Is it so gay ?

When confronted with the inevitable 'that's so gay' in the gaming world (and RL) I find it best to ask a simple question:

Is it in a same sex relationship or is it just frivolously happy?

If the response is 'nah it's just crap' (which is always what is meant) then the next question is 'so then you think gay people are crap?', to be truthful not once have I heard somebody reply wth a positive to that one and will likely vehemently deny any heterosexism.

So if the vast majority deny any hateful intent then what's the problem? Language is important, the more a word is used in a particular context the more it means that, in this particular respect it provides ammunition and a feeling of support to those who are actually homophobic, in a world where people are violently murdered everyday just because of their sexuality should we really be encouraging prejudice by acceptance of what has become a relatively harmless turn of phrase? Obviously my answer to that one is no, we shouldn't accept it and we should remind people what they are actually saying and contributing to.

In the game world we have this rather large phenomena of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, Bi, Transgender) guilds, look in any MMO deep enough and they will be there. These guilds aren't created with online dating or cyber sex in mind, they are forced in to existence so people can relax and not put up with bigotted remarks. It's sad that any particularly group feels the need to exclude itself from the wider community and it's even sadder that it's done for those reasons. It's obvious then that to a significant part of the LGBT community that using gay as a way of saying crap has more meaning than the casual user of the term thinks, so what about game companies?

From WoW's ToS
"(i) Transmit or post any content or language which, in the sole and absolute discretion of Blizzard, is deemed to be offensive, including without limitation content or language that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, hateful, sexually explicit, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable, nor may you use a misspelling or an alternative spelling to circumvent the content and language restrictions listed above;"

From NCSoft's end user agreement
"take any action or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit any content as determined by NC Interactive at its sole discretion that is harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable; or contains any viruses, trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere
with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information"

From Eve's ToS
2.You may not use any abusive, defamatory, ethnically or racially offensive, harassing, harmful, hateful, obscene, offensive, sexually explicit, threatening or vulgar language. (Alternate spelling or partial masking of such words will be reprimanded in the same manner as the actual use of such words.)

3. You may not organize nor be a member of any corporation or group within EVE Online that is based on or advocates any anti-ethnic, anti-gay, anti-religious, racist, sexist or other hate-mongering philosophies

From those three examples alone it's obvious that homophobic behaviour is against the EULA/ToS, so why is the use of the word gay as a meaning for something crap still acceptable and used in those games? I answered that earlier myself, so many don't mean it as that and they fail to realise that by using it they support real anti gay behaviour.

Blizzard's ToS is most telling of what's part of the problem - "Transmit or post any content or language which, in the sole and absolute discretion of Blizzard, is deemed to be offensive" Blizzard and any other company can happily take the view that the usage of the word gay in this context isn't implicit in its homophobia, they are right if they choose to bury their head in the sand just as the perpetrators who don't think about what they are fuelling do.

IMHO it's about time game companies actually lived up to their user agreements and terms of service and treated homophobia in exactly the same way they treat racism and sexism in game, it is within their power, the problem is that without a significant move from the game communities they won't act, while the community says 'it's ok I'm not really homophobic, it's just a phrase' then they aren't going to spend on GM/Community powers to curb it. It's got to be a two way street.

Personnaly I look at discrimination on any grounds as a failure to value the freedom and equality of others based on either fear or irrational hatred. If your discriminating against somebody for any other reason than because they are a bad person then your doing it wrong.

WoW - Blizzard + Frogster = Runes of Magic

No doubt the title alone turned someone off out there already. Nevertheless...I think this game is worth noting (considering I've been giving up my time to it on a regular basis lately.

The game is Runes of Magic. It's a WoW clone if ever I saw one. Don't let that cause you to dismiss it outright though. It's worth trying IMO, if you've ever had the slightest inkling you might like to try WoW, but couldn't get past the corporate, evil empire stuff that goes along with Blizzard. Also, this isn't quite as cartoony as WoW (well, except for the rare evil balloon monster...yes, you read that right, that is what they are actually called). The character models are actually believable.

So what's it like? For the game mechanic, I suppose if you too WoW, and combined Guild Wars' dual class system, you'd get something similar to RoM. You pick yourself a character, then at lvl 10, you can choose a secondary class. It is interesting how they did it. Essentially, it's like levelling up two characters simultaneously. You can only use one class at a time (and the class you're currently using is the one that gets the XP benefit of questing, etc etc), but both classes have a pool of skills to level up that are shared with each other. There are also elite skills that you can get that are dependent upon what your class combination is. For instance, if you're a Warrior/Mage, you can get a skill that allows you to charge your weapon with magical power before you strike. If you're a Warrior/Druid, you get a skill that "causes" your weapon to be wrapped in thorns and adds a bleed effect to your attacks. It's really an interesting system they have.

Remember those good old days of CoX where you weren't living unless you were playing with debt? Well, they're here again in RoM. When you die, if someone doesn't resurrect you, you are res'd at a respawn point, and you gain some XP and TP debt. It's not over bearing though and debt is usually gone rather quickly unless you get stubborn like me and die 10 times trying defeat the elite boss solo even though he's 2 levels over you...

TP is what you use to level up your skills. You gain Training Points by completeing quests, defeating mobs, and leveling up.

There is crafting. It is essentially the same as WoW where you collect x number of y and z resources and voila! You've got a new sword! It'a tad different though as there are certain runes you use for something. I don't know what yet, I've not progressed that far in crafting.

They've got instanced dungeons for those of you that like that stuff. There's guilds, PvP, etc etc. Basically, everything you could ask for in an MMO.

The bonus? It's free to play! The drawback? It's free to play! There is an item shop (which I have actually put out some cash for a mount...there are mounts you can "rent" with in game money, they are temporary. The only way to get a permanent one is to buy diamonds which you use in the in game shop).

Right now my highest is a 30 Priest/33 Knight (it's like have a healer and a tank in the same character), and up to lvl 30 at least, it's fairly easy going. Plent of quests to keep you busy, and prevent grinding too much. The levels cap at 58 right now and they're planning to up it to 60 in the near future. From what I hear, leveling get's a bit rough as you get closer to the cap, but I can't say for sure. You can buy things from the item shop to boost you in leveling, but the game is completely playable without spending any real cash on it at least as far as I've played. I've heard from other players that if you want to be anybody as far as endgame content goes, you'll have to spend some cash to get your gear statted, but if you're like me, you generally don't get into end game content that much.

In any case, try it out. What have you got to lose, except sleep, or maybe your sanity? If you're still reading this, I suspect you might partially have lost one or both anyway. :D

http://us.runesofmagic.com/us/index.html

Your never too old to play with Lego!

Your never too young to start learning the fundamentals of programming



One beta I haven't managed to get in to, shame the building part looks like hours of fun.

