Back to Hibernation

By GoW | Published: December 9, 2009

Logged on a cou­ple of times in my free week.

The Argent Tour­na­ment was inter­est­ing. My priest’s dual spec was fun. Play­ing along­side my wife was fun.

I actu­ally blocked out some time last night to take an offer up from a friend regard­ing run­ning the Tour­na­ment of Cham­pi­ons. I was look­ing for­ward to it.

Of course, it ended up being patch day, and the servers were shot, yield­ing an infi­nite response after every time I tried to log in:

You have been disconnected from the server.

Waited a half hour, tried again, then another half hour, then another. Gave up.

What really struck me about this was that there was no offi­cial note from Bliz­zard about why it hap­pened. No win­dow on the login screen acknowl­edg­ing the prob­lem, no details on what the prob­lem was or the progress on it. Noth­ing on the offi­cial web­site, either. I found an arti­cle on WoW Insider with details.

What a weird way to learn about the sta­tus of a game where you pay for every minute of ser­vice. Five years in and a patch still wholly kills their servers for a day.

Evi­dently it got fixed after I went to bed for the evening. When I tried to log on this morn­ing, my free week was over. The error mes­sage after your time is up help­fully reminds you to go pur­chase more time to play. Time, like yesterday?

Same issues. WoW is a great feast, with tons of left­overs. It’s just a poor snack.

My wife and I will prob­a­bly check out Cat­a­clysm. Given this handy reminder of uptime and login prob­lems, we’ll pass on the launch cel­e­bra­tion, though.

Posted in the free week | 1 Comment

Rebirth

By GoW | Published: December 2, 2009

The kind peo­ple at Bliz­zard sent me an email to let me know that they

  1. miss me
  2. would like me to come back to par­tic­i­pate in WoW’s five year anniversary

They did this by offer­ing a 7-day free revis­it­ing period so that I could see all the new fun they’ve added. Some­thing about Onyxia being dual spec or something?

My wife and I often talk about return­ing to WoW. Our sec­ond daugh­ter is beyond the six-month mark, and we almost some­what have some time at night.

Return­ing sounds awfully tempt­ing, but we decided that it was prob­a­bly not the best idea. Still so much to do apart from WoW: par­ent­ing, career, other hob­bies, friends, exer­cise, other fam­ily stuff.

But then she walked by when I had the email open.

“Is that an Onyxia whelpling minipet?”

“Yeah.”

“Ohhhh, well it’s a good thing that I didn’t get an email, too.” Then she laughed ner­vously.

Right, I mean lucky for us that they didn’t extend the free week to her as well. We wouldn’t play apart, so if they had offered… oh wait, there’s her email too.

Well.

I mean, free minipet, right?

It’s only one week, right?

Posted in the free week, world of warcraft | Leave a comment

Times Change

By GoW | Published: February 25, 2009

My wife and I were lucky enough to have our first daugh­ter last year. We will be luck­ier still to have our sec­ond daugh­ter later this year! The prospect of a sec­ond child has brought a lot of things into focus, includ­ing exactly how much time we’re going to have to play World of War­craft… which is vir­tu­ally none, given how this first year of hav­ing one child has been. Read More »

Posted in world of warcraft | 7 Comments

Wrath Emblem Design Revealed

By GoW | Published: February 6, 2009

Hid­den in an oth­er­wise bland post on the next sea­son of pvp rewards, game designer Kal­gan let slip how emblem pro­gres­sion is going to go for the rest of Wrath! Here’s the rel­e­vant quote:

it won’t be quite as easy to get deadly items via emblems of con­quest as hate­ful items cur­rently are via emblems of valor

Well, that’s inter­est­ing. So what have we learned? Read More »

Posted in world of warcraft | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Emblem Strategy for the Super-Casual

By GoW | Published: February 2, 2009

Update! This arti­cle is well-intended but the truth has been revealed, and I guessed wrong. More infor­ma­tion in the arti­cle “Wrath Emblem Design Revealed”.

How­ever, it kills me to delete text, so I’ll leave it here any­way. Also as a reminder to myself that design is opaque.

Only raid or instance once a week? Won­der­ing what to do with those 25 or 30 emblems you’ve finally accu­mu­lated? Like real-life money, don’t let those shiny tokens burn a hole in your pocket.

“But, but, but how can I wait? Zomgepics!”

I know, I know. The siren call of zomgepics beckon us all.

The emblem gear will (in all like­li­hood) be refreshed when a higher tier of con­tent comes out, just like the Badge of Jus­tice sys­tem did in the Burn­ing Cru­sade. This means that your Emblems will (in all like­li­hood) appre­ci­ate in value.

