This post is about 16 years in the making!

FINALLY. Although I'm pretty sure this menu was lifted from the release version.

Back in 1996, I was obsessed with Resident Evil. I got the game the week it came out and played it pretty much non-stop until the sequel finally dropped about two years later. In between sessions of whippin zombies asses, I learned how to make websites and built a fan page for Resident Evil 2. Although it wasn't the Resident Evil 2 we all know and love, it was what the world has deemed "Resident Evil 1.5." I never thought I'd be able to give it a whirl, until today.

Resident Evil 1.5 is the preliminary work Capcom did on Resident Evil 2, the planned follow-up to the smash hit game. The very first screenshots ever seen of Resident Evil 2 are from this version of the game, which was eventually scrapped to pursue the direction of the game that was released. Was this a bad thing? Absolutely not, Resident Evil 2 is probably the best game in the entire franchise and I don't think anything going on in this alpha build was going to change that.

I am pretty sure this image was on my website when I was 14. I actually think I had every picture on the web for RE2 hosted on my site at the time.

I've been tracking this thing for a very, very, very, very long time. It's been on the radar for years, but no one ever let the thing slip out into the public. A few people had copies of this primitive build, and a group of people got together to try to resurrect it into a playable form. The word on the street is someone got greedy, so they decided to just let the thing loose on the public. The closest I ever got was a bum ISO of the game that didn't boot. This one does, and I just played it.

To say I played it would be sort of a stretch, because there really isn't much to do beyond explore. You can select a character and walk around the RPD building. Some of the doors don't work, and some of the doors you go in don't necessarily take you back to where you were. Luckily there is a debug menu which allows you to teleport around the game, so you can explore every room.

The first most noticeable change between this version and release is the other character in the game: Elza. She was a young motorcycle racer, who was stranded in town. This character was eventually reworked and turned into Claire Redfield, overall a good choice for the series in my opinion. I believe they wanted to tie the two games together, and Claire was that link to Chris.

Elza, pretty much Claire version 1.

Other than Elza, the game is pretty much the exact same. Some of the environments are reused in the final game, but with a few tweaks. Leon's character model looks almost the same, and I'm pretty sure his animations were already done at this point. I could only find one box of bullets in the game, so I only shot a few zombies too. Felt about the same.

It's pretty fair to say that they were pretty much on the right path with this build, but decided to go in a different direction in terms of environments. This build looks quite a bit less detailed than the final release, which is A-OK with me. I never expected it to work, so getting to actually walk around and see the game I posted pictures and wrote fan pages for 16 years ago.

If you are interested in checking it out, you can find the ISO file on NeoGAF and run it on ePSXe. Getting ePSXe to run takes a minute to get everything set up, but once it fires up you just load the ISO and get cracking. Be warned you will encounter some wacky shit and it will crash on you. It's a fairly stable build, but it's prone to crashing. Some of the rooms are also fairly jacked up, so don't expect it to be anywhere near finished. It's a very cool peek into the past of this epic franchise.

ALSO, beware when you walk into Brian Iron's office, he does some freaky shit and it will crash your game. It's really creepy.

NeoGAF - ISO image:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=513896

ePSXe - emulator:
http://www.epsxe.com/download.php

Pete's OpenGL plugins:
http://www.pbernert.com/html/gpu.htm

PSX Bios file here:
http://www.emuparadise.me/biosfiles/bios.html

I just got Windows 8!

This is a video game blog, so writing about Windows 8 seems kinda weird. However, I think there may be some hesitation for some people to make the jump the new hotness, and I'd just like to give my side of the story. Fear not, this post involves mostly game related crap.

I've used Windows for a very long time. I had Windows 3.1 back when I was a wee lad, when you could actually EXIT WINDOWS. Command prompt wasn't just a window that opened up, it was fuckin MS-DOS. Since those days I've used pretty much ever iteration of Windows, from 95 all the way up to 8. So far, I'm enjoying 8.

