Let’s paint the picture for you: you’ve been working all day, maybe it was a crappy day.  You come home, [...]]]> I love Blizzard, I really do.  I think they do so much to keep their user base entertained, engaged and coming back for more.  The one area where I feel they fail utterly is: population control.

Let’s paint the picture for you: you’ve been working all day, maybe it was a crappy day.  You come home, do the dinner thing, don’t want to watch tv – so you decide to login to your favorite MMO: World of Warcraft.  You get yourself something to drink and maybe a snack, pull up a chair and enter in your login info.  Connecting, handshaking – all that sutff that flashes by and then you see it – your server is Full.  You’re going to have to wait.  How long?

Well, that depends on something I like to call ‘Big Magic, Much JooJoo…’

It starts off telling you that you’ve only got about ten minutes to wait, but then it starts changing – 30 minutes, five minutes, 40 minutes, 10 minutes, 35 minutes – it keeps pulsing back and forth.  Whatever, you’re in for a wait.  Just yesterday (saturday), I waited an hour to get onto my server only to find myself booted off again within a half hour while questing in Zangarmarsh.  It was very sudden – everything just sort of froze, and then I was kicked off.  I logged back in and was face to face with the freaking queue again, telling me it would be 30 minutes before I got back in, so I closed the program and played some Xbox instead.

Blizzard’s answer to this issue is two fold; on one hand, they offer ‘free transfers’ on ’select realms’ to ‘lower population servers’.  I don’t believe I’ve ever seen my server’s name, Earthen Ring, on any of these free transfer offers.  The second choice is a paid transfer to another server.

Both of these solutions have the same big problem: I don’t want to move my characters to another server.

Your server is a community, one that you’ve become a part of and that has become a part of you.  To leave it would be like moving from your town to another, leaving all your friends and family behind.  Who the hell wants to do that?

I don’t understand the logistics behind it, but I wonder why Bliizzard doesn’t simply increase capacity on high population servers?  I’ve been on Earthen Ring since the beginning, since I bought and installed the game.  I don’t want to leave it, but I’d sure like to be able to login and play.  The queue has been around, off and on, for a very long time.  Usually during ‘high peak’ times, late afternoon/early evening, but I’ve been noticing it later and later in the evenings and almost always on the weekends.  It’s getting ridiculous.

Is there some great wall that prevents Blizzard from increasing capacity on any given realm?  It can’t be a money issue – with 11.5 million subscribers at $15 a month – I think they have enough money.

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Some examples come from the Death Knight starting area and quests.  

The Eye.  The Eye quest lets you take a giant floating eye for a ride down to spy on the Scarlets.  Your [...]]]> I have been playing Wrath for a couple days now, and I have to admit – Blizzard has done some pretty nifty things.

Some examples come from the Death Knight starting area and quests.  

The Eye.  The Eye quest lets you take a giant floating eye for a ride down to spy on the Scarlets.  Your whole UI changes – it is really, really cool.

The next surprise for me was when you get to steal a horse.  Again, the UI changes – it surprised me and was a lot of fun.

Next, the cannons on the ship.  You get a quest to sneak behind enemy lines, board a ship and turn their own cannons against the Scarlets.  OMFG – the fun!  It reminded me of the first time I did the bombing quests in Outland.  SO FUN!

But none of that prepared me for the best surprise.  Normally, starting areas remain just that – starting areas.  You do your quests and move on, other people come on and do the same quests – the area remains the same.  Not so for Death Knights.  I completed the first quests and found that, for me, the starting area had changed!  Now, the Death Knights hold it – so I see a battered area, full of Ghouls and Plaguehounds.  Holy crap, it’s COOL!

This way of creating a logical progression – how the quests are about conquering the land and then you actually see it conquered instead of having to pretend – that is just simply amazing.

Well done, Blizzard.  Well done.

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My trip to Blizzcon rekindled my interest in the World of Warcraft, among other games.  I’ve been doing a good job of balancing my time playing video games with doing other, non sitting around on my ass stuff.  Not [...]]]> Well, to quote Michael Corleone: Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.

My trip to Blizzcon rekindled my interest in the World of Warcraft, among other games.  I’ve been doing a good job of balancing my time playing video games with doing other, non sitting around on my ass stuff.  Not enough, of course, but at least I’m trying.  Still, I find myself logging in more than I have in a very long time.

