Golden Anvil

Yeah, yeah, it's been a while. Mrs. Kheldar suggested that perhaps I should tell you all what I've been up to since last time. Well, I'll give you three guesses...

a) I've been ballooning across Asia.
My computers exploded and I haven't been able to get online.
c) I've been playing Vanguard.

...ok, so perhaps you didn't need three guesses...

I have been enjoying the game though. I've been intending to take some screenshots, but I keep forgetting. I did get one though.

This is Khalder the dwarf warrior (someone already had the name Kheldar). He's on his horse riding out from the main Dwarf city of Bordinar's Cleft.

I've really been enjoying this game. I joined a guild made up of a number of people from a gaming forum that I read. It's a fairly casual guild, but it's nice to have others around for grouping or other assistance. I've been splitting my time between adventuring, crafting, and diplomacy, and all three of those aspects are quite engaging. At least as of the last time the guild data was updated, I'm the top blacksmith in the guild and the fourth highest diplomat in the guild. That's out of 42 members (36 unique players).

The game is officially launched now, but it's been relatively smooth. The servers haven't felt particularly overloaded. Part of this is due to the fact that there are soooo many races to choose from, each with their own starting areas. That really helps spread people out early on, which help reduce lag problems. Also I was able to level my characters up during the 3 day head start (for those who preordered) so that I was able to get past the real low level areas. They're still stomping out bugs and ironing out other problems of course (I say of course because they were apparently forced to release a little early due to funding issues), but really it's been fairly smooth.

The world is very large, and quite interesting to explore. The graphics are very nice, and at times quite realistic. As you might guess from the fact that I haven't been in touch lately, I'm very much enjoying this game.

What else have I been doing? Well, Mrs. Kheldar and I finished up the first season of 24. That's quite the intense show! Unfortunately, I don't think it's in the budget to pick up the next season for a while yet. Ah well. Guess we'll have to go back to finishing up Babylon 5. Then we've got a couple different shows we want to borrow from people at work.

I've also been doing some reading. I've finished Footfall (a reread for me), and I'm now starting the first of the new books I picked up last week. Rhapsody is the first of a trilogy of which I believe I've only read the first one or two books. I'll probably alternate between reading that series and reading Robin Hobb's Assassin series. I've decided that alternating series helps me avoid getting burned out on an author (as tempting as it is to just read straight through).

Let's see... in other news, my Dad, Optiker, is now officially retired. Congrats! He's so lucky... now he's able to work on his big stack of projects. I'd love to be able to do that. Anyone know a sure fire way to retire early?

Hmm... enough for now. Hopefully enough of the initial excitement of Vanguard has worn off so that I can actually start doing something else around here besides just playing that game. We'll see...