A writing challenge

Errr..wow, it's only been just over a year (again) since I last wrote anything here, odd how I always come back to this blog in March.. Hmmm. Anyway I figured while something was about to go down I may as well post about it.

You may, or may not already know I'm a wannabe aspiring writer..Yup, I'm not even at the aspiring stage yet however it can only go up..right? I have a hundred and one ideas for books (and computer games but that's another post) but but not enough boots to my arse to actually start properly.Now it just so happens that a good friend at work is in the same boat as me and we bounce ideas off each other a lot and it happened that on Monday we decided to set ourselves a challenge... A (very) short story every two weeks based on a random theme. It's only 2,000 words and it's a whole two weeks we have to write it, so it's absolutely manageable by even our slacker standards but this is what we need, a way to make a quick and fun story without it being a slog. At least to start with anyway.

So using a random generator over at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index-writ.php I randomly made five and we chose one to base our stories on.. For our first challenge we picked...

The theme of this story: epic conflict. The main characters: sickly manager and militant servant. The start of the story: natural disaster. The end of the story: insight.

Idea has brewed in my head today so I'll get something down and for those that don't care I'll put it up for you to shake your head in my butchering of the English language :)

Why I won't buy Mass Effect 3

My stupid, stubborn, misguided, unreasonable principals have really stuck this one to me.

I really enjoyed Mass Effect 1 (well apart from the rubber space buggy) and Mass Effect 2 I felt was very well done although it felt a bit rushed towards the end and I was all looking forward to picking up ME3 at some point to continue the story but... I won't.

It's the EA 'store' Origin at fault for me. ME1 and 2 I purchased through Steam so I have nothing against online stores at all but since I use Steam I already have one good online store which also acts as DRM for those companies that insist on shoving it down our throats so why on earth do EA feel the need to force Origin upon everyone that just wants to play games. I put up with DRM on Steam with very limited patience and I refuse to install more bloatware that I need to register, setup accounts, remember log in details just to play one game because one company are so egotistical they claim they have millions of members when really it's only because people are being forced to use Origin if they want to play certain games not because they want to have a new online store.

So I vote with my wallet. EA won't miss my £35 and they won't change how they treat people that just want to play games because I rant about even more shit to install, run, register and keep a note of. I won't even buy it for my PS3... But it's my choice, it's my stupid, stubborn, misguided and unreasonable choice.

It lives...

Almost a year since my last post but decided it's time to get posting, if not regularly at least something that I can rant about for more than 140 characters... Stay tuned!

/AFK

Just a quick note to mention that I'm on a mini vacation this week so I wont get time to sit down and write a post until next weekend at earliest. I know updates have been sporadic at best over the last few weeks but life has been busy, combined with playing Rift it's not given me much chance to blog, although I do recommend following me on Twitter ( @slashbrb ) as I do have more time for a 140 character tirade!

/BRB in a week!

My first two weeks in Rift

Whitefall is full.

Well apart from that which has already had more than enough time being talked about how is my gaming in Rift going? Overall I'm still enjoying it, yes it's only two weeks but I'm finding enough to do, especially the achievements and collections which keep me occupied far more than it probably should do (much to the detriment of my level). I'll give it it's due though, I've found only a handful of bugs which I've reported and it does play very smooth.

I've done a fair chunk of warfronts (hard to stop when your faction is on a winning roll) as well as a whole one dungeon (I'm potentially one of the most introverted MMO players in the history of ever) which I tanked with no problems. Deepstrike Mines was quite fun as well, a nice level of time needed without it taking forever. Think it was maybe 30 minutes or so even though we were on the high end of the level requirements for it. It was completely pugged and everyone was very polite. Grimnir did a good post about it just now http://grimnir.mmofansites.com/posts/1949-mining-for-alien-gem-boss-things which pretty much sums up the same thing, only without wipes or anyone dying (we just nuked the unliving shit out of everything as I aoe tanked)

Which brings me onto something else. I've noticed that the community does seem very pleasant, helping out and offering advice when folks ask. Admittedly some people always give the sarcastic response or the rant in chat but certainly it seems less frequent than expected. Thumbs up!

