XBOX Necromancy

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I really overdid it yesterday, and this morning I am paying the price.  I am kind of sitting here in an extended allergy inflamed stupor.  I quite honestly had forgotten about blogging until my wife reminded me to do so.  It is a relatively cheery Sunday morning outside, which is a stark contrast to the stormy night we had last night.  Breakfast is now digesting, and it is time for me to think of something worth writing.

Tales of a Junktown Trader

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Yesterday after milling around a bit and blogging I went upstairs and tore into my office.  It tends to be a catch all for things that need to be removed from the rest of the house.  Generally things migrate there in the form of these miscellaneous boxes of debris that has not really been sorted.  Since previously I had packed up all of my classic consoles in boxes to clear out the loft, I now had tons of these boxes sitting in the way of progress.

At some point soon, hopefully Thursday… I need to call the cable company to get them to install cable to both my office and the loft.  This is part of the greater scheme of switching off of DSL and onto 50 meg cable.  Thursday is when we get the new sectional delivered for the downstairs, and since I will have to be there anyways it would be nice to get it all over in one day.  With this time table in mind I knew I realistically had to get my office in order this weekend.

Essentially I sorted through the boxes, tossed anything that was essentially unusable junk, donated anything that would be valuable to someone, and kept anything I really needed.  The end results was the above picture… essentially a jeep load full of stuff going to goodwill.  There are roughly 9 boxes of stuff, 2 partial cpus, a HP LaserJet printer and a floor lamp.  This was the culmination of 3 1/2 hours of hardcore cleaning.

XBOX Necromancy

The hardest part was trying to make sure I did not junk up my game loft too badly.  After all the cleaning was finished I set forth trying to resurrect my Xbox 360 so it could join the ps3 in the loft.  Basically my Xbox unit is old enough that it is no longer covered by Microsoft for the Red Ring of Death fix.  As a result I was basically left with the options of trying to perform rocket surgery on it, or one of the various homebrew “fixes” that have circulated around the internet.

The most notorious method is the towel trick, but I was really wanting to avoid that as I could totally picture my office going up in flames as the towels caught on fire.  So the first homebrew method I tried was the “Better than towel trick” method.  It made sense enough, so I doctored some qtips and proceeded to block the fans.  However after 30 minutes… my unit had still not flipped to the 2 lights shown in the video.  So the better than… method had failed me massively.

 

Next I tried this truly insane Rube Goldberg method… it has 15 steps… none of which are explained clearly.  However oddly enough I was able to get my unit to respond as expected until about halfway through the maneuver.  Firstly it took me a bit to figure out that they were calling the reset button… the panic button.  Once that was determined the method just became technically difficult and far less mind boggling.  Of course, as expected it didn’t actually do anything at all, except make my power button look like a red strobe light.

 

Finally I decided what the hell… I would try the towel trick.  This is the most famous of the towel trick videos, but there are literally hundreds of them.  Basically the idea is to wrap your xbox in a towel, force it to overheat… and this somehow resets whatever warning sensor has been flipped.  I wrapped my xbox up tightly, and powered it on.  I let it set for 45 minutes, and then after cooling down… it still did nothing at all.  So I started doing some research… and it turns out that once again conventional wisdom is wrong.

Conventional Wisdom Wrong Again

Essentially the two red rings of death is the only error that actually means your unit has overheated.  The three ring message I was seeing ultimately means “General Hardware Error”… which could literally be almost anything wrong.  Basically in easiest terms my Xbox is screwed, and not likely to come back.  I would have to take my unit into a repair place, and the cost of repair would be completely variable based on what was actually wrong… and ultimately I would still be left with an ancient xbox with only a 20 gig harddrive.

I did some looking around at local used game shops, and they wanted roughly 330 for a used 250 gig newer style xbox.  My wife suggested that we look around at some pawn shops, and at the very first one I found a good deal on a 250 gig matte black finish newer style xbox.  We went ahead and paid the extra 20 bucks for a 6 month warranty… as a just in case.  I got it set up last night, and started redownloading things… and at this point I am almost back to where I was before.

