My digital life and friendship 2.0

I don't need much in life to be happy, but a working, running PC is an absolute necessity. Alas, my super hardcore mega expensive, mega overclocked Zotac AMP! edition graphics card has decided that it's time for me to pursue a new hobby. "MEIN LEBEN!" it screamed as it stepped into the afterlife at the end of my final session on Guild Wars 2. Now it alternates between black screen crashes after a few moments of activity and the dreaded BSOD when I boot up the old machine.

Most people would find this annoying. If you're a poor fucker like me, you might even find it depressing, because I simply cannot afford an adequate replacement right now. To me, a broken PC results in a sense of dread and despair most regular people would only feel before an impending visit at the dentist. My computer doesn't just hold all my games, my hidden collection of home-made porn or my favourite bookmarks and music. In a way, this thing contains my identity, my life, all sorts of memories. All my work, my articles, my blogs, everything is on there. Every single one of Claire's emails, our pictures, everything we've shared is on that machine. This makes having no access to all of my stuff much worse than just having my favourite toy broken.

Yes, I should have created backups. :P
I hate changes. I'm not watching the new episodes of 2.5 men, because they changed the set, they replaced a character, and I just can't get used to it. I'm sure the show is just as funny as it has always been (not that it's overly difficult to tell the same jokes over and over again every episode), but I can't get used to the new setting. I can't get used to the newer Simpsons episodes for similar reasons. I freak out and shout at random people when they rearrange shit at the supermarket. Why can't they just leave the fucking Tabasco where it has been a week ago? What was wrong with that shelf? Why do I find tuna where I used to get the hot sauce? These things seriously stress me out!

And having to use a 4 year old backup laptop for a temporary replacement is a massive change. I don't mean to make fun of the little thing's performance. The old GT230m in there can barely run GW2, but at least I can keep on leveling up. What stresses me out is the pale, tiny screen, the tiny keyboard, the way everything is arranged on there and how I have no access to all of my stuff. You know, websites, email, bookmarks, games, savegames and settings, yada, yada, yada. Turns out much has changed since the early 2000s!

In fact, 90% of these problems can be eradicated by having accounts on Google, Steam and Origin. I'm not getting paid for saying this. :P
Having logged in to my Google account using Chrome, I instantly had all my bookmarks and settings back, Chrome downloaded and installed AdBlock straight away, I can access all my email (it's all linked to my Gmail account) and I'm writing this blog right now without having to remember the URL, login credentials or any of that crap, because Google took care of that for me. If I wanted to have a quick, low-resolution session of Space Marine later, I could just log in to my Steam account and reinstall that game over the 'net - all my settings, custom armor, loadouts etc. are stored on Steam's cloud-service, so I'd feel right at home without having to fiddle with any settings.

I'm keeping backups of all my work-related stuff now, invoices, accounting, that kinda crap. I'm gonna have to backup all of my Claire-related stuff. And possibly Skyrim, because no cloud-service in the world could possibly restore all of my mods and settings and customization. But for the most part, moving PCs doesn't remotely hurt as much as it used to. The fact I'm so impressed with all this really makes me feel old. Theoretically, I've known about all these features, but until recently, I have never depended on them. Nice to see it all work. Very convenient.
And while I was already getting into mimicking my PC-environment as closely as possible, I hooked up my gaming keyboard, mouse and the LED telly on the laptop. None of this helps improve this little machine's humble performance, but gaming and working on a big screen, with a proper mouse and keyboard just feels a lot better, pixellated visuals or not.

This is all just a temporary arrangement, thanks to something I like to call friendship 2.0. You know, real bonds you forge with people you may not even know outside the internet. A friend is sending me his old graphics card right now, so I can start using my PC again. I've done the same thing for another friend about a year ago, which is why I don't have any replacement to begin with.
I remember hanging around online chatrooms for countless hours, nearly 15 years ago. Long before there was stuff like Myspace and eventually Facebook. My stepmother would tell me it's all make-believe, none of these virtual friends were "real", I should go out more and meet people. You get the idea. And disagree with that as you will - of course there's a bit of truth in that paranoia. People can tell you all kinds of made up crap about themselves and what not. And how "real" is a friend you may never actually meet in person?

Nowadays, nobody would still wonder about these things, would they? If somebody is a dick and wants to lie to me, they'll lie to me anyway, online or offline. And from what I've seen, you don't need to physically meet someone to be friends with them. My best friend is a guy from Iceland, somebody I'm sure I'll eventually meet in person, but we're in no particular rush to arrange something. We've known each other for 11 years. He contacted me after I posted on the multiplayer forums for some role playing game. I don't think we've ever really played that game together, but for some reason we've stayed in touch ever since. He sent me my first ever Eddie Izzard DVD and an English version of Final Fantasy XI, I've sent him an SD card and wrote weird shit on the envelope.

Another friend of mine, a bitter, highly intelligent guy and a much better writer than I'll ever be, has sent me 20 Euros when I couldn't pay an urgent bill. Just like that. Bastard refuses to give me his bank account details until this very day, so I cannot even pay him back. He first contacted me when I had just started blogging using a made up, female persona I created to write the angry, pissed off blog that would get me my job a couple months after. He saw right through all of that crap. The awful, awful things that have been shared back then! Interestingly enough, he never gave a fuck. He wasn't even angry or anything. People are weird, but hey, lucky me!

I have met a whole lot of weird and wonderful people online. One of them has hooked me up with her daughter and our five year anniversary is just around the corner! Friends send me some of my favourite stuff from Germany, which I couldn't even get over here without their help. The guys at Ninjalooter.de have sent me a Charr plushie when Guild Wars 2 launched. Because they knew how crazy I am about that thing. And when I didn't win any of their free registration keys and they knew how enthusiastic I was about the whole thing, they just wanted to do something nice.

How are those people not "real" friends? When I randomly moan about how I miss German malzbier and suddenly there's a sixpack of that stuff in the mail, just because somebody wanted to make me happy, that's pretty damn real to me.
Heh. Reading this thing might give you the impression that I'm a really horrible person, sitting around and asking people to send me free stuff. It really isn't like that. I'm not asking anybody for anything. The really important thing is that they listen. That sixpack says, "Hey, I've noticed you were missing something from Germany, so let me cheer you up!" Call me weird, but I've actually kept one of the bottles to remind me. :)

Most of these guys have never met me in person. I won't lie to you - I kinda like it that way. Not because I'm shy or I don't wanna be around them, but because it tickles my funny bone in a very weird way. The idea of being known through this blog, my youtube channel, my magazine articles and my bitching on Facebook is strangely fun. Once you associate a real life person with all that, an average Joe with the same warts and flaws everyone else has, it destroys some of the magic. I know I'm being terribly arrogant here, but let me have this. :P

Ah well. Enough with the cheesiness. Our situation is a bit grim at the moment, we're cutting all the corners we can (no more Bosc monitor! Boohoo! And I'm so sick of eating toast...), but once we can figure out a way to get things back in order, I'm gonna have to buy a whole lot of Walkers Salt & Vinegar. I'll never understand why my friends back in Germany are so crazy about that stuff...

-Cat

Guild Wars 2: 30 hours and 36 levels later

Having spent practically every waking minute since the beginning of the GW2 headstart phase, I have tackled much of the content, explored huge parts of the game world and made it nearly halfway to the level cap of 80. And if you're familiar with this blog and my Facebook spam, then you'll know I'm having a great time on there. Most of that initial excitement still persists and I'm looking forward to ignoring work, my pets and basic needs such as food and sleep for many more hours, although parts of the game are beginning to feel a bit repetitive and samey. But let's get into that bit by bit, shall we?

Personal story

O noez! One of my fallen comrades has come back as a zombie!

Every two to three levels you'll get to play quests, which tell your character's personal story. Not only do they tell what kinda guy or gal your avatar is, but they also give you plenty of opportunity to answer these questions, yourself. The first steps are determined right at character creation. As a charr, I had to decide which one of the three warbands I want to be part of, tell the game whether my father was an honourable soldier, an outcast or a noble shaman and who my personal best buddy is. All these choices dictate how your story quests play out until about level 30. Each playable race gets a different start to their personal story, with different choices and options. After level 30, all races are faced with the same story, but depending on your choices, you get to continue your adventure from one of three different perspectives.

The good guy/bad guy options may not be as deep as the choices you make in The old Republic, but I did have the opportunity to slay or spare one of my main enemies after a nice showdown in the arena.
Most decisions , however, just involve following one faction or another. An order of thieves and assassins may ask you to prepare an ambush for the enemy and wait for them, the leader of a military band might urge you to attack them head-on. This may not have a huge impact on the actual gameplay, but the game does a great job placing you in charge. And with so many parallel storylines, replay value is definitely there!

The actual story is popcorn entertainment. You won't be moved to tears and you're not gonna lose sleep until you find out how it all ends. But my journey so far has been anything but boring! It's great when little cutscenes and dialogue sequences explain why you're killing a bunch of bad guys and why you should hate a certain boss, avenge a friend or go hunt for treasure. Nobody gives a crap about walls of text, but seeing all characters act it out, seeing your character as he or she speaks, issues commands and kicks ass, gets you that much more involved.