The events which happen in zones were fun as well but they do get a bit repetitive after a while and I've only been to two zones, it's basically the same thing, kill xx invasions, close yy rifts and zerg a boss forgetting about tactics. On top of that it's very easy to get high contribution simply by spamming one button over and over. I've seen clerics just spam a 1.5 second heal on me over and over again despite taking no damage for the simple fact that if you don't do anything then contribution drops, fastest way is to simply spam one key... Disappointing I have to admit but I suppose everyone can do the same.

Looking at the quests there was a time in my mid 20's (level wise) where most quests were basically "kill xx mobs" which was a disappointment as there was some brilliant quests which kept me reading the text, I'm not sure if this is Defiant mainly but there does seem to be a high proportion of kill quests, maybe the fact that you get decent xp for killing mobs makes it not seem as bad and the xp noticeably moves makes it less troublesome for most but I'd like to see more variety.

Overall though the game is still holding my attention well and I'm fairly enjoying it, if I had more time to mess around in game I'd be trying out more specs though. I'm not rushing ahead (I can't.. I'm still 87th in the queue at 9pm after already being here 30 minutes) so I fully expect that by the time I'm even starting to look at level 50 content more stuff will be out.

Rifts dynamic events... Not so dynamic?

I recently rolled a new character on a shard that doesn't involve multi hour queues to actually get some play time in. I have to admit, having quests and mobs to myself is quite appealing and there's not been a single bit of bad mouthing on the region chat and people have been very nice and helpful. It's also weird being the first to complete a soul quest 4 days after the server went live but never the less I'm actually getting through the levels quicker than I was on a busier server.

All of last night while I was on I didn't see a single event happen which I figured was fair as there wasn't many on the server however about 30 minutes before the servers went down for the release of live an event started. Now what I noticed to start with compared to my previous server was that only one or two invasions got taken down before the first wardstone was destroyed. I actually took a second look as I went solo against a minor rift and noticed that the victory conditions were exactly the same for part one on a server with very low population as they were on a server that's reached capacity.

I thought that the actual events were dynamic in that they adjusted themselves to the number and level of players but apparently it doesn't seem to be that way. I did a quick /who freemarch and this was the result (keep in mind that as far as I know there's no /anon)....

Really not enough players on to combat an invasion and we didn't, the server took down two or three invasions and a rift before the event failed. Now while I'm not overly bothered it does give me subtle hints that the events aren't as dynamic as believed. Whether they're also on a timer for spawning rather than pure population in areas I'm not sure but there certainly wasn't enough folk in the zone to successfully run the event since it's the same one that 10x the number of folks have to do on a busy server. It's interesting to see though just how events will occur when the population starts maturing on the server to the stage that there's little to no new players running through the early zones.

Rifts biggest flaw right now

And while it may not be a game breaker it's certainly impacting the level of enjoyment of the game...

Server Queues

I had this discussion on twitter a couple of days back but I fail to understand why Trion aren't cloning the busiest servers thus giving the players and guilds who are now established a choice of server (Whitefull) to play on without a huge upheaval process. For example right now the guild I'm in (and have been in since early days of Warhammer) is sitting multiple high 40's that will ding 50 today and many folks now 20 and above. That is a lot of time and effort especially for people like myself that aren't very grindy players (I have played three days and got to 22 due to my habit of running off and doing rifts, events and just exploring). I've seen Freemarch countless times already from beta and I am not sure I can face seeing it all over again, trying to collect artifacts and complete achievements.

Now I know getting to 22 isn't the hardest but I'm also tied in with the guild who are loathe to move now we have a high level core that will be jumping into the experts very shortly and as each day passes the chance of the guild rerolling lessens.

I don't understand why Trion don't just clone say Whitefall and let the players make the choice. The newest server that opened remained on low population all day for EN PVP for the reason that people don't want to reroll. I know people that are now onto the third server. Opening empty servers doesn't solve the queue problem if guilds/players have established themselves. Giving players a choice of server with the same characters and guilds on would do more to lessen the queues than anything else.