Cav's Place

Forsaken World is meant to be Perfect World‘s new flagship MMORPG, replacing Perfect World International (Perfect World II for Asian markets) even though, oddly enough, that game also had a new expansion released only a week before the launch of Forsaken World. Judging by what I see on the forums, but also by how the number of visits to my Perfect World International Information Dump post plummeted but has been more than made up for by those to my Answers for the Forsaken World Searches posts, I can say that they were successful in that, at least for the moment. But I somehow don’t think this success will last…

The first good thing that can be said about this game is that it’s free. Yes, cash shop items can have a significant impact and unless you purchase plenty of them you won’t have much of a chance to win in PvP, not to mention to top any rankings or, if the rumors will prove correct, to become a God of Eyrda, but if you want to simply play the game, you can do that well enough even without spending a single cent, particularly on the PvE servers.

At a first glance it seems to look and play extremely well for a free to play game, what the developers managed to squeeze out of such an old engine being quite amazing. The world looks nice, and later on you’ll see that it’s quite diverse as well, the character models are well made (though, from a developer with the insanely complex Perfect World International character creation system under their belt, I certainly expected far more choices) and the equipment design ranges from nice to truly outstanding (with particular care paid to female gear, though the amount of skin revealed by it bothers even me, and I’m a heterosexual male)… However, the engine’s age will quickly become obvious, even more so if you have a 64-bit operating system or any version of Windows 7, which seem to significantly increase the risk of encountering glitches that can go all the way to making the user completely unable to play or even start the game. Fixes exist and they’re occasionally compiled into more or less official forum posts or even a couple of knowledge base articles, but they’re mainly discovered by players through trial and error, therefore sometimes being quite unusual and far from guaranteed to work.
Even if you do manage to get the game to work on such a system, whether because you were lucky enough not to experience these issues or because one of the fixes worked, you are quite unlikely to be able to properly enjoy it simply because, certain laptops aside, having such an operating system usually implies that you have at least a reasonably powerful computer and this old engine won’t know what to do with it. Or the computer won’t know what to do with the engine. This is certainly the kind of game that will generally perform worse the better and newer the hardware it runs on is, as you will likely experience massive performance degradation, to the point of being unable to play on any but the lowest settings in some extreme cases, if your CPU has more than two cores, while a particularly new and powerful video card is more likely to just increase the number of potential glitches and crashes than improve the performance, as most video processing is done by the CPU as well.
(I must note that this entire section is written as a result of reading enough forum posts, including some official ones, to know that these issues are real and very frequent in the listed scenarios. My computer has a Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU (3 GHz, dual core), 2 Gb of RAM, an 1 Gb GeForce GTS 250 video card and runs 32-bit Windows Vista (Service Pack 2). As such, being below the “problem” threshold in every aspect, I have not experienced any major issues and the game ran well on maximum settings, with the exception of Freedom Harbor, where I experienced the expected frequent frame rate drop.)

If you get past all that and start playing, you’ll find plenty to do and enjoy, at least up to a point. The starting areas are pretty well done, teaching you the basics about the game without quite feeling like a tutorial, and as soon as you reach Freedom Harbor you’ll be overwhelmed with how much you can do. Side quests, daily quests, the main quest, jobs, exploration, your first instance once you hit level 15 and so on. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be going in circles, from one new and interesting thing to another, and reach level 20 before you even know it, possibly without even starting the Kalaires Plain portion of the main quest. Then you’ll take a breath and try to figure out what you actually mean to do with your character, in part because you’ll finally be able to assign talent points and the talent trees are made in such a way that it’s not only impossible to reach the most powerful talents unless you put every single point in the same tree, but also because even if you do that you’ll hardly be able to get even half of the talents in said one tree and it’s quite hard (though thankfully possible) to obtain a talent compass and reset your talents without purchasing one from the cash shop, so changing your mind can be a costly affair.
While there is little reason to dawdle in Kalaires Plain more than you need to, that will appear to change once you are able to go to the Sea of Oblivion. You’ll suddenly have another new area to explore, a new array of quests to do, plants and minerals to gather, elite monsters to kill for gem shards and crafting materials, instances and, if you’re so inclined, even world bosses to beat and so on. For a little while you’ll feel as if there couldn’t be enough hours in a day to tackle all that you can do even if you’d do nothing else but play this game. Which may, and in fact should, make you start thinking more about the path you want to take for your character, not just in terms of talents but in terms of how you actually want to play, what your role should be in Eyrda. Will you look for a guild and do guild quests in order to try to make it one of the best? Will you instead do as many instances as possible in order to obtain good gear and other rare drops? Will you be a gatherer? A crafter? A shrewd merchant who’ll somehow manage to earn large amounts of money without actually producing anything? Will you simply try to level up as fast as possible and worry about what you actually need to do after you reach the level cap? Will you play with or against others? Or will you try the path of the lone wolf instead? For a moment it will seem as if this is a game for everyone and you couldn’t wish for more.

