A look back at October

Continuing with the new month end tradition of my blog wrap-up, lets take a look at October and see how scary a month it truly was.

Blog-o-sphere

• Alex over at Average Joe decided it was best for the time being to take a break from blogging and focus more on real life commitments. Come back soon man!
• Clockwork Gamer added Xeavn to the mix of writers there and opened up a new section devoted to some upcoming guides for Everquest 2.
• Cuppycake and many others faced the fires of California and it looks okay for all.
• Orange Box is the new crack.
• Grouchy makes the move to a private domain. Mood change not guaranteed.
• Rao makes me wish I had vacation time left over.
• Heartless creates a Steam community and does a great writeup on TF2.
• Many of my fellow bloggers have found either the dull-drums I had or simply the need for something new and have landed in the world of Everquest 2.
• Wilhelm gets the Hulk inside of him free at last!
• Bildo put out chapter 1, 2, & 3 of a great story that I highly recommend to anyone who likes the fantasy setting. The world sounds very cool. Ask him about Hellgate:London too.
• Damiano dinged One this week and has some stats up at his blog. My traffic epeen just shrunk considerably smaller.
• Some crap about a cake.
• PvtHudson posted an epic article about MMO burnout, please read it as I care about all of you and I am waiting for the Blog-o-sphere guild to form.

Overall Blog-o-sphere morale: Temporarily satisfied.
Podcasting

• Virgin Worlds hit the 2 year mark this month. Still my favorite site.
• Channel Massive put out a new show that has a great round table on addiction.
• Darren finally gets Grimwell on the show and manages to keep everyone on topic.
• Tabulacast has launched over at VW and he sent me some linkage on my TR review. Thanks Sean. (I listen b/c he has a cool name)

Brackish News
I really think I forgot to post something about this at the beginning of the month but I made a second appearance on Darrens SUWT. What can I say, he promised me a bottle of Baileys and winter was around the corner.

I finally got iTunes this week. I had planned on writing a whole article about it but its a pretty bland topic and its not something I really wanted to do. Now that I have it, the hold is beginning to take place and I’m thinking about re-re-formatting my iPod back the original software. It seems Rockbox doesn’t like iTunes either.

My gaming has funneled down to me only playing EQ2 in my spare time and even still I have only reached level 39 as a Berserker and 35 as an Armorsmith. I guess thats pretty good as the wife is still sleeping in the same room and the boy is still porky and happy. Gotta balance out the life systems too!

With iTunes now on my PC, my list of shows is growing and I hope to update the right here with my top ten. There are many like EQ2’sDay, EpicDolls (WoW), and GameOver that make me wish I was sleepless like the marines in X-Files.

New Links

• revenants.wordpress.com – Killzum’s EQ2 blog here has become a regular read for me and is providing me with plenty of incentive to continue my journey in EQ2. Thanks!
• bigdaddygamer.blogspot.com – BDG is another gamer dad like myself.
• damianov.wordpress.com – Damiano and Aaron keep me constantly filled with gaming ideas.
• hgamer.blogspot.com – Heartless, ever heartless.

Top Search Engine Terms
human seducing games – I want no part of this.
veggietales mmog – I want every part of this.
animated person recycling in action – I don’t even know what this is, Soylent Green?

Forgive me if I missed any new linkage or important events that happened.

September in review

Taking one out of Wilhelm’s book, here’s a look at the past month of my gaming, blogging, and RL.

Happenings in the blogroll
Its been a great month in the blogroll and a lot has been going on.

• Amber Night took a trip over to the Wood and has some excellent news in her personal life.
• Darren put out a great couple of episodes of Shut Up. We’re Talking! despite another check on his ability to keep a female co-host. Don’t worry Darren, shes out there somewhere for you.
• Rao at Gestalt seems to have dug himself out of his gaming slump by choosing to return to EQ2. Wish I had started on the same server as you Rao as we could have used another great player in out trio.
• Adele took a leave of absence from her co-hosting to take a new RL job. Go over and wish her the best of luck!
• Cuppy’s new job seems to be getting much busier with their recent release of MetaPlace.
• Jaye got bitten by the podcast bug and made more than one appearance this month.
• Keen and Graev put out, in my opinion, their best podcast yet. Consoles, MMOs, and the blogging community are all covered in their bi-weekly show.
• P0tsh0t tipped us off to Luke Duke’s appearance in LotRO and continues his journey to lift the veil of anonymity in MMOs and out our well known celebrities.
• Bildo got a new tablet and is putting out more episodes of his comic. Let him know what you think.
• Cameron got engaged and is also tempting the rough waters of Vanguard.
• Pixiestyx gave an update on the state of the theoretical MMO and took some time off.
• Wife Aggro gives us some updated posts about his WoW adventuring and also an excellent article about being an effective guild leader.
• Troy blasted us with more episodes of his Voyages of Vanguard and EQual Perspectives. Rumor is he is actually a bionic-man engineered by SOE after a freak accident with one of their server squirrels. Be thankful we have him.
• Seth and Rage are back in full swing and have released episode 30 of their show. Gratz on 30 guys!
• Tobold made a balanced and comprehensive overview of three of the major crafting systems out there and convinced me to take another chance with this sphere of gameplay.

RL musings
My son has yet to let me actually build anything with his new cache of wooden blocks.
Playing a female character in MMOs may no longer be advantageous. I don’t know how I will maintain my standing as a great player now. /sarcasm
Podcasts are almost as enjoyable to be in as they are to listen to.
The barrier between RL and the blog-o-sphere is smaller than I thought.

Gaming goodness
I’m taking a brief departure from Middle Earth and dipping my lore hungry brain in the world of Norrath. So far my decision to do this has been one of the better choices I have made and the community within Antonia Bayle has been a welcome change of maturity. I had planned on waiting for Kendricke to finish his discussion on deities before making my decision on which path to follow, but the temptation to dive right in got the best of me. If you want to explore a world that epitomizes the spirit of lore driven content and offers its heroes multiple routes for advancement, be sure to check out Everquest 2.

I had hoped to take part in the testing of Pirates of the Burning Sea but the authorization process seems to take a bit longer than I had thought. I hope that everyone in the beta is doing their best to give Flying Labs as much information as possible and going over every inch of that game. Remember, if you are in a beta – Test the game!

Stats and links
It seems my brief post on Haudh Iarchith has been drawing a lot of eyes from the local search engines. If anyone has a good walk through on this LotRO dungeon, forward them along and I’ll tag some linkage to the end for those weary adventurers.
Brent posted links to a couple of my recent articles and drew some great traffic to the site. Thanks Brent.

Overall, an interesting and eventful month for everyone. Didn’t September used to be the most dreaded month of the year? Maybe that was just high school.