Month: October 2008

War’s ups & downs

Posted on by Nimgimli

While playing Warhammer last night I had some quests to do in RvR areas. A few times I ran across a member of Destruction, and we did battle. The experience buffs make a huge difference. I’ve been grinding plague trolls for like 2 weeks (obviously not literally). I’m level 15, they’re level 15. They give 400 experience per kill. Up the road a bit are these pesky sprites that are level 16. They also give 400 experience. When I ran into a level 15 Destruction character and fought him 1 on 1, I got 2000 experience for the kill. Later I encountered a level 17 Destruction character and beat her. 3000+ experience for that. So yeah, the xp buffs make a marked difference.

WARNING: Moping, whining part of the post begins here.

This morning I log in and go back to grinding plague trolls, fantasizing about a day when I can get a group to cap Chapter 7 influence. Then amazingly, more people show up. I join their open group and we churn through stage 1. Finally I’ll be able to do stage 2 on this infernal, hateful, spiteful, vile Public Quest. And then… they all leave. And I’m left alone again doing this quest.

Ah well. I go grind sprites while the trolls reset. At one point two of them attack me. Things are looking bad, so I pop a health potion. “That item cannot be used yet.” WTF? The icon isn’t dimmed, there’s no cooldown timer on it. I try a HoT Potion. “That item cannot be used yet.” Bam. Respawn. *sigh*

At this point I’m not having fun and thinking that maybe cleaning the toilet would be more rewarding than grinding more trolls and sprites. I decide to say the hell with it and move on, leaving Chapter 7 incomplete. And then Mandred’s Hold comes under attack. There’s chatter about it in /regional and I head out there to defend the homeland. Destruction has a sizable force attacking the Keep. Order has… me. At least that I saw.

I try to pick off a straggler but get noticed and killed. Respawn, head into the Postern Door. Destruction is inside but I get up the ramp and aid the NPC Keep Lord in defending as best I can. Still no Order. Destruction pushes up the ramp, I die. Run back…and just as I get to the front gate the guards change to Destruction. Keep is lost.

In /region there’s much moaning and groaning. I give up, go back to finding quests or something to do. Then Destruction hits the other Keep. Much more moaning and hand wringing in /regional, with a side dish of finger pointing. Finally it sounds like maybe someone other than me might actually think about perhaps defending, so I turn around and start running back. But by the time I get into the area, the keep has fallen. More moaning and groaning, and then someone suggests “Well let’s take it back!” but they’re shouted down by some self-professed Leader of Order who explains that its not a good time because there are defenders.

WTF? Isn’t that the BEST time to have a fun battle?

At this point I realize that my day is slipping away and a long unpleasant work week is drawing near and having to work this hard to have fun just isn’t an efficient use of my time, so I log.

Yes, I’m pouting & whining instead of acting. I could’ve shouted down the self-professed Leader or Order. Or I could’ve done what most others did and just let Destruction steam-roll the BO’s and Keeps and keep grinding trolls. But by this point the wind had gone completely out of my sails.

Warhammer is great fun with the planets align and you find a group and there’s some openRvR happening. But for me, that’s maybe 25% of the time that I play. And I’m really starting to question whether its worth $15/month for that 2 hours of real fun I get out of it every week.

Another stroll through Albion

Posted on by Nimgimli

I played another few hours of Fable 2 tonight. I guess it says a lot about the game that 2 hours can go by without me completing a single step of the main quest line, but still having fun.

I bought a couple of vendor stalls, I explored some random caves full of bandits (and dispatched said bandits), I flirted with a dozen villagers, I earned some coin making blades and chopping wood, I gambled that money away, I listened to a Bard’s awful song about me… but I never quite got around to doing the next step of the main quest.

Fun stuff. Feels a bit like a MSORPG (Massively Singleplayer Offline RPG) though I’m not really sure how big the world ultimately is.

