Coffee Everywhere…Argh!

Not even 24 hours after my last wonderful experience with my car alarm, I have another run in. This one was even more catastrophic. Today instead of holding onto my keys as I placed my coffee and my water in the car I decided to toss the keys on the car seat. Well I don't know how it happened but I slipped as I was putting stuff in my car and my hand found the car alarm button as it did yesterday. This set the car alarm going off, made me jump, and I spilled my entire cup of coffee all over my car. Fortunately we have seat covers which absorbed all of the coffee so it did not actually get into the upholstery, but I had to strip down the car seats, throw them in the house, and change clothes. Needless to say I was late for work today. Not a good morning once again.

A Few Minutes of LOTRO

On a more positive note, my time in Lord of the Rings online, while it may not be a lot, has been enjoyable so far. I only got about five or 10 minutes in yesterday but I was enjoying myself nonetheless. I'm still bopping around Thorin's gate at a low level, and learning how to use my few spells and my bear as a tank, but I think this is a game so far that I've been able to jump in and out of even when I only have a few minutes to play.

I am not an Artist…Let Me Play

One thing that I usually find as a large barrier of entry for a game is when trying to start up a new MMO, I am immediately presented with a bazillion options for my character appearance. Now I know character appearance doesn't usually have any impact on the game – you might have racial differences or gender differences or class differences – well I guess class would be the most different, but appearance really doesn't make that much of a difference in the game. I guess for me I'm not really the type of player who needs to have a completely distinctly looking unique character for every game I play. I actually like the fact that in Warcraft I only have a handful of options – I could change the horns, I could change the skin color, I could change the gender, and I've got about five options for my hairstyle – I don't really care about all that. Most of the time I'm looking at my characters butt anyway.

So I guess what I'm getting at is I would prefer to have games let me start playing right away. Integrate all the character appearance changes and idiosyncrasies – how high you want the chin to be, how deep you want the cheekbones, and how wide apart you want the eyes. That's all fine and good but don't force me to make all those decisions before I even get the play the damn game.

The main reason I bring this up is I was looking at starting up Wildstar again. The problem is my characters are sitting there untouched for probably a year now but I don't want to spend the intense effort to create a character with all the idiosyncrasies and adjustments that would make them unique. I guess I could just use the randomizer but I usually don't go that route. I'd love to be able to start the game and after I'm level 10, perhaps then or after I finish the tutorial, they can provide me with an option…hey what do you want your face to look like.

I don't know it's just not the way I enjoy getting into a game – I want to play, not sculpt the hair style of my avatar.

Morning Ramble 2.20