And other notable mentions...

Before it fades away from my memory, I'd like to expand on my personalized list of morons found in the world of Guild Wars. It baffles me just how dumb some people are when it comes to playing the game. And while it may be just a game, there are times when you just gotta wonder if they are really that stupid.

For this entry, I engrave Mystic Fear (aka Peoples Killer) into the stone tablet of morons, assholes, pricks, fucktards, idiots, dumbasses, and whatever kinds of degrading adjectives you can think of. And with good reasons for doing so.

In a society where order and management needs to be maintained, there is a need to put someone in charge, a leader if you will, to ensure that things go according to the task at hand and to supervise the entire performance. It's a common idea used in many places like military and large corporations. Without this kind of hierarchy system, any group being sent out to do a task would easily fall apart. And as such, there needs to be someone to at least give the group some form of direction.

Upon entering the area labeled as the Fissure of Woe, it was mentioned beforehand that a certain individual will be assigned the task of making first contact with enemies and to lure those enemies into the group for an organized and structured attack. This, of course, is a common tactic used in the military as well, to bait enemies into falling into a common trap system where the soldiers will ambush them. However, it seems such a notion is never in the mind of the aforementioned individual, who continued on in attracting enemies when he is not supposed to. Repeated attempts to get the person to stop failed. Eventually, the group informally agreed to not assist him to minimize the risk of failure. That idea worked about one-third of the way to our destination when he died. However, the individual refused to leave and instead stayed where he would constantly harass remaining party members. While the harassment was in text and in compass pings and drawings, the group continued on, battling against the odds and surviving twice.

But while the group eventually died due to a mistake on my part, it was proven to that individual twice that he alone cannot falter a group whose teamwork made the trip most interesting. There was little to no communications between the remaining members and everyone knew what they are supposed to do. No voice communication software was even involved.

For whatever reasons there are, it's bothersome and tiresome that there are those who do nothing but bring grief and sabotage a party's run. Sadly, people have to live with this fact and try to avoid those who are like this. But perhaps the worst part of all this is the fact that nothing can be done other than simply avoiding them. The administrators cannot deal with them unless it is a serious matter. And while the problem is serious enough for the casual gamers, it isn't according to the administrators. I can only hope that parties I join in the future are sensible, as it is risky and is no guarantee the party I end up on is of any good.

Sabotage and Technobabble

This'll be technical for a bit so if you know nothing of computer hardware, you can skip this portion.

Lately I've gotten the upgrade bug and am seeking to upgrade the hardware. However, I ran into a problem when I could not find any hardware that supports a particular series of processor, namely the Athlon64 X2. At first it seem weird that only boards with nForce4 chipsets would be able to use the X2 processors from the start. But I later realize that, after visiting a technical forum, that this is not entirely true. In fact, some nForce3 motherboards are supporting the X2 series with, as AMD has mentioned, just a BIOS upgrade. This came as a great relief as I did not want to dive in that much into the world of PCI Express where the upgrade would then cost me more than anticipated. So far, the only hardware that will be replaced is the CPU and motherboard, along with the heatsink since I have no proper heatsink for an Athlon64.

I nearly panicked when I realize that I may be screwed over when I have set my sight on a motherboard make and model. But thankfully things are starting to look better. At the moment, the lowest price for a X2 CPU is $435. Combined with a motherboard would make the grand total of over $555, not including the heatsink to cool the CPU down. However, recent news say that there is a new CPU model being released to be slated at a price of $345 (in 1,000 quantities). This'll be a welcome thing for me as it'll make getting a X2 CPU more affordable and opens up the potential for overclocking. Hopefully the upgrade won't delay me by a lot. I'm anxious to get my hands on the lower-end X2 and will be relieved when I finally get it installed.

Now on to different matters. In my time in playing Guild Wars, I've come across players of varying types. Some good, some bad, some I've no opinions of. You pass by them every time much like passing by another person out on the streets. For this blog entry, I'll be focusing on a particular player whose beliefs does not work or blend with others. I have contemplated for a while as to whether or not to start publishing names of people who has shown intelligence lower and beyond zero IQ.

Enter "Ro The Rock," a warrior who believes to strike while the enemies are standing and waste no time to do so. He also expects everyone to come along and help him before he is killed, which is quite unlikely given the location the party was in. In the game, there are two high level areas called the Underworld and Fissure of Woe, both of which costs 1,000 gold to enter and features enemeies with levels no lower than 24. Upon arriving at the Underworld, the area is littered with Battle Aatxe, a minotaur derivatives set at level 29. Hits from these enemies range in the 150 and up, of which no player can single-handedly stand going against one of these creatures.

After virtually sabotaging the entire run for the whole party, the person left after dying. It was then that the person deserves no respect nor deserves any cooperation from anyone. He would resort to using foul language whereas I continued hassling the person via private message. If any, that person ought to live the rest of the gaming days without anyone else to assist him, ever.

So I hope this list will only be a small one and I hope that people may spread the word about this bad individual. In the game, it's more about teamwork than about being Rambo.