Just One More Unlock

Its coming

2012-01-29T21:30:00.000-08:00

I don't like the idea of Valentine's Day for the fact that its become very commercial. Yes its good to pamper someone on a special day, but it should help remind us that every day is important.

Anyways.. its coming. More Skyrim related V-day cards at Kotaku.

Magic Trick

2012-01-28T20:41:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you, but I don't really like it when you have a nagging dream where it continues when you fall back asleep in the same night. I find (unless its about a hot girl) that you end up feeling restless and not very refreshed.

Last night's nagging dream was all about photography.

I think what it was telling me was that I need to take more photos and I need to do it now. Also, I want a fun, outgoing female (friend?) to be my spontaneous model so I can hone my craft.

For now, i'll have to settle for making ducks levitate.

Taxi!

2012-01-26T17:32:00.000-08:00

Lets learn something!

Apparently to be implemented into the future: Anti-Aliasing

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I didn't understand when I first read it. A blogger complaining about how much back-and-forth unnecessary walking there was in SW:TOR. I'll be the first to confirm that there are alot of open spaces in the game.. but possibly created to give a sense of size and enormity unlike the cities in Skyrim which are rather small and compact.

Then it happened to me.

My sniper was done destroying the terrorist cell in Nar Shaddaa and was tasked by a dark lord of the sith to track down a man of great importance with connections to her murdered father. From the ship, back to Nar Shaddaa, capturing the person, back to the ship, talking to the Keeper, travelling to Drommund Kaas *gasp* from the docking area, to the spaceport, to the taxi, to the taxi end point, into the capital city, another taxi to the Sith hq, talk to the dark lord. Hand in lousy quest for a pat on the head. Taxi back to main plaza area, walk to next taxi area, take taxi to the spaceport, spaceport to the docking area, enter ship, use the holoterminal to find out which planet to go to next... etc etc etc!

Simply.. too much walking. Fail.

Oh and 40k in credits just to learn how to fly a speeder? Gimme a break.

Invigorate

2012-01-24T21:56:00.000-08:00

There can be something to be said that the leveling system in mmo's like Star Wars has it right. In that, your character starts with a small assortment of skills and slowly gains a few skills throughout their lifetime. In not swamping the player with all the skills, all at once, the player will learn to master the skills.

My passion for Star Wars has been rekindled over the weekend when I started playing with my initial solo (vs the one I only played with my gf) character. It had been ages (2+ weeks easily) in which I even did a space mission with my Sniper. I decided with my upgraded pc, it would be a good time to test out pvp. It was a mistake, I didn'remember my skills, how they worked, how my talents were specced, nothing. I'm not a total noob at games though and managed to stay in the middle of the pack and provide decent dps.

Bottom Right area: Datacron!

It took a good couple hours of pve to determine what was the best configuration for my hotbars.. once again it was a poignant reminder that Bioware really needs to do something about a customization UI, as I tend to use 3+ horizontal hotbars at the bottom and don't like using vertical hotbars on the sides of the screens.

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I wonder if dark side characters in the universe that was Star Wars noticed the change in their appearance as they got more evil.

I noticed to my horror last night, that my Sniper started getting veiny cracks at the sides of his eyes and mouth. It was ugly to say the least and nothing like the scars or facial blemishes you add during character creation. I quickly checked my darkside points and saw that I was less than 100 points from reaching Dark II. Making this connection, my character decided to be a bit less bloodthirsty and a bit more merciful and a few quests later his skin was nice and smooth again.

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There needs to be a bit more variety in armor and helmets in Star Wars. My bounty hunter had the same Cyclops-like helmet for over 13+ levels and only at the end of the Nar Shaddaa quests was he rewarded with a new spider-like helmet.

I've never seen a helmet drop from loot yet and have only seen one or two other helmets available from different vendors.

Without color dyes, everyone tends to look the same and thats a bit sad.

In a galaxy far, far away.. everyone had the same color clothes.

Just give me a bit more time

2012-01-17T19:08:00.000-08:00

Magic Number

Cosplay and Art

2012-01-17T17:59:00.000-08:00

Missing some cosplay action? Me too.

Follow this Kotaku link for some more of this cosplay superstar (?) Meagan Marie.

And follow this one for more Mass Effect art

Exiled

2012-01-15T20:26:00.000-08:00

Sorry Stunner, you're not allowed to be played :P

Always Learning

2012-01-14T09:08:00.000-08:00

My coworker had a good philosophy about buying booster packs for MTG whereas I prefer to prebuild decks via various websites. There was not only the excitement of opening a new pack (like gifts of Christmas day) but by getting cards you wouldn't normally look at..

..later down the road, you may find a use for them.
I had created a douche 'permission' deck which totally frustrated my gf the other day, but after a few games I realized that I was really lacking in the department of creatures as it was a blue control deck who's monsters were only ones that garnered cards in which I could draw.

Then I read a recent article about a white-blue aggressor deck.. and looked over that card above.. never really thought it would be good.. and then *lightbulb*.. YES. It will work for the permission deck. Nice and cheap to bring out without leaving you without mana. A creature that gains evasion on turn 2, and hits for 3.. pretty good.

And the Pendulum swings..

2012-01-14T08:56:00.000-08:00

..the other way..

With a simple respec of my Powertech Bounty Hunter, TOR became enjoyable and exciting again, even if it was for a short time. I like it when my games are fun and exciting BUT not addictive; for when its not addictive I don't feel the need to (obviously?) play all the time and abandon other areas of life.

Although there are alot of things that bother me with TOR and thus have decreased my time with the game, it would be unfair to not talk about a few things that I enjoy.

Strong Storyline
Different for each class and i've found, in particular Nar Shaddaa, different quests for different class specializations (ie. Sith Assassin vs Sith Sorcerer). Thats a nice touch.. especially since there is exact class mirroring between factions. Not to give away spoilers, but the Imperial Agent will be searching for terrorists that blew up an Imperial cruise killing thousands of civilians, while the Sith Inquisitor is looking for important artifacts for their sith master.

Something is just wrong with this picture..

Decisions
I think in life in general, people do better when they have a choice. You can tell me to do the dishes right now and ill be a bit resistant. But if you tell me if I can do the dishes between x time and y time, I will choose the time to do it and do a great job and have less resistance to it. TOR does a good job of giving the player decisions to make in the game. Better still, some decisions branch out with different results later. For example, my gf decided to kill a sith prisoner which was the son of an important npc, while I decided to let him go. When we went back to our individual instanced area, the npc attacked my gf for killing his son while he was estatic that I helped his son.

Although a bit hard when only using your first companion (b/c the droid that comes with your ship is pathetic) that may not be of the same dark/light alignment as you are, being able to choose an outcome really makes you care about your character. It makes me think twice when I play my 'light side' sith assassin when people betray me as it makes me think twice about punishing people and instead try to be more merciful and spare them. It upsets my companion, but I follow the type of way I believe my character would act in that situation.

Space combat
Although becoming a bit tedious as there are only 5 different missions right now that are exactly the same each time I play through, it reminds me of the game Freelancer. Good experience and good money, not to mention a currency that can be used to purchase high level goods.

Friday Musings

2012-01-12T19:53:00.000-08:00

Happy soon-to-be Friday!
Here is a nice (if not over-played) MTG teaser trailer to Dark Ascension.

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I haven't been blogging too much about TOR b/c I think I realized i'm not having too much fun with it as before. Just like that *click* and what was very addictive, became 'meh.'

Lets go through the process of what makes TOR difficult to play and may damn the company when people are done with their first month of gametime.

Lack of money
Playing solo with my Bounty Hunter, I never truly struggled making money and surprised myself when I finished some quests in Nar Shaddaa and had 61k in credits. The problem i've seen is that crafting is a huge money sink especially when you're not doing Slicing as any gathering missions become very expensive. Second, skills become hugely expensive to purchase as you level. Crafting skills and class skills become very expensive; at level 23, although my Bounty Hunter had 61k, one class skill at that level cost 4k; I actually dread leveling up for fear that it'll cost me an arm and a leg, not to mention having to save up 25k for a mount.

Modding
Although I like the idea of modding your equipment to stay up to date with your level and not having to rely on drops to have the near-best gear, modding is a big time sink. I ~~waste~~ spend alot of time with two crafters just making items and breaking them down to level their skill. Then I need to make sure the proper characters with the correct gathering skills are gathering unique metals/fabrics/etc. Then I have to ensure that I gain the blue/purple recipes for the mods. By that time, my character is 2 levels higher than the mod I need and I can make the next version of the mod. This process seems slow, inefficient and tedious.

Companions
Simply: they stand far too close to you.
Always. Always, they're standing on your lootable corpse.

Travelling
I appreciate the functions of Quick Travel, Imperial Fleet Pass, and tons of taxi waypoints, but there is alot of travel to get to things I need in the game. In Nar Shaddaa, the mailbox is so far away from the Cantina; I honestly don't see a problem with it being in the Cantina or right outside. In Balmorra, there are no crafting skill trainers, so a person would need to go to get to the Imperial Fleet. Sure you can use the Imperial Fleet Pass, but then what? You need to go to the spaceport hanger, jump into your ship, go to the holomap and select Balmorra, travel there, exit the ship, take a shuttle to the spaceport, go through the spaceport THEN take a taxi to wherever you last needed to quest. Thats ALOT of unnecessary travelling.

Stacking
For the love of god; when you get similar items, or move them from your inventory to your bank and vice versa, it should stack appropriately. Why would the game put it in a separate stack? Another time sink, if you care about organization in your inventory/bank.

PvP
Disclaimer: I haven't done pvp yet, but I reserve the right to comment about it.
No tiered pvp?
Seriously what mmo does that? stick level 10s against level 50s?
Sure, one will argue that everyone is leveled to 50 to create a more balanced playfield and allows you to play with your higher lvled friends, but is that really the case? No. Higher level players will have higher level skills that lowbies won't even possess. Higher level players will also have talent points that lower level plays won't have either.
Yes yes, skill and teamwork will triumph over these imbalances.. but it makes a big difference to me.

Dark Ascension: Articles

2012-01-10T22:12:00.000-08:00

Oh no; I waited too long and before I started writing this entry, 2 additional articles were posted on Wizard's website for more information on MTG's Dark Ascension...

The first article talks about a tap-able artifact that decreases the cost of flashback spells. I never really made a flashback deck, mostly b/c I didn't have enough Burning Vengeance's, spells with flashback from prior blocks, nor found too many good flashback cards in Innistrad. Maybe though, its not about the utility of the spell itself, but just triggering flashback so that Burning Vengeance can do it's job.

The second article titled, My Increasing Devotion, talks about the author's love of token decks and how there will be some choice cards in DA that'll help fuel those kind of decks. I made a token deck myself made up of cards that pumped out tokens, ones that sacrificed them to (normally) do damage, or to be gobbled up by my Mycoloth to (hopefully) win the game. The purpose was to be good at free for all games by biding my time, slowing down damage and then attack relentlessly when I had a horde of tokens to use. Probably would be better if I had a few equipment to make them stronger... I don't think tokens is my playstyle though.

The third article.. **reads it... eyes growing larger and larger**.. talks about how Sorin Markov, everyone's favorite vampiric planeswalker helped create the angel Avacyn! One thing I love about Magic is the rich storyline and how everything comes to be. It usually works out, but I like to make tribal-like decks that revolve around a type of creature; whether it is Elementals, Goblins, or Leviathans, its usually all the same kind of creatures. I'm like those Pokemon trainers that Ash had to face off against that all had the same kind of creatures. It all had a general theme.

**reads the last article**
omg.
Well.. I think I know ill be making a Flashback deck now.. won't we?

Card advantage is one of the major themes to deck creation i've been concentration on these days.. and this will help it!

MTG: Dark Ascension

2012-01-09T10:19:00.000-08:00

So... looks like there are new developments/teasers for MTG.

New mechanics like Undying

This looks to be much better than the Persist mechanic.. though, you can make some interesting decks that have both..

Using Heartmender looks like an interesting way to play it... and they're all green... hmmm..

Two articles today: one on the new mechanics and the other on the direction of Dark Ascension

The Return

2012-01-09T08:59:00.001-08:00

Wow; does this guy blog anymore these days?