Still not playing much Horde, though.  I want to, I’m nearly there – seriously, I am.  Lots of drama happened there, lots of stupid people being petty and blaming everyone else for all sorts of crap.  Bleh.  It’s no wonder I stay away.  There are some truly fantastic people over there, though, and I am closer to going back and getting into the groove of things again than I was, say, a month ago.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on my Alliance side Paladin – arguably my first main character.  Pretty well developed RP-wise and when I played him every night, I had it down really well and as long as I had mana, I survived.  Playing him again after so long has been a challenge, but I’m getting the hang of it again.  I’m looking forward to the Lich King expansion, everything I saw at Blizzcon really looked interesting and the latest patch with all the new stuff has been a lot of fun.

Logging into him for the first time in a long time, I had to redo all his talents, spells, etc.  I also had to deal with the fact that he had no money – I’d sent it all to Morticai Horde side long ago.  So I set to work on getting him some money, working the Auction House (and doing a damned fine job of it), upgrading his armor and finally breaking level 60 after three years.

The funny came when I was going through my bank and found my tuxedo pants.  This reminded me of those early days, playing in a tight group and doing really well.  RP-wise, my Pally was engaged – hence the tuxedo pants.  When the call came to head to an instance, he was wearing said pants and I totally forgot to change them out for his plate.  So, I tanked Uldaman in tuxedo pants.  And I didn’t die.

If you know anything about the game, this should be amusing to you

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I have an alarm on my iPhone that’s set for daily – I forgot that doesn’t include Saturday – it’s just Monday through Friday, so it never actually went off this day.

D’oh.

I had people calling me early though, so I was able to [...]]]> Day four started just about the same as Day Three – I overslept.

I have an alarm on my iPhone that’s set for daily – I forgot that doesn’t include Saturday – it’s just Monday through Friday, so it never actually went off this day.

D’oh.

I had people calling me early though, so I was able to get up and get going, just not quickly.

I wanted food – people were busy doing stuff, so I went by myself.  Also, I had a mission.  It was at the end of this:

I’m talking about Downtown Disney.  See, Disney now has not only Disneyland and the California Adventure theme parks, they also have their own little downtown area complete with shops and restaurants.  I needed to hit the Disney store in that area to pick up something for my mom.  I’d asked her if there was anything I could bring her from Disney and she originally said ‘no’.  Then, -after- I’d visited the park and was well into the convention, she called and said she wouldn’t mind some ear rings if it wasn’t too much trouble.

Sigh.

So, being a good son, I walked to the Disney store and got her some ear rings.  While there, I also picked up a new hat for myself, which I wore for the rest of the convention.

I forgot to mention it but on the first day of the con, I met the cast of The Guild.  They were awesome people, very kind.  I got a special piece of art that had been done for them, and they each signed it.  Well, the second day, they were having their own panel at the con – I really wanted to see that.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to – there was a line like no other line to get into the room.  So I wandered some more, hooked up with Hukari and hit some of the other panels.  Eventually, we met up with the rest of The Monkeys and did a little gaming while the concert was going on.

It was the first time I’d ever played Diablo and I have to admit, I really liked it.  It was Diablo 3, the new game on the horizon in that franchise.  We played through twice – you got fifteen minutes and could be networked with 4 other players – it was really, really fun.

Here’s some photos from the day:

After dinner and a particularly fantastic rant on star wars by Brian (in the photo above, he’s in the back left, no hair), there was more hanging out and partying into the wee hours of the night, then everyone started to trickle out.  I was tired, sore and ready for bed, so I headed back to my hotel room and crashed for the night.

Blizzcon was over.

I was trying to figure out what it was all about, this Blizzcon thing.  I made a joke: “I figured out what Blizzcon is all about.  You spend close to $1,000 to take a trip to stand in line for 5 and 1/2 hours so you can buy a $20 shirt.”  It didn’t go over well.

But that’s not what it’s all about anyway.  I did figure it out.  It’s about people.  Good people, good friends, hanging out and talking about the stuff they all share and enjoy in common with each other.

What this meant for me was that I found myself energized for gaming again.  I was really interested in the panels for the World of Warcraft and the changes they’re making and plans for the future that they discussed.  I really enjoyed playing Diablo 3 and thought about picking up the first two (which I did when I got back – can’t play the first one though, it wants OS 9 and I don’t have that).  To top it off, I was itching to rp in WoW again, something I haven’t been interested in for about a year now.

The Drunken Monkey Brewery is filled with fantastic people.  All guilds should take a page out of their book.  When it comes to people getting along and surving for the long haul, they know what they’re doing.

The next day, I got up and flew back to Denver.

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