Category: Gaming

Cycle of Hatred

Posted on by Nimgimli

Cycle of HatredI’m back to playing World of Warcraft again, and as usual I’m totally caught up in this world that Blizzard has created. They’ve crafted such a rich history, but we only get glimpses of it. I have to cop to buying the paper & pencil RPG sourcebooks just to get more backstory. Yup, I’m a serious geek.

Which brings us to Cycle of Hatred by Keith R.A. DeCandido. Here is a novel set in the Warcraft world, and specifically it takes place between the end of The Frozen Throne (the last Warcraft strategy game) and the start of World of Warcraft (the MMRPG). Somewhere during that time the alliance between humans and orcs broke down, and I hoped from the title that maybe this book would describe what happened.

This isn’t my first Warcraft novel. I’ve read three others, and they varied between pretty good, and pretty bad. So my expectations were pretty low. And still I was disappointed. The book is totally without substance. What scraps of plot it has are routine, the characters are all cardboard cutouts and the only reason the world feels the least bit alive is through the Warcraft tie-in. It does nothing to add to the mythos of the world, or fill in any gaps in the history that Blizzard has crafted. The only thing this book has going for it is mention of places and people that Warcraft players “know” via the games.

Avoid at all costs.

Another death in the family

Posted on by Nimgimli

Yeah, I’m playing fast and loose with the word ‘family’ but in some senses I think of the denizens of online role-playing environments as a big, somewhat dysfunctional family. Or club maybe…dare I say cult?

Anyway, I never met Candace Bolter, to the best of my knowledge, but she seems to have been a very nice person. More importantly to me, is the fact that people who never met her face-to-face liked her, and now miss her and remember her fondly. Its so easy to write off ‘in-game’ friendships as somehow no more real than our avatars…easy, that is, until we lose someone, and know we’ve lost them.

How many other virtual friends have slipped away with us assuming they just got tired of playing? Its a disturbing thought, isn’t it?

In Memory of Candace Bolter, aka Kale

PSP initial reactions

Posted on by Nimgimli

Geek lust has never been so intense. I’m still in the futzin’ phase. I’ve played some Ridge Racer (which is awesome) including wireless head-to-head from a good 100 feet apart. Mostly I’ve just been gawking at the thing and caressing it lovingly… er. Ahem. Did I say that out loud?

I’m reading a lot of talk about bad pixels. I’ve seen 3 purchased units running so far, and haven’t found a bad pixel yet.

I do have one small gripe and that’s with wireless connectivity. I was trying to hook into my Apple wireless network and ran into some minor problems. First, I was using WPA and the PSP can only do WEP. So I change over to 128 bit WEP, enter the password in the PSP and it grumbles that passwords have to be 5 or 13 characters long (for 40 and 128 bit, presumably). That might always be the case with WEP…I’ve never used it before. It looked like the actual wireless base station ‘padded’ my too-short password in fact. I reset the password, padding it to 13 characters myself, and entered the padded password on the PSP, and all was well.

Oh, and I also think they should include a USB cable.

Other than that, everything is rocking for me so far…

PSP…It’s HERE!

Posted on by Nimgimli

Though sadly, “here” right now is the office. So my shiny new PSP sits on my desk, charging its battery and batting its eyelashes at me. Its a seductive little beastie with a ton of buttons jacks, and hidden panels. I DID get a chance to pop in the Spiderman 2 movie and flash it around the office, prompting one co-worker to don his coat and run out to Best Buy to get one before they were all gone.

Now I have to sit here until 6:00 pm before I can actually PLAY with the damned thing, but overall I’m pumped. The resolution of the screen is amazing. The whole unit is a little smaller than I thought it would be, while the screen is actually bigger than I thought it would be…

Tonight I’ll mess around with moving some MP3s or video onto it (I splurged on a half-gig memory card). Oh, and check out the games, of course. 🙂