Are you evil enough?
The Evil League of Evil is accepting applications.

That is all.
- posted by Josh @ 5:48 PM (0) comments

 
WoW thoughts
So, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, I've been playing a little World of Warcraft lately (okay, more than a little, a lot). I've built my dwarf warrior Varulus up to level 70, and as I've been tooling around at level 70 for a while, I've developed some feelings about the "endgame" content -- that is, the high-level instances and raids that 'wrap up' the storylines you've been following as you play through the game.

WoW is a very well designed game, and it is clear that when it came to developing the first expansion (Burning Crusade), Blizzard applied a number of lessons learned from the original, making the game -- especially the higher levels -- more accessible to the casual gamer: the kind of player who can get a couple hours of play in at once, but doesn't have the time to devote seven hours to an instance raid.

What I've found lately, and what has been frustrating me, is that the real end-game material (at least right now) is a bit too tough for my standard group to run. We've got the skills, we just don't have the gear to consistently perform at the level necessary to tackle the top-end enemies without wiping half-a dozen times.

Normally, this is a matter of getting better gear and going back to tackle the parts that are too tough right now. But the better gear is -- for the most part -- available as drops from the places that are too tough, rewards for getting your reputation up to high levels with the different factions, or rewards for earning a lot of honor in the player-versus-player battlegrounds.

In other words, a lot of repetitive grinding, or what I've come to call "Final Fantasy syndrome". I haven't actually completed a Final Fantasy game in a long time, largely because the end-game dungeon battle is easier if you do all sorts of side-quests and grinding to get those extra levels. I just don't have the time (or inclination). I want to see the end of the story.

I'm looking forward to the next expansion for WoW this November, because it will provide a lot of new content and story. Of course, I wonder if the same sort of thing will happen to the outland that happened to the high-level zones in the original game: nobody goes there anymore, because there is better and more interesting stuff to run.
- posted by Josh @ 12:30 PM (0) comments

 
Quick "Horrible" news...
Hi all. Quick post as I head off to bed for the night.

The soundtrack album for Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is now available for purchase from iTunes.

Go and buy!
- posted by Josh @ 10:54 PM (0) comments

 
OMG, an update!
No updates for August... oy have I been slacking. If there is anybody out there who still follows this, here's the latest news from planet H.

I broke down at the beginning of August and bought myself a new computer. I have made the switch, and I am loving it. I had the faithful old Dell for almost as long as we've been living in our current home (about 6 years) and it was really showing its age.

RedBrick didn't win the Ennie, which isn't really a surprise, since the voting is fan-driven and we don't have anywhere near the number of fans companies like White Wolf, Paizo, or Wizards of the Coast have.

One of the bigger announcements from RedBrick is the planned development and release of Age of Legend, a Barsaive-based campaign setting for D&D Fourth Edition. I'm consulting on some of the development for this.

Speaking of D&D4, I've been reading the core books and it looks like a pretty decent game -- certainly more up my alley than what 3.x eventually became. I haven't had much of a chance to play it at all... for that matter, I haven't had much of a chance to play much of anything when it comes to traditional RPGs. Even my long-running ED campaign has been on a pseudo hiatus for the past few months. We manage to get together every three weeks or so, but because of the two toddlers we don't end up getting much of anything done.

So, I've been getting my gaming fix by playing quite a bit of World of Warcraft. I play on the Sentinels realm, where I have three characters: Varulus, Mestoph, and Urthdawne (all Alliance side). I'm usually on in the evenings (Eastern time). Pop on over and say hi if you want.

As you can see from the new widget over on the right hand side of the page here, I'm giving Twitter a try. It's a kind of mini-blog news update thing, and has really caught on in the podcasting community. One of the interesting things about it is that each update is limited to 140 characters. It really makes you get to the point.

I've also been itching to get back into writing. I've opened the files that have my stories-in-progress a couple times now, trying to get back into the writing groove. Overtime at work has started to fall off, so I'm thinking about taking some of that morning time I didn't have before and get an hour or so of writing in. As numerous writers have talked about, you need to actually write regularly if you want to finish anything, and get better while you do it.

Of course, managing that with a 17-month old toddler and a wife who's starting her final semester of school is tough. It's not just a matter of setting priorities, it's managing time as well. The job situation is starting to settle into a routine, though, so perhaps I'll be able to keep more balls in the air at once. I had a vacation the first week of August (it was my first real vacation in a long time) and it helped recharge my batteries a bit.

That's all for now, I guess. I know I say this every time, but I really do plan on keeping this thing up to date a little more often than I have been lately.
- posted by Josh @ 1:40 PM (0) comments