A fun story about MLB: The Show

I have a stack of games sitting next to me at the computer. Almost without exception, none of them are current in the sense that they were released at any time recently, or are hot topics around the gaming sphere. However, over the next several months, I will probably spend most or all of my my gaming time with games out of this stack.

Last weekend, I unwrapped MLB 09: The Show and started a new “Road To The Show” (RTTS) player – an lefty-hitting, right-handed outfielder named Mike Mills. He’s named after Mike Mills of R.E.M., although he looks nothing like Mills in reality: the game doesn’t allow for medium-long, curly blonde hair and dorky-cool glasses, so he’s just a white guy with short hair and a mustache – he actually looks kind of like Wally Backman, which I’m fine with.

This game is just under two years old; however, I’m not spending any more money on baseball games for a long time. I bought the game the day it came out, and I’d like to get some value out of it since I’ve been remiss in not playing it until now. Fortunately, I’m enjoying it, so that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

* * * * *

I like RTTS mode because it allows you to create a player and level him like you would in an RPG. You start off as a rookie in Class AA-ball after your first spring training, and work your way up through the system, training and honing your skills as you go.

Anyway, I’m trying to create a player who can hit for average, has some power, can play adequate defense, and can steal bases like a madman. I love the stolen base; I was never a fast sprinter, and was never really that good at baseball, so I rarely had the chance to steal bases when I played – but, to me, it is one of the more exciting plays in baseball. In The Show, I like reading the pitcher, timing his delivery, playing around with different approaches to taking leads off the base, and so on.

There’s a weird problem that RTTS has in this regard: when you start off, you basically have to level everything, including your raw speed. This is not true to real life at all – usually, a player working through the minor leagues has the raw speed already, and works on refining his base-stealing skills and other fundamentals. Power may be a raw “stat” that can be increased over time in real life, but speed is either there or it isn’t at that point. This is not the case in the video game, so right now I run painfully slowly on the bases as well as in the field.

I’ve done my best to remedy this, ensuring that I put points into my speed-related skills at a slightly higher rate than other skills. However, at this point I’m almost a month into my first season at Class AA, and I’m still pretty slow.

I did steal my first base last night. I got on base against a right-handed pitcher who had a knuckleball as one of the five pitches in his repertoire, but in my at-bat against him he seemed to lean pretty heavily on it. I singled, and then watched as his first pitch to the next batter took f-o-r-e-v-e-r to get to the plate. I also noted that his delivery was painfully deliberate. So… I decided that I was going on the next pitch, whether it was a knuckleball or not, because of that slow delivery.

Just before the next pitch, one of the announcers said something like, “The guy at first is no threat to run, so he can really concentrate on getting the batter out.”

“Uh, yeah, right” was my thought, and as the pitcher committed to home plate, I took off. I easily beat the throw from the catcher, and stood proudly on second with my super-slow player’s first SB of 09: The Show. It was a fun game – for some reason, the knuckleballer was on the mound for six innings, and I had three hits, two RBIs and a stolen base against him.

As I play more games, do more training, “get faster,” and get on base more, I’ll start to develop a reputation for being dangerous on the base paths. That’s where the real fun begins – I’ll start stretching my leads, drawing more throws, attempting to steal third, and so on. Right now, I’m basically stuck on my base unless the pitcher has a slow delivery and a nothing harder than a weak fastball.

* * * * *

A funny thing happened last night.

In my first three weeks, I was a backup outfielder. This meant that I was starting every other game, and coming off the bench to pinch hit on the off days. As in the real game, this can be a tough assignment. It’s tough to get on base very often when you’re coming off the bench cold, even in a video game.

In spite of the erratic schedule, after three weeks I was hitting .375, so the manager was basically forced to play me every day. However, on the day before I was made a permanent starter, I was brought in off the bench… as a pitcher.

Yeah, I know, bizarre. But it gets better.

I haven’t played a baseball video game in a couple of years, and when I started this one, I went straight to RTTS, so I didn’t play any full-team games – this means that I didn’t get any experience with the pitching mechanics.

Oh well, I figured. We’ll see what happens.

It was the bottom of the fifth inning, and the leadoff batter, a righty, stepped into the box. The catcher called for a fastball, which I was grateful for. I reached back and whipped a fastball in there, hitting the low outside corner for a strike. Then…

I was pulled. Immediately.

The game was over, since in RTTS you only play the plays that involve you. I didn’t get to see how fast my pitch was, and I didn’t get credit for the batter, or for pitching part of an inning, or anything. However, amazingly, I got credit for the victory!

Yes… totally bizarre. So here is my career line as a pitcher: 1-0, 0.00 ERA (which is actually mathematically undefined), 0 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 K, 0 BB, 0 Batters Faced.

It must have been a glitch.

The next day I was promoted, and I’ve been starting every day in my proper lineup position, roaming left field and batting third.

* * * * *

I read recently that the upcoming version, MLB 11, will feature a completely revamped RTTS experience that is more natural and realistic, which sounds awesome. It would be nice to be able to make a player that had good speed and fielding skills, and decent contact skills, to start with, so that I could have some tools to work with instead of starting out sucking at everything. Perhaps at some point down the road I will get a chance to try it out… but for now, I’m busy playing a game that most other baseball gamers were playing two springs ago.

I finished Fable 2 – some final thoughts

I finished Fable 2 today. I didn’t play the “Happily Ever After” phase, which commences after you complete the main storyline and save the world. I did begin to do one of the quests that become available after the credits roll, but, as part of it involves shooting moving objects within a small time window, I let it go, since I am horrible at aiming with a thumbstick.

Overall impressions?

I liked it. I spent several hours more in the game than was actually necessary to beat it, and had fun for the most part. It’s a beautiful game graphically, with great music that expands upon themes from the original game, and it’s fun to get caught up in the cute British-based fantasy world.

It’s generally an easy game to play. That has its positive points; the main one being that the gameplay doesn’t get in the way of the story. However, for those looking for a challenge, this is probably not the game for you.

