I guess writing a blog is one of those things that once you fall out of the habit, it's hard to get back into it. Lately though, the urge the start writing has been itching at me again, so here we are, and here I am. I want to get back into updating this blog fairly regularly; I doubt I'll get to it on a daily basis, but a few times a week would be optimal. As for my mission goal, it'll be more-or-less the same as before. I wanna post about what I'm up to; including gaming, movie watching, and otherwise; post reviews of the games I play, and make blogs talking about my thoughts on game design theory.
Looking at my older posts, I noticed I got started on some rules for good game design, and I'd like to keep on that list; expanding it with more habits to be avoided to engaged; things I notice that tend to consistently make a game better or worse; as well as maybe clarifying on any rules that I find people consistently misunderstand. Heck, maybe I'll even find, with feedback, that a rule or two should be scratched.
As for what I've been up to lately, mostly Dead Island Riptide and Fire Emblem: Awakening. In fact, with May being Zombie Awareness Month, I was thinking I'd probably start-out the reboot of Idle Thinking by talking about the under-appreciated gem that is the Dead Island series. I wanna get a couple reviews up for each game, as well as a post or two talking about what I do and don't like about both games. Maybe next month I'll talk a bit about Fire Emblem and my history with the Strategy/RPG genre.
As for what I've been up to the past 4 years, mostly just life. Working, sleeping, gaming, forgetting that I had a blog on which I wanted to post, that kinda thing. I've somehow shaken-off my addiction to World of Warcraft in that time. Not to say that I was specifically trying to quit, just that it ran its course and now... I dunno, just not as much drive to play it anymore. I guess that the guild stopped raiding would be part of the reason, and getting a new job that made it so I couldn't make the raid hours anyway is another factor.
So here goes, hopefully this time I actually keep-up with something of a schedule on here. Until then, game happy.
Showing posts with label Random Musings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Random Musings. Show all posts
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Monday, December 21, 2009
If it isn't one thing...
Well, my computer is back up and running. I meant to log-on and talk about its hard drive breaking, but then I realized that wouldn't work too well. Between that and a few other things in the past couple months that I'm sure you'd be bored to hear about, I haven't really thought to get around to updating the blog, but I'm back.
Humm... so what's happened in the past couple months? Dragon Age came out, it's a really fun game, though I admittedly haven't vested much time into it. It's a weird scenario where I love the game, but I never want to actually play it. It's like... I'm glad its there, but I'd rather it not bother me. I dunno. I spent a lot of time playing Left 4 Dead 2 during the brief week before my Hard Drive failed me. I really looked forward to getting back into it once I got back up and running, but so far that's also a no go. I also got Borderlands when it came out and a little fun with it, but between losing my characters to the hard drive demons and all the bull that Gearbox/Take 2 have been giving the PC players, I'll likely never touch the game again. A shame because it really is a great game, but I'm sick of giving my money to a company that makes me feel like a second-rate citizen.
So what HAVE I been playing? Well, with the Team Fortress 2 War Update, I've been spending a lot of time in there. Being more of a Soldier player (compared to Demo) I was happy to hear that they won the war, but the prize is a little lackluster. Boots that reduce Rocket Jump damage are nice, but they aren't worth giving-up the Shotgun. At least the Banner gives you a buff to make-up for losing the Shotgun, and Rocket Jumping really doesn't do THAT much damage. So hooray, we won... whatever I guess.
I also recently purchased Torchlight since Steam was running a 50% sale on it this weekend. Think Diablo with more cartoony graphics and you're on the right course. Over-all it's a really fun and solid game for only $20 (or $10 if you got it on sale). Apparently it isn't really meant to be a full-on title so-much as a precursor to an MMO that the team is developing that's due in a couple years or so. Makes it sound like a demo that you have to pay for, but it's definitely a demo that's worth the money. I might look into that, if it's nearly as fun as the single-player game then it just might stand a chance to wrench me away from WoW.
Haven't seen Avatar just yet, I'll probably go and see that on the 23rd. So far I've heard nothing but good from people who have seen it. District 9 is coming out on DVD tomorrow, so I'll definitely be picking-up that one before work.
And with that I say Merry Christmas to all, and all... I'm off to play some TF2.
