Tales of the Aggronaut

Paradigm Shifts

July 14, 2013 by Belghast

Once again this morning I am sitting down to write about what I did last night… but finding it that I can’t really discuss anything I did last night. As a result I am searching the depths to find a topic to talk about that doesn’t break those three magical letters… N, D and A. The big news today… are things I don’t really want to talk about… so I want to talk instead about a few paradigm shifts that have really made a difference in my life, and changed the way I look at things.

Steam Sale Season

Right now it is essentially Christmas for PC gamers… because the ever increasingly insane Steam digital distribution sale is going on. For the last three summers, Steam has brought us PC titles discounted as much as 80% off retail price and quite frankly I have gotten used to this concept. What the Steam sale has done for me… is made me realize that if I wait a bit… I don’t have to pay the retail price for a game. While this concept seems simple… it has permeated the way I view gaming in general.

Essentially I have reach a point where most games just are not worth the ubiquitous $60 price tag. They are worth something to me… enough so that I wouldn’t even dream of pirating a game these days… unlike the heady college days of downloading whatever I could get my hands on. The problem is… the amount of money I am willing to pay is far from what the game companies want to charge.

It is like I have developed these containers in my head and as something comes out I immediately slot the title into one of them based on my interest. The first bucket is… that I want the title at release and am willing to preorder it. This bucket seems to have the least number of titles that fall into it… and is reserved for those game series that I absolutely love and will happily consume anything that is released as part of it. See The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Bioshock’s of the world.

The second bucket is… I am interested in the game, but only willing to buy it if the price drops. This is a larger group of games, and most of these are things I think I would like but don’t necessarily align to my “favorite” types of games. I am always looking for a deal… and I am willing to entertain these games if a significant deal arrises. The third bucket is… I am interested in the game, but only willing to buy it on one of those insane steam summer sales. I am talking about when a $60 game sells for $4 type sale.

Finally of course there is a bucket that the game genres I just have no interest in. The odd result of all of this is that I only really pick up games if they are on sale. I find myself less and less willing to pay even $40 for a new game… but instead am willing to wait out the good deal. This has trickled down into all aspects of gaming… and I find it particularly jarring now that I have re-engaged with the console gaming world. A world where essentially you have three options… pay $60, wait for the red banded edition for $20 or buy them used.

Coming from the steam world… console gaming feels fundamentally broken. Most games are not worth $60 to me… and quite frankly a large number are not even worth $20. For console titles… I tend to snap them up when they are $15 or less… that is the price point I am comfortable taking the risk on. So as a result… I pretty much only buy my games from pawn shops and other non-gamestop used game sellers. All of this is 100% a direct result of the training that steam has given me… to always look for a deal… and that I can always get the game cheaper somewhere else.

Amazon Prime

Another huge shift for me was when I decided to pony up for the $70 a year that upgrades your Amazon account to Prime. The free video streaming sounded tantalizing… but quite honestly they are so far behind the curve in letting you filter the content… that we never end up using it. For me the real meat of the prime deal is the fact that it gives you free second day shipping on any item you order that supports the prime program. This has completely changed the way I look at shopping in general.

I have never been a big showroomer, in that I went to the store… and then ended up purchasing online. Quite honestly if I can skip the whole going to the store experience I will every time. The decision point always came down to… wether or not this was something I needed quickly. If so I would end up trekking out to Best Buy and dealing with the annoying blue shirt mafia just to get the item I needed. Instant gratification has a price… and it was both a monetary and annoyance price for me.

The thing that Amazon Prime does is change the equation entirely. How often do you actually need an item without a few days notice? I have come to realize that most of the time there are very few absolute emergencies that necessitate me going out to a store to buy something. Even in those situations… Prime members get a significant reduction in next day shipping as well. In almost every case over the last few days… I have been able to wait the few days it would take for it to arrive. Previously it used to take roughly a week to get an item from Amazon, but lowering that shipping time to two days… was a complete game changer.

The only negative effect is it drives my wife insane. She feels like we are always receiving a package from Amazon, but in every case… these things are items I would have had to go out to a store to purchase. I would much rather do my research online, do my price comparisons online… and finally order online. Being an introvert, anything that keeps me from having to deal with salesmen is always a positive. Additionally there are a lot of things I simply cannot get in a store around me. Tulsa is not exactly a huge market… for example the closest IKEA to us… is six hours away.

For example… yesterday while running around town we decided to pop into Ulta to see if they still had the pomade I use. It is the only product I have ever found that adds hold and body without making my hair feel “crunchy” like a gel. The stuff is fairly expensive, but it literally takes me 2-3 years to go through a container. After roaming around the store we finally asked a guy stocking the shelves… and he indicated that they no longer carry it.

