Project Lore

A while back I told you all about the jump into multi-boxing which I've been observing second-hand through my husband's toons. He's been leveling up two hunters through recruit-a-friend: one on his usual account and another on the new account. I helped out a bit in the beginning, then we both cut back on the adventure for a bit. Now that the end of the three-month window of triple xp is coming up, he started the push again and got both hunters both up to level 60. In the process, he racked up 30 levels to grant to another character on his main account. Here's where the fun begins. We decided to team up to act out a bit of the spectacle that can be garnered from level-granting. So I logged on to his level 30 paladin, Horadric, on his main account. And he logged on to the newly level 60 hunter, Officetemp. We met up in Orgrimmar, just in front of the bank and mailbox where there's usually a pretty decent crowd. It started off innocently enough. Officetemp /waved. Horadric /bowed. He said, "Let's see how this works." And so it began. DING! Flash of light, woosh of sound. Officetemp: "Grats!" Horadric: "Thanks!" Not many paid much attention. On with the show. DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! [Horadric] has earned the achievement [Level 40]! Now, a crowd was starting to gather. Chatter began. Some questioned WTH was going on. Some laughed. Some congratulated. Some cheered. Others asked how many levels more would be granted. Oh, the attention. Officetemp: "Hang on, I think I still have some more." DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! [Horadric] has earned the achievement [Level 50]! Now, spectators started speculating about how many more levels would be granted. Would he go all the way to 60 - the cap for level granting? DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! Horadric: "Getting close!" DING! Level 56. DING! Level 57. DING! Level 58. DING! Level 59. ..... Horadric: /bow. Officetemp: ...(silence) The crowd didn't like the suspense. Speech bubbles started popping up as some predicted that Horadric wouldn't get all the way to 60. Some seemed disappointed. Some even complained on Horadric's behalf at the cruelty to leave him hanging at level 59. Officetemp, an orc, finally speaks. And it's not pretty: "You have to work for this one. Dance, you filthy blood elf, DANCE!" Horadric, not one to be discouraged: /dance. The Napolean Dynamite-inspired number ensues. Some of the crowd seems to think this isn't good enough. "Get naked!" someone yells. A couple of spectators derobe and start getting jiggy with Horadric as he strips down, one piece of armor at a time. Toons hollar and whistle at the scene, and Horadric continues with the spectacle. Finally, Officetemp is satisfied. DING! [Horadric] has earned the achievement [Level 60]! The crowd cheers, jumps around, continues to dance, offers congratulations -- and those who guessed that Horadric would go all the way to 60 gloat in their victory. Horadric: /kisses Officetemp. The spectacle has ended, but a full-on party has started in the process. And nearly-naked toons continue to dance the night away. Officetemp logged off, and I handed the reigns to Horadric back over. It was a fun experiment in attention whoring. I was utterly satisfied that some simple role-playing combined with the awesomeness of level granting had made for a fun experience for all. The social aspect and interacting with a group of toons also was a great time. I thirst for more! Now I'm curious about what similar experiences everyone else has had? Have you had an opportunity to create a spectacle in front of a group? If so, what are some of your favorite ways to gather a crowd? Do you like joining in on group parties, or would you rather do your own thing and leave the attention-seekers to themselves?

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I mentioned in yesterday's post about Bejeweled that I had more to say on the topic of dual-gaming. First let me define the term. Dual-gaming is simply playing two games at the same time. Be it via an addon like WoW Bejeweled, spinning to the TV behind you or having a Nintendo DS by your keyboard. I have actually been doing this for year's, mostly the spinning to the TV or having a handheld nearby variety of dual gaming. But this past weekend I entered into a new age of dual-gaming, dual-gaming on a single computer. I am sure many of you have heard of multi-boxing. That is the art of running multiple instances of World of Warcraft (or other MMOGs) across multiple computers. The users would then control all of the toons via various scripts and third party programs (remoting into the other computers and such). Blizzard Entertainment has even said that they see nothing wrong with multi-boxing. But that method is different than what I strive for. Instead of running it across multiple computers I decided to try multiple games on a single machine. Why the hell would I do this?

• Most of all, I wanted to be able to play multiple MMOGs at the same time. While queuing for an AV, trying to find a 5-man group for heroics or waiting for the raid, I could spend that downtime grinding in Warhammer Online or blasting away the aliens in Tabula Rasa. Vice versa, while playing WAR or TR, I could be scanning the auction house looking for deals or simply socializing as I get through the tedious parts in those games.
• I like challenges, specially when I think I can defeat them.
• My buddy (who helped me tweak and setup the box) wanted to see it done.
• I needed an upgrade anyways.
• And let us not forget, I am a huge nerd – and not the candy coated sugar kind.