Humm... so what's happened in the past couple months? Dragon Age came out, it's a really fun game, though I admittedly haven't vested much time into it. It's a weird scenario where I love the game, but I never want to actually play it. It's like... I'm glad its there, but I'd rather it not bother me. I dunno. I spent a lot of time playing Left 4 Dead 2 during the brief week before my Hard Drive failed me. I really looked forward to getting back into it once I got back up and running, but so far that's also a no go. I also got Borderlands when it came out and a little fun with it, but between losing my characters to the hard drive demons and all the bull that Gearbox/Take 2 have been giving the PC players, I'll likely never touch the game again. A shame because it really is a great game, but I'm sick of giving my money to a company that makes me feel like a second-rate citizen.
So what HAVE I been playing? Well, with the Team Fortress 2 War Update, I've been spending a lot of time in there. Being more of a Soldier player (compared to Demo) I was happy to hear that they won the war, but the prize is a little lackluster. Boots that reduce Rocket Jump damage are nice, but they aren't worth giving-up the Shotgun. At least the Banner gives you a buff to make-up for losing the Shotgun, and Rocket Jumping really doesn't do THAT much damage. So hooray, we won... whatever I guess.
I also recently purchased Torchlight since Steam was running a 50% sale on it this weekend. Think Diablo with more cartoony graphics and you're on the right course. Over-all it's a really fun and solid game for only $20 (or $10 if you got it on sale). Apparently it isn't really meant to be a full-on title so-much as a precursor to an MMO that the team is developing that's due in a couple years or so. Makes it sound like a demo that you have to pay for, but it's definitely a demo that's worth the money. I might look into that, if it's nearly as fun as the single-player game then it just might stand a chance to wrench me away from WoW.
Haven't seen Avatar just yet, I'll probably go and see that on the 23rd. So far I've heard nothing but good from people who have seen it. District 9 is coming out on DVD tomorrow, so I'll definitely be picking-up that one before work.
And with that I say Merry Christmas to all, and all... I'm off to play some TF2.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Oh yes, there will be bees.
Just got back from chilling with some friends. Lately we've been playing a lot of BlazBlue, the latest 2D fighting game from the same team that made the Guilty Gear series. I never played any of their earlier works, though I must say that if BlazBlue is any indication, then I will have to add that to my list of regrets as a gamer. BlazBlue is just such a well-designed fighter. It deviates from the basic formula that most fighting game fans would probably be familiar with to the point where picking a new character renders him almost completely alien until you've had some time to practice him, and the Drive System is great in that everyone who plays as a different character is essentially playing a different mini-game to deal damage to their opponent.
I play as Arakune, with "BEES!!" being my battle cry (ala the flowchart on how to play as him). One of my friends plays as Jin, so naturally the phrase "Freeze the bees" arose, and is the counter-slogan to my battle cries whenever I fight him. I don't own the game personally, so I'm at something of a handicap when playing against my friends. Thankfully though, I manage to keep-up for the most part. My win/lose ratio could certainly be better, but one on-looker during one of my better matches questioned whether or not I own the game in secret (though not owning a 360 or PS3, there's no way I could). This is owed mostly to my natural reflexes, adaptability, and fast learning.
I'm far from the best Arakune player out there, but with that I'm capable of when playing as him as-is, people should worry what will happen if the day should come that I do own the game. And hey, Street Fighter 4 was released on PC, so who's to say that BlazBlue won't be. Well... you know, besides the people who made the game of course. :x
I play as Arakune, with "BEES!!" being my battle cry (ala the flowchart on how to play as him). One of my friends plays as Jin, so naturally the phrase "Freeze the bees" arose, and is the counter-slogan to my battle cries whenever I fight him. I don't own the game personally, so I'm at something of a handicap when playing against my friends. Thankfully though, I manage to keep-up for the most part. My win/lose ratio could certainly be better, but one on-looker during one of my better matches questioned whether or not I own the game in secret (though not owning a 360 or PS3, there's no way I could). This is owed mostly to my natural reflexes, adaptability, and fast learning.
I'm far from the best Arakune player out there, but with that I'm capable of when playing as him as-is, people should worry what will happen if the day should come that I do own the game. And hey, Street Fighter 4 was released on PC, so who's to say that BlazBlue won't be. Well... you know, besides the people who made the game of course. :x
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Shiro's Brief WoW History
My main character is a Blood Elf Mage named Balthior. I started-up a guild there named "Silence the Discord" - a quote from the hybrid enemies of System Shock 2 - shortly after Burning Crusade was released. Having started the guild when I was around Level 30, it started as a leveling guild. After some waffling about (PvP vs PvE), I decided I wanted to take the guild into raiding, and given the hours I play games most often, a late-night raiding guild.
