I’m sorry, but I can’t blog right now. I’m busy playing Final Fantasy XII. Kindly leave a comment and come back soon. I’ll return to blogging as soon as possible.
Game good. Very very good.
I sometimes wonder about my decision making skills. I can see when something is a bad idea, but sometimes I do it anyways. What am I talking about? I’m talking about the World of Warcraft trading card game! It came out about two weeks ago and promptly sold out. I had been a bit curious about the game. I like Magic: The Gathering, the trading card game (or collectible card game, as they’re also known).
I got a little… excited when I started playing Magic. I would buy cards all the time. I even ordered some off eBay. I really really liked the collecting of cards. There’s something about tearing open a new booster pack and rifling through to see what you got. I don’t know, it’s probably a bit like gambling. The card packs have a random card assortment with a set number of common, uncommon and rare cards per pack. So you want to see which rare you got, how good is it, will it help you build your deck? I love that.
Anyways. Take that… interest and combine it with my… interest in World of Warcraft and it sounds like maybe a recipe for badness? For my wallet, for my tendency towards… being very interested in things, you know, all that jazz. I had not really intended to give the game much of a look. I wasn’t eagerly counting the days or anything. But then I was talking to a friend at work about it and next thing I know, I’m calling stores to find if it’s in stock. “Sold out everywhere in the city,” they told me, “everywhere but for one store.” Ooh! I called that one store, they had stock because they’d limited people to 5 boosters per person and jacked up the prices. I didn’t care! Now that I knew the supply was super limited I needed in! My friend and I hopped in the car and rode out to buy some cards!
Because there was a limit, of course I bought to that limit! And, well, I had another friend along and he didn’t want to try the game. So, um, I made him buy cards for me. (I paid him back! I just mean he let me get 2x the limit!) Met up with my friend that weekend and we played the game. And it was good. It’s a lot like Magic, so of course it’s good. Plus it has fun WoW flavor to it. You can see some of the ingame spells and critters.
The next week rolled around and the list of people interested in playing was growing. But the supply was still limited. Another co-worker managed to find a place online that had some in stock. He asked who wanted a box. Yes, a whole box of boosters.
I guess I sort of bought one. I’ve played the game several times now and I’m not sure I should have bought so many cards. I like the game - it’s pretty darn fun. But come on! Did I need all those cards?
Heh. Probably. 
I love the Final Fantasy series. Before I was afflicted with the disease known as WoW, I used to mostly prefer console RPGs. I first saw FFXII at E3 two years ago. I was not impressed. What was this real-time game that claimed to be a FF title? What had they done to my beloved FF conventions?
Since then, I’ve been keeping my eye on it. It came out in Japan to rave reviews. I had a friend play it in Japanese and rave about it. I tried the demo that came with Dragon Quest VIII. And I still wasn’t convinced.
It came out last week and a friend picked up a copy. I thought, hey, maybe I’ll take a look. So we sat down and traded off playing through the first few hours of the game. It starts with a gorgeous pre-rendered cinematic with hints of Star Wars and the epic battles of the Lord of the Rings movies. There was a bit too much onscreen text after that. I felt like I was in a bizarre history lecture, like maybe I should have been taking notes to keep the politics all straight. But then we got into the game. And the game was good.
So much is different. It no longer has a fixed camera - you can rotate the camera any which way you choose (though the controls are backwards by my standards). Combat doesn’t take place on a different screen, it happens on the main play level. You can see and avoid monsters in the world. And the big one is, of course, that the combat is real-time.
It’s not bad like I expected. I got used to it and started to really enjoy how it worked. It’s strange that you can run around while waiting for your attack to come up. But I think I still have many hours of play ahead of me to figure it out. You can use the system to automate a lot of the more monotonous aspects of typical combat, but still have the option to be as much of a control freak as you want when it’s called for.
After we played, my friend said “I guarantee you’ll buy it within 48 hours.” Oh, a challenge! I don’t know if me caving and weaseling another joint play session counts as a loss. But I still haven’t bought it.
There are many game mechanics that are different. But they’re good. And it still has the amazing production values - gorgeous ingame and pre-rendered cinematics, great voice acting and a story that keeps you playing. Plus a new leveling up mechanic that’s kind of cool. I’m just trying to work out when I’ll have time to play with everything else I have going on. But I’ll be buying it all too soon, I’m sure.
Most definitely not a love letter, this is best described as a hate letter. I really seriously dislike PvP servers. It would probably be for the best if I just walked away from my newly beloved shaman Yriani and never looked back. But I’m torn.
