Robert Jordan, known as the author of the brilliant fantasy series The Wheel Of Time, passed away on Sunday, September 16th. He was 58 years old at the time.

The Associated Press filing can be found here.

This isn’t a news site, and I don’t have anything profound to say.

I know that many of my friends will be affected by this news just as I am, and I wanted to make sure you got the chance to hear as soon as possible.

My wife just emailed me 10 minutes ago, to let me know. She knew from my conversations with friends that I cared, and would want to know.

Robert Jordan had for quite a while been associated with The Dragonmount blog, and would occasionally post updates on his condition, and how he was feeling.

My friend Mark had told me some time ago that Mr. Jordan had been very sick, but with the treatmeant he had been getting, he was beginning to feel better.

I checked back periodically, but to be honest I felt as though I were being too voyeuristic in the affairs of Mr. Jordan’s life, and I stopped visiting Dragonmount, perhaps in the naive wish that I could help him, or at least myself, by remaining ignorant and “thinking happy thoughts”.

All I can really think of to say is, I have been reading Mr. Jordan’s books since the first in the series, The Eye of the World, came out almost 17 years ago. At the time, I was a Sergeant and attending an advanced school stateside, on a base of Privates and PFcs whom Thou Shalt Not Fraternize With, and here was this huge fat book that not only promised to be a good long read and keep me out of trouble, but professed to be the first of a long series. I read that book from cover to cover in a weekend, and I was hooked from then on.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 17 years. I can remember in the earliest days of comupting, BBS sytems, phone modems and turn based chat posting, and hordes of fans on the fledgling PC Intrawebs, organizing ‘Darkfriend Socials’, getting together in face to face parties to celebrate the amazement of being fans of such a marvelous and complex fantasy world.

I was one of the online chatgroup that Darkfriend Socials sprang from, and used to debate the ‘Super Aes Sedai’, and what would happen to Perrin next, for endless hours.

Sightings of Mr. Jordan at conventions, or small book signings, were reported on and tidbits of hints that may or may not have been said were dutifully posted for all to read and debate at length. We hung on his words with open ears.

I guess all I can say, all that I should say, is simply…

For 17 years of my life, I have been influenced by a great writer, and today I feel as though I have lost a good and precious friend, a friend that I never met in person, but who truly was a part of my life. I wish that there were some way to let him know how much I appreciate his writing, admire his storytelling, and how much I wish him godspeed and blessings.

Hee hee…. I beat out Resto4life by giving a shout out to this one first!

Head on over to Ferocious Bite , a great new Druid blog, and check it out… it’s just getting going, but it’s a great start. I look forward to reading more!

So MrsBBB has played a bit this weekend. Instead of MrsBBB, we’re going to call her Cassie instead, since she has made two toons and seems to have chosen variations on that for her name….

The first person I see call her ‘Mamacass’ in game gets banned.

Oh, and wonder of wonders…. she chose a name with no goofy characters, no numbers, no ‘x’s, and it’s a good cool name…. and it hadn’t already been taken. Color me shocked.

Anyway, she played a priest up to level 8, and then let it slip that she wasn’t able to fight ‘face to face’ as well as she expected… her advisor had not really made it clear just HOW gimped a class is away from it’s normal role. Oops.

Allow me to give an example she used. In Kingdom Hearts, a PS2 game (and imo an excellent one), you have one main character, Sora. And you are given a choice early on to be a caster, a warrior or a defender, and your choice affected your playstyle strengths and weaknesses for the rest of the game.

Cassie had made the choice to be a caster, and when I described the different WoW classes to her, she made that comparison and decided she’d play a priest. She liked being able to heal herself while fighting.

The problem, of course, is that in Kingdom Hearts, the differences between a caster, warrior or defender is one of minute variations… no matter which you choose, you are still almost as good doing every role. Maybe a caster gets a teensy bit more mana. Or a warrior gets a couple more points of damage done. Not a noticeable difference unless you REALLY dig deep.

Anyway, she was having a lot of fun in the early levels where a viable strategy is to Smite from a distance to pull, then maybe get one more Smite in and then whack a mole with the mace. Cloth armor doesn’t make that big a deal.

In the first levels where stuff starts does make a difference, around 7 like when you are running to Jasperlode Mine and you’ll aggro two or three wolves at once, she started finding out that the strategy became ‘Bubble, Smite, Smite, bubble down, smite, bubble again, lesser heal, smite, etc, etc, etc’ and it got annoying that the mace was so puny. If she stuck with whacking them, it just didn’t make a dent.

So she stealth rerolled on me.

I have a level 6 gnome warlock that I had made a long time ago, intending it to be a level 19 pvp twink someday… until I realized that I just DO NOT have an interest in pvp. I figured it might be fun to run up to Stormwind and the Abbey, and start the same quests she is on and hang with her a bit… so I logged in on my system, took the tram and got to the Abbey, walked up to the first quest giver… and standing right in front of the quest giver is a brand spankin’ new level 1 rogue named Cassie-something or other…

I thought at first it was a funny coincidence… but for fun I /poked her and whispered “Are you sometimes known as MrsBBB?

I then ran upstairs, where I caught her online, looking back at my gnome. It WAS her! Sooooo busted.

She played her rogue, and I left her completely alone. She had mentioned that having a bunch of people hanging around waiting on her made her nervous, so I figured I’d just do quests, hang out in Goldshire, and if she needed help I’d be available, but otherwise, meh, she’d have more fun playing at her own pace… and if she wanted to pick-pocket kobolds for 2 hours, let her.

