MSTU 5510.005

Week 12: The Prodigal Son

2006-05-04T12:40:00.000-07:00

My problems with connecting to the internet were all about the router. It seems that WoW requires an almost-streamless connection to the computer, or else it thinks that something is amiss, so will disconnect you. My router is causing the problems in that it is slowing down the stream of information. This has caused a great deal of frustration with me and my room mates. I find that I have very little problems plugging my computer directly into the cable box, but as soon as I take it into the router, and try to VoIP, trouble arises. This does not makign gaming a happy thing. And so I suggest to WoW to ease it up a bit. People will questionable connections should not have to suffer - it's not like I'm doing 56k here people!

On a more pleasant note, Paul is back on board, so we play with him from time to time, though we're also doing our own thing, which means that our level discrepancy is staying the same. I wonder if WoW will have it programed with an assumption that if you get to a higher level, you have evolved, and therefore make things more intense/difficult by requiring different strategies. Otherwise, I don't think I want to continue playing a game that's "Load up on spells and potions, run into the situation, and try to win... QUICK!"

On another pleasant note, I'm getting married.

JUST KIDDING! Heheheh. Just making sure everyone was awake. The other pleasant note was to give kudos to both my gaming groups - through Sarah and Eyal. We've managed to come up with really good games these past couple of weeks. I mean, really good games. This class has been one of the most productive ones I've taken at Teachers College.

And if anyone is wondering, Joshua Stager will probably get done with his doctorate in about a year, after this summer. Maybe a year and a semester. And then...? Well, if this country isn't completely screwed, trying to fix the educational system. If not... HELLO OVERSEAS!

Week 11: Internet Separation Anxiety

2006-04-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm F'ed. WoW has been giving me a great deal of problems as of late, coinciding with difficulties of my router.

Occasionally I'd get kicked off of WoW for whatever reason, I'd throw myself back on, and that would be that. Sometimes it was when I talked to a store owner and other times when I wanted to get a quest (essential stuff). But eventually I would get back on. Then I started having problems with the router. It would tell me that information was getting to my computer, but it wasn't. It wasn't just my network card, because my room mate was having the same trouble. So I updated the router drivers ... things were working as normal.

Or so I thought.

That's around the same time that problems with WoW started occuring. I would get into the game, and everyone would be "Unknown Entity." Or I would fool around for a few moments and get kicked off the server. Or I would try to sit down, and it wouldn't let me. Always with the kicking off.

I contacted support for this issue, and they admitted that there was a problem with people trying to connect (they were also working on their server issues). So they told me to erase this, update that, which I did... and I still have been having problems. This makes me angry, as well as reluctant to even try to get on, because I will be thrown off again. Last night I tried for thirty minutes to get a healthy connection... to no avail.

So this can lead to problems.

I am continuing to talk with support, and get on occassionaly, so we'll see how this goes.

Week 10: Separation and Addiction

2006-04-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

I realize that I am posting a week before this is due because I may have posted on a week I wasn't required to post. And that's cooooooooool with me. As I found myself sitting at a computer with a bit of free time, I said to myself, "Let's knock this out of the box while I have a chance." As you all know, May is around the corner, and it gets crazy up in this piece in May.

So I have a confession... I am addicted to WoW. Luckily, I am a FUNCTIONING addict, as I have been able to limit my time on the computer... most of the time. Last night, for instance, I only played for an hour, so that's good. I WAS supposed to play for most of the day, but Paul vanished, and I'm already WAY ahead of him in terms of levels, so I thought that I would chill out and knock a quest out of the box.

The problem that I have run across is that the less you play the game, the less you want to play, so you don't, and then you fall behind the people that ARE playing. Also, the more you play the game... the more you want to play the game, which means that if people aren't in the same space you are in, you're going to surpass their level. This is the case for me. I'm near Nick, though a bit above him, and WAY above Paul. I think he's level 17 - I'm level 24. In terms of abilities, that's a lot. And you can't FORCE someone to play the game, so I try not to be on that much anymore, but ... well... I'm addicted, so I do. Nick helps feed that addiction by calling me up and being all, "I know you have class today, but... let's just play a little." This is while I'm at work, mind you. Because if I were in front of a computer that had access to WoW, I'd probably give in.

Funny story - I'm playing WoW, deep within this enemy camp. My roomate's bed is delivered. I scream an obscenity, make sure the area is clear, run down, let the guys in, then make an excuse to run back upstairs. I meet up with a friend in the camp, trying to frantically tell them my situation, when the elevator alarm goes off - these blokes are stuck in the elevator. Do I go and immediately help them? No. I have to kill this one guy so that I can complete my quest and get the hell out of dodge. So I let them bang on the door while the alarm goes off as I kill this one guy. Then, when it's done, I thank the guy, get into a safe corner, and THEN help them with the elevator.

