Redwolf's Journal (continued)

First it felt like some TV show, with a couple guys showing off all the great features in a large house. When they said it only listed for half a million dollars, I laughed. In retrospect, a house like that would probably be twice as much easily here. Heh. Then I was running off to class in some sort of Wing Commander academy. After class, we were assigned to simulated battles, in which I teamed up with my class friend and a couple others set to be in the Kilrathi opposition force. With lighter fighters equipped with cloaking devices, we managed to outmaneuver my class nemesis and destroy the Confed ship they were escorting. Woo!

After a stressful end of last week at work, Saturday was welcome. Unfortuntely, when trying to take a nap in the afternoon, I got a call from someone who was locked out of their account. Of course, by the time I got up, remote connected from home, and checked, the automatic lockout had already expired... Then I was awakened Sunday morning because the phones in the office were down - that one I had to go in to fix, even if it was simple. Unfortunately, that's also recurring. Ugh. And Sunday night, I wrap up my night with reports that one of our pages isn't showing up at the printer. @.@ Got that fixed too, but just... ugh... I need a vacation that I can't really take right now...

August 30th. Well, I initially thought any time before June was unrealistic. August seems doable. Considering 6.2 was the last major content release in... uhh... June of last year... it's also too long. Technically the shortest time between expansion releases, but tied for longest between last raid patch and next expansion (14 months, tied with Warlords of Draenor). For a company that has been saying they're trying to push content out faster for years, that's... typical (bad). Of course, when it comes out, what it is will matter more than the time involved. But until then... gonna be playing other things.

I wasn't going to play Tom Clancy's The Division . A modern third-person shooter is fine. Online-only play and instanced zones is not any sort of big plus, though pretty standard these days. But being built toward group play put me off. I don't have any squad of regularly friends to play these games with, and even if I did have the people/connections, the timing is difficult to work out. Buuut, someone on Faire talked it up, so I gave it a chance. Within the framework of what it is, the game is pretty good. Most of it can be played solo - to the point I did the entire storyline and have run hard (but not challenging) difficulty missions all by myself. Being grounded in a "realistic" setting is limiting, but there's a decent variety of looks and item models. I'd like to see a little wider variety of enemies, but what's there is serviceable. When you hit level 30, advancement is a gear-based thing, much like most MMO's or Diablo or (I presume) De...

Huh. I've been a bit tuned out of the meta-level news for the game. Really, I've only been logging in briefly once a day to grab a reward box and then a couple hours on Sundays to do guild missions. I've pretty much decided that I won't be raiding, so there's not much else to really work toward in the game that interests me. I haven't even gone back and done the Mordremoth fight again. So I'm a little surprised to hear Arenanet recently announced they were halting development on the new round of legendary weapons. They were planning to release a hold new set over the course of HoT, but have only done a few so far. Instead, they've said they're trying to shift focus back to Living Story content. I sort of approve of that decision, because the game really does need some more content at this point that isn't a raid. At the same time, I can totally understand how disappointing that can be to people and how it can seem like a betrayal when "n...

Once again casting about for distractions, I found the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. bundle on Steam relatively inexpensive. There are some good reviews out there. After my experience with Far Cry 2, I was wary, though. So... this is about what you get if you take Fallout 3, remove the quirky sense of humor, add a little more color variety to the palette, replace advancement with survival-style elements, and maybe knock the graphics down a peg or two. I find it kind of strange that Shadows of Chernobyl (the first of the games) is as engrossing as it is. The story's sort of weak so far (several hours in, but not complete). Without any sort of XP system, there's very little incentive to do "side" missions. With scarcity of ammo, weight of gear, and wear to weapons/armor, there's actually incentive to avoid most of them. The only improvement to be found is better weapons and armor, and even then things feel more "realistic" than most games. Even with a scope (which h...

Weekend - too short. D&D - I'm stunned at how much shady, suspicious stuff can happen without revealing any actually-damning evidence of wrong-doing. I don't believe for a moment that Shirhan (sp?) is actually innocent, but even getting into the fight he coooould just be defending himself. Zootopia - It's a little frustrating that most of my friends still haven't seen this movie. It's also mind-boggling to hear more and more about the movie it started out to be and how much things changed. To think things almost went "I can't believe that's Disney" levels of dark... just wow. I find it a little interesting, but I'm sooo glad the creators managed to find a new direction. Far Cry 2 - My first "request a refund" on Steam. The game seems to have a good reputation, but... ugh. Just getting through the intro drive, the game was buggy, with character models bouncing as if on a trampoline. The first 20-30 minutes of play felt rough...