[D3] They Just Don’t Listen

I said previously they desperately need to allow for offline mode for D3 because having to be connected to B.Net to play is B.Shit. You don’t need to be connected to B.Net for SC2, why for D3?

DRM? DRM which really only stops the folks that wouldn’t normally go that route anyway.

Social media? Fuck social media – where’s my choice of being a hermit and not wanting to be connected? I barely use Facebook – it’s full of losers looking for approval or pitty – and Twitter lasted five minutes before I uninstalled it followed up with a, “OMG, who fucken cares that you have a muffin? Noise pollution.”

People have been waiting 10+ years for this game and on opening day its availability is up and down like a hyperactive child with a pogo-stick.

Again… offline mode would have prevented all the crazy posts on the forums and irate fans.

You kids get off my lawn… and turn down that damn noise you call music!

[IRL] Unexpected Benefit

I recently switched from Rogers to Bell for TV and internet. I’ve experienced faster download speeds both wired and wireless. I also get more channels for less of a cost and no screwing around with packages containing undesired channels to get desired ones.

But those were expected benefits, the unexpected benefit was… no mother-in-law hanging out at my place all day long.

Why?

She can’t work the TV and doesn’t want to learn how to use the new control and receiver.

Thank you Bell!

[IRL] MIL Rant

Definitely not to be mistaken for MILF… the mother-in-law is a source of stress and annoyance for me. An example?

Today TheWife called the MIL to ask her to pick the kids up from school or the sitter, which ever. The MIL complained she wasn’t feeling well – fine, not a problem. TheWife called me to get me to leave a little earlier so I could pick the kids. I usually do the drop off and she does the pick up but today she was on the wrong end of town to make the pick up time.

So I rush home and see the MIL’s car is there. Cool, she must be feeling better and picked up the kids, right?

Wrong.

I get in the house and see no kid boots all over the entrance so I say, “Oh, you didn’t get the kids?”

She complains that her leg hurts and she can’t drive far.

The kicker?

Picking up the kids was on the way to my house from hers.

WTF?

You’re okay enough to come over to our house but not pick up the kids on the way?

It honestly would have bugged me less if she had said she forgot – it happens – but to suggest she can’t drive far but it’s on the way to our house?

ARRGH!

 

 

[ROT] f EA Origin

Last thing I want or need is another distribution software service sitting on my system checking for updates or consuming resources needlessly.

I have Steam, I don’t want or need Origin and if EA was smart, they’d let someone else do all the hosting, bandwidth, advertising, distribution and all the tech support involved with it all.

Maybe I should have titled this, “Dear EA” but I was feeling the current title more.

Too Long

I’ve heard that from women before, but that’s not what I’m talking about today.

Alysrazor.

Too fucken long.

I’ll admit, I’m a little burned out on Cataclysm. I’m tired of running the heroics over and over for Valor Points which I then turn into the next tier of gear. I’ve done the heroic grind before in Lich King, and I’ve been running these dungeons for eight months (or so) now.  I’m tired of them.

So when you throw a raid fight at me like Alysrazor, I shake my head and wonder at the futility of such a fight or even playing the game. It’s not hard or complicated and I’m not really finding it fun at the moment.

Did we kill her?

No.

Will we?

Yes.

It’s inevitable because it isn’t that hard, it’s just annoyingly long and you’re stuck repeating the same thing over and over until she dies or one of your 10 raiders screws up.

I’m pretty much only logging on to raid now. I have no interest in the Firelands dailies or their rewards (much like the Argent Tourney, I suspect most of the rewards are for non-raiders – short of a few recipes). And I’m tired of the heroics and troll dungeons. I don’t have the time (or will) to commit to running the older raids as an alternative option (much like the heroics, I’m sort of tired of them too). It’s sad, I’m sitting one troll heroic or two regular heroics away from an upgrade but I just can’t get on and do it. Maybe I’ll try tonight. I don’t know.

I’ve got two other 85s aside Smaken, and two other level 80s but I can’t bring myself to run through the Cata 80-85 content again. I was working on a Druid which completely stalled just short of Wrath level (67.9). I looked ahead and saw Wrath content which I’ve done a bunch already (at least five times) and I just didn’t feel up to it. So I’m going to stick with raiding and find something else to do with my off time.

