04.09.07
Posted in Appleology, Site News, World of Warcraft
at 2:04 pm
Not much to offer right now, folks. I’ve cleaned up the blog categories a little bit; you’ll notice that they’re actually more readable, and that each one should have a detailed description.
One thing that might be of limited interest, is that Seasons 4 and 5 of Babylon 5 were released in the iTunes Store over the weekend. That would, of course, be great if Season 3 was available. It isn’t. For some unknown reason Season 3 is absent from the store at this time. I personally think it’s just a little hiccup in the encoding process, but to be honest I don’t mind waiting a little bit longer. That’s not to say I didn’t get Season 4 already, and am waiting until I have positive cash flow again to get Season 5. But S3 is the last thing standing between me and a complete set of the series.
ANYWAY. Not much else going on at the moment. I hope to finish up Chocobo Tales today, so you should see that; I also have to go do some grocery shopping later. I did have some plans for the afternoon, but actually, those dried up. So, yeah.
Oh, the title? Just a little Blizzard humor, noting the fact that Friday afternoon I sprinted across The Barrens for the first time, chased by large, burly Taurens who wished to do unpleasant things to me. Sadly, since there’s currently no path directly from Ratchet to Astranaar, I have to do it all over again to get back. Fun fun. Later, folks.
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03.27.07
Posted in Gaming, World of Warcraft
at 5:48 am
Yeah, another “nothing of interest happened yesterday” post. Well, maybe not “nothing”– I started a new character in World of Warcraft. Yes, having only made it to 20 as a Hunter I decided I wanted to divide my attention further. So now I have a level 20 Hunter and a level 6 Warrior. Spiffy.
I’ve got a couple interesting tricks up my sleeve in the near future, folks, so stay tuned.
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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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10.25.06
Posted in Anime, Gaming, Rants, Site News, World of Warcraft, Writing
at 4:39 pm
Do you know, ladies and gentlemen, what happens when you turn your back on the wild and wooly world that is gaming? Well, yes, you do manage to get a life, but I’m talking about a temporary, “moving from Cleveland to Pittsburgh” kind of turning my back. What happens is that all hell breaks loose. As I haven’t really had much of a chance to let everyone know what is up, I figure now is as good a time as any to give the rundown of the last week’s events.
On October 17th, I was offered a job at a fairly high-tech company down on the east side of Pittsburgh. I accepted the position and made plans to start on the 30th. As luck would have it, I had come across good luck in that the resolution to the Secret Project had occurred over the weekend prior, and as a result I haven’t had to worry too much about the costs of moving. Most everything has been taken care of, and all that remains as of right now is for me to haul all my stuff down there (I got the keys to the new place on Monday of this week). When I got back to Cleveland on the 23rd, I figured all I had to do was to just go ahead and pack up all my stuff; on Friday I’d rent a U-Haul and drive the whole shebang down in one run.
Yeah, that kinda wasn’t gonna happen.
See, for whatever reason, I could not activate the electric utility over the phone Tuesday morning. I was told that I would have to go down to the office in downtown Pittsburgh, or else I needed to wait for them to mail me a form, and then I had to mail it back with a deposit. Fun thing about it is that my lease said if I didn’t get electricity in my name within three days, I would lose the apartment (and forfeit my deposit et al). Mailing was not an option. I loaded up my car with as much stuff as I could and drove down to Pittsburgh yesterday afternoon. On the way I also called and set up appointments for cable and internet.
The cable appointment was either Thursday, or not for three weeks. And the DSL is being installed on the 1st. While I have been assured that I will be allowed to leave work to get the DSL installed, the cable is a different matter. See, of all of the things in my apartment, the TV is by far the heaviest. But without a working TV in the apartment, the cable technician can’t check to see that the cable is installed properly and I’ll be pretty much waiting until three weeks from now for him to come out again (oh, and he’ll charge me for wasting the trip). Ideally I would have let it go until Friday, when I would have help. As stated, however, I don’t want to wait three weeks without cable, so I get the wonderful experience of hauling the TV myself. Which is what U-Haul is for, except I’m not renting the truck until Friday.
