One game that I've been excited about for quite some time is Funcom's "The Secret World." There is not a lot of information out there about it yet, but what is out there is awesome. And what Funcom has done with complex ARGs for the game has just been ... awesome. But now GDC is on, and according to a couple of posts (one and two) we can expect some concrete info soon!

What we do know is that the game will be set in the present day, in our world. The locations will be based on real locations in our world. The premise is that all/most of the legends, conspiracy theories, and so on are true - and you're a member of a secret society vying for control. The character development system will be skill-based rather than level based. And that's pretty much it. But that's enough!

Playing Anarchy Online again, Funcom's first MMO, I have been reminded again how awesome a more open, skill-based character system is. AO's character dev is complex, as I mentioned in my wall-o-text AO post. Hopefully TSW's will be even deeper.

I'm hoping to get involved in early beta for TSW. I'm playing AO, EQ2, and STO, sure, but I really miss the beta process. The last major beta (Alpha, actually) I was involved with was LOTRO and that was years ago. I miss the process of seeing a game evolve through early alpha, to beta, then open beta and finally release. Ah well, soon hopefully. I had a chance back in October/November to get a guaranteed slot in the TSW beta, by buying a 1 year subscription to AoC but I wasn't able to take advantage at the time. Hopefully I'll win the random selection lottery again like I seem to so regularly. ;) I know a lot of times active posters at fan sites/etc get selected early on, but honestly, I never found a point in posting a ton about a game that nothing is known about and I'm not in testing for. Once I'm "in", my post count usually goes to 1,000 rather quickly. Heh. Just no point in idle speculation, in my opinion. We don't even know... anything, so there's nothing really to talk about.

Anyway... TSW... A title to watch!

As mentioned in my wife's recent post (<--- that's a link, suckahs!), we've been enjoying a lot of awesome foods lately.

As she mentioned, we now own 0.53% of a herd of 18 dairy cows. Why the heck would you want to own 0.53% of some damn cows, you ask? Well, cows are really cool animals. Besides being cute, they're also made of beef! They also produce a pretty cool substance, called "milk." "But you can buy milk in the store", you say. Sure, you can. But it's not quite the same. Firstly it comes from corn-fed cattle. Secondly it's cooked. Cooking changes the chemical properties of things. Sometimes that's good, other times not so much. I don't want to get into the politics of milk, but we wanted to have access to uncooked milk. It's ... yes ... ILLEGAL ... to sell. Yes, it's illegal to sell milk. Sigh. But if you happen to own some cows... you can get the milk. Anyway. We own some cows. Er, 0.53% of 18 cows. Anyway the milk (and CREAM) is really damn good.

Speaking of cows, yesterday I braised a grass-fed chuck roast from Traders Point Creamery, obtained for us by the awesome people at D&R Market. Why grass-fed? Well, again I don't want to get into the health debates here - let's just talk taste. If you're around my age (39) or older, you might remember beef used to taste different. Back in the late 70s or early 80s, it tasted a lot different. I think that's because back then the cattle were still at least partially grass-fed, before producers converted over to pure corn. The things the cows eat change the taste. A lot. When I ate that chuck roast last night I was instantly transported back to being a kid and eating a roast. The flavor is amazing. Truly amazing.

We probably won't (and likely can't) convert to strictly grass-fed, but we'll certainly seek it out and try to have it whenever we can. It really is good beef. :)

We've also started baking again. Well, she has. I watch. And sometimes measure ingredients for her. She's been making breads, from scratch, and they've been truly amazing! The best bread I've ever had, hands down. And yesterday she made some devil's food cupcakes, frosted with peanut butter frosting. All of which were made from scratch. Spray-can frosting? NO! Not even from a can at all. It was made from real peanut butter, powdered sugar, and milk. And ... these cupcakes are amazing. It's a shame most of them are going with her to Knit Night at River Knits tonight. They'll enjoy them for sure though! Amazing stuff.

Anyway. Next food post, I promise, will have pictures. ;)

As promised, here's the Anarchy Online post. There is no TL;DR version, and this will be a wall-o-text!

I'd been working in my head a way to put up a TL;DR version of this post, but then I started to realize that The TL;DR Thing™ is one of the reasons there aren't more games like AO in the first place. So, no Tl;DR version - either skim the post, read it in detail, or just skip it. Heh.

AO is set 30,000 years in the future, (mostly) on a planet called Rubi-Ka. Nanotechnology has been advanced far, far beyond what we can do now, of course. The game was released back in 2001 and has remained a fairly "niche" game. If graphics are a primary motivator in your game choices, AO will probably turn you off. Back when it was released, the graphics were very good for an MMO, but of course that was 9 years ago and a lot has changed. EQ2, EVE, Vanguard, Aion, and so on, all have more up-to-date graphic engines and thus much higher quality graphics - but as the old gaming saying goes "flashy graphics do not make a game good." That said, Funcom is planning to give AO a graphics engine upgrade "soon" - I'm assuming they'll use the AoC client, which of course has insanely good graphics capability.

Character creation is pretty standard fare. You select a "breed" which in other games would be called race, a "profession" (class), play a little with your character's appearance, give your character a name, and then you're on your way. That might give you the impression that AO's character development system is simple and/or shallow. It's not. In fact you can easily, truly, gimp your character. In fact, AO is the first MMO where you could really gimp your character, and is probably the reason people still fear that state of gimpiness. There is no easy, ubiquitous "respec" capability, so if you gimp your character, it may be a long, long time before you can fix - if you can at all! But more on that later.

The professions are many and varied. You've got for example the gun DPS oriented Solider and the melee tank oriented Enforcer. The pet and buff/debuff oriented Meta-Physicist. The control oriented Bureaucrat. The stealth and other-profession-mimicking Agent. The list goes on - there are a lot of professions and there's something for everyone.

The character development system. It's based on "IP", short for Improvement Points. Every level (and there are 220 levels!) you get a certain number of IP to spend - on anything! You have a few "abilities" - Strength, Stamina, Sense, Psychic, a few others - these are what other RPGs call "stats." And you have a lot of skills. Ranged Energy, Matter Metamorphosis, Nano Casting Initiative - the list goes on - there are several dozen! Each skill is affected by one of more of the base abilities, and increasing the abilities will "trickle" down and slightly increase the skills that depend on it. But to really make a skill useful you've got to spend IP on it. Everything you can increase has a certain IP cost per point of increase, and these costs are color-coded. Green means a skill or ability is very cheap to increase. At the other end of the spectrum is dark blue, meaning it's going to cost a lot of IP to increase. There's several steps in between green and dark blue - giving you a wide range of IP costs to increase things. So that's the primary means of character development. Sort of. ;)

Your breed controls the IP costs of the base abilities. The weak, but super tech-oriented Nanomage breed has green Intelligence - meaning INT is very cheap for them to raise. But their Strength is dark blue, so STR is extremely expensive to invest in. The "big-but-dumb" Atrox have green STR and dark blue INT. The fast and agile Opifex have cheap Sense and Agility. And the "plain vanilla average" Solitus have middle-of-the-road costs for all of the base abilities.

