As expected, after our more than successful first attempt at the 40-man Molten Core dungeon, a number of people have left the guild, in search of a more dedicated (and numerous) group of players who can guarantee such 40-man, 3-4 hour raids several days a week. Good luck, and good riddance! They are mostly nice people but they are impatient; can’t blame them, however I would have liked to see more of them being upfront about the whole thing: THEY want the big stuff NOW, so there was no need to blame everyone else for "not being there".

The question now becomes, will a casual-oriented guild be able to experience the higher challenges in that game? Our experience suggests that it is almost impossible.

Well, turned out that the road to 60 wasn’t that hard, but could be terribly annoying. A couple of days when I tried to quest solo in my 50’s I ended up logging out completely angry at the groups of Alliances enjoying a cheap shot. However, the group instances (Uldaman, Zul’Farrak, Maraudon and Sunken Temple) allowed me to play with other people in a gank-free environment.

So at 60 now, free to run any high-level instances with the friends, the shadow of repetition and eventual boredom looms in the horizon, but until that happens, it is more fun than ever. Now, the jump from 5-man groups, 10- and 15-man raids, to Molten Core 40-man raids, must be huge. I can’t imagine the chaos, but we are hoping to give it a try this weekend.

The guild has expanded a lot in order to reach a critical mass of level 60 players that allows regular Molten Core runs. With that expansion has come a whole array of issues that I had heard about related to Everquest: players logging out in anger because they didn’t get the item they wanted, loot point systems like DKP, rules governing the use of alts, attempts at forcing specific talent trees in order to participate… It really is a weird dynamic when you see players switch attention, from playing for fun with friends, to obsession with items and statistics. The trend is terribly destructive in my opinion, but it seems inevitable. As an example, the guild hasn’t yet attempted a Molten Core raid, but there are arguments already about who should be allowed to go and who is not a "team player" because his only focus isn’t MC.

I remember telling a friend a few months ago that "purpose gets in the way of fun", on a completely unrelated topic, but it seems ever so true.

Well, this story (book and 50’s movie) has been in my mind since I was a kid, a reference for all other stories about aliens taking over Earth. I was hopeful that Spielberg’s version would be the great alien invasion movie, some kind of grandiose version of the book’s idea.

Instead, we got a pretty standard movie, with kids, dysfunctional family, some watered-down horror and some simplistic action. Not bad, but I didn’t feel immersed at any point throughout the movie. A collection of things, if you want, some of them good, some not so. Which actually sums up my view of most of Spielberg’s movies.

Read this from a review in imdb, which is interesting and worth repeating: "Spielberg’s camera is always running away, afraid to look at the destruction, panning away from the effects, terrified! And what’s terrific is that this new "eye" suits the story"

This man’s right, the movie does not look at all like other movies, just like the filming in Saving Private Ryan was unique and trend-setting. However, I’m not 100% sure that this innovation in style actually improves the end result.

In other news, Batman Begins was much more engaging and entertaining.

Yesterday was the conclusion of the 1st Master in Game Programming at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. It’s been great! The students had to step up and show their projects in front of a crowd, got their diplomas, and we all had fun celebrating it. They should be really proud of their accomplishment, the projects were quite ambitious but they were able to wrap up quite reasonable versions. Lots of variety, from strategy to racing, 2D and 3D, humour-based and seriuos ideas, singleplayer and networked, there was a bit of everything.

I look forward to repeating the experience next year.

Heh, I’ve reached a strange point in my WoW life. Up until now I had been leveling up slowly, taking my time, joking in the guild chat, devoting time to explore the world and the places I’m not supposed to be at.

Thanks to the wonderful dynamics of a PvP server, all that is changing. After level 40 or so, solo questing and hunting has become a real chore, with zones full of red-named players that want to see you die, no matter the means or the (lack of) reward. The last time I had a balanced battle was at level 29. Since then, it’s been all gangs of 3 against 1, level 60s ripping me apart in a few hits, players that wait until your health bar is low from fighting mobs before attacking you. Hunt for a few minutes, die an unavoidable death and spend the next 5-10 minutes getting back to your corpse. I have tried to join the dynamic, and it made me even more sick.

