War Materials and Instances

by on January 9, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Posted In: MMO

It’s been a busy weekend.

First off, one of the interesting (in a good way…) parts of the new patch is a pair of brand-new related raid instances. Well, okay, only intellectually interesting to me, but to get at them on any particular server, the players on it have to turn in staggering amounts materials, as part of big event to open the gates that block access to half the area of Silithus. Better yet, Alliance and Horde have their own goals, and the flavor text explicitly state that both sides are working together for a large offensive to do something about the Silithid infestation spreading throughout southern Kalimdor.

It was a little disappointing to see Uther way behind in the standings. I mean, it’s an old and (over)populated server, I’d figure it’d be up near the forefront, not at #108. But that’s all right, it gives me and the rest of the crew time to help out and get a share in the rewards. And as of today, Uther is #20, more like what I had expected. It interesting to note that the high-level stuff is mostly going first, I figure at the end, the low-level items will just blink from about half-way to 100%. Also, the fact that the Alliance side is going faster than the Horde, might encourage a few people to start up Horde characters on an imbalanced server.

I think it would be very interesting to see this process on a new server where most everyone is still working their levels up, you could see progress of the population as the harder items start getting turned in.

On Friday, Coppercheetah and Jareth held a small WoW party, and we ended up putting a couple “third-tier” members (Shrimpette & Jariedthe) through Gnomeregan. Jareth was worried about being too high-level to bother, but once in, had a good time. The other three members, all being “second generation” members, made the party way overlevel (52, 45, 36 I think). We still managed one party wipe when we managed to get the entire final trench on us (Shrimpette, barely in range for Gnomergan, seems to have aggroed one, and, well, the rest followed him around to us). Other than that, we got quests done, saw the sights and had a grand time in one of the finer instances.

The other thing scheduled for this weekend was a Sunken Temple run. Most of the quests for Sunken Temple are the ends of involved chains, so most of Saturday was taken up by various high-level guild members running around trying to get all the prerequisites out of the way. For me, this included a lot of time on a hunter-specific quest that goes down into Sunken Temple, but relies on an annoyingly rare drop first. The good news was that Dunain finally has a decent source of Thorium from this, and not only is his Blacksmithing starting to go forward again, but his Mining has finally maxed out at 300.

I’ve gotten this idea that high-level instances, and much of the high-level game, just isn’t as fun as say, levels 20-40. Scarlet Monastery felt a little empty to me. Zul’Ferrak fell a bit flat. Last night proved me wrong. We had a grand time. The top five guild characters went in: Blanc (57), Dunain (55), Dejek (54?), Gottesfaust (53), and Blondiewood (52). The temple is indeed sunken, sitting on the floor of the Swamp of Sorrows. The front entrance is flooded, but the rest goes down an air pocket under the water level, and is suitably ‘damp’ feeling.

It was atmospheric, large (we got lost a couple times), and reasonably tough. This particular group has done a few instances now, and I think it’s showing. There were some very tough bits, and some fights towards the end that were… too exciting for healthy living. But we generally made them go right, and pulled through. At one point towards the end, we had a death, and Blondiewood got her second combat rez, so that ended well. The penultimate boss, the Avatar of Hakkar fight (whose temple this was), went very well. During all of this, Lance (the pet) had leveled, along with Blanc, Blondiewood and Dejek.

So we went on to the final fight, the Shade of Eranikus, picking up my Hunter quest on the way. Eranikus was the Green Dragon that is charged with sealing Hakkar, the Troll’s blood god, out of the world. He’s insanely tough, but we knew what to expect (thank you for online guides), and we had a plan. We were about as prepared as we could be.

We wiped. Eranikus was about halfway down. For me, things went wrong when he decided I was the second biggest threat instead of the rogue, Dejek. Considering I was avoiding any special abilities, that was a surprise. His first hit taking me down by two-thirds was also a surprise, since in mail armor I can off-off-tank on occasion (poor use of a hunter, but it means I can survive long enough for the pet to get control of the situation again). Long story short, I didn’t think to feign until two seconds after I was dead.