I installed it on Melissa's computer about three months ago, and I was fairly impressed with it from the get-go. From what I can tell it's fairly light on the resources and adds a few aesthetic features borrowed heavily from the tablet/smart phone world. The new 'dashboard,' as I call it, is a tile-based GUI which allows you to add some visual flair to an otherwise dull landscape of your desktop. You can, however, skip this feature entirely and operate completely from the classic desktop view.

Navigating takes a minute to get used to, but it's fairly intuitive. Since it's optimized for tablets and touchscreens (which will be common place in every home in the next few years) you use semi-touch controls to use the 'apps,' which are simply regular computer programs with a fancy short-hand name for applications.  Any 'classic' program (which is pretty much anything you don't get from the Microsoft Store) functions exactly like a windows-esque GUI functions. X still closes and the - minimizes. Pretty easy.

I had concerns that my hardware wouldn't work (it's about 3 years old), but it is working flawlessly. I will warn that if you use nVidia cards, reboot your machine after you start Windows up for the first time. Windows automatically installs graphics drivers (however, they are not the most current by a revision or two) and if you don't reboot before you install the newest, you get a driver conflict which is fairly annoying. On a positive note, Windows 8 installed all the proper drivers for my hardware. Sweet.

When it comes to running games, all seems to be well. I bought Portal 2 TWO YEARS ago, and have only been allowed to actually play it today. It had some ridiculous crashing error on the first load screen, rendering the game completely unplayable. I played it for the first time today, it's good. The new OS also remedied my connection problems I was having with Borderlands 2 and Hawken, both games now functioning perfectly. I still haven't checked if Monkey Islands works yet, but I will probably do that as soon as I post this.

So far I am really enjoying Windows 8, it does what I need it to. I was very hesitant to keep current with Windows, but the pricing on Windows 8 is just incredible. I think Microsoft has figured out that people don't want to shell out $300 for an OS and I applaud them for it. Hopefully I continue to keep a positive attitude for Windows, and it won't start doing some weird ass crap. So far, however, so good.

Spec Ops: The Line is a weird game

So I've been wanting to play this game since I played the demo earlier this year. It was a pretty fun shooter game, with an interesting style. I finally picked it up on sale on Steam last week and got around to playing it this evening. It's a very short game, as I managed to beat it in one night. It's also a very weird game.

I'll start off by saying the game is overall pretty good. It's got great visuals, and a very cool soundtrack. I've never really gotten into music with lyrics as the backdrop to action in films and games, but it works really well in this. The gameplay mechanics are 100% straightforward military 3rd person shooter faire, so it's nothing to write home about. It feels solid, plays solid, same old-same old.

Where this game strays from the beaten path is how the game plays out. I read a little blurb on Kotaku that summed it up pretty well (and I generally do not like Kotaku's articles):

"At the end of it all, you didn't feel all-powerful or even like you always did the right thing. You just felt wrung out. A lot more like real war-and real life-than other action games."

At times in the game, I didn't like what I was doing. There were some decisions you have to make that are tough to make and I didn't like the outcome of either. I understand why this game does what it does, and that is to give a glimpse at what actual war is like. I also understand that it is impossible to capture what actual war is like within a video game, but I'm fairly sure that war isn't fun and at the end of it you definitely don't feel like celebrating.

I suggest you give this game a whirl, though. It's not too terribly difficult, and only takes a few hours to complete. It's full of some memorable moments, but be warned there are some fucked up things you do in the game and like I said previously I wasn't comfortable with a lot of it. But that is the feeling the game is supposed to invoke and I believe it's worth it just to experience the game for what it is: an experience.

Gaming Resolutions 2013

I've compiled a list of my gaming resolutions for 2013. These include playing or beating games I haven't played or beaten, to increasing the size of my collection.

1.) Beat Final Fantasy III - I have this weird thing where I don't like playing ports of games, and classic RPGs are a genre I prefer on their original consoles. I've had FF3 for quite a while for my SNES, I just never got around to playing it. Well to be fair I got about 15 hours into the game and for whatever reason I just stopped playing.