This Trailer is epic :)



Here's a game play demo

GW2 - Healing and Death

No death penalty, instead a new layer of combat in 'downtime' (read: Battle Fatigue). As you get close to death you switch to a new set of skills, these skills give you your last fighting chance


From a PC Gamer article
"The Elementalist has skills like ‘Drafting Earth,’ which will slow enemies who are running by, or ‘Mist Form’ which actually allows them to turn into a cloud of mist and move around slowly so they can try and get away from bad situations.” Like Dracula, then. These skills are exclusive to your downed state – they’re the last inch of your power, they’re everything you’ve got. This impressive range of desperate, last-ditch skills are part of a new plan to give you a chance after you’ve fallen in combat. The other part is just as cool, and if you’ve played Borderlands, you’ll have experienced this wonderful mechanic before. “If you manage to kill an enemy, you will rally, returning to life to fight again,” Jon said. You get up, dust off, and get stuck in."

If you don't succeed with that your dead, everyone has a revive skill from lvl 1, the more you die in combat the longer it is before you can be ressed, if you can't be ressed? then it's to the nearest res shrine for you my friend (if you have the few gold it will cost), beyond that there is no Death Penalty.

Why no healer? We shouldn't need one, while Anet are talking about moving away from the holy trinity they have just replaced it with concepts that sound familier: Support classes that buff and protect, crowd control rather than tanking, and well dps is just dps.

Five man dungeon attempted by three players from gamona.de
"We fought our way into the dungeon fairly well until we got into a fight with 5 boss golems each of whom uses a different type of elemental beam weapon. We were clearly overmatched but pressed on, determined to take some of them with us. Our more tankish warrior would call out targets and our ranged friend would immobilize them while I inflicted as much aoe damage as possible. If one of the warrior went down we’d use the downed skill “Retreat!” to give a speed buff to the others which would further enable them to kite the golems away so we could revive our fallen companion. A few times during the fight the other warrior would also use a downed skill called Vengeance which allows the warrior to get up and act normally for a short period of time before going straight to “defeated.” He’d use this skill to rez a friend or lead the golems away for a short period of time while the others healed. We defeated this encounter with no healer and nobody even playing one of the more support oriented professions in the game. We subsisted solely on self heals, solid tactics, and a little bit of luck"

So we all have heals and we all have skills that could help us escape death, I like the added depth this 'downtime' could bring but they really should think of a better name for it. I thought GW had a great DP system, I know people are split on this one but I like DP, it made you try that bit harder...

You can read more about healing and death at the official site

Light-Bot 2.0

I think the original Light-Bot game came out in our GameAmp days. But I can't really scavenge through the admin forums any more to see if I actually posted it there, so maybe none of you have any idea who or what Light-Bot is. But I have a link for you here just in case. Although I am not sure it is still operational. Maybe the battery went stale.

But the really good news is that there is a sequel now! It is aptly called Light-Bot 2.0. It is one of the most clever little games I have played. A really nice brain cracker.

Michael Garibaldi

UK Resistance made a post today about an Ulala cosplayer. And Zorg commented that we ought to know who Michael Garibaldi is. I am clearly not nerdy enough, since I didn't know right away. I feel a bit embarrassed I had to google it. But in my defense I did know Avon. To make this post even more meaningless here are a few more names. Tyr Anasazi, Al Calavicci, Mary Albright, Scorpius, Stanley H. Tweedle, Joxter, Joe Dawson.

Maybe I should scavenge the play.com box-set sales.

Blizzard has your name and is gonna use it....

Blizzard bashing is less common than WoW bashing, my own thoughts on WoW being no more highbrow than 'meh' and my thoughts on the company about the same. I wasn't impressed with their silly shiny pony in the cash shop - aren't they making enough money? Neither was I impressed that WoW's success as a hackers delight didn't make Blizzard shy about introducing a higher degree of security and charging you for it. I was still left feeling 'meh' about them and the game, lately though my tin hat has come out and I get a sinking feeling the more and more I read about them ....


Battle.net REAL ID

This is purely voluntary, as it currently stands you either opt in to the full whack or opt out. Opting in means that you can add friends, once you add them they can then see your real name and the real names of anyone else on your friendslist. All that is fine when your a responsible, well rounded adult, in the hands of the more vulnerable I find it a cause for concern. Vulnerable meaning that those unable to recognise what possible impact revealing your name to friends and friends of friends could mean, as we know with Facebook, that friendslist number can help prove that your loved to the other folks who also choose to interpret it as such, in the hands of some it will become like notches in the bed post. To all exccept the very few it will be harmless enough, those of us valueing our privacy will just opt out.

Forums

Close on the back of that is the news that now the official forums will be displaying your real name (the one associated with your account). Blizzard's public reasoning is that it will create a much more responsible style of posting, people can't hide behind their forum name and therefore will learn to play nice, to that end they also decided to introduce a rate or hate system for forum posts, which of course will cause more problems than it willl solve.....

Here's a quote from their official post

"With the launch of the new Battle.net, it's important to us to create a new and different kind of online gaming environment -- one that's highly social, and which provides an ideal place for gamers to form long-lasting, meaningful relationships. All of our design decisions surrounding Real ID -- including these forum changes -- have been made with this goal in mind."

On with your tin hat!

So what does this all mean? Why did they do it? I don't for one minute believe that they only had the communities interest at heart. Linking your real name with your friends real names, then their friends real names and having them visible on the forum makes their life a hell of a lot easier when it comes to studying demographics and building databases from browser habits.

As gamers we are quite succesfull at building our own communities, those that need help doing so certainly shouldn't be getting it from the game in the form of an ever increasing web of strangers. Using real names on the forum will lose them a hefty chunk of their community, not just the flamers but anyone who values their privacy. The cynic in me calls shenanigins and that this is nothing short of exploiting a playerbase for information, who else will get access to this info?

Tera- the MMO WWF ?

Reference to worlwide wrestling federation is because of the commentary, hopefully the cheesyness will give you a laugh as it did me :)

From Enmasse the company made up of ex Anet, Blizzard and Microsoft highflyers, owned by a Korean company and tasked with translating titles over here. Not excited by their offering but the narration cracked me up :)

Guild Wars 2: Killing Time Without Killing

IGN have just published a small article on non combat activities in the game, there are also two more interviews: gamereactor.eu and onlinewelten.com

The gamereactor article is a lot more interesting and touches on reaching an RP audience and having sanbox elements amongst directed gameplay, well worth the read.

It seems to me they've taken their experience from designing the fun activities for festivals in GW and run with it to make permanent features for GW2. These activities do have their bonuses, while they won't be crucial for story progression and character progression they will reward with aesthetic items and epeen boosters such as titles, in GW2 titles are account rather than character based, in GW titles go towards your HoM (Hall of Monuments) which will give you bonuses (aesthetic only) in GW2.

