05.02.07
Posted in City of Heroes/Villains, Gaming, Rants
at 8:02 am
Morning, folks. In the Twitter box I’ve detailed my quest for sugary Truthiness, more commonly known as the Stephen Colbert-inspired flavor of ice cream (“Americone Dream”, which is almost as silly-sounding as “Wii” but less scatological). Now, I’ve quested long and far for this ice cream after once tasting of its splendor in February or so. I did, of course, manage to find it in Zelienople on Monday, but I wasn’t expecting to find it there, and thus had no way to safely transport it back to my home before it melted. I kind of figured that would be the normal way of things, until last night.
See, last night was one of those nights where I was out a bit late, and I made it back to North Versailles just after midnight. On a whim, and knowing that I’d need to get a couple things in the morning, I decided that I’d do my grocery shopping then, when the lines were not going to be quite so long. As per my usual exercise in futility, I walked through the ice cream section, and saw the flavor sitting there, neatly stacked.
Long story short, I bought three. I am not running out again for a LONG time.
ANYWAY. I played the demo version of Catan this morning; it suffers from the now-endemic Itty Bitty Text On A Huge HD Screen Syndrome, so that’s a downside. Still, it’s a solid title. If and when I get the cash for some points, it’s on the list. The demo limits play until a human has seven victory points, and I got that in about twenty minutes’ time. Till then, back to my Pokeymans.
Sort of. See, City of Heroes just had its Issue 9 expansion hit yesterday… and the big thing there is the Invention system (also known as “loot”, sort of). There’s that whole business about the Statesman Task Force and the instanced villain Hamidon raid, too, but mostly it’s going to be “Hey look! Now you don’t have to run back to the city zones every three levels anymore to replace enhancements that have been made useless by your progression! Also, blurring the lines between archetypes.” Which I can TOTALLY get behind. Binding cold damage to Ayu’s flaming arrows would be so very much like her.
There’s other stuff in progress, not all of which I can discuss out here in the open. As soon as I can, though, rest assured that I will. Probably tomorrow I’ll either have some Bailout or some other interesting thing.
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01.26.07
Posted in City of Heroes/Villains, Gaming
at 6:01 am
I may have made passing reference to it previously, but this weekend is a double-experience point event in the City of Heroes/City of Villains game. Now, ordinarily, I would be so totally all over that, if it weren’t for the fact that I know with certainty that the Wal-Mart within walking distance will 100% have Wiis in stock on Sunday morning. Both pretty much no-brainer decisions, but together they present me with a bit of an odd duck.
Now, granted, I’ve already hit Level 50 in City of Heroes; the only “accomplishment”-related reason to keep playing is to do it again with a villain, and while I’m enjoying it, there are other games I could be playing. But, then again, there’s the whole social aspect of it, as well; I haven’t been playing CoH/V as much due to the fact that I’ve been doing other stuff. I do like to hang out with the people involved, so that’s a major pulling point for doing that.
And to be completely honest, there’s only maybe two games on the Wii that have my real interest at the moment (Rayman and Trauma Center). However, when the time finally comes that a blockbuster game I want to play (say, Smash Bros.) comes out, I may not be able to find the machine then– a ’second launch’ effect. Plus, it’s still damn fun.
Ah well. Either way I decide, I’ll be quite busy this weekend.
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01.12.07
Posted in City of Heroes/Villains, Gaming, World of Warcraft
at 8:30 am
Burning Crusade. As I’m not yet even Level 20, my level of excitement for the expansion is coming in slightly behind running out and buying toilet paper. However, reports that the pre-expansion patch is full of bugs makes me feel a little better about not actually logging in within the past couple weeks. I still enjoy it, I still like the game on principle, but I’ve just had no drive to continue it when I’ve made such good progress on FF12. And now, with five books on my plate– Snow Crash, Crest of the Stars 2, Kino’s Journey, re-starting American Gods, and finishing GTD– game progress might be slowing down a bit. Might.
Of course, then there’s also the announced Double XP Weekend for City of Heroes/Villains. So maybe reading won’t quite be on my list.
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11.30.06
Posted in Anime, City of Heroes/Villains, World of Warcraft
at 7:08 am
Quick shots before I head into work. I’ve undertaken a minor little side project to get all my music organized, and that means rating each and every one of my 18,000 some songs. Fortunately, I’ve managed to work it out; 1700 songs a day, and I should have it taken care of in no time flat. I bet I could even do better on the weekends, y’know, if I got really bored.
