Yes, the characters have minor goals that they may or may not have met at this point.  Yes, Luthar wants to win the Contest, but he’s sort of a whiny bitch about it.  Yes, Logen has made it to his preliminary goal, though that still doesn’t tell us much about where he’s actually going or what he wants.  Yes, we know Glokta is suffering but has a glimmer of human in him somewhere.  All this has served to do, to my mind, is to establish the characters as they are.  They haven’t grown (and granted, it’s early for that) and I have no idea where they might be going, or how they all connect.  And I feel that, at 20 percent in, there should be some sense of direction.

It’s just a little frustrating, because I want to enjoy the book, but to this point it has not given me any real reason to continue reading.  There’s no urge to know what’s going to happen next, because nothing of consequence is happening.

I’ll keep with it.  I’ve read slow starting books before and managed to hang on until things start happening.  Only once have I been annoyed enough (and invested little enough) to put the book down with no intention of finishing (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell).  I just wish they’d get to the story already.

Many of the changes that have been made since Wrath, or maybe even further back, seem to be designed to make the game easy mode.  At the same time, I find the idea of not having cookie cutter talent builds, or of not being told I’m a gimp for not choosing this one particular talent particularly appealing.

I don’t know if these changes will actually result in that, though.  It seems to me that the min-maxers or theorycrafters or what-have-you will always run the numbers and say, definitively, that this one way of speccing and of playing is best, and that there are few viable alternatives, if any.

I’d like this to lead to more character customization, but I don’t have much faith that it will.  However, I do think that Blizz often has a better idea of what’s good for the game (if not good for me) than I do, and so I’ll cross my fingers and hope that it turns out to be as much fun as they’re making it seem.

It looks like gPotato, or their management, has heard the rabble rousing, and have promised us an altered more palatable pricing structure sometime this week.  As I’ve been enjoying the game, brief though my time in it has been, I’m very glad to see this.

Weapon Skill – This stat will be removed from the game completely. Classes will start with all the weapon skills they need to know and will not need to improve them.

I guess it’ll turn into a Feat of Strength achievement, probably, but gosh, that sure feels like a whole lot of work for nothing.  Maybe I can use it the next time we’re talking about questing uphill in the snow both ways, back in the old WoW days (and liking it!)

Now, I am an avid reader.  I devour books, sometimes at a startling pace.  However, there are very few books that I find the time to re-read at all, let alone multiple times.  And I have read Austen multiple times.  I have read each of her books at least three times, and a couple much more than that.  Of her six complete books, I have duplicate copies of three and electronic copies of two.  I have seen, to my knowledge, every movie version of her books.  Yes, even the horrible ones.  While I watch the worse ones, I complain, but I am still enthralled.

This last surge of interest happened because Lifetime showed "The Jane Austen Book Club" which has been on my to-watch list for an age.  (Cute movie.  Starts uneven.  Middle is very strong.  Finishes decent.)  Even though I read that book a couple of years ago, I didn’t remember some of the opinions they express about why Austen did this or that with these characters, how the movie of Mansfield Park mangled the story (though I love it anyway), or what she was trying to show us.

I have had the newest rendition of Emma on the Tivo for a few weeks and hadn’t managed to find the time to watch it.  Last night, I sat down and watched the entire two hour first episode.  And I started reading Mansfield Park again.  And I started reading Persuasion again.  (One is the physical book at home and the other is the Kindle version on my iPod.)  It seems silly to juggle three stories at once, but I can’t choose to do otherwise right now.  I am, again and always, enthralled.

And yet, I still cannot put my finger on why.  I can tell you what concepts most attract me, but I’ve seen these in other books and I don’t have the urge to read them repeatedly.  Her writing is difficult for a modern reader at first, until you re-adapt to the period terminology and colloquialisms, so it cannot be because they are easy to slide into in that sense.  Is it something about the story itself?  I suppose some of them read like a Regency fairy tale, but there is as much a sense of harsh reality of a woman’s lot in that time as there is any joy at finding true love.

Maybe that is it, though — it is like a fairy tale for grownups, set at a time distant and different enough to be enchanting, but in a world real enough that we can empathize and be in the protagonist’s skin with only a little stretch of our imaginations.

