Monthly Archives: November 2009

LNP Reserved Seats, Edward’s Birthday

Today was the last Live Nude People show of the quarter. They did a raffle outside before the show, and we bought fourteen tickets for ten dollars in an attempt to win reserved seats for a quarter. We actually won! Well, gem’s ticket won, but we got two seats! I’m pretty thrilled! We also get reserved seats at Quarter in Review, but we haven’t seen any shows this year, so I’m not sure how much I’d enjoy it. I think I still would. God, I really love LNP!

 
I also had dinner with Edward and Carrie for Edward’s birthday on Tuesday. It was a lot of fun! I see Edward regularly but Carrie rarely, so it was cool to catch up with her. She had some interesting stories!
I’m in bed, procrastinating on my phone rather than sleeping. I’m all caught up on Twitter, MLIA, and FML. Damn!

What I Have or Have Not Been Playing

It’s been over a month since I’ve made one of these posts, but I haven’t really been playing much. I guess I’ll base this post off the last one I made to point out what games I put down.
The first game I talked about last month Wrath of the Lich King. Yeah, I’m still playing that. Last month I was working on ToC5 gear. I finished all the gear from that and have been running heroics and doing battlegrounds. There’s still a wand and off-hands that are slightly better than what I have from some regular instances, but for the most part I need to run heroics. I bought my t8 chest piece with emblems, which is cool.

