Rokk Talk

Not.  Impressed.

Two weeks ago, there was some “household restructuring” and my office was moved to another room.  What I have finally figured out is that, despite being closer to the wireless router, the single wall between the computer and the router is preventing an adequately powerful signal from getting through.  This means that if I have Youtube loading in the background while I’m in-game, I will be disconnected from the server.  Even if I don’t have anything running in the background, I’ll still be dealing with a latency in the thousands.

To prove that this was the problem, I ran a twenty-five foot cord from the router in the living room, across the hallway, into the “office”, and finally to my computer.  It looked like Hell, but I hoped that I would be able to have more than one streaming function running on the computer at a time.

Not that kind of streaming function.

After informing everyone in the house that there was a cord running across the hallway, it was necessary for SCIENCE, and it wasn’t some kind of booby-trap, I taped it to the floor and began running tests to make sure I had pinpointed the latency issue.  Still, within thirty minutes the tape was torn and the cord was flopping in the hallway.  I couldn’t believe it.  The twitch came to my eye, but I threw myself into my testing and concluded that the issue was, in fact, the air between the router and the computer.  In the old office, I had no problem.  Now, the problem found me.

The solution will be to move the router to my office,  where it is closer to Mrs Herc’s computer.   However, doing this will involvee routing wires through floor vents.  This becomes a cramp in my sphincter because the house’s designer was a structural sadist who did his best to make sure future owners would be royally screwed if they wanted to make ANY kind of modifications, including running a twenty-five foot cord from one room to another.

You mad, bro?

I’ve been able to take care of some Azerothian business amidst all my disconnects, but I just wanted to post this  so that the two people who read my blog (and one of them is probably my cat) know why I’ve been posting so infrequently lately.  Hopefully the connection issue will be solved and all will be well soon.

Or I will snap and bury the computer in the backyard.

HtM.

This week’s Shared Topic comes from Spinks over on Blog Azeroth –

Cataclysm is coming! The old world is going to be destroyed and remade.

Which town, quest, NPC, or zone really needs to be purged with fire, in your opinion? Will you enjoy dancing on the ashes of a particularly hated quest giver? Or is there some zone you avoid like the plague (plaguelands excluded) where being nuked from orbit could only improve the experience? And why do you hate it/them so much?

The Barrens.  Hands down. That zone makes me twitch.  Always has.  As someone who plays mostly Horde characters, I’ve spent what can loosely be considered “quality time” in the Barrens.  Let me tell you, I’m about as anxious to enter that zone as I am to play Rochambeau with a guy wearing steel-toed boots.

You never want to let the other guy go first.  It’s Unamerican.

I really don’t like this zone.  Why?  Funny you should ask!

• Size:  The Barrens is a huge zone to move around in.   While there are bigger zones in the game, the Barrens is a Level 10 – 25 zone.  Since you don’t get a mount until Level 20, you’re  forced to run everywhere you need to go.  And those damn developers made sure you need to go all over the zone.  It takes forever just to run to Crossroads when you first set foot in the Barrens (assuming you don’t get ganked by Alliance, who love to wipe out the town on a regular basis, regardless of server).  Plus, it isn’t like it’s the most scenic zone to cross.

Looks like somewhere good times go to die.

• Quests:  This goes hand in hand with the size of the zone.  Crossroads, for example, has an obscene amount of gathering quests – “Bring me X number of heads, claws, beads, etc”.  The drop rate for these are horrible (the raptor had a head when I killed it, but I can’t loot it?).  When you finally gather up the number of whatever it is you need, you hand them in and are told “Okay, now run even further away and grab Y number of heads, claws, beads, etc.”  Plenty of running back and forth without a mount, and those runs take forever.  Even exploration quests are sequential – “Check this oasis, okay now go check the one on the other end of the zone.”  I mean, did some Dev get shut down by his girlfriend the night before and decide to take his frustration out on the players?

In the Barrens, this shirt could get your knifed.

• Barrens Chat:  Chuck Norris does your mom with anal fisting.  It’s like Trade Chat but with twice the stupid.  This is what new players get to be exposed to, nice and early in gaming life.  From this point on, players end up a little broken inside.

Nuff said.

I don’t care what they’re doing with the Barrens in the next expansion.  Split it, dress it up, put a hat on it.  Anything has to be better than what it is.

This is Herc the Merc, who once played Russian Roulete with a fully loaded gun and won.  Beat that Chuck Norris.