Tobold Defines Evil

No. Really.

…only holds up as long as we are talking about avatars doing in-game action against other avatars, with no deeper emotion involved between the players behind the avatars.

Let’s take this a step further. What if the GAME is actually designed to cause this type of competition? American football is a contact physical sport and injuries happen, because players are hitting each other as hard as they can. If it makes the other guy go down, that’s sad, but it’s part of the game. Competitors always go for absolute victory. Going for a complete win, where the enemy won’t ever even come back to challenge you again, means using everything you have. It’s a way of looking at things so foreign and strange to people like Tobold, that they call it evil.

Evil is something different I think. Like purifying comments to maintain a particular image and silence voices of dissent.

But hey, that’s just me.

Edit: Some fun blog responses so far (I’ll try to link more as the day goes on, but meh, Friday, no promises).

You don’t know Evil

Is *blank* evil? No, just stupid

Swimming in Tears

Is this thing on?

Uh. Hi.

Yeah, still breathing. In a lazy Sunday afternoon right now, the long dark tea-time of the soul, as Arthur Dent calls it.

In any matter, for anyone still reading here’s a quick recap of where I’ve been gaming wise:

MMO bouncey-bouncey-bouncey: I’ve been entirely unable to stick to just one MMO for any length of time. I’ve been avoiding PvP ones in large part because of my temperamental internet connection, which FINALLY seems to be fixed. Mostly, I’ve bounced back and forth between EVE, EQ2, and a dash of Rift. I even went so far as to dip my toe in the AoC pool, but never even made it out of Tortage. Not sure what people are saying, but I found the Tortage experience to be as bland as any PvE MMO experience as I’ve played. I’m avoiding SWtOR for the most part, did some of the beta, but am dubious of my ever playing the actual game.

MOBAs: League of Legends has been hard for me to play in, because of said previous internet difficulties. I still played non-rank, games, and more Dominion than I normally would (thanks to it’s shorter time frame), but on the whole I haven’t done a whole lot there. However, along with getting my internet mostly back into shape two weeks ago, I got into DotA 2 beta, and that is just damn good, hard-core fun. I think I may do a short write-up about some of the big conceptual differences between the two. The sequel to the originator and the current crown champion of the genre.

SRPG: SKYRIM!! OMG SKYRIM!!! So fucking good. I have never played any of the Elder Scrolls games before this one, and was blown away by the awesomeitude this wonderous piece of digitally constructed world contained. My first play through was a shield and axe wielding, heavy armor wearing behemoth of destruction. My second (well 2.5) play through so far is a sneaky, archer type that just changes the whole way I play the game.

Console: I’ve gone back and replayed some of my older stuff, like Mirror’s Edge, and some more Wipeout, and a bit of Katamari: Forever. Console gaming is something I really enjoy still, and am waiting on the edge of my seat for Dust541, which just announced Beta sign-ups not too long ago (with some restrictions).

As for real life, my daughter just turned two, school is still in its part-time classification, which eats up a lot of free time what with that full-time job I have. I’m taking my first actual real-programming course this semester (Object Oriented aka Java), which I’m looking forward to. Work is finally slowing down a bit, my two large-scale hospitals are winding to a close on my design/coordination/fabrication side, and the bulk is going to be left in the hands of the installers – which means I’m sure someone is hunting for a new BIM project to throw me into.

The biggest thing I need to decide about this space, is how I want to proceed with it. There’s a good gap of time, and I don’t want to go back and discuss all the things that happened in the interim. I need to figure out what I want to write about, and get back in the habit of it all.

No new years resolution or anything like that, just saying, I’m going to try to put out stuff more frequently here on out.

Lull

There’s been a lull in my writing. It’s for a bunch of reasons. Work’s more restrictive policy of internet used coupled with being busier at work having been saddled with another giant BIM project as of two weeks ago are two of the main culprits. Elsewise, I’m playing two older, very well-balanced MMOs (EQ2 and EVE online), the second of which I haven’t really been playing other than to queue up skills. I haven’t been playing EVE because my internet has been completely unreliable. I lost my connection eight times in less than two hours Monday night – luckily, servicemen are coming tomorrow to hopefully fix it. Oh, and school, school started agin.

I’m not gaming much, and I’m certainly not reading other blogs nearly as much. I’m missing how I used to write every day, and I’m trying to figure out a way I can do that. I’ve tried it from my phone, and it just feels, unnatural. I don’t know how Scary does it – I need a keyboard in front of me to express my words, a very tactile responsive extension of my thoughts as my hands work their way across the letters and symbols of our language. Writing with my thumbs seems strange and alien to me – thumbs are for the spacebar.

