rifftrax

That’s a Lot of Fish

Last night I did something a bit different than my normal fare and actually hung out with several of my coworkers.  While I hang out with Rae at least in the virtual sense almost every night, this was a bit different.  For my boss’s birthday his brother took him to a thing called Rifftrax put on by the guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000.  They do the same basic thing, but they do it live and stream it to theaters all over the country.  Since he had such a great time he decided it would make an excellent group activity.  So last night we met  for dinner and then continued on to the nearby theater to watch the Matthew Broderick version of Godzilla ripped apart by the MST3K guys.

First off this is a much bigger deal than any of us realized, as we spent probably a bit too long at the restaurant and had maybe 20 minutes before the start of the film.  By the time we all got to the theater and inside the place was absolutely packed.  Apparently if you want to get seats together you have to arrive well ahead of time, and it almost has a tail gating mentality.  Instead we all split up mostly into groups of two to find a place to sit.  So this ended up with me being down on the front row leaning back in my seat and trying to watch the movie.  Thankfully we didn’t really CARE about the movie… but instead the commentary.  Afterwards they said that it was a bit hard to hear the dub over as you got further back in the theater so I guess the awkward angle was worth it.

This is totally something I would do again, and it has been a long while since I have laughed this hard.  I guess I had completely put large sections of the Broderick film out of my memory.  I mean I remember it being bad at the time, but I didn’t remember it being THIS bad.  If you have the chance to see Rifftrax in a nearby theater I suggest you take up that opportunity.  They do this apparently as a semi regular thing here, so I will have to follow the schedule and see what is next.  It seems like the next showing is November 4th where they do that campy classic Anaconda.  I will have to see what is going on but I would really like to maybe try and go.

We Have the Date

Yesterday was the big announcement for the Warlords of Draenor release date and now we know exactly when to expect it to land.  Some time ago Godmother ran a contest to see who could guess the date, and I apparently came the closest along with River.  I remember at the time River saying something to the effect that I looked lonely on the spreadsheet so he decided my guess was as good as any.  Now that said I did have some logic behind my guess, I was not just randomly picking numbers.  My general theory was that we would not see a World of Warcraft expansion until after Blizzcon.  So knowing the Blizzcon dates I figured they would want to take advantage of the Blizzcon-Bump but get product out there before Thanksgiving and the holiday madness begins.  I apparently was right but Blizzard threw everyone for a loop by making the release a Thursday.  I don’t think anyone was expecting that.

Once again the good folks at Blizzard have managed to craft together a really awesome cinematic.  Were I a horde player I would probably be cheering the awesome orc action.  Instead it just seems like another really awesomely animated feature explaining the premise of the expansion.  The events play out a little different than I would have thought.  All along I thought that Garrosh would actually stop Grommash from drinking the blood, but it seems like good ole Grom was already making that decision.  Garrosh however just gave him the backup he needed to defeat Mannorath.  I feel like the events of this expansion will serve to set up for the long fabled Burning Legion expansion, since we obviously screw with the way things were supposed to work out.  I figure you can’t kill a demon like Mannorath without having some pretty negative repercussions.

Overwhelming Meh

Like I said, were I a horde player I would likely be heralding in yet another overwhelmingly horde focused expansion.  Thing is I am not, and I have never cared a single bit about any of the horde lore.  It was just that faction filled with monstrous humanoids and a handful of people that I cared enough about to roll alts to be able to play with.  Nothing about the horde is really my thing, apart from the whole “everything has spikes” aspect.  I expected yesterdays event and subsequent trailer to pump me up and prepare me for what was inevitable, my temporary return to World of Warcraft.  The thing is it seems to have had the opposite effect.  I am even less interested in the expansion than I was going into the day, and I can’t really put my finger on the why.

I have been in Alpha/Beta for some time now, and all in total I have played somewhere between six and eight hours.  During that time I have just felt like I was forcing myself to play the game.  I felt obligated to test the content since friends had gotten me into it.  Nothing I was doing however really did it for me, and even with the existence of some interesting ideas like the Garrisons, it all felt rehashed.  The Burning Crusade was one of the most exciting expansions for me, and it was the era of so many cool things for me as a raider.  I expected to be wrapped up in this whirlwind of nostalgia upon returning to it…  albeit in a pre-destruction state.  While Draenor is gorgeous and I can see the underpinnings of the areas I used to love…  it all just feels really old at this point.

This expansion is going to be amazing for those players that are currently enthralled with the game.  There are going to be a handful of other players that maybe quit wow but didn’t really play other games in the meantime… that will return and fall back in love again.  However I fear for those of us who have gone nomadic and played every game that has come down the pipe… the overall game is just starting to feel its age.  The systems don’t quite work as well as other games on the market, it isn’t the culmination of the best ideas any longer.  Instead it is a combination of what they could get to work within the existing framework of the game.  It will definitely breathe new life into the game a whole and introduce a bunch of new doodads for the players to get involved with, but so far it has all felt very hollow to me.  As much as I want to be excited, I am wondering if I have actually truly outgrown the game.  I had more fun doing Godmother’s survey than I have had actually playing the game in a very long time…  so that tells me I was pretty much living off nostalgia to this point, and maybe that font has been exhausted.