Well, there's been some new stuff since last entry, so I'd better fill you in.
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In EVE, I haven't played since the last post, and it seems the Red vs. Blue idea is falling apart. Or at least, having some serious troubles. Blue seems to attract all the third party war declarations and they continuously have troubles with teaming, AFKers, and general lack of drive to fight. It was the same when I was playing, but now it seems worse. Plus, I doubt the Blue pilots really like going to look for fights with Reds, only to get ganked by a blob of third party enemies.
I don't think Kofi is even playing right now, as he hasn't mentioned it at all. And he keeps trying to get me to play Team Fortress 2 with him.
Oh well, maybe I can leave EVE alone for a while. Let CCP have the time to actually fix/add some stuff to the game.
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I finished season 3 of Battlestar Galactica a while ago too. Can't wait until season 4 starts up in April. It's sooo good.
I finally got Inferno to watch the start of season 1 too. He seemed to really enjoy it, but was saying how he doesn't want to watch it now cause "it'll be all bad". I think he's referring to knowing who one of the Cylons are. But it wasn't like he got a spoiler or anything. It was revealed in the episode we watched.
Whatever.
It also got me wanting to play a space game again, so I re-installed Freelancer, again. Lost my ID code so I had to make a new character on Inferno's server, but I managed to get higher than we had got in less time. Helps that I know the best trade route in the starter system.
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The reason I had to re-install Freelancer is cause I upgraded my computer, /again/. This time I got a quad core CPU, 4GB of RAM, an 8800GT card, a 500GB hard drive and a new motherboard and DVD burner. The whole rig is fucking sweet, and it can run everything I have at max resolution with all the settings maxed. Except for Crysis, of course. But I haven't even re-installed that yet. Don't know if I will either. It wasn't all that great, story-wise. Gameplay was cool, and graphics were top notch. But the story was the same old shit. I just couldn't get through it.
Right now I only have a few games installed. And I'm really only playing a couple. I had to backup all my Steam games (Half-Life 2, TF2, Portal, etc.) as well as STALKER and Sins of a Solar Empire. They are the only games I have installed. And I'm only really playing STALKER, once and a while. It didn't save my game when I backed it up, so I've had to start all over again. And it's kind of pissed me off.
Aside from those, I also have Lord of the Rings Online installed. o.O
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I'm sure you're wondering what possessed me to do that, but I was curious about the game for a while. Mostly from getting the emails about getting it for cheap every so often. So I DLed the trial, hoping it would give me my needed little fix, and let me go after the 7 days were up. Sadly, it didn't work and I bought the game.
BUT ... it only cost me $9.99, so it's not a bad deal. And I'm sure I'll get more fun out of my first month than I ever would with EVE Online. Having an actual avatar to look at really makes me enjoy an MMO. I can actually get immersed in the world and lose myself a little. I haven't really played it much since I paid for it, but that's okay. I plan on being more casual with it, so that I don't get burned out, and also so I can keep balance in my life. I don't want to slip back into the WoW days when I did nothing else with my free time.
I even gave Inferno a trial key, but I think that's a bad idea. He's got the worst addiction to video games I've ever seen. He did /absolutely nothing/ the other day but play UFO: Aftermath all day. All day.
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As for the tabletop front, we've moved towards GURPS for the most part now, as our one friend is the minority now. We did play a huge all-day session on Good Friday to wrap up the one DnD campaign, but that was because our GM was back in town for the weekend, and we needed to finish things off. It's not good to leave a game hanging in the middle of an adventure/battle/etc. People forget what's happening and it almost never gets resolved.
Hopefully we can convince the remaining two guys to game more often with the 4 of us left. The one guy is ridiculously busy and the other guy doesn't want to play anything other than DnD for some odd reason. Roleplaying is roleplaying, no matter the game system. Learning a different system is sometimes fun, and a change in setting is always a breath of fresh air. One can only stand so much Fantasy.
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Well, that seems like about all of it.
Until next time,
The Rev.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
From last entry:
Kofi and I actually got into Blue and have managed to be a part of some PvP fights. Or should I say, We've managed to get blown out of the sky numerous times while doing absolutely nothing significant to the enemy.
I've tried PvPing a little with Kofi in EVE, and it's become pretty frustrating, to say the least. We haven't managed to do /anything/. I've got in a few 1 vs. 1 fights (all consentual, of course) and have won more than I lost. But they were all vs. people more noobish than me. Or at least, more noobish in skillpoints than my alt.
Kofi, our friend and I decided to try getting our main characters into Blue instead. They are an Alliance now, so we could make our own corporation and join the alliance. If we want to leave, the corp just leaves, thus making it quite easy and limiting the corp hopping trail left in one's employment history.
I know some of you might stop there, and think that this all sounds a bit too much like real life. Corps, employment history, etc. And that's cause EVE is like that. You're never the lone hero, or a big name. You're usually just another cog in the machine. Which personally, I don't really like. I play solo 99% of the time, so having to team with others, or take orders from the CEO of a corp is not something I'd enjoy.