As I’ve mentioned in a few previous posts, I’m pretty clumsy when it comes to playing certain types of games on a console controller. For a game like this, I found myself limited by the controller. Players have the opportunity to learn several different Will (magic) spells, and can map them to their B button. Using the right trigger (or the menu), players can choose different spells for different occasions during combat. Honestly, I found this to be a clumsy interface, and, with the game being fairly easy, I stuck to using only Time Control and Blades, depending on my needs. I found myself missing the click/key-mapping options that many PC games offer, but, as the game is playable without using cool spells like Force Push, Chaos, Inferno and Shock, I ignored them almost entirely in favor of a less cumbersome playing experience. For what is very much an action game, I wish that there were a variety of spells at my disposal that could have been accessed via the D-pad and/or buttons by using a function button, like RT, to activate “Will mode” for more intuitive real-time spell casting and variety.

The other two disciplines, Skill (ranged weapons) and Strength (power, toughness and melee flourishes), are fairly intuitive and work well enough.

I didn’t get very involved in the social scene, and I didn’t try to get any of the more off-beat achievements. I got married, and then I went off and spent ten years of non-negotiable time in a quest chain. When I finally escaped, I cleared up a few things and then went back home to find that my wife had divorced me. So I married again, etc. To me, that social aspect is interesting, but it wasn’t fleshed out very well. Once I had gotten a modicum of renown, almost everyone wanted to marry me, and I was badgered with requests for autographs and wedding rings for the remainder of my time spent in towns throughout the game.

In spite of all of that, I didn’t commit my first murders until I was about 90% of the way through the game. Someone caught me stealing, and I decided to kill the five guards that attacked me rather than pay the fine. I hadn’t given much thought to being totally good or evil, and ended up being very loved, moderately feared, and fairly pure. There are choices that you can make in-game that will change the way that people feel about you, but ultimately I didn’t feel that I had to pay too much for my actions, one way or another.

I had heard that this game would be more difficult to exploit financially than its predecessor, and for a while I found that to be correct. However, this week I discovered that there is an exploit, and a cursory internet search shows that it became known fairly quickly by people who played the game when it came out. It works like this, in a nutshell:

When you own property, and that property is a business, you get a Shop Owner’s Discount. I figured that this would also mean that you could sell goods to that vendor with a nicer markup, but that’s not the case – you actually get a better price when selling if you don’t own the business. Since businesses can generally be bought and sold whenever, with a few exceptions, I was able to go to the Blacksmith and the Stonecutter in Bowerstone, buy up all of their wares (once I had the capital), sell the businesses, and then sell all of their wares back to them at higher prices. Buy the business, buy all of their goods. Rinse, repeat. It made money a non-issue, as I eventually bought most of the properties in the game. I wasn’t happy that the money challenge was completely decimated, but on the other hand it meant that I didn’t have to waste time doing jobs as the game wore on and I concentrated on questing.

Overall, Fable 2 was a fun game for me. Once I got accustomed to using a controller again, I found it to be an enjoyable experience. I left the game unfinished, as far as non-essential quests go, and I would probably continue to play it if I didn’t have Fable 3 sitting on top of my pile of un-played games. Now that I’ve finished with the main story, I’m interested in seeing where it goes in the third installment, so I will likely be tackling that one soon.

In a holding pattern, for the moment

It’s Thursday, and I haven’t touched my WoW toons since Sunday, when I agreed to hop on and help my girlfriend with her Tol Barad dailies. My last real activity happened late on Saturday, when I was involved in a furious Warsong Gulch match, which we lost but where I was able to scratch and claw my way to 11 killing blows on six deaths, with six flag returns.

I got an achievement for returning five flags in a single match, and earlier in the day I also became exalted with Baradin’s Wardens. The first (flag) achievement was the more gratifying of the two. The second (reputation) was about as anticlimactic as just about any achievement that I’ve ever gotten.

It happened at the wrong time. I was in the middle of doing my Tol Barad dailies, which is generally a horrible, teeth-grinding experience fraught with deadly respawns and accidentally killing stuff that someone else tagged, or being beaten by another player who is collecting the same item as you. So, there was a sense of relief, but it was muted, because I am so frustrated with my playing experience that I’m just about completely numb to the game at this point.

Here are some of my issues:

Easy leveling (early levels)

See my post from last Saturday for my feelings on this subject.

Easy leveling (80-85)

It took me 3.5 days to move my main toon from the old level cap to 85. It was a fun experience – probably the most fun that I’ve had in the game so far, other than different moments in PvP and the general camaraderie that we have in the guild. But it was too short. I did not rush – I just played and enjoyed it, and it still only took me half of a week.

Yes I’m more experienced and had nicer gear this time… but, to compare, it took me almost three months to get Anacrusa from level 70 to level 80. At this point, a month into the expansion, I have one toon (druid) that has been 85 for almost four weeks, one (paladin) that has very casually been 83 for almost two weeks, and a third (hunter) that is, almost as casually, one bar away from the cap.

It feels that, with the revamping of old zones, the “leveling through the expansion” part of the game got the short end of the stick this time. Perhaps that’s what most people wanted… but, in retrospect, it’s not what I wanted.

PvP

Tol Barad is a mess. It has been a mess since before launch, with a massive lack of competitive balance (it heavily favors the defending team, for those who don’t know). Blizzard introduced a hotfix last week that made it ten times more lucrative to win by attacking in order to try to balance this, which resulted in game-wide win-swapping between factions. Tol Barad became an absolute joke at this point. Blizzard “fixed” that this week by reducing the attack-win honor bonus by 80%, but by that time it was all over. The zone has all of the same problems that it has always had, and we’re a month into the game.

Otherwise, while my PvP experience has varied, I’m tired of battlegrounds. I was interested in arenas for a short while, but at this point I’m not all that interested in even playing the game, so I may never try them.

