Favre Retires

Thanks Brett. As a Green Bay Packers fan, born and raised in the heart of Wisconsin, there is not a more iconic character than Brett Favre. He was a superhero, someone I thought I would find in one of my favorite comic books, not on the football field. There he was though, every Football Sunday for the past sixteen years, his #4 hovering over center, poised to strike at any moment.

He set records, won games, lost games, made big plays, but most of all, he played the game the way it was meant to be played. He defined toughness and perseverance, while reminding us that yes, he was still human.

Packers fans lived and died by Brett Favre, watching him match brilliant plays with bad. However, Favre always seemed to come up on top. Broken thumb? Give him a band aid. Bloody puke? Its time for him to throw a touchdown pass. Interception on one of the biggest stages in sports? He's thrown more of them than anyone else, but he's also played more consecutive games, thrown for more touchdowns, won more games, and the list goes on.

Brett Favre, described often as a grizzled gunslinger, never passed up an opportunity at glory. Even in the depths of a losing season, he came to play and fight. In his mind, a win was never more than a gunshot away.

Favre steps down after a year of surprises. The Packers were supposed to be on the bottom this year, they came out a step away from the Super Bowl. Just as opposing defenses often looked on in amazement as Favre threw into triple coverage, the 2007 Packer season amazed everyone that watched.

In my opinion, it is fitting that Favre's last pass, possibly, at Lambeau Field was an interception that cost the 2007 Packers a trip to the Super Bowl. After all, he is only human and was playing in a game that NO ONE expected him to be in. Maybe that is why it is so easy for Favre fans to question whether this really is the end.

Update: 15 July, 2008 - Edited labels and last paragraph in anticiaption of Brett Favre potentially making a comeback.

WINDFURY OR DIE!!! World of Warcraft's PvE-PvP Break

A post over at WoWInsider details a bit of frustration coming from World of Warcraft players recently in regards to class changes made by Blizzard in an attempt to balance Arena matches.

Are we really ready to split the game into World of Warcraft and Warcraft Arena? There will no doubt be a lot of players who want to continue to play their characters in both PvE and PvP, balance be damned. But if Blizzard is as committed as they seem to be to balance Arena as precisely as it needs to be balanced to turn it into a real e-sport, they may have to eventually make the jump and separate the two games completely.

I couldn't agree more. Blizzard has reworked classes, rebuilt talent trees, and tweaked classes in the past. Minor changes were often held back and packaged with other changes to ensure a more comprehensive change for the intended class. Also, past changes had a much broader focus intended to fix problems in PvE and PvP. Most of all, they were never aimed at fixing one specific problem in one specific instance.

Unfortunately, this policy has changed as Blizzard begins a series of directed class and game changes with Patch 2.4 that are aimed squarely at fixing specific Arena problems with little regard to the game as a whole. Enhancement Shamans are getting a semi-overhaul aimed at making them competitive in 3vs3 arenas (quote from dev needed). Drinking is getting nerfed, but only while in an Arena. The Warlock ability life tap, is being significantly scaled back since it is a bit overpowering in Arena matches.

I want to focus on the Shaman changes, because I have played an Enhancement Shaman since late beta. The Shaman changes to the Ghost Wolf, Totem global cooldown, and Toughness help give a little more utility to skills that sparingly see use in PvP and normal play. The totem change will assist greatly in boosting PvE for all Shamans.

One of the main Enhancement Shaman changes, the addition of an anti-healing de-buff to the Flame-Tongue weapon skill, is pin-pointed at improving Enhancement Shamans in only a very specific instance: 3vs3 arenas. In my honest opinion, that is an asinine move on Blizzard's part.

Three out of the four weapon buffs available to Shamans have been all but useless since the game was released. Shamans have pleaded for changes to make them more equally balanced instead of the current standard of WINDFURY OR DIE!!! Instead of admitting that there might be an issue, Blizzard simply tacks on an unneeded addition to Flame Tongue to fix a very specific problem in a very specific instance for a very specific spec.

This just drives me mad. The Enhancement spec is completely pigeon-holed to start with, and now Blizzard makes changes to pigeon-hole them even further in a specific role. I'm not a game designer, but it makes sense to me that class design changes should be aimed at the overall experience of the class, not just a specific instanced problem. For whatever reason, Blizzard has abandoned this approach.

