20081112: Every WoW Hunter I've rolled has wanted Mazzranache. I can't count the number of times (and alts) I spent hours wandering around the base of Thunder Bluff just outside Bloodhoof, waiting for a glimpse of the notorious pink flamingo. Inevitably, I always gave up on Mazzranache and tamed any old beast that wandered my way because I'd get so tired of looking.
Not so with my new Night Elf Hunter, Tawnia. She spent her first ten levels in Draenei territory, and thought she wanted a Vale Moth (simply because all the other moths are untameable until Level 62!). This seemed like a great idea, given I hadn't seen any around, but the moment I hit Draenei soil, after a long run back to Dolanaar for my pet skill, what do I see but a Draenei hunter with a brand spanking new Vale Moth!
Given I had already run around so much from the Night Elf lands to Draenei territory (and back and forth a few times for good measure), I decided a run to Mulgore couldn't be much worse, and decided Mazzranache was the new target. The run was admittedly long and boring, with only a few deaths to spice things up, but as soon as I arrived at the famous intersection to the wee little path just below Thunder Bluff (ready to wait around for as long as it took), there she was! Right beside the road (almost like she'd been waiting).
Taming went smoothly; she almost killed me with no pots, and I caught some annoying aggro from the multitude of wolves and cougars and vultures lurking about; but it was done, and she was finally mine. Seconds after the tame, a wolf went for me; she had him off in a flash, and dead only a few hits later!
Here we are, deep in enemy territory for me; the start of a grand new life of (well fed) adventure for her:
20081107: (started 20080819) Golf. I've always felt a certain sense of awe when it comes to golf.
Years ago, my ex-husband inherited some golf clubs and became obsessed for awhile (I'm pretty sure our inevitable divorce was due in no small part to the fact we are both such intellectual dilettantes. Perhaps I'll explain why dilettante-ism relates to divorce one of these days). I remember going to the practice range with him and being very bored as he painstakingly whacked the little white balls as many meters in front of him as he could. I was far more fascinated with the rattling, ramshackle carts chugging around the practice range sucking up the hundreds of small white balls being continuously whacked out there by at least 30 or 40 people standing side by side doing exactly the same thing.
However, I'm a complete sucker for competence; this may be related to my dilettante-ism come to think of it. I remember the golf pros striding around, immaculately attired, leading their students, clearly in charge and very good at what they did. While I showed absolutely no interest in the sport at that time, a tiny sliver stuck in the back of my mind - a sliver that worked its way to the surface this summer.
One of my favorite projects is the Memorial Golf Tournament. I was approached by a client and friend in 2006 to help out with a local golf tournament that wanted to grow a little - not too much, mind you - just a little. We started meeting in the spring of 2006 and put together the 5th Annual Memorial Golf Tournament. I designed the website, we sent out an email or two using MeteorBytes and the tourney turned out to be a great success. We repeated this formula in 2007 and in 2008 to similar success, and great fun continues to be had by all.
For the first two years of the tournament I gamely resisted any attempts to coax me to play. After all, you're looking at the girl whose classmates fought over who wouldn't have to include her on their sports team (I was so jumpy when I was a kid, I would duck every time a ball came flying towards me - during baseball!). My experiences with sports, especially team sports, hadn't been especially positive to this point, so I was determined to stick to the electronic side of things. I'm not sure if 2008 found me braver, or just stupider; in any case, something made me decide to give this arcane game of golf the old college try.
The afternoon of August 14th arrived - the temperature was extra hot and rising, the sun getting ready to give everyone with under 30 SPF a nice crispy sunburn. I was in the middle of trying to decide if I was capable of living without a car, so I gamely took the bus (with an enormous and noisy bag of golf clubs as my boon companions) from Coquitlam all the way out to UBC. That in and of itself was an adventure (though slightly less of an adventure than the acquisition of said clubs...).
When I arrived, the University Golf Course was a bustle of activity. The volunteers were responsible for organizing over 100 golfers with welcome packages, lunch chits, carts, maps and instructions for the day. All I could think about what the fact I had literally never golfed before - never held a golf club, never aimed the little white ball at the little far away hole in the ground...
