Not Addicted

So, yeah. Many a blogger has wondered aloud why WoW (and most MMOs) are basically unparalleled meat grinders of genocide and animal hating. Most quests involve the senseless slaughter of Mob X for the looting of Doodad Z. Wether that mob is a humanoid, animal, or demon never really seems to give us pause. I’ve actually stopped reading quest texts at this point. I just hit the ‘Yeah, Whatever’ button, and then check the bullet list in Monkey Quest to see what I need to do for ‘teh moneys’. Blizzard has apparently decided to have some fun with this, by having us slaughter pot heads out on the Isle of Queldanis.

A headache was forming in a pinpoint behind his left eyeball. Lawrence had been logged into the game for over an hour now, and unless he logged out soon, he wouldn’t even be able to read for the rest of the afternoon. The game left his eyes fatigued, and left his brain feeling like a round hole with a square peg jammed firmly in place.

After closed beta, when WoW launched ‘for real’, I found myself on a server named Daggerspine. One of the original WoW servers, it was all I ever knew, or cared to know, for quite a long time. It was PvP, it was well populated, and it was home. New servers came, and old servers merged (some even merging into Daggerspine, hi Blackrock), but as far as I was concerned, Daggerspine was WoW. There were other versions of WoW floating around in parallel dimensions, but it didn’t affect me, so whatever.

Is it me, or does it seem a little silly that getting into a guild requires writing an essay discussing your strengths and weaknesses as a raider? The game itself already hinges on being a second job as it is; doesn't forcing people to jump through hoops to play together just seem counter productive to, oh-I-don't-know, having "fun"? This is a fucking video game we're talking about. Again, maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty sure I've never asked for a list of references before letting someone choose to be on the "red" team with me in Mario Kart co-op mode.

Okay. I always preface my discussions on PvP by saying that I’m not Gladiator Billy, and I’m not. But with all the recent confusion and crying over the proposed arena rating changes and point distribution changes, there seems to me to be a pretty easy fix: just base win and loss point rewards solely on gear.

There are exactly two things a player brings to the table in Arena: Skill and Gear. Skill takes place outside of the computer (it’s the person driving), and therefore can’t be reliably used in the equation. That leaves Gear, and it's really the only thing Blizzard can nail to the wall and point at once the last person is left standing at the end of a match.

So! Age of Conan! I just got kicked off the server for 4 hours downtime at 7pm in Japan, on a day where I didn’t have to work the following day; and I just started getting a wicked Sake buzz going, so I figured I might as well deliver early on the promise of an incoming Conan review. Hopefully my rambling will cotain a coherent start, middle, and end, and as an added bonus, I'm not violating NDAs, since the game is already out! Hooray!

So yeah. Age of Conan is a let down. It was an interesting alternative to WoW while it lasted, but not worth paying actual money to play on a monthly basis. The flood of positive reviews is a result of people suffering from Honeymoon Syndrome. Because the game is new, they're willing to overlook flaws in the game in order to just be playing something besides WoW. Fanboi Syndrome rears its ugly head here, as well, as people who were clamoring on the forums for 18 months before the game was even released refuse to be wrong-in-retrospect, so they cling fervently to their previous (unfounded) assertions, even in the face of shit game play.

Well, well, well! It seems as though EAMythic is having problems with the content in their big upcoming MMO title Warhammer Online. Apparently, two thirds of the much lauded RvR locations in the game are dull and boring, and will therefore be not included in the version that people end up buying. The devs themselves acknowledge “…we looked at the Greenskin home, the Dwarf home and we went ‘there’s an awful lot to do here and there are some issues‘”. While the logical thing to do would be to wait until the game is ready to launch before launching it, apparently AoC has given everyone the green light to just release unfinished product, and hope that the subscribers don’t notice things like the fact that four out of six major RvR conflict zones are not playable.

World of Diablo has arrived! Holy Moley MacInoley, I have just received EXCLUSIVE behind the scenes screenshots from the Blizzard Invitational event thing going on in Paris from my friend Jaque that works at the Eiffel Tower, and YOW they are HOT! NotAddicted.com is positively thrilled to be able to be the official source for this decade’s hottest gaming news leak! Big shout out to Jaque at the Eiffel Tower! We love ya, buddy!

So, yeah. I'm back on the wagon. Or I fell off the wagon. I'm not sure how that saying goes, really, but the point is that I'm back to playing WoW. I got hit(1) pretty(2) hard(3) during the fabled Banwave of May 2008, all because I was too fucking lazy to level up another 70 to play with a group of my old friends in America. There are a few funny things about that last sentence that I'll dive into in a sec, but let's just bask in the warm glow of WoW for a moment, and savor its flavor on our tongues together.

The iPhone just launched in Japan, much to the delight of hip young Japanese people everywhere. These same people are apparently tired of setting 10,000 yen notes on fire, and have broken their toilets by flushing money down them, so now they are flocking to Softbank outlets by the dozen to snatch up the latest overpriced American fad.

I may be a little late on this, but I basically just noticed that Wowhead has a few cool additions for hunters on its site. They've added a few little features for pets; what kinds there are, what skills they can get, where to get them, along with rudimentary pet talent calculators. Check out the full text for a few screencaps, or just quit being a lazy ass and go check it out yourself.

