1) No Nobuo

The disappearance of his musical scores in the Final Fantasy series is more apparent than Snow’s douchebag demeanor. There are a few tracks here and there that are composed well, however, I want to know why they hired Asimo as the musical director. No, musical director, I don’t want listen to Japanese Pop when there’s a pivotal scene. No, musical director, I don’t want to listen to a harmonica every time you have a dialogue with Sahz. No, musical director, I don’t want to listen David Sanborn while blasting through The Vile Peaks. Come back Nobuo, this is getting ridiculous.

2) Akward Silences

It took me awhile to figure out why I feel uncomfortable listening to the dialogue, but I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t like listening to actors that sound as if they forgot their lines while opposite actors will try to play charades to give them a hint on what to say. No really, I get it, some things are lost in translation and there must be extra pauses added in to dub the English so it matches the Japanese mouthing but for me, it’s like trying to watch a sitcom while muting the laugh box.

3) Diarrhea Dialogue

The romance between Snow and Serah is one that is typically present in a FF series and the only reason I could put up with it in the past is because I would read it in a monotone voice like Ben Stein. Now I have to sit through these cinematics and listen to what appears to be an animated series of Rock of Love. Not to mention Serah looks no older than 13 which makes the dialogue much more disturbing than tub girl.

4) Vanille

Never thought I’d say this but someone kick this drunk girl out of the bar before she gets anymore wasted. Don’t argue with me, she’s not giddy and innocent — she’s just a rundown barfly, loaded up with gin and tonics on the beaches of Bodum, mixed with the exposure of the awful clothes people wear there, which in turn creates a borderline retarded chick whose personality is a bit brighter than Forrest Gump’s.

5) Yuj

Demo Yuj on left, Final Yuj on the right. I’d really like to punch the guy in the face who decided to use the latter. I have to use my whole body to hate this character. Screw you asshole.

I don’t hate this game. I actually really like it, but as I progress through it, its little crap like this that bugs me. I can’t be the only one annoyed by this.

Unfortunately, lately I have been noticing that I no longer am looking forward to new games.  I constantly find myself searching through my old video game collection to play through the classics again.  Even today, I had a discussion with a co-worker about a little shop down the street that still sells the old cartridges for NES/SNES/Genesis/etc..  We reminisced about games like Chrono Trigger, Super Castlevania, and more.  Now, I am not going to sit here and bash all new games, there are still a good amount coming out that I look forward to.  However, for the most part, they are made solely by 1-2 developers and I will talk about them here in a second (i.e. Blizzard and SquareEnix).

I admit, I am an avid collector of classic video game series.  I own all of the Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil series.  I have a lust for Squaresoft/SquareEnix and Blizzard games.  I recently went through Final Fantasy 3 again and am about to go through Final Fantasy IV and V again in preparation for Final Fantasy XIII (hey, what do you know, another SquareEnix game).  I’m doing the same with Starcraft and Diablo as their new games get closer and closer to release date (more Blizzard games!).

My questions is, what is it nowadays that makes the majority of new games coming out non-enjoyable?  Is it the price?  Maybe sub-par gameplay?  Maybe it’s the lackluster stories?  Are most games too easy today?  Any of these questions could be the answer to any number of new games coming out on the market.  Every single one of those reasons has been a reason why I have not picked up a game at some point or another over the past 5 years or so.  The only two games I can honestly say that I have bought and enjoyed over the past 5 years have been FFXII and Demon’s Souls.  Demon’s Souls is a game that is very challenging and allows me to reminisce about old, hard, games like Ninja Gaiden and others.  It’s the best game on the PS3 in my opinion, simply because it’s the only game that actually brought me back for more.

So, by now maybe there are many who would venture to disagree with me on this topic.  Maybe you think there are plenty of great games out there that have come out in the past 5 years.  I am ready to hear about them.  Write me comments about games you think contradict my view.  Please, help me see the light in this abyss of sub-par video games over the past few years.  But please do one thing before doing so.  Think about those games that I talked about before.  Those games that you fell head over heels for when you first unwrapped it and plugged/slid it in to play.  If you don’t get that same feeling from any of these new games out, then why bother?  Why bother playing them when you can get a better feeling by playing the oldies?

