I ask myself that quite a bit when I blog really and when I do any kind of social networking. Its not that I don’t enjoy ‘being connected’ but honestly I really wonder how many of my ‘friends’ out there even really read the stuff I post on my social pages and really whats the point to this blog?
I’ve thought about actually creating content people would be interested in reading and making an actual internet site that would generate web traffic here but then I really think about it and two things come to mind. I’m not that interested in doing that because this site is just to clear my head more or less and two it sounds like a job and I’m just not interested in keeping to any kind of update schedule because then I’d probably view at as not as fun as when I can just do stuff in my free time.
Blogging and sites like this really drive a deeper question for me though which is really quite a pessimistic but, I think, realistic view that whats the point? If you look at the small scope, this blog for example. Whats the point to it? 95% of the people I have friended on my social sites probably won’t read this and if more then 50% do I’d be surprised and I openly apologize. I do know a couple will read this and I call them actual friends, or at least people who semi-care. Rambling aside though theres not much of a point to this thing since someday I will lose interest or just stop paying the bill or the system will break and it will be shutdown and more or less in the infinity of the internet no one will notice because I was no one.
If you look at the grand scheme of things the human race is less then a spec of a grain of sand in the sea of infinity and we will strive and most likely just fade from existence in an amount of years…
Now the obvious reply to this is in a way I’m telling people to just kill themselves since everything we all do is nothing. Its actually just the opposite. I’m actually saying that what you should be doing with your time and energy is something that is worth exactly that. I used to play MMO’s and while I did enjoy those I look back at those times and for the most part just see waste.
What is something you’ve always wanted to do? Try to set aside time for it, learn about it, try to persue it. Yes, this blog is nothing in the grand scope of things and this site only gets about 5 viewers a month but the reason I do this is for me and for anyone that is really actually reading this to hear what I have to say. I could be sitting in my chair watching nothing on tv right now or I could be expressing some thought and using my mind in a positive way and just relaying some kind of information on my mind.
I actually derailed quite a bit from the topic of the post but this all still follows it. In many ways I do love technology as its brought convenience and ‘gadgets’ to my life but in other ways I wish life was like the days before technology really came on the scene.
I can’t compare because I wasn’t around but I tend to glorify the ‘old days’ and just look at centuries past and think how they used to be and how the people lived their everyday life and how really simple it was and how it was really worth it. Like I said I can’t compare but I can ask you how well do you know your neighbors? When was the last time you really built something worth building with your own hands?
For the longest time I’ve wanted nothing more from my life then to just ‘get off the grid’ and not have anyone pushing on me in any way. I want to live in peace and not be bothered. I want my time to actually be worth something and if I have to work I want to be paid what I know I am worth. I am sick of having some greedy fuck under value me so they can keep whats left over for themselves.
I can just imagine what the days were like when people had the knowledge and ability to live off the land, to build their own houses, to reap what they sow. When your closest neighbor was at least 3 miles away and at night all you could hear were insects and the wind blowing.
Now days everything seems to revolve around technology and peoples lives seem to not be able to escape the internet. I think this might just be human evolution and the way things are going and I can say I’m not that “connected” of a person. I don’t email a lot of people, I’m lucky to actually get 3 calls a week that are conversation worthy and my facebook has less then 50 friends on it but even though my lack of being connected I still get sick of feeling like the only way to stay in touch is through the means of the internet even if it is the most convenient.
The point is though that through all these friends I’ve never once really had a friend that calls me on a regular basis to see whats up, outside of a current one and that years girlfriends(who recalling I think I did more calling, which I guess is how it should be?). I’ve had to be the one that does 95% of the calling just to even keep the lines of communication open and see if they wanted to do something.
…………
I’ll finish this later, I have to goto bed.
===================================
NOTE:
This post got pretty derailed and instead of just trimming it and posting it as a single topic I’m just posting it as is and hopefully make a post soon about the 2-3 topics that this one tried to cover.
One idea is that why does everyone need an online presence and the second being how can you tell who really are your friends. I’m sure theres a third mixed in there but I don’t want to reread this mess to try and find it.
I’ve found after reading this again I need to focus a bit more when I write. I don’t mind writing longer posts but if anyone actually does come here to read this crap I don’t want them losing interest at the 4th paragraph.
To a lot of people out there the nearby picture can mean an alternative life. A life they maybe proud of and take honor in or a life few people in their lives don’t know about. I was the later. Well, not entirely. Lets start from the very beginning I guess. If you want just the review skim down to where I point out the review starts.
A long time ago in a galaxy that is this one I started playing World of Warcraft on a free server a tad before Burning Crusade was released. At that time I was demo’ing out free games also as I did not want to shell out month fees. World of Warcraft at the time was the best thing around compared to the free games out there so I played it and then I got my wife playing it after some time. We started out as undead people(and I wish sometimes I would’ve stayed horde) but trying the game fully we went the cute side and tried gnomes. We ended up gnome because our personal lives were closest to them, cute and nerdy. Also the fact they do a wicked /train with volume pumped was a bonus because our kid really loved trains at the time and he laughed when we did /train.
