Monday morning October 20th, 2008. 6 Days later and I have just received my mounts in an in-game email. Better late than never I guess.

***UPDATE***

I still DO NOT have my mounts, but did receive a Blizzard survey. Here is what I put in the comments field in addition to all ZERO scores.

“It is SUNDAY. Five days after i first reported this issue and my issue has NOT been fixed. I have three missing mounts that have NOT been returned yet. I have had NO direct contact with a GM except pasted in game emails. I have had to open a second ticket which is still pending. It is very easy to see that I have 7 mounts based on the achievement which says i have 7 mounts. Physically, I only have 4. I have been playing this game since beta and have 3 paying accounts. This kind of customer service is ridiculous. Please fix this.”

On the eve of possibly the largest MMO patch ever, clocking in at 1.2GB, Blizzard seemingly could not keep it together. This resulted in long server downtime and me losing stuff.

I sent this in to WoW Insider to hopefully bring more attention to the issue.

Dear WoW Insider,

Last night my server, Bleeding Hollow, was one of the last servers to come online. It was up and down until 12am EST. I had gotten on around 10pm and the first thing I did was turn my mounts into abilities by clicking on them. This included my epic flyer, Netherdrake, epic horse, and epic war raptor. Almost immediately and during this time, the server was up and down. Now, it was stupid me for continually to try to login, but what can I say? i was excited. The server wasn’t fully up and playable until after 12am. And even then, the portals in Shatt were unusable and transaction issues persisted. When I opened my bags and checked my mount/pet tab, all I had was my drake. My other 3 mounts were missing. Others were complaining of this as well. I have an open ticket, so I hope it all gets sorted out, but as of today at 11am EST, I am still missing mounts. This issue should be brought to the forefront so many players like myself do not get screwed out of hard earned items like my mounts

The in-game items you get though are awesome. You get a special face (which doesn’t work right now), a tome that has 3 charges that allows +15% xp for 2 hours, a special ring that really helps your stats in the beginning, some exclusive quests (free XP), and an endless drink that has a great buff for leveling. Mythic spared no good idea or quantity for the in game inclusion benefits for us “CE” people.

Warhammer is not without its problems. Last night, which was launch night, was riddled with plenty of issues. Scenarios were down completely. My CE face “fell off”. I feel through the entire world in one zone then hovered above it in another. Our server (Azazel) has a constant queue during prime time. So if you want to log off to fix issues, you are in for a 30-40 treat in the form of a wait. I have gripes with many common sense issues. I have to agree to TOS twice every time I load the game. I have to sit through 4 (loud) splash screens every time I load the game. My UI settings are not memorized after each logoff. There is lag during battles with more than 5 people on a screen. I have only 5 people on my friends list, but when I try to add more, it says my list is full.

This game, at its core, is casual. That’s one good thing it has going for it. But it’s issues like the ones I’ve listed that really could turn off a casual player. Many feel like Mythic rushed this game out to get ahead of Wrath of the Lich King. They recently took out a chunk of content in favor of a faster launch. Some of these issues are issues that you would expect to find in beta. But every MMO gets to use the excuse that it’s launch, more capacity than we expected, etc right?

WoW is my game. Warhammer is my casual backup. I will play Warhammer until November 13th as my main game. Then, I might visit it on weekends and such. In the end though, while Warhammer currently doesn’t have the chops to be THE #1 MMO right now, it does offer one of the best alternatives for the traditional fantasy MMO genre. Many people WILL play this game as their main and it will most likely thrive. It’s casual and very PvP driven. I do question the end game. Will a few scenarios and RvR really carry it for those who will play it day in and day out once they are rank 40? Or is there (will there be) more than that. It’s a game you can just hop in and out of without much guilt, unless you’re friends are already rank 20 and you are still only rank 13 like me.

For now, I can obviously use the del.icio.us bookmarlet still on my bookmark bar in Chrome. I just have to completely leave the “betters” behind. 

Here’s to something new.

Later that day, I called AT&T to remove my discount in anticipation of getting a new phone in the near future. I called a different local Apple store and asked them if they had 16gb black phones in stock and they did. When I got there, the lady at the store told me they only had white ones left so I just went for it.