That won’t last, however. One moment you’ll feel as if you’re cheerfully and tirelessly running through a beautiful meadow on a perfect day, the next you’ll hit level 25 or so and that nice pond in front of you will suddenly turn into an increasingly deep swamp that you’ll find yourself needing to wade through. And then you’ll hit 30 and it’ll feel like coming to a halt against a wall. (Others put this at around level 35, but it was 30 for me.) If you want to keep going, thinking it will get better once you’re on the other side, you’ll probably pull out a spade and start digging a tunnel through the mud. Then, slowly but surely, that spade will bend and eventually break, so you’ll be pushing on with just the handle, then a rusty bucket you found nearby, then a bent spoon, then your boots and your bare hands, yet you still won’t find anything better…
Now I’m hardly a person who rushes and in fact very much prefer the slow and patient approach, where being in each place and at each level has a point… But that’s just the problem here: There is no point to be at any level or in any area other than because you’re on the increasingly tedious way to the next. Now I stopped playing when my characters, a human mage and a kindred vampire, were only level 48, but I have experienced quite enough to know what I’m talking about and have read others’ experiences at the higher levels as well, so I have specifics if you want them:
Want to just gain levels? You’ll be doing God’s Trial every day, because early on it gives so much experience there’s little point in looking for it anywhere else, but hit 30 and it will become less and less relevant. Hit 45 and you’ll be wondering why do you even bother, so you’ll be grinding the same daily quests every single day on top of it in order to actually get anywhere, even though you know very well that this will also be a case of diminishing returns.
Want to do instances? You’ll be doing the same ones every day for the same completely random drops that are unlikely to be what you want anyway. That’s made even worse by the fact that instances are only available through the instance queue system while you’re in a given level range, so once you exceed the maximum level you will no longer be able to look for random groups, though you’ll still be able to enter the instance if you find your own group. What’s more, though a player that is far above an instance’s recommended level range could take it as a challenge to complete it alone, that’s impossible because you are not allowed to enter instances unless you’re in a group of at least three and if your other party members leave and you are left alone inside an instance you will automatically be thrown out of it after 30 seconds. And then there’s the regeneration and mana use issue, but more on that later.
Want to simply quest? Well, quite frankly, you won’t be able to. I read that the main quest quite abruptly ends well before the level cap, while I know that you’ll be finishing side quests far faster than you’ll be able to level up enough to unlock new ones if questing is your focus. With few exceptions, these quests are nothing to write home about anyway, but the fact that, at least after level 40 or 45, you will simply run out of them all too soon and need to go right back to grinding the same dailies more and more makes it a lie when someone says that this game is “quest-centered”. No it’s not, it’s daily-centered!
Want to be a crafter? Good luck either gathering insane amounts of common materials and the required very rare ones or doing some other tedious chores to earn the money required to buy said materials from gatherers who are willing to put up with that for a decent profit. Then good luck with the actual crafting, as the item attributes are completely random, so the result is not only highly unlikely to be what you wanted but also quite likely to be a piece of trash that you’ll get less for than you spent on the materials required to craft it, if you chose to buy them. And you may often need to buy them, seeing as you can only have six of the 12 optional jobs active. But perhaps the worst problem when it comes to crafting is that high level recipes and materials can only be bought from guild bases, and currently only by the players who belong to the respective guild, so if you are not in a guild that’s strong enough to obtain and maintain a base, you simply won’t be able to craft for too long. And the highest level recipes and materials are only available for the best guilds, so not even simply having a base is enough.
So you’ll want a guild with a base, right? But a base is first expensive to obtain and then tedious to maintain, people estimating a need for some 20 to 30 very active members that will do guild quests, so even more dailies, in a sustained manner only to maintain it. If you want to improve it, you’ll need far more than that, and then it’ll also cost more and more to maintain, which tends to encourage a “slave driver” mentality in guild leaders and generate a lot of conflicts.
Want to engage in PvP? Seeing as a few players spend quite insane amounts of money on cash shop items, unless you’re one of them I sure hope you enjoy them wiping the floor with you just about every single time, because that’s almost certain to happen. (Then again, I have plenty of things to say about those who want PvP, all of them bad, so… Serves you right.)
Want to be a lone wolf instead? Oh, believe me, I tried! But first there’s God’s Trial, then there are items that can only be obtained in instances and perhaps from the cash shop, achievements for pretty much every single thing done in an instance and nice things you can obtain once you have a certain number of achievements, this need to rely on others for your jobs and, perhaps worst of all, the need for a solid guild if you even want to be able to continue using your jobs past a certain level!