It’s not really so bad, actually. See, when I bought the TV– back in Erie– I dragged it up a flight and a half of stairs. I did it once, I can probably do it again. Probably.
All right, enough about life. I’m trying to keep a positive outlook for the time being so if I harp on what’s going wrong, that’s not going to help at all. Let’s see, what can I say…
The Chinese buffet near the new place is terrible, and I don’t think I’ll be going ba– dammit, positive. Hrm.
I found a DDR machine near the new place, in a theater. That’s positive! Except it’s an Extreme machine that’s a buck for three songs. GAH.
NaNo approaches; I still have no idea what I wan– wait, I’m probably going with Five Hundred Prayers.
I think Phoenix Wright got reprinted; I picked up a copy when I was in Pittsburgh but also saw a copy when I went to Macedonia for the– aah, yeah, there is that.
So, Final Fantasy XII. The forums are all atwitter with early predictions and hopes. I of course seem to be able to see both sides of the main argument– there’s some elements from FF Tactics Advance that are getting a more fleshed-out treatment, but at the same time the gameplay is not entirely dissimilar to dot Hack. While I’ll refrain from actually going ahead and saying what I think– because right now I’m going off of fuzzy, pain-enriched memories of the last time I played the game, five months ago– I should probably mention that I’ll be taking a trip back to Macedonia to pick up the Collector’s Edition of the game that I preordered there. Granted, not on release day– that’d be silly– but the weekend afterwards.
Meteos Disney Edition will be the hotness, without a doubt.
World of Warcraft… Hrm. I’m addicted, but it’s only marginal right now. I advanced to Level 15 while at Pez’s house, and started my career as a skinner/leathercrafter. The crafting system is very interesting– there doesn’t seem to be much chance for failure or wasted resources, so it’s not nearly as frustrating as FFXI’s. However, it does take a considerable amount of time and silver/gold to raise your levels; currently after about two hours of dedicated work at it I think I’m at a level 45 or so in Leatherworking and over 75 in Skinning. To be geek-proud for a bit, I made most of my current set of armor. These three days without being able to play have been all right, mostly. However I’ve got the opportunity to play… but I’m not going to right now. Partly because I need to continue loading the car, but also partly because I know if I started I’d be on it for hours at a time.
I have meant so many times to buy more import games. I mean, I spent $300 on a Japanese PS2 under the assumption that I would use it for more than just Pop’n Music; an assumption which has, unfortunately, been invalidated by crippling bouts of just plain rotten luck. I do intend of course to rectify this when I get the chance, but I will unfortunately not be able to do so through Lik-Sang. Sony shut down the notorious importer– whom I’m sure most gamers on the verge of the bleeding edge have heard of, and who I know at least three of my readers have dealt with– under the pretense of intellectual property impropriety in regards to Japanese PSPs somehow making their way to the European Union. I myself don’t see the harm. Except for the harm that removing one of the biggest names in the game importing scene from the scene does to the scene. Anyway, I suppose I shall have to rely now upon NCSX or (more likely) binging at anime conventions.
Which reminds me, I need to volunteer for Tekkoshocon ASAP.
Anime! O glorious product of the Rising Sun, how I’ve missed thee! I had downloaded Fate/stay night a few weeks ago and finally got around to watching the first couple episodes (whilst stuck in my TV-less apartment last night). I’m interested, if just a little confused. I’m not entirely sure if Rin is going to become an ally or not, or if this is going to devolve into Emiya vs. everyone (including Saber). We shall see.
This post has, in actuality, been in the making for three hours. In that time I’ve done some of the packing and loading, but now it’s time for me to put away the TV and thus disallow myself access to my Mac for a while. I’m not entirely sure when I’ll be able to update again, folks; let’s say the 1st at the latest. Wish me luck, ladies and gentlemen.