Your profession controls the IP costs of skills. So, the nano casting oriented Nanotechnician has very cheap IP costs for his nano skills - he's supposed to raise them. But his gun and melee oriented skills are expensive. The ranged combat oriented Soldier has cheap ranged skills, a few sort of cheap nano casting skills, and so on. But you see... just because something is expensive to invest in, doesn't mean you can't! You can make a gun-using Nanotechnician. You have to plan things very carefully and know exactly what you're doing - or you end up, as mentioned before - gimping your character. But you've got the freedom to do all kinds of cool things! :)

Nano casting - yeah. This in other MMOs would be called spells. All professions can use nanotechnology to cast spell like effects. Your profession controls which ones you can learn and use, and there are a few "general" ones that everyone can use, though those are mostly very simple ones like tiny buffs to abilities and skills. The profession-specific ones are all themed after the profession. So Nanotechnicians get a lot of nukes. Doctors get heals and DOTs mostly. Meta-physicists get a lot of buffs, pets, nukes, debuffs, things like that. And Bureaucrats get things like "Blizzard of Red Tape" - which is a snare/root. Some of the names are very cool and very "in character" for the profession.

Gear! Everyone loves gear, right? The gear system is a little interesting too. You've got your basic armor and weapons like any other game. Armor requirements are set by abilities - certain armor requires a certain level of STR/STA or maybe INT/PSY, and so on. It's always a pair of abilities. This sort of skew armor choice to certain breeds, since the ability IP costs are controlled by breed. But again... you can do anything. Weapon requirements are set by skills. So for example a submachine gun will require a certain amount of SMG/MG skill and Burst skill to wield. And so on. But on top of that, you've also got your NCU belt and deck slots. An NCU belt is an item you equip, that hold chips, which in turn control how many NCU points you've got - which allow you to maintain buffs. NCU belts and chips all require a certain skill level in Computer Literacy, making CompLit a very important skill. Every buff in the game requires a certain number of NCU points. If you don't have enough free, you can't get the buff, unless you free some up by canceling a buff, or by equipping chips with more NCU points. Your first NCU belt will likely only have one slot for one chip, which will likely only grant another 2 or 4 NCU points. Eventually you'll have a 6 slot belt and chips equipped that give you 300 or more NCU points! Then there's implants... Heh.

You've got a number of implant slots. Head, chest, right and left arms, right and left hands, and so on. These implants can buff abilities and skills. As you can imagine, they are very important. Implant design and creation is an extremely advanced metagame and I won't go deep into it here; suffice it to say they're very important - and I'm not even going to mention symbiants. All implants have two requirements - the first being in Treatment skill. Usually they require a very high treatment skill - but treatment is easy to buff. Then there'll be an ability requirement. Some abilities are easy to buff, others not so much. The ability requirement will vary based on what ability/skill boosting clusters have been installed in to the implant.

Ok, you'll notice in the gear section all these ability/skill requirements are to equip. Once you get something equipped, it stays equipped until/unless you specifically unequip it. Are you following me? If you were to find ways to get stuff equipped, via buffing items, implants, and self- or outside buffs... you could equip things way, way, way over your current skills/abilities. And that's exactly what people do - that's one of the main cool things about the game. There's a number of fairly easy to equip low level items that buff certain things, that will then allow you to equip better stuff. Outside buffs can help. Implants can help - and you can "ladder up" implants to get even higher level ones in. The only caveat is with weapons and armor - you have to stay within (I believe) 80% of the requirements, or they lose effectiveness rapidly. But that still gives you a lot of leeway to equip absurdly high level stuff.

This metagame also applies to nano formulas ("spells"). Each nano formula will have certain requirements in order to "upload" (learn) it and to cast it. So for example, my MP's current attack pet spell requires 532 in Matter Creation and Time and Space in order to upload and cast it. I don't have 532 MC and TS. But I have self buffs that get me there. I haven't tried very hard; I'm only self-buffing to cast this pet. With outside buffs and with better implants I could cast a MUCH higher level pet. But, this pet is level 101 - and I'm only level 89. My pet "cons" red to me, and thus it can kill mobs than con red to me. ;)

PvP. I haven't gotten into AO PvP. It's very popular, though. PvP is controlled by "suppression gas levels." 100% means no combat of any kind is possible. 75% allows aggressive mobs. It goes lower and lower down to 0% which is free for all - but there are very few FFA areas. Most PvP is done as "political PvP." You see, there are two factions vying for control - the huge mega-corporation Omni-Tek, and the rebel "Clans." You can also choose to stay Neutral, but from what I've heard you lose out on a lot of content and life is harder. All my characters are Omni-Tek. Anyway, there is PvP and people like it - a lot! I just haven't done it. Yet.

Whew. So I came back to the game, and first logged on my L89 Meta-physicist. Back when I played, I did a lot of experimenting with various weapons on him. MP's have mostly light and dark blue (EXPENSIVE!) weapon skills. I wasted a lot of IP playing around. I mentioned before, there is no easy/ubiquitous "respec" option in AO. Every certain number of levels you enter a new "title level" and get an IP reset point. That allows you to reset the IP for ONE skill or ability. That's it. Every now and then Funcom has granted a full IP reset option due to profession changes. But those are once per character and you can't "save them up." All IP resetting must be done absolutely naked. No weapons, armor, implants, NCU belt/chips - nothing. Of course, most gear is equipped based on buffs, usually outside buffs... So IP resetting is NOT something you do lightly! I had a full IPR credit... so I stripped down and did it. It wasn't too bad getting everything back on - I didn't try very hard with his gear, and so I only needed two outside buffs to re-equip, heh. That done, I went and got a mission 10 levels above my own and re-learned how to play! It was cool - I got into trouble once and had to zone out to reset aggro, but I didn't die. :D

More details about professions? Well, I can speak in some detail about 3, and less detail about a few more. I play mainly a Meta-Physicist - mine's level 89. I have a level 42 Agent. My wife played a Martial Artist so I can talk about that too.

Meta-Physicist is a pet class, mainly. Big surprise that's my "main" eh? ;) In AO there's 3 pet classes, and MP is kind of the "main" one. You can have up to 3 pets at any one time, but only one of each type: attack pet, healing pet, and mezzing pet. The cool thing is, in AO, pets are separately controllable. You can order your attack pet to attack something, the heal pet to heal the attack pet, and the mez pet to mez another mob. You've also got a lot of nano casting skill buffs - MPs are always getting asked for these, as you can imagine: those buffs are the primary means that other profs cast much higher level nanos than they're ordinarily be able to cast. There's also nukes, debuffs, and a few unique things such as "Quantum Wings" which allows the MP to fly. :) It's a fun class.

The Agent is a stealth-oriented ranged combat class...mainly. Most people play it as a "sniper" type due to the cheap to raise Rifle and Aimed Shot skills. The Agent also gets "False Profession" nanos - these allow the Agent to temporarily "become" another profession and thus use that profession's nanos! But... with a huge downside. All the FP skills carry a gigantic casting speed debuff. You cast around... 10-20 times slower while in FP. And the FP effect is classified as "hostile", so you can't just "click it off" at will - you have to wait it out, and they last 30 minutes. But it does allow you to do some pretty cool things nonetheless.