I chose my Death Knight for this task, as she was already level 58 (due mostly to the nature of the hero class) and I figured if she had to get anywhere for training, it would be workable.  It only took me a few days at most to get to the top of Outlands level Inscription.  This is where I became stuck.

Apparently they’ve added in (or there always was and it just never came up) a minimum level for Northrend crafting.  In order to train Grand Master Inscription, I have to be level 65.  I am so glad I chose my Death Knight for this task and not a new character as I’d briefly considered.  That might have made me set aside this task for an indefinite amount of time.  Instead, I am now working bit by bit on leveling my DK to 65 so she can finish up her Inscription training.

One of the most frustrating elements of this is that, where I had to buy or gather herbs for all the earlier inks, I have such a surplus of Northrend herbs that I won’t deplete even half my stock once I am able to continue working on this crafting.  I thought it was about to get easy, and it became harder instead.

There were a couple of boss killing type achievements earned as well.  The first one was "Gotta Go!" which is earned for defeating Anub’arak in four minutes or less.  I doubt this is especially hard for raid geared folks, as most TBC folks are but I most definitely am not.  The other one was "Snakes.  Why’d It Have To Be Snakes?" which is for beating Slad’ran without getting snake wrapped.  Since it didn’t happen, I’m not sure what that involves, really.

That’s the problem with a smooth run — I don’t have much idea of the boss strategies because we didn’t seem to need them, or they were using them and I was just along for the ride.  I know not to stand in the goop, whatever kind it is, and to stand on the opposite side of a mob from the tank.  Oh, I also was able to try out my new Tricks of the Trade and Assist macros, and they both worked beautifully.  Set the tank as Focus and go!

I do remember the fights with Anub’arak and Gal’darah, as I remember getting speared once or twice (before I learned what this particular pool of stuff looked like – dust clouds – and avoided it), and I remember hollering "Wheee!" when I was thrown in the air by a rhino or some such.

Also in Gundrak, I got some new leggings: Gored Hide Legguards.  They are ugly, but have better stats than what I was wearing.  Sera’s poor shins are getting cold, as neither the "pants" nor the boots cover them.

Oh!  I also got the recipe for Haunted Herring, though I haven’t made any yet.

Other weekend accomplishments:

I finally got my last point in Unarmed combat and earned the achievement "Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich?"  I ended up switching my fist weapon to my right hand to do it, hoping that more hits might mean more chances, and it still took a few hours of play before it happened.

I finally ran across the last fish type I needed for Northrend Angler while questing in Dragonblight.

I also finished four of the Love Is In the Air achievements.  It would have been five if there was such a thing as Undead Warriors.  Where are they all hiding?  I let them all turn me into a turkey during Pilgrim’s Bounty.  The least they could do is return the favor.

The Eye of the Storm loss was in less than five minutes and they capped and held all four towers through the entire game.

I decided that I really don’t like Strand of the Ancients.  It might have been lack of coordination on the part of the Alliance folks but it seemed like I was always getting killed, right off and getting little if any assistance.  I don’t mind dying or I wouldn’t PvP but this just seemed excessive.  Maybe I should try it again.  Maybe it was a bad night.

I joined the Alterac Valley battle already in progress.  I ran to catch up with the pack, and by the time me and a half dozen others made it to the General fellow at the end, the pack was back at midfield or so running back.  I guess they died though I don’t really know.  (Why don’t people talk in BGs?)  We were smashing him fairly well when the Horde must have killed our general.  At least that one was close.

The Warsong Gulch battle was interesting.  Both teams were turtling to some degree, and there actually was some very little bit of talking going on.  Eventually someone on our side killed their flag carrier, and we managed to score a point.  At this point, there were about ten minutes left to go and the consensus (if you can call it that when it comes from only half the team) was to turtle so we’d get a win.  I am not sure what happened to that strategy, but in the last two and a half minutes, the Horde somehow capped the flag.  Twice.

Despite all of this relative frustration, I really had fun.  I’ve been toying with the idea of bringing up another alt just by playing in battlegrounds (from 30 onward), to see if it can be done, and as a challenge.  I’m not sure yet if I’ll go through with it, but the idea is bouncing around in my head.