Makes me wonder if I really want to be a technical writer or business systems analyst anymore.
Its probably just the fact that I've picked up and replaced one addiction for another and neither allows time for writing.

People attribute New Years with changing themselves and making resolutions.
I personally don't like "new years resolutions" b/c I feel its set to just one day and something that usually isn't successful.
And because of this, they usually end up being the same ones as the previous year.
That it is better that when you think of a way to improve yourself, to just start that day and not to wait any longer.
Do little baby steps and make it a habit; by making it a habit you will become successful. Force yourself to do it and it will become harder the longer you try.
But then one day it will just become second nature and then you've succeeded.

What kind of resolutions did you have this year?

Status: SW TOR

2011-12-27T22:26:00.000-08:00

Gone ~~fishing~~ gaming

TOR - All Caught Up

2011-12-23T21:30:00.000-08:00

See: found some time to write ;)

Some things i've noticed today while playing TOR:
- my computer plays the game, encounters little lag, but chugs.. I need an upgrade to my pc

- I love crew skills and sending my companions out on missions while i'm doing other things (handing in quests, organizing); its like a little mini game and very satisfying

- I panic when my sniper is overwhelmed by melee enemies... dunno if this is my class..

- I like the idea of a lightning magic caster.. but I don't do as much damage as i'd like.. maybe its the drawback when you can heal as well

- why can't I craft myself? I'm too good to sully my own hands with crafting!

- I miss public quests; even with Heroic areas, people don't really group or work together.. i'd really like some better gear

- Sith Sorcerer at lvl 14, while my Sniper is lvl 12..

- Slicing (stealing & thievery it seems), is really cool; getting stuff for my future ship; though Cybertech (the making of modifications for equipment) isn't that interesting b/c not many gear can be modded so far

Its a bit hard to see, but I looooove Biochem.. a REUSEABLE health pack!
BUT. You can only use it IF you have the Biochem skill...
Totally didn't read that part :(

Merry Christmas everyone! =)

Catching Up - TOR Day 2

2011-12-23T21:19:00.000-08:00

SW:TOR Day 2 Impressions

Had my bro run my Sith Inquisitor through the two Heroic instances.. the loot was good, but not outstanding. The cutscenes when handing in each quest makes you feel like you're part of something really important. Its a double-bladed sword b/c it makes me think that there is something special I may be missing out on if I don't do the heroic instances. It was unfortunately not the case and just some blue loot. I'm guessing at higher levels, these heroic quests will be chained and lead to better rewards.

Got my first follower, a tank, which I can equip with gear. I love that; the ability to equip my companion. I got to customize him too by picking a custom skin for him... unfortunately.. I picked red and the game gave me green instead. RED MEANS STOP! I guess alot of people will pick red anyways... so my guy will still be unique.

I found my Inquisitor would run out of mana/Force after fighting 2-3 enemies at a time.. so when I picked my advanced class of Sorcerer, I was surprised that somehow my mana/Force had increased 5fold. So it was a bit disappointing when I realized I may have wasted my initial talent point in getting 50 more force (can't find the screen/area that tells me what my total force was).

Travelled to and got lost in the capital city of Kaas City. An initial quest sends you to each corner so you know where certain things are (cantina, vendors, trainers etc).

Picked up crew skills of bioanalysis, biochem and diplomacy. My tank failed at his diplomacy quest, but brought back some nice biological compounds that I used to make medpacs. Reverse engineered one (to get mats back and to get something special).. just got mats back.. dunno if i want to spend the time to reverse engineer it. BUT this is the best time in the game: when you don't know whether reverse engineering the medpacs will yield something special. Most people don't know that answer without them trying it!

I found.. that once you left the starter planet, there was very little direction as to what you're supposed to do and where you're supposed to be. I knew I had to get to my Sith Lord in the capital city.. but there was a space station, a town and a heroic area between there. I got so lost, I just took a speeder to the capital city when I hit the heroic area b/c it was too dangerous there!

Revanite

2011-12-23T21:08:00.000-08:00

My Twi'lek Sith Inquisitor confuses me.

He's supposed to be evil but is nice to mostly everyone. He normally doesn't provoke people, but does lose his anger and kills without thought. He's supposed to be on the Empires side... but actively does things that undermines it (ie. telling a brainwashed jedi that its a trap).

I can only imagine he does this because the Sith treats him badly, always calling him a slave. What they don't know is while one hand is entended in friendship, the hand behind his back holds a dagger.

The game at first seems pretty linear and doesn't reward you for exploring; I decided to prove them wrong and investigated an elevator in the dig site of Korriban. As it climbed, I was disappointed to not see any people on the platform, but THEN excited to see an openable chest. Inside the chest, a magic item. Nice.

When you "hearth" in TOR, you actually pick from any save point that you've located in the area. VERY useful. No longer do you have to go to the original 'inn' to save.

An acolyte was spared force lightning interrogation with kind words.

Somehow got Lightside points by sabotaging the research of a Sith lord.

This Inquisitor helps everyone.. even if the task can be considered 'evil'. Because of his past, he'll normally try to minimize any pain inflicted on others.

Realized mid boss-battle that this was a Heroic quest requiring more than one member and saved myself by putting a medpac in my hotbar. Ressed a player that was trying to run in and out of the instance instead of getting help.

Helped a new player discover the way to collect artifacts is by right-clicking on them.

My Sith Overseer has it in for me; so while his pet sith apprentice is sent to the library in the next room to translate a manuscript, I'm sent to a deathtrap. Even when I bring the holocron back to him, he insults me, suggesting that I stole it from somewhere else.

He's on my naughtly list.

SW: TOR Catch up 1

2011-12-23T21:06:00.000-08:00

My SW:TOR Day 1 Experience

My brother picked the game up for me while I was at work (thank you thank you).

Came home.. took an hour to install the game; the problem stemmed while talking to my girlfriend on msn, RIGHT when I pressed enter to send a message to her, the pop-up screen came up telling me to enter disc 2. By pressing enter, it made the pc think I just put the disc in and it forever reason couldn't proceed further. Had to turn off the pc fully.

No problems making my TOR account.

Tried to log into the Launcher... annnd it kept giving me an error that I wasn't in a registered country... I know some Americans don't like us, but come'on we have Canadian bacon! 2 beavers are better than one!

When I finally got that working (somehow), it went to the opening trailer, which i've seen a few times, so I pressed the Escape button.. wrong move. The game crashed.

Ok. Lets reload, but no skipping the opening cutscene.

Crashed before it even got there.

Crash.Crash.Crash.Crash.Crash.Crash.Crash.

GRRRRRRRRRRR

My skin was turning the same color as the pureblood Sith.

Ok. Canyourunit.com

Tested it... and its all the way to the right. Thats a good thing.

Run as administrator?
Crash.

Repair button/function?
none.
Crash.

Turn off anti-virus temporarily?
Crash. Crash.

Turn off need for pc to notify when doing updates?
Crash.Crash.Crash.

Install newest version of Quicktime?
Requires a restart...ok.
...
About.. to .. crash..
wait!
EULA and Terms of Service in the launcher.. well thats new.
Crash?
nooooooo...

And thats how you fix a crashing Launcher!

Oh wait... there is my server...

Annnnnd i'm in queue... with 990 people infront of me. WoW

Over an hour later i'm still in queue, but I eventually get in, get ALL my names for my characters with no funny spelling (actually, I won't make a character with an altered name). Happiness meter is filling up.

Playing. Taking Screenshots, because everyone likes screenshots.
Enjoying zero lag, no crashes.

I stop when I tell myself to stop (playing)... instead of when I tell myself to stop when I'm playing Skyrim.

Dreams of SW:TOR.

Three Days of TOR

2011-12-23T07:23:00.000-08:00

I have tons of entries saved up and it would be nice if I could post them, but its that, or finish off the gifts for my co-workers for Christmas...

Coworkers win.

But I know you're all too busy playing the game anyways. Entries to come today after work!

Secret Weapon

2011-12-18T14:33:00.000-08:00

Normally MTGMintCards.com is pretty good with their shipping to Canada. Normally only 1 week, even though they say 1-2.. but come Monday, it'll be going into 3 weeks.. hoping it comes before Christmas..

Got to try a bit of TOR on my brother's pc today. Not bad... saved 2 names which is one of the most important things when playing any game.

Love the cut-scenes whenever I talk to npcs and hearing my voice when I choose my dialogue. Looking forward to playing on Tuesday when it releases.

Though, i'm not looking forward to the 15 min queue I was in...

SW:TOR Quick Question

2011-12-14T17:43:00.000-08:00

Once again, will be joining the hordes (if i can get two copies) on the 20th to play TOR, had a question for those currently or soon to be playing:

1. The specializations(say Sith Juggernaut and Marauder); is this a one time only choice and you can't change your choice, or is it similar to the soul system of Rift, where you can easily switch souls?

Skyrim: Exponential Power

2011-12-13T18:04:00.000-08:00

Money at the beginning of Skyrim is a bit hard to come by, even if you used my Halted-Stream transmute trick. I think the most important thing is to get a base of operations that is in town and not part of an actual guild. Sure the Assassin's Guild or the Mage Guild has alot of amenities, a house in town will generally have a blacksmith or vendors in convenient proximity.

Purchase-able houses are only found in the major towns, so Whiterun, Riften, Windhelm, Solitude and Morkath. Get that house. Once you get that house, furnish it a bit so that you get a few more containers. Open them, empty them, and use one for:
- craftable mats including ore, ingots, hides, leathers, grand/greater soul gems
- another one for ingredients
- useable weapons
- stuff you want to enchant
- stuff you need to sell (but don't have the time)

Making money in Skyrim, is all about inventory management. Even with a follower, its a bit hard to just loot everything. And then there are 3 ways to loot:
1. Loot everything
- fast in the sense that you'll fill up faster, but slower in that you'll be taking much more time completing quests
2. Loot things with the most face value
- steel chest pieces.. have a weight of 30 but sells for only 275... so about 9 gold per weight
3. Loot things with the best weight to value ratio
- a scroll of fireball has a weight of 0.5 but sells for over 200, so like a 400 gold per weight

There are a few ways to increase your effectiveness when making money:
- put point into stamina which will increase carry weight by 5
- use the Steed Stone which increases your carry weight by 100
- get 50 skill in Pickpocketing, which has a perk that increases carry weight by 50
- get 50 skill in Speech to get the perk which allows you to sell any item to any merchant
- enchant your gear/get gear that increases carry weight

Talking about Enchanting, I reached 100 in Enchanting on Sunday and with the perk that allows 2 enchantments at one time, my power level jumped! I was able to not only provide enough resistances to take the risky Apprentice Stone (100% increased magicka regen, 100% more damage FROM spells), I decreased the costs of Destruction spells to the point that I could cast 5 times as many spells.

Having troubles with Giants? Double enchant your follower and prep your maniacal laughter when you watch them cut a Giant down in 5 seconds.

How do you increase your Enchanting?
First: Ensure you have selected the Mage Stone. For faster results, sleep in a bed for a Rested bonus.
Whenever you're at a general trader npc, buy all their petty and lesser soul gems.
Once you have about 30 soul gems, go to either the rivers of Whiterun area or Winterhold sea area. The Whiterun rivers have mudcrabs which are easy targets, while the sea area of Winterhold(or even Dawnstar) has Horkers (think: Walrus).
Keep capturing souls until you get the message that you're out and then go an enchant any of your miscellaneous trash gear.

If I ever DO get the PC version, i'll be increasing my Enchanting and Speech asap.

Whats your Title?

2011-12-11T16:13:00.001-08:00

Got your attention? Good.

There seems to be a correlation between fitness and the hardcore gamer. It feels like we spend so much time gaming, that we ignore many other areas of life. Whether it be social or physical, the time we put into our games could be spread out into other activities. I'll be the first to pleading guilty of letting my games *cough-Skyrim-cough* take priority and conveniently forget everything else. Why today, I was busy listening to the rebel leaders talk about the importance of Whiterun instead of hearing the timer go off to let me know that my baked potatoes were done. Every night I make it a point to stop playing at 11 to get a good nights rest and wake up early before work to study or workout; instead I end up playing past 2 and waking up with enough time to run out the door.

