Three Ring GeekCircus!

Goodbye, October. I will not miss you.

Not with your two herniated discs in my husband’s back. Not with your intense sciatic nerve pain. And as nice as his entire month of work off was, honestly, a tropical vacation would have been better for that. Constant physical therapy appointments, doctor appointments, x-rays, MRIs, and steroid epidurals really are not as nice as days on a beach.

And frankly, if you were going to burn up his entire paid time off pool, you could at least have sent us on an exotic vacation instead of to various hospitals and medical facilities. We won’t even mention the stress, distress, and unrest. Or the fact that you didn’t bother to take the pain with you when you left.

As for an entire month without the energy or emotional wherewithal to write, critique, or do more than take care of an injured spouse, well, we won’t talk about that, either.

Since he has to go back to work so that we can pay bills, and since I’ll lose my freaking mind if I don’t start writing again, I’ve got some high hopes for November. But just so that we’re clear: November (and hell, December, for that matter), if you even think about bringing the words “back surgery”, I’m going after your mothers. Just sayin’.

I keep intending to write a nice, pleasant post about Arizona’s first signs of autumn. However, I have a cold, and seem to have misplaced my poetic prose the last time I blew my nose. You get this instead.

We went to Ace Hardware today. A festive holiday display greeted us when we walked through the door: a Christmas tree. Behind it sat shelves of colored lights and other tree decorations. Red, gold, and green snowflakes hung from the ceiling.

It isn’t even October yet.

What the hell is with that? Couldn’t they sell inflatable pumpkins and orange lights? Glow sticks? Colorfully packaged wood screws and nut/bolt sets for the adorable trick-or-treaters? Little Billy! You make such a cute vampire! Here, have a variety pack of washers! And you, Susie. What a scary witch! Why don’t you pick out five wingnuts?

At least wait until after Thanksgiving, people. For pity’s sake.

Tuesday, Blizzard announced that it intends to delay release of StarCraft II. No surprise there. It’s not a Blizzard title if it doesn’t get delayed at least four times.

But the reason for this delay makes it notable. Specifically, they’re delaying launch because BattleNet can’t handle the increased load, and they need to improve it.

Let me see if I understand this correctly. They have removed LAN play support, which was an extremely unpopular move, in favor of forcing everyone to connect to BattleNet. Then they delayed the launch of the game, also sure to be unpopular, because BattleNet isn’t ready for that kind of enforced, increased traffic.

Uh-huh.

Oh yes. They want to make BattleNet more like XBox Live. Which is ugly, kludgy, and unpleasant to use.

It must be nice to have a brand so popular that you can kick your customers in the junk a few times, and have them beg for more while they hand over their money.

There are some things you don’t want to deal with at 7:30 AM.

I had half an hour more to sleep when someone knocked on my bedroom door. Still half conscious, I grabbed my robe and staggered over to get it. What I found was the Girlchild, eyes huge and watery with panic.

It’s the same look you might get when you realize the stars have come right, and Great Cthulhu has resurrected himself in your bathtub.

“Mom, there’s a murfphle in the kitchen, where I usually put the step stool.” I’m not fully awake. She’s not speaking clearly. I have no idea what she’s just said.

Whatnow? “There’s a MURFPHLE in the kitchen! Oh, just come on!”

So I did. I follow her to the end of the hall, where she comes to an abrupt halt and points. “See? There’s a MURFPHLE where I put the step stool!”

I donn’t see. I see that there’s no fire, no flood, and I can’t see a plague of locusts. But then again, that might be because I hadn’t grabbed my glasses off the bedside table. For all I know, a swarm of insects is ravening through the dining room.

Okay. Wait just a second. I fetch my glasses. I return to find her, and my son, staring at a brown spot on the wall. The murfphle.

Remember what I said about things you don’t want to deal with at 7:30 in the morning? Scorpions rank right up there.

He looked rather like this.