Here’s to hoping the hardmodes give us something to chew on and Icecrown lives up to the standards put forth by climactic raid zones of the past.

If the Colosseum wasn’t laughable in and of itself, they’re recycling and bastardizing more classic content.  Onyxia is on deck, complete with a refurbished Vis’kag the Bloodletter, Deathbringer, and Quel’serrar.  I’m as sentimental as the next guy, but the recycled content in this expansion has grown tiresome.

One nice thing about the casual state of the game is that it takes little to no time to get toons “raid ready”.  My rogue has been 80 for exactly 2 weeks and it’s more or less ready for hardmode Ulduar, minus a couple pieces of gear which I expect to have during this week’s raid lockout.  All achieved by running 5-man dungeons, pug raid content, 10-mans, and daily quests.  Huzzah…

Not a chance.

I’m playing DotA with Kurkis and the other WoW guys.  I’m playing TF2 with Smashylarry and Ziros and Odd and other choice WoW vets.  I’m debating checking out the HoN beta (a DotA clone).  I’m leveling a fucking Rogue alt in WoW.  I am doing some light reading (which makes me feel mildly productive) - Philip K. Dick novels and some other classic Sci-Fi.  I’ve got a copy of "Choke" sitting on my desk that I haven’t watched, next to the copy of "The Wrestler" that I want to watch again.  In short: It’s 100 degrees and cloudless outside and I’d never know it if I didn’t look at the window.

And what is it about competitive PvP gaming that brings out the worst in people?  I’ve been playing DotA for three days and if the learning curve in that game wasn’t steep enough with the 50+ heroes to select from and the staggering itemization choices, you’ve got some 12-year-old korean on the other team telling you how good your mother was last night while he farms your toon.  The icing on the cake is when tells you to just quit and uninstall.  Not even Kurkis’ magic dust can save our DotA team…

@Tippo.  Come game it up with us.

@Ashy.  Let’s play some TF2

Back with more in a few days.

This wasn’t just an end-zone boss kill - it was end-zone boss kill when all the chips were down.  After a staggering amount of turnover and roster change from the start of Ulduar, we put ourselves back in the US top-30, after being Top-100 only weeks ago.  In that time, we’ve been spit on, poached, laughed at, and abandoned.  We’ve been told we were washed up.  We’ve had people log into our vent calling us “Has Beens, Woulda Beens, Shoulda Beens”.  People doubted us, called our successes a fluke, didn’t think we could hold a top standing.  So here it is…

And for the record - the actuall kill was closer to US 21st or 22nd.  With the way scoring works on WoW Progress, we got bumped 7 or 8 slots back in ranking by guilds that got the kill hours after us.  It is what it is.

We’ve got Alone in the Darkness to keep us occupied, and hopefully some more PTR work to get our feet wet with 3.2.

/Salute to the team and to Kurkis (The Magic Man) in particular.  I’m pretty sure he made this win possible for the guild.

I need to write more, hopefully now that the stress is off I’ll have more time to play here.  See you guys in a few days…

Sorry for the fruity looking achievments, I SSed that off the WoW armory.

And the kill shot, with our smiling e-mugs:

Credits go to:  Just, Hexagram, Rollins, Talifey, Arriellwine, Triess, Phoa, Preachers, Rapida, and Asper (lol-app).

To the folks that have jumped ship on us recently without word or warning:  May Drow’s hard work and commitment to making our players better, faster, and stronger pay-off for you.

Logged back in, started loading back into Dalaran, machine locked up.  3rd times a charm…

Lucky number three, yet another lock-up loading into Dalaran.  Fuck this.  My PC doesn’t deserve this shit.

Made a level 1 alt, loaded in just fine.  Ran around and did a quest to make sure I wasn’t imagining things, hit level 2, no lock-ups, no CTDs.  I don’t know why this would fix anything but at this point I’m willing to suspend my disbelief…

Tried loading back into Dalaran after my level 1 expedition, was able to load in this time.  Ran straight to the JC trainer to take some notes on the profession changes.  Found the vendor, started sifting through recipes, looking at the new epic cuts, noting gem costs.  Forty-five seconds of productivity on the PTR, and then a CTD.  “Fuck it”

Loaded in one more time and started snapping off screenshots to circumvent the innevitable CTD.  Got what I needed and logged off.

