So I just played through the campaign yesterday, and the biggest thing that annoyed me about the game was the visor. It was awesome at night, but in medium-well-lit rooms, not to mention the brightly lit day outside, it made the game really unplayable for me. Seeing enemies suddenly became incredibly difficult, and while the outlining worked for me great at night, it completely failed during the day.
 
The whole game, I just felt like the brights were TOO bright, and the dark was TOO dark. 
 
Anyone else get this feeling?

I recently came back to WoW after an 6-month hiatus that spanned the "end" of the TBC expansion (Essentially August 2008 - February 2009), and started playing a bunch again until now.
 
I was a "hardcore" raider in TBC, raiding 20 hours a week and ended up quitting when my guild broke up bashing our faces into Brutallus. I've been catching up with this expansion by leveling up a new class (a rogue, lol) and learning the ropes of the new raids. 
 
Seeing as how I experienced the end of TBC, I'm not surprised at all at the massive negative response to 3.2. It's been criticized as making the game too "noob-friendly", allowing "bads" to get gear and generally closing the gear gap between the "hardcore" and the "casual".  
 
I don't think that 3.2 was a detriment to the game whatsoever. Look at it from Blizzard's perspective. Their development team had a budget for creating content in WotLK, and too many players were not penetrating into endgame PvE content. All the while, they were expected to keep rolling out new content for players at the cutting edge, resulting in a ton of content not even being experienced by a ton of players stuck doing the initial raids.
 
How many players out of their subscriber base had never even stepped foot into Ulduar? How many guilds were stuck running Naxx, OS, VoA's and the like to meet a minimal gear requirement to even step foot in Ulduar 25? On my server (Gurubashi) I'm not even sure Yogg had been downed before the nerf. With 3.2, guilds can now experience the full breadth of content, and individual players now have the means to establish themselves as having some relatively good gear, even if their guilds cannot down bosses in Uld 25.
 
The way I see it, the game is not getting "dumbed down". Think of it more as Blizzard giving players the means necessary to raid more advanced content, rather than a gear giveaway to "baddies". Core raiders that have invested a ton of time to get their gear have a right to be indignant, but having more players experience more content doesn't suddenly invalidate the countless hours spent raiding.

So the news that Starcraft 2 will not support LAN has just hit the wire, and predictably, the online community has gone nuts with bashing Blizzard.

While I'll miss the LAN feature, I can't help but feel like this is just desserts. Just look at Warcraft 3 and how many pirated copies there are out there, with people taking advantage of the LAN feature to play via Hamachi or other applications like GArena. GArena doesn't bother with checking to see if the copies are legit or not, and honestly, I feel sick when I think of how many people are enjoying the fruits of Blizzard's labors without even throwing them a bone.

Blizzard is just taking the next logical step in the war against piracy. Don't blame Blizzard: this decision must've been tough, but was ultimately necessary. Instead, blame the pirates who've been screwing Blizzard over and applications like GArena for allowing pirates to have full functionality.

Seeing as how I just recently played WoW, I should know better than to expect flawless patching from MMO's. However, the patching for the free trial of WAR is intolerable. Free trials are meant for new players; it shouldn't require me to open up "patch.cfg" in notepad (running in administrator mode) and edit lines. Judging from the widespread consternation on forums for people trying out the free trial with the same error that I'm getting, it's not limited to me.

I'm still looking forward to trying it out (it's downloading a >3GB patch right now, go figure), but my trigger finger will be a little itchy, and I'll be just a little more ready to just toss this MMO by the wayside if it seems bad at first blush.

Just in case you need a link to the NPD Top 20, here it is :)

My initial thoughts on seeing the NPD was "wow, the UFC game moved over a million units, huh?". Hopefully THQ's financial problems will be alleviated a bit from this. THQ's a quality developer and I'd hate to see them go under.

Seeing Punch-Out!! at #8 (157K units sold) made me just a little more peeved at the Wii consumers. Even given that the game came out on the 18th, the sales numbers should be better than this, given the vast Wii install base. To me, Punch-Out!! was yet another litmus test by Nintendo to see if critically acclaimed games with broad audiences would sell. Given these numbers, I'd really be shocked to see this trend of bringing back great games from the past to the Wii. I asked Leigh Alexander on twitter if she thought that the tepid sales numbers would have a significant impact on Nintendo's software lineup in the future, but she replied that I should worry about everyone besides Nintendo. Given the overall sales numbers, I'd agree, but to the "hardcore" Wii audience, expect more casual party games and less of ones marketed towards you — you've done nothing to give Nintendo the impression that you'll turn out to buy these games.

Finally, there's a fair amount of doom and gloom going around in the industry lately, but given the titles out right now, I'm not surprised that software sales are down. Just wait till the holiday season: big name franchises will bring back the gaudy sales figures that we all know and love.