Pumping Irony

The announcement came today over at the Troll Lord Games forum, and is rapidly making the rounds on media and news channels that E. Gary Gygax, co-creator of the original Dungeons & Dragons role playing game, has passed away today at age 69.

Now I really want to get in a D&D game, just to honor the man for his creation, his vision, and allowing us the freedom to explore our own visions and stories for three decades. D&D, then AD&D 2nd Edition, was my introduction to the world of RPG’s and I still look back fondly on those days. From a D&D player’s perspective at the time, Gygax was a hero, and he will be missed by many.

I think I just might log into DDO and run the Delera’s Tomb quest chain, where Gary Gygax did the Dungeon Master voice-overs. Sure, his voice-acting was grating on the ears, but in a very weird and creepy way it was comforting to know that one of the Fathers of D&D took some minor involvement in the online game as well.

Update: 3/5/2008

Just wanted to mention the web comic Order of the Stick which created Issue #536 as a touchingly humorous tribute of Gary Gygax. Credit and thanks to Tipa to catching that for the rest of us.

First, let me start by wishing everyone a Happy Leap Year Day! I have absolutely no idea if that’s the proper phrase, but it sounds close enough.

February comes to a close seeing me bounce around from game to game (ie. my normal behavior) though I did get things accomplished in each.

MMORPG:

Vanguard: Dolndruth achieved level 29 and is currently working on the Coterie Infineum Sanctuary quest series. He’s in “Upper CIS” on the part where the group basically just goes in and grinds away until pieces of scavenged infineum armor which your character can actually use drop, along with a few type of energy gems. Once these are collected, they can be forged into infineum armor to better gear yourselves and to progress the quest chain. Dolndruth has been in twice so far, and only gotten a helmet half-prepared, and is waiting for a bigger piece to drop to complete the next quest. Oh, and the proper energy gem, which has yet to drop for anyone he’s grouped with so far. My friend Daniel rolled a cleric and is enjoying that more than his druid so I’m parking Dolndruth for a bit while Daniel gets his cleric up to where we can group together. He’s damn nearly there, running the Tomb of Lord Tsang several times, a few Hunter’s League quests, and ran with me to Donovan’s Roost to get the very first quest in the CIS chain.

DDO: As I’ve written about over the past few days, I made a return to DDO this month, and played my wizard, Koriander, to level 6! Actually, damn near level 7, which I will most likely achieve over the weekend, so I’m very excited about that. I also look forward to seeing my first-ever live event Sunday for DDO’s 2nd Anniversary.

LOTRO: I sorta-kinda started my return to LOTRO towards the end of the month. I created a monster, aka creep, to PvMP in the Ettenmoors, even got in my first monster raid which was a blast. My creep is an orc reaver, but I just realized today that in WoW, the hunter class was my absolute favorite to PvP with, so I rolled an Uruk this morning. Wow… I really wish the archer-type creeps were the orc archers I see running around. They look cool. My Uruk? Fugly. I don’t mean in a “well DUH, it’s a monster, they’re supposed to be ugly” kind of way, I mean in terms of the model and textures used to make the Uruk… just damn fugly. I’m tempted to whine that “the Uruk model breaks my immersion! QQ” but I won’t.

This morning I decided to “actually” play LOTRO for a bit so I logged in Arwellyn and did a few solo quests, running back and forth between the Lone Lands and North Downs to do so. Itching for some real action, I finally found a fellowship working on Book 2, so I joined them and we completed the entire Book together! Doing so also completed all the Wight Slayer deeds in the Lone Lands, so… bonus! The final instance, The Red Pass, was very fun, challenging, and very immersive. I have to say, while I totally love the open, non-instanced world of Telon in Vanguard, when it comes to getting your emotions up, your adrenaline flowing, and pushing some cool scripted story-telling, LOTRO is where it’s at.

I was dismayed to see changes in the kinship I’m a member of, Exodus. The original leader is still around, but rarely due to real-life constraints. The kinship has been turned over to another long-time member, which is fine, and he’s doing a great job. However… apparently Exodus has been asked to merge with Swifty and Hammo, another popular and very well-known kinship on the server, famous for their role-playing events. I love S&H, and even planned to put my Hobbit minstrel in there — Swifty and Hammo was originally very Hobbit-heavy, almost to the point of being exclusively Hobbits — before I decided I didn’t want to have umpteen alts in LOTRO. I’m not quite certain how I feel just yet about merging though. I really dislike when the dreaded Guild Drama rears its ugly head for any reason.

Side Note: Am I going out on a limb here mentioning the actual names of guilds I’m in? I typically don’t… not sure where that fine line in the sand is drawn when it comes to matters like this.

