My Reign of Warcraft is Over.

It's been quite a while since my last entry. Reason being nothing happened between then and now. That's the problem. Nothing ever really happens in World of Warcraft. You get a quest, the quest makes you kill things, you kill X amount of things or kill the things until X amount of items are dropped by said "things". Then you get the big quests, which require you go kill something higher difficulty for it's head. It's a glorified way of grinding, in short. Then you have the offshoot hobby parts of the game. Crafting and PVP, both of which are a joke in World of Warcraft. Sure WSG is fun or the first 20 times you run it, after that you wish the game's PVP mechanics were deeper.

I made it a little over a month, got a Paladin to 32, and leveled a Rogue I had from 39 to 43. The grinding process gets so much more tedious after 40, and this why I never get too far past that point with any character before giving up on either the character or the game.

So what am I doing now? Another game I am almost ashamed to be playing. Lord of the Rings Online, of course. I briefly played it in it's beta stages, dubbing it WOW part 2. But admitedly I never gave it the time of day, I never got anything past the "Prologue" portion and got into the actual game. Now that I'm playing it, its basics are in fact the same as world of warcraft. But the lore, and the general idea behind it's development is in fact different.

Not to mention I don't have to run around looking like a badly drawn cartoon character all of the time, wondering when I'm going to get a blue dagger.

I started out with a friend I work with on the Arkenstone server, but soon after found out the Landroval server is the "unofficial RP server" of the game and am now playing their pretty much full time.

Looking for a good heavy-RP guild currently, of which there seems to be plenty, deciding is the delima.

If any are interested in contacting me in game my main character currently is a Champion (13 as of now) Man, named Cohenric.

I feel so dirty.

I am playing World of Warcraft again. Why? I have no fucking clue! I have this seething malice towards it and everyone who loves it. And yet I find myself going back for one reason or another on a seemingly every 6 month type schedule. This time I'm going back for PVP and because Juice is playing.

I don't know, its fun usually until about the amount of time it takes to get to level 40, then I find myself wanting a game that isn't so dull. *Sigh* I am at a stage in my "gaming life" if you can call it such a sad thing - that I am in between interests. I'm waiting for other things to be released but have such along wait before they are out. So I'm left filling my time in with games I don't necessarily have a drive to play, which leaves just the general MMO addict phase that most MMORPG's can offer, rather than the game addiction itself. The first time I played WoW, I was truly addicted, but the second and now the third time I've gone back - I'm just there to waste a the time I have between getting off of work and going to bed each night.

I've still got my subscriptions to Vanguard and Dungeons & Dragons, and I'm trying to come to a decision on which to cancel, whether it be one or the other or just both. I really wanted to get into Vanguard again, but I am at a loss presently as to whether I'm going to give myself that chance or not.

HELP ME! I'm ridiculous!

Bleh!

So I started a new character, a Paladin - when I came back to Vanguard, to fit in w/ the lore of the RP guild I joined on the PVP server.

I've found myself in the same spider riddled cave for the past 2 days unfortunately. I'm at a point where the place I need to be is burdened by several 4 dot 13 and 14's. Not a big problem if I have virtue points to use my nuke, but I rarely do, because of how sparse they are.

So I quit early out of frustration and turned to the terrible Counter Strike for solace, wish I had someone my level in my guild to play with.

The Past Days

To catch everyone up to how I've come to be playing the two MMORPG's I'm currently playing (Listed on the side bar), here's a recap of the last few happenings and lineup changes.

Prior to Vanguard and DDO I was playing Everquest 2 as my only MMO. However, I was fighting the urge to stop due to boredom. I didn't want to abandon the game I'd just spent 3 months of solid play building up a self-ran Heavy RP guild which had become fairly popular on the RP server, and not to mention my character which was only a meager level 45 Templar, but regardless it'd taken me a lot of dedicated gaming to get there while at the same time managing the guild, organizing RP events, and the RP itself. However I had found my amount of time spent in game had become less and less as I spent my time on the computer playing other games and watching more movies than anything else.

About a year ago I had played DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) with my friend "Juice" as we'll call him, as that's his internet alias. We spent a solid 10 days straight LAN'ing at his apartment due to him being out of work at the time, as well as myself. It was ridiculously enjoyable, and even after I left and went back home we spent the next rest of that month as addicts to the game, which was a Guild Wars for rich people. It had the singleplayer feel but with a less linear story allowing for more exploration and more replay value. People complained about that, but to me it offered a very intimate feel to it, which was great for me and him and our other gamer friend "Uber" who'd come to join us and bring along "Fuzzy" part time. However the game seemed to "get sick" and began crashing for both of us more and more as time went on. From every few hours, it went to ever hour, and from every hour to every 30 minutes and from ever 30 to ever 5. At that point it was unplayable forcing me to unsubscribe and go on my merry way.

At the point of boredom with EQ2 however, I found myself yearning for the nostalgia of DDO and soon resubbed with Juice again to give it another go, and that's where I am now. We've played for quite a while, and even talked Uber into resubbing with us. I kept my EQ2 subscription for a while grudgingly. However, soon I found myself looking to Vanguard, another game I played for a while then gave up for other endeavors. The PVP felt so much like Shadowbane, and the lack there of in DDO really pulled me back to it. So I resubbed to that as well, this forced me to cancel EQ2, as I could not bring myself to pay for 3 subscriptions a month.

And so here I am, playing both Vanguard and DDO, most times at the very same time hahaha. Sad, aye?

The Introduction

Greetings!

First off, welcome to my blog. My name is Brian, but my usual online alias is Echelon. I play video games as if it was my life, and live my life as if it was a hobby. As sad as it is, it is just as true. I mainly play two types of games. First Person Shooters (FPS) and Role Playing Games (RPG). To be more specific I play a lot of MMORPG's (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). This is my blog for that genre. Being that I have played so many, and that I spend so much of my time at the present doing so, it's only right that my blog is about it. Despite how nerdy it is, I feel like writing about my digital adventures more so than about my real life endeavors.

That said, I hope you enjoy this, and I hope that if you to are a gamer, and have a gaming blog, feel free to comment and I'll do the same in return!