Rift

Why is it… that a bed that is uncomfortable at 10 pm… can become the most comfortable thing in the universe at 6 am?  Feeling very creaky as the hotel bed seems to not agree with my back, but that is nothing a few Tylenol will not cure.  It feels like the time shift thing is catching up with me… last night I could not for the life of me get to sleep and this morning I simply do not want to wake up.  Luckily however just one more morning of this before I am back home.  I miss my comfy spot on the couch a lot when I try to game here in the relatively uncomfortable office chair on a table that is just a tiny bit too high.

Bilgewater Trade Cartel

Yesterday it was confirmed by Bashiok that in 5.4 they would be adding in a cash shop for the World of Warcraft.  Apparently to some in the WoW community this is shocking and disturbing news, and Rowan wrote up a nice piece covering his thoughts on the matter.  Much the same as him… I am an outsider watching this situation evolve as I have no real vested interest in the game any longer.  I still have a good number of friends playing it, in and theory I am still leading House Stalwart over there by proxy.  I gave up the guild leader crown, but the person I handed it off to consults me on most major decisions…  not that I really expected that… but that has been what happened in practice.

What I don’t understand is why this is such a shock to the installed player base?  I am honestly surprised this has not happened before now.  The fact that you could go to battle.net and hit the store and purchase lots of in game items right away… means that essentially for years World of Warcraft has had a cash shop.  Placing this in game just streamlines the process, and makes it more of an impulse buy.  Additionally it allows them to expand their product offering to include different sorts of items.  Again…  I am shocked this has not happened before now…  as they already have a large catalog of items and services available for a fee.

I’ve said this before… and I will say it again…  I feel all of this is leading to Blizzard announcing a free to play conversion.  Right now it is just them, Eve Online, and Final Fantasy XIV that have subscriptions…  the last not even fully re-released yet…  so that could change.  Everything I have heard is that Blizzard has lost favor in China, and that World of Warcraft is no longer the cool thing it once was there.  As a result they have taken serious losses in player base there, if not completely losing that market.  This has been the thing that seriously overinflated their subscriber numbers, especially since WoW Asia already had a vastly different payment model than the United States monthly subscribers.

I feel like since it does not seem like they have much else in the pipeline… they will be making the big announcement at Blizzcon this year.  I feel like this is a decision they are going to have to make with the changes in the market, the constant trickle of player losses, and the fact that there is nothing on the horizon for at least another year.  This is pending an expansion announcement, which would at least be a year out.  If not another expansion… then the next big thing on the horizon is Titan in 2016.  There is just nothing there to ignite the player base and make them care about the game, so if nothing else I feel like a free to play decision might bring back existing players and get them to spend some money on the game.

I feel like Star Wars the Old Republic and Rift have both made the Free to Play conversion a much more palatable one for Blizzard.  In both cases they proved that they could make the switch and become more profitable in the process.  For a company with a deeply aging game, aging infrastructure and no clear content ark for storyline progression…  it has to be something that looks mighty tantalizing right now.  The only possible reason why Blizzard would not make this call is big stubborn pride.  But as they start to lose more money…  the pride thing eventually goes out the window.  Whatever is good for the bottom line of the company… and keeps the doors open… is ultimately good for the most dedicated player base.

Old Friends Renewed

Elowynn, Falconwing and Egan are folks I have known for roughly eight years of playing online games.  Back in vanilla wow, my guild House Stalwart and their guild Silent Strike were close allies and did a ton of content together.  There were many joint Zul’Gurub runs that I can remember fondly.  As Stalwart moved through Burning Crusade we got more and more “serious” about the content, our guilds started to drift apart as our focus was just in a difference place.  But during this time, there was not a period where I was not in communication with these folks… and if we needed subs for a raid I always threw a query out to them.

All these years later, I am finding out that they have a very active guild presence over on Faeblight.  Since I am on crappy hotel internet… I decided to roll a low level character to go visit with them.  I have to say it is in many ways like coming home.  While a lot of the people are different, the core of Elo, Falcon and Egan make the Silent Strike guild over on Faeblight feel all warm and fuzzy.  I am really wishing I had known about it when I came back to the game some time ago.  I love my friends that are in Outcast Misfits… but I have to admit I have a pull towards trying to transfer over to Faeblight.

