Me Want…

I have been playing WoW again lately and have decided I’m in desparate need of new weapons. None of the drops or quest rewards I’ve gotten in the last month have been better than what I was already using, which, frankly, is sad (see Arcadian Claymore and Splintermark). I discovered that I could fairly easily upgrade both of my weapons at the Valley of Honor quartermasters by playing a bit of AV and turning in my honor and AV marks. I know I need to upgrade my bow first and am currently working towards Merciless Gladiator’s Crossbow of the Phoenix . But, damn, there are both a polearm and a two-handed sword that I am drooling over (see below – how good do those look on me!?).

XBox Livid

A few months ago, I was playing some XBox games with a friend of mine on his 360. We couldn’t access certain features of the game and we thought it might be because I didn’t have a Gold membership for my account. So, I went ahead and signed up even though I don’t have an XBox, but of course, that didn’t end up being the issue, so we still couldn’t play what we wanted to. Fun! I tried to cancel my subscription both via his XBox and online that night and discovered that they require you to call to cancel. I knew immediately that would be a pain in the ass. They obviously made the conscious decision to not give any convenient ways of canceling accounts. Thus, I could only assume that forcing customers to talk to someone was intended to make it even harder, at least in part by having the customer service representative make the process as difficult as possible.

So I procrastinated calling them for a while, as I loathe these kinds of situations, but finally called this morning. I went through an automated voice menu, of course, and eventually got to a menu where one of the options was ‘Cancel My XBox Live Account’, so I selected that option. I was then connected to a customer service representative. He confirmed that I wanted to cancel my account and then proceeded to have me confirm all kinds of details about my account. He made me repeat and spell everything, sometimes more than once. I got the distinct impression that it wasnt that he didn’t understand, but that he was trained to make the process as difficult and frustrating as possible in the hopes that the customer would give up and change his mind. It just wasn’t believable to me that he was that inept, despite my unwavering faith in the capacity of humans to be complete idiots.

So after we get through that painful process, he informs me that he cannot actually help me with my request. He has to transfer me to the Billing and Cancellations department. Given that the menu option I chose in the automated voice menu was “Cancel My XBox Live Account”, it was perplexing to me that I was transferred to someone who couldn’t help me with that request. Furthermore, he confirmed at the beginning of our conversation that what I wanted was to cancel my account, so if he couldn’t help me, why didn’t he just transfer me immediately to someone who could. Let’s see…could it be an attempt to make the process frustrating enough that I might give up? No, they wouldn’t do that, I’m sure.

He then proceeds to put me on hold for about 6 minutes, coming back every few minutes to tell me how busy Billing and Cancellations is and that someone will be with me shortly. Finally, a woman, who I’m sure was from a totally different department and not sitting at the desk right next to his, picks up the line. She proceeds to have me repeat all the same information to verify my account as the first guy. I know, it’s a big shock. You couldn’t have seen that coming the second the first guy told me that he was going to have to transfer me to someone else. I mean, I’m sure Microsoft really wants to help facilitate good customer service experiences and wouldn’t needlessly ask people to repeat information over and over in the hopes of wearing them down.

Once we were finished going over every detail of my account again, she began the “talk the customer out of canceling” portion of the conversation. She asked me my reason for canceling, as I knew she would before I even called. I explained to her that I dont have an XBox, that I subscribed at a friend’s house a few months ago but havent used any membership features since then, so it’s not remotely worth it to me. I was pretty sure she hadn’t heard that reason too often, if at all, before. Like a true trooper, though, she managed to come up with some retorts that I’m not even sure were from her training manual. They just seemed too ridiculous to be official, but maybe I’m giving Microsoft too much credit.

Her counter offers included, “You should consider buying your own XBox because you know, you can transfer this account to your own XBox.” Okay, yeah, I’ll go spend a few hundred bucks so we can avoid this hassle. Another suggestion was, “Are you sure you don’t have a friend or family member with an XBox that would like to take over your account?” Uh…seriously? ‘Hey, Bob, I was going to cancel my XBox account, but then I realized that if you take it over, and we go through a bunch of hassle to change all the billing and contact information, and you want a gamer tag that represents who I am and not who you are, it would just make more sense. Oh, and *your* XBox Live Account, well, you can just get someone else to take that over, because you don’t want to cancel that either. It just doesn’t make sense if you think about it.’

