Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Roughly three inches of fresh powder by this morning. 'tis sunny now, but not above freezing. I imagine the parking lot at home's going to be a mess by the end of the day. It actually looks like winter now.

Movement proceeds toward the new grid which I haven't even really looked at. More new characters are being made. And at least one existing character submitted for import. And with that, I find my interest taking a nosedive. So characters start with 5 points. And the first imported existing character is submitted with (I didn't count, but trusted someone else's sum) more like 23. This... evokes dismay in me. When I saw the polls, I thought "I want to keep my existing character at their current power level" rated low enough that we wouldn't have to worry about it. Apparently that wasn't the case. As a player, this upsets me because I feel like any new character I make will be perpetually overshadowed and unable to do crap in comparison to this guy or, more importantly, anyone else imported by the same trend. As staff, I feel this represents an utter failure of the new system to accomplish one of the stated goals of decreasing the difference in power l

So patch 4.0.3a updated the geography of "vanilla" World of Warcraft to the new Cataclysm-based landscape, though the expansion itself is a week and a half away. I've been making the rounds through the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor to look over the changes. There are a ton of new flight masters, which is nice to see but will matter less to high-level characters once the old world flight skill is activated. Some places received major facelifts - Stormwind is much more impressive (even if the old park is... uhh... gone). Some places are radically changed - Thousand Needles flooded, the Barrens split, and such. Most of the world has changed visibly, but not seriously. It's definitely interesting to see, and I'm really anticipating being able to truly look at it from above rather than relying on the forced perspective tricks of old. As I made the rounds, however, I couldn't help but think of some of the changes from an in-character perspective. And, overall, the

Gratitude and appreciation to all my friends. Dinner was nice, if quieter than usual. Often, my parents have a friend or two over for the holiday, but no one made it this time around. I experimented with chocolate pecan pie. Good, though I think I like the traditional recipe better and the layer of chocolate seemed to interfere some with the cooking, the pie taking a good deal longer in the oven than usual and still being a little soft in the middle. Something to ponder.

A news headline point in the last couple days is a survey being summarized as saying people feel "marriage is becoming obsolete." Of course, there's a couple caveats to consider. First, I don't trust any survey or poll in a vacuum. They can be made to say just about anything. There's not totally useless, but to be taken with a grain of salt. Second, the long explanation I heard was not really an argument that marriage was or should be phased out. Rather that people were going into it later, having accomplished more. Rather than a mark of new adulthood, marriage is being seen more as something to do once you're established. So that headline is somewhat misleading. But it got me thinking. What if marriage were removed as a secular institution? That'd sure be one way to get the same-sex marriage issue out of the government's hair. Oh, there'd be work involved as we'd have to pull a lot of marriage-related laws and regulations (such as for

See what's become of me? There never seems to be enough time. Thanksgiving is just a couple days away, and I'm having to plan to get pies ready. That means Christmas is not all that far off, so it's time to start thinking about gifts. Aieee! And the sky being dark so early is unsettling. It looks like I'll be swapping shifts for Friday. I'm such a nice guy there. I recently had a discussion that involved an passing offer to join in a weekly RPG or perhaps joining in (in some way) with the Circus activities gabefinder has been increasingly involved in. But that really drove home just how hard it is to fit any more scheduling in my life. I only work 40 hours a week (give or take). Technically, I'm on call anytime I'm not at work, though that doesn't actually come up very often. That should leave plenty of time for other things, right? And yet, it never seems to. Because of my shift scheduling, I can't commit to anything on a weekly week day ba

Book three of the Incarnations of Immortality was better than the second, though I think the first remains my favorite. It definitely spans a good deal more time than the previous books (even in being about Fate rather than Time), so more of the overall arc is shown. Again, interesting thoughts on the whole incarnation thing. Fate seems... much less awesomely aware of things than hinted at back in the beginning, though perhaps that can be blamed on the way the big events of the book take place when Niobe is new to her particular post(s).

