Most of my gaming now feels very casual. For the most part, I play WoW. WoW is more socializing than game. Don't get me wrong, I'm on WoWWiki or Allakhazam looking stuff up all the time. We're doing ramparts soon, so I need fire resist. It's mostly just a pain, but makes me feel like I'm earning credit with people by putting in extra effort. It's probably worth mentioning that our guild is all people who know each other in real life, so I'm putting in more effort to please them than I probably would otherwise. I probably shouldn't though. They mostly don't notice or care. I bust my ass doing research, collecting mats, and questing just to get berated because I forgot to remind someone to get milk on the way home from boardgame night.
Outside of WoW, I'm mostly just playing fluff. Cheap old games that are fun to blow through on easy. BloodRayne 2, King Kong, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Armed & Dangerous. I consider games like this (when turned down to easy difficulty) the purest form of escape. They're like running around in the parking lot making whooshing noises to pretend that you're Superman.
There is one other game I'm playing. Because of the controversy surrounding its successor (and because Mike enjoyed it), I picked up a headset and a copy of Manhunt. So far I'm not impressed. It's a stealth game where the major mechanic seems to be find a shadow, make a noise, when the bad guy gets tired of staring into the shadow and turns around, kill him. Repeat until... yawn. Whoops. I was going to say repeat until bored but became too bored to finish the sentence. The gory canned animations really aren't that big a deal to me. Pan's Labyrinth had way worse face stabbing, and exploding a guy's head with a baseball bat seems more comical than horrific to me. Maybe if the graphics weren't so dated it'd be scarier.
Also the "director" talking into your headset, egging you on and reveling in your kills, was supposed to be a big part of the experience. I bought a headset, just for this game. I've been largely disappointed. From the first time the director said "kill this #%*#", I knew that he had a preset number of audio barks for whenever I got into the kill position. And his post-kill wanking is totally random. Sometimes he praises you lavishly for a crappy kill and remains completely silent when you pull of a level three kill. The only post kill bark I enjoyed was after I killed a guy with the nailgun and he said something like "Nice shooting, pardner."
These are preliminary opinions, of course. I haven't finished the game yet. But so far, the game's pretty dull and the gore is no big deal. Some gamers who have seen and even played Manhunt 2 say it's about the same or even tamer than the original. The original only lets you unlock certain things if you do extra nasty kills while the sequel gives you a nicer ending if you try to be less violent. If that's the case, it sounds like the ESRB rated Manhunt 2 wrong. Likely it's caving to pressure groups and / or taking retribution for the Hot Coffee scandal.
Meh. If it was a better game, I'd care more.
Showing posts with label WoW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WoW. Show all posts
26 July, 2007
18 April, 2007
"Griefers" :)
I don't remember if I mentioned it, but I'm playing WoW again. Because I'm playing with an old friend, it's a lot easier to stick with it.
After visiting the enchanting trainer in the back of Uldamon, we run into some skull level alliance. That means they are at least ten levels higher than we are. They challenge us to duels, make chicken noises; all the disrespectful behavior morons do when they think there are no consequences. We set our Do Not Disturb flags, thereby shutting down their duel requests, Sangie spits on them, and we take off for the outpost. They follow.
On the way back, Sangie realizes she's less than half a bubble from 40 and wants to kill some wolves so we can get that taken care of. (I had previously dinged 40 that night.) The griefers (Kallel and Kaidance on the Muradin server) decide to have some fun with us. The warlock starts fearing the wolves as we fight them. Unlike some other monsters, wolves are actually smart enough to get reinforcements when they are feared. As the new wolves come in, we're fighting two or three at a time. One actually starts chewing on the warlock, but I'm too busy to enjoy it and know that it's not really more than an annoyance for someone that high level.
Sangie wants to go. We're not really in control of the situation. I refuse. Obviously, as my healer, it's really her call, but she accepts it. I've dealt with enough jerks in Joint Ops to know that these are n00bs. Sure, they're way higher level, but griefing is an art, and people who think spamming duel requests to lowbies is comedy are n00bs at griefing.
So we keep fighting. Sangie plays it smart and saves mana for heals, in case we get too many. But we never do. Kaidance keeps fearing any time we do significant damage to a wolf. And since there's two of us, we can get a wolf down to half health in no time. We never have more than three at a time. My health and Sangie's mana never get low. And I'm making sure to put bleeds on all the wolves so they come back two hits away from death. This "griefer" is actually PULLING FOR US! Fabulous!
