The Reshaping of Azeroth

The Call of the Crusade

The beginning of the End has come. Highlord Tirion Fordring has put a daring plan into motion: to unite the contentious forces of the Alliance and Horde together and select their greatest champions to send against the Frozen Throne itself. To this end, Fordring and his Crusade have founded the Argent Tournament, calling brave and powerful soldiers from all over the world to compete for the right to claim vengeance and glory unparralled in the world's history.

Well, lads and gents, patch 3.2 is here! Well, "here" as of last week, but lets just forget about my laziness for a moment. Besides the obligatory new raid and questlines, this patch brought about some of the most earthshattering changes to the basic structure of WoW en masse. Suddenly, my absolute favorite part of the game, 5man Heroic dungeons, are very very useful again. Add to that the better than decent gear that now drops from the new 5man, Trial of the Champions, I've managed to get my Paladin into all i213 and up gear in every slot... which translates to much easier Ulduar runs and absolute tomfollery in the new Coliseum. Anyone else besides me wish that Garrosh and The Chin would just jump in halfway through the fight and just get this shit over with?!
BUT WHAT... THERE IS MORE.....

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
The first news about the much-anticipated 3rd WoW expansion has been slowly leaking onto the internet for over a month, starting with the title above. And while the rumors of new races came out three weeks ago, the absolute buffet of juicy news that leapt off of MMO-Champion this week bears immediate mentioning. I won't get into every specific here, so please visit the link above to get the full story, but some of the more interesting developments include the following:
1) Azeroth is being reshaped! Aszhara, queen of the Naga, and Deathwing, fallen Black Dragon Aspect, have caused an unimaginable catastophe now known as the eponymous "Cataclysm". The coastlines of Azeroth have been almost completely re-written. Kalimdor has been broken in two, and Thousand Needles has been flooded! Durotar has been decimated and Orgrimmar has been destroyed, with a new Orc capital city being constructed over the course of the expansion!
2) New Races! The lost kingdom of Gilneas has been opened once more by the destruction of the Greymane Wall, revealing an infestation of the Worgen curse... and now has introduced the pacified Worgen Gilneans to the Alliance. Meanwhile, Deathwing has attempted to enslave the Goblin race again, resulting in a rebel group of Goblin refugees fleeing to the Barrens and joining the Horde officially at last.
3) New Race-Class Combo's! The return of the Night Elf Highborne with the advent of Night Elf Mages! The Sin'dorei has rebuilt their armies with the coming of the Blood Elf Warrior! Tauren and Gnomes have found the Holy Light, and have begun to train Paladins and Priests! Trolls have brought into the Cenarion Circle and have become druids!

Oh, and just that little thing sidenote that Malfurion Stormrage has returned from the Emerald Dream at long last.... in order to help create a new Guardian of Tirisfal... who just happens to be motherhugging THRALL!!!!

NERDGASM! No words... should've sent a poet!

Wildly Inappropriate

This may or may not bring Chris Hansen to your house, but the following video has been popping up on almost every blog I read in the last few days. Apparently, at the height of Alyssa Milano's "Who's the Boss" days (or possibly in the immediate, Lifetime-movie dominated aftermath), she was convinced to star in a workout video aimed at teen girls. Just watch the first couple of minutes, and then feel bad about yourself because you actually got disappointed when the dialogue lead to an actual workout session, and not the workout your porno-addled mind has since come to expect.

And then tell Mr. Hansen that the guy he's looking for is the one who actually made this video. Shit, even the girls who actually watched this as teens have to be in their mid to late thirties by now. Now, jump in the wayback machine and remember the first time you saw a girl on television and had those confusing feelings you'd usually associate with hearing that Nintendo was coming out with a SUPER Nintendo next Christmas!

This should turn out well....