Fortunately, people are often charmed (and challenged to channel their inner instructor) by a newcomer (as long as their score isn't dependent on her), so there were many kind souls who were more than happy to help me figure out how to hold the club, set up the ball and let fly. Their information was often divergent (and there were many amused glances at my sweaty, rapidly crumpling copy of A Girl's On-Course Survival Guide to Golf) - I don't think any of them actually agreed on how I was supposed to hold the club! Fortunately, there was a lone, very impressive, golfer at the driving range who was pained enough (by my rather embarrassing struggles) to stop his own warm up occasionally and give me a few tips. His tips made sense and got me through the day with at least a modicum of dignity (only a modicum, mind you).
The end of the day found me slightly shell-shocked at just how terrible I was (one of my team mates eventually cried out an agonized: "You have to count your strokes on every hole, Linda!" - this came as rather surprising news to me, as I figured you had to just keep whacking the damned thing until you finally made it go in to the tiny little hole at the end. The counting thing made sense actually - took the pointlessness out of the whole exercise ;-)). At some point I realized the game wasn't as casual for everyone as I'd been led to believe - that having someone as terrible as me on the team really impacted how their game was going to turn out - so I decided to cut the three of them a break and go take pictures instead. While I don't pretend to be a world-class photographer, I'm certainly better at pointing the camera than I am at aiming a golf club!
All in all, my very first golf tournament (and first time golfing period, let's not forget) was an experience and a half. I promised everyone I wouldn't go back until I had a few lessons under my belt and understood things like counting strokes and how to make my driver work. There were a few awestruck, mouth-hanging-open moments when I had a chance to watch some truly astonishing golfers at work - the unmistakable, unforgettable sound of that powerful "whack" of club on ball before the small missile is launched clear up to the tree-tops only to land 250 meters closer to the wee little hole - 250 meters! I considered 1 meter per stroke a massive success ;-)
20080708: In what can only be described as an act of staggering idiocy, GoPets released (from what the forums tell me) yet another patch that not only does not improve gameplay in any way, it quite literally gouges their loyal base of premium members - members who bring in a regular flow of real-life money to pay for in-game gold. Skills and recipes that were level 30 on Sunday night have now been raised anywhere from level 90 to level 190. Water, necessary for crafting, has been increased from a fairly reasonable cost of 20-odd green shells to somewhere in the range of 5-30 pink and 39-200 green. These incomprehensible and unannounced increases make it nearly impossible to play this game unless you are fairly wealthy in both time and cash, because you'll need a hell of a lot of both if you want to do more than sit and look at your pets slowly starving, never to die, becoming miserable, depressed and narcoleptic.
A quick perusal of the GoPets forums shows comments like: "This is just plain insanity on Gopets part. I really believe now that they do not know how to run a business! Have they all lost their marbles! I am pretty confident that at this point anything that we write or say will just fall on deaf ears, they just simply don't care anymore, in my opinion."; "This is terrible. And once again Thanks for the HEADS UP GOPETS! I am trying to find a few games to replace this one, I have pretty much given up. "; "This is now a pay to-play-game. And it's a shambles of broken, boring, tedious, unenjoyable crafts, games, drops, custom making... They expect people to pay more than ever for a game that is more broken than ever."
CEO Eric Bethke's response to the very real concerns being voiced by his subscribers is weak, ineffectual and insulting: "You guys are important to GoPets and I do appreciate your energy. There is just a bunch of stuff that I have to get done. It will probably be a week or two before I can do a meaningful update."
Let's hope the "bunch of stuff" Eric has to "get done" includes a good hard look at how to fix what used to be a very charming and addictive little game.
20080704: Addendum: My recommendation no longer stands. As of Monday, July 7, I have removed the GoPets client from my PC and will not reinstall it.
GoPets Panda Paradise with Emily and Albert - read their blog here. You can visit GoPets and adopt a virtual cat, dog or panda too - Emily and Albert would love some new companions to play with! If you decide to come visit, you can find Emily and Albert in their Panda Paradise at 224,355.
I must admit to a certain amount of recreational fickleness that's plagued me much of my life. I remember years ago - I was probably 7 or 8 - opening one of those packages with the transparent red fish... when you held it in your palm it was supposed to tell you what sort of personality you had, and would continue to have; my fish rolled in the direction of fickle, and it seems to have stuck.
WoW was one of the first recreational activities that grabbed me long-term - knitting was a big one for quite some time, and I carried yarn and needles around obsessively for many months, but I would always leave several unfinished masterpieces littered about on the quest for the new perfect pattern or yarn - but WoW - WoW was something I felt passionate about for pretty much a solid year (though I am a confirmed and shameless 'alt-oholic', which brings to mind unfinished knitting masterpieces...).
