In my most recent entry, I mentioned that the guild I was in, Dol Amroth, had just recently joined an alliance with another guild, Echoes in Eternity, prior to our slaughtering of Cazic-Thule. So, I figured I should tell the story of how that marriage came to be. It was all because of a immensely stubborn dragon named Telkorenar.

A Brief History of the Temple of Veeshan

The Temple of Veeshan is home to the mightiest of dragons in all of Velious. Much of the temple is off limits even to the most devout followers of dragonkind as well as those Lord Yelinak would regard as an ally. For no matter what good deeds a Norrathian has performed in the name of dragons, ultimately dragons are simply superior to the "second generation" of races, and this is their most holiest of places. The dragons were here before the other gods took notice of Norrath, and they will likely be here after the other races die out.

The south wing is where those that made it past Sontalak outside will arrive in the temple. Though, once inside, there is no immediate means of exiting. The south wing has one enormous straight hallway decked with dozens of almost life-size paintings of some of Norrath's most notable dragons including Lady Vox and Lord Nagafen. This hall is guarded by small drakes of various shades. This hall is safe to those allied with the Claws of Veeshan, as is the west wing, known as the Hall of Relics. The east wing, the Hall of Testing, is where friends of the dragons go to prove their skills and return to Skyshrine for rewards in the form of exquisite armor. And the north wing, known as the Vault of Worship, is off limits to absolutely everyone and is full of some of the world's oldest and most powerful dragons.

An Alliance is Born

In the Scars of Velious expansion, much of the content is based on three warring factions. The Coldain (dwarves), the Kromzek/Kromrif (giants), and the Claws of Veeshan (dragons). Each faction has its own city (Thurgadin, Kael Drakkel, Skyshrine). Players, and guilds from a larger perspective, had to make a decision on which side to take. The choices each have their pros and cons, of course. We took the more difficult route of siding with the giants. The dwarves and dragons don't really care about each other, but the giants at war with both. Raiding the Temple of Veeshan is the end-game of the Velious expansion (aside from Sleeper's Tomb). And the logical line of progression was to tackle the three dragons in the west wing before venturing into the much more difficult north wing.

As a guild, we had been farming the west wing for armor drops every weekend for upwards of eight hours a day for weeks. The armor that the wurms and drakes dropped were blank, but could be turned in to certain giants in Kael in exchange for some insanely good class-specific gear. The first dragon in the west wing is a red dragon named Telkorenar. There is nothing specifically unique about this dragon. He has an AoE fire spell that also dispels buffs and it's impossible to land any kind of Slow spell on him, but that's about it. Even so, he was the bane of our existence for what seemed like forever. We even had one encounter where his health bar got down to that almost invisible last pixel, and we still wiped. I think our guild leader admitted to crying after that loss.

One weekend, we had spent time farming armor again, and decided to go after Telk one more time. If we couldn't beat him, the dream of heading to North ToV would be simply that, a dream. As we were getting ready, Echoes in Eternity showed up in the zone. They were a relatively new guild that had broken away from one of the two top tier guilds on the server. Like us, they had been attempting to make their way deeper into ToV. We knew that if we failed, they would take a shot next. Unfortunately, we lost our battle with Telk once again. As we gathered our corpses and belongings, we watched as EiE ran past us in their rightful attempt to slay Telk, but they too fell short of the goal.

I'm not sure who first presented the idea of joining forces, but there we were. Two guilds with one goal. All of us just wanting to finally crush this damn dragon. So, we helped each other get our corpses and got our buffs back in order. The guild officers from both sides called out groups for us to form up. It's hard to explain, but in EverQuest, your guild sort of became a family. Attempting a raid with strangers was…well…strange. I knew some people in EiE from pick-up groups in Velketor's, Sebilis, and other high-level dungeons, but I never thought I'd be in a healing rotation keeping one of their warriors alive on a dragon raid. Clerics had to work together by casting heals on set intervals, and I didn't know any of their clerics. Pick-up groups don't typically need more than one, so I'd never really spoken to them.

The main tank charged in and the clerics, including myself, started our rotation of casting heals that would hopefully keep him alive. It was a rocky start, and our main tank went down pretty early. Several players died before a new warrior could establish gaining Telk's attention to take over the main tank role. We had many more bodies to throw at him, but that wouldn't mean anything if the clerics didn't work together to keep that one warrior alive. And we did. The only problem was that having so many people in a small space created a ridiculous amount of lag, which made communicating in chat quite difficult. You have to remember, this was before we ever had voice chat.

But, Telkorenar finally fell. And, when he did, the chat log caught up with a flood of exclamatory shouts that would be heard throughout the zone. It was that night that shouting "MOTHER FUCKER" comically became our unofficial battle cry. Everyone had been so frustrated with this encounter that the fact we had finally defeated him felt like we could do anything. You can see the elation in some of the chat in the third image below. And, while we had hoped to do it on our own, joining forces with Echoes in Eternity gave us the opportunity to progress through the game's content much faster. Quite literally overnight, we had become a powerhouse. A force that the top two guilds on the server had to be concerned about.

Gallery

This alliance between Dol Amroth and Echoes in Eternity on the Rodcet Nife server would last for nearly ten years. Players came and went, but that alliance stood strong through two server mergers, sixteen expansions, and countless other MMOs being launched.

Next time, I think we'll stay in Velious and talk about the controversy surrounding Sleeper's Tomb.

Previous Entries

• You Are Currently Bound in the Plane of Fear - August 17, 2012
• Don't Sleep in The Hole - August 10, 2012
• It Pains My Soul - August 3, 2012
• Camping Ragefire - July 26, 2012

Previously on Tales from Norrath, I described the concept of binding your soul and respawning, and the dangers therein. Today, I'm here to tell the story of how I ended up binding my soul to one of the most dangerous place in the game (at that point), the Plane of Fear.

The Intricacies of Bind Affinity I described some of this in the previous entry, but let's recap just in case you didn't read that entry. Casters (enchanters, magicians, necromancers, wizards) and priests (clerics, druids, shaman) all have a spell called Bind Affinity. Casting this spell on themselves or any other player would create a spawn point for that player. You could only have one spawn point at a time. Those with the spell could cast it on themselves almost anywhere, while melee (warriors, rogues) and hybrids (paladins, rangers, shadow knights, bards) could only have the spell cast on them in a city zone. When a player dies, he/she resapwns at that one specific bind point with no equipment. All of his/her equipment remains on the corpse left behind until it is recovered by the player. Obviously, being bound somewhere near where you are playing is quite important especially for melees and hybrids. A corpse run from across the world is no fun at all.

You Are Currently Bound In: Plane of Fear

My guild, Dol Amroth, had just decided a few days prior to ally ourselves with another guild, Echoes in Eternity. We were both of about the same skill level, but alone we were each having trouble with some of the top tier content, and were losing those mobs to the two top tier guilds on the server. Together, we figured we could at least challenge them.