World of Warcraft continues apace. I figured out a system, actually– I play on the weekends, exhausting my character’s rest bar, and then let her sit idle all week. So, yeah, nobody here cares. Gotcha. Oh, and City of Heroes’ Issue 8 did hit on Tuesday. So full of love for that, but I need to play my villain more. I might go ahead and skip that, though, ’cause a lot of the new content is hero-exclusive. The one thing that would really help my villain is the trenchcoat, which is something that a Carmen Sandiego clone really needs to have, y’know?
I got my hands on a Wii. Well, a Wiimote, actually. I saw the EB demo kiosk running Excite Truck, and handed over my (almost empty) wallet to give it a try (the controller was not tethered to the machine, so to prevent theft it was necessary to temporarily trade your ID for the remote). I can honestly say that I’m underwhelmed by Excite Truck. The game uses the remote as an almost-traditional controller, except that steering and jumping are tilt-controlled. Overall it’s not a bad game, just kind of… meh. What did fill me with absolute giddiness was the Mii Channel (yes, I started poking around the system’s menu, what of it?). After taking a few seconds to orient myself with the controller as pointer, I was quickly zipping along. It was a pretty unique experience, making a replica of myself on this machine. While the proprietors weren’t going to change the disc (it was 8:45p by then and he was busy with other, paying customers), I was excited to know that once Wii Sports did make its way into the machine, ‘I’ would show up. Ah well. Maybe next time.
Last thing: I picked up the boxed set of Crest of the Stars last night. However, it was close to 11:00 by the time I got home and finished dinner, so that’s something that will have to wait until the weekend. But rest assured, I will (finally) watch it.
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11.21.06
Posted in City of Heroes/Villains, Gaming, Writing
at 6:55 pm
OK, two things. Last night (or this morning, by how WP reckons) I mentioned that I thought City of Heroes’ Issue 8 would be out today. Naturally, this evening, Lighthouse (one of the NCSoft Dev Liaisons) says that I8 is set for a post-Thanksgiving launch. So, wrong on one.
Also today, I made a bet that one of the three current players in the industry would not be making a return engagement when the next run of consoles comes around. While that’s a good five years off, I was immediately told that I was going to lose the bet. With the penalty being that I would have to camp out for all three systems and buy them on launch day, only to immediately donate them to a charity such as Child’s Play or Get Well Gamers. Honestly? There’s no real “loser” in that kind of a bet. (Besides, I’ve always wanted to camp out for a console, and money restricted me from doing so this time around.) I’m not going to sweat the outcome. But I am, naturally, going to remember it.
Oh, and I’m still working on getting the outline together for Incon. My plan is to read through the story so far tonight, and re-formulate the chain of events. The current goal is the end of January to have a finished manuscript. I already think I know what parts are going to have to be cut/re-written, but I’m leaving them as-is for now to make sure that I don’t accidentally cut something that a publisher would think was gold.
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10.15.06
Posted in Anime, City of Heroes/Villains, Gaming, Site News, World of Warcraft, Writing
at 11:41 pm
So things have been Busy over the last few weeks. I mean, really Busy, the kind of Busy that gets capitalized for no apparent reason other than the fact that it’s that much busier than busy. Busy is busy enough to get capitalized even when it’s spoken. Yeah, I’ve actually been that Busy the past month or so. I figure I ought to tell you all why.
The Super Secret Project (which really isn’t all that secret anymore) is finished; it was a web site for Atlus USA for the Super Robot Taisen Original Generation games. Earned me a nice significant amount of money, competitive in the industry (at least, I think it was competitive). Plus, well, I have officially been in the industry in two roles now– as a sales clerk and as part of the marketing machine. Once I get the word that the site is live, I’ll link to it– likely in the forums. Working on the site has really kept me excited for the game, and so it’s nice that I am going to be getting a copy of OG1 and picking up OG2 once that hits in November.
