Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Birthday AAR and a new drug


And another fabulous birthday weekend it's been. I consider myself lucky to have such a great bunch of friends. As is usual when I don't have my boys, this was an EVE Meet weekend; not as many of us still play, but some of the unsubbed (me included) are forming plans for a return, even my buddy Unzer who just moved to California where his girlfriend is a doctor in particle physics. Yeah, heavy duty shit! But because of its origins we still call it the EVE Meet, and EVE players from all over still come to Montreal for it.

This time around we did have many non-EVE players join us, non-gamers even. Yes, this would be my fault. Because of the age I was turning I created an event called "The Answer to the Ultimate Question about Life, The Universe, and Everything". If you're nerd enough, you now know my age. If you're not nerd enough 1- Google exactly this, and 2- why are you reading my blog? XD So us gamers were joined by a girlfriend, a sister, the sister's friend, an engineer and of course the wonderful Brutopia staff. Oh and I must add, the Montreal Night Life! I myself was accompanied by a long-time friend who has to be one of the most hardcore girl gamers I know. She may not be playing EVE but her knowledge of RPGs and MMORPGs is impressive to say the least. Her current game of predilection is League of Legends. I didn't really know what it was or how it was played but after a detailed explanation she got me interested enough to create an account and try it. Oh the pain to be a n00b again! For the first time in a long time I feel like in my early EVE days when I didn't know what was what or any of the lore. I have the feeling I'll reading up a lot. She can't really help me directly the way Letrange did in EVE because playing with her and her in-game buddies would have me meet opposition that is much too strong for me, so I have to play on my own with other pure n00bs. But at least she can help me with strong advice and guidance. It also doesn't hurt that she lives close to my place and I can do a lot of catching-up with her because in the past year-and-a-half she's been pretty sick and until about a month ago I hadn't seen her in about 2 years. She is worth seeing more of :)

So yeah, League of Legends... or LoL as it's also known (yes, funny abrev!). Learning that it was a pretty big e-sport had me perk up a bit; I sort of knew about the existence of LoL but I mistakenly thought it was an RTS à la Warcraft/Starcraft. Oh man was I wrong! The only similarity with a standard RTS is that one team has to blow up the other team's base. That's it. No ressource gathering and unit construction; the minions as they're called spawn by themselves as per a set timer and each player controls one champion who goes into battle with a total of six abilities or spells, and six inventory slots. Sounds pretty simple right? Think again. There are over a hundred champions one can choose from, and each one has its own strengths to draw upon and weaknesses to be exploited. Not to mention the way the characters evolve over the course of a game. It's sort of like the character leveling up in a regular RPG, but in minutes instead of hours. There is also no looting - when you get killing blows on minions, jungle monsters and champions you do get gold but no looting per se - so the only goal a team has is to successfully counter the other team and destroy its stuff.

Yes I know LoL is a bit deeper than than, but I will respectfully ask that I be given a break when it comes to LoL knowledge because I'm barely scratching the surface. Yes I would very much like to download my friend's brain but somehow I don't think she'll let me. I am supposed to see her tomorrow so I will at least try to get a bit more knowledge from her :)

All in all, my birthday could not have gone better. I even received a big gift from my mom in the form of a modern flat-screen TV to replace my ancient and dying 20th century CRT beast. Of course there was a bit of alcohol abuse, but it was all in good fun. And the company was simply awesome :))

Forty-Two down, and plenty yet to go !!!

o7 

2 comments:

Knug Lidi said...

Had my 45th yesterday.

I should really make my way down to Montreal for one of your EVE Meets.

Its only a short trip down the 401/40 from Kingston.

Benoit CozmikR5 Gauthier said...

We have 'em every 14 days like Swiss clockwork. We would be happy to unroll the Red Carpet :)

The next one is August 11th, so you can start your 14-day counts from there.