That pretty much sums my weekend.

Thought I’d pass along a link for any US college students (or out-of-college students with a university email address that still works): Win741.com (a viral marketing MS-type thing, or something) is offering Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit or 64-bit upgrade version for $29.99 - that’s $100 off. Goes through January 2010, and is a digital download (though you can buy a physical disk too, if you like). Downloads will be available after Win7’s actual release date.

Comments turned off to avoid inevitable alternate OS user snark. Yes, I like your OS too. This is not the forum for you go to “but Windows sux zomg.” Take it elsewhere.

A little backstory: part of the downside of leveling a fresh alt on a brand new realm, new experience or not, is the lack of support. Previously, when I leveled an alt, I could count at least an heirloom or two or three being passed around. When I made Anschlag on Kael’thas, his only real form of support was other people - a couple runes from Lady Jess and a boatload of green stuff for the teens and 20s from Dechion - and as much as I love those guys, I wanted to be able to help myself where necessary. So, since Zulfon was just kind of wasting away over there on Feathermoon, where I didn’t particularly want to raid with her… Well, say hello to Rajaat up there.

Race (troll -> draenei), faction (Horde -> Alliance), sex (female -> male), name (Zulfon -> Rajaat), and server (Feathermoon -> Kael’thas) - I think I pretty much changed everything I could. Oh, and guild too (The Aftermath -> Sidhe Devils). So, here’s a few tips from me to you, just in case you’re thinking about doing the same thing, or something similar, as well as a few things to think about before you switch sides from Alliance to Horde or vice versa.

So, yes, as some of you had surmised correctly from my inclusion of the above picture in my last post, I went back to WoW… sort of. But this time, as a casual player, not a hardcore raider. Why? So I can ruin your game, of course; that’s what all us casual players do. I’d like my free epics now.

… no?

… anyone?

Alright then. Truth be told, I had been doing some thinking since Cataclysm’s plans to renovate Azeroth, and realized that there was basically a whole half of the game I had never* experienced. And while I may not be actively playing like I used to, I still wanted to see at least that half of the storyline. Then I thought to myself, hey, I’ve never rolled a human. So I clicked human. Followed by, hey, I’ve never rolled a mage either. Click. Mage. Now all I need is a name.

And thus Anschlag, human mage, located on Kael’thas so I can harass Jess, Bre, and apparently sometimes Ratters, was born. Voila! See, it’s not that interesting of a story. But so far I’ve been having fun with it, rolling Frost and shooting things with … well, frostbolt spam. I’m really bad at figuring out the range on Frost Nova, and I kinda hate Elwynn Forest now. (I think it was the 8th time I had my face eaten by the same red-leveled bear while I was inside a house that the bear walked past).

So, yeah, on the MMO front I’m dividing my time between that and FFXI, with the result being that I level really, really slowly in both games. I’m also temporarily playing Shaiya (WoW clone hooooooooo!) because there’s two overlapping contests, for reaching levels 5 and 10 respectively, with a chance to win an Alienware 17x laptop (here’s a pic of the specs). Plus all the usual console games, though to be honest everything is taking a back seat because it’s football season! (And the Bengals have already managed to disappoint, but hey, that’s the life of being a Cincinnati fan.)

• Actually, I have a draenei shaman; he’s level 46, and he’s on Silver Hand. And I leveled him when I had no earthly idea what I was doing, so we’re going to pretend he doesn’t exist.

Oh, sure, I did some other stuff with my long holiday weekend, but for the most part, this sums it up:

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Monday:

And so life continues on, as it is wont to do. I’ve actually been up to quite a bit of stuff, just not sure how much of it is blogworthy. Oh, who am I kidding, it’s my blog, it’s all blogworthy. Here goes, in no particular order:

• I don’t know why but I’ve been bitten by the urge to buy a home. Probably a condo, as I’d like to stay in this area and that seems more likely to be in my budget range. However, before I can even think about doing that, I need to refinance my car loan - the initial interest rate was utterly atrocious because I had no credit whatsoever, and surely I can find a better rate by now - it’s been a year. Surely.

• More people have gotten married off - a lot of people seem to be doing that of late… best wishes, Cassie and Jim, and thanks for the fantastic wedding. The roof of a museum definitely takes the cake for best place I’ve been at for a 20-minute wedding, and the reception was no slouch.

