Year: 2008

Got here from Michele. Seems a interesting contrast!

I’m seeing a big contrast between the two multiplayer online games I’ve had a big involvement with :

Eve – the people I know in the game are fantastic people. They make me laugh and the occasional meetings up in the local are good fun. Trouble is, I’m not playing that game any more because I found it extremely tedious.

World of Warcraft – the game up to maximum level is decent, with good variation. Trouble is, because it’s so easy to pick up and play, it gets infested by idiots. And because you’re forced to go in groups to experience the end game content, you have to manage the idiots to be able to play.

So on the one hand – Eve : tedious game, great people
World of Warcraft : good game, tedious people

There are exceptions with Wow – there’s a certain person in VR who I firmly believe is an angel who is visiting us for a little while. Plus there’s the people I started the Mercs with and a few selected others. (The Scottish crowd, the Portuguese group and a few others too). There’s not many of the Guildlink people who I’d pass the time of day with but there’s exceptions there too – Sam, Aella and Tananka, take a bow :-).

What’s prompted this post is a thread by a certain Jacobus Flint (in game Eve name) that made me laugh out loud this morning. I won’t link it cos not many people looking here will have the access to see it and I won’t quote it cos it’s delightfully non-PC.

Morning update – I woke up with my radio alarm that I hadn’t turned off, thought “nah – not getting up yet”. Was rather glad I hadn’t about an hour later as I heard over the radio that England had lost embarassingly again !

That’s the question asked in this Register story that caught my eye … I’ve repeated the first two para’s here :

“Electrical retailer Comet has confirmed what those of us who boast enormous plasma tellys already know – that when it comes to getting your rocks off nothing beats a bit of hot bloke-on-widescreen action.

A survey by the retailer asked 2,000 Brit chaps what would convince them to give up rumpy-pumpy for six months, and no less than 47 per cent said that they’d skip a shag for a 50-in plasma, Reuters notes.”

Are they nuts ? Toys are one thing but I’d much rather have the chance to say “hello” to someone pretty as the first thing I do after waking up in the morning than have the big TV …

That said though, the first thing I do when I wake up tomorrow morning will be to pop downstairs, turn the telly on and promptly fall asleep in front of NZ vs England cricket. And I am thinking heavily about new telly, skybox and speakers … But I’d still prefer having the chance to say “hello” to that pretty person, especially if she likes watching cricket.

Warcraft is pretty addictive, I was well and truly hooked for a couple of years before the last expansion changed the rules around a bit. I still come on to help the guild I started in raids but to be painfully honest, I’m not sure if it’s the guild I started any more. Things change as they grow and we had to grow to get some independence. The alliance we were in became a burden and we had to leave it. Trouble is, since we left, we’ve probably grown too much and we’re not too good at cutting out the people who get in the way.

Which leads to frustration … The way Warcraft is built now, it’s essential that everyone coming along on a raid does their part, be that in following the plan or just plain paying attention. It gets highly frustrating when problems come due to people not following that plan or not paying attention. Which leads to people tearing their hair out, leading to posts like this one.

game ¹ (gm)n.

If the entertainment value of a game gets overridden by irritation with the people you’re playing the game with, then you have to ask if that game is worth playing. A year or so ago, I’d have shrugged off the frustration and gone right back into thumping those monsters. Now, I’m not too sure that it’s worth the bother. Plenty of other things to do out there …

It doesn’t help that my internet connection has gone unreliable. I was kicked off the net for about 15 mins/half an hour earlier, with little to do but fire up iTunes again and listen to some music while watching the modem lights flash.

Looking ahead – it’s the Fryday Morning FatBoy breakfast day tomorrow, which always cheers me up. Must be the bacon – it sends me hyperactive !

(addon) One highlight from tonight though was a conversation with one of our tank characters. He was complementing me on keeping one mob under control all the way through the fight. I think he was impressed that at one point, I had it under control despite not being logged into the game ! Disconnected halfway through but managed to get back in again.

