Gaming at Christmas

First let me say, sorry I haven't posted more. It's been kind of a crazy few weeks, and life isn't getting back to normal anytime soon.

Anyways, Christmas is my absolute favorite time of year. Not only do we celebrate the best brithday in the universe, (Jesus Christ in case you weren't following), we get time off from work, gifts to and from people we love.

In gaming, it's kind of interesting because we often feel a need to give in game items to people we know. Do you get your guild something? Do you get your closest friends something?

Heck, I have my husband whom I not only have to figure out what to get in the here and now, but also in our alter egos in WoW. My nephew is in that same boat. It's an interesting thought because there are so many people who swear that an online life is nothing compared to a real life. While I mostly agree, I do believe an online existance also has it's own reasons for being. We still connect to people, and those people may not be in the same state, but we still feel we have connections to them.

So, go out and get your guild something. Have a guild event. Enjoy Christmas. Sing Happy Birthday to Christ, and remember why we're all here.

Gahhhhhhhhh

Sorry, life right now is crazy, and I don't have any extra time.

I made a new mage in WoW though, which is pretty cool. You die a lot, and stop a lot, but the abilities look cool. Dunno if I'll keep her still or not, but it was quite a bit of fun.

Anyway, back to the drawing board. Again.

Oh, and if you want to see a neat gadget, search Engadget for the posture fixer. It's quite cool.

MMOs and the Economy

With all of the worries about fuel costs, collapsing industries, and employment loss, quite a few expenses have been cut across most families. I know a lot more people who stay at home to eat, rather than pay for an expensive menu. The fast food joints seem a lot more crowded, as do inexpensive retailers like Walmart. (Yes I’m cheap and tend to frequent these places even in a good economy).

People loose their jobs and careers and have to live on very little. New cars, jewelry, and other pretty accessories have started to get dropped. People aren’t going to the movies. They are dropping their animal friends at pounds because they can’t afford them anymore.

I know at least two or three people who now use an electronic scooter or manual bike to get into work. Even in the northeast where it’s freezing. People are cutting costs. I know I am.

I do see a few drop-outs in the games I play with other people. We have a lot of inactives in a guild that didn’t see that many inactive players previously.

On the other hand, I don’t think it’s all that bad for gaming. After all, especially with MMO’s, you pay an upfront cost, and then a small monthly fee to continue an entertainment that is otherwise cheap.

Granted, in WoW or other existing games, it’s cheap. You don’t need to worry about upgrading your system (think 2nd gen games, not 3rd gen like AoC), so you can play on the same machine you always have. You don’t need to worry about paying for extra gas to go anywhere. You can eat at home, spend time with your family and friends, and enjoy a fairly cheap entertainment lifestyle.

While I’ve always got a real life physical gift, I could see some people not being able to afford something physical to give to others this Christmas. In the mindset of the early years where we made what we gave people, we give people an electronic item. Like enough gold for a bear mount from Dalaraan. (that was a hint if there ever was one!)

In any case, I see people not quitting WoW first. I see them quitting the movies, and dinners first. I think it makes sense, and I wish more people entertained virtually as it would be an inexpensive way to have the expensive lifestyle we enjoyed before.

Wednesday's Five: Christmas Gifts

If I could get 5 Christmas Tech Gifts without worrying about how much they'd cost, this is what I'd get:

• Amazon's Kindle
  
• Mac Book Pro
• Blackberry Storm
• Area-51 with ALL the bells and Whistles
• Flash

What would you get?

Favorite Games as a Child

I’ve been gaming since my Dad brought home our first Commodore 64. I was probably about 4 or 5, and really it was one of the best times I’d had in a long time. My dad was a tech geek kind of guy, who loved fiddling with the thing to make it play games, and other fun programs.

One he had bought was called SAM. I couldn’t tell you what SAM stood for (something audio module I bet), but it was the coolest thing ever to me. It’d say whatever you typed through the tinny speakers we had attached to the TV. (There were no monitors back then!) I loved having it say words from all over the house, but I hated it when it said my name. Apparently to SAM I was JohD EYE.

My parents, being the mean spirited people they were (I love them so much), told me that in actuality that WAS how many name should be pronounced. I think I cried for a week.

In any case, I’m feeling rather nostalgic today, and want to remember some of the games I played when I was younger.

For the Commodore, I liked RUN-MAN, but I never could get very far. I always jumped off things when I shouldn’t have.

For the Atari (oh I miss my Atari!) I liked Pong quite a bit, but Breakout and Super Breakout were just the best games ever. I still get absorbed in Breakout like games on Yahoo and have to get hit over the head by my husband before I’ll stop.

Nintendo had some rather awesome titles. I always wanted Mike Tyson’s Super Punch-Out, but I had to go to a friend’s house to play it. I guess my parents thought it had too much violence or something. Pfft. Maybe it would have taught me to fight the bullys in school better. I can still sing the theme song to Super Mario Bros, and often do. (That Wii Commercial is my favorite!)