 
William, you can skip this next paragraph. You’ve heard it.
The game’s kind of discouraging now though. To progress I need to do heroics, but that requires a group of five. Getting a group is so difficult. There are a few things that annoy me. First, people leave the group while we’re still getting the last people without even saying anything. If they said “hey, this is taking too long so I’m gonna go. Sorry, but good luck” I wouldn’t be angry. But I find it very annoying that they just leave. If I met up with people to study at school, I wouldn’t just walk out of the room. Yes, yes, I know this is the Internet, but I guess that’s my point. Also, I hate that sometimes I ask a tank if they’d like to tank with out group, they say yes, I invite them, and they’re already in another group. I’m guessing what happens is that some other group sends them an invite, and they just assume it’s from my group. How about at least sending me a tell afterwards? I also find random group invites rude and don’t send invites without talking to the person first. Should I give up on that? Well, since the Looking For Group system sucks and sometimes marks people as tanks even though they didn’t select that, it seems like a bad idea. I’ve seen mages marked as tanks. Yesterday I saw two tanks in the LFG system for the heroic I needed – a level 1 Death Knight and a level 181 Death Knight, neither of which can exist. LFG is broken. Besides it being rude to send group invites randomly, I have no way of knowing that they REALLY can tank until I ask. Even when I get in a group, there’s a good chance it will have either idiots or assholes. It’s hard to find good people. It just doesn’t seem worth spending two hours and lots of stress to get a group to run one heroic.
Maybe everything will be better with Linh-Nam hits 80 with his hunter that he plans on using to play with us. Antonio and William already hit 80 with the characters they’re using with us, and gemma and I are 80. I’m still a little worried though because William and Linh-Nam already had 80s, and we didn’t run anything together. I think it’s because they were more progressed so it wouldn’t help them at all to help us. If that’s the case, as long as we stay at a similar progression, maybe things will go well when all five of us are together. It also just seems too good to be true. I’m going to play with a group of friends? No one’s going to leave and go do something else? Yeah, I’m not so sure. Playing with people on a regular basis kind of went away years and years ago, didn’t it?
Okay. Last time I posted I was in the ChEeSeaNaTers. Well, there were a lot of sexism and putting down homosexuality in guild chat, and I blew up on people multiple times, kicking out people I thought weren’t good to be around. Surprisingly the guild leaders were fine with it because they liked me and said I could kick anyone I didn’t like as long as I stayed, but the guild wasn’t so happy. I guess it just wasn’t a good fit. A lot of people seemed young and immature, like they were so excited and proud that they’ve had sex or can drink. Running raids was also frustrating because we’d run stuff low level raids, and people would constantly pull before everyone was even rez’ed. That was really minor though. My reason for leaving was really the personality mismatch with most of the guild. There were some people with whom I enjoyed running things, and I’ve played with them afterwards. I’ve even set aside my differences with some of the people that I was mad at and kicked in the past. I’ve run stuff with them since leaving and have done some bgs with them, and everything’s been fine. Anyways, I’m back in Playground Justice.
World of Warcraft is a lot of fun when I’m not stressing about heroics. Last night I did a bunch of battlegrounds, getting my last achievement (except for 100 wins and the meta of course) in Isle of Conquest. I also got a chance to do some real quests last night. I really enjoy Northrend questing! I feel like I get a lot more done when I forget about heroics, even if I’m not really progressing. Anyways, it’ll be a lot easier with the 3.3 system. The only real reason to worry about it now is to get the Proof of Demise achievement before it becomes at Feat of Strength in 3.3, but I’m not sure I can get that anyways. I’m really excited about last night though! Quests were so cool! For those who know, I did the chain in which you start to see a ghost in Icecrown. I don’t want to spoil. I also haven’t finished the chain, so don’t spoil the rest for me!
No more WoW talk.
I’m no longer playing Mafia Wars on my iPhone. I need more people in my mafia to do the new jobs, and I’ve been too lazy to go back to the JPAG thread to get more mafia members. I also stopped playing Sol Free Solitaire and A Quest Of Knights Onrush on my phone. I don’t know why.
inFamous! I haven’t really been playing it at all. I think the first time I played it since the last time I was posted was last night. I’m going to try to put some time into it more, even if it’s just a little. It’s a really fun game, although I think they should stop doing close ups of faces when the shadows are rendered all weird. The graphics are good, so why bother zooming close enough to show that they’re not good? I’m still on the second island and am playing through the hero campaign. Looking forward to finishing it.
I also mentioned last time a possible SelectButton Game Club of either a Donkey Kong Country game or Donkey Kong ’94. Guess what? Like all SBGCs, it didn’t materialize. Harvest Moon DS is another game I was playing that I stopped playing. Oh well. No real reason. But like I said in a previous post, I can’t seem to play Harvest Moon without William also playing Harvest Moon.
Well, that’s everything based on last month’s post. I have played a few other things a little. This morning I picked up Grand Theft Auto for PS1 a bit. Honestly I only played it for a half hour, so I’m not sure it counts. I also played FIFA 10 for the iPhone so I could review it. It was actually really cool, and I’m very impressed it, but it’s not really my type of game. At least the main modes aren’t. The mode where you just try to make/block goals is more my style.
I also started playing Warcraft III to get some of the story and background for World of Warcraft. So far I’ve enjoyed it, but I’m not very far. I just finished the intro in which you play as the Horde. Now I’m at the beginning of the human campaign.
And that’s everything I’ve been playing. Kind of sad. WoW takes up a lot of time. My plan is to finish inFamous, move on to Uncharted 2, and then hopefully play The Ballad of Gay Tony somehow. All of this would be squeezed between World of Warcraft of course, and maybe WC3 occasionally.

FIFA 10

I wrote a review of FIFA 10 for the iPhone recently. I submitted it and it was posted on November 10 over at Game-Boyz. I received the game for free in exchange for writing it, which I feel is important to mention. It’s $9.99 on the App Store today. More information can be found at my previous post. The post on Game-Boyz seems under construction, but the content is there.

Game-Boyz Reviews

I was asked recently to review iPhone games and hardware for Game-Boyz. It seems that the owner of Game-Boyz must have liked my GameFAQs reviews, because he contacted me at the e-mail address I use there. In exchange for writing reviews, I get to keep the software for free. For hardware, I’ve been informed that I can keep cheap hardware for free but not expensive items. I’m very excited about writing for Game-Boyz!
I think it’s important to note that I’m receiving the games for free. I’ll link to this post explaining the situation in future posts regarding the reviews.