GW2 uses animated stills and cutscenes for storytelling. No fancy CGI here!

World Events

GW2 refers to quests as 'events' and, for the most part, this description is fair. Think WoW for a minute. Tanaris, possibly pre-Cataclysm. Remember that quest where you had to kill X pirates, slay their leader and loot some crates scattered around their camp? You'd whack the required amount of guys, grab all the stuff you need and they'd all just keep on respawning around you. Even the boss comes right back a minute later. When you leave the place, it feels as though you've never showed up in the first place. Much of that has been fixed with phasing now, with the added side-effect of scattering the adventuring population across countless little instances of the same zone.

I have come across a similar event on GW2 last night: A bunch of pirates was raiding a village and torching the whole place. I had to kill all of them. No "kill 10 of them and spare the rest", no respawn. I had to hunt down every last one of them, including their leader, and douse the flames while I was at it. At the end of the event the pirates were dead, the village was safe, the NPCs would come back and continue on their daily business. Anyone who showed up after I was done would actually miss the event. The whole thing doesn't just reset every five minutes. Sure - at some point the pirates will come back and attack the village again and players will get the chance to fend them off. And if they fail, the place will be torched all over again. The big change here is how I, as a single player, can actually change the world to some extent. If I save an outpost under siege, the place will have merchants and possibly more event NPCs and a waypoint. If I fail, the place will be occupied or even destroyed by the enemy. It's a huge deal!

Many world events will quickly escalate into large-scale battles!

For as fun as most of these events are, there is also a fair amount of repetition. Escorting a merchant and his transport of ale, food or some other generic goods is fun the first time. You may get jumped by baddies at any moment and if you make it all the way to the destination, you'll be lead to follow-up events, there's more to see and more to do. Ten escort quests later, I'm starting to wonder just how many more of those things I'm gonna have to protect before I hit level 80.
And not all events are incredibly heroic. Try helping out the local farmers! They'll ask you to feed and water the cows, feed hungry chickens or bang them over the head with a shovel when they start eating the lettuce. Spray dog-sized parasites with Grub-BGone, burn wasp nests and weed out the bad crops. It's actually a lot more fun than it may sound and gives you a bit of a change of pace from all the fighting, but after half a dozen farms, my urge to feed cows has somewhat worn off.

Elite Baddies & Bosses

There are two kinds of boss baddies and both of them suck. There's the veteran or champion type, which usually takes a full five or more minutes to kill, hits harder than regular baddies at his level and requires a lot of kiting and ranged attacking. Keeping most bosses at a safe distance isn't very difficult, you can even solo them without much trouble. It may be fun or even challenging the first time around, but after a while, those battles are simply annoying and time-consuming.

The other kind of boss baddie is group-based. Like this guy here:

Since you're toast after only one hit, the only viable option is ranged attacks. Absolutely every class gets at least one ranged weapon, so it's not a huge deal. Having to spend a whole ten minutes running away from a guy and shooting him until he finally drops dead doesn't feel epic, though. The giant on that picture up there might look epic. He's just killed an entire town's population. He's probably killed a dozen players, who were dumb enough to attack him with melee weapons. But run, shoot, run, shoot, run, shoot and watch a massive health bar deplete one pixel at a time simply isn't fun. There's no strategy involved here, you don't have to figure out his attack pattern or use the environment to beat the guy. It just drags on.

Exploration

GW2 supports just about any play style you could imagine. I usually just walk in any random direction until I bump into a world event and just go from there. Since the game level-scales my level 36 ass when I suddenly end up in a level 20 area, all battles are always challenging, I get experience points for just about everything and I don't have to worry about where to go next. I just play it by ear. Maybe I'll throw in a bit of pvp while I'm at it. Maybe I'll gather and craft a bit. Everything rewards me with experience points and level-scaled loot, so no matter how I play, I progress.

Claire, on the other hand, goes for 100% completion of every area. She finds every single event, every waypoint, every point of interest and while this may seem time-consuming and not very rewarding to players like myself, completing an entire map rewards players with a metric shitload of experience, high quality items and transmutation stones, which do what transmogrifying does on WoW. Most of all, Claire gets rewarded with discoveries like that:

This is an actual ingame screenshot. Looks like concept art, doesn't it? So, what do you think this place is? Some faction's capital city? Some really important quest hub? Wrong! It's a shitty little village, which may not even have any events going on when you happen across it. You may never come back there again.
GW2 may not feature any stunning, photo-realistic visuals, but in a game where even unimportant little landmarks look so incredibly stunning and picturesque, exploring feels that much more exciting and rewarding. Kudos!

Player vs Player

The small-scale 5vs5 pvp is incredibly busy and highly skill-based. I won't go into how everyone gets boosted to level 80 and has all skills unlocked again, level playing field, yada, yada, yada. It works, it does exactly what you'd expect from it and if you're into battlegrounds-style player battles, this is where you'll want to be. To be honest, I have zero motivation to even go there for two reasons:

First of all, taking part in small-scale 'sPvP' only boosts your sPvP rank, you get rewarded with glory, glory can be traded for sPvP items. The whole thing is completely detached from the rest of the game. I can level up in a billion ways, obtaining gear is dead simple and I just don't feel like collecting yet another meta currency for some pretty items, which are exclusive to this particular game mode.

Secondly, I disagree with the team colours. The game makes such a huge deal out of cosmetic gear, finding and customizing that look you want and then your character turns completely red or blue for sPvP. Which makes sense, since you'll want to tell the good guys from the bad guys, but it also means my character looks silly, I don't get to show off, I can't express myself. Naturally, most normal folks won't give a crap about such petty little problems and just enjoy sPvP. To each their own and all that.

WvW(vW) is a massive zerg-fest with very little skill involved

The World vs World battles, whilst massive in scale and incredibly fun to play, feel a bit like Asterix Online. You form a massive zerg of 50+ people and just start rampaging across the landscape, conquering towers, camps and entire fortresses until an even bigger enemy zerg crushes you and you start all over again from the nearest resurrection spot. The main problem with this kind of gameplay is how it doesn't matter what class you play, what build you use or how awesome you may or may not be at playing your character. In WvW you switch to a ranged weapon, you spam AoEs like an idiot and you hope for a few lucky kills.

Sure, there will be the occasional lucky moment where you find yourself in a 1vs1 situation and you can actually show off your skills in a fair fight. But if that's really what you're after, then you'll want to play sPvP, not WvW. The latter is spectacular, there's a whole lot of gold and experience to be had from breaching a castle wall and slaying all its defenders, but it's certainly not the most sophisticated tactical gameplay you've ever experienced. Seeing as this is gonna be GW2's "endgame", I'm not too sure about the game's longevity. I like the large battles and everything, but I can't see myself enjoying this particular bit month after month whilst waiting for content updates and expansion packs.

Verdict

This game feels incredibly massive in every way! I have explored so many visually impressive zones and landscapes, fought so many battles, yet looking at my map it turns out I haven't even seen a third of Tyria. GW2 rewards exploration, crafting, pvp and pve battles handsomely and gives you a sense of progression, no matter what you do. Some of the more powerful items are a little harder to obtain and may require karma-points, which you earn by taking part in events or they may cost a hefty amount of gold at the cultural armor vendor, but there are no epic, insanely powerful, godly items, which only the most dedicated players can obtain. Everyone can have awesome gear - you may have to work for it, but not excessively so. It's perfectly doable for even the most casual player.

Tier 1 Charr cultural armor. I'm sexy and I know it!

Some of the events, particularly escorts and stuff involving farmyard animals, are starting to get repetitive. Boss battles are tedious and not very fun. WvW is a huge spam-fest, where skill doesn't matter as much as numbers.
I'm looking forward to finishing my personal storyline, exploring all of Tyria and getting more and more awesome-looking, completely over the top armor on the way. So what if I don't like some of the quests and WvW doesn't really appeal to me? There is plenty of other stuff for me to do and I'll definitely play all the way to the cap.

Will I keep playing after that, possibly roll another toon or just go for 100% completion in every area? I doubt it. I never liked WoW's carrot on a stick, which dangled in front of me during raids and arena seasons, but it gave me a purpose. It gave me something to do when I was at the level cap, no matter how much I hated it all in the end. On Guild Wars 2, my goal will be a cool-looking character, since there is no super-rare epic stuff to be had. So what's my motivation when I'm done with all that? Why should I keep playing? Frankly, I have no idea. But should I end up taking a break, doing so is as simple as uninstalling and returning at a later date. With no subscription fees, there is no need to cancel or reactivate an account.

-Cat

GW2: "Did you just see that? Please tell me you saw that!"

Do be do be dooo~♫ The name refers to cat anatomy, I'm not gonna use that in the live version

I don't always pvp in GW2. But when I do, I'm the top scorer in every category

Right. Just got back from the most recent stress test. They're handing the pre-order bonus items to every new character now and there's a whole lotta new animations, emotes and fun little speech features. So yeah, my character brags about crits now and they also complain about injuries and debuffs and the like.