I love my younger brother; he's incredibly smart and talented. Able to master anything he puts his mind to, he's unstoppable (like his older brother) when motivated. But right now, he'd rather spend 10+ hours a day just playing games *cough-Skyrim-WoW-cough*. It has been over 4 months since his contract at his last job ended and although that 'economy is tough,' it isn't impossible to get a job. Although people tend to pooh-pooh on job agencies, my friend's contract job ran out last Friday and got a new job (with Kobo, no less) in less than a week!

Everything takes effort. Anything worthwhile requires sacrifice. We're not talking about sacrificing a follower so that you survive a quest. We're talking about diverting our time and resources into something else.

So here comes the reason for the good-looking woman above; exercise is important for all of us. Its hard and requires dedication but isn't impossible. Exercising on a consistent basis doesn't mean we give up our hardcore gamer title (I prefer my gamer-photographer title instead). We don't need to become muscleheads, and abandon gaming (I probably won't ever), we just need to add some variety to what is the spice of life.

Anyways; if you're interested in exercising but don't know where to start, head over to Bodyrock.tv which has a pretty good website. Alot of videos that show you techniques, both beginner and advanced. It doesn't hurt that the people in the videos are easy on the eyes ;)

We only need to wait 3 days..

2011-12-10T12:29:00.001-08:00

Getting mentally prepped for TOR; just finished Star Wars, episodes 4-6... been watching the animated Clone Wars series.. and here are some official vids to keep up going up to the 13th (for early access people) and i'll probably see you (& blog about it) on the 20th!

Challenge Accepted!

2011-12-07T21:06:00.001-08:00

I enjoy challenging games. Not necessarily 'hard' games, but ones that provide a challenge.

Per Nerfnow's comic, that is the reason why I don't like WoW; they did a great job catering to those that have never played an mmo before and want to jump in, feel like they can get great loot, but they made it too easy. I see my brother, who granted is able to play any game and master it, but come on, there are people that have so many mounts that there is an actual book to select the one they feel like using. In the 'good ol days' you had your mount and that was it. It elevated you from the crowd; you tamed a dragon and brought it into town, now that was impressive.

I enjoy in Skyrim how creatures level up as you do, so you can't just expect to use certain loopholes in the game to level up and then overpower bandits by your sheer level difference. While you're lvl 25 plus in elven armor.. your bandits may be wearing orcish or even ebony gear now.. much stronger than yours. Even worse if you're leveling non-combat abilities (pure thief), you will be in a world of hurt when needing to fight.

Did you know, you can't just run up point-blank into a dragon and blast spells/shoot arrows at it? It clearly has a defined mind to take a chomp out of you. Maybe the weaker Blood Dragons won't do that, but when you're higher levels, the game plays better and those ancient dragons will eat you and you'll be reloading that fight again.

An efficient and safe way to level your destruction skill:
- summon a flame/frost atronach
- blast away
If you take too long, your atronach will turn hostile on you, but I haven't seen it retaliate. This is a much safer way to level your skill (although, very boring) versus fighting strong monsters or alot of weaker monsters.

A safe way to level your restoration skill:
- do the College of Winterhold quest where you learn the spell Equillibrium (alteration spell)
- the spell is similar to a warlock's spell that switches health for mana
- cast it until you have near full mana and nearly depleted health (don't kill yourself!)
- then cast a healing spell
- you'll be gaining both restoration and alteration skill
Once again, a boring way to level skill, but if you're set on leveling particular skills and not wasting contributions to your overall level, it has to be done.

Skyrim Lullaby

2011-12-04T22:02:00.001-08:00

I've made the right decision: instead of playing Skyrim at the dead of night (and probably ending up accidentally playing til 5...oops!), i've decided just to do this entry instead and provide fantastic fan vids of the music from Skyrim.

TOR and Mirrored Classes

2011-11-30T16:52:00.001-08:00

I don't have any real SW:TOR beta experiences or blogs b/c I didn't apply nor got into it and could only talk about what I saw briefly from watching my younger brother play. That being said, I have been reading your blogs and something I read was unsettling: Mirrored Classes.

Something I detest is classes that are shared against enemy factions. Especially when there are only 4 classes in TOR. Yes, there are specializations, but aren't they mirrored too? Once again, haven't done much research and haven't really read it on any blogs, but i'm quite sure its just another name for another class. If you have mirrored/shared classes, make sure you have 7+ classes. It was a bit odd to see my brother in Flashpoints/instances that consisted of just one class.

I did enjoy the fact that although there was class mirroring in WAR, Mythic did it right. The racial pairings had different class mechanics, so technically 10-12 different classes. Even then, the talents were unique (thinking about Pounce).. the pets were unique..the armors were different. You knew your opponent was a Black Orc, or a High Elf Swordmaster. Similar but not exactly the same.

Before I nitpick about Skyrim, lets just put it out there: Its a great game. I would seriously argue it is a GOTY. If I had it for PC, I would be able to tell you how many insane hours i've logged in just two weeks, but i'm guessing about.. 50+ easily.

That being said: I don't like how there is a high amount of invincible npcs in the game.

There should be some way to determine whether a character in Skyrim is killable or not. I'm already pretty paranoid (due to initial 360 data corruption issues) and save often, and this has saved me lots of fines and prison time, as i've found out the hard way that some seemingly innocent npcs are unkillable. It feels like a good 25% of them have this VIP status which takes away from seamlessness of the environment.

Skyrim Success

2011-11-29T17:21:00.001-08:00

Follow these simple tidbits for good results in Skyrim:

Archery
- spend a bit of money at the blacksmith/fletcher and buy arrows; making sure you have around 150+ on any adventure
- level it as soon as possible, being able to slow down time to get that headshot while zoomed in will make ranged combat viable and easy
- raise your level easily by attacking mammoths and giants and using the terrain (rivers, rocks, buidings) to your advantage

Money
- Halted Stream Camp; for the Transmute spell which converts any iron ore to silver and silver to gold; FYI, it doesn't convert ingots only ORE
- alchemy is a cash cow; just spend your time gathering materials, when my skill gets high enough, I even buy out all the ingredients from the vendors b/c I know ill end up with more high value pots
- don't loot everything; Iron has a poor value:weight ratio while steel has a better ratio; gloves, daggers and helmets generally have a better ratio as well. Unless you are CONSTANTLY going back and forth to every single town and vendor, you're better off looting high value but low carry weight items
- join the Thieves Guild to be able to steal and then sell frequently to the fence who can have anywhere from 250-500 more gold than normal vendors

Raising Alteration, Restoration, Illusion
- cast an armor (alteration)spell and letting wolves (something weak) attack you, casting a heal spell when health gets low, and possibly casting a fear spell to make them run away
- buy iron ore cheaply from vendors and casting Transmute for skill and profit
- once you get Invisibility, casting that with Muffle will EASILY get you to 100 Illusion
- if your goal (which we know it is) is to get 75 Illusion for Invisibility, the easiest (but cheap) way to level is to get a follower and then cast Courage over and over

Blacksmithing
- do alot of hunting, turn those pelts/hides into leather and make a billion hide bracers; its the cheapest item and it gives a big chunk of skill increases, the only drawback is that it sells for very little
- coupled with Transmuting your iron ore to gold ore, you can then turn the gold ore into simple gold necklaces which is an easy way to increase your skill and money

Enchanting
- same thing with blacksmithing; save your greater soul gems and use your petty and lesser soul gems and just enchant everything to increase your skill
- many dungeons will have a few soul gems as it is a bit expensive to buy from vendors (both empty and filled gems)
- join the College of Winterhold (mage guild) and steal from them as there are alot of gems here

A Skyrim Thanksgiving - Spoiler Warning

2011-11-24T09:16:00.001-08:00

I dislike dungeons in Skyrim... so unnaturally dark.. everyone must be Khajits in the world as they must have the Nighteyes racial ability. Oh but wait, its all Nords.. The guards have the right idea and patrol at night with torches.

Happy American Thanksgiving everyone! Although in Canada, i'm off b/c our department mostly does financing in the US, so if they're off, we're off! Yay!

Some things i've noticed in Skyrim these days *spoilers*:

It seems like all guild leaders are corrupt and will be the traitor.. convenient for you to take their place. I guess everyone wants to be the GM for the Dark Brotherhood, or Thieves Guild, but sometimes its nice to know there is leadership in place and you don't have to worry about day-to-day humdrums.

Invisibility + Muffle = Almost always invisibility.
I say 'almost' because animals can still smell you and will take a bite out of your invisible form. Try to stay atleast 3 meters away from them. I haven't tried crouching while invisible and muffled... but i don't think that is the point of the two spells.

Halted Steam Camp. Insta money. Find as many iron ore mines as you can and spend your time Transmuting all of it into silver, then into gold. Using Smithing, you can then easily turn them into gold jewelry for very high profit.

Near the end of the Dark Brotherhood questline, you get the most powerful horse in the game. Shadowmere. Black sheen. Red eyes. Regenerates when damaged and is an aggressive horse. Still afraid it will die though. And how are you supposed to pick reagents on a horse? You can't! Its like free money on the ground with some of the best weight to value ratios.

Make sure you don't keep any valuables in the Dark Brotherhood and make sure you pick anything you want up b/c at the end... it burns down and nothing is recoverable.

I find that backstabs doesn't always work. It for whatever reason only does normal damage. Be careful!

Also, there are alot of npcs that are apparently critical to the game and cannot be assassinated.. sad.

Besides the Shout that causes dragons to land, there has got to be a better way to bring them down. When you have melee weapons drawn, they will just land on houses. I find when you draw a bow (don't need to shoot them), only then will they drop to the ground.

Skyrim - Ultimate Thief

2011-11-24T09:02:00.001-08:00

I love it when web comics draw about games that i'm so passionate about... unfortunately unless it is an mmo, it is only for a few weeks until the next big game.

So per the comic in the previous entry, I've played ALOT of Skyrim. I've reached the point that i'm no longer addicted and need to play every day and am unable to stop. Its all more about testing things out, in particular the Invisibility spells, sneak attacks and how it works. As I wait to get it for the PC (b/c everything is better on the PC), i've developed a build I intend on using. Similar to D&D, I find if you plan ahead of time, you can make a very powerful character, and though you may not gimp them, not having a plan can result in a weaker character. Below is what i've partially tested (I have all the skills, just didn't do it in the right order that I intend) to be the Ultimate Thief build in Skyrim:

Objective: To be invisible most of the time & for devastating backstabs

Race:
Khajit

Primary skills:
Illusion - to be invisible and navigate easily via Muffle & Invisibility Spell
One Hand - to increase dagger damage
Sneak - for assassin blade perk for 15x backstab damage
Enchanting - decreased illusion spell cost, increased dagger dps and increased money

Secondary skills:
Lockpicking
Speech - to sell
Alchemy - poisons, pots and money source
blacksmith - to make better daggers and improve gear

Perk choices (starting racial value - skill - needed end value - perk):
15 illusion 75 - expert illusion
25 Sneak 50 - assassin's blade
20 one handed 80 - armsman rank 5
20 alchemy 80 - alchemist rank 5, poisoner
15 enchanting 100 - enchanter rank 5, 2 effects

Shout: Ice Form/ Throw voice

Enchantment slots
Head - Illusion
Chest - illusion
Hands - one handed
Feet - one handed
Ring - Illusion
Amulet - Illusion

First steps:
Join Dark Brotherhood - gloves that provide double (so at the end 30 TIMES) damage!!!
Join Thieves Guild - to sell stolen items, and put money towards Soul Gems, bribe guards
join Mage Guild - to get access to many alchemy and enchanting things (must steal)
Do Daedric Quest for Azura - rechargeable black soul gem for enchanting
Join Bard College - for quest reward perk for 15% faster Speech gain

Skyrim - Easy Money

2011-11-21T20:24:00.001-08:00

Think leveling your Illusion skill to 75 to be able to cast Invisibility is impossible?
The solution is a rather simple one:
Get a humanoid follower and cast Courage over and over. My level 9 mage has 50+ Illusion already.
Don't feel like being so cheap?

You technically could find one/two wolves in the wilderness and take turns casting Fear on them.