I couldn't be more pleased, but Sangie's still not feeling it. We still didn't have control of the situation, and at some level it felt like the griefers were still winning. Pallies have a spell that makes it so the mobs can't run. Now Sangie's still just level 39. That warlock is at least fifty. (It turned out she was 59.) But she takes a shot. This part is all very clear to me. We're running over a hill to get another wolf. The griefers are in hot pursuit, still clueless to the fact that they've done nothing but help us so far. Sangie drops her seal on the wolf. The warlock starts to fear... and nothing happens. There's a bigger than life fear icon over the wolf, but it doesn't budge an inch. My clever girl has just schooled a level 59 warlock. Slow thinkers that they are, it takes another wolf or two before they even realize they've been beaten. Sangie dings. We head back to camp, and the last thing they hear as they take off is a hearty Tauren chuckle fading into the distance.
Here's what I consider the moral of the story. People are jerks. Luckily, they are also stupid (myself included).
Seriously, griefing on a PvE server? How bottom of the gene pool do you have to be? Don't give me that Horde vs Alliance crap. When was the last time you actually role-played? The only reason you grief Horde only is because you're too scared you might actually have to deal with the consequences if you griefed Alliance. Of course, that's probably not even true. I'm guessing you're the type of folks who snag ore and chests from Alliance lowbies when you think you can get away with it. You're bad people, and apparently not too bright. Hopefully you grow out of it someday or at least grow a pair and roll PvP.
After visiting the enchanting trainer in the back of Uldamon, we run into some skull level alliance. That means they are at least ten levels higher than we are. They challenge us to duels, make chicken noises; all the disrespectful behavior morons do when they think there are no consequences. We set our Do Not Disturb flags, thereby shutting down their duel requests, Sangie spits on them, and we take off for the outpost. They follow.
On the way back, Sangie realizes she's less than half a bubble from 40 and wants to kill some wolves so we can get that taken care of. (I had previously dinged 40 that night.) The griefers (Kallel and Kaidance on the Muradin server) decide to have some fun with us. The warlock starts fearing the wolves as we fight them. Unlike some other monsters, wolves are actually smart enough to get reinforcements when they are feared. As the new wolves come in, we're fighting two or three at a time. One actually starts chewing on the warlock, but I'm too busy to enjoy it and know that it's not really more than an annoyance for someone that high level.
Sangie wants to go. We're not really in control of the situation. I refuse. Obviously, as my healer, it's really her call, but she accepts it. I've dealt with enough jerks in Joint Ops to know that these are n00bs. Sure, they're way higher level, but griefing is an art, and people who think spamming duel requests to lowbies is comedy are n00bs at griefing.
So we keep fighting. Sangie plays it smart and saves mana for heals, in case we get too many. But we never do. Kaidance keeps fearing any time we do significant damage to a wolf. And since there's two of us, we can get a wolf down to half health in no time. We never have more than three at a time. My health and Sangie's mana never get low. And I'm making sure to put bleeds on all the wolves so they come back two hits away from death. This "griefer" is actually PULLING FOR US! Fabulous!
I couldn't be more pleased, but Sangie's still not feeling it. We still didn't have control of the situation, and at some level it felt like the griefers were still winning. Pallies have a spell that makes it so the mobs can't run. Now Sangie's still just level 39. That warlock is at least fifty. (It turned out she was 59.) But she takes a shot. This part is all very clear to me. We're running over a hill to get another wolf. The griefers are in hot pursuit, still clueless to the fact that they've done nothing but help us so far. Sangie drops her seal on the wolf. The warlock starts to fear... and nothing happens. There's a bigger than life fear icon over the wolf, but it doesn't budge an inch. My clever girl has just schooled a level 59 warlock. Slow thinkers that they are, it takes another wolf or two before they even realize they've been beaten. Sangie dings. We head back to camp, and the last thing they hear as they take off is a hearty Tauren chuckle fading into the distance.
Here's what I consider the moral of the story. People are jerks. Luckily, they are also stupid (myself included).
Seriously, griefing on a PvE server? How bottom of the gene pool do you have to be? Don't give me that Horde vs Alliance crap. When was the last time you actually role-played? The only reason you grief Horde only is because you're too scared you might actually have to deal with the consequences if you griefed Alliance. Of course, that's probably not even true. I'm guessing you're the type of folks who snag ore and chests from Alliance lowbies when you think you can get away with it. You're bad people, and apparently not too bright. Hopefully you grow out of it someday or at least grow a pair and roll PvP.