After a few days of usage, I was very disappointed with the battery performance. I couldn’t believe that it was THAT bad or as bad as some on the internets were saying it was. It got so bad I started to do tests. One thing that was truly wrong was, when plugging in the phone at 10% charge in red, the phone would charge to 100% within an hour. But I was getting mixed comments from Twitterers and friends. Some say 2 hours of usage between charges was normal. Other friends were getting between 4 and 6 hours of usage with 40-50% battery left. The most I was getting was 2 hours of usage with 10% left. I knew that couldn’t be right.

Mix this with the fact that the white ones were starting to crack, I really thought it was time to get a replacement. I was able to do a retail swap for a black 16gb iPhone and the results were staggering. My usage went way up to about 6 hours of usage with 50% battery left. With this in mind it’s easy to say that the white one I was using had something wrong with it. And to the people who told me that they thought 2 hours of usage was normal should really take a look at their phone as well. When a product like this comes out to less than stellar battery reviews, it can be hard to tell if your battery is actually performing properly. I wonder how many people, like me, actually have a defective battery and think it’s normal.

I’ve had the worst luck with iPhones in general. Last generation, I had gone through two different replacements because my iPhone had the washed out black issue. I’ve actually had bad luck with Apple hardware altogether. My first Macbook Pro had a defective ambient light sensor. My current Macbook Pro had a whacked out keyboard which I just got replaced. Now, I am reading that all of the nvidia graphics cards in Penryns (mine) are defective. It never ends with me and this “luck”.

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In my car, I do not have a charger that works. I played music from my library on the way to the mall. I sent a few text messages here and there and also made a few phone calls.

To the surprise of no one, stores like Target, FYE, and the AT&T store did not have any updated 3g ready branded car chargers. On the way home I listened to Last.fm over 3g in the car. The day started around 2pm. Then, when I got home, I did my regular browsing, app, gaming on the unit before and after taking a nap. By the end of my use, it was about 6pm. At this point, I was already down below 50% battery.

With my first gen iPhone, I was very preventative with battery life and it was always a non factor. I charge overnight, I charge at work if necessary, and I charge whenever in the car. I never had to think about my battery. Now, with this new 3g version sucking down more juice, I think I just have to follow the same routine. The only missing piece is a car charger, which there seems to be a lack of and also a lack of a web page or list that states which chargers are compatible.

One positive thing I noticed is the 3g iPhone wifi signal seems to be a tad better. In a couple spots in my house, the 3g gets a bar or two more than the first gen iPhone.

On a side note, while in Radioshack looking at their iPod accessories, an employee there saw my white iPhone and said “Is that a white iPhone?”. And I said “Yeah”. And he said “Oh, I never seen one of those”. I said “It’s new”. I thought everyone was at least aware of what was going on with the iPhone, especially someone who works for a store that sells competing products and accessories for the iPhone.

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Apple, hardware, iphone

1. My Belkin car charger / amplifier is not compatible. I love this charger because it plays the sound from the usb / power port which is amplified by the charger as opposed to an unamplified signal through the headphone jack. This was also SUPER convenient because I only had to plug in the charge connection and never anything into the headphone jack. I hope Belkin makes a new version or some kind of adapter to turn the firewire juice into usb juice. Until then, I will have to get a plain jane car charger and the sound quality will be less through the headphone jack for the time being.

2. Not only is it not compatible, but the temporary case I bought, the Contour iSee, is not cut out properly so as to accomodate the Belkin charge cable. Double fail.

3. BONUS: The Contour iSee fits PERFECTLY into my Contour Showcase belt clip. That will come in handy for the time being.

4. Whatever charge the iPhone had out of the box was used up in the time it took me to get home from the Apple Store which was about 30 - 40 minutes. I was using it to listen to a podcast through Safari half the ride and then used the GPS real time for the rest with a few phone calls in between.

5. The first calls I made didn’t seem to have the echo effect when using my V-Modas which was an issue with my first gen iPhone.

6. Restoring this phone from a backup is going slower than dogshit.

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BEFORE:

AFTER:

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, itunes, appstore, aol

This video is hilarious. End of story.

Luckily, I’ve gotten pretty quick with the iPhone keyboard, but this is one app that surely would benefit from landscape orientation at least in this here writing screen.

"This is Matt from Contour.

The Showcase for iPhone 3G will be ready sometime in early
August.

Thanks

"

Awesome. Can’t wait! If I were a famous sports star or Hollywood superstar, this would be the iPhone case I endorse. It has protected my current iPhone for the greater part of a year successfully. When holding an iPhone out of a case, it feels foreign to me because the form factor of this case is so much more comfortable to me.