Sick as shit

This weekend has been horrid...
I feel crappy, headaches on either side of my head, coughing a lot, stuff nose/throat, probably will be sore soon too.
Plus it's snowing.
And like midterms coming up this exact week?
Anyway yeah, not good times.

What else, oh right, anyone know of a wav or mp3 splitter?
Preferably not one of those shitty shareware things I keep googling up.
I need to fix the Immaterial and Missing Power OST I ripped...

Post-Katsucon

So there I was last friday, working in the wee hours of the morning on a programming languages assignment (OCAML YOU SUCK!), when my phone rang at 7am.
Since NO ONE calls me at 7am, I pick it up...and it turns out to be a rather frantic Andy (anime club president), asking me when I would be ready to go to Katsucon.

Double take.

I hadn't received a confirmation email, and I hadn't even paid the deposit; I just had expressed some interest, then promptly forgot the whole thing.
So the fact that I was PREregistered and PAID for gave me a start.
Plus that ocaml assignment wasn't finishing itself.
Asked if I could just pay deposit off and not go.
"That would be forty dollars of nothing."
So...what the hell.
Hastily threw some clothes in a suitcase, hurriedly finished OCAML, and off to Katsucon I go.

Short summary:
Played some GGXX, got owned quite a bit, played a LOT of smash, got owned quite a lot, learned a whole shitload at the same time.
Managed to get in the cosplay this year (last year I was blocked at the door), waited a fucking hour or so to get into the dealer's room, FOUND 200% MARKED UP official Tsukihime manga (FUCK YOU SASUGA, YOU AND YOUR 600yen = TWELVE DOLLARS SHIT).
Talked with many drunks, bought instant ramen, almost starved myself at the same time, slept on the floor over and over (bah), saw the VGCats and MacHall guys, had quite a lot of fun.

In short...I sort of want to go to Otakon in a bad way.

VAFFANCULO

Quartett! is fucking beautiful.
I know I might say this every time, but there's this terrible urge for me to replay a BLOODY visual novel again.
And again.
And again.
The fact that a lot of it is about string instruments helps a lot, and the fact that the music is really really good too.
But geez, like Shuhua's story had me VERY VERY VERY worried and distraught until the final day.
I think I'm going to wimp out on replaying her story more than once...
I could probably replay Charlotte's story forever though...I like her character a lot.
And who knows, if my Japanese one day evolves far enough, I can grow to forgive Rossi too...cept in Charlotte's path of course, he's the absolute worst.
(I think the bastard's Phil's father too! Least from what the epilogue tells me...but the fact he "let?" Ruka kill that fucking bastard old man and helped him leave the country, plus the fact that he's at Phil's mother's grave in the epilogue, well he definitely has some good points at least...)

Anyway moving on to WoW business...
Two incidents which come to my attention, one is Glans/Jolson, who Dex hates, then again Dex hates everybody, vs the entire Obscured Reasoning guild.
Now I'm pretty neutral toward Obscured reasoning, and I'm really unsure about this Glans guy, nevermind the fact that his former name has a violation of TOS definition, but the argument pretty much went Glans and common sense - 1, all of Obscured reasoning - 0.
Best caster dagger in game...let's ignore the 40+ dps shall we.
What's the point of even trying to hide behind a shroud of neutrality when loot assigning, just come out and say you're going to be fucking biased before you bring people outside of guild to raid with you and be done with it so everyone knows.
Glans pretty much accomplished what he set out to do, which was paint Obscured Reasoning as idiots.

The other issue has to do with some crazy former Everquest guild and their highly "unusual" raid tactics.
I'm sort of undecided on this one, both sides make hilariously bitter filled comments that really put a new spin on spite, but in the end I'm inclined to lean toward the Conquest guild's side even though they are technically wrong.
They really are fucking hardcore though, their videos and strategies are really really well thought out.

What these crazies did was the first time in an instance, they did a hunter line of sight exploit pull, which basically pulls single mobs out of linked ones using feign death and frost traps.
In fact, I think it's sort of ingenius, it's been kicked around on the hunter boards for months, but Blizzard gave them a warning for it.
24 hours later, they tried another sort of pulling technique on the boss mob and his adds, this time involving a warlock summoning a rogue back to the main group.
In fact, every mob in the path also aggroed, however, boss ran faster than the others, and so they were able to section him off (I believe the rogue used vanish or died so the rest of the "trash" would reset and the guild hit the boss before he turned into the magical unhittable retreat state) and took the boss mob down to 5% (that's HALF AN HOUR, these boss mobs aren't your fucking blackrock spire losers) before getting owned by a GM, and getting several suspensions.
The suspension was basically as a result of..."Repeating an offense."

