I’m still playing around with my new laptop that I got for Christmas (when I’m not playing WoW *shifty eyes*).  I was just getting used to Windows 7, now I have a whole new OS to get used to.  Windows 8 is quite a trip with its layout but I’m also having quite a bit of fun playing around and customizing it.  The battery life is fantastic, lasting about three and a half hours or so.  And the laptop doesn’t burn my lap after five minutes like the old one.  IE 10 still crashes like IE 8 though, sorry IE.  However I’m having a hard time getting to the firewall settings to allow League of Legends finish installing.  App fever has hit Windows, haha.  I still have to transfer all my files and photos and such, as well as Liquid Story Binder.  It took me a couple of days to find something that will replace the free version of Office on the other laptop, since this one didn’t come with it.  Which I found odd, really.  ZenWriter is fabulous, but is too simple for what I used Word for.  Kingsoft Writer seems to be a hit, if it works out I’ll blog about it.

I’ve been back in Warcraft for about a week now, I believe, and I’m having way too much fun with the new pet battle system.  It was implemented in 5.0 I believe, with the Mists of Pandaria expansion (which I still have to get).  Fortunately you don’t need Pandaria to use the system.  In a matter of days I went from 50-something pets to now 153 since pet collection has gotten ridiculously simple.  This is so bad for my collecting tendency!  Battling, leveling and collecting rare pets is pretty much all I’ve been doing.  It does feel good to be back in though.  I know a lot of players, usually older players, now are dropping out saying the game isn’t worth paying for any longer.  I don’t think they’re wrong.  With games like this, it’s always a personal choice whether you continue playing with the game as it goes through its growth or whether it’s time to go.  For me, as long as I can find enough elements that I enjoy about WoW that make it worth the subscription I’ll stay.  Yes there are things I miss, changes I don’t agree with and a slowly growing number of players too lazy to do things themselves, but the things I still enjoy about this game outweighs all that.  I still enjoy my favourite races and classes, the storylines, flying mounts, the different zones and the community interaction.  I’ve met some fun people over the years, guilds are a good way to do that but even through groups I’ve met them as well.  The beauty of a game like this is it’s so dynamic and it really appeals to a wide variety of players – raiders, PVPers, casual players, dedicated players, those who like to play solo and those who prefer groups.  It doesn’t matter which way you prefer to play, you can enjoy yourself in this game.  Sometimes I think certain players forget that.  My favourite is seeing players come onto the servers I’m on (primarily RP servers, one is normal) and complaining about the lack of PVP.  Congratulations, you stated the obvious!  It’s not that PVP never happens on non-PVP servers, it’s just not a focus.  PVP servers are labeled as such for a reason, and if you don’t want to constantly be looking over your shoulder for a member of the opposite faction then you play on a different type of server.  Some players have too much time on their hands.

I am glad though that Blizzard has finally recognized that many players have multiple characters.  Now pets and mounts are available to all characters, certain achievements count for all characters, and the ease at which you level now compared to vanilla makes it easier to get low level characters up.  Now if they could just make a similar mechanic to Diablo III’s stash, perhaps one large bank stash per server so I don’t have to constantly try and mail things between characters.  I like the instant mail, but sometimes it’s a pain in the arse.  Just being able to empty my bags and then continue questing is far more convenient than spending ten minutes playing the mail shuffle.  Then again, my banks could all probably use a good clean-out.