So we played Burning Crusade, free style for awhile. Took a break because the server admin were being tools, tried a bunch of free games including Silk Road, ROSE Online, Perfect (Something, I forget), Fly For Fun(which I like a bunch), Gunbound. I also tried RF Online on a free server when it wasn’t free and liked it but I think I liked the idea of a sci-fi/fantasy game more then the game itself. I screenshotted that game a lot. I still love those screenshots. Not many games let you be a sweet looking robot.
We kept going back to WoW though. I’m not sure why we did this other then the underlaying mechanics and system it had was pretty damn polished. I’m talking of the talent point system, the professions(all of them) and it ran smooth. We finally found a PVE free server, just about the only good free PVE server as almost all the free servers were highly modified or PVP and we tried pvp but after level 20 its a gank fest and that extremely gets old when your just trying to level your toon minding your own damn business. Now, my comments on pvp realms, it sucks leveling your toon to max on them but once there I think it’d be fun if you got into a good guild and ran together. PVP realms are NOT for solo players(like myself mostly). PVE server people just don’t world pvp unless its a chicken achievement run of killing the city leaders and porting out ASAP.
Can't we all just get along? ... I don't think so with horde being asses...
Anyways, we got in a good PVE realm, eventually made a guild that would end up the biggest and best guild on that realm. A guildee even had a vent server we got to use so overall for a free server we were set. A little bit about free servers for those wondering. We played Burning Crusade when Sunwell came out and played for a few months after that for a few months until server admin F’ed it all up. We were on a 4x XP server so we leveled 4x faster and gold drops were higher so prices were a bit insane for things but the auction houses never worked so Stormwind was the hub for any action. There would be people all day just sitting in Stormwind trade spamming /y “LFM for BT PST.” There was no scripting. That means the bosses were literally tank and spank. When it came to Black Temple, Sunwell or any raid really, you’d run in, pull mobs, get to the boss and everyone does their role for about 4-5 straight minutes and the bosses never moved, adds never appeared, blah blah. In retrospective I miss those simple days. Got the group together, went in, did your thing, got a bunch of loot drops and got out all in about 4-5 hours.
Then the server went south once again because of mainly retarded admin teenagers. Most of the realm left and we did also.
After awhile we decided to demo World of Warcraft again with a 14 day trial which is extremely limited and a bit of a joke. We signed up for the real deal after a week or so.
We wanted a high alliance population so we looked on WarcraftRealms.com and chose Muradin. We did RP-PVE but RP’ers are a bit weird sometimes and can take things a bit to far. I rolled a shadow priest first and bam to 70 and went holy with a demonology leveling warlock to 70 at which point Wrath of the Lich King came out and later on I rolled a paladin in 3.2 and once at 58 I pwned everything in questing.
I knew the quests like the back of my hand and getting to then level 20-30 sucked cuz so much walking but then 38-58 sucked because the missions started requiring you to goto all these different zones. Example, I had to spend 10 minutes just running to the town in Desolace to turn in a dungeon quest or something and I never had to visit that zone again. Thing like this happen a LOT in 35-58. Once you get to 49 its not so bad and once you hit Hellfire Pen its a freakin’ cakewalk to 70. Outland questing is what vanilla WoW should’ve had instead of a long boring grind. Get to leveling your 2-3 alts and the repeative-ness really really gets old and thats actually one reason I vowed never to have more then three main toons.
We also made a guild and I was an officer(really if not the guild leader since we kind of had a weak one at times, IMHO) so guild drama quite things interesting. It did get to a point that I wish I wasn’t an officer as I busted my ass trying to organize raids and get the guild to what I wanted it to be(the best guild on the F’ing realm). I ran 25’s when we only had about 10-15 from the guild going and running pug 25’s isn’t that fun especially if you get fail players who don’t know how to decurse or do the dance. I did it for the good of the guild though to gear us. I spent a lot of time trying to organize with other officers to get us to switch off weeks but in my off weeks I’d see nothing happening so I gave up for awhile. More good people came into the guild though and eventually we got to be doing some mostly guild Naxx 25’s with a couple pugs.
I didn’t jump on the band wagon when Wrath of the Lich King came out. We got it about a month or two later. I was pretty amazed at the response it got from everyone. Everyone was freakin’ nuts for it. Some people in the guild didn’t get it either. With Cataclysm coming a new guy wanting to play WoW needs to plunk down like nearing $100 after all expansions and first month, that a damn lot of cash for a $15/month game. I was never a fan of paying to play. I always felt Blizzard needed a better deal for long term palyers but why would they change if its working for them?
I stopped playing the game about a month ago when they started talking about Cataclysm and the newest patch would have Onxyia coming back to the game so I quit around patch 3.2. something.
At the point I quit I had 3 80’s. A holy/shadow priest, an affliction/destruction warlock and a pretty fresh 80 paladin who just got d capped about 2 days before my subscription ran dry and I will be honest. At that point the only thing keeping my interest in the game was my paladin who I was going to start PVP’ing with more.