Goop

Dear Internet,
Last night there was a power outage. When I started my computer today, my HDD was making bad clicking noises. I wanted to confirm that it was the HDD and not the DVD burner, so I hit eject on my drive. The DVD that was in there was covered in some kind of goop. It looked like honey but smelled like nothing. The computer itself doesn’t have anything on it. Still, it seems like something must have dripped into the drive, but I’m not sure how it made it into the drive without me noticing anything on the outside of the drive or on my case itself. Anyways, I removed my DVD drive for now, and then started the computer again.
Yep, the HDD is still making bad sounds.
Your friend,
Peter

Video Games, Robots, Soda and More

Last night I actually went to bed at 10 and got 10 hours of sleep. I don’t know what made me go to bed so early, but I had some interesting dreams.

 
First, I was in some video game in which the red team was playing against the green team. There was a score at the top, and the first team to reach a predetermined number of points would win. I don’t know how the score was on the “top” because I was in the game; there was no screen. Anyways, you got points for making kills, getting people to enlist in the military, and causing explosions (with cars, I think). There was also some way to get combo points if you cause an explosion correctly and then get someone to enlist.
First, I managed to get somebody to enlist. Then I continued walking. As I walked from town to town like in Pokemon, I came across a place with lots of videogame themed stuff. In the RA’s (yeah, I don’t know) window were Mario toys. Then I found the town’s video game archive. It was huge! I remember specifically seeing the entire Diablo series and Earthworm Jim, although I remember being impressed they they had every major release. After talking to the person who ran it, I found that I could sign up to play and borrow the games without living in the town. I was excited!
In my next dream, Robert, the older brother from Everybody Loves Raymond, was a robot. He was kind of dumb and incompetent, so the woman who owned him wanted to upgrade/fix him. This reminds me of Gir from Invader Zim. She upgraded him, and then he made her some tea. She was worried that he might be evil now, so she asked him to try it first. I guess robots can drink and be poisoned. He was standing on the opposite side of a pit. Both sides had large rails. He extended his robot arms across and took the cup of tea. Then the cup was absorbed into his arms. His arms retracted, and then the cup emerged. He drank it an was fine. Then it was discovered that the computer that reprogrammed him was evil. We needed to destroy it! Apparently it was a video game. I went with Robert to kill it. The fight was a light gun battle with the computer plugged into the tv. I had the Super Scope. Robert was worried that he didn’t have a light gun. After I told him to concentrate, his hand turned into an NES Zapper. Somehow the computer was able to shoot at us through the tv. Luckily, we defeated her. Robert and I were very excited! Also defeating the “boss” unlocked additional modes for Antonio. It was here that Robert turned into Antonio.
In another dream, I was with my dad at a convenience store attempting to buy soda and some sort of creme pie snacks. Outside of the dream I also want to buy both these things, so that must be why I was dreaming about it. I couldn’t find the snacks, and they didn’t have any of the sodas I wanted. I was looking for Cherry Dr. Pepper, Cherry Coke, Cherry Pepsi, Pepsi, Coke, or Dr. Pepper (my priority was cherry), but they didn’t have any.
In another dream I had two different Starbucks locations in my phone for some reason. There was also something about going back to a hotel/restaurant I had been at before because they remembered me. My mom thought this was a good idea. Then she wanted to know where I wanted to be dropped off, and I said that Carl’s Jr. would be fine.
Okay, that’s all I can remember now.

Secret Scarlet Monastery Room Dream

This morning I had a dream in which element of World of Warcraft existed in real life. I was exploring SM with gem when we discovered a secret door. It took us to a new part of the dungeon. It was a very large room with smaller rooms inside. The large was the size of a convention hall, and the smaller rooms were sort of like cubicles. It was really scary, but I’m not sure why. There were large doors/furnaces all around. There was some sort of creature that could possess the doors/furnaces and reach out from them. It could only possess one at a time, and it was looking for us. gem wanted to stay, but I was scared so I ran out and dragged her with me.
Later I had trouble looking for my car, and Antonio agreed to drive me to my car. We talked about the dungeon I found, and he said it was a secret dungeon and that I could have solo’d it.