Polish This

Polish. The word bothers me. Read Bildo's post about Conan getting delayed again "to polish the game even more." Excuse me for beating a dead horse, but this little rant is timely for me. You see, my work has delayed their main product again and they actually used "polish" as the excuse. Um... right... I'm in software test. I've seen defect log and it ain't pretty.

When a company tells its customers they're postponing a release for "polishing"... that is PR putting a positive spin on a bad situation. When a company tells itself they're postponing release for "polishing" ... that, my friends, is politics.

If I hear the "polish" excuse, I think the product has too many:

• Broken features... that is, good ol' bugs. Hopefully minor things like typos and not hangs or crashes.
• Half-finished features. Either the feature was poorly specced to begin with or the software engineer cut corners to finish on time.
• Poorly designed features. Maybe it sounded good on paper but beta testers found it boring.

I had a point to all this... but lost it. Meh. I'm just bitter they delayed Smash Bros Brawl again.

Where's My Warcraft?

Rum? Check.
Coke? Check.
Warcraft? No.

The kids are fast asleep. I have an adult beverage in hand. Thoughts of running a few dungeons buzzing on caffeine, sugar, and alcohol. I pugged Dead Mines the other night and they called me god after multiple demonstrations of my near divine healing skillz. Not to brag (hehe). Wonder how I'd do over the legal limit.

Nope. Blizzavision has gone fubar on me. Hung at authentication. Perfect.



Thinking I need a "plan B game" for times like these. Something to fall back to if WOW is down. Maybe I'll dust off my copy of Rome Total War or try my hand at the boy's Zelda Twilight Princess. Now that should be interesting with good buzz going.

Theater Thursdays - January 17

Just Loot It via WOW Insider.



A modern Aristophanes emerges. The poetry is sublime.

Greed roll when you pass
Oops I mean need
Need need need
Then log with ninja speed

Goodbye Guinness

Today I buried my Guinness, my dog of almost nine years, beneath a tree bordering a field behind my parents' house. I cannot describe my sadness. He was a great dog and a member of our family. Guinness was sweet, funny, smart, loving, protective, obedient, silly, friendly, and happy. He was a black lab and golden retriever mix and had the best qualities of both breeds. Guinness was a fantastic family pet.

He went so quick. Two days ago my daughter and I took him for a long walk. Last night we played for a long time with one of his new toys from Xmas. Noon today Avril called and said he was too weak to come in from outside. She took him to the vet, and I met them there. He was bleeding internally and badly. A tumor. Even with a blood transfusion and emergency surgery his odds were bleak. We had to make a difficult choice. His head was in my lap as he drifted off. I cried while I dug his grave and covered him over. I miss him already, but I won't forget all the good times we shared.

P.S. I'll tie this post back to gaming by sharing this silly little fact. Whenever I play a game where my character has a pet wolf, I've always named it Guinn. My ranger in pnp D&D, druid in Neverwinter Nights, and hunter in WOW all had pets named Guinn.

Adios Soulcalibur Legends

I'm not a fan of the fighter genre of video games. Too much button mashing for my liking. Except for the excellent Super Smash Bros series. However, I'm a daddy and a gamer. The kids and I bond while playing video games, so that means I play games outside of my comfort zone. For example, Soulcalibur Legends for the Nintendo Wii.

My son and I received the game through our GameFly account. Two days later it's back in the mail. We enjoyed Soulcalibur 2 for the Gamecube. Rather, my son enjoyed it and I tolerated it. Hehe. The Wii version looks about the same but features a cooperative quest mode. Completely unimpressed. This is a next gen game? My advice: save your money and your time.

What I disliked about the game the most were the controls. Okay, it's cool using the Wiimote like a sword... for about ten minutes. This makes me sound like a wimp but the constant, fast, and repetive motions made my arm joints sore. I didn't bother looking through the game's options to see if there were alternate control schemes available. To be honest I'd rather play Super Smash Bros Melee with the kids or watch the boy play Super Mario Galaxy.

Anticipation

Where was I one year ago? What was I doing? It's hard to believe that a year has passed since the Burning Crusade was released.

A year ago my raiding guild was eager to start playing the expansion. We had a handful of people that played in the beta. Between their reports in the guild forums and the info we scoured from the intrawebs, the guildies were dying to start running the new instances and working on our Kara keys.

I reserved a copy at Gamestop and made plans to pick it up at midnight. That night I showed up early and stood outside in the cold drizzle with a few hundred others. The install and account upgrade went surprisingly smooth. I was soon in the game, stepping through the portal, and running away from a roaming fel reaver.

The Burning Crusade was the first time I played an MMO on release. I was a little kid again, feeling joy and giddiness like I hadn't felt for so many years. All the recent MMO releases just don't excite me. At least not enough to tolerate the standard new-release-problems-and-issues.

So... I've purposely been ignoring news and info about Warhammer. Anticipation is okay but only in small doses, thank you very much. However. Stupid me. I subscribed to the Warhamma podcast and listened to it on my shiny new iPod on the drive home tonight.

How many more months until WAR's release...?