Oh! One last thing. I want to thank whoever it was (most likely Eric, who rocks mightily) who fixed the LiveJournal syndication of the journal’s RSS feed. If you have an LJ, you need only add furryone_feed to their Friends list, and then you never ever have to come back here again. But please do. I need the hits.
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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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09.04.06
Posted in Gaming, World of Warcraft, Writing
at 9:38 pm
Finished up my current project for Unbelievers just a few minutes ago. I’m waiting to hear back from my counterpoint person to post it; but the verdict in a nutshell is that WoW could be fun if I knew more people. So, sionce I’ve reconnected with the Erie folks who are playing, I’m going to re-start on their server and enjoy myself a bit more. It could be fun but it takes a little work to get to the fun.
I also added the XFire thingy above. I play a lot of PC games lately, more than console games, but that’s partly because I have a decent gaming PC now. (To say nothing of my snazzy desk… man, I am still proud of it even after all weekend.) As of right now it shows… no games played. This may have something to do with the fact that I only installed it after I finished my CoH session for the night. I am, however, going to get on WoW and set up a character on the Erie crew’s server. But that’s it.
My next project for Unbelievers is sure to make Jack Thompson cream his shorts. That’s right, I’m opening fire on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game’s in my media rack right now, untouched since I picked it up; I’m taking a week or so off from writing, before I start a new project. Oh yeah, and to finish my run through Star Fox Command for the ‘Jak. Short story on that one is that it could have been good if Nintendo hadn’t screwed up the controls.
Finally, in a wonderful act of procrastination, I went to see Crank this afternoon. I liked it– it was a decent enough “kill stuff” flick, and the plot was just flimsy enough to be relevant yet enjoyable. The gags flowed freely, and I really liked some of the more subtle ones, like the elevator guy’s subtitles, and “do I look like I have c*** written all over my forehead?” when in fact that word did appear on his head for that sentence. It looked and felt a lot like, well, a session of Grand Theft Auto. Which is always good for visceral thrills.
Incidentally, that Coke commercial starring a clone of “the GTA guy” still is damn disturbing to watch.
Good night, all. Hopefully there will be very good news this week.
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08.01.06
Posted in Gaming, The Unbelievers, World of Warcraft
at 7:14 pm
Session Time: 2h20m. Advanced Ceilai from 8 to 9; rest state started at four “bubbles” (roughly 20 minutes of gameplay before it was exhausted). Completed a quest in the Fel Rock area and made it halfway through a quest in the Banethil Barrow Den area.
So, I’m enjoying myself. Why??
Let me start over here for a moment. The gameplay is very much the same as it was over the last couple hours. Leave town, kill things, collect the resulting detritus, sell detritus for a paltry sum. Occasionally talk to an NPC to get XP, money, or shinier detritus. I’m not paying attention to the storyline any more than is required to actually complete a quest; that is, I read over the quest descriptions looking for key words such as “north”, “dungeon”, and “kill”. I really have no emotional attachment to or investment in the story surrounding Azeroth, and I don’t see that changing unless the game makes a bigger effort to engage me. Rob called the setting “unoriginal”, and while it’s hard to refute him, there are a few things which manage to impress me. When I find them more than once during gameplay, I’ll let you all know.
One thing I thought was quite interesting was a quest I literally stumbled upon by accident. I had been wandering through Darnassus and accidentally found myself teleported to a small fishing village on the south end of the island. I was, of course, grateful for the 70 XP I gained from “exploration”, but more interesting to me was the fact that I had found a teleporter. It was a glowing purple aura. Later int he evening, I came across a similar aura surrounding a particular tree in the hollow south of Darnassus. Naturally, I approached it, thinking, “great, where will this one take me? Nothing happened; well, no actual transit happened, anyway. The tree could be interacted with, actually, and it awarded me with a fruit that “would be of interest” to one of the previous quest NPCs I’d dealt with. It was a rare stroke of luck that I actually remembered who the quest was talking about, and a few minutes later I had completed the task. It was rewarding– not just in the large monetary gain afforded me upon turning in the fruit, but also because it involved no combat (until the fruit was planted and the quest already complete; the monsters spawned were pathetically easy, though, so it hardly counts) and wasn’t made blatantly obvious, either by the game’s “!” markers or by any other in-game indication. It’s an interesting mechanic and I am looking forward to seeing more of this type of quest in the future.