Yet, besides all that and all the bugs, which in “good” Perfect World fashion are generally fixed at some point between too late and never, you know what I found to be the most annoying “feature” of the game? The health and mana regeneration, or more exactly the lack of it, coupled with the insanely high mana cost of skills! As somebody put it, though of course I have no intention of verifying, it takes somewhere between two days and a week to fully regenerate normally, while if you mean to use skills all the way you’ll use up most of your mana in order to kill one enemy of equal level. It’s even worse for the game’s flagship class, the vampires (that don’t sparkle), for that matter, as they can literally burn through half of their total amount of mana in around ten seconds if they go all out.
The game assumes that everyone will always have huge amounts of food and potions on hand, many players claiming to go through at least 30 or even 50 potions in each instance and some, particularly the top priests, saying they don’t go anywhere without a few hundred of them on hand because they know they’ll need them. Everyone is pressured from the beginning to get the botanist, alchemist and chef jobs, in order to be able to make their own food, drinks and potions, though you may choose not to get them, in order to keep job points for the other nine optional jobs. But whether you have those jobs or not, it still means that doing something properly implies a lot of grinding, either to gather the ingredients or the money required to obtain the huge amount of supplies you’ll need. Though it’s very slow and makes things even more tedious, it is, admittedly, possible to do most things without using potions or food as long as you play by yourself, and that’s how I usually played, but in instances you’ll have a serious problem if you try that because the other party members most likely will not share your view, instead going through potions like crazy and yelling at you if you don’t do the same and as a result don’t quite keep up.
In fact, though I generally say that I play alone or not at all and there were moments that certainly proved my point, I found that I could occasionally do some instances, at least enough to get by, until I hit this issue simply too many times. As I said, it’s possible to slowly do most other things without insane potion use if you’re careful and tactical, but instances will not work that way, partly because of how they’re designed but mainly because of the other players, who in the end behave just like the game encourages and even pressures them to, being apparently just its target audience. If you don’t like this, you’ll be missing out on what can be obtained from instances and need to rely more on other tasks… Which would be all right if said tasks wouldn’t be so unbearably tedious and generally pointless anyway. Yet they are, which means that they sooner or later become utterly impossible to put up with if you refuse to play in this idiotic manner the game tries to force on you.

In the end, I can say that this game at first appears to cater to everyone and be unbelievably well made, considering that it’s free to play, but after a while it’ll show its true colors and you’ll realize that it’s far from being as well made as it first appears and in fact it doesn’t really cater to anyone at all. Except perhaps to gatherers, who know what they’re signing up for, “slave driver” leaders and wealthy players who don’t mind buying large amounts of cash shop items meant to simplify the game, which in this context means bring it back within manageable levels. The rest will simply keep doing the same repetitive tasks for little or, all too often, no gain until they’ll either get bored or actually become unable to keep doing them for the reasons I mentioned above, at which point they’ll give up and move on to greener pastures.
You have little to lose if you play it for free for a while, until it gets boring, but you’d probably need to purchase cash shop items to make it bearable, not to mention truly enjoyable, past a certain point… And if you’re willing to pay, there are far better games out there for you.

