SWTOR: Final thoughts on the Sith Warrior **THPOILERTH!**

Note: This blog, as well as the videos shown in this entry, will reveal plot info regarding the Sith Warrior's storyline on SWTOR. If you're interested in experiencing the whole thing for yourself, DO NOT LOOK AT THIS CRAP!

You might remember this one from the last entry: This video shows the part where the story gets a little too obvious: My master, Darth Baras, asks me to kill another Sith Lord. The guy he sends to my aid is introduced to you as Baras' 'other apprentice'. It doesn't take a degree in rocket surgery to figure out what it means when a new apprentice appears all of a sudden. Oh and feel free to ignore the space battle and skip right on to the 2nd video.

This one begins with the new apprentice trying to kill me. How completely unpredictable, right? :P And from there you'll see some of the most important cut-scenes, which ultimately lead to Baras' fall. Fat fuck got what he deserved.

As you might still recall, my character is kind of a goodie-goodie. I tried being a Jedi and all, but they're just too damn boring. No emotion, no humping, no raging, they're just like math teachers. Dead on the inside. 

But despite being a really nice Sith and everything (you wouldn't believe the amounts of shocked comments I receive from the guild for this, as it's apparently oh-so out of character for me), I knew I was going to kill Darth Baras the second I've met him. A dumb, fat, arrogant prick, who treats me like his personal lapdog, makes me do all the work and then takes all the credit for it. My old RL job all over again. :P

Naturally, the story gets rather predictable in this regard: You're a fucking Sith. You want your Darth Title. Your master is an annoying pussy. This wouldn't be very satisfying if you couldn't plot to kill the fucker from day 1, knowing full well that you will get your chance at some point. In fact, the game isn't even trying to make a big secret of it, having NPCs in the very tutorial talking about how you're not strong enough to turn against him - yet!

And since the story makes me, the player, the super duper awesome indestructable badass Sith Warrior Rambo demigod type, it doesn't take long until Baras himself figures out I'm about to grow more powerful than he ever was. And I need to be stopped. So, once again, the inevitable happens, master turns against apprentice and vice versa, no one is really surprised there, but nobody needs to be - the motivation lies in plain old revenge. You'll want him dead. I wanted him dead. I've spared every single baddie who begged for their miserable life, forged plans to bring peace to the galaxy from within the Empire, but I knew I wasn't gonna have mercy on Baras. When was the last time you wanted to kill some MMO boss so badly if it wasn't for stupid "epic" loot?

So yes, the whole thing felt satisfying. Even moreso, when I acquired my Darth title before the level cap. And a little less when I realized that every moron on the whole fucking server already has that title, as well. Big surprise, with 850,000 Sith Warriors making them the most popular class on SWTOR right now, even ahead of 810,000 Jedi Knights.

The whole experience, whilst better than any other MMO-plot, was not as moving as some of the most memorable plot moments from Mass Effect, Dragon Age or - obviously - KOTOR, simply because the events happening around my character played on a much smaller scale. In the end, nothing that I did had any deciding factor on the galactic war, I didn't save the world and it was really just the story of how I made my way up from a lowly trainee all the way up to the Emperor's personal asskicker. Who, ironically, is hoping to bring peace, but that's where the story simply didn't go far enough.

One way to make the whole thing even better and more exciting would be adding some actual, real consequences to my good/evil decisions rather than just a couple alignment points. How about a level 50 quest, where I get to turn my back on the Empire and try and join the Republic? Or vice versa for evil Jedi characters? It would make sense with the lore and setting and it wouldn't be the first game to pull this off.

Sure, it would require a tremendous amount of work to implement that sort of thing for practically every character. But is that really unthinkable, now that we have a complete, fully voice-acted storyline for every single class in the game? And if you wanna compete with games like WoW, you gotta think big! Besides - If Anakin Skywalker and Kyle Katarn get to have trouble making up their minds about which side they're on, then my character should have the same privilege. Remember the devs advertising their game, saying, "This is your very own story within the Star Wars universe and you can be or do anything you could possibly imagine"? Well, let's see what you've got!

My job requires me to play my Sith Warriors some more, but now I'm very curious about some of the other classes and their storylines. And maybe I can get some fun out of the Jedi Knight after all. Who is to say I can't be a little vengeful, angry and emotional? Heh...

-Cat

SWTOR: The grumpy nice guy

Aw, don't act all surprised on me now!
(Click on the image to get to the full gallery)

Spoiler warning: I'm about to describe my experience with the SWTOR alignment system. If you're just getting started on the game and you do not want to know how your alignment can influence the game, don't read this. You've been warned.

One thing, which has always frustrated me about MMORPGs is how my character is basically just an assortment of gear, skills and numbers. Some games allow you to add a biography, many games have RP-servers, which let you act and talk 'in character' to give your alter ego a bit of a personality, but at the end of the day, it's all really just make-believe. Your characters don't have any real history or motivation, aside from the stuff you make up about them.

SWTOR promised to make things a bit more interesting by giving you light side and dark side actions and dialogue options as you progress through the story and quests. I wasn't expecting the whole system to have a huge impact on my gameplay experience and for the most part on my way through the first 30 levels I was right, some minor dresscode limitations aside - bad guys swing red lightsabres, good guys swing the colourful ones. You get the idea.

But seeing as the really interesting parts of the story are beginning to unfold before me, not only am I starting to feel that I have made the right choice when picking my class and alignment, but I'm also getting more attached to my character than I'm used to from any other online game. Through his story and his actions, that is, rather than meaningless achievement points and purple gear. But I'll get into that in a minute.

If you had asked me what kind of character I would like to play before the beta stages, I would have chosen a Jedi knight without hesitation. You see, the Sith get the fun outfits and the fancy magicks (sorry, force powers) and all, but the way those guys run their business reminds me too much of my old office job at a Korean electronics retailer: Everyone has their own hidden agenda, you only advance by killing your superiours and by taking credit for stuff you haven't actually done.

I have never been a huge Star Wars fan and I'm not familiar with much of that fictional universe, aside from the obvious crap everybody knows from the films. I knew the basic black and white stuff: Jedi = Good, Sith = Evil, that's that. So when I rolled my Jedi Knight, their whole philosophy, their mindset, the starting quests, which are meant to give you an idea of how it all works... it simply put me to sleep.

You see, when I play a character in an RPG, I want him to reflect my personality at least to some extent. And all of that crap about abandoning all emotions, letting go of all anger and passion and wasting every single boner (falling in love will get you booted!), sounded equally boring and cowardly to me. Nobody told me the Jedi were firm Catholics!

