Merry Christmas ya'll!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, what few readers of Conflagration I have left! Heh.

In all honesty, I hope all of you guys have a very good Christmas. I hope God fills all of your homes with joy, blessings, and love. I hope you enjoy seeing your families or friends, whatever it may be. And I hope you all never forget the magical joy of this season.

As the year winds down, folks tend to look back on the year in retrospect, kinda evaluate where things are. Me, well, while the year has had it's up and downs in various places, and I have some regrets, there are 2 key factors that have entered my life this year that have made it absolutely a good year. The first one would be Josiah Henry, the son of my beloved friends Josh and Angie Henry, and whom I am proud to have been named the Godfather of. He's ridiculously cute and I'm amazed just thinking about what all is going to come out of his life, all the potential inside him.

The other key factor? A beautiful woman named Karen Wilson. A lady who is amazing in SO many aspects, and I adore so very much. Our relationship is one of the most amazing things to ever happen in my life, and I am so happy that she'll be moving here soon. We haven't always had a whole lot of time to be together, but when we are, everything just seems better. I know the whole thing is going to change once we're able to see each other every day if we want, and I'm beyond happy. I know she'll be doing something she loves: helping God's children who are going through hard times. I can't tell you guys how happy I am for her because of that. I don't know the words to express it right. I say all this with complete honesty though, it's not just a side benefit to having her here, closer to me. Yes, obviously, I am extremely thrilled about that, but having her working for something that she truly loves, that's what brings more joy to me. I need you guys to know that, to understand that, because it's really important to me that you do. I'm praying for God to use her. Not for anything huge, or showy, or something that'll get her recognition, because I know that isn't as important to her as this: I pray that just one, at the very least, just one person will believe God is real because of her faith and her love for Him and her love for His people. Because nothing would make her happier than that.


Do I have regrets? Sure I do. There's plenty of things I regret, but if there's one thing I've had to have beaten into my head over and over, it's that you can't change the past, all you can do is make the future better. Well, I'm taking all those things I regret, and I'm gonna do all I can to change things for the better. To all those I have hurt or neglected my friendships with, I am sorry. Know I love you all. I do want to be a more active friend in your life again, if you'll have me.

I really think 2010 is going to be an epic year. There's so much possibility in store for me, for all of my friends, for my family, for everyone now that I think about it. I really hope there's a lot of Epic in it for all of you guys.

In the meantime, I'm going to look forward to Christmas...and New Year's with my beautiful girlfriend. Oh...and having a week and a half off from work after tomorrow! Love you guys, and once again, Merry Christmas!

Tis the Holiday Season!

I know I'm way overdue for updating this, but I'm actually about to go Christmas shopping, so I'll just hit a few quick points.

1. Karen is amazing, I had so much fun when she was here for Thanksgiving, and I can't wait to see her in a few short days for her graduation!

2. If you're so inclined to purchase something for me for Christmas, thank you. It means a lot to me. You can find a list of things I'd like at my Amazon.com wishlist.
http://amzn.com/w/257AL93EL6GZ1

3. Champions Online was fun for a while, but ultimately several factors came together to make it not really enjoyable in the long fun. The graphics engine is terribly designed, the questing is repetitive and dull (bad for a game that lends itself well to making lots of different characters), the statistics and character building system is insanely overly complicated, and it does not lend itself well to community building. I did enjoy some of it's features (the character creator has a LOT of options and the Sidekicking system does wonders for getting folks to group together at any level), but it's got a long way to go to come close to WoW, and I've canceled my account until these issues are resolved.

4. Speaking of WoW, my Shaman's level 78, the druid's gotten some great gear out of Ulduar, and I'm looking VERY forward to exploring Icecrown Citadel with my raid team next week.

5. You might wanna keep an eye on the Doghouse Podcast at www.Doghousesystems.com. I'm not gonna say why just yet, but...just be ready for the next episode. ^.^

Okay, off to go shopping. Later everyone.

Playing Catch-up. Not Ketchup. Though that IS tasty...

Howdy folks, I know it's been a long time. I been very busy, what with crazy stuff going on at work, busy weekends, and as much time with my beautiful and lovely Karen as is humanly possible!

This past weekend, Karen was here with me for 4 days. We had a blast together, hitting up the State Fair of Texas, the Fort Worth Zoo, and plenty of delightful little eateries around here. I was extremely sad to see her go, but I know it's not too much longer until the next time we can see each other (which will be around her birthday). Hopefully soon we can be a lot closer to each other after she graduates!! I adore her so much.

