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I don’t even need to write anything. The bunch of Escapist forum regulars have said all that I need to say:-

By SilverKyo:

This is a difference of what you’re looking for in games. Honestly you made my point for me in your first sentence when you said you play Zynga games five minutes at a time. It’s a matter of what you’re looking for in a game and what you can commit to it, which I’m in college so I understand, I don’t get to play as many games as I’d like to and my backlog of games I’d like to pick up is obscenely long. But the best way I could describe Zynga as not a good game would be to really look at that time commitment you described. And to be fair, I’ll compare it to another nice simple game, Solitaire (or Tetris, or some Popcap game, honestly it won’t make a large difference).

On the surface, the games look exactly the same. Simple, short, to the point, play whenever you have time to kill, but it’s the subtle differences that really make or break it. If you played Solitaire, you could play it for five minutes, ten minutes, a half hour, really however long you feel like, however much time you need to burn, however happy it makes you, etc. But with a game like Farmville, you can only play for five minutes. You harvest the crops, sow the land, and plant the new crops… that’s it, there is nothing else to do after that besides possibly stare at the screen and watch the percent to completion number climb (and if anyone seriously do that, they have some deeper psychological issues, and probably enjoy watching paint dry or grass grow). The game ends without the user being able to offer his desire on whether or not he’d like to continue playing, which is a terrible game design choice. But the way the game functions, and farmville being particularly clever in this field, is they require you to comeback to play again, or else you lose a sizable chunk of money and could royally screw yourself over if you don’t, which gives Zynga more numbers to add to their users and advertisements. It’s ingenious really, letting the player only play for five minutes and making them comeback. It helps gloss over the flaws of gameplay (or lack there of really) and creates recurring users, but it doesn’t really let you play the game because the game functions with a very little user input. You tell the game what to run and it runs it, but you don’t actively participate in the crop growing process or what have you. Another immense flaw out of Zynga’s favor for me is the repetition. In Solitaire, every single game will be new and random. Each game is the same in a very general sense, but no two games are ever the same when you play them… ever. Conversely, games like Farmville and the like are the exact same tasks every time. Plant the crops, cook the food, mug the innocent stranger, whatever it is, it never really changes. The crops, food, or illegal action you do may vary slightly, but the user’s experience never changes because it’s the same action of telling the game to do something and it does it. To be more specific, in Farmville it’s always harvest, sow, and replant; In Mafia Wars, it’s always do a mission until you run out of energy; In Cafe World, you cook the food and sell it. It might sound the same as Solitaire in the sense you’re just playing the game, but really it’s not, and don’t even try to suggest otherwise. The game tries to insert the randomness to excite you, like a random farm animal or plant that you find, but they don’t impact the overall experience that much. In the same sense that Zynga games don’t require alot of input from the player overall, they also don’t really require mental effort or thought in any sense. I’m not going to try to say Solitaire is complicated, but it usually requires some effort in trying to move cards around so you don’t run out of moves. I’d enjoy an example of one Zynga games that required some form of thought more complex then click, because there isn’t one.

That was just comparing Zynga to Solitaire, one of the most basic games in existance that is on EVERY computer, and it still doesn’t stack up really (objectively anyways). So trying to compare Zynga to games like Left 4 Dead, Portal, Half-Life, CounterStrike, etc. (I used all Valve examples for a reason) is almost laughable. I won’t stand here and say Zynga is terrible at what they do, but what they do isn’t good games. It’s simple time wasters that require the user to keep coming back to play, which then exposes them to the ads to make money. Then using incentives to get the user to spread the game virally to their friends is honestly pure genius, because it requires almost no work or investment on the company’s part, so they make almost pure profit on their marketing. Zynga are incredibly good at marketing and playing to their demographic, but to say their games are on the same level of the other 63 developers here is objectively wrong. Obviously people are subjective in their tastes of games and what they play, but taking a step back and comparing the games individually and objectively, Zynga really doesn’t stack up.

Thank you for saying the above. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I simply can’t thank you enough.

