Yeah, I’m just being lazy. Don’t worry, it extends to all parts of my life as well. I’m not avoiding just the webpage. I haven’t played Cali for more than PVP in a few weeks, I haven’t played Sullivan since the weekend (and I need to check some auctions). Just about the only thing I haven’t neglected these last few weeks is my Travian village. Not to say that Travian is particularly gripping, but when I slept in one Sunday I was raided for almost 1200 resources. To put that in perspective, I make less than 400 resources an hour. Also it sets a bad precedent, people think that they can start raiding you frequently. And it is just sloppy, we can’t have that. So I keep up with my citizens. We just built a stable yesterday and a Hero’s Mansion this morning, so I can start stockpiling resources to start researching better troops. Then I start building troops. Who knows, I might make my cranny obsolete by next weekend or so.

As for Warcraft, Sullivan is 35 now and therefore eligible for respeccing to Prot. Sadly I spent all of my available gold on tradeskills and getting Goblin Engineering, so I’m broke again. Ah well, hopefully somebody will put another recipe for Savory Deviate Delight up for 25 silver and I’ll be able to turn a 1000%+ profit. That was pretty cool. But yeah, Sully is a bomb maven and that is also cool. I figure that sometimes subtlety DOES actually mean “a smaller bomb.” Hopefully I can replace those crummy boots, though. I’ve been wearing the same ones since level 18, and there’s a bit of a level gap there from 18 to 35.

I saw the premier of Heroes Monday, and man I missed that show. I have to say, I’m not sure about the new flier. I mean have they already run out of interesting powers, now they need repeats? I’m still head-over-heels in love with the show though, don’t get that wrong. I’m not writing Heroes off at all. I saw Chuck too, and I have to say that if they can pull it off then it’ll be killer. The difficulty is mixing the action bits of the real plot with the comedy bits in between. At best they compliment each other nicely. At worst they detract from one another and the action bits are diffused by the comedy which in turn fizzles in the face of “real” action. I mean could you see 24 operating with this kind of slapstick (the bearded friend guy in Chuck springs to mind almost immediately). But hey, Jayne from Firefly is in it so its gold right?

Also, a meteor fell in Peru recently and immediately people started getting sick. And Yahoo files this under “Oddly Enough.” They could just as easily file it underneath “Colour Out of Space” or “Buy Ammo, Zombies are Coming,” if you ask me. I’m just saying is all.

In further “Microsoft wants some Yen” news, they seem to be bribing Treasure to bring an unspecified project to the XBox. I mean seriously, N1, Treasure, Cave, and some splinters of Square… what does MS have to do to get Japanese people to buy a perfectly good console? A game where you learn to read underwater or something?

In further “I may have to buy a PS3″ news, Sega is making a gently cel-shaded turn based anime style RTS/Shooter Hybrid called Senjou no Valkyria that just looks Downright Delectable. I mean really. Eternal Sonata looks similar, how about a multi-platform release? So far we’ve got this game, Disgaea 3 and the Final Fantasies to sway me to the PS3 camp, and Live+Media Center to MS. Damn damn damn. Ah, to be rich and not have to spend all of my PSP money (plus more) on a new set of tires.

Comments(0)

Well, this is a quick update to yesterday’s XBOX post. It seems that Microsoft is working on some kind of Shmup Renaissance as they are bringing something called Omega Five over as well. It looks like it plays a little wierd in these videos so I don’t know if I’ll be playing it or anything (look at the size of the player sprites! You’d have to move forever to dodge bullets), but still it is there and it demonstrates an interesting strategy of bringing over crazy ass titles.

So there’s that.

Comments(0)

Man. I was on the fence before about the whole PS3/XBOX360 thing, remember? I’m now forced to throw my lot in with the X360 crowd. The PS3 is an excellent Blu-Ray player, and it has a few great games that are still exclusives at this time. I’ll miss Final Fantasy and Disgaea 3. I’ll really miss Disgaea 3. I mean I’m going to buy a PSP someday so I can play Disgaea again, that’s how much I like the old N1. But Microsoft knows my secret weakness.

Killer platform titles. When you put in the available-over-Live exclusive titles I just get weak in the knees. See, Kotaku has just confirmed that both REZ and Ikaruga will be available over Live. Now I own a copy of REZ (Minus the vibrator) and I’ll still pick both of these up when I get a 360. Geometry Wars is one of my all-time favorite shooters, and that one is on Live as well. Senko no Ronde is XBOX only as well. Another game I already own but will pick up over Live is Symphony of the Night. I love SotN, have played it through several times and actually gotten something like 196.4% complete. It was the second game I did like that (the first being Vagrant Story). I’m a huge fan of the cross-title “account” model of the 360. I like having my Gamertag and pimping it out with crazy ass achievements in titles I enjoy. It is just a vanity plate thing, and hell, I love vanity.