I am super happy that now I have both a working PS3 and XBox up in the game loft.  The next step will be to tackle getting the nettop set up and the emulators running.  But that is a job that can wait for another day.  I still have not decided if I will be going with windows based XBox Media Center or the Ubuntu based variety.  The windows based gives me a bit more freedom to do other things, but the Ubuntu version seems more shake and bake and might take less time to configure.

Snap Crackle and Pop

I am really not sure how much will get accomplished today.  Right now when I move I make a snap, crackle and pop sound… which is not amazingly good.  I maybe over did it, since I hauled a load of boxes to goodwill, and another load of cardboard boxes to the recycling center by myself.  I could have gotten help with both had I waited, but I wanted the upstairs to be finished… and the clutter, bags of trash and empty boxes were just making it look like a complete and total mess.  We realistically need to do a few things downstairs to prep for thursday, but I am not sure how much of that will happen.  I hope you all have a great day out there, and that you keep from creaking and moaning like I apparently am right now.

Account Based Currencies

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Yesterday I spent more money than I ever have before in my life on a single purchase.  I am not counting automobiles… since those end up drug out over the course of years… and same goes with my house.  We purchased a new leather sectional and it will be delivered on Thursday.  This is pretty much the culmination of our whole “trying to make the house awesome” thing.  The awesome thing is that thanks to having a really cool saleswoman, she called us when we could get free delivery and a 5% discount.

Declutteration

So pretty much today is going to involve cleaning out my closet in my office.  It has 15 years worth of accumulated debris, and most of it needs to either be trashed or donated.  Essentially this is important because I need to clear my office of all the consoles I packed up while clearing out the loft.  Most of the crap in my closet is left over tech junk that I have either cycled out of, or not used in long enough that it no longer matters.  Going to start making piles of, this is something I should donate to charity and this is something I should just pitch.

My ultimate hope is to clear the closet enough to be able to pack my consoles neatly in there, and maybe get the cable installer scheduled for Thursday as well.  That way I can batch up all the annoying waiting around the house for an installer on the same day.  Ultimately this would be the last step keeping me from switching to cable internet.  Of all the improvements, this is the big one for me.  We have been on 4 meg DSL for years… and bumping up to 50 meg cable is going to be massive for me and my sanity.

Eyecandy

Apparently there is an Elder Scrolls Online poster contest going on.  A friend of mine linked me this and I thought it was so amazing that I had to share.  Also I am looking for nifty things to share since I am still very much unable to share what I am doing over this weekend.  You can hop over to Elder Scrolls Online page to check out the contest information…  but the prizes seem pretty great.

First prize wins…

  • One Medium Wacom Intuos5 Tablet.
  • One The Elder Scrolls Online poster signed by the development team.
  • One canvas print of the Alliance Battle Concept Art.
  • Winning poster will be printed and signed by the Game Director, Art Director, and Concept team and mailed to the winner.
  • Poster will be prominently displayed at ZeniMax Online Studios and in ZeniMax Customer Support offices.
  • Poster will be featured in the ZeniMax booth at a future convention.
  • One The Elder Scrolls Online limited stein.
  • One The Elder Scrolls Online t-shirt.

This is from the Tumblr and appears to be one of the entries.  I think it is going to be extremely hard to beat, but I highly suggest anyone with the skill to give it a shot!

Account Based Currencies

I prefer Septims _bf274cc7ed9f1d5876b5b4f50421dd30

Keeping with the Elder Scrolls eyecandy theme…  I found this nifty rendering of a Septim coin.  Yesterday I was playing with the Rift Mobile app, and after getting hundreds of planarite that are completely useless to my main for the thousandth time… it got me to thinking how frustrating it is that currency in general is not account bound.  So I threw out this tweet “I am of the opinion, that regardless of game… all tokens and currencies should be accrued at an account level, not character level”.  It had several favorites, and a retweet…  but it got me to thinking about how much better MMOs would feel if this were the case.