Turns out all the fun is with the Sith. They enjoy a good rage. And you know me. I'm all about rage. If I think you're an asshole, and chances are I do, then I'll say so to your face. I listen to my gut, I act and talk first and think later, no matter the consequences. But unlike your typical Sith Lord, I'm not very big on torture and mindless killing and what not. If someone's being a real dick, sure, torture them a bit, but I get no fun out of harming the innocent.

And that's where the alignment system kicks in. I'm a Sith Warrior and I'm enjoying an internship with this really mean prick, Darth Baras. Baras tells me to kill some guy he doesn't like, I just kick the guy's ass and tell him to run to the furthest corner of the galaxy and never come back, then I come back and pretend he's dead and my Master is none the wiser.

Basically, this is what a huge part of my storyline has played out like, so far. I'm being told to do something really nasty, I'm trying to be as compassionate and nice as possible, then act all badass in front of the boss and cash in on cool new titles and rewards. Sweet!

Of course, the whole thing started to get a little stale after a while. Me cutting off a bad guy's hand and telling him to run and hide, then present the hand to Darth Baras, all like, 'Look, this is all that's left of the poor fucker' and that moron is oblivious of what's really going on. It's an alternative way to solve quests, but it's not really all that 'light side'.

But things got gradually more interesting when I was told to kill a promising new padawan or, if I was feeling really hardcore, convince her to join the Dark Side. Naturally, I pretended to play along, secretly trying to save her in the process. And that's when the storytelling finally began to pick up. In order to reach the padawan, I had to talk to many of her former Jedi buddies in order to find out how to reach her. And when you're Sith, you're pretty much labelled a complete asshole, no matter what you do.

Imagine you walk in on some cranky old Jedi and the first thing he does is draw his lightsaber, threatening to kill you. You can stay cool, leave your weapon where it is, tell him you mean no harm to either him or the padawan and that you only want to talk. They don't give a shit. And they most certainly don't believe you. And whether you like it or not - in most of these situations you simply cannot avoid a fight. You may, however, choose to let your opponent live when you beat them, which usually gives them something to chew on for a while. It really is quite, funny, actually. "But... you guys are supposed to be evil! You're supposed to kill me! Maybe the Dark Side isn't so bad?"
-"Dude, it's awesome! We're allowed to get pissed off at stuff, we have comedy night on Fridays and best of all, we get to shag!"

I might be paraphrasing a bit here, but you get the idea. After 20 or so levels of goodie twoshoes I was actually attacked by my own mirror image, freaking out on me for being too nice. A very interesting touch, seeing as my own dark half told me how I was weak and how the Dark Council would eventually find out and plot to kill me and all kinds of stuff about me not being a proper Sith.

When I finally managed to get a hold of that fabled Padawan, her master would attack me relentlessly, trying his hardest to kill me, no matter how many times I told him I meant no harm or how many times I avoided dealing the killing blow. As the fight raged on, he started to show more and more signs of Dark Side corruption, i.e. his skin turned pale, his eyes turned red, his face turned into an 80 year old scrotum and all that.

After defeating (and sparing) both him and his padawan, she had to realize that it was her own master, who was being the dick here and that I was being nice about it all along. And in the end, she joined me, pretending to become my Sith apprentice, so together we could try and restore peace from within the Empire.
What's so interesting about this turn of events is how, up to this point, my character had always been a bit difficult to read. So I could spare and save people's lives, show compassion and empathy, but to what end? By the end of the day, I was still a Sith, right?

But that's where the elephant in the room had been addressed. It's all for show. We play along, do what we have to do in order to limit the damage done by the Empire as much as possible. It's the only logical explanation to a 'Sith' character, who spends all day saving lives and being nice to people. But unlike those boring Jedi dudes, I'm allowed to get angry. And I get to shag!


Speaking of which - one of my crew mates seems to be wanting exactly that. Sweeeeet~♪

Below you will find images of cutscenes and dialogue involving some of the events described in this entry. Click on an image to enlarge it and read the dialoge. Be sure to read the name at the beginning of a line of text if you're not sure which character is talking.

-Cat

The Force ain't strong enough to kill WoW

Lemme get two things straight right away:

1. This is merely my opinion. If I always had a clue what the fuck I was talking about, do you think I'd waste time writting shitty blogs all day?

2. To kill it before it comes up - I'm not a massive WoW fan. Not gonna piss on its grave when D-day finally arrives, not gonna put down flowers, either.

So. That game with the lightsabres and aliens and stuff is out. The majority of people will join six days from now, pre-order customers and the press (aka me) are already taking part in the headstart event. And as most of you probably know by now from beta and stress test events - the game is pretty damn good. I mean it. I'm having fun. Is it gonna be the next big thing? I don't think so.

To me, SW:ToR's biggest selling point is also its biggest flaw. It's the bastard child of Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) and World of Warcraft. You're supposed to get the best of both worlds, but I'm not fully satisfied in either department.

I love offline RPGs. I liked KOTOR a lot. You're the main hero, the most important character, the entire world revolves around you. If you screw up or do something you'd rather undo again, it's as simple as loading your savegame. Most of all, you get to play at your own pace. Nobody calls you a pussy if you secretly pick the lowest difficulty setting (between us, though, I pity you). Nobody knows if you cheat. Yeah sure, we've all downloaded GateKeeper for testing purposes and nothing else, right? :P

Yesterday, I teamed up with one of those typical singleplayer folks. A guy, god bless him, who usually stays away from MMOs and only installed SW:ToR, because it's Star Wars and it's Bioware. We were planning on doing the heroic group quests, which you face towards the end of the tutorial zone. Not a big deal, two semi-talented players can finish them together just fine.
So I waited at the dungeon entrance and the guy never reached me. Said he just had to fight his way through. And he died to a bunch of level 6 baddies. Again. And again. When I came to help him, it turned out he wasn't really using any abilities or special attacks. God knows whether he ever figured out how to learn new skills at his trainer.

Don't get me wrong. I am not trying to make fun of him in any way. The poor guy has probably never touched an online game before. He had no clue what he was doing, got his ass kicked by monsters 2 levels below him and there is no difficulty slider, no cheats, no savegames. Chances are, he's gonna get frustrated and he'll give up on the game if he hasn't done so already.

Sure, nobody forces him to do the group-based stuff. He can keep doing solo quests, grind baddies whenever he runs out of stuff to do from avoiding dungeons and heroic quests and just play this game like a single player RPG with lots of Chuck Norris jokes in global chat going on all the time. Right. Like that's gonna happen.