A work-bud is going on about Rift and all the content patches, fixes and fun times PVPing – maybe I’ll try that out. I played it before, it felt sort of WoW-like but at least the content was different. I guess it’s the difference of playing Quake and then trying Unreal – same gameplay, different content and different graphics. I’ll probably give it a go – I do enjoy PVP so maybe that’ll add some excitement.

I bet I pick the gimpiest class to play and only realize it 40 levels in…

 

I Fought the…

Mosquitoes and the mosquitoes won!

Wow. What a terrible camping trip, at least from my perspective. Just me, TheWife and the kids. Oh, and the kid up the street that the LLO invited and we found out the night before we were leaving. I give them credit, they were pretty good given that it rained almost the entire time.

I also managed to acquire quite the collection of mosquito bites. I have 10 on my left hand, five on my other hand and far too many to count on my legs an ankles. Everyone who has seen me since getting back (I have to wear shorts, pants rub the bites and make me terribly itchy) has cringed and wondered how I’m still sane.

Ha! I never was!

The kids definitely enjoyed it, even though they were trapped in the tent for the most part. We had maybe 45 minutes after we had set up the tent before the storm rolled in.

Thunder + lightning + high winds + tent = suck.

The next day we had brief intermissions on the rain. We used that time to dry off, get some food cooked and guard the frogs the boys were catching (Swampy, Bounce and King were what they named the frogs).

Then it rained, again.

Unable to find much cover to cook under (even though I put up a tarp) we ended up going into a local town to get some grub. Oddly enough, it wasn’t raining there. That’s when I discovered the mosquito bites on my feet despite the big wool socks I was wearing to ward the little fuckers off.

Somewhere in the evening they got at me again. This time doing a number on my legs since there probably wasn’t much more they could suck out of my feet/ankles.

Kids had a good time. TheWife knew I was miserable and sucking it up so she was sort of defensive. Anytime I’d say something that sounded remotely negative she’d pounce. So I stopped saying anything and just stared at her… scratching my legs and feet.

It’s now five days after we got back and I’ve still got big, angry, red bite marks.

There was about two hours on the evening of the last night where we managed to get a fire going. That made it feel more like camping and less like squatting. The clouds cleared a little so we could see some stars.

Then the rain started up again.

p.s. I love you Benadryl.

 

Activizzard

World of Warcraft loses another 300k subscribers last quarter which is added on top of the 600k subscribers they lost previously.

I think they’ve lost more than that – they’ve lost their touch with how to make a decent expansion. Or maybe their hands were tired by the big bad Activision?

Personally, I think the loss is due to a number of things:

1. They made parts of the game much easier (questing is clearer, they added a journal for dungeons or raids that reveal the boss abilities – no strategies, but you get a heads up on what they can do).
2. They made other parts drastically harder for the average gamer, let alone the non-gamer that just likes to play for the social/economic/casual aspect.
3. There wasn’t enough content in Cataclysm (largely due to revamping old world content which does nothing for people that don’t look back) – 5 levels? Bleh.
4. Pretty significant overhauls of the class systems (while more balanced, easier to understand and easier to tweak – some people just really liked being OP).
5. Dungeons were actually difficult (‘were’ – they still are for some people but you can outgear some of them now); heroics were nerfed a little and are now less heroic.
6. Raids were actually difficult (‘were’ again, they can be out geared now and Blizzard nerfed a lot of the regular mode bosses that tended to block people).
7. Firelands content consists of daily quests, rep grind and only 7 new bosses (which are pretty tough with new ‘mechanics’ to them).
8. Even going through the ‘new’ old world content there is a lot of the old quests and once you’re through with the old world you’re dumped into TBC content and then WotLK content which you might have already done several times.
9. Tiredness. It’s an older game which a lot of people have been playing for a long time.

Still, 11.4 million folks paying up about 15$ a month… I think that’s actually a point. People are getting pissed that Blizzard is making all this money and they release Cataclysm… old world zone revamps, 5 levels and 5 new zones (6 if you count the PVP zone which I don’t). While they’re also creating flying mounts or companion pets and selling those for real money?