Martial Artists kick ass, with their bare hands. Usually. There are weapons they can use for cheap IP investment but most just use their hands. Their nanos are mostly skill buffs, some heals, and some crit buffs. Fun stuff.

Engineers have robot pets. Bureaucrats also have robot pets, and can charm - and can have a robot and 2 charmed pets (from separate charm lines - one "stable" and the other "unstable") at once. Fixers run really fast and spray people with lead from their submachine guns. Ummm, Soldiers shoot people. Enforcers smack bitches up. There's a lot of other profs too... Heh.

Check the game out. It really is a lot of fun. I'm on "Atlantean" - also known as "RK1" for "Rubi-Ka 1." The servers used to be named Rubi-Ka 1 and 2, and then they added another server named Die Neue Welt (German for "The New World") and renamed RK1 and 2 to "Atlantean" and "Rimor", but most people call the servers RK1, 2, and 3 still. ;)

Oh... My MP is Bazull. Agent is Vendraen.

Just a quickie update! I've cycled back to Anarchy Online after around 4 years away from the game. It has a decently steep learning curve and I've missed a lot in 4 years! At least I was able to reset my IP and step back into my over-equipped implants and armor. ;)

I'll have a full review/etc up within the next 4-5 days or so. :)

Short version though: it's still an awesome game.

Other than Dragon Age, I haven't discussed many non-MMO games here. I feel other segments of gaming are plenty well covered by other sources, and I don't feel MMOs are given enough specific attention. Plus they're 99% of what I play, so... anyway. But this warrants a post.

Heavy Rain is incredible. It's a PS3-only psychological thriller game, and it's seriously fracked up. I'm trying to keep my site out of profanity filters so I used "fracked" but pretend I used the real word there, because it's the only thing that conveys how intensely twisted the game is.

I can't say much, if anything, about the actual story of the game, as I'm anti-spoiler, but since one part of the game has been mentioned in about every interview/etc, I'll mention it. The stripping scene. Compared to a lot of the rest of the game, that scene is "suitable for children." I mean, it's really not, but in comparison to other stuff, ... yeah. It's mild.

You play 4 different characters - 3 male and 1 female - with no control over which and when - it just follows the story, movie-like, and you play the main character in each scene. The control scheme is... odd. It does make use of every single thing the SixAxis can do, that's for sure. The control choices are inconsistent, though. Sometimes a similar action will be initiated by different buttons. There's also some seriously bad button combos you have to hit. X, Triangle, L1 and R2? Come on. That's some contortion.

I'm not finished yet - and can't tell how close I'm getting as there's no "% done" indicator and I won't read spoilers. I think I'm getting close as most of the characters' stories are starting to meet up now - but who knows. Could be far off still. It'll be interesting to see.

So, if you like psychological thriller type stuff, and don't mind being pretty seriously disturbed at least once during a game, pick up Heavy Rain. It truly delivers on the promises of the developers. This is the kind of thing the PS3 really needs in order to become more of a force in the console market. Well, that and a real online service... ;)

So for several years now, Blizzard has had job postings for "Next-Gen MMO." Nothing (that I know of) has been released about this "next-gen MMO" nor has anyone that I've seen come out and say "I was on the project and got fired/left/whatever, and this is what it was...." I'm AMAZED any company has been able to maintain secrecy for all these years!

What is the subject of this new MMO? Will it be "World of StarCraft?" "World of Diablo?" StarCraft makes more sense, since Blizzard already has a fantasy MMO (WoW). Or are they developing entirely new IP to base this MMO on?

Myself, I'm betting it's StarCraft. Blizzard seems to like to leverage existing, popular IP, and StarCraft is certainly their second most popular IP - and it's different enough from WarCraft to maybe bring in new people - perhaps ones that don't like fantasy.

Should be very interesting to see how this shapes up. Hopefully they'll release some information soon!

Being a steady customer at a local business absolutely has it's benefits. Not only are you helping your local economy directly, they generally take awesome care of you as a customer.

Patrick and Tad at D&R Market have really been bringing in a lot of good, new stuff recently. One of the new lines they've added is Traders Point Creamery's grass-fed dairy products. We've been buying quite a bit of the milk and yogurt, and the stuff is seriously flat-out awesome. We'd been asking about grass-fed beef as well, but Patrick said the Traders Point guy told him they don't like to sell the beef at retail because people tend to overcook it and then blame the beef for sucking. Well, Patrick knows we know our beef, so...

... they scored us some. :D And, oh yes, it is GOOD STUFF. We received a pair of rib eye steaks, some New York Strip, and a 2 1/2# chuck roast. The strips and the roast went into the freezer and last night we scarfed down the rib eyes. Oh boy - if you've never had grass-fed beef, you definitely need to try it. It doesn't taste radically different than corn/grain-fed stuff, but there is a slightly sweeter taste, and the texture is heartier. The overall difference makes it, IMO, way superior to grain-fed - and this beef is very, very good. And of course, if you believe in the health benefits of grass-fed vs. grain-fed, well, it's even better.

Another thing is: Traders Point is also local - in fact, we're probably going to go to their restaurant soon and tour the farm too. I have to see what cows that taste that good look like. :D

Patrick also scored us some pork fat. Yeah, that's a subject for another post. :D

I'm still playing STO as a "part time" game - short sessions here and there when I have small/odd blocks of time. :) I think the game is perfect for that - heck, it even seems designed to be played that way. It seems like the perfect game to keep around for smaller blocks of time, when you're also playing a more "hardcore" or serious game. I'm working my way through the Lt. Commander rank - at Grade 5 currently. I've switched to a Cruiser and I definitely like it. I still like the Science Wessel as well, but the Cruiser is working out a little better at the moment. Still haven't tried an Escort, and probably won't due to the expense - Escorts are best outfitted with cannons and I don't have any lying around, as both my Science Wessel and my Cruiser are setup with Beam Arrays.

Speaking of more serious games... It was clear that I'd never actually quit EQ2; it was just a question of when I'd be back. Well that's now, I suppose. Onte and Wolfgar have been playing for quite some time and I've now re-subbed. My Necromancer, Sevolution, was nearly 70 when I left the last time, and I quickly got him to 70 and nearly 71 already. Kunark content is awesome for smooth leveling - and sheer nostalgic Kunarky-ness of it can't be beat.

Of course, I'm also still wanting to play WoW, as I've got 3 max-level characters there, and I still really love running heroics on all of them. The problem is, they're on 2 separate accounts so that requires 2 subs - plus now I definitely want to keep EQ2 rolling so that makes 3 (my STO sub is lifetime so no worries there). I really don't like to run 3 subs for just myself, so something will have to give. I'll probably have to just keep one WoW sub running + the EQ2 sub. Or just forget WoW altogether for a while and let both subs lapse. I'll have to figure that out soon as the WoW subs come due in a week or so.