Ultimately when it was just me… it was no big deal.  But over the course of the last several weeks I have gotten a large number of the Stalwarts and various other friends playing Rift again.  We’ve used the Stalwart channel to organize things… but it would be awesome if we could end up all in the same place.  The Misfits are nice folks, but I am just used to a role-playing environment… namely because of the naming rules.  The Misfits have some members I have literally reported for offensive naming violations… and that is just not something I am used to having to stomach within the guild I am in.  They have provided an extremely friendly place to hang out, but I keep wondering if our folks would be better served with Silent Strike on Faeblight.

Ultimately I have stayed with the Misfits, because it opened a lot of doors for my people.  If any of them decided they wanted to raid… then they would have those options.  But honestly I find myself mostly sticking to the people I know… and the server channel we created.  Silent Strike at least are extremely similar to the type of environment we had with House Stalwart.  I guess ultimately I have been looking for that type of environment all along.  Catari Honor Guard was it… until the membership stopped playing…  but since then I just haven’t found anyplace I feel comfortable calling a home.  I would be nice to feel like inviting someone to a guild… without having to give them a bunch of disclaimers about how the members are a little “rough around the edges”.

Breakfast Hard Roll

For the last few mornings… I have ended up going into Stewart’s a Upstate New York convenience store to get a pop in the morning.  Near the checkout they have had these bins with a sign above it that says “Hard Rolls”.  They are divided into neat little bins… one for Butter, one for Peanut Butter, and one for Peanut Butter and Jelly.  As I waited in line… I would watch people grab 2 or 3 at a time… and it all seemed amazingly odd.  So that after experiencing this enigma for a few days… I decided I had to try one this morning.

It is apparently truth in advertising…  a Kaiser roll or Hard roll as people here apparently call them… sliced down the middle and covered in butter.  After doing some figuration… it is roughly 300 calories… and is the dirt cheap price of $0.85.  I guess this is a relatively cheap way to get fast and easy sustenance.  Quite honestly… the roll itself was rather tasty… nice and soft on the inside and nice and buttery and crusty on the outside.  The butter inside as well was of a seemingly good quality… or at least it did not taste like fake butter.

I still do not fully get why people seem to be buying multiples of these at a time… other than the fact that maybe since I am I  staying in the ghetto… it is a cheap way to get some calories in you.  Maybe they are going to have them for lunch?  It was tasty enough for me to eat it again, because I have always had a weakness for bread and butter.  I just find the concept of that being normal convenience store fair a little odd.  In Oklahoma you expect to have Hot Dogs, Nachos, Taquitos, little Breakfast Sandwiches… maybe donuts…  but not fresh rolls.

Wrapping Up

I have zero idea what I am going to do with myself today.  I know at some point I should probably leave the room so that the maids can work freely without trying to move around me.  I guessed the time at which they would clean the room wrong yesterday… and ended up back here before they had done so.  I had a nice conversation with the maid however, and she apparently does not really like Schenectady either.  She misses working in Florida… and I suppose I would too.  I also get the impression she was extremely happy to have someone willing to talk to her.  Anyways I hope you all have great days… and I will endevour to figure out how to kill another day.

This morning is feeling really harsh, as I woke up around 7 am on a Saturday, after staying up until around 1:20 or so last night.  It was entirely intentional however… since I wanted to make sure I could sleep tonight.  We will be getting up before 4 am tomorrow… so that we can catch a 6 am flight.  Normally I struggle to get to sleep, and the only sure way I could think of to make sure I slept tonight… was to purposefully exhaust myself today.  All of that logic aside… it still sucks to be groggy and feel like you just want to go back to sleep.

Last to Know

Most of yesterday was relatively un-eventful.  We hung out around the house, cleaned a bit, did copious amounts of laundry…  but in the larger scheme of things nothing much happened.  I hung out on my laptop playing some Rift and my wife read or did planning for the next school year.  Essentially the standard things we do any day.  We had plans to go out and about but those never really materialized, so essentially we were the exact opposite of busy all day long.  This will factor in shortly as to why how un-busy we were matters.

About seven last night we get a call from my wife’s step brothers spouse.  Apparently my wife’s mother is in the hospital… suspected heart attack.  Of course we are a little freaked… but the freaked out part turns to a bit of anger when we find out that she has been there essentially all day.  My wife goes into a panic of trying to call people and make sure they know… and one by one… every person she reaches has known for hours.  Even estranged family members seem to know.