01 May, 2006
WoW Ennui and More JO Madness (JO)
Well, that didn't go anywhere. I've been playing plenty of Joint Ops. I will post pictures tonight. It's not like I have anything else to do. My roommate is always playing WoW when I get home. The fact that I came home to see him and my other WoW friend running Gnomer without me (and my spending more than a day trying to run it with pick up groups to no avail) have begun to turn me to actively hating seeing that game up when I get home. It's just a reminder to me of how little I mean to my "best" friends. Meh.
At least my Joint Ops buddy is keeping things hopping. He mostly pilots while I satchel and grenade launcher the poor shmucks below. The frightening thing is we do really well that way most games. Once in a while you'll have competent opposition that prioritize you as a target and can actually do something about it, but mostly we just mop up. We had some fun the other night because the other team full of assclowns put a dozen people on a chopper and flew it into our base. I guess they thought if one guy with a grenade launcher was cool, twelve guys with grenade launchers and rockets would be spectactular. They weren't entirely wrong. They did some good stuff. But that was until we prioritized them as targets. My friend was piloting and refused to get close enough for me to use my satchels. So instead we had a whirling firefight, heli against heli, until we shot enough losers off of their skids and roof to make them head for the hills. It was like a knife fight from west side story. Classic. Still, the most kills I've ever gotten with one satchel was ten. I would love to beat the record.
After that map (Bumbu Channel) comes Karo Highlands. It was there that the legend was born: The Legend Of Daniel B. Hahaha. Daniel B was some guy who thought he could snipe our main base just by parking a heli behind a hill and crawling over. We repeatedly lobbed grenades on his head. We got so fond of killing him that we started typing messages into the general chat about the legend of Daniel B. It was sort of a Davy Crockett thing. I was even working on a song. Needless to say we were disappointed when he gave up the strategy. As such, we started base raiding the other team. There is nothing quite as satisfying as dropping one satchel on the middle of the joint ops roof full of helis, detonating it while your back is turned, and coming about to see a completely clean building, as though no helis were ever there. It's cleansing.
We've developed a small following online as well. There are some players that will switch teams to join our "Nade Bird" of destruction. We are a loyal group, going out to pick up other members. We've actually gotten pretty good at jumping into the helicopter as it flies by us at full speed while we are in the water. Hilarious. And a few times we've even managed to switch choppers in midair. That shuts up the people who think we're just assclowns real quick. Of course, we are just assclowns, but we're badass assclowns. :)
Speaking of which, let me describe a technique my partner in crime has perfected which still amazes me. The helicopters in joint ops can actually fly partly underwater, sometimes largely underwater. Who cares, right? Well, imagine this scenario. We're chasing an enemy boat when the driver (maybe coming under fire from one of our APCs or just panicked because we're yelling and shooting at him from our chopper) dives overboard. He thinks he'll swim safely to shore (or into a friendly APC or whatever). I immediately jump off the skid, knife in hand, to go and carve up his giblets. My friend flies around like crazy to get the guy in the water to take a shot at him so I can catch up and slice him. But my friend realized that since the chopper can dip it's beak in the water, maybe there was more he could do.
I'm swimming up behind a guy who's trying to sneak onto a friendly nade boat and kill our guys bombarding the enemy base. I'm right behind him, but can't close the distance. We're ten feet away from the friendly boat. He's gonna make it.
WHAM!
What the hell was that!? There is no way in @#*& I just saw what I just saw. That did not happen. Oh crap. It totally did!
Flying right next to the boat, my friend had dipped the heli's nose into the water right in front of where I was swimming while flying at full speed. HE RAN THE GUY OVER WITH THE HELI UNDERWATER!!!
I mean, it was ridiculous and hilarious enough that he had gotten to the point where he could smush unmoving enemy snipers and stupid enemy troops under his skids, but underwater hit and run!? He does it all the time now and still I can't believe it. It's like watching a quick wipe in a movie where one second a guy's alive, the next second he's doing the dead man's float, but an underwater helicopter is doing the wipe. Inconievable!
Some days, Joint Ops is all I live for.
