Well, about two months ago, my TV was taken away because my grandparents wanted cable (what?!). They never told me, they just took it and left. Now this TV was pretty crappy, and I guess in the beginning I looked at it as a way to get a new HDTV and finally play my xbox the way it should be. So I kept asking my parents, but all they told me was to wait until may. So, without xbox live, I had nothing to do, so i decided to give a try to World of Warcraft. It seemed like it was a great game, and some of my friends played it. I had loads of fun, until one day when I was around lvl 19ish. I tried logging in, and then a message popped it. It warned me that I was banned. Banned? What did I do? I'm only lvl 19! (Gnome warlock lol). So I checked my e-mail, and there it was. Some dude hacked my account and advertised his gold site! It says I was banned temporarliy, but I had already lost hope. By this time, I was already in love with this game. In fear of being hacked again, I created a new account. I made a new character, with the same class and same race. Yep. After about three days, I checked my account again. I changed my password, and I saw what they did. They had created a whole list of characters (mainly orcs), but luckily, they left my character alone. By this time I faced a decision: to come back to my old account, or stay on this one. The new character I made was on my friends server, who was lvl 65 at the time, so I was sorta being treated as a twink ( someone who gets unusually high lvled gear and money for their lvl), so I decided to stay on that one. As I was in some instance or so, I got disconnected randomly. Then i signed back in. And then i got disconnected. This repeated about 4 times. When your playing, and someone else signs in to your account, you are kicked out. This is what was happening to me. I couldnt believe it. Again? I got hacked again? On a completely new account. Frantic, I changed my password again, but realized when I tired to sign in; i was banned. AGAIN.

Tired and sick, I decided to go back to my old account and resume playing from there. I had fun for a while, until my newer character was playable again. I resumed play as usual, and after a week or so, I decided to check on my old account. Apparantly, that was hacked too, and they deleted my old character as well. It was pretty obvious that these attacks were from diferent people. I brought this to the forums, and they told me I had a keylogger. A keylogger is a spyware virus that can trace every single letter you type on your computer. This means that entering any credit card information was highly dangerous. In an attempt to stop this, I downloaded a spyware detector, deleted everything, and put keylogging defense to high.

Now, I felt safe, and I resumed playing on my new account. I played for about a month unbothered, and got to lvl 38. Then something happened. I tried signing in one day, and it just wouldnt work. It was like my nightmare all over again. I e-mailed blizzard, and they helped me get my password back. I signed on. And yes, they deleted my character. Now this account that I was talking about this whole time (the new one) was not mine, but my sister's friends. He had quit playing, and decided to let me use his account to save me from the $20 activation fee, and another $30 for burning crusade. He had two lvl 64s, and a bunch of random chracter strewn across different realms. They were ALL gone, except for his one hunter, his main, but it was stripped of gold and armor. This terrified me. I quickly canceled my credit card subscription, and here I am now.

I still love this game, and I still feel like playing. I completely rebooted my computer, and now I plan on starting some other time in the summer or so. But now, I feel like playing on a private server. I found this webiste called wowtoxic or something, and I guess it looks pretty good. Can anyone tell me if they've ever tried a private server, and what is different? Are there less people? Glitches? Hackers?

*By the way, I recently got my new HDTV i finally wanted! Two months without live!

Yes, we all know it, and you're probably thinking that i'm going to blame GS for firing Jeff, just like every other person in this community. Well, that partially is the reason, and it seems to have started around there. After they fired Jeff, for a reason still unknown, HORDES of users from GS said they were either leaving or converting to IGN (supposedly). I guess the staff decided there was no reason to be here anymore, so they all just left. After Jeff, there was Alex, Ryan, and so on. Now more and more of the people who actually made GS interesting are leaving, leaving the community to make this site worthwile themselves. I'm not saying the community is dying, but the Gamespot website.

To make interesting videos and features, you need interesting people, who are fun to watch, entertaining, and sometimes humorous. Jeff Gertsmann was just that person. He was in almost every feature and reviewed almost every game, well, because everyone liked him. After he left, features and On-the-Spots Gamespot would make never were the same. And then other star hosts like Ryan Davis left. Who's left at GS? This is my opinion, but when a big game like Super Smash Bros. Brawl comes out, GS usually hands the review to someone whos a great at it, like Jeff. Who the heck is Lark Anderson? I've never even seen him.

For example, one of the greatest reviewers on GS was Greg Kasavin, the guy who reviewed Oblivion. He didn't get fired, of course, but instead took up a job at Blizzard. It started around when Greg left, and now, after all these people from the GS staff are gone, it just doesn't seem the same. Of course, I will still stay here and support this website, but if they don't come up with better material or hire better staff members, GS will just be overcome by the competition.

Here is a brief summary of most of the GOTY awards from the critics:

Gamespot- Super Mario Galaxy

Gamespy- Call of Duty 4

Gamepro- Call of Duty 4

Time Magazine- Halo 3

X-Play- Bioshock

Video Game Awards 2007- Bioshock

1up.com- TBA

IGN.com- TBA

Yahoo- Super Mario Galaxy

TeamXbox- Mass Effect

My personal favorite- Call of Duty 4

So to sum it up, Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, and Super Mario Galaxy are the top games of the year. Yea, not a single game is from Sony's PS3 either. This year has been an amazing year for games, especially November, where huge games like Rock Band, Mass Effect, and Assassin's Creed were released. Next year it might not be as big, but at least we'll see games like Super Smash Brothers Brawl (online play, finally), Too Human, Bad Company, Halo Wars, GTA IV, and maybe Killzone 2. But im happy with my COD and Halo now.