Hi, here’s another update on my brother’s progress at World of Warcraft (WoW).

I must apologize to all the Mazgul fans out there. My brother has stopped playing him, instead focussing on developing the wily Night Elf Druid Baklava.

Baklava is now Level 24! He is able to shift into two additional animal forms. He can now transform into a sabretooth tiger-like cat, which currently is his best mode of delivering damage in hand-to-hand (claw-to-claw?) combat.

The cat also has the ability of becoming partially invisible (I think he called it “cloaking”), though if a character or monster is enough levels higher than Baklava, the cloaking doesn’t work very well.

Baklava has also completed a quest which now gives him a “water form”, basically an overweight seal. I guess it makes it easier for him to swim in water, or makes him cuter to attacking monsters, I don’t know exactly.

Baklava is now a member of a guild called “Legionofdragons”. The other guild members are much higher level than Baklava, but he’s trying to advance himself.

A guild in WoW can have its own bank within the game. Guild members can deposit and withdraw items from their bank. Baklava has been able to upgrade his gear by picking out items from the guild bank.

My brother thinks that Baklava may be gay, as he is obsessed with finding clothing patterns he can use to stitch together pieces of leather into wearable items, using his increasingly honed leathermaking skills. Plus, the last two things he withdrew from the guild bank were dark leggings and a lustrous pearl. What’s next, a Judy Garland album?

Baklava is nearing 200 points in his cooking skill, which is apparently equivalent to a sous chef at a mid-priced fancy restaurant. A few more points and he will be able to make spider sausage. That last sentence wasn’t a joke. He really does need a few points before he can make spider sausage.

Okay, now a few more pictures. You can click on them to get larger versions of the images. I’m sorry, but I am most likely going to discontinue the tradition of including a gratuitous photo of female night elf cheesecake.

Baklava as cat, with a classy NPC female night elf sentry.

Baklava as cat, cloaked. If you look closely, you can see his eyes and fangs to the right of another classy female night elf sentry.

Baklava from the rear, in his fat-assed “water-form”. In the distance, some svelte female night elf sentries.

UPDATE: My brother sent me one more picture.

Baklava trudging by some fetching female night elves. This picture reminds me very much of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. If Baklava gets a mohawk, I would probably steer clear of him.

Here’s a very small World of Warcraft (WoW) update. My brother has just informed me that Baklava the Night Elf Druid now has the ability to transform into a cat! Screenshots are forthcoming.

He told me that as Druids get higher in level they can transform into additional animals. So now, Baklava can be a bear or a cat.

The other day MizSplotchy indicated to me that my regular inclusion of night elf cheesecake has ruffled her feathers a bit. I was genuinely surprised. Perhaps it was triggered by a reader’s comment (a funny one, I thought) on a recent post intimating that some pubic hair was visible in a night elf drawing I had included.

I mentioned this to my brother, who retorted, “Oh, no. Night elves don’t have any pubic hair. Everybody knows this.”

I really like finding and including these night elf pics in WoW updates, but also understand and respect my wife’s point of view as well.

Perhaps we could get a little of direction from the readers of this blog?

So, I ask you, would you like the following to happen:

A) No more female night elf pics!
B) Keep the female night elf pics, but let’s shake it up by including a little beefcake night elf from time to time!
C) We want sexy female night elf pics, 24/7!

Thanks for any assistance in this matter.

[THIS IS WHERE A NIGHT ELF PIC WOULD NORMALLY BE]

UPDATE:

Just so you don’t think you’ll be disrupting the marital bliss of Splotchy and MizSplotchy by giving your opinion, she has seen this post and is cool with my solicitation of feedback from my readers, who, I should tell you, she believes to solely consist of World Of Warcraft night-elf cheesecake lovin’ freaks.

How can I live up to a post title like that? The truth is, I can’t. I’d love to show you a video of Baklava killing rabid thistle bears, that, despite being rabid, were honestly doing no harm to Baklava before he made vines shoot out of the ground and entangle them. Unfortunately, that video does not currently exist.