And this by TriggerHappy:

I think the reason so many regulars here are getting so fired up over this is because many of us have been playing games for most of our lives. We see them as more than mere escapist entertainment, just as an avid book reader finds books more than something to read on a slow day. we’ve spent countless hours, and sometimes dollars, honing our skills or perfecting our machines. we have played games from many developers and many ages, exploring different universes that have been artfully crafted with the utmost care. games that require more from us than a button click. This website is our “club” if you will, we come here to talk with others about these experiences because we know that they will appreciate them or at least have something constructive to say. We do not fight against zynga with such fervor because we are all elitists who don’t like anything based in a separate window or on a console. We fight because though we may also enjoy the experience zynga provides for maybe 15 minutes, it will never hold our attention or our imagination for longer than that. And for zynga to be winning against all odds, though it would seem that nearly all of us here are against them, to us seems as though zynga is buying the vote. I have personally played both mafia wars and farmville and I can assure you that I (like most everyone else here) find their quality, in comparison to the quality of games from the other developers in this competition, lackluster at best. I will admit that getting a game on facebook to have 80+ million users is rather impressive, but the people touting the number speak as though it’s the first time it has ever happened. Besides that, they also speak as if the games support in-game interactivity, as in an MMO however the only interactivity you see is though your wall on your profile page, not the actual game. Sure, every now and then you find a message at the top of your mafia wars page that says your friend has given you something but that’s as far as it goes. you never see any of the other players in the game, it is only you. As far as zynga goes, they push no envelopes and do nothing to really innovate while every other devs in the bracket have, at one time or another, done something that advanced the entire industry. Valve brought steam, the halflife series, and at least 3 different ideas that the industry had never seen before (and I’ll stop that rant short as it would, itself, make for a 5 page post). people keep saying that zynga is ushering in the era of social games but the truth is that they are already here, we call them MMORPGs, or MMOs for short. the most famous example is the offering of blizzard we know as world of warcraft which holds 64% of all MMO subscriptions (I’m not entirely sure how many people that is but I have a feeling that it is well over 80+ million). people say that zynga offers creativity but there are games out there that offer so much creativity that they allow you to create the games entire world (see little big planet).
Going back to my initial statements, we who frequent The Escapist see zynga as a developer that offers nothing new to the industry and fails to even come up to par with rest of the developers in the bracket. *deep breath* I realize that this rant probably won’t be seen by many of the people voting for zynga and that in a few hours it will be burried by about 12 pages of other post but I felt I needed to put in my two cents. if I offended anyone or made you uncomfortable, I apologize

And for this hilarious analogy by ObsessiveSketch:

It’s like a high school talent competition, but the break dancer, sword-swallower, and barbershop quartet all get beaten out by the local hot boy. Why? Because he carried the girl vote. Why? Because he’s HAWT. What does being hot have to do with talent? Exactly.

Ahahahahaahahahahahaha!!!!!

Another post that made me laugh:

Spinwhiz (the Mod with the banhammer):

The Hype

Welcome to the Field of Four (…). Who will come out on top, nobody knows but the thread furnace is already starting to heat up.

I’ve decided to move to a private URL for my blog, where it’s only visible to me (and perhaps… family?).  Most of my posts however will be there, thus I can vent all I want without worrying about suffering from backlash.

I’m still keeping this blog and this URL, as it makes no sense to close it for there could still be situations where I do want to share certain things with my tiny circle of friends (who probably might not be coming here again after reading this post – but anyway-).

Just to let those who are still coming here know.  That is all.  :)

I’ve got just so many things in mind to rant about – that I’m not sure if I have the determination to finish writing all of them down.  I’ll try and do this in an orderly fashion, but my thoughts are just all over the place now, so please bear with me.

Why Zynga shouldn’t even be in The Escapist’s 2010 March Mayhem

Why should Zynga be in?  No wait, they ARE in the list.  So the question should be, why are they even listed among the big game developers like Blizzard, Nintendo, Square-Enix, Rockstar, Bioware, etc?  This is just a company who create mainly Facebook FLASH games, for crying out loud.  And just because they kept posting links on their page, asking their FB players to go vote for them in the competition, they are winning every round.  And now, they are pitted against Square Enix, and they are winning Square Enix too!