So after I deflected all that crap, she said she would cancel the renewal charge to my credit card, but not the account so I could keep using it. Yes, thank you for not deleting my free gamer tag. Although, as a final ’screw you’ to someone who made it through the cancellation gauntlet, I wouldn’t put it past Microsoft.

So Many Screenshots…

I played WoW a bit over the holiday break and accumulated a lot of screen shots that need sharing. Most of them are related to neat Christmas themed skins.

This first set of pictures shows a skin they handed out for a Christmas mount. I used it on my flying mount and flew around Shadowmoon Valley. I love the magical holiday dust trailing from his hooves as he gallops through the air.

I used the transmogrifier by the airship tower by the Undercity and was turned into a gnome.

When I got back to Durotar, I used the transmogrifier by the airship tower there and got turned into a slightly less hairy gnome. I then holiday mount skin on my wolf and ran around in full Christmas themed skin style.

I can’t remember where I got it, but I had a broom in my inventory, perhaps left over from Halloween, that I finally decided to give a try. It was pretty fun, and funny looking, to fly around on. However, I didn’t realize it wasn’t truly a flying broomstick and when I took it over the edge of Aldor’s Rise, I fell to my death.

Finally, last night, I got two new pieces of armor for the first time in a long while. Unfortunately, they were both helmets and the one I liked the look of more had the lesser stats. I ended up going with the Stalker’s Helmet of Second Sight.

WoW Stuff

Of course, there are various Halloween themed goings-on in the game right now. One such event is a regularly scheduled attack on Razor Hill by the specter of the headless horseman. There is a quest to save the town from his rampage. When you complete it, which I did, you get some pumpkins that you can either wear on your head or throw at people. I tried one on and I think it looks awesome!

I also got a trick or treat bag as a reward for another Halloween quest. It contained some candy that turns me into an apparition, as well as a super lame “Human Female Mask.” It looks absolutely ridiculous when I wear it.

Last, while I was in Orgrimmar, a guy rode past me on an awesome cat mount. I asked him where he got it, and apparently it’s part of the trading card set, Fires of Outland. It was sweet!

First Puzzle Comedy Shooter

Jordan and I played Portal all the way through tonight and it was awesome! Of course the puzzles were brilliant and incredibly fun. We took tangents from solving the puzzles just to play with the portal physics, which is exactly what the Valve spokesperson said would happen when I saw it demoed at GDC this year. At times, we got vertigo or had to pause and rub our heads to stop the brain cramps, but it was the good kind of mind boggling. ; ) In addition to the fun of the problem solving and the physics engine, the game was laced with a dark humor that was hilarious. The vehicle for the comedy was a computer that provides information and commentary via the PA system as you proceed through the “test scenarios.” At first, it was mildly amusing as the female voice would deliver alarming information about your likely impending death in a soothing and cheery voice. As the game proceeded, the humor in this vein becomes more and more extreme. At points, we had to take breaks because I was doubled over with laughter. Without giving anything away, closer to the end of the game, the computer’s humor becomes inane and even immature at times, as she lashes out at you with the fury of a 6 year old. After you successfully finish the game, you are rewarded with a Jonathan Coulton song that is it’s own gem and had us laughing hysterically as well. I unequivocally recommend that everyone I know play this game. It is short, taking only a few hours to complete, and it is enjoyable and impressive on many levels. It sets the bar for a genre all its own.

Up in the Sky…

I got my flying mount, sooner than I expected. I didn’t want to wait another 6 months for the money to get an epic one, so I just went for the standard. While flying is incredibly cool and gives a whole new perspective on a two year old game, as well as access to areas you cannot otherwise reach, it is painful to travel so slowly when I’m used to my swifter wolf. : \  Still, I can’t complain. Overall, it was well worth it.

Ding!

I got 70 last night. Only took me, what, around 9 months. Also, I had abandoned my Rip-Blade Ravager a while ago because I just hated the look of the thing. Yes, I’m a girl, I care if my pet is pretty. That left me with my level 60 cat, Rak’shiri, whom I had renamed Cringer, and my level 63 serpent, Son of Hakkar, whom I renamed Ramjet. I was switching between them, but with me being level 67 when I got rid of the ravager, my pets weren’t getting any experience and were leveling really slowly. I never leveled Ramjet any further and I only managed to get Cringer to 62. So, once I hit level 70 last night, I decided the next course of action was to get myself a nice level 70 cat, a Blackwind Sabercat. They look similar to Rak’shiri with the glowing quality to the eyes and coat, and the unnatural colors for the coat and stripe color combination, so I was rather happy with this option for a new pet. The catch is that they are in an area you can only get into with a flying mount. However, I am still 200 gold shy of getting my flying mount. Getting that 200g is going to be a lot harder with a crappy low level pet that can’t hold threat for me.

