Random thoughts part 3: back from the city of brotherly love

Driving across the state for 6 hours straight is never easy, especially after you stay home and sleep on your own bed for 2 weeks. Even though this will be my final trip for the time being it was still hard to get in the mood of driving and staying in a hotel for 2 weeks again.

-When the weather is nice it's always an uneventful drive, but when it start snowing it can be real bad. Especially if you are driving at night on an interstate highway used mostly by truck drivers and there is a blizzard. With the combination of asshole truck drivers and hellish road condition it was almost the end for me...by about 2 inches.

-The city of Philadelphia is very weird to me as it one of the largest metropolitan in the U.S., but I am just not used to the grid set up with the tiny narrow roads with cars parked on both sides and people riding bicycles on it. I was waiting all night for us to hit someone or some car parked on the street.

-A night in Philadelphia China town, one of the oldest China towns in North America. However half the people on the street were not Asian but Blacks. Overall it was a good night fun that involved clubs, spicy squid and Ox penis soup...hmmm maybe that was club "Woody" at the Gayborhood, not really sure.


-Now for the real random thoughts of the day. I keep on seeing the what can Toyota's innovation do for you commercials and it made me think, who are some of the LEAST innovative car makers in recent memories?

1. Honda/Acura
Honda and Toyota used to be like flavor of ice creams, whoever you pick is the same at the core. But last 10 years Toyota has really differentiated itself from Honda as it really made a huge push for their luxury brand Lexus, a huge push for technology and all these has helped Toyota become one of the largest car maker in the world, leaving Honda in the dust. Buy a Honda today you will realize a few things, they either really believe the motto if it aint break don't fix it or they are just that conservative. Did you know that my 2008 highest trim Civc doesn't even have any kind of stability control? Neither did I, and you will not believe it either when I tell you Honda is about to make an Insight w/o cruise control. Honda is really starting to wear thin that reputation for reliability and the once mystical V-tech engine. But Honda wasn't always this way, here is a list that will shock you.
-Honda is one of the first to develop the stability control system in the early 90s, yet it is one of the last to adopt it on all of its car line ups.
-Honda is the first to differentiate their brand by inventing Acura for the North American market. Shocking because you will never know it if I ask you which one is more well known, Lexus or Acura.
-While Lexus used to be re-badged Toyota cars, it is no longer the case as Lexus is making more and more luxurious cars with very high techs. Acura on the other hand still plays the same hand since the introduction in early 80s. The Acura TSX is still a re-badged Honda Accord, in fact it's the Honda Accord in the rest of the world and in every sense of the car too. For example it still doesn't have keyless start/stop while Ford Fiesta has it.

2. BMW.
-Speaking of wearing that reputation very very thin. BMW used to represent the pinnacle of automotive engineering, from that mystical 50/50 weight distribution to the world renowned straight 6 engine. Every part of each BMW makes the ultimate driving machine come alive, and then it decided to join the luxury market and battle it out with Mercedes. It's all good but race cars are usually light and nimble, while luxury cars are big and lazy, so something has to give. Well unfortunately for all the car enthusiasts out there the cars are getting bigger and heavier, and to make up for the weight gains, the engines are getting bigger too. So now that unique bimmer experience is almost no more than a big muscle car.

-Another problem with BMW is using their their reputation to sell cars. They charge a hefty premium on their cars because they know people want that advanced German engineering and the luxury branding. But did you know BMW still live in 1990 when it comes to the definition of luxury? Here is a list of things that are not standard on the best selling BMW 3 series that starts at $34000, be warned this could be so shocking it could cause potential blindness.
a. Leather is not standard. This is truly a WTF moment, seeing as you can get leather standard on a 20000 dollar VW Jetta. I have no idea why it's not on a Bimmer.
b. Fake plastic wood. If I wanted those I could get them on a 18000 dollar Toyota Corolla and not a 3 series that can cost as much as 52000 dollars and not have real wood trims.
c. other seemingly minor things that are not standard on a BMW 3 series. Moonroof, Xenon headlights, heated seats, keyless entry, keyless start, the list just goes on and on. Now you may say not having these are not as bad but when you realize that these are standard on a Hyundai Sonata then it doesn't look particularly good for BMW when the cheapest 3 series is about 15000 dollars more than said Sonata and with all these options equipped, you could easily add another 10000 dollars to that price tag. What's more to this embarrassment is the lack of power in the 3 series, because the said Sonata also has way more power and speed than the world renowned 3 liter straight six engine, the ultimate driving machine indeed.

