Goodbye, Farewell and Amen

// Filed under: Life on Wednesday January 07th 2009, 11:35 pm

Perhaps it is fitting that I leave you on the 60th post of this blog. Perhaps it is not fitting, or perhaps it is mere coincidence, you cry, but I am not listening. I board the train, tears streaming down my handsome and rugged face like rain off the granite mountain slopes. ‘I loved you’ I mouth silently through the window as I pull away, but you are gone, blinded by inconsolable rage, the baseball bat gripped tightly in your white-knuckled hand.

In any case, I am not gone forever. I have simply moved – sideways perhaps, or diagonally. Electronically speaking I have not moved at all, but I digress – most importantly of all, I have moved in. In with my beautiful girlfriend, that is. Yes – it’s a coupleblog. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, after all. I will leave this blog active as an archive of Things What I Have Said and also of Things You Lot Said In Response, but I fear it will no longer be updated. If you want to see what I’m up to now, steer your internet-machine towards http://www.notsounwashed.com. You won’t regret it.

They say “always end on a song”. But instead, I’m going to leave you with a series of previously unpublished drafts that never made it past the care threshold enough to be finished. It’s not exactly the same thing, but I didn’t think you’d notice, so I went with it. I present them to you verbatim and unedited, in chronological order, everything that this blog might have been. Enjoy.

Meme’d:

So I got tagged – tagged, for my very first ever blog meme. However it was too boring, so I’ve decided to make it more interesting in an attempt to assuage my guilt at capitulating to the wonder of peer pressure.

Four jobs I have had
Four movies I can watch over and over
Four TV shows I love to watch
Four places I have lived
Four places I have vacationed
Four places I would rather be right now
Four of my favorite dishes
Four Web sites I visit daily
Four bloggers I am tagging

Terra Nullius, Redux:

And we’re back! In Australia, that is. A long time ago, actually. But, well, you know how it is. Jet lag here, heat-stroke there, Jess everywhere, it gets a bit hectic.

England.

Glorious, glorious England. I had a fantastic time. Though, as I’ve said to a few people, one of the main reasons I enjoyed it was seeing precisely how much better we have it over here. Train tickets, bus fares, road width… Simon’s stolen a lot of my thunder, but I’m going to bleat on some more about the flavoured milk malarkey later, because goddammit, that’s my story, you little bitch.

Where was I.

Oh yes. So, we rolled into England by way of Dubai International Airport. For those of you who have never been to Dubai International Airport, let me describe it for you. It’s a six kilometre-long mausoleum. It goes in a straight line from one end to the other. Housed in it are vast expanses of sleeping, dead, comatose or otherwise waiting people, broken up only by 24-hour shops that charge you AUD $18 for a muffin and coffee, and those ridiculously awesome flat-moving-walkway things, that Simon and I took great delight in scooting along.

Coming from Perth Airport, which services a total of three planes, two of which are bi-planes and the other one a wingless, rusting Boeing 747 which nobody has the heart to tow away, we were quite overwhelmed with the sheer scale of it all. You could walk from our house to our airport in the time it took to stroll from one end of this bastard to the other. This was of course compounded later when, as we were bus’d out onto the runway to the plane, we could see another shed-cum-airport under construction, at only three times the size of the one we were just in.

Some hours later, we pulled into Birmingham airport, in the beautifully green England. Our parents were, in typical fashion, late. We passed the time by staring in perverse wonder at the English orange-flavoured Fanta which is, in a terrible break with common sense and tradition, actually yellow. And smaller. Seriously – the Australian soft drink bottle is 600 mL, whereas its English counterpart is a mere 500 mL. And the Australian soft drink can weighs in a hefty 375 mL, compared to the paltry English 330 mL. If that’s not cause to become a republic, I don’t know what is.

At any rate, we were soon on the motorway up to Worcestershire to see Gran. Dad of course got lost – which is easy to do in English farm country, because somebody had the bright idea to grow six metre tall hedges along each side of every road. Even if you wanted to see where you were going, it’s an almost complete impossibility. Assuming you don’t get front-ended by another car coming around the hairpin country bends on what is, essentially, a one-lane road, there’s no way you can see any of the sights as you drive through the countryside – assuming your idea of “sights” doesn’t include hedges, that is.

Eventually we got to Gran’s, and spent a few days there. Our beautiful childhood memories of orchards galore had long since been shattered by bulldozers to make way for asparagus fields. Fields and fields of the stuff, and what they didn’t eat, they piled up as mulch around their trees. It was great to be on the farm again, though – freshly picked strawberries, clotted-cream ice-cream, potato chips so deep-fried I could see through them. It was magical.