Guardian is a definite yes for my main class now. Turns out I do get ranged attacks by putting a sceptre in my main hand. Looks insanely ugly, does crappy damage by shooting glowy little orbs at baddies and cannot possibly compete with dual pistols or rifles, but in a massive 50vs50 situation or when defending a fort all the way up on the walls, it'll come in handy. Not even gonna put points into that, though. I'll let Mr. Greatsword do all the talking whenever I get the chance. Greatsword life drain, 20% faster two-handed cooldowns, swinging a serious, ridiculously oversized weapon instead of wiggling a gay little stick... yeah, I'll go with that, thank you very much.

I love the way GW2 rewards player commitment in PVP. I capture a base, I get points. I resurrect a fallen team mate, I get points. I kill a whole bunch of enemy players without dying, I get a rampage bonus. At the end of a match, the guy on top of the board generally isn't that one prick who dished out the biggest amount of damage, like in a certain other MMO. Heh.
The one thing that worries me a bit is a possible hit to the face with the nerf bat. The moment I get close to an enemy player and start hacking them to bits, they're simply fucked. They can fight back, but my aegis will just block their first attack, heal me and set them on fire. Every swing of my sword heals me. One of my passives heals me. My healing spell heals me.

Sounds pretty powerful all in itself, but on top of that I get to abuse the pet system like there's no tomorrow. I get to summon three ethereal weapons at the same time. They fly around, attack my target and do decent damage, they cannot be destroyed and they do special attacks, which fuck enemy defenses or just knock them flat on their ass for a few seconds. Sure, they only last for 30-40 seconds with the appropriate skill set and then take just as long until they can be resummoned, but how many seconds do you need to kill a guy in pvp when you hit like a truck, your three pets rape and CC your enemy and you get a whole ton of selfheals?
To be fair, I had equally nice results as both a ranged and melee warrior and I suppose the bottom line is that all classes feel very powerful and satisfying.

What I really enjoy is the fact that I can take on every other class. There's no "Fighting a blood DK is a waste of time", "That frost mage will just kite me around a pillar for the next two hours", "That discipline priest has a holy pally healing him". I attack a guy and if I don't act like a complete moron, the other guy dies. Sometimes I die, but it never feels like I didn't stand a chance, it's usually very close and it doesn't feel frustrating, either. Sure, things will get a lot tougher once people master their classes and figure out their builds some more, but as they get better and more experienced, so will I. Right now it's mostly, "Am I really that good, is everybody else shit or is my class just OP?" A bit like Space Marine. :P

Stress test is still going for another two hours, but everything I do on there now feels like wasted effort. I know what I wanna play, I know how I'm gonna play it, we've even agreed on a server and guild name, so we're all just waiting for Saturday now. Oh and there was a special offer at Tesco today: 24 cans of our favourite energy drink for only six Quid. I'm sure you can imagine what the inside of our fridge looks like. ;)

-Cat

Hyped up like a complete idiot

Saturday is just around the corner now and I can't sit still. I literally got up and paced around the living room in a circle before writing this very sentence. There, did it again! I'm such a fucking moron!
Gaming is my god damn job! I don't just review games, though. My specialty is bashing unbelievably shitty games and stupid people, who pre-order and pre-purchase games, which are doomed to fail within just a month or two. Somewhere, deep within the archives of this blog, I've posted an entry about the SWToR beta, saying that game was gonna fail harder than any other project this big and expensive. And not only did it turn out to be a commercial failure for EA, but it's going F2P not even a year after launch.

I'm getting paid to make fun of these things. And of the stupid people who fall for the hype. The last game I reviewed was so unbelievably shit, I said I'd much rather park my naked ass right on top of an open bottle of Tabasco than spend another minute with this thing. They're probably gonna censor me, but I get paid to be a dick, so I'm happy. You get the idea.
So, what's my fucking point? I'm trying to emphasize the fact that I, of all people, should be immune to the hype. Average Joe is stupid. Average Joe preferred VHS to Beta. So whenever the general public gets all excited about something, I tend to assume it's for no reason and people are just being stupid, as usual.

So why the fuck am I so crazy about Guild Wars 2? Excitement is always the first step on the dark path to disappointment. They've only shown us one dungeon, which was rather on the meh side of things. We've been shown nothing but low level content. The little feature clips and trailers are massively overselling every aspect of the game. I'm fully aware of all that, yet I'm about to fill up every spare inch of my fridge with energy drinks, I'll set an alarm for 4.30am on Saturday and I'll be mashing the login-button until I gain access or my fucking hand falls off! The only thing that could possibly stop me from doing so is death. I'm updating the client software on Claire's ancient laptop in case my PC suddenly blows up again. I'm not taking any chances here.

I could tell you about how I'm speccing my toon and why, which abilities I'm planning to get at which level, but I don't believe anyone seriously gives a fuck. But I've already pre-generated and saved my spec, wrote down a list of possible names, Claire and I have even worked out a to-do list of sorts, where I divide my time between world vs world pvp and adventuring alongside her. I think she is one of the reasons why I can't wait to get started.

We used to do everything together on WoW, from dungeons to the arena to cancelling our subs. And nothing has quite managed to fill that hole once we gave up on Azeroth. We both love Skyrim, but there's no possibility for us to team up on there. I like FFXIV, she rightfully hates that pile of shit. We tried Diablo 3. lol.
GW2 gives us a whole new world to explore, we can follow each other's personal storyline and quests, we can play the entire thing together. And yes, we may just plow through the whole thing in two weeks and get bored waiting for the first expansion, but that's where I'm hoping the pvp will keep us entertained.

I have tried all the playable races and looked at all the newbie zones. I've thoroughly enjoyed all of them (okay, Sylvari reeeally aren't my cup of tea, but I can appreciate the idea). I absolutely loved playing a ranger, I'm still a big fan of the warrior despite my criticism and I've enjoyed playing a guardian. I find the thief, engineer and necromancer highly interesting and the only reason I haven't touched them so far is because I'm having a hard enough time to focus on one main class as it is. I can't remember the last time this happened to me in a game. Newbie zones generally bore me to death, starting my adventure by collecting ten rat tails sucks huge amounts of ass, I generally go for that one race or class that annoys me the least, but for some fucked up reason GW2 just appeals to me the second I look at character creation.

How fucking cool are the norn? They're like shape-shifting vikings or oversized dwarves, guided by their animal spirits, the wolf, raven, snow leopard and bear. They get to assume their animal form no matter what class they are, because their racial ability isn't stupid useless crap like "be .5% more proficient at using longbows", it's "turn into a fucking werebear and kick some motherloving ass"!
And the charr! Come on! Massive, angry, battle-clad cats, who only live to rip your head off, suck your eyes out of their sockets, fuck your brain till it turns to pulp and take a massive shit into your skull. Why the hell would I ever want to play another orc?
Humans, well... humans are boring in every game. But at least on here they aren't balding, hammer-fisted freaks with the anatomy of an average Lego character.

Everything I hate about MMOs is somehow awesome in GW2. When I get started on GW2, I don't hunt rats for countless hours. I kill a fucking boss ten times the size of my damn screen. When one of my friends plays on a different server, I don't reroll - I invite him to my group across the server and he can just join me and play with me. When I walk into a low-level zone for the first time with a high level character, I don't have to ignore all the quests because they yield no experience or useful loot - the game will downscale my character, everything remains challenging and fun and I get proper experience and loot at my actual level. And when I outlevel all of my friends, I can still team up with them and help them on their quests for the exact same reason.

Will that help avoid incredibly stupid global chat full of utter morons? Will it prevent me from getting stuck with random brain donors in dungeon and pvp groups? Or gold spam? Or news posts about hacked accounts? Or lack of pve content once I'm level-capped? Of course not. But the amount of total bullshit, which made me hate just about every other MMO up to a point where I didn't even want to touch another one is that much smaller now.

I'm boring the crap out of everybody reading my blog with my constant, ever-repeating posts about GW2. It's just another five days until I get to play. Then I'll probably write even more enthusiastic, biased shit for a while. But hey, eventually I'll probably end up posting about how much it all sucks, how stupid I was for getting so hyped up and why you should just stay away from a game that sucks so horribly. We'll see.

-Cat

Yay GW2(?), WTF SWToR, Pandas

Exactly one more week to go until pre-purchase customers such as myself get to roll their very first permanent characters, create their guilds and start their adventures in the land of Tyria, again, fuck if I remember how many years after the events of the original Guild Wars. I can't wait! Lucky me - I don't really have to. Nothing's gonna kill me before next Saturday, right? RIGHT? Maybe I should put that pizza back in the freezer...

