Taufmonster's Log

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 20 - My last day of WoW

2012-02-14T12:00:00.000-06:00

If it were my last day to play World of Warcraft, and not just a temporary unsubscription, I would really want to spend it connecting with people again. I'd run dungeons with my guildmates and say goodbye to all of them. I'd log on to old servers and send mail messages to old friends/seeing if they were online to say goodbye.

After that, I'd give away what wealth I had to those who needed it. If I had friends who were always in need of gold it would go to them. Otherwise I'd just hand it to some low level character who didn't have heirlooms, since they'd be the ones that most likely don't have a high-level character to bankroll them.

My final act would be to move all my main characters to somewhere meaningful to them. I would take my priest to Ashenvale. I have really strong memories of leveling her there and that's where I think she'd want to be, defending it from the orcs. I would log out my shaman at the Throne of the Elements in Nagrand. Being a Draenei and a shaman I think he would want to be there. My very last act would be to log out my druid. I would take him to the Night Elf starting area and log him out next to that initial quest giver, standing by him, greeting each new Night Elf and help new druids as they come.

Games and Love: Shadow of the Colossus

2012-02-14T10:00:00.000-06:00

This is my first post for Critical Distance's Blogs of the Round Table for February. The theme for February is Love. For this post I will be talking about one of my favorite games of all time, Shadow of the Colossus.

[[spoiler warning for Shadow of the Colossus]]

It's no secret that I love Shadow of the Colossus. That game was an incredible experience for me, and I will never forget it. When I think about love being conveyed in a video game, I think about Shadow of the Colossus. I believe Shadow of the Colossus conveys love so strongly because it does so without words.

Mono, the girl
Shadow of the Colossus starts off as the story about a boy who steals a magic sword so that he may gain access to a strange land where he can resurrect a girl, whose name in Mono. We are never informed about the boy's relationship with the girl, but I'd assume that they were in love, given the apparently similarity in their age. Other possibilities are that they are siblings, possibly twins. But it's not the nature of their love that matters, it's the quality.

When the boy reaches the land he is told by a spectral voice that calls itself 'Dormin' that it can bring back his love, if the boy slays the sixteen colossi. Without hesitation and without question the boy embarks on this quest. As the game progresses, the boy becomes weary. He looks dirty, corrupted, and has a much more difficult time getting up after he is knocked to the ground, but still he presses on to resurrect his loved one. Eventually the quest consumes Wander, and he struggles for his life so that he may see her alive again. You truly know that he would do anything and everything in his power to bring Mono back, because he truly loves her.

And while the game is about the love a boy has for a girl and his struggle to bring her back, that's not the love that the game fosters. There is another love.

Agro, the horse

Agro is your trusty steed througout the journey. He carries you wherever you need to go, as far as he can. There are even several boss battles that could not be done without him there to help you. He's even different from horses in other games. He's more intelligent. When navigating through a narrow passage, you don't need to steer him, he'll avoid the sides and lead you through. As I played the game, I came to care deeply about Agro.

This connection that you have to Agro is facilitated by the game's controls. When you're controlling Wander, you just tilt the left analog stick in the direction that you want to go, as you do in any other video game. Agro doesn't control the same way. When you are riding Agro you use the X button to kick your heels and go forward and use the left analog stick to steer left or right. Many people complained about this control scheme, saying that it was awkward and made going long distances frustrating because you had to keep pressing the X button. But what this scheme does is it make you connect with Agro the way you would a real horse.

You, the player, have to form a physical connection to Agro. When I walk, I tell myself to walk and my body doesn't disobey me, unless I trip or something. Compelling and animal to move is a very different story, and Shadow of the Colossus forces you to communicate with the controller in much the same way that Wander must communicate with Agro. Then you add in Agro's very realistic rendering and animations and you have one fastastic video game horse that puts any incarnation of Epona to shame.

When you call out to Agro, Wander's tone is different depending upon how far away Agro is. If he's far enough away, the call is loud and almost sounds desperate. He's your only companion in this strange, harsh land, and you need him. You need him to survive. You need him to complete the mission.

I grew to love Agro. I could feel Wander's love for Agro, and I could feel Agro's love for Wander. Every time you defeat a colossus, Wander passes out and wakes up in the temple where the game begins, and every time Agro is there, coming back to find/meet you. He knows that you'll be there and travels back to the temple by himself so that he can be with you and help you on your journey.