After we’d adjusted to the time difference, which was difficult given it stays light until eleven fucking p.m. you bastards, we eventually made our way down to Hathersage, which is about eight miles out of Sheffield. We spent four nights there, three in a neat little youth hostel, and the last one in the local pub which, though more expensive, actually had a working shower – and a working television, which allowed us to fully experience the horror of English Big Brother.

Seriously, what the fuck, you guys.

We were fortunate to be right next to a train station, so we ended up seeing Sheffield entirely more than we’d like – especially since trains only run every two hours back to Hathersage on Sundays (despite departing down that, actual, train track-line every fifteen minutes – they just didn’t stop at Hathersage, go figure). We also found our way to Warhammer World to meet up with some of the ever-lovin’ Golden Throne crew, and had a fantastic time.

After that, we bus’d our way down to the wonderful city of London – we were going to catch trains, you see, but, well – they wanted forty-seven pounds for the privilege of letting us sit on their poorly maintained, cramped trains for six or so hours, and frankly, I’d like my first mortgage to actually be on a house. Anyway, soon enough we were soon deposited in the raining Victoria Station, where we confusedly made our way to the Underground, and then to our youth hostel.

This youth hostel was an interesting experience. Our youth hostel back in Hathersage could have been generously described as “a cottage”. Because that’s… pretty much exactly what it was. But this.. this London-based monstrosity. It had security doors. And five floors. And elevators. Over half the people there were school-children. Another quarter were seniors, disabled person’s groups, travelling families or half-crazed English people looking for somewhere cheap to lodge. This place was a goddamn enterprise.

Our lodgings reflected this business approach. Three beds, stacked on top of each other in the corner of the room, such that your feet are lying underneath or on top of someone elses like some fruity human Jenga game. We were bunked down with a silent, bitter, ascetic English man who introduced himself (finally, on the third day we were together) as “Hi, sorry I don’t talk much, I’m a miserable bastard”, a German exchange student who was studying dentistry at a local university, and Orbie, a charming if boring man from The North, who enjoyed telling everyone about himself and then interspersing it with small gaps of breathing.

London is an interesting place, and fortunately I had help seeing most of it with the aid of the magnificent Ross Lewis, who not only took Simon and I around but actually presented us with a bag of English goodies to snack on and marvel at. Many photos were taken, and will be made available in a coherent form in short order, be assured.

With London wrapped up, we were off back up to Worcestershire for the 90th – finally introduced to our cousins whom we haven’t seen since the 80th in 1996. Understandably, they’ve grown up somewhat in the ten years since then and proved most excellent companions – Frankie and Giles, our drunken English cousins, and Chelsea and Emily, our self-proclaimed indie-music loving Canadian cousins. Together we formed the well-rounded waitering team for our Gran’s 90th, held in the Little Whitley Village Hall.

Of course as luck would have it, it was a Britishly-hot day (which basically means there’s more humidity than

No Subject:

Have you ever noticed that nearly half the Mortal Kombat characters were created simply by changing the colour of the costume of an existing character? No? Well, there you go.

Man, blogging! Who does that these days? It’s so passe. Anyway.

So who else worked today? Nobody? Nice. I did, of course. The prestigious Murdoch University is so prestigious that it doesn’t actually recognise the Foundation Day public holiday. Take that, our forefathers! We spit on your pathetic riverside colonies of 1829. Everyone else is out there respecting the place up with their lackadaisical slackness, and I am forced to fist the past by slaving away in an air-conditioned office in a comfortable chair. What is the deal with that.

Speaking of untidy segues, can I speak for a minute about how much I hate the advertising slogan “More than just…”. What is it about this slogan that makes the most absolutely mundane, one-purpose stores decide it’ll be great to inform the world that they do “more than just one vague product”? Let’s take an actual example here, from the radio.

“Find your shopping and entertainment at Southlands Boulevarde! More than just shopping!”

Having been to Southlands Boulevarde, I can clarify for you that when they claim to have “more” than just shopping, they can only be referring to the fact that they also offer the convenient service of parking as well.

Oh hey, I said I’d talk about this ages ago, but I never did. So here it is.

Basically, the street in which we live is going to be re-zoned from its current status as semi-rural to its new status of light industrial, meaning that – in a nutshell – our entire street will be demolished to make room for the expansion of the neighbouring suburb’s industrial area. This is all part of The City of Gosnells‘ plan to cope with the expected population increase in our area across the next 20 years, and by and large this is a good thing.

