Redwolf's Journal (continued)

So I got in time with the Guild Wars 2 "open" beta over the weekend. I didn't spend any obsessive amount of time, but got a sampling of gameplay and all. Three of the five races were playable, and I only did anything with two of them, so there's plenty I haven't seen even in the starting zones. And, of course, there were the usual beta issues with servers being brought down a few times and "overflow" zones pretty much never emptying into normal ones. And when I wrapped for the night Sunday, I tried to bid guild members a good night only to be told I didn't belong to a guild (in spite of still seeing it in the guild panel and having been on guild chat successfully earlier). So, what do I think? Most of my impressions are based on how a game feels to me, and I can't always back that up with reasons why. First, let me say that it feels like an improvement over the original to me in almost every way possible. Something as simple as being able t

I was just transferred aboard a United Federation of Planets starship as its captain, though rather than just a mix of military and civilian, like the Enterprise-D, it was some sort of full-blown luxury ship with malls, glass-sided turbolifts, restaurants and guests. My first officer was showing me around and leading me to my cabin, which we joked was on the opposite side of the ship from his so we both wouldn't be taken out at once if things got bad in battle. Things were so crowded with non-crew that it took something like twenty minutes to get from the bridge to my room. o.o; Straaange.

Suddenly, the weekend feels crowded. I'll probably put in 4-6 hours in WoW , depending on what happens Saturday night. The buff in Dragon Soul is up to 15% (20 next week), so we probably could make headway there, but I doubt many have studied the fights in months, some people may prefer to work on Ragnaros, and any progress toward Dragonwrath takes more time in Firelands. Plus Me3 is running a multiplayer event this weekend and the individual reward requires completing a run on gold difficulty through to successful extraction. That could take twenty minutes. Or a lot of twenty minutes(es?). I've only done one or two matches on silver, jumping into gold with a public group sounds daunting from all I've read. If that one proves too difficult, though, I'll probably give up. I'd like to unlock/upgrade an N7 weapon (I love my Valiant 1 already), but it isn't worth too much grief. And GW2 is running their first "open" beta weekend. I've played a cha

Ever since I first got into MtG, I picture Sunglasses of Urza when someone mentions rose glasses. Well, with recent reading making me think of Dungeons and Dragons, I've been thinking back. Third Edition (or probably the 3.5 revision if getting technical) stands as my favorite to date, but I wouldn't call it perfect. I've looked back at some of the defining characteristics of AD&D and AD&D 2nd Edition . And, as I said there, I didn't much use the first edition rules as rules so much as rough guidelines mixed with non-advanced D&D and such. When 2nd Edition came out, I thought it was pretty great. It consolidated and cleaned up a bunch of previous material. It had a lot of rules deliberately flagged as optional - something I appreciated. I won't say it was perfect, but I don't recall feeling the need to change the rules all that much, and I was comfortable adding classes, races, and other things as campaigns needed. Making a little NPC bloc

In high school, I tended to spend allowance money on novels and comic books. A lot of the former were published TSR D&D books, particularly of the Forgotten Realms. The avatar trilogy, Azure Bonds - things like that. T'was imagination fuel for an ongoing RPG campaign too. Since then, I really haven't picked up many such licensed books, but based on an online review I decided to pick one up. Brimstone Angels takes me back. It also shows me how much things have changed in the setting over the years. And boy, Neverwinter is a mess in 4E Forgotten Realms. First off, the technical editing, while not atrocious, is some of the worst I've seen in the last few years. There are little things like misplaced quotation marks or missing spaces between sentences. It's a little mind-boggling to me really, as most of these are things that automated systems should probably pick up. I also find the layout/cut of the pages to be distracting, with the text running too close to the

... and vice versa. The one aspect of the ongoing Aeranos fantasy game we have going that I have the most trouble with is not the incomplete spell list that's being fleshed out only as we players get to new spells or the wound system that does away with HP whittling in favor of something that practically works out to usually be minor scratches or mortal wounds with relatively little use of the gradient between, rather it's the disadvantage system. You may take up to X points in disadvantages at character creation. They do not give you points to gain more advantages or anything. Rather when a disadvantage hinders your character in play , you earn a fate point (usable for ass-saving critical moments). The closest published example I can think of is (if I'm remembering correctly) the disads in 7th Sea. But I have yet to see it actually work , and the concepts don't sit right with me. Part of the issue is how the conditions vary. A Sense disadvantage could come into

I played a little over the last few days, the beta doesn't have a lot of content. The first 9-10 levels goes pretty quickly and just gives a taste of the classes and a look at how to play in general. The weekend was deliberately a stress test, so I'm not particularly put off by or worried about getting disconnected once and having trouble logging in for a period of time Saturday. I'm still not fond of the connection requirements, but it is what it is. Overall, I'm underwhelmed, but I don't think I'm an ideal "target audience" person anyway. I enjoyed the previous games, but in the years since D2, the click-and-kill-everything genre has lost appeal to me. And while I find some elements of the setting of Sanctuary to be interesting, it's never been seriously fleshed out. D3 even begins back in (New - why do people keep building here) Tristram yet again. When I first booted the game up, the graphics made me go "bleh," but that was fixed by