FPS:

Battlefield 2142: I’m semi-tempted to apply to a clan of some sort, provided I could find one that fit my preferences and also allowed me to play casually. I normally play the Assault class, though I have saved the last two unlocks just in case I decide to start trying out one of the others. I occasionally will do the Recon class if I know the other team is camping one of our bases with snipers, so I’ll try to snipe them back, then back to Assault. The Battlefield engine gets a bit “jumpy” when moving so sniping isn’t the easiest thing in the world for me in that game, though Daniel got a few unlocks to get the next sniper rifle and says it’s much, much smoother and easier, almost to the point of not being challenging at all. So I’ll give it some time and perhaps play with a few other classes before I decide where to put those unlocks. In the meantime, I am at Master Corporal Silver rank, with 329 points until Master Corporal Gold.

COD4: I don’t play COD4 heavily, so I’m still on Act 1. That’s fine by me, since the campaign is fairly short from what I’ve read. I’ve completed “War Pig” and next time I play, I’ll be on the “Shock and Awe” mission, which is nearly the end of Act 1. COD4 is hands-down easily the most immersive FPS I’ve played yet, in terms of the campaign, and I highly recommend it. I did play a handful of short multiplayer matches and, aside from being discouraged at being thoroughly (and I do mean thoroughly! schooled, spanked, and otherwise owned, I just don’t find the multiplayer aspect very compelling, and certainly not immersive. I’ve said before that it strikes me as same ‘ol, same ‘ol small skirmishes from 1998 only with better graphics, and I still feel that way after giving it a few more tries.

RTS:

World in Conflict: I used to really enjoy the RTS genre. I still have my CD’s of Warcraft III, Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, Age of Mythology, Total Annihilation (friggin awesome in its day!), Ground Control, and probably one or two others, though none are installed. WiC is the spiritual successor of the Ground Control series, and is an Action RTS, where you just jump right into the action, there’s no resource gathering and base building garbage here. Back when I did play RTS, back before I’d ever heard of MUD’s, MMO’s, or Richard Bartle, I suspect I’d have still ranked quite highly as an Explorer player type. I always spend too much time exploring the map, watching my little troops fight their little battles from interesting camera angles, and just having a good ol’ time. Unfortunately for my little troops, all those attention-grabbing diversions (have I mentioned my already-short attention span?) tend to mean I’m not micro-managing anything else, so while I can usually scrape by in campaign mode, if I dare go online I’m doing so with a huge red “spank me hard, daddy!” flag over my head. Even with the exceptionally minimal level of micro-managing in WiC, I dared to venture online for the second time ever this month, and yeah… it still hurts to sit down… On a positive note, watching all the explosions and other eye candy as my little troops died cursing their incompetent diety (that’d be me) was spectacularly impressive to behold!

In closing, I’d like to thank everyone for the attention aimed in my general direction this month, I was humbled and honored to receive a few links and mentions out there. February kicked off with Darren naming it “blog of the week” in Shut Up, We’re Talking #19, which was truly shocking to hear since I had no idea it was coming. I was out walking listening to the show and suddenly he’s talking about this and I’m all “woot! That’s my blog they’re talking about!” while all the neighbors are looking at me strangely or rushing their children inside to safety from that crazy fool shouting outside… The Storytelling post was linked on several other sites, and somehow the First Guild post was mentioned on Massively! That was a huge honor (and shock) to get linked there. It’s funny, and amazing, the ways people stumble across your blog… I’m also noticing more and more interesting search terms that bring people here as well…

I cut my teeth on “real” RPG’s back in the day, starting with AD&D 2nd Edition, then expanding my horizons to other venues like Call of Cthulhu, Chill, Mage (only World of Darkness I ever experienced), Star Wars, then finally Palladium’s Fantasy RPG and Rifts.

I get a bit nostalgic when I read about Cameron and SmakenDahead and other bloggers getting their pen-and-paper on. Problem is I’m gone more than I’m home so I haven’t managed to make any actual friends here in Jacksonville. I talk to the random neighbor here and there but no one I’d be friends with, and certainly no one I’d game with. So… is there such a thing as online pen-and-paper? I have a vague understanding that D&D 4.0 will have some type of online component for a subscription fee. Not sure how I feel about that concept.  If I had to wager a guess, I might be limited to finding an IRC channel running RPG and Die Roll scripts?

I did recently discover an RPG shop but I didn’t hear if they knew of any adult groups looking for fresh blood, and my wonky schedule has always been a problem for events with other people, live or MMO, which is why I’m normally stuck with PUG’s even though I’m always in great guilds.

I’d love to try my hand at RPG’s again but I have a feeling if that ever happens, I’ll be limited to an online-only scenario…

Darren must have slipped on the ice and sustained a head injury — he voted PI.net as “Blog of the Week” on SUWT #19 today!

