So I haven’t done quite so much today. Quite possibly because I downloaded the Torchlight demo, and on the strength of what I had seen, caved in and bought it. It’s essentially everything you liked about Diablo (And one thing perhaps you didn’t like) distilled into a fine and wondrous thing. For example, whilst there are three classes, there are plenty of “classless” spells you can give yourself or your pet, and everyone can equip any piece of equipment as long as their stats match up. For example, my Alchemist can use a stave, or a pair of handguns, or even… dual-wielding wands.
It’s just… wonderful. A single-player dungeon-crawler like Diablo, but turned all the way up to eleven.
What works best is perhaps the fact the game is fast. I sometimes like going back in WoW and doing the earlier dungeons, racking up the kills from dozens of mobs. Torchlight does that, and far, far better.

Torchlight has even drained my urge to play WoW. It’s a frightening thing. And a veritable steal at £14.99.

( Stuart moans about door-to-door religion )

As you can tell from the rather long-winded nature of the above, I have had a lot of free time today. In particular, I got up early and went into town to pick up my course materials from the Post Office, had breakfast at the Golden Arches, had a coffee, and came home. It was barely quarter-past ten.

The rest of the day was taken up by the usual hit of Warcraft, and watching the second disc of Gurren Lagann. It’s  wonderful show, but sadly they stretched the content out over as many discs as possible. If anything, I get the feeling they’d put a single episode on a disc and charge £25 a throw if they could. But the twenty-seven episode run would cost you £75(!) to buy in an entirely legitimate fashion. Which is, let’s be honest, obscene. I can pick up the entire fucking run of The Sopranos, which is eighty-six fifty-minute (Seventy-one hours of entertainment) episodes for £60. Even assuming you double the Gurren Lagann episode count to make up for the dubbed and original soundtracks, The Sopranos still gives you more, well, value. That’s not a slander on Gurren Lagann at all, from what I’ve seen it’s fan-fucking-tastic, and I’d happily buy the entire run. But not for £75. And as much as LoveFilm helps in that regard, the wait between blocks of four or five episodes is a pain in the arse. 

To quote the great Northern philosopher, R. Noble, LOTS OF BAD SHIT HAPPENING IN THE WORLD LOTS OF BAD SHIT HAPPENING IN THE WORLD. My town is on the news again, once again it’s the hospital, once again because it’s a deathtrap. This is a situation that surprises precisely no-one whatsoever.

Got my chestplate in WoW. I continue to hit things harder, including tracking down a few old faces and breaking them into small pieces. I’m nothing if not fuelled by relentless vengeance.

And the Taggart Season ends with an episode without any particularly grisly murders. One person forced into anaphylactic shock and the other poisoned and thrown off a building onto a car. Almost cheerful compared to some of them.

New season of QI! And not that bad, either. The usual suspects, the usual formula, but that’s what you want, really. QI is good, uniformly so, so “usual” isn’t something to be ashamed of.

Got my Titan-forged Greaves of Triumph today, after a particularly impressive defence of Wintegrasp Fortress. As in, we, the Horde, defended it from Alliance attack. It was particularly satisfying. Stuck on Icewalker and a Smooth Autumn’s Glow gemstone and it’s a comfortable pair of boots that matches the rest of my gear.

Urgh, headache. Been sitting there all damned day. Coupled with a dodgy stomach since yesterday, I don’t exactly feel on top of the world.

WoW, as usual, happened, with a hefty dose of PvP. A solid game of AB took place, as well as some utterly dreadful attempts at WSG. Utterly without lube those were, but I netted a chunk of Honour and I should be able to get my boots with another Wintergrasp win. I look forward to sticking them on the neck of some Night Elf Huntard.

Not a lot else going on, although I will be returning Lothar’s copy of Scribblenauts. The novelty has well and truly worn off.

Another day, but no loot to sing about. I might get lucky and get the boots tomorrow, but right now I’ve been too busy ogling my damage. Critting for 5,000+ damage makes me a very happy man. I may have to go back and have words with a handful of NPCs.

The other thing that’s risen into view as of late is the Diablo-esque Torchlight. Wander through dungeons in a setting that has visual echoes of Warcraft 3, systematically butchering monsters not for honour, or fame, or glory, or even smouldering generic rage. You kill them for shitloads of money. Coupled with the strong mod support and built-in game editor, it may well be worth the £15.

Behold, the power of the Horde! Gitfinda acquired his helm, and with it, some nice gems, boosting the damage and the crit rating, and the health, and it doesn’t look like arse. If anything, it’s looks decidedly orky.
That just leaves the chestplate, leggings, boots, the cape, neckpiece, ring and trinkets. 220,000 Honour and, 65 Marks of Wintergrasp. Not factoring in the enchants and gemstones.

I haven’t got much else going on. Let’s be honest, it’s a Monday and there’s bugger all on TV, I’m out of reading material, I’m a shade broke and Scribblenauts is driving me to kill.

So, WoW happened and I got my new sword. It’s alright, although my crit rating has sunk like a stone. The upside is that my damage has skyrocketed, so when the crits happen they’re delicious, just they don’t occur as much as I’d like. Got myself a new wolf, the Frostwolf Howler, and I’m not too far from getting my new helm.
Lot of butthurt Hordies crying about how we never win AV. Of course, once again, the faults are clearly ex Alliance players, people rushing, people not rushing, people defending, people taking graveyards. They comfortably forget that it’s a team game, and since there’s very little teamwork, we tend to lose rather badly.
I cannot wait for rated battlegrounds. 

Yeah, my weekends are blessedly free of anything of note whatsoever.

Today was a large pile of meh. Ground out some Honour in WoW, got my bracers and happen to be in line to get my sword tomorrow. Yay and things.