Naturally, not every passionate RPG fan is a complete MMO-newbie. Some of them know what they're doing and they enjoy a good story. And that creates a whole new problem once you get into Flashpoints - the instanced dungeons in SW:ToR. Chances are, you'll spend half as much time in there chatting with NPCs as you do fighting baddies. Now, if you do care for the story, that's a great thing. It's not so great when the rest of your team already knows all the dialogue or simply doesn't care for it and urges you to skip it all. If you're the one guy to slow down your entire party by wanting to enjoy all the dialogue, you'll have to be ready to get booted. Yes, it does happen.

Of course this also works the other way 'round. Maybe you've finished the Flashpoint before. Maybe your last team failed at the second last boss and you're starting over with a whole new group. Maybe they all want to see all the dialogue which you already know, meaning you'll spend ages listening to the same crap all over again.

Most of all, as it is entirely randomized which party member gets to act and respond to dialogue, your group might not always do what you would want them to. They might kill an NPC you would have left alive or vice versa. It's not a deal breaker, but anyone who likes to be in charge and have full control over what's going on is not going to enjoy this.

And here's another thing: Those players, who intend on playing SW:ToR like it was some kind of offline RPG will eventually reach the level cap. They might roll a different toon, go for some different dialogue options, but that's where the fun stops. They're not gonna raid. They won't care for the PvP. And ultimately, they're gonna quit, at least until the first expansion or massive content update. Oh, did I mention that Bioware are working on Mass Effect 3, they wanna crank out a 3rd Dragon Age and they just got the license for Command & Conquer? Good luck getting a whole lot of new quality content!

Surely, the vast majority of gamers on there love their MMOs and they're gonna enjoy raids, pvp and whatever the devs throw at them for their endgame experience. But the magic of lightsabers and Jedi-lore only lasts for so long until they're gonna realize that, below the surface, this game does absolutely nothing new. Yeah, yeah, fucking companions, light side, dark side... it's still just WoW with lightsabres. The classes, the combat, the skill trees, the whole thing is *so* much like WoW, the one good reason to play SW:ToR is because you don't know every fucking quest in your sleep. Yet. Wait another month. Maybe two. The setting won't feel all new and exciting anymore and you're paying for yet another MMO, which feels and plays just like... well, you know where this is going. And then what? Well, see ya in Pandaria.

Seriously. If you're looking for another kickass Bioware-esque storyline and an awesome solo-experience, this is not it. And if you want something "better than" or at least different to WoW... well, move along.
I'm not saying this game is bad. Heck, it's pretty damn good, really! But it's not hurting WoW anywhere near as much as the fucking pandas.

-Cat

I AM BURGER KING!

I berserk meat with all my might (dramatization)

So I went to that new Flame Grill Pub thingie with the family tonight and they offer the usual suspects you'd expect to find at that kind of place: Steak, burgers, chicken, chilli... you get the idea. And since the whole world has to go fucking American with absolutely everything, they also have their own silly little challenge thing. That one.

And since I wasn't paying, I thought what the heck and went for it. And finished it. BECAUSE I'M A MAN!
And then everyone freaked out, saying I was the first one to ever finish the whole fucking burger and everything that goes with it and they took my picture for their wall of fame and I got badges and then I had to take a second picture because on the first one I clutched my chest and pretended I was having a heart attack and the manager didn't like it.

So yes. My angry, fat, hairy face is now decorating a pub in Carlton. Because I don't eat like a pussy. Give me a month and they'll name the whole fucking restaurant after me.

-Cat

WoW is for chicks now. Also, I'm a tank.

(You could see a prot warrior DPS peak of 37.3k on here before Youtube raped it of all detail and quality - try watching it in FullScreen 720p)

People are, once again, proclaiming the end of WoW - this time because of Star Wars: The old Republic. Since that's so incredibly different and innovative and totally not WoW with lightsabers and too much fucking dialogue. And I'm not revealing any secrets when I say that all critics are once again preparing to learn every single detail about the next WoW killer, hoping to crank out as many articles as possible and milk this upcoming new cash cow until its wrinkly teats will produce nothing but dust.

I'm not going to make any predictions here. Every single year, everybody is absolutely sure that some upcoming MMO is gonna be the next big thing and that nobody will play WoW anymore and two months later everyone is back in Azeroth. Well, not entirely everyone - they're down to what now, 9 million active subscribers? Yeah, I can totally see how WoW is dead.

At the end of the day, it doesn't fucking matter whether a game has 20 billion subscribers or just 5000. I have to find it enjoyable. And that's my problem with WoW right now. They have added those bouncy, swingy little playground pony rides. They stand for everything I hate about WoW and Pandaria right now. I'm a big, mean, scary warrior with flames coming out of every orifice, I have torn demons and dragons apart with my bare hands. And I'm riding a sandbox pony. "WHEEEEEE!"

Imagine you're cooking a great dinner. And to make things just a little more fun, you add a pinch of salt. And it tastes better, so you add a little more salt. And a little more. Until at some point you taste so much fucking salt, the whole damn dinner is ruined. And that's how I feel about all the "fun" and cutesie stuff on WoW. Yes, they've always had their whacky humor and yes, Warcraft 3 had fucking pandas as some kind of little side joke. But, for whatever reason, the whole experience was still immersive enough to me and still felt mature enough to not completely water down the WAR part of my warcraft experience. War isn't fun or candy-coloured. And there are no ponies.

Interestingly enough, the vast majority of my friends, who actually look forward to the silly little pandas and who get a kick out of the new Darkmoon Island and all the fun shit that goes with it, are female. The moment I moan about the upcoming expansion on Facebook, I'll get at least three fellow writers, all of them female, who will quite happily cram a whole panda up my ass for it.
My guild mates? Girls, every single one of them! Technically, you could say one of them might be male, but he's into cosplay, karaoke that whole 'some of my best friends are gay' thing. He's the biggest girl of them all.

Personally, I tend to wear my testicles with pride. They're awesome. They're what makes me ME! Erm... well, partially, I suppose. They're what made me quit WoW for nearly two months now. But now I seem to be growing an inner vagina. And it's all Bulwark of Azzinoth's fault!
That stupid ass shield has been mocking me ever since they first added it to the game!

Think about it. They put a shit ton of effort into making all the weapons look super powerful, shiny and ridiculously oversized. And then you get shields, which look like the lid of a fucking trash can. You get so many shields on WoW whose names contain "tower" or "bulwark" and they're ugly, pixellated and ridiculously tiny, unless you happen to be a male Tauren. But for some fucked up reason, shields don't scale up on male Worgen, so you'll have to look twice to even see a shield on them.

