Month: November 2008

Warhammer in my world

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m going to leave the taxonomy for now. I had a rough evening and morning (had my identity stolen and dealing with banks and such, but oops, banks are closed) so I’m going to be self-indulgent today.

My Warhammer account has a week left before I have to take a break. The downside to the break is, well, not playing. The upside is lots of shiny goodies when I return, I hope. So what are these goodies? I dunno, but I know what I *wish* they’d be. So here’s my list of desired Warhammer changes.

This is a list born of selfishness and I’m sure lots of people will take strong exception to it. I get that, and if I ruled the world, I still might not make these changes because I don’t want to break the game for others. I’ve also not let practicality get in the way of my dreams, as you’ll see.

1) More social mobs. I’m sick of (at low tiers at least) being able to pick off enemies one by one, while their friends stand there and watch them die. I want to (sometimes) face crowds of weaker enemies. Y’know what game does this really well? NCSoft’s freebie, Dungeon Runners. You’re always disappearing under a mass of enemies in that game, only to eventually emerge victorious. Instead of a single even level skeleton, send 6 or 7 of them a couple levels lower, and let me go crazy and send bodies flying in every which way. THAT feels powerful. Similarly, there are very few “skill pulls” in the solo PvE stuff. I’d like to have to rely on my smarts now and then when I need to attack baddies.

2) Shuffle the world!! Twenty-four zones sounds like plenty, right? But to me at least, it feels small, and I think it feels small because we have three nice neat corridors, with an entrance at one end of each zone and an exit at the other. Connections between tiers via teleport (essentially) makes it all seem very disconnected. Let’s change things up, make the world messier and more chaotic.

3) Eliminate scenarios. *ducks and runs away*

4) More “fluff”. Non-combat pets, housing, social gear (take the trophies and make them more obvious, maybe?). Just stuff to futz around with when you don’t feel like fighting but do feel like being in-game to hang out with your guild.

5) More PvE Quests. There’s enough now, but barely. Some Epic PvE quests would be fun…long term collection stuff, maybe. Put some of the objectives in the RvR Lakes, to get people out there now and then. Some “lever” quests (I just made up that term). What’s a lever quest? It’s a quest where one step “pulls a lever” to set something in motion that will impact other players. DAoC had some quests that caused mobs to attack a town. Everyone would have to stop their buying and selling and fight off the attack. WoW has stuff like Stitches. Actions that indirectly involve other players remind us all that we *aren’t* in a single player game. Beating back these attacks tend to bind players together. Common cause and all that.

6) More open RvR at all levels. Right now you can totally skip the RvR Lakes. My assumption is that the game is built that way so that PvE players can play and not engage in Open RvR. But really, as a PvE Only game Warhammer isn’t incredibly compelling. I do think that it needs better PvE for long-term success, but until then, RvR is the big hook that makes Warhammer stand out. So dammit, force people to cross those RvR Lakes now and then. Have the Lakes stretch clear across a zone, with a few chokepoints where players will naturally congregate. Put moving quest rewards out there (static rewards would get camped by the enemy, probably). Do something to get people (including me, frankly… I haven’t done any RvR since before Witching Night) out there.

7) More bag space, please. If we have to pay for it, that’s fine. But as someone who hates to leave corpses laying around causing lag (that’s old school, huh?) I get really sick and tired of spending as much time futzing with inventory as I do playing the game. If not more bag space, then fewer types of crafting resources.

8) Add a third realm. Hey, I don’t ask for much, do I? LOL

9) Give me a Lifetime Membership option

10) Reader’s choice!

Yeah, I’m not coming up with a #10, so I’ll leave it to others to add to the list. I told you it was selfish. I get 9 and you get 1.

Single player vs PvE vs RvR

Posted on by Nimgimli

Been navel-gazing again. I’ve decided that I operate within a game taxonomy that has three main categories. I’ve compiled a list of pros and cons for each.

