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Wait and See

I will not play Age of Conan or Warhammer Online on launch day. I am taking a wait and see attitude on new games. Prove to me you are worth playing and I will play. Blind faith and hope are not rewarded.

There is no rush. A good game will be around for many years. The longer you wait, the more content gets added. A lot of folks are getting worked up about Age of Conan’s early access program. They have a limited number of slots and they can’t handle more, because they are not prepared. You do not want to be a part of that. Besides, what is the rush? Seriously, it’s not that important.

Relax.

– Ethic

C8H10N4O2

When using caffeine, your target dose is 100mg. This may vary based on body size and tolerance, but 100mg is an average effective dose. You get this from one cup of coffee (mug-sized), one espresso, three cans of cola, two cans of Mountain Dew, or ten candy bars. It should take effect in about 15 minutes and ward off sleepiness for about 4 hours.

If you can, save caffeine use for when you need it. Complete tolerance develops somewhere in the neighborhood of 1g per day. At that point, you need the caffeine to function properly, and you will go into withdrawal without it. Mild overdose begins around 300mg (remember that it wears off and no longer “counts” after four hours), and 10g is the average amount to kill a human. That is about five liters of espresso, so you are unlikely to reach 10g without pills.

If you are staying up late playing, make sure that you are not too drowsy to tank. Caffeine does not counteract the effects of alcohol. An awake drunk is still drunk, and if you are too drunk to drive, you are too drunk to heal me.

: Zubon

Information taken from Alertness Solutions, Wikipedia, and reading the sides of cans.

Hobbits on Parade

(I was so tempted to make a “Return of the King” rhyme, but managed to hold back. Thank me later)

Ah, long has passed since I last had enough time to post here, and much has happened. In a good and bad way, perhaps, most of this has been out in Real Life ™, and has kept me from playing. Now that I have a few moments here and there to play, I’m not looking as much to WoW as I used to. I have a good raiding guild there to work with, but the Sunwell content seems fairly flat, and I’ve not seen one thing coming in the expansion that interests me at all. So on the suggestion of a friend, I took my precious few hours of free time last week to an old place I’d been before, Middle-Earth.

Continue reading Hobbits on Parade

Prepositions

If you want to trade x for y, it means that you have x and wish to acquire y. To take the classic Settlers of Catan example, if you have wood for sheep, that means that you have lumber which you wish to exchange for someone else’s livestock. You can make “for” work in the opposite direction by saying you wish to receive sheep for wood, but please do not let this advanced example confuse you.

FAQ

Q: How about WTT STICKS 4 STONES? That’s “four” not “for,” so it means I have the rocks, right?
A: I will end you and all you love.

: Zubon

Jalum reviews Conan

No, you don’t know who Jalum is. He’s an old friend from Asheron’s Call, one of the big PvPers on Morningthaw from back in the day. He tried out the Age of Conan “beta after it has gone gold.” He was not pleased.

While I don’t think we’ve been Flagshipped, we’ve definitely been Vanguarded.
…
The very first thing is that you will need a Crysis capable system to play this game as you see it in the nice videos and screenshots. My friend has a Crysis capable system and he says the game is gorgeous. I don’t, and it looks like [oh yeah, there is some harsh language in his comments].
…
So there are level 20 guards in this city. You can attack them, and they will kill you. This is not necessarily a problem by itself. However, combine that with the fact that there are quests that spawn hostile NPCs in the city who attack you AND the fact that all melee attacks are little AoE attacks and we have a problem. … a drunk pirate jumps my friend, and in defending himself, he clips a wandering guard with one of his swings. After my friend rezzes, we head off to do our first quest together.

I trust his opinion on PvP games, but this one died for him long before PvP became an issue. You can check out the full thing here.

: Zubon

Oatbarton

The Shire juts into the next zone. Oatbarton is on the Evendim map but counts as The Shire, a little agricultural village on the edge of danger. It explains so much. Back south, there is a deed with the Crop Saviour title for killing oversized flies. I see why that could be an issue for a farming community. Then you cross the zone border and see a farm swarming with level 28 locusts. “Kill them while they’re young” may not have been fully effective.