As said in the summary, I did wander into a couple of dungeon-like areas; actually caves, and not specifically “dungeons” (the term in WoW is reserved for the instanced missions, I believe). Fel Rock was actually an interesting place for a hunter to go, as demons spawned pretty regularly and were easy enough to handle solo. I may go back there just to take out some more demons, as they tend to drop the occasional handful of coins. The Barrow Den, however, was a different story. It’s loaded down with gnarlpine monsters, who are curiously not as affected by the hunter’s Nature-elemental based powers as, say, a demon. Moreover, there are way too many of them in the cave. Now, granted, this is mitigated quite a bit by the fact that there are usually many more adventurers entering the cave than there are monsters, but the quest I have involves collecting items from treasure chests scattered in the dungeon. Which means that unless your group is all on the same page, you’re likely to fall behind the meat-shields– er, excuse me, casters– who’re plowing their way through the depths. The mini-map is useless in the dungeons as it doesn’t account for height. Finally, and this is probably a shortcoming of the Hunter class, it’s too closed-in for ranged attackers; you can probably only get in about one or two shots before the monster closes to melee range. I suppose once I get a pet, I can have that hold the monster at a distance while I pick it off, but that’s a portion of a level away.
On a completely unrelated note, the quest in Fel Rock required me to decapitate a monster and bring the smaller portion of the corpse to the quest NPC. It is exactly the first time I’ve ever given head for XP. My slow descent into levelwhoring has begun!
The Good: Quests can be gained in unorthodox ways, and also solved in unorthodox ways. If you ask politely (read: not in global chat), people will generally point you in the right direction. I’m getting oddly familiar with the gameworld; as soon as I logged in, I answered a new player’s question. The map of the island is almost complete for me. Apparently there are many UI mods available; however, I’m refraining from using them so I review the game in its default state (otherwise, it would be fair game to bitch about GTA: San Andreas for having Hot Coffee); this is also why I’m only accepting limited help or information from external sources.
The Bad: If grouping is discouraged until Level 20, why are the low-level areas too full? Is there a way to turn off duel requests or otherwise indicate to people “No, I will not duel you, stop asking me”? The WoW forums are a dark and scary place, much like SomethingAwful but with less parental supervision. Moving windows in the UI should not require a mod. The minimap remains near-useless except in finding your corpse. Death penalties are not clearly defined in the manual or documentation.
Opinion Change? Improved somewhat. Quest diversity is good, but it’s still boiling down to “kill things”, “collect things”, or “deliver things”. I would love to see a quest revolve around a riddle that the player has to solve; bonus points if it requires knowledge of the gameworld that can be learned from within the game (no strategy-guide-only answers, please).
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07.29.06
Posted in Gaming, The Unbelievers, World of Warcraft
at 1:22 pm
[Note: Hah, the sun is shining and there's not a cloud in the sky. There are no fiber-seeking backhoes within ten miles of me, and I've sacrificed several small animals to Lord Jobs and W'oz-Loggoth. Let's see the power go out THIS time. This update is going to happen if I have to sit next to an Ethernet port with a spark plug and a battery.]
Session Time: 3h40m spread between last night and this morning. Logged off at 10:00p, resumed at 10:30a. Advanced Ceilai from 4 to 8. Rest state indicated one and a half “bubbles”.
I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I honestly think I’m not doing something right when I play an MMO. Or rather, this MMO in particular. I have found that the quests I’m offered have become much, MUCH more lucrative once I get out of the noob garden and into what might be considered a “real” area. We’re talking jumping from rewards of 10 copper for collecting 9 items to 1 and 3/4ths silver (equivalent to 175 copper) for collecting three things. Also, I’m more apt to take a quest that has me delivering something or collecting items gained from non-combat situations than I am to take one that says “go into the den of scary monsters and slay them all”. I get more fun out of not fighting than I do out of fighting. Why the hell do I play MMOs, then?