Ah well. Gaming's certainly an interesting hobby. ;)

Or not. Exactly zero (0) people replied about posting schedule ideas. So you all get to endure random posts about whatever subject I'm feeling like posting about, when I decide to. Cool.

That, dear readers, is picanha. We were at wonderful D&R Market, and the owner/butcher/meat god Patrick asked us, "Hey have you guys heard of picanha?", and I said "You mean that beef cut that they have at Brazilian steakhouses?" He said yes, and brought us out that wonderful hunk of dead cow that you see pictured above.

What is picanha, you ask? Well, if you've been to one of those Brazilian steakhouses that are getting really popular (Fogo de Chao, etc), then you probably know exactly what it is. We haven't been to one yet, but I keep reading about them and so had heard of the cut. Wikipedia says:

Rump cover or rump cap is a cut of beef that is in some countries considered to be the best part of the steer or heifer (even better than filet mignon) due to its marked flavor. It is famous and well liked in South American countries, especially Brazil where it is known as "Picanha".

Wikipedia's really f'ing boring. What it really is, is possibly the best f'ing cowslab you'll ever eat. Mmmm.

The only way to properly cook such a wonderful creation, is "not much" and "with a really stupid amount of heat." And since not even our uber-duber Weber Genesis will come to or hold temp in Indiana winter, cast iron was the only option. I threw a bunch of salt and pepper, and some garlic powder on both sides of the cowslab, and threw our trusty cast iron pan onto the burner. Thank "Bob" we have a gas range, as only a fool would use a cast iron pan on an electric range. They can't possibly pour on enough heat to get a cast iron pan hot enough. The pan would act as a giant heatsink and might even kill the coil. Anyway, I poured fire to the pan for a full ten minutes, until it was hot enough to sear your hand off, and then threw the god-meat into the pan. 2:30 on each side, and no more, and we had...

Ohhhhh yes. A 10 minute rest while we enjoyed a killer, huge salad, and I served it up...

... with some pinto beans we had cooked ourselves the day before. After having soaked them in raw milk whey for 12 hours. The flavor of this cut is ... amazing. Even though it's technically part of the sirloin, its different enough that it's very noticeable. No other beef tastes like this, and it is truly amazing. We'll be having much more of this stuff. Patrick's also going to cut us some fraldinha, another Brazilian cut. I love having a real, live, skilled butcher, to buy from. We can order up any cut we want. Get anything meat-related we want. :D

Mmmmm.

One thing you always see on MMO (and probably other game types) forums, blogs, etc, is "I want something new and different!" or "This is the same old, same old, nothing new here!", and the more negative, but expressing the same desire/sentiment "This is just a copy of <insert past/popular game here>!"

Why do so many games seem to follow a formula, a cookie-cutter if you will? There's a couple of potential reasons. I'll mainly be talking MMOs here, as that's the main thing I play and study.

The first, and likely primary reason for following design formulas is simple business. "'Game W' has millions of subscribers, so if we follow a lot of what 'Game W' did, we'll have a lot of subscribers, too." In general, that works. No one's matched 'Game W''s numbers yet (and it may be that no one ever does, until Developer B's next game), but most of the other fairly successful MMOs follow a similar design formula. MMOs cost millions (tens of millions, actually) of dollars to create, so, from a business standpoint, you either follow a proven formula, or you gamble with a boatload of money. It's hard to convince the bean counters to go for the gamble.

There is also the past history that a lot of games that went and did something different either failed, changed directions to be more formulaic, or actually shut down. You've got SWG, which when it opened, was a very sandboxy, open, unique game. It had a level-less advancement system with no classes, where you could really create the kind of character you wanted. It also had a very deep crafting system that I can't even begin to explain here. And... it ended up being changed into a standard level-based system with rigid classes. Then there's Vanguard, which sought to return to a more hardcore playstyle, with harsh death penalty and forced grouping. It was plagued by a truly disastrous release (and absurdly high computer system requirements), but I think ultimately the harder gameplay, in a post-WoW world helped kill it. Sure, it's still running, but do you know anyone that plays it as their primary MMO? I sure don't. The list of "different but failed/obscure" MMOs goes on: AC2, Shadowbane, WISH, Horizons; I could go on and on. Yes, all of these had OTHER problems, but, I maintain that if the gameplay were more familiar for more people, the games probably would have survived.

So you get bean counters looking at this history and saying "no way, all these games did things different and failed, we're not gambling with $50,000,000. You will follow a proven formula."

Then there's always the dual-nature of gamers working against doing things differently. Let's take an example from WoW. Dungeons in WoW generally follow a standard pattern. You go in, you clear "trash" mobs to get to a boss, then you fight the boss. The boss might be a simple "tank and spank" encounter, or sometimes there's more of an "event" to it. Then you clear to the next boss, and repeat until the last one. It's fun, but, basically, formulaic. People screamed for something different, so Blizzard came up with The Oculus, easily the most hated dungeon in the game. It's different though! For the record, I like Oculus. ;) Anyway, in this dungeon, you clear a small amount of trash, then port up to a boss and kill him, which frees 3 NPCs. Each of these NPCs represents a different color of drake, which you choose to ride on for parts of the rest of the dungeon. While riding on the drake, your character has a completely different set of abilities from your normal ones. You basically are not your character while you are on the drake. One of them is a damage dealer, one is a healer, and one is a tank. Yeah, it's the trinity. Anyway, for the rest of the dungeon, you use the drake to fly to different encounters. 2 of them, you get off the drake and play your regular character for, and then you get to the last boss. This last boss is a dragon, and you have to defeat him while on your drake. Defeating him requires a little bit of coordination of the drake's abilities, and I find the encounter pretty cool. But most players hate this dungeon! "I don't want to play a drake, I want to play myself." is the main complaint you hear. Well, Blizzard tried to give people something different - and they didn't like it! At least they tried, eh?

And this, I think, ends up being the biggest non-business related reason you don't see anything new: What is there!?

MMOs are at their core a lot like single player RPGs. You make a character, you advance that character, usually through gaining Experience Points by completing quests and killing monsters, so that you can become powerful enough to defeat the main enemy of the story. In single player RPGs, then you're done. In MMOs, a new main enemy always rises, and you repeat the level up/advance phase. That's just how this game genre works.

So, how do you come up with a way to have this mechanic of advancing a character, in order to take on new challenges, in a new and different way? I've been thinking about that problem for over 10 years now, and I've got nothing! It seems other players also have nothing, and ditto the developers. I see the cries for "new and different!" but I never see any actual suggestions as to what to actually do, down at a mechanics/content level. I honestly think it's like the movies: every story has been told already, and all we can do is tell it a little differently, with different people, in different settings. :)

Thing is... I still love these games. I still play them, I invest thousands of dollars per year to keep my hardware current, and hundreds per year on the games and subscriptions for same, and I don't see that ever stopping. :)

Have you got the solution to the "give me new and different!!!one" cries? Have you come up with something really revolutionary? I'd love to hear about it. Comment here, email me, or send a Tweet to @ModemMisuser.

