You get what you pay for! The dramas of free hosting and feed services

If anyone has been following me on twitter, you have been following my month long mini rants against my hosting and feeds. If not let me fill you in!

For the entire month of March (and perhaps as far back as into February) none of my podcasts have been posting properly. I wasn't aware of the problem as from my end, everything looked like it was going up fine. It was only when a listener asked where the shows were that I discovered that neither iTunes nor Sticher had been getting the shows from the feeds properly. Three shows total were impacted and looked like they didn't exist. (Battle Pets with Alludra and Kephas episodes 17-19)

This is, to say the least, problematic. You see, I work hard to make sure these shows are out regularly, and to find that some were a month behind on updating, well that's just embarrassing! All my hard work to edit and post the shows on a regular time table has been disrupted due to a problem with either my feeds or my hosting.

The providers in question are Feedburner and Archive.org. First Feedburner wasn't posting any posts, and I spent a lot of time troubleshooting and working on it, figuring it to be the worst culprit as the future of Feedburner seems uncertain. I straightened all that out and went along my happy way, seeing the feeds post properly to my Twitter once more.

But it turns out Archive.org is the true culprit in this case. For some reason the hosting I did from there was no longer allowing iTunes or Stitcher to pull the show off the feeds. While Alludra's pets may be properly hosted (with a lot of work and fixing!), for some reason Battle Pets would never show up. After weeks of working with it, (and seeing the shows finally show up weeks later, in one case I show I hadn't yet tried to edit to make more compliant) I decided to move battle pets to a new home. This of course is a big challenge as I am still unemployed in spite of my best efforts.

Lesson learned! Updates will now be going up normally and on time, and a lot of the month-long stress this has caused me is dealt with!

Since Alludra's pets posts more regularly from Archive.org, I have decided to leave that podcast where it is, at least until I can find employment. I have just discovered that nothing has posted from episode 66-current, so I know what I am doing this weekend.

If this has caused problems, you have my apologies. This is a learning experience for me as well.

Mannerly Mage

I have made the rough decision to end Mannerly Mage. As I mentioned on Twitter and other forums, it was the wrong sort of challenge, and I always looked upon this segment as a bit more of a 'chore' thenit should have been. Looking for the negativity in the wow community, if only to poke fun at it, wasn't something I liked to focus on. I should have noticed it from the start, but I thought that it was a good thing to be so challenged by the writing. Thinking outside my comfort zone and getting a new segment to a new audience.

I have learned a lot about writing and production from Mannerly Mage. Lessons that I wouldn't have learned otherwise working on Alludra's pets or Battlepets. One lesson that was the hardest for me to learn was letting the segment go. Admitting that finding new funny topics was difficult, especially when so many others do it better!

If you were a fan of the show, I just want to thank you. Your comments, emails, and in game whispers totally made it worthwhile. The sarcasm and eyebrow raising was fun while it lasted, but thanks to a full podcasting plate, I won't be going anywhere soon. :)

Microsoft and the used game market

Earlier today I tweeted that in light of the new Microsoft 'news' making the rounds, I will not be buying a console. Rather, steam will be getting the bulk of the (not negligible) amount of money I spend on consoles. This led to an uproar I didn't quite expect!

"How is Microsoft different now from Steam?" seems to be the rallying cry. How is their new changes on the console any different from what I am going to do with my PC gaming.  Needless to say I can't tweet an adequate response to everyone individually so I am taking it to my oft ignored blog.

I think this boils down to the concept of ownership. What is mine and what is not? This concept has been changing for years, but there is a striking difference between PC and console games. In the PC market I can't remember the last time I paid full price for a game, thanks in no small part to Steam. And while I have ended up with a few bad games, the fact that these games were less than $5 each made the bitter pill easier to swallow.

Physical games are a different commodity, rather than go down in value or retain value over time they become 'collectibles' or vanish entirely. Realistically we can't expect major retailers to hold onto games and stock for a console's lifetime and duration, or even a year out. Eventually a few years down the line we can hope for the games to get 'greatest hits' status and drop to half price and resurface in our local stores.

How many times have you picked up a used game loved it, then bought the sequel at full price? Or only had a few dollars and picked up that 5 year old game that you haven't thought about in years?

Let's face it, not everyone is thrilled with the way PC games are handled. Steam itself is under fire from more consumer friendly countries about their no reselling policies. They are only able to sue over it because it's illegal for terms of service in other countries to  block the right to take Steam and Valve to court. Think about that for a moment. 

To be honest, if I could check a box and resell some games *back* to steam they'd have my loyalty for life. I would seriously never shop at another retailer again, so I am closely following the news of this lawsuit in the hopes that PC game reselling will become our future.

For now, I am quite aware that these new console specs are in fact rumored and not concrete. But I am also not going to wait and see, I'd rather let Microsoft know that this is a path I do not support. We have madechanges in the past, and it's only by letting companies know how you will vote with your wallet that you can hope to get some change.

Pet Leveling from 1-25

I power level my battle pets. No secret! Once I got that first team up to level 25 and 5.1 dropped I have been taking advantage of the fact that the high level pets no longer have XP soaking issues and been leveling a pet a night that I log on! It's been awesome!

But how do you get that first team up there? Well, that's the hard part. Much like your first level capped character, your first level capped team is a lot of hard work.

What I did was stuck with one 'main' pet. I only leveled one pet in my first team from 1-25. I found it was a lot easier to take on higher level pets with my current team and capture them and then switch out one of my two other slots for the freshly caught pet.

This way I was able to concentrate on a zone only long enough to level the one pet (the others were already at level!) and then move on. By the time I got to Outlands the pets (level 25) weren't staying capped so it was just a minor grind to get them all their last few levels and boom! I had a capped team!

I also found this helped me get my safari achievements and find quite a few rares! 

Other things that helped:

• Open up dailies as quickly as you can. The XP gains from the dailies and defeating the tamers are enormous and a huge help. 
• Horde dailies are in Kalimdor. 
• Alliance dailies are in Eastern Kingdoms. 
• Check out the tamers before you jump into battle! They will have their pets running around them. Clicking on the pets will give you their levels and types. 
• If your team can't beat a tamer wait a few levels and come back. This is much quicker then leveling a new pet that has the type advantage.
• Have fun!