Apologies to anyone whos comment was blocked or unpublished. A significant amount of comment spam was bypassing the CAPTCHA module so I swapped over to Mollom, an anti-spam service similar to Akismet. It works like a champ but unfortunately, it seems to be blocking a few legitimate comments as well. Which, kind of sucks because it is not as if a whole lot of people bother visiting or commenting on this site >_<.

Anyway, Real IDs: I was kind of hoping for something similar to Steam's community chat system. Or rather, I was kind of hoping for a chat system promoting a global Battle.net avatar linking social communities across games. For security reasons, I'm not comfortable with just doling out my battle.net login email, which is unfortunately needed in order to add Real ID friends. I don't like the fact that my real name is shown in game and on friends list, I don't like how people not on my friends list are able to view my name on friends lists and I really don't like how there is no way to control friends list visibility.

Being able to link your game identity with your real identity within the game isn't a very good idea. It's mildly creepy and breaks immersion. I know that it is not that big of a deal (hint: if you don't like it don't use it), but it makes me very reluctant to add anyone to my Real ID list who I am not directly associated with outside of the game. I assume that was Blizzard's original intention, but as mentioned above, I was really hoping for more of a community system.

But all of that aside, I have quite a few co-workers and real life friends scattered across servers. It's nice being able to contact them in game without having to roll a social alt on another server (talking out of my ass since I don't think I have ever RL whispered anyone off server yet :P). On the other hand, it is not that hard just to uuuh send someone a text message or IM outside of the game...

Oh, people who are purchasing the new iPhone upgrade: Make sure that you unbind your authenticator so that you don't get locked out of your account. The authenticator app is tied to the phone's serial number.

You see folks, this why I can never ever run a serious, as in, "professional" gaming blog. I'm just never current on anything that isn't World of Warcraft, The Sims or the one or two other games that I am interested in enough to pre-order and actually post about before they go out of style (I also never post, but that is a different issue :P). But that aside:

Assassin's Creed was a good game, not great by any measure, but good; It just failed to live up to the massive amount of hype constantly being pushed out at the time. I think the most disappointing aspect of the game wasn't necessarily the repetition (though the repetition was pretty bad, I had to force myself to complete the game), but that it felt half-assed. Most people compare it too a tech demo, demonstrating the crowd reaction engine and I think that is for the most part an accurate assesment.

Job related content or rather, the distinct lack thereof has traditionally been a huge gaping hole in every single Sims game. Normally your sims choose a career path: Medical, business, food, whatever. In terms of gameplay, that career consists of little more than vanishing into a building for about 8 gameplay hours 5 days a week. Assuming that all of your sims have a regular job/school, that is almost a fourth of the game per sim spent doing almost nothing.

Ambitions is good because it allows to you to actively control your sim at work. I won't bother explaining the details for all of the new professions because that has already been done and uuuh I haven't played them all to be honest. The new profession objectives are fun, though fairly typical in what you would expect from the Sims style click based gameplay (run around, click, do something, repeat). I like the stylist and the architect professions because they affect the outward appearance of the town and its people (it is fun giving people pink mullets :P).

Guess what I will be doing this Saturday morning? I was #5,808 in line and I clicked the very second that it popped. Well, slightly less than the very second (had to select '2' from the dropdown menu). Some of you have fast fingers.

Round 2:

Ah well, it was a nice try. Sold out when I was at abouh 1.8k in line. Keybound the cache clear refresh to a keyboard macro, coordinated on Vent, started refreshing a couple of minutes early, ignored the ticket quantity. Still got about the same position in like 5.8k-ish. Maybe next year!

Where the hell is my package going? Why did ship from Oklahoma to Kentucky when I live in California? Furthermore, why did I bother with one day shipping on Amazon instead of just running over to Best Buy to purchase it after work QQ. I ordered the newest Sims 3 expansion pack, Ambitions on Sunday. I feel obligated to write a semi-review or glitch (go go EA QA) guide at some point. Actually, I am looking forward to playing this expansion quite a bit because it changes core gameplay. World Adventures was interesting, but allowing sims to travel to other load zones broke time continuity (among other things).

Other than the three new load zones and a couple of other things, not a whole lot was added into the game. The ability to control sims while on the job, as opposed to them just vanishing into a rabbit hole for 8+ hours has been on the top of most player's wish lists since uuuh the first game?

Oh And: Come on EA; would it have hurt you that much to roll out some of the Sims 2 expansion pack functionality into the Sims 3 base game? (like apartments). Or at the very least, some fairly significant additional content in the form of a free downloadable patch instead of pushing everything into DLC on your stupid store. I know that I will still end up purchasing every single expansion pack like an addict but still. T_T

I MUST GET BLIZZCON tickets tomorrow. Watch me get held up at work or stuck in traffic on the way home though :/. Oh and, I went a whole week without playing WoW, playing any games (iPhone games on the plane don't count), or sitting in front of (my) computer because I *gasp* went outside! Might post about my vacation if I ever get around to sorting through photos.