Here’s the thing. The way PvP works in WoW right now brings out the worst in people. It ensures bullying and vindictive behavior. My story starts in Stranglethorn Vale. It was a silly place to go to quest on a PvP server. But it seemed like a good idea at the time. The problem is that it’s a good place to quest for a huge range of levels. You can start there at level 30 (the level I was when I went there) and continue to quest up through the mid-40s. There’s a level 60 instance there, as well, so raid groups waiting for their party to arrive are hanging around with nothing to do.
My dying spree began in Booty Bay, the neutral city at the southmost point of Stranglethorn. There isn’t supposed to be PvP in the city itself. The are guards all over that will attack anyone that attacks another player inside the city. That didn’t stop a rogue, however. He one-shotted me in the back by the bank and then immediately vanished so the guards wouldn’t attack. That doesn’t seem very sporting. He got no honor for killing me and was just basically being annoying.
Oh well, I thought. I picked up some quests and began the long run north to where my quests were. I’m a shaman, so I can turn into a wolf and run 40% faster. I shifted and started running. I soon passed a level 60 priest on horseback. The jerk dismounted and threw a Shadow Word: Pain on me. I just kept running. It didn’t kill me and I managed to get out of his range since I was running much faster then he could on foot. So he mounted up and followed me. He ended up following me halfway across the zone before he killed me. Again, wtf? He got no honor, it took him very far out of his way, and it was just generally annoying. He then proceeded to stalk me and kill me twice more before I got some 60s to stand guard and protect me for a little while.
I stopped in Grom’gol, a Horde city in the middle of the zone. I got killed again as soon as I walked out the gates. Ok, this was getting old. I went off to kill some tigers. And this time, it was really bad.
This darn gnome rogue decided I made a great toy. He’d wait until I was in combat and at half life, then he’d come and backstab me. He was only 2 levels above me. There’s no way he could have taken me in a fair fight (come on, shammies rock!) But I never got the chance to find out. It got so bad with him doing this over and over that I made a targetting macro. It targetted him - the image above is the button I made for it. Jerk. Seriously. Before entering combat I’d mash the macro button a bunch to make sure he wasn’t nearby. Trouble is, you can’t target a rogue in stealth. So he did manage to get me again.
This was just totally frustrating. I’m sure he was getting some sick twisted joy out of tormenting me, but is that really a good thing? I eventually called for help and got a level 60 to stand nearby. He managed to kill the jerk for me. I then hung out near his corpse (like he’d been doing to me!) and tried to kill him when he spawned. But he got his own 60 to come in and kill me. Not cool. I was just trying to teach him that beating up people gets the same returned to you. But he had better luck calling in allies than I did.
Later on, I was just running by and he started attacking me again. I just kept running. I was so done with this. He got a hunter to Concussive Shot me. Come on! I was just trying to turn in my quest and get out of there. Fortunately, some nearby 60s were running by and killed them both. I turned in my quests and got out of there.
Time and time again, I see this kind of behavior on the PvP server. People hunt down and kill easy marks, just because they can. Then, when those victims get to a higher level, they do the same thing. I get beat, I beat someone else. It’s classic bully behavior, and it really bothers me. I’m not just talking about how annoying it is to get ganked over and over when trying to do the simplest things in game. I’m talking about what it says about people that so many of us find satisfaction in torturing and tormenting other people. They gain pleasure from wreaking havoc and making things difficult for others.
I’m still playing Yriani. I have friends on the server, and I decided to stay out of populus areas and give it another try. But I don’t enjoy the PvP server experience. And I guess I don’t like human nature all that much either.
I’ve been meaning to write a post of my impressions of raising a character on a PvP server. This is not that post. That post will be filled with rage and anger and general malaise as to the nature of a WoW PvP server. This is a post that is happy and joyous. Well. As much so as I ever am.
I was hanging out in Thunder Bluff with my newest toon, Yriani, a few weeks ago. Doing my usual business, running errands, selling and buying, you know the drill. When I read the news that TB was under attack, I didn’t think much of it. Until I ran by and saw the scope of it all. Wow.
They were taking over. They even had some people fishing in our very own fishing hole. That’s just wrong. I ran as quickly as possible to my class trainer so as to make sure I got there before he was killed in the mayhem. I took these pictures and got out of the warzone as quickly as possible. It was cool to see so many people banding together to do something, though. I was quite impressed. And I liked it all even better because they couldn’t kill me in their invasion unless I wanted them to, since I was in Horde territory and not flagged for PvP. And definitely intending to stay that way as long as possible.