So, run back in, modify the plan, and try again. We tried an even more cautious approach. As long as the priest and druid could keep things somewhat under control, it worked. But it was not a stable situation, and they did run out of mana, and we wiped after getting Eranikus down by two-thirds and I had feigned three times.

By this point, we’d been at it for about six hours, and it was getting late on a Sunday night. There was serious talk of thinking things over and trying again on another night. We decided that the last fight had taken too long, and went in for one more try with a much heavier hitting approach.

Well, that wasn’t so stable either. The fight wandered all over the chamber with various characters trying to keep up. I went for rare Aimed Shots instead of a constant stream of normal shot, hoping for a critical (about 1000 HP these days), and ready to feign if I did. Control of the fight was lost early and the healers went down. But before Eranikus could get rid of any of the rest of us… we got him instead. (Dejek commented “So… the winning strategy is let the healers die.”)

I also noticed that somewhere in the final parts of the instance, I’d missed seeing a golden glow. Yes, that’s right.

Lance leveled twice last night. After having fallen behind some from bunches of quest turn-ins, he’s now back at my level.

Dunain started the night really early in 55, and is now well over half way. I had to quit last night before doing most of the quest turn-ins, so I’ll see the final tally tonight. But at a guess, I won’t level from the quests either. I’ll just be really close.

Eranikus also generates a little quest that it is believed will lead to more, but they haven’t been created yet. However, it does explain something about all the Green Dragonflight world-encounters that were put in a while ago. Also, Zul’Gurub is the original capital of the Trolls and where Hakkar was originally summoned to Azeroth, and where some are trying again. So both of those things are, content-wise, sequels to this instance. Unfortunately, they both require large raid parties, so I don’t expect to do anything with them.

But, I think I’ll read up on them anyway.

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Empire Earth

by on December 30, 2005 at 11:48 am
Posted In: Computer games

Among the few (physical) things I did get for Christmas this year, I got a package from my Dad containing the computer game Empire Earth. He often gives me games that he bought and didn’t care much for, knowing my tastes are somewhat broader than his. Usually I find them more comprehensible than he did, if not much more enjoyable. -_^ I seem to remember him mentioning getting Empire Earth in email and being disappointed, and that I wasn’t surprised.

After playing it myself, I can say that this really isn’t a game for my Dad. Or me, actually. I just read the GameSpot review, and they pretty well agree with me. Empire Earth is a fairly good game, but it is only really enjoyable for the hard-core RTS crowd. My Dad doesn’t get RTS at all. I like RTS on occasion as a simple, short thing to blow off steam. This game is neither simple, nor short. Then again, it is trying to cover from the Stone Age to the 22nd Century. It’s ambitious, and I’m impressed by how well they did with it, but it has too many things to do at once (my usual problem with RTS), and too many things I can’t do.

For those familiar with the Age of Empires series, it is similar to those (same designer), but it tries to tackle all of history, instead of just pieces of it. This ‘Civ-like’ quality is what attracted my Dad to the game. And it’s a neat idea. Also, a very large and involved one. For me Empire Earth partially collapses under the weight of fifteen different epochs, and frankly each one is simplified down to the point of being pretty generic. I don’t think there’s anyone watching this who is seriously dedicated to the RTS genre, but if there is, I do recommend it (or better yet, the sequel, Empire Earth II), for you. The game has a lot in it, it does capture at least the basic flavor of the ages (I just had my first game that included the modern eras, and you can really feel the difference as you transition out of the 19th Century), and the AI is certainly better than I’m used to out of these games.

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Christmas Eve

by on December 25, 2005 at 11:26 am
Posted In: Life

After some delays due to financial trouble (more in the order of ‘turbulence’), Smudge and I picked up my new bed yesterday. Putting together the frame was easy enough. It was a bit larger than I was thinking of, however, not disastrously so. I’m going have to think about the layout of my room, but it just needs some adjusting.

(Following the link above, I have the single version of the bed, with a single tatami resting on the frame, instead of the double that is pictured, no headboard, no nightstands.)

