My blog is dead. / Work is killing me.

It's been about a month since I was around to update. I've been busy... VERY BUSY. I've been working 6 plus days a week for the last few weeks and putting in plenty of 10-12 hour shifts. I just haven't been around to update.

First, I am still alive. I'm not dead, I didn't forget about how and why PC gaming is dead and I plan to update this more often once I get a chance again. Not that anyone really reads it, but I might as well throw all of my thoughts somewhere... before I explode.

Second, I am piecing together a new PC. I was going to go all out next year, but I've made a few significant changes in my life and to my future that change just how responsible I feel I need to be with money in the next year. So, I decided to grab a few pieces and put together something inexpensive and that will last me though next year. I picked up an ASUS motherboard based on the 770 AMD chipset. I got my brother's old AMD Athlon X2 6000+ (89w), since he just got a new chip (AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE). I also picked up 8 gigs of ADATA DDR2 RAM. To ice this baby, I grabbed myself a brand new Sapphire 6870 video card. Chances are the video card will be the only thing that I take with me to my new PC, but that's okay with me. I am just glad to have something a little faster than my current set up.

To expand on my "changes"... I got married. Yep, got the ring, popped the question and got married all within about a week. I got to introduce my wife at Thanksgiving as such, it was pretty awesome. I also, if you couldn't tell from this post and previous, got a new job that has been very taxing. A new job and new wife can make life pretty hectic. I do well to even play a game these days.

And finally, STEAM SALES. Sure, they just started... but... come on! How many times can you put the same games on sale in a year? Why do you constantly try to get rid of the terrible games that no one wants? Why can't you take REAL games that people want to pay money for and knock off a couple of bucks? I know you'd still make some cash and we'd get to save some. Crappy independently developed puzzle games suck and don't count. GIVE US REAL GAMES AT GOOD PRICES!

Remembering what made WoW so fun...

When I look back at all of the time I spent playing WoW, I have to wonder... what kept me playing so long? The answer always ends up with me telling people the reason why I left or what I felt the game did to further the genre or gaming as a whole. I never get around to what I enjoyed or what kept me coming back night after night.

When WoW first announced I was totally onboard. I had been a huge fan of the original Warcraft series since back when I had a PC that couldn't even run it. I played it at a friends house and wished for the day to be able to enjoy it. I played the demo of the first game as soon as I had a rig capable enough to run it. I wore that thing out, and never did get a full version of it. When the second came out, that was my new goal. I wanted to be able to play it AND get a full copy of the first. I managed to get the two games together in a BattleChest. This was before Battle.Net, so patches had to be randomly found on crappy internet sites and then applied later while holding your breath or you just dealt with whatever bugs came with the game.

I took that BattleChest home and I set it on the shelf and I waited until I had a PC good enough to play it. Well, the second one at least. The first one I was able to play and I played it plenty. I even managed to get my dad hooked. To this day Warcraft 2 is one of his favorite games, though I've managed to get him into Warcraft 3 a time or two. I eventually got a PC capable of actually playing Warcraft 2 and it was amazing. The game was gripping and added so much more to the game. It was the first time that I saw storytelling evolve and a real story push through a video game and feel so epic. Sure, I had seen and played a lot of great games, but you knew Warcraft was going to be special.

By the time the third game came out I was an adult and as an avid PC gamer I had an uber rig and was easily able to handle it. Warcraft 3 was a benchmark to the RTS/RPG genre. It was so good that people STILL play it and even modify it slightly and market it as a different/better game. I had two of my close friends come over and experience Warcraft 3 with me. We each took turns playing the game and never let each other miss out. We would always save and go back. We slept in shifts and ate in stages. We lived off of very little of both food and sleep for about a week and we watched every glorious pixel of Warcraft 3 together. It was a great week and a damn good time. Again, we all knew that we were watching a huge franchise make some serious moves.

World of Warcraft was the icing. It was THE thing I wanted the most in the world. I had played other MMO games and had played dozens of RPGs and I knew that Blizzard would find a way to bring it all together perfectly. They did.

I invited one of my friends over to the house the first time I ever logged into WoW, during the closed beta. We watched as the magical world we had seen unfolded in front of us and we watched the different skills and effects and how gorgeous this whole world was. It was amazing. Something I am not sure that I can ever duplicate. Two grown men with our jaws dropped running around on this tree in the middle of the ocean killing off the random demon creatures and spiders. Sure it wasn't a raid and we didn't get any super epics, but it was amazing back then. The world hadn't seen anything like this before.

I played through the beta and into open beta. I watched the game change many times just before it was released. I played the game loyally. I picked a server with some friends and we made it our home. We founded a guild, we played together and had a great time. Slowly the friends slipped out of touch with WoW and went on to play other things, but I remained. WoW sucked me in. I wanted to see all of the world, I wanted to play all of the classes, I wanted to know the most and be the best. I memorized all of the cooldowns and spells and all of the formulas for calculating DPS and crit chance for melee or spell. I was never in a dominating guild, but I managed to get in a few server firsts.

My video card died and ended the early raiding career I had. I managed to level a lot of other classes and become very proficient in PvP, because of this. I met a lot of great people and made a lot of great friends, but mostly I had a lot of fun. I laughed and laughed and enjoyed the victories and I hated the losses. I was emotionally attached to pixels and a fictional world and these people that I'd never met. That is what still keeps me playing. The fun that I once had and I hope to relive. Sometimes there are glimmers of hope and every now and then I run into someone who knew me way back then, 5 or 6 years ago. I see people who recognize my name from the old days and respect the asses I kicked or faces I healed and it's nice.

Now days my brother plays off and on and most of my real life friends either don't play, or don't play with me. The friends I met in the game have mostly dwindled and the few I still see aren't around too much. I just recently came back because I want to be around when they blow up the world that I've come to know and love so much for so long. The shitty banks of Darkshore, with Murlocs and hydras. The forever-stretching Barrens that honed your skills as a young Horde player. The fields of Elwynn and the shores of Darkshire where I lured many newbies to death.

Many changes have been made to the game that I believe will help me relive a bit of the old school and some seem very interesting and give me hope for the new direction of the game. I always expect to see a few old faces at the beginning of every expansion, even if they just take off a couple months later. I wish that I was able to go back and play those days all over again. Not that I'd do much different or not that I'd want to. I'd probably do just about the same, but I wouldn't take for granted all of the fun that I had in the game or some of the friends I had made and hope to see again.

I survived Champaign, Illinois.

Barely. Just barely.

I managed to come out on top of my management training in good ol' Champaign, Illinois. What has to be the festering asshole for the known universe. I never thought I'd be so happy to be back home in the south. I managed to bring back some super sickness with me. So sick, in fact, that I actually managed to get time off of work to get better. Imagine that!

Now that I am back from my month long adventure and I have resubscribed to WoW, I am sure I will have all sorts of fun and interesting moments to share. Actually, I am pretty sure I will probably just have horrible letdowns and shattered dreams. BUT, AT LEAST IT'S SOMETHING!