I’ll also be honest that I took some “time off” from the game for a month previous to that. I needed a break from the grind of raiding, leveling and leveling my paladin to 58 because I was SOOOO sick of leveling. I borrowed my account to a player friend who played the 80’s and I leveled my pally. This fact made me wonder at a point that Blizzard may boast the most players but how many have dual accounts and how many are dead accounts taken by another person?
My wife stopped playing long before I did because she busted her ass to 80(I’m talking like 15 levels in a few days) to get into Naxx for a title achievement that she also bused her ass doing while leveling and she didn’t hit the mark so she just got sick of it and she says to this day that if she got that title she might still be playing but right now she does not miss the game at all.
Before I took the time off we had, IMO, the best guild on the realm. Not the best raiding guild, but the best casual/raiding guild. I took time off, played my pally, kept tabs on what was going on and the guild was slowly falling apart because of very poor guild leader who couldn’t keep officers in check. A few weeks before I came back a few officers left and more then a few good players left the guild. I was pretty pissed the lead let this happen as I felt personally I nearly built the guild to what it was. I recruited probably 85% of the people who invited the other good people.
At that point I had a fresh 80 Ret / Whatever paladin and a guild that was once awesome and now in pieces and still falling apart. I didn’t bother trying to put it back together, if it was up to me I would’ve disbanded and let the pieces fall where they will and take the good players to another guild but someone stepped up and took the reins and got it back on its feet and solid again. I actually also left the guild with my paladin as I didn’t really want to be an officer anymore and I wanted 25 Ulduar and such but the way Muradin was going there weren’t many guilds standing out to me. I hate the idea of DKP, I don’t like jerk people to raid with. I didn’t enjoy running raids that much but I have to say that I loved the raids I did run and I think everyone loved being in my raid as it was like a lot of people just hanging out and getting gear.
At the time Blizzard put the system into effect that grind heroic dungeons for emblems and you can buy close to the best gear in the game. So in doing so they made everyone already geared go back to grinding ass on the same dungeons they ground to gear up to get the gear to do Naxx and then Ulduar. I think the system is a double edged sword. There I am having 2 geared 80’s, grinding dungeons, gearing up, and here I have a third 80 grinding gear to get defense capped and to get gear to do better stuff but my best option is to just grind these same dungeons over and over and over and over, week after week until I have enough emblems to buy all my t8 but remember I’m a paladin now so I don’t need just one main set like a warlock, I need 3 sets, PLUS my pvp set. Do the math and that equals out to … 1337 emblems of conquest … or not 1337.
Remember I was guildless with my paladin at that time also with 2 other people I had to grind ass to gear to get where they were so I felt I deserved a little carrying in Ulduar or whatnot but I couldn’t even get in to do the easiest boss in the game, Flame Leviathan.
====== Real Review ======
I’ll cut the bullshit and get to the real review here. I apologize for rambling but I played this game for a year and a few months plus the time on private servers so I have a lot of history and a lot to say.
So if you did read all this you should know towards the end I was a little jaded but for about 4 month prior to me quitting I had these feelings that the games not as impressive as it should be and that Blizzard is doing things to make it easier for “n00bs” and is doing things that they should’ve done long long ago. Examples? It took them until 3.0 or 3.1(like 4 years?) to figure out that mining should take all the ore in 1 tap instead of 3 attempts. They finally got rid of failed attempts at leveling a gathering skill. Failed attempts just equal wasted time to the player. Wasted time to Blizzard equals more money in their pocket because you have to play longer to make up for that wasted time. It was the biggest deal in 3.1? that riding mounts got lowered by 10 levels so you can mount at 20 and epic at 60 I believe. There is a ton of other stuff also but those were the ones that stood out to me because they affected me most. Its just common sense and to me a lot of stuff they’ve done since 3.0 is common sense that should’ve been done long ago.
Dual spec? WTF is that? That and that alone should’ve been done when Sunwell hit. Thats all I have to say about that. That one is plain common sense.
When you hit 80 and get gear and usually before 80 you roll an alt. Everyone who plays probably has about 3-4 alts if not 10. Its just dumb they didn’t have mounts at 20. since the level cap is 10 levels higher now. No one I know liked running 10 minutes from one side of Duskwood to the other side to do a simple turn in quest to have to run back to the other side for another 10 minute run.
Another thing that drove me nuts is paladins buffs need to last 60 minutes. So much time is wasted in re-buffing in raids because of 30 minutes goes by fast in raids.
They need to put their lore into the game. They need to have video cutscenes. They need to make people care about the lore more. I am not a lore nut, I don’t care if Arthas is Durnholdes kid and the Onxyia is the sister of Luna Lovechild or any of that crap. I’m not going nuts and getting into 20 minute long discussions on Warcraft 3 nit pickings because I never played Warcraft 3 and don’t one bit care to. I can tell you though I spent a lot of time at WoW Wiki reading the history of some of the major players and major events and they have good lore and just the 3-ish paragraphs I’ve read on Cataclysm the lore looks quite interesting. The problem is though if you played the game the way I did you hit the quest guy, accept, goto QuestHelper, do it, turn in and not give a shit what the guy said because quests are just XP and nothing more. They have only one epic chain quest that I know of that has a cutscene somewhere in it and the cutscene is pretty cool. I never did the chain because you don’t even need to do the chain to level cap(which is mildly retarded because they wasted a good cutscene on those that don’t don’t care about it) but I saw it on youtube. Two things on this point and move on…
1) I actually loved Culling of Stratholme and they need more like it but they need to have an option to skip the 20 minute long intro and strut that Arthas does. Culling of Strat is cool because it actually puts lore into the game and its not vital but IMO pretty cool because you get to see a piece of that worlds history.