I'd be even more thrilled if it wasn't for one of my clever friends asking a very valid question: Why did they never show us any content beyond level 33 (or 30 or 35 or whatever the fuck that cap has been during all beta test stages)? How finished is this game? What I've seen during the very first beta weekend was amazing, near-flawless and felt more solid and polished than certain other hyped MMOs did a year after release. And I've tested several classes with all their level 80 abilities and skills, since that's how the staged pvp works - get buffed to the level cap, pick your favourite set of attacks and spells, blah blah... if I still have to explain this, then this blog isn't for you.

So yes, the classes and their abilities work, the lowbie zones work and they're insanely fun to explore. Maybe the guys at Arenanet are so confident in their work, that they don't need any beta testing for their mid and high level stuff. But it's a bit weird how they'd only show off a single dungeon, how we don't actually get to see any dragons, some random 2D images aside. Maybe they don't wanna ruin the surprise until the game actually goes live. After all, everyone who cared enough to look, knew every single new boss, dungeon, quest, EVERYTHING included in every new WoW expansion MONTHS before that stuff got released. I've watched Totalbiscuit's playthroughs and knew all of the goblin and worgen starting quests long before they made it into the actual game. Maybe Arenanet want to avoid exactly that for Guild Wars 2. Or maybe the game will turn into a broken, unfinished mess once you reach level 40? Not very likely, sure, but Final Fantasy XIV did the exact same thing, remember? Three different starting areas, no mounts, no quests, nothing to do in the beta - and they've added exactly nothing upon release. But let's leave that poor dead horse alone now.

The funny thing is - should the content beyond the low thirties turn out to be broken, incomplete or crap in some other way, I'd be sad, but I wouldn't even stop playing. I'm in for the pvp. I wanna spend every minute of my available spare time on the world vs world battlefield, cleave skulls, raise through the ranks and earn some cool-looking gear. I'll still do the pve bits for the sake of experiencing my character's personal story and simply because Claire wouldn't want to do all the exploration on her lonesome, but aside from that, I'm here to chew gum and kick some ass. And I'm all outta ass. Er... or something.

In other news, I'm predicting the sad, untimely end of Star Wars: The old Republic. You've probably heard about the game going free 2 play. Now, I'm not one of those nay-sayers, who say that F2P will ultimately doom every game. In fact, I'm rather enjoying the F2P versions of Age of Conan and Star Trek Online. But look at the interview at the bottom of this site. Just ignore the text if you don't understand German and simply watch the video. And yes, those are the guys I work with, this is a shameless self-plug, fuck off!

What I like about this interview is how he gets right to the point - the best thing about ToR is the storyline. Nobody plays this game to farm tokens for gear by repeating the same old instances and warzones over and over again. Until some smart people come up with proper endgame, every MMORPG out there will forever force you through this ordeal upon reaching the level cap: Repeat content in order to obtain gear, which will allow you to repeat more difficult content. If I wanna do that, I may do so on WoW, AoC, STO... I don't need to play ToR for that. The one thing that sets this game apart from all the other games is the great story: Be a good guy, be a bad guy, make friends and enemies, kill or spare your defeated enemies, that kinda thing. The universe revolves around you. Then you hit level 50 and BAM - you're one of a million morons trying to find a group in order to farm gear, no more story, no more adventure, you're not the hero anymore.

Okay, basically all he says is: "When my friends finished their personal storyline, they quit playing, because they felt like they've beaten the game. Something that shouldn't happen in an MMO." So you get the idea. What do we want? More story. See where our characters go. Epic adventure, voice acting, choices, drama. Space Opera - it's fucking Star Wars, for godzilla's sake! And what's their response? New group instances every six weeks? Really?

That guy says he's excited about the future of ToR and that he foresees millions of new players. Sure, it's his job to say that. He even tells people to have another look at the game, because they added awesome new features such as the LFG-tool, which has been requested by players since day one and they responded: "We might look into that, but not right now."
So, instead of continuing the cool story, which lots of players are hoping for, they're giving people more group-based content for farming, stating that they firmly believe the main aspect of every online game should be group-based stuff. Yeah... that's why so many games have solo instances, that's why ToR gives you a personal (solo) storyline, that's why there's a LFG-tool, so people don't have to awkwardly ask around for groups. Because everybody loves being forced to interact with random strangers. That's what online gaming is all about! Thanks for telling us!

I know I'm being cynical here. I know tackling a brand new instance with a bunch of friends can be super awesome. But come on! Just because there will be more operations and flashpoints for me to farm my tokens in doesn't make the farming any more fun. Of course it's easier and less expensive to release instances rather than new story bits. But we're talking about Bioware and EA here. It's not like they lacked the money or creativity. I remember pre-launch interviews, where they firmly promised regular updates on the story, whenever people have raised plausible questions about whether or not that's even gonna be possible. "We know it's gonna be expensive and time-consuming, but we can do it", blah, blah, blah. Load of crap. New flashpoints. For paying customers only. Yes, give your community something they didn't ask for and split them in half while you're at it. I'm sure that's gonna help save your game.

And while I'm bitching about stuff... I'm sure you've already seen this:

This is quite possibly the first time in my life, where I'd like to own a time machine for reasons other than sex. I'd love to show this thing to the WoW community half a decade ago, instead of a BC trailer. Just to see how they'd react. Just to see how people back then would have felt about a cartoony, humorous WoW cinematic featuring fucking pandas. Heh!

Don't get me wrong. For as stupid, annoying and off-putting I find the very idea of a continent full of pandas, I think Blizzard are probably doing the right thing. When WoW was still fresh and new, there was absolutely nothing like it. Now don't feel offended if you love Everquest or DaoC, but let's just say WoW was simply more accessible and more appealing to a wider audience. The game was fresh, unique, easy enough to get into and had zero competition. Today there are so many games just like WoW, many of them free to play and some of them mimicking the original so well, you'd almost think they're the same game.

Allods Online

And that brings me back to what I said earlier: If I want to raid, hack and slash my way through dungeons to farm epic gear, I now have a million games to choose from. One might argue that WoW executes this particular bit of gameplay much better than its competitors, but the fact remains that people have tons of similar games to play. So WoW adds the raid-finder, it hands epic weapons and armor sets to average Joe and even adds little timewasters and stuff, which doesn't really contribute to your character's progress at all. I am, of course, referring to the Pokemon and Farmville elements they're adding with Pandaria. Personally, if I want to play these games, I don't need a WoW account that costs me monthly fees, but I'm sure the new pet battles will turn out to be a crowd pleaser nonetheless.

It's not the game I once knew. I don't care for pandas, pet battles or epix for everybody. I liked being part of that small minority, which would get all the best gear before everybody else, earning it, working for my stuff. They're still gonna do hard modes of all their dungeons and raids, where you can get gear with slightly better stats and different textures, but that's just not the same. So my armor would be yellow instead of average Joe's blue armor, have slightly better stats and use the exact same model. I don't find that very motivating. Many "veterans" feel like me. I still think it's a clever design decision. Hardcore raiders, hardcore arena fetishists, progress junkies - they've always made up a very, very small part of the WoW community. They're not the reason why WoW still has millions of subscribers. Yes, so they're losing more and more players, but come on, after seven years? And still number one?

Look at the folks playing WoW. My dad plays WoW. He turned 57 today! Claire's mum plays WoW. People, who don't usually play PC games play WoW. Because everybody can achieve something, everyone can be the kind of hero they've always dreamed about and all that cheesy shit. Sounds like a bad advertising campaign, but at the end of the day it's all down to exactly that. And you don't appeal to the casual crowd by adding more and more exclusive, super hard to obtain items or by adding boss battles and encounters only the most dedicated core-gamers will ever get to see. If you want to make all your customers happy, you gotta give everything to everyone.

Hell, when I look at those stupid pandas, I can't help but wonder what the fuck I'm missing. I can't believe how excited people are getting because of them. I think they're stupid. When I look at the die-hard WoW fans in my family, I'm practically expecting them to agree with me. But they don't. They think they're awesome. Why? How is this possible? Is that because they're part of the dreaded "Generation Lich King?" Are they just more open-minded about complete bullshit than I am? I have no fucking clue. But I can tell they're all hyped up about this shit. So Blizzard must be doing something right. And to be perfectly honest: After seven years, I have long stopped caring about WoW anyway. Pandas, dinosaurs, gay poodles from outer space - no matter what the new expansion could have been about, I would have stopped playing, anyway. So if people enjoy their stupid pandas, let them. Why should I keep on moaning about what they're doing to a game I no longer care about? Doesn't hurt me if others are still having fun, right?

Oh well. One more week. I hope I'm not just gonna play GW2 to death within two or three weeks and never touch it again. Hype is the first step towards disappointment. On the plus side, this game costs no monthly fees. The worst thing that could happen is that I reach the level cap in less than a week, get bored of the pvp a week after and decide to wait for the first expansion. That's gonna limit the damage a bit.

-Cat

Space Marine, Hacks, Sony Vegas, Viruses

It's Gamescom time in Germany, meaning all the magazine people I work with are checking out tons of kickass new video games and I'm sitting on my ass in Nottingham with nothing useful to do. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just means I'm enjoying a rather unusually large amount of spare time. Spare time I spend doing one of my favourite things in life: Enjoy games the rest of the world doesn't give a shit about. Such as Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine.