2.) Actually Play Resident Evil 6 - I bought this game to play with my friend Bryan, and we just haven't had a chance to play it together yet. The newer generation of RE games are multiplayer-centric games, so it's best to play with a friend. I'm not sure if I will like the game, so we shall see. As I've mentioned before, RE is my absolute favorite game franchise so I hold each games to a very high standard.

3.) Resist breaking the Halo 4 disc - I need to beat this fucking game. I am playing on Legendary and I am too stubborn to knock it down a peg to Heroic. I'm stuck on a part that is just absolutely insane, and I'm not really stoked about it. Multiplayer is pretty fuckin' fun when Ier am on a roll.

4.) Finally play Max Payne 3 - I've never actually played the first Max Payne game, but I beat Max Payne 2 and loved it. I've been waiting for this game for a long while, and finally nabbed it for $15 on Steam. Can't wait to dig into this thing!

5.) Fear Alma a third time in FEAR 3 / F3AR / F34R /Whatever - I loved  the first two Fear games, and I was waiting for this game to be had for peanuts on Steam and I grabbed it for $5. Hopefully it's as good as the first two, because I really liked both of those games.

6.) Break my mouse clicking shit in Torchligh II - I need to actually finish this thing! TII is an incredibly fun 'click-on-stuff-til-it-dies' game that I can't recommend enough! I am quite a ways into it, I just need to hunker down and do the damn thing!

7.) Beat Skyrim...eventually - I still haven't completed this thing yet, and it is old! It really hasn't hit me as much as Oblivion and I don't really know why I am so indifferent to beating it at this point. Still need to see it through. I did scoop up Morrowind for like $4 on Steam recently, and I want to give it a whirl. I need to look up some mods for it.

8.) Get level 50 in Borderlands 2 - I fucking love this game. I beat it tonight, well I completed the Story and unlocked True Vault Hunter mode. I'm level 33 right now, but I really want to get level 50 and get the DLC. BL2 is such a solid fucking game, I don't really have any qualms with it. It's challenging and a boat load of fun. Things get incredibly hard at some points, but you just hunker down, blast some bandits and have a ball. Can't wait to play through the DLCs.

9.) Not cry about the lack of future Professor Layton games - I won't be able to pull this one off.

10.) Get a Super Famicom - So I can play Shutokou Battle 94. That is seriously the only reason I really want one. Oh yeah and Japanese Super Metroid.

11.) Get an Atari or Intellivision - I need to get into collecting for vintage consoles, the oldest system I collect for is the NES.

12.) Figure out how to make YouTube videos without looking like a tool - Still have no idea what sort of format to make video game videos. I definitely want to do it.

That's really all I got so far. Right now I'm really looking forward to more Borderlands 2 and finally getting a crack at Final Fantasy 3.

A friend of mine was murdered this year.

I was writing a post about my Christmas video game memories and it made me think about something that happened this year. Not to me, but to a friend of mine from college. It seemed to be a strange coincidence, but I had planned to reach out to him since I hadn't heard from him in a long while. That's when I heard the terrible news.

My friendship with Mitt stretched back to second grade. I went to JW Arnold Elementary school in Jonesboro, GA. The best way to describe him in second grade was Data from the Goonies. Mitt was a cool kid, pretty much like me and we got along fairly well. After second grade, I moved to a different school district and changed schools and never saw him again. Well, until a few years later.

Mitt went to the same martial arts school as my friend Matt. I ran into Mitt once again at Matt's birthday party in middle school. It was a weird coincidence, but it got weirder from there. We finally reignited our friendship in college, all while playing Pump It Up (which is a DDR clone, which I felt was superior in every way).

I played Pump It Up quite religiously, and if you've ever seen me play, I'm pretty damn good (well was, I'm sure playing it now would physically kill me). I started playing in high school and was overjoyed to see the rec center at GSU had one. Needless to say, I went there all the time and fed that machine my quarters (it was priced at $.50, which was a steal).

