AppleBeelzebub

Saw my brother (Well, one of them, anyway. The one who makes me feel old because he's about to graduate and land a good, high-paying job while I'm...here. Yeah.) today because it's going to be his birthday soon. So, since we won't see each other in the intervening space, we celebrated by taking him out to eat.

Now, me, I'm a bit of a foodie. I love good food, interesting food, new tastes and flavors and dishes - I'd be happy if I never had the same thing twice, I think, because there's just so much to try and experience. My brother's jut about the opposite. Really takes after my father and likes to have just plain, simple, boring food. As a result we ended up going to Applebee's which represents just about everything I hate in modern culture. Right down to the stupid memorabilia tacked to the walls according to some franchise plan in place of any real attempt at making it into a warm and welcoming place - all style, no substance. Make a nice Appletini, though.

I'm from Michigan, after all. We know from our apples. And I'm a sucker for a good cider or some scrumble or something. Speaking of which, I should really make some along with some donuts - all this cold weather's got me wistfully thinking of the fall and a trip to the cider mill - a good jug of the stuff and a paper bag full of freshly baked cinnamony donuts comes along with every memory.

Acting as hostess for the relation pretty much put a crimp in any plans I had to get much done writing-wise, though. For me, writing's like masturbation - I just can't do it with an audience. Some people lke to go to coffee shops or parks or don't mind chatting while they're working on something - not me. I need to be alone with my headphones on and the rest of the world tuned out. It's only then that the worlds inside my head can start rattling off onto the page.


It's too cold to go out, though. I don't feel like freezing my ass off even just walking to some club or bar at the moment. Yet I'm really not in the mood to get any quote unquote work done
either. I think I'm just going to fire up Guild Wars and see if I can't get some rounds in.

Lately, I've been thinking about premades. And how they were removed, it seems, when the skill templates were implemented. While I love the skill templates - lack of in-game support and ease of use notwithstanding - I think that's a loss for the game. Not so much for the established players, like myself, but for any newcomers attracted to the game. That's what the premades were really there for, after all. To help people get a leg up and have something to play around with. It seems to me that the developers could easily include several premades within that skills template folder that would be there for new and inexperienced players to experiment with. I don't see why they couldn't be streamed in or updated along with the game itself, either.

Beyond, of course, the fact that most premades were awful and it's a lot of work to maintain them. If you ask me, though, that's because the designers of those things went about it in the wrong way - they tried to make good builds when they should have been making good archetypes. There are roles in Guild Wars, after all, and certain professions fill those roles - wihle the individual skills might shift there are some basic things that are going to remain the same. By concentrating on having a good gimmick or putting together something competitive the premades opened themselves up to becoming outdated and redundant thanks to changes. But ones that tried to be more basic and timeless would be both more useful (As people could swap a few things in and out with even a little bit unlocked and get something approaching the current metabuild for that particular role.) and require a lot less maintenance (Since you'd be providing a framework for people to build on, you'd only need to tweak it in the event of some major change to the way the game worked.). I'd also have a lot more such "premade" templates - at least one for every core profession combination - but that's another story.

Outlook: Meandering and maudlin. Trying to figure out why I care again.

[1] - 25 minutes.