amassed lust Blog of Raymond Angel; Startup Enthusiast, CEO

I guess the jokes on Blizzard today.

One of the web guys and one of the developers at Blizzard thought it would be a funny prank for April Fool’s Day to post images of a fake new hero class to the website featuring a guitar playing Bard with Guitar Hero graphics.

In a funny twist the guys at Activision’s legal department who apparently have no sense of humor nor sense of intelligence are suing the Blizzard side of the newly formed Activision Blizzard for infringing on trademarks with Guitar Hero like images on the page.

All I can really say is that it provides me great laughs that not only would Blizzard post Guitar Hero images but that Activision which is the same company would then try to sue them for it.

I’ve been dual-booting between Linux Mint and Windows Vista on all of my machines for a while now trying to make the adjustment to using Linux full-time.

I still find myself switching between the operating systems often. For somethings Linux works best, for others I still have to come back to Windows.

Linux is a “your mileage may vary” kind of operating system.

Choice is great. I have a great deal of choices in Linux… but sometimes I have so many that it just ruins the experience for me.

A good example is how applications are installed on various distros.

For most you actually have to compile the files before you install them. I’ve actually found myself getting pretty acquainted with the process and it isn’t terribly hard but can my fiancee or my mom do it? Certainly not.

I know that the great part about Linux is that we have choice… however this is part of the problem. With so many choices no one can decide on a standard for installing applications on Linux that the regular average computer user can sit down and do.

RPMs, DEBS, these are things that the average user just doesn’t understand… nor do they want to.

So what can the people pushing Linux truly do?

Honestly I’m not sure. Getting people to agree on anything in the Linux community is going to be about damn near impossible.

My experience with the community is another “milage may vary” sort of topic. Sometimes I’ll ask for some assistance and people are quick to jump up and either give me the answer I need or at the very least point me in the right direction of a tutorial that I couldn’t find even after a great deal of searching.

Othertimes they can all be egotistical assholes. They believe they are better then everyone else because they use an “alternative” operating system. Sure buddy… that makes you so much “cooler”.

I’ve found that someone like my fiancee or my mother won’t have much luck finding help all of the time for issues they may have. If I decided to set either of them up with a Linux system I would myself have to become more familiar with the innerworkings so they have someone that can help them.

Linux has been great in the productivity department for me. I have found a plethora of great programs that keep me productive on Linux and it truly shows that Linux is becoming ready for the business and educational enviroment. As far as entertainment goes I’ve found the choices to be lacking.

A great deal of music and video software exists for Linux but not each program does everything and it often times takes me two programs to do things that one simple program on Windows could do but I’ve noticed that in this area a new program for Linux comes out nearly all of the time and that the developers are dedicated to making software that does everything I want.

Gaming on Linux has also been suprisingly pleasant. I’m playing World of Warcraft on my Linux box through Wine and I must say the experience has been VERY positive for me. I thought the game would run slow, the framerate would be bad or I’d run in to a lot of problems. Everyone makes installing it out to be some huge nightmare but I honestly had ZERO real problems getting it up and running on my Linux box.

As a matter of fact I’ve found that World of Warcraft not only LOOKS better on my Linux box then it does on Windows I get a much higher framerate then what I’ve been getting on Windows Vista.

I can run World of Warcraft at a higher graphics setting in Linux then I could on Windows and it looks better! I still can’t get over that.

With more and more software becoming avaliable each day I find myself pulled more and more to Linux because my system is more secure, seems a whole hell of a lot snappier, and most everything for Linux can be had for no charge.

Once the community learns to be more accepting of the new Linux users, some standards are established, and some more companies like Dell start offering Linux preinstalled you will see more and more people switching over to Linux.

P.S

The Linux Mint community has been the most pleasant community in the Linux world to date. When other distro communities were mean, hateful, and full of themselves the people in the Linux Mint community were understanding, thoughtful, and nice.

Tiffany and I are trying to spend more time together this weekend then we have in the past.

So we decided to play World of Warcraft together. I moved my computer to another desk and she moved her laptop to a spot on the same desk and we rerolled new characters on a PVP server.

Last night we both played until level 8 before we decided to watch some television and then hit the bed to get rested up for another fun-filled and exciting day.

I’ll be sure to post more on our status as we keep playing

So begins my journey…

The install has completed, the patching is nearly finished.

I must say that I’m VERY excited.