Now, to parse words, they in effect did not repeat the hunter line of sight bug at all. In fact the methods involved were really different. So the suspensions for a repeat of previous offense would not stack up UNLESS the listed offense was..."skipping content."
This euphemism seems to be engrained in MMORPG culture, which I was never a part of when I feebly attempted to play EQ, it basically means ignoring the crap and trash you have to fight through before the good stuff.
Evidentally, after waging a war with their players for a good few years, it's basically a standard tactic accepted by Sony on Everquest.
It's what I was doing when I stealthed through solo and assassinated Archmage Doan 20-30 or so times.
I completely ignored the "content" (trash mobs, etc.) of the rest of the instance and instead went straight for Doan, slicing the crap out of him and getting money from his drops.
They nerfed the selling prices on his drops pretty fast once they figured out what the rogues and druids were doing.
It's what I did when I called for a party of rogues to help me assassinate the hydromancer in Zul'Farrak to finish some quests.
It's also what our two druid three rogue party did in Maraudon, that is we skipped every single non named mob and went straight for the nameds, using a massive amount of stealth and distract to avoid about...3 hours worth of encounters.

Are we being asshats and "expoiters"?
I wouldn't like to think so, as we HAVE godamn stealth for a reason, and I'm sure hell the first thought of any semi intelligent rogue or druid would be...hey...we could frikkin stealth this entire damn instance.

Now the problems come up when you're talking about molten core, which is a raid instance.
Honestly, farming poor old corrupted Cerebras, farming until we all get photoskin spaulders and Vyletongue's lashes and crocodile skin boots is honestly NOT going to be a big deal.
These pieces of equipment are pretty good, and hell the spaulders and boots might last you to level 60...I know I sure haven't found anything better (I don't even HAVE the godamn spaulders or boots...because the damn other rogue won them.)
But when you're talking about say...molten core, with a named that takes a good HALF an hour alone to kill...how much time have you saved by pulling him through the trash.
We're talking shit that takes 40 people to kill and can sometimes win.
Yeah, you're saving a whole shitload.
And these are epic drops.

Now, to me, what these guys did was ingenius.
It's basically an extreme version of killing the named and his adds only, cept in a FORTY PERSON RAID INSTANCE.
Is it an exploit?
I don't know...but I have to say the burden sort of goes on Blizzard to FIX their high-end content and state if they specifically want to prohibit valid Everquest tactics in their game, considering they have some former EQ staff and players employed and are in the same genre.

"There's no such thing as cheap."

I read Sirlin's post on PvP a while back, and being on a PvE server and reading the forums constantly, it made sense.
Even on PvE you have forms of morons who can't take pure PvP because of the constant crap, so they instead kill all the quest npcs in crossroads, a level 20 horde town and camp it for hours.
People are fucking stupid.
But it was the responses that were the best, as s-kill came and beat all the "Anonymous"'s heads in with a truth baseball bat.

Anyway what the hell, we lost another student...this one apparently a suicide.
So this makes two murders from my year and one suicide from Kenny's year during my four years at good old JHU.
My mom is probably flipping out again.