... BUT I DON'T WANNA PLAY WOW AGAIN! =(

I played WoW. A lot. From the closed beta until just before the second expansion. I was convinced that WAR was going to be really good. It wasn't and I ended up back in WoW just a couple months after swearing it off for good. My account got turned off, with my internet, back in January. I haven't touched it since then. I got internet back again in March and it wasn't even on my list of things to do. But now... now, it is.

I spent a lot of time angry at WoW. I was angry

because the community was a bunch of fucking asshole elitist fuckbags. I was angry at the devs for constantly failing to live up to what was once so great about the game. Not even in the rose-colored glasses sense, but just in general. Especially when you consider the explosion at the launch of the game. I never knew that I'd look back almost 6 years ago and say "Man, this is probably one of the largest and most played games OF ALL TIME".

I was very upset with the latest expansion, after at first being overjoyed. Things rolled out too slowly and the stride that I thought they were making were more like babysteps to dumbing the game down even

more. The talents got reworked, but were still over the top and there was a lot of balancing that needed to be done that had thus far been overlooked.

THAT'S WHAT BETA IS FOR! I've used the phrase thousands of times and in this case, it was true. They seem to have worked over many of the kinks and issues that I had with the game that drove me so batshit crazy.

The talent trees have been slimmed down. Each class chooses a "specialization". From there you enter the tree. At max level, 85, you have 41 talent points now. Each tree has talents that extend down to a 31 point talent. You MUST invest 31 points into a tree (though you don't have to buy the 31-point talent) before you can spend talent points anywhere else. Hybrid builds are a thing of the past. No more picking up talents from all over the place. The synergy on some top tier talents have been improved to make this a little easier to handle. The outcome, though, will be forcing people to learn to play their specific role as Blizzard intended.

A large number of what used to be talents have been added as trainable ability or simple something passive. Trainable abilities, by the way, only need to be trained once and will scale with you as you go... forever. The Mastery system also steps in to take the place of some of the lost talents. Depending on your specialty, your Mastery skill will provide a different and specific bonus. For Warlocks their Affliction specialty adds X% to periodic Shadow damage. Then for each point of Master you add another Y%. Destruction does this for Fire damage and Demonology does the same for the damage of your demons.

WoW has always done a good job of streamlining and reshaping things before a large content patch, such as an expansion, and this is no different. They really did a pretty good job putting together a new system to play with. The main addition (or subtraction, rather) was the removal of many of the mind-numbing game stats. Spellpower and Attack power are gone, they have been replaced by stats that give a specific amount of either based on your class or spec. Mana per 5 also made an exit. The gear is now more simplified and stat heavy. It seems to be shaping up pretty

nicely.

I never though that I'd play WoW again. I figured I would be able to just quit it and never turn back. I can't. I see so many things returning to the way they should have been and I have a chance to run wild in the original landscape after it has been ravaged. I am really hoping for the best and I hope it turns out well.

Halo: Reach and why a 360 may be in my future.

I have been a gamer of some sort since I got my first Nintendo. Maybe even before that with a hand-me-down Atari. For more than a decade now, though, I've been a PC gamer almost exclusively. This longtime lovefest may be coming to an end.

As many of you may know, Halo:Reach just came out. It broke all sorts of online playing records as well as some sales records. This will be Bungie's last Halo game, so you know it has to be solid. On top of that, the multiplayer is anticipated to be VERY good.

I played Halo competitively when it came out for PC. I enjoyed the game and have very fond memories. I was never an XBox fan, but the game was really something special. I have been waiting to see something that fantastic again... and this could be it. I just have one little problem...

I don't own a 360. I don't own any consoles. All I own is a single gaming PC that is slowly being outpaced by today's games. I am trying to decide if I should get a 360 and if I do which one. I know I'll want more than one controller, that'll be extra. I know I will want at least 3 games to start, that's gonna break the bank. I know I want to be able to connect to the new Kinect and I will want to avoid RRoDs, that is going to crush my wallet... to death.

If I get a 360, I lose out on some features that the PS3 has. Large hard drive included, check. Blu-Ray player, check. Free online community/browser, check. I can't afford one right now, let alone both. I know I want to play Reach, but there are tons of great PS3 games, too. This is why having a PC is much easier. All of the games come out for it. Sure, you might have to upgrade every 3 or 4 years, but you can always play whatever they put it out for it.

The lust for a console is how I really know that PC games are dead. =(

Global Agenda does right so wrong.

Global Agenda is a newish FPSMMO hybrid game. It is based on the latest Unreal Engine (UE3) and has a lot of nice features from games of old. It has a Tribes personality with a 3rd person PlanetSide feel to some of it. Lots of people have hailed the game as a masterful in between of the two genres. In my little time with it I can't say if I like or dislike it, but I know that something is wrong under the surface.

Maybe it comes from being such a negative Nancy about the current state of gaming, but moreover I think my inner tinglings are because of the engine. The Unreal Engine isn't set up to take advantage of massive landscapes and tons of people smashed into one area. It all feels kind of odd, especially how the mobs respawn. I am an old school FPS and MMO player and neither one of those urges manage to be satiated by this game.

Granted I've not got very far into the game, but the time I have played has felt very strange. The movement is standard and the weapons seem fairly basic of this type of game. There are quests to be done and new items to be had. There is an underlying story and plot that I'm not sure I quite understand and their is a PvP system that seems to have a lot of people excited.

I will give it some more time and see if it grows on me, but in the limited time that I have had with this game, I'm not sure it's something that I could really get into. Then again, I've had a hard time getting into ANYTHING lately.

Phone companies will cannibalize the Mobile OS

You see it every day and you just don't realize it. That person using their fancy new smart phone hacked it/has a paid app that they downloaded/has at least 10 MP3s that they don't "own" on it. The phone company doesn't want you to have any of that and they WILL stop you.

No matter how many times technology changes for the better or how awesome it is for the world, no one is going to be happy... especially the guys who are looking to making money off of it. I am currently a perfect example of this.

I have an HTC Incredible. Verizon calls it the DROID Incredible by HTC. It's a great phone and I love it to death, but getting the latest version of the Android software has been quite a pain. The Motorola Droid managed to get it before Incredible owners, which is a huge letdown by itself. I, however, don't really care. The official update is out and circulating to phones, but it doesn't matter to me. Not that 2.2 isn't important or a great update, but I've already got it.

Yep, I have it before it even came out. I've had it in several different flavors. Right now I have it in a flavor that seems to work better and have less bugs than those with the OFFICIAL update. Go figure. I have a phone that is "rooted" (Jailbroken to anyone with an iPhag...err iPhone) and I've already had this update for quite some time. The official version doesn't seem to really offer much more. But it should.

Soon we will start seeing phone companies take the Mobile OS technology and consume it. Verizon might end up with Android while AT&T ends up with iOS and T-Mobile gets Windows Mobile. Fuck Sprint, they might as well go out of business for all I care, lying pieces of shit. This may not be how it all boils down, but it will go that direction soon enough.