In 36 years as an Arizonan, I have not seen a scorpion. Rattlesnakes? Sure. Tarantulas? Multiple times. I did see the Scorpions in concert, which doesn’t count.

It took me a minute to identify what the hell I was looking at. Not awake, in my glasses, staring at a brown lump that slowly resolved into legs, pincers, and a curled tail I could barely see is no way to start a morning.

Internal reaction: AAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! KILL IT WITH FIRE KILL IT WITH FIRE! GET THE SHOTGUN! AAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHH!

Moms don’t get to do this.

“Oh. Okay. It’s a scorpion, that’s all.” One of the Great Old Ones, chitinous and horrible, in my kitchen. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to take a picture of it, and then I’m going to kill it.”

The camera batteries had died, of course. In retrospect, it’s just as well. With that settled, I grabbed my shoe and tried to squash the critter into next week. I mummified it in a paper towel, threw it away, and everyone tried to resume their morning. After a bit, I had almost convinced myself that I’d seen it wrong, and I’d just killed a cricket.

Alas, the Brawny Man betrayed me. When I opened the garbage can later, the paper towel had unfolded to expose the arachnid in all his revolting glory. The tail had uncurled and extended. It was not a cricket. I could no longer nurture my delusions.

I could, however, locate a bunch of garbage and pile it on top of the damn thing. Eurgh.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Harry Potter. You may even have heard that there’s a movie out about him. And if you’re really with it, you might have read the book it loosely referenced.

There’s a scene toward the end of both movie and book wherein Mr. Potter must force his mentor, Dumbledore, to drink an unfortunate basin of magical liquid down, so that they may achieve their ends. Dumbledore yells, and begs, and cries for Harry to not make him do it. Faithful Harry ignores it all as best he can, and crams that water down Dumbledore’s throat.

This is how edits feel sometimes.

I find these spots where I just don’t know what the hell I was thinking. The Bad Writing Fairy and her cousin, the Bad Pacing Fairy, visited me while I wrote and waved their shimmering wands at my manuscript. Lo and behold, crap issued forth into the document. They’re hidden like the clumpy bits in nice, smooth cat litter.

And sometimes, I’ve apparently forgotten to scoop the litter box, because there are more clumpy bits than clean, minty grains. These sections have to be excised and the holes patched, or just rewritten. And they’re not always so easy to rework into the whole, even if the stuff in them needs to be there.

I have a love/hate relationship with my writing anyway, like a lot of authors do. So I hit these sections and gnash my teeth, tear at my hair, and wail. I go looking for a sackcloth keyboard cover. I dread working on them. My brain whimpers when I think about them.

Just like Dumbledore, kneeling in a cavern, begging to avoid the poison he knows he has to drink. And my inner Harry Potter, faithful and dutiful, makes me click the icon to open the document and get it done. If you just keep going, it’ll be over with. It’s not as bad as that. Imagine how much better you’ll feel when it’s fixed! You don’t suck, I promise!

And what’s annoying is that my inner Potter is right. Nose to the grindstone. Just get it done. You’ll feel better when it’s over.

Or, how an MMO gained and lost three subscriptions in 48 hours. I can sum it up in one word: GameGuard.

The installer didn’t tell me it intended to put GameGuard on my system. If it did, it was in pretty small print. I didn’t notice until I started the game, when GameGuard started itself. And then I was pretty angry.

I see the point of the software. I can even see some need for protection. But there are better packages to use. Ones that don’t interfere with my keyboard software. Or the software my husband needs to work from home. Or interfere with your antivirus or firewall.

Ones I can uninstall if I uninstall the game. Silly little things like that.

I’d decided that the game didn’t offer me anything that other MMOs don’t, other than beautiful graphics. In fact, I found some glaring issues. Small starting areas. Linear progression. A reportedly long end-game grind. But I’d still decided to buy the game. Because it’s pretty, and because I love the backstory and world mythos.

