Sleepypete's Pillow

If you've played the original Starcraft you've basically played Starcraft 2 – just with better graphics this time.

The best thing I found about it was the animated cut scenes which were very impressive. The game-play? Not so much…..

Nooo !!!

The Minecraft Threadnaught is under careful observation, with occasional addition of comment to feed the wildlife. But I don't think I'll go anywhere near downloading the client …

Sleepypete

You could try Minecraft! :p You must have seen the thread on the forums.

Volition Cult Multiplayer Server:

http://www.eve-volt.net/smf/index.php?topic=5533.0

Regards
Stone

I’m getting closer to actually 100% owning my car now.

I got it 3 years ago in a bit of an emergency buy. My previous car (a Ford Puma) had given me quite a few years of excellent service but it hit its wall at about 70,000 miles. Before that, hardly anything needing attention at the annual service. After that, all sorts of mechanical mayhem started happening. Power steering pump was the start but by the end, the braking system was totally shot with something weird happening with the anti-lock system and a complete failure of the handbrake. Not good if you park on a hill at work (other car park to the one I use now).

So, a couple of years after it started to collect faults, I switched to what I have now. My Focus isn’t a bad car, it’s actually been pretty good. However. It’s bigger than I like a car to be, so the 2 litre 170bhp engine doesn’t actually turn into much Go. At the same time, those 2 litres gobble petrol. The little things are starting to go too, like a rear wheel that leaks air. That’s not so bad, I have a compressor to pump the tyre up when it goes flat. I may also be allergic to the car. Weird as that sounds, weird is a total fit for me.

The big thing that shattered my confidence in my Focus was the inlet manifold failure last year. You don’t expect car stopping failures in modern cars, although you probably should because of the increase in built in complication. What was the response from the garage ? I bought a supposedly all in warranty with the Focus and still had to pay the £550 for the fix. I’ll put this in Big Letters :

Buy a CARCRAFT extended warranty and it will mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Everything that breaks will be classified under “fair use”, which translates to “You Pay”.

Very disappointed, I will not be returning to Carcraft after the last paid for service.

So – what’s next ? I’m keeping an eye on the Green Car Site. The people who run that collect as much information as they can about electric cars, biofuel cars, green cars and most interesting for me, hybrid cars. It’s a decent mine of information, with just enough in there to let you know what’s around. I’ve pretty much decided that my next car will be a hybrid. I’m very much interested in being as efficient as possible and the energy storage thing that comes with hybrid cars.

There’s just one problem. Hybrids are currently coming in 2 categories. Slow and highly efficient is the first, that’s where Toyota’s hybrid flag bearer (Prius) fits in. The other category is Hot Muscle Roadburner. That’s cars like the upcoming Infiniti M35h, looking on Greencarsite they’re claiming 0 to 60 in 5.5secs while still doing more miles to the gallon than my Focus and also kicking out less nasty CO2.

I’d love a car like that ! Or the Lexus G450h (link to Lexus site) which is on the market now. Just one problem, I’m not going to spend £46,000 on a car. I’m very wary about spending up to £20,000 on a Honda CR-Z.

That’s what I will probably end up with – Honda’s CR-Z (Honda site). The raw numbers suggest it’s not as fast as I would like, plus the reviews are mixed. Some are stellar, some are poor. I’ll treat them with the respect I usually give to reviews, I’ll make my own mind up judged on what I think of the reviewer. I miss my Puma, it was an excellent little grownup go-kart. The CR-Z promises to be something similar.

We shall see ! I have 2 more months now until the loan finishes and then I’m free to move from Speculation to being more free about checking stuff out.

Sandra – the pvp has improved too … Dunno if you did Wintergrasp but there's also Tol Barad now for what's effectively world pvp. Few more battlegrounds too joining AB and WSG, although I've not been in those too much.

Tol Barad gives a good rush from its general total Mayhem 🙂

CK – yeah, I'd been checking it out from watching the videos done by Totalbiscuit. Looks a fairly even game but I have a feeling it would go the same way as most other RTS games I play. As in, "Ooo ! Shiny !" straight to "meh"

Starcraft 2 is disapointing. We got bored with it fairly quickly….

Oh, i miss wow. And i also enjoyed pvp in wow before i left. I wish the days had more hours in them! Then i could return. 🙂
Have fun playing Ice!

