This 'n That

1. My Mac's latest ailment -- swollen battery-itis. The thing still fits, and I'm mobile but not not functional off AC power.

2. Geek step-dad: I'm taking the youngest to the friendly local game store's Free RPG Day mini-convention tomorrow. I'm running a Pathfinder game involving Dire Stoats, Killer Bunnies, incendiary acorn-tossing squirrels and mad druids. The youngster's going to play D&D 4th Ed in a special D&D for Kid's Game. There's also going to be Traveller, WoD and Pathfinder. I'll be playing in my first Pathfinder Society Organized Play game -- will probably be playing Greylith, my wizard, but I have a sorcerer, an alchemist and a ranger set up for OP as well.

3. Father's day is being celebrated here today (Friday) because she is working on Sunday. Her dad, the kid's dad and I will feast on swordfish steaks and pasta.

4. WoW: Testing the upcoming patch 4.2 personal progression content is a whole lot of fun. I'm not raiding as much now because with my kid care duties I cannot focus completely on raid performance for the bleeding edge content. I'm seeing some good trends with the personal progression content. In many MMO games, characters do not seem to make a visible impact on the world, even though they are supposed to be mighty heroes. This starts out early in the starting zones with the stereotypical "kill 10 rats" quests and progresses to endgame daily quests. In patch 4.2, after a prerequisite quest chain, you get to do things that change an entire zone through daily quests in one of the the current expansion's flashpoint zones. There is a second quest chain where there your hero gets to enable a second kind of transformation -- a personal one, in one of the core NPCs of the entire game world. The second positive thing I am seeing is that on one of the quests the lone hero is provided with what I call a "virtual party." In this quest, you are facing up against some tough elite monsters that pull some of the kinds of tricks that high end raid trash monsters do -- things like summoning additional monsters or laying down high damage Areas of Effect that need to be dodged. Without help, these guys cannot be soloed even by the stronger solo classes like hunters. I shudder to think how a cloth armored class like a priest might do without aid. In this quest, you have 4 helper NPCs that take the traditional party roles that you cannot fulfill. My hunter got a healer and a tank.
Is this the beginning of the end of the 5 man dungeon?