So I’ve cancelled my WoW subscription. I knew it was going to happen. Hell, I’ve cancelled it twice before now and this is number three. In the cancellation form, there is a space for additional comments, so I decided to start writing. Apparently the form won’t accept anything over a certain character limit because every time I tried to submit the form, I got some odd behavior. (Oh believe me, I tried different browsers, toggled javascript on and off – no dice).

I figured the third-best thing is to post what I was going to send to Blizzard and Activision to Pie-Hole (with the second-best somehow getting this to their customer service department). Without further ado, the letter follows after the fold. (more…)

Some friends of mine play World of Warcraft and it is something in which they really get invested. If you’ve been living under a rock for the last 6 years or so, World of Warcraft (WoW) is a computer game people play online with millions of other people around the world.

Players make characters of all kinds and take them into the game to all sorts of things – I won’t expound upon them here, but if you’re curious, visit the official website. Doing things earns points called Experience Points (XP). Amass enough XP and the character earning them “levels up” in tiers and gets more powerful as well as gains access to more abilities. The game currently has 80 of these levels, so it can take a fair bit of time to get to this far.

For a quick shortcut for what the game world is like, start at Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books, add more fantastic races of beings like humanoid cows with an American Indian bend, toss in a tiny bit of steampunk for what passes as high-technology. The lore upon which WoW is built upon is not the same as Lord of the Rings of course, with other computer games and books fleshing the story out to provide a rich background.

Some players role-play (RP) as part of their play and pretend to be part of the game world as a significant character. There are some servers dedicated to this play style so those who don’t wish to devote their time to this can choose not to. Take Player-vs-Player (PvP) Realms (the in-game term for server) for example. WoW is a massive war between two factions and on PvP Realms, the game greatly rewards players of opposite factions killing each other . As such, this can lead to a very competitive game experience. All’s fair in love and Warcraft (hurr!).

My friends are kind of in the middle. They play the game to get ahead and they don’t RP, but they do consume the lore and get involved in the hero characters’ stories. I still believe they take it a little more seriously than is practical though. I was told a story about how, due to a dramatic turn in the storyline of the evolving game world, they believed they wasted 75 levels of development and thought the game would permanently kill their character. They told me they literally wept and felt despair – not for the fact their character might be killed forever, but that it was completely justifiable for the game to do so because the twist of the story was about a massive betrayal my friend’s character was wrapped up in.

I don’t mean to betray my friends’ trust here. I love them, but damn. I play WoW myself, but when a dialog pops up with a quest description, I skip all the text and read the reward section. Then, just like all the other hundreds of quests I’ve started, I just hit ‘Accept Quest.’

It has certainly been awhile hasn’t it?

I am now so unladen with work at my job that I am bored. I now have long stretches of time in which I have nothing to do other than wait for something to come into my inbox. Sure I could certainly dive into some code, but the stretches of time aren’t nearly long enough for my concentration to coalesce into anything useful before getting snapped back to the reality of talking to someone on the phone.

Things have changed for Steve quite dramatically than what they were before, and I should be able to get into that as long as these stretches of time continue to be lengthy.

Orignally posted 2006-02-11 on an old Livejournal account, Dave reminded me of this as he mentioned The Olympics in passing.

Not new content, but hey, content is content!

There are few things I like less than the Winter Olympics. Muppets come to mind, but that’s not the point. So much of “the games” are not sports. Subjectivity only goes so far, so why waste your life on a cheap piece of metal? Sure you get the respect of your peers, but on the whole, nobody really cares. But I digress; I now present to you my Not a Sport Extravaganza – Winter Olympics 2006 Edition!