Anyway, the day before my Modern Complexity Theory homework is due, I'm wasting time on Immaterial and Missing Power.
This game is...fucking weird.
It's a fighting game from the EFZ people Tasofro, cept all the characters are from Shmups.
EFZ is one of those doujin fighters, and it's pretty good, and now that I'm watching Air some of the things they put in are really cool...like Kano's level 3 desparation super when you just defend is when she starts choking Yukito and saying "With my own hands" in the story.
And Misuzu's crow turns into Yukito who pours juice on the ground, or kicks potato at you like a fireball.
And Minagi's level 3 is her stardust.
But Immaterial plays...really really weirdly for a fighting game.
Like...more like direct versus shmups or something.
Oh sure there are combos, and some really hard ones also, but the general idea is everyone's "normals" at long range actually shoot bullet patterns.
The thing is, everyone has two dashes in the air and on the ground that just go through almost anything, so what ends up happening is at far range you have two people (or the cheating computer, who has more than 2 bars of life almost all the time and access to crazy versions of their supers) throwing bullet patterns and such at each other in such a way to catch the other.
The power meter is the life and blood of the game, when you are at far range and do your bullet patterns, certain patterns take more power meter than others, and if you hit 0 you have to wait for the ENTIRE bar to charge before doing projectile moves again.
Also, if you continually block, you lose power meter, and I believe if you hit 0 you can't block anymore either.
You can ALWAYS dash however.
Special moves (hadoken, srks, half circles, whatever) also usually take meter, but some don't...meaning some of the girls can still continue a pretty good assault while meterless, as they can still dash through bullet patterns and waves and can use some special moves.
Close range normals suck.
Like they don't chain, except maybe into itself twice or a medium move (forward + button), and the forward version might buffer into one of the specials, but in general if you're stuck with only your close range normals (meterless), you're pretty screwed.
Bombs work like in shooters, they clear all bullets from the screen...and they also let you cancel any move.
You get two per match, and well...I'm really bad at using them.
Usually for some reason I get hit while I'm doing a bomb, they're not the full screen livesaving things they are in shmups.
But they do launch, meaning you can do some really long combos with them, I'm just not good enough with them yet...hell I'm still trying to use them effectively like they are supposed to, removing bullets from the screen (maybe it's only a certain area or maybe I got jabbed out or something.)
While you're hitting or getting hit, you're building up super.
Normal matches start each player at two life bars, and you can choose a super for each life bar, meaning when you lose one life bar your super changes.
Each girl has 3 supers and their upgraded versions to use.
Supers also take power meter, some more than others, so you can spam some supers if you have enough meters, while other supers will actually take your entire power meter and leave you in helpless mode for a while after they are done.
Anyway, the characters still play differently, amazingly enough.
Like the sword girl is rush down.
Her dash is LONG, her dashing moves stuff all sorts of things, her specials are sword moves that take NO meter, her projectiles...well they're not that great.
But I like her, her supers aren't bad, one's a really easily comboable Hibiki type dash you got anime sword owned move, one's a gigantic instant overhead slash (the first version is pretty meh, I usually go the dash move for my first bar and her upgraded near full screen overhead slash super for my second life bar), and her third super summons a clone that mimics her moves but steadily drains your power meter.
Her third super honestly sucks, from what I can see, it's only good if you're fighting the cheating computer, where it becomes annoying as hell.
Then you have some sleepy library girl who has probably the best keepaway in the game?
Tornados, book fireballs, normal fireballs, a move that pushes you away from her if you get too close, water fountains, her supers are all pretty good too.
One she throws a ball onto the ground and if it's remotely near you it bursts into a tornado, pretty instant.
Upgraded version is a larger radius on the ball.
The second one she shoots a lot of waterballs at you, very nice spread and good if the enemy is on the ground.
I honestly forget what the upgraded version of this move is, it's sufficiently different, I think it summons lots of water bubbles that explode on contact?
Third super unupgraded version I've also forgotten, because the UPGRADED version is a full screen instant YOU GOT OWNED move.
True it takes out your power meter and such, but I'd have to say it could be better than Gill's jump into the middle of the screen and chip you down move.
Thing hits EVERYWHERE, does quite a bit of damage, has almost no startup.

Thing is Patchouli (her name's coming back to me) is sort of meter reliant, so she's really sort of vulnerable after it.
But it honestly doesn't matter to me.
I usually use her unupgraded watershot super and her upgraded FULLSCREENOWN super.
Finally you have this maid...
Her speed is on par with sword girl and her projectiles are pretty damn good.
So she's a good mix, she throws knives, lots of knives.
Her hadokens throw shadow knives that are activated if you press C, her C throws a stream so it's really two streams.
Her supers are summoning a circle of knives that then proceed to home on you (I believe when she just summons them they aren't in existence), this weird ass freeze time move I still haven't figured out yet, but when the computer does it a whole bunch of knives come out and basically guarantee if you're in reel animation you're going to get hit and if you're on the ground you're not going to be able to jump avoid it (good for chip). Her third super are these mad slashes with guess what, her knives, upgraded is full screen.