But, of course, I play alone or not at all, so MMO games are really not for me. Yet I played it for over three months, so it must have done something well… For a while…

As I’m starting to write this, at 9:30 PM, I can say that I’m done with Forsaken World. I will log on one more time tonight to pick up the spare change Calad will earn from the last items he put up for auction and will keep the program installed until I’ll write a review, which I certainly plan to do next week if at all possible, in case I’ll need to check something out, but I won’t be playing anymore. Right now I’m saying that I won’t be using any time set aside to check things out for the review to poke around the Gloomy Forest and Hazed Wilderness maps to look for landmark screenshots to submit for the game’s entry on MobyGames, and that the new Breeze Valley map has no landmarks so there’s no point in looking for any on it, but I may eventually end up doing that before actually uninstalling the game.
Including the brief phase four of the closed beta, I played this game for over three months, which is highly unusual for me, being an on-line game. Then again, playing such a game at all is unusual enough. But it’s a month since I started to seriously consider quitting and over a week since I last was in any instance, so it was about time, even though the decision to end it today came quite suddenly last evening. I didn’t want to miss the content update, both out of curiosity and to have more details when I’d submit something about it on MobyGames, but that came earlier this week and it truly left me with no more goals or reasons to keep playing, so I was just looking for an appropriate moment to quit and thought that the end of a week that’s also close to the end of a month is quite good enough.
Still, I wanted to leave both my characters at the same level, so played last night and today far more than I have in a long time, earning over four million experience points for Calad to finally get him to level 48 as well and grinding quests from Henry on Kalee as well until he gave me two Wish Card ones, so she’ll finally become a level two Socialite. Not that there’s any point in any of this, of course, but I wanted to have a proper closure… And probably also wanted to wear myself out, so I’ll be sure not to want to keep playing. Yet I won’t delete my characters because I may want to install it again when they’ll release the first proper expansion, just to look around a little and be able to submit a more appropriate entry on MobyGames, assuming my characters won’t get automatically deleted for inactivity by then, that is.

I’m wondering what I’ll be playing now, but I’ll figure something out… Or I won’t and I won’t play much of anything yet again, as I was doing before starting Forsaken World. Either way, it may translate into some chance of once again having two proper posts on here each week instead of barely struggling to write one and then squeezing something out of myself Sunday evening just to say there are two and I stuck to my original plan. That’s highly unlikely, seeing as writing here never worked properly and it’s been a very long time since it was anything other than dreadful, but we’ll see.
In the end, it’ll most likely translate into a couple more hours of doing nothing but feeling like shit and feeling sorry for myself each day. But there will be one less thing to think about at night, as so far I logged on at least a few times late at night in order to get a few things out of the way, which means that I should be able to just wait for things to get quiet enough around me, then turn off the monitor and simply sit and think in silence and darkness. It doesn’t help in any way, but I need to do that again… Even though writing works far less badly late at night as well, so I should probably use the time for that instead.