Sure, there were no Worgen back in BC and Wrath, but my point still stands. Look awesome using Titan's Grip or look dumb wielding part of a garbage can? Total no-brainer. Wrath came out and there it was again. That fucking monster of a shield, on the NPCs in Zul'Drak. The mother of all shields. The one shield that ends the world.

When you look at traditional tanks, you get skills titled shield slam and shield wall. Stuff that suggests your shield is a mighty, powerful tool, a weapon, something to save the lives of your party, something to ends the lives of your enemies. You think Bulwark of Azzinoth. Looks a bit like an industrial-size refrigerator with massive spikes coming out of it. Back then, I probably would have chosen that shield over sex. Possibly even pizza. But the level cap had just changed to 80, the shield is only level 70 and with Titan's Grip still feeling new and exciting, Mr. Fridge was something nice and spectacular to fantasize about, but not really worth the trouble.

But now they've fucking added transmogrifying. It changes everything. Visually, anyway. That epic shield, that one cool item I always wanted more than any other thing on WoW has suddenly become a valid option. Damn those bastards to hell!

Long story short, I'm tanking now. Haven't touched a shield in over two years, I've always enoyed fury more than anything and every idiot is already running around with that damn shield, anyway, but I don't care. The worst part is how tanking feels all nice, new and different now, so instead of doing something fun, something useful, I'm wasting even more time on that stupid, soon to be panda-infested game I hate so much. All for the sake of looking sexy. I'm such a girl! >.<

-Cat

Insanely bored

Did you ever open your eyes after sleep, only to realize your body isn't awake and you are quite literally trapped inside it? It happens to me all the time. Imagine you can see the bedroom, the cat might be around doing something stupid or there's a  random insect creeping up on you and you'd really love to get up and do something about it, but you can't move a muscle. The first couple of times this happened to me, I tried to scream or at least produce some kind of noise to have somebody wake me up, but that didn't really work, either. The only thing that works for me is to focus on one single arm or leg as hard as I can. Usually takes a while, but what do you know - eventually the damn thing starts twitching and my body wakes up. Woohoo!

My receding hairline and my magically shrinking shirts aside, I don't physically feel the effects of my age, yet. To be fair, 30 years isn't exactly biblical, but I do have friends who have recently started complaining about aching bones and joints and all kinds of old people crap. I don't need boner pills, either - knock on wood! :P

I'm not entirely sure where my brain is headed, though. I've had the occasional phase of literally sleeping with my eyes open since I was a kid, but for the past decade or so, it takes me several hours to fall asleep every night. Not because I'm particularly worried about anything, I don't really suffer from nightmares, but I'm constantly talking. To myself. Not literally, mind you, but inside my head.

There are several people in there. Most of them are me, one of them is a cat. It's kind of a long story, which nobody would believe anyway. Let's just say it's pretty damn crowded and everyone has something to say. And they never shut up. Actually, it's not as alarming as it may sound. They're not like imaginary people (or cats) filling the room everywhere around me. They're just voices. One of them tells me to grope the Clairebear's boob while she's asleep, the next one says he wants ice cream and one of them made up this very text right here, while I was trying to get some fucking rest. It's 4 in the morning while I'm writing this.

Imagine that. Imagine you close your eyes, you try counting sheep or whatever the fuck you do to stop thinking about all kinds of stuff and somebody inside your head screams TITS! and somebody reads out your next meaningless blog posting before you've even decided whether or not you want to put that shit online. The logical consequence was to get up two hours later to start blogging. Yes, I also groped the boob, but we're all out of popsicles, dammit!

Now, to rule out all possible misunderstandings - this is not a complaint or a cry for help. I'm quite happy with myself, thanks a lot. It does, however, make a regular, normal life the way average Joe pictures it pretty impossible. A life, which, all things considered, doesn't really need me and could quite easily take care of itself without me around, but that's a different story.

One problem about constantly having random (and often useless) thoughts flashing through my brain, having them screamed at me and having no possibility to take a break, is that it's impossible to focus on anything. I'm trying to fix my PSP comic reader, posting on my MW3 clan forums and trolling a friend on Facebook this very moment. Whilst writing this thing. Imagine you have all these voices nagging at you, telling you they want to do something, telling you that you're missing out on something and you have to pay your undivided attention to something right there and now. Every minute of every day. Then try to have a regular day-job. It's boredom on an entirely new level.

I've been fired from nearly a dozen office jobs. I've done everything from slaving away as a worthless data typist to accounting. I always get the job. I got my last job before becoming a writer by stating I'm Grand Inquisitor Xavor of planet Schlork. With a straight face. The boss himself wanted me in his office before anyone even spoke to any of the other applicants, just to ask what the fuck is wrong with me. Once you reach my level of boredom, you stop being scared. 


You probably haven't got a fucking clue what I'm talking about. Well, imagine an office job. Any kind of office job, really. You go there every single day. Travel up and down the same road, meet the same people on the bus every day or at least drive past the same damn landscape every day if you're lucky enough to own a car. Get to work at exactly the same time, do mostly the same kind of routine crap, go to the same cantina or restaurant, put up with the same co-workers... you get the idea. You do the exact same shit. Every. Single. Day. One day perfectly interchangeable with the next.

One problem about having too much routine is that I memorize it all, I just end up going through life without paying much attention to it and the voices will get a little louder each day. So loud, in fact, that everything around you just fades out. Suddenly, you don't really hear your co-workers talking crap behind each other's backs anymore, you no longer notice their fake smiles when their weekly victim walks in on them and you no longer flinch when your supervisor is having a bad day and decides to take it out on you. It all fades to grey.

At some point I wondered if I could break the routine, escape from the whole boredom by going there naked. Maybe just wear a cowboy hat or something. At some point I pictured myself shooting everyone in the office. Now, don't be alarmed - I didn't particularly hate those guys and I'm not potentially violent. I just wondered what it would be like. It seemed like a perfectly valid way to break free.
Now, before the cops kick down my door - I don't own a gun, I'm not planning on hurting anybody and the last time I could be arsed to leave the house was to take a piss on my neighbour's BMW. You've got nothing to worry about. Well, unless you're a douchebag who gets a kick out of parking your fucking car in front of my house just for the sake of showing off.

And at some point you stop caring. You no longer fear the consequences. In fact, I wanted those consequences, just because I figured they'd be more fun than making every single day as boring as the next. So I put porn on my desktop. I called my overweighed supervisor a fat slug. To her fat face. I declared every day casual Friday, stopped shaving and stopped getting haircuts. Turns out all of that "You're an asshole, but we're keeping you because you're doing a good job" crap only works on tv.