Single Player Games
Pros

  • You are the hero. The focus of the universe. It’s all about you, baby.
  • High convenience factor. Play for 10 minutes or 10 hours. The world will wait when you have to take a break
  • The world can be very fluid, your actions can have significant impact on the world
  • Smooth gameplay. You don’t have to worry about lag or queues or server outages
  • Strong Story
  • Play at your own pace. One session a week or several sessions a day, it doesn’t matter

Cons

  • Predictable, at least compared to being in a world with lots of other players
  • Finite: at some point the game ends and you’ve done everything there is to do

PvE focused MMO games
Pros

  • Unpredictable, you never know what other players are going to do
  • Virtually infinite. Expansion packs, gameplay tweaks and huge worlds… there’s always more to come
  • Moderately Convenient (Some aspects lend themselve to quick sessions but others require scheduling and large blocks of time)
  • Seasonal events tied to real-world calendar add spice to the world.

Cons

  • Many heroes. You are just another face in the crowd and often feel weak compared to those around you.
  • Static: The world generally doesn’t change much based on your actions. It’s all about the devs, baby.
  • Weak Story
  • Some pressure to “keep up” with other players

RvR focused MMO games
Pros

  • Unpredictable, you never know what other players are going to do
  • Virtually infinite. Expansion packs, gameplay tweaks and huge worlds… there’s always more to come
  • Seasonal events tied to real-world calendar add spice to the world.
  • Intense action. There are few gaming experiences as exciting as being in a big RvR battle.
  • Semi-static: Your side can change the world within certain limitations

Cons

  • Many heroes. You are just another face in the crowd and often feel weak compared to those around you.
  • Inconvenient. It is almost impossible to “schedule” a good RvR battle
  • Weak Story
  • Strong pressure to “Keep up” with other players

I’m sure I’ll keep adding to this list. And granted my RvR experience is pretty limited: DAoC and Warhammer, really.

For me the big issue is time. RvR games can offer the most fun but also require the most time. PvE games are more forgiving about time and are far more “schedule-able” . The NPC Boss is always going to be there waiting for us, right? Single player games, assuming they allow saving anywhere, are absolutely time-forgiving. At least, until they end. We all get tired of MMOs but darned few of us have literally “finished” one, where we’ve taken every class to cap and seen every quest and accomplished every task.

Each taxonomy has something great to offer. Being the hero of the story in a single-player game can be very satisfying, as can the sense of accomplishment for getting to “The End.” Working in a group in a PvE game to figure out the attack patterns and weaknesses of a boss and finally taking him down can evoke shrieks of delight. And the pulse pounding action of a massive RvR battle can be literally breath-taking.

I’m not including price, but for me the monthly cost of an MMO does influence my reaction to it. I feel a lot differently about LOTRO than I do about most other MMOs because I have a lifetime sub to it. There’s a low-level but persistent “pressure to play” when I know I’m spending a monthly fee to play a game.

So what’d I miss? What are your Pros and Cons? Or do you even buy into my taxonomy?

Less negativity = feeling better

Posted on by Nimgimli

In some ways it is grimly amusing how many of us bloggers can take something as fun as gaming and turn it into a source of negativity. I both produce irrelevant negativity, and consume it. I’ve been trying to stop, on both counts.

From the posting side of things, I’ve been trying to focus on the joy that comes from this wonderful hobby of ours. I will still say negative things about a game I’m playing, but only in the context of a “review-like” post that is meant to help you decide whether you want to buy or avoid. I’m trying to stay far away from “Game X [which I am not playing] sucks because of Y” and staying even farther away from negative comments about other gamers and their choices.

From a consumption point of view, I’ve been thinning down the list of sites and blogs in my RSS reader. If a blogger or site writes the kinds of posts that are full of negativity, I’m removing that site. I understand how cathartic venting in text can be; I’m not judging anyone! But I just don’t want to read that kind of post any more.

Since trying on this new attitude, I’ve found I’ve been enjoying gaming a lot more. I have more time to play (fewer sites to read = more free time). And I’ve felt better emotionally, and this feeling extends beyond gaming.

I just too easily slip into the Quixotic desire to debate/debunk posts that I feel are unfairly negative towards a product or service. And those can become real tar baby issues for me, leading towards frustration and wasted energy. They quickly become toxic.