One day while playing, I saw a kid who looked familiar. After I had played he asked me if I went to JW Arnold and I was like "haha so it is you!" We had an immediate friendship, and a common interest with the dancing game. We met up at the rec center almost daily for my entire freshman year at GSU and played Pump It Up all the freakin' time.

We hung out quite a bit, I even took him our on our Sea Doo's when his family came up to camp out at Lake Lanier. He was a total noob at driving PWC's and flipped off the front while he tried to tow the tube. We had a good laugh after we had determined that he hadn't broken his neck.

After I switched schools, we got busy and didn't get to hang out as much. Every once in a while when I was down on the southside, we would get together at Southlake Mall and play Pump It Up. It sound so dorky, but we both loved playing that stupid game and we found every excuse to play. One time when we were at Tilt playing Pump, some dude tried to sell us LSD. That shit was weird.

After a year or two, we both got busy and sort of lost touch, although I seemed to run into him at total random. The last time I saw him was a few years ago before a friends wedding. It was good to see him, and I now regret not making time to see an old friend. I regret it becasue I can't do it anymore, because he's now dead.

Earlier this year, Mitt was driving near the Starlite Drive-In off of Moreland in Atlanta. His car broke down, so he went to ask for help nearby. Instead of being greeted with a friendly hand, he was greeted with a bullet to his chest. A bullet that would prove fatal. He was shot, and left to die.

Mitt was a pretty extraordinary guy, probably the absolute nicest person I've ever met. I don't know why these sort of things happen, and why they happen to good people. It was the worst case of wrong place at the wrong time, and now my friend is gone forever. I wish now that I had gotten to share a laugh with him just one more time. I really wish that this had never happened to him at all. Rest in peace, friend.

The world ends tomorrow, so let me tell you my choice for 2012 Game of the Year 2k12

Spoiler alert; it's Chrono Trigger.

Frog is a fuckin' badass, btw.

The year is winding down and everyone on Earth is trying to sift through the rubble of the looming apocolypse to find the one thing that will bring their mind peace...what some bloke on the internet thinks is the pinnacle of gaming for the past 365 days. And folks, I'm here to tell you that I am some bloke and I am on the internet. So without further adieu, here is my top game of the year.

I have to be honest with you, I haven't touched this game this year at all. I actually haven't touched it in almost two years. Actually, this game came out almost 20 years ago. But you know what? I don't give two fucks about you, or your opinions. If you want to write a blog about games and name Call of Battle 3: Premium Ops DLC Edition game of the year, then sign up for a blogger account and write that shit down! I'm sure we'd all love to hear about how fuckin' sweet zombies mode is, you asshole.

Anyway, now that the hostility is channeled into a ineffective manner, let's continue with my praise for this not-lost and quite remembered game! Chrono Trigger, as many of you know, is fucking great. I didn't know to what extent this game ruled until I played through the damn thing. It's so good, I'm considering another go through the story with my overpowered gear! I think I may do that soon!

Chrono Trigger was originally released on the Super Bacon Dispenser System (SBDS for short), which would have been awesome if it were true. The only thing to make Chrono Trigger any better is to consume bacon while playing it. In reality, it was launched on the Super NES in the mid-90's to much deserved acclaim. Since that day, it has been one of (if not the most) sought after SNES game in the library. You'd be lucky to snag a complete copy for under a buck-twenty in US doll hairs.

To break it down to the brass tacks here, Chrono Trigger is a traditional console RPG. I'm sure if you have any sort of history in games, you would pick up what CT is throwin' down. It's so incredibly well made, it holds up incredibly well to this day. Even with the resurgence of retro gaming these days, people who aren't necessarily into retro games will more than likely get into it and have a blast playing it. The story is pretty straightforward, but the character development and execution is brilliant throughout. It definitely is the benchmark on which all other RPGs are measured.