Jonny brought up an interesting point. A lot of the reasons I said I wasn’t thrilled with WoW so far are reasons he doesn’t care for CoH. The problem, I think, is that we’re both working from different definitions and tolerances for “grinding”. So, to try to get a better idea of where he was coming from, before I logged into WoW this morning, I jumped onto my primary City of Heroes character and started going through old missions that I had never bothered to finish. Basically, I went ahead and turned the game into the most boring waste of two hours possible, because not only did I not accomplish anything, I actually managed to break the game temporarily (one of the missions was, in fact, bugged). I’ll give him that– both games have an abundance of boring stretches of just killing monsters. However, usually when I say “grinding” I’m referring to a “street sweeping mission”, where you’re charged to defeat X number of enemy type Y.
The reason I equate the two– because let’s face it, there’s not really a whole hell of a lot of difference between the two– is because those types of missions only serve to break up the long, winding level treadmill into smaller chunks. Also, they force the player to space out their exploration or utilization of some of the game’s more tailored aspects.
In CoH, instanced missions usually correspond to the level of the player (though you can outlevel the missions if you ignore them long enough– which is what I did this morning). This basically means you always have available a set of enemies at or near your level to go through. These aren’t the entirety of the missions, though, as CoH does feature “kill X of Y in common area Z” missions (but less frequently now than before). Is an instanced private mission grinding? Yes. Do I like it better than WoW, where you’re competing with every other yahoo in the world for seven Gnarlwood Mystics? Yes, because in CoH at least I know they’re MY seven Mystics, and not “whoever gets there first”. That said, I have to admit that the spawn rate in WoW does manage to keep the zones relatively populated with challenges. I had to hunt down a named monster– something Dreameater– and after I killed him, I was slain by the four Mystics gang-banging me from behind. ANYWAY, once I ran back to my corpse and revived, Dreamwhatever was back and being killed by someone else.
Now might be a good time to mention something on death. I died for the first time today. And the second. And third, fourth, and fifth times, too. Death in an MMO is a trivial thing, and I’m not complaining that I died at all. I’m actually somewhat impressed with death in WoW. There’s no penalty if you revive yourself save for the fact that you’re going to die immediately after being revived because your corpse is still being used as a chew-toy by the nine monsters what killed you.
I’m getting more used to the UI than I was before. Most of my complaints are just “I’m not familiar with it” rather than “it’s broken”– aside, of course, from the “you can’t move windows” thing. The G15 LCD does give me a slight advantage in that I can see how many inventory slots I have available to me, as well as the durability of all of my stuff at once.
As for the “sameness all over” of the environments, Jonny has it right in one as for CoH. I’d be a bit remiss if I said City of Heroes was an exemplar (ha ha) of excellent city planning. It’s piss-poor in some places. First off, there are no street names! Gah… this isn’t a criticism of CoH. What was bothering me about World of Warcraft, though, is that apparently you are the only person who is a cartographer. There’s no way to easily navigate through the areas (though in the game’s defense it might not have been bright of me to pick the darkest most confusing starting area, either). There are signposts along the road, but that’s no replacement for a waypoint system. You can apparently click on the mini-map to make a funny little noise that does nothing.
To try to see if my difficulties with players not having more clues than buttons on their mice, I decided to willingly go to the so-called “infamous” Dark Iron server. Dark Iron, it shoudl be noted, is home to several webcomic artists’ guilds including Penny-Arcade and the like. I started up a Dwarven Paladin on Dark Iron and prepared myself for the worst. There was nobody there. Might have just been the noob area, or odd timing on my part, or it could have been something else, but I saw all of three other players while wandering through and doing my first couple quests in the tundra. Including one guy who challenged me to a duel, beat the snot out of me, and then said, “heal me”. So, my choices are “idiots” or “nobody”. At least until I start teaming up, though, I’m going to refrain from any more generalizations about the populations of the servers because quite frankly, any game is going to have huge numbers of morons. There’s a relatively small number of “good” people to play with in CoH, too, and they don’t exactly make their presence known unless you know where to look.
