Still Rifting

Amun looks ready for war at level 26

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve updated. I could tell you that it’s been a busy time, which it has, but that’s not really the reason. I just haven’t had much to say recently, at least not important enough that I really wanted to get it out there. Truth is, I still don’t, I just felt like I wanted to make a post and here we are.

I’m still playing Rift, though not nearly as much as I’d like to due to my schedule. Me and the wife are level 33 now and it still feels like the levels are coming extremely quickly whenever we find the time to play. We would probably have been level 50 by now, but my account was hacked a while ago and it took a couple of weeks to get my gear back.

I haven’t messed too much with alts, though the little I have tells me that I’m going to need to concentrate on one char until I get them to the level cap before starting a new one, since the single starting zone per faction really limits replay value. So far I’m still really enjoying the game, aside from the terrible 10 level PVP brackets. I love when a zone suddenly goes into mass invasion mode and me and the wife can ride around slaughtering everything in sight while gaining some serious XP.

The biggest snafoo recently with Rift was the terrible way they handled their first world event. You may have noticed that it’s over. That’s right, the second and third phases lasted about an hour, while the first phase lasted weeks. It would have been nice if I’d have known about that, but it wouldn’t have mattered. You see, Trion Worlds decided to have this weekend be a free to play weekend, and apparently when subscribers tried to log on to see the last two phases of the world event they were greeted with que’s. This means that very few paying customers say any part of the second and third phases, which presumably were a lot cooler than phase one.

Other than that Rift has done amazingly well for me. It hasn’t drawn me in like WoW did, or UO before it, but I think that’s simply because at this point in my life I don’t have 8 hours a day to play.  Still, I have no interest in going back to WoW at this point in time, or even in playing another MMO. Of course I’ll try Guild Wars 2 when it comes out, and The Old Republic, but as of right now I’m pretty content in my MMO game of choice.

I’ve also been playing a lot of single player games, and you’ll hear about them soon. Whenever I get off my butt and write some more that is.

Kotaku: PC is Shit Week.

Warning: This is a pretty heavy rant with some foul language at the end. If this offends you please stop reading this post. Come back later though, there will be punch and pie.

This week is Kotaku‘s so called “PC Week”. A celebration of PC gaming, since most of the industry, and Kotaku, is focused on consoles 95% of the time. The idea is great, but the execution is more of an insult than anything.

The first question I need to ask is: Why have PC Week be THIS week? What PC games are announced that aren’t announced for consoles? What PC centric events are going on? Was it just an arbitrary week?

I consider myself a huge PC gamer. I have a 360, and at one point had a Wii, and while those consoles have some GREAT games, I just found that even if I bought them, I ended up just going back to my PC games and ignoring the console. Maybe that is because I am always on my PC, so turning on a game is very easy, as oppossed to getting up, going to the TV, turning on the 360, finding the game, starting it. Not that this is hard, just not as easy as PC games for me.

So what is my problem with Kotaku’s PC Week? Well, starting from Monday the 25th of October, the start of PC Week as near as I can tell, let’s see what some of the features have been.

Microsoft: We Are Doubling Down on PC Games.
Thank goodness they are announcing this for the fourth year in a row. Last time they tried they came out with Games for Windows Live, and we all know how beloved that is. Not to mention this time they are just making GFWL store “better”.  But they are still allowing companies to add their own DRM, so unlike Steam, I also get to not play my games after I buy them with GFWL. According to Kotaku “they will also be tapping into the massive community they’ve built with the Xbox 360.” I think we can assume that this just means I’ll be able to send messages back and forth between 360 and PC, and maybe stream Netflix on my PC, in case I don’t want to just go to the website or something…

Digital Storm’s New High-End Gaming PCs Light Up BlizzCon.
Case mods. Fine, whatever, they usually show case mods after big events anyway.

Asimov’s First Law Of PC Ads: Have Awesome Sideburns.
A picture from an old Radio Shack add…quality journalism here.

The Computer Nintendo Never Released.
Gotta love including a Nintendo story as a PC Week story. This is more of a peripheral/design story than a PC story.