If you're bored enough to watch until the 8:30 mark, you can see what a vengeful bastard I am. Some dipshit in a shiny, yellow outfit double-teams me, because he's too much of a pussy to face me by himself (actually, that's just really smart), so I dedicate the rest of the entire match to hunting him down, again and again. Which is easy, what with him being all nice and yellow.

I love the online multiplayer Annihilation (team deathmatch) mode on there. As you can see in the video, there are no dedicated servers and the shitty p2p-hosting causes insane amounts of interruptions and quite a bit of lag and most of the time there aren't more than 2 or 3 open Annihilation sessions going on at any given time. So yeah, not the most popular game on the planet, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. See, I don't always play Space Marine. But when I do, I win. Because people on there don't cheat as excessively as they do on the more popular shooters like Call of Duty or Battlefield.

With games appealing to more people than ever before, finding aimbots and other stupid 3rd party hacks has become as easy as using Google. You can actually buy whole software packages, which will actively turn your camera towards enemy players as they approach you, help you detect them through walls and even fire the shots for you if you so desire. Tons of people spend a whopping 20 Dollars on those programs to boost their scores in a computer game. How fucking sad is that? People are so concerned about what random strangers on the internet think about their gaming performance that they spend real, actual money on cheats! What in Godzilla's name is the fucking point? You don't win anything if you get a nice score, there are no prizes, no ladders, no tournaments, no nothing. At least with games like Counter-Strike you'd make it to the big leagues and start competing for money, but if they catch you cheating, you're banned for life, so good luck with that! Why the fuck would anyone do that kinda crap in Call of Duty? Beats me, but it ruins those games for me.

It's sad enough to get shot in the head by some guy who is at the other end of the fucking map, through several buildings, solid brick walls and everything. When people are so lazy or so stupid, they don't even try to hide their cheats. But the really annoying thing is paranoia. Am I having a really bad day? Am I lagging? Is every other player just really awesome? Or are there lots of cheaters around? Instead of actually enjoying the stupid game, people constantly worry about that kinda crap and on the rare occasions where I actually end up in first place with a decent score, people accuse me of cheating. Heck, it's the first thing I suspect when someone is really good!

Then there are games like Space Marine. Games played online by maybe a thousand people, if that. I'm sure you can find an aimbot for Space Marine if you're desperate enough, but I have yet to encounter some mysterious player, who pulls off headshot after headshot through walls, miles and miles away from their target. And strangely enough, I'm doing incredibly well on there. When I created that little video up there last night, it has been the first time I've played Space Marine in 11 months. And I'm still kicking the crap out of pretty much every other player. Why is that? Am I some kind of natural when it comes to this game, are all the other players incredibly shit or could this possibly be related to the fact that it's a lot harder to find hacks for this game than it is for Call of Duty? :P

But it's not just the fact that I win most of my matches on there or how most of the time people refrain from insulting my mother when I shoot them. It's the setting. Every other shooter needs realistic guns now, scopes, silencers, grenade launcher attachments, yada, yada, yada. It has to be real. Special units against terrorists. Believable soldiers. Real war in my living room. Hooray America, saving us from terrorists and all the bad people in the world! Nazis, communists, nazi zombies, even! But you know what? When I get to move around with a massive jump-pack, cleave a bunch of suckers in half with a huge-ass chainsword or a power axe and spend the rest of the day painting little skulls on my ridiculously oversized suit of armor, then Mr. Realistic Soldier Guy can kiss my ass. I'm not saying a more life-like scenario can't be fun, but we're getting that same old game again and again, every god damn year, with minor changes at full retail price. I'm so incredibly bored!

I've tried a couple new things on this video, such as onscreen text, sound effects and a little zoom effect thingie at around 8:35. I edit most of my videos using Movie Maker, which I find massively underrated. How come that insanely expensive, professional software like Vegas doesn't come with a single useful rendering preset, that doesn't make my videos look like shit? How come the preview works without hiccups in the free movie maker, yet lags like fuck in Vegas? Why is that stupid thing so damn unstable, why does rendering take for fucking ever and why does it shit all over my hard drive, placing a billion temporary files everywhere, which I have to delete manually when the video is done?
Vegas comes with a lot of really neat features, but stability, user-friendliness and performance are all shit. I know Movie Maker is designed to be idiot friendly and Vegas is for the "pros", but why does Vegas have to be so incredibly frustrating to use in comparison, a billion extra filters, effects and features or not?

Speaking of inconvenient shit: Win32:Sirefef-PL
The last time I caught a serious virus has been nearly a decade ago. I don't fall for Scareware, I stay away from dubious porn and warez sites and I'm pretty cautious with my torrents. And you can use pretty efficient stuff like Avast! for free, so it's not exactly difficult to keep your system clean. But just a couple days after I had finally managed to fix my hardware issues, they got me with a fake Flash update. Know those ugly grey Macromedia windows that pop up now and then, usually when you boot up, telling you to install yet another god damn update? And no matter how many times you disable the fucking popups, they always come back one way or another, even if it's after manually installing a new version when you actually need it. So yeah, I got one of them popups. Decided to install, because it's been a while. I'm a fucking moron!

What I had grabbed there had nothing to do with what it said in the description, but suddenly I could no longer reach most of my websites, my virus scanner kept telling me about blocked Trojans every two minutes and neither Avast! nor Malware Bytes got rid of that fucker titled Win32:Sirefef-PL. Both programs said that they did, but they didn't actually remove anything.
Awesome stuff! Following various guides and forum threads about how to remove the damn thing, I ended up downloading stuff from Symantec, Kaspersky, even weird shit I've never heard about, such as "RogueKiller". And hey, most of them would detect the virus, yet none of them actually managed to do anything about it. The best thing was one particular removal utility, which started deleting random system files without warning, which prevented my PC from booting up altogether - BSOD right after the loading screen!

Let's just say it's been a rather long, busy night, but now everything is up and running again. I've learned my lesson, though. First, my PC dies because of crappy hardware, then I get this annoying virus. Gotta make backups of all my work and tax-related stuff, because next time I might not be able to save everything. Never had this problem before I got self-employed. I mean, how much exactly do you lose when all your data gets wiped out nowadays? Most games store your progress, settings and character data online, you can check and store your email online, you can even watch all the damn tv shows and play every song imaginable online. Makes me wonder if we're even gonna need hard drives in the near future? PCs get more and more memory, broadband connections get faster and faster - maybe we'll eventually reach a point where everything just happens via streaming and the only stuff that actually needs to be stored on the PC is gonna be your OS, user names, that kinda stuff. Heck, even all of my damn screenshots are on Steam, Facebook or this blog here. Is there gonna be a point in having multiple terabytes of storage space on a computer?

Ah well. My virus troubles are gone, but somehow I get the feeling that I'll get to enjoy Win32:Sirefef-PL some more in the not so distant future. Claire's mum just had a weird crash in the middle of her boot scan after detecting 4 suspicious files, Claire's sister's PC has been completely fucked by a virus earlier this week and if, god forbid, they can't fix these problems on their own, then I'm the guy. I'm always the guy. Neighbours can't figure out how to set up their router and get online - I'm the guy. Claire's step brother's mother in law's PC refuses to work? I'm the guy.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I like being the guy. Makes me feel needed. Makes me feel a bit stupid, too. Take your infested PC to a shop, they'll demand a whole truckload of money and just wipe your entire system. Take it to me and I'll demand pizza, if that. Maybe I should listen to this guy:

Ah well. Time for more Space Marine!

-Cat

GUILDWARSGUILDWARSGUILDWARS WHEEEEEE!

If I hadn't already been all hyped up about this game since the first beta, last night's stress test sure has done it for me. As stated in my last blog, I wasn't entirely sure whether or not I could really enjoy playing a guardian in pvp, so that's what I've been doing all last night.

And since preparation is everything, I've created a loadout and skill-set to best match my play style using this: http://ninjalooter.de/gw2/charakter-planer.html (EN is on the top right corner  of the screen)
At first glance, the whole thing might seem a bit confusing and possibly a bit overwhelming to the average WoW noob. But if you take the time to read all the descriptions and popups, it's all self-explanatory and it all makes perfect sense. Most of all, it's nearly impossible to fuck up your character. You can use the skills and traits to make your class suit your play style, but you cannot really pick any bad or wrong ones.

For instance, your character might get a choice of three different healing abilities and you may only pick one. One restores a low amount of HP but comes with only a 20 seconds cooldown, the next one heals more, but can only be used every 30 seconds and then there's one with a really massive heal and small HoT-effect, which comes with an equally whopping cooldown timer. They're all perfectly viable in their own way, there's no right or wrong and in the end, it's all down to personal preference. Same goes for your possible buffs and oh-shit buttons. Small buffs can be kept up pretty much 100%, mega buffs have a much greater effect, but only last for a few seconds and come with a hefty recharge timer. They all get the job done and should you end up picking something you really hate, then it's easy enough to replace.
Of course you'll want to avoid picking trait bonuses, which raise your critical rate with swords if you only use axes, but if you lack the common sense to figure this out, then GW2 probably isn't for you.