Speaking of Diablo III it’s actually as good as I thought it would be, gameplay-wise.  Leah is still a bit of a twit, but well can’t do much about that.  Getting through Act II was insane.  Belial, the Act’s final boss was a b*tch to finish off.  It’s a three phase fight; phase one you fight his guards, phase two you fight him and his guards (annoying as hell, even with a companion) and finally phase three is full-sized Belial.  I failed that fight about five or six times before I finally beat him.  The Enchantress was a far more valuable companion in that fight than the Scoundrel was, I haven’t yet tried the Templar but because of the nature of the fight ranged seemed a better idea than melee.  But to get through the fight I had to stop trying to keep both the companion and my own health up since the companion respawns after a few seconds.  The fight is enough without worrying about them.  Attempt two was most annoying; I got Belial down to a sliver of health, probably a good shot or two away from death and I just couldn’t get to a health globe before he gave me a smackdown.  I cursed badly (I ordinarily don’t anymore, mostly because I now have a very young nephew with very perceptive hearing) and my mom gave me that oh-so-familiar ‘and you wanted this game because why?’ look.  She’s so tolerant of my vices and I do enjoy them.  Even when I’m cursing at them.

I’ve finished Hand of Isis, and I’m going to go do a Monday Review now for it.  It was really quite good, and I’ll tell you why in that entry.  Later I’ll have to crack open the box with all my books and pick a new read.

That unpacking thing?  Yeah still haven’t finished it.

Now that my back is healed I feel more at ease about carrying boxes upstairs than I was before.  So glad that fiasco is over.  Today I’m diving back into my exercise routine so this never happens again.  Not that I needed a reason, but this gives me that added motivation to just do it and stop waiting for a perfect moment.

This is going to be a little World of Warcraft-centric, only because it's the only game I have extensive history with. Hopefully my points apply to most if not all MMOs in general.

This was a little inspired by WoW's patch 4.3 content, in which Deathwing is finally brought to an end as well as the powers of the four Dragon Aspects. You don't really need to know much of the backstory to keep up with me, by the way. Anyhow. This storyline...well it was rushed. There's really no other way to say it. Deathwing (being the current main antagonist) was really hyped as being nearly unstoppable, he spend a good part of the game randomly flying about the world and scorching entire areas and for a long time all our major characters lamented how they were going to stop him before he destroyed the world. There really wasn't a very large gap between that and his end. I have a feeling part of it probably had to do with the upcoming expansion, but I digress. My problem was I really liked this storyline! All throughout the game, the Dragon Aspects are hinted to or referred to in some shape or form, and it didn't really start picking up until the Lich King expansion when they began appearing ingame. Still though, their roles and true nature was never really talked about in any detail and you basically had to look up the game history to know who they are and how they came about. From a story perspective, they just weren't touched on enough for how this story eventually ended. Nozdormu didn't even get a unique model until the 4.3 patch! With Deathwing's re-emergence into the world, I think a lot of us players (especially us veterans) expected to see and experience a lot more of the Dragon Aspects before Deathwing was finally brought down. Needless to say, I think we really got the short end of the stick. And it seems a lot of players feel that way too.

But in a way, I can kind of understand how something like this could happen. Writing a story for an MMO really appears and is probably similar to a long, unending first draft. And you seldom get it right on the first go. Trying to create interesting storylines in a confining format like an MMO is probably even more of a challenge than a novel or short story. You can't go back and change lore unless you get super creative. In a way, I can kind of let the bad setup slide. Stories often take time and planning, and really how many times have you sat down to write a story and find things change along the way? New ideas, characters, and settings, ideas shift and change. And that's with a tale that has an ENDING! Unless the writers at Blizz and every other MMO company are planning the entire lifetime of their games, it's very difficult to see where your game story is going to be a year, two years, etc. down the road. Sometimes it's not until you get to that pivotal moment in a story when you realize the role a character has to play. Sometimes old heros fade away, new ones take their place, sometimes the gods take a bigger or smaller role than anticipated. So really, as much as the end to Deathwing felt incredibly anti-climatic to the players who were looking forward to more Aspect fun, I don't think we can really 100% blame it all on the writers for the ending. The format makes it difficult, especially for lore that seemed to often be in progress as the overall game story developed. They would have had to have set that up LONG before Cata, and that probably wasn't realistic by any means. Still, I think they could have inched it out a bit more, maybe give us a bit of history somehow and fully define what their ancient powers were for and what role they were to play before taking it away from them.