Month: April 2011

Today’s blog post marks a first for the Aggronaut.  In the past I have made mention of various bits of my actual non-digital life, but never actually written about anything on a detailed level regarding what happens in the game of life.  Since this is a new kind of post, I made it a spiffy title.  I will attempt to use it from now on when I make a very reality laden post.

This Laptop’s Gone to Heaven

I realize that a lot of the readers out there have to make the choice between either playing on a laptop, or playing on a dedicated gaming pc, but for the last several years I have had the best of both worlds.  While upstairs in my office, I use my gaming desktop and when downstairs hanging out with my wife I play from a laptop.  It wasn’t until I lost this ability that I realized what a privilege it really was.

It was an ordinary Saturday afternoon several weeks back, I was hanging out downstairs in my comfy chair with my wife catching up on school work when the video froze on my laptop.  I had seen my machine get hot before, but this was positively steamy.  The video on screen looked like one of those checkerboard wipe effects that were so popular during the 80s.  I powered my machine off thinking initially it had just over heated.

Several hours later I tried booting up again only to find no video on the screen, just a combination of white lines on the screen that looked much like a UHF test pattern.  Long story short, the laptop was toast.  After further diagnosis determined that the video was pretty well fried.  Since video is on the motherboard, that meant a new motherboard and for a 3 year old laptop, that was pretty much a non-starter.

Hello Craigslist My Old Friend

Being the cheapskates we are, my wife immediately began looking on craigslist to see what was available.  In the past we have both had phenomenal luck getting good deals on Craigslist.  In fact, three years ago I purchased this laptop from a local individual at a bargain basement price, and it had performed admirably until now.  There was nothing really in our city, so my wife being the craigslist aficionado that she is extended the parameters to include some of the nearby areas.  After some hunting we found a few good deals roughly a 2 hour drive from the house. 

Flake 1: The Veteran

The first deal we found was an Asus G73JH reportedly months old, and $900.  Looking at the specs, it had everything I needed and wanted so we made contact.  Turns out the guy was enlisting in the Army and bouncing around to jump through the various hoops dealing with entrance.  I definitely understood the idea that he really had no control over his time, so I left it in his hands to tell me a time when it would be good to meet up.

We exchanged texts back and forth for about a week, each time he was uncertain of when he could meet.  He finally tried to find a friend that would be willing to meet up with me to sell the laptop.  Problem is, apparently his friends were assholes, since after several days he couldn’t find a single one willing to help him out.  Finally after several days, he said that he honestly didn’t know when he would be back in the area, and it would be better for me to find another option.

I appreciate his situation, but he still gets scored as the first flake of many that I have had to deal with.  I appreciate the fact that he was honest in the end instead of stringing me along for weeks.  However all the time spent dealing with him, cemented my desire to get an ASUS G73 series laptop.  So basically at this point I knew what I was looking for.

Flake 2:  The Meth Head

In the same basic area as the previous posting, there was a new one.  This time it was even better, the same exact laptop as the Veteran, but this time they only wanted $600 for it.  If I was willing to buy it for $900 I absolutely leapt on this one.  This was on a Wednesday, and after a few texts back and forth we agreed to meet up Saturday morning.  I considered this a done deal, and went on with my life, making plans to drive up on the weekend.

Thursday night I got a text about 10:30, saying that someone else had offered them $50 more and they were going with that.  Needless to say this pissed me off more than a little bit.  I was raised with an ethic that when you agreed on something, you had a verbal contract that you were honor bound to fulfill.  On top of that, the fact that they were willing to flake out on me, for only $50 more just added to the frustration. 

A series of texts back and forth, ended up with me giving up on this one.  Each time I would say I would match the offer, and they would text me back saying that the other person had raised theirs.  Basically as I came to realize the Meth head as I have dubbed them, needed as much money as they could get as fast as they could possibly get it.  So whereas I needed to plan my trip, and as such could only really do it on the weekend, the other person bidding against me could be there at 9:00 in the morning.

Basically I figured it was one of two things.  Either they needed to make rent, as it was the first of the month, or they were just an unethical schmuck.  Either way I was basically out of another laptop option.  So back to the drawing board, and back to Craigslist.  You’d think I would have learned my lesson after two of these incidents, but at the suggestion of my wife I dove back into the cesspool once again.

Flake 3:  The Runaway

Early during the process, we found this posting for what would be basically my ultimate laptop.  Solid state main drive, GeForce 460m 1.5 gig video, Bluray drive, etc.  The only thing that kept me away from the positing initially was the fact that it was $1150.  Like always we were trying to get most bang for the buck, but considering that $1150 is pretty much top dollar for Craigslist, I figured surely this one would be legit.

