Monthly Archive for February, 2008

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A Model Husband

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 girlgrrl… 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.

Down on the Farm

My friend Charlie has one of the best farming/powerleveling characters in City of Heroes. I say that with no hyperbole; it may be mathematically impossible to beat his build. He has the standard Fire/Kinetics/Fire Controller farmer, and he has every purple ultra-rare enhancement that he needs. To translate for players of other games, he has the best possible equipment, and there is an endlessly repeatable group quest that his class can solo with ease.

His girlfriend Nicole complements this with a character that could otherwise be suboptimal. Archery Blasters are not that popular, but they do come with the perfect nuke for farming: Rain of Arrows. I do not know her slotting (she must have her own set of purples by now), but between her powers and his buffs, her recharge on Rain of Arrows is twenty seconds at the most. Because of his Fulcrum Shift, she can live at the damage cap. While he is crushing one group, she takes out the next one in two attacks. Re-Fulcrum Shift off his next group and continue.

My latest character (Sonic/Sonic Defender) makes this even faster. When you are at the damage cap, enemy resistance debuffs are the only way to increase your damage further. Negative resistance becomes a damage multiplier. Disruption Field on the Controller, Howl at the enemies, and they are at -50% resistance. Add another nuke, plus some shields to deal with return fire.

Farming can be exceedingly dull and repetitive, but it hardly has time to when it goes that fast.

: Zubon

Exit Marvel, Enter Champions

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.

Historical L33t

IM- and chat-speak are not the wave of the future. They are the wave of the past. Language Log quotes Noah Webster’s proposed spelling changes:

Thus greef should be substituted for grief; kee for key; beleev for believe; laf for laugh; dawter for daughter; plow for plough; tuf for tough; proov for prove; blud for blood; and draft for draught.

They aren’t idiots, they are classicists. I still hate them.

: Zubon

Pimp My Hobbit

Shire Pimp

Clear Communication via Panic

We have not had a dating article in a while, but Ctrl+Alt+Del demonstrates some great advice in a single comic. Flip back another day if you need context.

Do you see what is happening there? They are dealing with an emotional reaction as a mature, reasonable couple. She understands that her initial presentation of the problem may not have been the best, and accepts his reaction. He does not hold it against her, instead pressing for clarity. She provides it. Now that he has a better grip on the situation, he prefaces his emotional response with the appropriate disclaimer, providing context. She understands and sympathizes with his reaction. They will be able to address the matter in more intellectual terms once they work through their initial emotional responses.

Full marks for both parties. This is a good sign for their relationship.

: Zubon

Cease and Desist

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

NASA MMO…EG

As you probably know, NASA recently put out an RFI (Request for Information) regarding the development of a MMOEG (educational game). The deadline for responses was today, at 11:59P Eastern, but it looks like they killed the page early this afternoon (not found) and now the link is password protected. If you didn’t get your submission in before they did this (or at least wrote the right information down) you are probably out of luck.

Anyway, I’ve posted my own thoughts on what NASA might or might not end up with, but I am curious to see what the KTR community thinks. After looking around at random other blogs, reviews, and whatever, I get the feeling that the gamer community, as a whole, may have missed the point about what NASA is looking for and trying to build. Forgive me for not saving the link, but I actually saw some comments on a Second Life blog implying that NASA and Linden Labs (makers of SL) were planning on creating a research company in SL to research the viability of a MMO (??). Even more amusing (or perplexing, depending on your point of view) one commenter expressed some befuddlement at the idea that NASA would consider building a MMO independently and not just build a space station or something within Second Life. (“…”).

What do you guys think?

Safe Hobby

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

New Video Card

Holy crap, is this what the game is supposed to look like? I’m no longer watching a slideshow. I really don’t know how to deal with this. Things are fluid. I can see individual drops of rain and snow in power effects. Some things have entered the uncanny valley, where it is disturbingly no-longer-cartoony and a touch surreal.

(NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 16X PCI Express)

: Zubon