Go, go, long titles! Let's see... "darker" than previous movies, sure. Times are tough and the good guys are on the defensive from the get-go. There's some tragedy along the way, but the moment that packed the most emotional punch for me was actually very, very early in the movie. Having not read the books probably gives me a relatively rare perspective. From where I sit, a lot fo the movie is spent running around accomplishing relatively little. Now, it does set up atmosphere, and describe what's happening in the world, but the primary conflict of Harry and Co. versus His Baddiness really doesn't advance all that much. I think if this didn't come from a novel with such effort made to preserve details, it probably could have been condensed into one movie with tighter pacing and focus. And it certainly wouldn't end without any real resolution. Still, I understand why it is the way it is, and it doesn't feel bad for it. 'tis still a fairly g

So last night I was expecting to spend some time running somewhere in Guild Wars in preparation for goals of the weekend. Instead, I ended up in the Fissure of Woe with a couple guildmates. The Fissure is one of those places I've read about, but never really expected to see. It's a special zone that's conditionally accessible. From what I've read, I would describe is as semi-mysterious and particularly deadly - known with familiarity to only a dedicated portion of the player base. The gulf between that and typical content felt like the leap to raiding in WoW. I was told to expect to spend a couple hours there, and that proved pretty accurate. We had along our super-duper-experienced guildie (who may not be in the true upper tier of players in the game, but certainly blows away most of the rest of us in knowledge and capability) which might have trivialized things some. We also took a path that involved a lot of backtracking to clear out static mobs in order to make t

What do say? It's okay. Obsidian seems to specialize in making expansion/sequels for other, established games (KotOR, Neverwinter Nights 2). The washed-out landscape gets repetitive after a while, but that is sort of the atmosphere of the whole post-apocalyptic setting. It's nice that you can explore and there's so much there, but sometimes that's a bit much, too. VATS isn't as overpowering as in Fallout 3, mostly because it doesn't prevent you from getting your ass kicked. Otherwise, it's much the same game with different locations. For most of the game, the bugs were not a serious distraction. The game would crash perhaps once every 3-4 hours. That's not good but it didn't stop me from playing. But there are a couple points that deserve note beyond that... First, there's one particular quest where you meet someone, talk to them, and go through a scripted event. That segment of, perhaps, 2-3 minutes of gameplay crashed a LOT. I got throug

Ugh. Tired. Woke up feeling like my brain had been active all night and missed any real rest. Still enjoying The Walking Dead. It's getting a little heavy into the inter-personal drama, but that's almost to be expected. And there's still zombies. Feels like we made a fair bit of progress last night in Guild Wars. I went from having one thing in my black moa egg incubator to missing one thing. That leaves tossing in some berries and getting to a late-Prophecies location. The later is, of course, complicated by not having done it with that character, and War in Kryta stuff making it harder. I also got to see how much it sucks to have two ritualists in the group without coordination on builds. WoW saw an improvised raid night. We brought in a couple non-guild people and were still at 8 while doing things, but were able to clear half of ICC after doing the weekly. My main is now at the justice point cap, which is good. Pre-Cataclysm stuff is gearing up - I feel odd "

Sort of related to the last post, it occurred during my ponderings that the two MMORPGs I'm involved in (WoW and GW) I came into late. In one case, it was semi-close to the first expansion, and in the other it was with the first expansion. In both cases, I was not an early adopter and did not have to suffer through initial balance bugs. Even my foray into D&D Online came fairly late And thinking about what I've read of Champions Online and Warhammer Online and Star Trek Online... I think that may be a good thing. In fact, I'm wondering now if that's a good thing. A very good thing. Heck, I'm settling on a working hypothesis that the worst thing you can do is dive into a new MMORPG on release. You get the "prestige" of being an early adopter, but you have to face all the bugs, server issues, balance problems, and go through all the changes when a lot of these games seem to take a couple months to smooth out. It seems like the only way to get a wor

Someone commented to me this morning that they had seen SW:TOR gameplay and they felt it was lacking. Y'know, I've been thinking that since the videos I saw back in July. Jumping Jedi spinning with their lightsabers and everything, it all just looked... well, kinda of hokey. But is any other MMORPG actually better? You lock onto a target, initiate auto attacks, activate abilities in sequence or response to condition, and move around as the situation dictates. There really isn't a whole lot of variance you see in these games as far as how play goes during combat. And yet, some of them work surprisingly well. Tangent: What I've seen of GW2 actually looks a lot more active than I'm accustomed to. Part of me wonders if it's necessary to be hopping and rolling all over. Part of me worries that it might be too "actiony/twitchy." But I'll reserve judgement. So if they all play roughly the same through combat (and let's face it, you're going