Anyway, that’s my Monday morning rambling for this week. Please call me on it if you see me slipping back into writing pointlessly negative posts. Gaming (to me at least) is supposed to be about discovering new worlds and having fun. I’m going to try to keep my focus there.

Fable 2 thoughts

Posted on by Nimgimli

Today I finished the main plot line for Fable 2. I’ve got a lot I’d like to say about it, but frankly I’m not sure how to say everything without spoiling the game for folks who haven’t played it. I certainly don’t want to post explicit spoilers, but later in the post there are some generic ones. I’ll warn you before they start.

Overall my opinion of the game is very favorable. The main story plot line wasn’t incredibly involved but it was enough to keep you moving forward, and it worked as an excellent framework to hang off many incidents that had real impact on me as a player. It was an RPG that spoke to the heart more than to the head.

I do think Molyneaux pulled some punches though, and I wish he hadn’t. And I wish the game had been more difficult. I’m not speaking about combat (combat never gets very hard, but it always feels pretty satisfying) but more about the ‘moral’ system in the game. As I mentioned in an earlier post, you have a Purity/Corruption stat and a Good/Evil stat. From about half-way through the game, my character was 100% Pure/100% Evil, and that was through no deliberate choice of mine, aside from the choice of eating vegetables and passing on meat. Veggies give you +Purity and meat gives you -Purity and +Fatness, and I was just trying to avoid the Fatness.

Money was another issue. Or rather, non-issue. If you invest some time early building a nest egg doing mini-game jobs, then buy a few houses/businesses to generate some income, you’ll never be strapped for cash. Also since business income accumulates even when you aren’t playing, if you take a break for a few days you’ll be even richer. Sure, there are big-ticket items you’ll need vast amounts of wealth for, but they’re really just to get Achievments and don’t impact the plot of the game at all.

And then there’s your family, or families. Another neat system that has very little impact on the game. In theory having a healthy, happy family will get you buffs from spending the night at home, but in practice you never really need to sleep since food, drink and potions will keep you going indefinitely. I only slept at home when the wife wanted sex, and I don’t think the game would’ve been drastically different had I never married.

I’m doing a lot of griping, but understand that’s just my nature… I really did enjoy the game a lot. The world felt very alive, and having the family, the businesses, doing the odd jobs; all of that was fun even if none of it really felt necessary. I just think it would’ve made a great game even better had these systems had more impact.

Part of the challenge, I think, comes from making a game for everyone. I spent a lot of time wandering around, fighting things, doing side-quests, exploring, collecting… just really taking my time. So I improved skills early, and had the gold to get the best weapons early, which meant the game never got hard. If some other player stuck to the main quest, used the Quick Travel feature to get around. and never did any of the ‘extra’ stuff, I’m guess the game would get pretty difficult further along.

Which brings me back to wishing there was a difficulty setting. Maybe some day we’ll get one as DLC.

But, as someone who got bored of Fable 1 and never finished it, I can’t recommend Fable 2 enough. It was an immensely satisfying game.

Spoilers follow. I’ll try to be as vague as possible but stop reading if you want the game to be as full of surprises for you as it was for me.

One of the most emotional moments in the game came when I was…removed from the world…for an extended period. I left my wife, my child, my dog, my businesses…all to fend for themselves for a decade. It wasn’t something I chose to do, and I was really bothered by it.

It just so happened that when this happened it was late at night out there in real life, so I had to quit. I spent the next day fretting about what would happen when my character returned from this exile. As soon as I got home from work I jumped back into the game, and my character returned to the world and… my wife said “You’re back!!” and kid had grown up a bit, but otherwise nothing had changed. My dog was still my dog. The wife had waited for me. The kid politely introduced herself then treated me like her dear old dad. My businesses had continued to collect rent. There was very little indication that I’d been gone so long, as far as personal impact.

Again, I think this is a spot where Molyneaux pulled his punches. I assumed my dog would be dead (and I’d have to get a puppy and raise it), my wife would’ve remarried, my businesses auctioned off. Essentially I assumed I’d have to start anew.

