Some friends I miss more than others. Stumbled across this on YouTube.

Many of you are already aware of the news, but I wanted to mention it anyway. I’ve accepted a position at AeriaGames at their Berlin office. Consequently am moving to the Capital city but I’ll bounce back and forth between Munich and Berlin until I’ve found a permanent residence.

AeriaGames is a company that offers free-to-play MMO’s (MMORPGs and others; for example we also offer an online racing sim). Needless to say, it’s a very interesting and challenging job. My new co-workers made me feel very welcome, and I am very happy that I am being given the opportunity to work here.

On a more personal note, Berlin is the hometown of my father, and my mother lived here for a time as well. It’s a bit of another step in my re-tracing the family history, even if it is less ironic than my visit to Qingdao. Hopefully, I’ll find time to finally research the origins of the Jeppe family.

Richard, I see your 34 matches and counter with 46 players named “Jeppe” in Europe and 9 in the American World of Warcraft. ;-)

(Of course “Jeppe” is a fairly common name in Scandinavia, especially in Denmark.)

I recent weeks I’ve done something I’d never actually seriously considered before: I am now raiding in World of Warcraft. Raids, in case you are not familiar with the lingo, are larger groups of adventurers than the basic 5-man party. Currently, WoW uses 10-man and 25-man raids, though in the past there have been 20-man and 40-man raids as well.

Raids take on challenges that’d be much too hard for smaller groups. Naxxramas – a floating, undead citadel – was the primary raid in the current content; last week, Ulduar was added. Ulduar is a fortress inhabited by titans.

After joining raids fro some weeks now, I’ve gotta say: I am kind of glad I did. They are much more interesting and challenging than small-scale encounters. They require 25 people to work well together; there’s a leadership structure (though we’re kind of casual about it) and people have more specialized roles. Everybody needs to do their job well; a weak link means a wipe – death of the entire raid. For example, on one boss in Naxxramas, I have to use my hunter’s ability to set freezing traps to help neutralize a large group of zombies, and I have to use my tranquilizing shot to calm down the boss when he becomes enraged. Positioning is much important as well. In short, it’s much more about tactics than most other fights.

It’s really fun to do this. Naxxramas is a bit too easy, but Ulduar is very tough for us. This is in part because it’s just a hard area, but it’s also because we’re still learning how to defeat the bosses there. There is immense satisfaction in taking on a big, bad monster, failing for many attempts, and then finally working out the right approach for a successful victory.

Very gratifying.

Razorscale - Ulduar 10-man

I’m now up to LPIC201 exam. I’ve still got to do the 202 exam sometime in the near future, but I’m already LPIC1 certified. Yay me – especially since this is something I’ve always wanted to do.

I love Wikipedia, and I think it’s a great resource. I also realize that running a large server farm costs a lot of money. But the latest drive, in which Wikipedia asks for millions of Euro, is getting on my nerves. The huge banners have been bad enough, but now we get this:

I mean – really! Do you have to make it that big and obnoxious? Besides, Wales is a thoroughly unlikable man, in my personal opinion; I am now even less inclined to donate money.

Bought the second World of Warcraft expansion, played it for a while, and feel confident enough to post a super quick review.

The good:

• Zone design is great, the zones look really nice.
• Quests are much less annoying – there are of course still FedEx- and kill-ten-grue-type-quests, but over all it is MUCH more imaginative, and has many nice extras (for example there’s a quest to free Murloc babies, which has got to be ones of the cutest things in a video game ever).
• Death Knights are actually a fun melee class, which I had not thought would ever happen; their starter “campaign” is also really well designed.
• Less reputation grind… it seems.

The bad:

• It’s more of the same. Really. If you have played WoW at all, you have played the expansion. Unless you are a WoW ultra-nerd, you should get tired of it really quickly.
• Inflation got knocked up another notch. My mage made 500g profit, just by questing, in three days of game-play.
• It absolutely sucks to be a new player at the moment, or to play a low level character. Unless you are level 70 or higher, and thus able to consume the WOTLK content, you will play this game alone for a long time.

Bottom line:

Wotlk gets 3/5. This is what the first expansion should have been like – Northrend totally puts Outland to shame. There’s enough to keep the old timers happy for a while, and some of the new additions are quite nice, but it is not compelling enough to warrant anything more than a “for fans” recommendation.

Passed my first LPIC exam today, the 101. More to come – but I am now, finally, on my way to being a certified Linux geek.