This is waiting

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

I saw my first PS3 on Sunday. It was sitting in Best Buy with five others. They were the premium, 60GB variety. I really couldn't believe what I was seeing. Two months after launch and there are systems to be had at 12:30 PM on Sunday morning? Show me a dodo bird and I'll believe it sooner. I know this is quite a sore point on Joystiq; the Sony apologists vs. the Wii60 lunatics love to debate the pros and cons of system availability (and Joystiq's supposed neutrality). I'll admit that I almost picked one up. Well, that's not entirely true. I did pick one up. It was lighter than I thought, and I put it down. Then I walked out of the store without buying anything, astounded with both my discovery and fortitude.

Or maybe it was easier than that. The only game I would consider buying with the PS3, Resistance, was not to be found at Best Buy. And that's it. All the other PS3 games are either (a) available on the Xbox 360, or (b) terrible. Also I get the minor delight of proving my boss wrong: I did not pick up a PS3. Why should I? There are no good games for it!

Plus, this frees up my bank account for the real ball buster: an iPhone. No, I decided, I may not get that one either. At least not immediately. The T-Mobile termination fee plus the iPhone's $500-600 price tag plus whatever I have to buy my mother to come with me... I would end up quite destitute. I think I will hold off until whatever inevitable catastrophic incident regarding the iPhone passes. I'll also have to pay for PAX in August. That's probably more important.

World of Warcraft's Burning Crusade expansion pack came out today. What's really burning are those tubes on the internet. I'm sitting here after dropping four discs in my computer, staring at Blizzard's peer to peer patch downloader that is fixed at 20%. Seriously, what is up? I can look at the connection info of the people sharing this patch with me. There's just one guy. Doesn't everybody and their mom have this thing? Why is my cup not overflowing with torrenty goodness? Please don't tell me Blizzard "misjudged" the popularity of a game whose box stickers say "Over 7 Million Players". This must be what it was like for everyone except me when WoW came out in the first place. I was the only person on Earth who experienced progressively worse performance with each patch.

I would ask myself why I bother, but I know why. World of Warcraft, as you all know, is a tax on gamers. It's similar to Xbox Live, but instead of giving you access to online multiplayer, WoW lets you say (in not so many words), "yeah, I'm a real gamer." You cannot hold your head high in the "hardcore" crowd that I fancy myself in if you do not have an active account. This game has gone beyond Everquest's patheticness: everybody plays World of Warcraft all over the world. At least you don't have to keep up with the Joneses: I have a level 36 mage that I'm in no hurry to get to 60 (or rather, 70). So here I sit, waiting for this sad little progress bar to progress a little further. It makes me want to say "rgarahlagaha!"