I finished Shadow's Master a week or two ago now. Okay read in general, and it seems to bring closure to most of the threads and characters of the (presumed) trilogy. Kit's story is probably the most compelling, actually. Caim was a bit disappointing in this installment, being "under the weather" about 90% of the time even as he drives on in his quest to find his mother and learn his origins. I also picked up Cast in Shadow and just finished that tonight. It was surprisingly enjoyable, and for once I can actually point to details why. The author's style makes excessive use of sentence fragements, for one. That's technically "bad," yet ends up giving the whole thing a more conversational tone that gives it an almost-first-person flavor. Some of the fantasy tropes are a bit tired (the Barrani are very elven stereotype), but there's also use of winged Aerians, feline Leontines, and human-guise Dragons that stand out as more unusual. Where thin

Last night was good in that we had a full raid group, and people to spare. We went through 6/7 in Firelands (as usual). We one-shotted Rhyolith and Beth'Tilac. We got one of our more involved players to exalted with Avengers of Hyjal. We got our guild leader to the ilevel 391 pre-Dragonwrath and a couple other upgrades were had. All of that's good. It seems like it's just now being realized that we're still somewhere close to 10 Firelands clears away from actually having the legendary Dragonwrath. To which I can only think "Really? It's just dawning on you now how long it'll take?" I died twelve times over the course of the night. That is... unusually high. We actually did okay on most of the bosses, though Baleroc was tough with 1/2 healers being new to the fight. No, most of those deaths (and some wipes) were on trash. That's stuff that should only happen when people are truly careless. Like backing into adds. Or not having someone jump on

I still haven't played the beta (they're doing an open-to-all weekend, too) and very well might not, but there was a brief conversational thread with tashiro a few days back. His intent is to "boycott" the game because it requires an active internet connection to play. While that's his choice, I see such as the way games are going. He disagreed, pointing out he could play God of War without being online. That little conversation has bugged me, and not just because his chosen example for where games are going was a 7-year-old console title. I mean, the fact is I don't like these developments. I want to be able to buy a game and to own that copy, to be reinstalled from disk or loaned to a friend or whatever. And in the latter case, I fully expect the game to require the disk to play, so there's only one "active copy" at any given time even if it's passed among multiple people over a period of time. But that just isn't the direction t

Strange dubbing of a quasi-holiday among our gaming group as we scrambled together to meet up tonight. We had Skittles and (obviously fake) thousand dollar bills even. It was a while before we actually got into the game itself, but it was fun.

I don't have much of an "audience," and those who do bother to read here aren't exactly known for their disposable income. Still, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it at all. A local friend, dreamer, and frequent-GM is trying to gather funding for an App to support tabletop gaming in his home-brew system as well as Pathfinder. Details are here and the actual Kickstarter page is here . I would like to see the project reach its goal and go through, though I'm not sure if I would bet on it just now (I am a pessimist, right?). I have mixed feelings about Kickstarter in general. You get lottery-like success stories there, but that's really a small percentage of projects. It feels as though you need a solid audience beforehand or have to luck out and be mentioned/featured such that you gain an interested audience.

There are things I could talk about which wouldn't be very spoilery, but would sound like it. Ultimately, Joss Whedon + self-aware-ish horror movie doesn't seem all that special to me. I like some of his work, but I'm no Whedonite or whatever. And when advanced reviews sounded positive, I thought about seeing it a little more seriously, but they've led me astray before. But the movie was actually pretty darn good. It even breaks one of my usual "rules" of movie reviewing to say that, but it really is. Some nice laughs, most of the usual horror tropes, some degree of actually making sense (though there are always unanswered questions if you dig deep enough). Good movie. Addendum : I had someone ask me "is it scary?" Well... uhh... that's a matter of perspective, naturally. I feel anyone remotely familiar with your typical horror movie formula will find most of the horror elements to be predictable (or perhaps more accurately, deliberately te

"About an hour" turned out to be a little over two. When I showed up at the dealership, only one other person was in the lounge. By the time I left, it had been full and then emptied some as a few people took a shuttle ride elsewhere rather than waiting. So after spending my morning there and spending about $90, I have a spare key that will work again (even if it's a no-frills version, as the remote lock/alarm version would have run another $80). Yay, I guess. So much trouble, though, over a car key. Ugh. And I come home to a beta invite for Diablo III. Not sure I care much at this point, though, as I'm getting a digital copy "free" anyway and the release is barely more than a month away.

