Non-Fiction

Introducing “Daily Quests”

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more repetitive; just when you thought grinding the same mobs and dungeons over and over in search of those elusive purple pixels couldn’t get any worse, some genius at Blizzard realized the one thing missing from the equation: Daily quests! Of course! The missing cornerstone in the holy Triforce of grinding!

I can imagine the whole scenario unfolding in my mind’s eye…

The scene: A dimly lit room in the basement of Blizzard Company Industries (Incorporated). There are no windows, and a single fluorescent bulb flickers overhead. A lone figure sits hunched over a typewriter, utterly broken. Crumpled papers are strewn all over the floor, collecting in the corners of the room like small snowdrifts.

This is Daniel Mackerty, the ‘Quest Development Dev’ at BCI(I). His superiors took away his Computron 1200xt after searching his hard drive, and finding it stuffed to overflowing with JPEGs and animated GIFs of naked Tauren. He has been isolated in this broom closet for six days now, subsisting only on the leftover mop water in a bucket under his desk. He foolishly relieved himself in said bucket on the first day when he realized the door was locked from the outside, and no one was going to come and get him after the office had long since closed for the weekend. Early Monday morning, a curt woman’s voice from other side of the door awoke Daniel by asking him if he had had any ‘ideas’ yet. Daniel jumped for the doorknob, twisting furiously, screaming and crying. The voice asked once more, and when it became apparent Daniel had no such thing to offer, it left. Daniel pleaded with the door, beating on it with clenched fists, but the woman was gone.

She would return once each morning to ask for ideas, and if Daniel had nothing, she would leave. She would not respond to cries for mercy, and eventually Daniel had given up begging for food or water, and had only answered a simple ‘no’ yesterday morning. It came out as little less than a croak. His throat was dry and rough, and it was no use wasting what little strength he had left in him. After draining every last drop of water in the bucket, he began to suck the moisture out of the mop head itself. He ate a sponge he found that had fallen behind a shelf yesterday; the situation was getting bad.

He understood now that he was being punished. He needed to find a way to prove himself to his superiors again, and he needed to do it quickly. He flashed back to the meeting when he unveiled his crowning achievement, the Hyjal Attunement. An attunement quest line that would require a run through every single instance in the Outlands, not once, but multiple times. Exalted reputation with pretty much every faction. Downing of every single raid boss from Gruul to Illidan himself. It had been a bit of a joke when he had written it, a dare put upon him by “Thunderfury Dave”, the creator of the legendary sword Thunderfury’s quest line. Dave and Daniel shared a cubicle up on the 74th floor. That cubicle had always seemed so sparse, so … barren before. What a fool he had been, back then. He chewed absently on a piece of scrap paper and racked his brain.

He needed something good, something even better than the Hyjal Attunement. Oh yes, the presentation of that particular quest line had gone over well. He had made it so ridiculously long and convoluted that he assumed no one would ever set foot inside Hyjal in the entire lifespan of the game, and quipped thusly during the PowerPoint portion of the meeting. The instance devs nodded vigorously and grunted in agreement. They were thereby shifted to more pressing matters for the game: a dance animation for the Druid’s tree form, the required implementation of Bloodelf and Draeni orphans for Children’s Week. Everyone left the meeting content that no one was that fucking crazy, and went about their lives in ignorant bliss.

	Slide 3A from the Hyjal Update Meeting. Click for full size image.

Then, on the Public Test Realms for the unreleased patch, the unthinkable occurred. Some crazy fucking European guild had not only finished the Hyjal Attunement, they had tried to fucking zone in, and were unceremoniously dropped on their desktops. Twenty five unwashed heathens from the far side of the Atlantic, in a perfectly formed raid; flask buffs ticking, rip roaring to go. The red emergency siren in the ‘raid room’ on the 50th floor of BCI(I) had gone off, and GMs began invisibly porting themselves to the Hyjal instance entrance to see what the fuck was going on. Within minutes, the European Realm Forums had caught fire, and they were demanding the immediate release of ‘New End Game Content’. The instance team was furious. They had been in the middle of tweaking the Trogg spawn locations in Ragefire Chasm when Tseric, the Forum Troll Department Head, burst in the door screaming bloody hell.

Tseric was immediately sedated to silence his raving (not having been seen since, rumors abound), and Daniel was dragged to the elevator by armed security guards kicking and screaming. His Computron 1200xt was seized from his cubicle, its hard drive immediately scoured for any other undocumented ‘solution’ he may have had to the problem now facing mother Blizzard.