Dungeons

And raids, I guess. I don’t know – I haven’t raided yet, and I’ve only managed to complete three heroics out of the seven or eight that I’ve attempted.

After we killed the Lich King in my old guild, I was burned out on raiding, and I guess that I’ve never gotten my mojo back, so to speak. Currently, my guild has one full-time tank, but he has a life to live, so he’s not always available. The experience can vary widely when pugging tanks… and I don’t like committing hours of time to frustration.

On Friday, I ditched my unused resto spec and picked up a tanking one, reforged and re-gemmed all of my gear, and swapped around my glyphs with the idea that maybe I could relearn to tank. But… I don’t want to tank. I don’t particularly like tanking, and it’s also been a while for me since I last tanked anything of consequence. And with my current attitude, I feel uninspired to actually carry out the task of learning to tank in Cataclysm.

A final note on dungeons: Being melee in these new dungeons is rough. As a cat druid, I have to balance the following: staying out of bad while being close enough to interrupt (and it’s sometimes impossible to do both), doing competitive damage, and watching people’s health (yes, I have thrown many, many heals in dungeons). Bringing in a pug tank means that, in spite of communication beforehand, the boss often doesn’t get kited, or nobody else interrupts, or whatever.

I’m fine with “staying out of fire,” concentrating on having enough energy available to interrupt each time, or throwing heals, all at the expense of topping the meters. I actually like that. However, when staying out of bad = not interrupting = Non-Kited-Boss one-shots Non-Kiting-Tank (and so on) as often as it does right now, I begin to lose what little desire that I had to be there in the first place.

Admittedly, my tolerance is low…

Going back to my points above about easy leveling through the five new zones, I have to say that being “not-capped” for less than a week also doesn’t feel good. Woot! – a few days of leveling, and then back to the old… yes… dungeon grind.

Reputation grinds

I worked hard to open up all of my dailies. I am exalted with three of the factions now. However, I have to say that I hate them. Between all of the people who are leveling and doing the quests, and all of the people grinding rep, the dailies range from pain-in-the-ass to nightmarish.

The nearly instant respawns in some zones, as noted above, are punishing. When I’m not fighting for my life, I’m competing with others for those mobs or quest items that, oddly enough, have poor respawn rates. As Darkbrew noted recently, if you need to kill ten things in Tol Barad, you’ll kill 20 by the time you’re through. It’s generally not a fun experience.

Closing

I’m in a holding pattern, for the moment. I haven’t quit the game, but I don’t know if I will be playing much at any time soon. This is a long break for me, even if it has only been four days. My heart hasn’t been in it for a week or longer. I’m saddened by the way that I feel about it. I love the potential for good times and interesting lore, and I like that the game seems more challenging at this level. It seems like I should be happy with WoW, but I have a lot of problems with it right now.

Perhaps I’m changing, or perhaps it’s just dawning on me that the game doesn’t offer what I’m interested in anymore. I’m not sure. At any rate, we’ll see what happens. I’m spending more time playing guitar, blogging a bit about sports, and I’ve picked up Fable 2 and Half-Life 2 again after months of not playing them. I’m enjoying Fable 2 – Half-Life is a game that I can only concentrate on once in a while, but Fable 2 has a fun story and an interesting NPC community that I’m enjoying right now. I’m hoping to finish it this week, and begin playing Fable 3 shortly thereafter.

As far as WoW goes… well, I’ll let you know.

Course correction: thoughts on recognizing my own shortcomings, the nature of public discussion, and the focus of future posts

I have a confession to make.

I’ve had my tidies in a bunch over the past few weeks about several issues, mostly pertaining to online discourse.

I’m sorry about that.

I didn’t start this blog to be a dick to people, and I feel that I was unfair to Ambrosine last week with regard to her take on Frostheim’s story about behaving badly in a PuG. Disagreeing with her wasn’t unfair, but when I reread my post, I realized that I never completed my thought about her post, and sort of left hanging the paragraph in question. I tried to clarify how I felt in the comments to my post, but she may never read anything on my blog again, for all that I know. Anyway, as a result, I’m afraid that readers could have taken what I said in the post to mean that I felt that her post was worthy of simply being dismissed, which is not the case. And that was unfair of me.

That said, I apologize to Ambrosine, and others who read my words, for my own poor communication on that particular point in the article.

My own personal conundrum

Words and thoughts can come from different places. Rational places. Emotional places. I find that, sometimes, those places are at odds within me.

I care quite a bit about my country, its people, and its government. My reactions to current events may come out of anger, frustration, hope, or some point along the skepticism/cynicism line, depending on the circumstance(s). There are issues that I feel strongly about, along with some issues that I am unsure of, or feel undereducated about. Some of my values are very different from those that I had growing up, while others are very similar. Many of my views on these issues are based on rational thought, but my reactions to how the issues are dealt with can come from an emotional place that conflicts with my rational self, and sometimes hinders my ability to separate fact from spin, and logic from bias… if that makes any sense.

I see a lot of good in the world, every day. I also see a lot of stuff that bothers me. As such, there is often much that I want to get off my chest in written form, and yet I continue to feel under-qualified to do so. Until lately, people who read my blog semi-regularly haven’t seen a lot of my opinions on matters that seem to be hot topics – I just haven’t felt that I have the ability to say what I want to say and be satisfied with the way that I’ve communicated it to the reader. Therefore, most of my writing doesn’t really touch on many hot-button issues.

My own personal conundrum, continued – rational vs. emotional

To go a little further into this, let me give an example. I am very passionate about the First Amendment. Rationally, I am completely in tune with the idea that it is a fundamental element of our country, a cornerstone of our way of life. My rational self tells me that debate and discourse are good.

On the other hand, my emotional self hates conflict and is discouraged by the often uncouth nature of online and political discussion. Civility in discourse is very important to me.