It feels like in general the long range endgame for all MMOs is to convince its players to roll more characters, and get more deeply involved in the experience.  The problem that you run into is when you are working on your alts, but end up being needed by your friends and guild on one of your mains instead.  I can remember how frustrating it was for me playing World of Warcraft, watching tokens sit unused on Belghast when I would love to have them on my other characters.

The game experience would be so much better overall if you knew regardless of what character you were playing, you were working towards whatever goals you have.  I know personally, I would mind tanking that same instance for the 300th time a lot less if I knew that the shiny baubles I was acquiring were capable of going towards the character I was really wanting to gear.  The problem with alting when you play a core role, is that it will always be in need.

I know that my opinion doesn’t really matter much, but it feels like a much more solid design… a longer range thought process.  Right now the challenge with MMOs seems to be trying to get players to keep playing your game for the long haul.  Doing anything to keep your players invested in more than just their first character seems like it is the best possible way to accomplish this. 

This is one of the things I miss most from the era of non-binding gear.  I could run a dungeon in Everquest, healing it on my cleric that was extremely needed… but be getting gear for my ranger or shadowknight.  This made the experience more exciting, and less of a hassle.  I realize we will never see an era of non-disposable gear… that is something long gone that will never likely come back.  However if I could at least accrue tokens and currencies… I could benefit my alts when doing a favor to friends.

Its Cleaning Time!

Yeah I am not really exclamation excited… but it needs to get done.  Time for me to get off here and head upstairs to work on my office.  I hope you all have a great weekend, and that you do something far more exciting than mine is going to shape up to be.

Responsible Adult Time

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Today is going to shape up to be a stressful one.  My boss overdid it coming back from surgery, and will be out of the office today.  As a result I will be acting as his proxy, attending whatever meetings he would have had to attend.  The beginning of these is having to lead an 8:30 meeting… so I really have to watch the time this morning as I blog.  Once again I am under an NDA as stated last night, so there is not much I can say about what happened last night,  save for as to say that it was an awesome evening.

Instant Ports

Over the years in EQ2 travel has gone from something that took large amounts of real time, to something that mostly involves knowing which travel networks connect in which zones.  For example I tend to use Enchanted Lands as a switching station, since the Druid Ring, Wizard Spire and Travel bells are all very close to each other.  I find traversing zones extremely quick, and so long as you have a base idea of what travel options are available in zones near where you are going you can get there in a matter of a few ports.

Apparently however this was not easy enough.  Based on an article I read yesterday, it looks like they will be offering the ability to teleport to one of the travel network destinations from anywhere in the world for an outlay of station cash.  This will likely replace the portable travel bells that already exist on the station cash store.  The portable travel bells were nice for emergency situations, and this will likely fill the same bill.

I feel like however, this is a change mostly for players without a guild large enough to host the various travel network vendors.  Between my port to home city and port to guild hall, it feels like I always have an option to get back to the travel network rapidly.  What it also does is make it so that players no longer need to memorize the directory of “connecting flights” that get you from one travel network to another.  There are times I cannot remember just which network goes to this expansion zone or that. 

Ultimately it will be interesting to see just how much station cash it costs to port like this.  I am completely fine with new conveniences, so long as they do not remove the existing networks.  Travel after many years arrived at a point where it made quite a bit of sense and that you could pretty much avoid all the boats entirely.  I don’t ever want to return to a time when intra-zone travel is a real-world time sink.

Exploration and Crafting

 

Yesterday Zenimax released a pretty cool video for the Elder Scrolls Online covering the gathering, crafting and exploration systems.  The fact that you can loot the barrels on the docks for crafting materials seems cool, but the highlight of the video is that they get close to what looks like a Nirnroot… and it makes the Nirnroot sound.  There were so many times I would be wandering across Skyrim, and I hear that sound. and immediately go into find the root mode.  The fact that they have carried that sound effect over… gives me hope that all the other little nuanced things will be there as well.