Maybe Fable 3 will take all this stuff a bit further. And I really do hope we get a Fable 3. There’s certainly a setup for one in the game.

Visiting Altdorf

Posted on by Nimgimli

I have to confess it’s been quite some time since I last visited Altdorf, but after Jobildo shared the location of my two favorite Warhammer characters, Gotrek & Felix, I knew I had to meet them before my time expired.

Turns out, Altdorf is a pretty happening place these days. But I get ahead of myself. I was far from a Flight Master when I made this decision, and rather than go backwards, I forged ahead into the next tier. Along the way I met this guy, Horst Ohersten, a Healer. I couldn’t help but chuckle. Would you trust this guy, with all those examples of his handiwork cooling in the snow?

Anyway the trip was scary and thrilling as there were plenty of beasties that could’ve had me for lunch, but I got to see another zone and I did eventually make it safely to the next warcamp and flight master. So off I went to Altdorf.

I found my way to Gotrek and Felix. Gotrek was as grouchy as I’d expect, but Felix had work for me in the Bright College. While inside, one of the wizards there asked me to run an errand. And outside I met a peasant with some crazy tale of man-sized rats…which turned out to be true! As I was prowling the streets looking for barrels doing a jig, I wandered past the Blow Hole and got involved in a PQ there. Won first place and got a nice cloak that won’t be wearable until 21. Something to look forward to when I get back.

I’m not sure if these quests scale or what, but all the mobs I had to fight were standard level 20 mobs: perfect sized for a level 17 Witch Hunter to brawl with. Decent kill experience, too. I made about half a level just pottering around in Altdorf, and there’s still more to do in there. This came at a perfect time as manageable solo empire quests were getting pretty thin back in Tier 2.

So don’t forget about Altdorf if you’re out there looking for PvE fun in Warhammer!

Cleaning up

Posted on by Nimgimli

Haven’t done a ton of gaming so far this weekend so haven’t had a lot to post about. I did fiddle around with Nile Online a lot yesterday, but that meant checking in on my city every couple of hours. I’m still enjoying that game quite a bit.

One of my PS3 hard drives was getting pretty full so I spent some time cleaning that up. I watched episodes three through six of Qore, the online magazine on the Playstation Network. It’s an entertaining product, but I’m still unconvinced its worth the price, *unless* you’re all about getting into betas. If it gets you into one beta you’re really jazzed about, then the ~$25/year is probably worth it. (My math there is that the product itself is probably worth $15/year and getting into a beta you really really want to get into is probably worth $10 to you.)

In Warhammer, I put all my characters except my Witch Hunter to bed, mentally. I cleaned out their mailboxes, organized their inventory. In the case of my Shadow Warrior I pushed him to the next Rank so he could wear a cloak I’d sent him from another character. That way he’ll look a bit snazzier when I come back to him in a month or two. Everyone is in a camp now, drinking ale and waiting for my return. Everyone, that is, except my CoW character, who I’ll continue to play right up to the cut-off day, though honestly knowing the account is going to expire soon makes that feel a little sad. At the same time I’m already a little excited about the improvements that will be in the game when I come back to it.

Probably next weekend I’ll fire up the EQ2 account so I can get re-familiarized with things before the expansion lands on the doorstep. Hmm, actually that doesn’t bode well for playing Warhammer next weekend, so maybe this will be the last week for my Witch Hunter.

I played some of The Witcher last night. I bought this game a year or so ago and it wasn’t too good, but they released an “Enhanced Edition” a couple months back and offered a free “upgrade” mega-patch to all registered users of the game. I started a fresh game just before the Fall tsunami of new game releases hit. I’m not very far into it but my conscience has been nagging at me not to lose track of it. I started playing it once on release, then restarted for this enhanced version. I know myself enough to realize that if I totally lose touch with the game and have to restart a third time, I never will.