There are certainly multitudes of people who express themselves eloquently online, in the news, in-game, and on the street, and I appreciate their discussions, even if I disagree when their viewpoints conflict with mine. However, I’ve previously expressed my disappointment over some of the destructive conversation that takes place online, and that feeling extends to the public and political spheres as well. My instinctive reaction to that type of conversation is to recoil in disgust, or to dismiss it. I usually try to deal with it in a mature manner; however, my tolerance for it has been dwindling rapidly lately, and “dealing with it maturely” ends up having a “bottling up your feelings”-type of effect. When my tolerance reaches a certain low point, the guardians of my own judgment go on vacation and I start reacting to stuff publicly, in spite of my usual reluctance to do so.

The results end up being emotional, reactionary. In spite of what I rationally accept and endorse (free speech is free speech, whether you like it or not), I hate the way that people express themselves sometimes…

Blogger: “Here’s a funny story: I made a less-than-noble decision in a game, but I learned something that I felt was exciting and decided to share…”

Tweetsters: “OMG!! Blogger should be fired for asshattery! He sucks anyway, and always has!”

Me: “Blarg! I find your method of communication to be one or more of the following – offensive, disrespectful, egregious, dismissive, ridiculous, to whatever degree – so I’m going to over-verbalize my reaction to such an extent that my point will be obscured, blah blah blah…”

No, no… This is not how I want to bring readers to my blog, and is not the kind of stuff that I want to draw inspiration from in order to have something to write about.

If I were able to write more clearly, concisely, rationally, and with better structure to my arguments, I might reconsider taking inspiration from these sorts of topics. Those, however, are skills that I don’t think that I’ve fully developed at this point.

Public Discourse: the way that we say something affects how people hear what we say

I’m not sure when it started, but at some point in my adulthood I noticed that I react pretty negatively toward inflammatory “discussion.” In politics, for example, when disagreement over a talking point turns into personal attacks and provocative rhetoric, I, as a citizen, stop hearing the content and start reconsidering my impression of the person making the statements.

I have a friend who expresses a lot of anger about President Obama. His anger is not without good reason, as far as I can tell based on my own research into some of his concerns. However, to be honest, I stopped listening to him months ago, because the language that he uses to express his viewpoints is absolutely rife with over-the-top, accusatory tones, obscenities, and proposals of violent solutions to the issues that he cares about.

This saddens me, because the guy has a lot of good points to make, and I could probably learn from him. However, he seems to feel that the only way to be heard is to shout, and to punctuate his arguments with profanity and suggestions that the President (for example) should die, or be otherwise personally, physically harmed.

I don’t think that the President should be harmed. And I don’t think that our former President should be harmed, either. That’s pretty extreme.

There’s so much shouting. So many people seem to think that using fear, insults, exaggeration, and the word “fuck,” are great ways to emphasize their positions and make others listen to them; that the degree of  volume and extremity of their statements will reinforce the “right-ness” of their viewpoints.

I think that it’s unfortunate that ideas seem to come before respect of others, no matter the forum: “You retard!” in-game; “You’re a Nazi!” in politics; etc. In-game, at school, at work, in the media, we are all citizens of the world. That seems so unimportant to an alarming number of people today. I wonder how much poor communication stunts the growth of countries and the welfare of their people; at any rate, it’s a terrible example for the next generation.

In the context of world problems, discussion in and about video games ranks far lower in overall importance. However, the tone of the discussion affects me similarly. I’m more inclined to find an article interesting, and to consider the author’s points, if it is presented sanely and maturely. I’m less likely to respond positively (or even finish reading) if the author’s point is delivered in an inflammatory tone, or is smothered in profanity or insults.

I’m not saying that it’s necessarily “correct” of me to react that way. I’m saying that that’s the way that I react.

So here I am

I feel that I have difficulty, sometimes, writing in a compelling manner – that is, expressing my views in a clear and concise manner first, with maybe some emotional emphasis added. Rather, I feel that some of my writing lately has come from an emotional (indignant) place, which has resulted in rambling posts and lower editing standards on my part. The end result is that I say things in a way that I may not be proud of upon reflection.

I do not want to be a part of the problem. I want to write posts that I enjoy rereading. I don’t want to make the mistake of expressing a view of someone’s work that is incomplete or otherwise doesn’t accurately reflect the respect that I have for his/her opinion.

I am considering following my intuition, which, right now, is telling me that I should perhaps curtail my discussion of these types of topics on my blog. I would love to be a bit more articulate on these subjects. However, when I look at the number of potential posts that I’ve discarded over the past couple of weeks, and the two “rant-y” ones that I’ve actually published recently, I don’t think that I’m ready to go down that road at this point.

I’m definitely not saying that I’m not going to post anymore. I’m still planning to post about WoW, music, sports, and other stuff that I find interesting. I just think that I’ll be a happier blogger if I don’t put out content that isn’t up to my own standards.

* * * * *

Post-Script: This post doesn’t seem to flow as well as I would like it to – which is, by this point, a common theme with me. I apologize for that. Trust me, it was way worse before I reworked and edited it!

Feeling anti-social: thoughts on Blizzcon detractors, Twitter, and other social networking stuff that is annoying me lately

I’m going through a negative phase this week, with regard to The Internet. There seems to have been a bit of communication overload in the circles I hang around, from Twitter to Facebook to the blogs I follow, and around the web in general. It seems odd, because a couple of months ago there was a lot of “there’s nothing going on” going on, but recently there has been a flurry of everything, and it’s making my brain and eyes hurt.

A little real-life stress doesn’t help. But that’s beside the point.

I follow a lot of WoW/MMO blogs, and I also follow sports. Over the past couple of weeks, that has meant that I’ve subjected myself to a lot of news and discussion regarding the Major League Baseball playoffs, the NFL season, sports-related concussions, 4.0.1, Cataclysm, Blizzcon, and F2P MMOs.

In addition to this, I’ve been playing some WoW, and most of my time in WoW has been spent doing BGs with my druid as I work toward a full set of feral Wrathful gear. Anyone who plays WoW with their hearthstone set in Dalaran and runs a lot of BGs knows that this is a recipe for exposing one’s self to a ton of name-calling and other totally useless or socially destructive chat.