WoW Pic post

As Promised before, I am posting pictures I took while I did my review for Cataclysm since I did not post them on the review post. Here they are.

-The world Tree of Hyjal is now here for everyone to see.


-Here is the World Tree in the distance while in Orgrimmar.


-Starting Zone Vasj'er puts a whole new perspective in underwater adventures.



-Someone order a Seahorse ride?



-Everyone knows about the new water graphics, but check out this sweet lighting.


-There are no new classes in Cata, but new class/race combos like this troll druid.



-Goblin starting quests involve a lot of getting blown into the air, rocket boots, oh and Goblin engineering at it's best, rocket mounted laser shark.




-Pain. Agony. My hatred burns through the cavernous deeps. The world heaves with my torment. Its wretched kingdoms quake beneath my rage. But at last, the whole of Azeroth will break! And all will burn beneath the shadow of my wings!


-And lastly you can always count on Blizzard to put in a subtle pop culture reference like they have done in the past 6 years.

Going Green?

With the gas price continues to climb toward the 5 dollar a gallon mark that is supposed to be by the end of this year, the once unthinkable mass hybrid cars is not so far fetched in the U.S. anymore. There was a time that when you talked about hybrid vehicles the only car that popped in one's head would be the Toyota Prius, and the only people that drove those cars were the extremists that wanted to make a statement. In another words they were as rare as a Ferrari on a regular U.S. road. But with the oil crisis upon us once again we are starting to see more and more manufacturers show casing their hybrid vehicles, and we are seeing them on the roads regularly now as well. It seems that every auto journalist is raving about the new hybrid or even true electric cars, about the insane gas milage they get. Drastic time calls for drastic measures, even some of the performance orientated car makers such as Porsche are making hyrids, and you know we are really in a shit now.

BMW has been known for making all around performance cars that are not so gas effient for the best part of last 50 years. But even they can not escape the current situation, however in true BMW fashion they will not just make another hybrid cars like everyone else is doing, they are making a BMW first and foremost.

Since 2009 BMW has been working on their next gen hybrid vehicles code named "Vision Efficient Dynamics". So what is it exactly other than the extremely long name? Well it will start with a very small 1.3 liter 3 cylinder turbo charged diesle engine, which is the engine of choice in Europe to save gas instead of regular gas engines or electric engines. It is then mated with 2 electric motors on each drive axl, and all these 3 engines will then be routed to all 4 wheels producing approximately 360 horse power thus making the vehicle going from 0-60 in less than 3.9 seconds. In another word instead making another boring hybrid BMW basically made a super car, but how good is the miage? BMW recently test it out in Dubai and got around 63 mpg average, and that is damn impressive for this what I think is ridiculous car and totally not one would have anticipated when they heard a hybrid. So yeah if you have 200 grand laying around and wanted to make a green statement, check this car out which is due in 2013.

My review on WoW: Cataclysm

Disclaimer: This is in no way a representation of the end game experience with current end game raids and other level 85 contents, this is just my initial impression of the game. Also there will be no pictures in this presentation as they were mistakenly stored on a different computer.

Six year after initial launch and the game has been dramatically changed, but was all this worth it for someone that has stopped playing after that disastrous Wrath of the Lich King? At first look Cataclysm is definitely Blizzard's most ambitious expansion pack for WoW yet, it contains so many game changing fixes that it could very well be it's own game. I took a closer look at what all these changes mean to a game in many ways need a jolt to reinvigorate millions of its loyal fans.

-vs. WotLK
Any veteran WoW player will be able to tell you, Wrath of the Lich King started on a good note as it featured one of the the most dramatic story line in the Warcraft history with the fall of Arthas. However as all these players will be able to tell you that all that good didn't last as WotLK ended on a sour note with many can not wait for the arrival of Cataclysm. Wrath did add many good features but in the mean time took away quite a few very important things that made vanilla and The Burning Crusade great. Wrath continued the transition of making the game more and more accessible to more players meaning it has gotten easier. To many this was the main complaint as it got so ridiculous by the end that you can literally hit level 80 and be decked out in epics in two weeks. Everyone in the game had a chance to kill the Lich King, a very good chance too. On the other hand PvP continues the imbalance of classes through more emphasis on arena. By all it feels like it has lost everything that made WoW a unique and perfectly polished MMO into a browser game that anyone that knows how to turn on a computer can play, and kill the Lich King on top of that. Arena titles like Gladiator meant nothing as well since anyone that plays a Warlock and have a cat can get the title.

