This may just be cranky, but to counteract my tip of the hat this morning – BAH.

Second Life to Charge For Last Names

The company’s business development team decided to create a vanity name feature in part to help legitimize the growing number of executives, political candidates and other famous people who stage rallies and give stump speeches in the virtual world. With the new feature, Linden Research will try to verify that avatars with high-profile names belong to same-named owners. For now, it’s nearly impossible to determine the offline identity behind any avatar.

They’re going to be charging $100 upfront, and then $50 a year after that. What. The. Hell? I … don’t have words. I’m not really the biggest fan of Second Life, but I’ve always regarded the place as a good place for artistic folks to do their thing. Gimme a break though, charging that kind of dough for a last name? Hey guys, maybe you should work on your server code instead of holding people up at gunpoint for what amounts to an addition to a database table?

A Late, Incomplete, and Pessimistic Review of the Buried Sea

I should really spend more time playing through more of the missions before snapping to a judgement about The Buried Sea. What I have seen so far is a lot of running around in huge complex zones to hunt down instances and hope that something along the mission doesn’t get fowled up along the way. My time is the most important commodity I have. I only have a few hours every week to play these games. More and more hobbies take up that time and I have to decide exactly where my time is best spent. Should I keep trying to slog through poorly designed missions until I find the ones that are good enough, well tuned enough, and rewarding enough to spend my time? Or should I go somewhere where I know the sort of output I am likely to expect?

The end of the review kind of trails off into complaining about The Burning Crusade, with Loral saying how he’s basically tired of EQ’s shit and is happy he has something else to play. This is Loral Ciriclight, Mobhunter, saying this. Yee-ikes. I guess you take a step forward, and then you take a step back, eh EQ?

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