I am happy to see a lockpicking system in the game as well.  Even though it looks like the Oblivion system, which I was absolutely horrible at…  it is awesome to see it.  I am more aligned to the easy mode lock picking of Skyrim and the Fallout games.  I love chests in games, and even more so I am excited that they may be difficult to find.  I hated that in WoW chests were just thrown out in the middle of nowhere, in places that made no sense to have one.  The chest showing up in the hollowed tree in the video seems about right.  I am all about games rewarding exploration.

Spam Mail Personified

 

I saw this video and thought it was pretty amazing…  especially when it gets to the point of the fake virus/speed software that takes over your machine.  I have had to rebuild our neighbors laptop at least five times because they managed to get that stupid faux virus malware.  I remember one time my mom called me, after being 3 screens deep into an obvious phishing site… because it finally sounded strange to her.  I told her that if she had already clicked submit a few times, it was all over but the crying.  Maybe this will go viral enough to reach our parents and neighbors…  one can only hope.

Luchador Power!

I mentioned this the other day, but I am massively hooked on the game Guacamelee!, the exclamation point is part of the name… that is just how awesome it is.  Essentially at its core is a Metroid/Castlevania game with Mexican Luchador flair.  This is one of the newer cross buy titles, in that you get it both on PS3 and your Vita.  Up until this point I really had zero interest in a Vita.  Don’t get me wrong I like my PSP, but I rooted it and turned it into a portable emulation machine, since that was a far more compelling use than the games actually were.

Also of note… Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is my favorite game of all time.  The fact that I could be playing Guacamelee! on a portable device has done more to make me lust after the Vita goodness than anything has to this point.  Additionally my little inner circle of friends has been going on and on about Persona 4 Golden…  I will admit I am also curious about that madness. 

Now I will begin my search through craigslist for a used unit…  because I just cannot ever bring myself to pay full price for a new console when there are so many used ones out there in need of good homes.  They totally need to make gaming adoption commercials… with Sarah McLachlan shaming us for even existing and not giving all our money to all the consoles.  I have 3 rescue cats and 3 rescue ferrets… and still I cannot bear to watch those commercials…  just think what it will do for gaming consoles.

Responsible Adult Time

So I need to wrap up this madcap episode of “Bel finds shit to talk about that doesn’t break and NDA!!!”.  Just think you are going to get several more of these since I am under NDA until at least Monday.  I need to go finish getting ready, gather some breakfast, and arrive at the office with enough time to print all the things and mentally prepare myself for the super important meeting.  There are days I hate being a responsible adult, but there comes a time when you are actually though of as a leader in your organization…  which scares me.  I hope you all have a great day…  one that doesn’t involve you being responsible!!!

Thief School Dropout

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It’s shaping up to be a rainy and hazy morning here in Oklahoma.  I have an on-site meeting with a printing company today about a joint project, so that is going to prove to be an odd little detour for me.  I am not really a hands on people person, I prefer to communicate over email unless I absolutely have to do otherwise.  So the thought of having to do a face to face with someone is extremely nerve wracking.  However, if this moves the project along I will take one for the team.

Thief School Dropout

As the day went on yesterday, we found out there far more than just ourselves had gotten hit by the car bandit.  Most of the individuals that got hit swore they locked their car, and in the case of one of my neighbors I believe it.  My problem is I don’t really remember if I locked it or not, it is usually just something I do as a reflex.  So essentially we are finding that the thief had some way of unlocking car doors rapidly.  What makes the whole thing even more brazen is the fact that there is a county sheriff directly across the street from me.

But since the thief had hit multiple sites, it meant when he hit our cars he was likely on the way to another home.  I figured he would have noticed that my sunglasses were prescription and tossed them pretty quickly.  Sure enough after retracing his steps I quickly found my sunglasses case, and shortly after my sunglasses laying nestled in the grass.  Basically they got into our cars and found nothing worth keeping.