Other people can expect to be rezoned to a higher housing density, subdivide their property, sell it, make a tidy profit off it all and basically retire on the winnings. We however, along with everyone along our street, can basically expect to get shafted. Shafted that is, to the tune of compulsory government accquisition of property at negligible market prices. I mean, we’ll pick up more for it than that which we paid originally, to be sure. But that’s to be expected when you buy property twenty years ago, and that property is basically a graveyard for scrap metal.

Twenty years. That’s how long we’ve owned this place, and how much work has been put into building and shaping it from a giant shitheap into a sprawling, beautiful garden home. All for basically nothing. Just enough time to raise two children, who then get to stand by and watch their childhood home vanish under the inexorable advance of industrial expansion and ridiculously soaring house prices.

It’s not all bad news, though. The back half of our property is designated as part of a wetland, which means it must be protected under Federal law. And under that same law, a buffer zone of 200 metres must be established around all protected wetlands, which would encompass most of our property. So the tricky question is, would we be allowed to live in this buffer zone?

Let’s talk about the new craze sweeping the tubes. Lolthings. Lolcats. Lolpresidents. Loltapirs. Lolcode.

Elekshunz:

Why shouldn’t you vote for John Howard?

Non
Core
Promise

Turn, and face the strain:

Ch-ch-ch chaaaanges….

Well, fuck. I honestly don’t know where to begin. Two-double-oh-seven has been an incredible year, and never more so than in the last two months. I guess it sounds a bit simplistic, but I’m happy. I’m really, genuinely happy for the first time in a long time.

Take My Cash (Please):

The Western Australian rental housing market is exciting and rewarding.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s imagine you’ve

Medical Over-Achievement:

I can’t tell you how thrilling it is.

I can’t begin to tell you how good it feels to blast into the BLU spawn area as an ubercharged Pyro, a faithful medic at your back, your flamethrower spitting burning death at your enemies. The quick ones disappear back through the door to their supply cabinets to salve their burning flesh, but some kind of spiteful, irresistible curiosity draws them back out again into your lethal embrace. Then the dance begins – to the supply cabinet, then back to the door, then back to the supply cabinet again. Has he gone? Has the ubercharge run out?

This all lasts for only ten seconds, of course. But ten seconds feels like an eternity, the crackle of the ubercharge mixing with the whoosh of ignited gas

But I didn’t used to play the Pyro. And I would never have known this

By their very nature, Achievements are designed to be arbitrary. A goal that is purely coincidental, running parallel to the main game. Players should be able to look back at their Achievement List and smile, remembering fondly the first time they burst into a room, flamethrower at the ready, and ignited five helpless enemies at once.

It’s been good, people. Stay with me – we’re not done yet.

// 1 Comment

More Hard-Hitting Current Affairs

// Filed under: IZ,Life,Verbiage on Tuesday July 15th 2008, 3:52 pm

So, Interzone had a formal day the other day. Many photos were taken, not least of them this one, of the Interzone GUI Team:

As this image was passed around the office, it was remarked that it looked remarkably like a cast-shot from a hardcore Australian legal drama. “GUI Legal!” Ellen shrieked, demanding that character roles be written immediately. “Legal drama! Hah!” I snorted, raising my fingers to the keyboard. “More like a low-budget inner-city cop show. More like…”

Interzone City. It’s a tough place. Hell, it’s a shit-hole. And to police a tough place, you need the toughest. You need the roughest. You need GUI Metro.

Detective Darren “Motherfucker” Yeow: Trained from an early age in the ways of drinking, smoking, and drinking while smoking, Darren worked his quickly through the ranks. His unprecedented combination of bribery and violence became the first of many multitasking skills that would later turn him into one of Interzone City’s finest. When the chips are down, Darren shoots first, shoots some more and never stops to ask any motherfucking questions because if anybody in this stinkhole of a city knows where the bodies are kept it’s him, and that’s probably because he left them there. Darren’s noble heart hangs heavy with justice, and even heavier with cigarette tar.

Constable Tone “Rookie” Prior: Fresh-faced recruit from the Academy, Tone showed up on the doorstep with a bag full of optimism and a bullneck that resisted even the best efforts of a enraged “Choker” Hawkins. His sunny disposition has crowbarred open the corpse-piled windows of the GUI Metro offices, with his Fresh Fruit Fridays and Tuesday Book Clubs earning him drunken abuse, if not outright approval. On the job Tone is alert and inquisitive, always ready to hand out a pamphlet or offer advice on removing a stubborn bloodstain.