I’m not exactly what you’d call the poster boy for Green issues. I drive, which is something the environmentalists will succeed in banning sooner or later, plus I’ve managed to avoid the craze of energy saving stuff. I leave my PC on all day, taking care not to leave Messenger running on it seeing as MSN seems to be developing a habit of signing in all on its own. At least my PC’s running the BOINC program on it, which means at any one time it’s helping medical research, looking for aliens or running climate models.

The anti-green is changing a little though – I’m down to my last spare lightbulb in my living room, which means energy saving lightbulb ! Comes to something when you have to go green cos you don’t know if you’re going to be able to buy normal stuff.

The next step might be to get a bike … Part of the environmentalist lobby’s not very devious plan is to ban cars by not allowing them to park anywhere. In the next couple of years, I may have to start paying to drive near my work place. Well – after a month or six, the cash spent on a bike will start to be less than what parking would be clocking up.

Gotta run – the Wow people are calling me !

Hmm. Screws could be good. The threads should grip where nails would just slide out.

Prodding’s worked a few times in the past 🙂 I need “maintenance” occasionally on my back cos of a cricket strain, plus my shoulder likes to move itself around trapping blood vessels. A good poking puts things back to where they should be … Which means I get to feel my fingers again !

Try putting it back together with screws, they hold much better. That wind sounds like it’s been using your garden as a play ground!

Thanks for the visit to my blog and hope you get that therapeutic prodding from that nurse soon, though I’m not convinced it will actually work it could have a placebo effect! LOL!

Trying to catch up at the moment. I watch a little too much telly, which gets a little easier now because NCIS has got to the end of its rerun on FX. The list is :

House – 5 a week
Torchwood – 1 a week
UFO – 2 a week, although this is another one that’s finished its re-run
Space 1999 – 1 a week
Atlantis – 1 a week
Jericho – 1 a week

That’s a little too much telly, so I’m starting to try and make a dent in it while not logging back into Wow. There was a chance to hit one of the instances today but people didn’t seem to be going for it an hour ago, so I’m catching up on the telly instead. Telly’s not too healthy but playing on the pooter is even less healthy. I need to get out more.

Last night’s Warhammer was fun, although our GM Aginoth proved yet again that he can be truly eeeevil. There were a couple of “ok – everyone but him leave the room please” moments last night, which is how the GM passes on critical information that the other players can’t know until later. It usually leads to sideways looks between the other players, associated with general “ok – how painfully is that one going to die …” thoughts.

If this is followed by the player going through the phases of rolling up a new character, then you start wondering if there’s any collateral damage happening to the dead-but-we-don’t-actually-know-it-yet character. The character did actually survive – but the player had about an hour thinking that he’d be getting a new one.

Quite happy with the way my boy Leopold is doing, he’s easy to play cos I can play him as a wide eyed kiddy which is precisely what he is. He’s learning though. I getting to like the Warhammer system more too, the more exposure I get to it. It seems to make much more sense as a combat system than the DnD and Vampire systems. There’s not much magic but that helps to keep it nicely rooted in something near to “reality”.

Just had one of those “erm – Sleepy, you should probably look outside at the fence in your garden” emails …

The wind wasn’t too bad for driving in, didn’t see many lorries having trouble but it’s exposed even more of the cowboy antics of the builders I had in ages ago to turn my garden into something maintenance free. Looks like I be buying some bigga nailz soon … Fence panel is fine but the nails weren’t up to the job. Plus I’ll have a few years worth of greenery to clear before putting the panel up again.

I think I need a Machete. And some Napalm would be useful too. Glad I have an understanding neighbour 🙂

Will have to peek at the sky dish too – it’s not receiving all the channels it should, plus recordings have a tendency to jump and skip a bit.

Warhammer gaming tonight – should be good fun. Just finishing up my dinner before heading over there.