You'd think I'd be pretty useless around an office, what with my concentration issues and all, but this is how I get all those jobs in the first place. I ace all the tests, score higher than the idiots around me, do my work twice as fast as I'm expected to. When you don't give a shit, you don't get nervous. When you're not nervous, you don't make as many mistakes. And when you always feel the urge to do half a dozen things at the same time instead of just one, you tend to get things done faster.
Problem is, people tend to let you go when they realize that somebody less efficient might fit in better with the rest of the staff.

One thing I love about being a writer is how routine is impossible. Yes, being a freelancer I tend to get the crap all the other critics don't want to write about, but that's irrelevant. Sometimes I get to write about a game, which is utter shit and I'm only supposed to focus on all of its positive aspects. Contrary to popular belief, proper reviews don't work that way, but paid advertising does. Reviews are even more fun, because when I do have to give out a rating, then there's no way around describing just how shit the game in question is - without actually using the word shit. It's challenging. And since every shitty game is shit in its own way, it never gets old. Of course I do get the occasional good game, but that's not as enjoyable.

Most importantly, though, it shuts up most of the voices or at least keeps them relatively satisfied. Take a screenshot, double-check on something you're stating as a fact, think of a witty caption or a fitting score for some abysmal pvp. A review is composed of so many different components, I never have to sit down and concentrate on only one boring thing.

I'm just not sure if this is enough to completely satisfy me for the rest of my life. Don't get me wrong. It's the best damn job I ever had and I'm loving every moment of it. But I'm an arrogant bastard. I feel like I was made for something bigger, something more important. Maybe a late night show. :P
I wish I could bring up the concentration to finish that book I've been writing on for so long. Or to write a book about something completely different. I feel the weird urge to publish a fucking book. Maybe I need a manager or something.

With that out of my system, one of the voices is finally shutting up. There are some leftover prawn crackers from last night's Chinese dinner, so maybe those are gonna shut up ice cream guy. And Claire still has one ungroped boob. Not entirely sure what the cat wants. I don't understand cats. But it makes me do things.

This headache is killing me.

-Cat

Modern Warfare 3: Singleplayer - yay! Multiplayer - fuck you!

Thousands of people are currently boycotting and heavily criticizing Modern Warfare 3, while most magazines out there praise the whole thing like it's the second coming of Christ. And strangely enough, I tend to agree with both the professionals and the pissed off community to a certain extent. Which might not make a lot of sense, but I'm so full of opinions! Ha!

The story of MW3's solo campaign is the same load of patriotic bullshit you know and love from the series. It's time for World War 3 and we all depend on some brave American Delta Force heroes to save the day and the whole damn planet. Okay, the one good guy who makes it all the way to the end is actually a Brit (whee!) and you get your fair share of Frenchies and some weird Germans named 'Zerstörer' or 'Vorschlaghammer', but for the most part, the game will have you cheering: "USA! USA!"

I'm sure tons of German soldiers use call-signs such as 'Zerstörer'

If you play these games for their story, I pity you. I honestly do. The plot in this game is shit and nobody cares, because you get to blow things up, you get to shoot a whole lot of bad guys and for the most part, it's a really fun ride.

This is where I agree with the reviewers and where I fail to understand the overall criticism coming from a whole lot of people: It's Call of Duty at its finest. You get high speed car chases, explosions, airplane crashes and a whole lot of chaos. It's war, alright. There were moments where I'd feel a major adrenaline rush, charging in Rambo-Style (which usually ends with me getting blown to bits) and moments, where there's so much going on, you just try to stay close to your team mates and somehow manage to get through the whole thing in one piece. There's a constant sense of tension here, the action is as fast-paced and crazy as any good action film and you're right in the middle of it.

Sure, it's a tried and tested formula, which might have gotten a little stale after so many games in a series, but what were people expecting? It's Call of fucking Duty, it's always been about scripted events, about shooting galleries, which are interrupted by scripted sequences, where you get to watch your character do cool stuff in 1st person perspective. You can't say MW1 and 2 and possibly Black Ops were awesome for that and MW3 is crap for the same thing. That's like saying you hate how Diabo 3 is full of dungeons, demons and zombies, because that's too much like its predecessors. Get real.

"Boo! MW3 uses scripted events and excessive explosions!" And you've been living under what rock?

To be fair, the feeling of déjà-vu is a little stronger than it should be. In Modern Warfare 2, there were moments, where the bad guys simply won. They'd point their gun at your face and pull the trigger without hesitation. In one particularly humiliating scene, you'd get to see through your dying character's eyes and watch as the major baddie chucks you and your companions into a pit, pours gasoline all over you and sets you on fire. Back then, this came to players as a major shock. You don't usually see main characters die like that, not through their eyes, not so violently.

MW3 pulls something similar, though less brutally. This time you just get shot in the face and die. Which should still be shocking enough in itself, but you just won't give a crap about it if you've played the previous title. Because you've seen it before, you've been there, it's not new or surprising anymore. It's overused.

What's worse, MW3 also copies a lot of bugs, breaking scripts and flawed gameplay from its predecessors. There are those incredibly stupid moments, where you face endlessly respawning enemies and the only way to move the whole thing forward is by rushing through the enemy hordes like crazy, which seems reckless and not very tactical.

You'll eventually accept that the game wants you to rush like an idiot, only to fail at a later stage, where the game expects you to sit still and kill every single enemy, because that time around, there's no respawn at all. If you don't play exactly the way you're supposed to play, you'll either die or break the script.

At one stage I was supposed to follow a character, who was parking his lazy ass behind cover and wouldn't move, no matter what. All the enemies were dead, there was nothing going on whatsoever, but my NPC, as well as the whole squad of soldiers, just held their position for no apparent reason, forcing me to carry on by myself. So I went ahead, bumped into a bunch of enemies, fought them for a while and then the whole game crashed with an error message. Upon loading up my savegame, all the NPCs would finally move and the mission carried on the way it was supposed to.

There aren't as many of these moments in MW3 as there were in the previous games, but you will inevitably reach a point where your team will stop acting and enemies will either disappear or respawn an infinte amount of times until you figure out how to trigger the next scripted sequence. 

You don't have to be overly talented - scripts do all the work for you.

According to Steam, it took me 7 hours to beat the campaign on regular difficulty (yeah, I'm slow), which isn't a whole lot, but the real meat and potatoes of the series lies in its multiplayer component, anyway.