EDIT: Because UFTimmy is busting my balls about the “… 11.4 million folks paying up about 15$ a month… ” bit, I said “about”. I realize subs don’t work that way outside of North America and some of Europe. If you’re curious, Wikipedia has some information on how the ‘subs’ work for other countries. It might not be 15$ a month and they might be losing software package fees, but they’re still making oodles.

Really, I shake my head at people flying the sparkle pony or flying-lion mounts – you paid 25$ for that (and yes I realize my sister has both, I shake my head at her too).

So rolling in all that cash… and Cataclysm is what they have to offer us? Content patch: two troll heroics? Next content patch: one raid zone with seven bosses and lots of trash – oh and an instanced dailies zone?

I think they’re losing touch with their player base a little.

I’m currently at the point where I’m enjoying the game because of the people I play with and not so much because of the stuff we’re doing. I have a pretty good feeling I’d still have fun with these same people in another game (so long as the game was interesting and fun for all them as well).

Cyclist vs. Idiot

A cyclist wears a helmet and rides their bike on the right side of the road where I can easily see them flowing with the traffic if they’re going the same way I am. If they’re going in the other direction, they’re on the left side and I can also see them coming much easier.

An idiot doesn’t wear a helmet and rides on the wrong side of the road… and on a sidewalk. This way I’m more likely to run you over if I’m turning left off a busy street. And, well, I guess I understand why you’re not wearing a helmet – nothing of value to protect.

You’re Not a Hero

You’re not doing this for us. You’re not doing this for anyone other than yourselves – stroking your own little egos because, quite frankly, you’re not much of anything otherwise.

Don’t delude yourselves.

That or your some crazy gold farmer data-mining for ‘gamer’ addresses, usernames and passwords.

As in this is either really notification that the account info was hacked – though it’s too general – or it could be a phishing attempt.

We recently learned that hackers gained unauthorized access to the decade-old BioWare server system supporting the Neverwinter Nights forums. We immediately took appropriate steps to protect our consumers’ data and launched a thorough ongoing evaluation of the breach. We have determined that no credit card data was compromised from the servers, nor did we ever have or store sensitive data like social security numbers. Our investigation shows that information such as user names, encrypted passwords, email addresses, mailing addresses, names, phone numbers, CD keys and birth dates from accounts on the system may have been compromised, as well as other
information (if any) that you may have associated with this forum account. In an abundance of caution, we have disabled your legacy Account. To create a new account please visit social.bioware.com.

We take the security of your information very seriously and regret any inconvenience this may have caused you. If your username, email address and/or password on your Neverwinter Nights account are similar to those you use on other sites, we recommend changing the password at those sites as well. We advise all of our fans to always be aware of any suspicious emails or account activity and report any suspicious emails and account activity to Customer Support at 1-877-357-6007.

If you have questions, please visit our FAQ at [redacted] or contact Customer Support at the phone number above.

Aaryn Flynn
Studio GM, BioWare Edmonton
VP, Electronic Arts

That said, if people have an account with the old NWN which uses an active email address (as in  you still use that address for other games) you may want to get a new email address and redirect games to that one. Also if you were dumb enough to use the same password on your email account that you use for game (and OMG would you be dumb), I suggest you change that too… before they do.

Can we ban countries from accessing the interwebs? I mean the ones that are lax with security and legal policies around use of internet services?

Social Networks and Kids

Back in my day, when you were a stupid teenage kid you did stupid teenage stuff. If you were lucky, only your friends knew about it. If you were unlucky (or your friends were assholes) your parents or maybe the kids on your street might know about it. If you were really unlucky, your school found out about it. But even then, memories fade.

Combine that with social networks and you’ve got a wide open audience to see your stupid teenage antics. All it takes is one dumb moment, a video camera, the ability to post it to YouTube and being on Facebook… voila. Instant stupid teenage move, uploaded to YouTube which goes viral on Facebook so that the world gets to see and that will stick around forever. Well, as far as we can tell – the internet is as ‘forever’ as things get. If you put something up there, it’s never really gone.

So to address the kids… if you’re going to upload something to YouTube take a good hard second look at it and ask, “Is this something I really want the world to see?” and also ask, “Is this something that could come back to haunt me 5-10 years down the road when I’m looking for a job?“.

Of course, another question to ask is, “Am I easily identifiable?” but it’s probably better to just not post stuff to YouTube without a second or third thought about the content.