There is no law in this world that you can’t make a point and be rude at the same time, and most people seem to embrace this.

Nope, there is no law, but I will likely ignore it.

We’re willing to take the risk that some amazing gem of design genius might be lost inside a ranting or whining post. If you want us to take your feedback seriously, communicate the way grown men and women communicate in civil society. We’re not asking for something unreasonable here. :)

You seem to live in a 60′s sitcom. You dont seem aware that the average person curses every 3 words in everyday life, and thats considered normal by most, not rude.

I make full use of the entirety of the English language myself. You should probably tone it down here since this is a relatively public place and profanity understandably offends some people. But really that’s not what I meant.

The anonymity of the Internet has fostered a culture where being ridiculously over the top with your communication is pretty typical. We’re just asking you not to do it here. If it helps, imagine you’re in a meeting room with all of the WoW designers and you have 30 seconds to make your point. Are you going to waste it on whining, you-hate-my-class, you-don’t-play-the-game stuff? Or are you going to try to make an intelligent point that the designers will actually listen to and hopefully take under advisement?

If you’ve ever seen a court of law or a government debate, those discussions can get pretty heated, but the participants generally try to maintain a modicum of respect for each other. They want to focus on the legal and / or logical strength of the argument and not the color of the delivery.

In writing, you are generally supposed to show restraint in your use of adjectives and adverbs. Yes, they are necessary in specific situations, but if you overuse them, you risk bloating, confusing or derailing the actual point you’re trying to make. The same is true of a forum post. Don’t dress it up with junk, which around these parts is typically QQ. Speak plainly. There was a recent thread whose thesis was “Blizzard lies and here’s an idea I had for a spell.” The mistake there sort of speaks for itself.

Collected from the forums via WoW Insider.

It’s definitely a bittersweet feeling. The reasons I’m leaving are simple – there’s just not enough Oceanic players on the server we were playing on to give a good pool of people to play with. There were a LOT of good people in WozW, but not enough to keep raiding the content I wanted to be raiding. So I’ll miss a lot of them, but try and keep in touch through forums and the odd chat.

Hopefully on a new server, in a new guild, I’ll be able to see all the big Warcraft lore developments on the horizon as The Lich King is defeated …

Long story short, I’ve only managed to get in to the game for about an hour so far, and this weekend the Closed Beta makes way for the “Preview weekend”, followed by the “Open Beta.” Of course, I’ll be in both, but it seems like I’ve missed a large part of the beta program. Oh well, it happens.

Today, thanks to a delightful ear infection, I’m at home, so have some free time to have a look around. I decided to try and read up, see what the already active Beta Community was saying, only to be met with the following message:

Collectors Edition and Australian Beta Testers do not have a forum. Please use in game bug, feedback, and appeals tools.

Well that sucks. I can’t quite understand what the reasoning is behind that, but it seems to be a really good way to annoy people that are beta testing your product for you. Thankfully, there are a few good unofficial forums around, that have very large populations, including many beta testers and even some developers, and since the NDA has now been lifted, free discussion can be had.

Still, seems like a fairly poor move on the part of EA Mythic for no real discernable reason.

The Sims is a fairly long-running computer game franchise, that has been through 2 core versions of the PC game, along with several spin-off games on various platforms and many, many expansion packs. To be honest, I pretty much lost interest in The Sims after creating a household based on my friends and causing the tragic clown to send them all insane before burning them all alive.

Affordable Swedish Crap - for your Sims!

Anyway … Many people probably already think that The Sims franchise has long past the point of too many expansions. I think that with The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff, there is now no doubt that it’s time for this franchise to be put in a bathroom with no doors and a tragic clown.

Maybe things will be better with The Sims 3?

I’ve been playing games for quite a long time. I don’t tend to play a lot of games, but I tend to play a lot of the games I play. I tend to get fairly involved in franchises too, and follow through on sequels. I’ve always been caught up in the Halo universe, and I definitely get sucked in by the hype, but I didn’t actually buy the game when it came out. I don’t actually own an xbox 360 (the one in our house belongs to my housemate), and so it felt a little weird buying a game for someone else’s console. But since he was in Melbourne at the time, I finally caved a few days after release and bought a copy of the limited edition tin. I played it a fair bit, even got in to xbox live and played a few games with mates online.

Then I went overseas, and after I got back, I started getting more and more into my other online gaming addiction (World of Warcraft, which I’m sure will come up in the future) and wasn’t playing so much on the Xbox Live front. Halo 3 started to gather a bit of dust and my skills (such as they were) faded away.

Recently, WoW-fatigue and some circular coaxing amongst a small group of friends has pushed me and a few others into a frenzy of Halo 3 activity. We’ve started playing together as a team, and trying to build our skills up together in the team playlists.

Dibbstar - D05

So if you find yourself on Xbox Live in either the Team Slayer or Team Doubles playlists of an evening, keep your eyes open for a combination of Dibbstar (myself), Enac Deraj, emslibbles or XingBot. Eventually you may even see Dievle as he builds up his skills and joins our team. Don’t worry if you don’t recognise the names, just keep your eyes open for the cowboy hats.

We’re not going to be troubling the level 50 Generals any time soon, but we’re working our way up, and winning our fair share of games as we go.