• Some progress made on HPWP. Definitively finished off King of Fighters XII, Treasure Planet, and (since it ended…) the Champions Online Closed Beta. Started Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, Mega Man Star Force 3: Black Ace, and Shadow of the Colossus. All good picks on my part, if I do say so myself.

• Weekly D&D nights have turned into … well, a different game every week, with a rotating “person in charge.” Our former DM (George) is now going to be running Millenium’s End, which I know next to nothing about; one of our players (Zach) is running a board game night; another player (Vince) is running a Pathfinder campaign, and I… have absolutely no idea what I want to do. Gack! I had been joking to Zach that I might try running people through the World’s Largest Dungeon, but I can’t find a place to get my hands on that 880-page (!) monstrosity. I’ve got no ideas!

• I’ve been bitten by the bug to get a “real” laptop. I have an Acer Aspire One netbook at the moment, but it has a tiny rattling noise from being carted around in my bag that I fear is probably a screw of some kind loose inside the case. Doesn’t seem to show any negative effects yet… but it’s only a matter of time. That, and the tiny screen bugs me a whole lot more than I anticipated it did, as does the utterly shitty touchpad on the Aspire One.

• A friend of mine from M3 is starting up a Persona-based MU* and lemme tell you friends, I could not be more excited about that. Actually very excited about the re-releases of Persona and Persona 3 for PSP, though I have to wonder where the heck the inevitable Persona 2 re-releases are - we only got one part here in America (which I still have, along with P1, thankyouverymuch), and surely we could get both of them over here now…?

• Oh, and I’ve been madly gobbling up every piece of FFXIV-related news I can find from Eorzeapedia and FFXIV.ZAM, and again, excitement meter is capped out. I just hope I haven’t fizzled out by the time the game appears next year… of course, I’ve been avoiding the rampant speculation on the forums and really subsisting on Square Enix’s slow IV drip of news, so it’s more of a steady excitement.

• And last but not least, graduate classes have started again, what with it being fall. I’m taking a “computation and logic” course which frankly scares the shit out of me, because the undergrad version of this same course was my worst experience in all of my undergraduate career, and I barely squeaked by with the minimum C. Of course, this appears to be more straightforward logic, which - well, logic is my strong suit, at least symbolic logic. My focus in my philosophy degree (trivia: I have a philosophy degree) was logic, and I helped goad a professor into introducing an advanced logic course into the curricula. Shame it didn’t work out.

Hey Square-Enix, could you please page the FFXIV floor, find the one guy who’s supposed to be on the live chat, and put him on it? Thaaaaaaaanks!

This. A hundred times this.

Remember how I told you I was a pretty avid console gamer? Well, yeah, about that…

I have a small problem when it comes to videogames: I never seem to finish them. My attention is caught, I plunk down the cash (or, more recently, massive amounts of Gamestop trade-in credit) and bring it home, I play the game for a night or two, and… nothing. Some rare games get me to come back to them repeatedly, but overall I seem to lose the drive to finish things in place of the drive to buy the Next New Thingâ„¢.

So, now, I am putting a challenge before myself: I’m going to finish what I start. Enter this site’s new page: Hey Phil, Whatcha Playin’? It’s a pretty straightforward page, divided into three sections:

1. Currently Playing, for games that are currently receiving a moderate-to-large amount of my gaming hours,

2. On the Shelf, for games that I either haven’t started, haven’t invested more than a few hours into, or that I have played for a while then put back down for whatever reason.

3. Finished! Which should be self-explanatory, no?

And, to make it a little more challenging on myself, I won’t be adding to the collection by spending any cash at all, until I’ve finished everything that is currently unfinished. If I want to get something new, there are two exceptions to this rule:

1. Store Credit, by trading in things I’m no longer playing, and

2. Rare Finds, such as if I manage to find Xenosaga III or Yakuza 2 somewhere.

That’s it. No spending money on new console or handheld games until I finish the ones I have. Let’s see if I can do it! I’ll update periodically on this (you didn’t think I would do something that didn’t provide me with periodic blogfodder, did you? Pshaw) and welcome comments as well as recommendations (because it’s probably pretty obvious from the list what kind of games I like).

Here is why I haven’t been blogging or chatting or on anything but Twitter for a week now (since Softi requested it):