For those who didn’t know Square Enix, Final Fantasy is created by them, dammit!

All the supercasual FB players simply followed the link, allowed The Escapist application to access their Facebook profile, and viola they are allowed to vote and they voted for Zynga when they don’t even know what the hell Square Enix is!  I’m not a fan of Square Enix, but even I’m starting (ok, I am currently) to get upset by this.  Sure, Blizzard posted a link on their walls, asking their fans to support them.  But that’s it – just one link, one post.  Zynga?  They post again and again on their wall whenever their competitor was edging them out in the polls.  Oh gawd.  As of now when I’m posting this, Zynga had edged out Square for more than 1,100 votes.  If you actually add up all the votes in other division matchups, you can clearly see that the main bunch of Escapists had united on one front and voted for Square (even though a lot of them admitted in the thread that they didn’t like SE at all) just to bump Zynga off.

But nooooo, the Facebook Farmville sheep just came along, click “vote”, then went back to their Farmville.  What can the serious gaming community do to stop this onslaught of supercasual FB-games-sheep?  Nothing.

It’s really very upsetting to see legendary developers like Square Enix losing out to the likes of Zynga.  Argh!

Blizzard Vs Nintendo

Sorry Nintendo, I know you created a lot of classics (Zelda, Mario, Pokemon, etc), but those were classics.  I don’t even need to give an explanation on what happened to their Wii, and how Nintendo lost half of their loyal, hardcore fanbase due to that.  Obviously, Blizzard’s the choice for me.  I sure as hell haven’t played any Nintendo games before, but then again, I wasn’t interested to do so.

Lots of people are arguing about this.  Childhood nostalgia versus the current company whose games are sucking their life and money out of them.  Childhood nostalgia is something that’s nice.  But hey, this is the 2010 March Mayhem.  It’s supposed to be who’s the better games developer currently, and not who had the most classic game ever.  Blizzard games have always been one of the top, when they decide to release one.  And the reason they are taking so long to release a particular game is because they want to make sure that the game they release is what they want to release.  These people are truly gamers, trying to make games that we, fellow gamers, will love.  People voted down Blizzard because the “last patch never went past the loading screen for WoW” and “Where’s my SC2 beta key?!” – I have this to say to you:  Too bad life sucks for you.

And then I see another one voting for Nintendo because “they’ve got better product support”.  Say… what?  Excuse me, how many consoles does Nintendo has?  And you can get them all by buying from the shelves.  The thing is, Nintendo consoles are all the same.  If something goes wrong, obviously it’s easy to fix.  Can’t fix?  Buy a new one or exchange your faulty unit for a new one.  It’s not that easy for a company like Blizzard who make PC games.  How many of us actually has a DIY PC?  How the hell can you expect the tech guys in Blizzard to know exactly what went wrong with your game when there’s no standard “configuration” for a PC?

If we are talking about WoW, sure a lot of people ran into problems during / after a patch day.  Hell, I’m writing this now instead of playing WoW is also because I couldn’t get into WoW due to some problems with my PC.  So?  At least I’m not whining that I can’t get in, or saying that Blizzard guys are not doing their job.  People complained that the forum tech guys did not come up with a solution.  Oh please, the forum tech guys are just PR people who have a little bit of tech knowledge here and there, and a list of model answers that they could provide for the paid subscribers, that’s all.  It’s the programmers that are working their asses off, trying to find out where the problems lie and to churn out a hotfix for the rest of us who couldn’t get into the game.  A thread that I post in the official WoW (EU) Tech Support forum got pushed to the second page in a  mere 15 minutes!  Imagine the forum guys trying to answer those threads one by one… I’d definitely be exhausted by the 20th thread.

For those who were so impatient and blasting the forum techies that they were slow and non-responsive, I have this to say to you:  You paying USD15 a month for the game doesn’t give you exclusive rights to have your problem solved.  Everyone paid the same amount of money, so let’s just wait for your turn yeah?  If you can’t wait… too bad.  You still can’t play the game.  Hur hur.

