Asheron's Call 2 beta is back up as of yesterday. The good news is the server isn't constantly crashing like it was last week. The bad news is they have patched in extreme rubber-band two-step lag from hell in place of crashes. And they added a new server, so now we can lag to death on either server! Yay! I played for about 2 hours yesterday and 2 hours today and managed to get my character to level 5 yay! Usually it takes oh, about 20 minutes to get to level 5, but they nerfed bow so it won't shoot through hills, rocks, trees, lakes, etc and they totally nerfed the range on it so now it seems worse than even magic. So, once again, mages are the most powerful character type, as it should be ... right? :\

[ 8:10:00 PM ]   Posted at the speed of blight by NONOBADKITTY!  

Today is the 75th anniversary of the first television transmission, so while you're watching trash tv tonight, take a moment to remember Philo T. Farnsworth, ok?

In other news, I finally got a job so now I can no longer slack around playing RPGs all day. Being a grown-up is hard hehe. But I'm glad I finally got work cuz I was getting worried how I was gonna pay my bills and stuff, having blown through most of my savings due to the fact that I've been living on financial aid and credit cards for the last year. So now, not only can I pay my bills but I can hopefully pay off my credit cards before I start attending the university in a year, so that I can accumulate new debt yay! I gotta say though, going to school full-time is way easier than working full-time, but working pays better, and I appreciate weekends more now. ;)

[ 8:45:00 AM ]   Posted at the speed of blight by NONOBADKITTY!  



Wednesday, September 04, 2002

Today I am feeling:

I hate cell phones. So do other people. Now, I admit, I do own a cell phone. In fact, I own only a cell phone, I don't have a regular land line phone because I can't justify paying $30/mo for a land line phone when I already have a convenient pocket-sized cell phone with more added features than my land line phone had. Of course, cell phones suck as far as quality. Or at least mine does. But come to think of it, so did my regular phone.

Anyway, the above mentioned article I found amusing. I dunno about you but I swear 99% of the population uses cell phones. People drive while using 'em which ticks me off. Students use 'em to cheat on tests in school (thanks to those handy-dandy text messenging features, teachers are you reading?) But the thing that cracks me up is people who literally walk around the grocery store in a daze talking to someone asking them what they want for dinner. Like what they choose is so important that if they choose chicken over fish the world will cease to exist. I mean, gimme a break people! And those annoying endless ringtones, man I swear, whoever invented those oughta be forced to listen to them 24 hours a day for a year just to get the full impact of how annoying they are. Why can't cell phones have "normal" ringers? Why do they need those irritating nails-on-a-blackboard sound they all have? Why?!? Thank goodness for silent mode is all I got to say. And people, please, turn your damn phones OFF in movie theatres or classrooms and the like. Especially classrooms during tests. There is always at least one student who keeps their phone on in class (no doubt waiting for an important "what's for dinner tonight" call) despite teacher requests to turn the damn phones off. If I was a teacher, and a student's phone rang during a test, it'd be an automatic F. No retake, no whining, that's it, learn your lesson, pal. Of course, the school would probably fire me cuz the student would <whine> and threaten to sue. I just hope that elementary school teachers can handle the kids with cell phones, the LA school district just lifted a ban on cell phones for kids in school, so now, not only can they deal drugs and cheat, they can also annoy the hell outta everyone too! Yay! I'm so glad schools are doing their job educating our children so they will be productive citizens in the future.

[ 10:48:00 AM ]   Posted at the speed of blight by NONOBADKITTY!  



Tuesday, September 03, 2002

Interesting show on PBS today on Frontline. I'm not looking forward to all the Sept. 11th anniversary exploitation shows but this one I thought was fairly good. The one thing that kinda bothered me though is how many people seemed to have their beliefs affected by something outside themselves. People whose faith in "god" was shattered or weakened or even strengthened. I dunno maybe I'm just dense or something, but Sept 11th didn't change my belief system. But I watched the whole thing as a sort of passive observer, I experienced shock and disbelief like a lotta people, but I also saw the beauty in it all and the despair and the utter stupidity of it all. But I think it did get some people, maybe, thinking about how we put so much energy in things that don't matter. I also hope that some people realize that it wasn't god or God that did this or let it happen, it wasn't even really people that did it, it was faith. But faith has more than one facet, just like everything else. It can be used for harm or healing. It can be rationalized or exalted. I think it's wrong to condemn someone for their faith. But I also think that a lotta people in this country use their faith as a way of convincing themselves they are more important than others of differing faith, and our own president called those of differing faith "evil" after Sept. 11th. That really bothered me, but I realize that each of us has to find our own version of faith. We may not always agree, but I think we do need to realize we're all in this crazy wacky thing called life together, and no matter how much faith you may have that this isn't all there is, you might be wrong. But so might I. <grin>

[ 10:23:00 PM ]   Posted at the speed of blight by NONOBADKITTY!  