So, I was looking around online and found a solution in a lovely little trick that someone posted. Anyone who has played Wow for a while is familiar with the phenomenon where if you are in an area that is bordered by mountains, and you run up into the mountains as far as you can before the grade gets to steep to proceed, sometimes the game switches you to the zone on the other side of the mountain as far as what it registers as your location. Someone had posted some coordinates in Terrokar Forest where you can use this trick and have the game think you are in Skettis Mountains. He also mentioned that if you die while in this zone, there is a graveyard there at which you will resurrect. The coordinates in Terrokar are conveniently located behind the elite spider Terokkarantula. So, I ran over there, ran behind the spider, ran up into the mountains until I saw the zone switch to Skettis Mountains and just keep running up against the grade in place while the spider killed me.

Sure enough, when I resurrected, I was in Skettis Mountains. I revived in the graveyard and took the resurrection sickness hit. Then I hopped on my mount, loped over to where the cats are, managing to only pull one or two mobs that I easily outran along the way. I found the cats, snuck amongst them until I found an isolated level 70 one, and tamed him in a freezing trap. I then hoped on my mount and descended down the mountain side into Shadowmoon Valley, taking some damage, but not enough to die.

Yay! Voila! New level 70 kitty! Cringer is reborn as a useful pet! The downside is that I also read that the loyalty grind on a level 70 pet is looooong. One poster said that a GM had this to say about it in a private conversation they once had on the topic: “While I cannot get into the exact mechanics of pet loyalty, I assure you that the mechanics are working for the pet you have chosen. Please note that pets at higher levels are more stubborn than lower level pets.” Good thing I have to grind for 200g anyway! Once I get him to loyalty level 6, it will be fun to PVP again with a strong pet.

So Close

< 5 bars to 70. Should have it by week’s end.

Ridiculous

I had the most awesome BF2 game of my career last week. The usual server I play on, the ORST server, was empty. Another clan, IMA, has some pretty decent servers, so I decided to play on their 64 player infantry only city maps server. I had three pretty good games, but I don’t recall the maps. Then, Karkand came up. The first Karkand game was pretty quick and I did okay. The second Karkand game went on for about an hour and I was totally bustin’ it up. I was on MEC and the US team only took a flag a few times. So very few of the points I amassed were flag capture points. When the game ended, I had 173 points. Second place had 85. My KDR was 46: 25. I ended up getting the expert medic badge for that performance. Note that 46 kills only gets me 92 pts. Since I had hardly any flag capture points, that means I had almost as many revive points as kill points. It was an insane game! I was rockin’ out. Repeatedly, there would be a skirmish between 4 MEC and 4 US troops. All my guys would fall and only one of the US guys would fall, leaving me to finish off 3 myself. I would kill all 3, then revive my 3, and then there’d be more US guys on us again. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. It was super fun. The down side is that apparently the server isn’t ranked because it’s infantry only. It says it is ranked in the server browser, but the stats and the badge never showed up on BF2S.com and I’m pretty sure infantry only can’t be ranked. Oh well, it is captured here for posterity. : )

Pickin’ Them Off

I played BF2 for the first time in about a year last night, which makes for a funny looking BF2Stats KDR graph, I might add. I was at Jordan’s house, so we were squaded up. I expected to entirely suck, being ridiculously out of practice. It was kind of ironic actually because he had an early birthday present for me – a BF2142 special edition Logitech G5 gaming mouse – which he he had already ordered and planned on giving me before I out of the blue told him I wanted to play BF2 last night. He told me he wished they had a BF2 edition, but it was the closest they offered. Anyway, the most fun and surprising part was that we didn’t suck at all. We got 3rd and 4th on the server in several games. I got to do my favorite thing of gunning in the attack chopper, when the Sharqi map came up. We also played Strike at Karkand, another of my favorite maps, in addition to a slew of others. I may have to get back into this game. It also makes me miss BF1942, including the incredibly intense and enjoyable El Alamein map. The cap the flag tricks we used to do with the Stucka were awesome, and usually suicide, but when we succeeded, it was such the rush. The AA in 1942 was also a blast and was great for taking out tanks as well. Too bad AA isn’t fun at all in BF2. And too bad that BF2142 was such a disappointment.