So, that said, I’ve got to go and register for the WoW forums now.
The Good: Getting more used to the UI; good habits are starting to form. I’m more comfortable with the control scheme and gameplay flow; there are a couple more interesting quest templates (harvest X, reclaim Y which was stolen by Z). The commerce system kinda sorta works.
The Bad: The average player thus far is an unhelpful jerk who’ll attack your target for no reason other than he thinks you’re in trouble or he wants the monster for himself. Rewards seem to be uneven; i gained 850 from a single quest but 350 from another somewhat more difficult task. Scarcity of money as well as steep prices means players have to make very tough choices about their training early on before they understand the impact of those choices. You should never have to choose between armor/food and learning a new skill.
Opinion Change? Slightly better. The game still hasn’t done anything to piss me off too royally, and some of the things I ragged on it for are remarkably similar to what I liked about CoH. I suppose it’s a “deja vu” thing– I’ve already done it once, why should I do it again?– but I’ll try to curb my comparisons to CoH from here on out because they’re too similar. Instead, I shall judge World of Warcraft as it compares to Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls.
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07.28.06
Posted in Gaming, The Unbelievers, World of Warcraft
at 6:42 am
First off, the patch process lasted another good ten minutes after my last entry. Apparently there were five or so megabytes that they just couldn’t bear tacking on to the “get up to date from a fresh install” package that was already 455 MB by itself. And naturally the patcher refused to actually download the patch. So, had to wade through FileFront to get the patch. Not happy.
In any event, I logged in (finally!) and was prompted to select a server. Based on my suggestions of “no PvP”, the system suggested Anvilmar. Who am I to argue with the system? Actually, the other reason I chose Anvilmar was because it was the only one I could see that had a population listing of “new” as opposed to “Low” or “High”. There were others, sure, but I’m not up enough on the world lore to start RP nor am I smart enough to PvP. Anvilmar it was, then.
My first character is Ceilai, a Night Elf Hunter. She (yes, I chose a female Night Elf on purpose– I’m going to get SOME bloody enjoyment out of this game) did pretty well on her first outing; I advanced to Level 4 within the span of about forty-five minutes. However, most of that was doing really, really simple “kill x” quests. I hate those kinds of quests. I was under the impression that there would be at least a brief bit of something interesting before the game said “go grind”, but no. Right off the god damned bat I got the one type of quest I hate. “Go talk to Nerga Yabbababa”, I can handle. “Take such and such an item to so and so and tell him he’s smelly”, I welcome. “Kill X of monster A and Y of Monster B”– kill it with fire. After a while I got an ability that put the names of monsters and their locations on the minimap, so that helped– but it was too little, too late. The ironic part is, once I figured out the combat system, I briefly thought I was playing my empathy Defender from CoH.
There were some things I liked. For example, you can’t use a bow to shoot something ten inches away. That’s a nice touch. The loot system works… all right. Character customization is very nice in terms of the stuff you wear appearing on your character; and no, I will not take off all my clothes. Perverts. Actually within about two minutes of entering the game, a nasty spike of global lag prevented me from completing a quest. But once that cleared up, I was approached by a male Night Elf who was under the impression that I was a girl. When I reminded him of the fact that there are no girls playing World of Warcraft at 9pm EDT on a Thursday Night, or at any other time for that matter, he didn’t get the hint. In short, it was exactly eight minutes into the game before I was hit on. Someone else was begging for a girlfriend in the shout channel.
My God, there are six million of these people?