Senior-Sergeant Andy “Choker” Hawkins: Nobody knows how long the hard-bitten Hawkins has been slugging it out in the trenches of Interzone City, but everyone in GUI Metro knows that when the shit hits the fan, they can always rely on Andy to choke until he can’t choke no more. When he’s not on duty, Andy stalks the dirty city streets, chewing on handfuls of bullets and muttering quietly to himself until the dawn breaks through the smog, glinting off of his bristling stubble. Then it’s time to head back to the office, rip a half-empty whisky bottle out of Darren’s slumbering grasp and count the minutes until he can once more clamp his iron grip around the soft, pasty-white neck of crime.

Constable Richard “Grinner” Kong: Quick with a smile and even quicker with a switchblade, Grinner hides his mysterious past behind an unflappable set of perfectly polished teeth. Supposedly expelled from the Academy, he was saved at the last minute by Darren “Motherfucker” Yeow, who took him under his cigarette-stained wing and made him his constant, smiling shadow. Nobody knows what possessed Darren to put his neck out, and Richard isn’t talking – except with his knife.

Doctor Cameron “Cameron” Royal: The youngest graduate in history from the Bonesaw Institute of Medical Adequacy, “Cameron” is a reclusive genius who claims the morgue as his own. Able to dissect a frog at fifty paces, Cameron’s medical discoveries have saved the detectives at GUI Metro hours of painful criminal beatings, and saved a comatose Darren from alcohol poisoning on more than one occasion. Rumour has it he sleeps in a body bag, though the last person to try to check on a slumbering Cameron quickly found themselves on the receiving end of experimental neck-reduction surgery. If Cameron isn’t at work – he’s probably dead.

Lieutenant Benjamin “Kneecaps” Hammersley: With his no-nonsense haircut and quiet economy of movement, you’d often be forgiven for thinking “Kneecaps” Hammersley was more interested in sipping his bubble tea than ramming a screwdriver clean through the soft knee cartilage of crime. There are lines that even the hard-drinking men and women at GUI Metro can’t bring themselves to cross. But sometimes, crime needs to pay. Sometimes, crime needs to learn a lesson. Sometimes, crime needs to be crippled and paralysed, lying whimpering in an alleyway as it is brutally beaten with a tyre iron, and then fed alive to squealing bloodthirsty pigs. And when that time is now, Benjamin is the man you turn to.

GUI Metro. Tough cops for a tough town.

9:30 Thursdays.

// 5 Comments

Let Sleeping Blogs Lie

// Filed under: Random on Friday February 01st 2008, 9:24 pm

Complacency steals over me, a soft blanket made entirely of the dust of good intentions. I sleep under its warming cover, happy in my filth, and enjoying the quiet satisfaction of my own fulfillment. And why shouldn’t I? As I move in with a beautiful woman, as I work hard at my new job – what would I have to talk about? What would I even say? I smack my lips unconsciously and roll over, for my sleep is long and deep and happy. There’s nothing to vent about anymore – no ire to bestow, no bellyfire to awaken the fingers and entangle the keyboard.

And yet – something stirs.

Someone approaches. Someone… someone calls.

Subject: CAD
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:29:23 -0800 (PST)
From: Ian Moldovan [vampdow@yahoo.com]
To: Tim Colwill [tim@timtekindustries.com]

I just stumbled upon a page of yours where you talk about Tim Buckley’s Ctrl-Alt-Del and calling it sexist and insulting. I just want to say that you could not be more wrong. If you actually knew what Lucas was thinking at that time, then you would understand why he was saying the things he was saying. And I agree with many of the things he said there, and I am a complete and utter feminist. So please, in the future, do a little research and get a brain before doing this sort of thing.

Twitch.

Twitch.

Subject: RE: CAD
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:25:52 +0900
From: Tim Colwill [tim@timtekindustries.com]
To: Ian Moldovan [vampdow@yahoo.com]

Dear Ian,

Thank you for your prompt response to my comic posted on the internet ten months ago. I am writing to you today to humbly beg your personal forgiveness.

When I placed that comic onto the internet, I was not aware that you were in close direct and personal contact with the fictional character of Lucas Davidowicz. I had no way of knowing that somewhere out there was a person who actually knew what Mr. Davidowicz was thinking better than I did. I deeply and sincerely apologise for misinterpreting Mr. Davidowicz’s actions and motivations. I hope that in the future I will not be so arrogant as to presume that I am able to comprehend the thoughts of a fictional character on a deeper level than another reader.