Previously my choice would have been to find a new product, which involves a lot of trial and error and a lot of buying expensive containers that you end up not liking, or I could have gone to the other Ulta locations in town hoping that there was an off chance that one still had it on the shelves. Instead my wife whipped out her phone, looked it up on Amazon… and I will have my container here on Tuesday. Essentially knowing we have fast and free shipping on whatever we want to order has completely changed the flow of our purchase decisions.

The Next Thing

I am not sure what the future will bring and what new paradigm shift will come with it. I feel that television and movies are fundamentally broken right now. In order for them to survive they will have to come up with a new and more equitable system for the customers. A prime example is that my wife after returning from the forensics workshop wanted to watch some of those early episodes of CSI… back when it was more focused on the science and less on the interpersonal drama.

We got home… fired up Netflix… and while CSI Miami and CSI New York were available… the original was not. I checked Amazon Prime and the same thing was true. I fired up a trial account for Hulu Plus only to find they had access only to CSI Miami. If your television show is not available on any of the three major streaming services… you are essentially fucking over your fans. I checked Amazon, and it would have cost $1.99 an episode… or $24 a season. Quite frankly a television show is just not worth that to me, and I have no real desire to own media… I just want streaming access.

Instead we went out to a local used chain… Vintage Stock and paid $10 for a DVD copy of Season 1… and I am now in the process of ripping and converting them to digital format. All so we can consume the content in the way we choose. This entire process is broken… and hopefully someone will fix it. I feel like the whole concept of broadcast television is equally broken. Having to wait for a show to come on in the world on on demand streaming just feels extremely archaic.

Hopefully someone will come along and design a system that provides one subscription with all you can eat programming and make it work in a way that the old media dinosaurs can profit from. Ultimately companies are going to have to realize that some money is better than no money at all. Had we struck out on getting a used copy of CSI… I would have pirated the content out of spite. Essentially they gave me no legal means to stream their content. Customers want to give you their money, but they want to do it in a way that makes them feel like they are not getting bent over in the process.

Wrapping Up

Well we are just about to watch some of those said CSI episodes… but I have been delaying the process since I type much faster when I do not have to filter out the television. As a result my wife has been patiently waiting for me to finish up this post. I hope you all have a great Sunday, and that the start of the work week begins in a not too painful way. Mine will be a hassle since I was gone a full week.. and often times various bits of work stacks up waiting on me. Thankfully now that I have some awesome co-workers they tend to take care of 90% of it.

5 Biggest MMO Disappointments

July 13, 2013 by Belghast

This is one of those days I have zero clue what to write about… but as not to break the chain of constant posts I am going to push through and post something anyways. In part this post about nothing has been brought to you today by the letters N, D and A. So instead of a normal post about what I did last night, or what I want to do today… I am going to make a post about my top five biggest MMO disappointments. This is kind of the bookend to my post about my five favorite MMOs, so hopefully I can do this without coming off overly negative about each.

The Disclaimer

Some of my picks for this list will be rather controversial… but they are my picks nonetheless. This list is not about what I consider to be the worst MMOs, or even bad MMOs at all. In fact most of the ones included on this list are games I have played over and over again… and will likely play again in the future. On the converse… these are the games I have been the most disappointed by over the years. This could be due to lack of content, lack of depth, lack of features… or just simply lack of follow through. This is by no means a death sentence for an MMO… it wouldn’t be on the list at all if I didn’t care. For example… I do not care at all for TERA or Aion… but I was not necessarily disappointed in either because I was not expecting to like them in the first place.

5 – World of Warcraft

If you remember… I included World of Warcraft as number five on my five favorite MMOs list… and I think placing it in the number five spot on this list adequately represents the love/hate relationship I have with this game. Without a doubt I have had some of the best times playing WoW, but I have also had some of my biggest disappointments in the path they have chosen to grow it. It feels like an old high school friend… that you were extremely close to… but after years of being apart you grew in two completely different directions. While you want really badly to be happy for it… you can see the potential that was there… and how it has been squandered.

World of Warcraft was a game that I expected not to like in the first place. I remember my very first thought when I heard about it… was where the hell would they get their story. Until Warcraft 3… every Blizzard game had essentially only had enough storyline to keep the game from completely falling on its face. After experiencing the deep and rich world of Norrath… I did not think that Blizzard could pull off anything that engaging. I was wrong… they wove together a world that was deep, rich, and filled with lore. Additionally they incorporated the best features of every game that had come before it… and remixed it in a way that truly represented the absolute best of breed for the time.