I found the location to the best way to make money in Skyrim:
Halted Stream Camp.
Almost (a bit west) directly north of the city of Whiterun; the actual location given to you as the second bounty quest by the Innkeeper at the Bannered Mare in Whiterun.
After defeating some bandits (and it's leader), inside the mine there is a spell tome of Transmutation. This amazing spell converts one piece of unrefined iron ore to one piece of unrefined silver. And then cast it again, and it will convert the silver to GOLD. Best thing is, the mine is filled with iron ore deposits.. when I left the mine, I had 34 pieces of iron ore in my backpack!
Don't mind/want to level your Smithing?
Smith that gold into gold jewelry for even more profit.
Every single character from now on will be going directly to that mine.

Skyrim - Hey I Know You

2011-11-20T20:44:00.001-08:00

There is great profit in lockpicking houses/shops and stealing in Skyrim, in particular pickpocketing their jewelry and then fencing it.

Steel daggers (vs iron) and certain helms and boots are generally more profitable in a gold per weight ratio than other loot you'll generally find.

The strategy guide suggests that if you pair the Khajit's unarmed damage perk with the Heavy Armor perk Fists of Steel that you'll do more damage b/c they stack.. not sure about that as I've tried it and haven't done as much damage as I thought.

Pure thief(no archery, very little melee skill) + melee/combat + lvl 20= death

Found Meeko the faithful dog who survives his master who died of a crippling disease, only to die hours after it joined my party... damn bandits..

Whiterun guards wanting to arrest me when I only have a ONE gold bounty.

Lazy thugs sent to kill me and ambushing me in a beggars house.. and not following me out the door.

Followers have a very hard tiem following you, even when you're not sprinting..

But you can sprint into followers to make them move out of the way when they block the doorway.. the radiation in Fallout makes for better thinking.

As a melee stealther, it is easier to see your surroundings by being in third person view. Make the camera zoom out more by unsheathing your weapons.

The Nighteyes racial perk of the Khajit is very useful, both for thieves and just in general if you don't like the dark. It replaces your shout and can be used as much as you like per day.

I can't figure out what skills level your character faster or slower. I found with my pure thief (sneak, lockpicking, pickpocket) that if he leveled his Smithing it would provide a smaller contribution to his overall level than if he leveled his lockpicking.

I miss using a mouse-keyboard configuration when playing Skyrim; it is incredibly hard to target and steal the correct items when using a controller.

Accomplishments:
- became the College of Winterhold Archmage and when fully geared up, my mage character has 233% increased magicka regeneration
- my Khajit pure thief finished the civil war storyline, helping the Imperial Legion defeat the racist Stormcloaks

Skyrim: The Enabler

2011-11-16T17:16:00.001-08:00

An improvement that i'd like to see in Skyrim:

Radar
Granted it is more realistic never knowing whether that shadow is a bandit or a guard, it would be nice to keep track of allied units and horses. I watch my brother play and he loses sight of his horse all the time. With the glitching of the game, your npc followers will constantly get left behind and you never know where they are as well. Ain't good when you encounter a group of enemies and backup is nowhere to be seen.

Because Skyrim is such a huge game, hours just fly by and it feels like you're not accomplishing much when in actuality, you are. Here are some interesting things that happened yesterday:

Became Thane of Winterhold by assistng 3 villagers:
1. Making a delivery
2. Stealing another villager's staff
3. Giving the village drunk some mead

Bought my house as holding bones and scales of dragons are too much for my housecarl to hold onto. Also bought many tomes of magic to level my other areas of magic instead of just destruction.

Leveled my blacksmithing to learn and create a whole set of dwarven (shiny!)gear for my housecarl.

Found and corrupted the Star of Azura and turned it into the Black Star, a re-useable soul gem which uses the souls of humans instead of creatures.

Disenchanted everything and brought my enchanting up. Discovered although it may say "Gives 15% Fire Resist", if you use a petty soul gem, it will only give you 1% Fire Resist instead.

Drank all my magicka pots and needed to make and buy more.

Although my housecarl was under constant threat of being singed by my fire and lightning attacks, she never died.. which was a good thing.

Skyrim: 2 Quick Questions

2011-11-15T16:29:00.001-08:00

1. Does armor (heavy in particular) affect spell casting in Skyrim like it did in Oblivion?
- everywhere I look online it looks like it doesn't; just mage robes tend to give bonuses whereas Heavy Armor normally doesn't cater to mages

2. Are there Doyens in Skyrim which can be used to decrease your bounty? And if not, are there any ways to decrease your bounty once its been applied to your character?

Just Enough Time

2011-11-14T16:19:00.001-08:00

..to write something about Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

Buy it.

Must I say why?

Crafting
If you love your crafting in games, they did it in spades in Skyrim. Don't want to buy the plentiful materials from various (blacksmiths, traders, alchemists) vendors? Go out into the world and forage for them, whether its plants, hides (for leather), or ore. Go back to town and convert it into useable materials. Then craft armor (including shields), and weapons (including bows!). Want it to be more powerful? Use the Grindstone or Workbench to improve your newly made gear. Want it even better? Enchant the gear afterwards! Skyrim is a crafter's paradise.

A few things to nitpick on crafting; you can't craft arrows... which really sucks, although you'll find alot off enemies and can buy them from most appropriate (blacksmiths, fletchers) vendors. No spears... I love spears (trojans and helenists[from Immortals]).. just give better reach... slowest attack?

Never fight alone
I can't really remember how Oblivion was like, but its very easy to get followers in your party to travel. There are over 30 npcs that can join you in Skyrim. This includes a faithful hound as well. Npcs will join you in quests as well making your party even bigger, if only temporarily.

Problems: Friendly fire. Unlike Fallout: New Vegas, you can accidently kill your followers. It isn't hardcore mode where they die normally, as in a normal battle, they will just fall to the ground and only get up when combat is done(enemies will then concentrate on you). But if you accidently attack them when they are in this vulnerable position, you will end up killing them. There is no resurrection.. just need to get another follower.

Problem #2: Bland followers; there is nothing really special about these followers.. just a basic template.. or meat shield. No background story for them, development, personal quests while they're with you. I loved Fallout's character system, which made you really care about who went with you.

Problem #3: Dumb followers; I think in New Vegas, there were less cramped environments, but my followers are constantly getting in my way in Skyrim. My tank should know if a monster is in their face and use their melee weapons instead of using their bow. I could also tell my follower what to do: stay close, stay far away, use melee, use ranged, etc more easily.

Out of Mana
In Oblivion, mana was a scarce resource that made playing a mage very difficult. Unless you had alot of mana potions or liked to wait around in the game, it was very hard to be a mage in Oblivion. NOT in Skyrim; mana regens at a very nice rate with many early armor/robes that increase mana regen rates.

No drawbacks that I see so far.. being a mage is great! Watch your aoes tho, its an easy way to kill your followers.

Look Ma! Two Hands!
YES. Finally, can you dual wield weapons AND dual wield SPELLS! Like to freeze an enemy and then burn them but not have to switch spells? Don't. Right hand will freeze, while the left will burn. BEST. THING. EVAR.

Problem: dual wielding melee weapons do not allow you to block... which doesn't make sense as we've seen countless movies where characters are able to block. Maybe instead a dual wielder cannot block power attacks..

Thats it for now... fantastic game.. easily GOTY for me..

Support Movember

2011-11-09T16:27:00.000-08:00

Support my friend and coworker Dapinder who is growing a moustache for Movember.

I'll be posting photos each week showing the progress. I'd do it myself, but have a serious problem growing one.. being asian and all ;)

If you're being super generous, you can also donate to my friend Marco who is also participating, but don't have any photos yet.

Race for your life

2011-11-06T12:18:00.000-08:00

THAT is a good catch phrase.

I normally never get/play racing games.. but avalanches.. explosions.. city street racing and gun firing helicopters? Yes please!

Wedged between a rock..

2011-11-03T17:54:00.000-07:00

Had a biopsy on my tongue on Tuesday.. BIG mistake, should have done it Thurs/Friday as its taking it's sweet time to heal. Its hard to talk and hurts to swallow... I had a grand total of 2 potato wedges for dinner before I gave up from the pain.

Thank goodness for pain killers.

I've installed and tried Fallen Earth the past two days.. and i'm pleasantly surprised; its fun. Kinda annoying to gather mats.. not see any use for them, sell them and then a few quests up the road require them, but then buy them from a merchant instead. Its not very efficient that way, but it feels like you're cheating (in a good way) when you can just buy the materials for a quest. Imagine completing quests in less than a minute: you need 10 pieces of scrap steel? No problem... I already have 7 in my backpack and ill buy 3 more from the npc vendor right below you.

I would post a screenshot.. if i knew how to, but its ok b/c its unfortunately kinda drab and a colorless place.. even with the sunsets.

Still, there is a great crafting queue system and I don't mind the real time combat/shooting.

Skyrim Live Action

2011-10-31T18:01:00.001-07:00

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Live Action Trailer, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Thirty-First

2011-10-31T16:40:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween everyone!

This is what I should have gone as... theres always next year..
Follow this link for some gaming-inspired Halloween costumes.. and this one.

Small Burst

2011-10-26T16:22:00.000-07:00

Heroes 6 strategies

2011-10-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

Not much to writeabout these days; I've been consumed with home activities, editting photos frommy photoshoot and been watching the Staw Wars: Clone Wars animated series.

When I have time, I do play Heroes 6: Might and Magic. I'd say the game easilyout-performs all of it's predecessors.

Here are some strategies I employ:

1. On the first turn, I normally build a tavern and purchase a hero with thesame two units that comes with my initial hero.
- this gives you a stronger hero to tackle early monsters in the first week andallow to you take less casualties

2. For the next few days, depending on the resources you have, I'll try to makeas many Town Hall improvements as possible.
- building a creature dwelling only gets you that creature and no additionalbenefits for the rest of the week
- building a Town Hall upgrade will give you more money for the rest of theweek

3. Normally around the 4th or 5th day, I'll start building creature dwellings
- i'll never upgrade any dwellings and concentrate on different dwellings,possibly using the Marketplace to purchase crystals when needed

4. Don't forget your initial hero comes with a skill point!
- spend it on your first turn before you do anything
- I like to spend it on Enlightenment; a stronger hero makes the army stronger

5. Save skill points when you are about to hit lvl 5 or 15
- by saving a points, you get get 2+ tier 2/3 skills at lvl 5/15 instead ofonly 1
- tier 2/3 skills are usually much better than tier1

6. Use your second hero as a mule
- concentrate your army in one hero for the first few weeks, and have yoursecondary hero be the mule which concentrates solely on picking up looseresources
- your main hero should only pick up artifacts and treasure chests forexperience
- when you have 2+ towns, should you have 3 heroes

7. Initial trait: resources, tarot card or money
- I normally always go the 5 extra resources; money is always plentiful, andthe tarot card doesn't seem to make a big difference

8. For those that don't read (which is moot b/c then they wouldn't read this),the "Mass" spells or abilities are normally 1/3 the strength ofsingle target spells.
- normally I only cast "mass" spells when there are 4 or morecreatures it will affect otherwise it isn't really worth it

PvE Scenarios

2011-10-24T16:10:00.000-07:00

I was reading (yes!Its been a busy month or so) Hunter's entry and he talks about WoW's owninterpretation of public quests. I personally haven't read up too much aboutWoW's new expansion, mostly b/c I don't intend on playing it and thus don'tcare, but the descriptor of "PvE Scenarios" piqued my interest.

Instead of having PQ's that was an amazing way to tell a story and get peopleto work together without knowing it, (that eventually dwindled due to highemphasis on pvp in WAR), what happens when you make it something you queue forin an instanced situation? It adds a new layer to the game that creates a fun,engaging environment; I loved PQs in WAR and am very glad its being translatedinto all MMOs now, but was disappointed when they werent being used in higherlevels.
By making people queue for an instanced PQ, you get the necessary amount ofpeople that can do something they enjoy doing. The drawback being is that it isinstanced and not part of the game world and that you need to possibly wait afew minutes for one to pop is a small price to pay. Countless times in WAR,when you're in even tier 3, the pve area is deserted; everyone was in the pvparea where the rewards were much greater.
I believe in most mmo's these days, the rewards are greatest in pvp closelyfollowed by raid rewards. Although PvE Instanced (PQ) rewards would be quitelower than either of those, I would still be greatly interested in taking partin that and would be my main source of recreation

Serenity Now

2011-10-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

I had written a huge paragraph rant of all the unfair things that are frustrating me to all hell, and then I look at that photo of mine.. and can't help to feel better. Thanks.