We started in Karazhan as most guilds did in the day. Actually no. We started in 5-man content, working to gear-up our freshly-leveled players, while also trying to recruit whom we could. From there we finally worked-up 10 decently geared people, and on a whim we decided to head into Karazhan for the first time to take a shot at the first boss and see how things went. From there, we slowly worked our way from barely being able to kill some of the bosses after a full night's worth of attempting, to eventually cleaning the instance out in a single night, with two groups of 10 people going at it.
The next step was the rough one. We had to work our way from Karazhan which required 10 people, upto the other raid instances that required 25. This is when we teamed-up with another guild, who's name unfortuneately escapes me at the moment. One of our recruits was friends with the leader of the guild (and in fact, came directly from that guild because he couldn't make their raid times). We set-up a date and time when we'd pool our resources together to tackle the first 25-man raid, Gruul's Lair. It was a semi-success.
After a number of raids together, the other guild started wanting to merge with us to make it easier to coordinate the raids. After some thought, I agreed to the matter, but things didn't turn-out quite so well as we would have hoped. Shortly after the merger, we tried to integrate them into the guild community, but they just seemed distant, as-if they didn't care that they were in the guild despite having been so adamant about wanting to merge. Slowly but surely, everyone from the guild funneled-out one by one, followed by one big purge as the last half-dozen or so of them left all at once.
It was a slight hit, but since they'd been slacking on attending raids anyway, we'd mostly been working to recruit anyway, so recovery was fairly quick. After their departure, we finally broke into the 25-man content, finally killing Gruul and eventually moving into Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep. From there the guild had it's highs and lows, I'm sure I could right a whole novel on our Level 70 raiding history. Our Level 70 achievements, to keep it short, include killing such bosses as Magtheridon and Lady Vashj before they were nerfed into obselescence, and making good progress into Black Temple.
Unfortunately for the guild though, progress was dragged to a hault. See, pretty much right from the start of the guild, I always had a hard time nailing-down officers. I'd promote some, of course, and they'd do their job for a while, but seldom stuck around for long. They never left the guild mind you, just vanished, stopped playing the game. For the most part we'd eventually regain contact with them and find out what happened with them, but it still left the guild with basically one leader through it's entire Level 70 endgame process. So what happened was... I took a vacation.
Despite having left an Officer specifically in charge of leading the raids during the week I'd be out of town, raids apparently screeched to a halt the instant I was gone (despite them having done raids just fine in the past during nights I was unable to be online, with that same officer leading in my stead). So I return, and the guild is in shambles. I tried to get raids back on the calendar, but no one showed for the raids anymore, and one by one, everyone except for a tightly-knit group of friends all trickled out. Were it not for the fact that Wrath of the Lich King was around the corner, I'd have probably just recruited to rebuild the raid, but pre-Expansion season is hell to recruit for if you don't already have a static group.
So that was that. The raid group had all but fallen apart, and the next Expansion that would raise the level cap to 80 was just a few months away. Around this time, one of the guild members had invited his friend who plays as a Warrior into the guild (a guild member who was in this group of friends who stuck around). He was green as hell, having not played the game at all in a year or so, so he quickly got a knack for how things worked at Level 70. Before long I decided he would make a good officer for the guild, and currently him and one other officer are the only two to stick around for more than a week without dropping off the face of the Earth.
So here we are now, at Level 80 and raiding Ulduar with something of a council in charge of the raids. Instead of just me trying to keep everyone coordinated, we have the afformentioned Warrior leading the tanks, the other officer leading the healers, and myself trying to keep the DPS and Crowd Control coordinated. It's been a slow climb (partially caused by a surge of apathy on my part), but our new raid group is starting to gel and reach the same level of performance that I was proud to say our old Level 70 raid group had. A lot of it due to the fact that we have fewer raiders leaving. High turn-over and successful raids just don't go hand-in-hand unless you're lucky enough to be recruiting natural pros with said turn-over.
Lately I've been putting a lot of thought into World of Warcraft. Still waffling-about on whether or not I want to pass-on the mantle of leadership to someone else, if I want to continue raiding, or if I want to even continue playing the game even on a casual basis. Were it a single-player game I'd probably just stop playing it for a while, but when you meet and bond with other people while playing a game, it can be hard to just stop.