But not all is bad though. Wrath did introduce some new game plays and techniques that were welcome in this aging game. Blizzard experimented phasing with the Death Knight and other key events through out Wrath that really made story telling in an MMO much better, and they also made looking for group easier with the queue system that was much much better that the dreaded hour long search for a tank on top of the Orgrimmar bank. One thing you will notice when you first play Cataclysm is all these welcome features are back and more heavily used. You will see phasing right away in the starting zones in Cataclysm as you progress in quests the landmarks and things around you will change. The LFG queue is back as well as you can queue for Catacylm dungeons right away provided that you have discovered the instance entrance. As for the bad things, this is what makes Blizzard one of the greatest developer in the industry. They listen to the community and change what is not right accordingly. It has been known for a year now Blizzard intend to fix everything that is wrong with Wrath by increasing the difficulty level of the game and making epic gear and epic end game bosses truly epic again. Meanwhile they will reinvest in battlegrounds again in hope of lessening the importance of arena game play. All these sounds good at Blizzcon but can they really deliver since it contridicts to what they wanted to do which is make the game more accessible and more casual?

-Changes for the good?
Cataclysm features two starting zones just like Wrath and immediately you will realize that the difficulty has been kicked up a notch. The mobs have alot more health than you and hits like a truck espcially if you are poorly geared to start with. Even classes that feature extreme ease in leveling such as Warlock or Death Knight have to stay awake this time around as if not careful you can easily die on one of the first quests. This will be more evident if you play a class that can not take a hit or in poor gear as you will die a lot. So in a way the game is more difficult right off the bat even though this is probably not exactly what people were complaining about. So what are the dungeons and raids like? espcially the heroic versions? Well I couldn't really comment on those since in the limited time I had to spend with Cataclysm I really didn't get a chance to try them out. I did however tried various normal version of different dungeons while leveling but they were nothing special in terms of difficulty. I did have a chance to tank in one of the heroics in beta and it was quite difficult, I wouldn't call it TBC difficult but it was still hard. It's a step in the right direction although you will still question Blizzard's intention after guilds have finished raids within 2 weeks of the release of Cataclysm. It definitely puts the wrong messages out there and slowly the epic gears are starting to make it's way into the game and all the blue gear lasted all but 2 weeks of the game. As far as PvP goes battlegrounds are more important now but arena still plays a big role for people that want to earn PvP gear quickly, the way I see it the only way to fix this problem completely is to remove arena entirely.

For the noobs and casual players that started playing in Wrath and still want to feel superior with all their easy kills and easy gears, what does all these changes mean? It means the game is more chanlleging to play and you might actually need your brain now, but it is still not nearly as hard as Vanilla or TBC ever was. As far as accessibilty goes it has gotten more so in a different way. You see for the person that is just getting into the game now the level 1-60 quests are much easier to do and make much more sense while doing them, you get quests that lead you to the next zone and quest rewards that are actually useful. It also features mount service to zones so lower level noobs don't have to wonder around for hours looking for the next town and getting killed in the wilderness and eventually get frustrated into rage quitting. The story line involved with questing make much more sense too if anyone still cares about story plot. And if questing and exploring the vast land of Azeroth is not for you then queue for random dungeon not only gives you superior experience to leveling it also gives you blue gear as reward for doing it. It also helps that majority of dungeon quest givers now are inside of the dungeon rather than making noobs going all over Azeroth collecting them thus further confusing said noobs. To test the accessibilty of the new leveling system I personally make a new hunter and through mixure of questing and random dungeons I was able to get all good blue gear and level to 35 in roughly 2 days of playing.

After all I can safely say all the changes are for the better even though it's not quite on par to what everyone hoped.