And it seems like a pretty good game now. It feels a little like a cross between Fable 2 and an MMO, actually. It has a skill-based progression (though with ‘generic’ experience so you don’t sculpt your character via actions like you do in Fable 2), action-ish combat (left click to melee, right click to fire a spell, melee chains via timed button presses) like Fable 2, an alchemy crafting system similar to what you’d find in an MMO (with you getting components from foes you slay), NPCs offering side quests and an apparently huge, MMO-sized world. Anyway, we’ll see. I need to get back to Fable 2 today!

So what’s everyone else been up to this weekend?

Nile Online

Posted on by Nimgimli

And now for something completely different…

Tilted Mill, the folks who made the rather enjoyable Hinterland that I’ve previously posted about, have a broswer-based city-building game now in beta, Nile Online.

I’ve been playing it for a week or so now. At first I thought it was really interesting. Then I got kind of bored with it since it seemed to lack depth. And then I realized there was more depth than I at first saw, so now I’m finding it really interesting again.

The basic idea of the game will be pretty familiar to strategy gamers. You start with a small settlement and need to feed your people and grow your empire via resource management. Every starting plot, as best I can figure, has wheat, clay and reed resources. Also each plot has a 4th resource that varies from area to area. I started with Kohl, used in cosmetics. Huh?

Each city has a finite number of building plots. You’ll erect bakeries, brickworks, basket shops, pottery shops, etc. Then you assign your labor pool to either gathering a resource or working in a shop. There are more products than there are building plots, so you’re not going to be able to make everything you need. Building a Market gives you access to goods that other players are selling. Curiously, the currency of the world is bread, which is also the way you feed your people. Buildings and resource plots can be continually upgraded to become more productive.

Nile Online runs in real time and is kind of low-impact gaming. As an example (I’m writing this on my lunch hour) I started upgrading my Market at the start of the hour, but its going to take about 2 hours for that upgrade to happen. So I’ll check in when I get home tonight, perhaps. Early on, level 1 buildings go up pretty quick… 10 minutes or so. Also low level buildings require pretty basic resources, so they’re easy to get going.

Soon enough things become more complicated. My next palace upgrade (which will give me a larger labor pool) is going to require Bricks, Baskets, Perfume, Pottery, and Jewelry (and 3 hours, 40 minutes of time). I can make the Bricks & Baskets, but I’ll need to buy the other items from the Market. I can grow a lot of wheat and bake a lot of bread to buy them, and I’m doing that, but I’ve also been trying to sell some extra pottery. I have a Cosmetics shop to turn my Kohl into Cosmetics, but I also need Henna, which I can’t produce, so I have to buy that. Hopefully I’ll be able to sell Cosmetics for enough to cover the costs of the Henna and still make a profit. Cosmetics are required to found additional cities, and if someone is rich enough to do that, I figure they can pay me well for my goods.

As far as I can tell, there is no player vs player combat in the game, but you can produce troops. Outside my city are “Monument plots occupied by raiders” and I assume these are what troops are for? Documentation for the game is sparse, to put it nicely (but again, this is beta) so I’m learning by doing, and I don’t have the resources (Bronze and Leather) to produce anything from my Spearmen building.

So, still a lot of questions, and ultimately it might not hold my interest. After the initial building process there’s kind of a dead spot where you’re just waiting to have enough bricks and bread to build a new building. But things get more interesting when you start playing the market and needing resources that you can’t product on your own.

It seems like anyone can join the beta. You do have to apply but getting in is really quick. If, like me, you have a lunch hour to fill every day, this is an interesting way to use up a bit of it. And I do find myself checking in before and after work. I’m looking forward to seeing what else the game holds as I grow my city.

What can MMO devs learn from Fable 2?

Posted on by Nimgimli

As a comment to yesterday’s post, DM Osbon of Construed asked if Fable 2 had anything to teach console MMO developers.

I thought this was a great question and worth a post of its own. I don’t have any answers, just ruminations. But I do like to ruminate, so without further ado…

Let’s start with character development. Fable 2 is not class based. It has three ‘schools’ of combat: melee, ranged and magic. There are 4 kinds of experience: one for each of the schools and then some “generic” experience that you can apply as you see fit. Using a school of combat to defeat an enemy causes that enemy to give more experience in that school of combat. So if you prefer slicing and dicing with a sword, you’ll get more melee experience than ranged or magic experience.