That’s when the “Pauren” folder was discovered. His superiors were not pleased.

He needed something… anything… to get back in their good graces again! Those sissies in the Reputation Grinding department had it so fucking easy. They just added some new faction (the Dinglewharfs!), and assigned some crap mob to divvy out three points of faction reputation per kill. If they were being especially hateful, they could abstain entirely from the raw “rep per kill” formula and instead offer up the tried and true “ridiculously low drop rate of some random doodad that gets turned in ten at a time”.

Thunderfury Dave had even suggested the current in-game scheme that works for the conflicting Mag’Har and Consortium rep turn-ins. The War Beads certain ogres drop can be turned in for EITHER faction. At first, Dave’s superior had threatened to curtail Dave’s rationing for the week ‘just out of principle’; until Dave had hesitantly explained that it would actually be more repetitive this way for the end user. In order to gain reputation with each faction, players would need to kill a million ogres; not once, but twice.

Dave dined on fresh, hot, ham that day during the Allocated 600 Second Break Period.

The instance teams had gotten fat in their complacence. They had already colluded with the Reputation Department to include rep grinds within the dungeons. Since the expansion, they had been sitting pretty just doing minor tweaks here and there. The architecture of the zones didn’t change, the mobs just needed tuning. Cleaves and Glancing Blows… changes for melee DPS. Seriously. Daniel rolled his eyes in the gloomy darkness. How he would kill for such a ‘work week’. This, of course, was all after Greta in Human Resources had had the epiphany regarding ‘Heroic Mode’ dungeons.

The entire staff at BCI(I) loved to print out and hang forum posts in their cubicles about the ridiculous ‘Hero Class’ that subscribers seemed to seize upon once every few months, when it suddenly occurred to Greta that we could give them their silly ‘Heroics’ by just giving the mobs in the instances more hit points, and upping the damage they did. New purple pixels would need to be implemented, of course, but think of it… twice the content! Running the exact same dungeons AGAIN…! To have finished Shattered Halls, only to turn around and run Sethyyk Halls on ‘Heroic Mode’?! Greta got a fucking plaque and moved eight stories up in the building for that one.

Daniel began to despair. The voice would be asking him again today for ideas, and Daniel had nothing. There was nothing left to do in the quest department. They had taken the concept of a quest chain to the absolute epitome of ridiculousness, and the demons in Europe had consumed it whole, expecting an after dinner mint to boot! They had done the silly “bombing runs” concept that those 12 year old twits in the focus groups had wet their pants over about 12 times over. Fed Ex quests were out. Asking for 16 Warp Chaser tails, and having only one in thirty Warp Chasers actually drop a tail was out. He needed something new! He needed something fresh! Something like an instance, that could be run over and over every day, with no visible end in sight. Even if all the loot was attained, there was still reputation to squeeze out of it. Heroic Badges (damn you, Greta). Stupid cave moss that only grew inside an instance. It was all already there…

And then it hit him.

Hit him in the face like that stupid Alterac Valley Unstoppable Force. He actually dropped to his knees, his fingers working around mindlessly inside his dry, sore ridden mouth. He half-realized he was gnawing on them as thoughts raced thru his head.

It was already there… of course! Like an instance… but outside! There would need to be an NPC, there always was, but why not have quests that you do Every Fucking Day Like A God Damned Instance Run? It was ridiculous, yes… but it could just wor—

Daniel was startled by the woman’s voice on the other side of the door.

“Any ideas today, Daniel? Or should I come back again tomorrow?”

“NO! I mean YES! I mean WAIT! I HAVE AN IDEA!” His voice cracked on the last word.

The voice on the other side of the door paused every so slightly. “Well…? Out with it then.”

“DAILY QUESTS! IT’S PERFECT! IT’S LIKE REP GRINDING AND INSTANCING AND QUESTING ALL IN ONE!” Daniel bit his lower lip, and closed his eyes.

A pause. “Go on,” the voice prodded.

