Thief School Dropout

It’s shaping up to be a rainy and hazy morning here in Oklahoma. I have an on-site meeting with a printing company today about a joint project, so that is going to prove to be an odd little detour for me. I am not really a hands on people person, I prefer to communicate over email unless I absolutely have to do otherwise. So the thought of having to do a face to face with someone is extremely nerve wracking. However, if this moves the project along I will take one for the team.

As the day went on yesterday, we found out there far more than just ourselves had gotten hit by the car bandit. Most of the individuals that got hit swore they locked their car, and in the case of one of my neighbors I believe it. My problem is I don’t really remember if I locked it or not, it is usually just something I do as a reflex. So essentially we are finding that the thief had some way of unlocking car doors rapidly. What makes the whole thing even more brazen is the fact that there is a county sheriff directly across the street from me.

But since the thief had hit multiple sites, it meant when he hit our cars he was likely on the way to another home. I figured he would have noticed that my sunglasses were prescription and tossed them pretty quickly. Sure enough after retracing his steps I quickly found my sunglasses case, and shortly after my sunglasses laying nestled in the grass. Basically they got into our cars and found nothing worth keeping.

It really makes me wonder what the thief was looking for in the first place. If it was just a bored teenager as I originally thought, why go to all the trouble. Especially since some of the cars appear to have been locked. What on earth was worth the risk that they went from car to car but essentially found nothing much. The whole skewed logic behind the whole thing baffles me. I guess I will likely never understand it since I am a law abiding citizen… and would never think to break into someone else’s car.

Rift Changes

The more I think about it the more I am looking forward to the changes. But the more I have seen from the community that they feel this is the end of the world for the game, and that all of the priorities will shift from this point onwards. I can understand this line of thought, but having lived through the cash shop and free to play conversions inside of Everquest 2 I know that life goes on happily regardless. Not every cash shop implementation is as egregious as the SWTOR conversation has been.

What I have seen with EQ2 is that the regular big updates continue to happen, but now there is a weekly flow of optional items you can pick up from the store. Most of these are completely optional and purely flavor based, but all in all make your character more enjoyable to play. I really hope they exploit this for some really cool looking cosmetic sets. I am also really hoping that a good deal of the housing stuff makes it to the cash shop as well.

The other big thing that I am looking forward to is REX. I actively played EQ2 during the transition to Krono, and to me personally this was a huge deal. No longer did I have to worry about how much platinum I had, or attempt to farm it at all… which is my least favorite activity ever. If I ran low, I could just pick up another Krono and fill my coffers again, so I stopped having to worry about such things and just got to play the game. It allowed me to do all the things I enjoy in the game without ever having to worry about trying to accumulate large amounts of wealth and/or play the auction house.

If you are one of those players that love playing the Auction House… then I apologize because this really is the apocalypse for you. The best change for me in a post Krono economy is that almost everything on the broker in EQ2 is dirt cheap, making it super easy for players starting out to get the items they need to play the game. The highest tier of quality at every level range is still commanding a premium, but the basic items that you need to survive all plummeted in price massively after the introduction of the Krono. This was a huge net positive for me personally, but reeked havoc on the players that loved to piddle around with the broker.

Yesterday they sent out a survey to all subscribers trying to get feedback on the transition. I took the very short survey, and will be interested to see if they release any of the data. Essentially it is mostly concerned with how likely you are to stay subscribed to the game. I said that the big benefit that is missing from the patron rewards is a monthly cash shop stipend. I have come to expect this playing SOE and Turbine free to play games. If they managed to cough this up, even a small stipend it would make this literally the best free to play conversion for subscribers.

Going Dark

As of this evening I will pretty much be going dark on my nightly activities again through the weekend. I will be once more bound by an NDA, as a result I am going to be trying to dig up interesting things to share in the absence of updates about what I am actually doing. However recently I have been talking a good deal more about myself than my gaming. Over the last few nights though, I have mostly played PlayStation 3. The whole cleaning of the loft thing has provided me something I had been missing, a way to play console games without feeling guilty for taking up the television.

Thanks to Playstation Plus I now have this instant library of titles to play, and thanks to a recommendation from a friend I have been playing a good deal of Guacamelee. If you have not played it you should at least download the demo. Basically it is this awesome side scrolling fighting game meets metroidvania with an awesome Mexican luchador flair. Everything about the game screams fun, from the colors to the ability names… instead of wall jump, you get goat jump. The story is simple, but the cast of characters are colorful and well written.

Right now it and Darksiders are seeing the most playtime, but I have a large stack of games I have grabbed from the Playstation Plus program. My biggest problem right now is that my internet connection has gone to hell. I am going to be working on my office this weekend trying to prep it so that I can order the cable installed next week. It will be so nice to bump up to 50 meg internet. I am literally going to stream all the things… ALL OF THEM!!!!

I hope you all have a great day, I am going to try my best to be a civil member of society and deal with this on site visit thingy. Hopefully nothing horrible happens today, since the last few days have pretty much depleted my ability to care. Dear weekend… why can’t you be today?