In other news, the book fair was this week and, after going each year since 2007, I didn’t go. Not that wandering around there for a while, alternating between being frightened, frustrated and infuriated by the people around me, did any good, but I wanted to go. Also wondered if there was any chance to find any good fantasy books in English at a reasonable price, of course, though that bookstore that specializes in them once again didn’t participate. They are relatively close to the fair’s location, however, and announced a 20% discount for the duration of the fair, but considering how I felt when I poked my head into that tiny place in previous years, it seemed unlikely that I’ll do it again. Still, I was planning to try, so I woke up on Thursday, tried to get out of bed… And realized there was no way I could make it. I just want to hide under a rock, not go to crowded places!
Besides, since it’s really too far to walk, there’s the issue with the transportation as well, as the company handling it completely got rid of the plain paper tickets and switched to personalized RFID cards. I’d need to specifically ask dad for one, and I’m not even sure he could buy it without me around, and that can’t happen when I’m not talking to him. But it couldn’t happen anyway, because I’m completely against the concept and wouldn’t even touch one! Don’t need personally identifiable information on yet another thing that required none so far, especially one I’ll only use a few times per year, and most certainly don’t need such information on an item I’ll always take with me and could theoretically be read without even being removed from my pocket, and nothing anyone can say or do will ever persuade me otherwise! So I had some plans a few months ago, to write a protest on a piece of paper and in case I’ll bump into a ticket checker I meant to hand it to them before obviously paying the fine, as I wouldn’t have a card. But that’d require a lot of guts, so really can’t imagine how could I think I could ever actually pull it off. Which means my range is as of now clearly restricted to only the places I can walk to.
Yet I still wanted to at least go out, because I needed to go out once per week to stick to what I said back in 2007, after all… So I eventually got out of bed, got dressed, raised the blinds and saw those two old people, this time aided by a small child, once again busy destroying just about all the vegetation behind this fence that’s behind the building here! It was done last year as well, twice, both behind and in front of the fence, though I’m not sure the same people did all of it. This time they no longer struggled to pull the little trees out with their bare hands, as last year they failed to pull a few of them out like that and they had to leave them be, and brought a hatchet as well! They keep turning a place that, if left alone, would turn into a little forest into nothing but piled up dead leaves and branches surrounded by dried out grass, yet last year they said they were “just removing weeds” when me muttering about it all the time made my parents ask what was going on…
That sight almost made my cry, yet of course I can’t cry, so had to sit here and whimper until I could turn the sorrow and frustration into anger and glare out the window, straight at the man. Somehow managed not to look away when he looked right at me either. If they’d at least do something with the place… It used to be a vegetable garden when I was little, so it could be nice if it’d become one again, but the owner died many years ago and I’m not sure if anyone even owns the place anymore, so until last year it had gradually turned itself into something of a tiny forest… Then they came along and destroyed it last spring, then again last autumn, then again now… Whenever it starts to really be covered in green yet again, they come to destroy it for apparently no other reason than because they can!
So this week’s walk turned into just aimlessly wandering out of the building, taking a few steps one way, then turning around and going the other way, around this group of buildings, until I got to have a look at them more directly, though still from a distance… Until the man noticed me again, at which point I turned on my heels and quickly made my way back inside, shivering all over…

I keep running into people who claim that being Atheists automatically makes them rational, while those who, as they say, have any sort of religious beliefs are not. I find that to be a very strange statement, seeing as, for all practical purposes, Atheism is a religion like any other. (You probably also noticed that I’m capitalizing the name, as I would for any religion and the associated adjective.) It may be far less unreasonable than most organized religions, seeing as it doesn’t reject proven scientific facts or make impossible predictions only to desperately look for equally impossible excuses when they don’t come to pass, but that doesn’t in any way change the fact that it is based on unproven beliefs regarding religious matters, which is just the definition of a religion.
The fact of the matter is that the only truly rational approach to matters of religion is agnosticism. We do not currently have the capacity to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of a deity or deities, souls or any sort of continuation of life after the death of the physical body. We also have nothing more than unproven and possibly unprovable theories about the appearance of the first form of life or about what was before the Big Bang, if you even assume that the Big Bang theory is correct, which is already a big if. As a result, if you want to be completely rational, the only thing you can say about any and all such matters is that you don’t know and you can’t know the answers. Anything other than that implies having a hypothesis regarding a matter outside of the realm currently covered by science. In other words, it implies having a religious belief.

What’s quite interesting about Atheism is that, even in its most basic form, namely the belief that no deities exist, it could never be proven as correct. Considering the size of the universe, evolutionary models and the capacity for technological development over such long stretches of time, it is in fact extremely improbable that no beings that we would consider as deities, regardless of how they would consider themselves, exist anywhere in it, and that’s even without taking other potential planes of existence into account. (Whether or not they have, or ever had, anything to do with our tiny planet is not the question here, as we are simply talking about their existence.) There is simply no way to prove that something does not exist in the universe other than omniscience, or at the very least omnipresence, and if you had either of those then you would negate your own hypothesis because, based on any definition we are currently aware of, you would be a deity yourself.
If we go further, it becomes perhaps even more unlikely because even the definitions are more and more blurred. For example, what if multiple dimensions and multiple universes existed, as even quite a few scientists claim? Would it not be possible to consider those as different planes of existence? Where do you draw the line? And how could you draw one when current science only deals with a part of the known material world on this one plane? How can you claim it’s rational to completely reject the existence of something that current scientific methods are simply unable to even grasp, much less analyze?
It is said that quantum physics proves that everything is magic. However, no current scientific method can look for anything that could potentially be described as a soul, which implies that no current scientific method can look for anything that requires one, such as reincarnation or astral projection. It is equally unscientific to claim that you can prove that such things exist as it is to claim that you can prove that they do not. The simple lack of hard evidence in favor of a concept does not constitute hard evidence against it, particularly when the subject can’t even be analyzed. And that, in fact, is one potential definition of religion: Something which science cannot disprove. An unfalsifiable theory.