I know now that because my opinion and interpretation is different from yours, that I must have been wrong. I accept that, and I have taken it to heart. I would count it as a personal favour if you would continue to email me with your turgid and ill-thought out opinions, that I may take them on board and call them my own. It would be a huge honour to receive this level of moral guidance from you, sir.

It is my deepest hope and wish that in the future I will be able to understand gender issues and relationships on the deep and complex level that you clearly do. Your agreement and support of an idea is the most important thing to me, and I promise to you now that I will spend the rest of my days in ceaseless pursuit of your approval. It is clear to me that because you agree with something, it must be right, and any thoughts to the contrary are deviant and inexcusable. I accept this, and I hope that with your help I can work to become a better person, and a better feminist.

I also promise to you now that I will endeavour to research issues more thoroughly before commenting on them. My comic, which expressed my thoughts in detail and with illustrated examples, was clearly a knee-jerk reaction. I accept that the fact that I have been closely following CAD for several years means nothing to you, and I am working to change that. In the future I will prepare several chapters worth of background material and submit it to you in triplicate with a standard lead time of fourteen (14) working days for your vetting.

I hope that you will forgive me, and work with me in the future to help me improve. Perhaps with time, I too can reach the staggering levels of ignorance, arrogance and terrifying naiveté that you display.

Your fan,
Tim Colwill

Oh, internet.

Ohhhhhhh, internet.

I am risen.

// 5 Comments

A Review Four Years Too Late

// Filed under: Video Games on Friday October 05th 2007, 9:16 pm

A month or so ago, I had a series of interviews with Interzone Games for the position of World Designer. I didn’t get the job, unfortunately – but during the course of the interviews, I was asked to write up my thoughts on the early game experiences of some MMO’s that I had played. Only really having any substantial experience in City of Villains, and having played enough (read: ten minutes) of Ultima Online to establish that doing something so crazy as walking outside of town was a medically bad idea, I figured I may as well get the fuck over myself and sink my teeth into a trial edition of World of Warcraft. So I teamed up with the beautiful and delightful Jess, to explore the lands of Kalimdor and/or Lordaeron for the princely number of 14 days. And here is the result.

World of Warcraft is a ridiculously well-crafted game, and this much is evident right off the bat. The opening cinematic for each class is so over-the-top and clichéd that it made me choke on my tea – but I must say that I absolutely love the fact that they did it in real-time, in-engine flythroughs. I’m not usually a big fan of game introduction movies taking place in-engine, but since they already took the time to blow us away with the initial CG movie I’ll allow it. Even if that CG movie was ridiculously heavy on the hated, hated Night Elves.

I took instantly to the fantastically intuitive question and exclamation mark system. Even if you haven’t played Diablo II, which is basically where it’s lifted from, it’s a pretty universal understanding of attention and makes it very easy to see who you need to be talking to. I also really like that silver marks appear over the heads of people who have a quest for you that you’re not capable of doing yet – it’s a bit hand-holding to be sure, but that’s just what newbies need at this early game.

What is particularly annoying however is the slowly scrolling quest-text that the NPC’s dump on you – I’m a particularly fast reader in any case, but it was just agonising waiting to see what I was actually required to do. Once my friend told me about the option to turn the scrolling off, I set that straight away. I was very surprised I couldn’t just click the text to bypass the scrolling in any case, even without changing the options – it’s the logical thing to do when presenting players with a lot of unfolding information.

I also love being able to see clearly what rewards a quest offers. That’s very neat, especially being able to see when a quest’s reward is clearly not worth your time. The clear expectation and reward system is very friendly but the geographical directions could use a bit of work. There were more than a few occasions where the unclear directions and incredible sameness of the tileset confused me – and when your character is wandering on foot all the time through wilderness where impossibly unrealistic amounts of wandering cougars want to kill you, this can get pretty annoying. I’m a much bigger fan of the City of Villains approach of highlighting exactly where you need to go and telling you exactly how far away from it you are.

On the subject of exploring, I love that it rewards you with experience for travelling places and discovering things. It was a genuine pleasure in many cases to open up new areas and the incentive of bonus XP, however meagre, is very nice. I found the notion of exploring new areas much more appealing than actually taking quests in many cases, though I noticed that other people seemed to spend a much longer time grinding on mobs before moving on than I did, which seemed odd. I surmised that this may be why I was having slight amounts of difficulty taking some of the later mobs – my skipping of the exceedingly repetitive quests was coming back to haunt me.