Why? Because of money. If people can so easily hack, change or manipulate this stuff then someone, somewhere isn't getting their money. Jailbreaking your phone could result in an automatic brick if Apple catches you soon enough. Verizon and Sprint have been slowly narrowing your ability to root and modify your phone on their latest Android devices. In the next few years we will see the Mobile OS become a huge market and you can bet that the phone companies are going to cash in on it.

Until they do I plan on having plenty of fun with my uber powerful smartphone and it's open source OS. Hopefully by the time they do that we will all be on a network similar to what they have in Europe. Pick your phone, pick your carrier. We will just have an extra step with "Pick your OS".

Sometimes real life interferes.

I have really had a whole lot on my plate, so my internet diary/blog/hatespew has been on hold.

My girlfriend and I just put her house on the market. We spent weeks moving stuff out and around so that we could clean. Carpets, baseboards, walls, tubs, toilets, counters. So much work. We moved our essentials to my parent's house, where we are staying for the time being. We moved much of our furniture out to the garage and boxed up most of our clothes and stacked them neatly in our closets. We arranged our "stuff" rooms as best we could and anything that didn't go to the garage was arranged to make the house look better or more spacious. My computer room got a good organizing and my good desk went out into the unused "office" area to show it off. Her stuff mostly got tossed into the closet in her own room since she had so much stuff: sewing machines, make up kits, hair products, etc.

The house is now on the market and that takes a lot of stress off of us. We still have some walls to touch up, but most of the work is over and all we will need is a U-Haul to carry it off. We are hoping to sell it quickly since it was listed at a modest price. With luck we can be out of there in time to get into decent house of our choosing before the housing market takes another dump all over itself.

I have also been looking for and may have a new job. I have kept my current job and I am working them both at the moment, while I go through this training process.

I am in the probationary period for a management job at Jimmy John's. If can manage to "cut it" for the next couple of weeks then I will have earned a trip to Illinois. While there I will attend a 3 week training course for Jimmy John's management/franchisees. I will get the whole run down from how the store should look, operate and function to how to perfect my sandwich making skills. I have had a whole lot of information thrown at me very quickly and it has actually been more challenging than I was expecting.

Any bozo can make a sandwich, but I have had some difficulties. Memorizing the menu by the numbers has caused me headaches and the amount of customization to the sandwiches is pretty tough. When you get an order that is nothing like what the sandwich is, it can get confusing. I am sure that I'll get it, but I might need to slow the pace down and work on my "skills" outside of a busy time.

On top of that new job, I have been working my primary job. I've been at a gourmet pizza shop for a while now and I've really been trying to get their menu down and learn all of the procedures. I am just now getting comfortable with all of that and I am having to memorize a whole new set of stuff. Ugh.

My brother works at this pizza place with me, he actually got me the job, and he is getting married in a couple weeks. I have decided to stay on at this job long enough for him to get in a small honeymoon. I love my brother and I want him to be happy. While missing work and losing out on some cash isn't really happiness, I want to be able to let him get some time off and enjoy his new, married, life.

My brother has been working 6 days a week (the pizza joint is closed on Monday) for the last several weeks and has been putting in more work and more hours than anyone else there. I know it is stressful and I know that he could use the time off, even if he doesn't leave or go anywhere.

On top of that I haven't really had much time to play any games. I did pick up a new game for trial the other day and I will have good things to say about it coming up soon. I am finally situated at my parents and things here are starting to die down and I am sure once I get the hang of my new job the stress there will clear up. Weddings, moving, jobs (new and old)... man, it's been a busy month!

I finally got a new mouse!

After weeks, maybe even months of not being able to double or single click when I wanted, being unable to copy and past easily and, most annoyingly, not being able to play a shooter worth a damn... I GOT A NEW MOUSE!

I didn't do a whole lot of research, because I was going to have to settle for what I could get my hands on anyway. I took a trip to our local "mall area". We have a Staples and an Office Max walking distance from each other. I started at Office Max but didn't really see anything that wowed me.

The mice today seemed pretty lame. They were all smallish and anything wireless looked like it was made for a laptop, not a desktop environment. I was a bit let down, but I still had Staples! I drove across the street, basically, and was greeted by a smaller selection, but better quality of mice.

I looked around and came across the newer version of the Microsoft Wireless mice. It's no laser mouse, but it'll do. I picked up a Microsoft Wireless Mouse 5000. It has a new technology that uses a blue optical light so it is easier to use on different surfaces. They claim it is just as easy to use on natural wood, concrete and carpet as it would be on your mousepad or desk. While I haven't tried it out, the mouse works great. It also boasts an 8 month battery life, while that sounds impressive I am not sure they mean that for someone like myself who spends a good deal of time at the PC.

I am glad to be rid of my Logitech mouse. It did do it's job but it just wore down way too quickly for the price that I paid for it and the amount of time I had it. I picked up my new mouse for 30 dollars at Staples, on sale.

Mobile games may be taking over.

Mobile games are making a pretty good push into the market now.

You can see new platforms like the iPhone and the Nintendo DS really doing well. Android phones are picking up speed, now, as well. The mobile gaming community is growing at an alarming rate and this isn't like the Gameboy days of old. This is a big time, big money business that a lot of big players are starting to put money in.

I don't have the time for a long-winded post spewing the same kind of stuff that I normally do. I don't have time to put up a couple of pictures for those of you that need motivation to read. I barely have time for this witty paragraph explaining my time crunch and how I am going to expand on this at a later time.

Keep an eye out in the next few months and into the holiday season for mobile gaming to continue growing. You might be surprised just how big this industry is becoming.

Facebook games need to STFU!

You aren't games, you aren't even remotely fun. Somehow you have tricked lonely housewives and tween aged girls into thinking that the

more time they invest and the more times that they clean out a fish tank or milk a cow that the game is rewarding them. It isn't a reward, it is a reminder to the rest of the world why they hate us. We live in such opulence that since most of us don't clean up after ourselves that we feel guilty and channel it into our tiny little farms and cities.

It's sad.

It is also very annoying. Being greeted day after day with requests from my friends to help them

find a hammer or a saw is pretty annoying. What about or present or past friendship makes you believe that I want to help you find a pixel shovel, seriously? Seeing post after post of someone trying to get me to help them accomplish some meaningless task in this game is infuriating. I almost want to get into my car, drive to their REAL house and punch them in their ACTUAL nose.

Leave me alone. No one cares about your fish tank. No one cares about your stupid fucking mini city where your little homies live. It isn't fun or interesting to anyone else. Keep wasting your days getting yourself infected with malware, spyware and potential viruses, but don't assume that I want to join you.

Assholes.

This is only further proof that Facebook isn't really for friends. My real friends wouldn't want me to help them harvest wood for a barn to put their virtual sheep in.

I've missed you, Blogger.

We needed to spend some time apart, because I just didn't have anything nice to say. Don't worry, though... there is more coming. I need to center my chi and be able to bang it out on a keyboard without wanting to smash it into my monitor. I really love my monitor and don't want it to die.

Starcraft 2 is the devil. Activision-Blizzard is pushing gaming in the wrong direction.