We started in Karazhan as most guilds did in the day. Actually no. We started in 5-man content, working to gear-up our freshly-leveled players, while also trying to recruit whom we could. From there we finally worked-up 10 decently geared people, and on a whim we decided to head into Karazhan for the first time to take a shot at the first boss and see how things went. From there, we slowly worked our way from barely being able to kill some of the bosses after a full night's worth of attempting, to eventually cleaning the instance out in a single night, with two groups of 10 people going at it.
The next step was the rough one. We had to work our way from Karazhan which required 10 people, upto the other raid instances that required 25. This is when we teamed-up with another guild, who's name unfortuneately escapes me at the moment. One of our recruits was friends with the leader of the guild (and in fact, came directly from that guild because he couldn't make their raid times). We set-up a date and time when we'd pool our resources together to tackle the first 25-man raid, Gruul's Lair. It was a semi-success.
After a number of raids together, the other guild started wanting to merge with us to make it easier to coordinate the raids. After some thought, I agreed to the matter, but things didn't turn-out quite so well as we would have hoped. Shortly after the merger, we tried to integrate them into the guild community, but they just seemed distant, as-if they didn't care that they were in the guild despite having been so adamant about wanting to merge. Slowly but surely, everyone from the guild funneled-out one by one, followed by one big purge as the last half-dozen or so of them left all at once.
It was a slight hit, but since they'd been slacking on attending raids anyway, we'd mostly been working to recruit anyway, so recovery was fairly quick. After their departure, we finally broke into the 25-man content, finally killing Gruul and eventually moving into Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep. From there the guild had it's highs and lows, I'm sure I could right a whole novel on our Level 70 raiding history. Our Level 70 achievements, to keep it short, include killing such bosses as Magtheridon and Lady Vashj before they were nerfed into obselescence, and making good progress into Black Temple.
Unfortunately for the guild though, progress was dragged to a hault. See, pretty much right from the start of the guild, I always had a hard time nailing-down officers. I'd promote some, of course, and they'd do their job for a while, but seldom stuck around for long. They never left the guild mind you, just vanished, stopped playing the game. For the most part we'd eventually regain contact with them and find out what happened with them, but it still left the guild with basically one leader through it's entire Level 70 endgame process. So what happened was... I took a vacation.
Despite having left an Officer specifically in charge of leading the raids during the week I'd be out of town, raids apparently screeched to a halt the instant I was gone (despite them having done raids just fine in the past during nights I was unable to be online, with that same officer leading in my stead). So I return, and the guild is in shambles. I tried to get raids back on the calendar, but no one showed for the raids anymore, and one by one, everyone except for a tightly-knit group of friends all trickled out. Were it not for the fact that Wrath of the Lich King was around the corner, I'd have probably just recruited to rebuild the raid, but pre-Expansion season is hell to recruit for if you don't already have a static group.
So that was that. The raid group had all but fallen apart, and the next Expansion that would raise the level cap to 80 was just a few months away. Around this time, one of the guild members had invited his friend who plays as a Warrior into the guild (a guild member who was in this group of friends who stuck around). He was green as hell, having not played the game at all in a year or so, so he quickly got a knack for how things worked at Level 70. Before long I decided he would make a good officer for the guild, and currently him and one other officer are the only two to stick around for more than a week without dropping off the face of the Earth.
So here we are now, at Level 80 and raiding Ulduar with something of a council in charge of the raids. Instead of just me trying to keep everyone coordinated, we have the afformentioned Warrior leading the tanks, the other officer leading the healers, and myself trying to keep the DPS and Crowd Control coordinated. It's been a slow climb (partially caused by a surge of apathy on my part), but our new raid group is starting to gel and reach the same level of performance that I was proud to say our old Level 70 raid group had. A lot of it due to the fact that we have fewer raiders leaving. High turn-over and successful raids just don't go hand-in-hand unless you're lucky enough to be recruiting natural pros with said turn-over.
Lately I've been putting a lot of thought into World of Warcraft. Still waffling-about on whether or not I want to pass-on the mantle of leadership to someone else, if I want to continue raiding, or if I want to even continue playing the game even on a casual basis. Were it a single-player game I'd probably just stop playing it for a while, but when you meet and bond with other people while playing a game, it can be hard to just stop.
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