When it comes to the subject of the quests themselves, this is where I have the most issue with the game structure. All of the early quests – and my friends tell me, most of the later quests – are basically unsubtle, blatant timesinks with little to no variation, following a very clear standard template. Some of them are really fun to do but after starting five different characters and working them to level ten or so it becomes horrendously tedious – not to mention the long periods of walking between all quests at a very, very slow pace.

Some of the class-specific quests are really excellent. I got to take part in two Shaman spirit quests and the concept and execution are really neat. It’s this sort of race/class depth that allows World of Warcraft to flex its quest muscles and do some really interesting things, and I wish they were more common instead of being forced to slaughter more respawning wildlife than the local ecosystem could possible support.

On that subject, the looting system is outrageously illogical – I need to bring someone back some boar meat and yet only one in every ten boars I casually slaughter has meat. The other nine boars are obviously made of fucking tofu or something. And especially irritating is that when you’re partying up with someone else, there’s always one of you who gets the quest items first and is then forced to follow the other one around helping them out – which is horrendously boring for all concerned. If you could share the requirements for these quests in the same way that all of you can contribute towards the X amount of Enemies killed quests, that would be fantastic. Instead you have to kill about 15 times more enemies than items you need and just hope that this tiger will actually have fur on it once it’s finally dead.

I really like the way you can share quests with others, so that they don’t have to go and pick it up from the NPC yourself. This is actually really convenient and saves a lot of time. I was slightly disappointed to note that you can’t actually complete a quest for someone else as well – this seems to me to be the logical extension of this mechanic, even if the concept is slightly abstract it would save another lot of time. Especially in partying situations where one of you needs to remain out in the wilderness because they haven’t managed to find any boars that actually had meat on them once they were dead.

I’ve noticed a lot of incongruity between the starting zones for the different races, to the extent where some of them have been really enjoyable and some of them have caused me teeth-pulling frustration. The Tauren starting zone, for example, consists of ridiculously huge expanses of plains that you need to walk across to get to your quests. This walking, which isn’t exactly helped by the horribly vague quest directions, means you’ll waste at least five minutes on every trip and end up getting attacked by every single critter that crosses your path. And the cities themselves are all up on immense, towering bluffs, which means you need to run a huge distance around them if you want to get somewhere on the other side. It’s just a huge, frustratingly designed zone and you can literally feel the hours slipping by as you plod slowly, Tauren-esquely to your destination.

On the other hand, the Troll and Orc starting zone is a positive delight. The quests themselves are slightly more varied, and much closer nearby than in the other zones. The landscape lends itself to the different quests being clumped nicely together, meaning a lot more can be accomplished in a shorter time, and the distances between places of interest are short enough to make walking between them a pleasant distraction rather than the chore it is in other zones. And pleasingly, there is a nice flow to the landscape meaning the eye is drawn to the paths you need to take, unlike the Dwarf zone for example where the incredible sameness of the snow-covered terrain led to Jess and I getting lost on a number of occasions.

Another thing that I found particularly frustrating was the lack of directions inside of the major cities. It was impossible to discover quickly where you need to be if it is your first time there because there is absolutely no direction. Want to find a shaman trainer in Orgrimmar? Why not wander from area to area, each filled with dozens of buildings and NPCs until you chance across the right one? I guess you could always ask somebody but the chat window is filled with hundreds of screeching morons hocking their wares. It’s simply frustrating and coming from a City of Villains system where all I have to do is open up the map, click on the NPC I want and then quickly fly over there, it was terribly frustrating for me.

What I took away most from my two-week World of Warcraft experience was a sensation of being stuck in a well-crafted, well-designed and beautifully detailed timesink. I found a lot to like about the game and the world, and I can very much see the appeal in playing with a large group of friends, but the phenomenal patience required to grind your way through the unsubtle repetition of it all, even at introductory levels, left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It was a pleasingly easy game to get to grips with and has taught me a lot about the nature of the early game hook – but it was a hook that in this instance I found all too easy to avoid. Everything I tried seemed like aesthetic variations on a theme, and though that is true to say of most other MMO’s I have played as well, the mechanics of that variation were just not enough to keep me interested.

// 5 Comments

Now With More Fried

// Filed under: Refried on Thursday October 04th 2007, 10:25 pm

Hello lovelies. I’ve just whacked together a new layout for Refried. I’d love to know what you all think, as the previous layout I basically threw together in five minutes. Blindfolded.

While being attacked by bears.

Anyway, take a look.

// No Comments

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