We decided to test our skills against the ruler of the Plane of Fear, Cazic-Thule the Faceless. The Plane of Fear was a place that I'd lost levels in before from dying so many times during raids. The only way into the plane was through a one-way portal in The Feerrott, and it was not safe at the entrance. You might just zone in to a pack of harpies or nightmare horses that would almost instantly kill you. Plus, in order to have a chance against Cazic-Thule, you needed to kill everything else in the zone first, otherwise, he would summon them all to his side once he was attacked. Even a completely error-free, successful raid of Fear could easily take several hours.

The risk of losing experience was accepted due to the high chance of getting some great loot, of course. The planes of Fear and Hate had some of the best class-based armor in the game. And the loot from Cazic-Thule himself was some of the best in the game period. We had a strategy planned out and cleared the zone of everything except CT pretty easily. Cazic, more affectionately known to us as Mr. Potato Head, had several abilities that makes fighting him a real pain in the ass. First of all, he has a skill called Cazic Touch, which would instantly kill whoever had his attention at the time. He could do this every minute or so. He also had an AoE fear that would send your character uncontrollably running away if your magic resistance wasn't high enough. To make things even worse, he had an AoE snare that made your movement about 30% slower. And lastly, he had an AoE debuff that would cancel out your buffs several at a time.

As I said, we had a plan, but we also had a backup plan. Me. As a cleric equipped with an epic weapon, I was able to resurrect fallen players without using any mana. The Water Sprinkler of Nem Ankh's spell effect was called Reviviscence, which not only brought the person back to their corpse, but also gave them 96% of the experience lost from the death back. So, I was stationed well away from the fight, but within sight. One of our monks, Rokudan, was tasked with dragging bodies to me. A monk was chosen for this because they have the ability to feign death if things go bad. My purpose was basically to get people back into the fight as quickly as possible, to the point where it may turn into something resembling a zerg rush if things went poorly. Also, if things went really bad, and everyone died, hopefully I'd have time to camp out (log out), then have Rok lure CT away while I logged back in and rezzed some people.

The real kicker in this plan is that I had to bind myself in the Plane of Fear, so that if by some crazy chance I died, I would be able to quickly get my epic back and keep on resurrecting people. The risk with this being that if somehow the fight with Cazic-Thule got pushed close enough to where I was stationed, he may be able to see me, thus sending me into an infinite death loop that would leave me helplessly leveling backwards until someone else could get into the zone to grab his attention. So…that was kinda scary. You should expect nothing less from a place called The Plane of Fear, I guess.

Here's some screenshots of my view of the fight, with a big ass picture of CT in the middle.

Gallery

Gallery

Luckily, the battle went quite well. At one point, I got a bit too close and got hit with the snare, which sucked for a minute or so. Between Rok and I, though, we had a resurrection machine churning there for a bit, but we ended up killing ol' potato head without too much going wrong. This was before we started using DKP, so loot was doled out by guild officers at their discretion. So, I don't know if was a reward for taking the risk of being the dedicated rezzer, or for a more cumulative reason, but I was given the Halo of the Enlightened, which was one of the few 100 HP/Mana items in the game at the time. Maybe it was a bit of both, for it was the first "god" loot I ever got.

That was our second endeavor as two guilds in an alliance. It was an alliance that would last nearly a decade (well after I stopped playing) and through two server mergers. I guess next time I should talk about our first encounter as a tag-team.

Before PAX East 2011, I put together a FAQ of sorts for PAX first timers. I've updated and revised it a couple times, but now it's time for PAX Prime 2012. For those that don't know me, I have attended the last seven Penny Arcade Expos (2008, 2009, East '10, Prime '10, East '11, Prime '11, East '12). I have also attended ten E3's from1997 to 2006. As you can see, I have quite a bit of experience in attending gaming conventions, making the most of the time available, and generally surviving four days on little to no sleep. While a lot of this info is targetted at those who have never experienced PAX, I believe it is also helpful to those who have.

If you read the guide prior to PAX East 2012, much of this information is going to be a repeat. I've edited it to focus on Seattle and the WSCC instead of Boston and the BCEC, of course. And there may be a few new bits of info to add in there. Off we go...

Wheaton's Law: Don't Be a Dick

I once wrote an article about The PAX Vibe. In it, I tried to describe the most indelible thing about PAX. The experience is as though you've come to some sort of reunion with tens of thousands friends you never knew you had. Whether it's an attendee, enforcer, exhibitor, panelist, or D-list Internet celebrity, virtually everyone has a permanent smile affixed to their face for three days. Our leader, Wil Wheaton, said it best...

All of the things that make us weird and strange in the real world.
Those things that people tease us for loving.
Those things that we seem to care about more than anyone else at work and school.
Those things make us who we are.
And when we are at PAX, we don’t have to hide them, or explain them, or justify them to anyone.
We have come here this weekend because just playing games isn’t nearly as fun as playing them together, surrounded by thousands of people who love them just as much as we do.

Personal Hygiene

First of all, for the sake of everyone at the show, please shower. Yes, every day. And use deoderant. It's not hard. You're going to be doing more walking than you're probably used to doing. Aside from that, why is this so high on the list of tips? Well, after PAX Prime 2010, there was a confirmed case of H1N1 on my flight home. So, use the hand sanitizer whenever you can. There are generally dispensers set up all around the convention center and especially right outside the bathrooms. You're going to be touching controllers that have been touched by people of varying degrees of sickness from all over the world. Be smart, and don't spend the week after PAX in misery.

Enforcers Are Awesome

The Enforcers are the incredible army of blue shirts that volunteer their time in order to make sure that PAX is an enjoyable experience for everyone. Can't find the right panel room? Look for a blue shirt. Need medical attention after experiencing the Hideo Kojima panel? Look for a blue shirt. Can't figure out where Jeff Green is handing out light-up Plants vs. Zombies sunglasses? Look for a blue shirt. These guys and girls are stationed everywhere. If they ask you to do something, listen up. Respect them. Appreciate them. Buy them cookies.

Do Your Homework

The schedule is avaiable right now. Download an app as well. Ther Official PAX App is Guidebook and it's the best. Skim through it, look at the presenters of every panel, and make a rough draft of what you'd like to see. Compare with your friends, look for overlaps, and start the excruciating process of deciding how to cut the least awesome things from your to-do list.

Planning ahead is a must. If you walk in there completely unprepared, you're going to either be a deer in headlights or a wandering madman. It's overwhelming. The key to planning ahead is to be flexible. Inevitably something will come up and you'll want to rearrange your plans. And know that it is virtually impossible to go to two panels that are back-to-back even if they're in the same room. For most panels, the Enforcers will empty the room in between. This means you'll be at the end of the line if it hasn't already been cut off. Also, not all of the panels are in the convention center. Getting to and from the convention center from the Sheraton, the Hyatt, the Red Lion, or the Paramount in under 30 minutes may be tough on its own, but it almost certainly means the panel you're running to will be full.

I'm going to tell you right now that you're simply not going to be able to do everything you want to do/see. Don't stress out about it. Stick to your plan as best you can, but have fun above all else.

Rhythm-Based Entertainment

A common misconception is that PAX is just like E3 in terms of being a giant expo hall of developers and publishers demoing their games. While that is a big part of PAX, there's so much more. The expo hall closes at 6 PM each day anyway, and the party certainly doesn't shut down at six. The concerts are an excellent way to spend your evening, whether you know the artists or not. In 2008, I only vaguely knew of Jonathan Coulton. I knew he did "Still Alive" for Portal, but that was about it. After that night, I was instantly a fan. The same could be said for Freezepop after that night as well.

This year's line-up includes the Video Game Orchestra, Sam Hart, Supercommuter, and The Protomen on Friday. And then Paul & Storm, Jonathan Coulton, and MC Frontalot on Saturday. When I go, I typically go on Saturday. For the uninitiated, Paul & Storm typically steal the show with their comedy stylings and a 15 minute song about pirates that you'll never forget. Generally, these concerts go pretty late. Sometimes well into the following morning. But, sometimes they are strictly told by the venue to be out by 1 AM. Dejected ARRR!

The Omegathon: Final Round

The Omegathon is a three day tournament between attendees that were randomly selected weeks ahead of time by Penny Arcade's staff. You'll see that each round is on the schedule if you want to see a particular game they're playing, but the important one is the final round. The final round's game is always kept a closely guarded secret until just moments before the contestants are set to play it. Have you ever imagined being in the crowd for the final showdown in The Wizard? Well, this is it. Literally thousands of people cheering for a few of their peers as they battle head-to-head in Pong, Contra, Skeeball, Ikaruga, or whatever they come up with this year. And it's all hosted by Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade. This is the perfect closing ceremony, and you should be there to experience it.

Hurry Up and Wait

As the years have gone by, attendance at PAX has only increased. The Washington State Convention Center is a massive maze of six levels, but you will inevitably be waiting in line for many things you intend to see and do. I've waited over an hour to see/play things like Dragon Age II, Mass Effect 3, Skate 3, and others at E3. On the most popular panels (i.e. the Keynote, Giant Bomb, Mega64, G4/X-Play, Kojima, and anything associated with Penny Arcade), you should arrive about an hour ahead (at least) to guarantee yourself a good seat.

So, be prepared. Bring your 3DS, Vita, Game Boy micro, or whatever it is you like. If you're a 3DS fan, you will get literally hundreds of StreetPasses over the weekend. Just check this out! If you're a Vita owner, be prepared to gather up more Game Goods than you will the rest of the year combined. And regardless of your handheld gaming option of choice, you'll likely never find a better place in the world to jump into random multiplayer games. I've mentioned it before, but I once used Pictochat on my DS to solicit people to come play me in Hot Shots Golf on PSP...and it worked!

Backpacking Through the Pacific Northwest

Many convention rookies make a mistake as soon as they leave their house. You simply must have a backpack of some kind. If you show up to PAX empty-handed, you'll be hurting and feeling like an idiot by 2 PM. Some think you can just pick up one of those big, fold-out, paper bags from a booth, but there's no guarantee any booths are doing that. Plus, they're cumbersome, you'll be hitting people with it constantly as you squeeze through crowds, and you need to keep your hands free.

So, be smart. Bring your favorite backpack or messenger bag to throw all of your swag into. Your shoulders are going to be killing you by Sunday afternoon, but it's your best option.

Expo Hall: It's a Trap!

The expo hall is where all the developers and publishers have booths set up to show off their upcoming games. You get to play stuff that's not out yet and typically talk to the people that are making them. It's awesome. But don't get stuck in there. Make sure to make your rounds through the convention center. Go upstairs and check out the PC Freeplay area. It's a massive farm of PC's unlike anything you've ever seen (unless you've been to QuakeCon). Hit up the Console Freeplay room and take your shot at some of the best fighting game players around. Think you're good enough? Enter one of the nearby tournaments (check the schedule). Need to take a break? Crash in the Handheld Lounge and rack up some StreetPasses and Near stuff. Head up to the Classic Console room for a bit and take a look at the massive library of gaming's past, pick out something you loved and play it with some people. And, even if you don't play board/card games, drop by the tabletop area and play some Cards Against Humanity with some random duders. There's just so much more than just the expo hall that you need to see and do to get the full PAX experience. And for the love of all things sacred, do your best to play some fuckin' Pooyan.

The Dangers of SWAG

Free stuff is great. I know. But, listen to me for a second. Don't spend the majority of your time trying to get inflatable swords, funny hats, and Gunnar Optiks t-shirts. You're going to get free stuff without trying. Not all of it, sure, but plenty. The vast majority of free stuff you get, you will eventually throw away or, if you're like me, going to pile into boxes in a closet. At PAX East 2010, there were people that waited well over an hour to play APB for 15 minutes and get a t-shirt. How do you think those people feel about that decision now? Just be smart, people.

Pack Light and Carry-On a Big Bag

For those of you flying to Seattle, you're likely going to pay at least $25 to check a bag on the plane, so you might as well get your money's worth. Even if you're only packing three Internet meme t-shirts and three sets of socks and underwear, bring a big suitcase. The extra space is going to be great for any swag you obtain as well as any stuff you end up buying inside or outside of PAX. At PAX 2009, I bought a 'Splosion Man statue from Twisted Pixel's booth. It came in a block of styrofoam, and I was still able to safely fit it into my luggage on the way home. At PAX Prime 2010, my friend (Washa Endrya) bought a fight stick from Capcom and was able to get it home easily as well.

Also, if you have one, bring a cardboard tube in your suitcase. You are likely to be handed posters at the show, and there's really no other way to get those home without folding or crushing them. One more tip from the experienced in packing for a con. Throw an empty trash bag in with your stuff. You can use that as a dirty laundry bag, which will allow you to quarantine your sweaty socks from all the cool stuff you accumulated at the show on your way home.

Do You Like Sleep? TOO BAD!

Sleep deprivation is a major side effect of the PAX experience. You can sleep on Monday or on your flight home. But, there are official and unofficial PAX events going on virtually 24 hours a day beginning Thursday night. The concerts Friday and Saturday typically go til at least 1 AM, and you're going to be in downtown Seattle, which awesomely has everything you need within walking distance. Don't even bother renting a car. In the grand scheme of things, your time at PAX is very limited even if you can be there all three days. You may not realize this now or even during the show, but come Monday, you'll know what I'm talking about. So, if you get four to five hours of sleep, you're doing great. Make the most of the time you have.

