Mordheim

Good morning people out in internet land.  I am slowly waking up and drinking my cup of coffee.  Usually caffeine makes everything better, so here is hoping it does the trick once again.  I had a pretty chill weekend.  Yesterday I hung out on the sofa with my laptop and play assorted games while watching the tail end of Hemlock Grove and continuing with Luther.  Both really great shows that I would suggest to anyone that is interested.  The more I think about it the more Hemlock Grove reminds me of Once Upon a Time meets Silent Hill.  I really don’t have a ton of ammunition to write about this morning, so here goes nothing.

Mordheim

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I think we all have those games we have a bundle of “what ifs” about, that never quite lived up to our expectations.  One of the biggest for me will likely always be Warhammer Online.  I loved the intellectual property the game was based on, and I think they did a really good job of bringing it to life.  The game introduced so many interesting mechanics like “physical tanking” and “public quests”.  They did several things well and I was happy to see other games adapt their ideas.

Ultimately the problem for me was the lack of a viable PVE experience after level 25.  I realize this was an attempt at making a PVP centric game… and that honestly is its failing.  People just don’t want that, or at least didn’t want that at the time of the release of Warhammer Online.  As a longtime fan of the Warhammer setting, there were various touchpoints they hit for me, and various other ones that I would have liked to have seen.  There is one thing especially that I have always daydreamed about that I wish they could have pulled off.

Mordheim was released as a stand alone boxed game from Games Workshop that takes place some 500 years before the setting of Warhammer Fantasy.  Ultimately the short version of the storyline is that a comet crash lands depositing this new material known as Wyrdstone.  Small warbands that the players control have to enter the city and try and uncover as many pieces of this new mineral as they can.  Not only do they have to contend with other warbands of players, but they also have to contend with the Skaven that have taken up root in the city.

I have always thought it would have been amazingly cool if they were able to either implement a public quest area that was Mordheim.  It would have been a lot like the Darkness Falls experience in DAoC with the ability for one faction or the other to control key points within the city while still having to fend off waves of NPC skaven that will attack the placements.  This would give an interesting three way balance between two factions of players and a third npc faction that wants to kill both of them and take the Wyrdstone for themselves.  I can’t say that this would have turned the tide of a losing game, but it definitely would have made for some interesting gameplay.

Eloping

After this weekend I am more convinced that we did the smart thing when we decided to elope and opt out of a traditional wedding.  One of our friends has decided that she is finally going to marry the guy she has been with for some time.  There have been multiple dates in the past but none of them actually came to fruition.  However now they decided to set a date two weeks from now… and are trying to pull everything together for a traditional wedding last minute.  The end result is complete and utter insanity.

As a result of all of this… my wife literally spent a good chunk of Friday night, most of Saturday and almost all of Sunday dealing with dress shopping.  She came hope with a disturbing looking teal number that appears to have come from Florida circa 2000…  as it seems to have a number of “hanging chads” along the skirt.  It is ugly as hell… my wife knows it, I know it… but it makes the bride happy so you deal with it.  But as we watch this logistical nightmare play out in front of me… we have turned to each other at several points and said “god I am happy we eloped”.

Ultimately I am going to end up as the photographer for the wedding… which should be a decent idea… as it will give me something to busy myself during the whole event.  I really really dislike weddings, and all the fluffy white wonderland that they seem to be.  I try my best not to be a grump about it, because for whoever is having the wedding it is a massive happy occasion.  I would just far rather send a nicer gift and hope they don’t mind the fact I didn’t attend.  I do find myself bringing a crappier gift when I attend the wedding… because I feel as though my suffering should count for something.

Chasing a Dream

 

I stumbled across this video while checking into G+ this morning.  I thought it was a really cool feel good story about how a guy chased down his dream of owning a video game store.  He mentions an IndieGoGo campaign but unfortunately I have not been able to dig up that link.  We have a handful of game stores like this in the Tulsa area and I try to frequent them whenever possible to support the concept of the hometown video game store.  I guess I find this whole thing extra neat because many times my wife and I have talked about the pipe dream of us building a store that fed off our own passions.

Ultimately it would end up as a educational curriculum, traditional book, video game and pen and paper shop.  The franken-shop would have a bunch of only vaguely related things crammed together in one place.  Granted we will never actually likely build said store, but it is a fun daydream.  Logistically any kind of retail venue would be a nightmare and I feel as though you are always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy in this market.  I think it would be cool to have an apartment located over the store like the old type general store clerks used to have.  There is just something special about a stored owned by someone that has a passion for whatever they are selling.  Hopefully at some point I can dig up the IndieGoGo link and post it.

Wrapping Up

This seems like another really short one, but to be honest I did warn you guys that I did not have a lot of ammunition this morning.  Hopefully something will happen throughout the day that I deeply care about.  Fortunately or Unfortunately depending upon the perspective, I have another one of those NDA bound things going on tonight, so not sure if I will have much gaming to be able to talk about tomorrow.  Hopefully you have a great start of the week, I have a lot going on at work that I need to make headway in.