Thanks, Darren

Oh, for the record Brenden, I do read Another Here I just don’t have it linked here… I suppose I could fix that after I click Publish, eh?

Here’s an example of why I just laugh at those who seek hardships in their virtual lives in the MMOsphere:

It was bad enough they snuck some late-night arrivals into our domicile this month, and I wound up doing it twice. Same trip, back to back. This was the first one and as a result I am not looking forward to next week’s whatsoever.

We arrived in domicile from New York (at least it was a clear night, Manhattan was gorgeous) slightly over an hour after the last flight departs for home, so I’d reserved a hotel room for the night. I try to only bid schedules that are commutable but until this month I’ve only ever had to check the report times. Looks like I’ll have to check completion times from now on. My First Officer also commutes but he has a “crash pad” in domicile and offered to drive me to the hotel. His junker airport car is broken though, but one of his roommates offered to leave the keys to his car for us. The roommate forgot. Without the spare cash to afford a hotel room, my FO is stuck at the airport for the night. I gave the hotel a call and their van is broken. Now we’re both stuck at the airport!

We head up to the crew room and shove some couches together as makeshift beds and take cushions from chairs as pillows and bunk down for the night. Uncomfortable? You bet, but it’s better than nothing. Just under an hour afterwards, we heard a click or pop sound. Hmm… no one had opened the crew room door, no one else was in the airport, so what was that? We finally noticed it was a bit quieter. Uh oh! The heat just quit and it’s in the 20’s at best outside! Sure enough, the room got colder and colder. We grabbed more couch and chair cushions and piled them up on top of us to keep our own heat in. Not that it worked or anything but at least we made the effort. Eventually it was entirely too cold to even sleep, everything just started hurting. At 4:45am the first crews started arriving for the originator flights, making all kinds of noise so even if we had slept it would have come to an abrupt end then.

Starbucks opened at 6am and kept me chemically awake until my flight home at 8:10am where I took a short nap on the hour flight home.

The really sad thing? While this is a rarity for me personally, it’s not so rare in general for flight crews. The “public” thinks we live like rock stars with tons of money, girls and luxury. Yeah, we wish…

Oh, and the travel home was still meaningless. Only the destination matters…

The EQ pretenders can sit in their comfy chairs at their computers in their nice warm offices (or basements, whatever) and revel for virtual hardships all they want. I live it.

You. Are. Not. Hardcore!

After a few days of pulling my hair and gnashing my teeth, trying all kinds of settings, reinstalling Wordpress 3 times, replacing all the MySQL databases, calling my host’s support, checking PHP errors and talking with the guys in #wordpress… turns out it was an error in the Mandigo theme. Tom put up a new version of Mandigo that fixes the error. Turns out it would allow any post to have a single comment, then every comment after that would fail somehow. The wp-comments-post.php file is not part of the theme so it was completely by accident that I even tried changing themes during commenting and discovered the error.

Anyway, now that everything’s working again, by all means jump in and discuss stuff! That’s what blogging’s all about!

Happy Holidays, and all the jazz!

I sincerely hope everyone has a fantastic holiday season spent with family, friends, and loved ones.  I start a 4-day trip in awhile, so perhaps I’ll even be taking some of you travelers back home afterwards!

I will likely not put up another post until after the New Year either, given my job’s schedule and I’ll be celebrating the holidays this weekend (including a quick holiday getaway with my girlfriend!). I’ve had a PvP-related post on the back burner for a few weeks so we’ll see if I can finally get motivated to put all the notes into words in January.

Until then, stay warm, stay safe, and I’ll catch ya on the flip side!

Still playing catch-up with things, my trips are fairly horrible this month and I’ve been in a continuous state of grogginess. Dazed and Confused. That’d be me.

I did want to address last week’s hullabaloo (always wanted to use that word somewhere) over bloggers and their posts that Jeff Freeman, Ryan Shwayder, Tobold and others got into. I’m intentionally not linking, that’d just make matters worse given this particular topic. Anyway, they were basically hashing over their annoyance when bloggers rehash the same tired old themes. In this case, “bloggers” meaning “gaming bloggers” or specifically “MMO bloggers.” There are well over 100,000 gaming-related blogs already. Most likely, anything said on any one of them has already been said before. Guess what? It’s going to be said again, too. Practically every thought, every idea any human has today has been thought of before over the course of humanity. I don’t expect everyone to rush to an encyclopedic database to scan for similarities of their thought processes before voicing those thoughts. In the case of this site, PI.net is my personal blog, not a site of professional journalism. I express my thoughts and feelings, my rants and raves over issues in the MMO or video game genres. I am very well aware that anything I write has probably been discussed already. I may have even written an article on the same topic myself on a previous iteration of this site. Perhaps the new article has my new take on the topic however. Perhaps, much like the overall MMO blogosphere is doing a 180 on its opinion of Tabula Rasa, my opinion has changed from my original stance. Or maybe I just want the opportunity to express my own feelings in my own words about anything I want. Isn’t that what blogs provide?

