Metaplanar Babel

Did you guys ever play a game called You Don’t Know Jack!? It’s a funny pop trivia game from back in the day, and apparently they now exist on the web, which flat out rocks. It’s actually kinda fun. I really miss this game.

People are strange, sometimes. I’ve been languishing for a few months now with no real desire to game at all. I still have Suiko V and Metal Gear Solid 3 that I haven’t played, but I just can’t seem to find that “want-to-play” vibe. Then, the other day, Fileplanet opened up a 17 day free trial of City of Villains for members, and all of a sudden, I find myself actually kinda excited about a game. An old game, no less. Granted, it’s been a year and a half or more since I last played City of Heroes, and the game has changed a lot, and being evil is often far more fun than being good, but still..

It must be the costume creator. I am so addicted to that thing. I could sit and play with it all day. But what’s more exciting is that I’m actually enjoying the game itself pretty well too. Of course, I feel impending alt-itis creeping up on me, but I’m hoping I can somehow avoid it this time (fat chance).

*entering CoH lingo mode* It’s kind of funny. Back in CoH, I used to say that if they’d just make Energy Melee a scrapper powerset, I’d be so happy. And now, in CoV, EM is a brute primary powerset. Plus the brute archtype seems to be a combination of scrapper and tanker, which is almost exactly what I wanted. That’s why I’m so excited, I guess. I said I wasn’t going to play anything but a brute. Naturally, that’s why I made a corrupter (kind of like an inverse defender: offensive power primary, defensive/buffing power secondary). And why I’m kinda liking the idea of the dominator (a controller with more umph and less friendliness). *le sigh*

Anyway.. I guess we’ll see if the game lingers, or if this is just a brief infatuation. Either way, it’s kinda nice to be even a little interested in a game for a little while.

Or..when geeks get bored:

I can’t even begin to imagine how long it must have taken to set this thing up. Pretty nifty though.

This Wii trailer from E3 seems to indicate that Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess will be released for the Wii (the Zelda spot is about 3/4 of the way through the video, but some of the other games are pretty interesting to watch too). I’m a little disappointed, because Nintendo had been saying that TP would be coming out for the GameCube, which I already own.

Amazon is currently reporting an April 26, 2006 release date for Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. They even have a DVD cover image now, so maybe it’s actually going to be released this time. Makes me kind of excited, anyway.

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.

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~

Cruinh wrote a post the other day about a recent article by the well-known game designer Raph Koster. Surprisingly, Mr. Koster actually left a comment. Isn’t blogging fun?

A guy going by the name Dayne over on the WoW warrior boards posted a great guide to being a warrior. I have taken his words to heart. Beware.

Quoting the full text below the “fold” so it doesn’t get lost to forum pruning at some point in the future.

(Continued..)

Scott over at Broken Toys wrote an interesting article about the age-old conflict between so-called casual gamers and hardcore gamers. Basically, he talks about how casual players often are disappointed when they reach 60 in WoW and discover that the WoW end-game is as raid heavy as any other MMO. I think he may have hit the nail on the head towards the end of the article, when he talks about what the casual players are looking for: