Neverwinter Nights 2

The Sunday night crew that I play with finished up Guild Wars and all the expansions last Sunday night.



Strangely enough, the final fight was not nearly as difficult as the two fights before it. So, our quick win kind of took us by surprise.

This week has been all about finding out what the heck it is that we will be doing over the next year or so until Diablo III is released. Unfortunately the official word is that they won't give us a firm release date. You know how Blizzard works. They like to get everything and every detail wonderful before they hit the release button. That's too their credit. Yup, I just complimented Blizzard.

After considering Space Siege and Titan Quest, we eventually rested upon Neverwinter Nights 2 (NWN2). After downloading the game and playing it for a couple hours last night . . . boy do I hope we've made the right decision. You see, Guild Wars was pretty fast paced. Things happened relatively quickly and it was an adrenaline rush at some times. NWN2 is more strategic than Guild Wars. I really hope the guys like this. The interface is also a little weird. moving the mouse to the edges of the screen to rotate the camera is odd and you have to press the asterisks key a few times in different situations to get the right view. It's highly likely that I'm just in the noob phase here where I'm learning controls.

What I do like about it so far is that the story is much more in depth and rich. There's more cut scenes (at least here in the beginning).

So, here goes nothing . . . I imagine our troupe will start playing either next Sunday night or the one after that.

OH! ONE MORE THING!

During all this research I actually did find a game I want to give a shot. I don't think it'd be right for our crew, but I think I want to try Demigod. I'll have to keep you informed if I jump in with both feet or not.

I AM STINGITE

Hi. I'm Stingite. I've been blogging haphazardly for a few years, and that should probably stop. Well, the haphazard part, not the blogging part. Ok, both should probably stop, but I'm not that smart. Yes, long drawn out self-torture is the only way to fly. I've blogged about Lord of the Rings, and I'm still blogging about Wizard 101. All my old wonderful writing from EQ are lost somewhere that I'll never get them back most likely, but I might try.

So, first things first, a repost of a blog of mine from The Friendly Necromancer where I tell about the name stingite. It's where I'm getting the name for this blog.

So I've been getting some questions as to where the handle "Stingite" comes from. No, it doesn't come from some strange adoration of the singer Sting. Although, good on him for trying to take on the ballads of John Dowland. And, no, it is not some equally strange worship of Bilbo Baggin's knife named "Sting."

So, sit back and relax while I tell you of the origins of my handle Stingite.

*begin cut and paste*

Stingite originally is this fella.



That's Stingite standing tall in a place known as the Plane of Time in the game Everquest. Though there were a couple MMO's before Everquest (or EQ), EQ is the father of a lot of these MMO games, or sometimes called a first generation MMORPG.

Around the time Amber Deathsong was born (in real life) there was a fantastic expansion to the game of Everquest called, The Shadows of Luclin. I had played a cleric class up to that point, but I knew that I really wanted to play a new class that was released with the Luclin expansion called "The Beastlord."

Oh man, they were awesome. Everyone in my guild (that's a big group of people that hang together under a name and get a private channel between friends) was pretty irked that I had switched classes from a cleric to a beastlord, but they hadn't had to suffer the indignation of staring at their spellbook for a year while they all ran around hitting stuff. (you used to have to sit and stare at a really dumb spellbook graphic to regain your mana faster.)

I also knew that I wanted to be an iksar. I mean, who doesn't want to be a scaley lizardman character at least once in their life? Not only that, my favorite starting area of any Everquest land (and believe me, there were tons of starting areas) was the field of bone, which was dominated by iksars. The field of bone was overrun by tons of these guys, scorpions.



So, knowing that the land my character was birthed in had a lot of those scorpions, I called myself STING-ite . . . or "of the sting." And it just kind of stuck from there. The following four or five years that I played Everquest just kind of solidified that name for me. I mean, when every time you log in and say hello in guild chat and everyone says, "STINGER!" or "STINGI!" or "STING!" it just kind of becomes a big part of your online persona. I AM STINGITE!

Of course I took the name on to other games like World of Warcraft (hunter character with a spider pet named "rimshot").



or Guild Wars (ranger beastmaster build with a lizard pet named "shoes") . . .



Or Lord of the Rings (champion, dual wielder major aoe dps man)



And pretty much any save file I do on any console game . . .

It just kind of became my handle online, which reminds me . . . I need to go reserve that name in free realms. If only Wizard 101 would find a way to approve that name for me somehow. That would be awesome. I'd drop "Thomas Lionblood" in an instant.

So that, my friends, is where the name Stingite comes from . . . a lizard man character in the game of Everquest who grew up in a land of scorpions.

*End cut and paste*

So that's that . . . this blog has begun! Finally, a place to call my own where I can blog about ANYTHING rather than specific things! Games, movies, thoughts, but mostly games. Finally. Well, I hope it goes well at least.

Now to come up with a fancy tag line like the "Happy Dueling" line I use on my Wizard101 blog. Meh, I may just keep that one.

Happy Dueling!