The set of drawers that I got with it are bit more trouble. The bed uses a total of six dowels to hold the slats in place, everything else just slides into place neatly, and is very solid. With luck, this will outlast me. The drawers use 20 dowels and eight bolts each (set of two), and took a lot of (careful) pounding to get together. We got one together, and will assemble the other… later.

We put on the tatami (which was much more substantial than either of us guessed), it’s a solid grass mat (I can smell it, it’s still airing out) over an inch thick. and then the futon (mattress), and all the bedding. After getting used to Smudge’s couch futon, this was quite manageable.

Thanks to the drawer, that took much of the afternoon. The evening was spent at Dustykat‘s for Christmas Eve dinner. Not exactly a wild time, but that’s not my kind of thing anyways. ^_^ Besides, we don’t see enough of him these days. Also got to see Tugrik and a couple James Bond films on cable (how… seasonal… ~_^), and the same set of 3-4 commercials a few dozen times.

This morning, my main gift is waking up in my very own bed.

Whee! I’m officially moved in now! No more sleeping on the couch!

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Flashpoint Mantor

by on December 17, 2005 at 7:00 pm
Posted In: SFB

The Federation Council, realizing that the situation was out of control and that war was imminent, ordered Star Fleet to evacuate all Federation citizens in the Mantor system. The cruiser Reshadije was dispatched on the direct orders of the Council, against the advice of Star Fleet Command, which wanted the powerful ship defending the border directly. She rendezvoused with the police flagship R. F. Kennedy, and the police cutter Pete Malloy. As Captian Abdul Aziz of the Reshadije frantically tried to organize the evacuation, a Kzinti force arrived and started shooting. Complicating matters even more was the arrival of a squadron of three Klingons ships in the system, for what purpose Captain Aziz did not know. And to complete the nightmare for Aziz, he had strict orders to use “non-violent” targeting only, since no formal declaration of hostilities had yet been issued by the Federation government.

We played this scenario from Captain’s Log #24 today, we all had our normal roles. So, I had the invading Kzintis, Mark the evacuating Federation, and Mike the Klingons.

I seem to have been the recipient of a few lucky circumstances. Mike had mistaken what today’s agenda was, so he didn’t have as clear cut a plan as he could have. But, the main Klingon force arrives at the beginning of turn 3, which gave him a chance to figure it all out. Mark was hosting, and missed an important point while fixing lunch….

For the most part, the forces involved are pretty light. The Federation has a CA, and two police ships to protect a small freighter, a free trader, and evacuate a bunch of civilians. The Kzintis have a CL and three FFs. The Klingons have a large freighter (which they get bonus points for getting out of the system), a D4 (predecessor to the D6, not very impressive against current technology), a F4 (a frigate as old as the D4), and an E3 (modern, but very tiny).

The main Federation focus for the first two turns was picking up as many civilians as possible. This left them tied down to the planet, Mantor, at speed four. In hindsight, I think I would have picked up a few and escorted the civilian ships (a small freighter and a trading ship) to the board edge, and then tried to pick up more on high-speed passes. But leaving civilians on the planet not only costs him points, it gives me victory points, so I don’t blame him for doing his utmost to get as many as possible before moving away from the planet.

The Kzinti’s sent a FF squadron screaming in towards the Feds, ending the first turn at a range of about four, then slowed to circle around the planet, hoping to pick off the lightly shielded civilian ships. The CL leading the force, lead from behind, unable to keep up with the frigates.

Non-violent targeting kept the Federation from being able to do too much to the Kzintis. Knocking down a shield was easy at close range for the crunch-heavy Feds, but they were unable to easily translate this into hits that could force the Kzintis to back off. Meanwhile, the CA took a pounding, losing two shields and a good number of internals. Thanks to lunch distractions, Mark didn’t notice the final pair of drones bearing down on his force. I made certain to mention their launch, but apparently it didn’t sink in. On the other hand, only the POL and FLG had any phasers left at this point, and they were at best at the edge of effective range. He probably could have killed one drone, but as it was, two drones hit the CA on a down shield, effectively gutting it.

This took what was becoming a grim situation for the Federation, and left a scramble to keep it from getting any worse.