TF2 happened, for better or worse, and the server is slowly getting back to it’s old self now I have SM working. We just need the TeamScramble mod and we’re good to go. Oh, and some people. The server was desolate again.

The Argent Tournament quests in WoW seem to get progressively harder as you climb the greasy pole. I’ve now got Gitfinda the right to champion Orgrimmar (And with that, a Squire who carries my banner around and calls me boss), and his duties include beating a slightly more difficult set of challengers on horseback and killing a bloody great frostwyrm. Joy of joys. I also got to finish the quest line involving unmasking the mysterious Black Knight, and Blizzard, to their eternal credit, only snuck in one Monty Python reference (The achievement for uncovering him and defeating him in single combat, It’s Just A Flesh Wound).

Seems once again it’s Children In Need. A noble cause, albeit one I avoid watching because I find celebrities who’re on more money than I could ever dream of urging me to donate money makes me throw up a little in my mouth. That, and perpetual images and tales of woe and suffering. It feels like they’re trying to use guilt and shame to get you to cough up. I don’t need to be coaxed, I’m capable of giving money to needy causes without being shamed into doing so. There’s usually a reason I don’t i.e. I’m broke. I doubt any of the Beeb’s talent pool are.

Well, another day, another bit of kit. Deadly Gladiator's Dreadplate Gauntlets, which should come in handy. With a bit of luck, I’ll be able to get either a set of Titan-Forged Bracers of Triumph or Titan-Forged Greaves of Triumph. Should come in handy to say the least. I’m on the way to getting a rather tasty set of epics. The kind that make the “hardcore” crowd whinge.

I’m having a bit of trouble getting through The Conan Chronicles. The trouble is there’s a lot of, well, unfinished stuff in there. A lot of fragments and synopsis’, with a few finished stories for good measure. Don’t get me wrong, when you get a good story, it’s a good story. But it’s hard going, and you don’t really know this until you’ve paid your money.

Also, may I ask, what the fuck? For those who’re reading this (Strange fellow) and are from Blighty, get in contact with your local MP. Don’t talk about it. Do it. Do it right now. Leave a message on their surgery answering machine. Go on. It’s a few pence but it lets them know, and short of kneecapping Mr. Mandelson (I refuse to refer to him as a Lord) there’s not a lot else you can do.

Scribblenauts continues to frustrate. The controls and general, for want of a better term, physics are shoddy in the extreme. I cannot recall the number of times my character (I chose the robot skin. For reasons that will become apparent I’ve called him Prick) has wandered into lava. Or orcs. Or orcs and lava. Or the person I have to rescue leaping into lava. Or fires. Like whores, dead whores. Dead whores who are morons.
Don’t get me wrong. The core concept is solid, and there’s humour to be had in some of the combinations, but the puzzles are comically easy or ridiculously unclear and the controls are abhorrent. I’m glad I didn’t actually pay money for this.
Also, whilst God, Cthulhu, and a lawyer combined can’t kill dragons, a sea mine can. Odd, that.

Got my Titan-Forged Girdle of Triumph. Stuck one of those belt-buckles on it for another gem socket, and stuck two 24 Stamina gems. So all in all, the thing has 159 Stamina. Woo.

WoW happened. My views on the AT quests has been further entrenched – Boring. Easy, but long-winded and boring. And Wintergrasp was lost simply because of lag. The server was driven to a standstill, preventing us noble members of the Horde from defending our justly-acquired prize from the cowardly and feeble Alliance. So yes, the Alliance needed the server to break to beat us. In the last minute.

Seems disc two of GL and Star Trek (The new movie) are winging their way to me from LoveFilm. Well, The Thing and The Wicker Man are also on the list. Same with a few standup DVDs (Rhod Gilbert and Russell Howard). So in that regard, I should be fan-dabby-abulous.

Also, it seems the Lego Atlantis stuff has snuck out over the water. This would be great, but I won’t see them until next year, and whilst a giant killer crab set is great, as is the scuba gear and Lovecraftian fishmen, the sets themselves, as a whole, leave me a bit cold. Still, It’s always nice to see proper Lego sets as opposed to the licensed, overpriced stuff. Indy and Star Wars is nice, but give me Space or Power Miners (Or even, dare I say it, Adventurers?) any day of the week.

I dunno why I’m so irritable. I mean, yes, I had to actually go to work and, heaven forbid, actually do some work. Terrifying. But that’s not enough to send me over the edge. The fact the radio at work has started to play Christmas songs may have done. We’re little more than a fortnight into November, for fuck’s sake! It’s not Christmas. You can tell by the fact it’s not fucking December.
I think WoW did little to relax me this evening. Wintergrasp was a farce, quite possibly because the Horde are comically outnumbered on my server. Barely thirty of us, against eighty plus Alliance, a fair number of which are in better gear than you could ever dream of. Of course, the usual suspects get into a strop over how it’s not because we’re outnumbered and outclassed, but because we didn’t follow their genius tactics (Split our force! Don’t split our forces! Shoot out the towers! Shoot out the walls!) that we lost.
I also stepped a bit further into the Argent Tournament, and realised perhaps that idea wasn’t the best. The quests (Almost all of them) involve getting onto a horse and taking in part in mounted duels, using the siege engine mechanics. Thing is, there’s plenty of good implementations of this, like turrets, siege engines, and The Spear of Hodir (Which involves fighting a dragon to death, whilst riding on the back of it. And then it it's mouth). The Argent Tournament quests aren’t. Quite possibly because they’re shit.

Played a spell of Scribblenauts in my tea breaks. It’s insultingly easy (Break open the piñata!) so far. May have to give it a whirl, because I get the feeling I won’t be putting my proverbial dick in the proverbial grinder (Or, running the AT quests) this evening.