I sent the user a text message on Friday, and after a brief exchange we set up a time on Tuesday evening to meet up.  The timing was pushed out because the poster was on a business trip, and would be flying in on Monday.  I went on to explain that I had 2 other users flake out on me, and I wanted to make sure that since we had made a deal that it would be a done deal.  Poster said he understood, and far as he was concerned as long as things went as planned on Tuesday it was a done deal.

Here is where things start to go off the rails.  On Sunday evening I got a text back from the poster, saying that he was about to board a 9 hour flight, and was considering not working Monday.  Wanted to know if we could meet up.  Since I had arranged to drive my wife’s vehicle on Tuesday (better for longer trips), I responded back saying that if at all possible I needed to keep it to Tuesday.

This is the last communication we received from the poster.  Each day I texted, trying to verify whether or not the meeting was still good.  I tried to give the poster the benefit of the doubt, there are a lot of things that can happen to keep you from being able to respond.  Tuesday came around, and still no word.  We gave him an hour and a half past the time I normally would have left town to get word to us as to whether or not it was still on.  Since it was a 2 1/2 hour drive, we opted not to go since we were never able to get in touch with the guy.

I tried texting and calling, but to this day I have yet to receive any form of contact back.  Initially my wife and I were concerned that something tragic might have happened.  But since then, the same phone number has posted other items on Craigslist and removed them as well.  Basically this guy is a schmuck, and has been ignoring us.  Who knows why, but currently the laptop is still posted on craigslist, I am guessing the guy was trying to make another deal on the side.

The Compromise

One of the biggest frustrations I have encountered with the Asus g73sw laptop is there are thirty bazillion different configurations and each and every retailer seems to have their own flavor.  Over the course of these weeks of annoyance I have torn apart each and every major online retailer, trying to figure out what each one has over the others.

Best buy for example has one of these that is available in store.  However, it is gimped in many ways including the fact that while most of the g73 configurations can run 1920×1080 the Best Buy flavor can only run 1600×900.  The lower resolution could probably be dealt with, but turns out that to further add to the limitations their models only have 1 gig dedicated to the video card and use a 128bit bus instead of 192bit like the other models.

Then you have issues like Amazon, that for some reason only give you a 1 year warranty, whereas most Asus laptops have a 2 year warranty.  Since navigating the features of the various models, and figuring out where the shortcoming of each has been a massive undertaking a compromise was proposed by my wife.  Locally there was a Gateway p-7811 FX laptop posted for a couple hundred, that was the upgraded big brother of my original p-6831 FX laptop.  While this is not what I wanted for the long term, it did solve the problem of me not having a laptop anymore.

Luckily this fourth person was not a flake, and was an MMO gamer.  Very nice, in fact they attempted to convince me to going back to WoW, and playing on their server.  Funny how ALL wow gamers are instant friends.  Anyways the basic idea is to use the laptop until I get things sorted out in my head as to which model I am planning to order.  Then rebuild the laptop with a fresh OS and pass it off as a hand-me-down to my wife. 

Her laptop is more than a bit dated at this point, and what was a relatively beefy game machine for its time will do all the office applications and web surfing that she will ever need.  I got things up and running yesterday, and after about 2 hours worth of tweaking got the settings at a happy medium of performance and pretty.  Rift looks far better than it did on my previous FX, and I am able once again to enjoy hanging out downstairs and gaming at the same time.

Back to Digital World

This was my first real, reality based post so hopefully no one is running to remove me from their RSS feeds at this point.  I promise we will be returning to Rift news, and gaming features this week.  However since this epic hunt for a laptop has consumed most of my personal processing cycles over the last few weeks I felt it warranted a post.

In Rift news, today the iPhone version of the Rift Mobile authenticator has been released.  I have the software already on my iPhone and will go through the process of binding it to my account this evening.  Having an authenticator again is like a warm blanket of security.  At this point, Rift honestly is one of the most hack proof games out there, and we are already seeing the effects of this. 

The frequency of classical gold farmers has increased massively, and while I still don’t like them, they almost feel quaint and old fashioned compared to the horrific gold hackers we have gotten used to dealing with.  Not saying I am willing to welcome them.  But I would far rather have to deal with farmers in zones, than hackers trying to invade my account through viruses.  The only way we can ever be rid of either is to remove the demand for the virtual currency in the first place.

During the course of the week I have had a number of little bits and baubles that I wanted to share, but didn’t really feel like fit with the thrust of a certain post.  In Rift, if you complete the objectives of a stage in a timely manner you get bonus stages.  I reserve the right to post a long rambling mess at any time the mood fits me, but I think for now I will try and relegate them to my “bonus stage” posts.

Foul Cascade Shortcut

I have been trying to find a good way to work this in for a week now but having zero luck.  Once you hit 50, one of the things you will inevitably do is run experts.  One of the easier and more rewarding of these tier 1 experts is Foul Cascade.  As a Defiant player, getting to this instance is a thorn in our side as it involves running north through guardian infested territory from the Scarwood Lift porticulum.