Things at home are going to be getting better connection wise, so my gaming will open up a bit more. I won’t have to avoid EVE and LoL for fear of being stranded vulnerable in space or leave a team a player short (respectively). Time-wise though, I’m not sure what I’ll have, and I still have the hurdle of not being able to use work time to do reading/writing for the blog. I’ll need to find a way to jump that, and it may be that I write and read from home more frequently at the detriment to gaming.

Still working on my German via Rosetta Stone too, which you probably know if you follow me on Twitter – which is another reason for lack of updates. A lot of the short ideas I have that used to turn into full on posts wither and die on the vine of 140 character micro-blogging tools. Blame this current age of instant access, quick media, and social networking for the ADHD inclined as part of the dearth of posts of late. I’m making no promises still, as I always said I wouldn’t, but I really still want this to remain a place for me to come and write about what I’m doing for my own sake as much as for the relationships and discussions I’ve built over time with this thing.

Oh and I still really REALLY want to explore the topic of Fair that I broached a couple of weeks back.

Obstaining from the tradition

That’s a fucked up Aprtil Fool’s post.

That’s actually plausible.

And this was just kinda week.

Better F.B.W. post?

Rift sucks.

Fuck you.

You’re cool.

Fuck you.

Peace, I’m out!

Shadow-war turns two

As I said the other day, this blog saw its second anniversary last week, on the 6th of January. Not so dissimilar from last year, I’m a little impressed that I have kept it going. I still enjoy playing WAR, but even with the release of the RvR pack, my interest and the interest in the game itself seems to be waning some. Not that the game is bad, but two years is a long time to play ANY game. Sadly, the community seems to be shrinking some, but those who are still here are a tight-knit group, and maintain the bonds of camaraderie still.

As I said on Friday, my blog stats have taken a major turn southward this year, as you’ll see in the pictures below. In case you weren’t around at the time, this is because, for whatever reason, google-images stopped bringing people here for a Christina Hendricks photo. Yes, my blog stats were majorly blown out of proportion because of that one picture. My busiest day ever, was the day Time (or something) named her as one of the world’s sexiest people (or something). I was never able to get an accurate read on what people liked, and what they did not, because the incoming traffic was such a blow-out to everything else, that analytics were fruitless. So, when I said viewership was down and I couldn’t be happier, I’m being sincere. Adolescents teens coming to fap to a picture of a hot-red head is great, but if they’re not participating in the discussion by at least reading what I write, it doesn’t do me much good.

So, follow the break for a bit of statistical imagery and some more chatter.

Two years and a day

So, I totally missed my second year anniversary yesterday. Yay me! Two years and counting. Sadly, I don’t have the time right now at the end of the day on a Friday to show you how the year has gone, and I’m going to be out-of-town this weekend. However, I promise to do so on Monday! I’ll show you how my numbers have gone way, way, WAY down, and why I couldn’t be more pleased!

So, with that teaser, have a good weekend, and you’ll be seeing my charts on Monday! Happy gaming and thank you once again for coming by. Without my readers, I’d be talking to myself, and that’s just early onset insanity.

Self cross-promotion

I’ve started a second blog, for anyone who cares.

Like WAR bloggers that have come before me, I’ve started to run, and despite advice to the contrary, not only am I NOT keeping it quiet, I’m telling everyone. It’s a form of keeping myself dedicated. I let myself slip up, and fall out of a commitment unless I do something to reinforce my will. This will be that support. Even if noone reads it, I will be chronicalling my progress, and putting it into the world, and that should keep me honest.

I’m in week two right now, which may be a bit early to start writing about it (but screw it), and will have a post about it soon.

I need a banner

The title says it all.

I need a banner created for this site, and honestly, I’m too busy to be able to do it myself. So, I’m reaching out to you, talented masses of the WAR community to put something totally awesome and sweet together. It can be whatever you think might fit best if you think you have a good idea, or you can go with a generic Archer/Ranger/Shooter/Warhammer type thing, or a Jesus with eagle wings, both are fine. My original idea was a compilation of various archer tropes compiled into one long banner. Kid Icarus, Robin Hood, etc… The only restriction is that it needs to be 960×80, or at least made in a way where it can scale to that, or a portion of it that is that size is banner-worthy. Or if what you make is really awesome, like a T-rex flying an F-16 awesome, I may re-do the whole damn site to fit your banner.

Anyway, whoever does the bestest ever job on this and who’s work I use, I’ll send you a Collector’s Edition Copy of Warhammer Online if you’re in the US, and if not, well, we’ll figure something out.

So, people with more time than I: I look forward to your help!

WINGS

Feel free to ignore this post if you want something gaming related.

RRRRAAAAAWWWWWRRRRRRR!!!!!

Go here. She’s funny, but has not approved my comment that I’m nearly 94.3% sure I left. It (the comment) was great, and talked all about how headphones while grocery shopping is a great way to avoid unwanted social interaction that I employ with a 99.67% success rate.

Also, this is the fourth time I have edited this post for formating/typo reasons.