Vid’s Blog

In the matter of a frew hours the  head start for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will begin (1:00 PM EST).  After spending numerous hours playing open beta I’ve almost finally came to a decission on what to play, a Black Orc.  The only thing remaining now is to name it.

If anyone actually still reads my blog I’d be surprised, but just in case anyone does I’m going to attempt to start updating it more frequently now that WAR is begining.

I’m thinking I might have a tough choice of things to do this weekend.  I could either go to my local watermelon festival or I can play Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning…  such a tough choice.

Until Murphy’s Law takes effect.  If for some reason you don’t know what Murphy’s Law is, the basic way to describe it is “If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.”  Last week I reported that I had been excepted for a customer service representative spot for Mythic Entertainment, to put it simple some things have gone wrong.  Due to a family issue that don’t look to be resolved in a short amount of time I’ve decided it’s best if I stay where I am currently and help deal with it.  Sadly I’ll be turning down a great opportunity, probably a once in a life time opportunity at that…

I guess its time for more of my thoughts on the current news. Where to start…? It seems the people of the net quickly forgot this, rightfully so, but I must say I’m joyful about the name change from EA Mythic back to Mythic Entertainment. I had one strange issue with EA Mythic that comes from my youth of playing Madden on my Sega Genesis. One thing that has always stuck with me about the game is that when it started you would hear “EA Sports, It’s in the game!” The way this affects EA Mythic is that about two weeks ago I thought up this “EA Mythic, It’s in the WAAAGH!” Clever, I know. Only that every time I see EA Mythic on the screen I hear myself saying that phrase in my head, and it got annoying. Now that it’s Mythic Entertainment it hopefully won’t happen as often.

Next up is PunkBuster. I can’t say a lot here due to the fact that I’ve never played a game that uses it. My understanding is that this MMO version of PunkBuster will work differently than the FPS version. I subscribe to the belief that you can’t hate it tell you’ve tried it, so until I’ve experienced this MMO version of PunkBuster I have nothing to say about it.

My poor Black Guard, it’s at that critical point of its hospital stay where he could be brought back from the brink and be saved, or be lost forever and only be remembered by the ones who around long enough to recall it. It’s not just the Black Guard either, the Choppa, Hammerer, and Knight of the Blazing Sun all share a room. I’m in the boat that would rather not have an up to par career than to have a career that’s weighted done by the fact it doesn’t have the same quality as the rest. Get well soon!

Lastly four of the six capital cities are being withheld from release due to not being up to par with the remaining two. Once again I’d rather not have something that doesn’t meet the same quality as its counterparts. With the Black Guard and Dark Elf capital city missing come release I’m faced with a choice. For starters what am I going to play? I can see myself playing a Sorceress, Witch Elf, Marauder, or even a Magus. Secondly with no capital cities in the Dark Elf Vs High Elf realm do I still want to want to partake in that realm? Currently it has been described that in order to raid Altdorf or the Inevitable City you’d need to control two realms. With this system it wouldn’t be a complete waste to play the elf realm; just it wouldn’t be for the elf realm’s capital cities. So I’ll most likely play Chaos for some time. Eventually the remaining four cities will be added back to the game but Mr. Jacobs has started to talk about a rotation concept. What this is described as that once one of the realm city pairings are completed they will be added to the game and the old pairing will be either removed or made unraidable to be worked on any issues. As a temporary solution I can get behind this, but I can’t see this being a permanent feature. But as I said earlier, I feel it’s important to be open-minded about new ideas until I’ve at least tried them.

Although this is bad news to most I think it would be worse news to get a copy of the release game and to find it out then.  Also I can’t speak for the rest of the community, but I feel I would lose more interest in the game if it had been delayed again rather than this.

Last month Mythic announced that they had started to look for Customer Support Representatives in preparations for Warhammer:Age of Reckoning’s release.  Having always wanted to get into the gaming industry I quickly applied for the position.  Last week I was contacted by Katie Stokes so that she could share some information with me about the position and set up an interview over the phone with Customer Support’s management.

Yesterday afternoon I had my interview that lasted for about thirty minutes, I was both nervous and excited at the same time.  Later this afternoon Katie Stokes calls me for my follow up call and I was anxious to hear some good news, and did I get it.  I’ve been green-lighted to join the Mythic staff!!!  I have about a month to relocate to Fairfax Virgina area so that I can be ready to be trained for GM status.  I look forward to providing service to you the customers in the future and see you in game.

WAAAGH!!!

Geeks around the world scrambled for a fresh pair of knickers after Blizzard Entertainment finally announced Diablo III.

While I’m excited about the prospect of a new Diablo game I do have a few gripes.  My biggest one is once again Blizzard goes with its now normal cartoonish look.  I had bno issue when they did it for Warcraft III and WoW, but I don’t feel it’s right for Startcraft and especially not Diablo.  The other big grip is that off the top of my head I can only name four game IPs that Blizzard has; Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, & The Lost Vikings.  Something new and original please?