I was a bit saddened when I realized that these great photos of my first photoshoot cannot be printed and displayed prominently. Because its of a pretty girl that isn't my girlfriend. And must be relegated to a portfolio instead. I wanted to display is proudly like a CEO that framed a dollar of their first sale of their new business.

Does Not Compute

2011-10-16T21:35:00.000-07:00

This is why I don't like the growing trend of needing to be connected constantly to be able to play PC games.

There is nothing wrong with my internet, and there is nothing programmed wrong with my settings (firewalls, virus protection)that is causing me not to enjoy a game that I rightfully paid for. Its the companies server that is down (pssst this isn't an mmo). And the user suffers because of that?

Unacceptable.

Heroes 6 by the way is amazing, but not liking the constant connection requirement.

Jasey Rae Photo Session

2011-10-15T21:12:00.000-07:00

Had a fantastic day today. Had my first official photo shoot.

7+ hours.
595 photos.
Strobes, umbrellas, lights.
Alcohol.
Makeup, curling irons, heels.
Countless outfits.

I learned a few things today:
- you should know your model; special features, tattoos, personality
- lighting is so critical; without it, you shouldn't waste your time (or your options are limited)
- have a large mental repertoire of angles and posed you want your model to do
- clean your surroundings; no loose pop cans or containers that distract the eye
- watch out for loose backdrops; they tend to get rumpled and will be a distraction too
- bring snacks and drinks
- bring a fan; to cool you, your model and provide an air source for flying hair
- extension cords are important
- bring all your lens; I found zoom lens were much more versatile than prime
- get that 'ladder-box' so you can change your angle of shot
- bring music! something to get your model going
- be vocal, give praise loudly and coach your model in doing positive things
- use the time when the model is being prepared by the makeup artist to get the lights and next set ready

Will be posting more photos here, but the bulk on my Deviant Art website.
Hope you're all having a great weekend too!

Matrix Pre-loaded

2011-10-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

Not much happening these days... tried to pre-load Heroes: Might and Magic 6 last night... woke up this morning to find it somehow stopped and was downloading at a blazing fast speed of 30kb/s.... And when I tried to resume today, it had forgotten I downloaded 4gigs and started from the beginning. Fannnnntastic

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Might & Magic: Heroes VI - GC 11: Heroes Never Die Trailer, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Hopefully will have good news on Monday; will be doing a studio photoshoot with a model and makeup artist on Saturday.. ill post some good ones.

Insomnia part 2

2011-10-09T23:04:00.000-07:00

I gave Deus Ex:Human Revolutionan honest attempt but I've found out that its not my type of game, and that isunfortunate, b/c it is a great game. I imagine that if you like games such asSplinter Cell or Assassin's Creed, it would be up your alley. It made merealize, and my best friend reminded me of it, that i'm more of a berzerkerthan a ninja.

A kamikaze!

I may have light footsteps and am quiet but the similarities stop there; Idon't have the patience in Deus Ex (and maybe games in general) to wait andjust watch an opponent. I want to run in there and get my hands dirty. It alsosucks that when you do trigger an alarm in the game, you need to be extremelyprecise and not go wild with you ammo. I'd come in guns blazing, ready with amelee weapon when everything is exhausted.

I totally understand this comic now.

I didn't like how the game guided you to expand your skills to be stealthy anda hacker, while there were boss fights that required you to have alot oftoughness, big weapons, or play very craftey and wear down the opponent. Itsfunny; even on the easiest difficulty in DE:HR, you will die after being shotabout 5 times, and about the same for normal (armored)enemies. But then youface the boss, which just means they are more augmented (see: less flesh, moremetal) and they will take 10+ shots to the head of a shotgun.

I think ill just stick withwaiting for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

Insomnia

2011-10-09T22:55:00.000-07:00

I was reading Bronte's articleon heirlooms in WoW and it got me thinking..

1. Do you like the idea of heirlooms in games?
I think its a cool idea but a character shouldn't be fully equipped with them.One or two pieces, per character, max, should a character have. It would bebetter if we could start with a heirloom item right from character creation.

My Heirloom

2. How would you like it implemented?
Quest-based. Every milestone (5/10 levels) you'd need to do an interestingpersonal story quest that would enable your heirloom to contine to grow instrength.
Experience-based. Wearing the gear while gaining experience would be trackedand would increase in strength. Experience could be meeting certainrequirements (kill 10 bears while equipped, or completed "named"quest, defeat boss of this dungeon). Being that alot of us are achievementoriented, this would be something we'd do.

3. If you had a choice, would you heirloom a weapon or armor?
I would heirloom... a weapon.

The Last Day

2011-10-05T09:03:00.000-07:00

Since it feels like I haven't blogged in ages.. another one..

When I went to the Toronto Fan Expo a month or so ago, it was the same day that my girl friend ended up in the hospital. It wasn't life-threatening, but still pretty serious. I wanted to get her something that would cheer her up ... and I ended up getting fleeced. You think its a good deal, but then you go to some Chinese strip mall and they have the same thing for 70% cheaper... guh.

Bi-winning

2011-10-05T08:58:00.000-07:00

(Woah look at this; a non-MTG entry! There should be less now that it released and I tried Deus Ex, so maybe ill write about that later)

Reading Spinks' article on grinding and it made me think of my gf who simply, has played more mmos than you and me (its a really high number). In these mmos include both free to play and subscription-based mmos. I've never liked the FTP ones as i've found it incredibly repetitive and grindey.

What was triggered when I read Spinks' article is the allure of grinding: its constantly winning.

Think of it; if there are no 'greater' purposes to the game (say questing, or pvp)other than grinding your levels, then making sure you survive and get to high levels is basically winning.

I now understand grinding.

Ruling: Illusions

2011-10-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

Hehe....

Everyone likes to be right.. and I dont typically like to argue... so i'd never be on a debate team. But I was right again.

"The Bear was still targeted. When Lightning Bolt was cast targeting Phantasmal Bear , the Bear's sacrifice trigger was put on the stack. Since the trigger is already on the stack, using Redirect or Cancel will not save it.

Think of it this way: since Redirect can only pick new targets for a spell, that spell still had to have old targets."

People should know: I only play honest; I don't like to be dishonest or cheat to get my way because winning that way is honorless.

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=360727

http://tappedout.net/mtg-questions/illusions-and-being-targeted/

Innistrad Launch Party

2011-10-01T11:26:00.000-07:00

So my group of friends had our MTG:Innistrad Launch party last night; it was the five of us; playing 2headed giant and free for all formats. My ending record was.. 1-4...eeek.

I'm a very aggressive player.. I play on the edge, relying on brute force, rather than trickery and deception. I'll easy give up life to get the power I need. This obviously sounds like a red/black type of deck.. though I don't really have a good enough deck to do so. Or more to the point, I think my decks are more made towards 1on1 (even Emperor) combats, rather than FFA matches.

My friends got some amazing mythic rare cards which I'm extremely jealous of.. equipped in their decks now.. whereas I don't have even 1 mythic in any deck, my ginger friend has 3. Am I making excuses to the number of loses? Kinda. But those that have played MTG, when playing with a non-mythic rare deck, versus one with them, it is a game changer when they are played.

On a FFA match between Red, Hunter and I, my usual aggressiveness with my vampire deck was the cause of my downfall. Instead of just waiting it out to let my trump creature just make all my opponents sacrifice their creatures, I attacked when Hunter has no defenders. It was a perfect time to make him lose half his health....

But then he played Rebuke... And the next turn, I was out of the game.
It looked like Hunter was going to win that round with his 6-7 werewolves on the field and Red struggling to stay alive with her weak 2/2 zombies, when on her last and most important turn, she pulled this:

And what was a sure win, ended up as a loss for Hunter and a win for Red. When I had come to their house, Hunter was already on the losing end of a 1on1 match due to the exact same card too.

Winning against people with mythics when you're not using any is a tough situation, but it doesn't bother me too much; the game is balanced and there are always ways around it.

Another of Red's card and what was used against it the next turn before she could turn anything into a controllable vampire.

I must say, Hunter is very much a strategist; always waiting to pounce at the RIGHT time with backup contingencies.... unlike me..

Lastly, I find that FFA is a very different type of game, requiring a different strategy. You need to:
- appear very weak and insignificant but at the same time be able to defend yourself to cause your opponent to think it is a waste to attack you
- at the same time, be able to do spike damage to an opponent and take them out quickly before they can retaliate
- Vigilance is perfect for an aggressive deck or a person that likes to attack and not worry about holding back creatures to defend
- aggressive strategies should be concentrating on a 1 turn punch out and shouldn't last more than 2 turns otherwise the other people will attack you, to save the losing person UNLESS they have a vendetta against them too
- don't p!ss off people; people will continue to attack you, even to their own detriment in FFA games
- deathtouch is a good ability to keep people from attacking

Every single round, I drew the ire of a player and we would beat each other up causing us to both to be eliminated shortly.

A balanced deck is also pretty important. On the second turn my ginger nemesis, Red, cast this curse on me

Which basically ended up slowly killing me. Though no creatures ever got through thanks to my good (maybe see: cheap) Wall of Denial, I didn't have any Naturalize spells to destroy that enchantment. Nothing is worse than being plinked to death.
Except maybe redirecting a killing blow spell back at my attacker which kills them instead.

All in all, it was a fun night despite the losses. I got some good cards and a booster box waiting to be opened with the gf. I saw the power of werewolves. Glad that Red and Hunter have different decks, albeit very powerful.

Car! Game on!

2011-09-30T15:50:00.000-07:00

After a frustrating and trying week, I finally get my reward... and it was worth it.

Times TWO! Woot!

Its not all about what you think

2011-09-24T10:37:00.000-07:00

One may wonder if this became more of a Magic: The Gathering blog rather than a general gaming blog these days, and I assure you that is not the case. Just more limited time for recreation, blogging, and nothing in particular I feel like playing.

I'm looking forwards to Heroes 6: Might and Magic which releases on October 11th 2011, though the beta is out currently. And i'm also really excited for some dual-wielding craziness in The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, though I may need a serious pc overhaul (please no!) for that. 11.11.11. If my pc is overhauled, then I guess i'll be trying Deus Ex as well.

For now, I'm concentrating on (besides Magic) my photography. My wonderful gf bought me a new camera bag.

Kata 2N1-20

While I went out yesterday and rounded out my collection and bought a monopod.

Manfrotto 680B

All that is needed now is a flash, ballhead and better lense filters.

I must say although Fallout: New Vegas is very buggy, it has brought countless hours worth of gaming, and thats with only 1 dlc. I purchased Old World Blues and barely scratched the storyline. Haven't bought Dead Money, or the new Lonesome Road.

Oh! And don't forget, Fallen Earth mmo is going free to play October 12th, which i'm very excited to give a go. Anyone else going to give it a try?

Deja Vu

2011-09-20T08:17:00.000-07:00

"Wizards actively tries to put good cards at each rarity, here's a list of commons that have proven to be very strong tournament staples." ~matt

Heh... and this article goes on to further prove the point how there are good cards in MTG even in the commons and uncommons. That, they don't need to be rare or mythic rare to work well. After over 15+ years, they've made their mistakes, make sure they test out to make sure the card isn't flawed and if it does, it makes it into the banned list. Lol; and whats the first card they talk about? The type card we fought so hard and long about.

The next article from Daily MTG talks about various other cards (by the way, all the cards have been released now and can be found in the product section) and their themes such as using the graveyard to fuel your creatures, heavy-token decks and copy spells. I'm eager to have a token deck again... whether it'll work as well as before.. we'll see.

Rulings and Reasoning

2011-09-18T13:19:00.000-07:00

I CAN SO tap that creature! SAY IT!