Ahem. After five or six quests, I decided it was time to take a look at life on the other side. I logged out and created a Tauren Shaman named Shalalah. It should be noted that I used the random name generator to get inspiration for the names, then altered them so that I felt like I had actually been creative. It should ALSO be noted that if nothing else comes of this whole fiasco, I really really REALLY like how the Taurens look. Nothing like the furious avenger of ‘ten billion served’ charging across the plains, staff in hand and magic at the ready. It’s just an awe-inspiring sight. The problem is that it’s only awe-inspiring when you’re on the receiving end. As might be inferred, Taurens move about as well as Victor Ireland used to guess release dates. They’re just as slow as they look when they’re not being all bad-ass.
Yeah, the first quests were more or less the same here, too. Change the NPC trainer name and the types and amounts of items, and it all adds up to more SUPER HAPPY FUN GRINDING!!11! However, I was exposed to a couple very odd elements of the game as a Tauren. First, someone randomly walked up to me and opened a trade window; he put something in the “enchant or unlock slot” and just stared at me. No text, no explanation, no nothing. I suppose he assumed I would enchant his whatever it was, but two things hindered this: first, he didn’t even bloody ask me first, and secondly, as I had no idea of the purpose of the “no trade slot”, nor did I actually realize that enchanting other items was a primary function of Shamans, I could not reasonably be expected to cast such a buff at Level 2. The other thing, which turned out rather well, was a duel that I was challenged to– again, without preamble and without warning. I decided “What the hell, I’ve got nothing to lose, right?” and accepted the duel, issued by a fellow Shaman. I lost. Horribly. Well, I did get a couple good hits in. But he kept spamming his lightning spell, which is what I was trying to do but I still didn’t have the hang of the keys.
I have a few gripes about the interface, though. Whose bright idea was it to prevent you from moving the UI windows? Why the hell is right-click the “activate” button, and why is there no prompt before you sell an item? I realize money is supposed to be scarce, but why do some dropped equipment items only sell for one or two copper? Furthermore, why are there no more specific error messages than “you cannot equip this item”? What in the name of all that is holy does “there is no equipment slot for this item” even mean? It’s a god damned chestplate! I’m wearing a different, inferior chestplate that you clearly acknowledge the existence of because you pop up the little comparison window! I want to remove the chestplate I’m wearing and buy the new one! It’s not hard, people! Lastly, it would be really nice if the mini-map showed me the location of completed-quest NPCs before I was right on top of them.
Some of these issues are gripes about the UI and will probably just take some getting used to. Others like the all-pervasiveness of the fetch quest will likely just serve to piss me off. Oh, and while the Rest system hasn’t yet come into play, it’s likely to be useless as the description says “one bubble of double XP for each 8 hours spent logged off”, but a “bubble” of experience (5% of the total needed to level) is just shy of two monsters right now.
There is native support for the Logitech G15 Keyboard and its LCD screen. About a year back a few people had been beaten with the banhammer for using the keyboard; its use has also been mentioned as ‘abusable’ in terms of CoH. However, I’m glad to see that Blizzard– and Cryptic/NCSoft, as well– gives players the benefit of the doubt that they won’t just become a bot. I still have to fiddle with the keybinds and my Nostromo loadout, but for the most part I’m digging the controls.
Session Time: Two hours. Levelled from 1-4, 1-3.
The Good Things: Very nice graphics and cinematics. Difficulty is not too tough, but monsters put up a fight. Tooltips and help prompts for everything. Quest kill counters appear on screen. Native support for the Logitech G15 keyboard.
The Bad Things: UI is unintuitive/counterintuitive. Audio is 2 steps shy of obnoxious; voice acting is copied directly from Warcraft III. Quests are uninteresting and not compelling. Areas are very hard to move around in due to sameness all over; lack of nav compass/waypoint system adds to this. Yeah, the noob zone is populated by morons; reserving judgement on people in general until later. Tooltips and prompts for everything; “helpfulness” borders on obsequiousness.
Opinion Change? Slightly for the better. It plays a lot better than I had thought, but the hiccups and grinding turn me off from the thought of seriously extended play.
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