Then the Klingon force entered, and dove into the middle of the Kzinti force which was turning itself around to follow the Feds who were getting out of Dodge. Not much firing happened, but there has been some sniping, and it’s getting pretty obvious that they’re going to pick up their own civilians. Whether they’re hoping to see a good opportunity to cripple or destroy a Kzinti ship while they leave has yet to be seen.

Meanwhile the Kzintis have been trying (unsuccessfully) to stop the two police ships, and have closed the system to commerce (I’ve been shooting up both freighters, and it looks as if I’ll get them).

We aren’t quite done with the scenario yet, but it’s pretty close to wrapping up (it’ll automatically end when the remaining Federation ships leave). Unless something odd happens, it looks like a pretty decisive win for the Kzintis.

The next face-to-face session should be a scenario we’re working up for a Kzinti assault on a small strongpoint as they try to take their primary initial objective in the Second Federation-Kzinti War. (It is also an excuse to use a minor race that also appeared in CL24).

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The Move, Part III: Online

by on December 12, 2005 at 8:32 am
Posted In: Life

It is amazing just how much stuff can be packed into one two-bedroom apartment. I took Thursday and Friday off to help in shifting all our accumulation of ill-gotten gains. I’m afraid I kicked off to a slow start Thursday, but then, there were certain limitations. Dave had gotten a bunch of boxes from one of the places he does work for (they weren’t using the sizes any more, so they were happy to get rid of them), but those were already running low. Friday morning Dave took me over there, and we grabbed a completely silly number of unused boxes.

I wish I’d taken more. We blew through them by late Saturday afternoon.

The weekend was the first, best (only) chance at moving the furniture. However, there was still of lot of stuff in the way, so much of Saturday was spent in a wild packing party. With help from Kris, and Coppercheetah we got a good amount of packing done, and started moving furniture, about 4 major pieces out of my estimate of 16.

Yesterday was assisted by Coppercheetah again, and Dustykat. We packed more. Mostly all the little knick-knacky things that had spread to cover any unused horizontal surface. (And, well, quite a few used ones.) But along with that, the furniture was moved. And a few that we were jettisoning were disposed of. Except the dining room table. That’s still at the old place, but it’s not that heavy, and uses leaves, so we’ll have no problems moving it ourselves. So today Baron gets to clean up the place, shift more leftover items, and try to do something about the large closet that houses a lot of BackBreaker’s supplies.

About Comcast…. I set up the house server in the new place, and managed to show all the hardware was working, but I was blocked by their ‘you need to download our software’ notice. Which isn’t true in our case. Also, it turned out there was quite a bit of account confusion, as we had opened a new account Monday instead of transferring the old one, which had been the intention. That ended up waiting until Sunday evening, with portions of the new place being set up as Smudge and Coppercheetah worked their way through this. In the end we got it down to the modem problem, which refused to budge despite tech support’s assurances that it should be feeding through fine. Finally, Coppercheetah checked what cable modem they were fiddling with. It turned out that they were still working with the old modem (they handed us a nice, shiny, new, tinyer one Monday). I should have unplugged the old one when the last computer left the place. After that, it went well.

Now we just need to get the place properly set up for Ethernet. Right now, one machine is hooked up. Two more in that room won’t be hard, but we still need to figure out how we’re going to wire my room and Dave’s so we are on the network also. (Until that happens, my email is still effectively DOWN.)

I’m officially moved out of the old place. Most of my stuff is out, and I didn’t sleep there last night. However, I’m not really moved in to the new place either. Last night, I slept on the couch. Actually, it’s a futon that folds down that I’ve been using as my bed for the last seven years. But it’s not really mine, and now that there’s a proper living room again, it’s being returned to its proper role. This means that it’s time for me to get my own bed. I have plans for that, and I should be sleeping in my own room within a week. But the full set will take… time. It seems I have expensive tastes. -_-;

I would like to thank Dave, Paul, Coppercheetah, Kris, and Dustykat for all their help getting these three pack rats moved after nine years of continuous occupation in one place (seven for me). It was all a big help, and I don’t see any way we could have done it without all of you.

Also, we got an invite to a Christmas Eve dinner! Considering that me, Smudge, and Baron had no plans yet, this was very welcome!

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