hiatus

Must

Hit

Sixty

So far behind

In talking about stuff.

I kind of took a long thanksgiving vacation.

I'll start back up again tonight. Cheers.

I read an interesting article today in Wired, called "The Bad Lieutenant," written by Clive Thompson. It raises some interesting questions but has some problems that bother me.

In Doom, the game that began it all, you were a Marine. Then came a ceaseless parade of patriotic, heart-in-hand World War II games, in which you merrily blow the skulls off Japanese and German soldiers under the explicit authority of the U.S. of A. Yet anti-gaming critics didn't really explode with indignation until Grand Theft Auto 3 came along

First of all, Doom was very controversial. It was blamed by the media for the shooting at Columbine. It was controversial enough to draw the attention of lawmakers. Grand Theft Auto has received a similar amount of criticism from the same people, but the assertion that the criticism of GTA was an "explosion" next to Doom is overreaching.

Furthermore ... Doom was released in 1993. GTA 3 was released in 2001. The WWII video game craze didn't really hit until well after GTA, with Battlefield 1942, Call of Duty and many others coming out in 2003 and 2004.

Why weren't these detractors equally up in arms about, say, the Rainbow Six series? Because games lay bare the conservative logic that governs brutal acts. Violence -- even horrible, war-crimes-level stuff -- is perfectly fine as long as you commit it under the aegis of the state.

This is typical of a lot of stuff I've been reading lately. The "why is it ok for a soldier to shoot a terrorist, but it's not OK for a criminal to deliberately shoot an innocent person who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?" I think if you are curious about that question, this isn't a good blog for you.

I'm not a fan of questioning common sense or questioning authority. Not that they are always right, but they typically are. It's better to tweak them where they need fixing and then leave well enough alone.

The irony is that, in reality, New York's actual police have moved in the opposite direction. They've become more successful at keeping the peace by being less bloodthirsty.

The success of the NYPD in recent years is usually attributed to the Broken Windows and Zero Tolerance policies that former Mayor Rudy Guiliani pushed. I don't think either of those policies have much to do with levels of bloodthirstiness.

huge gaming weekend

* Continued to work on my warrior in World of Warcraft, although not much

* Bought a Belkin Nostromo SpeedPad N52

* Bought Homeworld II

* Bought Evil Genius, which I hope is the spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper

* Bought Dawn of War

* Bought Dawn of War : Winter Assault (I'm a sucker for the Imperial Guard)

* Rebuilt my computer

* Played through the single player campaign in Dawn of War

There is much to say about most these things, but those ... words that I will say about those things will come later.

---

It is close to thanksgiving. The Jerks over at Penny Arcade had Thanksgiving four days early, when They Bought Their Own Skins Pack From XBox Live.

You may argue that event does not exactly satisfy Hubbardian standards. I would respond by calling you a liar and then kicking you in your face.

---

Behold! Jake Justice Strip One and Strip Two.

Germicide?

I had a dream that I had a Xbox 360

I was happy in my dream.

Back in real life, I wouldn't really have anything to do with an Xbox 360. No interesting launch games.

Halfway through World of Warcraft

I just hit 43.

If you look at this experience chart at wow.allakhazam.com, you can see that you hit 8170 same-level mob kills sometime during level 43. Since level 60 is the equivalent of 16340 same-level mob kills, I'm now halfway through.

Yipee.

Ivy League my ass

Waiting for the drive-in at McDonalds. Some genius designed the drive-in so there is precisely one car-length between the car that is paying at the first window, and the car that is ordering at the speaker.

Inevitably, the person that just ordered pulls up overconservatively, so the person behind them is about six feet away from the speaker.

So, inevitably, I start shouting at the speaker. And the person in front of me has their window down and hears me shouting, and pulls up another eight feet so I can pull up six.

But tonight, I start shouting ... a long order too. No pull up.

I squint to make out the sticker in the rear window of the SUV.

Cornell.

Server Cleansing

I learned a new term today.

"Server Cleansing" describes the act of corpse camping lowbies on your server, in the hopes of making them miserable enough to leave, thereby alleviating server queues.

I'm not sure which server had the bright idea first, but it seems to have the most currency on Sargeras. So I decided to make a level 1 alt to check out the story.

Just kidding. But seriously, people who try to make other people miserable so they will leave a server are idiots.

Our Boys

It's vereran's day today.

I'm not sure what to say about it. I'm proud of our veterans, and of our boys serving right now. I hope to see them home -- soon and safe.

Thinking about today, a quick google search led me here.

This citation is one of many.

*MANN, JOE E.

Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company H, 502d Parachute Infantry, 101st Airborne Division. Place and date: Best, Holland, 18 September 1944. Entered service at: Seattle, Wash. Birth: Rearden, Wash. G.O. No.: 73, 30 August 1945. Citation: He distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry above and beyond the call of duty. On 18 September 1944, in the vicinity of Best., Holland, his platoon, attempting to seize the bridge across the Wilhelmina Canal, was surrounded and isolated by an enemy force greatly superior in personnel and firepower. Acting as lead scout, Pfc. Mann boldly crept to within rocket-launcher range of an enemy artillery position and, in the face of heavy enemy fire, destroyed an 88mm. gun and an ammunition dump. Completely disregarding the great danger involved, he remained in his exposed position, and, with his M-1 rifle, killed the enemy one by one until he was wounded 4 times. Taken to a covered position, he insisted on returning to a forward position to stand guard during the night. On the following morning the enemy launched a concerted attack and advanced to within a few yards of the position, throwing hand grenades as they approached. One of these landed within a few feet of Pfc. Mann. Unable to raise his arms, which were bandaged to his body, he yelled "grenade" and threw his body over the grenade, and as it exploded, died. His outstanding gallantry above and beyond the call of duty and his magnificent conduct were an everlasting inspiration to his comrades for whom he gave his life.