According to some recent reports, Emma Watson is considering signing on to a goth remake of Cinderella... alongside Marilyn Manson. For those of you with me on "ummm... ok" page, consider this: according to unnamed sources this is part of a larger effort Emma is making to break free from her "child star" image as her co-star Daniel Radcliffe did before her by appearing nude on stage.

The sad part is that, in your heart of hearts, you already know we're not going to get the same results with Emma. She immediately strikes me as one of those celebrities where nudity is just never going to happen unless its a complete accident. Then again, she IS british, and those limeys seem to have no compunction with topless breasts appearing on literally every piece of printed literature. So maybe we'll get something unexpected someday... but probably not from this train-wreck of a movie waiting to happen. This will probably just be some Tim Burton fanboy's dim fantasy, scrawled out in txt format, and hastily submitted to a studio executive shortly after recieving "good feedback" from fellow fan-fiction writers on the net.

Why can't more celebrities take the Anne Hathaway route? You can't get that girl to keep her shirt ON anymore... and thats why I worship her as a saint. If only my masterful scheme to frame her boyfriend for international financial fraud had worked out as well as I planned... or perhaps I've said too much....

p.s.: Marilyn Manson's life has become excessive drug abuse, occasional touring, and banging out barely legal celebs. So, um, yeah.... good luck working with that guy, Emma.

Natalie Portman is in "Thor"...ummm, ok.

News broke yesterday that Natalie Portman will be playing the love interest in the upcoming Thor movie adaptation, thereby fulfilling her contractual obligation to nerds everywhere requiring her to appear in at least one sci-fiction and/or fantasy genre movie every three years. Sometimes I wonder what its like to be her agent.... "Alright Natalie, in the next few months we have three period-piece dramas, seven indie/slightly-hipsteresque "comedies"*, a Discovery channel special.... oh, and The Matrix 7: Revenge of the College Psychology Syllabus".

This girl is going to be forced into attending Comic-Cons for the rest of her natural life. And I appreciate that. But Thor? Really? I'm sure I'll be subjected to various nerdrage for this, but lets be honest: Thor sucks. Couple this with the news that Ryan Reynolds will be playing Hal Jordan's Green Lantern, and this looks like a depressing year for comic book movies. That being said, the fact that Natalie is in this movie is probably enough to make me go see it anyways, so good on you marketing executives. Even though the role of "love interest" in one of these things is usually confined to shooting the main character confused "what-are-you-hiding-from-me" looks for the 1st 3/4's of the flick, and then getting kidnapped and rescued just before credits roll.

WoW: Patch 3.2: "Azjol-Nerub was only a setback...."

If anyone still read this blog, most notably my former fellow contributors, they'd probably roll their eyes so far back into their head as to drop a 2nd set of testicles at any mention of my unhealthy obsession: World of Warcraft. But... they don't, so I'm gonna do it. Please direct any commentary to your own sense of self-hatred and jealousy at just how much more l33t I happen to be. Real men don't need to attract women. They grind Yeti's in Alterac Mountains instead. Bitch. *sob*

Anywho, it may seem like 3.1 is still rather fresh, but 3.2 is now only a few weeks away. I'll admit, I'm one of the sad Blood Elves who have yet to down Yoggy himself, but I will say that being 8/14 into Ulduar is still pretty impressive to me considering this is the first time I'm raiding the endgame while still on the current patch-level gear (I won't count 3.0 and Naxx considering the near universal QQ about how easy it is). Nevertheless, one would think dropping another major content patch so quickly is going to overwhelm many within the casual-hardcore borderlands.

But alas, not so. While many are focused on the new Argent Coliseum raid, tier 9 faction-specific armor, and they greatly reduced levelling difficulty, I think the most intriguing aspect of 3.2 will be the end of Hero and Valor badges and the implementation of Conquest badge drops in all 5-mans! Suddenly, my favorite aspect of the endgame (if it can even be called that) is given brand new life with cravable rewards. Even my main, the poor little pally who has trudged through the Seige and Antechamber of Ulduar several times over, but has only managed to down Freya (hence awarding me no tier 8 pieces thus far), will be substantially geared up by going back to the Utgardes, Ulduar Halls, Nexus and Spider wings and the rest. Also, my alt druid will probably be closing in on Northrend about the time 3.2 drops, so in no time at all my two characters will probably be similarly geared.