Okay technically this isn’t quite about Blizzard vs Nintendo, but at least I’ve got my rant on whiny Blizzard players out.

*Phew*

I was on the verge of commenting of the sad stage of the struggling little games industry here in Singapore, before I realised that I don’t have much steam to go on about it anymore.  I’ve said my piece in a certain forum, and unless YOU are my friend and YOU want to know all about it, I’ll keep my mouth shut on this topic on my blog.  If you really want to know, you can SMS / call / email / MSN me about it.

But really, if you are truly that interested, you should have just gone ahead with your passion and interest, and not linger around, trying to get opinions and reassuring yourself about your decision.  Only those with the passion for making games can succeed in this industry.  Those who actually asked me about “career progression in the local gaming industry” and “entry level pay” can just go take a dip in the swimming pool, because I’m NOT going to entertain you and your questions.  Obviously you are NOT that passionate about this industry, so don’t even bother to try coming in.  If you do, I can have a bet with you that you’ll leave the games industry in five to ten years time (assuming you can last that long), all disillusioned and looking for another career with a higher pay and better recognition elsewhere.

Yes!  Finally got these out from my system.  Feel so much better now… :D

By the way, I thought I’m always fond of pink.

I really did thought so.

But why is my Firefox persona of a blue shade and the general colour of my blog is blue too?

It’s been a while, isn’t it?

Even though I’ve lost my urge to blog, I figured that since I’m still paying for this domain, I may as well make use of it.  And since I don’t have anything else better to do with a website, I guess I shall continue to blog every once in a while.

Nothing’s really happening lately, except for the fact that my PC is randomly crashing and rebooting.  I’m seeing BSODs pretty often recently too.  Maybe the motherboard is dying; maybe some odd hardware somewhere is causing the random crashes.  Maybe, maybe.  I don’t really intend to troubleshoot, so I don’t really care.  I just make sure I’ll try and get into World of Warcraft, get my Frost emblems and all the dailies done, and get out before it starts its random-crashing process.  :P

I’m also about to make a fairly big decision – something that I have been putting aside for seven years, and even now when I’m thinking about it, I’m still hesitating to make the decision.  Those who saw my status in Facebook would remember about this.  Those who had taken the initiative to PM me and ask me what it’s all about – thank you for your concern.  :)  It’s nice to know that there are people who still care about what I’m thinking of and what I want to do.  :D  You know who you are, so thank you, my dears.  ^_^

(Yes, it’s pretty obvious that I’m not going to talk about it publicly until the decision is made, simply because I don’t want people – whom I don’t wish to see – going for the same thing as I am.  We’ll talk about this some time later when the time comes.)

I’m also thinking of getting a new laptop to replace this randomly-crashing desktop.  Something that is good enough to play my World of Warcraft smoothly in random heroics, and yet portable enough.  As you’d have known by now, not all laptops are really that “portable”.  For example, I won’t say that 5kg Asus gaming laptop that Reko has is exactly “portable”.  It’s just like lugging a sack of rice around.  I certainly don’t want to carry that to work everyday.  (Oh yes, I may just have the intention to log on to WoW and do some dailies during lunch time, LOL.)  Anything less than 3.5kg would be acceptable.  And of course, the main problem is my budget.  I have limited budget this time round – only S$2,000.  Or slightly more than that, but well, S$2k is what I’m comfortable with, for now.  Other specs will include at least an i5 processor, a discrete 1gb graphics card (obviously) – preferably nVidia , 13″~15″ screen, 4gb RAM, and 500gb memory.

Shinji suggested Dell Studio XPS 16, but after reading through comments and reviews, I have to say there might be a heat issue.  Asus laptops also have heat problems.  Sony Vaios are way overpriced.  Alienware is way overpriced too.  Sager is out of my budget.  Acer laptops are useless and break down pretty fast.  MSI laptops… Maybe.  But I haven’t seen enough information regarding those to make any kind of decision.