^_^

Week 9: After Spring Break

2006-03-19T09:35:00.000-08:00

The pressure was too much for Nick... he bought the game and quickly got up to our level. In fact, for a while, he surpassed it, which was shocking and upsetting. Now, however, as if the game universe knew of this, Paul has been playing a lot less than usual. That leaves Nick to do as much as we can to bring him up to speed (although he was a high level, he didn't complete a lot of the quests Paul and I did).

So Nick and I have been playing, often sending mail to Paul (you can send mail to other characters in the game), letting him know what we're up to. Unfortunately, we've surpassed him, and now are trying our best not to get too far ahead of him. This was all blown to shit today, though, where I go on JUST to complete this SIMPLE quest that Nick had already done... but then that quest turned into another quest... that turned into another quest. I mean...

Remember that robot I believe I spoke about a few weeks back? Well, I was chilling near it when I saw these two similiar-level characters. I asked them if they were doing that specific quest, they were, so I joined to help them fight the robot. And we won. So... there was one elite quest down that I didn't think would happen. I actually then ran into the same group two missions down, and picked up with them to complete another difficult quest.

So they are now on my friends list.

Nick is now in VA as of today, so he'll won't be able to play, and I think that playing a million hours on Sunday morning may have drained me for the rest of the day. After all... I do have other classes.

Week 7: Withdrawal

2006-03-02T08:35:00.000-08:00

Today will be a short entry (I know some of you are thinking: Thank god! Finally, a short entry), because I have to prepare for a trip... and because I have been playing less these last two weeks.

For those of you who have been following along, you'll remember that Nick, on my suggestion to get a life, bowed out of WoW. It was a good decision, in that now he has time to look into his non-profit and start really concentrating on doing video projects... for me. So he's gone.

Now, without getting into too much detail, Paul and I have hit a bump in the road. We have committed ourselves to some major missions, none of which we can do alone, all of which are too difficult for us. That robot-creature still stands, ready to kill if we even try to get near it. And, trust me, it doesn't look like we can get near it without dying. So there's that.

It is also mid-term time. Paul and I both have very different schedules, so it is difficult to coordinate time to get on together. Add onto this personal issues and you've got a whole lot of not-playing time. This is what happens when you get a life... you lose your computer life. That's the way it's always been with me and my computer buddies.

In college, (see how we do that wavy flash-back thing here), a group of us guys would sit around all night, playing games. Then one of them got a gal, so he could only play on the nights that the gal wasn't around, though a lot of times he would be too tired trying to balance the girl/school/and gaming, so he'd dump gaming. I had a similar problem, in that I was in a long-distance relationship with a girl named Stacey O'Rear, and since our telephone conversations were precious, I'd often leave the game to talk with my significant other. I tried on the occasion to both play and talk, but that either ends up with me losing or her getting really pissed. And having a pissed girlfriend miles away means MORE phone conversations and LESS games. So I often just got up and left, with the boys shouting down the hall, "WTF?!?!?!"

Hey, boys, that's love. And I think that all of us understand that. You have loyalty to the boys, loyalty to the game, and loyalty to your love. Where does your loyalty lie?

So, anyway, most of you observant readers in the class will get where I'm going with this...

And with a possible relationship for myself in the making, time is going to get REAL interesting.

A boy can only just do so many things... a man does many things, only just so. (Can we improve on this saying?)

Week 6: A Loss

2006-02-22T09:27:00.000-08:00

Well, a friend of ours, Nick, is no longer adventuring with us. We put time and energy into training him through a trial basis, but then the time came to buy the actual game. We were under the impression that all he had to do was buy an account, and he could use my CD key. This proved not to be the case. And as he is in an interesting financial/time situation, purchasing the game plus paying to play it plus paying a huge opportunity cost in time added to my suggestion that he should not game anymore.

This is unfortunate for several reasons - 1) It's a fantastic way to sit around, chat with one another, get opinions - just BS. I don't think enough people just BS. Granted, in class the other day I talked about I thought education should be an anti-BS tool, but that is in regards to work and education - not socializing. So we lost the ability to have three-way conversations and talk about life, expectations, and OMG IS THAT A LEVEL 20 HOARD MEMBER?!

Also, as my roomie likes to point out, we won't be able to argue over what armor is better and what herbs to buy.

2) We need another hand! I mean, I hate to voice my selfishness here, but trying to get on in a world of hostility without another hand is friggin' hard. The other day we got slaughtered by this one quest... a quest that we tried over and over to accomplish from sheer stubborness... but to no avail.

And now, audience, I'm going to say my name.... Joshua Stager. And now I will play some angelc music. And I did all of this... just for fun.