Customizing your abilities is easy enough and it's incredibly fun. For instance, I depend on greatswords in battle, so I've unlocked a greatsword life tap. I use my aegis all the time (magical shield thingie that takes hits for ya), so I've upgraded it to burn enemies that hit it and to heal me if somebody pops it. Claire's warrior uses axes, which build up her adrenaline meter like crazy, so she's picked a trait that gives her a crit-bonus that goes up with adrenaline. She also likes to switch to her gun a lot, so she's activated a small adrenaline bonus, that triggers whenever she changes weapons. Well, you get the idea. Basically, you pick the stuff that powers up your favourite abilities and weapon types and that's that. It's not rocket science and that's the whole point.

So I fired up the pvp browser, jumped into the first random match I could find and started killing people. Casters, thieves, other guardians - I was on top of the scoreboard the entire time. I'm fully aware that many of the people I fought weren't using optimized setups and that a couple weeks after launch the average skill level is going to increase a lot. But I had a metric shit ton of fun, my skill loadout worked perfectly and my gap closers and CC abilities were enough to defeat ranged and melee characters alike.
One feature I'm particularly fond of is the sparring NPCs. There are max level NPCs of every class in the pvp staging areas, who are happy to kick your ass for the sake of practice. Now, of course they're not as talented or difficult to kill as any skilled player, but if you're struggling against a certain class, then the sparring area is the place to go. Familiarize yourself with their abilities, learn how to read and counter them, feel more confident when you face them on the battlefield. Good stuff.

Wanna know the best thing about last night? Not only did I manage to solve my main char(r) dilemma, but... oh wait, you'll want to open this link in a new window before we continue. Done? Alright, so keep that small window open, read this next sentence and press the button in that new window all at the same time, okay? Here goes: Claire's main is gonna be a warrior! DUN DUN DUUUUUUUNNNNNN!!

Originally, she had planned on playing a thief. You can see how that worked out when looking at the video I've linked on top. Basically, she died about 800 times. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it's probably a L2P issue. But that's not the point. Thing is, she wasn't 100% sure about the whole thing. Then she tried a ranger and that only made things worse. We've genuinely written down a list of pros and cons for both the thief and the ranger, as though to figure out which of the two she should dump. Ranger would have won by some small amount, but you try and reason with a woman. It's THEM who came up with the stupid pros and cons list in the first place, but can they just accept the one thing with more pros and fewer cons? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! "I dunno, the ranger seems better, but they're both fun." Sigh. Back to square one.

Fortunately for her, I'm a kickass dude and one hell of a listener. She told me how she didn't like how fragile those classes were. She didn't like the looks of a leather-clad charr. Charr in full plate look so much cooler, she said. Okay. So you don't wanna be a glass cannon. You don't wanna wear leather. You love full plate. Why are you playing a thief again?
Long story short, she rolled a warrior, grabbed a sword, an axe and a gun and started chopping people in half. She didn't die once that night. Because she's got the fucking heavy armor and the biggest health pool in the whole damn game. Kill 3 higher level monsters at the same time with one overpowered special attack? Sure, why the hell not. Thief. Ha!

So yeah, it's all decided now. I'm gonna be a guardian, she's gonna be a warrior. She's finally hyped up about it and looking forward to the launch now. She stopped caring for the past couple of weeks, because she couldn't even get herself to like the classes she originally considered for her main. Now that's fixed, we'll be battle-clad heavy metal kitties together and two weeks from now we shall take over the world. Life is good!

-Cat

Hardware, Reptiles, Virtual Identity Crisis

I don't need much in life to be happy. Tits, junk food and a stable internet connection pretty much cover all my personal essentials. However, even the world's fastest broadband connection becomes relatively useless when your computer refuses to work.

What a fucking horrible four weeks I've had! It all began with one crash whilst playing Final Fantasy XIV. Black screen, sound loop, the whole thing just died. Never happened before. But after that one incident, I'd crash every single day, without fail. Sometimes right at the Windows logon screen, sometimes after two hours of gaming, but there hasn't been a day without these crashes. Half of the time my computer wouldn't even boot up anymore for hours!

I don't wanna get into the whole shitload of technical mumbo jumbo, but let's just say I've taken the whole thing apart, down to the very last screw, dusted off every last bit with a brush (!), updated every driver, my fucking BIOS, absolutely everything. Found out some crazy shit in the process, as well: My PC refuses to boot up with ATI cards, probably because it's using an Nvidia chipset on an Nvidia-branded board, Claire's PSU can't even power my Nvidia card, because only one of her six-pin power connector thingies is functional, Zotac rip people off by showing images of copper heat sinks on graphics cards, which use cheap aluminium components instead and temperature readings don't mean shit.

Having ruled out faulty memory and having no possibility to quickly replace my PSU and graphics card, I went with the cheapest option: Thermal paste. Under heavy workload, my CPU cores would reach the mid to high fifties. Nothing alarming, but the readings could have been lower, so I put some of that sticky white stuff on there. And the crashes persisted. My GPU, well... MSI Afterburner would read something around 60-65°C when I crashed out and these temperatures aren't even remotely critical. But hey, nothing to lose, right? So I've unscrewed the whole thing, took off the plastic casing and found two grey, tiny booger-shaped objects on my GPU, which must have been thermal paste in ages long forgotten.

Well, to cut the crap... after putting some fresh 20 Pence thermal paste on there, the crashes just stopped and never occured again. I already had my finger on the order button for a new current-gen graphics card! Ironically, MSI Afterburner still reads temperatures of 60-70 degrees when I run games. So according to these readings, nothing has really changed in the temperature department. But there hasn't been another crash all week long, so it has clearly solved my problem. The last time a bit of sticky white goo had such a surprising effect, I ended up getting somebody pregnant.

Oh well. Now I can finally look forward to Guild Wars 2, a least from a hardware point of view. My computer is ready now, recent stress tests have been fine on my end, but I'm faced with a whole new dilemma: I might not choose to be a warrior after all! *queue dramatic pause*
I don't pick my class by what the general public believes to be "most OP". That's something you see on every god damn forum for every god damn game today: Some asshole asking, "What's the most powerful class?" They don't wanna play what's fun or what suits their play style or personality or personal taste, they just wanna play what the cattle thinks is stronger than the rest. God, how much I hate stupid shit like that! You DON'T ask that kinda crap! You don't even ask which class is most fun to play! If you're too fucking stupid to make a decision without random strangers on the internet telling you what to do, then you shouldn't be alive!

Ahem, anyway. You know me. I don't do subtle. I'm in your face, balls out, act first, worry about consequences later. Yeah, sorry about that image. :P My point is - I wouldn't enjoy playing anything casty or sneaky or shooty, because it isn't really my style. I don't solve my problems by sneaking up on them and stabbing them in the back - I roar at them and scare them into submission, then hack them to bits. And in most online games that translates to one thing: Warrior.

And the warrior on Guild Wars is alright. Heck, in many regards he's simply better than any other warrior on any other MMO. As a warrior, I get a bigger health pool than any other class. You know, kinda like WoW before they decided to give identical stamina ratings to EVERYONE, including the fucking mages. As a warrior, I get the best armor. Like WoW before they came up with shit like 50% leather armor bonus talents, mage armor and all that other shit, which completely defeats the purpose of multiple armor types. Best of all, this class actually still deserves its name, knowing how to use just about every fucking weapon there is! If some asshole is running away from me, I can grab a fucking gun and do some god damn damage with it! I absolutely HATED that on WoW! First they made ranged attacks completely useless for virtually anything other than ranged pulls, then they scrapped them altogether with Pandaria and gave me some dumbass throwing attacks, instead. Good job, Blizzard!
On GW2, my ranged attacks are in every way as powerful as my melee hits. I beat the snot out of some stupid thief and when he runs off, I just nuke him with my gun. Some dumbass mage kiting me around a fucking pillar for two hours straight? Not in this game, bitch! And in large-scale pvp I'm no longer forced to jump right into 50 enemy players and get killed in half second, because I can actually attack from a safe distance, just like the fucking mages, hunters and what have you! Yay!

But what sounds great on paper, isn't very fun to me in the actual game. First of all, my gun is so incredibly powerful, it completely defeats the purpose of using melee at all. Sure, there's gonna be some sophisticated battle strategies, especially in pvp, where one may be well-advised to switch from a gun to a blade, but 90% of the time the gun is your best bet. Think about it: Sit back, shoot the crap out of a baddie and watch him die before he gets anywhere near you or jump the baddie, take damage as you fight him and end up getting attacked by his friends. Why would I want to hit a guy in close combat and lose health when I can do the exact same amount of damage with a gun, yet take absolutely no damage in return?

