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My Almost-daily Journal |
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| About I love trying out new things, especially when it comes to internet technology. I never really kept a journal, but it's something that I've always wanted to do. Now, everybody will get a chance to look inside my twisted, and somewhat-warped mind.
I've also subscribed to Audio Blog, so a few times a week, I'll leave actual voice blogs. Very cool!XML Newsfeed Previous Posts
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Friday, February 11, 2005
Been a Little Scarce Wow (no pun intended)! I've been relatively scarce latey in my digitally-shared life. I don't think I've publically evangelized or philosophized on df.com probably for six months... maybe a year. It doesn't mean I haven't stopped writing, though. I'm always writing something somewhere. During the df.com hiatus, I was spending most of my time writing (evangelizing and philosophizing) on my fraternity alumni site. Things were pretty interesting for a while, but it got too political (too many self-proclaimed heroes). So I quit writing there, cold-turkey. I guess I wanted to see if the conversations and traffic would become self-sustaining. I didn't want to be the sole discussion provoker. Marriage, honeymoon and move-in took the digital wind out of my sales for a bit... until I got addicted to the game Rome Total War. Poor Danielle. I couldn't stop thinking about that game. I played it non-stop. Damn good game. You think I would've given gaming a rest, since I am a recently-married newlywed. Nope. While I was still knee-deep in Rome Total War, I was coaxed by Peter to pre-purchase World of Warcraft, which many were saying was going to be the best game ever. Pre-purchasing was a guarantee I would get the game the day it was released. It didn't sell out right away, but it did sell out. I ended up buying the Collector's Edition for $90. After Christmas, they were sold out, and Collector's Editions were selling on eBay for $200 - $250. Well, the rest is history. I haven't been around much because of the 100% addictive nature of the game. If I have free time, I'm playing WoW. Even when I don't have free time, I'm playing WoW. Other than spending quality time with Danielle, there is nothing else I would rather be doing. I could honestly play that game 24/7, stopping to only to sleep and eat. It's to the point where the game addiction is unhealthy. But you know what? Kudos and props to Blizzard (the game author) for making such a marvelous game. I know for a fact that Danielle's dad would probably become a WoW addict if he ended up getting broadband. Surprisingly, he's into gaming, thanks to me. He's my #1 gaming convert and case study. Imagine my challenge: introduce computing and gaming to a 50-yr old, West Virginian wild game hunter. There are more deer heads and antlers in his house than at Gander Mountain. He sleeps, eats, and thinks hunting. Now, he sleeps, eats and thinks hunting and computer games. Very gratifying. There's a gamer in everybody. You just don't know it yet. WoW News I was playing WoW since its release a little after Thanksgiving. All was well. No real issues other than psychological addiction. Then the servers started getting populated as more people bought the game, which created a little lagginess. Then the floodgates opened on Christmas and the servers were packed with 600,000 people. Blizzard anticipated they would have 600,000 users by third quarter of 2005. They had 600,000 users a month after launch. Imagine sticking 600,000 people all at once in your living room. That's what the game started feeling like. All sorts of issues started to happen: crashing servers, rollbacks (where your character data is not saved and you lose experience and items), and utter lagginess. Well, I'm new to MMORPG's, and didn't think this was normal, nor acceptable. We're paying a monthly subscription fee to play this game, and basically I couldn't play on my time schedule. Whenever I played, the server would crash or the game would be unplayable due to lagginess. The way I look at it, if I'm paying a monthly subscription fee, I expect to be able to play when it's convenient for me. Nowhere on the box did it say that I would be able to play on weekends or weekday nights. Needless to say, I started documenting all my crashes and grief on my ex-guild's bulletin board. I just needed somewhere to vent. And when I vent, I write. Well, since the server was crashing on me daily, I was venting daily. Since many of my ex-guildies were veteran MMORPG'ers (mainly from the cult of Everquest), they were used to sub-par and an unsatisfactory server experience. Many of them were so used to shitty service, that anything better than shitty was acceptable. So they fired back with typical political fanboy responses, "Stop whining", "Blizzard rulez", "Everquest was worse", and "Ahh, shutup already". Ummm... I didn't expect them to offer a solution. I was just venting. To make a long story short, I just quit the guild, their bulletin board, and deleted every single one of my posts (I was the 2nd or 3rd highest poster- just below Peter and the forum admin). It's too bad too, because my brother and several of our friends are still part of that guild. I guess I'm a little bit of a romantic purist and feel that (right or wrong) your guildmates should have your back no matter what you say or do. Wasn't the case here. So I quit, and ran around the game solo until yesterday. Peter once saw a character with "Blizzard Stole My Life" as the guild name (guild name appears under your name in-game). I was rolling on the floor when I saw that picture. I wanted to join a guild like that, just for the name. I thought about creating one of my own like "Anti-establishment", "Laggy", or "I Have No Life". Guild-forming process is too long, so I trumped that idea. Then, last night, the guild leader of "Blizzard Stole My Life" sent me a blind invite to join their guild. Wow. Now I'm in a guild with three people I don't know. Not sure how long I'll stay, but for now, that guild name rocks. So now where am I venting, evangelizing and philosophizing? Well, now I'm posting directly on the Blizzard World of Warcraft Forums. Mainly on the Hellscream Realm Forum and General Discussion Forum. My in-game and forum name is Achilles. End of Report Gee whiz. What a loser I am. I wrote a whole dissertation on my WoW life. I guess this means I have no life. Ha ha. Just goes to show you how life-consuming a stupid game can be. I've been a computer and game junkie since the Commodore PET's playing Westward Ho! (in elementary school) and Atari 2600 game console (1980's). It has progressed as follows: Atari 2600 -> Commodore PET -> Commodore Vic-20 -> Commodore 64 -> (then college life computing) -> Commodore Amiga -> PC's (starting from 100 Mhz Gateway 2000 to a current 3.2 Ghz homegrown). I guess that means that computers and computer games ARE one of my biggest hobbies. Old habits never die: computers and gaming are in my blood. However, my wife and family are my biggest priority and hobby (though Danielle may seem to disagree right now due to the WoW addiction). There may be some news looming in the horizon. News that will rock my world and reprioritize things a bit. I can't wait until the public disclosure agreement is lifted. There is so much to tell. posted by Dino at 10:32 AM (permanent link)
Comments:
You and your bro are finally makin' babies... man, look out you're in for the ride of your life! Looking forward to PDA so we can talk more openly about it.
Few things:
Congratulations. Great post on WoW. Sorry we let you down. Just put Mehl on your friends list and we'll 'Clear the Land!'. -Mike
You guys are all tight! Can't wait for the PDA to be lifted, though there is evidence here of what the PDA is supposed to protect. LOL.
Mike! I miss clearing the land with you. Thanks for the runs early on (I had no idea what we were doing).
Hmm. I wonder what posts were removed by the "blog administrator". And I wonder what post was deleted by the author. I never deleted any posts. Curious.
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