I did finish Xenosaga a few days ago, and the ending was… I don’t really want to put too many spoilers right here on the front page but there’s so much that can be said about it. It’s equal parts of Xenogars and The Da Vinci Code, which I can honestly say wasn’t exactly unexpected what with all of the Judeo-Christian, Kabbalist, and Gnostic influences. Still, it sort of renders the entire struggles of the last three games kind of moot when you realize just who has been in your party since about three hours into the series. I shouldn’t need to spell out who. I am a little disappointed that there’s not going to be any more games in the series, as the story hit an interesting stride and was left very open-ended. Still, it provides enough closure for the purpose of making the ending satisfying. My next big project will be to get out of my hesitation to keep playing Wild ARMs 4.
As for my rush to Level 50 in City of Heroes, that was a mission I finally accomplished just about two weeks ago. Playing as a Kheldian– an archetype which plays like a super blaster– has been really interesting, and while I’ve not been playing as much as I was in the weeks running up to the big ding, it’s only because I want to wait for Issue 8 before I go through the low-level content again. Most importantly I want to be in position to check out Faultline 2.0. I glanced through it when it hit the test server last week; as I’ve only had ten minutes’ exposure to the new issue and I’m not aware of any major game-wrecking power nerfs, I feel a little unprepared to make any snap judgements. We shall see. The ‘new’ Pocket D seems… well, unusual. Let’s leave it at that.
This evening I fired up World of Warcraft for the first time in a month. It’s hard for me to say what drove me to it, but I just felt like doing it. In any event, I am glad I did– Anvilmar, my usual haunt, was full so I fired up the character I’d started on Kirin Tor. Getting her to Level 6 took a couple hours, and I played around with a handful of UI mods as well. These mods certainly addressed some of the issues I’d brought up during the Unbelievers trial (and confused me in a couple other cases), but overall I came away from the session with one thing stuck in my mind. Kirin Tor is an RP server, while Anvilmar isn’t; and I was approached by a couple of people during my travels who spoke to me, and weren’t strictly asshats. They weren’t the brightest bulbs I’d ever met, but they at least responded to me with the respect due a fellow human being (ie, they didn’t just call me a noob and ignore me or challenge me to The Most Lopsided Duel Evar). Bolstered by that kind of positive reinforcement, I’ll likely be continuing that for a few more weeks.
There’s been a lot of discussion in the forums lately regarding Final Fantasy XII, which hits the US in fifteen days. The most skepticism seems to be centered around the Gambit System. It’s been proffered as a way to delegate the responsibility of some of the more tedious aspects of dungeoneering (such as keeping the party healed between battles), and what I’ve played so far sort of exhibits that fact; at the same time, however, the comparisons to the dot Hack series are certainly valid and deserved. I’ll be honest, I am excited about the title– excited enough to be set up for the Collector’s Edition and to head down to Macedonia for the midnight release party– but I still have my reservations about the game due to the fact that it is so different from previous FF titles. Different can be good, yes, but it’s a risk that the series may not be able to recover from if it turns out to be a flop.
And, the job hunt continues apace. I’ve been away from home on the past couple Fridays, first to Madison, Wisconsin and then to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both trips were marked by some reading being done; in transit to Wisconsin I read a CSI: New York novel, which was an interesting little distraction, and coming back from Pittsburgh I picked up the first novel in the Crest of the Stars trilogy. I read through it in about two hours the next morning. My impressions are… well, the book certainly sets up an interesting plot and a very detailed universe. However, and this might just be the way Tokyopop chose to break up the novels for more money or some other reason, but the book has a really nasty little cliffhanger at the end. Not coincidentally, that cliffhanger happens to be the climax of the one episode of Banner/Crest that I’ve seen to this point, from WAY back when it was on TechTV (back when there was a TechTV– oooh, and I have some interesting things to say about that, too). Anyway, I’m digging it so far but I need more. I’ll likely be picking up the Banner box set this week or next.
Let’s talk about G4 for a moment, then. Friday came the announcement that G4 was going to be consolidated with E!, which oficially makes them the Cable Katamari of Suck. Seriously, they’ve rolled up two networks in their ball of abysmal programming, and while admittedly E! doesn’t exactly have that far to fall it’s entirely possible that someone will wake up and see that the numbers on TechTV were far better than G4. Wikipedia’s saying that G4 is in fact the LEAST watched channel on cable TV. Let me put this into perspective: C-SPAN, which shows Capitol Hill, gets better ratings. The Home Shopping Network gets better ratings. The freaking Reality Television Network gets better ratings. If you’re losing out to reruns of Survivor, maybe it’s time to consider going back to what worked, eh?