I suppose gaming really smacked me in the forehead when I bought my Nintendo Game Cube about 3 years ago. Until then, I hadn't ever gamed, really, other than a strange little game called 'Jill of the Jungle' (which I loved because I could change into a fish), and the ubiquitous 'Lemmings'. I dated a career gamer for three years, during which time he would play Everquest for fifteen hours (or more) at a time. I never really understood the appeal, and was often horrified when he had to kill creatures I thought might make good friends ;-) My most commonly quoted reason for avoiding gaming was the fact I couldn't actually 'go into that world' - a concept I found terribly frustrating. So until my rather out of character NCG acquisition, I pretty much avoided the world of gaming and chose to focus my always obsessive focus on a thousand other distractions - far too numerous to list here!
Once I played the NGC however, I was hooked. I played the Sims2 on the cube almost daily, despite the outraged protestations of said career gamer ex, for nearly 6 months. He was (and continues to be) outraged at the dumbed down, unexpandable/uncustomizable nature of platform gaming. He nearly wore his molars out gnashing his teeth at what he considered a leave of all my senses (a phenomenon that continues to this day ;-)). He implored me to try the Sims on my PC, but I couldn't really afford the upgrade at that point (especially after buying so many new games for the game cube...), so I continued on happily until I finally got bored. Once I got bored of the cube I played Sudoku (surprise, surprise - also obsessively) until it inevitably started to bore me too (though I've picked it up again, and find it as compelling as ever).
And then I got my DS.
I love my DS to this day - I think I've had it for almost two years, and while I don't play every day, I play several times a week most of the time. Most recently I've been playing Natsume's River King: Mystic Valley (which, despite several reviews to the contrary, is delightful). I also picked up Ubisoft's Petz: Hamsterz2 which is pretty cute, but not terribly compelling. I've started (and discarded, true to form) Final Fantasy III, MegaManZX, Castlevania; Portrait of Ruin, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Harvest Moon, Yoshi's Island, Geometry Wars: Galaxies, Cookie & Cream and DiddyKong Racing (to name a few).
I forgot to mention, somewhere in the crazed focus of my gaming quest, a brief spate of time I tried to find something that would work on my older IBM ThinkPad T20 with the 8MB video card... (lol) If you're interested in that, you can read my one and only blog post in a long discarded blog meant to be longer than one post here.
So, back to my original thought... well, sort of anyway - WoW. I played WoW pretty devotedly (albeit in a scattered and alt-hungry manner) for quite awhile considering my past penchant for hobby fickleness, and I still love WoW. I play a lot less often now, though, for a variety of reasons (all of which make said career gamer ex crazed and aggravated... what was it he said recently.... "Trying to get a bunch of girls all playing WoW effectively at the same time would be like herding cats." (cheeky grin) This comment was prompted by my recent (and very explicable if you know me) descent into madness as I tried to find the perfect virtual pet. Flyff (read below), has a pet system - and an interesting one at that - where your pet continuously loses health when you have it out with you, and if you happen to be careless enough to let it die IT CANNOT BE REZZED! Seriously. Your pet dies and can never come back. I really loved Flyff until I learned that. Given my famed denial of death, I couldn't very well invest in a pet that could potentially die at any moment never to be seen again, so I went on a truly epic adventure trying to find a game that would give me a pet to love and nurture that wouldn't ever die permanently - no matter what.
Which brings me to GoPets (Virtual World Digest paraphrases "GoPets never die or become sick, despite the lack of care or how low their status may become" here). When I was first searching for this perfect virtual pet experience (I literally tried everything from Second Life to the Asian equivalent of WoW - Perfect World) I had some parameters in mind - I wanted something like WoW because I love a lot of the elements of an MMO from the linear, directed and predictable questing system to the rewarding (though time consuming) crafting system and yes, the social element (a desire on my part I still don't completely understand). Unfortunately, almost no franchise has nearly the budget Blizzard does, so most UIs are visibly underfunded and aggravating to use (no matter how hard I tried, the Mabinogi UI drove me nuts). Second Life is still not entirely there - it has some interesting features, but I can't escape the fact that everything seems so much like the life I already have. I realize this perspective will be scoffed at by the legions devoted to creating a fantasy life in Second Life, but something about it felt sordid and a little rubby to me. I can't yet explain what or why. I adopted the AI dog and downloaded the programming, but the dog doesn't walk - it kind of hydroplanes (which is a little unnerving) and at no time did I feel like I had a companion. I didn't even feel like my avatar was a companion. The only good thing about Second Life was Ravensdream Nightfire - a female avatar on Help Island who was truly an astonishing person, and to whom I still owe some custom creations...