By the end of last night, she had reached level 8 almost 100% on her own, except for a little excursion into Fargodeep Mine. And along the way, many things came to light about Blizzards’ Guest Pass program that I thought it would be fun to point out here.

First though… I’d like to say that one of the coolest things I’ve seen is when she was level 3 and had the ‘Kill Garrick Padfoot’ quest. Padfoot is 5 and has an add that always pulls with him. I was over in the Vineyard doing Milly’s Harvest, and I sent her a group invite to ‘help’ her kill Padfoot.

When she accepted the invite, I looked at the map and saw she was already right on top of Padfoots’ location. I run that way just in time to see her stealthing away from Padfoots’ corpse… without saying anything to me, she had already figured out stealth, snuck over to him, killed him AND his add, and was stealthing her way back out again.

Now, that was cool. Try and remember back to your first day of WoW… I don’t know about you, but I sure as heck didn’t have that much on the ball at level 3.

Anyway, let’s talk about our old school first days of WoW…because when you have a Guest Pass, that is what you’re playing.

Do you remember you’re first character, the first day of playing? Did you nkow anyone else already? Or were you like I was, playing for the first time, not knowing anyone else on the server, broke and clueless, with the default bag, no money AT ALL, and no idea where anything is or how anything worked?

The purpose of a Guest Pass is to entice your non-playing friends to try the game, get hooked, and pony up the money for a subscription.

But on the other hand, Blizzard has had the hate of 8 million subscribers rain down on them for gold spamming and selling.

So what does Cassie get in a Guest Pass?

Well, first, she gets to choose from original game content. No Draenei for Alliance, no Blood Elves for Horde. Doesn’t matter that I have the expansion installed, the guest pass doesn’t recognize that. Okay, so Blizzard doesn’t want you using a free Guest Pass to play expansion starter level zones, I can see that. Of course, that means that if she gets hooked on her character, it means she is hooked on a character from pre-expansion that has the old quest lines to play, not the new ones that Blizzard themselves have admitted are more fun because they learned a lot from the mistakes they made in the original game.

Second, she cannot initiate a conversation with anyone that does not have her in their friends list.

Thats’ an interesting one. Obviously, Blizzard does not want someone creating a Guest Pass character, and using it to spam trade and general channels with gold ads. It has the interesting effect, however, of allowing her to add all of my long time friends’ characters to her friends list… but when they come online, she can’t tell them hello unless they see her first and initiate chat to her first. She also had problems not being able to chat in our personally created chat channel. No problem speaking in Party or Guild chat, though. Which explains the random group invites from player ’sdounsej’ that I sometimes get in IF… someone trying to get me in party to spam some gold ads at me, I bet.

But let’s get to the meat and potatoes part of the pain.

Players on a Guest Pass CANNOT USE MAIL, TRADE SYSTEM, OR AUCTION HOUSE.

Think about that for a second, huh?

Blizzard has made absolutely certain that a Guest Pass CANNOT be used by gold sellers to move, trade, pass on or shuffle around gold or items with anyone else in any way.

But it has the effect of forcing someone that is brand new to this game, and tying it to see if it will be fun, to only ever have equipped what they themselves loot or buy from money received from loot.

Nor can such a person save some money from what they have looted, to go to the Auction house and buy an upgrade. They CANNOT use the Auction House.

Now, how many of you remember when you first started to play this game? For most of my readers, I imagine it’s been at least a year, more likely two. Maybe some, or even most, of you also started with Guest Passes.

But I didn’t remember just how insanely painful it is to watch someone play a new character, that you cannot give a bunch of 14 slot Runecloth Bags to so they can loot without running to town every 5 minutes.

Or how painful it is to watch a priest unable to buy a stack or two of lesser healing potions or mana potions from the AH for emergencies.

A good argument can be made that it makes her appreciate the rewards she gets on her own much more. That could be a fun conversation, right there. How much of your enjoyment comes from the value you place on the rewards you get from quests and dropped loot? Does having a ton of gold ‘given’ to you from a higher level alt or other friend make you appreciate your rewards less?

However, I’d like to point out that on a Guest Pass, the hope is that she likes the game so much she wants to go out and buy it to continue playing.

I’d suggest that it would be a smarter move to let, say, access to the Auction House for items useable by level 10 and under be permitted. Maybe with a ‘character can only buy’ lockout so buying/selling to make money can’t happen. It would keep the player having to kill on their own, but they could buy lowest level pots and gear.

It would open up a part of the game to a new player, the economy of the Auction House. I think the AH is addictive all by itself, and would be a big draw.

And let’s be honest… low level crafters would LOVE the added demand for their items on the AH. Make the level limit of items a Guest Pass could buy low enough that it doesn’t endanger twink gear, sure. Maybe level 12.

It is fun seeing my wife play. It is awesome seeing her play better than I did.

And it is frustrating seeing her swear at having only one bag and all white gear, when I have 2 Imbued Netherweave Bags, 4 Mooncloth Bags and 150 gold floating around waiting to descend on her to gear her rogue out.

I invite all of you to offer your suggestions to her on having fun as a rogue :).

Her only real play annoyance at the moment is getting used to moving with the mouse and keyboard. She never played computer first person shooters, so moving and looking around with WASD is foreign to her. She’s getting the hang of it, and loves using the number bar hot keys to trigger abilities, but she still has a few problems with the right-click mouse view causing the image on screen to tilt up and down wildly.

Since I’ve played FPS a long time and WASD is second nature to me, I have never looked at aternative movement options. Do any of you have suggestions on easier methods of moving around?