Monthly Archive for February, 2008

One of the huge, huge advantages of being married to a gamer grrl is, when Valentine’s comes around, the ability to skip the flowers, the chocolate, the Hallmark moment and all those other embarassing, passé 20th century moments and get her something she would really love. If said girl … grrl… also happens to have her birthday within a month of that auspicious pagan celebration, well, you can really go for the big guns.

I wall-hacked her heart and captured the flag of her love by getting her one of these. It looks really good compared to the old Cantankerous Radiation Tube, it has tons more screen real space on the sides (which is nice, because she can finally tell when she’s being flanked and killed, something that happens an average of ~7 times a day) and it looks really neat on her desk, which I’m told is very important.

Guild Wars looks really nice in it, which is quite fortunate because that’s basically all we’ve been playing since around last July. It would have been heartbreaking had it looked bad. Like giving her a card that says “Happy Valentine’s Anastasia” when her name is really Denise, Beatrice or Her Unholy Grace Xinissa, Reaper of Agony (yes, she roleplays too). Would have been an awkward moment.

And yes I got one of them for me too, put it on the same card, and had them delivered at the exact same time, but dagnabbit that is not the point here. The point is that gamer grrls deserve only the best. She’s happy because she has a great new toy. I’m happy because she’s distracted and I can keep courting all those other tons of women I have. Well, I don’t really have, it’s more of a thing in progress. I mean, I was thinking about it. In a dream I had. Only once, yeah.

P.S.: Newegg, you rock, but tell the UPS guys to take it easy with the LCD panels, hmm? Mine arrived with a nice bump and crack on the plastic side, and if you tilt it you can hear something small and loose on the inside. It still works by the grace of Cthulhu.

This is actually sort of old news, but I wanted to wait until there was more useful information to post. Microsoft officially canceled the Marvel MMO that Cryptic had been developing for them. Cryptic has turned around and partnered with Hero Games, creators of the Champions tabletop RPG and retooled what was going to be the Marvel game to be a Champions Universe game. There’s now a website for the game, and it looks pretty spiffy. Their feature list and dev blogs read like the Requested Features section of the CoH forums, with things like power customization, AT-separate power picks (but not an entire lack of ATs, which is odd), loot (which apparently doesn’t obscure your costume), more action-based gameplay, etc. Amusingly, the game won’t be based directly off of the tabletop system, but after the MMO is released, there’s a plan to release either a conversion kit or something similar to port characters from the MMO back to the tabletop RPG.  It’ll be interesting to see what they actually manage to pull off and what’s pie-in-the-sky.  Regardless, good luck to them.

Scott Jennings has been asked to take down a picture of a kitten. Wait, no, that can’t be right. Conveniently, there is an explanation. And more details at many sites. I would link to all of them, but that just makes it more convenient for the next round of cease and desist orders. But if you lose one, you can find others. In the comments?

: Zubon

Remember, no matter how badly tonight’s raid goes, no one in your group will accidentally slash open your carotid artery. It’s a scary world out there, and you are only safe in your computer chair.

: Zubon