sentence. It’s good to set a time limit on this part. We did four minutes. Once everyone is done drawing, fold the sentence back so it can’t be seen, and pass to the next person, who writes a sentence based on what they see in the drawing. They then fold the drawing back so only the new sentence is visible, and pass it on for another drawing. You stop when the you get your own drawing/sentence back, which is probably drastically changed. Then everyone is seized with hysterical laughter as they see what their sentences morphed into. The whole game can be a little mentally exhausting. I haven’t done more than two rounds back to back, because we were all a little pooped afterwards. But it’s so fun to see what crazy sentence or drawing is coming your way, and the ultimate payoff is pouring over every sheet of paper at the end. I recommend switching the direction you pass the papers on the second round so you get a different person’s perspective. Below is one of the results. It morphed from “That rug really tied the room together” (movie quote alert!) to “The sun made me happy until it made me sad and full of zits.”