I’ve been focusing on my Death Knight a lot lately…  Haven’t really played my Warlock for a few days.  Haven’t even been doing the daily quests with him.

My Death Knight is now 67 and will likely be 68 by the end of the night.  I don’t plan on hanging around Outland for very long after that.  I want to pick up his flying mount and then get to Northrend as soon as possible.  I’m told that Northrend is do-able at 68, so I’ll see how things go.

It’s amazing how they’ve changed the experience curve in WoW since WotLK came out…  When I was playing through Burning Crusade for the first time, on my Warlock, I wound up questing in most of the zones before I hit 70.  I don’t think I did much in Shadowmoon Valley…  But I did every quest I could find in every other zone.  I ran through several dungeons repeatedly.  It really took pretty much all the new content in Outland to get me to level 70.

My Death Knight, on the other hand, is simply breezing along.  I did pretty much everything in Hellfire…  I did most of the stuff in Zangarmarsh…  I’ve done a bunch of the stuff in Terrokar…  I’ve just barely started in Nagrand…  And I’m very nearly 68.  Only two more levels until 70, and I haven’t done anything at all in Blade’s Edge, or Shadowmoon, or Netherstorm.  I’ve barely done anything in Nagrand.  I haven’t run through a single dungeon.  I haven’t done hardly anything in Shattrath.

Obviously, they’ve made the trip to 70 far easier than it used to be.  And that makes sense…  It gets people out to the new content sooner, which is really what everyone wants now that WotLK is live.

I really can’t wait to get my Death Knight out to Northrend.  I can’t wait to try some of those great new quests with a melee character…  Can’t wait to start picking up some of the nice new gear…  Can’t wait to run through the new dungeons with him…  Fun, fun, fun!

I’ve spent some time playing Red Alert 3 recently…  I played with it for a day or two when it first came out and then focused in on WoW again.

RA3 really is a lot of fun.  They’ve got the campy feel of the previous Red Alert games…  The units are a lot of fun…  The missions are interesting…  There’s a good storyline to it…  But I’m just not getting hooked like I did on previous Red Alert games.

There are two big issues that I keep getting hung up on…

Traditionally, RTS games follow a rock-paper-scissors kind of design approach.  You might have a tank that’s great at killing other tanks…but it can’t cross water, or get over mountains…or maybe it’s crap against infantry…or it’ll be vulnerable to air attacks.  So you’ve got a different tank that can take out infantry…  Or you’ve got a boat that can fight on the water…  But that boat can’t go on land, or it’s bad against tanks, or whatever.  Each unit seems to have a specific goal in mind, and a specific weakness keeping it from being overpowered.

RA3 follows this basic idea…  You’ve still got tanks that can’t cross water and boats that are bad against tanks and whatever else…  But then they go and mix things up by giving all sorts of units special abilities.  So you’ve got a tank that can hover across the water…  And a boat that can climb up on land…  And airplanes that can turn into tanks…  All sorts of weird stuff.

The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of rhyme or reason to how these various units work together.  So building up a cohesive force is very confusing.  Instead of just building two different units, you have to build a bunch of the one type and make sure that half of them are in one mode and half are in a different mode.

In the heat of battle it is very easy to send units out to fight in the wrong mode, and then they get slaughtered.  Or I’ll build some units that I thought were amphibious…only to discover that they are not, and cannot get to the battlefield on the other side of the water.  Or I’ll try to send some units out to fight, but they’ll be unable to reach their destination until I manually change their mode…and then have to remember to change them back on the other side of the water.

The end result of all this is that water (or mountains, or whatever) no longer provides the same clearly-understood boundary that it used to.  I can no longer see water and know that I’m going to need a shipyard to get across it…  Because I might be able to get away with just using my existing facilities.  Or I might not.

The other issue I’m having is with the whole co-commander thing…

I’ve always enjoyed the fact that RTS games work very well as a single player experience.  Unlike shooters, RTS games still give you some kind of storyline and progression.  As such, I hardly ever play RTS games multi-player.