In the end, religious beliefs that do not contradict proven scientific facts, including those that find flaws and loopholes in current scientific theories that could perhaps still allow them to be true in certain contexts, are potentially as valid as scientific hypotheses. I could even go one step further and simply call them religious hypotheses. And I think we need such religious hypotheses because, no matter how rational it may be, agnosticism is very much true to its name in the sense that it doesn’t advance knowledge. You need a hypothesis before you can have a theory, and you need a very clearly proven theory before you can claim that something is known. If you shy away from forming personal hypotheses because the matter at hand is not already known, how could it ever become known?
But here lies the problem: An unproven hypothesis needs to remain personal and not be forced upon others who did not freely choose to believe in it as well. Whether it claims that something exists or, quite the contrary, that it does not, a religious belief, or religious hypothesis, can be beneficial to a person or a group if it is freely chosen and provides them with hope, comfort, empowerment, closure or a sense of purpose. What’s more, it can potentially be beneficial to the whole world if it could somehow open the way to a theory and, ultimately, to furthering knowledge and expanding the realm of science by discovering facts outside its current boundaries. However, it very quickly becomes very harmful if forced upon those who do not freely agree and disempowers, restricts or otherwise harms them without being backed by any solid evidence. And, unfortunately, this is yet another piece of evidence in support of the claim I made in the title of this post, as militant Atheists are just as bad as fundamentalist Christians or Muslims or any others who try to force their unproven beliefs upon others.

Perhaps someday we will learn to be rational enough not to reject clearly proven facts simply because of outdated superstitions, but also to respect each other’s beliefs when it comes to matters that have not been proven one way or the other. Perhaps someday, by doing that, we will make new and currently unbelievable discoveries. As a result, perhaps someday we will directly meet or possibly even become the gods we currently may or may not believe exist. For now, however, it is important not to think we are different, not to mention better, than others who are in fact doing the same things we are. It is important to know who we are, but equally important to focus more on what brings us together than on what sets us apart.

This week’s second post was supposed to be a non-personal one, and actually have one in mind, but I couldn’t get myself to write it yesterday and today I’m alone, so really don’t feel like putting in the three or so hours it’d take me to write it. Let’s hope I’ll manage to write it early next week. Until then, you get another quick personal update, and this time I really mean to make it a quick one.

As the whole world probably knows, the Rapture was once again prophesied, this time for May 21, 2011. Large sums of money were donated and spent in order to announce the event through advertisements put up all over the world. It was supposed to also include a worldwide catastrophic earthquake that would be the beginning of the end, all those who were not saved yesterday eventually being doomed to die five months later. But the day came and went and the number of floating naked fundamentalist Christians, as well as the number of worldwide catastrophic earthquakes, stayed firmly at zero. Although everyone with the slightest trace of cerebral activity knew that would happen, quite a few people were baffled.
It did give me one more reason to plan my next serious post, however, as it has to do with religion. It doesn’t have anything to do with this particular pile of bullshit, in fact being something I meant to write after the topic came up once again on Remus Cernea‘s page on Facebook earlier this week, but it was rather interesting to connect the two. Let’s see if I’ll manage without letting too many days pass…

Moving on to Forsaken World, I finally got the last God’s Trial achievement on Wednesday for Kalee and Thursday for Calad, but still did it with both characters on Friday as well to get them to over 2500 mentor points, so halfway to the second mentor title. As a result, yesterday was the first day without being in any instance, and today the second. I really don’t plan to do another, no matter how much I’m losing because of this. Not that I’m doing much of anything else either, but I’ve been playing this game for some three months now, if you include the short fourth phase of the closed beta as well, and that in itself is quite unbelievable for me, seeing as it’s an MMO game. I probably won’t be playing it at all for that much longer, but I’ve been saying that for a few weeks already.