But, back to the topic of the Red vs. Blue PvP. The other guys want to get our mains into the fights. Then we'd have the ability to use bigger ships, and have better skills to fight and fit modules. But after seeing the PvP in EVE, I'm not sure I really enjoy it that much. I like more adrenaline in my gaming. And EVE is more tactical, slow paced combat.
There's another major reason I've given up on EVE PvP. Check the next part.
So, my account expires in a week or so, and I'm not going to renew it. I haven't even seen Kofi online for over a week. And now that our one co-worker got a transfer, both Kofi and I have to share the same job. That is, if I'm not working , he is. Our shifts look like they will rarely overlap at all now, thus our online time will probably not overlap either. And our other friend in EVE is always busy with the girlfriend, so I doubt he'll be playing much either. Plus, he's perpetually broke. :P
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In non-gaming related news, I've started watching the new Battlestar Galactica series (BSG). I DLed the first season off a torrent, watched it, then ran out and bought the first two seasons on DVD. It's that good.
If there was a recovery group for BSG addicts, I should be in it. It's fucking great, I can barely stop watching it.
It's also got me thinking about space dogfights, playing X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter (XvT) back in the day, Star Wars (in general), and sci-fi to the extreme. After watching BSG, remembering how much fun XvT was, I had to let EVE go. There's no comparison.
BSG has got me wanting to run my space game for our tabletop group as well. But Inferno and I have to sit down with our one friend and come up with a setting we can all agree on. We want to run different campaigns in the same gameworld, allowing us to build upon it and make a cohesive setting the players can feel like they are a part of. Last night before our tabletop game, we got into a big discussion about the space game, and our tabletop gaming in general. I think it surprised our one tabletop buddy, as I think he didn't realize how much we all don't like the DnD d20 system, and how much we've disliked the rotating GM idea.
It's nice to see he's come around a little, as he's now the minority in the group that likes playing DnD. He seemed to have a lot of fun RPing in last night's session too (which I GMed, BTW ;) ), and maybe we can make him more comfortable playing GURPS in general.
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I've also re-installed Freelancer and DLed a mod that adds like 100+ ships and 50+ planets to the game. There are ships from BSG, Star Wars, Babylon 5 (I think) and a lot of the ones that were NPC only in the normal game. Both Inferno and our roomie installed it as well, so maybe we can have some co-op gaming there as well. Though our roomie seems like he's one of those people who doesn't like playing a game normally. He wants to start at a higher level, instead of working our way up. He's also DLed walkthroughs of most games and beats them that way.
He's basically one of those gamers that cheats his way through just to feel godlike or something. Challenge is not something he seems willing to confront. A good example is our Call of Duty 4 (CoD4) deathmatches.
He formatted his PC a while ago, so he lost his account in CoD4. So we played the other night and he was level 1 again. Inferno and I were lvls 14 and 15, respectively. It goes to level 55. But our roomie got frustrated that we were beating him, and that he didn't have access to all the better weapons. So he logged off, hacked his account, and came back as a lvl 55. He then used a setup of the best weapon with a silencer, double firing rate, and silent movement, so he could fill us with rounds and run all over the place making no sound.
But what was funny is that he still didn't manage to beat either of us. And when he would die, I'd just go pick up his weapon and use it to kill him some more. It was funny, but it made him upset again, and he logged off. He really doesn't take losing well, /at all/. It's kind of ridiculous considering that it was a computer game too.
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I tried that Sins of a Solar Empire too. It's pretty sweet, though a little slow for my current mood. I tried a couple games, but after 4+ hours I was nowhere near winning, and I had to go to sleep. It looks like a good game Inferno and I could play co-op vs. the AI, like we used to do in Master of Orion 2 and 3.
It also looks exceedingly nice on my new 24" widescreen LCD monitor! :D My old monitor was /really dark/, and so I figured it was time to get a new one. Why not one of the biggest and best while I'm at it? :P
I even have my XBox 360 hooked up to it, so I can play in HD goodness. My 360 games look sooooo much crisper now on it. I really wish I had bought it earlier. Some games, like Assassin's Creed, I can finally read the fucking text. Before I had to pretty much guess what it said. It was that blurry.
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I might try out Lord of the Rings Online sometime here as well. I got a offer via email that would let me get the game for $9.99. It's pretty hard to say no to that, especially since the game wasn't bad, and my one tabletop friend plays it. Plus, he's moving 785km (490 mi) away, so I'm not going to see him anytime soon. Kind of sucks too, as he was the best GM we've had in a while (minus me, of course :P).
LotRO has voice chat too, so we could even just chat over the Net. I guess we could just use Teamspeak or Ventrilo instead, but this kills two birds with one stone.
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I think that's it for now. Sorry about the semi-rambling in this one. I'm not fully awake (haven't eaten yet), so I kind of lost focus there.
Hopefully more coherent next time,
The Rev.
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