I waited a very long time to finally play through Chrono Trigger, and I really wish I hadn't done that. I wanted to play it on it's original format on the SNES, but that is much too costly. I eventually picked it up for the DS and played through that. I don't think it detracted from the experience in the least, that is to say the port is very good. If you haven't played through this wonderful game, I suggest you do. All kidding aside, it is truly one of the greatest games I've ever played in my entire life and I whole-heartedly believe you will enjoy it if you already haven't.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

These are games you should play that actually came out this year:

Welp, you're dead.

Legend of Grimrock - This game is old school to the bones. It's a re-vamp of classic dungeon crawling games of yore. It's fucking incredibly hard, and completely scares the shit out of me. It's also super hard to put down, so give it a go. It's also like $15 which makes it the bargain of the century. There is a Steam sale going on as I write this and you may be able to get a little bit more off the top of that!

The art direction of this series is amazing.

Torchlight II - I guess this is the year of the PC for me, because I straight up bought a shit load of them. Torchlight II was intended to be the Diablo 3 killer, and in my opinion it raped Diablo 3's bloody corpse with an iron tank dick. That is so gross. In reality, this game probably sold nowhere near the units of Diablo 3 with it's hype bullet train but that is A-OK. Torchlight II is such a great game, I can't even formulate words. It's incredibly easy to pick up and endlessly fun to play. You go in and out of like 5000000 dungeons clicking on fucking raccoons and shit, but it's fun 100% of the time. I suggest you make an Engineer and just uses cannons. Yes, CANNONS. Shit is amazing.

Luke can talk to animals. I shit you not.

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask - All kidding aside from everything here, this is actually probably my favorite game of the year but I haven't beaten it yet. I've played every single Prof. Layton game to date, and so far this is the best technologically. I still haven't hit the zinger in the story, so I don't really have any comments on that. The way the game plays is an improvement over the previous, adding a little bit more depth to clicking on everything to find hint coins. I do believe most of the puzzles are too easy, either that or I am a genius (and I do not think this). If you have never played a Professor Layton game, you owe it to yourself to get a DS and fucking play one. I suggest the Diabolic Box or Unwound Future, both of which are stellar. I will not lie, Unwound Future made me straight up cry.

My love affair with World of Warcraft

Let's rewind time, shall we? Back in the 90's my brother, sister and I played this game called Warcraft and it's much superior younger brother, Warcraft II. After my interest in the 'get my ass kicked all the time by my siblings' genre waned, my brother kept the Blizzard flame burning strong through the years. He played the fucking bejesus out of Starcraft and Diablos, and was a Blizzard fan boy in general. He was the one who got me into WoW initially.

When WoW was unleashed unto the world, my brother was still carrying the Blizzard banner high and proud. I was aware of WoW, but was hesitant to enlist because of my previous attempts at MMO'ing. I had played Galaxies quite a bit, and enjoyed it. I did play Everquest for about a month before I got into Galaxies, but it was nothing to write home about. I never got into the meat of the game. Final Fantasy XI was also on the hit list of games I've played and didn't get into. I figured WoW would be one of those games and I didn't care to waste the time.

Oh how fucking wrong I was.

I created a character on my brother's account just to see how the game was. It looked neat to me, as Final Fantasy XI did before it (I still think XI looks great, it's just BORING AS HELL) and I was interested in checking it out on my brother's $15 a month. Unfortunately I was instantaneously hooked. The very next day I went to Wal Mart and bought the game. That was December 5th, 2005.

I started my warrior on that fateful day, I named him Xalthos. He would be the only character I would play for a few years. I spent a great deal of time being a complete noob, running around and killing stuff. The first few months, I had absolutely no fucking idea what I was doing and it was great. I would just run around and do quests. As a matter of fact, I never did a dungeon until I was like level 55 and even then it was in BC with two 70's ushering us through.