After playing River King on the DS I knew I wanted my virtual pet to interact with me. The monster babies that become your companions in the game aren't the most astonishing examples of sophisticated AI programming, but they're better than the Second Life dog - they bounce along in an adorable manner, talk to you (limited script of course ;-)) and help you find bugs and plants with a little noise and animation. When you give them a fish they love they get very excited and a little heart appears in their thought bubble; give them a fish they hate and an angry cloud appears. For whatever reason this interaction is very satisfying. So that experience set the bar a little higher for me.
On my many Google perusals, I'd seen references to GoPets, and after looking at the screenshots I decided against it because the animals looked strange and a little creepy. But, after a truly mammoth undertaking (which I have yet to rant about) getting the Sims2 and Sims2 Pets to run on my laptop (Yay!), I decided to give it a go.
So now I have little Emily and Albert - two adorable little Pandas on their own plot of land equipped with toys, fishing pond and diving pool (watching them dive is really is too cute for words). GoPets is unique in my experience. It's social networking combined with MMO combined with virtual pet... You buy your pet things with shells (the currency), you can send friends gifts you buy, you can make friends very easily and your pets travel from your "desktop" to visit the desktops of your friends. My new friend, Amjag71, sent her sweet little Panda, Micha, to visit Emily and Albert today, and after much pointed ignoring on the part of my two little monsters, the three got on very well, sharing food, taking turns at the diving pool and napping together.
My pets give every appearance of interacting with me. When I rub the cursor over their bellies they stretch and smile, and little hearts appear over their heads. They go to each other, independent of any action on my part, hugging and cuddling one another while various heart-like images pop up over their heads; if you give them a teddy bear they very gently pat and hug it, and if I "jumpstone" Emily too much she has terrible tantrums at the last arrival, obviously angry about such rapid, high-pressure inter-world travel ;-) When I put food and juice out for them they come running (very much like my real-life rabbit Mr. B does) and settle in to share the food with great contentment, often falling asleep together when they're done, then waking up and jumping happily into the tub for a bath. Add the level of customization options available for them and their environment, and you have exactly what I was searching for - they even have their own blog (and the owners get one too).
I recommend GoPets for anyone wanting a virtual pet with whom they can enjoy a greater level of interaction, but who also enjoy MMOs and social networking. If you visit this link I can apparently earn referral credits which will allow me to buy the kids and all our friends new and exciting presents ;-)
Now I wonder where my next big obsession will take me...
20080616: I can fly! (or at least Twiglit can). After 3 intensive days with my newly discovered (insanely addictive) Flyff (Fly For Fun) I finally reached Level 20 and my new ability to fly. Happiness.
I would never have made it through the last nail-biting level without the invaluable help of a little Assist named 'Pepper643,' who continuously buffed, rezzed and healed me (as I got used to my new (and soon to be nixed) Skill 'build,' who later explained he became an Assist because he likes helping people so much. Well, Pepper643, your help was greatly appreciated today, and you will be thought of as I soar through the skies on my new airboard and broomstick (I bought both due to a crisis of indecision ;-)).
20080613: After spending far too many hours searching for a new game (looking at everything from 'Mass Effect' to 'Dreamfall'), I finally stumbled on a little MMO I remember from a couple of years back - before the video card upgrade so I was unable to run it - Flyff (Fly for Fun), a 'free-for-life' Korean massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Immediately hooked, I wasted a good portion of my weekend racing for the goal of 20 when you are rewarded with the (rather unique) ability to fly anywhere in world on a broom or airboard. The soft strains of the very repetitive theme song pittered through my brain as I slept, walked, ate and worked, driving me to devote every spare minute to the task of earning my ability to fly.
