Robarandir from the forums sez:

Make radiance a virtue....

So you could either get it thru armor or a virtue.

I dont care if the virtue is hard to get but it should be something a solo player can get.

That would get me to log in every chance I got.

Thallian's synopsis.."genius!!!"

I love to explore!

Last night I went on a rampage. We ran to the crossroads, then explored all the tunnels to the north and east with a kamizake npc dwarf, then some more when he chickened out, and then went out the "door to the sky" to ZirakZigil and down the slope to where Gandalf slew the Balrog.

I have to say the Balrog didnt look as cool post-mortem as he did pre-mortem in the instance I took a screenshot of him, but maybe I need to visit him on my nice comp instead of the laptop. Anyways we poked him a couple times to make sure he wasnt still twitching and then jumped off the side of the mountain to our imminent dooms. Unfortunately it doesnt let you keep tumbling forever, (That'd be sweet!) like the bottomless stair I found near the halls of stone, but it was still a fun way to get back. then we explored some more and found caverns and forests kept alive by light transported in through giant mirrors, and other crazy neat stuff. Those dwarves sure were inventive up at Turbine. I kinda wish Moria was, well, more of a maze, in a way, but I know how much most people hate mazes soo... yeah I can see why they only made some parts mazes.

Why are games 15 or 5 bucks a month?

Easy question, easy answer. Games cost a magic set 15 dollars a month or 5 dollars for Free Realms for the kiddies because... wait for it... that's what the market will bear. If you wouldn't stand for it in big enough numbers, they wouldn't do it. Simple as that.

What's the best pricing model eva'!?! Pay as you play. Why don't they like this model? Cuz the chances are that they will win out with a monthly sub that you forget to use enough. Simple as that.

Dar Narbugud (Say that ten times fast)

What we know... Dar Narbugud (a strange name no?) is a

1. 6 boss raid instance alla the Rift and WoW launching with book 8.
   
2. Book 8 launches in June, and is already live on the test server.
   
3. One group has already cleared the dungeon on the test server.
   
4. The final boss takes longer to kill than the Balrog.
5. The dungeon has 30 gloom, and the bosses have the standard additional gloom.
6. Because of this gloom you cannot enter unless you are geared like you were going to fight the watcher.
7. Sooo if you thought (like me) that you could sit back and skip the annoying grind for radiance gear and still do the next raid, think again because that gear acts as your "attunement" for this instance.
8. I hate attunement systems of this magnitude. Having to get a key is one thing, having to get a full gear set on 12 people before doing it is another.
9. Maybe you like attunement systems and disagree with me. That's ok, but realize that most people don't have their radiance gear and probably a few (like myself) will not be getting it before the next paid expansion arrives and therefore will never see this raid. You however, depending on your dedication level, may in fact see it and it may be the uber-pimp shiznit of raids. At least it isnt like the grind for Naxx that WoW created the first time. Only 2 to 5% of the populace ever saw that raid in lvl 60 land so they recycled it later for everyone to enjoy as a 10 man instance for lvl (80's I believe), partly because it required hordes of time and hordes of cash. My thoughts are though that it takes at least 5 tries on each 6 man instance to get the radiance coins for yourself (Unless you are really lucky)
   
10. Personally I think this is a bad decision on turbine's part but it does avoid one pitfall, that of invalidating their previous content. Everyone will have to run the 6 mans still until they get what they want.
11. I am now waiting in free realms and the crafting quarter of Esteldin for Champions Online or something interesting. The expansion of Lotro might be interesting if it has mounted combat AND pvmp on mounts AND real siege weapons. (Not the sissy stupid ones in WAR(except for the cannon, I like the cannon, and the orcapult, which unfortunately is never used again anywhere but the newbie zone))
    

Flaming Flaming Deeps

So yeah, Saturday I ventured deep into the Flaming deeps and forges of Khazad Dum, once owned by king Durin the deathless and now overthrown by a horde of orcs which you have to, wait for it.. sneak past using spells and funny looking orcish clothing. However there is some skill involved as , if you get too close, they recognize you. The watchful sentries you have to have a minstrel to make less, well, watchful. And the costume mechanic is rather cute as you can send people ahead to distract and role play a little (not really but its better than nothing) You have to trick the orcs in the kitchen to leave cuz there's too many. And then you fight the cook with the remaining orcs. And he says fun stuff like "would you like that pan-seared?" As he whacks you with his pans.