Okay, back to the blog, for realz. I have something to admit that I'm not proud of. While on this impossible quest, I ran into someone just fooling around on the shore. I asked them for help, but I couldn't share the quest with them. The reason for this is because it was a multi-layer quest, where you have to do this one thing first, then you get to do another thing, etc. So we were well on our way into this quest. But I told the individual where to go to START the quest. She did not know, though, that I was following her with turned out to be a ticking time bomb. Now, the reason for this is that I would follow her to this one guy, who would turn the time bomb (in the form of some robot) on, and the robot would go insane and start trying to kill people. It was my hope that the robot would take on this individual and leave me and my party to attack from a distance without dying.

Paul TRIED to warn her.

But she didn't listen - the robot went insane - and everyone died in the fight. I could have really warned her, could have told her to get her freaky magic on the moment the robot went crazy, but I thought that I could use her better by throwing her to the lions... hoping to kill the lions off with our party. However, this didn't work. And I felt bad.

I felt bad.

About killing a person.

In cyber-space.

Who got resurrected.

I would explore this a little more, but my previous posts have been outrageous, so I'll let people just think about all this. And by people, I mean me.

Week 5: Paying it Forward

2006-02-18T08:14:00.000-08:00

One of the successes of WoW is the community.

A recent article that I read (http://www.innewsweekly.com/innews/?class_code=Ga&article_code=941) concerning WoW's mistake to ban a player who was recruiting for an openly gay guild. Once that individual and others complained, Blizzard wisely apologized and allowed the member to keep her character and continue recruiting. Thank god. I would be VERY disappointed if WoW didn't allow everyone to join in the fun, create their communities, and venture forward together on quests.

As I said before, one of the successes of WoW is the ability to create, be invited into, or witness community. So it wouldn't make sense to exclude ANY individual who was attempting to create a community. If the religious right doesn't want to acknowledge the existence of a homosexual community, fine, that's their right, so they can keep their kids off the damn servers. This member was trying to create a community, something that binds, and was not attempting to steal, lie, or disrupt the flow of things as an anarchist would see fit. (Maybe that last bit was off in left field - the point is that anyone trying to create a community should be allowed, whereas I could see Blizzard having a problem with anarchists, who try to destroy and scatter.)

Let me digress slightly. Paul and I were chilling on Darkshore, doing some quests, probably level, I don't know... 13 or so. We stumbled upon a quest that would require GREATLY more powerful characters. Luckily, we ran into some girl who was a level 20 mage, and she helped us out. We invited her into our group, she was down, and while we fought, she healed. Then she got to take some mushrooms from the cave we were in, as well as treasure and exp. We wouldn't have been able to do it without her; she was having a hard time going about it solo. So we combined and beat the quest. Before going on her merry way, she points out what other things we'll need to do shortly, taking us to the actual places, helping us out. We finished three quests because of her, one of which I would have had NO clue how to do.

Next snap-shot: We ran into this guy in the middle of the woods, we start chatting with him, he joins our group. He helps us go through two quests... none of which he has, nor can have. He's just there to help us out, chat about life in America (he was from Australia), and fight alongside us.

Next snap-shot: In one of the above quests with Dazlain (the chap), we stumbled across this Mother's Den quest, where we have to kill this mother bear. We get there, and there's a group in front of us. Now, instead of charging in and killing the bear, we wait in line until the group is done - because the Mother would respawn after they killed her. So they do, but the leader stops before going out and says, "Thanks a lot for waiting. It's more than what most others would do."

I will not explicate the above snapshots. These snapshots make the game worthwhile.

Week 4: Communication

2006-02-13T07:38:00.001-08:00

Let me clarify for a couple of people who have e-mailed me about how I communicate with friends through WoW. Now, WoW should have known that people would want to talk with one-and-other, and built in a chat program (possibly even working with Skype for such a thing) so that people could talk to each other. However, this is not the case. So my friends and I set a certain time and date (all of us have crazy schedules, but Wednesday is a really good time), we get on Skype, chat for a second, and then try to get online. Luckily WoW doesn't use a heck of a lot of computing or graphic power, so you can do this easily. Then we chat about life while we wait in the queue.

It's a going joke that I have some sort of magical game power because I'm always the first to be able to get into the game. And not by seconds or even minutes - last night I got in forty-five minutes ahead of another friend. He finally gave up.

This brings me to a problem with WoW. If people have to wait too long to get onto a server, they'll get fed up, and leave. I don't know why it takes one of my friends so long to get on... perhaps it's that he has a trial version, so the game puts him on the backburner. One would think, though, if WoW really wanted more people to buy the game, they would give PREFERENCE to those on a trial basis.

Another thing that popped up was that my friend is using my discs to play the game on a trial basis. I thought that he could just load the discs, and then create a real account, without having to buy the game. Turns out this isn't the case, so he says, as the game told him that if he wanted a real account, he'd have to buy the game. Does this sound right to anyone?

Okay, back to the game for a second. I remember an e-mail asked if everyone in the game chatted through Skpe. No. That would be awesome, but there are several other ways to communicate.