However over the years… they have butchered the lore… and instead of continuing to incorporated the best features on the market… have instead created half assed versions of them. I have to keep coming back to the Transmogrification system… because it personifies this concept of the modern Blizzard approach. They took something awesome… alternate appearance systems… and instead turned it into an extremely cludgy money sink. The same thing happened over and over as they tried to incorporate features of popular mods… but the official version was never anywhere near as solid as the original mod that inspired it.

Then on the other side of the coin… the content was just lacking. When new content was introduced… it was too little to late. Like a quick appetizer that never quite turned into a meal. Shortly after the release of Cataclysm… I started a brand new Worgen Druid… and managed to level it without much effort in under 5 days played time. Additionally the raid content just felt more and more uninspired… remixes of previous encounters. So I will admit… at times I am one of those guys… that views the golden area of vanilla through rose colored lenses.

For certain players the new mix of content and the pacing works. I have a ton of friends who are still knee deep in the thrall of this game… and more power to them. I just reached a point where I could not view anything but the disappointment. As a result I am not playing, and trying my best not to complain on a regular basis about the game. But… additionally I do not feel this post would be honest if I did not include WoW in the mix. I feel like it still has so much potential, and maybe if they changed to a content driven DLC style free to play model… they would have the endorsement to build content other than the raid ladder and dailies.

4 – Guild Wars 2

This is another title I did not really expect to like when I first heard about it. I was never a huge fan of Guild Wars 1 despite everyone telling me just how amazing a game it was. I liked some of the concepts presented, like the Magic the Gathering style ability system and the ability to multi-class… but everything else about that game I really despised. If I do not like your games user interface or control scheme… no matter how awesome a game it is underneath I just cannot bring myself to play it… no matter how many times I try. So all of this said I really had written off the concept of Guild Wars 2.

This all changed however when the folks at Arena.NET posted their Design Manifesto. It basically said everything I thought I wanted to hear, and laid out a great vision for a new game. So I was amped when I was able to get access to the testing program. However I was immediately disappointed in the experience I had there, and lack of what honestly felt like a game. I was disillusioned enough that I actually resigned from testing and wished them luck. One of my friends remained in the test a little bit longer than I did… and eventually bailed himself. I hoped they would find some direction and turn the project around.

When it came time for open beta testing… I gave the game another shot. The lowered expectations of expecting to dislike the game… caused me to view it through slightly different eyes. I enjoyed the game enough that I picked it up when it came out. The problem is… there just was not enough meat on the bones to hold my attention for long. There are definitely some aspects of the game that I enjoyed, but the whole experience felt very disposable… more so than any game I had experienced.

Additionally it did not feel like I was progressing my character at all. By the time I reached level five, I had unlocked all 5 abilities for my primary weapon choices and the signets and other related abilities… just did not feel like they had enough weight to them to make them something worth striving towards. The game set out to abolish the holy trinity of tank, healer and dps… but the problem is that it didn’t really replace it with anything in the process. Group content felt like a chaotic mess, and I was extremely disappointed when I did my first dungeon and realized the zerging a boss down from a spawn point was totally a viable tactic.

In the Manifesto they proposed that – Shouldn’t Great MMOs be Great RPGs too? The only problem is the key means for moving the story along in a role playing game is the questing construct… but they sought to abolish that as well. Once again… it is fine that they wanted to change the game… but they didn’t really replace it with anything meaningful in the process. As a result I felt extremely disconnected to the world around me. Things were going on around me… on scripted timers… but I didn’t really care about whether or not we won or lost. I didn’t care about the people and place… and the lack of questing did this.

In the Manifesto they stated that it was time to make MMORPGS more social. The only problem with that is that they introduced so much passive grouping, and took away any need for player roles… that the end result is one of the least social games I have played. When roaming around the world… you may be fighting along side other players, but you do not have to interact with them in any meaningful way. Each player is a self sufficient independent state… and as a result has no real need for anyone other than themselves. The game just feels like it is lacking reasons for players to actually be grouping together.

Let me reiterate, there is a lot to like about the game. It runs amazingly well on low end hardware, and presents a very fluid gaming experience. It has one of the prettiest worlds I have ever explored, and has a lot of things that incentivize exploration. While it is presenting a ton of new content in the form of now bi-monthly updates… the problem is most of it is limited time only. Instead of growing their world… they are creating disposable episodes that only serve to make the game play experience all the more disposable itself.