GameGuard changed that. Neither of us intends to buy or subscribe to their game. And then I talked to a friend of mine, who also decided she wasn’t interested, and all because of GameGuard.

Their forums are filled with people who decided to cancel their preorders because of this. Who had other pieces of software break because of it. This is the best NCSoft could do?

Back to waiting for Star Wars: The Old Republic. If they use GameGuard, there may be a lynching.

Today is our sixteenth wedding anniversary. After so long, some people choose to renew their vows. I’d like to take this opportunity to restate mine.

I, your loving wife, take you to be my spouse and gaming partner, to frag and to heal from this day forward, through good games and bad, even in times when we have no quarters, in epic or noob gear, to back up and to hunt with; from this day forward until we run out of lives.

When we are in the arcade, I will put a quarter in the machine before someone can challenge you and interrupt your streak. If we are playing cooperatively, and I am to die first, I will exchange our paper money into quarters or tokens.

When we play an MMO, I will buff you first, above others. If I am the main healer, and I must choose between you and another, I will heal you first and let the other die. If I am the tank, I will taunt the creatures off you. Whatever you play, I will find a way to complement it, so that we are unstoppable.

I will play the crafter, to make us money and gear, so that you do not have to. If you die, I will resurrect you.

When we play a shooter, I will watch your back. If you are to fall, I will take out whoever killed you. Our opponents will fear us as a collective unit, and will hesitate to attack one of us as they wonder where the other is.

If we are playing a shooter against each other, I will still chainsaw your ass. But I will do so lovingly.

If there is sniper ammo to be had…I will take it before you can. Love does have limits.

I will take the controller that drifts to the left, so that you can play with the better one.

When we play a strategy game, I will put observers over your base. If you have no resource expansion, you can share mine. If your defenses are weak, I will build some. If someone attacks you, I will rush their base to distract them. My last zergling is yours.

When you have looked forward to a game for months, I will scour the web, the coupons in the local paper, and the local game shops for the best trade-in deal. I will find a way to get you the game, even in the leanest of times.

I will not turn my nose up at a multiplayer game you enjoy before I have tried it myself.

When you are stuck on a level, I will Google the walkthrough for you. Then I will patiently guide you through each step until you succeed, even in the most convoluted, Rube Goldberg-ian of games.

When you accidentally throw the Rock Band drumstick, I will dutifully duck. And I will not tell anyone that you beaned our son.

When you need upgrades, I will haunt the hardware sites to come up with the best computer build we can afford on our budget. I will put it together for you, even if you have to snap on the CPU fan.

When we have a LAN party, I will hunt up recipes, so that your friends have good eats while we cut them down. We can both hope that my cooking doesn’t kill them before my chainsaw can.

I love you, hon. I look forward to sharing many more gaming systems over the years, many more split screens on many more televisions, and many more worlds where we complain that MMOs are far better without that “MM” part.

At some point in my life, I swore never to own a Siamese cat.

Also, at a very recent point in my life, I swore never to get another cat, once the ones I had were gone.

You see how those turned out.

A decade and a half ago, my husband and I went to a shelter to look for a cat. An orange and white kitten reached through the bars and grabbed my husband. That was Gunney, and we took him home.

Flash forward. Beloved Manx gone. Two cats recently gone. Vows taken. No more cats. Heck, for a while, no more animals. There was just too much potential for pain.

When you’ve always, every day of your life, had pets at large, though, you can’t just go cold turkey. There’s a huge hole that drops out of your heart. I thought I just wanted a dog, but after some time passed, I realized that I couldn’t go without a cat.

The husband was less enthused by the prospect. Not without good reason. He’s always been less of a cat person than I was, and he was the one there in Gunney and Tobias’s last moments. Cats didn’t have the best associations for him anymore.

But I wanted one. And he said, “When we go to the shelter to look at a dog, we can look at the cats, too. Maybe one will reach out and grab me like Gunney did.”

See where this is going?