Heh. Had a dream where I was doing some cute little holiday-style MMO quest chain with some others. We were in a theater and had to order a drink, tip an invisible waiter, have a conversation with him, then buy some little treat or drink for one of the living "monser" staff before we could progress on to the dungeon or secret chamber or something. In my dream it played out sort of LARPishly, with regular people in monster costumes and such. And though it didn't happen in the dream, it left me with this operatic mish-mash concept in my head: "Oh Ma-ri-a!" "Run away, little girl!" Oy.

... even when I probably shouldn't. For a second day in a row, my co-tech/supervisor was absent when I came in to start my late shift. Honestly, I'm not even sure if he was here at all earlier. I suspect he was gone all day today, though I think he might have been here some yesterday. Now, he is prone to taking off early more often than I am. If I'm on day shifts, I'll always wait at least until he gets in unless there's some truly pressing reason to do otherwise. I try to at least e-mail progress reports if I've been working on something he should be aware of. And I know he was saying he hadn't been sleeping well last week. I suspect the stress of a couple looming/lingering projects has been contributing. And while he's probably taken as many says off this year as I have, they've been spotty. I, at least, recently took a week off work (which wasn't as refreshing as I hoped, but it's something). He did schedule off the last few days of Nov

I feel a little like venting unto the ether... I'm tired. And it's not just a "the days are getting shorter and you never sleep enough" tired. No, I feel sapped of drive and creativity. Truthfully, I think that's standard "tired" for me. It's a weariness that runs deeper than just a desire for sleep, or even the desire to let go the worries and stresses of the day. It's hard to look forward to MUCKing (or much of anything else) when I know I just don't have much to put into it, especially when what you get out of it is based on that. Yesterday was one of the sorts of work days I really don't like so much (though not the worst ). I started off the morning with one thing to deal with almost immediately. Someone had hit a malware site. It usually takes an hour or more of cleaning and scanning before I'm willing to sign off on a computer and turn it back over - sometimes longer depending on how deep the crap gets its hooks in. Then

I shouldn't have to listen to campaigning phone calls anymore! And the election night party at work is over. The setup kept me a couple hours late yesterday and took a lot out of me. Ugh. These days, I find myself caring very little about candidates. Political reality renders most campaign promises pointless, and it's almost impossible to get anything useful from the piles of advertising. No, mostly I find myself interested in the proposals and ammendments. Local tax levies or changes to state constitution - things where the voters actually get to make a decision rather than pick someone to do it for them.

Not to be game bashing by any means, but I was asked a couple weeks back what my problem with the game was. It's actually a little bit difficult to explain. There are several things I don't like about the game because I've seen them done better (read: closer to my expectations and desires) elsewhere. I don't really like the instancing, the death penalty, or the boss fights. But none of that is really bad . They make it less a game that I might want to play, but not one I want to avoid . My biggest problem with it is not a design choice. It's not a gameplay issue. It's something more ethereal. Sometimes, I swear it feels like the game is out to get me. This first came up, I believe, when I was looking at builds and decided I wanted a specific faction-based skill for a character. So I went and did a bunch of quests to build up faction, I pushed through zones and missions to get to where I needed to be. Then, after what felt like an annoying grind, I went

I feel a bit like one myself this morning. Staying up to watch The Walking Dead kept me awake a little later than I would have otherwise chosen. West coast TV feeds are a real pain sometimes, and responsible for my failing to follow Venture Brothers this season, too. Even so, it was having the noise of my computer going that made it hard to get to sleep and stay that way. Ugh. A zombie apocalypse series seems a little ambitious, but it works well enough that I'll try to tune in next week, too. It looks like the cast is meant to grow and change over time, as the premiere introduced us only briefly to one group of people. I like the touch of having survivors taking time to seek small bits of closure - one sighting a rifle on his risen wife, another tracking down the first zombie he saw to finish it off. Of course, zombies in general require more suspension of disbelief than a lot of monsters. They aren't things beyond our understanding so much as things that violate our under