3 – Star Wars: The Old Republic

I’ve loved Star Wars since before I could even fully verbalize it. My parents tell stories about me seeing the movie when I was one… and then coming home and jabbering endlessly about “Darfa Bater”. So if there was any game that has enough storied lore to hold my attention… it should have been SWTOR. I was a huge fan of Knights of the Old Republic, and as a result I was completely committed to the genre they genre they chose to set the films in. Additionally I love the Bioware style of storytelling, and am a pretty huge Dragon Age and Mass Effect junky.

All of these things should have made SWTOR be the next 8 year game for me. The problem is… the experience while amazing… is overall disposable once you have made your way through the content. So much care and feeding were placed on making sure the quests were just right… and the voice acting was flawless… that it greatly cut into the total amount of content available. The three chapters that were available at launch… felt like an awesome introduction to the game… but the main course never really arrived.

I hear the Makeb release is extremely nice… and the continuation of the storyline extremely successful. The only problem is… that content came a year too late to stave off the players leaving. I feel like had they had more content in the pipeline and ready to release a month after launch, they would have been able to keep the majority of all the players that started playing. We just burned through the content way faster than they had expected. Additionally the fact that there was only one path per faction… and that essentially all the quests were the same minus the handful of class specific ones… alting became extremely tedious.

Additionally when they chose to go free to play… they adopted one of the most blatantly abusive models I have seen. Essentially with free to play, you can choose to take the carrot or the stick… and things like gear locks, pay walling what should be base features, and rolling out a never ending stream of unique lockbox gear just feel too much like being beat with the stick for me. It has however been extremely lucrative for Bioware… and enabled the game to keep its doors open. If it means they continue to release new content… then in the long run it could be good for the game as a whole.

I am still disappointed however at what could have been. Had they been able to launch a continuation of the main storyline each month or so… it would have kept me glued to the game. The original storyline was amazing… and there is no taking that away from the game. The Jedi Knight storyline is probably one of the most epic story arcs I have experienced in any game. It was just over way too soon, leaving me nothing really left that I wanted to do. The problem is… that content was extremely expensive to produce. There was never a way that they ever could have kept up with the demand.

2 – Champions Online

One of my all time favorite pen and paper games is Heroes Unlimited by Palladium games. I had early experiences with D&D and AD&D… but this was the game that really hooked me on the possibilities of role playing games. What made the system so cool is that it had rules to create literally any type of super hero or super villain you could imagine. Of course I created my share of Wolverine or Batman clones… but the game system was this fertile group that through a series of roles I could create some unique characters as well. What made the game so engaging was that the sky was literally the limit in the types of things you could create.

I was a huge fan of City of Heroes, because it gave me some of this same rich character building… but did so in an easy to digest MMO form. That game however had a lot of short comings… and when Champions Online was announced it looked to be addressing all of these base issues and creating this wild open ended super hero creation system. You could mix and match power sets… creating your own custom mix for your character… and this was placed on top of a character generator that was even more robust than City of Heroes. Everything sounded like the perfect super hero game… and I was hooked on it early.

The problem is… the power sets were grossly imbalanced. This is the first game I had ever played where certain power sets were literally unplayable. You could reach a point where you just simply could not progress any further due to the choices you had made. On the other side of the coin… certain power sets were so grossly overpowered that they completely removed any challenge from the content at all. You could steam roll over the top of anything, while your friend that chose one of the broken ones… could not even fight the lowest rank mobs.

The major disappointment is that they did a very poor job of mitigating the different power sets. They would buff one…. but then another power set would become the broken one… making it a constant cycle of your favorite power set potentially becoming the unplayable one. The game had all the potential in the world… and just became grossly mismanaged. Instead of understanding that this constant state of power flux and un-playability was what was driving their players away… they instead decided to streamline the content.

I really do not remember the timing, but I believe this happened around the time of the free to play conversion. Previously there had been a pretty interesting storyline that had multiple paths your characters could take. The end result ended up with everything being a big jumbled mess. The thing that ended up as the nail in the coffin however… is that coming back as a free to play character… I could not play any of my existing characters. Each and every one included some costume bits that were not open to free players. This should be a lesson to anyone… grandfather existing characters… because holding players characters hostage behind a pay wall is never a good call.

1 – Warhammer Online

I had to put this one at number one… because really this game turning out the way it did is one of my biggest gaming regrets. I love Warhammer… have since I was in middle school and painting my very first citadel miniatures. I love the world and the lore… and the sheer brutality of the chaos gods. They took a failing IP and placed it in the hands of MMO veterans… Mythic games… who had brought the world Dark Age of Camelot. It seemed like a no-fail proposal. I thought they knew exactly what players wanted… and could borrow from the success they had with DAoC and all the nuts and bolts that make a game work.

Unfortunately Warhammer Online is really the tale of two games. The one to twenty experience was amazing. The PVE content rich, the new public questing construct extremely fun, and the early battlegrounds extremely inventive and enoyable to play. I still think that the early experience in Warhammer Online ranks among some of my favorite leveling experiences. The problem is that when you hit about 20-25 the bottom fell out… the PVE content ceased to be interesting… and became increasingly more sparse. The game changed from this fun questing experience to this “go grind pvp to level” experience.

I feel like the game as a whole was a clash between these two seperate games… one of which I enjoyed immensely… the PVE experience… and one I really could care less about.. the PVP experience. Had they given me a pure PVE warhammer game… I would probably still be playing it. The game as a whole did so many innovative things, and there were so many mysteries around the world to unlock for your book of deeds. Additionally it shipped with an Addon system that was on par with World of Warcraft, and presented some extremely interesting class and race choices.

If only they had focused on giving equal time to both the PVE and PVP experience. The only problem is… I feel like the makers of this game have come to completely different conclusions about why it failed. Mark Jacobs has gone on to create Camelot Unchained… which serves to be a purely PVP game completely casting aside any PVE aspects. I feel like his take away was that it failed because it just was not PVP enough. In truth not a single friend that was playing left because of lack of PVP. We had a guild of around 40 players… and all of us left when the post 20 forced pvp experience began. Harecore PVP players are a niche within a niche, and I just don’t feel that you can really build any game solely around them as your target audience.

This is probably the game I feel would beneift the most from a free to play conversion. Awhile back I signed up for a new free trial account just to give the game a spin and see if it really is as good as I remembered. Overall the starter experience is still extremely fun, even though they have dumbed down the richness quite a bit by funneling everyone into the empire lands. I feel like a free to play version, might pump a bit more life into the title and allow it to survive. The problem is… this has become the textbook example for MMO failure… and I doubt EA would spend a dime on it going forward. As a result I will always be left with the thoughts of what might have been had the direction been a bit more sound.

Wrapping Up

This post ended up going a lot longer than expected. I’ve been typing for around an hour and a half now, but finally have reached a point where I have said what I needed to say about each of them. Hopefully none of them came off as too terribly ranty. I hope you all have great weekends, I will mostly be trying to relax a bit before Monday. I am already stressing out quite a bit, because I know going back I will be having to fill in for my boss as he is going out of town.

The Ordeal

July 12, 2013 by Belghast

So much happy right now… I am sitting at home on my comfy sofa typing on my laptop. I cannot express in words just how good it feels to be here. I am not a huge fan of travel, I don’t mind being other places… but I greatly prefer being home. Quite honestly… New York is probably the furthest I have been from home, and while it was entertaining I am elated to be back here.

The Ordeal

Travelling to Albany was rather un-eventful and everything essentially went nice and smooth. My biggest complaint was the lack of free WiFi at Chicago O’Hare/ The trip home however… had lots of moments of annoyance. First off I managed to take a wrong turn on the way to the airport. As a result I ended up turning on my android navigation… which took us on quite possibly the most scenic route ever to get back to the Troy-Schenectady Road. I drove through tons of residential neighborhoods having to take turns at almost every intersection… but eventually we met back up with the right road and we were on our way.

My wife had offered a lift to two other classmates that did not have transportation… so after dropping them off at the terminal we went to the car garage to drop off our rental. This is singlehandedly the most poorly designed feature of the Albany Airport… and as a result cars just end up backing up as people bail out to meet their flight… often times leaving the keys in the ignition and the car running. We were in no major rush… so we politely waited through the mess and were directed into a parking lot.

At this point we had to wait again… for the single person who was handling all drop offs and requisitions for both Alamo and Enterprise. I felt sorry for this guy… because he looked seriously stressed. We waited around… got our receipt and apparently they had charged us for a couple of extra hours… stating that we had returned it late. It was around this point that my wife went into attack mode… because she had stated multiple times when renting the car that we would not be returning it until 5 pm on Thursday… as she didn’t even get out of her conference until 3.

When I say attack mode… she was doing all of this as politely as possible… but still being extremely insistent. Apparently the poor employee had just had enough of the place… and ended up giving us a massive discount as well as removing the extra charges. So that settled we made our way across the street… through the plumes of smoke left by people trying to get a last minute cigarette… and into the ticketing area. I really wish that smokers should experience just once… what their addiction does to an asthmatic. But since they are seemingly fine with poisoning others… I am guessing they just wouldn’t give a crap.