Microsoft Space Bucks Don't Work Here

If you've got a debit or credit card, you're mostly okay. Any food places in the area (i.e. Brock Lesnar's Jimmy John's) are going to take your card just fine. Most booths in the expo hall will take it as well when purchasing their wares. But, it may be a good idea to carry at least a little old-fashioned paper money. Cash can be good especially if you're going out to the bars at night. If you know you're going to need cash, there are several ATM's at the convention center, but you should hit them early because I've seen them run out of cash to dispense. And there's nothing worse than knowing you can afford that one of a kind Cammy drawing by Long Vo, but being unable to retrieve the funds to buy it.

Eat Something!

This may sound ridiculous at first, but once you're in the thick of PAX, you may forget to eat or drink. And considering that you normally don't walk around for 10-14 hours a day, you're going to need to hydrate. Stopping for 30 minutes to eat may not sound enticing either depending on your schedule, but you've gotta. Luckily, downtown Seattle is a pretty great place to run out and get food. Just don't make the dumb mistake of standing in that hour-long line for the tiny Subway in the convention center. There's plenty of places within 5-10 minutes of walking distance. Otherwise, you could toss a few Clif bars in your bag and just eat on the go.

Don't Let PAX Ruin Your PAX

This is something I've learned over the last couple PAX's. Whether it's the pre-PAX board game meet up at the Sheraton, the Pokemon bar crawl, the Double Fine meet up at the Hard Rock, or one of the countless other unofficial PAX festivities, make an effort to do stuff after show hours. Honestly, it doesn't even have to be PAX related. Chances are, if you head out to the bars and restaurants in downtown Seattle, you're going to run into other PAX goers. We generally take over the city.

What I'm getting at is that being in line at the Queue Room of the convention center at 8 AM (2 hours prior to show open) isn't worth missing out on the great stuff that's going on at night. Now, if there's a game that you HAVE to see and you know the line during the day is super long, go ahead and get to the convention center early one day and run for it when the doors open. But, just make sure you spend some time outside of the convention center and your hotel room.

It's All That You Can Do

Be yourself, but also be open to meeting new people. I know your mom told you not to talk to strangers, but I'm telling you that's a bunch of crap. It's unlikely that you're ever going to be around more people like yourself than you will at PAX. Above everything else, including all the tips I've given you here, have fun. You're about to have an experience that you'll never forget.

In my previous entry, I briefly mentioned a guild mate of mine named Glimpse. Glimpse was a high elf enchanter and I think he was still in high school at the time. Most importantly though was his notorious reputation for being a tad narcoleptic. It didn't really matter what time of day it was or what we were doing, if he was AFK for even a couple minutes, we just assumed he had fallen asleep. It was just an accepted risk. Glimpse was a cool guy though, so no one ever really got angry about it. Although, while this was quite funny at times, it could also became hazardous. Like that one night in The Hole.

A Brief History of The Ruins of Old Paineel The Hole is a massive underground cavern created by an explosion caused during the Erudites' civil war. The study of necromancy is strictly forbidden in Erudin, so a group referring to themselves as Cazicites (as in worshippers of Cazic-Thule) decided to leave the the High City and establish their own city where the dark arts could be freely researched. They called their new city Paineel and became known as Heretics by those true to Erud's teachings. It wasn't long before the two factions were at war. With the vast majority of Erudites being highly intelligent spell casters, this was a war waged primarily with magic and not swords. At the height of the battle, the clashes of magic resulted in an enormous explosion that blasted an island-sized chunk of earth completely off the face of Norrath. Aghast at what they had done, both sides parted ways. What was left became commonly known as The Hole, and the Cazicites began investigating its depths. They should have left it alone though, for the blast cut so deep that it opened the Vault of Living Stone, a passage to the Plane of Underfoot, the realm of Brell Serilis. The Cazicites were overrun by powerful earth elementals and other types of Brell's minions. Now, the Hole is not only full of powerful earth elementals, but also the ghosts of many fallen Cazicites. The citizens of Paineel refer to this area by a more proper name; The Ruins of Old Paineel.

Operation: Keep Glimpse Alive

The Hole has seen a few different types of revamps over the years, but it's always been a challenging zone. It was also the location for certain parts of several different class' epic weapon quests. A pair of ghosts named Kindle and Polzin were sought by enchanters. A wretched erudite was tracked by rangers. A ghost named Glohnor was a target of shadow knights. Paladins all needed a tainted sword carried by the Keeper of the Tombs. And, at the very bottom, was a legendary dragon-slaying Erudite named Nortlav who often carried red dragon scales that both bards and warriors would want. We were there to hit a number of those targets for members of the guild, but the last one was an Iksar known as High Scale Kirn that our buddy Szago needed for his shaman epic.

We'd been there for a while, so it was getting late. I forget exactly how the encounter with Kirn goes, but we got him. We probably had about 25-30 people down there and we started to head out. The easiest way out for casters (wizards, enchanters, magicians, necromancers, clerics, druids, and shaman) was to just cast Gate, which would return them to their bind point. Wizards and druids also had group teleportation spells, so they would typically get the melee folks (warriors, paladins, shadow knights, bards, rogues, and rangers) out so no one had to try to fight their way back out.

Well, Glimpse was in my group. And, as if you didn't know where this was going, he'd fallen asleep. The problem was he was the group leader. This meant that he was the only person that could invite people to the group, and we didn't have a druid or wizard in ours. You had to be in a group in order for the teleport spell to work, so others could disband and group up with a porter, but Glimpse was effectively stuck there either way.

Why is that a big deal? Well, when you die in EverQuest, not only do you lose experience, but your corpse also keeps all of your stuff. So, when you respawn, you are 100% naked. You have no gear and none of your bags or other inventory items. If you didn't get to your corpse within 24 played hours, it rotted, taking everything you were wearing and/or carrying with it. So, leaving him to die was not an easy choice to make. Also, we didn't know where his bind point was. All casters had a spell called Bind Affinity. If you played a melee class, you needed a caster to cast this spell on you in a city so that if you died, you would respawn (hopefully) relatively near wear you were raiding. Casting it on other players only worked in cities, but the caster could use it on himself/herself almost anywhere. We would have liked to assume Glimpse was bound in a safe place, but if he wasn't, letting him die could send him into a death loop that could potentially delevel him all the way to a newbie.

Yeah, you read that right. If you died over and over, you would lose levels. And corpses with nothing on them rotted faster than ones that did. So, what did we do? Well, myself and a few others knew we could probably at least hold the room once the mobs started respawning. We could do this indefinitely and hope Glimpse would wake up. A small group of us, in one of the most dangerous zones in the game at that point, protecting a sleeping enchanter. Maybe we were delirious from being up that late, but the whole situation was hilarious to us. Unfortunately, it got to a point where one or two of us simply had to go to bed. There was no way three of us could hold the room, so we said goodbye to our sleeping enchanter and ported out of there.