In the end, I hearken back to a favorite saying of one of my English professors: write as if no one is reading. Put your thoughts down on paper pixels because even though the ideas, concepts, or themes behind the topic you write about is not original, what you write is uniquely yours and stems from your own unique creativity.

Unfortunately, since the server crash, I’m quite literally writing for no one but that’s ok — it’s a venue for expression and that is my primary goal. It also provides the ability to look back in time and read my exact thoughts on whatever topic I was writing about, and I don’t have to keep stacks of papers and records to track those thoughts.

As I sign off, just to pay homage to SmakenDaHed’s comment that I like to split hairs: I don’t consider myself a “blogger” at all. I’m just some guy who has blog. The difference? To me a blogger is someone who updates quite frequently with relevant content. I write what I want, when I want. Maybe that’s splitting hairs, maybe not, but it’s how I’ve always viewed things. Back when blogging first started becoming popular, I jumped on the bandwagon. I ran a fan-news site for what used to be the MSN Gaming Zone and was diligent in a very Blues News style twitch reporting, in addition to writing blog-style posts. I didn’t have a CMS then, so in addition to the writing, I had to hand-code each entry and upload to the server, then turn around and hand-code the XML for the RSS feed. So I’ve been a “blogger” as well. I have a different job now, and quite frankly I don’t always have something to say on every single little issue or news byte that everyone else jumps on. A lot of times I’d rather play the games with friends than take a few hours formulating an article. Is that so bad?

After much debate and little time or inclination to research (read: December schedules FTL) I’ll just ask you guys and gals for suggestions.

I’m looking for two items: my first widescreen LCD monitor, and a new laptop.

LCD: I don’t think my current desk would allow anything larger than a 22″ which is fine, I’ve seen the bigger ones and, if it were an HDTV being viewed from 5′ or more, that’d be one thing. But sitting right at the desk with the monitor that close, the big ones hurt my eyes and give me headaches. A friend recommended the Samsung 226BW which sounds great other than people complaining about the lack of height adjustment on the stand. A 2ms refresh time is a must — I am a gamer after all. Now, here’s another potential issue with that 226BW: the “recommended” resolution of 1680×1050. My normal desktop runs at 1280×1024 and that’s good enough. It’ll do better, no problem, but that’s also my preferred gaming resolution. COD4 is killing my system and I had to break down and reduce to 1024×768 to get (in my opinion) playable frame rates. I’m told that running a resolution other than the recommended tends to result in blurry or otherwise not-so-crisp images so if that’s the case, the 226BW is out of the question. There’s no way I’d be able to run COD4 at 1680×1050 if I wasn’t overly pleased at 1280×1024. Enlighten me on how these resolutions work on LCD’s as my only experience has been my Dell 600m that I’m desperately looking to replace. Which brings me to item #2…

Laptop: Obviously, given my profession, I travel constantly so portability is a huge issue. I’ll define portability into three categories: weight, size, and battery life. Widescreen would be great, but I’m looking for 13.3″ maximum. If I’m in the cabin of a plane those big screens are also tall and they won’t open quite enough to watch movies comfortably, especially if the person in front of me reclines their seat. Big also means more weight, and I have plenty enough weight to lug around with my luggage and flight bag. Again, I’m a gamer and I’d like to be able to play the occasional game when I have time. Nothing super serious like Vanguard, although if it will run Vanguard, great. If it’ll handle LOTRO with ease, that’s probably good enough for me currently. Basically that means a good video card and 2GB RAM. Battery life is an issue for all laptops, but this 600m gets ridiculous. I’ll turn the screen brightness down as low as I can while still being able to read well, running as few applications as possible, and I still only get 1.5 hours out of it tops. The majority of movies in the past 10+ years are regularly hitting the 2 hour mark. I obviously won’t be gaming on batteries. As for OS’ it seems most come with Vista. I have an XP Home sitting around unused, and I’ll likely be dual-booting with either Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS so quite frankly if the laptop comes without an OS that’s fine by me.

Thanks everyone, I look forward to any assistance you’re willing to give.

Saw this over at pΘtshΘt and out of dangerous curiosity submitted PI.net with a result of:

Despite my English degree, my online writing style tends to be more train of thought and as if I’m speaking casually rather than speaking in a formal situation or using all the typical conventions of writing. Turns out I’m spot-on since currently the average American reads at approximately an 8th grade level. I’ll save technical writing for other articles at other sites. This is just a blog, and a gaming blog at that. I’d rather it be easy to read and have a casual feel and flow to it.