So that type of thing doesn’t help my mood.

Let me preface what I say by reiterating something that I’ve said before – people have the right to say whatever they want; to give opinions, to express themselves, etc. I am 100% in favor of this.

However, a lot of chatter (and chat) seems to be getting on my nerves lately. Here goes…

Blizzcon

Well, I may as well get this out of the way.

The amount of negative coverage that Blizzcon has gotten this year has surprised me. With the knowledge that there was no big announcement in the works, Blizzard claims that they wrestled with whether to actually have a Blizzcon this year. They eventually decided that not holding the event would be disappointing to the people who love to attend. From what I’ve read, people who attended had a blast. Fans of the game, from new players to old players to writers, loved having opportunities to talk with developers, see some new content, check out some gear, play Blizzard’s games, and hang out with – and talk WoW with – fellow WoW-players for three days. All things considered, I would say that it was a success.

However, I’ve wasted more life-experience over the past two weeks reading articles poo-pooing Blizzard’s annual convention than I ever cared to. The ad nauseam complaining that “Blizzard didn’t have a big reveal, so they ripped off their fans” and “Blizzard won’t give players extra character slots, or wardrobes/closets for gear set storage, so they don’t care about their fans” is so tired at this point.

Blizzcon certainly wasn’t perfect. They didn’t answer everyone’s questions, and there were some questions that weren’t answered particularly well. However, it was an event for the fans, and it seems that a fun time was had by, if not every single person, the overwhelming majority of the people who attended. I think that that’s the most important thing.

I didn’t go to Blizzcon, and I didn’t watch much of the video footage. It’s not my bag, but for thousands of people, it is, and I’m glad that Blizzard gave them the chance to get together and celebrate some of their favorite games.

Blizzcon part 2: the “broken leg”

(Subtitled: If nobody likes an asshole, then why are there so many of them out there?)

The problem, in this case, wasn’t the fan who fell and apparently broke his leg during the dance competition. The guy actually “broke a ligament” in his knee, according to what he told WoW Insider. Whether or not it can be argued that one “tears” rather than “breaks” a ligament, the guy suffered some serious damage. Ligament injuries are fixable, but they aren’t easy procedures, and usually require quite a bit of therapy before the knee is back to normal. In addition, the injury could cause him suffering down the road, depending on a variety of factors.

However, the injury was not the issue for me. Ligaments can be damaged by slipping, or your foot landing awkwardly, or being knocked at a bad angle during a sports competition.

The problem was that it happened during the dance competition, which was recorded and seen, not just by the people attending, but by people watching at home, and later by YouTube visitors, who have, as of this writing, viewed it around 650,000 times (here’s one of the links to it). Since it was a legitimate injury that happened to a “nerd” in a “nerdy” competition and is widely available to view on the Internet, the kid is not only physically injured, but is now famous for being “that guy…”

As we all know, YouTube is one of the largest troll-havens on the planet, and a quick glance through some of the comments on the video confirms that to the fullest.

It appalls me that name-calling and derision (of the magnitude that we see now) is the norm in this day and age. The downside to being socially networked these days is having to sort through all of the anonymous disrespect, callousness and misanthropy.

Hey assholes: the guy didn’t hurt himself because he’s retarded, has Asperger syndrome, is a douche, or a nerd with no life, or a virgin, or any of that crap. He fell because he took part in a dance competition for fun, and, unfortunately, the stage was extremely slippery (witness all of the other people who fell while dancing – some fell multiple times).

I’m disgusted by the hatred that is spewed by so many people on the Internet. Even if he did have a disorder, it wouldn’t be funny or cool to make fun of it.

Twitter: too much info

I like Twitter because I can follow some my favorite writers, like Andrew, Tesh, Krist, and Gordon. And a few others.

I don’t like Twitter because some of the other writers that I follow tweet at a rate of about fifty times per day. It ends up becoming a lot to sort through, and it’s more work than I really care to do.

What Twitter ends up being, from my perspective, is a chaotic way to converse. Followers of the more prolific Twitter users often have to sift through a deluge of abbreviated partial-conversations in order to get a cohesive idea of what’s going on. Last weekend, I was reading an amazing amount of tweets about baseball, football, and Blizzcon, and felt as if my brain was going to explode. As a result, I have removed nine users from the list of people I follow, and I’m thinking of trimming that list down to the people mentioned above, along with a few others, and leaving it at that. This would be something completely Twitter-related; I still love reading Peter King and Joe Posnanski, etc., but I don’t necessarily know if I need to follow every one of their tweets.

WoW/PvP chat

Um…

Yell chat. PvP chat. I don’t think I need to say anything more. It’s as ridiculous as ever. See above rant regarding the dancer injuring his leg…

I really wish that there were options for disabling /bg (temporarily, “for this BG,” for times when I’ve reached my breaking point in a “fail BG”) and /yell (permanently) in this game. If there are, please let me know, because I will do it!

Blogs

I follow more than 125 blogs in my reader. Lately, I’ve been skipping a lot of them, and reading only the core blogs that I really like. The sites/blogs that I read every article from are:

1. Multi-subject/gaming: Systemic Babble,  Tish Tosh Tesh, We Fly Spitfires, Krist Novoselic
2. WoW class-specific: Warcraft Hunters Union, Feral Aggression, Think Tank, Primal Precision, The Fluid Druid, OutDPS!, The Brew Hall, One Man Raid, Tree Bark Jacket, From The Barrow Dens
3. WoW general: WoW Insider
4. Sports: Joe Posnanski’s blog, Peter King’s columns at SI.com
5. Music: Blabbermouth.net (well, I don’t read every article due to the sheer volume, but I read it every day)

*all of these are linked in my blogroll

I have a ton of unread posts in my reader right now. A few months ago, I spent a lot of time raiding others’ blogrolls, culling as much new reading material as I could. However, I’m sort of burned out at the moment, as far as reading so much. So this is all on me, and does not in any way reflect negatively on the quality of others’ writing; I’ve simply come to a point where only so much holds my interest at the moment. I’m sure that will change soon enough!