Nine Pounds

We waited in a line, and made our way up to the ticketing kiosk. My wife went first since she is again the road warrior and can do those kiosks without thinking. There was no real place to set our bag at first, but soon an employee came over and cleared the scale and I hoisted the big orange beast onto it. The rather snooty employee informed us that we were nine pounds over weight. We either had to remove nine pounds from the bag or pay an extra hundred dollars to check the bag. I am not shitting you… one hundred dollars… for nine frickin pounds.

So my wife rifled through the bag because she thought she knew what the culprit was. As a result of the conference she had gained this massive 3 inch binder full of course materials. Sure enough after removing that it took the bag weight down to a level that the snooty ass would be willing to accept. Since I only had one carry on… we just decided to bring the binder along and store it in the overhead bin. So I spent most of yesterday carrying my laptop/camera bag and a huge three ring binder… I did not look geeky at all… I swear.

My Awesome Bag

I want to take a few minutes to talk about my bag… now that I have mentioned it. This thing is seriously amazing… and served perfectly for what I was needing. Essentially I was looking for a way to carry both my laptop, camera and lenses in one compact form factor. I ended up searching around and finally settled on this one from amazon… the above image was taken of the bag fully loaded in the hotel room. I was able to stuff a ton of tech in one bag… and then carry it around with me. Fully stuffed it was a bit difficult to cram in some of the overhead bins… but I managed to do so with a little bit of effort.

Just for reference… this is all the stuff in the above bag.

15.6” Lenovo y500 Laptop
y500 Power Brick
Large Monoprice gaming mousepad
Logitech g600 MMO Mouse
Earbud Headphones
USB Cable and Brick for Cellphone
Sony PSP in Case
Sony PSP Charger
Two Cliff Bars – in case we got hungry while travelling
Canon t3i DSLR
4 Lenses for DSLR
6 Filters for DSLR
Wide Angle Adapter for DSLR
Fisheye Adapter for DSLR

So yeah… this bag holds a ton of stuff, and does so in a fashion that still makes it easy to carry. While I mostly bought this for the trip… it actually makes a far better camera bag than my pervious one… because it gives rapid access to all the stuff in it. With the laptop and chargers out… it is actually rather light. This will definitely become handy whenever we start going up to the lake. Additionally it would let me bring both my laptop and camera to work… if I wanted to end up going out over lunch and taking photos.

Airplane Juggling

So back to our tale… after all the manipulation of our luggage and drama with mister snooty pants… we were finally able to just chill out at the gate waiting on the airplane. We got to our gate… and immediately realized that this was going to be one of those rare occasions where we had to walk out on the tarmac to load into the plane. While we were sitting there… we noticed that pretty much every plane listed as coming from Newark was delayed. Ours was currently on time… but that didn’t stay that way for long.

We heard over the intercom that that our flight had not left the gate at Newark yet, and that they had a bunch of empty spaces on one currently loading at a different gate. So we hustled upstairs and when we got there… they called our names specifically. Apparently they were giving higher priority to those with connecting flights once we arrived at Newark. I have to say… airport workers catch a lot of shit… and I dished out my own little bit about mister snooty pants…. but these guys upstairs were amazing. I watched this lady fight with the registration system trying to juggle us off one flight and onto another… while her manager was constantly calling down to the baggage room to make sure they got each passengers luggage off of the other flight and onto this one.

After about thirty minutes of serious reservation system hackery… she managed to get us new passes for the plane that was already loaded and waiting at this point… and in doing so managed to get us seats side by side. I cannot impress upon you enough just how awesome it was to see them working. We thanked them profusely and boarded the plane. It seems like most of the passengers that had connecting flights, even this very sweet girl who was flying by herself for the first time… and was more than a bit freaked out… got loaded onto the earlier flight.

Newark: Eater of Souls

Newark is hands down the most poorly designed airport I have seen… which isn’t saying much… but my wife the frequent flier agrees. Essentially the layout of the place involves three completely stand alone concourses. There is an automated tram that runs between the three… but for whatever reason it loads on the OTHER side of the freakin security barrier. So if you decide to use it… you have to exit security… and then pass back through the security checks to get in. It seems like as a result the individual airlines have various workarounds in place.

United Airlines runs a shuttle bus that goes between the terminals. How this works however… is that they have essentially given up a gate and built a waiting room… and ramp that goes down to the tarmac. About every 10 minutes a bus arrives and passengers can load onto it to go to either concourse A or B. We missed the first bus since the waiting room was already packed when we got there. So by the time we waited on a second bus… loaded it… took the not insignificant trip across to concourse A.. we only had a few minutes left before our plane was set to depart.

