Amnesia

Wow. Just wow.

A while back, I was quite skeptical that we would ever be able to safely grant Stephen Hawking a trip into space. Peter Diamandis founder of the X Prize, retells the story below and I for one was grateful that Dr. Hawking’s dream was realized.

Thanks, Gary for sending me the link to this site. There are wonderful videos on this site as well, so make sure you take a look.

I mean, Warcraft.

First off, Age of Conan takes itself way too seriously. Sure, you get to chop off heads and taunt your victims while headbutting them in the face as they splash you with their blood. You also get to see boobies and cavort with whores and thieves. Yet, after a few levels of broken quests and memory leaks which crash you to desktop, the cool stuff is drastically overshadowed.

I would argue even, that the graphics try to be too good, constantly bogging down a decent system. A lot of my friends would have needed to spend mucho money upgrading their rigs to see the game at its full glory or even make it playable with frustration levels hovering around 5-8 FPS. Mind you, the world is absolutely beautiful if you’ve got the equipment to display it. With DX10 support coming soon, gamers who spend the money to upgrade to cards supporting the feature will probably be blown away.

It’s just a shame that the other 90 percent of the player base won’t ever get to see that except through screen shots.

Another thing not helping Age of Conan, is the art of the armor and weapons. Most people who play MMO’s take pride in beating a particularly hard boss for the loot. You can imagine the disappointment when you’ve reached the level cap of 80 and you still look like you shop at the Salvation Army. Frankly the NPC’s have better looking gear.

Earning money in the game is extremely hard to do as well, level 1-40. When AoC first launched, to purchase a mount at level 40, you needed a total of 3 gold. I was very well frustrated to find that despite the small and expensive bag space, no amount of selling vendor trash was going to get me a much needed horse. The zones are huge. At level 40, I had approximately 50 silver to my name.

They’ve since lowered the price of the mount to 75 silver, but I’m sure the riding book is still 2 gold. Unless they adjust the prices of vendor trash, one will need to be creative in obtaining enough gold to do anything. While the economy in the auction house was trying to settle, I took advantage of buying leather low and selling it for a profit.

I hate doing that. It’s such a waste of time.

Not to mention, once you hit 50, gold production is drastically increased, but at that point, it just sits in your bag. There is absolutely nothing to spend it on.

The good things going for Age of Conan are few, but they do exist. The combat system is beyond a doubt one of the best I’ve had the privilege to play. It’s not a one button click-fest. While most MMO’s depend on group strategy when working together, success hinges on the actions of each player, whether soloing an instance or working together in a group.

Speaking of solo instances, this is another feature that really shines in AoC. You can immerse yourself into your own little world away from guilds or parties while fighting instances specifically designed for a solo player. It fully enables the gamer to level up when the multi-player situation is too much, or not enough.

I do feel abit cheated now that I look back. AoC was released for mass consumption too early IMO and it seems that Funcom expected the player base to pay for a beta. With the impending (and now delayed) release of Warhammer, I’m sure they felt a product in any state would be a significant advantage over their newest competitor. The cool factor drew most of us in, but after escaping the first zone at level 20, there were significant problems waiting for us. In some cases, unforgivable problems that really minimized enjoyment of the game.

Lack of customer service added to the problem, and while the subscription service was easy enough to navigate, any in-game issues were for a good part ignored, due to lack of agents and GMs. If you do not have the infrastructure to handle a big player base, you shouldn’t really be in the MMO business.

I’ve since cancelled my monthly subscription and from what I’ve read, a lot of others have done the same. I was going to sit on my hands or finish playing CoD4, but instead was convinced to go back to World of Warcraft after a two year hiatus.

So far, it’s been nothing but fun.

Tomorrow, I will discuss the pros and very little cons that make up the biggest MMO in gaming history; World of Warcraft.

My video reaction to the conclusion of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is below. It does give a spoiler, so if you haven’t watched it, don’t watch this. If you have, you’ll get exactly what I was talking about.

EDIT: Finally found a plugin that actually works! You should be able to see the video now, instead of downloading it.

If you use podpress, you will receive an error when trying to post or edit a post in Internet Explorer.

You have two options:

Install and use firefox. No issues have cropped up just yet.

Deactivate podpress until a fix comes out.

If you haven’t upgraded yet, I’d wait a few days until a few of the bugs that have appeared are coded and patched.

I absolutely love this. I would rank it as one of my favorite commercials. I don’t know if it’s because I remember singing this song in elementary school, or the fact that Discovery is right, the world is an awesome place! If you haven’t seen it, watch this. You won’t be disappointed, even if you aren’t a DC addict as I so happen to claim.

The best part, is that it’s really a ‘thank you’ to both Momma Terra and the channel’s viewers without being pretentious.

Oh, and Mike Rowe. Mmmmm.

Yummy.

I have been having  some hosting issues and haven’t been able to get to my site for the past 24 hours, but it seems to be resolved now, after 3 hours on the phone this morning with Cox Communications and Bluehost. 

I found Twitter in my boredom and absolutely love it. If you are a member, let me know and I’ll add you to my friends list. If you scroll to the bottom of my site, you can see I’ve added a Twitter link, where you can see all the little musings of peeps to whom I’ve subscribed.

I upgraded wordpress this morning too, so hopefully everything still works!

What have you been up to this morning?

A few weeks ago, Shawn Powers asked if I’d be willing to do a quick interview type of read for a Linux Journal podcast product review. Naturally, I jumped at the chance! It’s a short piece of work, but I had a ton of fun watching the finished product and hope that I can do it again!

That WII remote isn’t just for video game bowling or tennis anymore! Check out this amazing video which can make any projection surface or LCD monitor/laptop into a interactive whiteboard, for peanuts.

Thanks for the linkage, Gary.

I am only getting worse, health wise, so my promise of original content has to wait hopefully just one more day. Instead, read this piece I wrote for Pete.

Don’t Get in the Choppah!

I really don’t like to complain. I really don’t. I slept a total of 18 hours last night into today. I am pretty sure I either have the flu or the beginnings of bronchitis/pneumonia. Brain isn’t working and neither is the cough syrup.

Anyone got any good chicken soup recipes? You are up against my own terrific Polish recipe, so beware, I will be judging with quite the skeptic eye. Don’t you just love challenges in which you are up against horrible odds?

So what do I have for you today?

How about the $2 billion helicopter order that the US Government revealed has one teenie, weenie and minor flaw. It can’t fly in weather above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m not kidding you. Military vehicles are often made without air conditioning to improve on performance, cut down on weight and to save on fuel, so they’re going to have to go back and retrofit these choppers with some cooling. If the outside temperature is above the 80 degree threshold, the cockpit temps soar to 104, both dangerous for the pilots and soldiers riding along and possibly shutting down the vital instruments to keep the thing in the air.

One senator suggested we scrap the entire order at tax payer expense and just order Blackhawks instead.

Why aren’t we going back to the manufacturer and demanding they fix this stuff for free? The designs should have been a red flag to any experienced engineer and frankly if the helo can’t operate in temperatures found almost anywhere on the globe except maybe Antarctica, it should be their issue to fix them at their expense.

It’s time to hold military contractors responsible for their own mistakes instead of passing the cost of repairs or retrofits to the taxpayers. God help them if I were a contract consultant in Washington, half of the companies who do business with the US would be blacklisted.

Here’s hoping they do the right thing for once.

Again, no, it’s not that kind of acid. I’ve been having a lot of fun with this Sony program, so for your enjoyment, here’s another dance/classical/rock fusion I put together. I actually like this one, alot.

Without further ado, here is “Down the Hill With No Handlebars” by Kate Baker.

Let me know what you think!