Daniel tried to calm down; he took a deep breath, his heart racing. He was aware that he was hyperventilating, and had to steady himself with a hand on the table to keep from fainting. If he could just get this thought unraveled and out of his mouth, he might be let out of this cage. He might be able to go home. Yess… home…

“It’s like at home,” he began. “The kids that play... our subscribers… what do they do?” he asked. “They do the dishes. They take out the garbage, they clean their room. These are things they do everyday because they have to. They do them because they know if they do, they—“

“—they get their allowance. Yes, Daniel. I was at the Quarterly Earnings Analysis meeting before the expansion was released, as well. We all were, Daniel. I’m familiar with the analogy the Instance Team used. I know it well. Back to these ‘Daily Quests’…”

“Well, imagine that same scenario, but without an instance to zone into! Just plop an NPC on some god forsaken rock somewhere. Maybe that empty area just east of Shattrath that we aren’t using! Give that zone a name, put a fucking exclamation mark over some NPC’s fucking head, and make it some ridiculously long quest chain to earn some useless crap no one will ever need!”

Another pause. It stretched out for an eternity. Daniel had a horrifying thought that she had just waked away, his ridiculous idea just not good enough to waste her time with. Then, “The Europeans will eat that up, Daniel. You know they don’t sleep.”

He stood before the door, hunched over, his head resting on the door itself, hands clenching, unclenching. “But that’s just it! You can’t take ALL the garbage out in one day, because it takes TIME for the garbage in the kitchen to accumulate! You can’t clean your room every day on Monday! If you could, every kid would have their allowance on Monday afternoon! There would be nothing left to do all week long. Nothing to wait for on Friday when the payoff happens! We could portion it out, so that they can only do one tiny sliver of the total quest line per day… thereby FORCING the Europeans to take just as long as Trailer Park Sally playing the game on dialup in Kansas.”

“And the reward for these…. Daily Quests?”

He stepped back. “Uhh… that .. I… don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that yet… I mean… oh! Just give them another mount! People are still running Zul’Gurub for that stupid tiger, and it doesn’t even fly!”

The voice behind the door let out a soft chuckle, “So they are, Daniel… so they are.”

Another thought occurred to Daniel. “And sir! I mean, Ma’am…! Productivity…!” He licked his lips at the P word, savoring its taste on his lips. He was in the final stretch here. “In the gutter, ma’am!”

“Oh?” The voice sounded closer to the door now. Daniel could feel it. “How do you figure, my boy?”

“Well, think about it, ma’am. People are already split between all aspects of the game. Grinding reputation outside of instances, grinding reputation inside of instances, running arenas, running battlegrounds… There are those who are running heroics, and those who can’t, because they aren’t keyed yet. The implementation of the Looking for Group tool proposed by Walter in the Time Sink department was brilliant, but people are learning ways around it already… staying in major cities and using that blasted Trade Channel to form parties. If we introduce a whole new sink into the system…”

“Yesss… ‘Looking for group Heroic Durnholde’…” The voice behind the door began. He could hear the smile forming on her lips

“…can’t go now, I have my daily quests to do first,” Daniel finished, a smile forming on his own cracked lips as well.

There was an audible clack as a deadbolt was turned. The door swung open, and there was Greta. She looked older than Daniel remembered her… harder somehow. Her hair was pulled back into an impossibly tight bun, dead center of the back of her head. Not a single strand of hair flew free. Her maroon business suit was immaculately pressed, and she bore a single pin above her left breast. There was a simple symbol in the middle of the pin, but Daniel couldn’t quite make it out. He was on the verge of collapse, but he took a moment and squinted closer at the flair she wore. It was purple and black, and looked like… a helmet. Oh, of course. Daniel made a strained, grunting laugh noise as he realized what it was. Greta, previously of Human Resources, wore a fucking Heroic Badge on her chest. Better to remind those around her of her contribution to The Game, no doubt.

“Well!” Greta said, a little too abruptly, and Daniel cringed despite himself. “I guess you’ll want to be getting home for a shower and meal!”

Daniel studied Greta’s face for a moment, and hesitated. His mouth opened quickly, and then stopped. “I think… I should… get up to the 74th floor first,” he offered. “I should probably get some of this down while it’s still fresh in my head…” The last part of the sentence rose up at the end like a question, and Daniel was horrified to see a smile forming on Greta’s lips.

She nodded curtly, and wrapped her arm around Daniel’s cowering form as she led him from the cell. “Don’t strain yourself, now, my boy” she cooed gently in his ear. “There might still be something wonderful in the future for you yet, little one.”

[continue...]

Newsflash: I hate consoles, too.