Three Hour Tour

After having just enough time to hit the restroom and sit back down… it was time to board our flight from Newark to Tulsa. This was yet again a step down in size, so instead of two seats on either side of the isle… this plane had 1 seat on one side… and 2 on the other. By the time wet got in… and found out seat it was occupied by a Chinese woman that spoke almost zero English. We pantomimed that she was in the wrong seat and were able to go through the process of getting strapped in place for the duration. On a positive note… I apparently no longer need the extender thingy.

This flight was without a doubt the most chatty group I have ever encountered. There were multiple conversations going on that often times spanned multiple rows. I would have greatly preferred if everyone would have just sat in silence… but the amount of alcohol being imbibed pretty much made this an impossibility. Also since all flights going into Newark were being delayed… I am guessing there was a lot of time spent in various airport bars along the way. The worst example of this was the duo directly in front of me.

In the single seat we had a Country Boy CFO from a random company in Joplin, MO… and to his side was a nice Indian gentleman that said he worked in IT… though from the cut of his suit… he had to be somewhere in management. The two of them struck up a conversation… that managed to last all three hours of the flight… and got progressively more and more animated the more alcohol the CFO partook of. By the time we neared Tulsa… country boy was full on dropping f-bombs every few minutes. The last rant I recall was something about “effing welfare”.

At multiple points throughout the conversation he talked about how everything thinks he is dumb by the way he talks… but he is much smarter than they give him credit for. To which I think to myself… if you have to keep reminding people that you are smart… it becomes progressively less likely than it is actually true. There were so many points during the flight that I wanted to hit him over the head with something large and heavy. Especially when he went off on a tear about how not dressing up shows a lack of work ethic. This is a feat of logic I just cannot manage to follow… I suppose it only makes sense if you are drunk.

About the last hour forward, the nice IT guy, kept trying to extract himself from the conversation.. eventually saying that he needed to catch some shuteye. At which point he started fumbling under his seat to find a bottle that had fallen down… which instead turned out to be my foot. When he realized this he profusely apologized and we all had a laugh. Finally we landed in Tulsa… after what seemed like an eternity in good ole boy hell. By the time I hobbled off the plane.. it was like after three hours in a cramped space I had forgotten how to walk right.

Wrapping Up

Ultimately we made it out to the baggage carousel, and of all amazing wonders our big orange bag had managed to arrive in Tulsa just fine. I feel absolutely drained by the whole ordeal. New York was an interesting place to visit, but I am extremely happy to be back in my wonderful home. Apparently the cats missed us… because right now I have one on me… wife has one on her… and the other is laying between us. Hopefully it will be a long while before I fly again… the next trip needs to be a road trip. I hope you all have a great day and a great weekend.

Homeward Bound

July 11, 2013 by Belghast

This morning as I sit at the keyboard typing away… my laptop remains essentially the only thing not yet packed and ready too be loaded into our rental. I have a mixture of excitement and trepidation… excitement because I will be so glad to be home… and trepidation because I detest flying… and know I have to deal with a 3 hour flight from Newark to Tulsa. Hopefully everything at home is just fine, and that our animals are all happy and healthy, and that the house sitter had no real issues.

Holding Pattern

The most frustrating thing about this trip so far has been that while I had all the time in the world to do anything I liked… I did not have stable enough internet to do much of it. Sunday night when we finally arrived at our hotel room, the internet was awesome… while not quite up to what I am used to at home… it was more than sufficient. Monday the cast of an off Broadway show arrived… and from that point onwards regardless of the time of day… most everything has been unplayable if I could even get connected in the first place.

It feels like so much has been going on this week, with the anniversary events happening in The Secret World and a release of a new content update. Then over in Guild Wars 2 there is quite a lot of stuff happening as well. Finally I am still in the thrall of my Rift resurgence… and for whatever reason this is the game that seems to hate the hotel internet the most. I will start off with a decent ping, but very quickly it degrades into completely unplayable. Often times I ultimately just ended up disconnecting and not being able to get back on afterwards.

Very quickly I realized that I would have to just wait to do much of anything until I got home today. As a result I feel like I have been trying to find things that did not necessarily involve an internet connection to play them. Unfortunately while my laptop is loaded full of MMOs… it is sadly lacking in the single player and offline departments. With the Hotel Internet not being super stable… I can’t really download anything from steam that I have in my archives.

A Game of Cubes

Cube World was released last week sometime… but the store went almost immediately offline… and stayed that way for the majority of the week. When the ability to purchase the game came back… they had taken the new accounts sign-up feature offline. So it became a daily activity of checking whether or not this was open for registration, and finally on Saturday night… before we left for Albany… the registrations opened up and I was able to grab ahold of a copy. This game has served as my mostly offline shiny new thing to play with on this trip.