The Future of PC Gaming, According To The Creator Of FarmVille.
The future of PC gaming as seen through the eyes of a man who has never made or been associated with a PC GAME. Sweet, exactly what non-PC players need to think of when they think of PC gaming. He does make one valid point though: “Finally, I think we’re going to start seeing the initial inklings of adaptive game experiences. Games are getting smart — and eventually systems, along with the management software, will monitor a player’s progress and adapt game play difficulty, mechanics and experience accordingly.” Good for you, now go back to making your apps.

The Most Awesome PC Box Art In The World.
Literally just pictures of OLD PC game box art. Thrilling and relevant.

The Many, Many Deaths Of PC Gaming.
A nice little video showing how PC gaming is either dying, or dying slowly. I know it’s meant to show how people keep saying it, and it’s still around, but honestly nothing in the actual video said that to me.

I’ve Always Wanted To Slam Dunk A Baby.
Yes, show the game where you can slam dunk a baby into a basketball net and watch it explode. Way to show how great PC gaming is.

The World’s Greatest World Of Warcraft Fan.
To the kid in this video, I love you man. You’re the massive dork inside all of us gamers. But is this really what you want to put out for your PC Week? Might as well call all PC Gamers unwashed, pimpled dorks.

Microsoft’s Computer Gave Birth To Japanese Gaming Legends.
A story about, for all intents and purposes, Microsofts first attempt at a CONSOLE. Sure it could do more, but look at the thing. If the PS3 can have linux and be a console, this thing is a console.

The Future of PC Gaming, According To The Lead Creator Of BioShock.
Seriously good stuff here, and the only thing I’ve seen on Kotaku’s PC Week that gave me hope for the PC market.

When An MMO Dies.
While an enjoyable article, it really is depressing reading about all these failed MMOs.

The Story Of The Biggest Computer Game Of All Time.
A FUCKING STORY ABOUT SOLITAIRE! SERIOUSLY? WTF? Who gives a shit? This is not ‘PC Gaming’, this is fucking SOLITAIRE! It was a card game in the real world, and it was translated with shitty graphics to the PC, that’s IT. WTF?

That is pretty much it for PC Week so far, except for all of the non-PC usual stuff that involves consoles. Am I being too hard on them? Fuck no. If they want to include more PC stuff on Kotaku, great. But to call it PC Week and then shit on it and post detritus like this the entire week? I like Kotaku, but damn this is fail.

Giving LOTRO another chance.

The wife got pretty angry at LOTRO last weekend, and truth be told so did I. We tried the duo skirmishes, something we have been excited about for a while now. We spent about four hours respawning, yelling, cursing and having one of the worst times I’ve ever had in an MMO. Are we undergeared? Not according to our guild mates. Are our skirmish pets underpowered? Maybe a little but it’s hard for us to tell. Do we have to wrong pets for our class combination? Again hard to tell.

Anyway this led to us both ragelogging. My wife needs an extra day or two more than me when this kind of thing happens so I was left feeling kind of bored and I decided to roll a new LOTRO alt. This time I picked a hobbit burglar and got him up to level 20 in just under 24 hours played. This is by no means a speed record, but I did complete every quest and deed in The Shire before I moved on, which is part of the reason it took so long.

I had a really fun time though. Me and the wife have been at levels 35-40 for about four months now it seems because every time we log on we try Skirmishes and are completely obliterated for hours until we quit, having gained very little of anything. It was nice to just level and have fun in the game again. Even the pie deliveries were enjoyable. I think once she’s ready to play again we’ll abandon Skirmishes for good and just level, quest and have fun.

Below is a link to my Burglar on Landroval, Undor. Feel free to send me a text in game.

Undor.

Bungie Encourages Douchebags

Since the dawn of the Halo franchise it has bred and attracted gamechair jocks and douches the world round, and while it is a great game series on it’s own, it’s image will forever be tarnished by the teabaging, smack-talking fraternity idiots that swarm over the game like crabs on a jock strap.

Or so I thought. It turns out Bungie encourages this behavior. In an update from Bungie they announced that there was a bug in the alpha phase of their upcoming game Halo: Reach. That bug you ask? In their own words: “The respawn camera flies back to the spawn location immediately after dying, so your opponents can’t teabag / shoot / melee your body and have a possibility of you seeing it.” Yes, they consider not being an asshole a bug.

Hopefully the next iteration of the game, Halo: Douche, will have a collectors edition featuring a beer bong, truck balls and step by step instructions on how to be an annoying prick.