I think I’m kind of a strange ‘gamer’. I own pretty much every gaming console; I buy them when they come out, I crawl behind my TV unplugging and realigning everything in to make a slot for it, turn it on and play with the ‘configuration’ options. I connect it to my network, set the date, maybe download a demo or two, and then proceed to absolutely ignore its existence. I don’t really ‘play the games’ as much as ‘need to own the console so I can be secure in knowing I have one’. I recently convinced myself that I needed a Playstation 3, but managed to take a somewhat realistic approach to it. Since my Xbox 360 was pretty much a glorified DVD player, and since the PS3 would soon be filling that role, I decided that having both was a bit silly.

I decided I would sell my 360, and then use that money to buy a PS3, effectively discounting the purchase. I got to the videogame shop and tried to sell my 360, but they didn’t buy it since I didn’t have the manual for it. I figured it was at home somewhere, so I went ahead and shelled out the 79 billion yen to get a PS3 anyway, figuring I’d just go home and get the manual later, and then sell the 360.

Not only did I never find the manual, I never even got around to taking the 360 out of my car. I’ve been driving around with it in the backseat for about 3 months now. When I go to the convenience store to buy beer, I leave the windows rolled down with the car running while I go inside. I noticed a friend doing this to my utter disbelief when I first arrived, fresh out of “Hood Rat Oakland”, and began doing it myself as a sort of game. When my car is finally stolen, I will nod knowingly and tell myself that I knew it all along. I’ve been in Japan coming up on three years now, and my car is always still sitting outside waiting for me. It’s getting to be kind of a waste of gas at this point. Regardless, the fact that the console is still back there can speak either of Japan’s low crime rate, or of Japan’s complete and utter indifference towards the Microsoft console. I realized the other day that I forgot to put the Xbox’s DVD controller in the box, too; that’s sitting by the front door, where I put my keys. There it lies; patiently awaiting the day it will make the journey all the way out to the driveway to be reunited with its brethren.

	I searched Google Images for "ps3". This came up. No comment.

Downloading demos on the PS3, up until just recently, was an exercise in patience. It was like standing in front of the microwave waiting for your HotPocket, but the HotPocket took an hour to cook. You couldn’t even do anything else with the machine while it chugged away. They finally fixed this, but the sour taste lingers. Once every two weeks or so, I log onto the Playstation Store, and see what new demos are available. I queue them all up, and go to sleep. I own one actual game for the system itself (“Motor Crash” or something). Demos are seriously all I need to fulfill my console gaming quota for the month. I download them, play them, delete them, and thank god I didn’t blow 6000 yen on that crap. Renting games out is apparently illegal in Japan (but you can rent music CDs..? wtf?), so you’re kinda fucked if the game sucks.

Last night I realized I had downloaded the Ninja Gaiden Demo a few days back and forgot to play it, so I fired up the ol’ PS3 and went to check it out. I also found that I had a formula F1 racing game that I had totally forgotten about downloading, too. Bonus.

Here’s how I ‘test’ racing game demos: I find a straightaway, floor it, and slam into the wall at the end. If my car doesn’t explode, I turn the game off, and delete it. Formula Racing F1 Fever or whatever the fuck it was called didn’t last very long on my hard drive. Neither did the new Gran Turismo HD demo. In both cases, but for separate reasons, it was a disappointment.

Seriously... what redeeming quality does F1 racing offer, unless the cars can explode in a million pieces when you barely nub another driver at 800,000 MPH? The whole ‘Nascar’ thing has got to be the most boring excuse for entertainment on the planet. Fifty cars driving fast around an OVAL for fuck’s sake. If the cars didn’t blow up there would be no point at all. Nascar even uses somewhat normally shaped cars. F1 cars are made of toothpicks and balsa wood, and feature the driver straddling an F-14 jet engine! Where do you think the F and 1 come from? (they also have 4 wheels, stop asking) To hurtle into a wall at the speed of sound and just… stop…? It’s as disappointing as joining a Counterstrike server only to find my teammates BULLETS don’t hurt each other, only ‘the bad guys’. I can run around a corner with my AK-47 shooting hot lead into someone’s face, but oh, hey! Sorry, Fred! I thought you were a cop! Nvm, ‘solgood LoL ; ) ! It kind of defeats the purpose of pretending like there are guns at all. Why not just have a game mode called “Sticks and Stones”, and everyone can just log in and type mean things in chat to each other?