... of why I'm not actually a fan of the electronification of frickin' everything: Today I got ready to go to work, went out to my car, got in, turned the key... and nothing happened. Several more attempts and the alarm actually went off. The button on the "integrated key fob" turned the alarm back off, but that still didn't fix the issue of the car not starting. Thankfully, I could retrieve the spare key from my room and it did work, but now I have a problem - and one that would have been a lot worse if I'd lost the key or it was with someone else. These integrated key fobs have buttons for door locks, trunk, and the alarm - which all still work. Apparently they also contain some data that syncs with the car to say it's a proper key and allow ignition, and I can only assume that's specifically the part that isn't working. This sort of thing doesn't happen when keys are just mechanical. Grrr. I thought maybe it was a symptom of a low ba

I think last weekend may have unduly gotten my hopes up in WoW. We only had a handful of people show up this past Saturday, so no further raiding attempts. We ran a few dungeons, at least. That, coupled with a funk regarding Furryfaire after watching friends go at it (again) on Thursday night left me very "meh" toward my usual weekend forms of entertainment. On the other hand, I continue to play ME3 multiplayer from time to time, so maybe I should put forth some more detailed thoughts about that... When I first heard the game would have multiplayer, I really didn't care. When I heard about the impact it has on the single-player game ending (though it turns out the difference between the "best" ending and what you access at a lower EMS total seems minimal), I was offended. But as I neared the end of my primary play-through, I decided I'd bite the bullet and try it. Surprise, surprise - not only was it bearable, I actually enjoyed it. It's more o

Last night was actually the most fun I've had in a tabletop roleplaying session in a while. I think some of this stems from a chance to really get into and think about some character development. When knee-deep in an active campaign, certainly there are signs of change in characters. You can see the trends of where XP is being spent (or what feats are chosen, or whatever). But it isn't always so simple to see what those changes really mean for the character. Last night we picked up with a little time lapse after a previous campaign. It's unfortunate only two of the four players present had (surviving) characters to carry over, but I was lucky enough to be one. When I started Rowan, she was a self-centered syvani (elf) smith. Her archery was excellent, but she would be more happy in a workshop than out on an adventure. She'd studied as a wical (priestess), but was never very serious about it. Thrust into a foreign land under assault by a demon-guided oroka (orc)

Politics has a way of screwing things up and making me annoyed at people on both sides of an issue. It can be positively infuriating, especially when it rears its head in my recreational space. What are the duties of a head wizard on a MUCK anyway? I suppose opinions may vary. In my book, the position entails: - Delegation of duties to other staff and oversight of such, including appointment and removal of other wizards - Final say in matters of policy or direction (because someone has to) - Responsibility for anything not assigned to someone else Now, I strongly feel a headwiz shouldn't be making major choices without any other input or against the grain of the staff or player base. Like any leadership position, maintaining the post requires a certain level of appeasement of the masses (you can't exactly play tyrant and roll out tanks to force people to keep playing there). So on one side we have a headwiz who is prone to making seemingly-abrupt decisions and standing

Feh. I actually decide I want the paladin PVP set for transmogrification and start converting valor points only to find the weekly conquest point cap applies to converted points too. Cuuurses! So I have to wait a couple weeks to be able to get the helm and shoulders, which are really the distinct pieces. I continue to run a few missions in ME3 multiplayer here and there. I feel with a decently-leveled character, I could play on silver - I'm starting to grasp combos, have a familiarity with the maps, and have a pretty good idea how to handle most objectives. Unfortunately, I'd still be at the mercy of the random grouping. I might see how that works at some point. Maybe. Should you rent or own? It depends. If you don't have a relatively stable income, getting a mortgage to own may be out of the question entirely. If it is an option, you have to start looking at finer and finer details. The more you can put down immediately and the less you're borrowing, the better

I was a little bit surprised at the turnout on WoW Saturday night, even if it didn't really materialize until later than our "normal" raid time. Ran a few dungeons, actually delved into Firelands with 10 guildmates... The warm bodies were there, though we would need some further polish to get Beth'Tilac down. Or at least we'd need to get through it without one of the two active healers disconnecting (I wish we'd tried three-healing that last couple times). I've poked at the Mists of Pandaria beta a little bit. I don't really see myself playing a panda main, and... my paladin kit feels seriously pared down. Not sure whether I like that. I poked on GW Sunday long enough to do their April 1st quest. Cute little play on Terminator 2, I suppose, with a continuity-breaking (at least in my mind) run in with your "past self" that reminds me of the Bronze Dragonshrine quests in WotLK. I also put in an unusual amount of time playing Mass Effect

So I noticed the coming of April 1st with a little trick by DBM (a WoW addon) playing random sound bytes from the game upon login/zone-in. A quick search even turned up a manual command for that. Cute. And before I turned in, I also saw Cartoon Network replacing its usual late Saturday/early Sunday programming with an old(er)-style Toonami block, including use of the host TOM and his giving a review of Mass Effect 3. Of course Blizzard has to get in on things, with the Starcraft 2 Supply Depot game. One of the bullet points for the game: "Multiple endings, each influenced by your choices and color-coded for your convenience! (Further epic endings planned for post release as downloadable content.)" Also a revamp of classic educational games in Blizzard Kidzz and young adult novels as well as a Zergotachi authenticator (keep it healthy and happy or it won't give you the whole code). I wasn't sure if SWTOR would get in on it, but hey, play a ship droid! Googl