Still here...

As Brandon so subtly pointed out I have a knack for being lazy: doubly so with writing anything. I love writing but usually tend to hate most things I put to paper. Life has also crazy the past few weeks. Friends have been having babies, ruptured water heaters are deluging my home into firstly a swimming pool, and secondly an isolated hurricane. They set up 4722 fans to help dry the place out. We could not live at home. We stayed with the people with the aforementioned baby… yeah. So when you add the crazy with the lazy you get “Clazy.” If Sarah Palin can make up words by comparing herself to William Shakespeare then I bloody well can too.

Cla-zy [kley-zee] – adj.- Being dumb enough to think you can in any way be considered on the same creative level, or grasp the usage of words, as well as William Shakespeare. EXAMPLE: “Did you get a load of Sarah Palin? Man… Bitch be clazy!”

Fast forward to this week and they are finally laying new floors in my home, but incorrectly so they have had to start over, it is costing more money, I have had to board my cats up in a “Pet hotel,” my wife is sick and has been running a fever, I lost my shoes (They are somewhere in all my packed stuff while the house is being renovated) and a Slurpee machine blew up in my face. So the will to write has been minimal but I want to change that. Enough whining about my life woes. I will now whine about other things.

Don't bite the hand that feeds you Blizzard. Brandon and I have been playing World of Warcraft since beta. We have taken breaks here and there but have been steady customers since launch. Blizzard recently announced “Cross server grouping”... for a fee. The community outcry against charging for what should be a subscription included service has been loud, clear and up until this point... unaddressed. Brandon decided to post on the official forums supporting the community's displeasure. He did so in the proper thread, he did not use profanity, and his argument was arguably pin point accurate. The sum of his post was this.

Since Activision bought Blizzard and claimed they would leave them alone the business practices of the parent company have slowly started to creep into Blizzard games and this move is proof.

For this Brandon got a 72 hour ban which he disputed and received a cold email back standing by their choice to lock him out. They called his post “nonconstructive” when it was very much the opposite. They called into question Brandon's “Forum history,” which is funny as I can count the number of times he has posted anything on one hand. Those few posts he has made before were usually in joke threads.

So screw you Blizzard. If you are going to ban people for stating their honest opinion then I think we might be done with WoW. The desire to play is gone and more than anything this whole affair saddens me. You were once a jewel, an unshakable cornerstone of the gaming world. People could count on Blizzard. Now you are just part of Activision, a company which has openly admitted they want to fleece their customers for all they are worth. So you while you are busy charging people for new features, and charging $175 admission fees to Blizzcon here are a few ideas for you.

1- Make the cool down on hearthstones zero but add a five cent fee every time it is used.

2- If a guild is unable to beat a raid boss add an option for the raid leader to issue a “Defeat boss?” vote. All raid members will then vote yes or no. If the vote passes then everyone in the raid has their credit cards billed one dollar and the boss instantly dies. The raid gets to move forward and you make ten or twenty five bucks! Everyone wins!

3- Now that players can fly pretty much anywhere at max level, once they hit that cap and they decide to use a flight point so they can go piss or get a Coke instead of doing it themselves... yeah... you should charge for that. They are obviously lazy players who are using a game convenience when they could be doing it themselves. Skin'em to the bone Activision.

The worst part of this is that I will still buy Diablo 3. I am sure I will still love it and be excited and lose sleep playing it. However, now there will be some small part of that will feel dirty for doing so.