Newbs:

My life as of late seems plagued by newbs. For one thing, I’ve gotten into several truly awful WoW raid PUGs in the last few days. In one, I came in to heal a Baradin Hold guild run (not my guild, thank god), only to find that they were trying to kill the new boss, Occu’thar, with DPS that wouldn’t have been nearly sufficient for the much easier Argaloth. Most of them didn’t even have gems in their gear. I try to fight every elitist urge I have, and I rarely judge people harshly for not having the very best gear or enchants, but not geming is just something that gets under my skin. It’s hanging a giant “I don’t care about succeeding, and I’m willing to drag everyone in my group down with me” sign around one’s neck.

A day later, I was thrilled to finally be invited to a Firelands group, only to find out the group had only one healer (me), and one tank. The raid leader was an all PvP gear and didn’t even know what a role check was. Needless to say, I bailed on the group–something I only do under the most dire circumstances. I try to be very tolerant of the inexperienced and help them when I can, but when you don’t even understand that raids take multiple tanks and healers, I start to wonder if you bought your toon off eBay.

Then today I joined another Firelands group (after having to explain my class, spec, and ilevel to the raider leader about seven times, after he said I could come), only to find the group had vanished and only the leader was left. He evaded my questions about what had happened to the rest of the group, and when I asked for clarification, he called me an obscenity and stormed from the group. This very suspicious fellow is now resting comfortably in my ignore list.

But my newb problem isn’t limited to the gaming world. A few months ago, I submitted some of my short fiction to a new anthology of fantasy fiction, “Beneath a Violet Moon” from an obscure company called Inceptus Press. And then I waited for a response. And waited. And waited. At last, a few days ago, I checked their blog, and discovered they had decided not to do the anthology after all because they didn’t like the submissions.

What bothers me about this is they didn’t bother to inform the contributors by any means but a single poorly advertised post. All they would have had to do is write a brief form letter explaining the situation and do a mass mailing to all their contributors. It probably would have taken the same amount of effort as the blog post.
That they neglected to do so proves they are a tactless, rude, and unprofessional group of people.

In other words, they’re newbs.

Anyway, I did promise a review…

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part one:

Last night, I finally got around to seeing the second to last Harry Potter film on DVD. I’ve found all of the movies to date rather disappointing compared to the awesomeness of the books, to varying degrees. Order of the Phoenix was pretty enjoyable and almost as good as the book, but Half-Blood Prince was a horrific butcher job.

The Deathly Hallows was probably the closest to the books so far in terms of following the specifics of events. Little was left out, and for the first time, it felt properly paced instead of seeming like a jerky plot summary of the book. But that said, it still comes up short.

This was the first time I realized this, but the actors playing Harry, Ron, and Hermione simply aren’t very talented. Ron is probably the best, but that’s likely just down to his being the easiest role to play. Daniel Radcliffe has none of the intensity or gravitas Harry carried in the book, and Emma Watson tries her best, but she just comes off as too shrill and girly. Neither have the strength of personality to pull off their respective roles. The good acting is reserved for the minor roles: Bellatrix Lestrange and Luna Lovegood.

There was one big blunder, too. (Warning: Spoiler ahead if you haven’t read the book–and if you haven’t, have you been living under a rock?) In the scene where Bellatrix is torturing Hermione, I remember book-Ron going absolutely ballistic. It was a crucial scene that really proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he loved her. In the movie, he hardly reacted at all.

Overall rating: 6.4/10 The Deathly Hallows part one is one of the better efforts to emulate the books thus far, but it still doesn’t work that well.

One final note–Weird Worm posted another of my articles: Beloved But Short-Lived Sci-fi Shows.