The problem comes from story mode, as the girls you fight in there don't exactly work the way you do.
In story mode, the girls will not do any supers or what not until they are low life (regardless of which life bar it is), then they have INFINITE SUPER METER and from what I think almost infinite power meter.
Also, the farther you go on, the more life bars the girls have, so instead of facing 2 supers, you'll face all 3, or maybe some crazy upgraded versions near the end.
Oh right, I forgot to mention that each girl's final life bar will will let her have infinite meter when it's full, meaning she will start with free supers on the last lag.
There's a whole series of bosses near the end too, that just have super sequences for their ENTIRE last 4 life bars or so, and they have like 7 total.
These overpower supers usually give the girl super armor, and or totally uninterruptible, hence the problem with some of the moves I mentioned.
Knife maid's slashing super is pretty good, but when you do it against unflinchable psycho children of doom, you're going to get interrupted by the ridiculous bullet patterns (reminiscent of shmups final bosses) that are flying all over the place.
So it's better to go her circle of knives, as the cast time is very short and she doesn't need to continually perform the move.
With the sword girl, her near full screen sword slash is very very fast, and with library girl, well her full screen move COMPLETELY YELLOWS out the screen when it's hitting meaning she is INVINCIBLE while it's happening, REGARDLESS of what craziness is going on screen.

Anyway I sort of wonder how competitive play is for this game, it's just too weird for me to imagine it being anything other than a keepaway fest and massive mind games.

Is there a use for wings that can't fly?

Air 5.
Ahhhhhhhh, they're really going to screw us along here aren't they...
I sort of feel the absence of Kano from further episodes (I hope it is not permanent), but Minagi's story takes place now, and it's depressing too.
Plus we're beginning to see a lot of the cracks around Misuzu.
I wonder how they're going juggle this in the end...

Oh right, level 60 Rogue.
I win.

While the weather outside is frightful...

55 in WoW...after having an absence of 22 days.
Talk about money wasted, but it was my old computer's fault...thing finally died.
Ha, all of Kenny's friends all hit 60, so he laughed at me.
Then he told me to stop playing.
True, continuing to play is like a hazard waiting to happen but...I have to hit 60.
And hell, my guild's fun enough, even with bastards like Dex.
Ok, bastards like Dex make it worthwhile honestly...
It's a pity we lost a lot of our female influence due to our coarseness...but at least no grudges?
Better then can be said for the OTHER unfortunates who left.
The only one I slightly missed is Aerogoth, the rest are good riddance with a capital G.
Cept the asian fob chiao.
He owes me money.
Warcraft money.
Plus it was hilarious listening to him on Vent.

My first dream is a secret, my second dream is to fly in the sky.

I don't know if it's because I haven't slept and it's 9:46am in the winter in Baltimore, or the absolute beautifulness that is Air, but I am shivering.

Tin can!

Hm, a link so interesting I had to blog about it.
Anyway, this is downright interesting.
I'm already thinking up uses, but basically it's a crazy vortex machine that turns anything dumped into it into micron size powder.
And the guy only had a high school education?
Take THAT, college!

But yeah, still thinking of uses...

Edit: SOYLENT GREEN!

???

So, after narrowing down my problems to NOT the power supply, probably NOT the motherboard, etc. etc etc., I was reduced to fiddling with 999 options in the bios.
None really mattered...what was for sure was somewhere in my case something was shorting any power supply that I used.

This goes on, and then, on a whim, I switch keyboards.
And for some reason, it works...so far.
We'll see how it goes, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

Oh yeah, THIS is sort of funny.
Seems like Japan is the land of unsecured cameras.

Air

Perhaps it was the nice feeling Kanon left me that makes me in awe of Air.
Anyway, Key finally made/started on an anime version of Air, which I only know through whispers and doujin games, such as eternal fighter zero.
Comparison to Kanon?
The girls are almost drawn the same, in that rather weird but cute style.
The guy however is a step UP, cause he looks so fucking cool.
Yuuichi, you're a nice guy, but come on you look dorky =D.
But right away, yeah, I notice a gigantic shift in the mood.
While Kanon started off with that sort of homegrown coziness of a school anime, Air...starts off expansive.
I don't know how to describe it; it's just this wonderful feeling of a journey permeates the episode.
I can sort of figure out the main story from Eternal Fight Zero, most likely the guy, Yukito, is searching from someone he saw or from his dreams, a girl with wings, who I happen to know is named Kanna.
Anyway, the cast of MAIN girls seems more tightly knit, with Misuzu (Testament clone in EFZ =D), Kano (Top tier, she's a magic/RO freak!), and Minagi (She has that little red haired crazy shrimp with her as a stand!) being the main trio.
There's also Misuzu's mother, who I'm really not sure is her real mother and this dark haired sort of mysterious girl (School nurse?)
But I'm really like the show after episode one, I hope it has that free spirited mood through the entire thing.

