Yup. Still here.

Yea this is still a thing folks. I haven't forgotten about it. I just took a break from writing crap is all. I've been playing lots of game actually, since getting a better Internet connection. I'm overloaded with games practically. And there's also that other thing I have to do called "work"... ugh you don't even want to know what's going on there. I may have to start a Live Journal for that mess.

But yes, I have been playing a lot of games lately since upgrading to Comcast. For one, I've gotten back into playing good ol' Team Fortress 2. It's been a full on year since I last bothered with this game. Lots has changed about it. Like the incredible amounts of hats and weapons. So many items man. It's almost like it's an RPG but not really. But it's been pretty decent so far. All I ever play is 2Fort maps though. Ehh, I've always been like that, since classic TF... the original Quake mod folks, not that half-assed Valve knocked off (sorry fanyboys).

I've also been playing Left 4 Dead 2 as well. And what made me get back into it was the Workshop mods. Workshop is pretty darn cool if you ask me. Sure it's not as robust of a mod collection service. But there's enough in there to hold my interest for a good while. Macho Man Tank mod. Get it! It's worth it trust me.

Oh yeah.... I resubbed to WoW. You can shoot me later I guess. I don't know. I got a hankering to level my alts again. I got my Monk passed the Outlands content. So we're doing good ol' Wrath baby stuff now. It's still leagues better than Burning Crusade. I'm sorry guys. I still stand by Wrath of the Lich King being a good expansion. My first real raids came out of there. And I liked the badge system. Oh I appreciated that system so much compared to the crap in MoP.... which is still a Rep grind most of the way. But they're apparently changing all of that in 5.3... yeah how convenient for them, right? They do this shit all of the time guys. I get sick of hearing apologist podcasts acting surprised when Blizzard decides to increase the XP gains mid-expansion. THEY DO THIS EVERY EXPANSION DUDE! They don't want players plowing through six years worth of game development in a matter of  2 weeks. So they make it grindy as fuck to keep every one at bay, except the no-lifer-top-raiding-guilds (yes I went there) because those guys you can't slow down. They know this. Come the half-way mark of the Expansion or close to the final raid is when they up the XP gains for everyone.
Anyways I could go on for hours about this. Which begs to question: Why am I playing this game again? Well today I kind of came to the realization that that i don't really hate the game so much as I do not being able to get what I want when I want it on the spot like we had in Wrath. Wrath was great for a player like me. But on the other side of that coin I always enjoyed the story, the characters, and rolling alts. Leveling Alts is actually kind of relaxing for me. Much in the same way playing Minecraft was. Now there's a game I can't pick up and play anymore.
But to be truthful for once, I don't hate World of Warcraft. I take my breaks when I need it. And three months down the the road I always pick it back up. I just hated how I couldn't get into Raiding like I wanted to this expansion. And I hated the "not-required" Daily Quest grinds for rep and purples in order to gear up for 1st tier LFR. I would have much rather preferred running Heroics 5-mans for my raid gear. You know, like it use to be Blizzard?

Other than that nonsense, yeah gaming is back in business for me. I have a lot of stuff on the Twitch channel from past streams of these games. Nothing much yet going on for YouTube content. I'm kind of in a pickle with what software to use for editing video and such. I'm almost thinking of paying for a Adobe Premiere subscription. We'll have to see if the price is right for what I want to do.

Some updates

Internets = srs.biz. Parody motivator. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

EDIT: I was extremely tired while writing this post. I didn't bother with reading it over before hitting the Published button.... I need to figure out how to make money off the Internet like Totalbiscuit.

Well it's certainly been a while since I've updated the ol' blog here. I've been working quite a bit off and on. Just upgraded our Internet provider to a faster connection last Wednesday. So what's all this Internet talking jazz mean?

Better video quality for one thing. Part of the reason why most of my videos were uploads directly from TwitchTV streams was due to bandwidth limits I've had. I was on a lousy 3Mbps DSL connection for two years. And to be honest, I was hardly getting that half the time. So it's a major upgrade. And with that I can do better video quality on YouTube and TwitchTV. It really is an improvement.

I'm already at work with some ideas I've had lying in the back of my head for quite some time. One is doing some video reviews of Free2Play type games. Hell, I have all this bandwidth now and there are dozens, if not hundreds of these games out there. Why not do some videos on them?

Planetside 2. That's still a thing. I recently jumped back into. I have no freaking clue what to do. I was in the closed beta for it and I didn't learn much from that experience then. But I have some experience with the first Planetside game. I know what it's about. And I'm one of those guys who can play a game incorrectly and still have fun with it. So look forward to some videos coming out of that in the future. Planetside 2 does a good job of bringing out my crazy side. Cap n Murica is back! (My alter-ego character whatever the hell it is... I always wanted to be a redneck).

