Ready Up

21 hours and counting

Withdrawal is an incredibly difficult time. More so when it’s forced upon you, like some kind of intervention, it leaves you feeling vulnerable and out of control. I’ve woken up in good spirits but I’m naive. The rough road lies ahead of me, winding endlessly towards the horizon. In several hours I could be a gibbering wreck, rocking back and forth, muttering wildly about party invites and lobbies. Send the men in white coats now, there’s little hope for me.
On 16th June, as I write, XBL is offline for 24 HOURS. In all seriousness I think I can cope. Yes. I’m pretty sure I can cope. They say you should get outside and try not to dwell on things. So here I am, scribbling away in the library… dwelling on things. Yep, I’ve left the house. I’m inflicting at least forty minutes of direct sunlight on my body. I’m in severe danger of getting colour on my skin, some exercise and a hefty dose of vitamin D. Damn you Microsoft!
No XBL? This is my company
No XBL? This is my company

During these 24 hours, what will I actually miss? Today should be Gears of War 2 night for those of us who lurk on the Ready Up forum so I’ll be unable to consistently let down my Wingman. I’ll miss stalking my friends list on Xbox.com, seeing who’s online, what they’re playing and debating on whether or not to harass them with messages. I’ll pine for their wonderful voices and our intellectual party chat conversations. By “intellectual” I mean trash talking and innuendo followed by a few minutes of…

“I think you’re breaking up”

“What? I can’t hear you properly, you seem to be breaking up”

“Say again. You’re breaking up”

…on an endless loop.

So I guess I’ll have to resort to single player, like the old days, or see if my Playstation 2 is still talking to me after I dumped it so swiftly upon purchasing the Xbox 360. Perhaps I’ll watch one of these deeveedee things I hear so much about or try to cultivate a new addiction. A likely contender is Plants Vs Zombies on my PC as the demo alone kept me occupied for an indecent amount of time.

Braaaaaiiins
My name is Kat and I am a PopCap junkie

Thankfully the Microsoft Overlords are not shutting down the entire internet. I know with your support online we can make it through this difficult time together and today will soon be a fading memory.

Posted

in

,

by

Kat

Tags:

Comments

3 responses to “21 hours and counting”

  1. The Rook avatar
    The Rook

    The 24 hours offline period has ended, are you still with us Kat, or was this your final submission. Kat? KAT???

    THankfully, I didn’t suffer through this trying time as I was playing Infamous. I have experienced times were I had lost all internet connection. You don’t realise how much you take it for granted until you can’t access it.

    And can you imagine if it happened on Monday night, on GTA night??? We’re all back to normal again, just waiting on our E3 extras being added.

  2. MarkuzR avatar
    MarkuzR

    I actually enjoy playing online now, although I never thought I would. Friday night and Sunday night I was burning up Big Surf Island with a friend and, as mentioned above, he’d start a conversation that never seemed to reach completion because of dead silence. At first it was infuriating… then I remembered back in 1996 when I first had an online conversation with a friend in Danbury CT… she had 56k and I had quad iSDN and it was STILL pointless.

    If I can’t get online, not necessarily gaming, I just go mental. I remember a “Top Ten Signs You Spend Too Much Time Online” thing many years ago, and one of them was “You call up the AOL line just to listen to the modems squealing”.

    Yeah, I’m with that.

  3. MrCuddleswick avatar
    MrCuddleswick

    I missed all my fuuuurends while Live was down, but it gave me an opportunity to work through WAW single player. Which was miserable…..so….yeah…..what was I saying?

Leave a Reply