Which brings me to the whole point of this post. World of Warcraft needs to be divided into World of Warcraft: The Game Everyone Enjoys and World of Warcraft Arenas: Serious Business Only. This would allow Blizzard to take far more drastic measures to balance classes for e-Sport competitiveness. Also, it eliminates the gear inflation occurring with the current Arena system. Most of all, it allows those of us who actually enjoy the other aspects of WoW without the hindrance of class changes meant to fix Arenas only (which in turn screws the rest of the game over).

Maybe then, Blizzard could get around to fixing the other weapon buffs for Shamans.

I Can See!

Today is my first day with my first-ever pair of glasses and all I can say is: "wow". I honestly did not realize how bad my vision had gotten. When I sat down in my car after picking up the glasses, I looked at the building and noticed all these little details I could not see without my glasses. There were cracks on the side of the window panes, there was a definite stucco finish to the walls, and I could actually read the sign that said: "Hours: M-F 9am - 6pm".

I am very excited and can't wait to play a game with my glasses on. I can't even imagine what I've been missing. Unfortunately, that may have to wait as my new motherboard isn't arriving until later today and I have a group project to work on tonight. Plus, I will be out of town all weekend :(

Oh well, eventually I will get to see the real World of Warcraft, Team Fortress 2, and Call of Duty 4 I've been missing all this time.

Stage 6, We Hardly Knew Ye

Sad news for those of us interested in quality video watching over the Internet: Stage 6 is closing down on Feb 28th.

You may only be vaguely aware of DivX's Stage 6 video site (which probably explains why it wasn't successful) but it's going to be shut down entirely at the end of February. Stage 6 was DivX's YouTube-like video site meant to provide a bunch of streamable content for living room and mobile DivX players. The fact that it's being canned speaks to how successful the effort was. Most of you won't miss it, but we'll have a special place in our hearts for the handful of nudie clips we found on it that one time.

If you never had the chance to visit Stage 6, you truly missed the REAL DEAL in regards to online video. Stage 6 trumped YouTube in every single category. Stage 6 videos were higher quality, more interesting, and rarely came with the nonsensical comments and "Leave Britney alone!" bullshit of YouTube.

Alas, Stage 6, we hardly knew ye.

New Computer Parts = Broken Computer

TigerDirect.com had a deal I just could not resist. Quadcore processor? Check. Motherboard to support quadcore? Check. Enough RAM to support an eventual upgrade (downgrade?) to Windows Vista? Check. Essentially, this deal had everything I was looking for in my quest for computer upgrades.

At the time, this all made sense. I wouldn't just stumble into the multi-core processing scene, I would blast into it with a quadcore! Unfortunately, in my haste to capitalize on a great combo deal, I didn't do my homework. Now, I'm left out in the cold, posting this via my secondary, can't run World of Warcraft or Team Fortress 2, computer.

Everything started out great. Motherboard and hardware install went great. Booted the computer up to my Windows XP Pro CD to do a repair install to update the Windows HAL (hardware abstraction layer) to support the quadcore processor. Install completed perfectly and a short call to Microsoft and my copy of Windows XP Pro was divvied over to my new hardware. Then, I did a bit of work and reinstalled service pack 2 and several other updates.

The computer worked beautifully at this point. CPU temps were holding steady, RAM was working fine, and I was just about to throw this machine into it's first workout. However, I ran out of time for the day and shut the machine down. Unfortunately, that was the last time it was seen running.

Long story short, the motherboard died between bootups. No amount of CMOS resetting or hardware finagling can save it. Doing a bit more research, I am not the only one with a dead XFX motherboard. Every corner of the Internet seems to have someone with a dead XFX nforce 680i LT Sli motherboard. Even the TigerDirect.com customer reviews section is littered with dead on arrival (DOA) motherboards.

I am not some newb to computer hardware. I tear down and rebuild hundreds of PCs every year at work. I've helped numerous gaming friends build kick-ass rigs. I have never been stupid enough to jump on a hot deal. Yet, here I sit with a piece-of-garbage motherboard that needs to be returned. All because I wanted to catch a deal before it ended. I'm learning my lesson the hard way.

If I could, I would return the entire packaged deal, but I opened the CPU and it can not be returned. So, I will keep the OCZ RAM and Intel Q6600 quadcore CPU. However, the XFX nForce 680i LT Sli motherboard is history and I will never purchase another XFX product.

Lesson learned, be patient and smart about your computer purchases.