Read More »

Posted in world of warcraft | Tagged , , | 5 Comments
Times Change | Groups of Words

Times Change

By GoW | Published: February 25, 2009

My wife and I were lucky enough to have our first daugh­ter last year. We will be luck­ier still to have our sec­ond daugh­ter later this year! The prospect of a sec­ond child has brought a lot of things into focus, includ­ing exactly how much time we’re going to have to play World of War­craft… which is vir­tu­ally none, given how this first year of hav­ing one child has been.

We orig­i­nally got into WoW because I had two com­put­ers (I’m a PC tin­kerer), and we didn’t have a lot of money. World of War­craft, if you play it a decent amount and already have the com­put­ers, is a cost-effective hobby. $300/year for two peo­ple is great when you’re play­ing almost every day.

But what hap­pens when the para­me­ters of your life change? How about log­ging on once a week? No raid­ing, instanc­ing, or remain­ing com­pet­i­tive at pvp. We couldn’t put the time together to fin­ish a sea­sonal event before it ended. In such cases, the cost/value ratio comes out dif­fer­ently, and in our case, unfavorably.

We still love WoW. In fact, if we hadn’t decided to become par­ents, we’d be play­ing tonight. My wife got teary-eyed dur­ing our con­ver­sa­tion on whether to can­cel or not. We’ve spent a lot of time play­ing this game together, had a lot of fun, and made real friends. I’ve learned so much about lead­er­ship from this game that I can’t even begin to describe it. Par­tic­i­pat­ing in this expe­ri­ence has changed us, and we’re going to miss it.

How­ever, times change. I feel like part of the strug­gle of being a healthy per­son is let­ting go of what has passed and putting your atten­tion into what is hap­pen­ing now. Right now, my wife is in her last trimester, and we have a lit­tle fire­cracker run­ning around our apart­ment. For us, it’s just not the right time for a hobby like WoW.

So, our WoW chap­ter has come to an end.

(…for now. Bliz­zard doesn’t delete char­ac­ters, after all.)

More Words!

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7 Comments

  1. Larísa
    Posted February 25, 2009 at 4:11 pm | Permalink

    Con­grats to the big news!

    I can fully under­stand your deci­sion — I can’t imag­ine myself play­ing when I was in the same sit­u­a­tion with so young chil­dren. It must be a pain at the same time, but since you’re two going through the feel­ing of loss and seper­a­tion I guess you have com­fort in each other.

    I’m really going to miss your blog. You’re one of those that I appre­ci­ate most. You’re intel­li­gent and inter­est­ing and you know how to write. Thanks for all that you gave us.

    Reply
  2. Dave
    Posted February 25, 2009 at 9:29 pm | Permalink

    I led the horse to the water but it was you who really started drink­ing. I remem­ber the mixed emo­tions I felt when I real­ized you were far out­pac­ing my knowl­edge about this game AND the social struc­tures that sur­round it.

    I look for­ward to play­ing games with you in the future, my fam­ily and yours, even if that just means Chutes and Lad­ders or Hide and Seek.

    Reply
  3. Matticus
    Posted February 27, 2009 at 1:23 pm | Permalink

    All the best to you. I’ve enjoyed read­ing your posts when I found it those months ago. I’m sure the game will still be here should you decide to come back.

    Reply
  4. PTD
    Posted February 27, 2009 at 2:30 pm | Permalink

    There seems to be a rash of posts like this from blog­gers! I don’t blame you at all, I myself have a 2 year old and a 6 month old, and I know how tough it can be. It can be dif­fi­cult to find a bal­ance, and often the best bal­ance is none at all — ie, no more WoW. Best of luck with your real life leveling!

    PTD

    On PTD’s blog… Time Ver­sus Skill: My WoW Jealousy

    Reply
  5. Kikidas
    Posted February 28, 2009 at 11:35 am | Permalink

    Con­grat­u­la­tions on the incom­ing epic loot. :) You need to do what you need to do to raise your fam­ily well and take care of everything.

    We’ll miss you!

    On Kikidas’s blog… “Reset But­ton”

    Reply
  6. Gnomeaggedon
    Posted March 26, 2009 at 10:42 pm | Permalink

    I have been sit­ting on this one for a while so I could give it proper atten­tion… but a month down the track all I can think of is good luck with the new one.  I also know how pressed it can be with lit­tle ones and finan­cial thoughts float­ing about… WoW becomes a tempt­ing dis­trac­tion that ulti­mately doesn’t do one any favors…

    So good luck… and hope­fully see you back again soon!

    Reply
  7. Meyev
    Posted April 29, 2009 at 3:13 am | Permalink

    I’ve read three of your arti­cles tonight and just came across this one last.

    I got teary eyed from hear­ing you were paus­ing WoW after hav­ing spent 15 min­utes on your blog.

    So, best of luck! I’ve learned so much in just 5 min­utes and I thank you for it. Your writ­ing skills are unmatch­able. You must make a won­der­ful parent!

    Reply

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