Fable 2 is not level based. (Incidentally, Syncaine just posted a good essay on the topic of levels: How important are levels in our MMOs?. Ironically, I argue for them.) Instead, you spend experience points to buy skills to better your ability to perform a particular school of combat. There are three ‘branches’ of skills in each school: these could easily be expanded for longer-term play.

In Fable 2, your actions have consequences. This, I think, is a big one. You have a Good/Evil and a Purity/Corruption rating, and those ratings change depending on your actions in the game. In turn, these ratings impact how others treat you and what opportunities are open to you. Some MMOs have tried to embrace this kind of system, but the problem is you can’t code player behavior. So if my character is evil and corrupt, but I, the player, am a genuinely nice guy chatting with you… is YOUR character going to react to mine as an evil and corrupt entity, or are you going to react to me by having your character treat mine as if mine was nice. Erm… does that make sense?

Fable 2 has business ownership. This is an interesting ‘sub-game’ in Fable 2, and one I enjoy, but I’m not sure how you’d implement it in an MMO. So you have a coin purse bulging with gold, you see a nice house, and you buy it. The people that live in it become your tenants and pay you rent. Or you buy a business and get profits from it. You can tweak prices and so forth, which can impact your Good/Evil and Purity/Corrupt ratings.

This works well for Fable 2 as a single player game, but most MMO’s struggle to put in gold sinks, not gold fountains. Plus, cities would have to be huge in order for everyone to get a chance to buy a few businesses. Otherwise players joining the game months after launch would have nothing to purchase.

But speaking of gold… creatures in Fable 2 don’t drop loot when you kill them. You get experience and that’s all. Doing quests gets you renown and impacts your Good/Evil rating. Gold comes from Treasures you find, gifts that people give you, jobs (blacksmith, wood cutter, bartender, bounty hunter, etc) you can take, and goodies you dig up. Most gear comes from vendors. This is far different from the lotto-corpse system of most MMOs. I’m not sure how well MMO players would take to such a radical change, honestly. Oddly, this has been pretty transparent to me so far… I had to stop and think about whether I’ve gotten any gold or gear rewards from doing quests in Fable 2. I assumed I had…but then couldn’t think of any. So I guess I haven’t!

I wanted to add story here, because I while I am very confident that Fable 2 has a really interesting story but I have to be honest: I haven’t seen it yet. I’ve been having so much fun just being “immersed” in the world that I’ve been very slow in following the main quest/storyline. But it’s hard to put a good story into an MMO without instancing the game into a single party experience.

/end rumination

But getting back to Fable 2 as the game I’m playing now, and story progression…

WHOA. Some stuff happened last night that I can’t really talk about yet, because I was forced to stop playing right in the middle of it. Suffice to say that so far the game has been pretty upbeat in tone, even with all the bad things happening. It’s felt “light.” Last night…that changed. I felt it in my heart, not in my head. Which I found pretty freaking astounding for a video game. The only analogy that springs to mind is the feeling I had when reading about Sam & Frodo’s journey into Mordor. Tolkein wrote such heaviness into those pages that I felt their struggle and it seemed like the very pages of the book I was reading were getting hard to turn. (And no, I’m not comparing Molyneaux to Tolkein.) And maybe it was just my mood or how tired I was or something. But events in the game really hit me in a pretty emotional way, and when I shut down the console to head to bed, I felt dazed by the experience.

I can’t wait to get home and get some closure to this situation and see what happens next!

Bigamy + Veggies = Purity

Posted on by Nimgimli

When last we left our intrepid adventurer Sparrow Dumpling Blade Lionheart (a hero’s title is ever-changing), he’d taken on a wife and she’d born him a daughter, Gemma. And he thought that life was complicated.

So innocent and naive, was he.