Funny little sidenote: on the Sunday before she left, I fired up my laptop and got her to try out World of Warcraft. She made a little Blood Elf Rogue (durn Blood Elves!) andI got her walking around, looking at quests, and making with the stabby stabby! I definitely think she got the basics down pretty quick, and seemed to be enjoying it. After she got back home, she told me she was having withdrawls of me, Firefly (which she had never seen and we got through 2 and 1/2 discs of), and WoW. Hehehe. My girlfriend is an extremely gorgeous geek. I think I'm the luckiest dude on the planet.

Probably my favorite part of the State Fair? The bird show. Seriously, it was one of the coolest things I've watched. They had a wide variety of bird species ranging from exotic singing parrots, to crows which could retrieve dollar bills, to a stork which flew low over the crowd and nearly hit Karen, and a lot in between. I love animals, and most birds are pretty high up on that list, so this show was a wonder to see. Incidentally, if you ever want to know what my favorite color is, search online for an image of a Hyacinth Macaw. Their feathers are a beautiful dark blue that I just love. The Fair's over now, sadly, but next year I highly recommend you go and see this show, if nothing else. It's awesome. Incidentally when we went to the Fort Worth Zoo, it made going through the raptor canyon area a lot more enjoyable, having learned so much and witnessed the bird's behaviors in a semi-uncaptive environment. Which was really nice, considering that my usual favorite portion of the zoo, the Herpetarium, was closed down for renovation and relocation. Grrrrr....FAIL, Fort Worth Zoo. Bleh! Oh well, someday the snakes will return!

In my last entry, I talked about the Mimiron Hard Mode encounter in the Ulduar dungeon of World of Warcraft.

What I didn't mention was that all the other bosses have a similar "Hard Mode" achievement, in which you purposefully make the encounter more difficult for a better challenge and better loot as well.

If you manage to accomplish all of these achievements, you earn a meta-achievement called "Glory of the Ulduar Raider". And you get a reward for your efforts, a reward that serves not only as an awesome looking form of transportation, but a mark of distinction, that your team was able to accomplish the truly difficult.

That reward takes the form of a Proto-Drake mount. This one has been magically bound in metal as a hatchling, and now it's fully grown, covered in metallic plate that's slightly rusted. Hence, his name: The Rusted Proto-Drake. Rusty or not, I think he looks awesome. Here's a screenshot of my 10-man team on our new mounts.



We'd been working on this since gaining our first hard mode back on the 20th of May, and finished it off on October 7th with our defeat of Yogg-Saron on his Hard Mode, having the assistance of only 1 of the Keepers. Under the normal fight, all four keepers assist you.

This fight is utterly crazy as it is. One of the mechanics of the fight is a numerical value known as your Sanity. Getting damaged by Yogg-Saron will lower your sanity, and if it drops to zero, you go insane, and Yogg essentially mindcontrols you into attacking your fellow players. You normally can restore your sanity by standing in one of the green beams of light that Freya, one of the keepers, places around the room.

In the Hard Mode, Freya is not present, only Thorim is. Thorim must be present as he is the only one who can kill Yogg's Immortal Guardians in Phase 3 of the fight. You thus have to manage your sanity by taking as little damage as possible.

For our successful attempt, we had 2 players down when we reached phase 3, and most of us were EXTREMELY low on Sanity. During Phase 3, Yogg Saron casts a spell called Lunatic Gaze. While this is active, anyone looking at Yogg takes damage and loses Sanity. If you're low on Sanity, you have to watch the timer for when Lunatic Gaze is about to go active, and turn away from him before that happens. If not, you're that much closer to going insane. Yogg will constantly spawn Immortal Guardians, which must be killed. Normally when they reach 1% of their health, they cannot be killed by players anymore. Thorim, however, has the power to kill them.

Normally, the tanks and the melee DPS focus on bringing these guardians down, while all ranged focuses completely on ripping Yoggy apart. However, because I was so low on sanity, they told me to stay facing the Guardians, away from Yogg, and help bring them down. What followed was a lot of on-the-fly-moving folks around as people got too low on Sanity to safely attack Yogg. It was slow going, but it was going. Yogg's health was steadily decreasing.

Then the worst possible thing happened. Our main tank, Servillia, lost all of his sanity.

The guardians immediately turned and went after the rest of the raid, as did Serv. All we heard over our Ventrilo was the off tank, Thrakan, yelling "TURN AND BURN, TURN AND BURN!!" We all immediately turned around, faced Yogg, and unleashed everything we had. It didn't look good for us. With no one to control the Guardians, they ran around rampant, killing people, as we tried so hard to put out enough damage to bring him down, and it looked like we weren't gonna make it. I was furiously blasting with everything I had, waiting for when the guardians were going to come after me...

