Metaplanar Babel

It’s funny, I was so caught in talking about Oblivion (which I talk about so much that I’m probably driving my husband and cruinh nuts) that I forgot to mention that my birthday was Tuesday. Really, though, that’s about how much of an impact it had on me; it was just another day, easily overshadowed by other things. No, I’m not telling how old I am. Don’t ask.

It was a pretty nice day overall. A couple of folks at work gave me cards and decorated my office. I came away with some majorly phat
loot. Of course, now I have so many great things to do that I can’t decide which one I want to do first. I mean, I can keep playing Oblivion, but I might be playing that for quite a while.. and I’ve been looking forward to a good Suikoden game since 3 came out. Ah well, I suppose having too many choices isn’t really something I should complain about.

Otherwise, I didn’t do much. Didn’t even go out to dinner, thanks to my broken foot. Just another day, in the words of the soulful Jon Secada.

On another note, Metaplanar Babel has been around for over a year now. I know I’ve slowed down a bunch lately, but it’s still kicking. I still only have what, 2 or 3 readers, but I love ya all.

The wizards at Wordpress have released a Widgets Plugin that sounds kind of interesting. It also sounds kind of complimacated, but I may play around with it some. It basically allows a theme developer to specify chunks of code (like a list of links, or a flickr badge, or a google search) that can be moved around in the sidebar by the user; users can also download other widgets to add in. I guess it’s really just a way of making things easier for folks who don’t know enough HTML/CSS/PHP to configure their own sidebars, but it’s definitely an interesting development.

As others have written, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is one hell of a game. I hadn’t heard much about Oblivion until about a month ago, because I tried to play Morrowind (ESIII) a while back and couldn’t ever get into the game. I couldn’t find any storyline at all, and I just couldn’t figure the game out. Oblivion, on the other hand, throws you right into the story from the outset, before you’ve even had a chance to pick your class! Of course, once you get through the introduction, the game frees you to do whatever you want, so you can choose to ignore the main story if you like, but at least you have the option.

I haven’t been so into a game as I am into Oblivion in a really long time. I don’t usually like “sandbox” games, because I like to have a little guidance and at least a little bit of story to chew on, but I’ve been having a blast with Oblivion. The graphics are gorgeous, even with some of the settings turned down to prevent my computer from complaining. The character customization is pretty nice, though the skin textures are little splotchy for my liking (and that may not be the textures’ fault - it could just be that I’m incompetent at character design ). The class customization is awesome. You can choose a specialization, primary attributes, and primary skills that basically represent your character’s talents. I’m currently playing with a mage/thief type character who may end up joining the Dark Brotherhood (that would be the assassin guild, for the uninitiated), but I’ve played a straight fighter and a straight thief as well.

The biggest surprise for me has been how interesting and engaging the quests have been. I’ve yet to run into any “bring me 5 rat meat” types of quests; so far, I’ve helped a Countess find her missing painting by playing Sherlock Holmes, advanced in the Thieves Guild, become Arena Grand Champion, reunited a separated set of twins, returned them to their estate, protected a farm from invading goblins, fought some vampires, made some potions, stole..er..nothing (really!), and generally had a great time. And I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface yet. Oh yeah, and I found the Emperor’s Lost Heir (otherwise known as Sean Bean ^.^), went to “hell”, and fought some daedra (or demons). Whee.

I’ve run into a few instances of the game crashing (well, okay, more than a few), and until I turned off some distance rendering options, I had horrible framerate issues in a few specific areas, but otherwise, I haven’t had any problems. I’m not overly fond of the limit to 8 hotkeys, but I suspect I’ll make do. The NPC AI seems pretty decent, and I actually like the little minigame you can do to improve their disposition towards you. I’ve had many dialogues cause me to laugh, which is always a plus in a game. One female NPC in a town asked me what the fine for necrophilia was; when you ask if she means the first offense, she replies, “lets say…no.” with a straight face and exclaims happily that the 500g fine is nothing compared to those levied in Morrowind. Creepy, in a way, but very funny and unexpected. Gotta love that in a game.

Anyway, Oblivion is one of the reasons I haven’t had much to say lately. I think most of it has been winter blues, but it’s supposed to be warming up some this week. Hopefully my mood will be less apathetic. It doesn’t help that I fell and chipped a bone or severely strained something in my foot. Crutches are not fun. Especially not with a 3 story townhouse. Fortunately, I have Oblivion to keep my interest for now, which keeps me from moving too much.

Go see V for Vendetta. Right now. This I command!

I’m taking the plunge and attempting to upgrade to 2.0.2. Don’t be surprised if things look wonky for a little bit, until I get the plugins working and stuff.

Update: Somewhat to my surprise, the upgrade was as painless as most WP installs. All my plugins work, with the exception of the recent_posts one that I use down at the bottom. It’s not displaying the number of comments for anything except the first post listed, though it works otherwise. *shrug* I’ll look into finding an updated version of the plugin or figuring out what’s broken later. So far, so good.

I know, it’s been quiet around here. I wish I could say I had been really busy, but I can’t. What I’ve been is horrifically uninspired. It’s a problem that’s plagued me all winter, save for a few minor breaks that spawned Vesper and Wings. I’m not sure if it’s the strangely schizophrenic weather we’ve had, the fact that I’ve been working 40 hour weeks as a part time (read: no benefits) employee since October, or some other strange mis-alignment of stars, but my creative centers seem to have (hopefully temporarily) deserted me. I haven’t had the mental capabilities to work on my RoR app or to squash out the odd IE quirks remaining in Wings. Even less have I felt enough coherence and interest in a topic to write; hence the silence here.

Today is still relatively uncreative. The weather was in the 70s yesterday, but now it’s back in the 30s - this kind of rollercoaster weather is just horrible. God needs to stop playing with the thermostat, damnit. That said, the “Written 2 weeks, 3 days ago” timestamp on the last post drove me to attempt to write something.

So. What can I say? Oh, I finally got a character to level 60 in WoW (my orc warrior). Of course, now that I’ve done that, I find myself with very little drive to play, because I can’t seem to get into the cycle of getting better gear so that I can go to a different place and get still better gear, but only if I’m willing to put up with 14 or 39 other people while I’m doing so. Instead, Jon and I have created a set of newbie characters on an RP-PVP server (a druid and a priest), in hopes that the PVP experience might spice the game up a bit for us again. So far, it’s been fun. Maelstrom, the server we’ve been playing on, is fairly quiet, with minimal do0ds. We have yet to get to the first contested area, though, so the future remains uncertain. We joined with a handful of other level 10s last night to zerg a mid 20s rogue who was attacking one of our quest NPCs. My first honorable kill on Maelstrom, isn’t that sweet.

One kind of neat thing about my warrior: she got level 60 on the same day that the Gates of An’Quiraj opened. Too bad the lag was so horrific that she got trapped behind the Gates before the event really got going, forcing me to give up on the game for the day. Shame too, the event looked pretty neat.

Other than that, I’ve been looking forward to Battle for Middle Earth II, a new real time strategy game using the Lord of the Rings license. I got to play with the beta demo for a while, and it seems really cool. The graphics are gorgeous, as is the sound, two things I don’t usually associate with an RTS. Plus, you can summon Boromir! What more could you possibly want from a game? Or, y’know, you could summon a Balrog or Sauron, if their styles suit you better. I’ll probably pick it up this weekend and tinker with it some. Hoorah~