The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ has no loading screens between zones. You just walk from The Shire into Evendim. This means that you are running past level 10 bears and goblins, which were formidable at the time, and then into a field with stealthed level 28 wolves. Ouch. (The Bree/Lone Lands border has a similar effect, where the level 10 goblins mix with the level 20s.) There is also a herd of elk around town, using the same model as the level 1 deer. They are herd animals, so aggroing one can lead to a very messy incident with a lot of very angry elk. This is not a threat I expected amongst the minions of Mordor.

: Zubon

On Not Reading

I am enjoying The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢, but I find myself not reading all the quest text. At first this was because I had read it during beta, and I needed to consciously remind myself to stop and read new stuff. Habit is a great deadener. Then I stopped caring about why this particular person needed me to kill ten boars. And it usually is boars, sometimes wolves or birds.

Look, I understand that I am doing the Epic Side Quest while Frodo carries The One Ring, and I get to maintain the home front and be a distraction from the real battlefront. Fine. But I am repeatedly being sent on quests for food, including one hobbit who sent me a zone-and-a-half for oatmeal. Oatmeal! The woman next him wants me to slaughter evil birds so that she can stuff pillows with their feathers. First, are craban feathers really the best substitute for fluffy down; more importantly, has she not heard about The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢’s famous chickens? I vaguely worry that I am missing some good and interesting writing when I skip through it, but I see a title (“Thin the Wolf Pack”), an objective (“bring 8 wolf teeth”), and I know the pattern. Orcs or bears attacked you, spiders ate your dog, I get it.

Please let me know if there is quest text really worth reading beyond the epics (and I have my questions there).

: Zubon

See? Blizzard learns

Hey, like the Brontosaurus sometimes, but better late than never. WotLK info from Bliz, via WoW Insider :

  • All 5-man dungeons will have a Heroic mode
  • Heroic dungeons will have a separate loot table than non-Heroics
  • A new token system will be used, similar to the Badge of Justice one used now (*)
  • The 5-man instances are designed to not take more than an hour (*)
  • All raid dungeons will have both 10-man and 25-man versions (*)
  • The 10 and 25-man progressions will not depend on each other (*)
  • There will be no attunements or keys necessary for any raid (*)
  • The 25-man loot will be a tier higher than the 10-man loot
  • The 10 and 25-man versions of the same raid will be on different timers so that each can be attempted on the same day by the same people (*)

I know a couple hundred people that will be happy.

(*): A lot of people (myself included) have been asking for something like this – or very, very similar – for two years now. This is Bliz, opening the cage of raiding and letting it out to play with everybody. Designing for the 1% was, and is, just bull. Grats on this one go to Irvine.

P.S.: Tempted to explain why each of those points is a very good thing, but I trust our readers don’t really need any explanation. Plus, people always tell me I type and talk too much.

Issue 12 Quality of Life Improvements

Yes, the upcoming issue (now in open beta) includes a new zone and task force, villain epic archetypes, and power set proliferation. But have you seen the quality of life changes? The patch notes for just that section run 1,421 words, with more in the full notes. They include saving local settings (for importing to your next alt), saving notes and ratings for other players, more power trays and interface options, revamped chat and hide systems, linkable item and power names (like most new games have), more combat attribute window options, in-depth power information, a new contact user interface, and a list of smaller changes like map notification of zonewide events. I want to note this one, for lovers of real numbers:

In-Depth Power Information
Detailed Power Information is now available at Power Selection, Level up, Respec, and Enhancement placing screen as well as a new tab in the info window. This information shows the powers basic data along with every effect the power has.

  • There is a slider to see the effect of the power across all levels.
  • There is a class selector to see how the power would perform for each class.
  • There is a PvP toggle to see how powers will change in PvP.
  • Powers that spawn pets will show all powers the pets use and their effects.

: Zubon

PvMP

Playing The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢, I have really been enjoying the PvP content. This is unusual for me, as I am not a big PvPer. Maybe it will fade, but let me tell you about it.

There is one The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ zone in which people play the monsters. Human-played orcs, uruks, wargs, and spiders (“creeps”) work with similar NPCs and huge trolls to control five keeps. Any player can hit a button to get a level 50 monster. The opposing forces are the normal PCs, the Free People (“freeps”) who unite to dethrone the tyrants of each keep and claim them for the light. This is Player vs. Monster Player (“PvMP”), The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢’s answer to PvP.

Continue reading PvMP