Let me elucidate the matter:

1) You can type outloud so that anyone around you can see the text. A little bubble comes up. This is fine for when you're standing in front of someone, or you're a textfreak - someone who constantly reads what's going on in the left corner of your screen.

2) You can whisper to someone. This is great because then not everyone has to hear what you're saying - bad because not everyone glances at the bottom left of their screen. So imagine the screen as a HUD - there is a small box of text on the lower screen that explains action and speech. Since you're wandering around, doing your own thing, mindful of your character, the chances of you missing someone whispering to you are pretty high. What I do when I want to make sure someone is listening is I go in front of them and wave or something to get their attention, then whisper.

3) Speaking of waving - there are a lot of movements you can tell your character to do, like dance, wave, sit, sleep, giggle, cry, etc. I think you can use hotkeys for this, but another way is to /e (for emote) and then the command: /e giggle - your character laughs. This is great fun.

4) Another way of communicating is like /e except that your character doesn't actually do it. And now I've forgotten what key you have to press. Perhaps its still /e. So let's say that you want your character to do something that it's not programmed to do. You want him to pull his beard in frustration. Then you go and press /e pulls his beard in frustration. Then text will pop up in the lower left corner and says, "Character name" pulls his beard in frustration.

I prefer to Skype because, well, it's better communication.

My room mate came in the other day and said, "I love it when you guys are talking about the game. It cracks my sh-t up. You're always like, "OMG! I need help! There's this huge... oh sh-t, nevermind. I died. Give me a second," or, "Nick, goddamnit, get your ass over here and except this quest!", or, her favorite, "God, I really wish I could buy this enchanted leather belt, but I don't have enough silver." She loves to hear about guys virtually shopping.

And that's it for now.

Week 3: WoW

2006-02-02T12:49:00.000-08:00

So, my not-so-captive audience, let me explain a little something I like to call Holy WoW! Here's the deal. A friend of mine, who I believe this blog is linked to, though if that's not the case I will make it so, who is now in Maryland doing his graduate work in theatre-whosits discovered a game called World of WarCraft. Now Paul isn't a big game player because he likes to get a taste of a game, but will soon lose interest. So he was playing this one game, League of Heroes or something like that, and somehow he gets turned onto World of WarCraft. Perhaps someone in his guild said something, I don't know. The point is that he starts playing WoW and is bowled over by it. He keeps talking about it like it's gods gift to video games.

So I play.

In fact, I started on Sunday. I meant to install it, play around with it for a bit, and then go back to my normal life. Instead, I played six hours with him mentoring.

A word about starting the game. Rather, a lot of words. Get a mentor. Have someone who has obviously played play with you, teach you the ropes, etc., because you don't want to be flipping through the 500 page manual they give you with the game. Instead, Paul was gracious enough to stop playing his level one-million warlock demon beast-monkey to help a lowly Night Elf Hunter. I don't know if this is a drawback that you really should have someone help you out, or if it's good because it forces community and relations and all that. It's certainly a lot more fun. Paul was patient, letting me know that typing /laugh will make me laugh, that I need to left click on an enemy to stab it, that I don't need to KEEP left clicking... etc. There's a lot to learn.

I'm sure that there are other ways to communicate through WoW, but we use Skype. In fact, I feel that the only reason I quit the other day was because my ears hurt from the earpieces. However, the game is so good that you actually go through these ear-stages:

1) Feeling fine
2) Ears feel the minor discomfot
3) Ears start to hurt
4) Ears feel like they are bleeding and about to fall off

I usually push it past stage 4 for as long as I can, which is about six hours I've found out.

Week 2: Introduction

2006-01-24T08:46:00.000-08:00

Greetings and salutations, MSTU5510!

Unfortunately, I was not on the original class roster, so I did not get to meet the class. However, I will be there Tuesday to meet everyone.

A little bit about me, as is a requisite for every introduction: I'm an EDD student in the Public-School Leadership Program. My background is education, as I used to teach high school English in Harlem and was a Dean. My dissertation interests are alternative suspension sites. Oh, yes, I'm a Pisces and an atheist.

As for the game that I will use to develop my expertise - I believe I will have to choose Castelvania: Curse of Darkness. This is unless I can find another game for the PS2 that I am interested in or the computer, but that will require some game shopping. Is it all right that I change games midstream of the semester, as I'm sure I'll be able to knock a game out of the box in just a few weeks. I've been playing them ever since my mother refused to buy a Nintendo for me, so I snuck over to the neighbor's house for many hours of video game enjoyment.

I so enjoy video games that I also listen to video game music. Be sure to check out www.ocremix.org or www.ormgas.com if you have a hankering for the soundtrack of Lemmings, Megaman, FF, Halo, or a plethora of other games. FYI: My name there is JusticeJP.