I'd like to start posting more regularly, as I miss the simple joy of just writing, and then having "the world" read it. Plus it's a good cognitive exercise, and it's also just fun. Rather than just randomly blathering, though, I'd like to come up with a "posting schedule" like many other active blogs have.

I basically blog about a few different things: (mostly MMO) gaming and computers/hardware, Atheism/skepticism/etc, health/fitness/biking (when it's > 40°F out!), other hobbies, and sometimes food (which is also tied into health).

So I'm thinking maybe I'll start out trying to have a schedule like... Monday: Atheism/etc; Wednesday: Gaming, Computers and The Like™; Friday: Food/Health/etc. And any others days, maybe a random fill-in post will show up. If that works out, I can try to expand it to every weekday, with more specific topics.

Readers: does this sound good? Would you like to see something else? Post comments! Make an account - it's free, easy, and believe me - I'm not gonna do a damn thing with your email address. If you'd prefer not to make an account, you can simply email me your suggestions @ modemmisuser@gmail.com. Or, DM or @message me via Twitter @ModemMisuser.

Those of you reading my site for gaming/computer stuff may want to turn away now. I haven't done this often, but here I go again... Another post about Atheism and such.

Most Atheist writings talk about how Atheism can give one comfort during a crisis, and how the old adage "there are no Atheists in foxholes" just isn't true. And usually, they're right - knowing nothing is "out to get you" or "punishing you," and understanding science and reason really does help you through many crises. But what happens when it doesn't?

Well, recently I've been going through a health crisis in my family. It's (most likely) not life-threatening, but it is fairly serious. The condition does not seem to be responding in the expected way to the scientifically accepted "gold standard" of medical treatment. It'll improve in one area, but stay the same or get a little worse in others. It's pretty frustrating, especially for the person with the condition, but also for me, since of course I want to see the person get better and back to 100% normal life!

Now, if you've read every post here, or know me, you know that for a lot of my earlier life, I did subscribe to many and varied Woo Belief Systems™©. From being raised Christian, then in my adolescence and early adulthood, moving on to various Occult belief systems, I've been around the Woo Block! But, I'm now a devout (and Out!) Atheist. Or so I thought.

Well, one night, a particularly bad one, during a discussion about what to do to move closer to resolving this medical crisis, I ... well ... broke down. I don't know why, it just happened. All of the old thought patterns came back. I started wondering what the heck we'd done to deserve this kind of punishment, what being was messing with us, how we could fix it, and ... yeah. It was, for lack of a better term, an Atheist crisis of faith! How can you have a crisis of faith when you don't believe in anything?

Atheists DO believe in things though. Things that can be proven, things we can see, touch, or fully understand. I think that's the problem in this case. This is a fairly common medical condition that has been studied for many, many decades. It has a very well-defined accepted treatment regimen, and it's supposed to respond and resolve fairly easily. But it isn't. So, I think, I started to wonder if science really was the answer. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Woo isn't Woo. Maybe there are "things out there" fucking with us humans. I think I was starting to see Woo as science, in a way, since I was seeing "evidence" that "science was wrong." It was wrong-thinking, but that's the state I was in at the time.

So what happened? It passed. I realized I was engaging in some bad thinking, wrong logic, and of course, under stress and therefore not thinking logically. I was pretty ashamed at having sunk into that way of thinking at all. I thought I had become a devoted, "devout" Atheist and would never again engage in Woo-think or anything approaching it. I guess, though, that more than 20 years of that sort of belief takes a while to fully leave a person's brain. I envy the Atheists that were raised Atheist, or otherwise were never engaged in a Woo belief system, or those that converted very early. I imagine they don't have to deal with this kind of crisis.

Anyway - hopefully this post will help show that it's not always easy to guard against "wrong" thinking, and sometimes even Atheists question their "faith."

And what about this medical crisis? Well, researching the condition outside of accepted medical circles begins to uncover a lot of "alternative" treatments and the like, some of which are based on what used to be accepted medical science. It is also, though, known that sometimes this condition can simply take a while to respond to the treatment. But anecdotal evidence also shows that some people simply do not respond to the gold standard treatment and require a different medication. Who do you believe? How long do you give the gold standard time to work, when quality of life is fairly negatively affected by the condition? We're simply... not sure, right now. We've got some options for second, third, etc, opinions, and we'll avail ourselves of those options. Full genetic testing has been done on the person with the condition, and we know that said person has some genetic issues with various medications, as well as in the area of pain response and the like, so it does follow that they may respond differently to treatments based on this. Who knows. We'll get through it!

Take care. :)

I actually received it last Thursday, but I wanted several days of testing to make sure it was in perfect working order and was going to work out for me - but - I got a new machine! A portable even.

It's a Sager NP8760, which doesn't tell you much, as Sager's machines (which are actually built on Clevo OEM machines) are 100% custom builds. I got mine with the i7 820QM CPU, 4GB of DDR3, a 160GB Intel SSD for the primary drive, and a 7200 RPM 500GB SATA drive for secondary. Standard onboard video is a GTX280M with 1GB of GDDR. The built-in display is 17.3" 1900x1080 (Full 1080P HD), but of course, I still have my Samsung 275T+ 27.5" art/DP grade monitor... so I use that mostly.

The machine is... incredible. I get better framerates than I did on my desktop - even though the desktop has a pair of GTX295 cards in quad-SLI mode. Quad SLI is... bad tech, honestly. I play STO, WoW, AoC on it, at max settings, and again, it's better performing than my desktop.

I'll have pics up later today or tomorrow. It's very cool - pure black, with no logos of any kind on it.

Last week I promised I'd have my full Star Trek Online review/comments/etc up. Well, here they are. The game is fairly complex, and there's a lot to cover, so I'm hoping I can make this review make sense. ;)

Let me start off by saying the typical MMO "holy trinity" mentality of pigeonholing everything into tank/dps/healing is really hindering people's thinking with this game. While those functions are still present in the game, you are not limited to these roles by your choice of "class." Everyone is, and is meant to be, a hybrid. Everyone at some point will need to tank something, heal something, and damage something. Your "class" choice is more how you approach all of those things, not which one you can approach.

I'll describe the space combat side of the game first, as it's where probably 80% of the game is spent. The ground combat is no less detailed though! You just spend less time there.

Ok, so when you create your character, you choose his or her career - which can be Science Officer, Engineering Officer, or Tactical Officer. This choice has a very general effect on how your character will approach problems, and gives you access to a few career-specific abilities at various points in the game. You're then put through a short tutorial series of missions, and end up field-promoted to captaining your own basic ship.

Ships are very detailed; almost like a separate character. They have several slots to equip items in - a number of front and rear weapon slots, an Impulse Engine slot, shield slot, etc - everything you'd figure a Star Trek ship would have. They also have console slots - classed as Engineering, Science, and Tactical. Your first ship has one of each; later ships have differing amounts, depending on what class of ship it is. You can equip consoles in these slots that modify various things relating to the type of console it is. Turn rates, shield power, things like that.