Very few activities were discussed but include:

• Bar brawl
• Something musical (not expanded on but instruments are mentioned)
• Shooting Gallery

I have no doubt, thinking of things like rollerbeatle racing from current GW festivities that these activities will be pretty varied and fun, I liked the idea of toxic spew in the bar brawls.

From gamereactor.eu :

Activities don't have a level requirement. Do you have any plans for rewards for them, and if so - how do you balance those rewards?

John: We are going to have rewards come out of the activities. An example that I've given is like for the bar brawl, while you are in there, you're knocking out people, you might get a tooth as a drop. And then we might have an NPC that is a collector that is associated with the activity and you're turning in teeth to him because it just so happens that he is the local dentist and you're basically sending business to him. So you can turn those items in for rewards. In terms of making them balanced, it's more about getting an aesthetic reward, like a weapon or an armor kind of thing, it's like a skin for that activity, you won't be able to get it anywhere else.

How many of these activities do you have planned?

John: About 30-ish, I believe is what we're looking at.

You guys mentioned being able to break the game, and change the rules. How far can you go when it comes to these activities?

John: As far as it takes to make it fun.

But can you give any other example when you "break the game"?

John: Some examples that we can give...you know, we talk about so much of the game that is built on co-operation and working together and in activities we can take a break from that. Because sometimes you're just in the mood to do something different. The bar brawl is built around that chaotic, free-for-all feeling of the moment you're seeing in movies, when someone gets a chair to the back of the head from out of nowhere, even though he is fighting someone else. We can change those kinds of rules for scoring and stuff like that. Or in the case of one of the other activities in Divinity's Reach, imagine that you're playing polo, but polo had pitfalls and bombs and traps going off. Things that are completely off the wall that we can get in there.

The activities are going to split across locations, giving you more reason to explore and find them.

A few other things are touched on :

Feats
Which sound like a series of progressively harder daily events that will provide experience, designed so that casual players have something to jump in with and achieve

From gamereactor.eu

One of the things you are talking about now are "feats". Can you give some solid examples of what these feats will look like?

Curtis Johnson: Feats are kind of our answer to rest experience and daily rewards. Feats are things that the game is tracking about your playtime, they layer on top of everything you're doing. Like how many things you've killed, and at certain levels you get rewards for that. We keep track of how many things you've killed simultaneously, what variety of enemies you are encountering, and all this are specific areas that as you meet certain levels in them you get bonus rewards for that day.

You say that this is a way for casual players to keep up with the more hardcore players. Only like through rest experience, or any other forum of bonuses?

Curtis: It's experience point bonuses, it's gold bonuses, there might be specific items or buffs that you get through feats. Basically they help to make your initial playtime, like the first hour or two, be more efficient. And so a casual player that plays for a short time, compared to someone who plays three or four times as long, might get up to about half as much experience points. Those first hours are more efficient, and give you a larger reward.

Personality
Choices made by your character will affect how NPC's react to you, without affecting gameplay, seems to be there purely for the RP side of character development.

More on Personality from onlinewelten.com

Personality (formerly called diplomacy)
The personality system allows players who want to roleplay the personality of their character a method for doing so. We measure three major personality categories; ferocity, dignity, and charm. Whenever a character talks to an NPC they may have a chance to say something that corresponds to one of these categories. As they speak to NPC’s the game keeps track of what they’ve said and assigns them a personality based on the mix of responses that they’ve given. For example someone who tends to use both charm and ferocity a lot would have the personality of “scoundrel”. Depending on a character’s personality certain NPC’s in the game will react to them differently and they will also be able to take certain actions that would otherwise have been unavailable. For example a “barbaric” who is trying to get information from someone may have the option to “punch them in the face”.




Too much to be true? Heres another quoute from gamereactor.eu

"One of the things I can say is that we tend to, you know, we were pretty tight-lipped about the game for a long time and we tend not to talk about things unless they are actually in the game. So when we talk about activities, like when we talk about the bar brawl, or the shooting gallery, because they are actually in the game you can go in and experience them right now. And so there is actually very little chance that most things we talk about are not going to make it into the game just because we run out of time or anything like that. Because, as I said, we tend not to talk about things unless we're very, very certain that we can do them. Certain as in they are in already"

Anets policy of not talking unless they are confident it will be in the game, which it likely is already, is something a lot of publishers could learn from. The hype increases as does the weight on them to make it all true, let's hope they succeed. I tend to believe their words.

Catching up on single player games

I actually wanted to play The Witcher last week when I was in the States. But either my laptop or the wifi in the hotel were not up to par. After the login intro it crashed. So I had to go with my backup plan, Tomb Raider Anniversary. Supposedly it is the same game as the original Tomb Raider but with better graphics. Since I never really played through the original one I am having a blast. After I got back home I started over on my proper PC, and I am still having fun. It should keep me busy the next two weeks or so. Maybe I'll retry the Witcher after that. And maybe not.

A book review. Are you serious?

Yep, afraid so. And it is about three books I actually finished already a few months back. Normally I am not a very busy reader. It can easily take me 4 or 5 months to finish a book. But the three books I want to say something about, I managed to finish all within a week's time.

Quite a while back I was happily surprised in the bookshop when I saw Fatal Revenant by Stephen R. Donaldson. I didn't know it existed! In my enthusiasm I bought two copies. But only about a year after that I finally opened it up. It is the second book in the third trilogy in the world of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. The first two trilogies are probably the greatest books I ever read. But with great stories comes great complexity. I had to recall personages from decades ago. And the really wonderfully deep characters made it not an easy read. Half a year later I still had not finished it.

Then the wonderful Lani remained true to his word and Kushiel's Mercy by Jacqueline Carey showed up on my doorstep. The first three books is the series are about the life and times of Phedre Delaunay. They impressed me that much it became my virtual role modal. Her adopted son toke over in the fourth book in the Kushiel series. Kushiel's Mercy is the sixth and last book in the series. The character of Imriel was by far not as impessive as Phedre and the fourth book was a bit disappointing. But that improved quite a bit in the next installment, and I got therefore big hopes for a great finale.

I had put the conclusion of Thomas Covenant's "life" on hold to read up on the adventures in Terre D'Ange, which is much better airplane literature. But what a major disappoint it turned out to be. Each and every character was so boring and flat. Especially Phedre's own appearances were abysmal. I struggled to finish the book as quickly as possible since on every page I was wondering why I am bothering with this. A Steven Segal movie would have more depth.

