WoW & Broken PvP

Tonight my character “Esmer” progressed to Stranglethorn, an area for the 30 to 40th or so levels. Up to this point the game wasn’t so bad. I experienced a bit of ganking here and there which was annoying but nothing out of the expected ordinary.

Then Stranglethorn happened. This is a lovely place to show just how broken the PvP in World of Warcraft truly is. The sad part is that Blizzard has the perfect deterrent already in place, they simply refuse to use it to help protect their paying subscribers from the frustrating wandering bands of gankers. Instead, it’s used to protect NPCs of all things.

I digress a bit, however.

Tonight showed what the game is truly going to be like. Level 60 players wandering around the zone wantonly killing off significantly lower level players, and doing so again and again. Camping those players as well as their quest areas so that they’re guranteed to have plenty of challenge-free ganks. Mind you, a player in World of Warcraft receives absolutely nothing for this other than “shits and giggles”.

This was my World of Warcraft play experience tonight, and it’s going to continue to be my play experience if I continue playing this game. It went on for hours before I finally rolled my eyes at getting next to nothing done, let alone not having a bit of fun, and logged out.

Now, what’s this deterrent system that I mentioned?

Blizzard has a system in World of Warcraft that reduces a character’s “honor score” if they kill a target that’s significantly lower level than them. Losing ranks in honor will prevent that player from buying very special gear for their character. Ranks are also a status symbol in and of themselves, no doubt more so on a PvP server than on the game’s other servers.

The catch is that this system only protects NPCs. So, ironically enough, a player is not penalized in the least for ganking paying customers over and over, but they are if they kill an NPC that’s too low of a level to give experience. In fact, anyone in a raid receives the penalty if any member of that raid ganks a computer controlled character!

Nothing for harassing paying customers, however.

This is as backward a system as it could be, in my opinion. Tonight’s play wasn’t fun, it wasn’t even much in the way of “frustrating”. It was dull, annoying, and made me wonder why I was spending so long playing this game, or why I was bothering to play it at all. It got me angry at one point, during the beginning of tonight’s session, but that’s easily shrugged off. What isn’t so easily shrugged off is looking at the bigger pictur and wondering why you’re paying for this broken system in the first place.

The system is so out of whack that these players with significantly higher level characters would see me in the distance, summon their riding mount so that they could travel quickly, and run across large areas of land to gank my character. They then would run back and return to power leveling their buddy’s character or whatever it was that they were doing.

Granted, causing players to give “dishonorable kills” to gankers would not stop it completely but it would certainly help to deter the behavior. You would definitely see far less, if any, instances of players with a maxed out character riding the length of their view distance to gank a lowbie character.

One may be concerned about getting mobbed to death by lower level characters and not being able to fight back less their character receives “dishonorable kills”. It’s a simple matter for the programmers to determine that your character was attacked first. In fact, the starting zones in the game already prevent you from attacking players in the starting zone, but they can attack you. After they do so then you can freely fight back. So the frame work is already there.

It’s a shame that Blizzard deems their computer controlled characters to be more important than their paying subscribers. It’s cost them this subscription. Not because PvP is a frustrating experience for me – I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit – but because their priorities are screwed.

~Mysk

Fitness Journal 11/29/05

Temperature was about 29 degrees fahrenheit (or about negative 1 degrees celsius) out tonight but I went outside to work out anyway.  I made roughly 118 resolutions of the jump rope before reaching the speed walking stage and consequently began freezing my ears and sucking in the cold air.

I decided that working out tonight wasn’t the best idea.  So I left it at that and done 20 situps and about 13 push ups.  It’s not as much as I would like to do, but it’s better than nothing.

~Mysk

Fitness Journal 11/27/05

worked out, ’nuff said :p

I’m starting to forget to post here about my work outs and thus I’m starting to lose track of when the last time was that I worked out. This note is meant only to help me keep track.

15 Trojans and over 250 spyware

That was my brother’s computer tonight. He came to me asking how to format his system and I sat down to start the process, but decided to first ask why he wanted to.

It turns out that he was getting a shit tonne of popup advertisements and he couldn’t close them. Those popups would spawn more popups, and so on. It was terrible. No wonder why he wanted to format the thing.

It took me I think close to two hours to clean his system and I’m not 100% sure that it’s all gone. I sure hope so.

His default browser is now Firefox and I installed Avast anti-virus on his system. Lavasoft AdAware, Spybot Search & Destroy and Spyware Blaster were used to remove the spyware. The scan that Avast runs at system boot after installation got rid of the trojans. I also ran Windows Update to catch any security fixes that may be needed to patch holes exploited by spyware.

Crazieness.

~Mysk

• Lavasoft Adaware
• Spybot Search & Destroy
• Spyware Blaster
• Avast Antivirus

Fitness Journal 11/25/05

I didn’t get out until after dark today, roughly around 6:30 PM.  Checking The Weather Channel’s “Desktop Weather” I was advised to use dual layers for working out and done so.  It’s good to know that the advice worked.

Asthma was its usual pain in the arse tonight but I was able to do all 3 jumping rotations.