Consoles are gaining more momentum and look to take over most of gaming's heavy lifting in the next few years. No doubt ramping up for the next generation of consoles (which might as well be a HTPC).

So much more that makes me want to hurt my dear, precious monitor. WOOOSAH!

It's not my router, Comcast.

Tonight, like many other nights I had to call Comcast. I have called Comcast hundreds of times since they took over for @Home internet and eventually became the default service provider for cable TV in the area where I live. I have called about cable TV, about digital TV, high def channels, the internet, the wires being down and hanging in the road, and who even knows what else. I've covered many, many, MANY bases of the "reason why I called" universe with these guys. Tonight, I almost snapped.

I had someone come out back in January, because my internet was in and our so sporadically that it just didn't make sense. The guy came out, looked around, checked some random levels and didn't find anything. He talked about the new conversion and the new system that they put in place for super fast tiered internet and the upcoming changes to digital. That all sounded cool, but I didn't give a fuck. My internet either worked right or didn't, that's all I care about. Period.

My problems cleared up a bit, but never really went away entirely. My brother moved in for a month back in March/April. We had another guy come out, he brought out a fancy new modem and hooked everything up. I explained my weird disconnects and he told me it was because I had an old modem and the guy from back in January should have given me a new modem. Okay, whatever. Will the internet work? Still wasn't sure. He did tell me that he wasn't allowed to touch my router or set up anything. I'd have to do all of the router work and plugging in to the PC. He had to set it up to run on this one particular laptop and that was it. Uhh, alright.

Time marches on and so do my disconnects. Let's move on to two weeks ago. I got so sick of these random disconnects, which have become more and more close together, that I finally called. I called up Comcast, got almost directly to a rep and told them that I was having problems. He said there was an outage and people were working on it, it just hadn't been updated so that I heard about it when I called in. He gave me a 20 dollar credit. I was kind of please. 20 bucks off AND maybe someone was fixing an issue. OMG, YES!

OMG, NO. The outages still come. The modem resets itself. It goes from online to restarted, instantly. I tried different plugs, I made sure it was plugged in well, I moved it, I unplugged it from the router. I went through it all since then. On the Linux PC beside me I get the same result, which is obvious BECAUSE THE FUCKING ROUTER IS RESTARTING, the computer has nothing to do with that.

So, I call them up tonight. I deal with the stupid fucking automated mess. I speak English, having issues with the internet, my phone number is blah, yes I have tried x, y, z, r, q, and w, then it tells me my balance. Then it asks me to pay my balance. WAIT! I don't have service, I'm calling to complain about poor service and you're still trying to suck money out of me. Are you fucking serious? I select the option to speak to a rep, after it tells me all about my balance. That takes me back to the first menu, I get to go through it all again. Hell yes I wanna do the callback survey. They still haven't called.

I get on the phone with a person and it's awful. I go slow, because most of the time they want to know a bunch of stupid shit before we can get started. Hi, yeah, my service is on for now but it has been going in and out for the past two weeks and I just wanted to call and report the issue. Yeah, I will give you the number again, even though I had to enter it twice before I talked to you and the automated system was able to tell me how much money I owed, but no... I'll say it to you, now. It's in my brother's name. Yeah, I got the last 4 of his social. I explain the issue. I explain that I had people out and I go on a fairly long-winded explanation, so hopefully she will understand what I want.

Nope. IT'S NOT MY ROUTER! That is basically what she comes up with. I tell her that my modem is losing connection and resetting and she tells me that I should check my router.... WHAT? Where do you find these retarded fucking monkeys that you hire to fill these jobs? Why can't I get one of these jobs, I'll act like a fucking idiot. GAH! I tell her that I don't want someone to come out. It isn't my problem, it has nothing to do with me, it is THEIR problem. Something is wrong with THEM. They need to check their lines. No credit this time, but at least I have a notation that I called. I plan to call everytime it does this from now on. I will eventually annoy them enough to fix it or to block my calls.

Fuck you, Comcast. It's not my router, fix your shit.

The Wii plays games but IS NOT for gamers.

When you think about the most fun that you can have with a current generation console you think about all of the interesting and console-specific titles that the Playstation 3 has: Blast Factor, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, SOCOM, Gran Turismo 5. But, at the end of the day it just isn't the console that everyone is scrambling to knock off the throne.

The Nintendo Wii is the reigning badass of the console world. This might lead people to believe that "gamers" invest in and play the games that come out for this system, but those people would be wrong. The games are fun and the system is quite intriguing, but very little legitimate gaming is done on this particular console and that has been a sticking point for many gamers and many game-enthusiasts for quite a while now. While the quality of Nintendo and it's consoles can't really be disputed, just how much of a gaming device this is can be.

For years the kids lived and breathed Mario. The original NES opened the hearts and minds of the youth in America to a fun-loving plumber and a scary dinosaur dragon walrus princess stealer. We had Metroid and Duck Hunt and other classic and great games. We loved the games and they loved us back, at least until they wouldn't load right and our bright idea as to... blow on them. The Super NES was a big jump forward and many people were very excited. We didn't really view games the same back then, but we all knew that something magical was happening. We got some more amazing classics like Final Fantasy 2 and 3, as well as Earthworm Jim, Turtles in Time, Super Mario All-Stars, Street Fight 2, Chrono Trigger and Mega Man X. The quality of the games was better. Both story, graphics and gameplay all became better and you could feel the gaming community begin pushing the boundaries and moving forward.

Then we got the abortion that has become known as the Virtual Boy. What a huge disappointment. One of the worst attempts at gaming that the world had ever seen. While the vision may have been there, the technology wasn't, yet Nintendo soldiered on and let it happen. This set gaming back and may set back the "virtual" community for a very long time. We are just now seeing 3-D television and movies move into the mainstream, 15 years later. The bad taste and overall sucktitude of the Virtual Boy wouldn't last long though. Nintendo had one of their neater tricks up their sleeve. The N64. While it was one of the last of it's generation of consoles out, it was also pretty solid in terms of performance. However, Nintendo refused to go with the CD for it's games and continued on with the cartridge. This made things terrible for developers and a lot of games on N64 suffered because of this. The console did offer some of the more fun FPS games in Golden Eye and Perfect Dark, it was severely limited and also managed to put out one of the worst games ever in Superman 64.

The N64 wouldn't quench the thirst for power for ve ry long. Again coming in later in the pack for the next generation of consoles the Game Cube came out and stunned people. Mostly because the games really didn't look any better than before. The Game Cube didn't look terrible, but the games were overly cartoony and you could tell a difference between it's power and the power of the other three main consoles. While the Game Cube was far from a failure, it did not have the sort of amazing success that the previous versions had become accustomed to. The PS2 and the XBox were able to convince gamers that they were superior consoles and offered and overall better experience. Nintendo would stay up to task and develop a console that would once again vault them back to the top of consoles gaming. They would do it by being the weakest in terms of tech specs and offer games that were entirely different than anything their competitors could. They would make you play the game... for real.