I’m not saying get Leo Laporte back. That’s impossible now. It might have been an option a year ago but now? Forget about it. What I’m suggesting is bring together some intelligent and funny people to produce a show akin to the Screen Savers. I suppose I’m a little obsessed about it, yeah, but the fact of the matter is that TechTV from 2003-2004 had the single best tech-oriented TV lineup to date. Those folks just plain got it.
Ah well. With any luck I’ll be making my own contributions to the world of quality tech television very soon. And the GAMErica project, which I’d put on the back-burner this time last year, might be coming together again. We’ll see. One way or another I will begin bringing teh fünni on a regular basis again.
Oh, yeah. Last year I was hyping National Novel Writing Month pretty much constantly, and badgering everyone I knew to do it. Well, the badgering is a bit less this year, as is the hyping, mostly because I don’t rightly know if I can participate this year. I have an idea– a vague one, anyway– but the whole job thing and the possibility of moving might wreck my ability to devote time to it or nuke my efforts halfway through. I hope that I’ll have an answer to both of those problems here in the next two weeks but it’s still up in the air right now.
I think that about covers everything that’s safe to discuss openly. There are a few other things that I’d rather not have plastered around the world, and some things which I need to keep to myself for right now, but those who need to know already do know. And to be honest, there’s a lot here already. Later, folks. We’ll have to do this again some time.
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09.25.06
Posted in City of Heroes/Villains, Gaming, Site News, Writing
at 9:03 am
Hey, folks. I’m at the “run my mouth off way too much” phase of the project that’s been keeping me so incredibly busy, but I still don’t want to announce it here. I’ve been going ahead with small little bits in other places that people know me frequent, so it’s sort of an “open secret”, if you will, but as soon as I get the OK, I’ll let you all know.
In any event, let’s talk about some interesting things, shall we? Interesting things interest both me and you, so they are worth talking about. Mac Hall is “moving to the next phase”, which is really just some weird codephrase for “Ian got a real job and doesn’t have time to draw anymore, so the partnership is breaking up and who knows what they’re going to do”. I’ll admit, a month between updates is a bit excessive, but hey. It’s not like I’ll get too broken up about it. Just as long as they sell the books, I’ll be happy. Still, I wish them both the best of luck, and I’ll likely be keeping them on the links list, at least until the “next phase” shows itself. Speaking of webcomics, I got the strange urge last night to go take a look to see if Jackie’s Fridge had ever updated. Short answer: no. I read through the archives, though, and got a few more laughs out of it.
I’d played Lunar Knights for about ten minutes back in May, and wasn’t terribly impressed; I mean, it’s a solid game and all, but wasn’t anything that really shone. Apparently, that’s on purpose. I knew it was tangentially related to the Boktai series, but had little knowledge of just how.
So, next-gen systems. It’s no real secret that my tastes are running along the lines of the so-called “Wii60″ combination. The biggest news out of the Tokyo Game Show for me, then, was that Trusty Bell: Chopin’s Dream was going to get a US release. Joystiq reports that the game is similar to Xenosaga, which leads me to believe that Namco Bandai politely requested the engine be retooled for such an endeavor. I don’t really have that much of a problem with Xenosaga’s combat system, aside from the fact that it’s got a WAY too steep difficulty curve. Incidentally, to the classical music fans in my audience (all three of you), the soundtrack has probably been in stores for a while now. My best guess, for about 150-some years.
I can’t think of a good way to transition to the next topic, which really doesn’t matter as I don’t actually do that in my writing. So.
I have a job interview today, and I have to pester a few other people for updates and information. I also, in a very rare show of me being overly generous with my time estimates, am very nearly done with most of the work for the project. So, yeah. Not much going on today aside from those two things. To unwind yesterday, I played some City of Heroes, and am now just mere inches away from level 47. Once I hit 50, folks, I will stop whining about it. I mean it. That might happen this week, if all goes well. We shall see; depends on if I decide to just blaze through Warburg or actually concentrate on finishing some of the Praetorian arc.
I kinda lost steam with this entry, so I’m off to hopefully JOB GET. If I can prevent myself from spouting off random 4chan memes during the interview, that is.