Considering the only reason I am in a PVP server is the people I guild with, and that being a slower than average player prevents me from playing with them, I have reached a point where either I pump levels to catch up with them (high-end, gank-free instances) or I’ll leave the server and the friends.

I suspect my enjoyment of the game will not survive this change of pace. It’s the best, most polished, most fun, funny and entertaining MMO I have tried, but sometimes the universe just conspires against us.

Interesting topic of discussion here. Summary: well-known internet ad firm says systems that block their ads will remove opportunities for sites that want to remain free (their claim is a lot more outrageous, but of course they’re an ad firm so what do you expect?).

Like I mentioned a couple posts below regarding MSN Messenger, the real problem comes when you annoy people. Like most people remark in the slashdot discussion, I never have had a problem with Google Ads, and I have clicked them a few times. In fact, they are the ONLY type of ad I think I have ever clicked in a website. That alarmist company can take their popups, flash animations and *gasp* ads with sounds, and hide them where the sun doesn’t shine. They are facing stiff competition from a company that knows how to create a service that other companies AND their customers appreciate, and therefore their business is in trouble.

I remember discussing the issue of annoying ads back in 2000 when my boss was involved in creating an internet company. I told him I had just seen a site where clicking on the article I wanted to see took me to an ad page from which I could go to the actual article, and how dumb that was. He replied he couldn’t see that kind of cheap trick work. I guess he believes too much in building value for his businesses (he never floated his internet startup, and it has become a successful service in its own right instead).

Firefox is now my browser (again, after many years of going with IE), I don’t have flash installed on it and I don’t plan to, when I specifically want to view a Flash site I’ll use IE but that’s all. Call it a poor man’s ad-blocker, but it’s fairly effective.

To anyone who is in the business of annoying other people: understand that most of us WANT to see your company go bankrupt, and will do everything in our hands to help that happen.

Added 5 or 6 new pics to the Gallery. Also discovered a handy tool to remove all the crap that Photoshop insists on including in JPG files. Thumbnail pics gone down from 18Kb to 4Kb, what’s not to like?

Edit: finally revamped the Gallery to use a database backend and an upload form through the web. Took a while to figure out all the proper parameters and code in the PHP script and the server panel, but it works now.

Congratulations, Microsoft! After several years of staying with Messenger and refusing to use other IMs, your latest and greatest additions to an app already crammed with CRAP has finally convinced me.

Trillian here I come.

Maybe someone can shed light on this. This morning I found 300 emails in my inbox, from various Mailer Systems, notifying that "my email could not be delivered", all from various sources and different styles. Some of them included the original email or the subject, which was essentially spam.

My PCs were turned off at the time all those error emails were generated and sent, so I doubt I have been virused or trojaned. The possibility is that someone is sending spam and putting a real email address (mine in this case) in the From: / Reply-To: fields. If blacklists and anti-spam filters are using and registering these fields, this would be a damn great way to either ruin someone’s address, or more likely, render those systems unusable by filling them from non-spammer data. Spoofing a From: / Reply-To: field is the easiest thing in the world, but I had never thought of this use. I now fear my e-mail address (which has been relatively spam-safe for years) will be blacklisted and ruined forever.

Anyone knows anything about this issue?

Links I’ve found about this:
http://www.ksinclair.com/Article536.htm

Microsoft finally launches a casual game download service for the XBox. Strane, considering the next iteration of the console comes out in about 6 months, and the service is launched in Europe of all places. I assume they simply want to test and polish the download / promotion / billing system so it’s available out of the box for XBox 360’s launch.

Oh and Jason is right: I have given up and joined the masses in accepting the XBox 360’s name. Guess I’m too old to keep fighting for lost causes. 🙂