Within fifteen minutes, Glimpse was dead. Luckily, his soul wasn't bound in a dangerous place. The next day we all had a good laugh about it. Luckily, necromancers had a spell that would summon corpses, so one of our necros escorted a naked high elf to The Hole and got all his stuff back in time.

I don't know where "Glimpse" is now or what he's up to, but I hope he's got some good friends to keep an eye on him when he's out late and surrounded by ghosts.

Next time I'll talk about a time that I bound my soul within the scariest zone in the game.

In the first edition of Tales from Norrath, I told the story of my luckiest moment in EverQuest (or any other game). Now, I'm here to counter that with one of the unluckiest moments. If you can call nineteen hours a "moment."

It Pains My Soul

For anyone who played the game during The Ruins of Kunark era, you definitely know about Veeshan's Peak. While everyone knows about it, few ever actually got to go there. It is the home of the Ring of Scale, which is an ancient order of dragons that live within the Skyfire Mountains of Kunark. It is named after the Wurmqueen, a dragon deity that was the first to bring life to the world of Norrath. The zone was built as a test for the game's highest level and most skilled players even more difficult than the Planes of Fear, Hate, or Sky. To even enter Veeshan's Peak, each player had to individually complete a lengthy quest to obtain a key. And, once you were inside, there was no way back out (teleportation did not work inside the zone either) aside from one of the portals that were located behind the most powerful dragons in the zone.

Emperor Ganak was an Iksar who led his people against the Ring of Scale during The Age of Blood (many centuries before the time period in which the game takes place). He fell in an aerial battle along with the dragons' leader, Jaled`Dar. Now, even in death, he still seeks the destruction of the Ring of Scale and must employ the help of living mortals to carry out the task. He holds the key to Veeshan's Peak and requests that the medallions of the five, ancient Iksar tribes be returned to him. Oh…and he wants a tooth from the undead dragon known as Trakanon who resides deep within the ruins of Sebilis, the former capitol city of the Iksar empire.

The first two tribes' medallions, Nathsar and Kunzar, are easy to obtain by killing a couple frogloks not far from Emperor Ganak's ghost is found. Bringing him those two earns a key to Sebilis, which is obviously required to slay Trakanon. If you were thinking that slaying an undead, poisonous dragon was the hard part or the portion I was here to tell you about, sorry. Everyone wants to slay Trakanon, regardless of wanting a VP key or not. He drops class-based breastplates, tunics, and robes that were some of the best in the game at the time.

The other three tribes' medallions (Jarsath, Kylong, Obulus) were the tough part, as they were each broken into three pieces and scattered across the continent. Some were easier to obtain than others, of course. Some could be found on the ground in less-than-safe places while others were carried by certain people or creatures that must be slain. The one that I'm here to tell you about is bottom third of the Obulus medallion. It is carried by another spectral Iksar who can be found just a few hundred yards from Emperor Ganak himself. He is known simply as the "pained soul," and hangs around the above-ground ruins of Sebilis in a part of the Emerald Jungle now known as Trakanon's Teeth.

A Quick Lesson in MMO Terminology If you're not familiar with [old] MMO mechanics, there are "named" NPCs such as this pained soul, Emperor Ganak, Trakanon, etc. Then there are generic NPCs like "a spectral warrior," "a dracolich," "a froglok knight," etc. Many of these "named" NPCs have placeholders, which are generic NPCs that spawn at the same spot as the more sought after named NPCs. The purpose of placeholders is to limit the acquisition of certain items and completion of certain quests that require the named NPCs. For example, anyone can go online and find out that the pained soul spawns at the coordinates of -1835, -4370 in Trakanon's Teeth, but that doesn't mean he is always there. At that spot, you may find a variation of Iksar ghosts. If you're after the named, you must kill that placeholder, then wait for the next spawn and hope it's the named next time. The spawn timer is different depending on the zone or mob. In this case, it is seven minutes.

It was a regular afternoon in the world of Norrath and not many people from guild were online yet. We were all somewhat casually working on our VP key quests at that time, so I figured since there was nothing else going on, I'd try my hand at the pained soul. I knew going in that he was quite rare, but I figured I had at least a few hours before the guild would be ready to go raid something. So, around 3:00 PM I killed the first of what would be many Iksar ghosts. I was probably level 58 or so at the time (60 was the max), which meant that I was at virtually no risk of dying in that area of Trakanon's Teeth. And, as a cleric, I had a fairly high-powered spell specifically for killing undead, so I was able to kill them easily.

At some point, probably four or five hours in, I decided for myself that I wasn't going to leave until the task was completed. A few times, guild mates stopped by to say hello and make sure I was still awake. Around 11:00 PM, a high elf enchanter from a rival guild showed up. Although he never spoke to me, I knew why he was there. See, in EverQuest (and most older MMOs), there were really no rules built into the mechanics of the game to "claim" an encounter. If he was able to do 51% of the damage to a mob I was fighting, even if I was first to attack, he'd earn loot rights. This would be unlikely considering he was an enchanter, but it meant that I had to be on my toes every time that seven minutes ran out.

A guildmate of mine, a half elf ranger named Ravenmyst, asked me to tell her when this guy left, because she wanted to get in line behind me to camp the spawn next. She gave me her phone number and told me she didn't care what time of night it was. Around 2 or 3 AM, he finally left me alone. So, I stared at my phone trying to decide how serious she was about this. Am I really going to call a woman I've never talked to (in person) before in the middle of the night to sign on to a video game? What if someone else answers the phone? Everyone knows nothing good's on the other end of a late night call. Well…I did it. She did ask me to after all. After a few minutes, there was Ravenmyst, keeping me company in the dead of night and helping kill these placeholders at a much faster pace.

After a few hours, with no luck at all, she gave up the idea of taking over after me. She wished me well and went back to bed. This is where my story gets blurry. I remember commenting to the European players in my guild that the sun was coming up. What I don't remember is getting out of my desk chair and laying down. I woke up around 9 AM in a state of confused panic. Did I just waste all that time by unconsciously going to bed? I looked across the room and the game was still on the screen. When I sat down, the first thing I noticed was no ghost was there. Someone had killed the most recent placeholder, which in the unwritten rules of the game, meant I had lost my rights to the camp. But, the person doing it was a guild mate. His name was Glimpse, an enchanter most known for being fairly narcoleptic during raids. The irony here was at ridiculous levels. He saw my character move and immediately said "YOU'RE AWAKE!" I looked at my chat log, and he (and others) had been sending me tells for quite a while it seemed.

Glimpse said he'd found me there with a placeholder up and after I didn't respond, he started killing them for me, hoping, in a weird way, that the pained soul would not spawn before I woke up. He hung out with me for a bit before leaving once I assured him I was fully awake again. It's a miracle that someone else didn't take the camp.