I did not eat, drink nor take ibuprofean before working out this time.  I didn’t realize this until right before I began jumping but I went ahead with it because I had already stretched.  Luckily, no headaches occurred during tonight’s work out.

I stopped counting resolutions but it was a good hundred or so.

Dinner was good though.  Big fat over stuffed home made burrito.  Yum.

*pats belly* Counter productive, but yum.

~Mysk

Applying for holiday temp positions

It’s been a couple of days since I tossed an (electronic) app towards wal-mart.  They have those computer terminals now instead of paper applications.

I’m trying to think of some other stores that could use some holiday help.  This town doesn’t have much in the way of super markets.  There’s the place across town that sells wood, pipes, appliances and any other number of “build your own house” junk but I know nothing about this subject.  I wonder if they’d hire me, or if a store like that even has a holiday runs.  My guess is not.

Aside from that there’s maybe the mall.  It’s not much of a mall in this town; it’s literally a long hallway with stores on either side and that’s that.  Mostly small stores, so it’s difficult to see them hiring.

Well it’s worth a shot.  The myskers needs more monies!

~Mysk

Fitness Journal – So Confused

I missed posting here on one or two days and now I’m all confused.

Pretty sure I worked out yesterday but now I can’t remember, lol. Doh!

*sigh* Tomorrow is definitely a work out day.

Been doing 20 situps and five to ten push ups after each work out, as well.

Bugger, now I’ve thrown my schedule off. Oh, well.

~Mysk

Get World of Warcraft For $19.99

Here is a good opportunity for you if you want to buy World of Warcraft. The goal of this rebate is to reduce the cost of WoW to $19.99 USD. To do so, Blizzard will rebate you the difference in the cost up to $30.

For example, if WoW cost you $29.99 then you would get a $10 rebate. If WoW cost you $49.99 then you would get a $30 rebate.

You’ll need to follow these instructions to get the mail in rebate.

1. Print the coupon from the World of Warcraft website.
2. Buy a copy of World of Warcraft.
3. This is important. In the field where it says “Your W.O.W. Account Name” you will need to enter the account name of someone who owns WoW. If you don’t know someone who does then you can use mine, talis26. I get nothing for you doing this.
4. The field that says, “Gift Recipient’s New W.O.W. Account Name” is where you enter your WoW account name. You’ll create an account after you have bought the game and are playing your free month.
5. The rest of the fields you fill out with your own information. I do not need to know, will not ever know and do not wish to know that information.

Blizzard is offering this deal for a limited time. Jan 1st 2006 is when the offer ends but take a look at that fine print to make sure you’re complying with the rebate rules.
Please keep in mind that mail in rebates take awhile to arrive (the coupon says up to 10 weeks). Most importantly, be very careful to follow the instructions so that you get your rebate.

The intention for this coupon is for someone such as me to buy the game and then give it to someone as a gift. Then I would use the mail in rebate to (eventually) reduce the cost of the game. However, I see no reason why others can’t take advantage of this offer.

Enjoy,
~Mysk

KU To Teach Intelligent Design As Mythology

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10153657/

…and all that I can really muster at the moment is, “YAY! ^.^”

Were I able to use photoshop, or even had it in the first place, I’d have to PS some KU cheerleaders with the shocker glove.  Or some such nonsense.

Reading this article made me feel good.  Kind of like finding intelligent life amongst all of the simple cell organisms that seem to make up Kansas lately.

~Mysk

Fun Esmer Shots

Tonight I got a pretty useless quest reward: a boquet of flowers. It’s held in the off hand and gives no bonuses and (obviously) can’t be used as a weapon. Besides that, as a rogue character Esmer needs her off hand to duel wield.

So I was left with the question, “What do I do with this?” and decided to take some cute pics before selling the flowers to an NPC merchant. They’re “soul bound” so can’t be sold to other players.

Since WordPress.com has apparently had some issues with images and lost some of my previous uploads I’ve decided to just link to image shack. This means no thumbnails but oh well, that’s the way that it goes for now.

A cute shot with her eyes shut:
http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=flowercomfycloseeyesclosed18tt.jpg

I’ve taken so many images of her with the PvP tabbard and face mask on that I thought that she needed some without those. So here’s that:
http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=esmersuitfirenotabard19el.jpg

A mostly “eh” shot. Full gear on close up with poison dripping from a blade:
http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=esmersuitfiretabard19ql.jpg

A good shot of Esmer being relaxed with out her armor on and holding the boquet of flowers:
http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=flowercomfyclose47tt.jpg

The following shot is fun but you have to look close to notice why. You’ll see that I caught her in the middle of the blink animation. She’s also looking off to the side. To my imagination this makes me think of her getting caught while holding the boquet of flowers and consequently glaring at someone “off screen” for making a glib about her “looking all cute”. A little imagination goes a long way. To me, this was a very entertaining shot.
http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?image=flowerfullsuit37qd.jpg

I have a lot more of her in her “regular day cloths” while holding the flower but they’re mostly redundant.  It was fun to take a few moments out of the regular play to give the character a moment of “every day life”.  Besides, since they sell to the NPC merhcant for 11 silver they’re definitely being sold and I won’t have the flowers for later.  Therefore this serves as a bit of a record.

~Mysk