Oh, you better believe it...

Okami Wii box art in all it's glory... I think I'm in love all over again.
Even better, guess what the release date is?
March 25th, man... My birthday.

Well, that's that. I really have nothing more to add that I haven't already said in the last few days. I'm not especially surprised, and I'm not especially sad... As far as I was concerned, the Uru and community I knew had died when Ubisoft pulled the plug. (Just as the Uru the Choru testers knew died when it was completely restructured.) But... That's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about this little gem of a post I found on a thread that Tay linked me:

... We know there are a number of people on GameTap who came because of Uru, we hope you'll stay. We have a number of other Cyan titles on the service and worked with Cyan to make RealMyst available again. Continuing with us gives you access to nearly a thousand games and does helps us continue to work with developers like Cyan. That said, please contact customer service with any questions you may have about your current subscription.

Can't wait to plug your game base, can you? What poor taste. The guy then goes on to defend what he said by talking about how they aren't corporate money-counters in expensive suits. We really don't care, GameTap... And I don't think they get it. Some (dare I say most?) only subscribed BECAUSE of Uru. We are Myst fans... We own all the games already. Why would we want to pay a monthly fee to use your crappy service to download games we already own? I realize some don't have the old games, but, again, some (most) do, and were only using the GameTap service because Uru was there. As for me, the fact that Uru is canceled will mean that I will never consider subscribing again. It's that simple.

It will be interesting to see the subscription numbers after Uru is taken off the service. Of course, everyone knows that these numbers will be sealed in a vacuum vault, never to be seen again, just like Ubisoft did, but I'm sure there's going to be a mass exodus of Myst fans very soon.

So since I don't have my WoW blog running, yet, I'm going to grace you with another Warcraft-related posts on this blog. Remember the Booterang? (See this post, and this post.) The little boomerang boot that you fling at disobedient orcs to get them back to work. They'll be sleeping, or wandering around, or be busy being quite angry... You click on them and they'll say thing like "whaaaaat?" and "something need doing?" and "me not that kind of orc!" and "leave me alooone!", like in the good ol' Warcraft games of old, and then you deliver a mighty smite to the head.

Enter the World of Warcraft Arena. A world of pure skill where the best fight the best in a ranked system similar to that of Halo 2, except that there is no incentive to lose and drop rank to kill the lowbies. Quite an ingenious system. Anyway! My brother (finally) got to level 70... And that means we have lots and lots of stuff to do now! Including a 2 vs 2 arena. We've been wanting to try one out since it came out with the Burning Crusade, but we weren't high enough and we didn't have enough people. But, finally! We're both 70 now.

So... We're 70... We want an arena team... We need a name. We were tossing words around and, naturally, I said "booterang". I love that word! I say it to myself every now and then and laugh at myself like I'm mentally insane. So I suggested that. Booterang! Booterang... What... We need another word. So here is a glimpse as to how my train of thought works:

Booterang... Boomerang... Boomerang... Those things the Boomerang Bros. throw in Super Mario Bros. 3... OH MY GOSH. BOOTERANG BROTHERS!

We initially settled on "Booterang Bros.", just like the official name of the Boomerang Bros., but the arena system doesn't accept periods in the title, and "Boomerang Bros" without the period made it look like we were gangsters or something. "We da Boomerang Bros, bro!" So we went with the full, cultured "Booterang Brothers".

Behold! The 2v2 Arena Team: BOOTERANG BROTHERS! We've played a grand total of 3 matches so far, and we've won a grand total of... zero. Isn't that awesome? I think we set some records... First match? The opposing team charged out of their pen and massacred us in about 2 seconds. Second match, it was an identical set up. Hunter and Druid vs Hunter and Druid. It was a race of who ran out of mana the quickest... Sadly, that was us, but it lasted about 2 minutes. Next time, we're going to be concentrating on the healer first. Third match was very similar to the first, in such that the opposing team charged out of their pen and massacred us in 2 seconds. Fun stuff... Not really... But my guild assures me that we'll eventually win some.  (To which I replied, "yeah, I hope we win some after we sink to a rating of 100." They all laughed. I don't know why.)

The interesting thing about arenas is that... The points you receive are NOT based on how many people you kill, but they are indirectly based on how many you win and lose. See, every time you fight someone, you win or lose... Duh. If you win, your team rating goes up! If you lose, you go down. If you beat a strong team (I'm guessing if, by some chance, they're the closest match to you at the time), you go up a lot! If you lose to a weak team, you go down a lot. You have to do at least 10 games a week. (A World of Warcraft week is from Tuesday to Tuesday.) If you do less than 10 games, you aren't eligible for getting points. If you do MORE than 10 games, you aren't eligible for MORE points than if you were to just do 10 games only. However!