...and it happened. The guardians despawned as Yogg convulsed and fell over dead. We all earned our achievements, and began yelling with joy in Vent. I couldn't believe it, we'd finally done it. All the hard work, the repeated wiping, the frustrations, it had all paid off. It was done, and one of the coolest things I've ever seen in the game. So very cool. Just wanted to share that with ya'll.



Us celebrating in front of ol' Yoggy's dead self.




I've actually picked up another MMO to play when I need a break from WoW. It's called Champions Online. You've probably heard of City of Heroes, NCSoft's semi-well-known superhero MMORPG, this is along the same vein. I never played CoH, but from what what I'm told from those who did, Champions is better in nearly every way.

The game was initally being made by NCSoft, and grew out of a failed attempt to make an MMO on the Marvel Comics universe. However, they eventually sold it to Cryptic Entertainment, who finished the game and released it. You can buy it in stores or over the Steam download service.

The first thing that's worth mentioning about this game is the literally GINORMOUS character creation system. As someone who was used to the bare-bones character creator in World of Warcraft, this was nearly overwhelming. You have SO many options, so many costume pieces to choose from, that you could spend hours just playing with that. It does make sense though. In WoW, your clothing and armor change appearance as you get new equipment and put it on. In Champions, your appearance is what you make of it here. The items you get do not affect it in any way.

The first thing you choose is your powers "archetype". This is a collection of thematically linked together abilities and a base statisitics set. These range from Fire to Ice to Archery to Martial Arts to Power Armor to Sorcery to Telekinesis. There's a total of 18 archetypes to choose from, and what's truly killer is that you can actually pick around if you want to mix it up a little bit.

And that is perhaps the other truly amazing thing about this game, the sheer amount of customization you have. In WoW, if you're a hunter, for example, you're going to want the same set of stats on your items at all time.

In Champions, you gain the ability to, at levels 5 and 13, pick your "superstats". These two statistics will be what determines the strength of your powers, regardless of what archetype you select. Now, each archetype starts with a base set of statistics that gives you average values for all of them save two. These two are what they recommend you use as your super stats because they typically have other benefits for your archetyps, but they aren't required. You can thus mix and match whatever statistics you wish to focus on however you like. It's astounding.

And the customization does not stop there. You need not stick to powers from your archetype's pre-determined set, either!. As long as you have a minimum number of powers from one archetype, you can start learning powers from other types as well, and many of them synergize with certain other archetypes very well. For example, let's say you have a Power Armor hero, and he's gained a set number of Power Armor powers. If he gains a new power, he can switch over to the Eletricity Archetype and take the power Electric Form. Electric Form gives you a boost to Electricity and Particle damage, and aids in your energy gaining. The Power Armor archetype doesn't have many electric powers, but it has plenty of Particle damage in the form of it's many beam abilities!

The sheer degree of customizing, both in terms of character creation and ability gaining, means you will have yourself a truly unique character. Unless of course you fall into the truly sad realm of making characters that are blatant ripoffs of established superheros. I myself witnessed someone playing a Gambit copy known as "The Ragin' Cajun", and a Nightcrawler ripoff known as "Kurt Wagner" followed by a random series of letters. Those sorts of things are so very annoying.

I haven't gotten terribly far in Champions (Fireball, my pyrokinetic alter ego, is currently a mere level 15, while the hi-tech-armored bringer of justice known as Night Raven is catching up at level 14), but it looks to be loads of fun and a truly epic experience. If fantasty MMO's aren't your thing, I highly recommend you give the superheroic world a try. There's far more to the game than I could cover here in my basic review, and it's well worth your looking at.

I think that's all for now, my friends. Take care and I'll try to talk to you soon!

Firefighter

Well, it's another weekend, which marks a break point in the continual 5-day drudge through the work week before I get to see my lady again. October 15th cannot get here soon enough.

Well I suppose it COULD get here too soon, if it was right now, and then I'd be wondering why I'm writing this and not getting dressed and on the road. But then again, that really wouldn't be too soon either, honestly.

At any rate, she is off on a retreat with her sorority sisters, so we're unable to communicate until she returns. Which given that my friends Alex and Tiffani are together this weekend when they're normally seperated by half the friggin' country, seems somewhat ironic. While I am fiercely jealous, I'm also very happy for them. They ARE my friends after all!

