Category: Gaming

More BetaWARs

Posted on by Nimgimli

So the open beta for Warhammer Online starts on Sunday (the 7th), but for some percentage of pre-orders, it apparently started today as a second preview weekend? Honestly I haven’t been paying attention. My gaze is firmly fixed on September 14th, when Headstart Access opens for Collector’s Edition pre-orders.

My only fear is that my guild is playing in the betas, getting to know each other, forming friendships, and I’m not a part of that. Hopefully I’ll be able to ‘socially catch-up’ when the time comes. I just am really afraid of ‘burning out’ on the early levels if I run through them yet again before launch.

I’m awfully excited about the launch of Warhammer though.

In other news, I canceled my Spore pre-order….or tried to at least. I called Gamestop too late to prevent it from being shipped, but I’ll return the game to a local store when it arrives. I’m still playing LOTRO pretty heavily, I have Warhammer incoming in 9 days, and I’m not a fan of Spore’s SecurROM copy protection.

PS3 Bluetooth Headset priced at Ouch!

Posted on by Nimgimli

Amazon has a listing for the upcoming Playstation 3 Bluetooth Headset. Price is $49.99! Yikes. That price includes a charging cradle and it should work with your cell phone, etc. According to PS3 Fanboy:

A new High-Quality (HQ) mode will use “advanced wireless technologies and the Headset’s dual-microphone design to enable clear and wide-band wireless voice communication with the PS3 system.”

(They don’t attribute the quote in that, um, quote.)

Of course, for $10 more you can buy SOCOM: Confrontation and get the headset and a game, which is what pretty much everyone will do, and that’s probably exactly what Sony wants you to do. $59.99 for a bluetooth headset and a game seems like a decent deal.

Blog Comments/discussions: Worth it?

Posted on by Nimgimli

[NOTE: Contents of this post have been edited heavily to focus more on the topic at hand, and less on the topic that spawned my consideration of the issues. Also derailing comments have been deleted.]

So this morning I was reading at post over a Pumping Irony where Scott was talking about LOTRO Executive Producer Jeffrey Steefel’s interview of a couple days ago. I thought Scott made some good points (which I won’t re-iterate here, but I encourage you to go read the post) so I left a kind of an ‘atta boy!’ comment.

But being a dumbass, I couldn’t stop there, and questioned some of what another commenter had posted. Which began a back and forth of us each spinning our wheels and getting nowhere. Now don’t get me wrong, it was a civil discussion, but ultimately pointless and a waste of both our times. He wasn’t convincing me and I wasn’t convincing him.

It’s not worth regurgitating the whole debate, which spilled over to this blog and devolved even further. There’s no structure in blog comments, no ‘rules of engagement’ and meanings of common terms are often not clearly defined. To take the time to define them is cumbersome when you don’t even know for sure the other party is coming back.

It was a frustrating discussion for me; it was like the other party was from a totally different culture and we had no common ground to base the discussion on. Some of his points made as much sense to me as someone saying “We have corn flakes when moon dust wallows green penguins irately. ” First he would say one thing then he’d say completely the opposite, or so it seemed to me. It got to the point where I could only surmise he was debating for the sake of debating, not worrying about reasoning or consistency, but just trying to be an irritant. Perhaps he felt the same way about me.

Anyway, my point about this, beyond just needing to vent my frustration, is to ask this question:

Are comments on blogs really of any value, or are they just a place to fritter away time talking to each other, but not listening to each other? I don’t mean to vilify this dude, because the fact is I was certain of myself too, and he wasn’t going to budge my opinion either.

So what’s the point? Have you ever been swayed by a discussion in blog comments? Or are they all just a waste of bandwidth? Should we all turn them off and save ourselves the hassle of combating the spammers?

Great Barrows to Rivendell

Posted on by Nimgimli

The three day weekend wound up being devoted pretty heavily to LOTRO. My Champion is up to level 28 now, and went through the Great Barrows three times (I think?) this weekend. Enough that I’m not anxious to go through there again, in any event!!

For all the hours I played, I didn’t advance much. Did some deed grinding (the trees in the Old Forest, Wargs and Crows in the Lone Lands) and helped guildies and others with some quest lines. It felt like every time I needed a fellowship for a quest, everyone was about 3 steps behind, so I’d have to catch ’em all up. I don’t normally mind this, but I was on my main and some of the people I was catching up were on their third alts. It’s hard to catch my main up to their main when I’m spinning my wheels killing grays and helping their #3 alts to level.

Finally read a post at Kill Ten Rats about leveling fast. Tried it a bit yesterday and it sure works. I might just skip the Fellowship quests and concentrate on soloing for a while, except at such times that a Fellowship quest reward is going to really help me, or a group is set to go and needs a bit ‘o extra DPS.

As the weekend drew to a close I got it in my head to ride to Rivendell, so I did, on my pokey freebie Bree Horse (from being a Founder). Things got hairy after I crossed the ford where Glorfindel/Arwen (depending on whether you read the books or watched the movies) turned back the Nine. The road peters out after that and everything was purple, but I made it. Coming upon Rivendell for the first time was truly breathtaking (and the Trollshaws were nice too, I look forward to hunting there). I spent a good hour running around Rivendell geekgasming all over the place.

My only regret is that I didn’t get there earlier. I understand it used to be the you could stumble upon members of The Fellowship wandering the roads of Rivendell, but now they’re all sequestered in housing in preparation for the Mines of Moria expansion. (They instance housing so you see different things inside a building/room based on where you are in the storyline.)

