Adventures of Taas

November has been a slow gaming month for me.  Right after I hit 80 in World of Warcraft and really got in to a raiding groove my monitor decided that I was having too much fun and one day just wouldn’t power up (the death was much more slow and painful than that but there you go).  As a result I’ve been spending near 0 time on the PC and as my xfire stats over the last few weeks will attest absolutely ZERO PC gaming.

To get my gaming fix I’ve been relying on NHL 2010, BF1943 and FIFA 09 on the xbox 360 (I’m actually down an HDMI cable at the moment so on top of no PC I’m PS3-less as well!).

NHL2010 feels a little flat.  NHL 2009 last year was without question the best sports game of the year (and they have the awards to prove it) but this year’s installment feels a little “un-fun”.  They added pretty sophisticated methods of controlling the gameplay and difficulty this year, which is great BUT they didn’t spend nearly enough time and energy fine tuning the default settings so your only hope of getting the game right-for-you is browsing around the internet and that is if you even really know what you want the game play to be relative to the available options.

The good news is today I picked myself up a Samsung 2333 monitor (23 inches) and I’m ready to get back in to the PC gaming groove.  Getting back in to that groove has been made much more difficult thanks to the Steam’s Early Holiday sale.  How does that make it difficult you ask?  I have lots of new shiney to play with!

My Steam loot list so far (we still have tomorrow to go!):

• Left 4 Dead 2 (Thanks to Jim – he bought this for the guys!)
• Battlefield 2 Complete Edition (figured seeing the expansions for 14.99 would be worth it!)
• Champions Online (again – for 20 bucks I couldn’t pass up the chance to play this – the game is quite fun – but super heroes really aren’t my bag… we shall see!)
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (I might the only person who has never played this game)
• World of Goo (Indie devs need love too)

I’m a huge UI guy. When I recently returned to World of Warcraft (post incoming on that topic!) I spent a whole day not playing so I could get my UI just-right.

So I figured what the heck – I’ll put up a UI section here on the website. This weekend I’ll be adding some screenshots and links to the mods I have installed – for now you have a list of what I use.

Thanks to Will for the inspiration to get this down on paper! Check out My UI here.

As you may know I use twitter regularly and am a huge fan of the microblogging concept. I’ve decided to create a twitter account for tracking my what-I’m-up-to-in-gaming.

I have my Raptr account automatically updating what PC games I’m playing and I’ll also be providing updates on leveling, gear, etc in the various MMOs I play.

If you want to follow this new account head over to the Taasgaming twitter account page.

You’ve probably found your way here from rjoworld.com or by some strange act of random google. This is part of my personal network of sites (adventuresoftaas.com and ryanosullivan.ca make up my mini blogging network) where I share bits and pieces of my life.

Adventures of Taas is my ramblings and observations of the computer gaming industry specifically the Massively Multiplayer Genre.

In the coming week’s I’ll do a lot more to introduce myself as a gamer and to introduce the games I play!

So why did I pick adventuresoftaas.com when I’ve always been rather boring in the past? (Come on I spent over 9 years using rjoworld.com as my blog host – rjo being my initials). Taas is my Everquest 2 Troubador. I’ve spent the most time with him (I have over 1000 hours clocked in EQ2) and I’ve without question had the most fun playing him. He was also the first character I ever took to end game in an MMO – so he holds a special place in my heart for that.

Taas doesn’t see much action these days (Warhammer Online being my current game of choice – EQ2 is a side destraction at best these days) but he’ll always be my number one. So I dedicate this blog to him.