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07.25.06
Posted in City of Heroes/Villains, Rants, Site News, Writing
at 10:20 pm
Hey, folks. I kinda left you all hanging in regards to the car. Well, needless to say, that situation’s been resolved to my satisfaction, even if I still feel extremely ripped off about it. Meh, nothing to be done about it now. I would have mentioned it sooner, except this weekend was a special event in City of Heroes and I spent most of my time doing that, so… yeah, extreme laziness prevented the update. I’m sorry.
It’s late now, however, and unfortunately I’m just about to fall asleep, so a full update will have to wait. One thing that should be said is that after a long spell of relative writer’s block, I’m getting more impetus to finish Incon than previously, so I really, truly, honestly expect that it will be done soon. Not going to put any date on it except “before November”. We shall see. ‘Night, folks.
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07.02.06
Posted in City of Heroes/Villains, Gaming, Rants
at 8:54 am
Found this on 4chan (Dad, you really, REALLY don’t want to follow this link, just trust me) in reference to World of Warcraft:
“Guys, my guild is constantly stopping in raids for toilet breaks, dinner, and because they need to let the dog out ;[ Progress = zilch. Is this just my guild or is every guild like this?”
If there ever comes a day when I say this, in a completely serious context, changing only references to activities and the proper noun for the group name, there is something very specific I would like you to do for me. I would like each and every one of you to come to my house and beat the hell out of me with my keyboard until I lose all will to even touch a computer.
There is some redeeming content in that thread, yes, like the guy who says that he quit WoW once he got to the ‘raiding’ point (presumably the endgame content). And yes, I’d be willing to bet that once I get a character or two to 50 in City of Heroes, the thrill will likely die down (I’m hoping I hit 38 today). The thing is, though, there are certain fundamental differences between the two games. For example, players valuing their health and sanity more than a few goddamn bits.
I play two MMOs, as you folks might know. City of Heroes/Villains and Final Fantasy XI. I tend to play CoX more than FF simply because it takes less time for me to have fun there than FFXI. This may be a factor of the servers I play on (Virtue and Fairy– which, I should add, never sounded so absolutely implicit until right this second) and it may be a factor of the gameplay itself (as Rob will undoubtedly be extremely quick to point out, ‘grinding’). But, as the aforementioned thread shows, a lot of what makes an MMO fun– or in this case, drives potential players away– is in the ‘unseen selling point’: the people you play with.
Let me put forth a hypothetical example here. We have a pretty closely-knit group of friends congregating here at TFO.net. Why do people stay? I’m not going to hold myself in any regard and say it’s because of my pathetic and less-infrequent-now ramblings, but rather people stay because of the other people who are already here. “Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.” The same holds true for an MMO. People join MMOs for different reasons; however, they stay most likely because they’re invested heavily in their friends within the game’s context. In the case of a ‘casual’ game like CoX, it’s a good thing; there’s a core group that sticks around, but general comings-and-goings are accepted as daily life (but it could be bad to those folks who don’t have any other social contacts outside of the game, in which case they wind up not developing real-world contacts– gah, getting too far into pop psychology here). And, for WoW, it could also be a good thing, if you get in with the right group of folks.
I cannot now or ever dictate who is and is not “the right group”. To do so is arrogant and childish and more than a little offensive. But I can, and will, say who is and is not the “right group” for me. Folks who think that it’s OK to berate, and belittle people who deal with emergencies as they come up instead of delaying them to play a goddamn game are not the “right group”. And though they may not be representative of all WoW players, I have yet to see evidence to the contrary.
Let me say something else, too. Yes, you should take care of life stuff before sitting down to play. Water the plants, feed the cat, eat food, that sort of thing. But if it comes up and is genuinely unavoidable– like, say, the call of the commode (note to self: do not drink three large cans of iced tea and a large coke before going to watch two movies in a row EVER AGAIN)– then you goddamned well better do it! For the love of all that is holy, that’s how people die playing these games! This is not something to emulate, this is not something to be proud of. Yeah, sure, it lends you a little bit of bragging rights (“…and about five hours in, I really had to pee, so I held it till the next break…”) but honestly, outside of your game friends– who were most likely there– who cares?
