Category Archives: Entertainment

What’s Wrong with WoW, and More MMOG Thoughts

Posted by on February 24, 2006 1 comment

Found this interesting link in Gamasutra about how World of Warcraft is teaching and encouraging the wrong goals. I concur, so read on: World of Warcraft Teaches the Wrong Things

While I don’t necessarily agree with or subscribe to his points in their entirety, nor do I place Street Fighter on the high pedestal that the author does — quite likely because I suck at it — I do think he’s somewhat on the ball about the general “dumbing-down” of MMORPGs. In general I’ve found the “theme park” play style that WoW uses to be somewhat bland and unexciting for me long-term, which is one reason why I’m giving serious consideration to going back to EVE Online. They recently made a major hardware upgrade, and CCP continues to be one of the most responsive and active developers I’ve yet seen in the MMOG space.

I’ve also got a couple of ideas to bring to EVE, one of which is here: The EVE Documentation Project. I hope to be able to take the community’s drive for compiling information about EVE and put it in a wiki where they can do a better job of maintaining and producing it. The forums (EVE account required) are trying to fill that purpose now, but they’re really not an ideal vehicle or tool for such documentation. I’ll hopefully be making a post to said forums at some point in the near future and we’ll see how things go.

Joss Whedon Took the Sky From Me

Posted by on October 1, 2005 1 comment

Those of you who know me know that I don’t post on my blog very often. Hell, those of you who don’t know me can tell how infrequently I post by just skimming down the previous entries. It’s usually only things that stir me greatly that precipitate my posting here and this is one such thing.

Long story short: Joss Whedon killed Firefly. He did so callously and what I deem unnecessarily and I’m going to go into as much detail as I can to convey why I feel that way. This contains spoilers, so if you don’t want to be prepared for what you’re going to see when you visit your local theater then DO NOT READ ON. Read more »

Counter-Strike: Source Server

Posted by on January 18, 2005 1 comment

So I’ve put the Counter-Strike: Source server back up now that bots have been released and it’s seeing some measurable traffic. I’ve made this post here so that the players can comment on the server and give me feedback on what’s good, what’s bad, etc. The server exists for the players to use so their opinions matter and this is a good way to gather them.

So, if you’ve played on the Chunky Bacon CS:S server and have something to say, please leave a comment!

Invader Zim Toys

Posted by on December 21, 2004 No comments

These are the coolest action figures I’ve ever seen in my life and I want them so very badly it’s palpable, like the longing felt by a dehydrated man upon spying fresh water.

Wish List

Posted by on November 22, 2004 1 comment

So I started an Amazon wish list for stuff I’d like for Christmas — and beyond — since it was the easiest and most effective way to keep track of such things. You can view it here.

Blizzard Games

Posted by on September 3, 2004 1 comment

I’m one of the approximately 100,000 people participating in the World of Warcraft closed stress test beta, and I’ve noticed something interesting about Blizzard’s games: They all have exceptionally high production values, unreal levels of polish, and have been very well tested. The graphics are gorgeous, the sound is fantastic, the models and animations are sublime, the environment is engaging, the interface is supremely usable and manageable, and the game system is thorough and adaptive. The only problem with it is that it’s full of obnoxious people; the newbie zones were absolutely flooded with everyone trying to kill the same couple of quest creatures yesterday evening and night. The volume will settle down and people will spread out over time, but it was annoying as all hell. I also am really fond of something that Dark Age of Camelot did called role-playing servers. On these servers there were naming restrictions such that you’d never see people named “SupaDupafly” and “DeathKillerBoy” running around, and there was a moratorium on out-of-character chat. It made for a much more pleasant experience for players such as myself who don’t like to see the same weenies who ruin Counter-Strike ruin their massively multiplayer role-playing games as well.

Open Water

Posted by on August 25, 2004 1 comment

Saw the new movie “Open Water” tonight. If you tend to suffer from motion sickness then you’ll probably want to take some Dramamine before the show as there are a lot of shots with heavy wave motion, due both to the water itself and to the camera techniques. Also, it’s depressing, like most movies about human tragedy. But I’m still glad I saw it, if for no other reason than to support smaller films.