I probably should have stopped there and never read another Jacqueline Carey book, and savior the joy of her earlier stories. But I never really listen to myself, and in stead bought before I finished Kushiel's End Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey. After all the dribble I couldn't go back to Thomas so I started reading Santa Olivia right away. And I was pleasantly surprised. It was a cute story set in a near semi-apocalyptic world. Some interesting characters, since setting, and decent dialogs. The ending left me a bit disappointed, but overall I was glad I read it. It washed away the horrible taste I had.

it also gave me the joy to finish up the Fatal Revenant. It is a great story with such great characters struggling with their own morals and believes. It is one of those book that live on long after you close it. Stephen Donaldson is a literary master.

Countering the GW video's

Not that there's anything wrong with the GW vids, but I really like this STWOR compilation pointing out the very interactive comabit in terms of synchronised animations.
You know the thing we mentioned being not sure about in the GW2 vids whether it was actually existing. The fact that SWTOR is doing it is hoepful. It may mean that A'net's footage isn't carefully choreocrafted (deliberate misspelling) eyecandy but might return in some form for actual gameplay as well.

My main 'concern' reagarding GW2 now is that ArenaNet started on GW2 before Bioware initialised their SWTOR project by about a year. From the released material It feels like Bioware is abotu a year ahead of ArenaNet now. Not sure whether that favours Bioware or AreneNet.

Crossing a crowded marketplace

Nothing good was going to come of this, Bottle knew, but he also recognized the necessity and so walked uncomplaining in Ebron's company as the cut across the round with its heaving, shouting throng locked in a frenzy of buying and selling and consuming - like seabirds flocking to a single rock day after day, reliving the same rituals that built up a life in layers of ... well don't hedge now ... of guano. Of course, one man's shit was another man's... whatever.

There was a hidden privilege in being a solider, he decided. He had been pushed outside normal life, protected from the rigours of meeting most basic needs - food, drink, clothes,shelter: all of these were provided to him in some form or other. And family, don't forget that. All in exchange for the task of delivering terrible violence; only every now and then to be sure, for such things could not be sustained over long periods of time without crushing the capacity for feeling, without devouring a mortal's humanity

In that context, Bottle reconsidered - with a dull spasm of anguish deep inside - maybe the exchange wasn't that reasonable after all. Less a privilege than a burden, a curse. Seeing the faces in this crowd flashing past, a spinning, whirling cascade of masks - each a faintly stunning alternative to his own - he felt himself not simply pushed outside, but estranged. Leaving him bemused, even perturbed, as he witnessed their seemingly mindless, pointless activities, only to find himself envious of these shallow, undramatic lives - wherein the only need was satiation. Possession, stuffed bellies, expanding heaps of coin.

What do any of you know about life? he wanted to ask. Try stumbling through a burning city. Try cradling a dying friend with blood like tattered shrouds on all sides. Try glancing to an animated face beside you, only to glance a second time and find it empty, lifeless.
A soldier knew what was real and what was ephemeral.
A soldier understood how thin, how fragile, was the fabric of life.

Could one feel envy when looking upon the protected, ignorant lives of others - those people who cloistered faith saw strength in weakness, who found hope in the false assurance of routine? Yes, beacause once you become aware of that fragility, there is no going back. You lose a thousand masks and are left with but one, with its faint lines of contempt, its downturned mouth only a comment away from a sneer, its promise of cold indifference.
Gods, we're just goign for a walk here. I don't need to be thinking any of this.

---

From: A dust of Dreams (A tale of the Malazan book of the Fallen ) page 262 Book #9 in a 10 part series by Steven Erikson.

For some reason, books classified as Fantasy are automatically classified as something sub-par. Even below big brother Science Fiction. Neither will ever be classified as 'Literature'.
Sometimes you have to wonder why.

40 assumptions the dev of your next MMO will make...

Assumptions about your name that is.
As someone with an ö (alt+148) in his surname I feel this author's pain.

40 wrong assumptions programmers make regarding people's names:

1. People have exactly one canonical full name.
2. People have exactly one full name which they go by.
3. People have, at this point in time, exactly one canonical full name.
4. People have, at this point in time, one full name which they go by.
5. People have exactly N names, for any value of N.
6. People’s names fit within a certain defined amount of space.
7. People’s names do not change.
8. People’s names change, but only at a certain enumerated set of events.
9. People’s names are written in ASCII.
10. People’s names are written in any single character set.
11. People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points.
12. People’s names are case sensitive.
13. People’s names are case insensitive.
14. People’s names sometimes have prefixes or suffixes, but you can safely ignore those.
15. People’s names do not contain numbers.
16. People’s names are not written in ALL CAPS.
17. People’s names are not written in all lower case letters.
18. People’s names have an order to them. Picking any ordering scheme will automatically result in consistent ordering among all systems, as long as both use the same ordering scheme for the same name.
19. People’s first names and last names are, by necessity, different.
20. People have last names, family names, or anything else which is shared by folks recognized as their relatives.
21. People’s names are globally unique.
22. People’s names are almost globally unique.
23. Alright alright but surely people’s names are diverse enough such that no million people share the same name.
24. My system will never have to deal with names from China.
25. Or Japan.
26. Or Korea.
27. Or Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Russia, Sweden, Botswana, South Africa, Trinidad, Haiti, France, or the Klingon Empire, all of which have “weird” naming schemes in common use.
28. That Klingon Empire thing was a joke, right?
29. Confound your cultural relativism! People in my society, at least, agree on one commonly accepted standard for names.
30. There exists an algorithm which transforms names and can be reversed losslessly. (Yes, yes, you can do it if your algorithm returns the input. You get a gold star.)
31. I can safely assume that this dictionary of bad words contains no people’s names in it.
32. People’s names are assigned at birth.
33. OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty close to birth.
34. Alright, alright, within a year or so of birth.
35. Five years?
36. You’re kidding me, right?
37. Two different systems containing data about the same person will use the same name for that person.
38. Two different data entry operators, given a person’s name, will by necessity enter bitwise equivalent strings on any single system, if the system is well-designed.
39. People whose names break my system are weird outliers. They should have had solid, acceptable names, like 田中太郎.
40. People have names.

More SW:TOR stuff

My thoughts:

1) Since about a third of my country is running around in orange shirts with orange hats on and orange warpaint on their faces, we can buy hamburgers with orange sauce and whatnot, people dressing up as Stormtroopers, Jedi's and mandalorians don't seem as silly as they normally would.

2) Still no sign of non-human players. Here's hoping it's just a matter of production timing. Originally people freaked out because in early video's there seemed to be but one hair style. Art departments tend to be rather tyrannical about what's allowed to be shown to the public. Anything not perfect yet is kept under waraps usually.

3) I am very much digging the relatively low nr of items on the hotbar in that video. I hope it doesn't mean a hidden "roller" where you first have to press shift+1-10 to get to the 9 hidden bars full of skills.

3.5) I wonder if they're also intending to make this into a console MMO maybe?

4) Also liking the combat effects on the ground textures. See the clip again if you missed that.