Good stuff. I was getting vaguely bored before heading to Rivendell, I have to admit. I kind of feel like LOTRO keeps you in a particular zone for much too long, if you’re anal like me and don’t like leaving unfinished quests behind. I need to let go of that and play in areas that I’m enjoying, rather than grinding through quests because I “should.” Visiting Rivendell refreshed my enthusiasm for the game; I need to level up so I’m ready to explore the Mines of Moria!

But WAR looms on the horizon…

Rock Band DLC: Skullcrusher Mountain!!!

Posted on by Nimgimli

Woot! This week’s Rock Band DLC is a 3-song pack, for $3, that includes:

* “Skullcrusher Mountain” – Jonathan Coulton
* “Livin’ on the Corner of Dude and Catastrophe” – MC Frontalot
* “Shhh….” – Darkest of the Hillside Thickets

All are masters, and all proceeds go to Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play Charity.

Time to let my rampant JoCo Fanboyism run free….

WAR is still coming (Headstart Dates)

Posted on by Nimgimli

I haven’t seen this officially on the NA Warhammer sites, but the European site says that the Warhammer Online Headstart Program starts on Sept. 14th for Collector’s Edition pre-orders, and Sept. 15th for standard orders. Note that the 14th is a Sunday, so (most) CE pre-orders have a full day of headstart over standard buyers.

But this means that Open Beta is at most 7 days. I guess that’s enough time for some stress testing, but I’m not sure its enough time for many fixes to be developed, tested and deployed.

New isn’t always improved

Posted on by Nimgimli

Poor Sara Pickell. I did it to her again, posting a long rambling rant in the comments section of her blog, answering her post as if I knew exactly what she was basing her post on, which honestly I didn’t.

I *have* to stop doing this stuff to her. Something about her posts just gets me charged up for debate though. Maybe that means she’s succeeding. Anyway Sara if you’re reading this, feel free to nuke my comments over there, cause I’m basically going to turn that tirade into a post here.

Sara’s post, titled “Do Players Want Something New?” started thusly:

During the latest round of blogs, I’ve heard a large number of people saying “players don’t want something too new anyways.” This is hardly a new topic of thought for me, but I thought I’d go into some persuasive hyperbole on the topic.

I assumed this post was tied into the backlash against Brent at VirginWorlds. I may have assumed correctly, or I may not have, but either way assuming is never a good idea.

But I *am* going to respond to the backlash to the backlash, so to speak. It’s like a blogging tennis game or something. Here’s what I left as a comment on Sara’s post, a bit cleaned up. I’m building off a few prior topics.
Continue reading “New isn’t always improved”

Conquer Club

Posted on by Nimgimli

Some of my friends and I have ‘discovered’ a fun web site, Conquer Club. (Full disclosure: that link contains a referral tag…if you follow it and sign up as a paid member of the site, I get a free month.)

The site is built around a web-based version of the old “Conquer” game, which itself was basically a rip-off of Risk. The games are played either on a 5-minute/turn (more or less real-time) clock, or a 24-hour clock, which means you take a turn at most once a day. Games are further broken down as either sequential (each player goes in turn) or freestyle (everyone can play whenever they like during the 24-hour turn period). There are a ton of maps and variants, almost all of which are more complex than basic Risk; if you enjoy this kind of game the site could keep you busy for a LONG time.

Players are rated and ranked and can earn medals (sort of like Achievements). Rating is assigned by other players on aspects such as if you’re a fast player or a good sport. Ranking is more about stats and how good you are. At least that’s how I understand it works.

It’s free to play up to 4 games at a time, or for $25/year you can play as many as you like and start Private games. Be warned that the competition there is pretty darn tough and a lot of these guys have been playing for a long time, it seems. It isn’t unusual for a game to only last a few turns. I’ve been having more fun, honestly, playing Private games with friends.

My handle over there is Jaded, and I did spring for the Premium membership. If there’s any interest I could start a private game for readers of Dragonchasers and Jaded’s Pub (my gaming forum, linked to above).

The Calm Before the Storm

Posted on by Nimgimli

Not a lot happening here at Dragonchasers HQ.

I’m playing the hell out of LOTRO these days, but there isn’t a lot for me to say about the game that hasn’t been said a hundred times before. It I was high enough level to be enjoying the latest new content it’d be one thing, but I’m still hunting the Lone Lands looking for Wargs. Don’t read that wrong, I’m having an absolute blast, but I’m not doing anything ‘newsworthy.’

In the absence of real Warhammer News, blogs are turning towards navel gazing and in some cases sniping at each other. I myself spent some time arguing with Sara Pickell in the comments of her blog, which was ultimately not a good use of my time or hers, since the topic at hand seems to be an emotional one. Sorry, Sara.

Spore will be here soon, I guess next week. Not convinced it’ll be great, but that didnt’ stop me from pre-ordering. I think it’ll at least be interesting from a ‘student of games’ point of view. And then a week or so later, Headstart for Warhammer Online starts. So lots of excitement coming in.

And thanks to Grimjakk, I just ordered an “Omnibus” edition of some Warhammer novels to get me in the mood for the game. I so blindly followed his suggestion that I’ve already forgot the title. Heh.

I dunno, I’m a little sick of the hyperbole of the blogosphere. So many bloggers declaring absolutes that aren’t, citing facts that only exist in their own mind, and so on. We all get swept up in these things, I guess. But it’d be nice if we could all try to remember that just because we feel certain things are or are not important, it doesn’t mean everyone else feels the same way.