There has been a lot of news the last few weeks, and most of it covered sufficently by the big sites, more “real” bloggers, and the twitterverse. Thus every time I have sat down to try and write a post I have stopped by thinking, “This has been talked about enough by others, and I don’t really have much more to say.” Today I am not going to let that happen. My whole point for this site, was for it to be a place for me to record my thoughts so I could look back and remember things; If I don’t post, I fail.

Celebrity Deaths

We will all die. Sorry but that is part of the package and you can not avoid it. Though when people that impacted us in some why die, it tends to affect us. Make us ponder that death and remember all the ways that one person influenced us.  When I heard Micheal Jackson had passed away last week, I was not really sad instead I became more reflective about my past. His music, videos, style and dances helped shaped my pre-teen and teenage years.

And before the news of the king of pop’s death was that of Farrah Fawcett leaving us. One of my early boyhood crushes, was gone, and again I was not really sad but more though filled about my child hood.

Then yesterday I heard about Billy Mays, and again became reflective. This man is so ingrained in my mind with infomercials from my late college years that simply hearing his name made me remember some of my sleepless nights trying to study with the TV on.

I thought I could avoid moaning the loss of celebrities and holding up entertainers above other people, but in the end I have to admit that their deaths did affect me.  Not in a personal sad way, but in a reflect back on my own life sort of way.

Aion

Aion has been getting a whole lot of game blog and game tweet attention and I am really not sure why. Now, I am not in beta and have not played the game, all I have seen are some videos posted no youtube so maybe after I play it myself I will be amazed.  Yet until then I stay confused. It looks like a the same old MMO game play we have seen done in other games. Sure it looks pretty, but will it run on my computer. Ya you can fly, great done that in high level wow and in mid level CoX.  It has combat animations that are sharp, smooth and blend well together; so does FFXI.

I guess the vocal gaming community (bloggers, tweeters) just need something new, and I can relate to that. If its fun, looks good, and runs on my machine, I will probably get excited though I am not sure if it will be excited enough for me to leave my friends and accomplishments in WoW. We will see.

World of Warcraft

I crack myself up reading many of the wow / gaming blogs where people go on and on about “welfare epics”, and “morons”, “the right and proper way to play”, and making broad statements that people must be lazy or dumb in real life to not be doing the “smart things” in game. Geesh people its a toy.

Really a toy. Something someone wants to play with for fun. I don’t even want to use the term game or sport anymore, since then these “smart bloggers” will want to compare it to chess or basketball and tell me how wrong I am. Bah!

There are people that simply enjoy logging in and doing whatever they want. My favorite part of WoW was leveling up my first few characters. Struggling to stay alive, get money, complete quests, and venture into dangerous dungeons.

So while I am sad that my favorite fun activity in WoW is gone, leveling up a character is no where near the challenge that it once was. I completely understand that in the end blizzard is a business. And if more people out there want the toy to work differently than me , well then I they are probably going to change the toy. So I have found other things I enjoy.

Now I find more fun simply logging in and chatting with friends on the other side of the world, raiding a bit with those friends, and goofing around with lowbie characters here and there.

Of course I say I do raid, but I have little patience or time to join many 25 man groups, its not that I don’t have the skill to do 25mans, or that I am lazy. It is because I don’t find all the “stuff” that comes with 25mans to be fun. Same goes for making money, I am smart enough to take the time to figure out how to make a mass of coin Auctioning glyphs or Flasks or some such but I don’t really want to do those activities in the game.   It costs me very little in game money to chat with my friends and raid with my guild so I have very little incentive to make more money.

Is Wow my dream game, or ultimate MMO? Far from it, heck in many ways I think its farther from such a game now than it was at launch. Is WoW fun? Yes and in some ways more fun now for me than it used to be, and less fun in other ways.

In the end its just a toy, something I want to interact with and be entertained.

Transforms 2

Gah. The more I think about this movie the more insane it is. It has big loud explosions. It has gaint metal beasts fighting each other. It has a slightly more logical story than the first. (did I just say that?) What it does not have is heart.

First, why they heck don’t these robots look (in most cases) anything like the toys they are based on?

Second, in a movie named transformers why do we not have more lines of dialog building up the robots as characters?

Third, what the heck is going on with the actual story. Good grief I was about to puke at one point because of one very trite and predicable scene. Which ends in a way that I saw coming, but then spent the rest of the movie questioning. I am trying to not to be spoilerly so maybe in a couple of weeks I will bring it up again, but for now just know that the I think the decepticons are so illogical that they deserve to lose.   Not that the autobots and humans are winner’s but geesh decepticons, you really need to look at all the tools you have available and ask yourself why are we dumb. (answer: the writers of the movie are dumb)

Also I might have to rewatch the first film (as painful as that will be) because I don’t recall megatron ever acting like he was not the BOSS. Am I just recalling things wrong? If I am wrong then ignore this; “where the heck is “the fallen” coming from?    Also where they heck is the fallen when starscream and megatron go to visit?   Why was that place not around in the first film?

Ok Humans and by that I really mean the screenwriters. You are fighting giant robots that can look like earth vehicles, can fly, and come from space. So why the heck are you not constantly monitoring your, apparently, single military communications satellite to make sure it is not compromised. Stupid Stupid humans.

Why after being proven so wrong about some things in film 1, and ally with aliens do you then ignore and kick out of your organization (and apparently let him walk out with classifieds docs) a person whom might be valuable to have around? Oh yea, I know bad writers.

Where did the little decepticon toy truck go? He just vanishes which was sad since he was much more interesting than the highly insulting autobot twins. Gah.

Another thing that seemed crazy to me was the fact that the main character after the events of the first movie would ever want anything close to a “normal” life. You are friends with powerful Alien robot allies and you want to go sit a stupid astronomy class? Seriously you don’t think there would be an autobot or government scientist that you would rather learn from?

If I had survived the events of film one, you would have to FORCE me to stay away from the autobots. Heck I suspect I would ask my new friends to let me help them with their new alliance with the earth governments. There is no way I would want to try and be “normal”.

Alright, I think I got most of my film frustration out. I don’t feel my money was completely wasted on this film, only because it helped me realize just how good the Star Trek movie was, and I strongly urge anyone thinking of going to see transformers 2 to go see it. Or UP, I really should have spent my movie money on that film.

End of Line

I think that is enough rambling on for one day. I will leave today’s post with a suggestion to watch Virutality you can find it currently on Hulu. I thought it was interesting and did a good job setting the stage for a series.