Redwolf's Journal (continued)

When tashiro said he could run a Star Wars game online, I said "sure?" 'cause, hey why not? That's young yet, with some revamped older characters done anew in some cases. So far, my poor little captain is upset that her precious ship has been attacked and life generally seems to be going downhill since taking a contract with Jedi. Heh. Thinking about Star Wars again got me to reinstall SWTOR with intent to maybe pursue some of those stories I didn't finish and such. I expected going in that there would be some shock from feature-loss. I was a subscriber at one time, so that makes me now a owner of a "preferred" account rather than a completely free one, but there are still a number of options I don't have that I did as a subscriber back when that was the only option. I might miss toolbars, though hopefully four is enough. I wasn't over the limit of character slots, so that's something. Some customization options (fewer races and things lik

You just can't win with MMOs. And I'm not talking about the evolving gameplay and additions to content making the path for players endless. No, I mean for the designers/coders/whatevers on the other side of the affair. Any truly "massively multiplayer" game has, practically by definition, too large a player base to please everyone. This came to mind when a friend pointed out Arenanet's solicitation of community feedback on their "living story" content. commented that he liked it, but felt excluded by the elements that were hard - like some specific mechanics-heavy 5-man dungeon fights. I can totally feel for him, because I've been right there lately, wondering if we can get a group of five together who 1) won't have to leave after half an hour and 2) won't go down like wet tissue paper before boss fights. While I probably could get into these encounters with groups in the other guild, I don't care quite enough to work at it, so I'

Hmm... In retrospect, it bothers me a little that I didn't find more to say about Red Seas Under Red Skies back when I read it. It may have felt a little formulaic, but it remains the most atmospheric and authentic-feeling depiction of sea travel in a general "fantasy" era. Instead of one year, I've been waiting three to see the sequel. I'm not sure it lived up to what I wanted, mostly due to one specific (if volume-spanning) detail, but it was enjoyable. The premise of pitting fellow/friend/lover rogues against one enough behind the scenes of an election is interesting enough. And the I enjoyed the flashback threads in which the characters deal with the titular play. The end of the book sees a major paradigm shift in the world that is sure (because the books center on them) to involve the Gentleman Bastards again going forward. It was nice to finally (after two books in the series already) get to see the near-mythical Sabetha who is Locke's love intere

I dreamed I saw at some big party-dinner of some sort, dressed up in a nice white shirt and black pants. There was scrambling to get prepared for this function, and a lot of last-minute changes and directions. Among other things, there was the announcement that people had to be in full tuxedos. Somehow, I got a bit of a "pass" for not having vest and jacket because I was in some special position of being honored, but I felt a bit underdressed at that point. And then I was assigned to play host as people arrived, taking notes on their party and seating them. But I wasn't immediately told what all I had to mark down on the tickets. That list expanded each time - name, number in party, whether they have prepaid for the dinner with coupons or are paying cash... Odd. But I can tell where most of the feelings behind all that came from. Over the weekend, we finally went live with a system update that was suggested to us back toward the beginning of the year. We looked at the

Sooo pissed with Apple paradigm right now. Previous employee tied a company iPad to his iCloud account. Now I can't do jack shit with it without his login. Even the iTunes "hard" reset that worked with another one to clear a set passcode still requires the account login to reactivate.

Well, feeling some better today, at least. I don't regularly read WoW blogs anymore. But today, I happened to glance at one that's a story-framed retelling of part of the Siege of Orgrimmar raid. It strikes a chord, reminding me of past experiences and the depth of investment in the game over year. I liked the Klaxxi paragons. I knew fighting them would be inevitable. Leaving the game before that happened... feels at once merciful and saddening. There are some good stories there, and knowing how they play out is not the same as experiencing them. As much as I miss those stories and as much as I put a lot more solo than group time into the game, it just wasn't the same having the guild dwindle to only a couple other active players. I wonder about that a bit. I don't think it was just raid access, though that's part of it. The social structure has value too. I miss being able to log into an MMO and being at ease with everyone on guild channel - familiar with the

I am not at all sure I shouldn't flag this private instead of friend-only. It's vaguely useful for my own records, but I don't want to worry others, especially since there isn't much that could be done anyway. The weekend probably didn't leave me in the best of mindsets. They rarely do. Yesterday was a busy day at work, though not brutally so. The last hour or so of the workday was even quiet enough that I stumbled across a little slice-of-life comic to skim through. I already felt pretty down. I think reading high school relationship issues probably didn't help much. And having something to throw myself into probably would have been better than a quiet evening, even if it did give me the "chance" to go to bed early. Overall, though, I find my mind in a pretty poor place. I'm trying to analyze while experiencing, but thinking about depression feels pretty depressing in itself. I can, and do, put on a smile when talking to others, but it mel

