This is one of the things that Blizzard does really well. I’m very much looking forward to the buildup to Cataclysm. This is going to be fun!

Gnomes look silly on talbuk. And worse on mammoths.

For Gnomeregan!

A sea of banners

That will offset my frustration with Square Enix and FFXIV. *grrrrr* To be honest, actually, I’m not that bothered. I wouldn’t mind having a look, but I can’t even register nor can I download the beta client. I cancelled the CE that I’d ordered after reading all of the negative comments and bad reviews. Perhaps after launch I’ll buy a copy (not CE) and have a look. But the comments about the horrendous UI and poor gameplay have put me off.

It does look pretty, though. :/

EDIT: I tried one last time before leaving to go see the knee doctor, and it finally let me in!  Will try to download the client tonight.

I have been playing. Ravven, my very first character ever created, my old raiding main up through Serpentshrine, finally hit 80. (I abandoned her when I was finally allowed to switch to my hunter Kitsune, my love, and I’ve never looked back since. Poor Ravven.)

The Recruit a Friend project characters are levelling a lot more slowly now, but we’re still playing together and are looking at 74. I’m still enjoying the shammy, although I have come to understand the importance of stacking tons of haste. Frickin’ slowest cast times EVAH.

All in all, things are ok. Not fun, fo’ sho’, but ok.

And to think that we only did the Recruit A Friend thing because P. wanted the mount. :)

I’ve taken a few days off this week for my birthday (it’s a disastrously huge birthday, a milestone birthday, and I think I needed the time to prepare myself mentally!), and so I think that today, with another few hours playtime, we should be in Outland. Easiest levelling ever.

Feels almost as fast as getting older in real life. The years seem to go by like some cosmic Recruit A Friend programme that I don’t ever remember signing up for.

I love it. :)

Seriously, a few hours worth of work, and we’re at level 30. We barely start quests before they go green. It’s amazing.

Aside from that, I did some well-fought Wintergrasps over the weekend, and did a lot of relaxing. We watched some TV in order to justify having just ordered Sky. We watched one episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter, which may have been the most cringeworthy thing I have ever watched in my life.

All in all, a good weekend. And I like my little shammy. The rocket is pretty cool, too. :)

And I just had to include a Dog the Bounty Hunter clip, just so you could see how awful/funny it is.  :D

Most of my upgrades, unless I start raiding, are here, more’s the pity. Hmmph…must have a think.

If only I’d realised how much growing up and becoming a responsible adult would suck, I don’t think I would have bothered. :/

I have been doing a bit of healing on my still-woefully-undergeared pally. I enjoy it a lot, although I think I would get very flustered if trying to raid heal. Better gear, with more intellect, would help a lot. Speed runs are tough, if there are people who need a lot of healing.

I know that healing has been described as whack-a-mole, and it’s true…there is an element of that. You stare at Grid while trying to keep half an eye out for shadow circles or fire or whatever on the floor. God knows what the instances actually look like. And yet, it’s fun. I’ve played ranged dps for so long that healing is a challenge, and everything feels new again.

The new pally changes are interesting – I love the idea of being a melee healer, a type of battle monk. I’ve loved classes in other games that combine healing with dps, and this would be a huge step in that direction. The only thing that I really don’t like is the combo-point-type mechanic. That is part of the reason why I’ve never been able to actually level a druid or rogue past 30…the combo point/finishing move mechanic just feels too artificial and stilted. But we will see. Despite my being a total tard at playing melee dps characters, I think it will be a good change.

Well, back to work. This was a stolen moment from my workday, taken to make up for having worked through lunch. I know, I know…emo  much?

“His obligation is to his shareholders,” Schafer tells Eurogamer. “Well, he doesn’t have to be as much of a dick about it, does he? I think there is a way he can do it without being a total prick. It seems like it would be possible. It’s not something he’s interested in.

He [Kotick] makes a big deal about not liking games, and I just don’t think that attitude is good for games in general. I just don’t think we’re an industry of widgets…We can approach it like we approach bars of soap, where you’re just trying to make the cheapest bar of soap. He definitely has that that kind of widget-maker attitude. I don’t think he’s great for the industry, overall. You can’t just latch onto something when it’s popular and then squeeze the life out of it and then move on to the next one. You have to at some point create something, build something.

Hopefully he’ll go back to another industry scene. He could go to an industry that makes more money. Ball bearings… something that suits his passions more. Weapons manufacturing?”

Activision then responded by stating “Bobby has always been passionate about games, and loves the video game industry. But as CEO of a company that makes games enjoyed by millions of people worldwide, the demands on his time now make it difficult to play games as often as he’d like to or as much as he once did.”

*snort*

And then it becomes priceless. “That was an accident,” Schafer told website Eurogamer. “I was going to change the title of my talk to ‘how to give interviews and remember to check the microphone is off.’”

I can’t tell you how much this interchange has cheered me up. I think I want to have Schafer’s babies or something.

And in case you forgot the quote that Bobby Kotick is most famous for, it is this:

Speaking at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference in San Francisco, Kotick said “The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.”

Sounds an awful lot like a prick to me, actually.