I have only recently been playing EQ1 again, and the new expansion kinda snuck up on me. I knew Prophecy of Ro was coming out, but I really did not know when. EQ2’s Kingdom of Sky, I knew about.
I figured I’d pick up a copy of both on the way home so I could check them out on at least one account before springing for the other. But Walmart… never heard of EverQuest. They had lots of WoWs, though.
When I asked the guy at Gamestop, he really had to think hard. “Is that that Sky one?”, he asked. He found a cardboard stand-up display, read it… “Kingdom of Sky? We’re all out of that.”
How about Prophecy of Ro? I play both EQs, I asked. “I think we’re out of that, too.” But he looked, and there were some left.
There was something on his mind, something he couldn’t quite get his head around. Finally: “Do you play World of Warcraft?”
Yes, I have a 60 priestess on Kirin Tor.
A smile, finally! I smiled, too. We were both smiling and happy once more. “Did you know that the Burning Crusade is coming out? You could pre-order it!”
No, thanks. I took my loot and gated home.
Prophecy of Ro came with three kinda cute “Welcome to Freeport” postcards, and an in-game horse upgrade which makes my slow horse a pretty slow horse… Still pretty slow… Though I installed it from the CD, it still took well over an hour to patch. I then just copied the patched EQ to my other computer to save time, and logged in.
I couldn’t find a group in PoR, though I did get invited twice to a RSS group (by different people, but I think they same group…) I should have taken more screenshots, but this one of me, levitating, looking up at the Skylance, is the only one I took. Later, added picture of new warhorse.
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In other news, my new media center computer shall be named “Glyph”. I haven’t decided if I will build it around MythTV or Windows Media Center yet, but at least I have its name. It’ll join Supernova (my game computer) and Baphomet (my email/browser/movie/music Linux computer). I want Glyph to be able to play music and movies stored on Baphomet, and if WMC can do that, I’ll likely go with it. I know how tough it is to get multimedia working on Linux through my experiences with Baph.
But I’m really concerned with letting Microsoft into my home more than I absolutely need to. Nobody knows what Windows does with the information it gathers about what you watch, listen to, surf to… it can and will lock you out of movies and music you legitimately own, and prevent you from recording certain programs whether or not you have the legal right to do so. HBO and other media companies do not want you recording their shows and watching them, and they will just arbitrarily decide you cannot do these things. Microsoft will follow right along. Automatically downloaded updates mean they can change Windows to do whatever they like, and you can’t stop them.
So the issue comes down, do I go with the convenience and ease of Windows and accept that what it does is out of my control, or go with the tedium and frustration of setting up Linux, but knowing I have complete control over what the computer does?
Right now, I’m kinda thinking Glyph will be marching with the penguin. But that means sticking to a very strict, and short, list of video hardware that has Linux drivers.
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Hmm… later note… Pluto Home has a black-box Linux solution to all this. This looks good… and free… yay open source…