I just had my first successful compile and I must admit I am very excited.

While waiting for my World of Warcraft patches to download I decided to get G-15 support going for my keyboard and download the libraries for it.

I was intimidated and didn’t think I’d be able to figure it out but now I can safely say that I compiled it, installed it, and even started mapping my extra G keys to make them usable!

I installed Linux Mint on my computer and am dual-booting between it and Windows Vista.

If I can make World of Warcraft run on Linux properly then I will use it a lot more in my day-to-day computing.

The installer is downloading the files I need right now

Recently I wrote about quitting World of Warcraft and how I didn’t really miss it. I even listed several reasons as to why I left the game. I didn’t include everything on that list but I still wrote a lot of them down.

One reason I left is because I was on the Alexstraza server. When I first started playing the game it was where my friends were (namely Jim).

Over time Alexstraza has become known as a server full of drama, problems, glitches and slow overcrowding.

One reason I left the game was because I was sick to death of waiting in a que, having to wait hours for Alterac Valley and the general childish drama of the server.

this week Blizzard opened a new server. This week I resubscribed to the game and moved ALL of my characters to said new server and decided to give the game another go.

Imust say I’m impressed. Not having to deal with the same stupid childish antics (yet), being able to get in to Alterac Valley with only ten minute ques, and not watching trade channel be spammed every two seconds is a nice change.

Will this bring me back to the game forever?

Maybe… not likely as I still have a great deal of issues with the game… but will it get me playing again for a while? Most certainly.

Besides with Age of Conan now being pushed back until May what am I suppose to play?

I cancelled my World of Warcraft account recently.

As of right now I’ve already found that I have more time dedicated to getting things done, posting on my blog more often, talking with friends a bit more and surfing the news on the Internet.

Do I miss it?

I can’t really say that I miss it. I have noticed though that on ocassions I find myself thinking it would be alright to login and start grinding for some gold.

The more I thought about that though the more I realized that grinding is one of the reasons I left.

Upon further thought I also realized that it is highly likely I may join the world again when the next expansion pack comes out.

My logic here is rather simple.

When Wrath of the Lich King comes out the value of everything in Northend will be higher and the game economy will again for a while inflate.

As such I should be able to make a large amount of gold by simply questing and doing things that I’m already going to need to do to begin with.

I’m not addicted to World of Warcraft, I’m not counting down the days until the next expansion pack either. I am interested though on how it will play out and how good of a game it will be.

Age of Conan though… I am counting down for that one

I’ve been a pretty loyal World of Warcraft player for some time now as many around me already know.

Earlier this week as evidenced in this post you saw that I decided to cancel my account.

I left because…

• I hate que times.
  Sure the ques are only about fifteen minutes or so now. I realize they used to be much longer and used to happen more often but my new busy schedule prevents me from giving World of Warcraft long periods of playing. Fifteen minutes is 1/4 of my play time spent waiting to get in the game. I can simply play other games without a que and get my fix of fun gaming elsewhere.
• I hate Blizzard’s customer is wrong approach.
  The moderators on the forums will often belittle players, take sides, and post statements that if another company made them to a customer base or called a customer stupid would be totally unacceptable. For Blizzard though it seems acceptable.
• Childish Antics.
  Something about World of Warcraft sure does attract the drama filled children. I’m waiting for Age of Conan a truly adult game to finally be released. I’m sure the kids will come eventually but I’m holding out hope they won’t be like the children in World of Warcraft.
• Alterac Valley.
  Why does Blizzard insist that Horde players now have the upper-hand in Alterac Valley when the Alliance clearly has an amazing chokepoint. Why should I suffer through two hour que times to play my favorite battleground because the Alliance gets beaten and won’t que for it until the Horde lets them win some.
• Battleground AFKers.
  I realize they are now taking action against people who are AFK a great deal but this like other solutions will slowly be used less and less often.
• Boredom.
  The game hasn’t really changed all that much. Sure we’ve got Black Temple in the game, Sunwell coming in the game, and more but at the moment nothing revolutionary is happening in World of Warcraft. Blizzard take some ideas from other MMORPGS that are coming out this year and start adding new features to attract players back.

I may only be one player to quit in 9 million players but I’ll take my money and spend it on the Age of Conan Collectors Edition where I can experience a truly adult game, better PVP, player built cities, new classes, and a whole new story line.