Guild Wars 2 is still going through. I've just reached level 35 on my Ranger. Still enjoying the hell out of sPvP/WvW (look at me with the termonology!). So there will obviously be more streams of that game going on. I love the game what can I say?

How about World of Warcraft? Well that game is on hiatus. Not a permanent one. But ever since I began playing Guild Wars 2, I just have no interest right now in continuing to pay the $15 bucks a month deal just to do fucking daily quests, and sit in a 2 hour LFR queue. And the PvP is broken. There's nothing there for me, and I feel it's no longer worth the money. Not to mention the bad taste Blizzard left in my mouth with the Anal (sic) Long Pass I ponied up for last year. I'm really seeing the light of how this game needs to evolve passed it's click-target-hot-keys ways. Really all MMO following this blue print needs to evolve.

I had a funny idea a few weeks ago of doing a series of Let's Plays based on popular Facebook games. Yes that's right. Facebook games. Has anyone done this before? I don't know. I haven't bothered to really look on Youtube for any. But I still think it's a funny idea. We'll have to see if I am truly willing to torture myself with it all.

And finally I ... well... here I have a Tumblr page now. Yeah I know what you're probably thinking. Look, if anyone knows me well out there, I don't always stick to my guns on things. Loyalty on the Internet is about as good as your options.  Anyways I made a Tumblr page because there's some folks from YouTube I wanted to follow on there. Twitter is kind of losing it's novelty with me. Since I gave up my Wrasslin Addiction, I kind of have no need for Twitter now. Tumblr is sort of like Twitter and well it's a good place for me to throw up (literally!) the garbage that comes out of my mind on a daily basis. So there's that. http://punctured3d.tumblr.com

Anyways, that's what up. I'll still blog on here regardless of the Tumblr Log. That's completely different from what I put on the blog.

Planetside 2 - It's a War Man!

No, it's not that High Quality Video Content I promised in my last post. Mainly because I'm an idiot when it comes to Xsplit configurations and can't figure out how to get the video stream to be at least 720p. I got it up to 480p though. So it's a start.

Anyways enjoy this 40+ minutes of me dying and cursing a lot at Crookzy. You disgusting furry!

All year long there has been an ongoing theme with my blog posts revolving around games I’ve been disappointed with. I believe I’ve unintentionally done a very good impression of the Francis character from YouTube with my knee-jerk reactions towards these games.So much so that I had to stop writing and tell myself to calm the hell down. With all due to respect to Boogie2998, he’s about 5 of me put all together.

 I still stand my ground with the Wii U and Nintendos inability to provide good any games for this system. But to be fair, I didn’t do my research before buying the damn thing, and it’s my own fault really. We’re talking about a console that’s predecessor has a poor quality of library titles to pick from. And I actually thought about it later on. “What games was I looking forward to playing on this system anyways?”. The only real franchises I’m interested in is the Metroid and Zelda games. Mario is at the very bottom of that list. And I know full well third-party support for Nintendo consoles have been an abysmal low since the Gamecube really. So again, what was I looking to get out of this console that I could not get out of the Xbox of Playstation?

Moving on, Diablo III came to mind tonight. And I did do a little back-tracking with my initial arguments on the game upon it’s launch a year ago. Like a lot of folks, I was greatly disappointed by the game. More so to do with the actual content of the game, than over the silly Error 37 debacle. I’m not stating people didn’t have a right to be pissed off about that course. After all, I like many other noted YouTube gamers said the Always-On DRM shit would be a major issue for gamers. Look no further than launch day WoW expansions where players are unable to launch the game, or connect. When you have a major title such as Diablo III was, and a large player base interest things will always go wrong on the first day. No one regardless of how massive your company is, will be prepared for that sort of demand. It would be like if Walmart only sold Playstation 4s, and only had about 1000 units to sell for the first week. If they were the only seller in town, you can bet your ass they’d sell out within minutes, and a lot of people would be left with nothing on the first day.

So after I calmed down about Diablo III’s story sucking ass, and a shit ending, I went back to play the game a few months later. And Blizzard had improved the game a lot. Not the story of course. But the gameplay still felt fun. I didn’t mind the homogenized talent tree really. I know many hardcore players hated it to pieces because it wasn’t a complex mess they could do mathematics with. But for me it worked fine. I enjoyed rolling a Monk on Hardcore mode. He hasn’t died yet.