The game as a whole is much harder than I was expecting it to be. Initially I was thinking this would be much more Minecraft than it has ended up being. Essentially you start out in a completely randomly generated world… with little to no ability to actually kill anything. At first you end up following around packs of NPC adventurers that will help you combat the bad guys you encounter in the world. As a result… the process of getting from “I suck at everything” to “I can survive mostly on my own” feels a little tedious.

I am not sure if this is just another game that loathes melee players or not, because generally ranged tends to be easier as a whole than melee in most games like this. I detest finger wigglers. so of course I had to go for sword and board… though over time I have migrated to dual wield. The block mechanic works well enough… but only for insanely short periods of time. When you are dealing with monsters that seem to be able to do non-stop special moves… it just isn’t enough to make the difference.

My biggest complaint thus far is that the torch feels inadequate for illuminating anything really. It creates roughly a 5 block by 5 block bubble of light around you… but when it comes to exploring anything like a cave… it is extremely hard to see where you are going. I am hoping that over time you can get upgrades that increase your radius of light similar to how you can in Terraria. If you intend to craft metal upgrades… you will spend a lot of time looking for caves, fighting bats and destroying iron nodes. As a result the lighting system feels extremely limiting.

The major complaint I have had with the system… is that I feel it would have been better if it supported a building system like Minecraft or Terraria. I like exploring… but I also like having bases of operation that gives me a feeling that I am actually changing the world around me. The exploration aspect of the game is great, and I love encountering monsters I have never seen before… and often times dying to them the first time. But I wish I could be building things in the world as well. If this game could be blended with Minecraft the hybrid would probably be the most addicting game ever.

Fort Belghast

As a direct result of playing Cube World… and this feeling that I wanted to be shaping my world… I have spent a lot of time alternating back and forth between exploring in that game… and building over in Minecraft. I started a brand new world and the seed I chose had a really nice shallow cave system. I started off boxing that in and using it as a prebuilt base until I started constructing a proper fort on top of it. Right now the underground area has a few large chambers, with a structure growing up into the little fort that you can see in the image above.

I created an elevated bridge style entrance, because it allows me to see what is surrounding my base before exiting out into the dangerous world. Also when there are a large number of zombies or similar around me… it funnels them into one single block place for farming. Additionally if I absolutely have to… I can bail over the wall to escape something. Right now I am quarrying stone from below the base to build up the tower system above. As you can see in the above picture… the tower is currently woefully unfinished.

I hope to do some terracing eventually to clean up the area and make the approach to my fort a little nicer looking. I have really not done that much exploration… my focus has really been on building up a solid base of operations. Eventually I will start a mine system below my base where I can hopefully get plenty of ores and other special resources. I mostly play Minecraft to build structures… but for whatever reason it feels more real to me.. if I do it on survival. I could be just as happy playing on creative… since all I really want to do is build nifty things… but the world then feels completely dead.

Homeward Bound

I cannot express in words… how happy I will be to leave this area and get back home. I miss essentially everything… my animals… my comfy sofa… a world that makes sense to me. I’ve found plenty of interesting things to do to kill my time… but it was not really the grand voyage of discovery I was hoping for. I know the workshop my wife attended, has been massively useful for her… and each night she has come home with pictures of the labs and activities they did. So the major focus of this trip was a complete success… and my being here… was just to make sure that happened.

I came on this trip just because I wanted to make sure my wife could attend this workshop. While she is a trooper and an amazing road warrior… she would have struggled with driving in this environment. She doesn’t really like driving period… and Tulsa traffic is far more sane and rational than anything I have experienced here. Her lack of depth perception would have been a major issue in this environment where I am essentially constantly scanning both sides of the street watching for some idiot that is about to dart out into the middle of traffic (as has happened so many times I have lost count). So ultimately regardless of how I have felt about this vacation… I feel like my role in it was a success.

So essentially today I have to check us out of the hotel at noon and then figure out a way to kill 3 hours of time until I pick my wife up from class. We are ferrying two other classmates to the airport… turning in our rental… and catching a 5 pm flight to Newark. We have a 45 minute wait until we catch another flight to Tulsa that should take 3 hours. So hopefully by about 9:30-10ish tonight I will be home in my own bed. After the hotel bed all these nights… our comfy bed at home will be amazing.

Wrapping Up

This has been an interesting experiencing even if it has not been super exciting. Time for me to do some googling to figure out how exactly I will kill the rest of the day. Thinking I will play some Minecraft until around noon… pack up the rental and then set off and do something for the rest of the afternoon. Elo was telling me about another mall with another game store… so I will likely set my sights on that. I hope you all have a great day, and that it is relatively uneventful.