Been busy in the evenings lately but probably busy at all the wrong things 🙂

I’ve been gaming a lot lately and also trying to keep up with all the recorded stuff lately. Babylon5 off dvd has taken a back seat while I try and stay ahead. After a little flurry of book reading, I’ve stalled after starting Inversions by Iain M Banks. It’s not the author’s fault, I’ve just gone SQUIRREL and got distracted by other things.

Like ?

I’ve been back in Warcraft now for the last few months and have been enjoying it far more than my various spells in Eve. The spacer MMO (Eve) tends to be a long tedious grind to support Player V Player (PvP) action. The trouble with Eve’s PvP is that you have to go looking for it. Unless there’s territorial stuff going on (which happens more in the alliance we’re in now), looking for PvP means joining a gang that then goes looking for trouble. Problem there is, trouble either gets caught in the open and annihilated or trouble runs away. The “Rush” that comes in an even fight is quite rare. I don’t find 20 vs 1 fights challenging or interesting.

Warcraft’s PvP is structured differently, at least on the server I play on. It’s based primarily on battlegrounds, which have strict limits on how many can take part. Warsong Gulch is 10 a side and you have to capture the enemy’s flag from their base and take it back to your’s 3 times to win. Arathi Basin is 15 a side and is based on dominating 5 control points. It’s well designed and makes for a dynamic and engaging sequence of play where the “Who’s going to win?” can change very quickly.

It’s the kind of gaming that gets me drawn in and checking when the next Tol Barad (another domination type battleground with 40 a side Total Mayhem) is going to be. It gets the blood flowing.

Oh – it probably feeds the addiction prone tendencies due to the buzz from winning through Burning Stuff. My character plays with Fire and has talents like Firestarter and Pyromaniac. The people who know me personally will have just hidden in concrete flameproof bunkers.

There’s just one problem with Warcraft now – I think I’ve taken my main character as far as it’ll go from what I can do on my own. (1 more upgrade to come) I could hit the dungeon queues to get more Stuff but that tends to lead to frustration due to having the wider Warcraft player base inflicted on you. Most of the players of Warcraft are under the age of 20 and like to act like they’re younger than 10. That “Rush” does funny things to the mind.

That’s why I like to stick to just doing things with the guild, it’s a collection of people who play the game a lot like I do. They play hard but are also prepared to have a laugh. Always have to remember that you’re playing a game, taking things too seriously can put a definite dampener on things. That’s a good attitude to take to everything, always be prepared to laugh at the work in full knowledge that the world will not hesitate to laugh at you if you let it. The Warcraft people are better than the Eve people. Eve people like to think they’re a better class of player but it doesn’t show when playing with them. Except for the Volition Cult corp, they break the mould by being good to be around.

Laughing at our mistakes helps us pick ourselves up when we’re down. Plus it helps reinforce a bit of “yeah, I’m whinging but I’m not whinging at you”. A few of our people at work are getting a lot of stick right now because we’ve just introduced a new information management system which wasn’t ready. Not their fault but they’re the closest people to us so they’re the ones who get their ears bent over it.

Need a game ?

I’ve hit that point again where I’ve got a bit bored with the games I have and need something new. I have my Formula that beats Settlers IV. My Krogans are unbeatable in Moo2 if the start is good, my Sectoids are even better despite the start they get. Civ 4 is too big scale a game to play casually. Just finished another Mass Effect run. Warcraft is good but too much of a good thing makes the good thing go stale.

Starcraft II is looking like a contender, I’ve gone big into real time strategy games in the past. Plus there is also a case for letting the brain cool down a bit by reading a book instead of having to keep up with twitchgaming.

Ha – it’ll cool down even more in the summer when cricket comes round again 🙂 I’m smart but when I start running around something happens in my head that means I have trouble counting even to 6 (balls in an over). Or I let the random thoughts spill out of my head like in a blog post like this one 🙂

One thing I will hope to do is have fewer late evenings getting home. That’s not just work, it’s things like heading off to the Mall for emergencies. But it would be good to have 6 hours to myself in the evening instead of just 4 plus what I sneak in after midnight.

How long until the next Tol’Barad ? Must go check 🙂

Yeah – if it's a boring task that can be got out of the way quickly, that's great. Do 'em, forget about 'em, on to the next thing 🙂

Priority is a tricky question when it comes to work. The only rule i have for myself is to start with the most boring tasks, since if i start with the fun ones (that one can get lost in for ages) the dull ones kind of keep knocking on the shoulder and hangs there like the darkest cloud forever and ever!