Your points are determined solely by your rating. So if you do 10 games, and your rating is where you want it, STOP and wait until Tuesday, when you get your points. If you do 10 games and your rating is NOT where you want it, play more until it is where you want it, and THEN stop.

A little weird to understand at first. Like, say, our current rating is 1460. If, say, we're 1460 when we've finished 10 games, then we'll get 255 arena points. If we don't like being 1460, and we want to be 2000, then we have to play enough games to get a rating of 2000, where we'll get 801 arena points. You have to play AT LEAST 10 games. So if you're 2000 after 10 games, then you'll probably want to stop, because if you play 11, then you have a high chance of losing and then getting less points. (Arena points, by the way, are what you use to buy rewards.)

Check it out!

Most popular MMO in the world just keeps getting more and more popular.

And then, of course, come all the people who think they're doing their duty to make comments about how they quit while they were ahead, and how they're better than everyone else because they did, or because of things like: "oh, I quit because once I hit level 70, I didn't want to repeat the same dungeon over and over and over again," and "oh, I quit because once I hit level 70, I got tired of all the guilds exploding because of the emo, angsty children," and "oh, I quit because I have a life now," and "oh, yeah, how much of that 10 million are gold farmers?" and then you've always got the people who say: "oh, I never tried WoW because my friend plays it all the time and I don't want to do that. Instead, I play <other MMO here> all day. It's a lot better than World of Warcrack."

Let's answer them in order, shall we? Because that's what I do here.

"The End-Game Content is Repetitive"

As always, to each their own, and if you don't like a game, those of us who do play want you to leave. We don't enjoy hearing people in the game talk about how bad the game is. But anyway, yes, the end-game content can get a little repetitive. Once you hit the leveling limit, all that's left as far as questing goes is what are called "daily quests" that you simply repeat every day to get a nice sum of money that you use to fund the perpetual extravagant costs of upgrading and repairing your equipment. There are, however, many, many, many instances that you can run. Granted, running the same one over and over can get a little discouraging, but that could just be because your guild is just bad. Different guilds are at different stages of doing instances, and if you're getting sick of the ones your guild is doing, you can move on. I wouldn't ever do that, because I have a bit of a loyalty thing going on, but I think over half the time, people moving from guild to guild will save themselves and everyone else a lot of headaches and sadness.

But there are some of you people who don't like to do instances, sure. I get that. I used to be one a long time ago. (And when I changed my mind, nobody was there to help, but that's another story that I always enjoy sticking in random places to remind certain people (who don't even read this blog) of it.) That's why there's more to WoW than running dungeons

Enter Player vs Player.  You know, it's that feature that lets you pit your skills directly against another player to see who's the best, and you get points for winning, with which you can now buy gear that is pretty darned close to the quality you'd get running the highest level dungeons. I'm not talking about the Battlegrounds, either. That could almost be worse than running dungeons all day, because if you don't want to be the ugly, smelly, evil Horde, you're going to pick the pretty, clean, righteous Alliance, and they just don't win the Battlegrounds (due to the amount of haughty, high-and-mighty players who think they know how to solo the thing, and completely ignore all attempts of coordinating activities). But there's a new event that Blizzard came out with when they released the Burning Crusade! Arenas. 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3, and 5 vs 5 arenas. Think of them as clan skirmishes in games like Tremulous or Counter-Strike... Only they're ranked like Halo 3 matches. 2 players against 2 equally ranked players have it out and see who's the best. If you lose, no biggie, you don't lose points. Just go on to the next match and try to beat them, too. Don't be discouraged if you don't know how to PvP, because nobody is good at that overnight. (And so, so, so many people don't want to get good, so they just complain about losing all the time and don't try to get better.)

There are plenty of things to do in the end-game. I don't understand the mentality behind all these dummies who complain about the monotonous and repetitive qualities of World of Warcraft and then go on to declare how awesome EVE Online or some other MMO is. Please, tell me, how is EVE Online better than WoW? On EVE, you have to wait real-world time to learn skills. I actually subscribed for one month to play EVE outside a trial and I actually enjoyed it... Up until the point where I was training to learn how to drive a super-miner, and learned that it would take literally 30 days to train. 30 DAYS. That's the entire month completely blown because I'm training. Why did I want to train this, you ask? Because with this super-miner, I could run back and forth between mining sites. Over and over. Yeah. That's it. That's like, repetition defined. Fly to a rock, mine it, fly back to base, sell it... Fly to a rock, mine it, fly back to base, sell it. How is this better than World of Warcraft?