5) Overall, if I were to compare the combat to anything in use in MMO's today I'd say CoX. I think that's a good sign. Lots of moving around, that's a good sign.

6) I do hope they get more combat stances, that jedi we were following started to look a little lame and ineffectual in that "hand forward doing a Jedi mindtrick" pose after a while.

Star Wars The Old Republic - E3 2010 Trailer

GW2 - Warrior Class and Traits Overview

Traits Overview

"To give this some context, let's pretend an event has started. A giant boar is marauding through the forest and your party decides to take it on. This build is meant to maximize the damage you and your teammates can deliver against a single target.

Step 1: Pick a weapon. The weapon you're currently wielding is the major determining factor for how your character will play. Let's pick a sword, a versatile weapon which comes standard with a chain of three skills (Sever Artery, Gash, and Final Thrust), a rapid-fire repeating attack that hits a small area (Flurry), and a chase skill to close the distance between you and the enemy (Savage Leap). For my offhand weapon I could take warhorn for damage buffs, but I'll cover that with my utility skills. Instead, I'll dual wield swords to maximize my own damage. In practice, you'd also decide on your alternate weapon for switching in combat - perhaps a longbow for range.

Step 2: Pick a heal skill. Let's go with a basic heal like Healing Surge, which gives you both health and adrenaline when used. Adrenaline gives you damage bonuses and allows you to use your burst skill more often, so it's perfect for our build.

Step 3: Pick your utility skills and elite skill. You choose On My Mark (which lowers an enemy's armor and calls a target out), For Great Justice (which gives allies Fury Boon and Might Boon), and Frenzy (which increases my overall adrenaline gain). For my elite skill, I'm taking the always epic Battle Standard (which puts an array of powerful buffs on your allies).

Step 4: Assign your traits. Here you can start focusing your play style and being clever with what you slot in each trait line.

Power: Let's choose to stack traits that increase your strength attribute so your individual melee attacks do more damage.


Tactics: While kiting the giant boar, switching weapons faster sure would be awesome, so you slot the Weapon Master trait that lowers the cool down on switching weapons. You also slot traits that increase the number of targets your shouts affect, and increase the duration of your banners.

Sword: You choose to slot Swordmastery to further increase the damage you do, as well as the trait that increases the chance you will score a critical strike with Final Thrust.

Longbow: Out of what is available let's keep things simple, more damage.

We want experimentation with traits to be fun and engaging, so we've made the rules for changing traits extremely flexible. With no in-game cost, you can respec at will, outside of combat. This means you are open to experiment with what works and what doesn't work on the fly, without having to go back to town or worry about if you have enough gold.

Whether it's adventuring around Tyria trying to stop dragons or fighting other players in World PvP - the trait system is there to experiment with, to have fun with, and to allow you to feel like you are actively mastering the profession you have chosen. Like Guild Wars, there are countless unique and clever combinations to be found.

To all you would-be heroes out there: go forth and adventure, and use the power of traits not for good or evil, but for awesome.

Stay tuned - in the coming weeks we'll be covering things like achievements, armor and equipment... and maybe even get Colin to talk about his secret moa ranch."

I'm particularly pleased about no cost in changing your spec, the system doesn't sound too different from anything we already know but I think the combination of skills and traits could lead to some fun experimenting, IF the weapon skills can be picked from a library (we know weapon skills can be found as drops) then this system is more complex than I originally thought.

Warrior
Not a major departure from the warrior in GW, duel wielders will be happy.

Here's the vids of some skills, the game is looking very nice now :)

Sever Artery + Gash + Final Thrust


Arcing Shot


Shield Stance


Stomp


Eviscerate

Sunny Sunday Screenshot Siesta

Genofeva Soaking up the sun in the Barrachan Isles



Nahkti running towards destiny


Looking back at Khemi



Vailare sits anxiously waiting for the Stygian flower seller


Moody blue sky at the Eiglophean Mountains


Bewitched by the moon after a meeting with Zeleta


Xibaluku is a dark, dangerous place


The Dark One

Three reasons not to play SW:TOR

1) the absense of playable non-human species
2) the presence of Midichlorians...
3) the presence of Gungans other than in a mission where you exterminate them all.

None of these are confirmed and from what I've been able to tell (as someone trying very hard not to follow the game too closely) only item 1 is a real concern for now.

This in lieu of another Wall of Text which I'd feel compelled to fact-check and would essentially still break down to these three points.

Anything you guys are looking forward to or fearing in SW:TOR?

Not much of a post

As soon as the plane landed in Mumbai I realized I had forgotten something. My camera. So not much of a travel post to make. Only a few crappy iPhone pictures taken from the car.



Of course there is a lot more to tell about one crazy week in Pune, but I'll spare you all that till the time we'll meet up again.

The Problem of Too Many Skills

Maybe I'm the only one that has this problem. I'll be playing along, tossin out some heals or whatnot and then it happens. The big whammo. The smack that is layethed down. The big wipe. It's frustrating at times (stupid nub) because of the various reasons (Leeeeeroooooy Jeeeenkins!) that it comes about (just a sec and CHARGE! are not synonymous, contrary to popular opinion).

But then there's the reason that no one really knows about. Or maybe they do and just don't mention it as much. It's the problem of having too many skills. Inevitably, I'll be playing along (and mostly it's by myself) and some kobold protecting his candle will manage stick his knife in my back causing my premature demise. As I'm laying there, eating virtual dirt, I realize my Super-Duper Mega Invincibility skill is sitting happily on my skillbar gathering dust. Why is that, you might ask? I forgot. I forgot I had it. I've only got 5 fingers you know, and only 4 are really useable to activate skills.

So what's realy the problem? Am I just a special case in my mental capacity? Or could it be that having 10 (or more) slots for skills assigned to the 0-9 keys not ideal? Or maybe it's just that we've got way too many skills in games to begin with?

I could probably write a small essay examining all the different points, but right now, I don't want to. So gimme just a sec (that's MMO speak for CHARGE! btw). In other words, Ok Go...

A quickie

This is funny at 06:38 after a long boring night shift:

A mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, and a civil engineer are discussing God. They all agree He must be an engineer, but what kind? The mechanical engineer says, look at the human body, its skeleton, joints and musculature, mechanical genius! God must be a mechanical engineer. The electrical engineer says, Nonsense! Look at the brain, the nerves, God is an electrical engineer. The civil engineer says, "Nope. God is a civil engineer, who else would put the sewer outflow in the middle of the entertainment district?

I'll check if it's still funny at any other time after a morning's sleep.

Where the Wild Things were

This review will contain spoilers!