Last but not least, it would seem that somebody tried to hack an account I have on a dead forum. Noticed a visit to my site from there today and went to check, wondering if that meant there were any new users. The answer is that yes, there is one who even posted a few things. However, what was more interesting, and worrying, was that when I tried to log on I was told that the maximum number of attempts had been exceeded and had to enter a code on top of my password to unlock my account. Now what the fuck was that about?

As I’m starting to write this, it’s been raining for over two and a half hours. Now it’s really calm, but at first it was quite a storm and likely the biggest lightning strike actually happened only about one hour ago. Unlike the first ones, that one was distant, as the thunder needed several seconds to get here, but it was very long, very deep and very loud when it did, quite literally shaking the whole building. And the flash seemed just blinding, though when it happened I was watching a movie, so not exactly looking out the window.
Actually, I think the rain just stopped right now, though it could start again. But that’s hardly a problem as long as I’m inside, seeing as I like to watch rain and storms… As long as my connection holds, at least, seeing as this one caused it to go out for two whole hours. Was actually wondering if some equipment got damaged again and they won’t replace it until tomorrow, if even then, but thankfully that wasn’t the case. Still, connection issues are that much worse now, seeing as I’m not talking to dad at all anymore and so I couldn’t tell him to ask them what’s going on.

No, things aren’t changing. I’m still scared of my own shadow and just rushing past when I absolutely need to get out of my room, all frightened that one of them would at some point try to say something or that some other scary thing would happen. Yesterday I had to run back here and leave food on the kitchen table since they left for a while and I went to grab something to eat, but I heard the key in the door before I was done. And today I just ducked and made myself as small as I could when I went out, thankfully in time to be back before the storm started.
I had certain things I meant to say here, but I can’t. It’s just been too long, so there’s no getting out of this. Five years and close to eight months now since she left and I’m still far from crazy enough to become oblivious to “reality” and just live in dreams and fantasies. So it can’t get any better because time only flows one way and the only thing that could fix everything isn’t going to happen in the future… If what I fear actually did come to pass, even the theoretical chance of that is gone.

I think I needed 30 minutes to write the above paragraph, so let’s just stop there, all right? Today was planned as a rather busy day, though of course still laughable for anyone who actually does anything. But you know what? Fuck you with glass shards glued to rusty metal poles if you think that! I had to go out a little, write a post, do the usual stuff in Forsaken World, write a fair bit more in something else as well, watch that movie to get rid of it and perhaps also submit some more things on MobyGames. So I’m done with the movie and the walk and this is the post, after realizing there was no way I could write the non-personal one I have in mind today. Only partially done with Forsaken World, so let’s hope my connection won’t fail again later. As for the writing and the submissions, let’s see what the night will bring. Did notice lately that it’s somewhat less difficult to write if I do it late at night…
Then again, I actually was busy in every sense of the word on Sunday, when I was alone and decided to make the most of it by finally spraying something on the mold. That involved moving everything towards the center of the room, spraying, cleaning and then moving everything back. The problem, of course, was that the stuff pooled on the floor a little and there was no way there could be enough time for it to dry by the time they got back, so I tried to just wipe a little and then moved the furniture back anyway. Not sure what the result of that will be, but just barely managed to finish in time even so.

Otherwise, right now I’m getting really excited about The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, though I still haven’t even played the first one. These are really at the very top of the list of games I don’t want to play pirated, so that makes it quite a problem. Even more so now, when I couldn’t even ask dad for it, not to mention that I’d strongly prefer to just get a digital edition and that’s utterly impossible since I’d really have no way to pay. But if I were to buy it it’d probably have the same fate as the others, which is to say that I wouldn’t even start it for a long time and then abandon it at some point, so let’s just leave it as wishful thinking for now…
Reviewers do make it sound just outstanding though, especially when it comes to the story, the impact and importance of your decisions and the level of maturity of it all. Unfortunately, it does seem to have been rushed to the market too soon, so I’m expecting quite a few patches in the coming months to fix what they can of the issues, not to mention a fair number of actual additions to the game, but at least I trust this developer to actually do all of that, and properly too. And I also trust them to treat the gamers fairly, which is unfortunately more and more of a rarity. Their attitude is, after all, perhaps even more important than the quality of the games themselves when it comes to deciding not to play them pirated.

But I’ve been struggling with writing this for over and hour and a half now and God’s Trial is open, so I’ll rush to Forsaken World to get Calad through it as well, then finish the other things I have to do…