Other than that I have few negative things to say at the time without actually playing the game itself.  The added hotbar is a nice addition.  Also the Witch Doctor looks to be an interesting class to play as well.  In closing here’s hoping they improve on the Horadric Cube greatly… or else.

Just one day before making my way to Baltimore I woke up with a subtle-constant pain in my right side just above the pelvic bone.  Not thinking its was anything serious I go on about my business and prepare for my trip.  After arriving home from Baltimore the pain was still persisting and I had noticed I was urinating far less then than normal so a urinary tract infection crossed my mind.  After spending the next couple of days drinking cranberry juice the pain had stopped on Friday the 20th.  Saturday was another story, I woke up with the most intense pain that I had experienced since it had started, but like the rest of the pain I had suffered it was something I could deal with.

By this time a few things start to run threw my head of illnesses it could be; urinary infection still, kidney stones, kidney infection, and a few other things.  Appendicitis was the very last thing I thought it could have been, after all I was under the impression its was severe pain coupled with nausea and vomiting, nothing I was experiencing.  So come last Monday I finally decided it was time to see a family doctor.  After getting poked in my side and peeing in a cup the doctor tells me he can’t tell if its appendicitis or a kidney infection and informs me I need to report to the hospital immediately for a CT abdominal scan immediately because they are waiting for me.

So I make my way to the radiology department of my local hospital and wait for the folks to call me in for my CT scan.  After getting called into the room to get scanned I have to get an IV put in me, only issue is they cant get the IV to actually penetrate the vein in my left hand because every time they try to the vein moves.  After poking and prodding for several minutes they decide it simply not going into that hand so they move over to my right hand.  Thankfully they have no difficulties with that hand.  After getting scanned at least twice, once with just the IV and once with dye added, they tell me they are going to be leaving the IV, send me back to the waiting room, and they would have a surgeon come talk to me.  The lady then tells me its appendicitis.

After a short wait the surgeon arrives and tells me that what had happened was that back on the 12th when the pain had started it looked like the appendix had ruptured.  He also informed me that m body had already built a wall around the rupture to contain it and also that my intestines had started to grow around the appendix to cover it up as well.  Shortly after telling me all this I was being preped for surgery and whisked away to the OR.  Unfortunately due to the condition of my appendix I wasn’t going to get the new advance procedure done but instead the old procedure where they make a 2 to 3 inch cut in me.

When I woke with six staples in me and a drain mechanism running into my body that sucked out the fluids in my abdomen that my body had produced around the appendix.  The first night I probably had to get up and go to the bathroom ever 30 minutes to an hour since I was constantly being injected with fluids via IV.  Tuesday started and I basically had a small list of things I could do; eat, sleep, walk the halls, or go to the bathroom.  How boring.  I suffered threw Tuesday not because of the pain, there was very little pain, but of the fact that I had 72 channels to watch and nothing good was on and also because the food tasted awful.

On Wednesday I had to suffer threw breakfast but for lunch and supper I was served soup and jello, the soup was horrid but I ate the jello.  After supper I was pretty sure I was going to be staying the night again until my surgeon comes in and asks me how thing are going.  I tell him the food is awful around there , also that I barely missed getting a suppository because I had a bowl movement, and that I was so bored that I had been walking plenty.  He looks at me and exclaims that he wasn’t aware I had progressed so quickly and that it sounded like to him I could go in a few minutes.  He then asked the silliest question I think he could have asked “Do you want to go home tonight?”  I quickly responded with a yes.

Finally I could wear clothes that covered my rear-end, eat some decent food, not be attached to an IV, and get some decent sleep.  The only thing left now is figure out what story to tell when I start to show off the scar…

I had the chance to attend Games Day Baltimore.  I managed to get to the event about 30 minutes after it had started and the first thing I headed for was Mythic’s RvR line.  Man it was long..  I stood in the line for about 10 minutes until I noticed it things weren’t moving fast and the time for the Q&A was quickly approaching.  I had a choice to make; get out of line so I can make the Q&A or wait in line and miss it.  Needless to say I got out of line.  I had about 45 minutes to waste before the Q&A got underway so I decided I’d stand in the PvE line and see how things where going on that end.  This line was no where near as long as the RvR line so I figured I’d get in a decent amount of PvE, WRONG.  I stood second in line for 25-30 minutes waiting for the fellow in front of me to decide he had enough and move on.

Finally it was my chance to play and I picked a Rank 2 dark Elf Sorceress.  More specifically this one:

The very first thing I do once I get into the game is I turn around and run up the ramp onto the boat directly behind me and I find a few House Scions.  To my best guess these would be the slaves to the boat owners.  After sitting there and watching them toss the box around on their shoulders for a few moments I got back off the ship and noticed that a NPC was selling items off the side of the ramp I had ran up moments before.  I opened up the shop window and to my surprise where crafting materials being sold along with other items.  To my knowledge I haven’t heard anyone else talk about the crafting materials being sold.