"I Got Tired of All the Babies Playing the Game"

Simple response here: Don't play with them. There are plenty of guilds who advertise for mature players. (And by that, I don't mean... mature as in "Rated R", I mean mature as in "acting your age".) You can also leave the global channels shut off. If they're all babies, you're not going to miss anything. You're going to get noobs and brats and morons in every game you play. In fact, in EVE Online, you get brats and morons who happen to be really skilled, but still enjoy griefing the lesser players and causing problems, even in the areas that are supposed to be secure. I don't care if that's the spirit of the game, it's what happens and there's no denying it. My point is that there will be people like this in all walks of life, so you might as well start learning how to ignore them, or just deal with it. Let me help you along! The major channel for whining is the Trade channel, because it's global. (Bad move, Blizzard.) The answer is simple: Shut it off. This is how you do that:

1. /leave Trade

There is no step 2. That's it. If your guild is getting overrun by newbies who are pining for free help, then talk to your guild master or someone in charge and tell them. If nothing changes, absolutely nothing is stopping you from leaving the guild and finding another one. If your guild is as bad as you say, there shouldn't be any second thoughts about leaving, right? Or is it a good guild, but you can't stand new players asking questions like you did when you first got the game? There's a difference.

"I Quit Because I Have a Life Now"

This has to be the number one fallacy of the planet. "World of Warcraft destroys lives." Everything in moderation, dude. As for myself, I am a 4.0 college student in his second semester and I'm in a Karazhan run in my guild on the Sentinels realm. How's that for smashing the fallacy that WoW is a drug? If you can't play WoW because you don't know how to take fun in moderation, then say that. Making yourself look like a hero for breaking out of the "chains of addiction" just makes you look stupid. If you can't handle WoW and life, fine! Really, that's fine. Making it sound like you just fought off the latest illegal drug? Not so much.

"How Much of These Subscribers are Gold Farmers?"

Does it matter? Really. Ask yourself if it really matters? Does it matter that 9 million of the 10 million members are gold farmers? The money still goes to Blizzard, and everyone compares subscription statistics, not "active people who are leveling up properly" statistics. But if you're really dead set on asking this question, I'm going to ask again, does it matter? Every MMO has gold farmers. That's a fact of life. People who actually get paid to make money in the game so that they can sell it to lazy players for real-world money. I think the exchange rate is 50 USD for 1000 Gold in Warcraft at the moment. I only know this because of spammers in Stormwind, I might add. But come on. This question is utterly pointless, because every MMO has gold farmers. EVE, Everquest, Star Wars: Galaxies... They all have gold farmers. The question is, what does the developer do about the gold farmers? I don't know about you, but I think I keep reading month after month, about how Blizzard bans hundreds of thousands of gold farmers, cheaters, exploiters, etc. I don't know about you, but I think Blizzard is one of the few (if not the only) companies who actually bans people from their service. How many companies do you know that ban paying customers? Blizzard keeps adding more and more countermeasures and options for us good players to use against them. We have a new Report Spam option that will automatically tag a spammer, submit a ticket, and ignore the spammer, all in two clicks. The Warden (you know, that nasty, evil, no-good program that SPIES ON YOU, OH MY GOSH!!!) is constantly updated with more and more algorithms to detect cheating applications, and Blizzard BANS them. How many of the 10 million subscribers are gold farmers, you ask? My answer is: Less and less every day.

"I Don't Play WoW, I Play <Other MMO Here>."

The good ol' "I won't touch WoW, but I'll play another MMO that takes up just as much time, no problem, because since it's not WoW, I'm somehow above you all". Remember that post I made? Yeah... That applies to this. Go read it, if you've never seen it. I'll say now that the reason I compared WoW to Uru is because the person who ranted about WoW being evil is an extremely addicted (er, I'm sorry, AVID) Uru player. I don't think I'll ever forget what she said... But, then again, this is the same person who took over a project I was involved in and tried making me jump through a bunch of legal hoops so I couldn't come back and say they kicked me off the project or some such crap. I refused to say anything of the sort, because she should have known that I'd never do something like that, and she got all upset at me and told me how stupid I was, and then left... Only to come back a few minutes later and gloat about how she'd gotten into the Uru Beta (which was completely against the Terms of Agreement, but who listens to that anymore?) and asked where all my friends were. Yeah. That gives you some credibility to say WoW is evil, little miss snotty. I think you're the reason I stopped playing Uru, plain and simple. You're obviously too good for me, so why should I even bother? While you're all busy fighting amongst yourselves, trying to determine who the best fan is, I'm having fun raiding Karazhan with my new guild mates, not wasting my money on some "who can suck up to Cyan the most and get the most benefits" social playhouse.