While making the run for what felt like the hundredth time I decided there had to be an easier way.  In other games, players would get banned for “wall hacking” their way across zone lines.  But in Rift, Trion actually rewards this behavior since when you get up to the top of mountains, there are always cool things to see.  At the very least there is usually a wealth of artifacts along the way.

Above is my recording, using the in game /record system, of the route I take between Chancel of Labors in Iron Pine Peaks and the Foul Cascade instance.  Of note, I got confused while running across the lake as to where the road met up, and got dismounted.  Also of note, when you get to the Gloamwood / Scarlet Gorge zoneline, I drop down off my fast mount to my slow mount for a significant reason. 

If you are moving at fast mount speeds it is way too easy to drop down too far at once, and end up killing yourself.  Luckily, if you happen to do this, there is a soul forge at the bottom of the hill, at the same level as Foul Cascade so the run back is extremely short.  Honestly you would do just as well to simply dismount and hop down by foot, than to even mess with a mount.

I know there are other paths, but this one is pretty quick and relatively simple.  Would be interested to know any other shortcuts to either Foul Cascade or other instances that my readers have.  I know Caspian, one of my guildmates has a path that he runs to Foul Cascade somehow from Moonshae Highlands, but I do not know the specifics of it.  However according to him, this path involves no mobs in between, so that would cut down on the getting dismounted factor.

Nerd 202

One of my blogger and twitter friends, Kadomi branched out on a new venture this week.  She is making the scary transition from blogging about WoW, to blogging about geek life in general.  Just like her wow blog, Tank Like A Girl, the posts are well written and always interesting.  Initially I thought this meant she would be leaving the other blog behind, but since then she has updated posts on the wow site as well.  If you do not have Tank Like a Girl and Live Like a Nerd in your RSS feed, you should add them.  Both are extremely good reads, and I hope that she continues to have great success as a blogger.

Week Without WYSBPR

I realize it has been a long time now since I have posted an episode in the “Why You Should Be Playing Rift” series.  I have a few things still in mind, but in general at this point, players are either hooked on the game or well stratified in their opinion that WoW is the only game on the planet.  It has come to the time where I trim back some of my evangelism and start just reporting MMO news, and my own brand of commentary.

I think before all is said and done I would like to have a nice even 10 episodes in the series, so expect to see more things.  However the post I have been working on in the background, is somewhat the reverse of “Why You Should Be Playing Rift”.  The idea is to create a post outlining all the questions players can ask themselves, to determine if Rift is wrong for them.

Since release we have had a handful of players return to wow, because the game just didn’t scratch whatever itch they needed scratched.  For some the game play in Rift was too difficult, for others they missed the 3D chat room that WoW had become for them, and as a result missed too many of their friends still playing WoW.  Rift is by no means the “one ring to rule them all”, it expects a lot more of its player base than wow has since the burning crusade era.  As a result, this game just is not the right game for certain personalities and player styles.

There should be some cool things in the weeks ahead.  I have been shocked at how quickly this blog has revived and regained readership.  All along I thought I was just burnt out with blogging, when I went on hiatus from the Aggronaut.  Turns out, the game I was playing just did not make me excited enough to write anymore.  Now that I have pushed that game aside, I feel like I have a world of ideas swimming in my head.  Hopefully I continue to have success, but I just wanted to thank the readers.  I am slowly beginning to believe that I actually do have an audience.

Just wanted to get these up really quick.  These have not rolled out on North American servers as of yet, but if they follow the pattern recently they will be up at 8 AM PDT.  As of this morning we had already received the launcher patch associated with these changes.

New Items Arrive

As promised by Trion, the rumored “hundreds of new items” have apparently arrived.  These are supposedly sprinkled throughout the Tier 1 and Tier 2 dungeon bosses beefing up their loot tables.  I have no word as to whether or not these will be limited time drops, of if these are permanent changes to the loot table.  Either way I plan on making it another weekend of grinding away at expert dungeons.

Nameplate Options

One of the big problems I have with the game is the current nameplate system.  I will expound on this later in a future post, but it looks like we are at least getting some options.  There are now apparently two sliders in the interface options that allow you to control the size of player and NPC nameplates separately.  I just hope this makes them easier to see, and pick out from the sea of mobs.

Full Patch Notes

you can find the official patch notes here.

 

Despite having a now dead account, I still try and keep touch with my friends who are playing World of Warcraft.  Yesterday evening the buzz was surrounding the new and improved dungeon finder tool.  If you have read any of my recent posts on wow, you know that I consider this tool the “idiot button”, but I figured I would read the details and see if they were addressing any of the problems I had with it.  Below is a snippet that sums up the feature.  Full announcement can be found over on wow insider.