Speaking of Castlevania, the producer of said series has thrown his hat into the Microsoft ring as well, citing poor market penetration on Sony’s part. He says he’ll go with the PS3 if Metal Gear does really well, which mean he may go dual platform if Metal Gear owns all.

Fallout 3 is dual platform, Devil May Cry is multiplatform, almost any game worth anything is coming to the 360 and the PS3 at the same time. Exclusive titles are few and far between. Then there’s the old news of N1 doing development for the XBOX. What could that be? A re-release of Disgaea over Live? Disgaea 3 multiplatform? A prinny based FPS? Who knows?

There’s always the dark horse, though. The Wii. With a Vanillaware sidescroller with mystical ninja protagonists, they may have a killer app. Now if that one would go multi (to the PS2 or Xbox) then I’d just be done for.

Comments(1)

I’ve been playing a heap of Travian recently. I’m not exactly sure how I got started either. I think it was an ad in the top part of Wowhead. It is a fun little game, I have to say. It is an online quasi-Civilization clone, played in real time. This means that you are never really “logged out” that your town/territory is always there and must always be defended. The issue is that raiding is the most effective way of resource gathering. The Travian Wiki goes as far as to define “farming” as “…the simple art of acquiring resources by the old fashion method of taking them.” Seriously.

The game is fairly straightforward: you start with one square of territory full of resources and a town. You are under noob protection for a few days (actual days) so you can devote at least a few to resource gathering before you get into defense mode. The first order of business is to stockpile some loot. To start you will need more clay than wood, more wood than iron, and enough crop to keep everybody working. Something to remember is that buildings and upgraded resource nodes will subtract from your crop total, so keep up with the crop upgrades. It is VERY annoying to look at a stockpile of 300 clay,wood and iron but only have 5 crop and a rate of 15 an hour because you’ve been leaning on upgrading your barracks. So get your rates up and keep them up.

Then build a cranny. This will hold your shit in the likely even of a raid. Check the “overworld” map (the third circular icon in the row at the top of the screen) if there are big cities near you (bigger than you) and they are Teuton settlements, get ready to receive their club guys. Teutons are all jackasses that will raid you almost constantly. Their dudes are free to make, but are always hungry. For some reason I’m playing a Roman village, so I’ve got the best trained troops, they just cost an arm and a leg to build and maintain. Remember to keep upgrading that cranny. Those Teutonic bastards reduce your effective cranny size by 1/3, so if you have the thing filled they can always steal a little off the top. They get frustrated after a while if they leave empty so make sure they leave empty handed. They can’t kill your workers (who exist as an abstract concept apparently) or burn your buildings, so don’t be worried about anything like that.

That’s a lie, they can destroy your buildings, but only with siege weapons and they can’t target your cranny intentionally. So at the start you should be cool. By the time you are repelling sieges you should have troops anyway. To get troops you will need a barracks. You get to start working on your barracks by upgrading your main building to level 3 and building a rally point. Most of your buildings can be built on any of the dots in your village, but the rally point can only be build on the crescent shaped bit of land to the right of the circle that is the village center. This is not exactly transparent to first time players.

Another building that has a set location, and no real mention of it is the city walls. They naturally encircle the village, and unless I spent some time mis-clicking all over the place I don’t think I would have hit it easily.

Anyway, I built a wall and a granary and that was a mistake. The wall gives bonuses to defending troops and I still haven’t built any, and the granary upgrades my storage from 800 crop to 1200 crop. I have made it a point of fact to never exceed cranny capacity if I can help it, and so have never seen more than 300 of any resource at one time. I wish I could reclaim some resources and tear the two buildings down, but you can’t demolish until your main building is stupid high level and I don’t think you get resources back anyhow. Just remember, the cranny is the most important building you can have in the early game bar none. I think that if you upgrade your cranny and main building while increasing production as much as possible, you will be cool. If I had it to do over again, I might play the Gauls. The Trapper and the double cranny capacity perks kinda beat my abilities as a Roman. I have good troops, but a week after I started playing I still don’t have any troops, and I can enhance a resource node while I build or upgrade a building. Having two build queues is cool, but right now I don’t have the resources to run them both. I think both of these perks will probably come up later in the game though, so I’m not rerolling.

I’m on Server 5 also if anybody wants to start up. Its a great little game that requires about 5 minutes of effort every few hours and it is happy to just chug along in the background while I play WoW or something. So very similar to EVE in that regard.

Comments(0)

Martin may have stopped finding out what type of cake he is, but me? NEVER!! Ahem. Anyway.

