Location Taken: Ruby Beach, Washington
Time Taken: June 2008
I had a simple task a few days ago. Well, I’m not sure task is the right word for it.
I wanted to play Guild Wars 2. My sister and her boyfriend play, and managed to show off the game well enough for me to want to join in. Main thing that drew me in is the way that they strongly support solo players. I’m a loner in games as well as real life, and don’t care for setting up parties or joining things or even talking to people. In most MMOs, this means I’m locked out of all the high-end content. Guild Wars 2, on the other hand, just lets me join in to the big group battles with no talking or inviting or what have you involved. So if I see a big battle going on, I can just hop in, help out, and hop back out easily. It’s nice.
Anyway, that was my task. Play a game.
First step was, of course, buy the game. At least Guild Wars 2 is a one-time-payment game. Unlike a lot of MMOs, you just pay when you buy, and can just keep playing as much or little as you like without having to pay another penny ever. They do have a few things you can pay for with “Gems”, which you can buy with real-world money if you want, but since you can also pay for them with in-game money, I have no problem with the secondary money stream. I’ve played a few free-to-play MMOs in the past where there’s a real-world money only store that gives some really strong items, making it imbalanced between those with spare cash and those without.
…And I’m getting off topic again. They have a digital version available, but I decided to get the physical version. I’m just a bit happier if when I spend $60 on something I can then hold it in my hands. It’s not too logical, but hey…
So I drove to the store, found it fairly easily, and purchased it.
And then, as I was leaving the parking lot, remembered something rather important: my CD drive on my computer was broken.
I regularly clean the dust out of my computer. It helps the computer run better and quieter. But it does mean opening up the computer case. And in order to clean out the front panel of my computer, I have to remove it. Unfortunately, my old CD drive was salvaged from a different computer and the plastic covering on the front of it didn’t fully fit in the space provided. Or more specifically, it fit too well. It was so snug against the front panel that when I pulled the front panel away from the computer body, the CD drive would come with it. Quite awkward all around. And last time I cleaned the computer, I must have twisted the front panel slightly as I was pulling it open. The plastic covering cracked, and a few pieces even fell off of it into the body of the CD drive. I got most of them out. Most. Alas, the ones that were left fell into a spot that prevented the CD tray from either going out all the way or returning back all the way. It was just stuck part way out, and of course, completely useless.
So I made a quick detour on my way home from the video game store over to Best Buy. Now before you crow at me about how inadequate Best Buy is as a computer parts store, I know it already. But it was late enough the small shops were already closed. All best buy had were a small handful of CD writers, which at least can work as players even though I’ve never needed to burn a CD in my life. It bumped up the price, but I found one on clearance that bumped it back down again.
Back home, and I had to shut down my computer and pull out all the cables attached to it. I found a flat spot, made sure to go ground myself on the plumbing to bleed of any excess static electricity, and opened up my computer case. At least I decided to learn my way around computer hardware years ago (I built my current computer, after doing tons and tons of research), so I could do the labor myself. It was rather simple, actually, just unplugging the old one, replacing one cable (the old CD drive used the now obsolete IDE connections, while the new one uses the new SATA standard, but the new drive came with a cable, and there was space for a few more SATA cables on my motherboard), and then plugging in the new drive. Took less than 10 minutes, and probably saved me at least $60 in labor costs compared to hiring someone else to do it.
And then, all I had to do was plug everything back in, make sure the CD drive worked, install the game, and then I could play!
Well, except I also had to make sure I was on the same World as my sister’s characters. Most MMOs have to split their player base up into different Worlds (or shards, or servers, or whatever they’re called), to keep the active population using the maps down to a level their tech can handle. So I got the name of the World I wanted from my sister, opened up the game to join in and – “This World is Full”.
I couldn’t get in.
So it was to the internets to figure out what was up. And I found out that the World was not permanently full, just temporarily full. And if I joined in when it wasn’t full, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting in again. I think it’s just a matter of trying to keep the various Worlds at a certain evenness of popularity, by not letting new players join in to the really popular ones.
Alas, I really wanted to join that specific world, so it was time for the waiting game. I knew it would probably have a “non-peak” time, where the population of people playing dropped below the limit for Full, whether from people having to sleep or going to work or school. I checked back every hour from about 7 pm to midnight, with no luck. So I set my alarm for six in the morning. No luck. After a bit more sleep, I checked again starting at 10am. Finally, at 2 in the afternoon, it dropped from “Full” to “High”!
So I quickly signed in, nearly a full day after buying the game, and made my first (and so far only) character, a female Human Warrior. I’m rather enjoying it, and while I’m still not high enough level to go pester my sister’s characters, well, let’s just say there’s a reason today and yesterday’s posts came in so late…
Oh, and if you’re wondering what in the world this has to do with the picture, the answer is absolutely nothing. I just found it while looking for anything appropriate and thought it funny. Well, funny in that completely serious way, if you know what I mean. If you really want a connection, well, um… Guild Wars 2 has spots where you can swim underwater, and they’re quite monster-infested, so swimming and wading is in fact dangerous?