My other gripe with the warrior is how dual-wielding swords is absolutely lame. I prefer swords to maces and axes and I prefer dual-wielding to two-handers, but my weird adrenaline-fuelled flurry charge attack thingie aside, sword skills simply aren't fun. I get harmstring. Really? I can just shoot a guy if he runs off, I can unlock perks that make me run faster than anybody else when I use melee weapons, I get a charge attack... when I only have five attack hotkeys, then I don't want one of them to be fucking harmstring! Then I get a ranged attack with a bleed DoT. Did I mention I can use a fucking GUN? Why do I need a ranged attack for my sword? A warrior can be specced to cause bleed stacks with just about every fucking ability there is, so why do I need a ranged attack, which does exactly that? It makes no sense! And then there's Riposte. You know, stand still for five seconds, anticipate a melee attack and retaliate it. Stylish. So how does that help me against mages, rangers, anyone not stupid enough to frontally attack a fucking warrior in melee?

Sometime during the last stress test, I rolled a guardian. Basically, to "not get all hooked on my stress test warrior, only to lose him at launch". He doesn't get to dual-wield, so I wasn't interested in him as a main character. But... well, then I found this two-handed sword, which was the size of a medium airplane. And on top of the twohander I get a magical aegis. You know, some cool, glowy shield made of magical energy or some crap that will block attacks even while I'm two-handing it?

My first impulse was to say, "But he's a tank!" As in, tough cookie who can dish out absolutely no damage. But there's no holy trinity in GW2, no dedicated healers, damage dealers or tanks. The damage I cranked out with this guy was in every way as impressive as my warrior's. The main difference being that all my skills were actually fun to use! I get to whirl around with my sword and hit everything around me, even at a distance. I get to range-snare a guy with one of my attacks and, if I use the same attack again within ten seconds, pull the poor sucker towards me, much like a Death Knight on WoW. I get to teleport to my enemy to set him and everyone around him on fire. I get to summon ethereal weapons, which function like invulnerable battle pets and aid me in combat. Why the FUCK would I want to be a warrior?

Right now I'm only seeing one potential issue with this class, which I'm going to look into during tonight's stress test: I don't get to use any actual ranged weapons. I have a bunch of awesome gap-closers, which should theoretically be enough to fight rangers and casters in pvp, but any warrior fighting a frost mage on WoW will know that three or four gap closers mean absolutely nothing when game designers use "rock-paper-scissors" as an excuse for lousy balancing. Even if pvp feels fun against single enemies and there won't be any 40+ minutes kite-around-the-fucking-pillar scenarios, I'm not sure a guardian would be all that useful in a large-scale battle. When virtually every other class around me can use ranged attacks and I'm almost purely melee-based, then I'll be doomed to watch people shoot each other whilst waiting for an opportunity to swing my sword without drawing focus fire from 50 people.

Seeing as there is no actual endgame and the real meat and bones in GW2 is pvp, I want to be absolutely sure that my class won't just frustrate the crap out of me in that particular regard. So tonight I'm gonna set up a guardian for pvp. Maybe I'm paranoid for no reason, which will set my decision in stone. But if I'm not enjoying this guy in pvp, then... hoo boy! Ranger? I'd miss the heavy armor and I will always prefer melee over ranged attacks, but they get the cool pets and all.

Speaking of cool pets - look at him!

This one is actually ours. No more random Google image search crap. The glove is still a precaution, because strangely enough, he seems to prefer it to the touch of actual skin. He no longer attacks us, he puts up with the whole picking up thing, but after a few moments he will still start wiggling around until we put him back down. Major progress and, once again, much easier than anticipated.

The one thing, which is completely absent right now is mutual trust. You can see it in the video when I put his hide back in the tank and he instantly jumps when he notices me. And yes, the camera shakes the same second because I flinch like a pussy. Basically, we spend most of our time staring at each other, thinking "What the fuck do you want?" and jumping at each other like "AAAAAAAAAH! IMGONNADIEIMGONNADIEIMGONNADIEIMGONNADIEEEE!1"

I can't wait for him to move in with us. Though I'd best be prepared to move him back to the shop whenever the landlord pays us a visit. They've been cool with snakes, cats and bearded dragons so far, but I'm not sure he's gonna enjoy a massive monitor chilling out in our living room. Gonna be fun having two hungry cats and one huge-ass lizard sitting in the kitchen and waiting for breakfast every morning, though.

Regarding names - how about Barry? Barry the bosc? That's also the name of the fat kid on American Dad. Good morning, USA!

-Cat

Minibosc

Today has been our third day of bosc taming, if you can really call it that. I picked him up and while he wasn't exactly thrilled about it, there was absolutely no hissing, no biting and - most importantly - no shit. I hate when they do that.
I was fully expecting him to attack me again like he did on the first two days. Maybe he was tired or just too hot, but maybe we're just starting to make a little progress. It doesn't really work that quickly and easily, does it? I've read a lot of stuff about how bosc monitors can be very aggressive and hard to handle and a real bitch to tame, so I didn't think he'd be so calm after only two days, but once again, I probably shouldn't read too much into this. Besides, when people talk about those guys being so ferocious, they're likely referring to the fully-grown version when it had never been handled as a baby. I don't think I'd enjoy taming one of those anytime soon!

I'd love to finally add the damn pictures, but Claire's ancient mobile phone only sends them stamp-sized. Literally! I could scan a stamp with a booger on it and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I'm gonna bring our shitty old camera to the shop tomorrow to share some images with the world, but for the time being, you'll have to use google or your imagination. It's a lizard. Come on.

Interestingly enough, Claire is warming up to the little guy a lot. She's not into lizards much. Apparently, some reptile enthusiasts only like snakes and don't care about lizards and vice versa. I'm guessing most snakes are easier to handle once you get the hang of it. They have exactly one end that will hurt you if you fuck it up. And since they're not exactly selling anything venomous, getting the occasional bite isn't really a big deal. A lizard, on the other hand, has teeth, sharp claws, many of them are rather spiky and then there's that freaky tail whip. When I first heard about lizards attacking people with their tails, I thought it was ridiculous. My cats have tails. Dogs have tails. They're not very threatening. When a lizard whacks you with its tail, holy fuck, you're gonna feel it! Our tiny bosc did it. He's too small to seriously hurt anyone, but he already packs such a surprising punch and I really don't wanna be at the receiving end of that when he's all grown up!

Still gotta come up with a name, as well. I know, reptiles don't care for that kinda crap, they don't come running when you call them by their names and they're not gonna fetch the fucking stick. But it's a sign of affection, if you will. A pet thing. Something that makes him a family member (within reason) rather than something that you just own like some piece of furniture. My first idea was Hector, until I was reminded that the lizard on tv was already named Hector. Boo! Then I thought Hank.

Maybe it's just me, but... people named Hank always somehow look like a Hank, don't they? You know, a bit chunky, probably bald, maybe tattooed, little rough around the edges, that kinda thing. Maybe not the brightest star in the sky. Great buddy, though. You wouldn't wanna get on his bad side. Hank the lizard. I guess it would work. Or maybe Goliath, since he's gonna be so fucking huge. Or just Fred. Fred the Bosc. I think that's funny.
The thing with monitors is that you cannot really tell what gender they are unless they're male and it just pokes out at some point. They just do that sometimes. Air the wang a bit. We've all been there. I mean, what if Fred turns out to be a girl? Hm.

Since you can only spend so many hours torturing one small animal and I was in no particular hurry, I decided to help with the baby snakes. Freakiest thing I've seen for a while! Basically, they just pop out of their eggs and that's it. All done. Ready snake! Which makes sense, I suppose. I mean, what the heck are they supposed to do when they get outta there? Grow ears and maybe a pair of eyebrows? They're not really into that whole arms and legs thing, either. Maybe they don't really hatch as totally perfect, complete, whole animals, but they're just gimp little wyrmlings, who decide to remain that way for the rest of their lives. Nature's little underachievers.

They're like proper snakes. Just... tiny.

So I've filled a dozen bottlecaps with water and put them in tiny little plastic tubs with even tinier little snakes in them and what do you know, they actually started drinking. Yes, that's the whole fucking point, thank you very much, but unless you're an actual snake owner or one of those weirdos buying National Geographic, have you ever seen a baby snake drink? Fascinating stuff, really.

There's also one special needs customer. He was born without eyes. Tiny, pink snake, perfectly fit and healthy and everything, but no eyes. Not even any eyelids or sockets or anything, that whole part is just missing. We named him Earthworm Jim. I know the actual Earthworm Jim has eyes, but the comparison is still flattering, considering he's a pink, fleshy, worm-shaped object with a tiny hole for a mouth.
Oh well. More lizard-handling tomorrow. Let's see if he actually stays as cool as he did today. Next logical step would be putting him on my chest or something, moving him around a bit, rather than just picking him up and standing in front of the tank like some moron, waiting to see how much it takes for him to get annoyed with it.

-Cat

Like a Bosc!