Man, I like Britain. I just do. I enjoy Dr. Who, Monty Python, Dragonforce and Top Gear. I honestly think I may be more of an Anglophile than a Nippophile (amazing, isn’t it?). If I had to live in a foreign country, it would be a close run race between Great Britain and Japan. Sure, I would get better wifi in Japan, but I already know the English language. But then you hear about stuff like this: The entire population of Britain - and every visitor - should be added to the national DNA database, a senior judge has argued. All I have to say is LOLWHUT? I’m a tourist, I’m here to see the myriad cultural treasures you’ve ganked over the centuries and maybe have some of your horrible food, and you want my DNA? In order to keep me in a giant potential-suspect database? And your first name is Lord? Didn’t you guys sign the Magna Carta? Geez. And here I wanted to see the Rosetta Stone and the big wax Master Chief (why did they model a metal person in wax anyway? Isn’t the point of wax sculpture to realistically depict flesh?) If I’m getting a cheek swab as well as a hand down my pants* then you can keep your country. I’m sure somebody made a replica of the Rosetta Stone anyway.

Yeesh, any wonder why my main forms of recreation are a fantasy game and an ancient form of armed combat? Escapism is fun. And I can get horrible food anywhere. Hell, in WoW, I can make the most horrible food imaginable, Eyeball stew.

I need to get a bigger flash drive. I’ve been using this 1gb PQI drive since back when 1gb was the biggest you could get. I’ve done a survey of the data in what I think of as my extended partition (a few directories here and there, on my server, my laptop and my box at work) and I’m up around 3gb, though a fair portion of that is the Van Buren demo and a few Bleach episodes. I could easily drop that by about a gig. That wouldn’t matter though, because the drive would still have to be 4gb or larger to hold my stuff. Luckily a 4gb drive can be had for a song. So one of these months I’ll free up $50 or so and go get a 4gb drive. That should be fun.

*= I am a man, so I wear a belt (dammit). The buckle is metal. This doesn’t require getting to third base with a public servant to verify. At least use Lucy Liu or something.

Comments(1)

And now we are 30. Level 30, that is. Sullivan has reached a new plateau, and actually started making money. It turns out the stuff I was talking about earlier only applied to the un-sellability of linen level garbage. The kind of greens you start getting around the wool and silk levels are far more profitable (ie, profitable as anything other than strange dust). So that’s fun. Of course I’ve left off PVP again so it’ll be another nine levels before I feel the need to enter into any Warsong or Arathi combat.

There was a post on WoW Insider about a request on the forums to be able to toggle XP gain on and off. To basically be able to freeze your character’s growth at a certain level until you have the supplies, craft skills and support you are looking for before moving on. The upside is you could run Deadmines over and over again until you have the complete Blackened Defias set without the risk that you might level over its effectiveness (like my old NE rogue from back in the day). Also if your crew was not on you could still run around and do some quests or whatnot from other zones without leaving people in the dust. The flipside though is that the twink brackets in PVP would become unbearable. As incredibly annoying as it is to try to kill a level 29 as a level 23, it would become hysterical if said 29 had Archeus, a sword obtainable from a level 28 quest that could support any of the top end BC enchants. Hell, you could put Savagery on there or something and just go nuts.

On balance, I think that it would be decent for PVE but a complete boondoggle for PVP. It would all but kill casual PVP.

Comments(1)

More adult than I’m used to, at least. I’ve now spent an amount of time working in my yard equal to the amount of time I usually spend at work. And man are my arms tired. As well as my shoulders, back, legs, neck, feet, and so forth. Pretty much my whole me. But yeah. I walked the dog then I started on the yard. I mowed the back, then I weeded the monkey grass and the Lantanna, roughly that is, nothing really all that professional. Just enough to make it look like a plant that is supposed to be there, not some patch of random shit all jumbled up together. Then I busted out the weed whacker and trimmed the grass I can’t get with the mower and cleaned up edges around the path and the slab for the shed. I then looked around and said “Well, this looks good, but the Lantanna is spilling out all over the granite that borders the bed near the gate and there is some kind of weird plant overflowing on to the patio.” Now I have a weed whacker as I mentioned so I put two and two together and cleared those plants up. I then cleaned up the wreckage from that and the weeding, emptied the mower and pronounced the backyard done. At this time it was 11:30AM and I started work after returning from the dog walking at 6:30AM (or so. Usually around 6:15AM).

Then I ate some lunch. It was almost noon and I had a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich waiting for me. Yeah due to complete lack of money I have actually bought nothing of consequence recently, and have been eating in all but once a week. Yay for brown bags, right?

Finally, the front yard. I repeated the mowing. I trimmed what I could with the weed whacker, but the damn thing ran out of line after I finished the curb and the bit around the front path (I still need to do the driveway). Lacking anything else to occupy the remainder of the day, I decided it was time to take my hedge trimmer on its maiden voyage. Turns out that trimming hedges isn’t the carefree, simple job that you think that it is. Its actually fairly annoying. And painful if you’ve got hedges secretly harboring stinging nettles.

So I chopped the daylights out of the hedges. Incredibly there was a large portion of the driveway that was covered by greenery, and still more that my trimmer is ineffective at removing. I think I might need an ax. Ah well. I think we can fit another car there now, so if people were to call me for hanging out then fewer people would have to park in the street.

Comments Off