More blogrolling

Posted on by Nimgimli

Cleaned up the blogroll some more.

I re-ordered links in reverse alphabetical order. Why? Well I wanted to organize them in some kind of objective fashion, and since almost everyone goes with alphabetical, I figured I’d give the late-alphabet folks some love by moving them to the top for once.

The blogroll is a perpetual work-in-progress. If you want to be on it, or know a blog I should be reading, feel free to leave a comment. Here’s a repost on my criteria for linking to you, reprinted from my last post on the subject:
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If you’re not on there and want to be, drop a comment. My criteria for inclusion on my blogroll are pretty hazy but generally: 1) if you have Dragonchasers on your blog roll, I’ll almost certainly include you unless your blog is actively offensive to me (not very likely). 2) If I read you regularly, I’ll include you as a “public service” for other Dragonchasers readers because I think you rock. 3) If you’re a frequent commenter, I’ll include you as an indication of what great taste in blogs you have. 🙂 Plus I probably read you as well…I often follow links from commenters to check out your blogs.

First Impressions: Rock Band 2 Guitar (PS2/PS3)

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m now the proud owner of a Rock Band 2 Wireless Guitar for PS2 & PS3. Huzzah! Figured I’d list a few impressions.

First, the visuals. The old guitar had an ugly neck & head (it was a kind of “bone” color that really looked like a shade of “this was white once but sat in the room of a heavy smoker for 5 years” yellow) but a plain black and white body. The new guitar has a nice black neck, and the head is a wood grain pattern. The body has a solid white “plate” and the rest is wood grain fading into black around the edges. I’m not a huge fan of the look of the new body, but you *can* get face plates for these things, but I’ve never seen a neck plate.

The guitar once again comes in two pieces, but now there’s a push button so you can remove the head if you need to. The new dongle has 2 USB ports on it; a nice convenience feature for folks with fewer than 4 ports on their consoles.

The new guitar is very quiet: both fret buttons and strum bar. If you like the ‘click’ of some guitars, this might be a problem, but I really appreciate the silence. The strum bar feels very sensitive. It only takes a light touch to get notes to register. The Start button has a ridge of plastic around it making it less easy to hit by mistake. The tilt sensor feels adequate. Honestly the tilt sensor on my old guitar was so borked that I’m not sure what a “good” tilt center feels like. In a silent room you can hear a spring flexing inside the guitar when you move it; I worry a little because it sounds pretty fragile.

Now keep in mind I’m a very casual music-gamer. Since coming back to the genre with RB 2 after a 6 month+ break, I’m still playing on Medium. *pauses to let the laughter die down* 🙂 My set up has audio going from PS3 to an old receiver via digital optical cable, and video to a 52″ LCD via HDMI.

The feature that blows my mind with this new guitar is the auto-calibration. You hold the guitar up to your center speaker and hit a button and let it calibrate the audio, then hold it up to the tv to calibrate the video (via a series of blinding white flashes..those woke me up!). The system “auto-calibrated’ the guitar far differently than I had it manually calibrated, in particular the sound delay.

And OMG! What a difference that made!!!! Suddenly, at least for songs that I know really well, I could play with my ears as well as my eyes. I’ve always taken it for granted that you almost had to ignore the beat of the music and play these games by watching when the notes crossed the strum bar. What a fool I’ve been!! So I fired up Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up”, an oldie that is burned into my brain, and I can actually look away during certain passages when I know the note is going to stay the same. I can play the song by ear and by feel, and damn, but that feels great! When I make a mistake, I know I made a musical error, not a ‘screen reading’ error (where I fail to correctly anticipate when the game expects me to hit the note). I got a 98% of “Pump It Up” the first time I’ve played it. I know I know, it’s still on Medium so I’m a noob, but now I see how I could get better by learning the songs better.

So is it worth it to get a new guitar to go with your new game? In my opinion, absolutely. The instrument feels a lot better made and more sensitive (though it may be a bit more fragile, too). And if you have a mixed setup like I do, the calibration tool alone makes the purchase worthwhile.