At least my Joint Ops buddy is keeping things hopping. He mostly pilots while I satchel and grenade launcher the poor shmucks below. The frightening thing is we do really well that way most games. Once in a while you'll have competent opposition that prioritize you as a target and can actually do something about it, but mostly we just mop up. We had some fun the other night because the other team full of assclowns put a dozen people on a chopper and flew it into our base. I guess they thought if one guy with a grenade launcher was cool, twelve guys with grenade launchers and rockets would be spectactular. They weren't entirely wrong. They did some good stuff. But that was until we prioritized them as targets. My friend was piloting and refused to get close enough for me to use my satchels. So instead we had a whirling firefight, heli against heli, until we shot enough losers off of their skids and roof to make them head for the hills. It was like a knife fight from west side story. Classic. Still, the most kills I've ever gotten with one satchel was ten. I would love to beat the record.
After that map (Bumbu Channel) comes Karo Highlands. It was there that the legend was born: The Legend Of Daniel B. Hahaha. Daniel B was some guy who thought he could snipe our main base just by parking a heli behind a hill and crawling over. We repeatedly lobbed grenades on his head. We got so fond of killing him that we started typing messages into the general chat about the legend of Daniel B. It was sort of a Davy Crockett thing. I was even working on a song. Needless to say we were disappointed when he gave up the strategy. As such, we started base raiding the other team. There is nothing quite as satisfying as dropping one satchel on the middle of the joint ops roof full of helis, detonating it while your back is turned, and coming about to see a completely clean building, as though no helis were ever there. It's cleansing.
We've developed a small following online as well. There are some players that will switch teams to join our "Nade Bird" of destruction. We are a loyal group, going out to pick up other members. We've actually gotten pretty good at jumping into the helicopter as it flies by us at full speed while we are in the water. Hilarious. And a few times we've even managed to switch choppers in midair. That shuts up the people who think we're just assclowns real quick. Of course, we are just assclowns, but we're badass assclowns. :)
Speaking of which, let me describe a technique my partner in crime has perfected which still amazes me. The helicopters in joint ops can actually fly partly underwater, sometimes largely underwater. Who cares, right? Well, imagine this scenario. We're chasing an enemy boat when the driver (maybe coming under fire from one of our APCs or just panicked because we're yelling and shooting at him from our chopper) dives overboard. He thinks he'll swim safely to shore (or into a friendly APC or whatever). I immediately jump off the skid, knife in hand, to go and carve up his giblets. My friend flies around like crazy to get the guy in the water to take a shot at him so I can catch up and slice him. But my friend realized that since the chopper can dip it's beak in the water, maybe there was more he could do.
I'm swimming up behind a guy who's trying to sneak onto a friendly nade boat and kill our guys bombarding the enemy base. I'm right behind him, but can't close the distance. We're ten feet away from the friendly boat. He's gonna make it.
WHAM!
What the hell was that!? There is no way in @#*& I just saw what I just saw. That did not happen. Oh crap. It totally did!
Flying right next to the boat, my friend had dipped the heli's nose into the water right in front of where I was swimming while flying at full speed. HE RAN THE GUY OVER WITH THE HELI UNDERWATER!!!
I mean, it was ridiculous and hilarious enough that he had gotten to the point where he could smush unmoving enemy snipers and stupid enemy troops under his skids, but underwater hit and run!? He does it all the time now and still I can't believe it. It's like watching a quick wipe in a movie where one second a guy's alive, the next second he's doing the dead man's float, but an underwater helicopter is doing the wipe. Inconievable!
Some days, Joint Ops is all I live for.
10 April, 2006
Out Of Hibernation (And Mana)
Warning: This is mostly stream of conciousness with plenty of gamer jargon. It's mostly just me mentally catching up with the gaming I've done.
I have played a lot of games. But for pictures, I haven't had much to post except Joint Ops, and I figured you'd be tired of that. Then I realized that there's no more than two people who even read this thing, and you'd love some more Joint Ops. :) I'm not posting this from a place where I've got access to my Joint Ops photos, but you can expect further updates in the not too distant future. In the meantime, I'll blather about WoW.
World of Warcraft is a decent game. But like most MMOs, it's largely about fighting monsters to get bigger weapons to fight bigger monsters to get even bigger weapons to fight even bigger monsters. Size is the 3D game equivalent of palette shifting. I'd explain, but the gamers know what I mean. And it's not that everything in WoW is size adjusted. There's palette shifting too. :P Seriously, though, it's the same treadmill. But I don't care anymore.
I'm all played out.
Seriously.
I spent six months playing games and played everything there is to play.
That's not strictly true of course. There's always more to play, but I've played the best in every genre I care about. I even got to the point where I could be playing a well made game and be bored with it. Sly 3: Band of Thieves is the game I'm thinking of. I enjoyed Sly and Sly 2. Sly 3 was still good, but didn't feel much different from Sly 2. I'd had enough gaming goodness. And don't think I hadn't done a good deal of looking around.
