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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

Ozzie’s in a pickle!

Guess what game I bought myself for an early holiday gift? The title should give it away, more than likely. It’s making my MMORPG vacation due to traveling on work so much less painful.

Much geek love for this finally coming to portable. This, Secret of Mana, and Earthbound were my all-time favorite SNES games growing up. I’ve very nearly bought one of those emulator kits for my DS simply so I could play these games. With this release, I see the possibility for Secret to follow (Children of Mana was horribly disappointing) and perhaps, dare I dream, Earthbound. Ness, Randi, and Crono are the three kings of RPG history…

Comic Book Bleg

I have a few long-boxes of comic books I want to get rid of, mostly from the 1990s. Is there an orthodox way of doing so in this modern digital age? Ebaying one at a time, or even in batches, seems like a lot of work for limited return. Swinging by the local comic shop seems like very little work for almost no return. Our audience seems like the sort that must have encountered this problem sometime.

Oh, and have you seen comic book legends revealed? That one’s for you, Hudson!

: Zubon

Efficient Trolling

Arnold Zwicky blogs at Language Log (and if you read only one linguistics blog, it should probably be Language Log). Earlier this year, he wrote about caring for his late partner Jacques. Jacques had brain cancer, and the best treatment available only moved him from impending death to inevitable dementia, an Alzheimer’s-like decline a decade down the line. Arnold spent twelve years caring for him.

This appeared on a linguistics blog because of Jacques’s particular problem: avoidance of evidence that he was in California. I encourage you to read the whole thing. He could read normally, but he could not consciously process the word “California” if it implied that Jacques himself was in California. For him, license plates were blocked, news reports were garbled, and postcards were illegible, but only the parts implying that he was in California. National news that mentioned California would have been fine; you could see those anywhere. His brain was effectively reading ahead, recognizing the word and the context, blocking it from his conscious awareness, and then rationalizing why the word was not there.

Prof. Zwicky has some comments about similar dementias. Others in the comments share their stories about caring for family members and their cases of implicit and explicit awareness. The dialogue draws out more details. It is a heart-rending account of loss.

And then one commenter tossed in, “TL;DR” Five characters, and I wanted to track the IP to put a brick through someone’s window or skull.

: Zubon

The Eregion Chapters

I am really digging the Mines of Moria expansion for Lord of the Rings Online, and I have barely scratched the surface.  I started as a level 48 Captain, which got me a little worried.  Turbine seemed to sense the need for more intermediate content and created Eregion (level 48-53).  This got Ravric, Foe of Night up to level 51 with a crit-monster legendary halberd, Meticulous Owl.  The quest design in the first Mines of Moria region is absolutely fantastic, and it truly shows how masterful Turbine can be. Continue reading The Eregion Chapters

Reading – The Lost Art

First off, I’d like to say I blame WoW for this. As a player who played it for three years, I know what I’m talking about. WoW caters to entry-level players, and not reading quest text in WoW was par for the course – in fact, there’s an option to make it display instantly so you can close it right away, and most did. There’s one quest that even mocks this trend, by saying in the quest text “Blah blah you’re not even reading this anyway”. As an Old School(tm) Quester, back in the days of Everquest, you had to read the text carefully. Those devs were devious in their writing, and the hint for the quest was likely buried deep in the words spewed by the NPC. (They relished in this, they told me several times) This said, I miss the days when people would at least try to figure things out for themselves. I took the week off last week and got a good bit of playtime in on the Lord of the Rings expansion. The quests are well written, simple, and literally lead you around the land, telling a story, with multiple quests usually having you kill in the exact same area. There was only one item in days of questing I couldn’t find from reading the text (which was a paragraph or two at most). From the advice channel, you’d think you needed Indiana Jones to find the target. And even worse, you’d see the same question mere seconds after the last one was asked, and you know that person had to be in the zone at the time.

I wonder if they drive around town shouting out of the window “Hey, where is the Taco Bell?” to passers-by.