The World of Warcraft open beta ended today. Here's a couple of shots of my level 16 Dwarven Hunter, Ragath. Well, he's not 16th level in these pics, but that's what I managed to reach before the beta ended at 11:13 tonight.

The most recent IF Competition has just reached its conclusion. The votes are in and being tabulated. I managed to score all but 2 of the qualified games this year; I slacked off and crunched at the end, burned myself out on IF last night, and left 2 of the games unscored because I'd only played a few minutes of each.

My reviews? That may be a little while. I rated my impressions of each game, which is pretty quick and easy. Writing a useful review will take a little more time. I do have the notes and transcripts I took for each game (the ones that would let me do transcripts, that is). There were a few games that I didn't get to finish in the 2 hour time limit, and I want to go back and finish those before I write the actual review. So be patient, they'll be available eventually.

The World of Warcraft open beta has interrupted my retro gaming! Damn you, Blizzard. As fun as it's been playing solo and with friends, I still won't be buying the game. But I'll post some screenshots when I remember to take some. (My character is a gun-wielding marksman... who woulda guessed?)

I tried to see if I could shoehorn the reactions from the hard left I was seeing into the standard "5 stages of grief" that most people are familiar with (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance). No, it wasn't quite working (especially with the lack of "bargaining"). They've come up with their own stages, it seems.

DENIAL
First did come Denial. This is what first led me to try this experiment. To be fair, a lot of fault for this can be placed onto the terribly skewed exit polling data that seems to have been leaked early. And all the mainstream news outlets use the same company for their exit polling, so they all came up with the same numbers. "Let's just wait for all the votes to be counted," the Democrats said when the actual precincts started reporting in and things looked good for Bush. "How could W carry Ohio? Inconceivable!" Some are still in this stage.

DEPRESSION
I think what I saw following denial was mainly Depression. People dazed and shocked, saying how sad they were and how much they wanted to cry. Or at least move to Canada. This stage appeared to actually be very brief.

BLAME
Next comes Blame, smashing through depression rather quickly. The great thing about this stage is how scattershot different Democrats have been in assigning blame:

"It's Kerry's fault, because he wasn't a good candidate. Yeah, I never really liked him to begin with. He didn't listen to his advisors. He really did flip-flop a lot. You could never know where he stood on a position. He said different things to different people."

"Kerry lost because of his campaign managers. They were incompetent. Bush ran a much better campaign."

"You can blame this all on the Republicans for brainwashing people into believing all their nonsense. Kerry is a saint, but those damn Bushies made up all these lies and they're responsible for this travesty."

"Those Swift Boat veterans did this. It's all their fault."

"Those red-state voters have ruined our country."

ANGER
Then there's the Anger. Oh boy, is there the anger. For example, read this rant from a London "news site". Or this recent "protest". Or this other recent protest. Or this site, which is not too fond of southern states (conveniently ignoring both the non-southern states that backed Bush and plenty of facts that counter his points). Or any of the savage diatrabes delivered wherever the hard left gathers en masse. "Red-necked racist bigots." "Ignorant homophobes." "Retarded religious fundamentalist hicks." Apparently you can't vote for Bush unless you are, in some manner, mentally defective or fascist. A vote for Bush (apparently) means you hate blacks, that you hate gays, that you hate poor people, that you want to kill abortionists. Ah, so this is the famous leftist tolerance I'd heard so much about!

(I guess everyone should cut them some slack; the wounds are still raw. But I don't have a lot of patience for idiocy. More Democrats backed Bush (11%) than Republicans backed Kerry (6%). Those Bush voters who considered "Moral Values" the most important issue made up only 17.6% of voters and even this encompasses a wide range of issues.)

ACCUSATIONS
Some have already started on the Accusations. "The voting machines were rigged." "Voter intimidation! Disenfranchisement!" "They did it again. They stole another election." In fact, there is growing discussion over voting irregularities across the nation. Of course, these happen every election, but only since 2000 has anyone actually cared. Not that they are excusable; it's embarrassing that after all this time, we still can't run a flawless election. The problem is that you're going to see lefties obsessing over every possible, theoretical extra vote for Bush in the "red" states while ignoring every single irregularity that occurs in a state that went to Kerry. Why don't we fix the system so we can stop worry about it at all?

ACCEPTANCE?
Final stage: Acceptance? Maybe. For some, though, there will never be acceptance. For nearly all of them, I think, the final stage will be determination. A drive to win in 2008.