-New Content
All the changes to the old world is great for attracting new players but is there enough new content for vetern players? That is a very important question since the biggest problem with Wrath was at times it felt like Blizzard was only concerned with attracting new/casual players and they don't really care about all the die hard vetern players. From what I have heard that there is actually less new zones in Cataclysm than WotLK but they all vary greatly in terms of landmark and quests they feel a lot more fresh than Wrath zones. For example many player seems to prefer leveling in mount Hyjal but I found that Vasj'er was a lot more original and overall cooler zone. It's starts with a movie with your boat sinking along the shore of Eastern Kingdom and the whole zone then is under water, with you getting your seahorse mount shortly afterwards. It doesn't give you as much gear rewards as Hyjal quests so if you are not already decked out in ICC epics then it might be better for you to level in Hyjal, other than that every single aspect of Vasj'er is supperior to Hyjal. Also the game ships with 4 end game raids compare to the 1 that was in Wrath, and none of these raids are recycled like Naxx was for Wrath. Other changes such as game mechanics are no strangers to WoW as Blizzard constantly fine tunes game play through each patch, however I can not comment on them too much as I didn't reach end game to really know how each class plays different. What I can say is some more evident changes are welcome while some are not. The changes to the talent tree are welcome in my opinion as the old talent tree was getting too bloated with a lot of pointless talents. Now it's more concise and most of neccessary passive talents and some more important ones that everyone gets such as mortal strike, everyone will get them depending on the tree you go for. Some of the less welcome changes to me include changes to Orgrimmar, I really hated it at first and while I am slowly getting used to it now I still enjoy the less confusing design of the original Orgrimmar. Others include the deletion of Portals in major cities, and here I thought Blizzard is trying to make the game more accessible to noobs.

With Cataclysm Blizzard also introduces 2 new races but no new classes. Both Goblin and Worgen are cool race in their own right with Worgen more so for obvious reasons. But what makes them cooler is their starting zones. Both feature heavy phasing especially Worgen. The city of Gilneas is a dark gothic city along the coast of Eastern Kingdom, and the starting quests will take you through out the city and the vast lands around it. As you progress through the quest line you will slowly see the changes within Gilneas as the city slowly decays and eventually falls into ruins with the invading Forsakens. Goblin starting zone is at a much lighter note with the upbeat music even though the island of Kezan is getting destroyed by Deathwing but the lack of seriousness is apparent in the Goblin's solution of blowing everything up. This includes putting rockets up monkeys' asses and chickens while setting bombs off on everything you touch. Overall Blizzard really out done themselves on these 2 starting zone in terms of showing off the new phasing tech and story telling. It translates well for the rest of the game too and that's what makes Cataclysm leveling less tedious.

-Conclusion
All these are great but is Cataclysm enough to bring excitement to a 6 year old game? Blizzard always make great trailers to hype people up but at the end of the day as you play in Cataclysm you realize it's still the same old WoW, you get to 85, you grind all the rep, you get gear in heroics and you do raids. Nothing more nothing less it's just the road to that goal might be more enjoyable now than Wrath. For me all the changes are great but Blizzard needs to do a lot more than this to convice me, therefore Cataclysm is not quite that earth shattering event I am looking for.

-Final Score: 8/10

nostalgia part 3 (a World of Warcraft special)

Many things have changed in WoW over the past 6 years. Class mechanics have changed numerous times that classes today plays nothing like when the game originally came out. The game itself has changed not just the cosmetic change with Cataclysm but the game mechanic itself. This is what makes WoW the best MMO out there because it's constantly evolving, for better or worse. I can sit here and say that the game is always evolving toward mainstream audience since it's getting easier and easier, but at the mean time it's not such a bad thing all together seeing as it's becoming more and more accessible.

One thing that has never changed is the epic music in WoW. With whatever changes it may deliver with each content patch or each expansion pack, WoW has always had that glorious music. Long after the game is dead, many other MMOs will learn from many things that made WoW great, the lore, the classes, the game play, the smallest detail, the constant updates and many more. I will always remember the game that has some of the production values and music that we have ever seen in the game industry. The epic music starts right away at your log in screen and here is some nostalgia to the past WoW log in screens.