Last night I completed a spectacular goal in World of Warcraft. To those of you who play and are at least mildly familar with the Ulduar instance, let me just say that our 10-man finally completed Mimiron Hard Mode and earned the Firefighter achievement.

To those who do NOT play or don't know just how insane that fight truly is, let me run it down a bit.



This is Mimiron. Mimiron is one of the Keepers of Ulduar, essentially a powerful being created by the Titans to watch over Azeroth, and more specifically the Old God imprisioned in Ulduar, Yogg Saron.


Hey Yoggy.

Unfortunately, Yogg has opened up cracks in his prision, and his power and evil has corrupted the 4 keepers, essentially driving them insane. Essentially, Yogg Saron's power causes the Keepers to destroy anything in their path using their areas of influence. Mimiron, as a clockwork mechanical being, is an expert in the areas of building machines. When you enter his workshop, he assumes that you're there to test our his newest and best invention yet. Which he does by unleashing its firepower on you.



His first part of his invention is the Leviathan Mark II, essentially a big ol' tank with mines, a napalm shell launcher, a battering ram, and worse. Once you wipe our it's health, he moves the tank away and moves on to the next part.



The second part is the VX-001 Anti-Personnel Assault Cannon. It's a stationary mobile turret. Mimiron rotates around the room and unleashes blasts of energy at anyone in his line of fire. He also radiates massive amounts of heat from the turret, launches rockets at you, and occasionally charges his turrets up for the P3W x2 Laser Barrage. That will kill you if he hits you with it, as will the rockets, instantly.



After you destroy the turret, Mimiron summons the final part of his invention, the Aerial Command Unit. This thing looks like a big head with a pair of helicopter blades keeping it aloft. In this part of the fight, he shoots plasma blasts at you, drops Bomb Bots that walk over to your raid and explode, and also summons Assault bots as well.

Now, if you manage to defeat the Aerial Command Unit, Mimiron will happily exclaim that the preliminary testing is complete, and now it is time for the true test.

The Leviathan Mk II will roll out, the VX-001 will sprout hands where it's turrets used to be, and dock itself into the Leviathan. The Aerial Command unit will attach itself to the top of the VX-001.



The V-07-TR-0N is now formed. It has most of all of the abilities of the 3 parts, including the mines, the Laser Barrage, the rockets, and the Shock Blasts. All three of it's parts are independantly targettable. And you must bring all three pieces' health from 50% to 0% at the same time. If you don't, they repair themselves.

So yeah, does it sound crazy? It's pretty nuts, to be sure. If you wanna see it in action, watch this video that another guild made of the fight.




And that's not even his HARD mode.

His hard mode is activated by pushing that big red button you may have spotted during the video before the fight starts.

That button activates the Self-Destruct Mechanism. It also gives all of his "parts" 25% more health, 25% more damage, and causes the room to start breaking up...and catch fire.

The fire is what makes this encounter nightmarish. It's constantly spreading, is only randomly put out by some various extra abilities that Mimiron gains, and essentially means you have to be almost continually moving throughout the fight or you burn.

It's insanely hard. Here's a video of the hard mode for you to see for yourself.



Yeah, we beat it last night for the first time. I was so happy to get that done. Now I never want to do it again, haha.

Okay, I'm going to end this one for now, but I'll leave you with a pic of my newest little reward for completing an achievement that takes a year to complete, because it requires you to do all the achievements associated with all the holidays in the game.



RAWR!!

Ten

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of my rebirth, so to speak. 10 years ago today, I made a decision that has changed my life. I accepted the gift Christ offered when he died on the cross.

This is the story of how it happened. It's written by my best friend, and the man who, at that point in my life, was almost entirely responsible for showing me what a life lived by following Jesus is really like, David Butler.

"As some of you know, today marks the 10 year anniversary of the Wedgwood Baptist shootings. For those that don't know, a man named Larry Ashbrook walked into a Saw You At The Pole rally on Wednesday night ten years ago at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth and began firing into the crowd. Seven people were killed and seven more were wounded. At the time I was a Junior in high school, and several of my friends had attended the rally, but I decided to stay at Southcliff for the evening instead.

Obviously it affected our youth group quite a bit. Wedgwood Baptist Church was only a couple miles from Southcliff, where I went to church, and since many of our students had been there, there was a closeness to the situation that was very unsettling. But what I'd come to remember most about that night ended up not being the shootings, but that it was the night one of my best friends of all time came to accept Jesus Christ into his heart.