I think it was Tesh who, in a thread where I mentioned my excitement about this reimagination of one of my earliest happy memories, mentioned that he didn't altogether enjoy seeing the movie "Where the Wild Things Are". I've had the movie DVD in house for a few weeks now and finally got around to seeing it last Thursday. I have to say my own experiences of the movie are also ambivalent. I can't quite determine why I can't wholeheartedly like- or dislike it. Probably because I can't tell if the movie's made for children or adults. It probably tries to do both but that's where the shoe starts to rub I guess.

First a note on the Wild Things, the 'monsters'. They're all very well done and their 'acting' is great as well as that of Max who's rock solid throughout the movie. As a blend of both animatronics and CGI it's some very impressive work. As can be expected of Jim Henson's Creature Shop. But that does point to something I kinda missed. It felt like there should have been a Hensonesque music/dance scene in there somewhere. Maybe that's just me showing my age but something along the lines of Sarah meeting those reddish muppets with the loosely attached extremeties in Labyrinth? It might even have mitigated my prime issue with the movie.

ACT 1: Setting the background.
Well, this first part I have absolutely no problems with. Max, his sister and his mother are introduced in a very well directed manner, all from Max's perspective. Not only is the wolf-suit instantly recognizable and gets you into things immediately, but Max's character is set down very well in a series of scenes that give a good insight into the loneliness and disconnectedness that make him the enfant terrible that he is.

The relationship with Big Sister (who gets about 90 seconds of screentime) is done very well and I really wanted to hug Max upon seeing him ready to burst into tears after being buried alive in his snow iglo by his elder sister's friends. The whole snowball fight scene between ambusher Max and Claire's friends is a very succinct method of showing how Max craves attention and will settle even for the negative type while at the same time driving home the problems with a younger kid trying to play with older kids. That Big Sis had a better relationship with Max but outgrew him is nicely portrayed in the following scenes. A lot of this is very recognizable for everyone who's had an imperfect childhood or has taken the time to interact with a lonely child and should be good vieweing for any parent with a troublesome child just to get perspective.

The relationship with Mom is set up equally well and is used to show Max's imagination at the same time. The first hints of the somehwat heavy handed symbolism start to show up here. Still, the first act is by far the most subtle, for example in the way it's obvious Max misses a father figure even though Max's dad is barely referred to in the movie at all. As you can tell I really liked the first act. Script, directing and acting comes together superbly here.

The act ends with Max running away after having bitten his Mom in a fit of anger and jealousy over his Mom's new love interest. He runs of and sails to the island where the Wild Things Are.

ACT2 Cutting loose.
The second act has Max meeting the monsters who are the Wild Things. A group of monsters living on an island, each representing a part of Max or of the people and forces around him, with a lot of Freudian and Jungian elements thrown in. There's Carol, who's an obvious representation of Max's own id or wilder side who wants everything and doesn't get why people don't always agree with them. There's Judith who's always complaining and pointing out the fallacies in any plan like either the SuperEgo or possibly Mom, as Mom's tend to fill that role while a child still "developess" that part of themselves, but Mom really never shows that side in Act 1. But I'm describing what she was probably meant to portray, not how she came across to me. More on that later.
There's also KW who's a more obvious representation of Max's Sister. Slightly more mature than Carol she's at first absent from the group and likes to spend time with other friends outside the monsters, two owls of all things. Yeah that's the kind of symbolic subtlety you can apply with a two by four. We could probably find the Ego amongst some of the other Wild Things and find other representations, like Goat Boy (Alexander) who's a clear representation of the misunderstood, shy sensitive e.t.c. All the Wild Things each have a purpose and depth to them.

Anyway, in this Act Max meets all the Wild Things and manages to get them to make him their King. What bothered me here was not so much the kind of blunt subtlety with the Owls, it's supposedly a kid's movie so a bit of obviousness is ok right but that from my perspective this would be the 'happy time' for Max. It is really, but each moment of joy in the movies is 'poisoned' by foreshadowing of things to come in some form or other or not so subtle 'it will not last' signs. The sole exlcusion to this is maybe the 'pile up' where all the Wild Things pile on top of Max in order to go sleep that way. The juxtaposition and contrast with being buried in the pile of snow from Act 1 is obviuous, but in a good way for Max as he manages to connect with KW (Big Sister) who protects him from the worst of the avalanche.

ACT 3: Everything Changes:
ACT 3 has Max organizing the Wild Things into accomplishing Carol's dreams, creating a place where only the things you want happen. It's actually in this Act that Max meets KW's Owl friends who are liked by everybody except Carol and Max who don't understand them while eveyrone else does. Max now tries to mollify Carol into accepting the owls as a price for not losing KW again. We see some growth in max that way. During Act 3 Max has an encounter with most of the Wild Things that teaches him a little something about himself, meanwhile the big dream is starting to unravel with ever increasing foreboding and inevitability.

ACT4: the house of cards comes tumbling down:
ACT 4 has everything breaking down and Max realizing he has no future here amongst the Wild Things. He incurs the jealousy of some by being to close to Carol then begins to lose that conenction when he begins to become aware that some of the things Carol wants just aren't reasonable or feasible even. He has to own up to not being as all powerfull as he claimed (in order to keep them from eating him but make him their King) and he ends up shattering Carol's dreams and desires even while he does manage to reintegrate KW with the group. In the end he sets of in his boat to return home and the Wild Things 'howl him off' including Carol.

ACT5: it was all just a dream.
Probably the Act which satisfied me the least. Max returns home and reunites with his Mom who'd naturally been worried sick and eats his dinner. It's all very sweet without becoming too cloying but I really really missed max saying 'sorry' to his mother just once. Maybe that's implied by him eating his dinner including the frozen corn he doesn't like while Mom watches over him smiling happily but maybe it was actually dinner sans corn. I missed Max saying sorry and Mom not being a wet hen to be honest. Well, if Mom remains a wet hen that's her problem. But with Max effectively abandonning the Wild Things to their lot after he failed to actually lead them the lack of that 'sorry' tells me Max didn't really gain a sense of responsibility for his actions, which is kind of the whole central premise of the book you know. And in Act 3+4 there's some building blocks for that bridge, but he never seems to actually reach the other shore there.
Maybe they were trying to be subtle about it, I'm not sure in retrospect if Max is is or isn't eating the frozen corn he refused to eat in Act1, that bit I will have to check back on the DVD. If he is eating them, he did learn his lesson, but that's maybe a bit too subtle for me.

Overall experience:
A very well directed movie which nonetheless had me feeling vaguely dissatisfied. Mostly I can't tell if this is a kid's movie or a grown ups movie. There's not a single moment of unmitigated joy that isn't spoiled to some extend by some not so subtle foreboding of doom and gloom. This is so strong it really doesn't fit well with a kid's movie. It's more appropriate for an adult movie on a serious subject. Not that a kid's loneliness isn't serious business of course. It's that jarring that spoils an otherwise great movie for me. It's not that I have problems with the concept of each success carrying within the seeds of its destruction. That's Life for you. But that's a bit to adult a concept for this type of movie. Even as a kid's movie for grown ups.
That and the no-sorry ending.