I like to build up my own army…  Explore the map…  Build my base…  Slowly crush the enemy beneath my might…  There’s a real feeling of personal accomplishment when you finally destroy their last structure.

RA3, for some unknown reason, decided to bring the whole multi-player dynamic to the single player storyline.  You have to option of going on-line and having another real human play with you…  But if you don’t, the computer will fill in that second spot automatically.  So every game you play you’ve got a computer-controlled partner helping you out.

This can be handy…  But it can also be very annoying.

It’s nice that you share resources.  If the computer gets out and starts gathering minerals faster than you do you still benefit from that income.  You can spend the money that the computer is bringing in.  But the computer can also spend the money that you’re brining in.  There are times when the computer is frantically building up its forces and it becomes very difficult to build anything yourself – no matter how many harvesters you’ve got going.

It’s nice that the computer is there to take some of the load off of you…  The enemy will attack them part of the time, and they’ll attack the enemy.  But it also means that you get warnings whenever your ally is under attack, instead of just when you are.  It can be hard to determine whether you should really be worried about a warning or not.  And sometimes the computer will do something stupid, that puts your collective resources in jeopardy, so you have to go defend them.  And when you are in jeopardy yourself the computer is sometimes slow to help.

What is most frustrating, however, is when the computer winds up completing objectives for you.  On some missions it almost seems that I could simply sit back and watch the game unfold.  The computer will build up a base, produce units, and attempt to accomplish the same objectives that you’ve been given.  So you wind up not only trying to complete your objectives, but racing against the computer co-commander as well.

Sure, you’ve got some control over what the co-commander does…  You can tell them to plan an attack, or move to a specific place…  But the control is clumsy at best.

So the impression that I’ve gotten from RA3 is that I’m not really as in-control of the game as I’d like to be.  It’s unclear what units I need to complete an objective…  It’s unclear which units can fight which enemies…  And the co-commander is always racing ahead of me.

It is certainly possible that I’m just too dumb to enjoy such a sophisticated experience.  Maybe if I play longer I’ll learn how it all works.  Maybe I’ll finally get used to manually switching units back and forth…  Learn exactly who can do what…  But, at this point, I really don’t have much incentive to do that.  It really hasn’t hooked me like previous Red Alert games have.  I just don’t feel compelled to finish up the storyline and see how it all turns out.

Dawn of War II has apparently gone gold.  Should be in stores around February 19th.  I’m thrilled.  I thoroughly enjoyed all the previous Dawn of War games and I can’t wait to see what this one is like.  Especially with the Tyranids as a playable race.

Doesn’t look like I’m going to have to wait all that long, either.  There’s a multi-player beta coming to Steam on the 28th.  I’ll have to be sure to grab that and give it a try.

So, yesterday was Thanksgiving.  Terri got the day off on account of her slaving over a hot stove every other day of the year, so I did the cooking.  Everything turned out surprisingly well.  Not that I really thought I’d ruin everything…  I can cook fairly well usually…  But a big ol’ Thanksgiving dinner is a little imposing.

I, of course, ate far too much.  Piles of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, rolls, pumpkin pie…  It’s amazing that I didn’t rupture something yesterday.

I also spent a good chunk of the day yesterday playing WoW.  My Warlock is now 76, and my Death Knight is 62.  I’m more-or-less done with Dragonblight…  There are still a few group quests for me to do there, but I’ve had enough.  Some of those quests were pretty frustrating and I’m glad to be out of the zone.  I’m currently grinding in Howling Fjord – technically a step backwards, as the zone is lower level, but it’s a lot of fun.