I *can* give you an account where I witnessed the druidy punishment dealt by Baklava firsthand. Well, I was sitting behind my brother when he was doing the killing. The family Thanksgiving dinner was actually had at his house. After dinner, I asked for a brief display of his World of Warcraft (WoW) prowess.

Baklava is Level 19 now. I saw him kill some rabid thistle bears, some moonkin, and other things I can’t remember. He was shooting bolts at them, turning into a bear and swiping at them, etc.

One funny thing I noted during the gameplay was that when you are exiting a game, there is a 30 second delay before you get completely logged off. During this time, your character sits down on the ground and quietly waits. No matter how foul or evil a character you play in WoW, at least he or she will have the common decency to know when to sit and when to stand.

I thought the game looked decent enough, but I confirmed my feeling that I do not want to wander down the path to WoW any time soon.

I’m not sure if it was from seeing the game played earlier, but for some reason after we got home and put the kids to bed, I felt the need to watch Return Of The King. What time was it when I started the movie? Oh, around 9:00pm. And we have the Extended Edition. And I had to go to work the next day. What the hell was I thinking?

MizSplotchy was gracious enough to sit down and remain awake with me for the movie. Right after the ring was destroyed (a little after midnight), I asked her, “Do you mind if we turn the movie off now? I just wanted to see Sauron get his ass kicked.” She thankfully agreed.

Something funny occurred to me in viewing Return Of The King. In the films, we hear the scary, disembodied voice of Sauron at different points. I thought it would be cool at the end, when we see the tower with his eye on top collapsing, that you hear some final words from him:

The above images were modified from original screenshots here. Go there for a quick, web-based way of whipping through the trilogy!

Here’s one of the scenes I skipped over in last night’s viewing, with the audio tweaked a little for humorous results.

And now, here’s a little purple elf cheesecake for you.

P.S., for all you Mazgul fans, I saw him kill some bats.

Hi, here’s a very short update regarding the adventures of Baklava, the Night Elf Druid that likes to kill defenseless deer and sit on campfires.

Baklava is now Level 16.

My brother recently made an adjustment to his character. Characters in World of Warcraft, when not killing deer, can focus on pursuing two professions. My brother recently learned that you can pick two professions that have synergies.

If you pursue Herbology and Alchemy as your professions, you can take the flowers and plants you pick and make potions. If you choose Tanning and Leathermaking, you can make items from the pelts you collect from animals.

Baklava’s professions of choice were Herbology and Tanning, which have absolutely no synergies whatsoever. He was essentially able to gather raw materials for two unrelated things, but couldn’t actually do anything with them. Baklava has now “unlearned” Herbology and is on the track to be a Leathermaker.

For those of you who might miss Baklava’s spice bread, please do not worry. It is still possible to have hobbies. Cooking is one of Baklava’s hobbies, and will always have a place in his dark purple heart.

While online, Baklava has been invited on numerous occasions by a persistent fellow who wants him to join a guild called the “Italian World Order”. My brother would understand Greeks seeking him out, as he bears the name of a sweet dessert, but was surprised to be contacted by Italians. Baklava is uncertain about the purpose of this guild, and how serious it is about Italian global domination. As of yet, he has not sought further information or expressed interest in joining.

And now, another Night Elf babe.

I apologize for leaving my readers in suspense about my brother’s involvement with the game World Of Warcraft (WoW). When we last left him, he hadn’t decided whether he would go beyond the initial 10-day free trial and actually start paying to play the game.

Would he would decide to pony up some money to continue playing Baklava the Night Elf Druid and Mazgul the Undead Mage? Or would he quit the game cold turkey, abandoning his characters to be deleted by some underpaid sysadmin?

What? You weren’t in suspense? Is that ice water in your veins?

Baklava and Mazgul are alive, for the moment. My brother paid 20 bucks for a licensed copy of the game, which gave him 30 more days of hot WoW action.

He was nice enough to take some screenshots for me, so now you can begin to see these heroic characters in all their glory.

This post will be devoted to Baklava. I’m sorry, Mazgul fans. You’re going to have to wait a little longer to get your Undead Mage fix.