There’s a reason I (usually) only give a high-level overview of my CoX and FFXI time, and that’s because the people who would be interested in it, already know. The rest of the world likely doesn’t care that I had fun collecting shards with the Phoenix Force in Bloody Bay, or that I’m stranded in Selbina because I don’t want to leave before I hit 18. So telling those stories isn’t important, and thus I don’t need to prove anything by doing these wonderful feats whilst under severe intestinal pressure. Yeah, if something funny happens, I might share it as long as it’s universally funny. But ultimately, it’s not that important in my life, and thus I don’t need to make it more important than it really is.
So this past week I’ve had a crisis of self-faith, wondering if I’m still entitled to the adjective “hardcore” before my self-description of “gamer”. What with, y’know, the disasters involved in not having the games anymore due to stuff and junk (side note: it’s finally turning around; I reclaimed Wild ARMs 4 this weekend, and started it up again). If being “hardcore” means pushing myself to a potentially lethal point for the sake of a stupid level treadmill, then no. I’m not “hardcore”. But, let’s go ahead and call that behavior what it is. If you have ever gotten to a point where a real-life crisis or incident has taken a back seat to a game, for no good reason other than “I don’t want to stop playing”, then you are “hardcore”, or more appropriately “hordecore”.
If you wear or carry at least one game-themed item to work every day.
If you have ever put up a pre-order poster in all seriousness.
If you can name the mixes any given DDR song is in without looking it up.
If your media rack has more games than movies.
If you have ever agonized over the decision to spend $8 on a movie or on arcade tokens.
If you direct-deposit some of your paycheck into Live Marketplace points.
If you can play “Bark At The Moon” on Expert without looking at the screen (but can’t manage even “Mary Had A Little Lamb” on a real six-string).
If the first words you learned to read in Japanese were “save”, “load”, “options”, “yes”, and “no”.
If you caught them all.
But most importantly, if you have ever said “It’s just a game.” And meant it.
Then you are the true definition of “hardcore”.
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06.29.06
Posted in City of Heroes/Villains, Rants, Writing
at 7:29 am
Hey, all– a few minutes here before I head out the door. I have been extremely non-focused these past few days. Bouncing from project to project, doing high-level design and not enough coding, thinking up new stories and not concluding any of the ones I have open, that sort of thing. And of course I never get around to actually doing any of that, because I sit and play CoH or FFXI once I get home. So, hopefully this will spur me to action (I do this every couple of months, and I never seem to commit to it, so no comments about “blah blah blah, you know you’re going to fail, give up”).
So, half an hour of writing once I get up in the morning. I’ve got the time, really, which I tend to spend reading 4chan or some other colossal waste of sensory log space. From June 30 to July 31st, every morning. And I do mean, EVERY morning.
Coding will be done in the evenings, when/if I feel like it. The game is a new project, actually, and it’s going to take a long time. I’d much rather delay starting that than rush through it while balancing fourteen other things at once. Besides, every time I said something was going to be a ‘quick hack job’ in my preliminary notes, I was wrong. Why? Because I’m a dumbass. Also because I still don’t quite get some of the code– owing to that whole ‘balancing fourteen projects’ thing.
I made a milestone in CoH last night– got Ayu up to 20. So, I’ll likely taper off of that for a little bit– or, more likely, concentrate on finishing my push to 50 with my other character. I’m in that ‘dead zone’ between 37 and 40 where my missions aren’t nearly as worth it (getting swarmed by baddies tends to kill the momentum of a mission, and absolutely wrecks the end bonus), and grinding Warburg is getting tedious. However, if/when I get into a good group, missions are much more fun; it’s amazing what the simple act of role-playing can do for a game that’s otherwise kinda repetitive. Which, oddly enough, is probably why I like CoH– it’s the first game I’ve actually done any RP in (any serious RP, anyway– my MUD days are kind of murky in that regard), and when I first fired it up (back around Issue 1 or so) I lost interest because doing RP was damn near impossible for me (still in my ‘too shy to speak’ phase). Starting… huh, just about this time last year, actually, I vowed to do more RP and to get myself to 50. And so here I am, still not at 50, but enjoying the game a LOT more.
Time to hit the road, folks. That smell– the one of decaying Plot– will soon be replaced by burning graphite. Metaphorically, of course. I don’t think graphite actually burns. Meh, whatever. The point is, John must write because he is a slacker!
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