Besides family, I've known and been constant friends with Brandon Matthews longer than anyone else I know. We've been through all the good times and all the bad times together, and I thank God to be a part of his life. It's really awesome to see how God can take a horrific tragedy and turn it into something that you are actually celebrating year after year. 10 years... how crazy is that! Through the last ten years I've seen true change happen in the heart of my friend Brandon.

When I first met him as a Sophomore in Leach's english class, he was a jaded and cynical kid, without any real direction that mattered. Nevertheless we seemed to hit it off right away in class, with our nerdy love of comics! After about a year or so (I think) I started inviting him to Wednesday nights with me at church, with a couple other friends. We'd meet at my place after school and all go to eat and bible study together. That night, after we received word about the shootings, and my parents had come to pick us up, Brandon was shook up a lot I think. My dad took him aside and they talked for a good bit while the rest of us waited in the car, praying. Basically that night my dad was able to lead Brandon to the Lord, which in my opinion, pretty much destroyed any victory Satan could have claimed that night.

Since then, Brandon has become one of the most caring, understanding, and devoted friends I have ever known. I've never seen such a change in someone like that. I think Brandon would say the same thing. Through the years we've grown closer, then farther apart, due to the miles between us, but we STILL get together, most recently for the worship projects we've been recording in New Mexico, and of course he was a groomsman in my wedding (and yes, I've even dragged him to a reenactment)! Add that to 3 years of high school together, 30 shows and 2 albums with Monkeywrench, and over 10 years of friendship... it seems like a lifetime! And in many ways, it has been...

Shortly after the Wedgwood shootings, I wrote a song about the whole thing. Looking back on it, the lyrics might be a little cheezy, and my vocals certainly never did it justice, but the message is there. It was one of the first songs that my old band Monkeywrench (who Brandon was also in) ever wrote. I thought it would be appropriate to include it in this 10 year anniversary note. It is appropriately titled "9-15-99."

9-15-99

Where do you turn when your world is in shambles...
Where do you turn when there's no place to hide?
When the place that you worship is destroyed and undone...
When your faith is shattered across the sky?

Where do you turn when your life is in shambles...
Where do you turn when your hate cannot hide
When the one that you worship leaves you empty inside...
When you're so confused you take your life?

Turn to Him, he will take all your sorrows
He will make them better than before they'd begun
He will wrap His arms of comforting love around your heart from heaven above.

So that's where you turn when your world is in shambles.
That's where you turn, though there's no need to hide
And the place that you worship will be restored in your heart
And your faith will be mended before your eyes.

So turn to him, he'll take your sorrows
He will make them better than before they'd begun
He will wrap His arms of comforting love around your heart from heaven above."

Awake and Alive and Listening to something better.

I love the band Skillet. I had mixed feelings about the first two albums of theirs that I owned (which would be Invincible and Alien Youth), so it took me a while to buy Collide. Finally, after my friend David threated me with physical harm, I bought it. And, well, if you've listened to the album, you know how A) incredible it is and B) what a massive departure it was from the previous stuff we've seen from Skillet.

Collide was raw, passionate, and hard. It also included one of the most truly epic songs I've ever heard in the form of the titular track. This album threw Skillet into the list of my favorite musical artists. Their next album, Comatose, sealed it there forever. Comatose took everything that was great about the song Collide and made nearly an entire album's worth of greatness from it, blending the hard, nearly-metal rock sound with the symphonic intros and backing, resulting in classics like Rebirthing, Comatose, and Whispers in the Dark. There are plenty of great solid rock tracks on here as well, including Better Than Drugs, Last Night, Falling Into Black, and Those Nights.

However, Comatose does have a downside to it. The album incorporates a couple of songs that can best be described (and in fact WERE described as such by John Cooper, Skillet's Frontman, on Comatose Comes Alive) as 80s power ballads, namely Yours to Hold, The Older I Get, and Say Goodbye. These songs are absolutely lame. I'm sorry, they are. They're boring compared to what this band is capable of and what they demonstrate on the rest of this album.

The problem is that, on their live abum, Comatose Comes Alive, John mentioned that he LOVES 1980s power ballads just before playing Yours to Hold. I wish I could say that set off some warning bells in my mind, but it didn't.

So now we come to the recently released Awake. After Comatose, I think we all had incredibly high hopes for this album. Was it too much? I don't think so, not really. The first single we heard off this album, "Hero", certainly sounded like the Skillet we all know and love! There's less symphonic backing, but lots of rock, and a passionate calling out to Jesus to help us make a stand in thie world. Plus it features vocals from their new drummer, and she ain't bad, singing or drumming.

