Episode II: The Rise and Fall of Burgerr the Gnome

Problems in Realm-land last time I played meant that the Realm that housed Burgerr the Dwarf was offline, meaning I had to pick a different Realm to play in and create a new character. Continuing with my theme of choosing the characters who look oddest when running around in underwear, I went with a Gnome. What a little freak.

Yes it's Burgerr the Gnome, another mug you could expect to meet in a dark dank alleyway where you'd beasked "you likess the par-tees?" Note the lovely flowing Mage robes. They didn't last long.

No doubt you're all ready with your Freudian analysis of why the first thing I do in these Virtual Worlds is strip naked, but I was actually stopped from doing this for a minute or two by the sheer madness of the Realm I entered. See, because there were a good few other Realms offline, everyone was probably choosing this one and as a result it was jam-packed with characters. A shock compared to what I had last time, this was like the Japanese Subway of realm-packedness. I stood standing there for a bit, watching all the gnomes and dwarves scurrying around the camp yelling things in Spanish. Yes, apparently a Spanish server had been shut down and they had all been dumped in here. Now I vividly remembered choosing "English" as my Realmlanguage, so I didn't understand why I had to deal with things like "el que me reta donde esta." Nevertheless, standing there wasn't accomplishing anything and I was getting new players spawning over me, making a nice gnome-dwarf amalgamation.

Seeing I'd have trouble communicating with people yet wanting to have some attention drawn to me, I took off my clothing and ran naked into the square yelling gooblagooblagoobla.

No one cared. How hurtful. Then again a lot of english-speaking folk have trouble telling languages apart so perhaps they just thought I was saying "your mother was a hamster" in Spanish. My plea for attention having failed, I took a lie down in the middle of the square, hoping someone would join in a nap. Instead I just kept getting stepped on by other little freaks rushing from quest to NPC.

I'm thinking there has to be some sort of massive sale over there, judging by the interest. Perhaps he's selling noobburgers.

Some other players were dancing and one was crying, perhaps that was connected somehow. Another player screamed out that "KATE" was a noob. Kate didn't respond to this as she was probably hidden under a pillow sobbing somewhere at this humiliation. In any case, after getting my head stepped on more than was healthy (doctors recommend no more than 3/day) I decided this Lie-in wasn't leading anywhere and ran off into the forests to go hunt wolves. The forests looked like quite the battlefield. Consider the fact that most players were starting a new character, and the first quest is to kill 8 wolves (and take their meat), and multiply that by the amount of players using this realm. That's a lot of wolves that had to die, and I'm sure some Cruelty to Animals Charity should have been called in. Burgerr wasn't all that bothered with it, though, deciding to engage in an unsettling butt-slapping dance in the middle of the corpses. Shockingly, still no one cared.

Frankly, this questing was getting boring. Burgerr was a mage, which meant that his main attack was a charge-up fireball of some sort. He could also beat on enemies with that stick he carried around, but that was more of a last resort attack, like insulting someone as you run away from them. No, it had to be fireball, and it was better to fire this from a distance, of course. Yet by the time I found a target, charged and fired, someone was already fighting it. This meant my fireball connected after the battle had started and the other person got the XP (and the ability to loot the corpse). Bored of running around attacking wolves futilely, I proceeded to point at a few players. One of them was called Dwarvensmash. With a name like that you sort of expectedthe only thing he'd be able to say would be, in fact, "dwarvensmash." No response. I said it before and I say it again, playing an MMORPG and only being concerned with XP is a waste. But there they were, rushing to and fro killing things asap and levelling up asap. I took one last look at the carnage and left.

Burgerr set off into the Dwarven Town In The Mountain. The only way to get anywhere when naked is by jumping, everyone knows that.

As I was walking through a short hallway to the main room of the underground town, I noticed a chair I could "interact" with. I right clicked, and suddenly I was looking through a transparent picture of myself at the hallway. OMG! I was sitting in the chair, facing the hallway! That's right, this game has Sitting In Chair Action(tm)! I was now seriously considering paying a monthly fee, as you can't just sit anywhere in real life. Unfortunately, once again no one really cared that I was sitting down in the chair and a few dwarves rushed past, no doubt delivering a mug somewhere for a few coppers.

I found another few chairs near a table and sat in those. It was all very thrilling, but no one was paying any attention to me, so I lept up onto the table and danced. As you do.

By now it was apparent to me that dancing wasn't going to catch anyone's attention, and I decided to go ask the locals where a Gnomish Male such as myself could get his freak on.

Everyone was still ignoring the naked gnome, who was now feeling extra lonely. To be fair, I would have ignored a gnome like that in real life too. Burgerr noticed there was a large fireplace in the middle of the room and attempted to enter it. Unfortunately there was an invisible force-field in front of it, no doubt some sort of noob-protection on account of lawsuits. When I was young fireplaces had no force-fields and look how I turned out! Err, nekkid, screaming gooblagoobla and dancing on tables. Right. Looks like my idea wasn't all that bad, though, as there were a few other players trying to enter the Luurvely Flames.

My next attempt at entering fire was unexpectedly successful and suddenly Burgerr the Gnome was dead. Shocker!

As a final insult, no one really noticed. The only person really making an issue of anything was some xenophobe screaming about calling "imigration" on all the Spanis (sic) people, who were apparently all his "biches." A fellow player suggested he perform an anatomically impossible action.

Meanwhile, Burgerr's spirit was released. It looked just like the normal world, except it was all in white and any attempt to point at something resulted in the "you are dead" message rubbing it in, in red letters in the middle of the screen. I watched a rabbit hopping around a bit.

Then, my patience at an end, I did what I do best. I took a nap.

So ends the saga of Burgerr the Gnome. May his ashes fill that Dwarf Town with light for years to come. Or cancer, if Burgerr has his way. The little freak.

Verdict on day 2: The same shortcomings I've already noticed on MMORPGs are still apparent. You need to really care about levelling up your character and going through the quests to get the most out of the game. It's obvious you're not going to get the experiencefrom the other players, who are all either screaming about noobs or dueling. I still don't understand why I should pay for this monthly when I can get Guild Wars without monthly payments or offline RPGs like Fallout which are much more engrossing. I never thought about asking about getting bizay in Fallout...

Next: Burgerr drops an R, gains a G, andrejoins Azeroth as an Undead. Plenty of zombies, crypts, dark magicks, corpses, and, err, Refreshing Spring Water(tm)?