Nerd Culture Podcast

Welcome to the forty-first instalment of Who Review, my ongoing quest to review all available episodes of TV’s longest running SF series, Doctor Who. This week, the Doctor confronts two of his deadliest enemies in Frontier in Space.

EPISODES

Frontier in Space

BROADCAST DATES

24 February – 31 March 1973 (6 episodes)

THE DOCTOR

Jon Pertwee

THE COMPANIONS

Jo Grant

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WoW has a pretty cool little time waster called the Battle Pet System. It is an obvious rip off of Pokemon but it apparently hasn’t pissed off Nintendo so all good.

At first I was dismissive of the whole thing. I mean it’s blatantly designed to enhance the already crack-like nature of the game and keep people playing and that annoyed me, and I was never into Pokemon anyway, but now I have a confession to make:

I’m kinda obsessed by Battle Pets.

Like all other aspects of the game, Battle Pets have their own selection of Achievements, and I long ago fell into the trap of seeking out more and more Achievements, so here were a brand new selection for me to obsess over.

They range from ‘Collect X number of Battle Pets‘, to ‘Win X PvP Battle Pet duels‘, and everything in between. I’m not really interested in the PvP ones but the collecting ones are right up my alley.

Most of the Pet collecting achievements are pretty easy, and simply involve capturing pets from scattered around Azeroth & Outland. But a few of the pets are ridiculous to find.

I only have 2 more pets to get to complete the achievement ‘Kalimdor Safari‘, which will in turn then complete the achievement ‘World Safari‘ and grant me the title Zookeeper. But these 2 pets are proving very elusive.

One is the Qiraji Guardling, which only comes out during the Midsummer Fire Festival, which is a week away, so not too bad there, but the other is the infamous Minfernal. My God catching this pet is pissing me off.

It only spawns in one little area in Felwood, and with no discernible pattern that I have been able to figure out. I currently have 4 toons, on 4 different servers, parked over the area and switch between them hoping that one has spawned. And I’m not alone in that plan either, there is always someone else hovering over the are when I appear, adding to the frustration.

I’ve even made the almost blasphemous decision that if I see one on the AH I will just buy the damn thing, regardless of cost. I’ve avoided buying any so far but for this one screw principles! And I usually try to avoid collecting Poor quality pets (they range from poor to rare) but if the Minfernal is Poor quality I don’t give a crap, I’ll take it!

My favourite pet collecting experience is actually getting the Tiny Shale Spider. It drops from a rarespawn elemental spider called Jadefang, which lives on a ledge in a cave in Deepholm. I camped this ledge for days and on the night of the weekly reset it finally spawned – with only 2 minutes to go!  I almost had a heart attack as I furiously killed Jadefang, looted the pet, added it to my collection, and logged out, all before the auto reset 🙂

I suspect I’ll have a similar experience if the Minfernal ever appears. It probably isn’t good for my health, but it’ll be exciting enough to make up for the incredibly annoying hunt!

17/6/13 – UPDATE – I found a Minfernal!!! Oh the feeling LOL. I thought I’d have a quick check when Crystal called that dinner was ready, just for the hell of it, and holy crap there it was! It was uncommon but I’m happy with that. As I posted above, I had 3 other toons in position over Felwood, so I decided I didn’t need them there anymore and logged onto each one to send them home. And lo and behold, there was another Minfernal! I could not believe it! I swooped down hoping for a rare, but is was a poor, so I cancelled the battle and left it alone so that someone else could grab it. My good deed for the day 🙂

This will come as no surprise to listeners of NCP, but I’m kinda addicted to World of Warcraft.

I say kinda, because I don’t play though the night knowing I have to get up for work the next morning, or pee into a bottle that sits beside my desk because I don’t want to miss out on the dungeon finder popping, or get anxious if I don’t play for a few days, but this wasn’t always the case. Yes, I admit I’ve had 24 hour marathon play sessions, made use of an empty bottle on at least one occasion, and had trouble concentrating the next day if I finished playing the night before and my toon (character) was only 1 or 2 bars away from leveling, but that was in my earlier WoW days. Being married to a non-WoW player means that I have the joy of being able to spend time with her, so WoW has been relegated to a weekend only, and no weeknights situation and that’s more than ok with me. And besides, I’m an old man now and I need my sleep!

That doesn’t mean that I’m no longer a loyal player. Whenever other obligations don’t interfere, I am at my PC traveling the world of Azeroth, and happy as a pig in mud. Other games may temporally distract me (like SWToR) but I always come home to WoW.

So to that end I thought I might occasionally post some thoughts here about my highs and lows of playing the world’s most popular MMORPG, and even write down the sometimes ridiculously detailed character biographies I have for my toons. I know, bloody RP’ers… 🙂

I can’t guarantee it will be a regular thing, but they’ll be up every now and then. I might even be able to coax our resident WoW Yoda to post a story of two.

And, if you have a WoW experience, or character bio you want to share please feel free to post it in the Comments section. I would very much like to read them!

David

Comic Review by a Comics Newbie

Howdy comics fans. For my review this week I am looking at Blackacre: Volume 1: An Errand into the Wilderness by Image Comics.

Image continues to be my favourite comic publisher. From Alpha Girl to The Darkness to Saga (if you are not reading Saga get on it!), the comics that are coming out from Image are of a very high quality both story and art wise.

Blackacre Volume 1 comprises the first five issues in this ongoing series.

The story is relatively complex but the use of an epilogue at the beginning was a great move by the writer. The epilogue works perfectly as an exposition device so when the story kicks in a few pages in the comic I knew what was going on.

A quick synopsis of the epilogue:

1. The USA as it known today has collapsed
2. A shadowy well-funded group known as Excorp struck a deal with the government for some undisclosed land
3. While the rest of the country descended into chaos, Excorp created a new secure super city called Blackacre.

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Episode #52 features:

Our 2nd Anniversary!

Dust Jacket: The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov

Dust Jacket: Who is killing the Great Capes of Heropa? by Andrez Bergen

And our Competition Winner is announced – congratulations to Andrew ! Thanks to All Star Comics Melbourne!

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The Caves of Steel

Who is killing the Great Capes of Heropa?