Monday, September 02, 2002

Posted late today on the AC2 beta boards:

"AC2 BETA HALTED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE"

Hehe well it's about damn time! I dunno how many of you people have been trying to play AC2 beta the last few days since the big wipe/patch on Friday (excellent day to do a patch/wipe, btw, right before a major holiday weekend) but it's been well, just so much fun! Lemme see, the beta already had about 10k people in it with servers erm make that server (as in game world not subserver) that could accomodate at most maybe 3000 people online at once. Ok. So, what do they do? They do a wipe, so everyone has to start over. That means 3000 people online at once in the newbie dungeons. Ok but not only that, it's not just a wipe, it's a patch! Yes! A patch! Hooray! A really big patch that takes over an hour to download on cable! Not only that but a buggy as hell oops we put bugs back in that were fixed in the last patch patch! A "if you loot certain monsters the server will crash" patch. Before the last patch I could usually play for an hour or so without crashing. And my mouse worked! (One of the recent patches broke USB mouse support and it was "fixed" but not really fixed in the most recent patch.) That is no longer true.

Here is how my weekend went. Log in late Friday, download patch at 3k/sec for over an hour on cable modem. Make newbie character. Crash in newbie dungeon. Try to log in again. Newbie won't load due to being stuck in portal. Create new character. Get through newbie dungeon to newbie training area. Get character up to about level 7. Server crashes. Server comes up, try 50 times to login. Give up for an hour. Try again. Yay! Load newbie character. Character is now at beginning of newbie dungeon, level 1. Bang head against wall. Train newbie up to level 5 again. Server crashes. Wait awhile. Try again, load newbie up. Character is now back to level 2, but at least outside the newbie dungeon. Get tired of playing a lugian. Decide to make a human archer, knowing full well every archer I've created so far is bugged. Create character. Stuck in portal. Ok. Wait awhile. Try again. Log in, get character through newbie dungeon, get out and level her to level 5. Server crashes. Call it a night.

Saturday. Try all day to log in. Server is either down or crashes within minutes of logging in. Timewarps all day long, can't gain levels, every time I get a decent weapon or armor, I crash. Give up. Try again Sunday. Pretty much same thing. Did manage to get lugian to level 8. Monday, holiday yay no one will be on! Hmmm ... server down for a restart ok. Wait. Friend says "servers up", login. Stuck in portal. Client locks up. Reboot. Try again. About 30 times. Give up. Try again later. Log into Arwic vault area, oooh fellowship forming for quest cool. Manage to actually do quest ... well almost ... during movie play client locks up. Reboot. Try to log in. Server is full. Grrrr . Try later. Get in. Take 3 steps. Lock up, link dead. Server crashes. Wait. Manage to login again. Crap, timewarp grrr. Play for about 5 minutes trying desperately to get outta Arwic subserver cuz that's my crashing problem right? Server crashes. Time warp. Try again, this time lifestone just outta Arwic, it saves at lifestones right? Run about 5 clicks, server crashes. Manage to log in again, timewarp back before lifestone wtf? Grrr ... try again to run outta Arwic. Server crash. Wait, manage to login again. Stuck in portal. Disconnnected. Give up. About an hour later, decide to try again ... load launcher ... hmmm ... new message ... "AC2 BETA HALTED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE". So, there ya go. My guess is they'll do another wipe so I will get to start over again for the umpteenth time maybe this time I'll make it past level 12 which is the highest I've managed to get a character so far and that was before this last patch. And dammit they better fix the mouse issue I need my USB scrolly mouse back <whimper>