---

There's a couple of jewels in the dialogue:

Judith: Are you good to eat? You better be good to eat! Did you even consider you ought to be good to eat?


Max: Small is good. My powers are able to slip right through the cracks.
Judith: But what if the cracks are closed up?
Max: Then I have a re-cracker, which goes right through that.
Judith: But what if they have some sort of material that re-crackers can't get through?
Max: Then I have a double re-cracker, which can get through anything in this whole universe. And that's the end, and there's nothing more powerful after that, ever. Period.
Alexander: He has a double re-cracker.
Ira: He does sound powerful.


Carol: This is all yours. You're the owner of this world. Everything you see is yours. Oh, except that hole over there, that's Ira's. The tree's yours, but the hole is Ira's. But everything else is yours.

A beautiful Islay

My vacation is over. It was short, but sweet. Together with my brother and his wife the four of us went to visit an island in the Atlantic. Well, maybe it is not really considered the Atlantic yet. It was just a short but lovely ferry ride from the Scottish mainland to the island of Islay.


The island was beautful! Rugged Scottish slopes, misty moors, plenty of sheep, and, to my surprise, loads of sunshine. I actually managed to get some sunburn. The picture below is from north west shore overlooking nearby island Jura.


Although it is worth visiting for its own beauty it is actually known for only one thing. It is home to some of the best Single Malt Whiskeys. Caol Ila, Bruichladdich, Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Ardbeg, Bowmore and Bunnahabhain are all made there. And even a few more I didn't know about yet. I was sort of expecting these distilleries to be big-ish efficient factories. But they are small hidden away gems in the landscape. All of them are very welcoming to visitors, and we sampled quite a bit.


But in Bowmore, the administrative and shopping capital of Islay, is a pub called Duffies. It is not that hard to find. There are only two pubs, and it is not that other one. Duffies has the most impressive collection of Whiskeys. The ones on the picture are all from Islay. Other than two pubs the town had a restaurant, a Spar, and Co-op, and a bank. It was the ultimate in laid back island life. It got only disturbed when a tour bus with 20 clueless tourists came bursting through the bar.


Besides debating which Whiskey was better we had time to explore the island on foot and other random wanderings before heading to the next distillery. The whole vacation got triggered by a bottle of Laphroig we bought a year or two ago. It comes with a certificate of ownership of a square foot of land outside their distillery. The next picture is on the way there. We claimed our square foot, and received a bottle of whiskey as payment for the rent.


Yesterday we drove back home again. It was quite far, but I would love to go back again some day.

Rising to slay a God

I've been playing Age of Conan again for the last two days. Well, part of the time anyway.
You know you're playing a Funcom MMO when they launch an expansion on the 11th followed by a 6 hour maintenance downtime smack in the middle of European Prime Time.
No-one manages to miss the barn like Funcom in matters of well timed actions...

I really wanted to start the Kithan content as low in level as possible so I first tried getting through Tortage again for a day. I'd rolled a new Kithan Ranger, Osprey, to explore the world with.
It was good to walk the streets of Tortage again. Especially with the DirectX 10 Test stuff running at full tilt. It's another gaffe imo that at the time of the first expansion DirectX 10 implementation is still visibly marked as ' Test'. Maybe you forgot, but DirectX 10 features were a selling point on the box during the original game's launch.

Unfortunately it took a whole day and 15 levels for me to realize that Ranger isn't my class. Sorry but the way combo's are applied to the Ranger class doesn't work for me. It might have been different if you fired one arrow at the end of a combo, not one for each step, ensuring you will always end up shooting your foes from point blank range. At the end of it I decided not to continue with Osprey.

DX10 Khemi looking good

So today I was going to give it another shot.
I could reroll, but rerolling would be as either an Assassin or a Herald. The Assassin was a no-go based on the sheer number of overly buxxom killer courtesans I'd ran into the day before. The Herald was a possibility but after a whole day of playing through Tortage I didn't really fancy rerolling as something else and go through all that again. I didn't feel like continuing with my Ranger either. Luckily I have more than one bird in my hand.

Kestrel, my Guardian alt, was only 26 and should be able to Roleplay her way through the low twenties quests of the first Kithai zone, Gateway to Kithai. And so I picked up her spear again and donned the woad warpaint and took her into the far East.

75 coppers to boat across 100 yards of water that doesn't even have crocs???

So far I'm liking what I see. The first pleasant surprise for me was that the Gateway to Kithai means lots and lots of Hyrkanians. I'd been missing these mongol hordes in the original campaign and I'm sure glad they at least maken an appearance here. The Quests and storylines of Gateway are interesting and well worked out. I've noticed they've tried to give some quests a rogueish tint (actually using the Hide skill) which probably makes them boring as heck for the classes that actually have that. But for a clumsy cluttering ... Cimerian in the china cabinet they're quite challenging.

The views are as could've been expected, spectacular!

Some other nice things that have been added over the months that I only now came across are the armor shops. Those were added a long time ago and only sell 80's stuff but it all looks splendid. There's fluff pets you can buy in Old Tarantia and a Veterans reward quartermaster. This one sells a lot of fluff and horses and additional Pathway spells for in excahnge for Veteran Tokens (one per month per character or so I believe). It's mostly convenience gear. The stuff you've gotten used to from many similar carrot programs. The nice thing with Funcom is that you get to choose what you want through means of the token currency.
These Veteran Tokens are but one variant of a series of Tokens you can get inside the game, primarily through Raiding I gathered. I suspect you buy the next treadmill with those tokens, or the gear needed to get into the next treadmill maybe?

Another improvement I spotted is that each nation now sports a gaggle of hairdressers/dyers, face-painters and tattooists who in exchange for sinking your money back into the game will give you a makeover. As the makeover costs 15 Silver per part I haven't experimented yet, but I do believe this is now the way to finally get that Aquilonian red hair on your Cimmerian, or Woad painting on your Stygian.

The only downside is that whoever placed these in each city seems to have gotten instructions to under no circumstances have them more than 5 feet apart and in a spot where they not only don't quite fit in the background of the place but actually stikc out so they can't be missed. I suspect he/she was further refrained from tastefully placing them in/around the available stalls by the threat that management would then insist on neon signs or billboards.

Since I for some reason got the CE edition of 'Godslayer' I also have a huge section of stuff under the /claim command. More veteran reward-like stuff. Some interesting, some not so.
Ok, not much of a review really, just felt like mentioning I'm having fun with AoC at the moment.

Oh, if anyone else feels like returning to the world of Hyborea, because of or more likely in spite of my review, do take the time to download the Stonerune GUI. It's very, very good. Not invasive, not breaking with the established look and feel and just plain essential with al the extra abilities that find their way onto your hotbars thanks to the new AA system...