	Not an actual screenshot. In fact, nothing like this will happen in the game, okay?

With Turismo, it’s a whole new level of disappointment, but it’s hardly new. They’ve been doing this since the first version of it. Apparently it’s some licensing crap where Toyota doesn’t want to see its precious Vitz sedan all banged up. They see Turismo as an extravagant commercial, and want to always show the cars in their best light. But still, Turismo has “THE RACING SIMULATOR” written all over it in like twenty different typefaces. Every loading screen screams at you about how ‘real’ it all is, and yet, slamming into a wall at 120 mph in my Mazda just results in ‘coming to a stop’. At that point, I can calmly reverse, and drive away. This is a game that takes the temperature of your tires into effect when it calculates how much grip you have when cornering, and allows you to adjust the camber of your axels in tenths of degrees. However! Flipping a bitch, building up speed, and slamming head-on into the other racers just results in the two of you ‘rubbing’ into each other. Even the sound byte you get is pathetic.

So, yeah.

Racing games, whatever.

Anyway… Oh boy, Ninja Gaiden! The story of a Ninja Guy whose name is Dan. I played the original Ninja Gaiden games on the NES, and had my ‘grip the wall, do a flip and re-grip the wall a little bit higher’ technique honed to perfection. I was a bad ass, and totally beat.. the… uh.. boss guy at the end… whoever he was. I forget.

But anyway! Ninja Gaiden! Woo! Let’s get this rolling! I had played the first Xbox version back when it came out, and the game was pretty satisfyingly Ninjariffic. Dan would chop people and zoom around on the walls while screaming and grunting, and basically doing the whole ninja thing. You know: flipping out and killing people. You could say the camera was frustrating, or you could just say I only made it to about the second boss and then stopped playing because I would scream at my TV while trying to twist (choke?) the controller in my hands to death, secretly hoping to break it so I could have an actual excuse to not try again. This was a boss that jumped through a flaming building on a horse, stabbed me in the face with a long spear (HYAA!), and proceeded to drag my flaccid body around on the ground behind his horse.

At least, I think that’s what was happening… 90% of the time I wasn’t even on the screen.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I boot this game up, a full ‘console generation’ later, to find the EXACT same fucking game patiently awaiting my disapproval. Oh, Dan’s pants are shinier, and the boxes that you kick open are red instead of brown, but that’s about where the distinction ends.

Everything came flooding back as I sat in my underwear at 11 pm. I was afraid to play this demo, because the PS3 controllers are pretty lightweight. I think I probably could tear one in half if given the chance.

I began to remember the ‘trapdoors’ that you fall though; not because you’ve discovered a secret room, but because the camera just doesn’t show that whole half of the room. You wander around, the camera shifts wildly, and suddenly there are little bats squawking around in a cave, while ten seconds ago you were doing backspins-in-the-mix against white ninjas. Add the fact that you can effectively wait until you have one pixel of lifebar left before you ‘pause’ the game, dig thru your bags for five minutes, drink not one potion-- but two or three, maybe compose a haiku about sucky camera angles, and then leisurely resume the face-dragging-long-spear-routine as if nothing had happened. The friendly ‘bad guy ninjas that wait their turn to get sliced while you decapitate Larry over there’ aren’t going anywhere, take your time!

I exited game, and deleted that demo, too.

It’s sad enough that the industry feels compelled to flood the market with ‘genres’ instead of ‘titles’ these days. You have the shooter, the 3rd person shooter (as if camera placement revolutionizes gameplay), the dungeon crawl, the puzzler, whatever. Now developers are being told by their superiors to not even bother making a sequel, just remake the exact same game again. Twice. Ninja Gaiden had a “Black” edition, too, that tried to pawn itself off as a ‘director’s cut’ or some crap. This version on the PS3 (titled “Ninja Gaiden: Sigma” ooooh!) will now be the third time this exact game has been released. I don’t know how to react.


I think the funniest part of the demo was at the very beginning, where this un-skippable wall of text scrolls by at a glacial speed. It’s a warning that copying or reproducing the game in any way, shape, or form violates Tecmo’s Constitutional Rights, and that the wrath of the entire branch of the judicial system will be unleashed upon anyone foolish enough to attempt such a blasphemy.

I wonder… is it possible to sue one’s self?

[continue...]

Money Can't Buy Me Love? Pfff.

