I feel like I want to sit down and write, but I’ve sat here for a few minutes contemplating a beginning and it just isn’t coming to me. Not a cohesive one, anyway. So I figure I’ll just take a step back and do one of those stream of consciousness kind of things and see where it leads me.

I’m not in the best of moods today. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that we were woken up this morning by our telephones freaking out. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but from the sounds of it they just decided to emit one uninterrupted ring that lasted for about two minutes. Nobody was calling as far as I can tell. At least, if they were, their number didn’t show up on the caller ID.

Maybe we have poltergeists.

I’ve been very frustrated by my cordless phones recently, and have been contemplating replacing them. They have absolute shit for battery life these days, regardless of how long we charge them. I figured it was going to cost more to replace the batteries than it would to replace the phones. Until I actually opened the back and looked, that is.

They take standard AA rechargeable batteries.

Oops.

So I’ll be picking up more of those later today.

I also did something very embarassing last night, but I’m not going to get into details of that here (to avoid further embarassment, mainly). The offense was forgiven (and very graciously so), but still…it really sucked.

I did get to see Grimm’s Faery Tales last night, and it was a damned fine show. I highly reccomend you go check it out if you get a chance.

I also got to hang out a little with my friends Steve, Ben and George. It was really nice to see them. We all used to hang out pretty much every weekend, but that hasn’t gone on in a very long time. They’ve been doing so a lot more recently, and have expressed an interest in having me join them, and I’m probably going to take them up on that – and the great part is that I can do so and get my raid on over the weekends as well. The Friday night raid is a very short one that usually starts at 8 and is over by 9, so I can easily do that and hang out with the guys after. It will, unfortunately, keep me from our late night Friday runs…and I’ve been enjoying the hell out of those recently…but ya gotta take a step back and do something outside of the game on occasion, and in recent weeks we’ve had a fairly intense raiding schedule.

So we’ll see. Maybe I’ll just alternate weeks or something.

The guys are even willing to come hang at our place and let the rest of the family play if they want to, so that’s cool.

Speaking of WoW (which is what I was talking about above for those of you who just had a collective “what??”), they’ve made some pretty major announcements in the last week or so about the future of the game. The biggest of those is the fact that there will be no more 40 player raid content in the Burning Crusade expansion. I cannot tell you how thrilled this makes me. I like the raid stuff – I really do. It has a truly epic feel and the rewards are sweet. But you really do have to deal with a lot of bullshit to participate in it, and with the way our guild is growing we’ll be able to do most of it with just us and our friends in the allied guilds.

I find it amusing that there are so many raiders upset about this change, and how they make are so convinced that Blizzard is now “ruining” the endgame. Even more amusing is the fact that they think this change amounts to “caving to casuals.” This is largely based on the fact that they seem to think that the activity on the official WoW forums actually influenced the developers in their decision.

What these folks apparently fail to realize is that Blizzard is a business, and that their primary concern is the bottom line. They want to make money. How do they make money with this game? By getting players to buy it and continue paying the monthtly subscription fees. This decision, in my opinion, is based entirely on data. They know how many players they have, they know the percentage of those players who access the raid level content, and they know how many players cancel their accounts after hitting level 60. I am convinced that the large majority of players who have reached “endgame” do not regularly access the raid level content, and that Blizzard is making the very wise move of adding content that will keep those players paying their monthly subscription fees.

I also find it very amusing (and insulting) that the “hardcores” make the claim that because the new 25 player epic dungeon is being touted as the most difficult dungeon in the game the smaller guilds will not be able to handle it.

Here’s a newsflash for you, Mr. MC Raider – Being in a guild large enough to tackle 40 player content does not automatically grant you skill. If it’s a matter of needing the gear from the 40 player content that is currently available, Blizzard has already stated that it would take less than 40 level 70 players to handle that content.

Do you remember how many they said it would take? I do.

25.

I applaud this decision. It will, in my opinion, make the game much accessible to smaller groups of friends who enjoy playing with each other and don’t necessarily want to put up with bullshit from strangers just to see something new. Blizzard just locked in my purchase of their new expansion, and guaranteed my subscription fees for the forseeable future. I’m sure I’m not the only one, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people came back after hearing about this.

Well, I could probably write a lot more but I’ve got things to do before our raid tonight. Have a good one out there, my friends.