2) They need more cutscenes like the epic chain one but they need to make that where everyone sees that. They need to make vital quests you have to do to hit level cap and the scenes need to be in the chain to explain or make you actually feel like your having an impact on this world because as it stands the game recycles content week to week, year to year and its a grind. You kill Yogg Saron this week? Guess what, you’ll get to do the exact same thing next week, and the week after, and the week after, and all weeks after that because it never really dies, thus meaning you have no impact on this world and to me it felt in a way like I was accomplishing nothing. All it is is a grind for gear and you better pry to whatever God that your guild doesn’t fall apart and you get in a good group every week because getting in a crap pug is the worst thing about this game, or one of the worst things.
Heres an example, I just did a search for that Wrath cutscene and found this cutscene below that I never even knew was in the game or even if it is in the game but linking it anyway because it looks like it is. I imagine only the epic of the epic in Burning Crusade got to see this, probably only if you actually got to Illidan.
Now, this is just my opinion here but Blizzard also needs to cut the pop culture references in the game. Yes, Ophera Windfury and the Paris Hilton npc are cute and funny and it makes people talk about the game and its quirks but I play it partially as a way to escape life. I get to hear enough about Hilton in my real life on the way to work and I don’t give one fucking rat shit about her in either world and you may think its cute but I think its not and I imagine theres more out there like me who just want to play a fantasy game and not be reminded I have to get up at 5:52am on Monday to goto a job I hate. I didn’t even mind that stuff until I got to Scholar Basin and found the damned LOST Hatch on an island there. You hover over the hatch and you even get the numbers. It actually made me hang my head in shame and make me wonder if I’m playing a game with original content or just a bunch of nerds who want to make references to stuff.
They need to make the racial bonuses fair and make it seem like they don’t favor the horde which I think everyone knows Blizzard does. Arcane torrent compared to +15 engineering skill? Canabalize VS +5 jewelcrafting and a crappy HOT? WTF, mildly unbalanced and one reason I wish I would have rolled horde.
====== The Question ======
This is what anyone reading here wants to hear though, the honest to goodness “is World of Warcraft worth it” question answer.
… is World of Warcraft worth it? That in itself is actually a long answer also because it is actually a bit of a double edge sword but I will be honest here with my impression up to the point of patch 3.2 something. No, World of Warcraft is not worth it but to be completely honest it can be.
The endgame is extremely lack of. Extremely. There is nothing to do but PVP and raid. I will hand it to Blizzard that they made a third thing to do, grind achievements(which I guess will be implemented into a new guild achievement system in Cataclysm) but I for one never got into that and some of them I wanted and could’ve gotten with time but saw no point. You can’t spend the ACH points on anything. The only ones worth anything were the titles and half the titles were just dumb looking titles I thought. The only titles I remember wanting were The Insane which is actually just insane to grind to get, The Love Fool(which my wife quit the game over(read the way above)), and Chef. There were some others I might’ve wanted but I forgot them so I didn’t really want them that bad.
I never got into PVP much. I didn’t do arenas, and I would’ve with my priest or paladin but never got to it. I did world pvp and the alliance battlegrounds were almost nothing but bitching about people not doing they jobs(defending) and the thing I did notice on the alliance side was almost always a lack of healers in battlegrounds and for raiding a lot also. I had a guild group for Naxx10 but our pally healer had to bail and I had to stay LF 1 healer for about an hour because none were on and I was spamming everywhere.
As for PVE, the game is a very repetitive grind. Like I mentioned in the long blah blah above the new emblem system in 3.2 makes it a very boring game. I’ll used my paladin as an example. I got him to a fresh 80, so I grind heroics to gear up to get into Ulduar/etc but they way Blizzard made it I know just have to grind those same heroics to buy nearly the best loot in the game so I’ll be running those same heroics to gear up and to get close to best gear but one piece of gear costs like 60 emblems(or more) and a character has what… 15 some equipment slots? The kicker here is now dual specs so everyone is grinding twice as much for two sets of gear and being a paladin I was grinding for 3 sets. So there are… say 5 bosses(and thats above par I think) in Nexus and you can only do Nexus once a day and Nexus can take at least 30 minutes with a really good crew I think. I’m not sure what the math equals out to but its freaking insane and on Blizzards end genius at the same time.
I know why they did it, because so many ‘noobs’ were bitching everyone was out gearing them and not running heroics anymore so they could’ve gear up to get into better stuff so Blizz changed the entire game so that everyone is doing heroics now and everyone is gearing up and the only progression thats partially worth doing in like 2 instances? I’m talking of 3.3 now because I think Onxyia and Grand Coliseum are the only ones that give a good gear boost. Ulduar 25 is nice but not that great and a bit of a pain in the ass and H-TOC drops some nice stuff and much easier. Its genius on Blizz’s end though because they have everyone grinding for more gear and all in a huff to get it and be uber but at the time I was mildly sick of the game and not falling for their game and I know others I talked to in the game weren’t impressed with what they did either and were getting kind of sick of it.