I played every game I cared about on Yahoo's subscription service. Out of all of them, I only bought Thief: Deadly Shadows to keep after my account expired. I think that game made the best use of bump mapping of any game I've seen. Medieval environs are just perfect for the type of rough stone and brick textures bump mapping brings out. Sure, DOOM 3 had it, but Thief 3 really used it.
And that asylum level was fantastically creepy and way more fun than Silent Hill 3 in its entirety. The problem I have with most horror games is that they aren't really horror games, but rather action games with really bad controls. Even Resident Evil 4, the best of the lot, fits that description. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed RE4, but lost interest on my second playthrough. The thing I like about games is that they give you the tools to perform amazing feats. Most horror games just don't do that. If you want to make me play a clutzy writer who's fallen into a horrible conspiracy, that's fine, but do what a novelist would do and give me the kinds of puzzles and situations that would make it somewhat feasible for my character to perservere, not just a nerf version of an action game protagonist fighting cumbersome nerf monsters. That's incredibly lazy design.
Meh. I have no room to talk. It's not like I'm writing a game. I was at one point, but I'm just too damn lazy. Spending time with family and friends is as much as I want out of life. So that's what my gaming life has become. I play WoW because my friends do, even avoiding advancing too quickly so no one gets level envy and we all get the same XP. I play Joint Ops because Baby Einstein does. I could still play with 69 Rocket GC, yoshahorror and some of the others, but without the voice chat and accompanying silliness (the ballad of DanielB), it wouldn't be worth it.
Hanging out with friends and family. That's my gaming life.
I have played a lot of games. But for pictures, I haven't had much to post except Joint Ops, and I figured you'd be tired of that. Then I realized that there's no more than two people who even read this thing, and you'd love some more Joint Ops. :) I'm not posting this from a place where I've got access to my Joint Ops photos, but you can expect further updates in the not too distant future. In the meantime, I'll blather about WoW.
World of Warcraft is a decent game. But like most MMOs, it's largely about fighting monsters to get bigger weapons to fight bigger monsters to get even bigger weapons to fight even bigger monsters. Size is the 3D game equivalent of palette shifting. I'd explain, but the gamers know what I mean. And it's not that everything in WoW is size adjusted. There's palette shifting too. :P Seriously, though, it's the same treadmill. But I don't care anymore.
I'm all played out.
Seriously.
I spent six months playing games and played everything there is to play.
That's not strictly true of course. There's always more to play, but I've played the best in every genre I care about. I even got to the point where I could be playing a well made game and be bored with it. Sly 3: Band of Thieves is the game I'm thinking of. I enjoyed Sly and Sly 2. Sly 3 was still good, but didn't feel much different from Sly 2. I'd had enough gaming goodness. And don't think I hadn't done a good deal of looking around.
I played every game I cared about on Yahoo's subscription service. Out of all of them, I only bought Thief: Deadly Shadows to keep after my account expired. I think that game made the best use of bump mapping of any game I've seen. Medieval environs are just perfect for the type of rough stone and brick textures bump mapping brings out. Sure, DOOM 3 had it, but Thief 3 really used it.
And that asylum level was fantastically creepy and way more fun than Silent Hill 3 in its entirety. The problem I have with most horror games is that they aren't really horror games, but rather action games with really bad controls. Even Resident Evil 4, the best of the lot, fits that description. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed RE4, but lost interest on my second playthrough. The thing I like about games is that they give you the tools to perform amazing feats. Most horror games just don't do that. If you want to make me play a clutzy writer who's fallen into a horrible conspiracy, that's fine, but do what a novelist would do and give me the kinds of puzzles and situations that would make it somewhat feasible for my character to perservere, not just a nerf version of an action game protagonist fighting cumbersome nerf monsters. That's incredibly lazy design.
Meh. I have no room to talk. It's not like I'm writing a game. I was at one point, but I'm just too damn lazy. Spending time with family and friends is as much as I want out of life. So that's what my gaming life has become. I play WoW because my friends do, even avoiding advancing too quickly so no one gets level envy and we all get the same XP. I play Joint Ops because Baby Einstein does. I could still play with 69 Rocket GC, yoshahorror and some of the others, but without the voice chat and accompanying silliness (the ballad of DanielB), it wouldn't be worth it.
Hanging out with friends and family. That's my gaming life.
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