Overall much of what made the original Diablo and Diablo II a good game to me is in this game. And perhaps I was a bit unfair on some parts. I really thought it over you know. Diablos story was never ground breaking stuff. And part of why I loved Diablo was just getting loot and thrashing through mobs. I’d say the only thing that sucks about Diablo III is the Always-On DRM, Mainly because what a lot of people loved about the other Diablos was just launching a trainer and doing what they wanted with the game. Blizzard took that away from us. I know a lot of players played the game online for PVP and such. I wasn’t really one of those players though. I just preferred to go solo and did what I wanted with the game. We can’t do that in Diablo III and that fucking sucks Blizzard. I’m not sorry.

You could even argue about the inability to mod the game as well. There’s a few mods out there for Diablo II that changes the game. And again we can’t do that with Diablo III. Blizzard worried so much over Blackmarket Gold Sellers and really forgot what made the original games so beloved. There’s no real community for this game now. And there will probably never be one. Chew on that Blizz.

My point about this post is that from now on I am going to stop with the knee-jerk reactions and really do my homework before crowning a game a complete failure. Hindsight is 20/20 right?

Although Aliens Colonial Marines is a shit fucking game, isn’t it? My uncle bought the game after I saw the bad reviews for it. Here’s the best part: He loves it. He’s still playing it on his Xbox. That’s my uncle for you. He loves the Prometheus movie as well. I know he’s watched it over 5 times now and told me it’s one of the best sci-fi movies he’s seen in a long time. *Shrugs*.

I stand by the Colonial Marines reviews though. After playing it, beating it, and then trying to forget it. It definitely is a shit fucking game guys. There was so much potential for this game too. I mean with the co-op in mind, I was thinking like a lot of others about the possibility of having an Aliens themed Left4Dead game. I still want that. Someone needs to just take the Left4Dead Source SDK and make that game at least. If the family who produced the worst game of the year, Revelations 2012, anyone can do it.

Anyways here’s hoping for a better blog on here.

[Old Games Playthrough] Quake Part One

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Game: Quake
Mods: Darkplaces Engine
Epiquake Sound replacement Pack
Difficulty: Hard
Notes: Partial playthrough levels 1 - 4 of Episode One. To be continued.

Our new Overlords.....

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Last night I ran my first dungeon in Guild Wars 2. And my oh my what an experience that was. It makes World of Warcraft Raids seem like Minecraft on Peaceful Mode. Everything I ever knew about raiding/dungeon runs were thrown right out the window.

I ran one of the special Living Story events going on called Molten Weapons Facility. There's apparently several of these dungeons scattered through the Norn and Charr zones. I grouped up with 5 people. The dungeon scales you to level 80 upon entering the instance. However, as I learned, none of that really matters, because it's basically taking a leveling 80 and putting them in level 15 gear. In other words, it's probably more about the gear and class abilities than anything else.

Now I was level 23 when I did this dungeon. And it whooped my ass good, as you can see in the video I embeded. I live streamed this 2hour long run last night. The people involved I don't know. Just randoms who invited me into their group. But they were pretty damn good most of the time. The final boss fight is a real fucking bitch. I mean the mechanics are such bullshit at times. Come to think of it, all of it was bullshit. Not in an unfair way. But in a “If you don't know the basics, you're fucked! Lol!” kind of way. Which is where I was. Someone in the party asked me what my DP was. I had no clue what that was or where to look for it. It's your Downed Health Pool or something to that effect. I don't know. But there you go. I'm a total noob still.

Anyways after 6 wipes on the final boss encounter, we downed those fuckers (well the group did. I died a lot). That was the longest fight ever. I would dare say longer than any major boss fight in the World of Warcraft, that's I've ever done. Seriously. Props to ArenaNet for making a 5-man dungeon feel brutal and challenging. Something WoW can't pull off because the engine is so old and limited.

Which begs to challenge Blizzard: You should probably make a World of Warcraft 2... just saying. 8 years is long enough for a Modified Warcraft III Engine.

This game has left such an impression on me that if WoW comes up I'm think, “Why would I want to go back to that?”. Nostalgia isn't why because Blizzard killed that with Cataclysm basically.

Whereas a game like Everquest, it still has nostalgia to go back to, in one form or another.

Overall, I got my ass kicked hardcore last night, and enjoyed every bit of it. You can hear it through out my video. I hadn't expressed anything like that in an MMO in a long ass time. Thankyou ArenaNet. My new Lord of the MMO.

And then it all jelled together..

I had that moment tonight. That moment where everything came together and made perfect sense to me.

