It has been 5 days now since I entered in my full CD key and upgraded my account from the canceled pre-order account. I still don’t have access to the forums. I’d like to because with any game launch most of the good early research and tips are on those forums. I can’t get in though. I have managed to scrounge up a few good tools like:

• Ten Ton Hammer’s guide to AoC emotes.
• The Goonheim (SA Forum/EvE’s Goonsquad) Feat Calculator
• The Wikia AoC Wiki... which still sucks atm. It took the WoW Wiki years to start being good.

Asics Gel-Nimbus 10:

Ok so I went for a run last night. The shoes are fantastic. Other than the fact that it was 92 degrees out and I hadn’t brought any water (there goes me thinking it’d be another short run) I had a really great run. I’ve got no pain and ran 2.5 miles before deciding that the lack of water probably wasn’t a good idea. Normally I can run 0.5 miles before I get some kind of discomfort in my shins and calves. Fantastic!

Best Buy:

This IM conversation sums it up…

Update6: Game is going well now that I have a proper CD key. Unfortunately my forum account is still banned.

Update5: As I suspected Funcom did it on purpose. Not what I would consider good customer service. Anytime you burn thousands of loyal fans in order to punish a few dozen violators (who can’t play without paying subscription fees anyway) I think your priorities need to be reevaluated.

Update4: One of the commenters below says he was able to “Upgrade” his canceled account using the retail box code and it fixed the problem. Try that first. If not try Update3.

Ok so via wakoopa I discovered fold it. It’s a project by the University of Washington along with support from HHMI, DARPA, Microsoft and Adobe. The idea is cool. Apparently the rosetta@home project has had distributed computers working on folding proteins for a while, but there’s something missing with computers. The way computers crack the problem is by trying every possible combination one by one. There is no intuition. No instinct. No visual cues. It just keeps trying all the combinations until it clicks into one that works.

Update4: AoC Launched! My account was canceled for me. Thanks Funcom!

Update3: Seems like most of the people in EA are enjoying the game. That is definitely good news, although since Funcom was so strict with the number of participants it does worry me about potential lag on the actual Launch day where they won’t be able to ratchet down the number of people participating. I’m still hoping for some kind of concession or apology from Funcom over their bad customer service.

Don’t accidentally hold down the “jump out of vehicle while in motion” button while flying a helicopter. Turns out it doesn’t work so well.

Image from alpha-dev version of GTA4, but you get the idea.

Here’s where I while away my time when on the computer/console:

World of Warcraft - This game is just so dominant it’s hard to ignore. If you play it on your own there isn’t much to keep you in long term, but if you have any kind of social connection (I play with coworkers and friends) then it’s something that will be hard to put down.

Looks like my paid time is finally running out. I know they won’t answer but I sent it anyway.

(click for the full size image)

I have been thinking about signing up for a game service, but most of the reviews I have read complain about both. Seems most of the people who are willing to pay for this type of service come from having used Netflix. Netflix has their act together. It’s a great service. Gamefly & Gottaplay apparently are leaving a lot of customers dissatisfied.

Summarized, here are the responses:

Gamefly: Horrible long travel times to and from the distribution centers.
Gottaplay: Very limited selection.

Any advice? I don’t know if it’s worth the $$.

Last October I was getting tired of WoW, but unfortunately there wasn’t much out there that looked like it was going to be a good alternative. WAR was taking it’s sweet time. AoC was being pushed back and back and back. TR was the only thing even looking like it was going to release in 2007.