The news

ugh… the news… ugh… /shakes head

SO…

All of that, to say this: I am suffering from a kind of severe case of information overload, along with an even-lower-than-usual tolerance for asshattery.

As such, I scaled back my blog-reading/Internet-time/WoW-playing over the past few days. In addition to playing quite a bit more guitar this week, I also dusted off my copy of Fable 2 (360) a couple of days ago, and have put eight or nine hours into it.

It’s the first time that I’ve put more than a couple of hours into it before giving up. This time, I started a new character and began getting over my discomfort with the control scheme and UI issues, which I’ve written about in the past. Fortunately, I’ve succeeded in this endeavor enough that I’ve really started to enjoy the game.

I’m taking my time with it, playing with a toon who is generally balanced both morally and in combat. I’m trying to make some gold, working jobs and completing side quests, and trying to become even more comfortable with the 360 controls (I’m spoiled by the WoW UI in this regard).

It’s great to be playing a game where there is no interaction with other people. Sometimes, breaks from things like these are necessary. I’ve been largely avoiding the blog, the reader, the news, and Twitter, and I’ve been logged out of WoW quite a bit this week, and it’s refreshing.

Closing

Thus, my rant for this week is over. Hopefully, a few more days of diminished social networking will leave me feeling somewhat refreshed, and I can get around to the 500+ articles that I have left unread at this point.

Saniel: if you’re reading this, I know that you commented on my Feral PvP post a few days ago, and I apologize for not responding to it before today. I’ve remained logged out of WordPress for the past few days, so I didn’t respond to anything until now. However, I appreciate the comment!

* * * * *

Possible near-future article ideas: impressions of Google Chrome as compared with Safari, my Feral PvP spec, maybe a Fable 2 post (um, yeah, fresh on the heals of the Fable 3 release – sounds about right for me!).

Miscellaneous update: heat wave edition

The heat has been pretty much unbearable this week. As such, I’ve tried to balance some productivity with some fun inside stuff.

Books

After I finished reading The Eagle, I went through a span of several days where I felt like I didn’t want to read anything for a while. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but I didn’t think it would last long. I picked up Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger from time to time, and, as it’s not a long book, I finished it last night. It was a bargain book, and I was hoping that it would be a story that stands on its own; admittedly, this was because I didn’t want to have to find the sequels, but I’m going to have to at some point, because it really functions as the beginning to a larger story. So I have to read the next one at some point…

A couple of nights ago I started reading Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass, and it looks like that will be holding my attention for a while.

Music

I’ve been working on a song, little by little. Lyrics are much more difficult for me than guitar, so it’s going to take a while to finish. That’s fine, because it’s all for my own enjoyment. My fingers are coming along slowly, as I get them accustomed to playing the guitar every day. I’m hoping to change the strings on my acoustic this weekend, because it’s been a few months and they’re starting to look and feel worse for wear.

Video Games

The Steam “Perils of Summer Sale” ended on July 4th, and I restrained myself, not dropping a lot of money on a bunch of games that I’m not sure I would play. I have a terrible habit of buying games and letting them sit for months (or forever), and so I only picked up one game, Civilization IV Complete, for $10 last weekend. I had intended to buy another game or two, but there were a couple of occasions where I added a game to my cart when it was 75% off for the day, decided to think about it before buying, and then forgot about it (Torchlight for $5 was one of them). I wasn’t too broken up about that, in the end. Like I said, I’m really bad with playing most games that I’m “interested” in – something weird about my personality, I guess – so the one game was enough for me.

As a side note, there are many games that I know are available for Mac that are not available on Steam. Like Dragon Age: Origins. EA has made a concerted effort to make more games available for Mac over the past year or two, and they’re available elsewhere, but with DA:O I’m holding out for a while. I like the fact that Steam seems the most likely candidate to provide updates, something that has been universally absent for that game in particular on the Mac.

In general, I’m really happy with Steam, although I’ve only used it to purchase three games thus far. I do wish that they would release more than two or three games per month for Mac. I’m not blaming them, though. I’m sure that they’re constantly dealing with issues related to the games that they make available, and so I’ll continue to check a couple of times a week to see what’s new or on sale.

Etc.

As far as what else has been going on, I’ve been doing a little gardening (trying to keep the tomato plants sated and healthy has been my greatest challenge) and other yard work (in small spurts), as well as plenty of chilling out indoors, trying to stay cool. Fortunately, the worst part of the heat wave seems to be over, moving toward the southeastern coast now. We’ll still have temps in the low 90s next week, but it shouldn’t be as bad, thankfully!

Moving beyond WoW: hobbies, and the power of suggestion

I pretty much hated Silithis, but it made for a cool pic.

Last week I wrote a post about how well I’ve been adjusting to life without World of Warcraft. For the most part, I have had far fewer cravings for the game than I had expected, and have even felt very uninspired with respect to finishing up the feral druid articles that I had been working on at the time I decided to take a break.

World of Warcraft… and the power of suggestion

So a couple of days after I published that article, a friend of mine posted a “come back to WoW” comment on my Facebook page.

And this is where the title of this post comes from. The simple suggestion by that person reopened my mind to WoW. The call of the game, and the corresponding opportunity to be with friends, made a stronger impression with me than either of us could have anticipated!

So, does this mean I go back? For the time being, no. I still need time away from the game, and if I do play again, it will be in a different situation, with a smaller time commitment and different objectives. I’ll mix some of the familiar with the unfamiliar, exploring parts of the game that don’t necessitate a regular raid schedule. But now is not the time yet.