Mood between "meh" and "feh." I can't say the weekend was bad, but it never seems enough to fully relax these days and I can't claim to have done anything I feel was productive. I wonder if I should be concerned with hot big a thing that is. Hmm. Shortening days doesn't help either. It's been hard to get into most RP at hand of late, for one reason or another. Oh, sometimes something may grab me, but mostly the people with the ideas and the people in position to make those ideas into scenes have not been the same people. And I certainly haven't gotten back to doing any RP-related campaign work. Ugh. I think I've decided to bump Beyond: Two Souls down the line. Maybe I'll pick it up discounted or maybe I'll watch a playthrough. Reviews have been wildly split, but it sounds like the control scheme and disjointed chronology make for an even less interactive-feeling experience than Heavy Rain. And it sounds like the story isn't q

First snow of the "season" today, and it came with a bite. The office (all with a few thousand residents) ended up without power for almost an hour and a half. That set things behind and led to a fair bit of scrambling. Worse still, when the power came back on, one of our NAS devices serving as primary file storage for our prepress/ad design department didn't. Amusingly, we had just acquired a new one to replace it due to our having filled the old one up basically, but we were several days away from being ready to make the switch, with a ton of files to move and no way to get at them if the old NAS wouldn't boot. And this is about how my mind approached it: - Is it working? No. Restart? No. Unplug for a few minutes and restart? No. - Nothing is powering on, so it's probably either the power supply or control board. The drives are probably fine, so the data should be okay. - Can we put the drives in another chassis and run that? ... Theory is sound, but the

Feels odd. I was off my last night-shift week, so it's a little strange settling in for one. I also have to pick up my parents late tonight - assuming their flight gets in as scheduled. I have a couple projects I want to bust ass on and get done, but I keep getting roadblocked. My co-tech is taking tomorrow off, so replacing a critical workstation tonight is a bad idea without someone here in the morning, and licenses for another install showed up for his login, but not mine yet. Hrrf. Friend-guild activities last night in GW2 were largely a bust. It's a little frustrating not to be able to get five people together to run a new dungeon, but... this also seems like a bit of a management failure. I had no idea that was even the goal for the night, but if I had, I would have studied some. And I would assume someone who particularly wanted to do that dungeon path would have studied some. So hearing it takes 2 hours or so for a "good" group shouldn't have been a s

What do you say about a series that's always been pushing bigger and better? Playing criminals isn't for everyone, but the GTA games I've seen have generally ranged from good to revolutionary. I'm not quite calling this one the latter, but that's okay. GTA V feels huge, it's got a ton of detail (seriously, an insane amount in some cases), it looks good, it behaves well (though with anything this big, there are bound to be glitches, I haven't really seen any personally)... What isn't to like? There are some elements some would-be players may not be comfortable with - heck, there were a few moments where I ran into that myself, but I don't feel those behaviors were glorified or encouraged out of game. Otherwise, the worst think I can say is there's some missed potential. The three-character story is done well, but it doesn't strike me as so new and dazzling as some reviews have made it out to be. I was impressed by the technique years ago

I'm not at my worst by any means, but it's come to mind after catching this article . What really grabbed me about it, though, was a linked webcomic in which someone describes their own experiences with depression and it strikes me as a remarkably good description of what it can be like. My own detachment, at times, is... perhaps not quite that complete or consistent, but the described sense of hopeless apathy is pretty darn familiar. I'm sure there's a lot of individual variance. Of course, I'm sure it doesn't help that I've been something of an antisocial introvert for pretty much as long as I can remember (including back when I could look out from a hilltop and felt rather than just mentally acknowledged "damn that's a beautiful view"). So I've never really responded well to friendly nudges to "go do something" even under the best of circumstances. Hmm...

So, after a session of fantasy adventure RP last night, I got to talking with our active GM for a bit. As conversations will, we strayed over a few topics, but some left me thinking. He made one brief comment about liking the thinking I expressed at one point. The group was faced with retrieving a hammer entombed with a king in a large burial mound, and we were faced with a largely-immovable slab of a door and possible curses/wards. One of the other party members was going on with "I'm going to look around, there has to be another way in." I had to sort of shake my head and point out, "No, there really doesn't. This is a tomb. They don't make these things to be accessed." That's something I get into during games - arguably too much sometimes. I try (not even deliberately a lot of the time) to apply some form of logic to a situation. Often, I have to acknowledge that the information I/my character has is incomplete, so my conclusions can be wron