And that's where I can't help but agree with the people, who vent their anger and frustration on websites like metacritic.com

I don't mind how they've recycled the same old engine for yet another game, how MW3 doesn't look anywhere near as stunning as Battlefield 3 and how it's nothing super spectacular anymore. Because in the campaign, they just make it work. There's a shit ton of action! Helicopters, bombers, explosions, cars, boats... fuck, there's so much crazy shit going on at the same time at a solid, stable 60 FPS, I won't complain about the dated engine.

Multiplayer, on the other hand, looks and feels like some kind of Black Ops mod, combined with yet another map pack. So they've changed a few perks, made it less of a pain in the ass to unlock pro perks and they've rebalanced things a bit here and there. Some say it's the most well-balanced CoD multiplayer of all times, because you no longer get akimbo shotguns or infinite marathon perks. Probably the same people who haven't figured out you still get to use akimbo machine-pistols, run across the map and spray bullets like a moron, racking up quite a few kills in the process.

Balance isn't the problem. It never was. People will always find and exploit the most powerful stuff, they will break your game and either you adapt or you stay offline. It's how online multiplayer works. The real problem is that MW3 adds nothing new. Yes, so you get a couple websites jerking off over the oh-so incredible new 'kill confirmed' mode, where you have to collect a dead guy's dog tags before your team gets the points for a kill. Big deal!

What they fail to mention is how the server browser we had in Black Ops has mysteriously disappeared again*, forcing people into shitty, console-style matchmaking. You get to choose a game mode, then the game will pick any random map for you, team you with and pit you against random people, determine the best host and go do the same laggy, rubberbanding peer 2 peer shit that made the online mode on Warhammer 40k so much fun.

*except for broken, dead, dedicated servers, more about that later

Being unable to choose your session by map, ping or player count is frustrating and stupid enough. What's worse, though, is the massive amount of blatant cheating. People locking their crosshairs on you as you approach them from behind solid walls can be just as annoying as paranoid folks accusing each other of cheating for no good reason. The community is lousy, there is just as much raging, flaming and whining going on as Counter-Strike had seen in its best days. 

Of course you could just leave a session if you don't like what's going on there, but since you have zero influence on where the matchmaking system will take you next, there is a high chance you'll end up playing with the exact same people again, anyway.

Alright, this isn't 100% true. Hidden in your options menu, you may acticate a dedicated server browser, which might seem awesome when you first hear it. It isn't. Let me show you what I mean:

Empty. Every. Single. Fucking. Server. Zero players across the board.

Wanna know why? Dedicated servers are unranked only. In plain English: You don't get experience points on there, you don't level up, you cannot use your favourite weapons, perks and loadouts, unless the server admin decides they're cool. And with the level-ups, prestige and customization removed from MW3 multiplayer, you might as well play some crappy Korean F2P shooter.

I've made a lot of great friends when I played Black Ops. I was an admin on my favourite server, we had a nice, friendly community and we could kick cheaters and assholes when the need came up. So MW3 has what some people might consider better "balance". It's got new maps. But if, in turn, I get to put up with lousy matchmaking, cheaters, random maps and a lot of drama, then it's not fucking worth it. Sure, the same guys I know and love from BO might set up their own dedicated server for MW3. They might even figure out how to give people their favourite loadouts. But what's the fucking point, when nobody ever plays on those servers? Heck, most people do not even know how to activate the damn server browser!

And to me, this isn't even the worst part. This is the worst part. They're already telling me my brand new game is about to become outdated, I'm gonna have to buy another one in a year, gonna have to get used to new guns, perks, maps etc. all over again. I just don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth if there's a new CoD every fucking year.

Don't get me wrong. Multiplayer can be awesome on those rare occasions where people just get along and have a great time. When all of my friends and I somehow manage to get into the same game at the same time. But we shouldn't be forced to put up with this kind of garbage. Black Ops didn't enforce matchmaking. You may or may not hate Black Ops for the guns, perks or god knows what. But it had fucking dedicated servers. And they worked. Rankings included. Why do they have to take that away in MW3? I just don't get it.

I'll be honest with you. MW3 doesn't piss me off enough to make me stop playing online. But if I could go back, I'd spend my money on something else. The solo campaign was great, warts and all, but I'm not sure 7 hours of fun are really worth 40 Quid. The online mode certainly isn't.

-Cat

Skyrim: Dear King Conan (***SPOILERS***)

I have received your letter containing the little frowny face. I am aware that the Tarantia commons district is ablaze and the nobles want their houses cleaned of any roaming demons and raiders. I am deeply ashamed to let you down in this hour of need, but my duties in Skyrim will keep me busy until further notice.

I know I said I was only going to help the people of Skyrim with their dragon problem, but now that I have established my place as Harbinger among the Companions of Whiterun, I am to cure my fellow shieldsiblings of their lycanthropy and I, myself, have to make a very important decision: Do I really want to stop being a werewolf or do I give in to the call of Hircine and spend my afterlife hunting among his divine pack? What would you do, my king?

Having spent many a month in your service as a conqueror, I am still comfortable donning the heaviest suits of armor and slaying my foes with sword and axe in hand. But word has it, that the most skilled fighters of Skyrim can move around in their armor as though it weighed nothing, allowing them to take out their victims with stealth and precision. And I have only scraped the very surface of magic, enchanting wild beasts and enemies alike to fight by my side and raising the dead to do my bidding. I am also becoming quite the marksman, taking out foes with a bow and arrow from great distance, without them ever knowing what hit them. Back in Hyboria, I never would have thought of specializing in so many forms of combat and magic!

Tamriel welcomes me as a returning veteran. The bards play melodies, which I have enjoyed back in my days where I explored Morrowind and even Daggerfall, nodding at me with a knowing smile. "This one is just for you", they say, knowing that I know, knowing I would recognize the origin of these tunes, which might just be nice and utterly meaningless to the vast majority of younger adventurers. But I have always been there and this is my reward.

You must forgive me, my king, when I'm in love with the cold, harsh, snowy mountains of Skyrim, as they remind me of both your and my homeland Cimmeria in so many ways. Of course nothing will ever rival the beauty of Conall's Valley, but Skyrim is beautiful in its own ways and full of adventure! I have lost count of all the caverns, villages, fortresses and dungeons I have encountered, each and every one of them full of monsters, bandits, traps, treasures and people in need. It seems like I can spend a hundred hours and more, helping all of them, solving all the quests and problems, and still I won't run out of things to do.