Oh, by the way, I got into the Uru Beta the very day after she did... So her gloating was short-lived.

So the Indianapolis Colts lost in the Playoffs... Big surprise there.
But hey, at least the Dallas Cowboys lost, too...
Now we need the New England Patriots to lose and everything will be perfect.
Anyway... Here are some more Dragonmaw Orc Peons!

This is after you give the poor orc a mighty wallop for slacking off:
"WHY IT PUT DA BOOTERANG ON DA SKIN?? WHY??"

Here are various sayings when you chuck out some poisoned bits of meat for them to get sick on... Remember, even though they're awesome, they're still bad orcs, and you're trying to stop them from ravaging the home of the Netherwing dragons:

"Me so hungry! YUM!"

"Mmmm! FOOD!"

"Time for eating!?"

"It put the mutton in the stomach!"

And here's a random human Paladin dancing on a fountain in Stormwind City in his underwear:

There's an extensive line of quests that allow you to gain reputation with a faction of dragons called the Netherwing. Once you get the highest standing possible, they'll allow you to pick a dragon to aid you in your journey. (Definite hints of Pern here.) The dragons will even speak to you! Really sweet... But to gain reputation, you have to infiltrate a band of orcs who have overrun the dragons' home, and you have to gain reputation with THEM in an attempt to get in a position to take them out completely. One of the quests is one where you have to go around and discipline disobedient orc peons with an amazing little gizmo called a Booterang. Basically? A boot you throw at them and it comes back to you after delivering quite the beat-down. Boomerang + Boot = Booterang!

So here I go, walking along to look for some disobedient orcs. I quickly found one:

A very outspoke peon who has suddenly decided that he's too good to be picking away at Netherwing crystals all day and has settled to declaring his dominance over his superiors. And as if I wasn't laughing hard enough as seeing this little quote, he then proceeds to declare this little gem:

I couldn't have said it better, little orc. I couldn't have said it better.

That's right. That's me in my new Swift Flying Form. 280% speed increase in the air, 100% speed increase when running along the ground. I can fly anywhere faster than using flight paths, simply because I can fly "as the crow", and get from Point A to Point B without any swerving or curving. This... Only after about a week of farming for 4000 gold worth of herbs and Primals, and only after about 2 weeks of playing with my new guild.

I started hitting the end of the line as far as solo content goes, so I started looking at guild recruitment posts and threads and advertisements and I found one that looked promising: Militis Noctis. You know, the whole thing where they promise to help you get done whatever you need done, and they let you play however you want to play, AND they do dungeon instances. It's pretty much the dream guild on paper. So I decided to give them a shot. Little to no roleplaying, which is okay for now. I always thought RP'ing on a guild channel was a little wonky, seeing as how you can talk to anyone, anywhere, any time... A little... Unrealistic for roleplaying. But anyway...

The first night I join? I was asked to run an Outlands dungeon. My first since the dungeon in Hellfire Peninsula! So I group up and we smash through a dungeon in no time. The next day, someone needs to run a dungeon called Mechanar, so I group up and we smash through that dungeon, too. Unfortunately, I'm not keyed for the big one called Karazhan, but guess what? They're actually helping me get keyed, too! It's everything Ahrotahntee promised, only MN delivers on those promises. I told them I'd be willing to try them out, but I've fit in so quickly and we've helped each other so much so quickly in only a week, that I think I'll most likely stick with them.

So, anyway. I hit 5000 gold last night and bought training for Riding 300, and then more herbs sold and I hit 200 gold, with which I decided to buy a swift griffon mount. I almost didn't buy one, because I could just use my swift flying form once I finished the quest, but the quest has you running through a heroic instance (which means it's extremely difficult), and I didn't think I would run it for a while, because the guild is still trying to get through Karazhan. Buuut... That night was scheduled a heroic instance run that didn't follow through, so everyone was free to do Heroic Sethekk Halls, which is what I needed! So now I have my swift flying form and a guild that actually helps... Yay! We only wiped once on the boss, too. But we don't technically count the very first attempt ever, because that's the learning attempt. After we knew what to do, it was easy. (Nerve-wracking and intense, but still relatively easy.)

(Yes... This was a post to show off. My guild rocks!)