I think Magic needs an online chat room that you can join 24/7 to get instant rulings. There probably is one.. I just gotta find one. Mannnn.. my friends and I had the most heated discussions ever on Friday night. Normally, we're all unsure and we just decide to play it a certain way and then next time have it verified by a veteran. But the sides were insistent and adamant in their own position. I normally save the questionable rulings in my Blackberry so I can email my girlfriend's brother-in-law so he can answer it... but I was so sure in the situation in question that I wanted to text him it... at 2 in the morning. Anyways, i'm glad we're good enough friends to say GG, shake each other's hands and not have hard feelings about it afterwards (though maybe not during the game). lol. Afterall, its only a game.

Not bad for 1 mana.

Ok. So, here are two additional articles from Daily MTG; the first one is on the reasoning on the 2-sided cards as it didn't sound like it was the most popular decision. One of the biggest complaints was that if you didn't cover your cards, people could easily see that you had a werewolf card. And that it was kind of a hassle if you had to constantly take the card out of the protector to show the correct side (part of the reason why I don't want to play 2-sided cards myself).

The second article, talks about a big part of the horror genre of bringing creatures back from the graveyard.

I absolutely love this kind of play style: concentrating on your offense and attacking creatures, and if your creatures are removed or ever end up in the graveyard, just bring them back and keep the pressure on. One of the greatest things that Wizards are using in Innistrad is the the Flashback mechanic. I love getting better utility of my cards; I dislike when its a one-time use only especially if they get countered. Innistrad seems to lessen the impact of counters as they'll need twice as many with flashback. Make Mill decks less damaging, or actually beneficial. Even discarding cards doesn't seem that bad anymore. Exile seems like its going to be much more important now.

I think my friends know that I love to use enchantments and have littered their decks with destroy enchantment spells as whenever I get a good enchantment out, its normally destroyed right away before it can do some good damage.

Counter Spell

2011-09-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

Yessss!
A particular ginger friend of mine uses this card on me, all the time.

I probably lose because i'm too aggressive and would rather pay the health cost than the mana cost. Now there is finally a card that will slightly nullify it without having to rely on disenchanting it.

For more information on strategies on this kind of card go to the Daily MTG article.

This next article talks alot how a strength of blue mages is to counter spells. This card below is another strategy of theirs:

Card Advantage.
I'm not too fond of cards like this that lets me draw/pick cards... maybe if I get alot of these, coupled with some Ponders, i'll give it a try.

The Frightening Saint

2011-09-14T09:01:00.000-07:00

More Innistrad cards today:

Looks like Splinterfright will be pretty good with the graveyard-centric theme. While Saint Traft looks like it'll hit hard and frequently.

More card reveals found at the Product Section of Daily MTG.

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - E3 2011: Demonstration Part I, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Innistrad: Daily Spoilers

2011-09-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

Two (technically three) new Innistrad articles today, revealing a few new and interesting cards. This article talks about a new double-faced vampire card and devises up some decks for it.

This article talks about the card to the right, Prey Upon; how it works, the strengths and weaknesses... basically its pretty good when using Green and big creatures, but is susceptible to counters, redirects and buffs. Use cards with Morbid to counter it, or atleast benefit someway.

Lastly, a very short card reveal article of the below card, Evil Twin. A copy creature card with a slight twist.

Innistrad Spoiler: White

2011-09-12T19:59:00.000-07:00

For my friends, to see what kind of cards that are coming out for Innistrad. I sure am liking the white cards.. pretty powerful.

In Memory 9/11

2011-09-11T10:44:00.000-07:00

Our Greatest Glory is in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

We will never forget.

Pilgrims and Maniacs

2011-09-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

Today there are two articles from Daily MTG... more on the meta game of MTG that teases out some new cards for Innistrad. Not my type of articles, but they still show some diversity in writing styles and have some interesting cards:

Looks like white and green decks are in my future.
I'm a fan of cards that tap to give mana, especially if it gives a different color than it's own color.

The card reveal for Laboratory Maniac came with an interesting story.. but I don't see it as a very interesting way to play in Casual format. I really hope I don't get this card in my boosters :P

Heroes 6 Beta Improvements

2011-09-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

I pre-ordered Heroes of Mightand Magic 6 on steam and got access to their beta. I don't recall seeing anyNDA, so i'll assume its ok to talk about it and bring the hype.

Town Portal
A great improvement to the franchise: there are two kinds of town portals thatcan be built in towns: basic and greater. A hero is able to teleport from onetown to another as long as: both towns have a basic town portal, the hero is intown AND has 15 movement points (about half of movement points).

No more, teleporting to whatever town you like when you're deep in thewilderness when the opponent sneaks into your area.

Only with a greater town portal can a hero teleport to the NEAREST town with agreater town portal. One might not think this a big deal, but in Homm6, therare resource Chaos Crystals, are pretty hard to come by. Its as expensive asbuilding tier 2 (4th, 5th, 6th ranked) buildings (or like the 4th/5th levels ofmage guilds).

Army purchasing
I always thought it was a pain to have to get my mule heroes to move my armiesfrom my strongest home castle to my adventuring hero. In Homm6, as long as youhave the basic creature dwelling on the outpost, you can purchase thatun-upgraded version of the monster from a pool of all your creatures from allyour castles.

Being designed this way, it is easier to defend specific towns from attack, atthe cost that if not enough time is given to upgrade it, you may be playingwith weak versioned creatures.

Retreat
Retreating no longer is 'that' painful in Homm6. Instead of losing your wholearmy, you only lose 25% of them. The drawback comes when having to purchaseyour hero again; costing significantly more, coming in with a debuff, having ahuge stable of heroes is a thing of the past. Some factions do come withspecial buildings that decrease the cost of purchasing heroes and even givethem a small buff for a week

Leveling Heroes
I always thought it sucked when your main hero was incredibly strong, but thenhad newbie heroes guarding your home. Even with a strong army, they wouldseccumb to a more experienced hero with better skills and magic.

In Homm6, there is a feature to have 'more powerful' heroes. As timeprogresses, the purchasing level of your heroes in the tavern increases. Soinstead of paying X amount for a level one hero, you now have a level 5, orlevel 8. Pretty impressive.

--------------------------------------

New Innistrad links: Curse of the Stalked Prey (fast agro strategy) and Human Champions

Dragon Con 2011

2011-09-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

It just came to me, that the other pictures of cosplay wouldn't really interest most people, since it dealt with non-mmo games. Here are some Star Wars cosplay shots that I took from the Fan Expo, 2 weeks ago.

Here is a link to some Dragon Con photos.

And another one here.

I'm happy to report that these shots look better than the photos on those at Kotaku =)

Alot of my shots that i've reviewed can be found on my Deviant Art site.

This girl was a fantastic model; great facial expressions!

Innistrad: 2 Sided Cards and Art

2011-09-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

Mmm... I think it may be premature to get rid of my dragon deck...

I sure do love my dragons and big creatures in Magic. For additional art of Innistrad.

An article discussing the 2 sided cards which will be used for a the first time since the Kamigawa block..

I do love me some shipwrecks!

Labor Day Goodness

2011-09-03T09:19:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness American's share Labor Day with Canada (means I get the day off too!).

Some intersting cosplayers from Dragon Con.

Have a safe weekend everyone!

The Technically New

2011-09-01T19:36:00.000-07:00

I was reading a web comic Ifrequent on a daily basis, GU comics and stumbled upon an interestingdiscussion on an event that happened recently that involved the new game DeusEx and Gamestop.

The short form was:
- Square Enix included a coupon for 1 free month to an online game servicecalled OnLive in each copy of the game
- Gamestop has their own online game service called Impulse and to preventcompetition, opened and removed these coupons from all copies

People obviously don't like this, and it makes sense.

There is the argument that the game is not 'new' anymore if they:
1. Open the package (for any reason)
2. Remove anything from the package

From my (long) time at EB, there was a legit reason, at the time to open thegames and still sell it as new; b/c people steal and we didn't have marketingmaterials for display purposes. It wasn't the best solution or reason, but ithad to be done. I fully understand in what was (at the time) a mostlymale-dominated store, guys don't always take the best care of what they handle.But if you had me, I handled it with great care and it would bother me to sella non perfect condition cd to the point, i'd normally defect it than have adisgruntled customer.

Alot of people tend to pooh-pooh on EB for some reason. Maybe b/c they're a bigcorporation.. so they're "the man." Or for practices such as thissituation. Or the people that work there that were rude to them. But there arelocations that have great people that are gamers themselves that treasure theircustomers. It sounds corny and weird (to treasure their customers), but iremember when I did the opening shift, I'd always have the lunch crew from somenearby office come by, just to see what was new, and say hi. I had the one guythat would call frequently asking for the trade-in values for tons of games. Orthe young kid who basically grew up in the mall b/c his parents owned the DQ;we let him sit on a little stool and play on his nintendo ds.

I don't know, at this time, how I feel about removing the coupon from the game;I understand how it is damaging (to Gamestop's Impulse business), how noticeshould have been provided by Square (keep good relations between companies),that at EB reps will remove the guts of the game to be used for displaypurposes, and how as a lowly rep, you do what you're told whether it's ethicalor not (of course there are things you can report). But taking something thatshould be included in a game.. thats iffy. I think the best thing to do withthe least amount of backlash, is to fully remove the game from circulation andwait till Square provides a version without the coupon, or publicly advise thatthey will provide a 50$ coupon with Gamestop for removing it BEFORE any aresold without warning. Do you think the normal rep WANTS to deal with iratecustomers who found out; who probably didn't think it was right having toremove it in the first place; who had to spend the time opening every singlecopy?

I like to think of the situation from all sides and just think that thereshould have been a flag set in place to alert Gamestop that this game had acoupon which was against their best interest. And if there isn't one(flag/system)in general, obviously from this public outcry, Gamestop shouldimplement one in the future.

Another day of Innistrad

2011-09-01T09:02:00.001-07:00

At this time, there are two new articles for Magic: The Gathering Innistrad

One on a powerful card for zombie decks & the other of the power of cheap agro red decks.

Everything MTG - Innistrad

2011-08-31T08:06:00.000-07:00

You can't imagine how excited I am for the next Magic: The Gathering block: Innistrad. Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, Abominations, Spirits, Victims and Slayers.. true horror theme. Coming out in late September.. time for some new cards!

Below are some links from Daily MTG to catch up on some news:

The why of Innistrad.

The mechanics of Innistrad.

A trick with card advantage and tempo. (which I don't understand too much)

The background story of why Liliana Vess comes to Innistrad.

What is the Flashback mechanic, and why it comes in handy.

Demons, Morbid Mechanic, Doubling Season trick.

Fan Expo - Moments

2011-08-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

I honestly dont' know why I keep thinking its 2012.... ...
Anyways; below are some interesting photos I took that people might enjoy :)

Heroes in plain sight.

An assassin making his move..

Gun Envy

Fan Expo 2011

2011-08-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

Fan Expo = Anime Comics Sci-fi Horror Gaming

Also.. famous celebrities (William Shatner, Eliza Dushku).. cosplay.. new games and technologies.. things you don't see every day..

All the things you love in book, jewelry, print, plushie etc-format that you can think of, all in one place and not spread out all over Ontario/farther.
Lots more on my Deviant Art site.

Like-minded individuals, taking part in what they love.

Everyone just being themselves; and thats cool.

(Dunno if this video will load for you; but its a whole group of kids in cosplay, just dancing around)You laugh at first at the absurdity.. but then smile, b/c they're just having fun.

Reckless

2011-08-24T22:34:00.001-07:00

2011-08-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

I've always found it curious how we play our games, in particular mmos.
Customization has always been very important to us to cater to the way in which we play, to maximize our effectiveness.

In Warhammer Online I would end up with 5 rows of action bars to accomodate all the skills and abilities of my character. I would have the UI show all 5 bars one on top of each other in a vertical fashion so that i could have my mouse in the middle of what would look like a square/rectangle. This would allow me to access all the skills easily, going up, down, left or right.

Neverwinter Nights got it right in a way, by having hotkeys via CTRL, ALT or SHIFT buttons for numbers 1 to + (I believe) since there was 'less' visible UI customization.

I look at Thrangis' pictures of the new Guild Wars 2 of what looks to be hotbars. One hotbar and skills changing, depending on what main & offhand weapons one has. Being able to assign numbers 6+ for misc/other abilities.