The Wii used motion, your own motion, to power your gaming experience and people were shocked. All of a sudden people were off the couch and moving. The bowling game was fun, tennis was a blast, golf was a skill game and everyone could be involved. Grandmothers and 5-year olds alike were now gaming.... WAIT A MINUTE! This isn't gaming. It's playing. Nintendo had tricked us. They sold us a toy and made us play with it and called it gaming. Dammit! We had been deceived!

Thankfully Nintendo opened a lot of eyes with the console and helped push it into many houses. It has changed the mind of people who thought that playing games would make you worship Satan and lick Marilyn Manson's asshole. It has been both good and bad for gamers. It might have set gaming back, due to it's simplicity and lack of advancement. Especially since the console sold so well that Sony and Microsoft just recently announced to add their very own Wii-like additions onto their existing current generation consoles.

Awesome! I can't wait to be hardcore and virtually pet seals in Norway!

Logitech mice suck and WoW isn't the best game ever.

Oh what I wouldn't give to have a Microsoft mouse. Just about a year ago I finally beat my old Microsoft wireless mouse to death and had to go and get a new one. I opted to give Logitech a try, because finding the mouse I wanted proved to be very difficult. After going to Best Buy, Staples, Office Max and Office Depot I wasn't any closer to getting something that I wanted. I went with a Logitech mouse that felt fairly comfortable in my hand. I have required a wireless mouse of years now and I have been fairly pleased, this mouse wasn't much different. Over time the mouse wore down very quickly, but it didn't suck down the batteries like my past Microsoft mice had. Now here I sit with a busted button just a short time later. I know they aren't made to last forever, but I've never seen quality this bad in a mouse. Not even in the 6 dollar ball mice of past years. I'm sorry Logitech, but your mice just don't seem to be for gaming.

I need something that can take a beating. I do a lot of clicking and a lot of moving. I need the mouse to be weighted well and easy to move. I require things that a normal user doesn't and I end up paying upwards of 60 dollars to get what I want, so I'd like to think that my thoughts matter. Since I am absolutely penniless I can't simply go out on a search for the perfect mouse, instead I've got to deal with this shitty and broken button until I can get something to replace it. My gaming has already begun to suffer with random double clicks. My normal desktop usage is infuriating, since the buttons don't want to click properly. Clicking and dragging is impossible now. Feh.

My next complaint is about World of warcraft. I hear it touted and heralded so highly, but for no reason. Most of the people that I hear talking about it haven't played as long as I did and didn't experience the game at the beginning. They never lived through the terrible unbalanced game that shipped. The horrible loot lag that followed. The months that we sat with our characters naked to take stress off the servers. All of these things I am quite fond of. They easily forget that at least one Tuesday a month they can't even play the game and it isn't even always WoW related. Blizzard broke something with another login service that isn't even fully active yet and now WoW users can't play. OHNOEZ!

I have been away from WoW since January and I did my fair share of playing, don't get me wrong, but it just isn't the best game ever. They offer up new rep grinds instead of giving actual content. They give daily quests for a new faction or new group of factions instead of offering something fun and interesting. They recycle old content like Onyxia and pretend like it's something new and shiny and worthy of our praise. Not since Karazhan has WoW made my jaw drop. What an amazing instance. Naxx was great, but not enough people had a chance to experience it, not to mention it was probably more challenging at 60 than it is at 80.

WoW hasn't moved forward. Small minor updates to graphics in an engine that is quite dated (we are talking 7 or 8 years now) just doesn't cut it. They haven't moved mechanics forward. Players aren't any better now, but Blizzard has streamlined the game and told people that by pressing the appropriate keys in the right configuration that they will be "good". What does that have to do with being good at a game? They did this back in the arcade days and while people were good at those games, when you only have 3 buttons it is a little different. I have a whole keyboard and plenty of skills and abilities, I'd like to be able to use them. WoW has further gone on to make gear the most valuable thing in the game. Someone who is terrible can sit in the back and make a very minor impact and rake in the loot. People assume that since this person has superior gear that they must be a superior player. That just doesn't work out at the end of the day.

The PvP aspect of the game used to be a selling point, but since everyone has a way of being an unkillable crushing machine now, the point is moot. Who has the most cooldowns and can not be snared the longest wins. It's not about being a good player anymore, it's about getting good gear and pressing the right buttons in sequence. That isn't how a game is supposed to be played. I wish other games would quit building their models around WoW, because we aren't going anywhere. When WoW came out it did a lot of things right and made a lot of people very happy. Almost 6 years later most of those things have been dumbed down and stripped away. Nothing will change the amount of joy that I had when I killed my first mob on my first character in the closed beta of WoW. Nothing. It was an amazing experience and it lasted a long time, but now it is time to move forward. Stop holding the industry back, please!

Team Fortress 2: Engineers EVERYWHERE!

I have enjoyed TF2 for quite some time now. The game is fairly balanced and allows a high level of coordination and teamplay to be successful. For shooter games, that is pretty hard to do. Just recently the guys over at Valve let us have a tasty new update, especially for the Engineer class. New weapons for the Engineer as well as some new maps AND it's free. If this were Activision I'd

be paying 15 to 25 dollars for this kind of thing, yet Valve provides it for free to a game that is almost 3 years old. The updates breathed some new life into the game, which still had plenty of life left in it.

The new update focuses around the Engineer. Every class in the game has had an update in which they had significant improvements to their class. Medics got neat new toys for phat healz, Scouts got some very interesting tools that help them stay alive or avoid pursuit, everyone basically got something. This time it is the Engineers turn and they don't bother wasting any

time. They add neat new gizmos, some of which have yet to prove their proper usage.

As with the release of any large new update, everyone has flocked to the new and cool stuff. I've been a long time fan of the Engineer and I have trouble finding a server where it is worth it to play an Engineer or where I can even play the class due to limitations. There is no reason to join an 8 on 8 game where 6 people on your team are Engineers. The game is long, boring and full of suck. However, I did manage to get the minimum achievements that allowed me to pick up the new weapons.

I was very excited to get my hand on the new shotgun, but then I wasn't so sure that it was something I want. It gets crits based on the number of "revenge points" that your turret builds up. You can't use these immediately. You have to either destroy your turret OR have your turret destroyed. Either way, unless you lose the turret then you aren't getting the points. It's kind of awkward. The points can build up and allow for some very potent crits, but sacrificing your turret is a pretty large drawback.

Luckily, the second weapon you receive is a mechanical hand that allows you to build mini turrets. The mini turrets can't be heal or upgraded, but they build 4 times faster. They only do have damage, but you're normally going to be right on top of them anyway, so it should be much of an issue. With a low-cost, fast-build turret available the new shotgun becomes more useful. The effectiveness of the new turret is rather low, but it makes an offensive Engineer much more viable.

The final new weapon takes the place of your pistol, which I hate to see go, but allows you to remotely control your turret. You can aim it and fire it, but when you "disconnect" it is unable to make any actions for 3 seconds. It makes the turret pretty vulnerable, not to mention that while you are firing the turret, you are spending through your ammo and you or another Engineer will need to refill it, if you want to continue your killing spree. You can choose to fire off bullets or rockets, both of which can be restocked in your turret, so long as you have it upgraded.

