Thanks, Geico

   Happy Wednesday, everybody. I was going to say happy hump day, but that stupid damn insurance commercial has pretty much made it a crime to use the phrase "hump day." Thanks, Geico.

The true face of evil.

   Today was my first official day of summer break and it felt pretty good. It was nice, although I did have to work. They haven't scheduled me to work a Wednesday night in a while, and I forgot how freaking busy it is. I go from work, to my violin lesson, then I come home, write this blog, then there's usually an update to be done on the Nerds Under Fire site, and then there's audio editing to be done, and then I get to go to bed. Today was made even busier because I had a rehearsal before I went to work. So as you might imagine, I'm a bit drained at this point. 

   Regardless, I'm feeling pretty good. If you've been on the site during the day this week, you'll notice things will start to move around every couple minutes, and don't stop for two to three hours. I've been trying to find a layout I like, but I just can't quite seem to nail it down. I've been trying to set up a slider to show my recent posts, but Blogger has been thwarting my every attempt. So if anyone has some helpful tips, or just the code that would be great. 

   In light of the recent lull in Azeroth, I've found myself in Telara in the past few days. For those not familiar, that would be the supposed "WoW killer" Rift which went free to play within a year. 

   Now don't think that I'm slamming the game. It's an excellent game, but I don't like the term "WoW killer." At this point, I really think the only thing that will kill WoW is itself. From my point of view, the only way it will ever die is it will just slowly dwindle out over the course of the next decade or two. Moral of the story-WoW is here to stay for a long, long time.

   Back to Rift, I must say it's really quite good, and they really have an excellent free-to-play model from what I've seen so far. You can pick between two factions, each with three races. From there you can pick from the four base classes-warrior, cleric, mage, and rogue. Now that seems like a small amount to choose from, but from there you can select your "soul." This essentially determines how you play the game. There are four roles in the game-tank, DPS, healer, and support. What's really fascinating about this game, however, is any class can be any role (that is, if you purchase the expansion). Without the expansion, for example, mages can support, DPS, and heal. However, if you purchase their expansion you can tank. 

   Now I'm just going to take a break here to let that sit in.

   Yeah, you read that right.

   Mage.

   Tank.

Remember what happened last time?

   I nearly purchased the expansion right there and I hadn't even gotten into the game yet. 

   Once I was in the game, itself I was quite impressed. Everything runs very smoothly, and the art style, while a little darker than WoW's, it's quite pleasing, and the graphics are extremely good looking, even on the lower settings. 

   I haven't even leveled beyond the starting zone yet, so you can expect a lot more to come, but I certainly expect to play a lot more of this game over the summer, especially seeing as it's more accessible to my friends that can't afford the $15 a month to play WoW. I highly recommend this game.

   Hope to see everyone back for Friday!

Tacos,

Gladdstone