I Need Another Vacation

Well, my spring break's over. Not that I did anything much different than any other week mind, but I did have last week off of school. Which wasn't much of a problem except today when I came home, started working on an intricate dinner of lemon-soy chicken breasts with some brussel sprouts and fingerling potatoes and then to sit down and type some things out when I realized, "Oh shit, I have class tonight." Cue scrambling to make it out the door and to class on time. I made it but it kinda threw a wrench in my plans.

The seventh round pairings are out. I'll probably get around to posting them in detail later (Looks like we might actually have a good opponent this time around.) but I'm a bit upset because it seems we were jobbed out of some points somewhere. It's a bit hard to say as the official results aren't up just yet (There's even a current standings page but it points to the results of the 5th round, not the 6th.) but we should have had a forfeit and, thus, +3 points to put us at 12 overall. But in the lists I've seen OoX is listed at only 9 points. I don't want to change our opponent or anything but, you know, what gives? Frankly, the whole tournament's been a disappointment. It's been weeks since I actually played a game in it and the amount of scheduling headaches and sacrifices that have been made just haven't been worth it. Sure, it's brought my guild together and we've had lots of quality practice but, you know, I was hoping to have some quality matches against opponents of a similar level in a tournament settings - that hasn't happened yet. And the lack of these matches on obs mode means I miss out on the fun at the top end of the bracket, too.

As for the weekend, it went rather well. I only have a handful of glad points to show for my efforts but, after all, getting glad points in the RA isn't a matter of how good you are, it's how lucky. You need to wind up on a team with enough to carry you through ten wins and then promptly disband once you hit the TA because you won't stand a chance. It's an awful system and probably responsible for all the leavers. I tend to Monk in the RA for the simple reason that I know at least the person responsible for keeping my team alive won't be dribbling on the keyboard (I lean away, so the drool goes on the floor. Pro tip.) so it's not like I have a problem with that. But that just means I have to deal with the Obs Flesh tanks for Warriors and IW Mesmers and everything else that people run for the sole purpose of making my eyes bulge out of my skull in disbelief. So, you know, I run around for five minutes healing like mad while my team can't kill jack shit but I just can't bring myself to leave because the other team hasn't killed anything either. Oddly enough, the teams I won glad points with were the unbalanced ones - 3 Necros (all with Spoil Victor, you have to love it.), 3 Eles and me on the Monk, that sort of thing. Oh, and I managed to pick up some Cloverleafs and Green Beer items in PvE, too, so that was nice.

There were a lot of good players in the RA over the weekend and it was nice to see but, if anything, it only brought home to me just how broken and in need of a fix or an alternative that format is. Ask yourself this, if you had someone new to the game and to PvP and you wanted to introduce them slowly into how to play, could you honestly think they could spend, say, four rounds in the current Arena without getting disgusted, discouraged and /or rag uninstalling? I don't think so, either. And that's a really sad problem.

I didn't get to play as much as I would have liked because of the St. Paddy's day festivities - I had some people over for dinner on Saturday. A real, Irish meal with Corned Beef for 12 and homemade Soda Bread for desert. Fun was had, huge amounts of beer (With, I'll add, not a drop of green food coloring) were consumed, and much basketball was watched.

The NCAAs also kept me away because, you know, although they haven't been quite as amazing as in some years past they're still fun to watch. My brackets aren't looking too shabby now that the initial orunds have played themselves out. Really, what hurt me was the strength of the Big Ten. Although they've only got one team going on to the Sweet Sixteen, they went 6-1 in the first round, and I expected them to do much worse. Beyond that, I've called upsets like Winthrop and UNLV but for the first time in a long time all the #12s got bounced out in the first round. Didn't think that would happen, either. And, really, I made what I thought was the smart move and decided to go with as many upsets as I could in an effort to differentiate myself from anyone else in any of my pools - unfortunately, this year, the upsets have been fewer and far between. So, I'm not going to be winning any tournament contests I'm in but, hey, at least I tried.

Anyh0w, time to get some practice in.