Around 11:00 AM, the pained soul finally spawned. No one else was around. I blinked a bit trying to verify to myself that I was seeing what I thought I was, then nuked the hell out of him as best as a cleric could. So, after nineteen hours of killing placeholders every seven minutes, I finally had the piece of the medallion I needed. That's at least 100 placeholders depending on how long I was asleep. I was so excited that I actually stayed awake most of the rest of the day.

Do you want to know the really sad part though? I never did get to go to Veeshan's Peak. I didn't finish my key in time before my guild's first trip into the zone. And, by the time I did, we had moved on to content in Scars of Velious.

Next time, maybe I'll tell a funny story about our friendly, neighborhood, narcoleptic enchanter. And maybe it won't be so ridiculously long as this one!

Wake up, wake up. It's the 1st of tha month! Time for another set of blue bars to look at. If you were a fan of these in the past and somehow missed last month, just know that I don't access to some of the analytics that Ethan did. That means I can't tell you who had the most visited profile pages or most visited blog pages. If I do get access to that, I'll definitely let you all know.

June's numbers were affected across the site by E3 2012. July was a slow month in terms of games, but we did have the Steam Summer Sale to boost some activity around here.

And don't forget you can click on the graphs to embiggen™ them.

Blogs

The number of blogs posted on the site per day is kind of all over the place. You can't really even pin it down to weekdays vs. weekends.

Fellow moderator, @mracoon , has been on a tear with his Video Game Music of the Day blogs. And, if you're a fan of beer, you should really check @Brewmaster_Andy 's Brewcasts featuring Tested.com's Joey Fameli.

Forums

Only two of the most commented topics of July were related to games. That's what happens when no games come out. All I can say is that I really hope games start coming out soon.

Also worth noting, if there's four things that Giant Bomb users love, it's:

• Cheap games
• Wrestling
• Anime
• @patrickklepek

No surprise here. @Video_Game_King easily takes the top spot with the most posts once again by just barely missing 200 posts.

Well, Patrick took the top spot here due to news posts, so that makes @falserelic the most active user in terms of creating topics.

Forum activity seems to bottom out on the weekends, which is kinda weird to me. Maybe that will change now that school is starting up again. I'm guessing people have had a lot of free time during the week lately. They certainly haven't been playing new games.

And the commenting activity pretty much mirrors the creation activity for the most part.

Reviews

Low numbers across the board here on the user reviews front. We're almost out of the desert, guys. I promise. There will be new games soon. We're almost there!

I don't really know who @theuselessgod or @King9999 are, but they're carrying the whole community in terms of reviewing games it seems.

I don't know what the hell happened on July 5th, but apparently someone went buck wild on reviewing games that day.

Videos

What if I were to tell you the most viewed, and therefore most popular, video on Giant Bomb during the month of July was Ryan and Vinny bouncing on a trampoline? Yeah...that sounds about right.

So, @MeatSim posted on videos 98 times in July, and if my investigations are correct, he still doesn't have the "First!" quest completed. You'll get it soon, buddy!

Wiki

3400+ individual edits? I have no idea what that guy's doing. Might have to look into that...

Always interesting to see new names at the top of highest points earned list.

These are the top 10 pages in terms of number of edits made, not points. How did FF7 jump into the top 10? And that seems like a ridiculous amount of edits for the Cerebrate page.

And here's the top 10 game pages in terms of points earned. Some weird stuff on the list this month. All comes back to being in the depths of the Summer drought I think.

Here's a breakdown of edits per day shown by category. That's a pretty big spike in the middle of the month for game pages.

Moderator business over here. I'm pretty sure that spike in rejections was when I ran into some users trying to add games to franchises incorrectly. But, for the most part, you can see here that we don't have to reject many submissions at all. Some days none at all.

ZombiePie once again squashed the submission queue. Every time I go in there, it's practically empty. It's been fairly slow the last few months. I kinda miss the days when we'd chug through 200+ submissions a day. You guys should do something about that. Get on that. Give us something to do.

Just a heads up...Next month's edition will be several days late, because I will be at PAX Prime 2012.

I've been thinking about writing some EverQuest-related blogs for a while. I doubt many people will read them, but I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy writing them. So...here goes.

Halfling Luck

One of the biggest features of EverQuest's first expansion pack, The Ruins of Kunark, was the introduction of epic weapons for each class. The stats on these weapons were the best in the game, and the particle effects on the equipped item made sure that your prize would not go unnoticed by other players. Having an epic weapon was a true status symbol among players. Obtaining one of these weapons required embarking on a marathon quest that spanned across the world of Norrath. Some tasks along the way could be completed alone, but, most of the time, they required the help of a few, if not dozens, of friends. It took several months for players to completely discover the entirety of each class' unique quest, and while some epic quests turned out to be easier than others, they all had their bottlenecks.

The most notorious of these bottlenecks was the last leg of the cleric epic, The Water Sprinkler of Nem Ankh. Even speaking the name "Ragefire," will probably send a chill down the spine of anyone who played a cleric between 1999-2002. Zordak Ragefire is a red dragon, who first appears in the form of a human merchant, that must be slain in order to obtain the last piece required in quest (his heart). The cleric going for it would likely need the help of 30-40 players to defeat this dragon, and that was the easiest part of the task.

First of all, Ragefire only spawned in Nagafen's Lair and in the same part of the zone as Lord Nagafen himself. Nagafen was one of the original dragon boss fights in the game. So, you're thinking "two dragons at once?" Nope. That'd be easier than the truth. The problem with Nagafen is that, in an attempt to keep content available for lower level players, Verant had put a level cap on Nagafen. What this meant is that if you were above level 52 and attacked Nagafen in any way, you would be teleported out of the zone. Ragefire could only spawn if Nagafen was dead (more on this later). So, this typically meant that the cleric (or his/her friends) would need to organize an open raid on Nagafen that they themselves could not participate in.

Once that was completed, the real fun began. I'm not sure if anyone ever truly figured out the math on this part, but I'm going to tell you the way I understood it. After Nagafen died, an invisible timer began. At one hour, there was a chance for Ragefire to spawn…a 4% chance. At the end of hour number two, a 5% chance. Hour three, 6%. And, so on. This meant that the cleric could possibly be there for 96 hours. Yep, that's four days of real, Earth time. I knew of several clerics that had camped Ragefire for three full days.

Oh…it gets worse.

The fire giants that guard Nagafen respawn every six hours, regardless of whether or not Nagafen is already dead. So, not only are you potentially going to be awake for the better part of four days, but you're going to need help from at least five or six people several times a day (and in the middle of the night). If you didn't get help in time, another group could potentially take your camp. There weren't any official rules on this, but if you couldn't kill the giants, basically you forfeited the camp whether you'd been there six hours or eighty-six. The same goes for whenever Ragefire spawns. If you couldn't mobilize enough people for a dragon raid, someone else could take it. Fall asleep, forfeit. Internet goes out, forfeit.