Yes this is another Guild Wars 2 post. I've found the game that makes me forget about World of Warcraft.
I had off today from work. So I spent a good 4 hours running through Guild Wars, leveling up a Ranger. Taking down Veterens Bosses, and events with loads of players. So many players in fact that during the Maw boss event, I was played in an Overflow queue because there were too many people. It reminded me of Wintergrasp back in WoW, when the zone would reach over 200 players and you were instantly kicked out of the zone. I hated that so much during Wrath.

Eventually I got back in and helped out during the Pre Maw phase. It's an interesting dynamic really. It's like being in a massive raid, but without forming a raid.. if that makes any sense I guess. But it all worked out in the end. We took the guy down, and a big chest popped up. Every one involved got some loot. The loot I grabbed was good... even I was playing the professions the loot was made for of course.
I have a bunch of exotics I can't use because I am a Ranger and restricted to swords, bows, shortbows, and leather armor. I ended up saving these items though because I have a characters who could use them items.
There was one item my Ranger could use, and it was a two-handed sword, with a plus to healing and some sort of bleeding effect sigil on it. I would prefer either Precision or Condition Damage, but I'll take what i can get. It does more damage over all compared to my other sword.

The Ranger is an interesting class that I am finding myself becoming more comfortable with as I play it. I like the idea of switching back and forth between ranged and melee when I need to. I do fairly well in melee combat believe it or not. It has this Pally/Rogue kind of vibe going on where I do a lot of evasive attacks while having the ability to throw down an AoE Healing ground spell which anyone around me can take advantage of.
I like this the most about GW2. Every one can heal in this game. Everyone benefits from helping each other. There is no kill-stealing. No ninja-looting. No loot drama. If you die, you can help rez the person back on to their feet, and you're right back into the battle. Granted that person risks getting knocked down as well.

That moment I was referring to earlier, was just that. This game has made cooperation with other players in an MMO setting easy and painless. It's fun! I was running around doing events and in Map Chat (general chat basically), everyone was posting Way Points to Bosses that spawned, or big events, etc. It's something I have never experienced in any MMO I played since the dawn of Everquest 1. This is just the tip of the iceberg though. I'm only experiencing the very early levels of this game. I keep hearing things about Dragon Events and Guild Missions, and Dungeons (which I will get to in a moment). It sounds like there is a hell of a lot going on in this game. And that's a great thing to hear.

I mentioned Dungeons... well this probably the one portion the game I find odd. In WoW you can start running Dungeons as early as level 15. Technically you can run them earlier than that, but not through the Dungeon Finder.
In Guild Wars 2, it seems that you can't do this. My guild mates were talking about this today when someone asked if they were ready for a dungeon. The person was only level 14, and was told not by a long shot. So I'm curious to find out what level you can do this, and why it is people are saying the Dungeons are extremely difficult to do.

Anyways, getting back to the moment when everything came together for me. When I doing the Maw Event tonight, I was in a massive group of people. So bad that it actually lagged my game out some. My frames dropped to like 11 fps during that fight. Ouch!
But after everything was said and done, I realized why everything is setup this way. Why it was so simple for everyone to gather up so quickly to take down this boss. And why the level for it was set so low. I was level 15 during this event. This is the raiding of GW2. It's designed this way so that just anyone, can join in the action, experience an epic fight, and get some loot. It's everything raids in games like WoW has. But done better.
There is no need to form a raid group. No need to summon anyone. If you have the Waypoint already on the map, you can easily jump in the fight. Since everyone has healing abilities, there's no need to have a main healer assigned. Technically there's no need for a Tank class to be assigned either. Tanking is weird in this game to say the least. The aggro system is kind of wonky, and spastic. Like the mobs just randomly attack whoever is nearby regardless of who's attacking it basically. I'm not sure if i like this or not. But so far so good I guess.
My point on all of this is that ArenaNet has managed to due away with the conventional headaches of MMO games. I bitched a few weeks ago on here about there being no carrot-on-a-stick mechanic. There is such a thing in this game. It's just hidden soo well, that you don't even think about it anymore. They didn't take away gear progression like I assumed they did. It's still there. What they did take away was the feeling of the grind to getting there.
Once I started playing on this new server, that is full of players fighting a long side each other, the game became fun for me. All of a sudden, things started to jell together. The way the developers intended. It just all made sense to me tonight. And I can't believe i didn't see this earlier. It works well if you have the players. I was on a small server, with hardly any people in any given area at a time. It was often quiet where I played. And I found myself dying to mobs easily.
This new server on the other hand, that doesn't exist anymore. And I find myself really loving this game now. I'm even enjoying the Personal Story bit on my Ranger.

So kudos to ArenaNet. And this may possibly mean the end for World of Warcraft for me. Because I don't want to go back to that now lol!