This might only be a Muradin realm thing also but I should mention the ‘noobs’ situation. Blizzard really needs to implement a better ‘banning’ system and maybe put an admin on a realm. I say banning because we had a trade spammer who would just sit on trade being an ass, a very annoying ass and they created a guild for annoying asses and amazingly a lot of people were in it and they went unchecked. Sure you could ignore them but your ignore list can only hold like 20? people. About every two weeks I had to delete people from my ignore list so I could ignore new ones, but I could’ve downloaded a resource eating addon to make my ignore list bigger but thats another thing Blizzard should have common sense about and something else you shouldn’t need an addon for! I actually joined that guild, which consisted of people level 6 and under(if your over level 6 you get kicked) alts, just so I could fill their entire guild bank with items you can’t vendor. The point is though you shouldn’t need to ignore these idiots and they should get a 1-2 day ban scaling up.
Besides the general idiocy of trade chat you meet a LOT of jerks while pugging groups. I’ve wasted a lot of time because there were ninja pullers wiping 25’s, some ass healer didn’t want to do the last bosses because they only needed one drop and left after the one boss and didn’t tell us before hand. About 2 days before I stopped playing I ran in a pug with a healer who was so pushy he was pulling bosses himself and just being about the biggest fuck tard I’ve ever met virtually but theres been a number of others ranking up there with him.
I stopped pugging groups on my priest because as a healer you are blamed for nearly everything if a group fails. It was my first toon and I wanted to go shadow but went heals because the guild had lack of so I was doing heals and I had to pug groups because we didn’t have enough 80’s. Now, just me saying that the healer should run the show and the tank should tell the healer his plans so he knows whats up and where to stand but a lot of pugs you just have people going nuts. I just really don’t think people knew their classes and I know it wasn’t me because I research my classes, I know the dungeons but I’d still get /yelled at and I don’t know how many whispers I’ve gotten saying I should be using this over this or that or this or just someone know whoes the class better then I do. I know how not to go OOM without using a pot, I know how to get the tank and the party shielded and hotted up before I get a full channel of Hymn of Hope up, don’t fucking tell me I don’t know what I’m doing. I always got a kick out of dps that was saying this party is great. I always replied if you want to know how well its really going ask the healers.
Everything in WoW rides on the back of healers and being a good one gets old because they always want you in that roll and thats one reason I rolled a warlock. Just mindless dps and face rolling its such a true vacation. Just have to output your dps so no one complains your only pulling 1.3k dps when you should be getting 1.8k and your good for a follow the team night.
Really though besides PVE and PVP theres nothing to do in this game. Achievements over all are just a way for Blizzard to make more money off you as you grind things but when I say that, thats all this game is really built for, grinding. Hours and hours of grinding and making Blizzard money and for what? Virtual clothes? So in game you are someone and someone will inspect you and be jealous you have a +5 more dps gun then you have?
I will again be honest that I may be a bit jaded or whatever and I do yet and did enjoy the game. I said the game can be worth it and I did mean that when I said it. It can be worth it if you really don’t have a life and need a hobby and a way to socialize without leaving your house while having that desire to “do something” fulfilled. In the few times I’ve stopped playing I’ve realized I don’t have that many hobbies and WoW gave me something to do with my time. Its a diversion and can be a really good one. I stand by my statement that parents of young children(infant through probably 7 or 8 years old) should not be playing this game and spending time with their children unless they are dedicated part time players. This game is perfect for anti-social twenty somethings that don’t like going to the bar on the weekend I think. I’ve been a month away from it and it still calls my name but I do look at myself in third person because of it. I’ve known people that played WoW, some good people and I’ve known others that have played and have lack of substance to their life outside of it and I’ve really put a hard look on myself and I don’t entirely regret playing the game but I wish I didn’t delve into it quite like I did. I do not want to end up the guy at Thanksgiving who sits on WoW and takes about guild progression and how much dps I can output but thats just me.
Come on guys hold up, my vents not working, I need to load my addons, I need to restart, I don't have a mic, vent doesn't work, anyone have any pots, can anyone spare gold for repairs? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PEOPLE COME ON! - Comic from my webcomic site.
I look at the time spent on it in retrospect and wish I would’ve been doing more with my life and see the things I could have done, like working on my webcomic which I linked a strip above. Thats not to say you can’t play the game and not have a life but, from my eyes, if you do have a life and do go out and do things with friends or have young kids(which I do) whats the point to playing when your really only half serious about it? Being a parent of young kids and having another one on the way and having a wife and trying to be a raider in a game where you sometimes you have 24 other people waiting on you and you can’t pause the game to go eat supper with your family or watch a movie with your wife because your at a boss or killing one and don’t have a good breaking point… whats the point? Do you really have your priorities straight? Family/friends or some virtual clothes on a game that will eventually get outdated and/or shutdown and be no more?