Important info for Fable 2 players

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m at work so can’t wall o’ text ya, but saw this in an RSS feed and figured it was worth sharing asap:

Fable II players report game breaking glitch – Xbox 360 Fanboy

The glitch occurs during the quest called “Monk’s Quest,” in which players are tasked with speaking to the Abbot of the Temple of Light in Oakfield. Apparently, if players run into the temple, begin the conversation with the Abbot, and then leave the region before the conversation is finished, they are be unable to resume the quest, thus preventing them from completing the main story.

Fable 2 First Impressions

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last night I finally got a chance to get in some quality time with Fable 2. Before I get into that, I have to say XBox 360 #3 performed flawlessly (*knock on wood*) and is a lot quieter than the first two I’ve had. I didn’t hate using the 360 last night, and its been quite a while since I could make that claim.

So let’s get the bad out of the way first. Fable 2 could use a final run through the polishing cycle. It feels a bit rough in some pretty subtle ways. You can often get ‘stuck’ for a moment on a small change in height of the terrain, for instance (there’s no Jump so normally you just step up automatically). It can feel “fiddly” targeting a specific individual in order to interact with them.

I’d heard there was treasure underwater at times, and I’d envisioned swimming down, breath bar dwindling, exploring the bottom of a lake. Instead, you swim on the surface until you see a DIVE icon floating over the surface of the water, at which point you hit A and your character vanished below the surface then reappears with treasure. It works but feels like a missed opportunity.

These are certainly not game breakers, though. On the positive side, the game looks very nice and I’m really enjoying the voice acting. There’s a ton of stuff going on all around you and towns really do feel “alive” in many ways. Combat is still simple at my low “level” but that doesn’t prevent it from feeling fun and satisfying. The story hasn’t really gotten underway, but feels like it has potential.

A lot of fuss was made about your dog in the previews, and it was warranted. You know how most games indicate enemies near by via “combat music” starting to play? In Fable 2, you know there’s danger near because your dog starts growling and barking. This sounds trivial but it makes a huge difference to me. Feels very immersive. And your pup does all the nit-picky exploration for you, too. No need to look into every little crack and crevice; if there’s treasure in there your dog will point it out to you.

The only major downside for me is the glowing quest trail thingie. At all times, there’s a glowing trail showing exactly where you need to go. This isn’t a bad feature, but I’m a bad player. I feel like I’m being nagged by it, so rather than wander around and explore I find myself constantly chasing the trail. You can make it dimmer, or even turn it completely off. I’m going to try playing that way next time, and see how much of a chore turning it on and off is. In an ideal world, there’d bit a quick button press to toggle it.

Again, this isn’t a generalized complaint about the game; its more a psychological glitch in my internal systems. Nothing in the game prevents you from totally ignoring the glowy trail and doing whatever you want. But I just find its constantly tugging at me, urging me to stop messing about and get on with things.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of what I know is in the game (from reading about other’s experiences) and I can’t wait to dig deeper in. I don’t own a home or have a wife yet. I don’t own any businesses. I still only know one spell. I did take on a job as a blacksmith for a while; this exists in-game as a mini-game of timed button presses that felt curiously satisfying. I was even excited to get a promotion. 🙂

So far, so good. I’m not loving it as much as some people who are totally over-the-moon about the game; at least not yet. But it’s definitely an awful lot of fun so far. Let’s hope it holds up!

Couples Counseling for me & 360

Posted on by Nimgimli

XBox 360 and I have had a long and stormy relationship. I first began courting her six months before her coming out soiree. In spite of this early attention, upon her debut her dance card was too full to fit me in. I had to settle for dating her skinny cousin, XBox Core, for a few weeks.