So, let's recap:

• Complete a dragon raid in which you probably cannot actively participate in.
• Be prepared to stay in one spot for up to four days real time.
• Enlist the help of several friends to accompany you at least every 6-8 hours to clear fire giants.
• Hope you have enough friends/guild members to quickly mobilize if/when Ragefire spawns.

Clearly, this camp was a test of endurance, camaraderie, and sanity. And, keep in mind that this is only the last part of the epic quest. There are many steps leading up to this monumental task.

Why am I telling you about all of this? Because it was the most ridiculous, shocking, lucky, unbelievable moment I've ever had, and likely will ever have, in a video game.

The server was down for scheduled maintenance. I had told my guild that I was going to attempt to claim the camp once it came back online at noon. The server being down guaranteed that Nagafen would be alive, which meant we would immediately need to get to work putting together a pick-up raid to take him out. I was level 58 at the time, so I could only help organize it. It took about six hours and included one of my paladin friends/guildmates (Wranglersan) dying on purpose multiple times to delevel himself from 54 to 52 so that he could lead the raid.

Because it took so long to get organized and kill Nagafen, that meant the fire giants were going to be respawning soon. So, five of my guild mates stayed behind to help me on the first wave of giants after everyone else had left. They start spawning and we start killing them. Not long into this, the ranger in the group (Davaren) says "Um…Ragefire is on track." Rangers in EverQuest had the ability to pull up a menu that lists almost any player or NPC within a certain range. Of course I told him to shut up, assuming he was messing with me. His real-life wife, a dark elf cleric named Eternyal, assured me that he was not lying. I couldn't believe it. Davaren immediately called out in guild chat for everyone to pull a 180º and get back to Nagafen's Lair. No one else could believe it either.

Zordak Ragefire had spawned exactly one hour after the fall of Nagafen. Not only was the 1-hour spawn insanely lucky, but at this point it was about 7:00 PM Eastern Time, meaning that almost everyone in my guild was online. Within minutes, I had an army of 50+ guild members ready to slaughter a dragon. And that's exactly what happened. And that's how I became the second halfling cleric on the server to wield a Water Sprinkler of Nem Ankh.

My only question at that point was… What am I supposed to do with these two cases of Cherry Coke I just bought in preparation of staying awake for several days?

I think my next entry will tell the tale of how my luck completely ran out after this.

The majority of Giant Bomb first went live on July 21, 2008. That's 508 reviews, almost 300 podcasts, nearly 200,000 forum topics, 6000+ videos, 4 E3's, 7 PAX's, 3 (official) Endurance Runs, and 2 Big Live Live Shows in the span of just four years. So, thanks in part to a suggestion from @Mento , I thought it might be cool to look at some of the site's stats from those early days. Can you remember that far back? It was a bit chaotic. I wasn't a moderator at the time, but I've heard the horror stories.

Some of the statistics that you may have seen in the June Data Dump aren't on here. It appears that some of those stats don't go that far back. But, let's take a look at some of the numbers.

July 21, 2008

The amount of activity on the site on the first day is barely believable. Take a look at some of these crazy numbers.

• Blogs - 1600
• Forum Topics - 1594
• Forum Replies - 26,602
• User Reviews - 1307
• New Wiki Pages - 2911
• Wiki Submissions - 11,591

Blogs

Naturally, it seems most users wanted to test out all the new stuff when the site first launched. That means 1600 blogs were created on the very first day. After a few days, it evened out to about 250 per day.

Forums

The first image here shows the number of comments in different areas of the site. The second image shows that there were an astounding 26,000+ replies to forum topics on the first day. To put that in perspective, we're averaging about 2200 per day this month. The third image shows the users with the most comments in July 2008, which was the first full week+ the site was up. The fourth image shows which forums had the most created topics on the first day. Yep, that's the Hamburger forum at #4. The fifth image shows that a whopping 1600 topics were created on the first day before it evened out to around 500 the rest of the first month. The last image tells us what the top 10 most active topics were on the first day. Looks like some standard introductory topics there. How old are you? Where did you hear about GB? Are hamburgers sandwiches?

Gallery

Reviews

So fifty people signed up for Giant Bomb and immediately wrote a review for Metal Gear Solid 4. That seems kinda crazy to me, but what's really insane is the second picture shows that over 1250 total reviews were written that day. The "None" in the first image must be a game page that at some point got deleted. I don't know for sure though.

Gallery

Wiki

The first image here shows a daily record of the types of new pages that were added to the site in July 2008. The second image totals up each category within that same time period, which was basically the first week of the site. Yep, that's over 7,000 characters added to the site in just a week. That's just a little less than one third of the total characters on the site four years later. Wiki editors are kinda crazy.

Gallery

Okay, what we've got here in the first image is a look at the total number of wiki submissions per day and whether or not they were accepted. Looks like about 20% of the submissions on day one were rejected by moderators. 2500 rejects in one day. Damn, that's a lot. Right now the average number of rejections in a day is in single digits. The second image shows the submissions broken into what type they were, while the third is the same data, just with character and game data removed so you can see some of the less popular data.

Gallery

The first image here is the most active wiki pages based on edits made in the first week of the site being up. I have no earthly idea what that first one is/was. If I had to guess, it was probably some rampant plagiarism that got a page deleted. Since the bar graphs are distorted because of that, I'll let you know that Halo 3 had 634 edits followed by Mass Effect with 584. The rest were pretty close with MGS4 wrapping up the Top 10 with 524.

The second image shows the top 10 wiki editors based on number of edits (not points). It doesn't appear that I can pull points data from that far back. I'm not sure why.

Gallery

Who were the top wiki moderators in the olden days? These are the duders who did the brunt of the work laying the foundation of what you see on the wiki today. The first image shows the top wiki mods for all of 2008, while the second image shows the top wiki mods for July 2008. It looks like @TheBeast was truly a beast during the first week of the site's existence. That's 16,824 moderations by just him in the first week of the site. To put that in perspective, @ZombiePie was the top wiki moderator in June 2012 with about 1200 moderations.

It's worth noting that @NuclearWinter is the only remaining member of the mod team from these top 10 charts.

Gallery

See ya in a couple weeks for the July 2012 data dump!

You can call it a comeback; it's been dead for a year. We used to see these charts every month, but it's been a while. Since I have access to the metrics, I got permission to pick up the torch and share some of this info with everyone. The only thing I can't do is find out what the most visited pages are (profiles, blogs, games, concepts, etc.) and that's because I don't have access to the Google analytics. If those become available, I'll surely add those in. But, even without that, there's plenty of blue bars and numbers to comb through.

Also, if it's not obvious, you can click on the images to embiggen them, which makes the data labels easier to read.

Blogs

You can see here there was a boost in activity during E3 2012. This will become a theme in many of the charts to follow.

@Hailinel quest to write a blog every day about video game bosses was a success and easily put him at the top of the heap in terms of blog authors on the site.