Essentially my wife is her mothers next of kin… the closest blood relative and the only one who could legally sign for her.  Yet she is quite literally the last person to find out she is in the hospital…  let alone has been there since at least around noon yesterday.  Somehow one of the step daughters got called and went to the hospital with her…  but my wife’s mother did not want anyone  called… since they “didn’t know anything”.  Thing is…  the step daughter is a 50+ year old grown woman… she should have started calling the moment she found out anything.  My wife’s mother was in a hospital bed… it is not like she could have stopped her.

To make matters worse… my niece thinks it is important to let everyone know when her kids have odd bowel movements…  yet the one time something important actually happens she doesn’t let us know?  She is a busy body, with no job, and essentially no life…  yet the one time she could have passed along crucial and vital information she didn’t.  Essentially the whole experience was frustrating to be so catastrophically left out of the loop.  I think we finally got called because people wondered where we were.

Okay So Far

In their defense… for whatever reason they all thought we had already left on our vacation.  But even then it would have been nice to at least know something was up.  Ultimately I think they wanted to save us the stress since we couldn’t really do anything about it.  Overall she is being treated like it was a heart attack… but she has had none of the signs of heart attack.  She was out working on the farm of her “boyfriend” and fainted.  But afterwards we find out she had not had anything to eat since 9pm the night before…  and not really had anything to drink since around 6pm.  So it could have been a low blood sugar or dehydration thing… since senior citizens dehydrate extremely easily.

She was as stubborn and frustrating as ever when we finally got to the hospital last night around 8:30.  All in all she was doing well, and felt much better, however they had her hooked to a heart monitor just to make sure things were okay.  They said she had some signs of plaque in her arteries… but quite honestly what 76 year old person has not developed a build up?  Based on her explanation of what happened I am doubt it was anything cardiac since she had no chest pain… and has no soreness other than the injuries she experienced in the fall.  The doctors had not really seen any “smoking guns” so hopefully they will release her today with an all clear.

We’ve made everyone we talk to essentially promise to call us first from now on… despite whatever she says.  I know she just didn’t want to needlessly worry anyone… but the simple fact that she was in the hospital at all meant folks needed to know.  We would have headed up there at noon and sat all day with her if we had known.  But this has always been the way it has gone in our family.  Since we tend to keep our heads down and focused on the day to day… we always end up the last to know about anything.  Generally it is the gossip queen niece that keeps us up to date… but sadly she seems to gloss over the things that are actually important.

The Treehouse

During the day yesterday I played a ton of Rift, as I ran around happily on my stabbity rogue.  I completed Pelladane and most of Cape Jule, but found myself struggling a little bit when I hit Seratos and the mob levels increased.  As a result I decided to try and push on through to 53 through a combination of Instant Adventures, Rifts and Zone events.  I made pretty decent progress and am sitting at roughly 75% through 52.  I would have probably made it to 53 that night, but of course the things I mentioned above happened and that pretty much closed out our evening.

During the middle of my Instant Adventure-a-thon my friend Rae got home and logged in… and wanted me to check out her dimension.  She has literally spent the last three days doing nothing but work on her dimension and it shows.  She had some some really awesome things.  The picture above is me standing on the top platform of her tree house… that she built entirely from scratch.  Essentially she has this huge pavilion of sorts on the ground floor, with spiral staircases leading up to a garden level… then finally a series of platforms climbing up the tree.

This alone would be amazing, but she has also built down into the little grotto area at the bottom of the falls in the Moonshade Pools dimension.  So through a nifty winding path downwards you can reach the bottom and she is starting to build a pretty nifty dock down there.  I knew she had this in her, since she is a minecrafting fiend…  but overall she has done way more with dimensions than I would expect anyone would.  She has inspired me to start trying to do something with my own version of Moonshade Pools.  Right now it is pretty much just a catch all for all the nifty dimension items I have gotten so far.  If you are over on Deepwood, friend Audrae and take a look for yourself.

Wrapping Up

Well I should wrap up this post and get on with the whole getting ready thing.  We have a long list of errands we need to run today so that we can pack this evening and prepare to leave the state tomorrow.  We still have our houseguest, and he is seemingly doing okay.  He has been down to his mothers house quite a bit, so here is hoping he is about to decide he wants to move back home. I hope you all have a great day, and I hope we have safe travels.  I will likely be blogging tomorrow from the airport in Chicago, as that will be the first time I really have anytime to do much of anything.