The second single, "Monster"....well lets just say this should have been the second warning sign. It's not an overall bad track on it's own. The first thought I had as I was listening to it was "Wow...these lyrics are really not as good as Skillet has done." But I continued listening...and then we got to the bridge.

If you've heard this track, and not the radio version, you know what comes next. You get a dropoff of all instruments, and you're expecting to hear John sing (or even scream) the words "feel like a monster". Well, you get those words all right, but they're uttered by this synthesized monster voice. I don't know if they were going for creepy, or just scary, or what, but it is the cheesiest thing I think I've ever heard. I was in such shock and disgust at the sheer lameness of it, I had to stop the song. Seriously? You guys were gonna go with that??

I've listened to the song a few more times since then, and that stupid monster voice aside, it's not a bad track at all, if you consider it on it's own, apart from anything Skillet has done before. If you factor that in, then yes, it's a bit disappointing. Monster's a pretty rocking track, but Skillet has done way better.

So then we get the full deal. Awake debuts in stores, and I immediately grab that sucker off iTunes and get ready to rock.

Oh wow, is this album disappointing. Really really disappointing. Why? Because it's about 50% lame 80s power ballads, and what few songs aren't, well half of them are just plain terrible.

I'm not even going to talk about the power ballad tracks. I can't. I can barely stand to listen to them through once. So let's take a look at the rest of the offerings here. The title track, Awake and Alive, is not bad, really. It tries to capture the formula they used on Comatose: Blend good hard rock with their signature symphonic backing. For the most part it works, until you get to the chorus, specifically the lyrics "Now, it's my time. I'll do what I want, cause this is my life!". I'm sorry, I thought I was listening to Skillet, not "Angry teen emo-rock band #357". What happened, guys? You're too smart to fall into the whole "cater-songs-to-the-teenage-youth-group-crowd" that gripped otherwise good bands. I'm looking at you, Superchic[k]. The song kind of just falls apart from there, getting less and less mature, which culiminates in having to hear John sing "Wa-king-up, Waking up!" over and over prior to the bridge and at the song's close. I felt like I'd been bait-and-switched.

Next we get "One Day Too Late" which has...oh right. Power Ballad. *pushes skip button*. Sorry, now we come to "It's Not Me It's You". And yet again, we have to check our CD to make sure we haven't been hoodwinked. This is not a Skillet song. This is a terrible piece of crap that some girl-power chick band threw together after they broke up with their boyfriend. I'm really disgusted at this point, and begging the rest of the album to impove.

Sadly, our next track, Should've When You Could've? Yeah, ballad. Also, really annoying title. And the one after that? It's called "Believe", it's gotta be good, right? Hey look another one! Ugh. "Believe" sounds like something a jerk guy would sing if he was trying to blame a girl for all his relationship issues. I'm not kidding, go listen to it if you don't believe me (pardon the pun). I have no idea what has happened to this band by now. I'm looking for something, ANYTHING, to salvage this mess.

"Forgiven" tries to do that. It really does. Again, they try to capture the sound that made Comatose so good, and the song itself FINALLY comes back to something that actually sounds Spiritual, a heartfelt confession of wrong and God's Forgiveness of it all. The problem is, there's enough of the power ballad influence in here that it just makes the song average at best. It's decent, but it's hardly a standout hit.

Now we come to "Sometimes". Okay, I think we're getting somewhere here. This one gets it closer to the seriously hard rock we've heard on Collide. This is good stuff. Lyrics are a bit on the immature side, but at thsi point, i'm so sick of the power ballads I'm almost willing to overlook that. Do we have another classic hit here? I can't bring it up that high. It's good, but not great.

"Never Surrender" is like that last grasp at safety before falling off a cliff. It's trying to stick to the good things that started being developed in the previous tracks, you can tell that in the opener and even during the chorus, but the rest of it? Yeah, back into the pit of powerballad. Sigh.

Finally there's "Lucy". A downer tear-jerker about a girl that's died. Hey Skillet? No. Stop it. Just stop this. Please. No one likes you guys because of these kinds of songs. They love you for your epic, powerful, raw, uninhibitted anthems of the greatness of God and his love. That's why Collide and Comatose did so well. That's why Comatose Comes Alive is so great, because for the most part you stuck to those. With the exception of "Hero", you don't have anything close to that greatness on this CD. What happened here, guys??

If you picked up the Deluxe Edition (and I'll go on another rant about why I hate these later), you got three bonus tracks. "Dead Inside" is, hilariously, better than almost all of the album. It sounds more like it was a song that couldn't quite make it on to Comatose, honestly. It's got a good solid rock feel, good lyrics, overall highly enjoyable. "Would it Matter" is a synth-backed power ballad. Lame.