I know some people out there probably just wanted some perspective on if World of Warcraft is worth it and in looking back over the time I’ve played and the month I’ve been away and the time in between, I do think I’ve given my honest answer and I hope it helps someone out there.
The following is yet another paper I wrote from high school, probably around 1996, about 11-ish years before I actually had a baby. The class was Life Skills and I had the choose to take one of those “real life” dolls(that “pee”, cry and all that) for a couple days or do a report on babies at the time. I took the intelligent and less involved route, the report. The follow is that. Prepare to be edu-ma-cated my good internet peebles.
I’m during a report about some general things about parenting and raising a baby. I got most of my information from the Internet and some books. Some things about parenting you should remember is not to be hard on your child and don’t push him/her to hard. It is nice to see them grow up and learn and to teach them.
You were a kid once:
You should remember that you were a kid once, and you should try to remember what you disliked about your parents and try to avoid that. Do your own parenting but remember to do the right thing and stand by your desicion. According to one person when we were small we looked up to the older people and envied their height so we wanted to grow-up faster.
Development of the mind:
During this time it is said that small children start to mimic the people they are around. They start to see, hear and copy words. You should watch the words you tell your children or just around children. You shouldn’t use a lot of should, must, don’t and those types of words. Also parents start molding their child with proper behavior and values.
Parents should watch how far they push their kids. Also children are sensitive around this time because a lot of things can influence them easily.
Parental Repetition:
Children during this time start absorbing the things that parents say. They start becoming more fimilar with the commands that parents tell them and the parents expect their child to comply, but it is said that they drift away from what they are told the more they are told it. The parent should use emotions along with commands because emotions get across a lot better because they understand them more.
Childs curious nature:
Around this time is when the child becomes more and more curious of his/hers surroundings and starts fiddling with things. You should watch your kids during this time because they do a lot of crazy things like playing with large things and putting things in their mouth. This is a step that everyone takes to become who they are.
Kids touchiness:
This is the time that every child goes through when they are told they can’t have something. Like when you are going through(or by) a toy store and they ask for a toy, you say no, and they start bawling. You have to be careful what you say around them during these times because they are very touchy. If they don’t get what they want, then they get mad. You don’t want your kids mad.
To be, or not to be:
Kids are really into their surroundings and want to fit in with everything around them. They will want to fit in.
Behavior patterns:
Kids start to copy the behavior patterns of the people around them and they get influenced more. You must watch what you do around them. You shouldn’t swear or make rude gestures because they have been known to copy them and use them in public.
Personality:
A childs personality starts to be built now. It is affected by a lot of things around it. It is mostly affected by the things living with it. It will see you do something and slowly adapt it in to a part of its experiences. It learns and adapts from experience and kids will try anything because of their curiousness.
Summary:
Kids are affected by a lot of things in the enviroment around it. The most influence around it is the ones in the house and what it sees daily. All the time while raising a child you should watch what you do around it because it will start seeing/absorbing and immitating everything it sees. Children are easily influenced by the things around them until they get to the age of 7 or 8. That is about they age they start gaining individuality and learning on their own more often.
Hot damn, what an awesome report chalk full of very informative information. Thanks again for another great surfing session and report output internet!
The following is actually my senior research paper from my high school english class. I went through a phase for a good 5+ years of really loving science and wanting to learn as much as I could but I have really slacked off from those days. Not to say the interest isn’t there because it is but I’ve been wanting to learn more about the history of science and just history in general. Enjoy.
PS- If your thinking of using this as your paper, I think I got like a B+ or something because of numerous grammatical errors.
I. Possibilities
A. Changing The Past For The Better
B. Seeing The Future
II. Time Travel Techniques
A. Tachyon Particle
B. Lightspeed
C. Black Holes
D. Closed Timelink Curve(CTC)
III. Multi Universe
A. Description
B. Traveling in a “Multiverse”
IV. Paradoxes
A. Granny Paradox
1. Your Existence
2. Stopping it
B. Artist Paradox
1. Artist’s Painting
2. Possibilities
V. Free Will In The Past
A. Possibilities
B. Preset Future And Past
If it is at all possible, there are many aspects to think of for would be time travelers. The possibilities of time travel are almost endless, but if it is possible, and we find may away to do it, a traveler may be able to wreak havoc by killing your grandparent, that is if free will would let that happen. Some people even theorize that there are multi-universes or alternate worlds. There are many mathematicians that believe time travel is not possible and a man named Stephen Hawking stated one reason why time travel is not possible in the quote, “We would know if time travel is possible because there would be many time traveling “tourists” that would be visiting our time. I haven’t heard of any instancies of this happening, so I do believe it is not possible.” A response made to that statement was, “If there were “tourists” why would they come back to this time? If I was a time traveler I know that the twentieth century would probably be lower on my list of places to visit.”(Unveiling, 1992, p. 190). The only worthy thing to return to the twentieth is most likely World War 2 or maybe when a Mr. Albert Einstein released the special theory of relativity in 1905 which is E=MC2, and what that equation means is matter times a constant(squared) equals energy. According to that theory about 1 kilogram of matter has the potential to make about 100 million watts of power, or it can power a light bulb for 3,500 years. Scientists have used that theory to make the atomic bomb which they used on Japan in the second world war. The scientists couldn’t find a way to break matter into energy, but they have found a way to break certain elements into lighter elements which causes left over energy which reacts with the elements and creates a sufficient explosion. This theory has proven itself through the test of time and it has taken everything scientists have thrown at it. If scientists ever find a way to make total use of this theory and some other theories that are out there they may have the key they need to create a time machine of some sort. What if scientists could find a way to make time travel possible? Imagine what the possibilities could be and what kind of potential power a time traveler could have on the future and the past of mankind. It could be the best thing that could happen to us, or it could be the worst thing that could happen to us. It all depends on what is possible.