-World of Warcraft (Vanilla)


-The Burning Crusade


-Wrath of the Lich King (my personal favorite)


-Cataclysm

nostalgia part 2 (a World of Warcraft special)

Cataclysm is here and the world of Azeroth as we know it is no longer the same. There are many things I personally will miss about the game, yes I don't play the game anymore but it was part of my life for the better part of last 6 years and whether good or bad it will be missed.

Blizzard usually don't screw up very often and when they do they almost address it immediately in the form of a content patch. People that plays WoW know what I am talking about as we have see endless changes with raids in term of difficulties and how the encounter works. People have also moaned and groaned whenever Blizzard changes how fundamentally a class works through buffs and nerfs. But after all It's Blizzard's way of tweaking the game mechanics in response to the community, they are trying to fix the game through each patch whether you believe it or not. One glaring omission however still remains in the game. Blizzard introduced pvp arena with the release of the Burning Crusade and it has been a total failure, even Blizzard themselves have admitted so. But guess what, arena is still in the game. Personally I feel like it destroyed pvp in WoW, the old battleground was not skill based but neither is arena. It was the purpose of arena but with the game so unbalanced around certain classes and gear sets, it turned into a faceroll competition of who has the best geared warlocks, rogues and healers. Don't get me wrong I played in arena as a gimp shadow priest in 3v3 and got to top 5 in the battle group, it was a real feat considering that if I kept on playing at the time I would have been one of the few Gladiators in that season that wasn't a warlock, rogue, warrior or some type of healer.

To be honest I miss the good old battlegrounds of large group pvp, that was WoW at its best. With Cataclysm Blizzard again is not removing arena in fear of warlock uprising since the warlock community seems to believe it takes true skill to play a warlock and the best place to display such skill is in arena. However Blizzard is making Battlegrounds relevant again now that you can gain pvp points from doing battlegrounds vs just in arena. I am really looking forward to getting the old pvp titles back too, now it's time to enjoy the old battleground music while one gets pumped up to slay thy alliance scum!

Random Thoughts part 2: Windy city edition

As Random Thoughts part 1 indicated that I don't travel very often, usually no more than 100 miles away from home. But sometimes life leads you to places that you never dreamed of going, and this time it led me to Chicago.

It has been some 13 years since I last boarded a plane. Some people suggested that I drive to Chicago instead of flying but there were two major flaws with that line of thinking:
-I absolutely hate driving. My car is not comfortable enough to allow me sitting in one position for more than an hour. I am also a conservative when it comes to driving long periods of time, the more I'm on the road the more pissed off I am with other driver and more prone to accidents. It's law of large numbers, its a fact. If those weren't enough then after driving 6 hours to the other side of the state had proven my theory nicely.
-I hate driving in the city. You could bundle this with I hate driving overall but a nice cruise in the country side is nothing like driving in the city, and in this case in Chicago.

That being said I chose to fly to the windy city. Since I haven't done this in a long time there were a few observations along the way.
-don't fucking pay for all your bags. It's a fucking rip off, big time. Unless you enjoy paying 30 dollars for a bag then I suggest carrying at least one or two with you. But the problems is the airline check in system isn't exactly very user friendly, it keeps asking you to pay for this and that sometimes you miss click and paid for something you don't even know.
-After 9/11 they have really upped the security at airports. Okay it's nothing like dogs and FBI agents standing around but I didn't realize you can't bring water bottles on with you anymore.
-After boarding the plane everything is pretty uneventful. The plane ride only took about 50 minutes, much less stressful than what would be 8 hours of driving. I didn't get lost in Chicago O'Hara airport like some people suggested, and my supposed limo service turned out to be a Russian dude driving a Mercedes. But everything worked out pretty nicely.

The hotel was pretty nice. It had 2 dinning services and my room had an 40 inch HDTV. One thing I don't get is why every hotel out there all have a copy of the bible? And they all look exactly the same too. Other than that the week in windy city was pretty boring, we didn't get to see much of the city not that I really cared. After all it was a business trip not a pleasure vacation. One thing that was very interesting to me was that since I don't travel much I don't meet a lot of people, but this trip had many others that were from all over the country. It really opened my eyes talking to them. From an Italian dude from Brooklyn, NYC to a good old country boy from Alabama, everyone was cool to talk to.

Chicago seems like an ages ago now that I am back, but it definitely went a lot better than I initially predicted.