We picked out another cat. He had a lot of potential. And as we headed around one last time, my husband distinctly ignored the Siamese in the cage. So she yelled at him.

No, she didn’t meow. She yelled. Told him off. Then she reached through the bars and grabbed him.

Feline habit? None of the other cats did it. Just the sweet, loving torti-point Siamese with the cliched name and the tendency to drool. Somehow, she knew the criteria, and knew that we were the ones to adopt.

Persia’s at home now. She had a long day, getting fixed and adopted all at once. The house doesn’t feel quite so empty. Neither does my heart.

For a while, StarCraft made up a lot of our social life.

We’d get babysitting, then head to the office where my husband worked. They didn’t care if we used the network. So we’d get together with our friends, order a pizza, or fire up the office grill, and settle in for a day of Terrans vs. Protoss vs. Zerg.

I still remember the game on the map Lost Temple where my friend hadn’t protected his base well enough. He was in the north spawn point, and I was in the west, the husband (as my partner) was in the east, and our friend’s partner was in the south. I crept a Protoss arbiter around the very back corner of his base and found a place where his turrets didn’t overlap protection. And then I recalled my entire fighting force into the center of his main base.

The excitement. The carnage. The cussing.

Those were good times. Friends and games. Good-natured, shouted smack talk. Being able to get up and walk to the snack table and debrief on the match while we noshed.

And I’m pretty sure that LAN play, with the ability to even make temporary spawn copies for someone who didn’t have it, played a large role in the game’s success. It gave people a reason to get together. Sure, people would play on BattleNet, but the internet can’t duplicate the vibe that playing in the same place has. This remains true today, when we have XBox LAN parties to play Gears despite getting together online twice a week.

LAN parties were the roots of the multiplayer game. It seems like Blizzard has forgotten that.

StarCraft II is destined to be a big seller no matter what. Despite their questionable move of splitting the single game into three installments you need to buy, and the classic, neverending Blizzard development cycle, gamers are going to buy it in droves. They’re going to spend extra for the collector’s editions. There will always be pirates, but the people who spend money for three games based off one property will outnumber them. Blizzard will not be losing any money.

Instead of leveraging the community energy to find new, better ways to make money off their game’s popularity (which others have done with success), Blizzard has gone another route. They have essentially called their entire fan base thieves. We, it seems, are not to be trusted. And because we are such naughty pirates, we will have our toys taken from us.

Despite the fact that those toys made the first game what it is today. They still sell it for $20. After a decade, people still buy it.

Perhaps worse, they’re also trying to tell us that it’s a large pile of dung, but that it’s the best dung ever! Sure, we can’t play on a LAN with our friends anymore. Want to have a LAN party? Make sure you have a net connection, and you can all sign into the wonderful thing that is BattleNet!

It’ll be great! You can be part of the community! It’ll give us the chance to make it better! What’s more, you can all be forced to interact with the foul-mouthed 14 year old twitch gamers that everyone can’t get enough of! Won’t that be fantastic?

I suppose the notion of building a quality online experience and letting it lure people in didn’t occur to them. They need real impetus. Like, say, forcing millions of gamers to connect to their servers. I’m sure opening day will be smooth as silk.

Blizzard hasn’t learned from the example of Spore. EA took draconian measures to counteract piracy, and offended its player base. That player base responded by making Spore the most pirated game ever. I can only imagine what the pillars of moral behavior that make up the bulk of StarCraft’s devotees will decide to do. I don’t think the answer is “repent and buy legit copies”.

I’m disappointed in this decision. Disappointed enough that foregoing the game has occurred. I’ve been waiting for it for a decade, just like everyone else. But I’m also not going to give my money to a company who treats me like a misbehaving kindergartener, not a customer.

And I’ll bet I’m not the only one.

Ed McMahon: I watched him on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson as a kid. While I didn’t tune in to see Mr. McMahon, he was a constant presence.

A very strange deadpool, this.