I truly look forward to a game where I don't have a huge plethora of skills that I need to find a place for quick access to. Maybe something with more strategy, and body placement, rather than pressing a combination of the same keys for abilities. Where a battle will be different each time even if its against the same monster.

This kind of wish, reminds me of one of the best Wii games i've ever played: Monster Hunter Tri. (Granted the Wii didn't really have 'good' games that I liked). It was an single player game that you could play like a mmo, just think of it like Borderlands (drop in, and drop out ability). You battled big monsters all the time, and you had only a small amount of attack abilities (more like different kind of thrusts: high attack, low sweep attack, quick attack, strong attack). It didn't emphasize the many special skills you had or your level, but more of body placement, moving around, dodging and attacking weak points when presented with them. "Mini" boss battles could last an extremely long time (10+ minutes) and we're not even talking about the real bosses. Real bosses would require you to chase them across the map and sometimes require you to run away when you got overwhelmed.

From the videos that you watch in Guild Wars 2 that have released and posted recently on other sites, you see the warrior runs around alot in using his abilities, dodging, weaving, never just standing there and taking the hits except when he actively blocks. Same thing goes with pvp, it looks like there is alot more movement happening.

I'm getting more excited and looking forward to GW2 and even how SWTOR will play..

More immersion

2011-08-22T08:10:00.000-07:00

I read this from Spinks' entry:

"Basically tanks will be getting an automatic 200% treat increase next patch. It's mostly due to dps who don't like having to hold back in instances when they get a lower geared tank."

That quote kinda bothers me. Maybe because its generalized so the mass reader can understand what the patch is about, but the reason just doesn't make sense; logically.

What makes a tank/plate warrior draw more attention than an individual that does more damage and more lightly armored?

Is the warrior's armor making more clanking sounds when they move?
Is the warrior now shouting more and waving their arms about to attract more attention?
Are monsters easily distracted by bright shiney things?

I've always thought knives to the back is more annoying than someone all turtley using a big shield and doing minimal damage.

If you draw more agro, because you do more damage naturally, you should have more ways to defend yourself.
You should be able to:

Feign death - ok, the annoying creature is dead, onto the next more annoying stabby guy

Disappear with smoke, ninja style - well he disappeared. Next!

Increase one's dodging/parry ability - nothing is hitting him, and the guy next to him is hitting me and i'm still able to hit him... hmm

Rabbit out of a hat

2011-08-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

To create a sense of immersion, logic plays a key role for me.
It has to make sense; it can't always be as "its because its magic."

I was reading Syp's entry on ArenaNet's use of home instances in Guild Wars 2 and while it seems like great way to make a connection with the player (via in-game housing), the way it sounds like it will be implemented doesn't sound 'real.'

There will be an instance of this area in the capital city that you can visit and interact with other npcs. You can invite your friends there. People that aren't your friends will not be able to go, but still have their own instance of the exact same area? Will you be able to see them, or will it be fully instanced?

Is that supposed to be magic.. that you enter some sort of portal and you have your house and the people that you interacted with in your travels.. but in reality it only occupies a small space like in a magical bag of holding, and other people has a mirror or parallel universe/space like yours?

I think that is what made the housing in UO special; you had a house (if you were lucky enough to find a spot) which anyone in the game universe could visit and interact with. The drawback was that there was a huge population and only a finite amount of space available to purchase property.

With the technology of instancing, Arenanet was able to accomodate the player's need of personal housing at the cost of logic and believability; what is the logic that everyone has their own personal space that occupies an actual area in the game?

I guess it comes with the territory of pve; where in reality the quest has been done hundreds of thousands of times by many other players. Heroes you would call them. But when you do that pve quest, you are the sole person of importance: you are the only hero.

Going back to a personal instance that you and people you allow have access to, if this technology or magic is possible, why is it only that small area and not the whole world? A world where you are the most important person: the king or queen?

I look forward to the personal quest and the home instance provided in Guild Wars 2, i'm just saying from what i've read on it, it doesn't seem to be logical.

Life Lessons

2011-08-15T09:58:00.001-07:00

We probably don't pay attention to how often we complain in our daily life: how life is unfair and cruel to us. I try my best to recall a picture I saw in the TIME magazine; of a woman scavenging in a garbage dump. She LIVED in said place and that was her only form of income for her family. We all live a charmed life when we compare our trials with that.

I normally don't watch & despise these reality tv shows, but i'm glad I watched this one; it not only reminds me that life is incredibly difficult for people, but they have the opportunity to change it.

Where's Fluffy?

2011-08-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

Hey all, back from a very relaxing cottage week vacation. Back to one of my first loves: blogging.
FanExpo for Toronto is coming up in 2 weeks (that was fast). Don't forget!

Just like how Princess Leia is a cult icon for North America, that Final Fantasy heroine is the shiz for asians ;)

Follow the link for more cosplayers!

Went with a new Canadian wireless carrier and purchased a new phone recently; I was with Virgin Mobile before, on a basic texting plan (unlimited incoming, 100 outgoing, for 5$ a month) with an LG Rumor.

One day while talking to my close friend and gaming-brother Capo, and all I could think about the whole time was "how many more minutes do I have left until my pay-as-you-go run out?" It was very uncomfortable and stressing.

So I purchased a Blackberry Bold 9780 (yes, they are coming out with a new line up) and went with a new competitor in the market: Mobilicity. 50$ basically for unlimited everything, including data. Lets do a compliment sandwich:

The biggest plus was the very reasonable monthly price without a contract and unlimited everything (even data).

There are minuses though:
- reception; my BB has no reception in my room, while the Rumor had about a bar or two. Everywhere else, the reception is good, but I want to operate the cell in my room unfortunately
- 'unlimited' when operating in the metropolitan area; i'd need to pay per usage outside.. we'll see how crippling that is when I start paying for that (don't think ill be out of the area too often)
- the reps at the store didn't sound like they knew what they were doing

Back to some positives:
- great customer service; I called the cx service to verify some details on my account and fix an issue with porting my phone number. The people on the line knew what they were doing and the email responses were quick and effective

1.8 Billion Dollars...

2011-08-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

Thats quite a bit of customization... i like.

Probably my last entry for a while; my best friend's wedding is this weekend and after that i'll be on my birthday vacation. Have a great time everyone :)

Lessons

2011-08-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

THAT is actual cosplay and not cgi!

In 24 days, the Toronto FanExpo comes to town and we'll get to see lots of crazy things like this:

Roll out!

As a guy, make sure you don't check your nails like that...

Note to self, learn more about your new camera

Nikon D300

Went hiking over the weekend, and although I didn't take any good shots, they were all taken in JPEG and *ahem* true photographers will take them in RAW.

Life is like this sometimes

2011-07-27T21:05:00.000-07:00

Found at Omake Theater

What to expect at a Comic Con

2011-07-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

Cosplay found at the San Diego Comic Con

Not the best stuff i've seen, but still better than anything I can make..

Pew-Pew Indeed

2011-07-26T08:06:00.001-07:00

With a serious gaping hole which is the lack of mmo gaming these days, i've been catching up on some Fallout: New Vegas.

I found out how easy it was to finish the 'evil' Caesar's Legion questline (follow the quest indicator: duh). I was stuck at the part in which I needed to get part of the equipment of an Auto-doc from a vault.

I'm currently exploring the wastes of the Mojave wasteland with an avenged Rose of Sharon Cassidy (more damage) and an upgraded ED-E after being tinkered with by the Followers of the Apocalypse.

My character, Vera, is a silent melee brawler currently leveling her lockpicking so she can get access to safes and rooms hopefully brimming with treasures. Travellers of the Mojave must be of great importance (see: Quest related or a vendor)to avoid her terrible cruelty which normally happen at night via a Mr Sandman attack. Those that aren't fortunate to seccumb in their beds will only hear a small thud; a silenced 10mm, to the back of their head.

In this playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas, I intend on:
- purchasing every implant from the Medical Clinic
- finishing each companions side quest
- getting to max level for the Steam achievement
- try to explore every area that I haven't been to yet (not many more places at this point)

Note: The game was very nice to me when I was playing my evil campaign with Caesar's Legion, only crashing one time. With Vera the game has been consistently crashing on me every 1.5-2hours, so I quicksave with vigilance.

2011 Comic Con

2011-07-22T14:45:00.000-07:00

I haven't played/thought of Borderlands for such a long time, that I nearly missed this from the (San Fran?) Comic Con 2011:

Go here for more photos. Yay cosplay ;)
There should be Fan Expo at the end of August in Toronto which I intend on taking some photos for practice!

Engaging

2011-07-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

And climbing..

Pretty good.

Fortune favors the Brazen...

2011-07-20T08:02:00.001-07:00

If you follow my blog and use my blogroll to access other blogs, you may have noticed I added a new one: The Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk.

Now not a gaming blog at all, but a blog I found incredibly interesting. Catchy titles to entries and engaging entries that suck you into it without requiring *ahem* photos or pictures.

I have a Xanga blog as well and I notice that some bloggers on there are really fake; it seems like they write fake entries that are meant to provoke people into commenting on their site, gain traffic and online notoriety. Many of us gaming bloggers blog because its our therapy, our calling and because we want to share our love of our games. The fakers write outrageous things for fame.

While Penelope has many outrageous things she says in her blogs, it doesn't give off the same vibe. Yes, she gets an incredible amount of traffic and provokes alot of people, but it seem genuine, un-filtered thoughts coming from her own head. She's quirky. She's just a real human with real faults but not afraid to say it.

Heroes 6 Musings

2011-07-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

The Harpy attack animation takes too long
- it takes about 3-5 times longer than any other creature

Only one type of special resource? Chaos Crystals?
- I liked concentrating on different resources for different factions

Unique catapults depending on the faction
- spider-like design for the necropolis

More support creatures in Homm6; more healers (usually 3 heal charges), more ranged (looks like unlimited ammo).

The ability to convert enemy faction towns and forts when captured
- pay a small amount of resources and you no longer have a mish-mash of creatures

Taking over an enemy town, will turn over all mines to your control (atleast in this beta skirmish map)
- so no more having to get a secondary hero to steal them away
- but while the enemy holds their town, you cannot steal their mines

Some artifacts have requirements; Magic Heroes cannot use shields, while some artifacts require the Magic Affinity ability

Going from land to a boat doesn't take up a whole turn
- it looks like the Sanctuary faction has water-walking!

Each pre-generated hero comes without starting skills, so you can fine tune them the way you want instead of hoping you have access to them in your tavern.

Your tavern gives you access to all heroes in all factions.

Logistics seems to have a lesser impact/nerfed.

Different look to Phoenix
- at first I thought it was a Thunderbird. The fire shield on the Phoenix is DEADLY with stacks of +50/+100 creatures dying instantly.

- The Necropolis top tier creature has the ability to morph from a vicious melee creature into a spider ranged creature.

- The game likes to crash 3-4 turns before I win the game :P

The Empty Feeling

2011-07-14T23:28:00.000-07:00

So much for sleeping early.

Hope everyone's has a good Friday and better weekend.

On RvR Lakes

2011-07-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

I was reading Gaara's entry on his meeting with other bloggers with Mythic and the suggestion came up on there being interesting areas of interest in the pve area while the rvr lakes only had small uninteresting buildings or a "pile of rocks" to defend.

Its been a long time since i've played WAR and have forgotten about the server types and have heard there are very few left. I remember there being a PVP type of server where you could attack an enemy whether he was flagged or not. Mythic did a fantastic job in pathing the player through pve where the player would rarely meet up with an opposing faction unless they were specifically exploring and looking for trouble. As an explorer by heart, I always feared for my virtual life while in the enemy territory. Mythic didn't do a good enough job in creating a stealth class like Trion did with Rift, but that didn't stop me from going to each part of the map looking for tome unlocks!

It would be great if the maps, questing and pathing could direct players in every tier to bump into and encourage skirmishes and not be specifically in the RVR area. I always found the RVR area to be a bit too sterile; too empty, too far apart, nothing truly interesting in them except those special scrolls for (what else?) tome unlocks. To make the whole map the RVR lake; where what you do contributes to the warfront. Possibly doing a quest, pushes npc friendlies closer to the enemy towns. Similar to Rift, the ability to destroy the Rift crystal, overrun and convert the town into your control. There would be a warcamp which has no possibility to take over, with max level npcs, and many seige defending weapons.