The last and most interesting/fun additions, aside from the maps which I haven't had much time to play, is the new ability to move your mechanical minions. You can now uproot your turrets, dispensers and teleporters and move them around. You can build and upgrade anything and simply pick it up and move it. In a bad spot and wanna give it another shot? Pick that bad boy up and just take it somewhere else? Forget having to destroy and rebuild items when you move forward, just pick it up and carry it with you to the next spot. What a welcome addition!

The ideas are all very solid, we will see how they evolve into the the gameplay. I am very glad to have this update, as I said I enjoy the Engineer quite a bit. I have always liked TF2 and have been waiting for this update for some time, now. With it's arrival comes a ton of people who are playing the class. In a few weeks things should quiet down and return back to mostly normal. I appreciate all of Valve's hard work and look forward to getting plenty of time with TF2 in the near future.

Borderlands makes Co-Op fun!

Oh boy, oh boy! I was lucky enough to have a friend gift me a copy of the the RPGFPS game Borderlands, while it was on sale last week on Steam. Steam has become a great place to get games and an even better place to keep them neatly packed away and accessible. I have had an account there since the service first opened up and they have really expanded their library. But, this isn't about Steam, it's about Borderlands.

The game is simple enough to grasp. It is a shooter with RPG elements. There will be levels and some of the cool stuff that you find throughout the game is going to require you to adhere to

these elements. It doesn't act like a normal shooter, though. Accuracy and the type of damage you are capable of is based on the weapon and modifications that are available to you. You also have skill trees for each character that allow the same "class" to play in different ways. This seems very cool, but most "classes" have an optimal tree or skill-set that allows them to min/max. There are four classes available and the playstyle of each is only really different based on the skills and, most importantly, the main action skill. You action skills is the innate ability that you MUST purchase before spending any other points in your skill trees. Every Soldier will have a Turret, but not all turrets will be the same. You can customize your action skill via other skills or with items that you pick up along the way that change the type of damage that it does.

What the game lacks in proper FPS form, it makes up with in style. The game looks gorgeous. The cell-shaded world is stunning when you turn on all of the lighting and shadow effects. It runs pretty well even on my low end system (which I'd rather not discuss, it just hurts my feelings). I don't have everything cranked up, but I still have my settings high enough that I can appreciate the detail and still maintain playability. Some of the landscapes, at least in the early game, seem like they are reused over and over. You get bored of some of the enemies and scenario very quickly, though you get to shuffle off into another area and you quickly forget about the game and focus

on the action. This game has plenty of action, too. By playing with other players in the co-op mode you really make the game shine. The difficulty is ramped up based on how many people you bring along and it helps facilitate the need for a challenge in the game. Impossible odds and near death experiences become commonplace and it just adds to the fun factor. Nothing like fragging away with your buddies in scary desert filled with sandworm-dogs.

The game does seem to have some connection issues. I spend about 90 minutes with a friend today just trying to play with them. We opened up ports, created static IPs for ourselves and even resorted to another third-party launcher application (Steam is a platform, but GameSpy does all of the connection for online play). We failed over and over again, luckily another friend showed up and saved the day by hosting the server and allowing us to all play together. I then spent another hour trying to get connected to the second friend after the first went on to bed. We eventually gave up. After the fight that my Comodo firewall put up with Left4Dead I had hoped to be over this. I guess not. We checked several forums and this seems to just be a common issue with the game.

It's fast, it's fun and it has diverted my attention away from Dragon Age, at the moment. Team Fortress 2 did come out with a new patch today, which may steal some time away from Borderlands. Though I may give it time to settle down. I am please so far with Borderlands and I look forward to playing it more with my buddies and having a good time. It has been a long time since I really wanted to stay up super late and game, and it feels good. I am exhausted and have a busy day ahead of me, but I'll probably make it through just because I know I'll get to blow more shit up tonight.

Dragon Age: Origins ate my life.

I started playing Dragon Age: Origins recently and it took control of my life and devoured my time. Though I had plenty of free time to soak up, this was kind of frightening. The game was so good that I literally started losing chunks of time without even realizing it.

At first I wanted to give the Rogue class a try, so I did. After spending some time with the class and consulting with the wiki page I decided that I should start over again. I was only 6 or 8 hours in and hadn't really done much, so why not? I had got the controls down well enough and figured that I had some of the basic mechanics down. I gave it another shot with the help of a small guide with a better explanation of the Rogue's role within this game. I got to around the same point and then stopped. Playing through the Rogue twice at low levels had made me want something different.

A Mage! That is what I'd want to play, obviously. I started my Mage and went on my way. Spell slinging sure is fun and in Dragon Age it is an absolute blast. The spell combos and interesting ways to use spells is immediately apparent and a whole lot of fun. I, however, hurt myself by reading that wiki. I looked up some of the "specialties" available in this game and saw that Blood Magic looked interesting. I took a straight shot toward it and was disappointed. I had a bit of a save issue and had to start farther back than I wanted because I found Blood Magic to be less fun than I had anticipated. So, I had to replay through some things to get back to where I was and then decided that I had really wanted to go an entirely different way. Should I go back to the Rogue? Should I stick with the Mage since I had recovered from my early mistake with Blood Magic?

NO! I should try a Warrior out. This time I went back to the wiki page, looked up some

information and decided that maybe a Warrior wasn't for me. Maybe the Rogue would really be more my style. Back to the Rogue it is. I was hoping to get some time in playing that character again tonight, but I decided to go out and hang with a friend for a while, instead. Social interaction is always nice. We discussed life stuff, like buying houses and what area my girlfriend and I should move to in the future. The friend I went out with was actually the person who let me borrow the game. Seems odd that I would pass up such a great game to hang with him, huh? =P He of all people should understand.

Though I haven't finished the game yet and I've bounced between characters, I am very pleased with the game. It is very fun and the combat system is relatively simple. It feels like a shiny Baldur's Gate and my brother calls it "KoToR 2 in fairy land". Both work. The game is fantastic and I look forward to playing it again and I look forward to completing the main mission even more. I plan to get it eventually and probably pick up the expansion and some DLC (downloadable content). Why would I want downloadable content after ripping open Activision's asshole over it? Because this content is very cheap, actually adds NEW things to the game and is going to enhance and expand my game.

Dragon Age is great. I just hope I can break it's spell on me before another 10 days goes by.

E3 2010 - Star Wars: The Old Republic

I've been looking forward to a new MMO for a while now. SW:TOR looks like it will be a big budget game with plenty of backing and high profile name. My hopes for the game being successful go beyond the Star Wars name and the huge backing from EA, BioWare and Lucas Arts, though. It's the fact that the gameplay looks so compelling and the classes look individualized enough that you might just find your perfect little niche in the game.