You also have Bridge Officers. These are very detailed "pets"; you can choose their name and appearance (using the full Cryptic-trademark detailed character designer). Each BO also has a career, from the same choices as your character. The BO's career controls which abilities they have access to, and you can choose from several for your BO, within their career.

On your ship, Bridge Officers man stations. Your first ship has one each of Science, Tactical, and Engineering stations. This is how you gain abilities in space: the BO that is manning a station makes available the abilities they possess. You'll just have one ability each at the start.

You can also manage the power levels of your ship's systems: engines, shields, weapons, and auxiliary. This can have a large effect on your ship's performance, and this is another fairly detailed meta-game, and a subject of much discussion/argument on the official forums.

Space combat is akin to naval combat, rather than being arcade-style. Weapons have different firing arcs, so positioning is important. You've got to know your ship's turning rate, and your firing arcs, in order to best decide how to approach your battles. You have shields in all four directions, and you also need to manage them as well, perhaps turning a weakened side away from an enemy's fire, or even diverting more power to that side. And of course, you've also got the activateable abilities each of your BOs provides. There's a lot to pay attention to during a space battle!

Ground combat is pretty detailed as well. You gain usable abilities based on the "kit" you have equipped. This might be the ability to lay down a mine field, or construct a phaser turret, or maybe throw a grenade. There are quite a few different kits you can equip (one at a time though - but higher quality ones sometimes grant 2 or more abilities). You also have slots for personal shields, armor, and weapons. Your BOs also can come with you on your Away Team, and they also have usable abilities. They can't equip kits, though; their abilities come from their career. They do have personal shields/armor/weapon slots though.

So, in ground combat, you have a small army of extremely customizable pets with you. It's very much the Ultimate Pet Game™©!

Ground combat itself is fairly tactical - there's no auto-fire, and cover matters. You can also double-tap movement keys to "roll" to take less damage.

"Leveling" in the game is different. The "levels" aren't numbered: you have a rank and a grade. You start out at Lieutenant. As you gain skill points, you progress through Lt. Grade 1, then Lt Grade 2, and so on. Grade is gained by earning skill points. To increase in rank, however, you have to spend those skill points. Of course, you normally want to spend them as soon as they're earned, as they do provide a major benefit. Once you hit Lt. Grade 11, and have spent all the points you earned getting there, you will be promoted to Lt. Commander, and gain access to a Tier 2 ship.

It is at Tier 2 where ships become even more customizable. You will choose between a Cruiser, an Escort, or a Science Wessel. Many players don't realize they don't have to (and probably shouldn't!) choose the ship that corresponds to their career. What the different types of ships give you (in addition to different turn rates, hull and shield strengths and the like) is more BO stations and console slots of a type depending on the ship's class. Cruisers have more Engineering slots, Science Wessels have more Science slots, and Escorts have more Tactical stuff. This allows you to really customize and hybridize depending on what you like doing. Your first T2 ship is free; it's awarded to you for being promoted. You can buy more ships - so you can try all 3 types if you like.

You also gain BO skill points as you play, which you can use to improve your BOs. They also have a rank - and you can promote them when they've been trained with a certain amount of skill points. You can promote a BO to one rank under your current rank. So at Lt., your BOs can only be Ensigns. At Lt. Commander, you can promote to Lt, and so on. Increasing a BO's rank gives them access to new skills, and as they gain rank they will have more skills available at once. A Lt. rank BO has 2 space and 2 ground abilities, and so forth. Eventually, you can see, you'll have a LOT of abilities to choose from and use.

Whew. Ok. Hopefully that mechanics run-down made a little sense. Sound daunting? It kind of is - and it's even more complex than I've gone into - I didn't even mention what skills you're spending those skill points on, and what they affect, and how... It's pretty complex. And, to be honest, not well explained in the game's UI.

I know what you're really wanting is a more general run-down of how the game is. Stability, bugs, content depth and amount, things like that. Well, here goes...

I started during the preorder customer Head Start. It was pretty bad, honestly. Server stability was not the best, and server-side lag/rubber-banding was pretty bad. Is this a new thing? Not really - but this was noticeably worse than many recent MMO launches. Things improved quite a bit once retail release happened, but there have been a lot of patches during this first week. Yes, patches are good, as they fix and enhance things, of course, but players really just want to play, so the numerous patches have been annoying the playerbase.

The game's UI is a step backwards, compared to, say, WoW, or most other MMOs. We've all become used to highly customizable, configurable, and very detailed UIs. STO's .. isn't. You can move elements, but that's about it. Some things don't save - like enabling the 2nd and 3rd ability bars. Sometimes. They save for some people, not for others. Quite a few bugs there. Usable, but a definite step backwards.

Content. Well. It's a rule that MMOs at release are always content-light, and this is no exception. There's a lot of repeatable patrol/etc missions, and you do have to do those in order to progress, as the story missions alone aren't enough. On the plus side, the story missions are very well done, and very "Star Trek-y", for sure. Read my first few posts about the game for an idea of how some of them proceed. So, yeah, content is light, and there is literally no endgame content, so level-rushing is a bad idea; good thing I tend not to. ;)

As far as non-leveling things to do, there's plenty. Lots of players (for now) to socialize with, systems to fly around and look at, all that kind of stuff. Even during missions, there's "non mission stuff" to do - crew to heal, things to scan/investigate, and so on. Very Star Trek-like.

One major criticism that many Star Trek fan players have is that there's too much of a focus on combat vs. what "should be" in a Star Trek game. In one way, they're not wrong; there is a lot of combat. But, this is a video game, and most video games focus on conflict, and that usually means combat. That's where the excitement is. So, I understand why there is a lot of combat. Still, though, there are many non-combat mission goals, and some missions where there's no combat at all. The problem, though, is that the non-combat objectives aren't detailed enough. "Scan an artifact" - it's just a single button press interaction. It could be made into a mini-game where you have to press the right controls on your "tricorder", or similar, to make the non-combat stuff feel as detailed as the combat. But... they had to focus on combat for release. That's just a reality of the game industry. I understand it. The beauty of an MMO is that it can and will evolve heavily post-release. If it survives, of course...

I have a lifetime subscription to STO. I hope it survives a long while. With all the negatives I've posted, you'd think I'm saying the game is doomed. Well, I'm not - but Cryptic does need to move fast. The fact that the game is Star Trek will carry it pretty far, but it doesn't make it invincible. They've got to fix a lot of bugs, shore up content, and get the server rock stable. I like the game, and I'm glad I'm Lifetime, but as I said, Cryptic has a lot of work ahead of it.

I'll have my full, detailed initial STO review in a few days, once I've had a chance to really get into the second tier of content (and ships!), but I just wanted to at least check in and say "hi."

Still working through Tier 1. Cryptic says about 20 hours to get into T2 and while I haven't checked my /played (and I'm not sure STO has a /played command!), I think that'll be about right once I finally do hit T2. I'm taking my time though. Reading the quest text and such. There's a lot of hidden Star Trek lore gems in the quest texts - STO has no video cut scenes, so if you want story and lore, you have to read.

