April 2008 Archives

What a waste of opportunity!

I want to rant about the elitist gamer society and how soulless the MMORPG industry is right now, but as I began this post, I was drained of all energy to do it.

Those who disagree will disagree and those who agree will find a sympathetic mind. I only hope it'll get better in the next generation, when enough people are sick and tired of the current formula (embodied in essence by WoW).

My first MMO was Nexus: Kingdom of the Winds. I only played the trial of that, and was totally enamored by the idea of being able to play as a character in a gigantic fantasy world. There was the action fighting segment and stat-building that implied a growing character, and the social, exploration segment that implied a whole new world of adventure waiting for me.

Well. MMOs walked down one path and followed it pretty tight. Status-based growth and reducing characters and players down to arithmetic is all there is now. The prospect of adventure is almost completely gone.

I never feel like I'm going out to vanquish some evil for the greater good- I feel like I'm going out there to harvest a big glob of EXP and drops. Hana yori dango. Actions in-game have consequence for the character, in terms of managing the growth- but the character itself is inconsequential to the world. The world does not change!

Okay, so I ranted anyway. D&D ftw.

I'm still trying to get ahead in life. Spring Break passed by, and was great fun- but I didn't accomplish anything I had wanted to. But I'm feeling optimistic now... despite some bouts of the opposite.

I played Rainbow Six Vegas 2 on the Gamer House's newly upgraded rigs. Maybe it's just me- but Vegas 2 is like... 5x better than Vegas ever was! I'm sure the gameplay itself hasn't changed much, though-- so, I realized I've learned a few things about myself.

1) I love character customisation
2) I love cool looking girls
3) I love the Walther P99

These 3 points are the main differences I see between this game and R6Vegas..... oh, that and- I'm playing on a computer that can actually run the game. In Vegas, I had to fix the .ini files to force the game to run at the 640x480 and disable several shader effects in order to achieve a playable framerate. This resulted in the game really not rendering well except in Thermal Vision mode, which... instead of looking like a cool heat-sensing vision, ends up looking like a matte red world of polyons.

Anyway, R6 Vegas 2? Surprisingly good game. And I can have my little brat-girl Rainbow operative with her tank top, backwards cap, and cool boots.

I've found some new great things in life.

Firefly. Sci-Fi series by Joss Whedon. I watched Serenity with Sam back in 2005 or so whenever it came out in theaters, and loved it... Sam went on to buy the DVD set of Firefly, but I never watched it. I recently did last week at hulu.com.... and it instantly became my favorite TV show. Much <3 for Firefly! It's way better than Heroes, and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, both of which I enjoy as well.

Oranges. Some reason, I never really liked eating oranges, or any fruits for that matter. Yesterday, though- I got some oranges that were very, very sweet. They're... so... good. It's like the freshest, un-sugary pure orange juice ever! Not too sour, either- just perfect.

I strolled over to the swings with my best friend and we talked and played... tried to see how far we could fling ourselves off the swings, then climbed around a little fortress with slides, monkey bars and poles. Balanced eachother's weight on a teeter-totter.

Then, sat down on my driveway and talked about the future-- cyberspace, fully functional AI and the applications thereof, social aspects of the new cyberspace, and its impact on human cultures. It was then 2AM, so he drove home, and I sit down to blog about this.

At $25/mo., this service beats out the prices of all competitors. This morning, I called AT&T and Champion Broadband, trying to get a new service for my internet, which is slow-poke. It serves, yes, but if I try to spoil myself with anything moderately intensive (such as playing games while my mother uses Skype), it begins failing to keep up. It also doesn't help that my router also starts to complain about its back-pains and hiccups and just dies, forcing a reset of the connection.

I've been trying to get a new connection-- AT&T offers Fiber Optic lines here (named with a snazzy, "U-Verse Enabled"), but they want to sell it to me bundled with their TV services. Well, that would be all well and great-- and I'd love to give them my patronage (along with receiving a $200 cash-back for switching over and betraying Champion Broadband, stabbing them and twisting the knife), but AT&T doesn't offer any Mandarin channels. They've got Japanese, Indian, Italian, Korean and all that handled-- but no Mandarin Chinese. Great. No.

One of the representatives told me I could order the U-Verse service with no terms, no contract, no installation fee, and all those niceties, and just cancel the TV portion of the service afterwards. Well, calling back the following day-- the new rep tells me that the Manager would want me to keep the TV service for at least 3 months before cancelling it. That's like, $200 of extra crap that I don't want. So no. Until they offer Chinese channels (which, honestly, I don't understand why they don't seeing as how Chinese people are actually a majority in this area), or offer the fiber-optic line alone, I'm not gonna get suckered for over $150 worth of charges.

Except that my family has already been suckered by AT&T. I called the tech support (after realizing that there was no other plan to switch my internet over to in the same price range), to see what was up with my internet line, which... really isn't delivering the speed I want.

It turns out that the line is set at 384kbps up/down. My connection is advertised as being the "1.5mbps" line, which gives speeds ranging from 384kbps - 1.5Mbps. Huzzah for delivering as little possible, hm. So it's probably been at least 2 or 3 years that I've had this service, and... tbh, guys? I'm not very happy.

They're sending a technician over to look at the line tomorrow... with the possibility of a $60 charge if the problem isn't with AT&T but with my computer or something silly like that. I'm gonna talk with the tech to see if I can get the details out of him, because I don't want some faulty diagnostic that ends up costing $60 and not fixing the connection. I'm like, 98% certain that the problem is with AT&T's line.

Champion Broadband's cable service of 4mbps is offered at $45. Verizon doesn't offer FiOS in my area, and Time Warner's 6mbps line is the same price as Champion's 4mbps (even though I already have cable service with Champion, it's cheaper to get service from Time Warner? T_T)

I'm kind of frustrated.

This on top of trying to figure out exactly what job field I want to go into... I've already been accepted into Pomona and Long Beach for Graphic Design, which I'm certain I don't want to do anymore. I don't know how I can even sort this stuff out-- I'm supposed to talk to people to find out what I want to major in, and then talk to the schools that have accepted me, in case they offer good programs there... and the schools themselves are pushing me to give them a response in like, two weeks!

... Mrgh.