There are going to be standard MMO limitations, however. There will be tanks and healers, there will be various DPS, and there will be phat lewtz. The developers said that the game will be laid out in such a way that you will play you class "story" during the game. I'm not sure what that means or how that will change grouping, but it seems like it might be an interesting new take on the tired old questing system that we have now in MMO games. I hope very much that SW:TOR can break the mold of standard MMO games and go beyond with something that is both involving and fun. I want to play with other people, but I also want to be able to play alone. Good solo and group play will really make or break this game.

At E3 this year there has been a wealth of knowledge and a plethora of information given about SW:TOR. The game is scheduled to be released in Spring of 2011, hopefully this is the last time I have to see it at E3 without being able to play it. We have had interviews with developers and writers. We have seen countless new videos and treated to some hands-on play. Though they were not my hands, I am still glad that SOMEONE got to play the game. I can't tell you how excited this wealth of knowledge makes me, yet sad at the same time. I know that I won't get a good solid chunk of info for another month or more and I won't be able to play for almost another year. As we head into the summer of 2010 all I can do is prepare myself for the hours of my life that this game will steal away.

Dear Jeff Fisher, Keep you fucking players OUT of strip clubs, dumbass.

You would think that a multi-million dollar earning athlete and role model would want to appear in the headlines because he saved a child from being hit by a car or because he went back to his old neighborhood to help kids learn to read. Nope, not the Tennessee Titans. They go to strip clubs and start shit. At least no one got shot this time.

Vince Young, being the brilliant young man that he is, decided that he should go to a strip club and get into a fight with the pimp.... err... manager. I mean, who the fuck wears a purple-lined jacket? Yeah, pimps. Yeah, well, Mr. Pimp got a bloody limp and decided to call the cops. Young got picked up on a Class C assault charge. How in the fuck you manage to carry around an illegal gun, take it into the facility where you practice and play games and then threaten suicide and don't go to jail, but bust a grown mans lip and do... completely beyond me. Someone, please explain this to me.

There is a video that is circulating the internet of Young going "backstage" into a little room where Mr. Pimpbitchwithabustedlipboohoo is being taught to read. He has a short conversation by a bald-headed security guard, then Pimp Daddy decides to start talking shit about Texas, where Young went to college and won a national championship. Okay... so, a famous person with millions of dollars comes in while I'm getting my booklearnin' and I start talking shit to this guy... what? Why? MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. He could be shoving real cash into the panties of my dancers are paying for premium drinks, why the hell would I piss him off?

Why did this whole fucking situation happen? Because Jeff Fisher hasn't figured out that young men with a lot of money don't need to be at a fucking stripclub! Fisher, get it together man. I'm amazed you weren't shitcanned after that loss to New England. You need to get control of your team back and you need to do it quickly. Just because Pittsburgh lets ROFLsberger go on a raping spree and Tony Dungy didn't want to believe that Harrison shoot people, doesn't mean that you can just let your guys keep fucking up in stripclubs. Ban them. Your players obviously aren't cut out for it.

Please, for the love of God, just stop. Stop letting them go to these places and make themselves look like idiots. That goes for everyone, not just the Titans. When was the last time you saw Peyton Manning do something like this? We all know Tom Brady likes to get chicks pregnant and then dump them for supermodels, but still... no stripclubs. If you don't want people to ask if your mom is a prostitute, don't beat up pimps.

Left 4 Dead vs. Comodo

Ahhh yes. Friday night. We eat steak every Friday at my house, a little later than normal this Friday, but still steak. I settle into my normal groove and get read to play a game with my brother, which I haven't done in a long time. He just got a Left 4 Dead pack that Steam had on sale. I don't own the second game, so we start with the first.

We both know what zombies are and look forward to killing them. I, however, have to shoot down my overzealous internet security first. The interesting way that L4D connects requires me to fight with Comodo more than normal. I have to play half of my games in Windowed mode, at least to start, because Comodo will freeze fullscreen applications that don't have the proper permissions. While I do appreciate this, I had kind of hoped that after nearly a year on this same install of Winodws 7 that it would have picked up SOME of my habits. Also, gaming in a window blows. Like, a lot.

He sets up a room, I join. First go... NO GO. I get a popup that won't go away no matter how many times I tell it that it's trust. Comodo refuses to believe that I want to play this game. I have to turn everything off, close the program, reopen it, turn everything off again and somehow manage to magically fix it. What? Yep. Not even worth going into much more detail.

Second try... and we succeed. We manage to get connected and start the game. He has never played, so I take the initiative and begin to lead him into the fray. We have a good time, blasting zombies and whatnot. We get to the first checkpoint without issue. We breeze through the first part of the second area, end up having to deal with a witch. I picked the fight, I was trying to show how much of a pain in the ass she is, but she didn't live long enough to get to us. We enter into the next stage and everything sucks. There is a Witch waiting for us at the lift, we have to deal with her and I end up taking the death punch. It sucked.

We make it to the hospital and the end of the map. We fight to the top of the building. We have killed a bunch of zombies. We have been pounded on by tanks. My brother has shot be about 30 fucking times. We enter into the last little bit and I'm looking forward to it, my brother... he has no idea what is coming. Wave after wave of zombie washes over us. All over the place. We get two different tanks and at one point both of us are pulled different directions by smokers. We somehow make it through and "get to da chawpa". Ahh, success.

I have won a mission in L4D. I have enjoyed my brother's company on a frenzied corpse-strewn street. I have conquered something, yes, but more importantly, I had made Comodo stop being such a bitch.

I just realized that there was a new version out, so I picked it up, uninstalled the old one and got to installing this one. I'm running the first scan with it right now, so it'll quit complaining that I haven't scanned with it. Hopefully I can train this new version better than the last.

Smartphone vs. Battery Life

My brother got a new TP2 in April. He got a Nexus One last week, after having phone envy when he saw my Incredible, nah just kidding, he just loves Android (don't we all?). His TP2 is GSM and I'm not sure if they use the same batteries, not sure why it wouldn't, but we will see. I plan to pick up the battery from him this week and see if it works. Maybe we can trade or he will let me hang onto it until Verizon release their 2150mAh Extended battery and back.

Here is to hoping it all goes well. =)

Edit/update:

I just picked up the battery from my brother and tossed it into the phone. It's been in for maybe 90 minutes, charged it back up to full and have it plugged into my PC while I transfer a few things to it. Will pull it off and give it some lovin'. Hoping just to pull a couple extra hours with it. Will update when I've had a bit of time with it.

edit/update 2:

have spent some time with the new battery. didnt use the phone as much as normal, between cooking dinner diagnosing and repairing a pc and fragging it out in tf2, i just didnt fool with it like normal.

my stats so far are.....10:48:27 up, 4:38:12 awake. cell standby 41%, phone idle 36%, android system 18%, display 5%. osmonitor and system app both say 73%. i did not do the turn off and keep charging method (you know what im talking about), gonna try it tomorrow. it really did do bettet than i expected. i will report back tomorrow after a nice big charge on this battery.