I haven’t played Left 4 Dead again since that first session.  It was certainly fun, but I’ve been tied up in WoW almost nonstop.  That’s the problem with the holiday season in general – excess.  Too much stuff going on, too much to do, not enough time for any of it.  I’ve still got to play through Red Alert 3, and I wanted to try Fallout 3, and I never did finish Dead Space…

The best part though, is that it is only Friday night.  I’ve had two full days off from work, and I’ve got two more to go.  Very nice.

Today is the Wrath of the Lich King launch…  And, appropriately enough, it’s cold here.  Frost all over the place…  Had to wait for the car to defrost before I could drive anywhere this morning…  Having to wait for a car to defrost before I can go to my first call of the day…

I am certainly looking forward to WotLK.  I can’t wait to start playing a Death Knight for real, and I never really explored much of Northrend in the beta, and there’ll be new quests, and new cooking recipes, and more fishing to do, and new dungeons…  But, most importantly, I’ll be able to play with Terri – unlike in the beta.

But, to be completely honest, I’m not so excited about launch day.  If WotLK launch is anything like the original WoW launch, or BC after that, it’ll be nearly impossible to accomplish anything for a few days.  The servers will be buggy, laggy, and periodically rebooted for a day or two…  And everyone is going to be playing in the same areas again.  The lower sections of Northrend and the Death Knight starter zones are going to be packed full of people.  It’ll be a challenge to get anything done at all.

I honestly don’t expect to be able to accomplish much of anything until Saturday or Sunday.

That’s ok though…  I’ve got plenty of other things to keep me occupied.

Friday night I’ll be working fairly late, so I won’t have much time for games.  I don’t expect to get home until somewhere around 9:00 or so.

I’ve also still got Dead Space to play.  I haven’t made much progress with that for a good week or so.  That last tentacle attack was very demoralizing.  I never liked those tentacles…  And I was thrilled when I thought they were gone for good…  And now they’re back.

I’ve also been on a Peggle kick recently.  It’s a pretty simple game, but a lot of fun.

Then there’s Fallout 3, which I acquired a little while ago but haven’t gotten around to playing yet.  Everyone says it’s pretty good…  But they also stress that it isn’t really a Fallout game, which worries me.

And Red Alert 3 was recently released, and I’ve managed to acquire a copy of it as well.  I did install that, and gave it a try, and I’m fairly impressed so far.  I really kind of regretted spending any money on Command & Conquer 3…  It just was not a satisfying game.  Didn’t enjoy it much at all.  I expected similar disappointment from Red Alert 3, but so far it’s a very solid game.

Looks like they’re rolling out another Command & Conquer game…  This time around it’s another installment of the Red Alert series.  I’ve always enjoyed the Red Alert games more than the Tiberian ones.  They’re a little more over-the-top…kind of a steampunk kind of thing going on, rather than the generic sci-fi setting of the other C&C games.

However, after playing through C&C 3: Tiberium Wars I’m a little apprehensive to say the least…  I was simply not impressed with that game.  Sure, the graphics were nice…  But the storyline was not impressive and the whole thing felt very dated.  Maybe it’s just time for them to rethink their control mechanisms and interface.

Looks like they’re giving away Red Alert 1 & 2 to stir up interest in their new game…  You can download Red Alert 1 from their website, and you get a copy of Red Alert 2 when you pre-order RA3.

One of the games that I wanted to play, but couldn’t because my computer was crap, is Command & Conquer 3. So, I dug out my discs and gave it a try…

The graphics are absolutely beautiful. The units are quite detailed, the scenery is very nice. Lots of little glowy and sparkly effects. Random people running in the street here and there…cars…busses. The graphics are definitely an upgrade over the old C&C games. It’s immediately obvious why it wouldn’t run on my old computer.

Beyond the graphics though, C&C3 was a disappointment. The gameplay just isn’t impressive by today’s standards.  So much so that I couldn’t even play through the entire game.  I made it through the GDI missions, and partway through the Nod missions, and then just couldn’t care enough to keep playing.  I grabbed a savegame file just so I could try out the Scrin and see all the storyline videos – something I almost never do.