For reasons, which defy all logic and common sense, I have always liked cats. Cats are jerks, they don't give a shit about anything but themselves, they step over you and right all over your fucking balls and show you their asshole in the process. All of it. They're the embodiment of disrespect. Some people mistake their sucking up for affection, when they really just grovel for food or a belly rub. Because the little shits have absolutely no self-respect. "I want you to stroke my belly! But only eight times! After that, I'm gonna bite you." Because they're little psychopath fucks.

And maybe it's that same sense of idiocy, which has always attracted me to stranger, more exotic pets. Rats, for instance. Back when I was a kid, rats were actually rather uncommon as pets, at least in my area. So I got myself a rat and suddenly my girlfriend had rats, my school mates had rats and in the end, even my fucking stepmother thought they were kinda cute and put my rat in her purse when she went shopping. But even without grownups thinking they're fun, rats turned out to suck. A lot. They stink. They piss and shit all the god damn time. Everywhere. Without stopping. And that makes them stink even more. They usually go blind and die of cancer two years after you buy them.

Yes, I know, you can train them to be very clever, clean, faithful little companions. Been there, done that, wasted months of my life getting them to shit in the designated corner of the cage and remain nice and clean and calm when I picked them up. And a year later they're old and just like old people, they get a little grumpy and a little weird and before you know it they're aggressive and filthy again. When my last pair of rats grew old, they became so nasty and annoying, I went to the nearest field and released them. Mabye they got another happy couple of weeks there. Maybe they got eaten by the fucking cat five minutes after I was gone. I didn't even give a shit.

Don't look at me like that! They're rodents! Vermin! Bred by the dozen, sold for a buck, designed to grow monster tumors that kill them two years into their miserable, tiny lifespan. It's not like I kicked out the goddamn dog!
For what it counts, we're planning on getting a whole lot of new rats in the future. No more cage, though. They're going straight in the freezer. As soon as our python grows too big for mice.

So yeah, reptiles. They're pretty exotic. Surprisingly enough, "unusual" pets really aren't all that special around here. There's this guy who walks up and down our street with an owl on his shoulder every other day. There's some elderly gentleman who never leaves home without his parrot. He takes him to the supermarket and they're having conversations while he's doing the shopping. I don't know whether these birds are intelligent enough to actually understand what's being said, but he's happy enough just to babble along with the old guy. Of course you do see the usual amounts of cats and dogs around here, but people also love their massive birds, their micro pigs and - naturally - reptiles.

Perhaps you still remember those guys:

Bearded dragons are quite possibly the most idiot-friendly kind of reptile. And maybe leopard geckos, but I just can't get myself to enjoy a tiny, fragile little animal, that drops its tail the moment I look at it funny. Our beardies are so unbelievably relaxed and easy to handle, it's hard to tell whether they're friendly and social or just incredibly slow.

I can put some salad in the food bowl and watch the tragedy unfold: Bakara, our special needs beardie, will attempt to catch the salad with her tongue, while she's about three feet away from it. Maybe she thinks she's a chameleon or something. So she licks the air for ten minutes, realizes she's too far away from the salad and moves one step closer. Rinse and repeat for two hours until she falls asleep or actually gets close enough to eat. Sometimes Chompy, the other dragon, watches the whole thing, then just takes the salad for herself. She doesn't even like salad. I suspect she's really just a total asshole.

That's all they ever do. They sit around and try to lick things. They sleep. They roast under the heater. You can pick them up and carry them around. They don't give a shit. You can watch TV with them and they'll go to sleep on you. You can put them on the scratchpost with the cats and they'll all stare out the window together.
I never expected any of them to twirl a stick, put on a little top hat and do a little happy dance. But when you watch beardie babies, they're curious, they're hyperactive, they pace up and down the tank, get on their hind legs and look at what's going on outside, they seem incredibly fun and clever and entertaining. And then they grow up and spend the rest of their lives just sitting there. My cat sleeps 18 hours a day. And compared to our beardies, that's still pretty damn active.

Don't get me wrong. I still like them. They're still fun to watch when they chase after bugs or swim around in the tub. And shopping is so much more fun when you have a lazy lizard sleeping on your shoulder! We even bring the lizards when we see the family. Because they're fun.
When we got our first beardie, I knew abolutely nothing about reptiles. Didn't know how to handle them, how to "read" them, the whole thing. Today I pick up our royal python to put her on youtube, I don't mind hand-feeding our lizards and I like doing a bit of research when I find the time. I have also learned that vast amounts of information on how to handle reptiles consists of hearsay, opinions and a lot of bullshit rather than facts. Which makes sense: We've had cats and dogs since the stone age. Reptiles? Not so much. I've read guides, which say that bosc monitors love eggs and should be fed lots of them. Yet another website suggests that eggs are bad and if you feed them eggs, the lizard will die a slow, horrible death before they even reach their first birthday. Yes, they used the word horrible. Death by egg.

Ahem. Anyhow. I'm not trying to sound like some fucking expert. Because I'm not. But I went from having zero clue about the whole thing to knowing how to handle tiny, unimpressive stuff like bearded dragons and ball pythons. They're not dangerous. They're not tricky in any way. But when you don't know shit about reptiles, why not start with something that won't put up a fight if you turn out to be too stupid to handle it, right?
I have learned a few basics, I'm actually enjoying the whole thing and I feel ready for an 'intermediate' reptile, so to speak.

The whole thing started with Hector. Hector is some guy's Asian monitor lizard and was on tv last year. Basically, that thing lives in his house and walks around there like some kind of watchdog, jumps in the bath tub when he feels like it, demands bacon and eggs for breakfast and is just a really fun pet. This may sound ridiculous, but for the most part, he functions like any cat or dog, minus the hair, the barking, flea infestations and ridiculous hormone-induced yowling sessions. I'd love to link a clip or two, but with Channel 5 being a bitch about their copyright crap, you can't even get a working video on their catchup-website. Just imagine some old guy living with a small dinosaur.

Then, just a few weeks ago, this guy came to the reptile shop, carrying a massive bosc (or 'savannah') monitor. Really cool kid with a really cool lizard. He was about the size of that guy here:

That thing was so chilled out and relaxed, it may as well have been dead. I picked him up and he just sat there, not giving a fuck about anything in the world. That guy put his finger in the lizard's mouth, something you should never do, because they have nasty, serrated teeth and they're incredibly strong and can do some serious damage to you. He didn't care. He put up with it. I have seen friendly juvenile monitors at the shop before, I have seen grownup "tame" boscs on youtube, but this lizard was like a different species or something. The guy has spent several hours each day, over the course of eight months, taming that lizard, bit by bit, until he could just carry him around town. No leash, no harness, no nothing, just like that.

And all of a sudden, my bearded dragons seemed incredibly shit in comparison. Again, I'm not setting them loose in some random field, I'm not trading them in, they're still very happy and well looked-after. But come on! Look at how massive he is! Fuck cats! Fuck dogs! Everybody has got one of those, anyway!
And then they had baby bosc monitors at the shop. Baby boscs look like this:

Well, you already know where I'm going with this. The one at the shop has not sold for a while, we're in the fortunate position of getting a little extra money right now and they're doing payment plans at the shop, so...

I had my first handling session today. I've never done anything quite like this, I had no idea what to expect and I'll admit to being a complete pussy and putting on a safety glove when I first tried to touch him. I had no clue how he would react or what he would do and I don't know what it feels like to be bitten by a lizard. I used to be scared when my cat would bite me as a kid, nowadays I don't even pull my hand away, because I'm so used to it and it doesn't really hurt all that much. Little Bosc? No clue. And yes, he's bigger than the tiny guy on the picture. :P

And holy fuck - that little bastard started to jump and hiss and tail whip like a pro! It took him a full five minutes just to stop freaking the fuck out whenever my hand got anywhere near him. But eventually, I managed to pick him up, then he'd let me touch him without spazzing out and eventually, I just held him and stroked him entirely without the glove.
I'm gonna have to repeat this little game every day now. Pick him up, no matter how much he hisses and struggles. Show him that it doesn't hurt to be picked up. And that there's no point in freaking out over it. I'm hoping that after some time he'll figure out that attacking me is useless, because it doesn't yield the desired effect. I'll still pick him up anyway, so he might as well stop struggling and put up with it. If they manage to intimidate you, then that's just what they'll do - hiss and bite and be a dick until you leave them alone. But that's not gonna work on me. I'll show him who's boss.

Anyhow. The plan is to turn him into a nice, tame lizard that is fun to handle when he's all grown up. He should be free to walk around the house just like the cats and I'd like to bring him along when I come to the shop or visit the family. I'm aware that I'll collect a few scars in the process, but if I wanted another easy reptile, I'd just go for my third beardie. I fully expect him to attack me again when I try picking him up tomorrow and he'll probably keep doing so for a while. Having absolutely no experience with this, I cannot really judge how long it's gonna take until he'll be fully okay with it. I just gotta pick him up every day. Until he gets bored of attacking me. Or better yet - until he learns that nobody is gonna hurt him.
Who knows? Maybe one day I'll be able to stick my finger up his mouth like that guy at the shop did. Yeah, probably not. I'm not sure I'd even want to risk that. I like my fingers.

-Cat