Month: December 2008

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Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.

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Day Jobs

City of Heroes is having a welcome-back weekend to celebrate the release of Issue 13. Even if you are not now interested in playing, if you think you might be in the future, it is worthwhile to log on and shuffle your characters about. Having your characters logged off in many areas can earn you badges, and those badges come with bonuses and powers. Walk your characters to a hospital, train station, or such, and you are golden.

If you happened to have logged at one of those spots, you get retroactive credit for however long you have been logged off. All the characters on my main server were at one … except my main, who was five steps away. Oh well.

Bonus fun: head to Ms. Liberty and time how long it takes you to see Captain America! (Shields are a new power set.)

: Zubon

Never Is, But Always To Be

For those of us fond of allusions, “hope springs eternal” is always a winner. It sounds positive, but it is one of the darkest sentiments you will find. The full quote is:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest

In other words, (vain) hope is all you have; the blessing is never coming, always in the promised future. It gets better: this entire section of the Essay on Man is about how bleak the future is. The lamb frolics in the morning before going to the butcher in the afternoon, licking the hand that raises the knife. This is the kindness of a God who cares no more about the death of a hero or a sparrow, the bursting of a bubble or a world: at least you have fruitless hope and are too ignorant or stupid to see doom coming. This is, by the way, intended as an optimistic argument, because hey, you have that hope, and it will be worse if you ask for more.
Continue reading Never Is, But Always To Be

Ethic Gets Older

It’s birthday time again I see;
Another year’s gone by.
We’re older than we used to be;
The thought could make me cry.
For getting older is not such fun,
When there’s hurting in your back,
And it’s agony if you have to run,
And a pleasure to lie in the sack.
Yes getting older is quite a bore,
But to not get old is worse.
So “Happy Birthday!” let’s shout once more,
And to heck with our ride in the hearse!
– Karl Fuchs

Yes, a pathetic attempt to garner birthday wishes for myself. Sad isn’t it?

– Ethic

Horrors of Design

The flash game challenge of the week at Kongregate is Rage 3. Adventure map 4 exhibits two large, very common problems. First, successive keys are at opposite ends of a large map, so go all the way to the bottom to get the key to open the gate at the top to open the gate at the bottom to open the gate at the top to open the gate at the bottom to open the spring at the top. Second, after doing so, you discover that you must be level 6 to enter the last boss’s room. There is not enough experience in the entire adventure game to bring you to level 6. You must either grind the map a few times or play the arcade mode to build up experience. Grinding, in a platformer. Also, mention the level requirement before sending someone all the way to the bottom to get the key to open the gate at the top to open the gate…

: Zubon

Obsessed with Poo

What’s in the water down in Irvine? We have ignored the signs for so long. It all began with that (presumably) Dwarf stuck in the outhouse in Searing Gorge. A predicament, but one easily solved by some mass murdering in the area. Proximity to poo: close.

Then Burning Crusade regaled us with the wonderful quest experience of having to dig through twenty bundles of gazelle crap in Nagrand to look for digested cherry seeds. Yum, amirite? Proximity to poo: touch. Unless you RP’d using a stick to sift through the things, which many a roleplayer has done, as I understand it.

Now come Northrend, I’ve taken part in two of these high-class adventuring quests. One in Borean Tundra where you not only have to administer (by way of tossing) a powerful laxative to some wolves so they can evacuate important microfilm fragments, which of course you have to sift through. Proximity to poo: touch. Again. Then in Grizzly Hills not only you eat a bunch of seeds, maliciously tempted by a yellow exclamation sign, but you then have to remove those seeds from the digestion equation by means of yet another laxative. This time one you must prepare and ingest yourself. Then you go to an outhouse, and in between aoe’s of mist and mini-earthquakes (I kid not) you emerge triumphant holding what laid hidden in your detritus: partially digested seed. Proximity to poo: touching. Touching your own poo, man. Far out.

Of course the seeds go back in the bucket for the next trusting soul to pick. It’s the cycle of life. And this is only at level 74 or so. What lies next? Is Kel’Thuzad, well, ‘blocked’? Gotta do something about that too? Do we find out about the Lich King’s irregularity? Is this what the plague was really all about?

One thing’s for sure, Blizzard sure loves shitty quests.

A PvP MMO Subscription

I really like Warhammer Online.  Sure, it has its problems, but Mythic seems truly dedicated to the game (unlike some other newer MMOs).  It has some level of PvE, but I have Lord of the Rings Online for PvE.  Public Quests, I hope, will shape the future of MMO PvE content, but Mythic has laid down the charge that its focus is RvR.  So, I really only use the game for MMO PvP.  And, that’s the problem.  I am subscribing to a PvP MMO. Continue reading A PvP MMO Subscription

The Languor Of A Long Distance Runner

When I’m not playing MMOs, I’m taking part in MMOs – Mountain Marathons Outdoors. (Okay, I admit it, that was poor. I was trying to be clever – something my wife repeatedly tells me to stop doing as it never ends happily.) I love running but after getting bored of the usual 5km and 10km road races, decided to find some events that would push me that much further. Mountain Marathons are a two day endurance event where you and a team-mate pack all the stuff you’ll need for a weekend (compass, food, tent, clothes etc) and race across mountains. (UK readers may recall some news items at the end of October about runners getting “lost” in the Lake District during some bad storms – that was one of these events).

Anyway, the point of all this self aggrandisement is a chance to share some photos. Oh, and also to tell you about the last time I logged into LOTRO.

I haven’t played LOTRO in a while now, despite the fact that I’ve got a lifetime subscription and despite the fact that, on the whole, I quite like the game and think that Turbine have done a very good job with recreating Middle Earth and the experience of actually being there. They paid attention to every last detail that was put on paper by Prof. Tolkien.

Right on down to the endless running.
Continue reading The Languor Of A Long Distance Runner