BTW, the funny thing about this whole AC2 beta is, you'd think they'd have been prepared. They knew they were gonna invite all 10k or so current AC subscribers to the beta, they knew a major gaming magazine would be out early September with another 10k or so testers, they knew GameSpy was gonna have a download available with another who knows how many testers ... so why, I ask WHY is there only ONE server? And why did they release a major big buggy patch right before they added all these new testers? And why oh why did they lift the NDA? Hehe I'll bet someone is getting spanked for that timing. But yannow, they really really shoulda known better, after all AC2 is AC2 it's a sequel, you know, as in "we've done this before". I had the pleasure of beta testing the first Asheron's Call game during the closed beta a couple years ago, and it was probably the most bug-free, smoothly run beta I've ever done and I've done a lot (I've tested almost every online RPG out there in the last 7 years, as well as a bunch of non RPG online games.) This beta is the complete opposite. It is the second most poorly run/buggy beta I've ever done. I won't mention the worst but its name also started with an A, followed closely by one that started with an M. Anyway, now I know AC2 is very complex and very graphically intensive judging from the massive strain it's putting on my video card. Hehe. Can we say "help me I need an additional cooling fan"? But, sheesh, gimme a break. Even in AC1 beta, they had more than one server before they opened the gates to 10k users. And they had 6, yes SIX servers by the time open beta started. AC2 has as many testers I'd guess as AC1 open beta had but only one barely functioning server. And the code is totally borked. I think someone somewhere musta gotten their versions messed up cuz it seems that bugs that were gone last patch came back this one and bugs that weren't in before the last 2 patches there now. But hey, they finally fixed the map! Uhm ... well, except for the fact it crashes the server if ya click on it. Hehe. Ooops. Ok, well, not every time ya click on it. Anyway, I'm glad they finally halted this ugly beast of a beta. I can now let the wounds on my badly banged head heal while I go do something else more productive than clicking on a launcher for hours a day hoping to be one of the lucky few who gets in and can play for 1/2 an hour before the server croaks again.

Now, if they'll only block all those CGM and GameSpy testers from the beta till they get it working or add new servers. Hehe yeah right. Wishful thinking. <sigh>

[ 8:08:00 PM ]   Posted at the speed of blight by NONOBADKITTY!  



Sunday, September 01, 2002

They did it to me again, those morons at Blockbuster. Oops, I said their name. Heh. Anyway, I still have a few rentals available on my LOTR 10 video rental card and today I tried to get my "free" rental for this week (which isn't really free cuz I already paid in advance for the 10 rentals) and they said my card didn't work ... again. I had this problem a few weeks ago (again on a Sunday I think, maybe their computers are sporked and don't work on Sunday or they don't reset correctly or something) and I had to whine to resolve it. They supposedly put a blinking note on my account so that employees would not let it happen again. Apparently the manager on duty today (sorry, she wasn't a "manager" she was a "shift leader", they don't have "managers" according to her despite the big sign above her head that had the name of the "manager" and phone number) couldn't or wouldn't fix it. So I told her about how it had happened before and they'd resolved it, and another employee there today remembered me and backed me up (go Heather!) but the "shift leader" still didn't wanna do it, so I pointed to the sign over her head again, and said the sign said she was empowered to help me. She whined a bit, so I asked if she had a pen and paper so I could write down the phone number of the "manager" and "district leader" from the big sign, so she wrote 'em down for me and I asked her to write her own name down too for reference since her name tag wasn't visible and she wrote down her first name and I asked sarcastically if she had a last name and she said I didn't need her last name so I said hmmm k whatever. Anyway, the threat of the manager and district leader being called apparently scared her so she gave me my damn "free" rental that I'd already paid for.

But what I want to know is ... why the f*** can't they just say something like "Oh, your card doesn't seem to be working, let me check when you last rented." Then they verify I haven't rented a video this week (which begins on Sunday, which they can read on the card) then they could say "Hmm ... well I don't know why it's not working you should be eligible for a rental, let me just override it for you." And that would be that, no whining, no pissing off the customer, no big scene that makes other customers anxious (I'm real good at that!) But no, they gotta make you bitch and complain to get what you already paid for. Oh well, I'll just send another email to the main office like I did last time ... only this time I'll cc it to the CEO. I am so evil muhahaha. But yannow, I used to work in customer service years ago, and one thing I learned is that if you give the customer what they want *without* making them whine or bitch for it, they will usually be loyal customers for life *and* they'll usually tell all their friends how great you are, cuz it's very rare for companies to actually bend over backwards to help the customer. And without customers, no business can survive. So there, Blockbuster! Get a f******* clue! BTW, as soon as my "free" rentals are up, I won't be doing business with Blockbuster again cuz well, they're not worth my time or my money, even with the free "whine" rentals.

[ 3:09:00 PM ]   Posted at the speed of blight by NONOBADKITTY!