finally, after several years, i beat xenosaga (i ordered it november 19th, 2004 - almost 3 years ago...). i just could never bring myself to finish it (then again, WoW did come out around that time in 2004) until today (finally).
and, while i hadn't played WoW since 6/15, i've reactivated my account. no, not addiction, just boredom, that and some of my work colleagues playing. but hey, what else do you do when you live thousands of miles from family? go figure.
today, during blizzcon, blizzard announced a new WoW expansion, "wrath of the lich king." i haven't played WoW in over 1.5 months now (i canceled my account and unsubscribed to wowinsider and other WoW rss feeds so i don't get tempted, but... i don't know anymore... :p) hopefully insha'Allah i'll manage to stay strong :p
blizzard put up the armory for WoW character stats - i like this a lot better than allakhazam because now i don't manually have to run a tool to update my character stats - plus the interface is much nicer 
so i updated the links on the side...
that having been said, i haven't had much of a chance to play in the past month or so... my main is still only 60 :p
oh, and i just added a gaming category to the site too for all these WoW posts
blizzard people are signing copies of burning crusade ~5 miles from my house... so very much tempted to go, but i can't imagine waiting a day in line to get one of 4500 copies... and besides, if it takes lines from 6 am to get one of 4500 copies, it'll be so crowded that i can't imagine it being worth going... then again, it could be nicely ebayable... *shrugs*
my bigger debate is, "to buy it, or not to buy it..."
thanks to a friend from college (thanks dude), i got on the burning crusade beta. i transferred rad over and played some... looks uber promising, albeit rough around the edges, but i guess that's why they're not releasing it until mid january... man playing on a pvp server has a totally different feel than playing on an rp server
i was looking on ebay, where you can sell your WoW characters for an amount depending on the type of gear and money they have. so glancing at some of the previous auctions, rogues seem to go between $150 and $500, depending on how tweaked they are.
so guestimating rad to get ~$200 (i think that's a safe guess based on his not-so-uber uberness), and estimating about 34 days of /played time on him, that's 816 hours for about $200... which is less than a quarter per hour!!! in 1938, that was minimum wage (although that was equivalent of about $3.22 in 2005). but now, minimum wage is about $5.15, which means WoW pays less than 1/20th of the current US minimum wage.
now if we also take into account the $14.99/month fee for playing... then wow...
(source: wikipedia).
today, i closed my WoW account. for good measure, i also deleted my characters before closing the account. this way, i can be sure that i don't go back. awesome game, but its too addicting and wastes too much time.
i am in the top 2000 pvp players on silverhand! w00t! i am now a sergeant, 1704th place on silverhand not bad for the first week of serious pvping :p
i installed wow reader - cool stuff, though i think it can be improved (automated somehow? i still have to do a /wver to get it to load, but... yeah). here is my first and most leveled up character's stats i should probably put this on the sidebar of my blog somewhere... what would be really nice is also a time tracking thing that looks at /played... hehe except then people would know how much i play 
my guild members and i were experiencing some major lag in the game, so we started to quote movie phrases, replacing random words with the word lag... the best one was, "with great lag comes great latency..."
so, in the words of another guild member, i am lagging out.
world of warcraft, the popular mmorpg by blizzard, despite being over a year old, still has millions of subscribers. i'm still subscribed now (although i did quit for a few months). what i realized, however, is that with few exceptions, the game is highly repetitive and is usually played as a means of escape into a fantasy world (or, as some people claim, as a means of socializing).
but i discovered that WoW isn't all that different from the real world - you can eat and drink in both - you can get sick, you can get disease... you can be well rested, or you can suffer from fatigue. if you try to swim across the ocean, you die from fatigue. rather than airplanes, we have gryphons or hippos. your deeds earn you a reputation with the cities and communities you work for - helping the community earns you a good reputation, whereas killing its people or harming them earns you a bad one.
in addition, as you "grow up," you learn more, just like in the real world. just like in the real world, you need money to do anything useful, including, but not limited to, going from one place to the other (and, just like in the real world, you could, in theory, walk almost any distance, but you will pass through bad areas, see highway men, and it will definitely take you a long time), buying new equipment, buying food, drink, etc. just like the real world, you can also learn to utilize the gifts of God to man in nature - you can learn to be a miner or herbalist, or you can learn to skin dead animals. and, like in the real world, you can use these raw materials to make something useful - to make medicines to help people who are sick, or build a nice leather armor, or fix a broken sword as a blacksmith. you can even fish or be an amazing 'chef de jour.' heck, you can even be a jeweler!
like in the real world, you can make friends and add them to your friends list. you can join a group of people or a faction and call yourself part of them, just like our typical nationalism today in the form of guilds. moreover, you can can communicate with a lot of people. like in the real world, there are many languages depending on your race and origin. oh, and like the real world, there are many races, humans, elves, dwarves, and gnomes among others.
just like in the real world, there are good people and there are bad people. there are trustworthy people and there are thieves. besides the fact that you can pickpocket enemies (in a robin hood style "take from the rich give to the poor" fashion), you will also meet people who, when questing with you, will steal from you or be dishonest. and, of course, you'll meet honest, friendly, and good people.
just like in the real world, there are spiders and other bugs. there are also bears, wolves, and tigers. there are also forests, oceans, and skies. there is a concept of day and night. there is a moon at night that shines so beautifully in the horizon. just like the real world, parts of world of warcraft are beautiful. just like the real world, there are areas with forests and areas that are mountainous and areas that are desert. just like the real world, there are a set number of continents, and travel across the is possible.
just like the real world, you can be religious in world of warcraft - i mean besides the fact that you can be a priest as a class, there are churches in many of the major cities. i have not stumbled across many mosques, although i have often found empty open homes which would be suitable to pray in. and, of course, for a muslim, the whole world is a masjid. in addition, all my characters follow the sunnah and thus have beards.
so yeah. world of warcraft is like real life. and that's all.
[disclaimer: i don't really believe this... or do i? ;)]
update: i've tried again to run WoW under linux, except that this time, i was trying with a dell 2005fpw. all i can say is wow, transgaming really did an awesome job with cedega. i get pretty decent performance, even with an ati card on the 2005fpw. linux rocks!