Super NES had the newer Super Mario Bros, Zelda and Metroid. I knew of Castlevania, but it wasn’t my thing as much. I also kicked around a Mega Man once in awhile. Of course, I’ll never ever forget Final Fantasy 3. I still get misty when I think about it.

Funny when I think about it. I’m now almost exclusively a PC gamer. I don’t have any of the newer systems (and can’t really justify the expense), but when I was young, I never played PC games. Until SimCity 2000, I didn’t play anything at all on the computer. Weird how life works like that.

So, for any of you who may be out there, what were your favorite games? Did you have a favorite genre? Do you have a particular memory that revolves around gaming you want to share?

How many games ARE there?

So the Independent Games Festival for 2009 has just released their entrants, and it made me wonder: how many games really exist?

Not just your big named “Left4Dead” or “World of Warcraft” games, but those small independent games that have a niche market. I’ve heard of games about characters like Rainbow Brite and Fraggle Rock. I guess they want to get us thinking about our childhood.

I know I’ve heard other people philsophize about books and movies; there can only be a certain number of story ideas that exist. If that’s the case, if we look at the incredibly large number of choices we already have – how many do we have left?

I for one think this is a really silly thought and that there are an infinite number of stories, movies, games and other media out there just waiting to happen. For every creative person that exists there is a new idea just waiting to happen.

While you can often group people into large types or social circles, each individual is still just that. We all have unique ideas and perspectives that allow us to create new and interesting thoughts.

Mine may be jumbled and random sometimes, but they’re not the same as another gamer girl who exists. I’m not a tomboy, as many of us are, nor am I a stylista. I’m a programmer who enjoys gaming, cooking, sewing, writing, and playing with gadgets and toys.

I’d hate to think there was a physical limit to the number of possibilities out there, but even if there is – that would be like trying to imagine having a million ideas all at once. It’s still an amazing thought, and makes me wonder how many of the games from the Festival I’ll see in stores and online.

Apethetic to Technology

So I read on CNN awhile ago that if you want to stay current in today’s tech memes you needed to learn about Twitter. I’d never used Twitter before, never even knew what it was until that moment.

For those of you who are like me, and aren’t always into the latest internet fashions, Twitter is a strange alien sounding thing. Really, it’s one of those words that sounds like it really means: an onomatopoeia (yes I had to look it up). It’s a bunch of strangers all across the world saying what they’re doing/thinking. Not everyone is a stranger, but many to most of them are. They’re connecting in a strange light.

The reason I bring this up today (and not a few days ago) was I mentioned it to someone I knew who also didn’t get it. I thought how do you explain new technology to someone who doesn’t get it?

Imagine the first people to try to use telephones. “Here, you talk into this end” – Talk into an inanimate object? People will think I’m crazy. “No really, talk into this end, and someone on the other side will hear you.”

I wonder if the first time someone who wasn’t a techie kind of person spoke on the phone what their response was. Did they cry? Did they think it was God? Did they laugh or express some other kind of emotion?

Today we’re so apathetic (one I didn’t look up :p) to new technology I wonder what type of major milestone in our crazy world will provoke an emotional reaction like something as simple as the telephone had to have created.

Yes, I got excited when I brought home my first HD Television, but I didn’t cry. Maybe it’ll be some sort of faster transportation system, like vehicles that could almost instaneously get you from one place to another. Or a way to solve one of the world’s monster problems.

I don’t know about you, but I hope that the cure for Cancer, Aids or global hunger will provoke a human reaction. As for Twitter, it’s like people watching, but with the ability to get inside their heads.

Tech I'm Thankful For

• Sweet Graphics Cards
• Hard Drive Space With Room to Groove
• C# and it's Classes
• Sliced Bread
• HD Monitors
• Google
• Youtube
  

Gaming with People You Know (Really!)

I currently game with my husband and my nephew. I’ve also gamed with friends in the past, and I think there are interesting points to gaming anonymously to gaming with friends and family.

With my husband, it’s natural. We met in an online game (back before they had MMO’s mind you, yes I’m that old) before we met in this realm of life. We’ve gamed since then, and I imagine we’ll always game. It’s our “date” night. Some people go to fancy dinners, my husband and I stay up till four A.M. questing, talking, and killing things. We learn team work, communication, and are an awesome team. We always have been, which is why we’re married. (Don’t worry ladies, he still takes me out once in awhile, but most of the time I’m more happy at home than I am out.)

The friend that I gamed with a long time ago I’m no longer friends with. I think I would be if I had the choice, but she really doesn’t seem that interested in a relationship anymore. Perhaps I’m still too much of a gamer for her. When I was younger (and before I was married) I found that gaming with another girl often leads to competition with guys. That can be healthy, and it can be annoying. I don’t mind anonymous females that I don’t have to face in real life, but I still get jealous.

The family part is to me the coolest one. Before gaming with my nephew I didn’t know him nearly as well as I wanted to. I used to watch him when he was really young, and I knew him then. Over the years, we went our separate ways. When he learned we were fairly serious about sticking with WoW, he relocated to our server, and we’ve been playing together since. I know a lot more about him now, and enjoy spending time with him. It makes my gaming time more fun knowing that I get to share that time with him.