Sigh.  I’m gonna be so broke for the rest of the year…

And I was wondering… should I update, or should I not?  After all, I don’t have the intention to do an update… so I’m writing this post with nothing concrete in my mind.  I’m just wasting my time away here simply because I can’t sleep.

Well, for those of you who are waiting for an update on the Christmas/New Year Finland trip, you can stop waiting… because there is none.  XD  There’ll be no update, because I’m lazy to write them all down.  I’m still amazed at how I was able to come up with – and finished – a mini journal detailing my first trip to Finland.  I don’t think I can ever get that kind of enthusiasm again, unless I go to a new country and actually have the time to blog/update about it after the trip.  Usually I have to mentally prepare myself for work the next day after touching down, and thus I will have no mood for blogging…

Chinese New Year’s coming, so I went for my annual hair-rebonding session at Kimage.  Jason is such a great hairstylist, that I don’t think I’ll ever think of changing one.  I’m more than comfortable with him handling my hair, and he always know what I want or do not want when it comes to hairstyle.  He knows what I dare to try and what I dare not.  XD  So yeah, my hair is now uber straight (and a tad too short, some of my colleagues said), and I’m happy with it.  :)

Work-wise… not gonna comment too much.  Who knows who’s reading this now…?

Family-wise… At the moment, I’m refusing to speak with my dad.  He’s been borrowing too much from me, simply because he spent all his salary gambling.  Then at the end of every month, he would borrow money from me, saying that he didn’t have enough for the rest of the month, and he would pay me back after he get his salary.  I don’t mind lending him if he overspent every now and then, but everytime after he got his salary, he would just go gamble and won’t be home at midnight even though he would be working morning shift (a.k.a. have to wake up at 3am to get to the bus depot) the next day.  Again and again, my mom and I would called him and nagged him to come home.  Again and again, he would lie to us and said he’s “on his way”, “on the bus”, “drinking coffee with friends in coffeeshop”, but hey, the background is just too goddamn quiet and echo-ey for him to be “on his way” or “in the coffeeshop”.  The last straw came, when he asked his friend to lie to me as well when I asked to speak to his friend whom he claimed to be “drinking coffee” with at a coffeeshop.  I’m no longer the 3-year old kid whom believed everything he said.  I can detect a lie when there’s one.  Just because I gave him the benefit of the doubt previously doesn’t mean I would continue to do it, especially now that he went overboard, by asking his friend to lie to me as well.

To that uncle who lied to me, thinking that I’m easy to kid, FUCK YOU.  Be glad I didn’t make my way down to the depot the next day to make a ruckus out of the whole incident.

I need to stop being so easily agitated.  -_-  Otherwise my blood pressure’s gonna rocket sky-high again.

Okay – some nice thoughts.  Reko and I just celebrated my 5th year anniversary last Friday, 22 Jan 2010.  How he managed to stick with me for five years, I do not know.  How did he get his superhuman patience when it comes to me… I do not know.  But I do know that I’m thankful for him, for what he always does for me, for him being there and not walking away at times when others would have… and I love him.  =)  I know he had made a lot of sacrifices for me, for my sake… and though it’s not often that I said it to him, I really do appreciate it.  And more often than not, I find myself forcing him to do things that he didn’t want to do (but still did, for my sake), and he would never force me to do what I don’t wanna do.  Argh, how did this kind of man come about >_<??

This Valentines’ Day… I don’t even know what to buy for him anymore.  LOL.  Sometimes I feel that we were kinda like old married couples already…

Bah, does insomnia get worse the longer you stay up?  Or will you eventually get tired and go sleep after awhile?  I’m still wide awake… the wheel in my mind is still whirring… my eyes are not closing at all… Sigh.  I don’t usually (or should I say – never) get insomnia (unless self-induced), so I can say this is the first time.  The first time I can’t sleep, and I don’t know the reason.  I don’t have anything on my mind… I don’t feel sad or happy or hungry or bloated… I didn’t had a lot of coffee… – just one Grande Starbucks Cafe Latte in the afternoon.  I’m just not tired.  Not sleepy.  Ugh…

Guess I’ll switch off the PC and lie on the bed… to try and count sheep or cows or something… Don’t think it’ll help but… yeah.