Just what we needed. An AA system adding even more combo's to our hotbars...

Free Cake!

GW2 - Lofty Ambitions?

Dynamic Events Overview

The latest blog entry over on the official GW2 site

One of my favourite quotes:

.... in a traditional MMO, the character who gives you a quest will tell you ogres are coming to destroy the character's home, and you need to kill them. You then get a quest which says, "Kill 0/10 ogres" and you proceed to kill a bunch of ogres standing around in a field picking daisies. Since every player in the game needs to be able to do this quest, the ogres will never actually threaten the character's home - they will just eternally pick daisies in the field. The ogres aren't actually doing what the quest says they are - the game is lying to you!

My concerns about dynamic scaling put to rest:

Everyone works together towards the common goal of the event and everyone is rewarded for doing so. To help ensure there is always enough for everyone to do, our events dynamically scale, so the more players who show up and participate in the event, the more enemies show up to fight them. If a bunch of players leave the event, it will dynamically scale back down so it can be completed by the people who are still there playing it. This careful balance created by our dynamic scaling system helps ensure you have the best and most rewarding play experience.

Rewarding altaholics and explorers:

As an added bonus, we've also hidden hundreds of events all over the world that require interaction with the game world. This helps give an extra sense of reward and discovery for those who seek to explore the entire world.

It's a good read, It's so far removed from GW1 in everything but lore the excitement of a sequel has long gone, now it's whats being unveiled about this new MMO that's getting me excited, this looks like damn good stuff.

Dark Star: They don't write dialogue like that anymore

Also a cautionairy regarding the sue of SmartBombs....

[Doolittle convinces the bomb not to explode]
Doolittle: Hello, Bomb? Are you with me?
Bomb #20: Of course.
Doolittle: Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?
Bomb #20: I am always receptive to suggestions.
Doolittle: Fine. Think about this then. How do you know you exist?
Bomb #20: Well, of course I exist.
Doolittle: But how do you know you exist?
Bomb #20: It is intuitively obvious.
Doolittle: Intuition is no proof. What concrete evidence do you have that you exist?
Bomb #20: Hmmmm... well... I think, therefore I am.
Doolittle: That's good. That's very good. But how do you know that anything else exists?
Bomb #20: My sensory apparatus reveals it to me. This is fun.

[Pinback wants the bomb to disarm]
Pinback: All right, bomb. Prepare to receive new orders.
Bomb#20: You are false data.
Pinback: Hmmm?
Bomb #20: Therefore I shall ignore you.
Pinback: Hello... bomb?
Bomb #20: False data can act only as a distraction. Therefore, I shall refuse to perceive.
Pinback: Hey, bomb?
Bomb #20: The only thing that exists is myself.
Pinback: Snap out of it, bomb.

The Bomb's final words:
Bomb#20: In the beginning, there was darkness. And the darkness was without form, and void.
Boiler: What the hell is he talking about?
Bomb#20: And in addition to the darkness there was also me. And I moved upon the face of the darkness. And I saw that I was alone. Let there be light.


The movie's a bit long in the tooth (1974) and there was no special effect budget but especially the bomb bits are brilliant.

Somebody is being daft!

I received this email this morning from FunCom:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your Pre Order of Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer!

We are happy to announce that payments are now beginning to process for this exciting upcoming event. Unfortunately it appears that your account is cancelled. Your payment for your pre-order will not be able to process while your account is cancelled and this may result in your account being frozen during the launch period.

To ensure uninterrupted service and a successful purchase of Rise of the Godslayer expansion please log into your account today at https://register.ageofconan.com and reactivate to allow your payment to be processed.

Thank you for your attention,
Funcom

I don't want to play Age of Conan now. So they expect me to pay $15 just to have the privilage to pay them another $30 for something that is not available yet for some time. That is just ...

Wait, let me check the AOC website. Oh wow, Rise of the Godslayer got released today! Hmm, then the email makes some sense. But I still don't want to play today. I'll just have to wait and see what happens when I eventually activate my account.

It is still Fallen Earth

It has been a while since I have posted anything, so it is time for some more ramblings. But this I am cheering it up a bit with a few choice screenshots. All the screenshots had to come from Fallen Earth since that is still the only game I am seriously playing.

Pilatus is trying to sit relaxed and comfortable in South Burb.

But her short skirt makes her a bit too self conscience.

But I am not playing it a lot. I find myself often dilly-dallying before actually entering the wastelands. Reading up on FE forums posts, browsing through not too relevant websites, and even solving a silly Sudoku puzzle. I haven't really figured out yet why I do that. The most logic thing would be that I don't really feel like playing it anymore. But then I get on and be enthralled by the wide open world, and love running up and down, crafting complex vehicles, and talk to friends and clan members.

While crossing the plains Chennie is trying shoot some fresh lunch.

I had set myself a goal to explore some of the PvP areas a few weeks ago. I would just finish up my crafting work, and a few loose questing ends, and off I should go. That finishing up stuff took me a week. And I finally made it to New Gallows, the PvP area east of Haven. Only to find out it is actually not a PvP area anymore! Silly me. It had turned into a special Human League town quest-ish kind of place. They had new veteran NPCs. They were a fun challanging bunch. I got a request from a nearby Tech camp to kill some for a nice reward. But then Lani mentioned something about a dune buggy. So I rushed back to New Flasgstaff and locked myself up in the science lab (and went to Chicago for work).

It just learned it won't get shot at anymore.

A quiet life at the stables is awaiting.

I managed to build the buggy, and all the components from the raw materials Lani had send me. But diner parties, and whiskey drinking put a stop to further playing. In stead I read up on Tobold's EVE adventures. It really made me want to play EVE. I even blurred that out somewhere. Maybe I actually will do it.

We just stepped out of a Lifenet bunker talking to Graham.

Life in the wastelands can be very good sometimes.

Saturday I made it back home again, after circling north around Iceland. So I had time to pick up where I left of in Fallen Earth. But I didn't. In stead I went to Paragon City and went shopping for enhancements and a new costume slot for Sylva Varescu. She had turned 32 the last Sunday we played City of Heroes, and needed the upgrade before yesterday's session.

But as it turned out half the COH gang was out. And the other half is also playing Fallen Earth like me. So I ended up in the wastelands after all. And as usual we had a great time. We did some tough group missions at Last Stop, and an instanced fort near Devon. There were two bosses our level. On both bosses we got a team wipe (3 of us), but we got them on the rerun. It was epic fighting. And we got a truly stunning sunrise on top! I still love this game. (Or am I trying to convince myself here?)

No idea when I will have time to play this, but Steam had the entire Civilization IV collection on sale for 6.49 GBP. I just couldn't resist. I do know if I start that up I won't be back anywhere any time soon.