I did sweet fuck all this week in WoW.<\/p>\n
And I didn’t really miss it.<\/p>\n
I had a short work week, spent time with loved ones, friends, family, read a book and a half in the last week, watched four hockey games and that meant no real time for video games.<\/p>\n
Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts on things. :)<\/p>\n
Topic 1: The WoW Store<\/strong><\/p>\n There’s a sale being advertised in the Blizzard launcher, for many (all?) of the Blizzard games. When you click on World of Warcraft, they are encouraging you to buy Midnight, but also a housing thing. “Cozy Treehouse Retreat Bundle”, which has some druid or panda themed housing stuff, including the externals. Only 7500 Hearthsteel!!! WHAT A DEAL, PEOPLE!!!! ahahaha. That is $92.50 CAD, and that’s before tax. That is more expensive than all but the epic version of the Midnight expansion.<\/p>\n But wait, there’s more! You can get a “Blooming Arboon” mount, either “Blossomback” or “Amberback” for $32 CAD apiece. (I’m guessing that’s about $25 USD.)<\/p>\n And if that’s not enough, they’re bribing you to buy a 6-month subscription ($97.99 CAD, pre-tax) in exchange for a flying mount in Retail and a pet in Classic. And if you buy a 12-month subscription ($195.98 CAD, pre-tax), you get an additional flying mount and ground mount in Retail and a flying mount in classic. Or some nonsense like that. You can read more about the offer here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Why at least a six-month subscription? Because that’s like $100 (CAD, maybe 70-75 USD) in their pockets immediately. It’s a very nice revenue bump. And why does that matter? It matters because the Microsoft fiscal year ends at the end of June<\/a>. So the revenue bump helps the bottom line\u00a0now<\/em>, right before the end of the fiscal year, and then since it’s for 6 months, any money from those WoW subscribers between now and November is sort of like the icing on the cake. So if they buy Hearthsteel, or if they buy a mount, or a pet, or a character boost, or whatever. It’s above and beyond what they anticipated from you just having an ongoing subscription.<\/p>\n Honestly, looking at the finance page at Yahoo about Microsoft makes me feel vaguely ill. Everything is basically in billions. The market value of Microsoft<\/a> is approximately 4.1\u00a0trillion dollars<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And they couldn’t be bothered to fix the guild bank issues.<\/p>\n Or make sure a patch launches without game-breaking bugs.<\/p>\n Or ensure that textures persist in housing.<\/p>\n But they can take the time to come up with new art assets and sell them or bribe people into getting them, as long as they make a quick buck!<\/p>\n It’s pretty gross.<\/p>\n Topic 2: If I were rich…<\/strong><\/p>\n If I were very, very independently wealthy, there are several things I’d want to do right off the bat, most of which is caring for my family and friends. You know, pay off my brother and sister-in-law’s mortgage. Pay for private school for their kids. That sort of thing.<\/p>\n But assuming I’d have a good chunk left over, I think I’d want to try to put together a small game dev company. Nothing huge, but a nice place to work, where everyone gets benefits, mostly flexible hours, work remotely, all that good stuff. I have a lot of ideas rattling around in my head and I am not talented enough to code everything, nor do I have the\u00a0time<\/em> to code everything. Because it would be a lot.<\/p>\n And just looking at the Microsoft financials (even more info here<\/a>), and knowing that they’re doing voluntary layoffs<\/a> makes me feel even more ill. All of this means that they hope their numbers will go up.<\/p>\n We are in late-stage capitalism and\u00a0the numbers cannot always go up<\/em>.<\/p>\n I am tired of living in such a rabidly capitalist society, and I don’t even live in the USA (although anything they do affects us significantly). But in order to, you know, have a place to\u00a0live<\/em>, one needs to at least try to play the capitalism-numbers-go-up game. So if I could run a small game dev company, hire carefully, pay very well, and then get some kind of return because\u00a0the games are good<\/em>, then that would be awesome.<\/p>\n Alas, I fear I will never be independently wealthy to the point of doing so. But it’s nice to dream about.<\/p>\n Topic 3: Classic Dungeons<\/strong><\/p>\n I think Strat UD is my favourite of the Classic dungeons, but BRD is a close second, followed by LBRS as a close third. Strat is my favourite because of my multiple failed (and some successful!) 45-minute Baron runs. I just know it so well and have so many great memories of being in there.<\/p>\n BRD might be closer to Stockholm Syndrome, given the number of times I’ve run Jailbreak or attuned someone to the core. But again, the memories made there are priceless to me.<\/p>\n LBRS is a freaking labyrinth until it clicks. And once it clicks, you’ll never get lost again. Or, at least I never did. It was one of my first runs with my guild at the time and I was level 52 (? Maybe 53?) and I was level-pulling everything around us. Whoopsiedoodle. :D But I always enjoyed it. There was a ton to explore, lots of rare drops, lots of bosses, lots of tier 0 pieces to be had.<\/p>\n What about you? What are your favourite Classic\/Vanilla dungeons?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I did sweet fuck all this week in WoW. And I didn’t really miss it. I had a short work week, spent time with loved ones, friends, family, read a book and a half in the last week, watched four hockey games and that meant no real time for video games. Of course, that doesn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3224,"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3223\/revisions\/3224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}