Here’s a quick tip in case you have too much gold on your hands, and are looking for a way to get rid of it efficiently: drop a maxed out trade skill, and powerlevel another one. If you’re feeling especially bold, take up blacksmithing. Bonus points are given if you can’t wear plate mail.

While on my recent trip to America, I found myself stuck with my Japanese laptop as my only gaming outlet. This is a laptop I tried to save money on while purchasing; something that always ends up biting you in the ass later. With a desktop machine, this is actually a viable option, as you can always go back later and swap parts out or around. With a laptop, you’re kind of stuck with what you get on day one, and what I got was one of those “works great for email, and that’s about it” models. I found myself standing around in Ogrimmar, spitting out about 4 frames a second, politely declining raid invites as soon as I’d log in. It sucked.

I decided to make the most of my time, though, and finally ditch Engineering in favor of Blacksmithing. Using the AH and anvil don't require lightning reflexes or silky framerates.

A little background on that: I had originally powerleveled Engineering in order to get a second hearthstone for Tanaris. I was a raid leader for AQ20, and showing up early to help the warlock get summons started helped get the raid rolling. It was part of the job, and I really didn’t mind. The trinkets and crap I could make were all pretty stupid, and there wasn’t a single piece of leather gear my rogue would have found useful. The Engineer’s ‘toolkit’ consists of a Blacksmith’s Hammer, a Screwdriver, and a Wrench. And yet, what kind of armor do they make? Cloth caster gear. Whoop de fucking doo.

One of the first articles I wrote here at NotAddicted was about a QQ thread I had come across on the forums where some retard-o-tron was crying because his pal netted him ‘a few times over the weekend’ in the beta testing of the upcoming Arena portion of the game. He was devastated over this horrible imbalance, and went so far as to say that everyone needed to be engineers in order to compete in the Arena. I pretty much crapped all over him, and was secure in the knowledge that not even Blizzard would be so retarded as to completely nullify an entire tradeskill in the Arenas. Tradeskills are a way of diversifying your toon from the next guy; by grinding engineering, you should be able to use that ‘skill’ you have to your advantage. Never mind the fact that the trinkets often backfired to your horrendous disadvantage.

I was wrong. Blizzard apparently WAS that retarded. Engineering items are unusable in the Arena, and yet, Timmy McFredbob over here can slam my face in with his Blacksmithing crafted Deep Thundertron 2000.

Yeah. That’s fair.

Engineering is due for an 'overhaul', but after grinding from 300 to about 354 to be able to make White Smoke Flares That Don’t Work in Ogrimmar, or Healing Potion Injectors That Use The Exact Same Fucking Cooldown As Regular Potions, I began to realize an overhaul wasn’t going to rescue this trash profession. The icing on the cake came when I realized the new transporter I would be able to craft would end up transporting me (a Hordie) to a fucking Alliance city. Dead Serious. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.

So, I ditched Engineering, and began the long crawl to Blacksmithing 350 in order to craft my Drake Fist Hammer.

My secondary profession is Mining, which actually complements Blacksmithing, but I’ll be damned if I was going to fly around on my horsey looking for little yellow dots on my minimap at 4 frames per second. I ran straight to the Auction House and began to buy out stacks of everything I would need to build up to 350.

I barely made it.

After mailing all spare gold off of all of my alts, and selling all of those “memory maker” epics that were never going to be used again, I managed to drag my way up to 351 Blacksmithing, and craft my new mace. I ended up spending around 1600 gold in the process. The raw mats for crafting the mace itself cost around 400g (10x Primal Fires, 10x Primal Earth, etc etc). When you think about it, I see people trying to sell BoE epics on the AH for 2500 sometimes, and this mace is pretty much the best non dagger main hand 1h in the game… so I don’t really regret spending the gold either.

Before I started this little mission, I was sitting on about 1200g on my main, and really had no intention of grinding out the fast flying horsey. I could give a shit if I arrive to the instance 2 minutes later. Let those with the epics fly there at the speed of light and summon me, dammit. Good job, guys.

At this point I’ve all but given up on WoW, and am reaching the point where I intend to just have fun with it until the next thing comes along (Warhammer, in my case, I think). Before I went to America, I had respecced 6 times in the course of a week, just to try out all the specs I never got around to. I’m combat maces now, and I actually kinda like it. Other rogues love to crap on me because the stuns don’t work on bosses; but when we duel, I seem to be the one that wins… what’s up with that?

[continue...]