In this lovely part of the country I call home, last weekend was the weekend for fall colors.  At least in terms of leaves still being on the trees and not in your yard.  The downside to last weekend is that it was bloody cold and we had quite a few snow flurries.  Not exactly pleasing.  Still, from the car it was quite a sight.  And there’s nothing like a cold day that makes you want to stick yourself under a blanket and not move for a year.

Get Out and Vote, Eh

Today is Election Day in Canada, where we vote for our next Space Olympian (Prime Minister).  It was the longest official campaign since the 1880s, though in reality it has nothing to compare to the US preparing 4 years ahead of time.  We have 3 official large parties, 2 small ones (Green and BQ) and then a bunch of fringe ones. Choice is good, though 4 of those options are all left leaning.  Canada is an interesting country, with fiscal conservatives and social liberals, by and large.  Aside from the past 8 years, it’s been a rather centrist country, without too many wild swings in either direction.

This campaign hasn’t been much fun, with a rather ridiculous amount of vitriol and rhetoric going around.  Apparently I have to worry about brothels popping up next to my house if I vote a certain way.  I’m really curious as to who actually believes that’s a possibility – and then shake their hand.  As with many large countries, we use a first-past-the-post electorate system.  The main flaw with that system is that over time it reduces options to just 2 (as occurred in the US) – which generally means much wider swings from one party to the next.  There are better systems out there…but they cost more money.  Who knows where we’ll end up.

All that to say that I’m voting today.  Every able Canadian should vote.  People have died for that privilege.  It’s a duty I’ll be certain to instill in my children because every single vote counts.

Wildstar

This weekend was double PvP currency weekend.  I’m clearly not the intended audience, as PvP as a whole turns me off quite a bit – stat based PvP even more so.  Still, I gave it a few runs since the queues were instant.  I played once as a DPS and the rest of the time as a healer.  Context though, I’ve healed in PvE content.  The gear isn’t the best, only around ilvl 80, but it gets the job done.  With one exception, I was outhealed by a factor of 2:1.  On a PvP bonus weekend, that’s not a big deal to me.  It does however, pretty much ensure that I won’t be PvPing in the future as it’s a stat wall I have no intention of climbing.  The maps are neat, and the objectives short enough but it still doesn’t scratch any itch that I have.

I’ve been reading on the Wildstar economy, primarily from the Reddit forum.  Either Entity is immune to pricing fluctuations or I am missing a 0 on some item prices.  I find it absolutely hilarious to see people posting about making #plat on rune fragments when they haven’t sold for over a gold in a long time.  I’ve been back about 2 weeks, I’ve made about 30 plat so far, which was ok enough.  I’ve put my foot back into the flipping business, with moderate results.  I’m sure I could park a mule there and just flip like crazy but that’s not much fun is it?  I do know that it costs about 100p to unlock all the ability/amp slots if I bought them on the AH, but since there are other paths, I’ll try that out instead.

Final note, I haven’t really found any big limitations being a F2P player who had a box copy – or at least, not enough to motivate me to become a signature member. I appreciate not being nickel and dimed or get spammed (NW I’m looking at you) for sure, but at the same time, I’m curious as to where I should spend my money.  TSW, Marvel Heroes and Path of Exile had ways for me to drop coin.  I guess the store is just a little too young at the moment.  There are a lot of people playing, word of mouth is great, so hopefully that translates into some forward movement on income.