The people in the game are extremely generous, helpful, charming and oh-so very very young... scrolling through chat you see comments like: "I turn 12 in October"! I continue to be astonished at how this online world strips away conceptions of age, gender and station. I can happily play for hours with a group of kind, intelligent, industrious 11 year olds who patiently guide this old 'noob' through the intricacies of watching aggro, obtaining the first job and how to travel from one city to the next. In just three days I made several new friends - all who approached me without hesitation, obviously happy and secure in their online personas; and grouping is this crazy delightful mass of people from all different guilds bouncing around killing things with abandon, inviting anyone who happens past so everyone can share the XP - I notice none of the politics that sometimes grate on me in WoW... and very little of the seriousness. All in all, I recommend Flyff without hesitation for anyone wanting a lighter MMO experience to wile away the hours...
20080526 Cute picture of the month from Brant:
Don't you just want to say "Awwwwwww"?
20080506: Interesting article in April 19th's Economist 'Beware grannies on Facebook' reinforcing (to me) not only the point of social networking, but yet another example of its value (yes, yes - I realize I'm a late adopter); a recent post on eROI's Email Days blog further supports this idea with their brief 'Twitter offers Get out of Jail Free with its service' tidbit. As I scurry over to MailChimps' current post on MonkeyBrains (their really excellent blog) 'MailChimp Twitter Updates', I'm starting to see a pretty persuasive case for increased corporate use of these social networking sites that businesses like Twitter and MailChimp are adopting with such innovation and alacrity. MediaShift has a great Guide to Micro-Blogging and Twitter that startles me a little with just how far behind I am.
20080503: Well, after nearly a full year of waiting, Toffy finally got her Mr. Wiggles. She and the little orcish orphan had great fun this past Saturday for Children's Week 2008 seeing the sights in Azeroth and plotting further adventures over some yummy strawberry ice cream. The result of all the excitement? A portly, loyal little Mr. Wiggles as boon companion to our intrepid Tauren adventurer. She and the loveable pig promptly meandered across the land picking up such valuable flight paths as Swamp of Sorrows and Blasted Lands. Mr. Wiggles is reported to be quite excited about seeing Outland in the near future and apparently hopes he can assist his new companion's creator in this monumental task with the occasional reminder of her solemn promise not to roll any more alts until he and Toffy finally see Level 70.
TOFFY and MR. WIGGLES - RAVENTUSK 2008
20080502: Everything seems to be moving a lot faster these days (she says from the ripe old vantage point of 35...). I recently (and reluctantly) upgraded my trusty Blackberry 7250 to the still ancient 8703e. I spent weeks tethering the 7250 and was reluctant to relinquish the kinship I felt with the little device after so much shared pain.
The 8703e and I are getting along famously, the FreeRange RSS reader providing me with some seriously fun and productive reading while I drive and walk around distractedly. This little reader works perfectly with the 8703e. I had no trouble setting it up and adding feeds. It is reasonably customizable, allowing me a few color choices and full-screen mode. I can also post to De.licio.us while reading a feed... something that prompted me to give De.licio.us another chance.
Which brings me to my original idea.. well, sort of. FreeRange provided me with my favorite email marketing publications on the go, which led me to Twitter, leading me, of course, to begin twittering away (you can literally sing tiny twitters any way and anywhere you can possibly think of); which (how unexpected) led me to try posting to De.licio.us from FreeRange (an entirely painless and efficient process). All this led me to think more on the whole 'social networking' craze - a craze (like so many others) I have valiantly tried to ignore.
I have a Facebook profile, which I have pared down to almost nothing; choosing to allow my curmudgeonly senior cat to represent me to the public (not a terrible choice). Blue aside, I understand why people Facebook, and am beginning to understand the almost pathological need we all have to stay in constant touch with (as the Economist recently wondered in their April 12th 2008 article 'Our nomadic future') business associates, friends and family. Are these sociologists the Economist mentions right to worry that "permanent connectivity" might "isolate cliques...[causing] constant emailers and texters [to lose] the everday connections to casual acquaintances or strangers who might be sitting next to them in the café or bus"?
Not having been extraordinarily social myself, I do have to reach a little on this one, but if I think a little I can remember a time I used to have nothing to do except read a book or look out the window rather than play on my DS, email on my berry, talk on the phone, read the latest feeds from any number of interesting sources and fret about 15 minutes of telus server lag between email pushes. I seem to remember talking to the odd stranger, thinking a little deeper, enjoying some downtime... Today, I often feel like 'downtime' has become a dirty word.
Certainly food for thought as I go back to reading and posting and twitting on my merry, wireless, obsessive little way.