Pushing the warfront forward, will unlock new pve and pvp quests at each town. Each quest will be unique because the town used to be a player town for a specific faction. The warfront is pushed via pve quests, pvp quests, rvr control, scenarios, skimishes and public quests. The strength of the defenders of the town is based on the progress of those indicators. But as you get closer to the enemy's warcamp, the stronger their defences get, even if you are dominating in each facet. There should be special currency like Rift currency (planarite) that will be granted from all forms of participation, where with reputation (elf/orc/chaos) will grant special items the players will be able to buy. If people are concentrating on a certain task (that they might find is most efficient), Mythic can create Live Events to move it in a different direction.

As before, if you don't belong to a lower level tier, you will turn into a chicken, providing a nice target for the lowbies. The rewards should be good for a realm (elf/orc/chaos) that you are dominating in to encourage defence instead of zerging to a different realm. Zerging should also be minimized in this way b/c domination in one or two areas (rvr control and say scenarios) is not enough and the defending towns will still be rather strong.

These warfronts will not only be a direct line which is rather boring, but a matrix, allowing different venues of attack; if a town is too well defended, the wargroup can go attack a weaker town. And though this can be done, once again, this will make the other defending towns stronger and require more participation (questing, public questing) first, to weaken the defenders.

Mythic can still raise WAR from the ashes and soar like a powerful phoenix and make the game more engaging. It won't be easy (or cheap), but nothing worth it ever is!

WAR's New Relic System

2011-07-12T08:48:00.001-07:00

...or atleast an interesting way I can imagine it can be implemented:

3 different zones ; elf, orc and chaos
Each with 1 relic in a random keep

Equipping a relic at a keep will give it indestructible warmachines for the defenders. Or some other bonus. Possibly only for a short time to discourage turtling and encourage constant movement of the relic; possibly giving a bonus of renown for moving it.

When a keep with a relic falls into the hands of the attackers; one person is assigned by the person/leader that plants the banner on the keep on who can carry the relic (only 1 person).
That person cannot use a mount and is unable to move the relic out of the rvr zone. They do have the ability to move the relic to a different racial zone, but only once a day (or within reason).

They cannot stay in a warcamp for longer than 10 minutes, or it will:
- spawn randomly in the rvr area
- spawn in an enemy keep in a different zone

When all three relics are in control of one side, they are able to bring it to the capital enemy fortress, where by combining/bringing them together weakens the capital city defences. This can take X days to weaken the ward to the city, allowing the defenders of the capital city to try to take back the relics.

At this point the relics are immovable at the enemy fortress (captured that is), and vulnerable by the enemy. There should be a postern door to the capital city which should give an opportunity for the capital city defenders to get the relics, strengthen the ward to their city and once the ward is strengthened, the rvr zones reset.

Farewell

2011-07-09T08:50:00.001-07:00

RIP Grandma

Say hi to Grandpa for me.

Heroes 6 Preview

2011-07-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

So. Heroes of Might and Magic 6... or more like Might and Magic: Heroes 6. If you bought the preorder on the official website or on Steam, you'd be able to download the closed beta.

Lets get right down to it.

The Good:

Graphics
The adventure screen is more 3d and shows more depth; you can tell whether you're going to a higher altitude or going down a slope. There is more color and more light bursts. More Shiny. Creatures look impressive both in normal and elite versions; it looks like more thought was put into making the elite version look more impressive and not be just a different splash of color.

Combat
Is the same as you loved it in previous versions. Checkerboard design. No more hexagonal design (i like both). Right clicking on a creature will show you all the stats, abilities, buffs and debuffs currently affecting it. You now see critical hits as a special animation; imagine my eyes becoming as big as saucers when I saw the vampire throw his sword high into the air, fly up and do a verical slice down onto the baddie. The death animation is also impressive for creatures.

User Interface
Its new, its different. No longer does the game go into a separate screen to access hero skills, or the town management screen; a smaller window will popup allowing you quicker access to the info. It seems to lag a bit, but i'm attributing it to the more intensive graphics and it being a beta.

The market interface which allows you to trade resources is revamped; it still does the same thing, but now is much more sleek and user friendly.

New Hero Skill/Ability System
There has been a current theme to continuation of series these days (Dungeon Seige 3 or Dragon Age for example) where developers are dumbing down beloved strategy/rpg games to cater to console players but turning away the pc players. I'm happy to report that the skill development system of Homm6 is streamlined, makes sense and doesn't give a feel that it is dumbed-down, but more user friendly instead.

If you remember from previous Homm games, you had your favorite heroes for a certain faction that you'd always start with. I remember in one series where I had the minotaur Dace which had a bonus to logistics which would allow him to run much farther than any other hero. In Homm6, you get to CREATE your own hero; you determine the name, sex, faction, starting bonus, any dynasty weapons (more later), might/magic class. This form of customization is very sleek and very welcome, creating emotional attachment to the hero.

If creating your own avatar wasn't enough, the new ability system appears in a window divided by Might, Magic, General skills. All heroes have access to both Might and Magic abilities, but your class dictates how far down the skill tree you can get. For example, as a Might class, you will be able to get (basic, advanced, elite) elite might skills, but only get advanced magic skills. No longer do you have to rely on manuals or websites to see what skill leads to what and what is available in general; all the skills are plainly revealed. To get access to advanced skills, the hero needs to be atleast lvl 5 and sometimes require you to have purchased the basic skill. Same thing goes with elite skills; the hero needs to be lvl 15 and have purchased the basic and advanced prior versions.

Online hero persona
As you play, you gain experience. As far as I see, they look like you can use the experience as currency to purchase special in-game items that make your heroes more powerful/unique. At the same time, this boosts your dynasty weapons..

Dynasty weapons
What is a Dynasty Weapon, you may ask? It is an equip-able special item that a hero is assigned to which provides stronger bonuses dependent on your online hero persona's level/experience. These is this staff that I have from pre-ordering that gives a bonus to water spells, and if I gain a level, it will give my hero more mana and boost my other skills. Knowing this, I think the Deluxe Homm6 costs would be justified.

Factions
There are 5 factions each with it's own feel:
Haven - your traditional knights and angels (european)
Necropolis - undead and vampires (the immortals from the movie 300)
Barbarian - goblins, orcs and cyclops (mayan)
Demons - succubi, demons, pit fiends
Sanctuary - nagas (snake people), sharkmen, frog-ishmen (japanese)

Story
With greater computing power, Homm6 appears to have a much better fleshed out campaign mode. Cut scenes, more dialogue and better character progression seems to make the campaign mode something that i'll pursue.

The Bad
Factions
Only 5 factions which seem like alot less from previous versions. Of course the arguement is that they 5 factions that made the cut were polished and work really well, i've always still enjoyed having many different factions and avoiding the feel of rock-paper-scissors. I will truly miss the Wizard faction (titans, genie and mages), Dungeon/Dark Elf faction (evil dragons!), Forest/Elf Faction (elven archers, unicorns, phoenix!) from the normal mix. I really hope the future expansions contain more of these missing factions and that they DO NOT create an elemental town instead (stupid).

Graphic Glitches
Maybe its the game telling me that my new (& rather good) video card is not that great, but every 5 seconds the screen flickers... which is annoying. I will attribute that and the choppiness to being a beta and hopefully this will be fixed by time it goes gold.

UI placement
In the top right part of the screen, there is a globe which allows you to look at the progress of your overall online persona. Its invisible, but if you click on the top right, there seems to be a close button there. If you click on that accidently (which I have twice now), it WILL close your game. Thank goodness for autosave.

It took me till my third game to realize how to create the improvement to creature buildings to be able to purchase elite creatures. Where it has the icon that shows you build the basic creature generator, there is a checkmark to let you know you built it. What you may not realize until you read this, is that you can click on it again which allows you at THAT point to then purchase the upgrade. It wasn't as new-user friendly as I would have hoped, but once you know how it works, it makes sense.

Online Security system
The developers of Homm6 are devious, I barely recognized it: they created this online hero persona to make you forget you need to be connected to the internet to be able to play the game. Just like other Steam games, if you don't have connection to the internet, you won't be able to (legitimately atleast) play a game that you've paid for.

Conclusion:
Blackhole has made great strides and changes to a beloved franchise, but kept it true to it's roots that we can all appreciate.

If you're a Homm fan; this takes the game to the next level; everything has been improved, its a reasonable (50$) price for massive replayability. So long as it isn't hampered by too much by bugs and CTDs, this will be a staple in our pc game libraries.

I'm definitely glad I pre-ordered this game to get access to a beta which allows access to 2 campaign stories (Haven & Sanctuary) and a skirmish map allowing you to play ANY faction. I'd highly recommend preordering it if you're a Homm fan and feel the itch to play one more turn.

On Pets: After Rift

2011-07-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

I realize i'm not really a fan of collecting in-game pets. Atleast the way that Trion implemented them in Rift, it wasn't too big a draw for me as some bloggers I read about. Besides getting an achievement eventually, you can only display one pet at a time. They don't provide any boosts, barely look cool and because of this, I normally forget about summoning them when I play.

Even worse was that death rift glow item from the first Live Event. It looked very cool, but you'd forget to use it often. After I purchased it for all my characters, I couldn't have used it more than 5 times. Not to mention most people bought that item too, so it wasn't that special.

Warhammer Online also didn't do a very good job in regards to companion pets.. only giving them as rewards for getting people to signup for the game. Their equivalent to companion pets (I imagine) was the trinkets which could be displayed on the character. Great idea, rather unique b/c it was hard to acquire these trinkets, BUT barely visible on the character. Only if you were doing nothing (ie. waiting in keeps during defence locks) would you be inspecting other players, and even then, you're not doing it straight on the screen; you're doing this via their paperdoll.
Useless.

Replication

2011-07-06T07:32:00.001-07:00

Heh. I wonder if people read this when there isn't gaming news/content..
Anyways; Happy belated Canada-Independence Day. I finally got to use my expensive cable release for my camera.. you know.. only after 1 whole year..

Some of my work.

Game of Heroes

2011-07-05T18:59:00.000-07:00

I ended up pre-ordering the Might and Magic: Heroes 6 on Steam to get access to the beta. I'll have a preview up soon but so far everything looks alot better: graphically, emphasis on storytelling, new factions, interface.

Oh Dear God...

2011-06-30T20:03:00.000-07:00

Huge savings (albeit on Steam) from June 30th to July 10th...

Just what we all needed: more games..

Not to mention,

Pre-ordering will get you into the beta..

So many games... so little money for more Magic cards... guh

The more things change..

2011-06-29T07:55:00.000-07:00

Finished the New Vegas: Honest Hearts dlc... once again, i'm glad (is that the right word?) that it only cost 10$ b/c it was incredibly short. It took a grand total of possibly 3 hours to complete. Granted, I didn't do much exploring and just the storyline, but it was a short adventure.

And its still buggy with a CTD, losing a few minutes of progression (only a few minutes b/c I save constantly being paranoid of previous CTD sessions).

Ahh.. Fallout... you are so buggy. You should be ashamed.

Whats everyone's plans for this long weekend?

Lull

2011-06-27T08:51:00.000-07:00

Haven't been playing much these days; my most recent purchase (besides more MTG cards) was the Honest Hearts dlc for Fallout New Vegas, but even then i've only played it for 2ish hours. It seems like it is exactly worth the ten dollars you pay for it. Small additions, small map, short dialogues, one or two unique things.

I've been editing the macro photos I take during the day and didn't end up purchasing Dungeon Siege 3 after reading this online:

Why did they decide to do that? Thats just laziness a la Fable 2.

Quiet Farewell

2011-06-22T07:39:00.000-07:00

I guess last night was the last time i'd log into Rift. I figured with my continued night shift schedule that I'd have little time to give out little gift bags personally to my guildies. Sorry if I missed you, I actually sent so many messages, that the system warned me that I sent out too many.

Take care friends and have fun!

Onto new adventures!

A Good Hand

2011-06-20T19:35:00.000-07:00