Edit: That and the fact the fucking opening and ending and production values are bloody awesome...those songs really help the expansive move, and godamn everything looks nicer than nice.

Repetition

Bloody hell I never read my past posts, especially if they are like 2-3 weeks old.
Anyway, problems with Power supplies...k8n neo seems to require a 24A or higher 12V rail.
Now, before this, I only knew one number about power supplies, and that's wattage.
Turns out wattage is a horrible bullshit measure to go by.
In fact, reading up on power supplies turned into an EE minicourse.
But anyway, I'm going with what the wacky danish certified electrician geek said, and that's an Enermax 460W.
Wish me luck, but it's free two day shipping!
Woo.
I'll be able to play WoW...SOON.
I hope.
My rogue is probably cold.

AHEM

Well holy fuck.
Anyway we all knew the computer would die one day, just did it have to be RIGHT after I got home.
Catastrophic failures all over the place, and so I have been basically computerless until...well today.
Still, my measly 350w power supply is lacking, so I can't play WoW just yet.
But damn it's good to be alive.
I'll be going back as soon as I can, hopefully like...Thursday or Wednesday or something.
And then...job hunting time, GLEE.
Oh and for the curious nerds:

Athlon 3200 XP (Not 64 because of WinXPs problems with it)
K8n Neo Platinum
1024MB ram
Reused radeon 9800

Rawr!

Passing on...

Wow some repeat posting here about WoW, I guess I really don't have track of the time I spend on that game.
Anyway, my old computer has finally given up.
It's laying down in the middle of the road and waiting to die.
I ordered a whole bunch of new parts, going to salvage the card and the two hard drives and just copy stuff over then format both of them.

Man I'm sort of excited, even though I had to spend lots of money =/.
But my computer had given up the ghost anyway, it was seriously pushing it.
I'm surprised it didn't explode earlier.

Anyway the new thing should be pretty sweet:
Athlon 3200+
1 gig ram
Some crazy mofo motherboard
Salvaging radeon 9800 (yes yes it was WASTED on my old piece of shit.)
Some funky case which I HOPE TO GOD fits in my suitcase back.
That's basically what's changing, oh right already have a SATA drive.
Wish me luck fools, hopefully I don't own myself again (REMEMBER THE THERMAL GREASE MORON!)

The war on my computer

Well, everytime I turn my pc off, it gets the bright idea to fail spectacularly.
I've saved this pos no less than 10 times by now, and right now I'm working on the 11th.
Seems like ntoskrnl.exe is...guess what, corrupt!
Plus it doesn't fit on a floppy, and the expand function doesn't work in dos mode.
Good job microsoft, I hate you.
I'm also getting slightly behind in World of Warcraft.

All righty, big description of the good ole Wow.
I was originally not going to play this game at ALL.
But good old Brennan bought a copy, and it was DEFECTIVE.
Actually, when I look back, I think it just might be his computer sucking worse than mine (amazing!)
But either way, his good old friend who works at the game store WROTE off the defective copy and got Brennan a new one.
Thing is, defective copy, nondefective CD KEY.
You get the picture.
So that's why I sold my soul to World of Warcraft TWO WEEKS BEFORE FINALS.
Ouch.
I owned myself.
But it's a great game, I'm currently playing a level 46? or 47 NE rogue.
Rogues own, they really got the sneaky thing down.
We excel at assassination missions too, ironically.
We just can't take mobs like those fucking hunters and paladins.
But yes I'll write about the actual rogue class itself later.
Right now I have to figure out how to move a file slightly larger than a floppy onto another computer.

Doom

Reading period for finals, and Blizzard released World of Warcraft.
Wasn't going to buy it, cause of the initial cost and I knew the risks.
Roommate buys a copy, it's defective, he gets a new copy.
Still has defective copy's cd-key...

And that's why I haven't written anything or been on aim in the past 2 weeks.
He has doomed me to waste more time and money by giving me something for free.
The irony.