I took a break at the end of 2006 because I wasn't as interested in the game, and I had a lot of school work to do. While I wasn't playing, Burning Crusade launched and I couldn't really be bothered. I wasn't level 60 yet and leveling back in those days was a huge bitch, so I was just like "fuck it." I eventually caved and bought the game, because it was like 50% off when CompUSA was closing down. A short time later, I resubscribed but never installed the X-pac until I hit 60.

I didn't hit 70 until March of 2008, which was the final year of Burning Crusade. I was about to graduate college, and I didn't really play the game all that much. I had gotten my friend Zach and Mike into playing and Zach had taken it to a new level. He surpassed me in level and hit 70 well before I did and started raiding with some people. After I hit 70 I joined the guild he was in, which is the guild I am still in today, Wrath of Nekromancy.

It wasn't until I had graduated and gotten a job that my addiction to the game hit full intensity. I found myself with a great deal of time after work and not a lot to do, so I just played more WoW. As the new expansion pack loomed, I found myself learning more and more about the game, and just getting better and better at it. As ridiculous as that sounds, there is sort of a learning curve to the game. Once you figure out how a lot of the stuff works, the game is a lot easier to comprehend and excel at.

I was in full WoW mode when Wrath of the Lich King dropped. I took time off work and got the game at midnight to play for the next day straight. Now you might be thinking "that sounds like something only a loser would do!" Well, I took a paid day off of work and spent it doing something I enjoyed with my friends. If you took a day off work to watch a football game, it's pretty much the same exact thing. It's the same exact thing as taking a sick day from school and playing Final Fantasy VII all day, because I know you've all fucking done that. I know I have.

Wrath of the Lich King, contrary to popular belief among the players, was a pretty solid expansion. Granted there was a fucking nerf roller coaster for the entire duration of the expansion, the x-pac on a whole was really fun. I had tried my hand at raiding in BC, so I wanted to do more. Luckily for me Wrath was the x-pac that aimed to bring raiding to everyone.

Now to the uninitiated, raiding sounds like we're going to run into a girls dormitory and steal their undies. The concept here is the same, except replace dorm with dungeon and panties with swords and shields. You can loot pants, so I guess that's fairly close. Raiding in terms of MMO's is a large group of people tackling a dungeon together with the ultimate goal of crying over loot and complaining about someone else being terrible. While this doesn't sound very appealing, it's pretty fun. Although people bitching isn't fun, and you just kind of have to look past that part these days.

I enjoyed raiding quite a bit, so I tried to do as much as I could. It was really enjoyable to get together with 24 other people and tackle difficult raid bosses. Some would argue that Wrath on a whole was a cakewalk, and I will partially agree. The game, as a whole, is pretty simple. Early bosses had weird mechanics, but if you just paid attention and weren't a moron the game is not hard at all. Even still, there were a few challenges in Wrath to be had, and it was enjoyable to see them through.

One of my greatest accomplishments in WoW would probably be Charlie and I putting a random PUG together to get Ulduar drakes and actually doing it. Granted we were mostly in ToC gear, but even then it wasn't as easy as it sounds. It took us two nights, because by the time we got to Yogg it was like 3 in the fucking morning and I was falling asleep at the keys. But the second night we came in there, one-shot it and then went to Algalon and managed to kill him before he disappeared. I was very pleased that we had assembled a group of random people and got some sweet ass drakes. I was so pumped.

It's moments like that which keep me coming back to WoW. There are so many moments and stories that remind me of my love for the game. For instance, one time I joined a random group of people from Phenomenon (the top guild on the server) who were going to clear Sunwell for shit n' giggles. We were all level 80, so Sunwell was pretty easy for the most part although it was the most difficult raid at level 70. We clear all the way to the last boss and by that time I have to take a major, major deuce. It looks like we have a lot more trash to clear before Kil'Jaeden so I get up to use the bathroom and by the time I get back they had already beaten him AND THE LEGENDARY BOW HAD DROPPED. Not only did I miss the RP event at the end, I missed seeing a legendary drop. Boo hoo.

