The Wizard of Duke StreetA collection of essays, reviews and commentary on fantasy, science-fiction, gaming, and associated genres.First Time in Karazhan- March 31, 2008 I've never done much raiding before - a few times into Zul'Gurub, back in the pre-TBC days. Saturday evening last, though, the raid group my guild works with were arranging runs into the new, no-attunement Karazhan. We had enough people to run three simultaneous raids, each with ten people. For me, at least, it was a momentous success.There were some post-patch oddities with the Omen addon. The Prince fight had apparently been made a lot harder, and we made it through anyway. None of the rest...http://dukestreet.org/archives/004616.html WoW Patch 2.4- March 28, 2008 Patch 2.4 hit the European servers of World of Warcraft on Wednesday, and was the smoothest patch yet - things were up and running well by the time people were coming home from work. It chewed up a lot of addons, mainly due to the changes in the combat log, but that's to be expected, and there wasn't a lot Blizzard could do about it anyway.Quel'Danas Quel'Danas is the new island, aka Sunwell Isle off to the north of Silvermoon. The Shattered Sun offensive (a combination of the Scryers and...http://dukestreet.org/archives/004614.html Doctor Who Series 4- March 20, 2008 There's an interview in SFX this month with Russell T Davies. Front and centre of the article are the words "We have a twenty year plan..." That's pretty ambitious in television, but starting in to the article, I really hope we can take it at face value. This is the kind of concept you just might be able to pull off with Doctor Who that you really couldn't with any other TV series.The Sontarans (classic Who monsters) are back. There's a visit to Pompeii - although given the howls that Gladiator.http://dukestreet.org/archives/004611.html Orbital Preview- March 20, 2008 This year's Eastercon is Orbital, to be held in the Radisson Edwardian in Heathrow. It's been a long time since I went to an Eastercon, being as they're across the water and over the one guaranteed four-day weekend of the year, but this one has both China Miville and Neil Gaiman, as well as Charlie Stross and Tanith Lee. So Nina and I are off on Friday afternoon to London, and as soon as we're in the door, we'll be putting our names down for the coffee sessions with the authors. The way these...http://dukestreet.org/archives/004610.html |