• Biathalon – aka “Ski and Shoot”
  Not a sport. Yes, it has roots in survival, but shooting targets and moving to another location to shoot more targets is not a sport. It’s called target practice on a mountain in snow. The name biathalon is also the most undescriptive name for an event – I’m sorry, two events. It could really be anything. If the IOC made Fuck and Suck a sport for the games, it’d be called the biathalon too. People would show up with a gun and skis ready to go. They probably wouldn’t be turned away due to bonus points in “artistic interpretation.” Fuck the biathalon.
  Score: 2/10 (Extra points for having guns. Firearms are cool.)
• Bobsleigh – aka “Bobsled“ Fuckin’ Euros
  Not a sport. Going down an ice slide in cock-shaped fiberglass and lexan dildo for four is not a sport. Granted, it takes skill and teamwork to complete the course in record time, but so does group sex. I can go to a regulation bobsled course right now, put on some teflon coated scuba gear, and complete the run without any trouble. Bobsled is not a sport; it’s an amusement park ride. Fuck the Bobsled.
  Score: 0/10
• Curling
  Not a sport. Actually, wait… yes. It is a sport. The rules are fucked up because 500 years ago, poor Scottish people made them up when they should have been inside, making themselves busy not dying from the cold. I attribute hypothermia induced madness to this sport. A better sport though would be ice basketball. Imagine top-heavy basketball stars slipping all over the court. There would be all time low scoring games of 0-0 that would never end. Knowing Olympic-types though, Greenland would field dwarves and midgets and win all three medals by scoring any points at all against the other teams. Anyway, the ruling still stands: Fuck Curling.
  Score: 1/10 (It made me think of ice-basketball)
• Hockey
  A sport. Hockey Rules. Fuck you.
  Score: 9/10 (USA doesn’t win every time, but it’s still awesome)
• Luge
  Not a sport. In all its variations, from skeleton to two man luge – the manliest, I’m sorry… faggiest of all luges – it’s just the same as bobsled, except this time, the risk of serious injury goes up. It’s like someone stole the chassis from the teams’ bobsled and the judges were like, “fuck it, push ‘em down!” Better event: Standing Luge. Riders stand on their luge sled and must remain standing throughout the course. You win by standing the whole time – none of this kneeling shit – and staying alive. Skeleton Luge is suicidal. In regular luge, the rider looks down over his body, but in skeleton luge, the rider’s neck cranes upward. I’m just waiting to hear of a skeleton luge accident in which the descriptor “pez-dispenser” is used. Fuck the Luge.
  Score: 3/10 (Bloody decapitation can be entertaining – just ask the French! Also, Pez is yummy)
• Skating
  Not a sport. Anything where you can score more points for being artistic is a load of bullshit. From singles to doubles, it’s all about who can do more lutzs or axels in increasing difficulty. I can appreciate the technical aspects of skating; I certainly will never be able, or want to for that matter, to do the things these atheletes are capabale of doing. They are atheletes. It takes immense dicipline to perform with such precision and stamina, but for what? Just so Germany can give you a 9.4 instead of a 9.3? What if Germany’s judge having a bad day? He could totally screw Poland or France by invading their – wait… whatever. Fuck skating.
  Score: -5/10 (Bullshittery enhanced due to annoying whiners and 2002’s multiple medals. Negative score)
• Skiiing
  Two pieces of plastic + snow + mountain = fun. But not a sport. I have few words for this event, but imagine if you will an activity that will destroy your knees before your 40^th birthday: The moguls. How about one where you try to jump as far as possible down a mountain, risking shattered ankles and a smashed face? If that’s not to your taste, try the one that’s most like ice-skating: freestlye snowboarding. What the fuck? Who allowed snowboarding into the Olympics? Seriously, Halfpipe Snowboarding is an Olympic Event! Complete with Indy Nosebones and Tailgrabs! I expect a written apology on my desk, IOC. Fuck Skiing (and now apparently Snowboarding)
  Score: 2/10 (Serious injury can also be entertaining. If snowboarding’s in, I’m waiting for half-pipe skateboarding)

It’s fun to reminisce! Especially if it’s bitchy!

The online customer Printer I use for my artwork has decided to stop offering short-run print services. They have now instated a 25 copy minimum for any print run. I thought maybe I was missing something on their website, but I called their customer service department and they confirmed it.

What’s frustrating is they are still very affordable even with the minimum requirements. I need to make a choice whether to use them at all even when I have a need to print 25 or more of anything. The other frustrating bit is I have been framing my art in software at 11″x17″, the size their printers output. Granted, I have always worked within 11″x14″ because that is a standard Wal-Mart sized frame. If I find another affordable vendor, I don’t want to lose image quality because of it.

This is a very valuable lesson though: Don’t trust a vendor to offering the same product or service indefinitely. I could have learned that from just about anywhere in the last 25 years of my life by looking around and simply watching, but I have never personally been burned by this phenomenon.