The run upstairs cost us a few lives (fortunately I found those one-up mushrooms in the shadowed refuge) But eventually we figured it all out and killed the second boss without killing his friends (don't ask me how that happened). His buddies try and do fellowship maneuvers on you and its cute almost, except they are big ugly orcs.

The final boss in the dungeon, later is very.... annoying. You can only hurt him after getting him splashed with fire from his friend who you must tank near him when hes about to throw fire. Then you take the boss and run him over one of the traps in the room, after which he has a 30 second or less debuff during which you can hurt him. If the team knows what they are doing I bet its not too bad but we must of spent a half hour fighting him. We had three healers so its very possible it was half an hour. He has tons of loot, of which none was very interesting, including the coin for radiance gear.

I'm sure the new raid coming out soon will have gear that mudflates the radiance gear handily and makes everyone drool. We shall see of course but I'm saving my efforts for the raid just because I enjoy playing with large groups of people more. I would look forward to champions online instead but... its been delayed till Sept at least. Oh well :D

Neverwinter Nights 2 map editor review

So I wasn't entirely idle on my honeymoon, I did have some spare time when my sweety got forty winks during the day and I booted up a number of things including the Neverwinter Nights 2 map editor. I'm an old hand at the first one's map editor so I knew the potential might be there for making a world or something and I was pleasantly surprised in some ways and upset in others. First of all, I forgot to bring my mouse and apparently you can only mostly navigate with a traditional mouse and not the touch pad most laptops come with. Zooming out was impossible.

Those difficulties aside, along with the fact that figuring out how to make rooms took me 2 hours, I can say it compares favorably with the original map editor. You can now make world maps and connect areas in that way too. Although it uses some funny file format that nobody has ever heard of for the images. You can also edit and play around with the 3D frames for the monsters and characters and create instances or templates for new ones. The waypoint system seems to be better done and the whole thing is quite obviously done in Visual Basic this time rather than C/C++ for Neverwinter Nights 1 which is both better and worse. Better for user friendliness, worse for low level map hacking.

Anyways It looks like I need to give this some solid time and make a dungeon from which no Anton can ever escape. Unless he has a truly awesome Rogue anyways.

Chrome 2.0 is faster but I still wouldn't use it

In an attempt to overthrow Lord Anton's evil rule, I shall blog and blog and bloggenate him again until he begs for mercy! Perhaps I shall forgive those who have acquired ill gotten cookies from him... we shall see. Cookies ARE mighty tempting.

Chrome 2.0 is supposedly much faster than its IE and FF counterparts, but honestly, other than that it has auto-fill, a full-screen mode, and the ability to drag and drop windows to fit the screen equally. But who honestly cares about that stuff? Wouldn't it be nicer if Google just developed these things for Firefox and then IE copied them all in the next update? I'd certainly prefer that.

What the..!!!!!

Oh sure, you go away for a honeymoon and what does your friend do? He turns into an evil overlord and takes over the blog, that's what! Excuse, me I have to go on an epic quest to get my, errr our blog back to normal, first though I must find a way to fix his wagon! En guarde!

This could be you.

Yes? No?

I thought so.

-Lord Anton

My Igor

"Yesss Massterrr!"

"Good boy."

-Lord Anton

That's No Ordinary Rabbit!

Vicious, Razor-Sharp Teeth!

-Lord Anton

Blob

Ew! What is that?!

This thing isn't part of my evil dominion. I don't know what it is.

-Lord Anton

More Grandmas

Don't ask why I love grandmas so much.

-Lord Anton

Space Girl

Now introducing: Space Girl!

-Lord Anton

P.S. @ mbp All right, the cookie was a lie...But the death part was not.

Cookie for Chappo

Resist and die.

Join me and get a cookie.

The choice is yours.

-Lord Anton

Quest: Sewer Rats

The first step to putting a stop to my evil dominion is going to the sewers and killing 10 of these. There's a very good reason for this, but I can't reveal all my secrets.

-Lord Anton