Okay .. so first off, as I always found it difficult to find my own bit of "space" in hyperspace, I've done two things - I've downloaded some weird little bit of software that seems to be a sort of offline blog writer called Windows Live Writer, where you write down your blog entries on your computer and it then uploads them to your blog (hopefully!).  Secondly, I've created a new sub-domain so I (and anyone else I guess, if they feel the urge) can find it .. its now at www.blog.lowesfamily.net - which I may change at some time in the future, but at the moment, when there is really only me here *shrugs* no need to pay for an extra domain name.

Right .. to explain the title.  Yesterday, I "dinged" to 80.  yup.  Not the first and certainly not the last, but I did definitely ding.  I'm talking about World of Warcraft of course.  And "Dinging" for some very strange reason, is what you call it when you go up a level. 

In the game, when you go up a level, you get a kind of yellowy gold swirl around you, and a "boing" noise, together with a nice message telling you you have levelled and gained extra points in various bit n bobs like stamina (which adds to the amount of health/hit points you have), strength (which adds to the amount of damage you can do when you wallop something), etc.  I have no idea why they call it "dinging" and not "boinging" ... perhaps its just easier to spell!

Since the last expansion pack came out a good few weeks ago, all those people who had characters stuck at level 70 could now advance another 10 levels - along the way experiencing more quests, dungeons, people, monsters, etc.  And I've just got my first character, my "main" character, to level 80 .. capped again.  Now comes the long hard slog (but enjoyable all the same!) of levelling all the other characters I have, some of which are sitting ready and raring at level 70, others ranging right down to level 7 - a looong way to go! 

And what happens with a character when they get to level 80?  Well, then a whole new game opens up - more rewards, more dungeons, bigger, harder dungeons that require more people to do them, a HUGE range of achievements that have just been brought out with the last expansion - and all the time Blizzard (the guys who run World of Warcraft) are working on the next patch, the next update, the next batch of additional content and changes.