(I typed this on my phone, while laying in bed... it sucked)

Edit/update 3:

The day didn't go as I had planned, phone got left at home and didn't come off of the charger until about 8PM, it's 3AM now. Uptime of 32:10:39, Awake time of 17:04:13. Plan to actually turn the phone off and give it a good solid charger tomorrow. Battery is reporting 57% charge today after fairly heavy usage coming off the charger. Lots of time on WiFi, as well.

My regular battery would probably be in need of a charge by now. I am pretty pleased with these unscientific "tests" I've run. Basically, I just use the phone like normal and I have seen an improvement in how long the charge lasts. I will check back in with more news tomorrow, after it gets a good charge on the charger with the phone powered off.

Edit/update 4:

Up time 8:55:49 - Awake time 3:27:45 - Battery 62%

Usage

31% - Maps

24% - Cell standby

22% - Phone idle

10% - Android System

7% - Voice calls

4% - Display

2% - Dialer

I didn't do as much gaming today as normal, very light usage throughout the day (for me). I'd say that makes me "moderate". I used Google Maps, as you can see, I think that makes up for my light use of my games. I made some phone calls, fielded and sent out the normal amount of texts. I even showed off some of the coolness of the phone to someone today. Random loading of internet pages to show how fast the browser was and some of the random/neat apps like Sky Map and Google Goggles.

I can assure you that my 1300mAh battery would be dead just from this usage. It would have had to sit on the charger at my desk all day or it would be in need of a charge.

I am no scientist, but based on my usage patterns I can say that the 1500mAh battery is far superior. This makes me wonder if the 1500mAh is less awesome and the 1300mAh might just suck. The 2150 is getting reports of in stock, or soon to be in stock. That's good. This will hold me over until I finally pick up a 2150. I look forward to the battery life that the 2150mAh will net me, especially after the results with the 1500mAh.

So... come the hell on Verizon. I'm dying for a battery here. GIMME! This smartphone is painfully weak and limited with such a short battery life. Gimme the juice!

Oh Turbine, how you give me hope...

As if making two marginal MMO games and Asheron's call wasn't enough, you have gone ahead and helped usher the new form of "free-to-play" games. Don't get me wrong, Asheron's Call was fun and AC2 was probably before it's time and suffered greatly because of it. No disrespect to Turbine, not in the slightest. I've played DDO (Dungeons & Dragons Online), and I enjoyed it. Though I've never played their hobbit-filled MMO, I must assume that it is similar in polish and presentation.... Oh, and yeah, it's also gonna be FREE, soon.

Turbine made a staggering announcement recently and said that this fall their Lord of the Rings MMO will be modeled in similar fashion to DDO, as in... FREE. Well, free to a point. You will be able to play through the early portions of the game, just enough to get your excited and then abruptly shut you off. You will be required to purchase "mini game packs", that open up a little or a lot depending on what you choose. You can also spend a little extra cash and get a few things along the way, if you so desire.

But Dave why do you like this model of distribution and talk so much shit about Activision of being greedy dicksuckers, you ask? Because Activision charged PC gamers 10 dollars more (yep, a pricetag 10 bucks higher than console... 60 bones!), didn't provide dedicated servers, and slowly release old content for a new game and make you pay for it. Turbine won't require you to buy the game and they won't ever charge you a subscription fee. You will be free to roam about the world that they have given you for free and you can, if you wish, purchase a continued experience. In the 75 dollars that PC gamers have shelled out for MW2 alone, you could probably pick up a considerable chunk of the content you want in DDO.

DDO and LOTRO are NOT the best MMO games out there, but they are a nice alternative and for cheap people they will be better than just about anything else you can play for free. While I am giving shouts to free games, Guild Wars is another great alternative. Though you will have to purchase the game and some expansions to really get the full effect, the whole collection should only run you about 60 or 70 bucks, about as much as you'd spend on MW2 (faggots).

The Stimulus Map Pack

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?

This? THIS is what you give to PC gamers for shitting on everything that they know and love about PC gaming. You remake a couple old maps and slide in a new one or two? You ship a PC game WITHOUT dedicated servers, something you failed to mention until close to launch, and then you expect them to just lay back while you fuck them out of another 15 bucks?! Wow.

Why do you people let them do this? Why do you buy these games and allow this to continue. As much as they are the problem, the community is to blame. If we didn't buy these half-finished, half-featured games.... well, then they'd pull an EA and stop making the game for PC at all (in reference to them ditching the Madden series after Madden 08). In the case of EA, though, they own the rights to, basically, all of the NFL and no other company can even make a game to compete. It's really, really sad.

I don't play, have never played and do not intent to play Modern Warfare 2. The lack of dedicated servers for the PC instantly made the decision for me, upon release of the game. The fact that months later they rehash old content and charge people money is just... awful. I remember when Half-Life was the GAME and Counter-Strike was the MOD. While I understand that those days are gone, quality games should still make it to PC... for the PC.

I really look forward to the next batch of gaming coming to PC over the next few years, those that are full Direct X 10 and even the new games that give us glimpses of Direct X 11. I hope that these games can help me wash the bad taste out of my mouth, the last five or so years in gaming has been mostly lackluster. We keep supporting it, though and end up with... A Stimulus Map Pack. Sigh.

....And the awkward introduction

I love PC gaming, I really, really do. I have loved it for years, but it's dead. Dead. DEAD.

I've been a PC enthusiast for years. I remember playing with 80x88s and 80x86s. I remember when a 286 with a CGA graphics card blew my mind. I remember the the old glory days of the x86 platform of processors. I'm sure I've still got plenty of goodies stashed away in my parent's attic, just waiting to be put in a museum one day. I always enjoyed gaming and an enthusiasm for the platform and a healthy love of gaming meant one hell of a ride.

I played all of the old classics. Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem (2D and 3D), Police Quest, Command Keen, the list just goes on and on... and one. PC gaming was a staple in my life and it was something that I simply loved doing. What really flipped the switch was seeing the original Unreal Tournament on a 3DFX Voodoo3 graphics card. It was just something so amazing that I couldn't believe it. It was like all of those years playing the older games had never happened. I was hooked.

I immediately became an addict. UT was great, but Tribes is where I really had a great time and made friends that I still have today. The competition, the seriousness, the fun that could be had by grown men and teens alike. This was something that I felt would shake gaming to the absolute core. I was wrong, though. Sure, team-based FPS games are the standard now, but Final Fantasy 7 made more different than Tribes and you could tell... PC Gaming was dead.

Consoles became more and more powerful during my love affair with PCs. Sure, Tony Hawk was

fun, but that couldn't last forever. Mario was great, but nothing like being online with a bunch of friends blowing stuff up. Consoles have now taken gaming to a whole new level. No longer are they offline bricks that provide solo gameplay, now consoles are pumping out titles that offer strong teamplay and put dozens of people together. Though they are lightyears behind PC, IMO, in immersion and accuracy, console games are winning a very sad war.

I've seen the rise and fall of many games. I have enjoyed games that were failures and disliked others that were and are some of the largest games of all time. I am still an advocate for PC gaming and I hope that it rebounds, like it has done before, and thrives again. I'm going to use this space on the internet to tell you why PC gaming is dead and romanticize it's life. I hope you enjoy.