Those of you who are playing it, know how awesome it is, and know how hellish this time is if in college.
Those of you who aren't...get with the program.

Oh geez

Am I bloody cursed with the death touch?
My laptop has officially died because of a corrupt userinit.exe file while I was trying to change regional settings.
Again I am missing a bootdisk that reads ntfs partitions and can handle a drive larger than 8mb or whatever ridiculously small amount my current bootdisk supports.
Yay.

I hate computers.

Home sweet home

Man this gimpy laptop lacks Japanese language support!
Many apologies to noob who had to send me japanese language files one at a time... pissed him off quite a bit =D.
Anyway, it's nice to be home, it's warm, it's CLEAN-er than my apartment, there is no immediate deathly homework trap of death over my head, and I have access to plenty of FOOD.
Plus ultimate game tomorrow or something?
These are the days...I sort of wish I didn't have this internship and job stuff hanging over my head.
Brennan IS right though, after we get out of JHU we can pretty much find any job we want, just not the really crazy high paying ones...
And until we have a family or what not, we're pretty set for the future.
Thanks JHU, for at least that.

Pilgrims were good and Indians too!

Well it's that time of year again, the time where 90 bloody assignments all fall before we escape for Thanksgiving.
Currently stalling on PL/SQL database query, probability/statistics homework, Internet protocols homework, and a Chinese history museum report.
Go procrastination, that and lousy sleep schedules.

Man perl...a language I never got to good at...it comes back to haunt me...fitting cause it's another Yarowsky class.

In my "spare" time, I decided to ask the people of gamefaqs (hahaha I know what you're thinking), specifically the RO community, on how they can like a game so backwards and old as RO.
Honestly...maybe I should have been nicer, but heck they're GAMEFAQS posters for crying out loud.
Anyway, I sort of already know why people pay for this glorified chat room...
The cute sprites and the people they've met.
At least that's why I was still playing and why I am paid through till February.
It sure as hell wasn't the gameplay or WOE or leveling...
Well here's a shoutout to the people who managed to make me waste money for an untold number of months: Jazzy, Kenton/Sev, Viki, Zed, SM, and more recently Tanzy, Jack, Yiyi, and Yilei.
Thanks for the memories, even though I'm a hell of a lot poorer.

On that subject, after I finish my homework (HAHAHA if), new month coming up = new guild wars preview weekend.
I wonder what they'll have done to the formula, besides the already awesome unbeatable no monthly fees thing.
I for one suggest MORE types of armor, and maybe a weapon store with more types of crazy weapons (different elements, stun, whatever), again all competitively priced of course.
I'm secretly hoping the money bug is still there so I can get full studded leather before my two days runs out again (Brennan was so pissed that the game went down right before he got his while I was jumping around doing emotes in green full studded armor =D)

Chkdsk does not run in DOS

HOLY MOTHER FUCK.
These past few days have been a trying trying time.
Remember all that shit about calm before the storm?
The storm has arrived.
My system is going through convulsions and catastrophic failures by the day, and I had to use seven or so disks in tandem to revive the beast.
I even ordered a hard drive from newegg.com right there, cause I need to move my files and wipe/reinstall xp before the drive explodes from bit errors.

Meanwhile, at the same time, I can absolutely not stop playing World of Warcraft 3 beta.
It's like the perfect counterpart to guild wars...where one is skill based etc, WC3 is going to be your uber Skinner's box.
It's still an mmorpg, but it's done really well, and Blizzard has given you lots of shit to do until the next couple of years.
It's rather easy to figure out too...and FUN, most of all.
If it didn't have monthly fees I'd buy it, but as of now...probably no go.
I'm not rich.

WoW!

Talk about absurd, a 2gigabyte client distributed over "Blizzard installer" (Read, bittorrent), unzips into a 3 gigabyte install package that somehow takes 30 minutes to install.

THIRTY MINUTES.
What the hell are they dropping on my computer that requires 30 minutes to install?
Don't even give me the IT'S THREE GIGS argument, plenty of installations bordering or surpassing 3 gigs do not take as long.
I can't remember the last time a game installation took remotely past 5 minutes.

And now, I can't even make a character, because I get disconnected every few seconds.

This bites...
I'll talk about the gameplay when I can actualy try it, but as of now, man the freeloading populace really brought this game to its knees stress wise.