WoW-less weekend

I've had the first weekend without WoW for a long, long time. In a way I feel a bit uneasy, because I haven't blogged about anything for some time now, especially after the great discussion we had some weeks ago about the current status of roleplaying and my views of perfect game.

But then again, considering we had the lure coursing season start last weekend, I cannot feel bad about it. First of all, our two main dogs won the Finnish Cup 2009 competition (male won, bitch was second), which is an invitation only competition for the last season's best dogs. Secondly, our newcomer who ran her first competition won on Sunday, even though she didn't finish the final trial. What makes these wins even more sweet is the fact that our dogs, all four of them, had a severe case of kennel cough in the beginning of this year, taking three months and as many antibiotic strains to kill. Our male was closer to dying than we even want to think about.

And now they are already in the striking condition even though we think they are just recovering.

I have to add something about WoW to this post, too, because otherwise I'm fooling myself and you, dear readers. I truly believe that this 'hiatus' is going to do some good to my playing whenever the weather doesn't permit lengthy walks in the woods. Then again, if the weathers turn out good, I will be spending even less at the computer: my main obligation is with the family and the dogs, especially now that they have shown to be capable to be trained for the next European Championship later this summer.

Azariel commented my earlier post by asking if it would be viable to limit the speed at which the players advance in the content. I've thought about this for the last week or so, and IMHO there are several things in WoW which have been decreased in effect and lessened in impact to the players: levelling experience is one, the dumbing down the quests is another and most certainly, the effect of rested bonus is another, too. When I first started, I didn't pay any attention to the rested bonus. None at all. In fact, I even wondered why my exp bar was of different color from time to time, until I found about the resting.

Still, the effect of rested bonus, or in fact, the lack of penalty for not resting, is alarmingly low. You can blast through the current content in a few days of /played without paying any attention to the rested bonus. It's a nice bonus if you stay away from the game enough to gain it, but lack of rest doesn't affect the toon at all.

This is a clever thing in a game where the crafting and trade skills are more or less button clicking annoyance. In others, where trade skills can be considered worthy -or at least entertaining- like EQ2 this wouldn't be so clever as the players would be skipping the crafting minigame in search of levels and fame.

The moral of the story: simple small changes in the game's ruleset at any stage will change the whole game in the long run. Just look what has happened to WoW from TBC to WotLK and you'll notice.

Weekend all busy

What a weekend.

Friday came and went, mostly on preparations for the Saturday. Spent majority of the day on a training course for boy/girlscout leaders about plays and games for the kids. During the training I was -in the games, of course- the following:

- a Princess
- a Monster
- a Stone
- a Bat
- a Snake
- a Pirate (HARRR!)

and I was forced to do the following

- hide
- seek
- slide on the floor
- run
- jump
- draw
- sing

and all that in 5 hours including lunch! Honestly speaking, I was finished when I got back home.

On Sunday our dogs had a Lure Coursing competition. Considering the fact that we have been neglecting the long walks in the woods for some time now, the competition went quite well. Our male was third. The points of the finalists were quite high, so I'm very pleased on his performance. I have to write about LC more sometime, as there are some real peculiarities in there. Well, as far as I have heard, the whole dog-kennel-scene is filled with peculiar aspects of human behaviour...

What is really peculiar about the typical lure-coursing competition is in fact the way people handle their dogs. Considering that the dogs run twice a zig-zagging track about 600-1000 m long, they are generally not prepared for the activity. If you think of a human athlete preparing for 800m track, he will be warming up, stretching and concentrating. The dog athletes are generally taken to the track and let loose.

After a race, a human athlete will cool himself down, use some recovery drinks and foods and stretch and relax. Dog athletes, on the other hand, are walked to the car and stuffed in to wait for the next lap.

For us it's somewhat different. Our main concern is that the dogs are fit, well and willing to compete in full in the next competition, too. This means that in competitions we treat them as top athletes: we do a long walk with increasing intensitiy before the lap, and we cool them down with similar walk -decreasing intensity, naturally- after the lap.

This is repeated for the second lap, the finals.

All in all, the day is all walking and jogging with the dogs. We have once had a pedometer with us and it showed after a competition day that we had walked wbout 9.5 km during the day. No wonder we're as finished as the dogs as we return home!

I've seen during this competition season a few dogs lose their interest in the competing. They have been the dogs who have been taken to the track without proper warming up and have been put into the car after the race, without cooling them down. In the next lap they have been stiff, sore and most probably also in some muscle pain from the earlier strain. The most peculiar thing is the fact that the owners of the dog blame the dog for the poor performance, instead of taking the time to evaluate the situation and checking what was done (and what could be done otherwise).

What does this have to do with MMO's? Not much, except that if there is a wipe, it's not necessarily the healer's or the tank's fault. It's always good to start from yourself and change the way you work before launching on others.

Point taken.

What's going on, really?!

So I decided to give this a try. Blogging I mean. Been reading blogs for sometime now, mainly focused on MMO's and gaming, so I guess there is next to nothing I can say about them that hasn't been said already somewhere.

But then again, has that ever stopped anyone else from commenting the same issues? I mean, people are linking from one blog to another and saying both nice and not-so-nice things about other bloggers opinions. Why wouldn't I?

I'm not going to stick only on the MMO's and gaming. I most probably will be ranting about my two 'loves': MMO's and lure-coursing. Naturally the latter means that I will be crossing the ever sensitive issue of dogs and training, too. Which -sure as sunset- will not gain me any friends or positive comments. But it's my blog and I will cover whatever crosses my mind.

Like just now: I left my car to the garage for some extra maintenance that was scheduled a couple of weeks ago, when the car was in the normal, km-based service. Some parts were not in the shop, so they rescheduled the rest of the jobs for today. Mind you, that was two weeks ago.

Now I received a call from the service: sorry, but the parts haven't arrived yet, and you have to reschedule the maintenance. Come again?! The date was decided on the fact that they would receive the needed parts for today, right?

So what is going on in there? Bad planning, next to not existing customer service and so on?

Oh, yes, the current situation is that the secondary repairs they were making are now open. They couldn't even complete the jobs that were on the list!

Well, thankfully the car is leased, so there is not a dime in it from my side. But it pisses me off because it's me who is suffering from their incompetence.

And just to clarify. BullCopra was the first ever WoW toon I played over lv40. There you go, curious people.