It really makes me wonder what the thief was looking for in the first place.  If it was just a bored teenager as I originally thought, why go to all the trouble.  Especially since some of the cars appear to have been locked.  What on earth was worth the risk that they went from car to car but essentially found nothing much.  The whole skewed logic behind the whole thing baffles me.  I guess I will likely never understand it since I am a law abiding citizen…  and would never think to break into someone else’s car.

Rift Changes

The more I think about it the more I am looking forward to the changes.  But the more I have seen from the community that they feel this is the end of the world for the game, and that all of the priorities will shift from this point onwards.  I can understand this line of thought, but having lived through the cash shop and free to play conversions inside of Everquest 2 I know that life goes on happily regardless.  Not every cash shop implementation is as egregious as the SWTOR conversation has been.

What I have seen with EQ2 is that the regular big updates continue to happen, but now there is a weekly flow of optional items you can pick up from the store.  Most of these are completely optional and purely flavor based, but all in all make your character more enjoyable to play.  I really hope they exploit this for some really cool looking cosmetic sets.  I am also really hoping that a good deal of the housing stuff makes it to the cash shop as well.

The other big thing that I am looking forward to is REX.  I actively played EQ2 during the transition to Krono, and to me personally this was a huge deal.  No longer did I have to worry about how much platinum I had, or attempt to farm it at all…  which is my least favorite activity ever.  If I ran low, I could just pick up another Krono and fill my coffers again, so I stopped having to worry about such things and just got to play the game.  It allowed me to do all the things I enjoy in the game without ever having to worry about trying to accumulate large amounts of wealth and/or play the auction house.

If you are one of those players that love playing the Auction House… then I apologize because this really is the apocalypse for you.  The best change for me in a post Krono economy is that almost everything on the broker in EQ2 is dirt cheap, making it super easy for players starting out to get the items they need to play the game.  The highest tier of quality at every level range is still commanding a premium, but the basic items that you need to survive all plummeted in price massively after the introduction of the Krono.  This was a huge net positive for me personally, but reeked havoc on the players that loved to piddle around with the broker.

Yesterday they sent out a survey to all subscribers trying to get feedback on the transition.  I took the very short survey, and will be interested to see if they release any of the data.  Essentially it is mostly concerned with how likely you are to stay subscribed to the game.  I said that the big benefit that is missing from the patron rewards is a monthly cash shop stipend.  I have come to expect this playing SOE and Turbine free to play games.  If they managed to cough this up, even a small stipend it would make this literally the best free to play conversion for subscribers.

Going Dark

As of this evening I will pretty much be going dark on my nightly activities again through the weekend.  I will be once more bound by an NDA, as a result I am going to be trying to dig up interesting things to share in the absence of updates about what I am actually doing.  However recently I have been talking a good deal more about myself than my gaming.  Over the last few nights though, I have mostly played PlayStation 3.  The whole cleaning of the loft thing has provided me something I had been missing, a way to play console games without feeling guilty for taking up the television.

Thanks to Playstation Plus I now have this instant library of titles to play, and thanks to a recommendation from a friend I have been playing a good deal of Guacamelee.  If you have not played it you should at least download the demo.  Basically it is this awesome side scrolling fighting game meets metroidvania with an awesome Mexican luchador flair.  Everything about the game screams fun, from the colors to the ability names… instead of wall jump, you get goat jump.  The story is simple, but the cast of characters are colorful and well written.

Right now it and Darksiders are seeing the most playtime, but I have a large stack of games I have grabbed from the Playstation Plus program.  My biggest problem right now is that my internet connection has gone to hell.  I am going to be working on my office this weekend trying to prep it so that I can order the cable installed next week.  It will be so nice to bump up to 50 meg internet.  I am literally going to stream all the things…  ALL OF THEM!!!!

I hope you all have a great day, I am going to try my best to be a civil member of society and deal with this on site visit thingy.  Hopefully nothing horrible happens today, since the last few days have pretty much depleted my ability to care.  Dear weekend… why can’t you be today?