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!

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.

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).