Forums

Only the Microsoft E3 Press Conference is more popular than wrestling on Giant Bomb. Nice work, @TurboMan

I'm kind of surprised that I'm on this list, but maybe it's due to all those videos I uploaded during E3. No surprise that @Video_Game_King is at the top though.

Looks like Hailinel's blog project put him at the top of the forum topic creators list as well. Both he and @Hizang created more topics than Patrick created news topics. That's a lot.

There's a part of this one that doesn't make any sense to me. Why is there a huge drop off in topics created during E3? It shoots up on Day 1, but then falls into the basement on Day 2. I don't know. It's weird.

Miscellaneous

I didn't know where else to put this, but this is a chart of notification traffic each day. This includes @ replies, friend requests, review recommendations, list recommendations, wall posts, wiki approvals, wiki denials, and all direct PM's.

Reviews

These are the most reviewed games by users throughout the month of June. No real surprise that Max Payne 3 tops the list of such a slow month for games. Pretty crazy that Bastion is still up there.

I don't know what @Chroma_Auron is doing, but he's doing a lot of it.

User reviews have half stars, while staff reviews don't. So, numerically, a user review of 5 is really 10.

Videos

There were only about 4000 views separating #1 from #10 here.

It seems most of us like high quality video, but not TOO high quality.

Again, I can only assume that posting a video counts as a comment. Otherwise, there's no way I had over 100 comments on videos.

Wiki

@DeF was the most active wiki editor in terms of individual edits this month.

Oh! So, that's how Etrian Odyssey made its way to the most edited pages chart (see below). @spiritfox seems to be blowin' it up.

These are the most edit pages for the month of June. Not in terms of point differential, but just number of individual edits made. No surprise that E3 2012 easily was at the top, and check out one of our newest concept pages; Skull for a Head.

If you thought the Release system was largely ignored, this proves you wrong. Still, there's a lot of work to be done in that area of the site. I have to believe that @erinfizz has something to do with this chart's results.

Here's the number of edits per category. I might be the only one, but I hope we eventually get a revamped version of accessory pages.

Here's a glimpse into wiki moderation. Here you can see how many submissions are made per day broken down into users with live edit privileges versus newer wiki editors and even how rarely we actually have to reject stuff.

And, lastly, here's a look at how active your friendly, neighborhood moderators are on the wiki queue. Unfortunately, there's no metric for showing who's doing the heavy lifting on forum moderations. Clearly @ZombiePie was killin' it during June.

See ya next month!

From Poker Smash to Steel Battalion, it's been over four years of reviewing games for the staff at Giant Bomb. To celebrate this milestone, I've compiled a bunch of colorful pie charts, bar graphs, and grids to break it all down. But, it's not just about the staff in this set of data porn! Of the 500 games that the staff has reviewed, users have written over 10,000 reviews on those same games. So, I've included all of that info as well, which, among other things, allows us to see which staff members the community agrees with most. Spoiler Alert: There's one staff member that users agree with 100% of the time!

On a side note, user reviews allow for half-stars while staff reviews do not. So, to make things easier to compare, I've rounded off the user review scores. For example, seventy users reviewed Burnout Paradise, which resulted in an overall 4.2. I round that down to a 4 in order to compare it to Jeff's 5-star review. Also, if you added up the percentages in the system section of each staff members reviews, it will be over 100%. That's because some reviews include more than one system. Got it? Good. Let's get started!

Alex

Mr. Navarro got a late start compared to most of the other staff members, but he's catching up fast. Over half the time (55.3%), users reviewing the same game as Alex agree with him. The real crazy stat here is that 23.4% of the games Alex reviews, no one else has.

Brad

Mr. Shoemaker's first review was Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which earned a stellar five stars. His latest review, Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, was one of the worst games ever reviewed on Giant Bomb. Brad also just passed the century mark with his review of Diablo III. Brad is also tied with Jeff for the most DS reviews (7).

Dave

Mr. Snider has chipped in with nine reviews including some top-tier blockbusters such as Battlefield 3 and Dragon Age: Origins. Even with just nine reviews, he has the 4th most PC game reviews. And, at 66.7%, Dave is tied for 2nd place for the average user reviews that agree with his.

Drew

It's no secret that Mr. Scanlon loves DiRT. Unfortunately, two reviews doesn't make for a very pretty pie chart. If you're wondering why users "disagree" with Drew, both DiRT 2 and DiRT 3 got a 4.2 from users, so it was pretty close to being 100% agreement.

Jeff

It should be no surprise to anyone that Mr. Gerstmann has reviewed more games than anyone on Giant Bomb. With over 200 total reviews, Jeff has reviewed more 3DS, DSiWare, PC, PS2, PS3, PS3N, PSP, Vita, Xbox 360, and XBLA games than anyone else.

Matt

During his reign as Whiskey Media King-tern, Mr. Kessler reviewed several games. I think the percentages "vs Users" are a bit skewed on this one since he only reviewed a few games. So, I wouldn't pay attention to those numbers much.

Patrick

Despite being the newest staff member, Mr. Klepek is tied for second place in terms of users agreeing with his reviews. The only game that users actually disagreed with him on was Dragon's Dogma, which users liked more than Patrick did.

Ryan

From Bully: Scholarship Edition to Max Payne 3, Mr. Davis has reviewed over 100 games so far here at Giant Bomb. Also, did you know Ryan has reviewed more Wii Shop titles than Jeff? I think he's trying to derail the train. He's also reviewed more Wii and Mac games than anyone else.

Vinny

Sadly, Mr. Caravella has not reviewed a game since October 2009. Although we haven't seen an official review from Vinny in nearly three years, user reviews agree with him ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OF THE TIME! It's clear that the community is more in tune with Vinny's opinions than any other staff member.

Also, Vinny has never given a game a 1-star review, which makes that cartoon header the only one that's never officially been used on the site.

Andy

You thought I would forget Mr. McCurdy's review? Or maybe you didn't know he did one. The Bomb Squad guild knows about it, for sure.

Staff Totals

Now that you've seen each staff member individually, here's all of them smashed together. And some user review info below.

Platform Totals and Staff vs Users

Here's a breakdown of the reviews by platform. Keep in mind that the reason the total is 700 reviews is because some games' reviews count towards multiple systems.

The top chart here is simply a breakdown of each staff members' totals per platform.

The bottom chart is a condensed version of how much user reviews agree or disagree with staff reviews. In this chart, I have combined the "Higher" and "Lower" totals to make one "Disagree" percentage. So, whether the user reviews liked the game more or less is irrelevant. "None" means no users reviewed the game that the staff did.

This one is just a simple breakdown of Total Stars by Staff and Total Stars by Users.

Yearly Breakdown

2009 must've been a hell of a year. Aside from that one, we're on pace for roughly 100 reviews per year.

Top 25 Most Reviewed Games by Users

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