Seeing that I will be busy around here for quite some time, I have purchased a lovely little home in Whiterun, where my caring wife Shahvee is cooking my meals and watching over my treasures and trophies. Yes, my king, I have married! The people of Tamriel openly celebrate their love and get wed regardless of age, race and gender. Alas, it seems that there are no interested Khajiit in all the land, but an Argonian will do. You know what they say about their spear polishing skills.

I'll admit the people around here are not perfect. Most of them seem utterly stupid and it is perfectly valid to put a bucket on people's heads to get away with stealing. This is also a widely-accepted method of stealth practice. Sometimes the people of Skyrim will sit on thin air as though they owned invisible furniture, they have conversations through ceilings and Lydia, my battle companion, is hell-bent on getting me killed by setting off every single trap, which I so skillfully dodge and evade. In Hyboria, we would call them dumber than shit. And rightfully so.

But seeing as they can teach me so many new skills, offer me so much to do, so many great adventures and such opportunity to gain fame and fortune beyond measure, I find it easy to forgive their little weaknesses and shortcomings.
I am afraid I have to delay my return even further, but rest assured that my adventures will come to an end sooner rather than later. Because that's how it goes in Tamriel. Once you are done, you are done. And then I'll be fighting for glory again on the many battlefields of Hyboria, earn new ranks and skills and the right to wear powerful new armor.

I have to go now. Class is starting in the College of Mages and I don't want to be late.

Kind regards,
-Cat

Skyrim: First look, two cents

The new Elder Scrolls RPG does a lot to disappoint me, some aspects of the game just plain annoy me, but the game does everything to draw you in from the very beginning. And from the intro to my first dead dragon, I have been, and still am, completely hooked.

Following the events of Oblivion, where the late king's last remaining son had a much greater destiny than being the next heir to the throne, the Empire quickly lost power and influence until 200 years later, where Skyrim begins, they're trying to regain some of their former glory by invading the other realms. Including - you guessed it - Skyrim. Their presence is dividing a nation, splitting them into a group that welcomes and supports the soldiers of Cyrodiil and the Stormcloak rebels, who believe that Skyrim should be free from the Empire. In fact, some of them wouldn't mind getting rid of everybody, who isn't a Nord.

Right from the start, people try to drag you on to their side, ask where your loyalties lie, whether you're for or against the Empire. And that's when the dragons start to show up and scare the shit out of everybody. I might be absolutely wrong here, but my guess is that, in the long run, you'll end up uniting the people to stand against the dragons. But since it's a Bethesda game, there will probably be other options here, as well. We will see.

The game does an incredible job at making you experience everything through the eyes of your character, from the shaky camera when you start to run to the huffing and puffing when you're out of breath from the very beginning of the game, where you're being carted to your execution with a bunch of other prisoners, who all talk to you as you look around.

Nobody would wield their maces like that.

The whole thing isn't perfect. You don't actually see your character when you play in 1st person perspective, you don't get to look at your legs flailing about when a baddie sends you flying and the way your character will dual wield melee weapons is anything but realistic, though it does look pretty awesome once you zoom out into 3rd person view.

I'll admit I'm a bit disappointed with the graphics, especially the overall look and feel of Skyrim itself, the outdoor areas, the forests, plains, mountains and streams. Don't get me wrong - it most certainly doesn't look bad! But do you remember the first time you've ever played Oblivion? How you had to pick up your jaw from the floor and you couldn't help but gaze at the landscape for a while before you actually went on with the game? There are no such moments for me in Skyrim.

It looks nice. Just not piss yourself with excitement kinda nice.

According to preview trailers and interviews, they're using a whole new engine, but I see old flaws persisting from the days of Oblivion, starting with the really shitty jumping animation to random arrows getting stuck in your character and staying there for what seems like an eternity.
The faces, facial expressions and overall animations look better than ever, but there is simply nothing here that completely blows me away. Oblivion did that. Fallout 3 did that. I guess Bethesda have spoiled me in that regard. I was expecting more.

The game has supposedly become a lot simpler, as well. Not in an "idiot-proof", casual kind of way, but less unnecessarily complicated. Instead of having a skill for long blades, short blades, blunt weapons etc. you just get one-handed and two-handed weapon skills and that's that. No more strength attribute. Or any attributes, for that mater. No more acrobatics, either. Instead, you now get to choose perks upon level ups, which are supposed to be more fun and exciting than simply raising stats such as strength or intelligence.

I can appreciate the big idea here, however I'm not entirely satisfied with the execution. When I level up in Skyrim, being a dual-wield melee based character, I get to put points into a perk, which raises the damage done by my one-handed weapons. I also get to raise things such as health or stamina. How exactly is that different from or more exciting than having a Strength attribute, which I used to level in the earlier games of the series? It does the exact same things.

I'll admit there are a few more interesting perks, which will allow you to paralyze foes with a power attack or make some attacks bounce off your heavy armor, but in order to get those, you will have to spend countless points on boring, dull perks such as "+10% armor bonus" or "+5% two-handed weapon damage". I fail to see the innovation.

On the default difficulty setting, your first dragon is a complete pussy.

One thing that has definitely become simpler is actual difficulty. On the default, medium difficulty setting ("adept"), I can simply click enemies to death like a madman and even when I have sprung a few traps and when I have done battle with my very first dragon, my life bar would never go any lower than 50%. I don't really mind, since I can always crank things up a little higher if I get bored, but I was hoping for a combat system, which would feel more solid and complex this time, rather than getting through every tough situation with simple button-mashing.

My major complaint with Skyrim is its shitty interface. Seriously - how hard can it be to come up with a UI, which can be controlled with a mouse and keyboard? Buying and selling items is a chore, switching from your favourite sword to a bow and arrows is unecessarily complicated and the whole thing becomes horribly unresponsive if you do as little as *try* to use your mouse in the menus rather than navigating them with WASD, E and TAB. Don't get me wrong - you will get used to the menus over time as you play, but you simply shouldn't have to.

I know that reading all these bits of criticism will make it sound like I had a horrible first impression. But, and that's the important bit, I absolutely love the game. I can't wait to get back in, can't wait to fight more dragons, to explore the land and to fight my way through countless dungeons, meeting new companions on the way and working my way through the various guilds and factions. It may not have the stunning looks I had hoped for, but they're more than adequate. Combat might not be as incredible as I would like it to be, but it's enjoyable and the bloody fatalities and dismemberment make it look good. And most of all, the story is right there, drags you right in, won't let you go. Because unlike Oblivion, this one makes you the hero, makes you the main character rather than Sean Bean's little errant boy. And at the end of the day, that's exactly what we all want from our role playing games.

