WoW Sweatshops

No this isn’t a gold farming thing.

I was Silvermoon training tailoring when I noticed stairs leading down, on a whim I jumped down to see what was there. Now I fully expected to see a mana loom, what I found instead was the elves’ dirty little secret. They run a sweat shop of leper gnomes. There’s even a succubus whipping them back to work if they fall asleep. ‘Fo shame Blood Elves, fo’ shame.

Blizzcon Day 1

So obviously I haven’t been playing WoW as much as I used to, but I’m still a big Blizzard fan. I hop into WoW from time to time, I’m on my 4th SC2 playthrough and I’m awaiting Diablo 3. So yes, I got virtual Blizzcon.

I must say the interface has been vastly cleaned up this year over last. Last year they used an ‘enhanced RayV Player’. If enhanced you mean ‘prone to buffering’ it was the most enhanced media player since RealPlayer. This year we have a simple FlashPlayer and I had no problem whatsoever.

The big news is of course the announcement of WoW’s next expansion, Mist of Panderia. It’s funny I remember the rumor a couple months ago. Blizzard denied and it seemed to go away, now of course it’s been confirmed. I’m a little excited to see a lighter tone as, let’s face it, Azeroth can be downright depressing what with the zombie invasion and death dragon destroying everything. Now we get kung-fu pandas and beer! Yay!

The other big announcement was Diablo 3 being free with a 1-year commitment to WoW. You also get a new mount that appears to be a reskinned star pony. It looks fairly badass, like a flying pally mount really. Also according to the FAW if you also shell out for the collectors edition you get 4 months game time. I’ll most likely do this as I had every intention of not canceling WoW anyway.

A couple of minor notes:

• Blizzard DOTA includes Stitches!
• The Diablo 3 big bad from the trailer, Azmodan(sp?), looks kinda lame. Still, the Diablo design is so classic, where do you go?
• The Panderia preview panel had a screen shot that made me laugh. While in all likelihood a placeholder and not final, a quest being turned in had for rewards ‘30 Valor points, 10xp and 2 copper’
• Speaking of, Valor points were mention several times as rewards. At this point you may get Valor points for logging in
• In general it sounds like quest design is being scaled back towards a BC modeland away from the Cataclysm hand holding. Great, I think that was once of my biggest turnoffs to Cataclysm
• Monks, playable by all races except Worgen and Goblin, are leather wearing tank/healer/DPS hybrids… monk/druids FIGHT!
• Challenge mode dungeons initially made me groan feeling Blizzard had officially endorsed the ‘gogogo’ assholes.
• The Pet Battle System reminds me of another game. Or was it a TV show? Or a movie? I seem to recall a yellow lightning mouse with rosy red cheeks. During the presentation I kept waiting with each slide change for the devs to shout ‘Just kidding!’. And then it went on for another 10 minutes. It’s October, not April right?
• Talents are getting another major revamp. Hopefully it’ll go better than lasttime when it destroyed my groove with Space*
• 2 of my 3 picks in the costume contest won – yay!

Alright, GSL final starts in minutes. I’m out after the rant.

*Pallys have 3 interrupts now? WTF. Back in my day if a paladin wanted to interrupt something more than once a minute he brought a rogue along. Or healed through it. Or bubbled. Damn homogenization, stop crowding my action bar and give me back consecration.

Star Wars on Blu-Ray

By now I’m sure everyone’s heard of Lucas’s further fiddling with the original trilogy. On one hand I’m torn because while Lucas is getting a lot of flack of this, artist reworking their creations is nothing new and Lucas is hardly the only one.

• Stephen King rewrote several scenes in his classic The Stand to update the time period
• After The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien had intended to rewrite several things in The Hobbit to make them more cohesive. He sent a sample chapter 1 to the publisher who did not respond, thinking they were interested Tolkien dropped the plan. However the publisher thought the proposed chapter 1 was the only change and used it the next printing
• Apocalypse Now Redux adds so much new content it’s generally considered to be a separate movie
• Spielberg changing guns to radios in E.T.
• Musicians and ‘remix’ go together like banana peels and kart racing

Lucas’s problem isn’t that he’s making changes (for the most part), it’s that certain changes are stupid. For example there is little outcry over replacing muppet Yoda with digital Yoda in The Phantom Menace. Why? Because digital Yoda looks better.

However take The Revenge of the Sith. Regarded as the best of the prequels, the one scene reviled by most people is Vader waking up after being rebuilt and shouting ‘Nooo!!!!!’. So what’s Lucas do? He has Vader shout ‘Noooo!!!!’ in RotJ. Because, obviously that’s something fans are clamoring for.

OH well. I’ll get them anyway, though I WONT be getting any 3D version that may materialize. I wonder if RotJ would be considered a horrible movie if the original script called for James Earl Jones to shout ‘Noooo!!!’

Lastly: here’s samples of the changes straight from the blu-ray with no alterations. I swear.*

and…

*I’m a big fat liar

Lazy Movie Review: Sucker Punch

Mr. Snyder you have failed me. I’d try to explain the plot but I think the entire thing is a hallucination about 7 minutes into the movie. I hate that shit. I hated it with Shutter Island and I hate it here, hell I even think The Wizard of Oz was a copout*. Maybe the plot would make more sense if I’d finished, but I don’t think I should work that hard to decipher a movie. That’s the director’s job.

D.N.F. – Did not Finish

 

*The Nightmare on Elm Street series gets a pass because you know… Freddy will kill you

The New PS3: Episode 3

So Gamestop will cover price changes in a 7 day window and I got the $50.00 difference refunded today. Yay!!

PS3 Price Drop to $249.99!!

… and I got my replacement Sunday.

@#$%

PS3 RIP

*Taps*

So for the last week or so my PS3 has intermittently turning itself off. I cleans out the vents and pointed the air conditioner vent at it. Alas, it hasn’t turned back on this time. It appears to the end. I understand electronics don’t last forever, but it still makes me sad. I had an old 60GB model with backwards compatibility that I loathe to give up.

Still I think I’ll get a new replacement this time and maybe a PS2 a few months down the line.

Pity too, disc two of Burn Notice S3 is trapped in the system.