As you can see in the screenshot above, things went pretty well. I decided to test it on WoW and WAR, since I play them the most. Both are running in windowed mode (the most taxing way to play but really the only way to do this), and you can see via my taskbar that I have a bunch of other crap running as well. WAR doesn't report its performance so I had to use FRAPS to get its FPS. With WAR as the active window, the machine was able to run both of them at a solid 20-30 FPS. Plenty good for gaming, although not the most ideal if I was raiding. I also tested the setup while playing The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and WoW. I had Auctioneer scanning the Auction House for deals as I ran around as the White Wolf slaying various beasts. The box ran without a hitch. Unlike the double MMOG test, The Witcher: EE was running in fullscreen while WoW was windowed on my other screen. For both tests, all the titles had their graphics settings to the highest level and highest resolution the screen could provide. Incoming nerdiness. For those who are wondering what hardware I am running:

• MSI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB 512-bit GPU– This is an overclocked X2 running at 780MHz and is currently the best and most expensive card on the market. The card is tested and OCed by the manufacturer which is awesome.
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz Processor– Overclocked on air to 3.0GHz.
• Corsair 4x1GB DDR2 PC2 6400 RAM – Ram running at 4-4-4-12.
• Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10,000RPM SATA Harddrive – God, I love these drives.
• EVGA nForce 680i Ultra SLi Motherboard - An okay motherbord.

Now I should be able to review PC games twice as fast!

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As I've said earlier, I've been bringing my alts, a druid and a priest, up to (hopefully) level 60. Currently, you can find them in STV leveling. It is very annoying, but it's hard to ignore the number of quests there. The pages quest ended up giving me about 32,000 xp at level 37. That's a lot considering all I had to do was get some pages out of the guild bank. I'll probably leave the area when I finish this stupid crystal quest to find a new hang out. Stupid goblins. Other than the massive amount of XP I'm getting, not much has changed in STV. It is still gank central, which is one of the reasons I'm going to leave for a few levels. I'm not the best dual-boxer in the world, far from it. So whenever anything happens to my priest, I either use Power Word: Shield then heal or just fear. That's the extent of what I can do. I don't have any hotkeys set up for offensive spells. So if anyone targets my priest, he goes down quickly unless I can manage to get whatever it is to attack my druid. It's fun with mobs when there are fewer than 4 of them, but not so much with other players. I am just terrible at defending myself against pretty much anyone, which is too bad. My abilities basically extend to logging on Juggy to take out the stupid, stupid horde. I guess I could use a few tips from anyone out there with druid, priest, or dual box experience. I feel so helpless!

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Sometimes, you log in and nobody is around to group with you for heroics. Sometimes, your arena team is busy. Sometimes, your guild is busy wiping on a new boss for two hours. Sometimes, you just want some mindless fun. Recently, when I find myself in those situations, I've been leveling up some new alts. I've been playing a druid, and I've been playing a priest. At the same time. Kind of. I signed up for the Recruit a Friend program to test out that juicy triple XP. I entered my own name as the name of my friend, which I suppose is true enough. I tend to consider me a friend. So, I made a second account and, on it, created a dwarf priest. I'm not dual-boxing to pwn in arena or to solo Kara. I just have the priest auto follow the druid while I rip stuff up in cat form. If I need some help, I'll just have the priest bubble, renew, or heal the druid. It's fun, it's a new type of challenge, and it's a good way to get a lot of levels. And I mean a LOT of levels. The rate at which these two characters are leveling is pretty unbelievable. A guildy ran us through stocks a few times, where I got two levels from the mobs and one from completing the quests. Each character got almost 10,000 xp for each of the Stockade quests. That is pretty ridiculous in the mid 20s. Now, they both have their mounts and are level 31 and 32. Soon we will be roaming Outland, killing Overlord. Maybe. Now, I'm not really into the exclusive mount thing, so I probably won't keep the account for the full time needed to unlock that Zhevra. I just figured that it's a good way to get a couple of alts up to at least 60 before the expansion hits. Once the priest hits 59, I'll have him give 29 levels to my level 28 warrior or my 29 mage. That will be three characters to 60 in less time than it normally takes one. And then perhaps my dual-boxing days will be behind me. Although, maybe I will start the whole process over again with a combination of a hunter, a rogue, or a pally. I'm thinking rogue/pally would be easiest. Hunters are OP while soloing anyway. Once that's done, I might have a chance to finally get that second shaman I've always dreamed of. If you couldn't tell, I love shaman. And I love alts. After WotLK comes out, I can take advantage of the over-abundance of death knights that will be roaming Outland looking for groups and have nine 70s (or 80s?) Although, I have heard of 5 DKs completing appropriate level instances in the beta. NERF DKs.

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