Swollen Pickles

For those of us unable to make it to Germany for Oktoberfest I may have stumbled across the next best thing... Brewfest. One minor problem though, it's in Azeroth, so you're going to need a World of Warcraft account.

Once you've got that sorted, head to the beer garden outside the dwarven capital city Iron Forge. Then, drink up until your computer generated you cant walk straight anymore. Brewfest began on the 20th of September and will finish up on the 4th of October.

Besides the opportunity to get your geek drink on, Brewfest also opens up a heap of Brewfest related quests that will see you drawing your sword against the nefarious Coren Direbrew, leader of the Dark Iron dwarves. Defeat Direbrew and he drops a heaps of cool stuff at random, including some weapons and trinkets, as well as a couple of Brewfest mounts, the Great Brewfest Kodo or the Swift Brewfest Ram. Personally I'm after the Kodo, cause it looks cooler, but as of writing this, I've paid Direbrew five visits, for a total of 25 drops, and neither the Kodo or Ram have dropped once. With a couple of days left my luck might change.

I've also got four days left to complete two of the final achievements in order to take the title of Brewmaster. I have Drunken Stupor (basically getting sh!t faced and surviving a 65 yard fall) and Disturbing the Peace (While wearing 3 pieces of Brewfest clothing, get completely smashed and /dance in Dalaran) left to complete.

Not surprisingly the event has spawned a range of real world merchandise including the "Tankard O' Terror", that can hold close to 2 litres of your preferred beverage. Personally, I'm feeling more than a little include to pick up one of the groovy Brewfest t-shirts. I'm sure chicks dig dudes in World of Warcraft apparel.

Here's an interesting little bit of information I stumbled across while randomly surfing through wikipedia this evening. It relates to World of Warcraft, so nerds can rejoice. For those unfamiliar with the game, your character can pick up diseases and/or curses when battling the enemy. Like in the real world, these things can be a real downer, causing you to perform at less than your best.

A year or two ago, Blizzard, the company behind World of Warcraft, opened the games first 20 player raid dungeon, call Zul'Gurub, as part of patch 1.7. Basically the dungeon saw players taking on tribes of troll who were under the control of the Blood God, Hakkar the Soulflayer. Upon battling Hakkar, the dude with the brutal death metal sounding name, players were tagged with a debuff called "Corrupted Blood", which was a disease that caused the player to have their life sapped over time. The disease could also be passed on to other players that were nearby the infected player. Blizzards intention was that the disease was to only affect players so long as they were inside the dungeon. Unfortunately there appeared to be a bug in the system that allowed the disease to be carried outside of the dungeon, by way of Hunter's pets and Warlock's minions. Before long, corpses littered the World of Warcraft... (more...)

Now, 99% of the people that watch this video will probably groan, mumble something about "nerds" and click themselves to greener pastures. But there's that 1% that will pi$$ themselves laughing when they see this. I don't want it said that I don't cater to the minority groups, so today, this is all about the 1%.

If you've ever played World of Warcraft (that's WoW for the non-newbs), you'll probably have seen references to the "Leeeroy" quest. Well, this is the story behind that spawned that quest. Enjoy.

Just to prove that you can find fame, no matter how fleeting, in almost any way these days, here's an interview with Leroy himself.

LOL! That's right, I said LOL.

It's official. I'm a grade 'A' nerd. In some peoples eyes, I will have hit rock bottom. I have now played World of Warcraft. How'd this happen? Well, I've been curious for some time, so having a bit of spare time up my sleeve, I went and bought a copy from JB HiFi. In the week that I've had the game, I have to say that it's become a guilty pleasure. It's a simple game, but the key to it is that it's executed on such a grand scale, that it's hard not to become drawn into it.

After loading up the game, I had to register a World of Warcraft account, which was easy, and then created my character... Daken the Night Elf. I decided to create a Hunter, because they are good with a bow and arrow, and they can keep pets, once you reach a certain level. In a tribute to He-Man, I've named my pet tiger Battle-Cat.

If nothing else, my excursion into the World of Warcraft has reinforced to me that I shouldn't judge things before I've tried them. If you're into WoW feel free to stop by and say g'day to Daken, I'll be the guy shooting things with my bow and arrow, and building the Guild of the Swollen Pickle.