Eventually though, she found her way into my arms, and I took her home with me. The first blush of love is such a heady intoxicant. We spent evening after evening racing around ridges, enjoying each other’s company. In the following months our appetites for adventure grew, and our games became more and more exotic and edgy.

But then something changed in our relationship. I became increasingly aware of how loud she was, and her propensity for scratching disks when angry grew irksome. I had never been a fan of her father, Microsoft, who I still think of as something of an evil empire kingpin.

I confess, I eventually starting seeing another. I met PS3 and she was quiet and elegant. Her interests were not as diverse, I’ll admit, but what we shared was quite enjoyable. And oh! How she loved movies!!

And then one day, 360 refused to budge. I coaxed and prodded her, but nothing I could do would get her going anymore. I sent her off to a clinic, at a cost of $100. She was gone for a solid month and I got used to not having her around. When she finally returned, we were distinctly cool towards each other. She had gotten quieter, and no longer scratched disks when angry, but I was so enraptured with PS3 I found it hard to make time to spend with 360.

Nearly a year passed before I courted her again, inviting her to go with me to Liberty City. At first she seemed more than willing, but then she started freezing up. Liberty City *can* be a frightening place, I’ll admit, so I was understanding, but at the same time I still wanted to see the sights. So I went with PS3 instead, who seemed to love the place.

But I tried once more, inviting 360 on a Lost Odyssey, and again she was happy to begin the journey and again, she froze once we got there. Again and again. Finally I had to admit that she was in some way broken inside. So off I sent her to the clinic again. This time she was only gone a few weeks, but came back looking somewhat battered and old.

Since her return, we’ve done naught but watch each other suspiciously. My friends are sick to death of hearing me complain about her, and I can’t help but feel our relationship is at a crisis. We need to either come to some understanding, or go our own ways.

So I’ve pledged to try one last time. Tonight I am taking her to Albion, which I’m hearing is a very enjoyable place to visit (and is a place that PS3 can never hope to visit; they’d turn her away at the border). I’m hoping 360 will come with me, enjoy the sights and sounds, and not freeze up on me. I’m hoping she won’t scratch any disks. I’m hoping she’ll be quieter than she was. And I’m hoping we have a good time together.

If we do, I’m going to strive to let go of my irritation and embrace her as the source of joy she once was. There’s enough of me to keep two consoles satisfied after all! With a Wii bit left over, in fact.

But if she freezes, or scratches, or carries on in any of her old bad ways, then I’ll be sending her away for good, and she will be dead to me. Griping about her only irritates my friends, and as long as she is sitting there staring at me reproachfully, I’ll never be able to let go of these negative feelings I have for her.

Tonight is all about low lighting, fresh batteries, and exotic adventures. Wish us luck.

Will Halloween bring OpenRvR Love to WAR?

Posted on by Nimgimli

So over at the Herald Associate Producer Mark Davis brags talks a bit about how some of his ideas made it into Warhammer. It’s a fun enough read but then we get to this:

In the skirmish areas around the entire world during the Halloween holiday, there will be boss monsters lurking for players to kill. They’ll have cool loot on them, of course, so players from both sides will want to take them down. I’m sure Order and Destruction will play nicely with each other and share equally with each other for the spoils of the fight – yeah right!

Yeah right, indeed! Will this be enough to coax people out of the scenario queues? What will it be like, trying to take down a boss monster while also defending yourself from incoming players from the other side. Will we be able to “ninja” the boss, letting the other side weaken it (and the boss weaken them) before we sweep in to obliterate both players and boss at once? Will there be stand-offs with both sides waiting for the other to attack the Boss?

Lots of possibilities here. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, thinking about getting the chance to slaughter (and be slaughtered) in celebration of Witching Night!

In the meantime, Ysh had a great post on PvE up at Stylish Corpse, with Thallian, Smaken and I commenting so far. There’s the beginnings of a good conversation over there, so check it out. I hear Ysh is serving hot mulled cider in honor of the season. Presumably she spikes it with rum….