These days WoW isn't the same as it used to be, but I still sort of enjoy it. For me, it was all about playing with my friends and now most of them don't play anymore. I had a pretty solid group of people I raided with on my rogue, but they all changed servers or quit. Playing by yourself is just not as fun as playing with others. I wish I could raid like the old days, but the new raids just look kinda boring by comparison.

WoW has this unending appeal to me, and I really can't nail it down. I really enjoy the world in World of Warcraft, it's enjoyable just to fly around and explore stuff. It's such a colorful and elaborate world, filled with a bunch of random shit. There is always something better than what you have, and you just have to go out and get it. I feel like there is constant progression in the game, and it gives you a sense of accomplishment for doing trivial things, which sort of makes you feel good. I enjoy that.

This is going to sound ridiculous coming from me, if you know me. Over the past few years I've been in a lul of sorts. I lost my job I got right out of school after working there for about a year and a half. At first I wasn't all that bothered, but after I couldn't find another job for a few months, I got worried. I managed to get a job working at an online sex toy shop, only because I needed a job. So I had a job I hated and I moved back in with my mom to save money, and I felt pretty terrible about it. I never felt much like doing anything, and the lack of interest in hiring me to do something I enjoyed and excelled at was bringing me down further.

Over this time I played WoW a whole lot, because it made me forget about all the bummer shit that was going on. At times I felt like maybe I was spending too much time playing WoW, and at times it felt like that's all I wanted to do. Looking back, it really helped me not plunge completely into the bummer oblivion I was approaching. WoW and it's constant make-you-feel-good gameplay style made me feel good about myself in terms of the game. I was pretty good at it, and it kept me going.

I joined a progression raiding guild and they liked me, and accepted me. It felt good to be accepted when all I felt was rejection. I'm sure if I joined a club or did some other social interactions I might have found the same acceptance, but I'm pretty weird around people I don't know and the internet sort of breaks down those barriers for you. Plus you're all into WoW, so you can just talk about that anyway.

Luckily for me I have amazing people in my life who have supported me all the way through my shit-storm of a life for the past few years and I've come to a much better place. I still have a desire to play WoW, but in a different capacity. I no longer feel like I have to play the game to feel accomplished, I feel that in other areas of things I do. Now I can just play WoW to play WoW and kill some wolves and complain about loot.

I don't really want to end this post with a cliched story about how WoW changed my life, so I'll end it with another WoW related story. For the first tier of Cataclysm, I raided with a small group of guys from my raiding guild on my rogue. We were probably like server 3rd or 4th in terms of progression, but we just wanted to kill da bosses. We were on the last boss of the normal modes, before we were going to do heroics, which was Nefarion. We had cleared Cho'Gall, and Al'Akir so Nefarion was on our shit list.

We worked on the fight for a few nights, rarely ever making it past the lava phase. We put in several good attempts which got us to the third phase, which was the tank n' spank phase. We wiped a lot because our off-tank was a clueless stoner Paladin who was carried by class at that point (Paladins is WoW on easy mode if you are interested in playing the game), and couldn't kite adds to save his life.

On the attempt we finally killed him, everything was running smooth until Phase 3. We had him down to execute range and that's when shit hit the fan. We managed to keep the adds at bay the entire time, just to have the off-tank die. We throw out a battle res, only to have the tank die again a few seconds later. The whole time we are CC'ing the shit out of some adds trying to lighten the load on the main tank, but it doesn't work. He goes down.

We're at about 10% at this point, the furthest we've ever gone. We'd just popped Bloodlust to get in the extra damage on the phase, so we were working with a little bit of extra damage on our side. With both tanks down, I noticed that I was sitting really high on threat so I get the hunter to Misdirect the boss to me and I pop Evasion (increases my dodge by like 90% or something). For the last remaining 10% on the boss, I Evasion tank Nefarion like a boss while he gets nuked to death. When he finally died, I was down to like 1000 health and there were only like 4 people left up in the raid. The sloppiest kill we ever did and quite possibly the most exciting.