Yes, after a two-week-long vacation, I’m now back in Singapore.

And it’s a 40 degree Celsius transition too.  I almost forgot how sweltering hot our weather can be.

I don’t think I’ll do any kind of mini-site for my White Christmas + New Year 2010 mini fireworks celebration thingy, so I guess you don’t need to look forward to it.  All I’m gonna do is perhaps to just post them photos on my Flickr account with some captions, that’s all.  I don’t even feel like writing a decent blog entry about it anymore because that’s a full 2-weeks of events to write >_>;  I’m getting old and impatient, yes.  XD

I’m uploading some photos from my iPhone (which are all horribly, unbelievably grainy), and still waiting for most of the nice scenary shots from Reko’s DSLR.  When all the photos are done and arranged chronologically (if I actually bother to arrange them), I’ll post up the link here.  :D

Just as the title says:- Happy New Year all!

May year 2010 brings you new friends, new opportunities, new hope, etc etc. :)

Ho hum.

*Cough* So, here I am, trying to make a decent, long post.

What should I start with? Hmm…

iPhone – My best purchase in Year 2009

Okay, let’s start with my iPhone. It’s not a new purchase anymore, as I have it for almost two months. I’m still loving it, despite bad photos under poor lightings, as well as the disturbingly short battery life. The display is bright and colourful; the features are user-friendly; the App Store is filled with free (and paid) goodies; and I get free iPhone to iPhone messaging, thanks for the various apps out there. I’m also slowly getting used to the touch-keyboard. I still could not walk and SMS at the same time without looking at the phone, though.

Checking on Facebook and Twitter, as well as my emails have never been easier. Just a tap on the screen, and everything is loaded. Now I just need that IM+ application (which will cost me EUR7.99 T_T), and I’ll be connected to all networks (including emails) via Apple’s Push Notifications.

At the same time, my phone functions as a great MP3 player that plays songs with album cover as well as lyrics. I’ve yet to get my hands on that Sennheiser earphones with mic, but Apple’s bundled earphones are doing great on its own. So I guess I’ll save my money on that till the next PC fair… XD

Birthday Cruise – 11/11/2009~13/11/2009

Yeah, and so that was my birthday present this year – a 3D/2N StarCruise trip to Malacca/Port Klang.  He was initially mulling to take the junior suite, but honestly the price was totally not worth it.  In the end, we settled on a cabin with balcony.  (No pictures, because I’m really too lazy to upload =x)  We didn’t go for any shore excursions, and we stayed on the cruise for the whole trip.  Food was okay, service was pretty good, bed was comfy, TV programmes were bad (despite it being cable TV)…  and really, there’s nothing to do on the ship.  We finished walking the entertainment decks even before the ship left the harbour.  -_-;  It was essentially just a rest-and-relax trip.

That’s a good thing because I was already half-sick before the trip, and hence I was still sick while on the ship.  I just slept early, woke up, had breakfast, then went back to cabin to sleep/rest, woke up for lunch, went back to cabin to sleep, then woke up for dinner, walked around the open deck and went back to cabin to rest.  XD  The balcony that we had to ourselves was a nice feature.  Just standing by the balcony, feeling the wind, mist and rain hitting your face (yes, it was raining in the middle of the sea) was such an exhilarating experience.  And of course, having your boyfriend standing behind you and wrapping his arms around you was a bonus.  :P

Oh, and I did received a birthday cake and a birthday card from the crew on my birthday itself.  :D  It was a chocolate cake, albeit not very fresh, but still, it was a nice gesture from them.  :)

After this cruise, I’d say… no more cruise to neighbouring countries.  The next time I’ll go on a cruise would be an Alaskan cruise or cruise to see the ice fjords or something.

Upcoming Christmas Trip

Ohhhhhh, this is making me excited.  XD  And damn it, I haven’t pack anything yet!! >_<!