Each day has felt like forever, and yet the past month has flown by. It’s interesting how that happens…

* * * * *

During this break, I’ve engaged myself in hobbies and activities that I had previously not taken the time to enjoy when I was playing. First and foremost, I’ve been reading a lot.

Books

Last week,  Franklin & Marshall held their annual used book sale, a three-day event. I went over with a friend on Monday (May 24), the first day, and between the two of us we bought around 35 books for under $50! I was able to pick up about a dozen Agatha Christie novels (Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot), as well as three of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series, a Lord Peter Wimsey short story collection, and a couple of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. With paperbacks at 50 cents apiece, it was difficult to go wrong!

I’m a big fan of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (and those authors who lovingly craft tales that attempt to fill in holes in the Holmes canon), and other authors of mystery fiction from the last half of the 19th-century through middle of the 20th. I suppose that my interest comes partially from watching so much of the PBS program  ”Mystery” while I was growing up. At any rate, I can devour these books fairly easily, and if I get tired of one, I’m usually in the process of reading three to five books at any given time, so I eventually finish them all!

I’ve also recently picked up The Second Rumpole Omnibus, a collection which I had set down about eighteen months ago and forgotten about. I left off at a story that I wasn’t enjoying, but I am determined to power through it and move on to stories that I’m sure I will enjoy more.

Finally, I’ve recently started rereading the second to last book in Jack Whyte’s Camulod Chronicles, The Lance Thrower. I’ve only ever read each of the last two books in the series once, and I’d like to read them again in order to have a better understanding of what happened. For anyone interested in historical fiction and an Arthurian theme, the entire nine-book series is highly recommended.

I tend to read books multiple times, which I guess is strange. However, a book that I enjoy is almost always a book that I can read more than once, since I tend to get new things out of it on a second or third read-through.

There are some local bookstores downtown that I’d like to check out on one of my walks, so perhaps I’ll be able to pick up some more treasures in the near future.

Music

In addition to constantly uploading music to my hard drive, I’ve been playing more guitar lately. While my intention has always been that I would play my guitar every day, I had let it go this year to the point where I was almost never playing. As someone who loves to play guitar, noticing the callouses disappear from my fingertips was disheartening, and when I would occasionally attempt to play, both my muscle memory and fingertips were so ill-equipped that I would put down the instrument after a few minutes… And the cycle continued – disillusionment led to less playing, which led to more disillusionment when I’d try to play again, and so on.

Lately, since I moved out of my old place, I’ve gotten the opportunity to spend more time outside. I have, of course, been walking and taking pictures, but I’ve also spent a lot of time sitting on the porch, reading or looking at my surroundings. Being in a new place, and more exposed to the outdoors, has inspired me to pick up the guitar at times. As such, I played more guitar in the last three weeks of May than I did from January through April combined. I haven’t yet played a long session, and I’ve done very little as far as working on new material, but the simple act of sitting down with my acoustic and playing through some old songs and song bits has been gratifying. My callouses are slowly developing on my left hand again, and my picking hand is true more often than it had been.

Photography

As I mentioned, I’ve gone on a few walks where I took some pictures, and have posted photos from those walks on two occasions in the past few weeks. I’m about as fledgling as they come when it comes to photography, but I’ve concentrated on taking pictures of things that I find beautiful or interesting. I’m still learning how to use my camera, and it is my hope that as time goes by and I gain experience with it, I will be able to post a greater variety of quality photos. Most recently, I’ve concentrated on nature photography, but I would like to expand my horizons!

Video Games

Ah, this is where it gets tricky. In lieu of WoW, I’ve spent time with a half-dozen games over the past few weeks: Portal and Half-Life 2 for Mac, Dragon Age: Origins and Tiger Woods 07 for 360, and Scribblenauts and Professor Layton and the Curious Village for DS. Portal, Half-Life 2 and Tiger Woods have each gotten more than 90 minutes of play from me; the others did not hold my attention for long, for various reasons.

There is a common reason that none of these games has become my “go-to” game at this point: simply, I am still wired for WoW right now.

However, there are other reasons. In the case of Dragon Age, while the game seems to be very interesting (and I’m loving the music!), I don’t like the control scheme at all. I need to put some more time into it before I decide to scrap it and perhaps pick up the Mac version, but my first impression was frustrating… I’m not a big fan of using a console controller for these types of games.

In the cases of Professor Layton and Scribblenauts, I’m probably just not feeling puzzle games right now. I like them both, conceptually, but I’ve only put about 30-40 minutes into each in the past month. I’ll put them down and pick them up later if I feel so moved.

I have many other games to try, and so I’ll continue to throw a few against the wall every so often and see which one sticks.

Conclusion

I’ve had mixed results with not only finding other hobbies to get back into, but having the discipline to keep at them. With books, it has been easy – in fact, I’ve had to pace myself at times. Playing guitar has been more of a process (albeit a rewarding one), and finding new games to latch onto has been a challenge. We’ll see how June goes!

Half-Life 2 (OS X); of mice and Macs

Half-Life 2 (OS X)!

I read on gameinformer.com yesterday that Half-life 2 (OS X) would be released today via Steam – an idea that excites me, as I played Half-Life on a PC, but only got through some of Half-Life 2 on the 360. I was particularly curious to see what the price point would be, and if they would make the episodes available as well.

As of early this afternoon, all three games are available, and at acceptable prices.

Half-Life 2 – $9.99 (on sale for $6.99)

Episode 1 – $7.99 (on sale for $5.59)

Episode 2 – same as Episode 1

Yeah… I’ll totally be downloading them!

Anyway, I was reading about it on GI.com last night. It’s a short article, so I watched the trailer, and then began to peruse the comments.

Comment QQ (by me)

It’s interesting to see the comments that people leave sometimes. It seems that, with more attention being paid to Mac gaming these days, every time new titles are announced for Mac, there’s an asshat who says something like what I read yesterday:

“All you Mac users out there, have fun playing an FPS with only one mouse button.”