Here’s the documentation:

Cost of new recipes: 5 Jeweler’s Tokens

New epic gems are on par with current Stormjewel values:

Epic gems cost 10-20 badges:

Stormjewels are getting nerfed:

JC profession gems getting buffed:

Otherwise this week has been slow.   4th of July is one of the hollidays I dread the most - it definitely rivals Christmas in terms of team absences.  Not really sure why, but it does.  People love to burn chicken on the grill and blow shit up.  We didn’t get much done in the way of progression raiding, but we have tonight and tomorrow to catch up on hardmodes, and of course our hour on Algalon.

It’s possible our 10s comp will see an Algalon kill this week, however.  Stay tuned for that.

As promised, the fruitcake.  Recipe courtesy of Adap0 (extra nut):

]]> http://www.drow.org/blog/2009/07/05/ptr-fireworks-and-fruitcakes/feed/ http://www.drow.org/blog/2009/06/29/call-the-fire-deptartment/ http://www.drow.org/blog/2009/06/29/call-the-fire-deptartment/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:59:02 +0000 Rollins http://www.drow.org/blog/?p=206 Two hardmodes in one week, that’s a GG in my book.  This puts us at US 48th.

Mimiron’s hard-mode is one of those unforgiving encounters with a thousand-and-one ways to die, and it takes nothing short of every member in your raid learning how to keep themselves alive under pressure if you want to get the kill.

You have to dodge landmines.  You have to run from the spreading fires. You have to avoid the emergency bots bobbing around the room dousing the  fires.  You have to dodge aerial rocket strikes.  You have to run from plasma blasts and laser beams, while avoiding more fires and landmines and the frost-bombs Mimiron deploys to help his emergency bots put out the fires, all while trying to kill the boss under the strict confines of an enrage timer…

It’s serious.

And you need every last second you can spare with the 10 minutes you’re allotted, because when the timer is up your raid goes down in flames, and you’re singing that old familiar sad-bastard tune of a 1%-wipe:

We should have had this kill last night but couldn’t squeeze out the DPS required.  Chalk up the failures to landmines, or fires, or landmines hidden in fire, or plasma blasts and aerial rockets, you name it…  The end result was a frustrating night of sub-5% wipes.

So we went back to the drawing board and came in tonight with some strat changes designed to milk a few more seconds off the clock.  We didn’t like what we saw, went back to our original strategy, and delivered a kill about an hour into the evening.

Yogg 1-light is all that stands between us and our Glory of the Ulduar Raider achievments, so expect to hear about that soon.  An Algalon kill is in our sights as well…

Beyond progression raiding there’s a lot happening within the guild, and within the game, that deserves mention.

Our healing officer, Hexagram, completed his legendary mace - Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings.  Huge congratulations to him for that.  It’s not as pivotal for progression as some of the other legendaries we’ve seen such as Thunderfury or the Warglaives of Azzinoth, but it’s a great item and more than anything else it serves as a token of respect from the guild to Hex, so it’s newsworthy to me regardless.

On the horizon:  The 3.2 PTR is up with a huge batch of content being added to the game.  There are class changes on deck, a brand-spankin’-new 5-man dungeon, 10 and 25-man raid zones (each with normal and hardmode lockout timers, and some interesting achievments >.>), profession changes - the list goes on.  I’ve got my character copied over to the Test Realms but unfortunately haven’t had the time to log on and check things out first hand.

More on all that when we get around to testing it.  Lots of griping to be done over the priest nerfs, to be sure…

- Rollins

Took a break from the WoW scene before WotLK dropped, came back in April to see if the game had changed for the better.  What I found was a heaping pile of guild strife and challenging content.

We’ve been hard at work, repairing the ship Steve built, check the résumé:

And our progress on the 25-man equivalent:

And some 10-man Algalon progress:

We’ve got Mimiron, One-Light, and Algalon ahead of us for the serious challenges, and while I’m not jazzed about facing nerfed content a kill is a kill, and the team is showing  serious promise.  Props to Blizzard for delivering a rewarding and challenging zone after a hefty lull of engaging content during WotLK’s initial release.

More to come from Team Bluebird, stay tuned.

Rollins