Random Links about Games...and stuff.

Here are a few links I want to read over again. For various reasons of interest.


http://gamerant.com/interview-author-dean-koontz-talks-storytelling-video-games-poole-38472/

http://gamerant.com/hardcore-gamers-wii-culture-poole-37277/

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/02/24/this-hunger-for-reality/comment-page-2/#comments

http://www.world-mysteries.com/rennes_mneyman.htm

Labor Day Special

I had a great horse race with my wife and my little sister last week in lotro, and this week I got to raid with my sister-in-law, soon to be brother-in-law, sister, and friends I made in-game. We started up a "Hand of Smack" (our kin) raid and had 6 people in no time! took me about 20 minutes to round up another 6 and bam! we were rolling.

This was to be a lvl 34 raid of the Seige of Gondamon. Not something to do lightly, I might add. The enemies were fierce and the waves came on two sides sometimes. I foudn that once (not if) the outer defenders died, it was best for the group to stay in the middle downstairs and just deal with everything there. If you hang out upstairs there's more chance something will kill Mathi and that's never good. On our second try we downed both dragons, and the Mr.Heat Wave Dourhand Dwarf. (You have to fight three bosses at once in raid mode, and they all do tons of damage. They really DO want to take down the city of Gondamon after all) Lastly I spent some time playing a vicious game of Scrabble, swimming in the pool, and helping my brother-in-law learn how to craft and navigate quests in Lotro with his newbie hunter who is now lvl 16.

And today, I can't play so I'm writing instead. Cuz apparently the servers are down until tomorrow. I'm kinda reserving my judgment on this whole FTP thing until I see the results. It might be beneficial for the long term health of the game. But personally I think they should have at least let them have the lone lands free, if they really wanted them to get hooked, or at a discount anyways. Well I live on Windfola, one of the least populated servers previously so maybe it'll be a great thing. Maybe I better start recruiting noobs. Who knows. If any of you bloggers come to Windfola add Thallian to your friends list and send me a letter. I'll add you to my friends too, and invite you to the kin when I catch you on. ;)

Anton's Weekly Sketch

Anton's Weekly Sketch

Fun with da wife

This week, I've been having a bit of a recoup from finding jobs and getting used to my new job. I think I like my new place of work, the people seem nice, there is plenty to do, and I don't feel useless, even though I do get frustrated with how much I don't know about their architecture and the limitations this puts on me.

In my home life I taught my wife how to play Mario Kart double dash with me this week, and we beat the flower cup on 100cc after three tries (won a bronze the other two)  I've also been showing her Zelda 64, Ocarina of Time. I'm on the Fire Temple right now in that game. She likes to watch. Today we went to Great America and got sick spinning on the rides (urp!) And also exhausted ourselves looking for a new house somewhere south (Fremont or San Jose/Sunnyvale area) I am right now working on a php and flash based logo design which, once functional I will encourage all my readers here to go tell their friends about but not yet. It is mostly done I just need to work out some kinks in the pre-shopping cart and make a nice page for logo designers to log in and submit logo images for us to sell/use. I think early on we may not even have a database. We might just do everything by email. No need to go grandiose with this until orders start flying in.

Lastly, and most importantly for this blog, I've been playing Lotro again, huzzah! I'm doing the Mirkwood quests and finding new ones and new places I never noticed the first time because I was in such a rush to level. It's also a very different experience with my captain (who has a npc helper) than my minstrel who does not. I'm prolly gonna save a couple of his levels for when the new area comes out since it will be lvl 61-65 I think, and finally I'm planning a horse race today with my wife and sister to get their horses for the first time.

Too Much Game!

We got Beatles Rockband in December as an early Christmas present. My then 2-year-old son fell in love with the game so much, that now all he wants to do is rock out. Guitar, Drums, and Microphones are pretty much the only toys he ever wants to play with.

Somewhere along the line, we stopped actually playing the game, and started to just listen to/sing/play the songs ourselves. I hardly ever play Beatles Rockband any more, but I am always singing the music. As I stopped to think about this, I realized that lately, every time the idea to turn on the game has come to my mind, I instead would prefer to just play my real guitar that I got, or just sing the songs.

The game is old for us. We can hardly stand to turn it on...yet we still love it.

Anybody have experiences where you entirely love a game, but you've played it so much you couldn't stand to turn it on again?

Anton's Weekly Sketch