I’ve been trying out a new mod for WoW - WoW Rankings. It feeds information about your character to a website, which makes your character information publicly visible. One of the things I still really like about Mythic’s DAoC is the fact that character information is readily available on the web. It was very nice being able to point people at a website to show them your characters, instead of having to constantly try to describe your accomplishments. WoW, unfortunately, doesn’t do this.

WoW Rankings attempts to…but it isn’t working nearly as well as I’d like. To start with, the information is frighteningly comprehensive. It shows not just your character’s stats and attributes…but also which talents you’ve taken, what equipment you’re wearing, and also the contents of your inventory and bank vaults! I’m not sure I like how comprehensive that information is… I guess I don’t have anything to hide, but I question how useful and important it is for everyone on the web to know that I’ve got 12 soul shards stashed in my backpack.

WoW Rankings also uses an updater program to upload your information, and it isn’t the most stable. I’ve had it crash on me twice now. It isn’t a major problem if it does crash, you can always restart it, but there is a certain annoyance factor.

The biggest problem with WoW Rankings right now is how slow the service is. I suppose I shouldn’t complain, since it is free… But the service is virtually unuseable as it is right now. It took a good 5 hours for my first upload to appear on the website, and it hasn’t updated at all over the last day or so (even though I have been playing and updating my information). I guess it isn’t terribly important that the information be absolutely up to date…but I’m miffed that my profile still lists me as level 50, when I’m 51 now…

Still, aside from those few problems, it all seems to be working fairly well. I’m not entirely certain if I’ll keep using it or not… Time will tell.

Very odd having the day off today… I’m not used to having holidays off. At EB, the store was open whenever the mall was…and, of course, the mall was open on holidays. Plus, if it was a holiday, the chances were good that I’d be working. I was dependable, reliable, and didn’t complain - I needed the hours. I always wound up working the holidays. Not anymore… Today, I’ve got the day off.

It feels all kinds of wrong. I woke up this morning around 9:00, aware that I did not have to work today, but waiting for the phone to ring nonetheless.

GameSpot | THQ returns to war with Winter Assault

Looks like Relic is working on an expansion pack for Dawn of War. I’m thrilled. I thoroughly enjoyed that game… My only complaint was that the storyline was too short. I can’t wait to play some more. I just hope the expansion is as rich as the first game was, and that the storyline is a bit longer.

Slashdot | U.S. Agencies Earn D+ on Computer Security

Is this even news anymore? They do one of these reports every year, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen the U.S. Government get a good grade.

Spent a lot of time over the weekend playing around in Feralas. Previously, I’d done just a quick pass-through out there…maybe a quest or two…but never really spent any time seeing what was out there. Over the weekend we knocked off several quests, and I completely filled in my map. Most interesting was the discovery of the Writhing Deep in Southern Feralas - an area filled with twitching, oozing, bug-like stuff just like what I found out in Tanaris.

The quest I had not only led us to the Writhing Deep, but also into some kind of hive-like cave system. It really reminded me of Aliens, when they’re wandering through the hive. The walls were all purple/black…they kept pulsating as if they were alive, and everything glistened slightly. There were these huge pods hanging from the ceiling filled with immature silithid (the big bug-monsters that inhabit these places). It was great. Eventually we had to cut some poor Night Elf out of a cocoon of some sort, and lead him to safety.

Well, I was raving about how cool that was to everyone in /gu, and they informed me that there’s more of that stuff in a zone called Silithus… So I just had to go see for myself.

The trip to Silithus was a bit difficult, since I had to make my way through Un’goro Crater to get there - a very high level zone. I died repeatedly on my trip through Un’goro…but I also found yet another Silithid hive in there. Very cool. Silithus itself is just crawling with the things. There’s a couple big hivelike things out there, surrounded with swarms of tiny bugs… It was amazing. They tell me that eventually there’s going to be a big ol’ raid instance in Southern Silithus inside of one of those hives…and I cannot wait to check it out.