Whoever cooked up the idea behind achievements and the Xbox Live “Gamerscore” system over at Xbox HQ needs a plaque and a raise. He single-handedly created a System of Stupid that consoles will undoubtedly replicate over and over from now until the end of time. Grats on lowering the bar, and stepping backward in time for the good of gamers. While I’m sure there are people in the world who are upset that they don’t get to enter their initials on the HI SCORE chart at the end of every gaming session, I was kinda glad when games moved away from “keeping score”, and moved towards something more intangible.

Reader Thules posted in one of my patented Conan Complain-o-Fests about how he was tempted to rig up his wiimote for Wiisports style melee sword swinging action to pull off combos. Call me crazy, but that actually sounds like it would be kinda sweet! Well, for proof of concept anyway. I imagine once I’d done it for an hour or so, I’d be back to finding myself bored with the game itself, but it turns out there’s a whole project in full swing to get this wiimote thing realized.

Okay, I faxed this over to the NotAddicted Legal Department this morning, waiting for our elite swat team of attorneys-in-suspenders to take the rulings apart and offer witty insight into the American Judicial System. Somehow drawing a correlation between Glider’s parent company MDY (a.k.a “Roe”), and Blizzard’s Legal Department (a.k.a “Wade”), and then putting a Pro-Life / Anti-Apartheid spin on all of it is just out of my reach. Honestly, I’m not even sure who won Roe v. Wade, and whether I labeled the winning and losing companies correctly in my little example there, I just know that lawyer shit gets the ladies all hot and bothered, and I aim to please.

…are totally fucking stupid. I hate you all in the face with my shoe, and I hate you even more if you got a boner when you read the title of this story. Why do nerds all over the world get hard-ons over the idea of ‘owning’ a home in an MMO? What is so fantastically awesome about having some stupid hut that makes people bring it up over and over again? Is it because they still live at home, and think “ONCE I GET MY OWN HOUSE IN WOW I DON’T NEED TO LISTEN TO MOM EVER AGAIN”? Do you honestly think your guild leader will respect you more when he sees that you made your own fucking drapes in the shit-hole you ‘own’ out by the Crossroads? Let’s just get this out in the open: you are a huge loser if you want a fucking hovel to put your shit in, in-game. This isn’t up for argument. I’m always right, and in this case especially you are totally and utterly wrong. Suck it up.

Wow. Not WoW, just wow. I just discovered a game that absolutely captures the essence of our beloved genre so perfectly it's basically a criminal offence that I didn't know about it until today. I'm personally never speaking to anyone on this website again until you bastards all send me PMs about how sorry you are for holding out on this one. Seriously, what the fuck. Do you assholes think you'd keep this gem to yourselves? Afraid I was going to start playing myself and 'use up all the fun'? I'm sure you've all been leveling Low Elf Mu-Fu Monks, or Eel Man Puma Burglars without me, and for that, it's over between us. No more witty wit-filled witticisms from ol’ Isobelle anymore. No more wonderful stories that warm your hearts on cold nights. It's fucking over between us, and from this point on I will find my only solace in the warm embrace of my new best friends on the Spoltog Server.

Okay. I realize I’m a pretty Negative Nancy on the site here, and it can be a drag reading me piss and moan about everything day in and day out. I try to keep a fresh load of steaming CONTENT on the front page for you guys to get yer lulz, but yeah… I tend to write in a pretty negative fashion. Not today! Today I will hereby present to you the Internet List of Things That Make Iso Happy. It might be short, but may give you insight into my tiny mind and what makes me hate everything else not on the list.

The month of August is one of the most painful parts of the school year for me to endure, since all the children are at home playing Pokemon in front of the air conditioner; while I’m stuck at school, sitting at my desk, drenched in sweat, with no classes to teach for a whole month and a half. In America it's called Summer Vacation. In Japan, we call it 夏休み (Natsu Yasumi). ‘Natsu’ means Summer, and ‘Yasumi’ means Rest. Being a salaried employee of the Japanese BoE, I’m pretty much expected to just sit here all day and do fuck all for 40 hours a week. Why do you care about any of this? Maybe you don’t! I won’t twist your arm, but there seem to be a lot of people interested in Japan, and if you think you’d like to learn some Japanese using your DS, then continue on, otherwise just move along… nothing to see here.

¡Buenos Dias! ¡Tenemos que comer unas ardillas, y entonces, me gusta leer unas periodicas! Me rompir mi grabadora, soy de San Felipe. ¿Donde estan los quesos deliciosos? Cuando mi abuela esta en mi cama, vamos a "LATIN AMERICA" juegadores! Hermanos, hermanas, todo el mundo decir! Aye, dios mio! Mi madre y mi padre te gustan buscar a las piernas, pero mi favorito juegadore es muy facil! ¿Verdad? ¡Claro que si, es la verdad! Hay mucho cochetes rojos en mi cabesa, pero el gato y mi libre es en el casa de pe pe. Lo siento, pero mi novia es una cucaracha ahora. Siempre tengo que comer ustedes pantalones, y bebe unas serbilletas. ¡Es muy divertido! ¡Unos 'TROLLS', y unas 'DEATHKNIGHTS', vamos a la playa!