I’ve been thinking about picking up some FPS games to play with some of the people I work with. I’m a little worried about it as I don’t know a lot of them nearly as well as I know the people I play WoW with, but I think I’d be up for the challenge. It’d give me a chance to get to know more people around here, and I could always use more people to hang out with.

All in all I tend to be a loner and a leader playing games. I like going my own way, and I like helping others in their own quests. It may seem like an odd combination, but it suits me.

Sorry

No post yesterday. But I did get to Herbalism 450. Now I can start questing again.

Re-Painting a Home Without Paint

I came up with a great idea while driving to work today. This idea is one of those strange ones that makes you sit and wonder.

Painting a room takes a lot of time, money and effort. Few people like the effort that is involved from scraping the old color off, and even less from making sure they don’t miss every single little spot. It has to look nice, and it has to be clean. Never mind the amount of money that’s involved in buying all that paint.

Then of course, if you try out a room color, and it looks terrible – then what do you do? You have to re-do the whole thing! More time and effort and money are again eaten. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a way of having a wall décor that wasn’t based on physical items like paint, wallpaper or molding?

It exists today, but isn’t being put to use in the mainstream market yet. I think it should be, and I think this application would be rather cool. They’re called E-Textiles, and once they hit mainstream, this would be a very cool application for them.

Imagine, instead of having walls, having a screen of E-Cloth lying flat on your wall. Your home computer has a program that tells the wall what shade to be. You could have family photos, paintings, and any decoration or style that you want to be displayed. You can have a different look today than you do tomorrow, and have different displays in each room.

You could also incorporate sound with tiny speakers inter-dispersed within the fabric. Have a room that makes you feel like the ocean with a beach scenery, and ocean noises. Better yet, can you imagine video gaming technology off of this kind of fabric? Talk about being in the action! Imagine flying around Netherstorm while it’s surrounding you – literally.

Receive phone calls or videos from friends. Check your e-mail. All of this is possible with an E-Textile wall.

I think this is very cool tech, and I hope home applications are put to use within the next few years.

Crafting in MMO's

I'm sick of it.

No, really, I'm sick of it.

You know that feeling you get when you're about to start a new MMO (or one you've played forever) and you have to decide what crafting you want to choose? Then once you've ground it up to its highest level you suddenly discover it's not really all that fun, and there isn't much use for it for you anymore?

Yeah, that feeling. I'm sick of it!

I want a crafting profession in a game where for once the resources are cheaper than the items you sell. I want a crafting profession with items you can use at any point in time. I want one that is fun to grind up, and it needs to be something I can spend time doing instead of mindlessly killing my foes.

Is that too much to ask? Apparently, because I get this feeling in every MMO I've ever played, and I think it's going to happen forever. I understand the logic behind why it happens. Everyone who wants to craft doesn't want to get their own resources, so they pay (and pay high prices) to have other people get them for them. Then, because so many people are "x" profession, the price of the item you want to sell is pennies in comparision. You'd think that they'd eventually even out, but game economy is a strange thing.

I think real world economists should study gaming economy because in some ways some of this madness may be useful. Imagine if Iron was more expensive than the cars you bought? In games, we except not making a profit, but in real life profit is king.

Who knows, but I'm still tired of it.

Trust in Guilds

I’m a guild leader in that massive online game known as World of Warcraft. You know the one. You probably know someone who plays it, or wishes they could play it. We now have about 100 characters in the guild, and had yet to have anyone really steal from us. We have 5 bank tabs (think storage for a large group of people), and everyone had played it fair. In fact, we usually had to empty it about once or twice a week because it got full from the items everyone put in it. Every time we’d empty it, the money from the sales would go back into the bank.

My current system I thought was more than fair. You put more into the bank, you get to take more out of it. Promotions were based on what people did for the guild as a whole, and what effort they put into it. With a promotion you got access to more items, and more varied items.

We had a member who had been playing in our guild for a few months. He was friendly enough, and fairly active. He had four alts in the guild, each of which was active enough to be promoted at least once.

As a result of the fairness, and the number of alts, he was able to take over 30 items from our bank. Granted, we’re still fairly young enough that it mostly contained items to help other people in the guild level. From blue items, to blue card items to gems, these items could have helped someone else. Instead, they helped him get money for this character, or another one of his characters.

We demoted him immediately. We sent mails and tells to him when he logged in. He didn’t quit the guild. After about two days with no response, we kicked him. Since it was an “Unknown” that was kicked, we assume that either the characters were deleted or transferred.

The hardest part about this situation is deciding what to do next. We’d rather not punish everyone in the guild. That’s silly. We have a lot of responsible individuals who have done nothing but help each other.

My first instinctual reaction was to only allow one character to be promoted for each player. This idea wasn’t the best because then people would be uncomfortable telling you who their alts were. I’d rather have an open honesty like we’ve had in the past.

In the end, I think we’ve decided to add two ranks, and limit the amount of items people can take out on a daily basis for the lower ranks. It’s not an easy decision, and I don’t like feeling like anyone else would take advantage of their other guild mates. I can only hope that it won’t happen again.