There are many possibilities to think of if we could use time travel and visit or alter the future or the past, but one tiny change in the past could alter the future in a devastating way. Think about this scenario; a time traveler decides to go back to an ancient swamp and while he is there an animal attacks him and in self defense he kills it. That animal could have had a destiny to take a small trip into a local town and either scare the population or kill a man which in turn could cause the town to go on a killing spree of those animals. While most of the town is away on this hunt a bunch of rogues head into town to cause trouble and they vandalize and rob places before they make their get away. Where as if he does kill the animal that means the town would not be out of town when the rogues come into town to cause trouble, and they end up killing more people which in turn makes people lose their bother/sister/etc. and that affects them in a major way. The point being even the smallest thing changed in the past could alter the future in unpredictable ways according to the cascade effect. The cascade effect states that “if the smallest unit is changed at any time in the past it will effect change on everything in its immediate proximity relative to the quantity of change over the original state, and progressing by geometric proportion in matter and energy with each interval of time thereafter.”(Cascade Effect, http://www.angelfire.com/az/finalsky/cascade.html) Now say, changing the past for the better, would that be possible? Say, killing Hitler, how would that affect the future, because he had such a great affect on the history of mankind? If someone were to go back and kill Hitler when he was a baby no one could look back upon World War 2 as the monstrosity it was and learn from its example. Also killing Hitler in the past would leave about 6 million more people alive and 6 million people could create about another billion or so people, if not at least a half million which would once again put the world into chaos because it can only hold and sustain so many people. Even if a time traveler believes he is changing the past for the better he could not even come close to telling what the future would be like when he returns after his job is done. He could leave it in a good way go back and kill Hitler, thinking that it would be good for mankind, and return to a world which is worse off than he left. Now the problem for him is how do you fix that problem? Time travelers have to be very careful about what they do in the past, but what about traveling into the future? Oh, you thought I was only going to talk about going into the past? Sorry to say, but when we’re talking about time travel we mean traveling either way, stopping, and returning to where(or when) we came from without any problems. Traveling into the future could be a little different because that time has yet to come according to your original time. When someone goes into the future he/she could see who wins the next super bowl then he/she could go back and bet on that team. That couldn’t change unless someone were to alter the past. Seeing the future has some great possibilities, besides gambling, it can give someone the chance to see new technologies and maybe improve their time traveling method, or it could give them an edge on business choices and what is to come and become popular. It can even give the chance to see yourself in how ever many years you want. Maybe if you really wanted you could go see your own funeral. Wouldn’t that be kind of strange?
There are some brilliant minds out there that have already thought of ways we may be able to access traveling on the 4th dimension, time. Some people have put their mind and math skills to the test by figuring out ways we may go about creating time machines. The following are some ways that brilliant mathematicians have thought of that we may use to go on this trek: manipulating tachyon particles, faster than light(FTL), black holes and closed timelink curve.
Tachyons are particles that supposedly travel up to the speed of light(about 300,000 km per second) and the more energy they gather after that the faster they go, and according to various scientists once something breaks the speed of light time starts going backwards. The faster the tachyon particle travels after it breaks that barrier the faster time travels backwards. If man were to find a way to manipulate these tachyon particles and use them on himself it is believed that he could go back in time. One problem with this theory is that tachyon particles can only travel back in time and there would be no way for the traveler to return to the future. The minds that thought of this idea thought that tachyon particles are all around us, but we can’t tell they are because they aren’t visible to our eyes because they travel along the 4th dimension which is time. Another way some scientists figure we may go about traveling in time is if someone could travel faster than the speed of light. Supposedly the closer someone gets to the speed of the slower time goes and once someone is at the speed of light, about 296,000 km per sec, time stops. “Einstein’s special theory of relativity(E=MC2) predicts that, with sufficient acceleration, an astronaut could go on a journey and return to Earth decades into the past, while physically aging only one year or two.”(Sci-Am. 1994, p. 69) We may find the truth to this theory if the human race can last another 2-4,000 years and if we can find a way for our body to withstand the force against our body at going that fast. The way the human race is advancing I believe we may find a way to do this yet, but it may take a long time. There is one thing that even going the speed of light you can not escape, that is a black hole. People think that black holes may be a way to travel backward or forward in time. Some people even believe that there are other universes on the other side of a black hole. The fact is all we know or figure about black holes is that is sucks the energy out of near by stars and other various astronomical elements and sucks them in and tears the matter apart atom by atom and spits the radiation and left over matter back out. Yet another way people such as Stephen Hawking have thought about are called closed timelink curve and he also believes we need quantum mechanics to understand CTCs and to use them. Hawking and some others believe we cannot operate a CTC without the use of quantum mechanics because they find them and if we found one we would have to use. There is only a certain range we could go back using these though. Say we were to find and open the first CTC ever on January 1, 2000 and we found a way to operate it in the year 2020, what that means is we can only travel back to January 1 of 2000. CTCs would allow a person to go back in time for a certain time amount and relive and interact in that world for the amount of time they have chosen. Closed timelink curves are regarded as the only way to travel back in time and interact with it.