Baklava from the main character screen. My brother calls it his ‘class photo’.

Baklava is now at Level 14, and has the ability to use a whole new slew of spells. But, a lot of time has been spent transforming into a bear, a skill a Druid can acquire at Level 10.

Baklava The Bear

I told you Baklava was a mighty hunter of deer-that-don’t-fight-back.

Now you can witness the epic battle!
Click on the pictures to get even larger images of the carnage!

Spotting his prey

Unleashing a ridiculous amount of damage via a ‘Wrath’ spell

Baklava Triumphant

Attempts to get a good pelt from the carcass prove to be unsuccessful

Baklava isn’t just about the hunting. He is also making lots of different kinds of food. He now knows how to make spice bread and herbed eggs (eating food heals you, though I think my brother gets a perverse pleasure from the act of virtually cooking for it’s own sake). Baklava is currently considering pursuing Herbology as a hobby.

Baklava has recently also taken up fishing

Another thing Baklava likes to do is sit on things. Do not question why. Baklava does not need to answer your foolish questions.

Sitting in the middle of a campfire

Baklava rides a Hippogriff

And now, the icing on the cake. A hot night elf babe.

So, my brother still does not know if he is going to pursue a paid subscription with the folks at Blizzard Entertainment, for access to their popular game World of Warcraft.

Right now he is on his eighth day of the Free Trial. Enclosed please find an update of his progress.

The Adventures of Baklava, the herb-gathering, rabbit-killing Night Elf Druid

Baklava, a Level 11 Night Elf Druid character, is now proficient in herb lore, and can now pick weeds and herbs. He doesn’t know what to do with them at this point. But he can pick them.

Baklava is now getting good at skinning deer and rabbit, without ruining their pelts. He says you have to kill them to get their pelts.

“Can deer or rabbits hurt you in combat?” I ask.

“No, only through guilt.”

I ask them how you approach them.

“They just stand there. I shoot a spell at them and they drop dead.”

“Does it take a long time to get from place to place?” I inquire.

“Yeah, it takes fucking forever.”

However, Baklava said there are platforms in various cities where a tired Night Elf can hitch a ride on a hippogriff. He says that the experience of flight on the hippogriff is especially nice, and says that the game overall is very beautiful.

Mazgul, the unfortunately-named Undead Mage

My brother also has an Undead mage, currently at Level 7. The mage’s name is Mazgul. After creating him, my brother realizes the name is just one letter and a caret off from Nazgûl (something he didn’t intend, and makes him now think of it as a name that conveys to him a particular Lord Of The Rings-style of dweebishness).

Mazgul was wandering around a graveyard on a quest, looking for some dog blood for a spell. He walked into a crypt, when suddenly the door shut behind him. He realized he was trapped there with a much higher level monster, and was quickly and brutally killed.

As he was recovering his body, a fellow adventurer got his attention by saying, “LOL I killed you” — apparently this was the jerk who had shut the crypt door on my brother. My brother noted that when the text “LOL” is typed for a character, you hear the character laughing, which is, as you can probably guess, annoying.

Mazgul was able to finish collecting vials of dog blood. Now he is concentrating on a new quest involving collecting ten red scarves from some bandits. Yes, it all sounds a bit swishy.

A pleasing part of playing Mazgul involves casting an Immolation spell, which sets the recipient of the spell ablaze. Mazgul says that he set some Dusk Bats on fire from a long ways away, and told me that they were really cool looking as they slowly swooped down at him, engulfed in flames.

He said that Undead characters are able to use some sort of magic floating ship for transportation, which is also cool. Apparently the different races you play have differing experiences throughout the game — quests are different, as are means of transportation, where your character starts out at is different, etc.

Will Baklava/Mazgul start shelling out cash money for the privilege of gathering herbs, killing rabbits and setting bats on fire? Stay tuned for the next (and possibly, last) installment of World of Warcraft.

And now, what you’ve been waiting for – more sexy Night Elf action.

Not pictured: the owner of this lifesize Night Elf replica, faintly intoning “It rubs the lotion on its skin.”