Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Guild Wars 2 ArenaNet's been promoting their upcoming April 2014 "Feature Pack," revealing a lot of what I would consider quality of life improvements. More things will be shared across accounts rather than per character, including dyes and wardrobe options. Doing away with armor repair costs. The ability to swap traits without paying for a consumable to do so. Honestly, there's only one point I have any reservations about, which is the manner of unlocking traits. That could be annoying, or it could be fine. Everything else looks good. Yet, for all that, none of it actually makes me want to put in more time in-game. Still doing guild missions with AW, which has been streamlined to around an hour and a half most weeks, and spending some evening time with ARIN. Other than those guild activities, however, the only thing that feels new/like progress is the Living Story when there's a release, and that seems to be in a bit of a lull - just a statement, I don't re

Y'know, I don't want to disrespect the work involved in CGI, but I love hearing about physical effects in movies. I haven't watched the others, but the Aliens documentary linked here was a blast for me. Three hours is a long video to watch, but hearing about the behind-the-scenes stuff for a movie that's a favorite of mine is great.

I caught the rest of the first season of Log Horizon , and I'm still enjoying it. The ending arc feels a little weak overall, and the growing harem vibe around the main character is a little off-putting, but it's still good. I look forward to seeing the second season, expected in fall sometime, though I have some concerns as the first went through (from what I've read) about 5 of the existing 7 light novel volumes. That implies the anime series will have to start being padded or go off on its own path - neither of which tends to end up as good as it could have been. I also went back a bit and watched the Read or Die TV series. I saw the OVAs years ago on... hmmm... Cartoon Network? Maybe even the SciFi Channel. Whatever the case, the OVAs come first and lay out a world of anachronistic British power, cloning, and largely-unexplained super powers. The lead character is a frequently-distracted obsessive reader with... well... "paperkinesis" I guess, in that she

Awesome dream this morning. I had some sort of harness/rig connected to two small, but very powerful fans that I could hold before me with some hand controls - and this let me fly. There was definitely some awkwardness initially, learning to angle these two fans to provide enough lift to stay aloft as well as provide forward thrust. As I got the hang of it, though, I progressed beyond an open flat area where lots of rich folk had personal helicopters and went soaring on my own out along mountain valleys and overlooks. T'was a thrilling adventure!

This feels like a lull in GW2 content releases, though I suppose it's worth noting that most of the mechanical changes went to tweaking PVP/WVW. As far as PVE, there are really only two points of note for me: 1) Lion's Arch is a hollow shell of a zone, for now. With all the events wrapped up, but the city functionality not restored, it's a weird landscape of empty vistas and a couple new memorials. I suppose it fits the story, but it's strange to see so much "empty" space in an MMO (worse than my early experiences with Silithus by far). I'm sure that's a temporary situation. 2) There's a little wrap-up for the main NPCs introduced over the course of Scarlet's arc. I would describe it as "charming." It's nice. It also serves to fill people in if they missed the end of the Battle scene. It doesn't really offer anything new, though, save introducing Marjory's sister. What it doesn't do is address any of what I perce

I don't think I've sunk this much time into a non-MMO game since... well, maybe GTA V, but possibly not even that open world monster. And I'm not finished yet, though I feel like I am sort of over a large hump now that I have some choice as to which bosses to go after. So how is it? Complicated. Control: I didn't even try to use the keyboard, mouse setup, so I don't know. I connected a PS3 controller, ran MotionInJoy in the background, and downloaded a mod that changes the command prompts to match. No need to second-guess, and it all works well, though I've never really liked using both PS3 trigger buttons, personally. I like the differences in combat styles a lot, actually, with a distinctly different feel in most cases. Connectivity: My largest meta-game frustration. The PC version users Games for Windows Live. I have no idea what's going to happen when that's due to shut down (this year, I think). In the meantime, though, I've had to remov

Since I got nudged into starting to watch anime online, I've had a chance to take in a few series. Most are relatively new (Valvrave, Log Horizon), though I've started watching a relatively older series as well (Read or Die). And while I like a lot of these individually, if to varying degrees, the meta-reaction I'm having here is one of sadness at the state of the industry/medium. I can actually apply the same thinking to other forms of entertainment, especially on TV, as well, but it strikes me in particular with anime. It's a function of the business side of things - unfortunate, but pretty much unavoidable. Most series start off as manga, sometimes in turn based on (light) novels. A property reaches sort of a critical mass where the publisher/investors see a potential for growth. They say "hey, this is good/popular enough to be worth some additional money, and if we can make a series out of it, that'll increase sales and merchandise!" So a season is

A friend once commented on my posting about nerfs to some Wow content: "I still don't comprehend the idea of "nerfing" content. Ah well. Yeah, Samantha considers GW combat as a tactical thing. If you fail, see what you did wrong, adjust, and go into it. She's just glad it isn't a timing thing, really, just more of a "what are they doing, let's deal with it" sort of thing." Well, there's a fine line to be walked between offering challenge and making things accessible. Matching a design vision can be hard, and can be messed up with the slightest tweak sometimes. Major "nerfs" are generally made to increase the accessibility. That comes up when designers want more people to be able to succeed - whether because an encounter was made too hard, or designer priorities change. Arenanet's not perfect. They may well have just stepped into that. Their initial release of the main encounter in the current patch, which is battling

I feel like I'm being repeatedly told "Just one more update before we reveal everything to you. Really!" While Escape from Lion's Arch was said to be the penultimate living story release for Scarlet's plot line, now that Battle for Lion's Arch is out, it's been said that there will be some sort of epilogue on the 18th. Whee! The zone activities are kind of a mess, and Arenanet has been scrambling to adjust the way credit are rewards are given for several of the key events. In what feels a strange design choice, there's a map-wide event that requires coordination and timing to get to a major battle that sort of leads into a solo instance with the finale - or you can go straight into that instance with a shortcut and be confused at the state of things. Well, the Mordremoth theory I referenced/mentioned seems to be supported. Though I have to say, the first time I saw the end cinematic I thought the "jungle" scene looked like a "sea

Well, I'm glad the Escape from Lion's Arch phase in GW2 is ending - I'm a little tired of that, even though it did allow quick completion of March monthlies with a large concentration of enemies, events, and counting as a "dungeon." I have plenty of materials for an ascended back piece, but not the skill for it yet. Heh. "Battle for..." starts tonight, and sounds like it requires some coordination (complete three events "simultaneously" to open the actual assault on Scarlet), which means it'll probably only be feasible during peak hours for the first week or so in a non-overflow server instance. Whee. It sounds like actual story closure is coming on the 18th rather than this week, though. After the last anime series proved short and, while not bad, a little disappointing, I ended up getting into Log Horizon . Is "players are mysteriously drawn into an MMO for real" a genre of its own yet? This one takes shades of Maoyuu or Spi