Failing To Understand Motivation

The above description of the new ability sounds great in theory, but it verifies a long held belief of mine.  Blizzard simply does not understand the motivation behind certain classes.  The classes that we are generally missing from the PUG landscape are the ones that require the biggest social responsibility.  It takes a special breed to be willing to take responsibility for other players into your own hands on a regular basis.

In WoW the class that has always been in the shortest supply are the tanks.  The tank is controlling force in any party, sets the pull speed, determines the approach, and for the most part directs the success of a run.  A good tank knows he has to rely on solid healing, expert dps and utility to get through the instance.  However someone has to be the voice of the party and More often than not, in a successful group, that is the tank.

To be a good tank, you need an instinctively protective nature.  You need the desire to protect the other players from harm and press yourself against the onslaught of mobs attacking you.  Doing this means you tend to develop a special bond for your fellow players, and as a result these players tend to ask you into groups on a regular basis.

Sure there are good tanks that are very reward focused, and chase every shiny new bauble available.  However after playing a tank in one form or another for 10 years, I believe a far greater number do it for other reasons.  I personally tank, because I enjoy the feeling of protecting my friends from whatever comes our way.  I enjoy saving the day in an epic fashion, and when you take away the familiarity with your players, much of that enjoyment goes away.

Failing To Understand Their Game

Kadomi touches on this issue in her post, “Call to Fail”, but I will expand further.  As I wrote about in my “Is WoW The WoW-Killer” post, the community of gamers is a much different place than when the game was released.  Long gone are the good natured, easy going players that are willing to work through a problem.  They have been replaced by the “lolurbad”, “faster!” and “big pulls” wrath genre morons.  As a result the tank ends up bearing the brunt of this player abuse. 

Frankly, no amount of carrot is worth the stick that the abrasive players already provide.  Stepping into a pug as a tank, many times is like stepping into a warzone.  The instances themselves are usually relatively simple, dealing with the selfish and socially mal-adjusted are the difficult part.  As the tank, you somehow have to figure out a way to steer this bus of constant frustration across the finish line in a timely manner. 

The simple truth is, if you are a good tank, you don’t have a need to pug.  You have a pool of players that are always willing to run heroics with you.  You become a favorite tour guide, that everyone knows will get them home safely.  Most nights in wow, I logged in to a sea of purple tells, many of which were friends asking me to come tank something for them.  At the end of the day, no amount of loot is worth dealing with the frustrations when you have a stable of “known good” players asking you for help.

This ties back in to what I said earlier, most of your good tanks are not doing it for the “money” so to speak.  Most of us actually like to help our friends.  We like to be contributing members of the guild and server community, and as a result become keystones in whatever environment we are in.  When you have this network of goodwill built up around you, why on earth would you as a player abandon that for an experience you know will lead you to invent new forms of cursing.

Lost Touch

This has been a constant thread I have seen among the various disillusioned players leaving World of Warcraft.  We all feel like Blizzard has abandoned us, the players that helped build its empire.  My grandfather had a saying, and I hope it will make sense to you non-Oklahomans: “You dance with the one that brought you”.  Basically most of the players I know filing out of WoW at this point, are players who like me played from release or near release.

We were the players that brought Blizzard to the throne of gaming it has managed to obtain.  Problem is along the way it forgot why we started playing their games in the first place.  In this facebook era of games, it is too easy to think it is natural to have millions of users to spare.  In doing so however, you forget all the reasons why your game was great in the first place.

I’m thankful to Trion at the moment, because they seem to get it.  After years of playing under Blizzard, Sony Online Entertainment, and Mythic I had come to expect a certain amount of distance between the company and its player base.  I expect them to not really understand why we cared about the game, and why we were playing it.  With Trion, it simply feels different.

In my time since starting Rift, I have seen far more involvement from the company as a whole than ever in my gaming career.  There have been 13 hotfixes and 3 patches, with the game only being out about a month and a half.  In the past I would have judged a game harshly on those numbers, thinking they were having to bandaid the game to keep it going.  Instead Trion launched the most complete product I have ever played, and continues to simply improve the experience with each release.

Magic Dust is Gone

I am not sure it is really quantifiable, but something is gone from WoW.  It is like the lid to a box has been opened and whatever magic dust was inside floated away on the wind, and is forever gone.  I left quite obviously to play another game, but many of my friends who are now leaving are just doing so because the game no longer holds whatever special property it once did for them.  Either they got tired of the hamster wheel, or simply stopped caring about the game play entirely.

I still believe this has been a gradual process of bad decisions that have lead us to this point, and this latest change in an attempt to buy off the tanks only supports that.  However I do still feel bad that whatever locomotive is at the head of the train, is most definitely off course.  I have many friends still playing WoW, and many that either do not have the systems or desire to jump to another game if WoW fails.  I honestly do hope someone will step in to balance the listing ship, before it capsizes.