I’ll be flying to Finland (yes, again!) on 19th this month to spend my first real white Christmas!  The moment we touch down, most likely we’ll start to do some shopping for food that Reko and his mom will be preparing for the Christmas eve feast.  I love shopping in their supermarkets, because the stuff they have there is so different from our supermarkets here!  Although I can’t help them in preparing the food, I’ll try and see if I’m able to take any photos during their cooking process… mwahahhaa.  Oh yeah, don’t expect to see Turkey on the table… As far as I know, they get ham for Christmas, not turkey… @_@

And and, we’ll be shopping for a real Christmas tree too!  For the first time, I’ll get to put Christmas decorations on a real Christmas tree!  :D  And full of presents at the bottom of it too!  Can’t wait to pass the presents and opening them in front of their fireplace… :D :D :D

After Christmas, we’ll then be heading towards Rovaniemi, Lapland to visit Santa! I’m still deciding whether to queue and take a picture with him or not… because I think a polaroid with him costs EUR25.00 and you can’t take photos with your own camera.  >_>  Oh well… we’ll see how bad the crowd and the queue would be then… No Christmas cards sent from Santa Claus’ post office for you guys, sorry!  Because it’ll probably be Chinese New Year by the time you receive them… XD

I’ll be spending the New Year there too, and will only be on the plane back to Singapore on New Year Day itself.  After this trip, I don’t think I’ll be going Finland anytime soon again though… I’ve been there during early Spring, Summer, and Winter (this time)… the only season I’m missing is Autumn.  But since the right time to go during Autumn is hard to predict…. hmm… we’ll see how it goes.  >_<

Ah, the updates on my normal life ends here.  Below would be stuff regarding World of Warcraft.  So if you are not interested, you can stop here and continue with what you are doing before you came here… XD

My World of Warcraft Updates — Don’t Read If You Ain’t Interested

I have no life.  LOL.  I admit it!  Every morning I wake up, I’ll go work.  After work, I’ll go gym on alternate days, and then I’ll be home to play WoW.  Honestly… I have no idea why I’m grinding money in the game.  I will log in my two level 80 characters, do the easy daily quests, and get some gold.  Then I’ll log on to my low-level shaman to play in some battlegrounds, leeching some XP from Alterac Valley.  Last weekend, Reko and I actually started new characters again.  /facepalm

I had this sudden urge to play a mage again.  I had one before… and I deleted her after she got to around level 30-ish, because I think she was too weak.  But after so many patches and all the classes had went through so many changes, I’m starting to like mages again, since they are not as weak nowadays in PvP.  And so, I started a mage (Blood Elf mage, naturally), and Reko started a priest to level with me.  WoW nowadays is like a noob game, if you know what you are doing.  It’s so easy to level at the beginning now.  Mana regeneration is fast for spell castors, and if you are equipped with a wand, you can kill mobs before they even reach you.  Easy-mode, I say.

Of course, the end game content is still not easy, especially for me and Reko who couldn’t join normal raiding guilds to gear up our main characters.  It was so disheartening to see people calling out for groups in Dalaran, saying “LFM ToTC, link achv.  Gear check @ Dalaran Fountain!”  (It means Looking For Members, link achievement to show that you have went through the dungeon before, and there is a gear check on you to make sure that you have the right gear for the raid.)  I mean, players without a raiding gear would need to start from somewhere, but where can they start if everyone who’s organising raids demands experienced and geared players?  Zzzzzz…

And thus, Blizzard just came up with this patch that they hope would solve this problem.  It’s a dungeon finder, and basically you just need to “queue” up to join a random raid group.  Of course, if they are not happy with one player, they can vote-kick him/her, but it’d require the whole group to agree to kick.  In order to make people use this new feature, Blizzard threw in lots of incentives – giving emblems and achievements for frequent usage of this new dungeon finder feature.  I nearly tried to queue for my hunter just now using this feature, but at the end I still gave up and didn’t try it, because I was afraid I’m too inexperienced and would drag the group down or something…

If one day I’m living in Europe for one reason or another, I’ll make sure Reko and I would go join a raiding guild, just to see what I’ve been missing out on… >_>  I miss the sense of cohesiveness within guild mates… but I don’t miss the emo-drama that always seem to plague all online communities.. -_-;