-Cat

Pandas, Straw, Camel's backs etc.

This entry makes me a fucking hypocrite. I have always hated blogs and forum posts where people moan about WoW and start listing up all the many reasons why they're quitting, when the fault usually didn't lie within the actual game, but the players, themselves. If you play the shit out of something for almost seven years straight, it doesn't fucking matter whether it keeps on changing 'for the worse', whether it doesn't change enough or anything in between these two extremes. You're just full. In fact, all these people are just full.

I've been full for a while now. Even when the goats from outer space crashed into the planet, I had known I was full and it wasn't their fault WoW was starting to get on my nuts. When the lore finally changed from "female night elves may never be druids" to "Look, it's a holy cow!" I knew I was just full and the game itself didn't really make a change for the worse. When the game changed to World of Frost Mages to World of Holy Paladins to World of Win Any BG By Stacking Healers, I knew the problem was really on my end.

But for the love of tuna - SIX fucking talents per class? Just how much more can you simplify a game?
Once Pandaria goes live the way they're planning it right now, you'll get to choose from 3 near-identical talents every 15 levels. At some point you'll get one of three slightly different self-heals, one of three slightly different snares, one of three different berserk mechanisms and so on. One of them might be a bit stronger than the other but comes with a greater cooldown or one might affect more than just one target, but at greater mana/rage/whatthefuckever cost. Everyone is gonna be fucking identical. Perfect balance.

For contrast, I'm playing Age of Conan right now. I know - it's just as easy to mock AoC, if not easier. But have you seen the character development on there? Three different talent (or 'feat') trees, which let you distribute your points any way you want, a max level perk-system, which lets you power up endgame toons much like the promised and then scrapped Path of the Titans for WoW, a whole lot of means and ways to spec out and play your toon, some of them good, many of them utter shit.

Yes, WoW eliminates the utter shit now by making everyone equal. But I don't like that. I like being unique, being an individual, having the possibility to choose my own character's strengths and weaknesses. It's what makes a fucking RPG a role playing game!


Ironically, at the same time they're announcing pet battles. So people will train their cats, skunks, squirrels and other shit to fight other critters in the arena. The player character becomes ever more simplified up to a point where you can focus on your fucking CAT more than your own progression!

Hold it, I'm not done bitching. Remember the attacks of the undead hordes before Wrath went live? How they would change you into a ghoul if you died, allowing you to attack and kill your fellow players? Remember those bastards appearing seemingly out of nowhere, without warning, without giving you a god damn clue where they would strike next? I loved that shit. Now look at what we're getting before Pandaria.

Theramore gets destroyed. Nobody gives a shit about the place, it's just another spot on the map the Alliance will lose to the Horde, because that's what they're best at. Getting their asses kicked. Funny thing is, Pandaria is probably a year away from us and everyone already fucking knows that Theramore will be destroyed. Can it get any more anti-climatic? The destruction of that place should strike people as a shock, it should be something big and meaningful, a surprise event! Instead, everyone already knows it's gonna happen and people couldn't care less.

But the real joke is this: Upon the destruction of Theramore and the ensuing battle at sea, some stranded soldiers will end up discovering Pandaria. Okay, let me get this straight: People in Azeroth ride dragons and gryphons, gnomes and goblins build whacky airplanes. People in Azeroth fucking fly! They fly, they teleport, they travel the sea. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU FAIL TO NOTICE A WHOLE FUCKING CONTINENT?

Now, do I seriously have to get started on a new race, which started out as an April Fool's joke?* And since they couldn't be bothered to come up with something cool that actually makes sense, both the Alliance and the Horde will get fucking pandas now. And a new class. Remember how people talked about how badly they wanted the Blademaster or the Demonslayer or any of the many brilliant heroic classes known from the Warcraft Universe? We're getting monks. The one class I already don't give a fuck about in Diablo 3.
*Pandaren Brewmasters have been sighted in Warcraft 3 before this prank, of course.

I have always been with the guys who backed up Blizzard and all their stupid changes to WoW. I have always agreed that, for the most part, my desire to leave WoW, just as everyone else's, was mostly related to all of us simply having played it too fucking much. But come on. This is a fucking April Fool's joke turned real. This is the ultimate simplification, the ultimate lack of ideas. And spare me the crap about how awesome it's gonna be to have some oriental landscapes and architecture. Every fucking online game out there jumps the Asia-bandwagon at some point. We've seen Khitai in AoC, the fucking Fortress of Edou in Hellgate London, the Chinese-style Sarnak islands on Everquest 2, Guild Wars had gone for it and there's about a million F2P-titles out there, which exclusively use settings inspired by ancient China, Japan and Korea. Why is it suddenly cool, fun, new and unique if WoW does it?

I like how resilience will become a base stat and how you might no longer be forced to farm both pvp and pve gear. I like how epic items and 1 or 2 character levels are supposed to make less of a difference than they do now. I like how the whole thing is supposed to get a bit tougher again. But for crying out loud. Pet battles? Fucking pandas? And to all you people telling me I could just ignore all of that crap if I don't like it: Well, what are you gonna do if you end up ignoring all that? Focus on the battle against a brand new evil, which threatens to destroy all of Azeroth? Oh right, there is no such thing! WoW wants to focus more on the oh-so interesting battle of the Alliance vs the Horde, which has always been completely in the hands of the writers out there. A battle, which us players, the very members of both of these factions, had absolutely no fucking say in. Other than occupying a tower on Hellfire Peninsula or slaying Varian, who will respawn a couple minutes later, did we ever have any influence on how the battle of the Horde against the Alliance would progress, maybe even change the world?

And what about the people, pussies as they might be, who don't give a crap about PVP and the whole Horde vs Alliance thing, the lovers of pve content, the raiders, the guys who want to tackle all the tough bosses and face all the biggest evils of Azeroth? Since we've already recycled Nefarian and Ragnaros, are they gonna face Illidan all over again until you can be arsed to come up with a new bad guy?

I used to love this game. Sure, I'm bored with it now and chances are, I'd be bored with it even if it was still as tough and complex as nostalgia is making me believe it used to be. But what the fuck are they doing to that damn game now? What the hell is going on here? Is this some kind of messed up experiment or is the whole damn design team being run by interns and trainees now, as everyone else is working on Titan, some stupid new game nobody knows anything about?

I'm known for being a bit drastic and extreme with my opinions. I'm known for changing them over night whenever I feel like it. But for the time being, I'm enjoying the additional 25GB of space left by WoW, which can now be occupied by some new porn.

-Cat