Finally, we're treated to "Monster (Alternate Radio Version)". If you're familiar with the practice of "Radio Versions" of songs, you know they're usually highly lame, softened up versions of normally good songs, done to maximize their appeal on the radio to all those folks who love happy-slappy contemporary Christian stuff that utterly bores me. Monster's "Radio Version" does not do that. All it changes is, yes you guessed it, the terrible monster voice during the bridge. Instead, we get the same dropoff, but the normal vocals continue to sing. It's amazing how much more enjoyable the song is.

So, I have to ask, guys. Did you think "Oooh, that Monster voice is a little too extreme for the radio, we better just replace it with regular vocals"? Because, I hate to tell you this, but the Radio version is better. Like I said, that monster voice is cheesy and bad. This version would have been a far better choice.

Overall, Skillet it seems has finally taken a misstep. They've taken the power ballads way too far and regressed badly on lyrical maturity. There's a few good songs worth listening to on this album, but the rest of it can just be marked as "Skillet's experimental power ballad album" and never spoken of again.

I give it 2 out of 5 Stars, 3 if you bought the Deluxe version.



Going to Waco again this weekend. If you see me seperated from Karen for an extended length of time, something has gone horribly awry. See ya'll then!!

Cataclysmic.

Okay, it's been a good solid few days since Blizzcon ended, so let's digest some info.

First of all, the third expansion for World of warcraft was announced, and it's called Cataclysm. Pretty much what everyone was expecting. The "final boss" of this one will be everyone's favorite evil dragon covered in Adamantite plate, Deathwing, and is going to completely reshape the world as we know it. Literally. Hence the name.

The story of this chapter of Azeroth centers around a massive disaster of such epic proportions that it reshapes the world. Deathwing, it seems, has been hiding in another plane of existence, the elemental plane of earth, also known as Deepholme. He's been there recovering from the last two major defeats he's suffered (all of which occured before WoW's story began) and it seems he's recovered enough to make his presence known again. Which he does by tearing a hole in existence between Deepholme and Azeroth. Now I don't know how much you all know about planar physics, but tearing a hole between two different planes of existence is NOT a good thing. The act breaks open massive cracks in the planet, exposing molten lava fissures across the face of Azeroth, reshapes the two major continents, causes the oceans of the world to flood areas previously locked by land, and does very bad things to many of the civilizations spread across the world.

Kaboom.

What does this mean for us, the Players? It means the "old world" (the two continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, the only 2 that used to exist in the original version of WoW) are being completely revamped. In the wake of this event, known as the Cataclysm, whole zones have been reshaped or broken in half. Multiple areas that were previously unreachable now are. Other areas are vastly reshaped. Desolace, for example, is now a lush grassland. The Barrens not only has a massive molten fissue running across it, it's partially covered by a tropical rainforest. The Wetlands has been split in half, with the new half known as the Twilight highlands, occupied by Deathwing, his new Twilight dragons, and the Twilight's Hammer cult cowed into serving him.

In essence, the leveling experience from 1-60 is being redesigned completely. New quests, new areas, the whole shebang.

To go along with this, we get two new races: The Goblins and the Worgen.

The Goblins as we've known them in WoW have all been neutral, part of an organization called the Steamwheedle Cartel. These new goblins are from another organization apparently that was sold out into slavery by competitors. The Cataclysm set them free, but it also stranded them during their escape. In need of protection and a new place in the world to make their own, they've joined the Horde.

The Worgen are members of the former human nation of Gilneas, which isolated itself from the world during the Third War, in fear of the Scourge. Archmage Arugal, a Gilnean himself, summoned the creatures known as the worgen from another plane to help defend their borders. Unfortunately the Werewolf creatures broke free of Arugal and began spreading the werewolf curse among the kingdom. Though the Gilnean people have regained control of their minds, the Cataclysm destroyed the great wall that isolated them. With the Forsaken bearing down on them, they've turned to old friends in the Alliance to help them rejoin the world.

Personally, I'll admit, the idea of playing a werewolf is EXTREMELY awesome. And I've seen the video of their transformation effect. I can only describe it as awesome. But they're Alliance, and most of my friends are playing Horde these days.

The Goblins don't seem too bad either. From what I've heard from folks who attended Blizzcon, the Goblin starter area is FUN. Lots of explosions. Who doesn't love that?