Thank you.

Enchanting

I've decided to take up enchanting on my new Warrior. As a result, I didn't get much in the way of experience last night.

I think my big mistake was writing a simple computer program that told me how much each enchant would cost based on the prices on the AH. Useful in the long run. Killer to my progress.

Level 37

This will not be the same as last night's post

I vaguely remember an interview with a musician from long ago. The musician told the interviewer that it was important to take a break from touring, because otherwise every song ends up being about "The Road".

Welcome to the second of many grinding-to-60 posts.

You would think that by my third character I would be good at this. But you would be wrong. I have grinding spots I really like from 41-50, and from 56-60. The other 46 levels are a vast meaningless wasteland to me.

Tonight I was fighting undead that were a little too high for me. Undead drop money and cloth (for bandages) but don't run away when they're almost dead. Very nice when the server is laggy, as it has been of late.

36.8

The Road to 60

I'm working on a new character in World of Warcraft, a warrior. Grinding to 60 is fun.

No it isn't.

My first mistake was made a year ago when I rolled on a PvP server. I thought "Wow, how fun will end-game PvP be. Only on a PvP server will I be able to properly enjoy fighting the horde."

Then I started to play. "Ok, it's not that much fun to get repeatedly killed by a rogue 20 levels higher than me, but it will be worth it, for that awesome end-game PvP that I can only enjoy on a PvP server."

You know the rest of the story. Or maybe you don't. I got to 60. The honor system came out. It turns out that open field PvP sucks. Battlegrounds came out, and they were cool. But Battlegrounds on a PvE server are exactly the same as the ones on a PvP server.

Of course, I can say on the forums that I'm not on a "carebear" server. But having to run back to my corpse repeatedly because I was ganked by somebody twice my level doesn't really mean I have extra skill. I could just slam my hand in a car door every 20 minutes. There's an idea. Everyone who doesn't slam their hand in a car door every 20 minutes is now "carebear".

In fact, all it really means is that my death can provide validation for illiterate juvenile malcontents that shouldn't be getting validated. These guys are supposed to be quaffing drain cleaner, but because of me they're hanging on. It all just makes me ill.

So, here I am, a year later, getting another character up to 60, my 3rd. And again with the malcontents. I wish I had gone PvE.

Why I write about videogames

I grew up in the 1980's. Unfortunately.

Anyway, back in these so called "80's", people couldn't get enough of the the science fiction movies. And they all would try so hard not to be like Star Wars. Which is totally different from today, when new science fiction movies ... try really hard not to be like Star Wars.

One of those movies was The Last Starfighter. I don't remember the story exactly because the movie was released 20 years ago and I never saw it. But the basic idea of the plot is that super-advanced aliens gave us video games so they could test our space-fighting abilities. Then when they needed new starfighter pilots, they had a pool of well-qualified, non-union pilots they could abduct from earth and probe.

That's why I'm so obsessed with videogames. I hope that someday an alien race will emerge from space, abduct me, and ask me to write about their videogames.

I don't think I've been impressing the aliens lately. I slacked off last week. I'm sorry aliens.

Dungeon Keeper 2 is dead

Dug this game out last week. I was thinking about buying "Dawn of War" and thought ... well, if I have time to play Dawn of War I should have time to beat Dungeon Keeper 2 again ... I've beaten it once before, and have started-to-play-it-but-not-beaten-it a few more times.

In the year since I started playing WoW, I think I have purchased four to six games. The time I've put into those games ranges from ten hours to zero hours.

I'd been playing a dungeon a night in DK2. That lasted until last night, when I ran into my first harder dungeon. And this comes at a bad time, when I have a project in-game that really needs to be finished as quickly as possible.

Another game falls to the cruel and barbaric sword of WoW.

The Most Frightening Halloween Ever

Last night, my level 22 character is killing mobs in Redridge despite horrendous lag.

I feel like I've done this before.

Indeed, the lag is back.

For roughly the first three months after World of Warcraft was released, our server was laggy nearly all the time. Unplayably laggy -- you could spend five minutes trying to loot a corpse, and eventually have to alt-f4 out of the game (logging out didn't work because of the lag).

Then Blizzard opened up a transfer from our server to another, and I guess enough people left, and things have been bearable to good ever since.

Well, not quite 'ever since'. The lag resurfaced suddenly about a month ago. It came at a bad time, and it has kept my guild from advancing further in PvE content. We lose a few nights every week to lag, and that's just enough to keep us from moving forward.

But that lag is just junior league lag, soft lag, if you will. Two to ten seconds after you cast a spell, the spell finally casts. That's frustrating but can be overcome occasionally. Last night was an entirely different matter. It was 'hard lag', the one where you spend five minutes looting and then have to alt-f4 because you can't log out lag.

I can only take so much of this.