As it turns out, Deb the Villager is fairly low maintenance. A modest gift here, a good rogering there, a decent allowance for running the house, and she stays pretty happy. In fact things were going so well that a second wife seemed in order. Well, not really. Actually, our man found himself on the horns of a dilemma where he had to be either mean or immoral (if you consider bigamy immoral, as a fairly large percentage of us do). Unless I’m angry, I’m not good at being mean, and I wasn’t angry at this lass, so after much thought, I had our hero marry her, and set up a home in Bowerstone with her.

I expected his Purity rating to plunge, but it didn’t. In fact the only indication that something odd had happened was that I got a Bigamist Achievement! Deb seemed slightly more suspicious the next time her hubby came home, but that might have been my guilty conscience. Yeah, I really felt a bit guilty about the situation!

The thing is, now Lionheart has two places where he can bed down for the night, with a bit of extra warmth in each one. And he gets a nice Purity boon for sleeping there with his wife. After sticking to protected sex with wifey #2 for a while, I hit the wrong button once and now Lionheart has an infant son, Georg, to go with his daughter Gemma.

Between this bonus, and eating lots of fresh veggies (each of which give purity points) he now strides about the land, pure as the driven snow, with a halo floating over his head. I’m not sure what message Fable 2 is trying to convey here… that it’s OK to have several wives as long as you eat your veggies?

He’s pretty Good too, and attractive, and honestly it’s almost becoming a nuisance. He walks into town and half a dozen women surround him, badgering him for a ring or just offering to jump his bones. Y’know, now that I think about it, it’s just like real life!! 🙂 Seriously, it can be pretty annoying trying to push around these crowds all the time; I wish there was a “Let her down easy” emote our hero could use to tell a lady “You’re a wonderful woman but I’m already married” without making her afraid of or angry at him. The most subtle technique he has now is “Point and Laugh” which evokes reactions that just make me feel terrible!!!

Oh yes, and then there’s this whole adventure…. Lionheart was warned by his mentor and his fellow hero Hammer, that he should put his affairs in order before taking the next step in his quest for vengeance. So he’s been doing that…helping archeologists and breaking gargoyles and protecting the Temple of Light and protecting farmers from robbers and freeing slaves: he’s been a busy fellow indeed.

But I think its about time that he pushed forward on his quest.

Back and crankier than ever

Posted on by Nimgimli

Going back to the office today, tissue box in one hand, fistful of various cold medications in the other. I should be pleasant to be around. 🙂 I worked from home yesterday, but aside from that I’ve spent the last 3 days pretty much laying on the couch.

Haven’t played any Warhammer (or anything else on the PC). Did play quite a bit of Fable 2, and I watched a lot of old videos I still had on the PS3, including stuff like 1Up’s E3 coverage. Wow, had I ever pushed a lot of that out of my mind. Who else remembers the “You’re in the movies” demo during the Microsoft Press conference? If you don’t, check out this video starting about 3 minutes in:

In less amusing news, a bunch of bills came in, and I felt the sting of all the splurging I did the past month or two, what with the Warhammer CE, Rock Band 2, and a new RB guitar, Hinterlands, LittleBigPlanet, and some non-gaming extravagances. The reality is that its time to tighten my belt. I cut a lot of little things like knocking my Netflix membership down a couple of notches, gonna be more careful about grocery shopping, dumping some extra cable services and the like. All these little cuts add up.

But I realized that I simply cannot justify carrying two game subscriptions at once. It’s so easy to turn these things on and off that it makes more fiscal sense to alternate months. I’ve promised Angela that I’d play EQ2 with her when the new expansion comes out, which is I believe Nov. 20th. So I’ll be suspending my Warhammer Online account after this month runs out (I think on Nov. 18th). I hate to do it since I believe in the game and I’m sort of voting against it by doing this, not to mention all the asshat smug bloggers who’re taking such joy out of finding out that supporters of the game are leaving it.

But I still have almost two weeks to enjoy Warhammer and CoW, so if you read this JoBildo, don’t make me an alumni yet!! And I’m going to look at it this way; when I go back after a month or two of EQ2, the game will be even better than it is now. So that’s something to look forward to!