I saw this on Wandering Goblin, and thought it was very sweet: Romeo, Juliet and their Sassy Gay Friend:

Due to the fun of hanging with Single Abstract Noun, I’ve gotten back into the game in a big way. I haven’t played so much Warcraft since I virtually quit the game when I stopped raiding. Even though the game is fairly old, everything considered, the graphic style has held up quite well. There are a few areas, though, where it’s really starting to bother me a bit.

1. It’s time to redesign the character models.

I love Kit above every other game character that I have spent endless hours with. But when I look at her awkward spade-shaped hands and triangular fingers, it really bothers me. Mouths are bad. Male characters are creepy and ugly – most of them seem to have harelips, and they all look kind of pissed off and constipated, as though they’re in need of a good poo. I could never play one. Blood elf males are better facially, but still suffer from the grotesquely overwide shoulders. Human models are boring, and human females are saddled with the worst dance in the game. It just won’t do!

Now, everything doesn’t have to be as beautiful as, say, Aion. I quite like the look of the towns and outdoor environments, and the very stylised Warcraft art direction works for me. But please, please, please – redo the avatars.

2. The older armor and weapons need an update.

I get the starting out in rags and gradually acquiring better gear thing, that’s fine. But again, the older textures are really showing their age. They’re so low-res that you just get a vague impression of broadly-sketched in texture. Give me more modern textures, where the cloth looks like cloth, and metal actually looks like metal. Newer high-level armor sets are fine, a lot of work has gone into those. But the really old textures are pathetic.

When interviewed, the developers and designers at Blizzard are pretty honest about not really knowing what, exactly, give Warcraft the magic that it has, that indefinable quality of “fun”. And I would never wish anything to detract from that. But surely, better character models would only increase pleasure in the game, without diverging too much from the look and feel of the environment.

That said, though, I am having an enormous amount of fun running around with my blocky, floppy-footed troll hunter with the vacant, somewhat retarded face. She’s smarter than she looks…and a lot more fun. :)

I’ve played so much Warcraft this weekend. I’ve played until my eyes have dried up and turned into raisins…but it was still a fun weekend.

P. has been playing Star Trek Online, having discovered Klingon pvp. Our computer rooms are on the top floor of the house, with a connecting door so we can yell at each other. It’s rather nice. Quite often we play together, when we’re playing the same games. When we’re not, then we go off and do our own thing. We always have something to talk about, and have an outlet for our geekiness (gaming is something that I mostly just don’t talk about at work, aside from casual references).

The cats have their favourite spots around the rooms. Occasionally they insist on quality time, usually by sitting in front of the computer screens, being obstructive. My room is dark blue, filled with a wall of books, several computers, a squashy reading chair and lamp, and a poster of Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow.

This is my homespace, this is where I relax. Where the sound of space battles meets clashing blades, where the air smells of my favourite Nag Champa, where we can call to each other from our separate universes.

I’ve been struggling with an infuriating issue with Warcraft for a month or so now. Recently it’s gotten worse, to the point where it affects most of the characters that I want to play. My bank alt can stand around IF enjoying 40-60 fps even with everyone around him, but can I play a main? Not without everything looking like a series of photographs. It’s even a problem with brand new characters.

On some characters (not all, just some) I experience very low fps (9-12) and drawn-out, stuttering sound – to the point where the game is unplayable. I’ve tried everything:

• Full reformat and reinstall of my operating system
• Full download and fresh reinstall of Warcraft
• Playing without any addons at all
• Updated all drivers, including scary motherboard drivers

At this point, I’m out of options. :( It’s possible the powersupply isn’t powering the graphics card sufficiently, but aside from that I’ve no idea. It’s a decent spec, with a good graphics card and a lot of RAM. Frustrating in the extreme.

I joined SINGLE ABSTRACT NOUN, and they’re a very social, literate group of gamers – I highly recommend stopping by and saying hi if you can. I’ll be the one getting killed because of my terrible lag. :D

EDIT: And after weeks of frustration, and not one but THREE support tickets, I seem to have fixed it. (Please don’t let me have jinxed it by saying that!) For some reason, enabling 3D sound fixes the low framerate. Thank all the gods for Teh Internets and the ONE PERSON IN THE ENTIRE WORLD who had the same problem and posted how they fixed it. One. Person. Bless you.

This is such a great idea – a guild of bloggers (and people active in the Warcraft community). I was so jealous of Casualties of War while I was playing Warhammer…but not enough to play on the US servers. :) If you play on Argent Dawn, EU -or don’t mind rerolling there- say hi because they seem like a very nice group of folks.

As Tamarind says in the post, one of the rules is that you “Leave your wowcock in the stand by the door”. It doesn’t get much better than that. That’s pretty much why I stopped raiding, and then stopped playing my mains…I was so sick of having to list achievements, and playing the “my gearscore is bigger than yours” type of games, that it just wasn’t fun any more.

And it’s on a roleplay server! That is so tempting. I miss RP servers. I may have to reactivate my account and join them. :)

This whole week (and last week too, to be honest) has been making me think about that line from Airplane. Did you ever have a day when everything you touched broke and turned black and fell apart? Kind of like the reverse of a Midas touch? I’ve had a lot of those days.

Allods Online, as I’m sure you have all read, has fixed their cash shop prices and I think shocked everyone by their fairness – they really did make some reasonably substantial cuts in the laughable original prices. They’re still more expensive than the Russian shop, of course, but they’re better. Fear of Death will evidently still roll out in a future patch, which still gets my panties in a bunch. It’s a nasty mechanic and I hate being held hostage by a game mechanic like that – even if the price is more palatable now.

Like many other people, I’ll support a game that I like. I’ll buy things. I don’t like the venality, or the mistrust of the customer base, or whatever you would call it – the logic that says that we’re all a bunch of cheap bastards so they need to force us to pay. If that is your opinion, just make it a subscription game. But let me feel good about buying fripperies and mounts and xp potions.

Well, it’s now 5:00, and it’s time to go home. To play, most probably. :) Thank goodness for escapism.