Also, and from a purely geeky point-of-view, I'm excited about the direction the lore is taking in the upcoming patch, setting things up nicely for 3.3 and the Lich King himself. The Horde and Alliance are at each other's throats, while Tirion is desperately trying to hold everything together for his grand plan of a elite strike force of Azeroth's best to send against Arthas. And low and behold, who has been burrowing under the only tranquil spot on Icecrown Glacier for these past few months.... Anub'arak himself! I always thought his death in Azjol-Nerub was a little anticlimactic for such a major Northrend character, and seeing him pop up again as the final boss of the AC raid is simply awesome.

3.2 is on the Public Test Realm as we speak, and has been for a couple of weeks. Final release of the patch should probably happen sometime in early to mid August.

Almost Emma, Almost

Well, its Wednesday and goddamit if my vacation next week doesn't feel like its still literally months away. So lets kill the hours together with eye candy.

The new Harry Potter flick is coming out tonight, and while I'll probably not bother with it until the inevitable HBO blitzkrieg of repeat showings early next year, I can't really pretend to hate these movies anymore either. If nothing else, they've given me a progressively-less-creepy celebrity crush in Emma Watson (pictured left, so close to making my month that it hurts).

Seriously, about the time this girl is 26, she's pretty going to be Kate Beckinsale. That perfect face, perfect body, British chick who you always double-take over when you pops up on t.v. As is, though, at 19, she's already well-beyond most other celebrities in her age-group. Add to that the fact that I don't want to stab out my ear drums with a flathead screwdriver everytime she opens her mouth. Thats always a plus.

Priority divided by Weight Gain over Time

Well, the inevitable has happened. Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson have officially called it quits. And thus passes one of the more publicized celebrity couplings of our modern day. Not to mention the only hope for this New York Football Giant fan not to seriously question Tony Romo's ambigious sexuality.

Listen, I get it. I'll readily admit that I exude an interest in football thats borderline nerd-like obsession, but even I would take a step back from all the Romo-hate in the wake of his choketacular postseason performances in the last years, almost always blamed purely on the large breasted Texan to the right. While everyone else would sit there accusing Romo of being distracted away from his job, I'd be the only one sitting there saying "Can you blame him?!" Very few things in life are more important that football... but regularly banging one of the hottest girls on the planet is defintely one of them. That being said, I'm pretty sure that dealing with the vacuous sense of self-entitlement that comes hand-in-hand with the aforementioned amazing body can eventually tip the scales over time.

Nevertheless, I think the picture below is a pretty good bet as to where Jessica can go from here. And all the inuendo that it implies.

Anyone else feel like there should be a NaughtyAmerica tag on the lower left corner of that cap?

Raised from the dead by hot french bitches...

The following post does not promise, nor imply, an effort towards future improvement in regularity of updates. Instead, it is purely a reflection of the writer's present fleeting obsession with the following celebrity figure.

Alright, this is more than old news, but I thought it bared mentioning regardless: Alizee is impossibly hot. I mean, like orbiting-so-close-to-the-sun-that-you'd-be-warping space-time-kinda hot. Sure, we have a long, proud history of pop tart starlets here in the States too, but I gotta be honest... not like this. Which begs the alarming question: are we Americans losing the ass race with Europe?! How will our national security be ensured without a constantly-upgraded stream of mildly-talented, extremely-pro-tools'ed (yes, thats a verb.... NOW) borderline jailbait singers.... to make us feel uncomfortable and confusing emotions? If thats our future, people, I don't want any part of it, man. Just put me on the boat to France right now. I'm pretty good at feigning arrogance and surrendering to Germany.