After browsing threw the shop window I finally get around to doing a few quests.  I run out and kill a few Sea Guards and then run up a hill killing Dark Sprites while on my way to see a Hag.  Once I visit the Hag and go kill a few Sword Novices its about time to make the trip upstairs to the Q&A.  When you logged out of the PvE you where presented with a small five question survey with rankings of one to five.  Taking about three minutes to fill out I beat feat upstairs to claim my seat for the Q&A.  I ended up sitting near the back and to my surprise both Jeff and Josh come in and sit down two seats in front of me.  At this point I got my favorite picture, Jeff and Josh heckling themselves because the Q&A had yet to start.

Before taking this picture I thought I said ” I could always take a picture of the back of Jeff and Josh’s heads.” loud enough that they would hear it, but I guess they didn’t because they never turned around.  To bad…  The things I’m going to make Josh point at in the near future… *cackle*

Oh, Q&A.  I had the chance to ask two questions during the Q&A.  The first one being “As I browser the Warhammer Alliance forums I’ve noticed people disheartened about the lack of Black Guard information, can you share anything with us?”  Josh got to answer this one with “No” followed by a  Bart Simpson like laugh.  The second question I got to ask was the kill a bear, kill a bear, kill a bear, and kill another bear quest tracking before picking up the quest that we where told about in the Quest Podcast by Paul.  Jeff cleared this up for me (at least) by stating that not all quest work that way, only a few in each zone do.

After the Q&A I asked both Jeff and josh to sign the EA Mythic shirt that I had acquired off of Ebay that the funds went to charity.  Afterwards I asked Josh about his art book that he carries around with him.  Needless to say I forgot a very important rule about the book.  Once you touch the book you have to draw in it.  I was ill prepared for drawing, I need inspiration to draw and can’t do it at any moment like the great artist out there can.  After spending a brief few moments doodling I had it back to Josh and he takes one look at it only to exclaim “Thats the second most disturbing thing in the book.”  Then he quickly flipped threw the pages and showed me the first thing.  Morale of the story, don’t ask to see the book unless your ready to draw.

At this point Josh, my girlfriend and I walk back to the display and part ways.  I have to say it was very easy to approach Josh and was a nice person to meet, hope to meet him again in fact.  After a quick lunch break I go stand in the RvR line and send my girlfriend off to do the Paint and Take miniture while she waits.  After spending about an hour or so in line I finally make it to a computer and picked out a Goblin Squig Herder for the Battle of Pragg, which was all the computers set up for RvR (30?)  While I wait for the scenario to start I had summoned a squig.  Shortly after summoning the Squig enough people had signed up for the battle it was time to move on to the fight.  After a quick loading screen I noticed that my squig was no longer summoned so I had to summon another, personally I didn’t like this and hope not to see it with the White Lion.  After the battle begins the Destruction side has to run over a wall facing to get down to the next flag, well part of the wall was blinking in and out so you could see threw the world.    You could walk on it with nothing happening.

Finally we are down to the middle and Destruction is duking it out with Order and I crash to the desktop, moments later the fellow to my left crashes as well.  None of the Mythic employees could figure out why it happened but it did.  By the time we get back up and running we have about five minutes more of play time and then Destuction wins the scenario.  All in all I can’t complain, after all its not the final release of the game.

Thats about the extents of my dealing with the game for the day.  The graphics looked good and the PvE played well.  I hope that I can get into closed beta to test it some more, but if not I can’t wait tell open beta.

After getting off my train that had taken two hours longer than needed to I get home.  After I get home my computer fails to start after I shut it down Thursday before going to Games Day Baltimore.  Until I figure out why it refuses to start I won’t be providing any pics of Games Day.  Hopefully it wont take long.

I don’t know if this has been covered by national news or not, but at the moment NC is suffering from its largest wild fire since World War 2 (or so I’ve been told.) It started last Thursday (june 5th, 2008) in Hyde County near the border of Washington County. The last number I’ve heard is that its burned 30,000 acres of land since it got started less than a week ago. Its estimated that it won’t be put out until Thanksgiving of this year due to the soils contents. In the area of the fire the land is mostly comprised of peat. Peat normally burns slowly and at a low temperature, because of this they may be able to put the fire out thats on top of the soil but they can’t do anything about whats still burning underground.

So you ask why am I talking about this when my main focus for this blog is to be video game related. Well I happen to live in the county beside Hyde, my grandmother actually lives in Hyde herself. Today has been the first day that we have seen a sign of the fire where I live due to the way the wind has been blowing. Today at about noon the wind sifted and now the county I reside in is shrouded in smoke.

The picture really doesn’t do it justice.