Which irritates me to some extent, because… in this particular instance, I checked the guy’s GI.com profile. He lists his occupation as Contract Game Tester, and game design as one of his hobbies. He has a few blog posts and a game review, which are written fairly intelligently, and describes himself as a hardcore gamer.

So why would someone like that assume that all Mac users are using the mouse that Apple provides (and make derisive comments to that effect)?

Is that type of comment motivated by the desire to ridicule Mac users, due to a perceived elitist attitude that all Mac users must have? Is there a maturity issue here? Or do people really think that a Mac gamer who is interested in playing an FPS would fumble around for hours, trying to play a game that they just spent their hard-earned money on, without a) trying to make adjustments in the Preferences section, or b) going out and getting a new mouse?

A short history of my experience with mice and Macs (super boring, btw!)

When I started playing WoW, I immediately ran into problems with the Apple mouse. So I went out and got a wireless Logitech mouse, which worked, but not too well. At some point I got frustrated with it, and borrowed a Dell mouse from a friend… and that worked alright, although it never satisfied me.

Early last fall, I plunked down $50 or so for the Razer DeathAdder 3G for Mac. I ordered it from Amazon, and when it arrived a couple of days later, I was in heaven. Here was a mouse that was smooth and precise, comfortable, and allowed for very high tracking speed if desired. It also came with two mappable thumb-buttons, which I found very useful at times. As someone who never mapped all of his abilities to his keyboard, like I apparently should have, this was great because it gave me much better control with minimal hand movement.

And the mouse didn’t fail. Ever. The network or server would fail occasionally, but never the mouse. It has been a dream to use, to this day.

In addition to gaming, this mouse works very well for everything else that I want to do on my Mac, for all of the same reasons. It’s apparently not available anymore, but in reality there are several excellent mice, even those that aren’t made specifically for Macs, that would perform similarly.

Conclusions

• I think that the Apple mice, which have always been somewhat gimmicky, would suffice in many casual gaming situations, but any Mac user with a need and an opportunity to pick up a more appropriate mouse will probably do so.
• If nothing else, owners of MacBooks will pick up a mouse if they plan on gaming or doing other mouse-heavy tasks. No owner of a Mac made in the past five-plus years is limited to only buying an Apple mouse.
• I suppose that the source of my irritation is a low tolerance for derisive/unconstructive dialogue, which is admittedly one of my personal failings.
• On the other hand, while I prefer to use a Mac, I respect those who use PCs. There may be a Mac vs. PC war that’s been going on for years now on TV, but it doesn’t mean that using one or the other is indicative of a person’s intelligence.
• Half-Life 2 for Mac! Woo hoo!

WoW withdrawal

It has been three weeks since my last raid, and two weeks since I did anything of consequence in World of Warcraft. The subscription has run out, the toons are in storage, and the icon is no longer on my desktop.

WoW withdrawal?

Quitting the game did not happen the way I might have anticipated, but nevertheless, the burnout had been getting to me toward the end anyway, as much as I tried to deny it along the way.

I had always thought that leaving the game would be an extremely difficult habit to break, if I was not ready to do it at the time. To my pleasant surprise, I’ve actually had very few symptoms of withdrawal. Honestly, the personal issue that caused me to leave the guild and game left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and I’ve found that I have almost no desire whatsoever for the game itself. Not being able to play with my friends has been the most difficult part, by far. I’ve been fortunate enough to have kept in touch with many of them on Facebook or by phone thus far, but there are others with whom I’ve already lost touch (I miss you guys if you’re reading this!).

Moving right along…

I’ve been taking a break from video games in general this month. Other than putting a little bit of time into Portal (Mac), I’ve spent my free time doing other things. It has been my intention all along to set up my newish, as-yet-underutilized 360 in order to play some of the stuff that is waiting patiently for me, and so Friday afternoon I did just that.

I have about ten games that I want to play at some point, but I wasn’t feeling like really digging into anything that I already own. So after setting up the system, I headed off to the mall, where I snagged these two items (at Gamestop and FYE, respectively):

Rock!... and Rock!!

Yeah, I was in the mood for some kick-ass metal fun, and I got both of these pretty cheaply! I haven’t tried Brütal Legend yet, because I would like to get the 360 online and updated before I play some of the newer games… although that isn’t entirely written in stone.

Much ado about nothing

Ok, so I was sort of joking when I decided on the title to this post! In summary, I’ve been pleasantly free of WoW cravings, and I’ve been slow to replace my normal WoW-time with other games. While I do intend to play other games, including those that I already own, I find my mind moving in other directions as well, which can only be healthy.

Steam for Mac goes live with free Portal download

On Wednesday afternoon (May 12), Steam for Mac went live, much to my delight.

In celebration of this new opportunity To promote the upcoming Portal 2 release, Steam is currently running an offer through May 24th where you can download the full original Portal for free for PC and Mac.

I already have a copy of Portal as part of the Half-Life 2: Orange Box collection on Xbox 360. However, the opportunity to play Portal on my computer instead, for the price of a few clicks and the download time, was too good to pass up. I downloaded it this evening, and after dinner I spent a half-hour playing through several of the puzzles to get a feel for it.

The port from PC to Mac seems to be flawless. The game looks great, and is extremely easy to control “right out of the box.” I’m excited to have something to play on my computer (other than playing “blogger,” “Facebook,” “check email,” and “catch up on feed reader”) while I’m in the midst of moving and adjusting to a WoW-free lifestyle.

I’ve been waiting for Steam for Mac to go live since they announced it, and am already salivating at the possibilities. Torchlight is on sale for $9.99 until Monday, and I’m already grappling with whether or not I want to snag that one. Braid is available for Mac, as is World of Goo. I’m curious to see what kinds of games are released for Mac via Steam in the near future, and wondering if more of the bigger titles that are available for PC are going to be ported to Mac.

All in all, it’s an exciting time for gamers with Macs. The potential for a greater variety of titles and genres is encouraging, and I’m looking forward to seeing how this effects my gaming habits this year.