There are even people out there that believe there are multiple universes out there for every different outcome there is. One of the easiest way to explain this is using the TV show called “Sliders.” In that show various people have found a way to travel to different Earths in different dimensions where anything can be altered. For each and every desicion made there is another Earth for every out come of that instance. Say, I were to come to school and I’m looking for a parking spot, there is one “multiverse” where I choose the nearest one and there is one where I choose one where I’m by a friends car and so on for every other choose made. If this is true there would most likely be billions of other dimensions for us to explore. According to this theory this is an alternate and parallel universe along side ours that has not had a Hitler. Also according to this theory if someone were to travel back in time and kill Hitler then they would not return along our “branch” of the universe, they would move on to the branch were Hitler was killed and that would go on without affecting our world. If someone were to alter the past and there are multiple universes then he/she would travel up that branch and actually not even alter anything but their own path.
When interacting with the past you’re altering the future from its normal course. If someone were to go back and interfere with your creation that incident is called a paradox, in peticular it is called a granny paradox. The granny paradox is one of the largest questions, and possibly one of the largest problems, with traveling into the past and interacting with it because it may alter the future in an unpredictable way. Why is this this biggest problem and most asked question? Because it deals with the existence of something that already exists. If someone were to go back and kill your mother, would that in fact kill you also and if so would you just disappear and everyone act like you never existed? Some physicists studying the matter have agreed that one cannot time travel into the past because the past cannot stray from itself or be changed in anyway. Another view from the opposing side of this argument is that some believe you can travel into the past, but something would have to stop you from altering the future according to classical physics. If you try to do a sniper shoot at Hitler from a distance then someone would have to walk in his way or your gun all of a sudden jams. So on one side people say we can’t go back in time, but on the other side they say we can but can’t change anything. If we can’t change the past according to these scientists could that mean we may have a preset timeline? “Classical physics says there is only one history, so try as we might to do other then what history dictates, consistency requires us to act out our part in it.”(Sci-Am. 1994, p. 68) If we have a preset and unchangeable past then what about our future? According to that we may have a preset future for our lifes that is unchangeable. Another paradox that may cause problems of sorts is known as the painter paradox. It involves a future traveler going back to see an inspiring painter. He sees the painter hasn’t done the paintings yet so the traveler tells the painter of them and shows him a book of his paintings that he yet to produce of his own free will. Before the traveler goes back to his time the painter steals the book and copies the paintings down on canvas for future critiquing. The problem with this paradox is that the painter has not actually made the painting of his own free will. He knew the paintings would be famous so he took the and copied them down without actually thinking of the painting and being inspired to do it. Also another problem with this paradox is that the traveler brought something back with him. “Time travel appears to allow knowledge to flow from the future to the past and back, in a self consistent loop, without anyone or anything ever having to grapple with the corresponding problems.”(Sci-Am. 1994, p. 69) That means a traveler could bring anything back in time, forget it in the past, and leave it there. Then someone from the past finds in and tinkers with it to see what it does and how it works and starts mass producing them. Problem: It is invented ahead of its time and no one really needs to invent it then because it was made by example and not thought of. Inventions are suppose to come in a certain way, not just pop up because someone found something “cool.”
That brings up another point about having free will if a traveler were to travel back, could he/she have free will or would they have to act out an already planned out destiny? When a traveler goes into the past he/she would think they are doing things of their own free will, but if that theory is true then the traveler is actually doing what he/she has done many times before.
As you can tell there are many things for would be time travelers to think. The possibilities are almost endless and there are many things we could find out about the world and its timeline such as how man came about, was it evolution or creation? Time travel is an intriguing thing even if your not one to really think about those types of things. There are many books about it and probably one of the most earliest ones ever written about the subject is probably “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells. If you have not read this book it has some interesting topics in it and that book is what got me interested in this topic. It could mean so much that the human race has evolved that much that we could do that. As you read there are a few ways that physicists, scientists and mathematicians have thought about and put their talents to the test trying to figure out if we could one day proceed with it. It will most likely be one of the greatest days in mankind when we have found a way to master the fourth dimension, time. I will leave you with some facts: according to physics time travel is possible, the theory of relativity predicts it is possible, many people are working on this daily and we’re getting closer to the key, our technology is advancing almost exponentially. The last thing I’ll say is a quote by John Gribbin, “I never said time travel would be easy – only that it is allowed by the laws of physics.”(Unveiling, 1992, p.193)
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