Both races are getting a super wide variety of playable classes too. The Worgen can be every class except Paladin and Shaman, and the Goblins get everything except Paladin and Druid. Oddly enough, that includes Death Knights for both. This would seem odd, given that the starting Death Knight chain story would preclude the involvement or even knowledge of either race, but at the same time, a Goblin or Worgen Death knight sounds really cool, so I can't fault Blizzard for including it. Maybe they'll deal with the discrepancy somehow, but I'm not going to care much if they don't.

There's also going to be some substantial expansion in class choices for the existing races as well. Humans and Forsaken both gain access to Hunters. Dwarves are gaining Shamans and Mages; the Night Elves and Orcs gained the latter as well. Gnomes are gaining Priests, as are the Tauren. Tauren also are getting Paladins. Trolls will soon be able to be Druids. Finally, the Blood Elves will gain the Warrior race.

Some of these additions are fairly natural extensions, such as the Human Hunter or Blood Elf Warrior. Some of them can be fairly easily explained by cross-racial teachings (such as the Tauren druids teaching trolls or Draenei shamans teaching dwarves). Some of them are just downright mysterious and will require some fairly good storytelling to explain, and in a few cases we see examples of this in game now. Regardless, we've got plenty more choices for characters now, and plenty of new opportunities for level 1 alts to explore the newly revamped world.

And it really is getting revamped. One of the most often asked questions after flying mounts were introduced in Burning Crusade is "Why can't we fly in the old world". The answer is that the Old World may look three dimensional, but it's not. Many of the distinctive landmarks you may see in game are not really there at all, they're optical illusions of sorts, and if you flew over them, it would be terribly obvious. In Cataclysm, Blizzard is rebuilding the world to be truly three-dimensional, and thus we will be able to fly across all of Azeroth on our menagerie of flying mounts.

I'm really excited about this one, because these two continents are BIG. I'd love the change to go explore them from a high up perspective now, and even though the world is gonna be wildly different, I'm still gonna love checking it out from the air!

The level cap is only going up by 5, making 85 the new max level. Blizzard stated that they wanted to give us fewer levels to get through, but that they wanted the experience to be more enjoyable and more epic. We're not getting any new "tiers" of talents, so we'll have more points to spend on what we already have, but talents ARE going to get a pretty substantial redesign. They want to take away "boring" talents like "increases dmg" or "Increases x stat" and make them more enjoyable to choose from. To go along with this, statistics are getting an extreme revamp as well. Many of the more complicated statistics, like Spellpower, Attack Power, defense rating, armor penetration, and the like? Going away completely. Some of these will be provided based on base statistics (strength, Agility, intellect, etc), and some of it will be provided via talent selection. There's also a new stat called "Mastery". As best I understand it, Mastery will do different things for you based on your chosen talent spec. For example (and this is purely hypothetical description on my part), a warrior might have X points of Mastery. If he's Prot, his X Mastery will give him Y amounts of Armor. If he was Arms or Fury, that same X Mastery would give him Z attack power or Critical strike rating. It's a very nifty and fluid system, and it lets players use their existing gear for multiple roles, cutting down on the number of armor sets needed for various specs. How exactly it will play out, well I suppose we'll find out more as Cataclysm draws nearer, but I really like the concept myself.

Obviously with all these new zones, we're getting new dungeons and raids. I won't go into a whole lot of detail there, but I will say this, because these got me excited. Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines are getting heroic modes and Ragnaros is coming back. He's at Mount Hyjal trying to burn down the World Tree. Oh and we're told he's about three times as huge as he used to be. Opposing him? Malfurion friggin' Stormrage. That's right. The baddest of the druids has returned and he is (we're told) going to help us kick some giant fire elemental butt. Excellent!

There's a new secondary profession called Archaeology, and a new "progression system" called Path of the Titans. We don't know a whole lot about this yet, but from what the designers talked about, it's a system that allows you to continue to experience the fun of leveling, but takes away the "grind" feel of it, and gives you some pretty cool rewards to go with it. Again, not sure what that's going to mean exactly.

So yeah, that's an awful lot to digest. And there was lots more. Heck, I didn't even talk about all the stuff they discussed for the final path of Wrath, Patch 3.3. But all in all, I'm stoked about this. It's way too soon to tell for any of us how we plan on experiencing this upcoming expansion, but the future of WoW looks really good (from an enjoyability standpoint, the future of Azeroth looks pretty painful, heheh).

I can't wait for some nitty gritty details to come out so we can really see just how different things are gonna be, but its all pretty exciting.

But for now, all we can do is wait. And see how many of our friends we can get to come along for the ride (*wink* at a certain someone).