I'm really enjoying the space combat. There's definitely 2 categories of Captains in the game. You've got your "Arcade Pilots" who expect to just go in, point their guns at the baddies, and blow them up. Versus smaller enemies, that works. Larger ones, or multiple enemies, not so much. Then you've got the ones that understand naval combat a little more. They go in, maneuver for a good shot, choose the smaller and fast (more maneuverable) targets to take out first, and make sure the heavy guns don't get a broadside on them. It's really a different style of combat than most people have seen in an MMO before.

Ground combat is fun too. You've got your team of Bridge Officers to manage, and it can get pretty micro-managey at times - but it's still fun. You can let them "do their thing" and you'll usually win, but against large groups of enemies, or vs. certain types (Klingon Swordmasters and Targ Handlers in particular), you've got to micro-manage your Away Team and get them to focus fire. I was hoping that STO would end up being the "Ultimate Pet Class Game" and it really is! Your Bridge Officers are super-detailed "pets" that you can customize in nearly every way, and you've got a lot of them - and you get to have more as you grade/rank up.

That's all for now; huge long wall of text style review in a few days/next week-ish.

I'm pretty excited, as Star Trek Online's pre-order Headstart begins today! I'll be able to make my "real" character and get going with the game. It'll be a fun night. :)

I'm also still playing WoW, as a heal-specced Druid mainly, and really liking it. Healers and Tanks are scarce in the random dungeons, so I always get a group near-instantly. I'm planning on leveling and gearing a Death Knight very soon so that I can do my small part to alleviate the extreme tank shortage. :)

Yesterday I mentioned I was considering putting in a preorder for Star Trek Online. Well, not only did I put in said preorder (and CE no less), ... I'm Lifetime. :D It's 4 months of my hobby budget, yes, but - it gives me a game I can play anytime I want, without having to budget in a subscription fee or anything. :)

I kind of like to have options when it comes to gaming time. I'm still playing WoW primarily, and will be for quite some time, but some days, it's nice to login to something else. To do that requires keeping another sub active (or re-upping something for a month), and it's kind of a pain to track sub date overlaps and such. Well, now I don't have to. I'm subbed to STO...forever. :) Woot.

Speaking of WoW, and I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: the Random Dungeon Group Finder is simply pure win. Even with the long-ish wait as DPS, it's STILL pure win. I've had a blast running 2-3 randoms every day, and massively improving my character's gear while doing it. It's the best design idea Blizzard has ever had. Easily.

In addition, I also have to say that porterhouse steaks rock. No, it's not gaming related. Oh well. Deal. I cooked one up for my birthday and it was a work of art. I had Patrick @ D&R market cut me "the best porterhouse he's ever cut" (my words on asking for said slab-o-beef), and he did. Oh "Bob" did he. Anyway. :D

So a Star Trek Online open beta key magically showed up in my email last Thursday evening. No idea who hooked me up - but thanks! Over the weekend, I got a bit of time in the beta - as much as I could, given the single OB server is absolutely slammed with people! Seems they're using OB as an extended Stress Test, which is a good idea IMO. But that of course means it's hard to get in.

But, wow, the game is very good. I got through the intro/tutorial and then did the first mission I got assigned to. The intro/tutorial is pretty good - it gets you through the basics of how ship combat and ground combat work, introduces the UI, basically all the stuff you expect an MMO intro to do.

Graphics are very good. I had to update my video drivers to get good performance - seems SLI was enabled for STO back in November but I hadn't updated since then. Once I did that, wow, good performance and great visuals. My machine's no slouch (i7 950, 12GB RAM, 2x GTX295 cards), but there's a lot of tweakable options so I'm sure the game will perform on a wide variety of hardware.

The first mission is what really grabbed me. You're sent out to investigate what happened to a transport that hasn't been heard from in quite some time. It's Captained by an experienced Captain, so it's not like they'd just forget to check in - so Starfleet expects Something Bad(tm) happened. So you warp out to it's last known position, and as you arrive you receive a distress call from the transport, saying they've been attacked by Orion pirates and the ship is damaged and they need help. As you approach the ship, you find a couple of Orion ships still attacking, so you have to deal with them. It's a decent space battle between your ship and the 4 pirate ships, which you can deal with 2 at a time if you're careful.

Then the Captain signals that their warp core is leaking radiation and they can't beam off the ship - plus there are Orion pirate boarding parties onboard. So you gather an Away Team and beam onto the ship to deal with the pirates and stop the radiation leaks. Now you get a good bit of ground combat as you work your way through the transport, ridding it of pirates.

Then, of course, the warp core goes critical and you have to escort the ship's crew to the cargo bay to be beamed off to your ship safely, while the Captain stays behind to try to stabilize the core. Of course, more pirates beam aboard right as this happens, so they must be dealt with too. This is a tough bit of combat - there are a lot, and they're pretty smart.

Once you've got the crew to safety, more pirate ships attack, so you beam back to your ship to command it through another space battle. This time 4 pirate ships - then a HUGE pirate battleship warps in, as a sort of "boss fight" - it's pretty tough, but I got it down. Then you have to beam the transport's Captain onto your ship as her ship is going to explode.

So in this first little mission you're given, you get introduced pretty heavily to space and ground combat, and it's definitely not a guaranteed win - especially the second wave of pirate boarding parties as you're trying to escort the crew to safety. There's a LOT of them and they use flanking and cover pretty effectively!

The thing is - I always expected that one of the "sides" of STO would feel "tacked on" or "limited" or to put it more crudely, that it would suck. Either the space combat would be limited, or the ground combat would be. I didn't expect both sides to be engaging, well done, and detailed. But they are.

The space combat isn't "arcade style." It's real, naval combat. There's firing arcs, and turning speeds, and you've got to present your "best side" to the enemy, while at the same time trying to bring your weapons to bear against their "worst side" and so forth. I'd compare it most closely to Pirates of the Burning Sea. It's really well done!

And the ground combat is just as well done! You can use cover, flanking, you can go into "aim mode" to increase damage, but then you move more slowly and take more damage. You can also roll to avoid attacks, by double-tapping a movement key. It's not twitch/FPS style combat, but it's definitely a lot more active than an auto-attack based MMO. Of course, you've got all kinds of special abilities you and your Away Team members can use, depending on what you're specialized in.

Another good thing I noticed was there's a good loot system! I had been concerned that in a game based on, basically, you being in the military (Starfleet), there wouldn't be a lot of cool loot items to get and work for, like there is in another MMOs. Well, during the ground combat on the transport, I found 3 different bind-on-equip body armor items, all of which seemed pretty decent! So there's loot to collect and such too, which is a good thing, as it's a big goal for a lot of people in MMOs (myself included).

STO is also interesting for being the second major MMO title to offer a Lifetime Subscription - the first being LOTRO of course. For $240, you can get a lifetime sub to STO - and of course the perks they're included with it are pretty compelling, especially to fans of the IP and/or the game itself. Said perks include the ability to design your character as a liberated Borg! Lifetime sub is the only way to do this - and it's only being offered from now until the game releases! It's ... pretty compelling! ;)

So, in 4 days, I've gone from being fairly "meh" about the game, to being pretty damn close to putting in a preorder. O_o I really had to experience first-hand how fleshed out both types of combat were - that was the main thing I had been concerned about. I really didn't think they'd be able to "nail" both space and ground combat. I've rarely been so happy to be wrong. :D

Well, Return to Ostagar was finally released yesterday and of course we tried it out. Got through the entire module once as the current character.

