Slashdot has a story today pointing out that there’s now a Doom Board Game. I sincerely wonder just how you translate a first person shooter into a board game… The game was certainly linear enough, and had enough sub-objectives to complete, that you could certainly turn the basic layout into a game board… But I’m just wondering about the shooter mechanics of it. Actually, I don’t know if I’d really call this a board game, since it looks more along the lines of Dungeons & Dragons than Monopoly. Still, there is a game board, so I guess it counts…

There’s a great thread over on the Blizzard boards about Warriors. While there’s an awful lot of helpful information here, there isn’t a whole lot of ass-kissing. It is nice to see a game company stand by their decisions and not give in to the whining and complaining. Definitely refreshing.

I finally got a group together to try a run through Zul Farak last night… Everyone in the guild has been whining and complaining about that instance for weeks. Nobody wanted to go back in there. There were a few of us with quests in there, but we could never convince a healer or tank to go in with us - until last night.

Zul Farak itself is a little unusual, at least compared the instanced that I’ve done so far. It is an outside instance…you can see the sky up above your head. You aren’t in some cavern or building. ZF is, basically, a troll city. The architecture was very interesting…reminded me of the South American (Incan/Mayan) ruins you see in National Geographic. It was odd to have nice, wide-open courtyards and walkways in an instance… I’m so used to smaller and more claustraphobic settings.

The critters were almost entirely trolls. All sorts of different trolls. Casting trolls, hunter trolls, troll shamen, troll warriors…every type of troll you can imagine. There may not have been a whole lot of visual variety, but there was plenty to keep us on our toes. They didn’t like to come alone, they almost always brought friends. And one of the casters kept turning folks into frogs. And the hunters had basilisks for pets. We actually wound up wiping the group once or twice…but we kept coming back for more.

Eventually we made our way to a large courtyard with a fairly small reflecting pool in the middle. At one end of that reflecting pool was a gong. We cleared out all the trolls in the courtyard and then ran up to bang the gong. Dramatic music played, and a huge 3-headed lizard called Gahz’rilla climbed up out of the pool. Very cool. He really wasn’t all that challenging though, after all the trolls we’d fought. He took a while to kill, but there was only one of him, and we were never in danger of dying. Still, he looked amazing.

After killing Gahz’rilla, we made our way to another large courtyard, with a huge stepped pyramid on one end. We climbed up to the top of the pyramid and found a number of NPC’s being held captive. We opened their cages to set them free, and were promptly attacked by a huge swarm of trolls. Wave after wave of trolls…5 or 10 in each wave…with the occasional elite thrown in for fun. It was quite possibly the hardest fight I’ve had so far in WoW, but also the most fun by far. I don’t know how many times I was saved from the brink of death by a timely heal, or dropped a monster just before it killed someone. Truly an epic battle.

By the time that battle was over, it was getting late and I needed to head to bed. But I did have just enough time to go poking my nose where I shouldn’t have been, and got myself killed by an undead troll. I just couldn’t resist opening the shallow grave I found…and its occupants were not happy to be disturbed.

Slashdot | Monday, January 24th to be Worst Day of the Year

Wonderful news! The day I start my new job is going to be the worst day of the year…

Slashdot | No More Players for World of Warcraft - For Now

I find it very interesting to see a story like this posted on Slashdot… Sure, there’s plenty of gaming news on Slashdot, and I know WoW has been very popular (we’ve been sold-out at EB for about a month now, and we’ve got people asking for it daily), but I’m still surprised that something like this makes the front page of Slashdot. Seems odd that so many people would really care about whether Blizzard was able to handle the demand for their new game or not.