It's short, I'll say that. It took, I dunno, probably an hour, maybe a little over, to get through it. It was fun, though, and I definitely think it was worth the cost of the download.

There isn't much else I can say without getting into spoiler territory and I don't like to do that. :) I will say though, that it doesn't deliver on some of the plot promises that were made in the teasers for it.

(As with most of my Dragon Age posts, this post will be kind of cryptic, as I don't want to spoil things for people...)

So last night, we were at a certain point in run-through #4 of Dragon Age, and were expecting a character to do a specific thing, that they have always done before. And they did exactly the opposite! And then proceeded to ... do something other things ... that had us both sitting there, jaws dropped, for about 3 minutes straight while the cut scenes played out.

This game just keeps being amazing, and different every single play through. I've still got at least one, maybe 2 more planned.

It's a shame the DLC was delayed. But, if they found a problem, better to delay than release buggy DLC and piss people off. Still, though, I want see it... damn it!

Also - I noticed they announced a full, paid expansion to the game planned for mid-March! Can't wait for that, to be sure.

So my last couple of entries have been extolling the awesomeness of the WoW random dungeon finder - and it is completely awesome! There is a weird paradox though. A group in WoW generally consists of 1 tank, 1 healer, and 3 DPS classes. So, you'd figure, as a DPS class you'd get into a random group a ton faster, since they're needed in quantity 3 per group. But it's exactly the opposite! DPS classes have to wait much, much longer.

In general, tanks get grouped the very second they click "join queue." As a healer, I usually get in instantly, and always within 20-30 seconds - and that matches up with what other healers are saying. DPS classes, though, have long waits. When I queue my hunter, I wait between 15 and 20 minutes, and that agrees with what other DPS player are saying.

But why? You need 3 DPS players per group - shouldn't they be getting grouped faster? It has to be that there are many, many more people playing DPS than are playing tanks and healers. Maybe the specialized "win/lose will hinge on this player" roles of tank and healer are just a little too much for a lot of players? I don't know - it's odd though.

So, just to get maximum playing per session, I've been queuing as my druid, and picking Healer and DPS for role. Of course, I always get pulled for Healer, and that's fine. I have done a few runs as my offspec, though, and that's been fun too. Of course I had to uncheck Healer role, and had long waits, but it was worth it.

Speaking of which: Moonkin. That's what I chose for offspec, and it's a blast (literally!) Imagine a 7' tall bipedal owl-creature. With antlers. That casts very, very high damage nuke spells. And, if the RNG is with him, even higher damage! So high that the form is given a massive bonus to health and such. Since it's super easy to pull aggro... ;) Very fun offspec though.

I'm also still playing Dragon Age very heavily, and looking forward to the DLC coming out today! What the heck "secret plans and goals" good that puppy-dog-of-a-King Cailan have had?! I have to know.

I've been playing the druid nearly exclusively, running random heroics via the random dungeon finder, and having a blast. Being the healer gives you a sense of ... accomplishment, for sure. I've realized too that my gear is nowhere near as bad as random_forum_d00ds01 would have me believe. You really don't need full T10 raid gear to run heroics - go figure!

One cool thing though about druids is that you can be a tank, healer, melee DPS, or ranged (nuker) DPS. Just takes a separate set of gear and a separate talent spec for each. And since they added the option to swap between two talent specs ages ago, the talent part is easy. I have a "decent" gear set for melee DPS, but DPS classes are a dime a dozen and I hear queue times are quite long. I could easily get together a tanking set, and tanks say that queue times are faster than for healers! Or, I could go moonkin (nuker), but again with the queue times.

I wonder if the long queue times for DPS is a battlegroup-specific thing though. When I've run randoms on my hunter, the queue times have been longer than for my healer, but not super long. I don't time it with a stopwatch or anything, but I'm an extremely impatient person and it never seems long to me. Maybe 2-5 minutes at most? It never seemed long. Who knows.

Maybe beartank is the way to go though - then I'd cover the "holy duo" (tanking and healing). I can also just not mess with offspec, and use my hunter for "offspec" in the form of another character. He's way behind the gear curve, but with random dungeons that's super easy to fix, and hunter IS a pet class after all.

Who knows - all that matters is I'm having a lot of fun, in a way I haven't before in WoW, so... yeah... glad I'm back again.

So I logged on my druid and told myself "ok, time to just try a random dungeon!" I queued up, selected Healer as my role, and in about 20-30 seconds (!!!) I was in The Nexus. Sure, it's supposedly one of the easiest Heroics, but it was all new to me.

The group leader was a paladin, and we had a warrior, a death knight, and a hunter as well. Turns out the pally was the group leader and tank, and he did really, really well. Now keep in mind this was the first time I was doing this dungeon, and I was the healer! We did really well. Destroyed the place, honestly. The only "ack omg" moment was when the pally was AFK and the DK decided to pull a boatload of trash and I nearly lost him. I didn't realize he was going to pull with the main tank and group leader AFK and so I had to get creative with keeping him up - but I did!

Given it was a random dungeon with a 100% pick-up group, the rewards were great - quite a few T9 set piece emblems. The new dungeon finder system is great - you can just queue up for a random dungeon, have just a short wait while a group is assembled for you, and once you're done, you get some nice rewards - especially for your first of the day, and especially if the group is 100% PUG.

I only had time for the one run, and so I left group after we were done and sent a tell to the pally apologizing for leaving them healer-less and he said it was no problem and also said "nice healing!" So, cool, my first heroic run, and I got complimented on my healing. It's experiences like that that'll keep me playing a class.

Now to fix my character's awful gear. My healing set really is bad... Heh.

I am still also playing Dragon Age pretty heavily. I've finished the game once, and have nearly finished it a second time. I'm about 1/3rd the way through on a third character, and have a 4th character started as well. Why the heck would I do this?

Well, the first time through was as a female dwarf rogue and I played it "good." The second character is a human female rogue and I've also played it "good." You get different reactions (very different) as a human than you do as a dwarf. The third character is a human male mage and I'm playing it horrifically "evil." You really get different reactions as a mage, and gender also has an effect. And of course, being basically the devil has a large effect on story/reactions too. The fourth character, barely started, is a male dwarf warrior that I'm running just to get a story piece that doesn't seem to be available to any other combination. I'll leave it at that to avoid spoilering anything. ;)

So, you see, there's a lot of replayability with Dragon Age. You're probably seeing that being touted on every gaming site out there... And it's true! Different race/class/gender/alignment combinations give you wildly different reactions and story options.

I'm also looking forward to the DLC that's supposed to be out "sometime this holiday season." I've always been a fan of DLC (I have an absurd amount of Rock Band/RB2 DLC!) and so I'm happy to see Dragon Age being extended via DLC. :)