Before the final boss, there is a bridge that you have to cross. As you run across it on Agro the bridge starts to crumble. You can't make Agro go fast enough and as you're just short of the end Agro throws Wander off of him so that you land on the other side and he...he falls into the gorge, plunging into the river below.

It was at that moment that my heart sank and I felt absolute rage. This last colossus was going to die so that Agro, my friend's sacrifice would not be in vain. After killing the last colossus and fulfilling some final scene responsibilities, Mono is alive in the temple. Then, at the front of the temple you hear it, the sound of a horse's hooves. Agro had somehow survived the fall into the river and made it all the way back to the temple one last time, limping, to be with you. Mono takes Agro and the two of them make their way to the top of the temple to presumably live out their days together.

That, dear readers, is a love greater than any that has ever been conveyed to me in a video game, and it's one I hope to never forget.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 19 - In my bags/bank

2012-02-13T12:00:00.000-06:00

My first bag is where I keep the standard stuff, the things that I'll never get rid of. In there you'll find my hearthstone, my battle standards, and fun items that I like to use. On my druid, this includes my Tol'Barad Searchlight as well as the tabard from Operation Gnomeregan that lets me turn into a gnome. I also have juggling torches from the fire festival because why the hell not.

My second bag contains my offspec gear. My druid's current offspec is balance so I have spell leather in there. My third bag is where the stuff really starts to pile in. First, you'll find potions, flasks and food. You'll also find alternate pieces of gear that I may use situationally. After that the quest items and other random pickups start to fill in. My fourth bag is usually picked up items, and my fifth bag is also picked up items.

In my bank you can find tons of items that I need to get rid off. There are bags that are soulbound and smaller than my current bags. There are things that I need to put on the auction house but have been to lazy to. There are old crafting materials, in case I need to make something for an alt. Other items include

lockboxes even though I'm not a rogue
tabards I don't need anymore
rep items
food that I don't eat
an ogre tannin
a rock

WoW Survey Results: Gender and Class

2012-02-13T10:00:00.000-06:00

Last time we covered the differences in race selection by the gender of the respondents. This time, we're going to talk about the differences in class selection by the gender of the respondents. There are tons of ways to break this down, so let's get started.

Breakdown by class

Classes played by male respondents
Paladin	Druid	Warrior	DK	Shaman	Hunter	Priest	Mage	Rogue	Warlock
12.69%	11.24%	11.03%	10.27%	10.22%	9.72%	9.61%	9.10%	8.45%	7.67%

Classes played by female respondents
Druid	Priest	Hunter	Paladin	Shaman	Mage	DK	Warlock	Rogue	Warrior
15.71%	13.60%	12.48%	11.22%	10.66%	9.96%	7.15%	7.01%	6.31%	5.89%

The classes that increased in representation if you go from male to female respondents were: druid, shaman, hunter, priest, mage, and warlock. The classes that decreased in representation were, paladin, warrior, dk, and rogue.

One of the things that we want to do when we look at this is to figure out the trend. Certainly by looking at which classes decreased in popularity it would seem that women don't like being in melee as much as men do. Is that the chief difference? Or is it that women don't like wearing plate or rogues as much? I think this deserves some breakdowns.

Breakdown by roles available

Average class representation

Male respondents
	No Heal	Heal
No Tank	8.74%	9.92%
Tank	10.65%	11.97%

Female respondents
	No Heal	Heal
No Tank	8.94%	12.13%
Tank	6.52%	13.47%

But what does this all mean? Both male and female respondents seem to enjoy classes that can heal as opposed to classes that can't heal. There is a clear indication that male respondents would rather have the option of tanking than to not have the option. However, with the female respondents, we see an increase from dps/healing hybrid (top right) to 3-way hybrid (bottom right) but a decrease from pure DPS (top left) to tank/dps hybrid (bottom left).

If you think about it, the tank/dps hybrids are warriors and Death Knights. They are both plate classes. SO maybe this all has to do with the aesthetics of armor types and it cascades into the roles of the class. Let's look at some more breakdowns.

Breakdown by armor type

Average Class Representation
	Cloth	Leather	Mail	Plate
Male	8.79%	9.85%	9.97%	11.33%
Female	10.42%	11.01%	11.57%	8.09%

From this chart it would appear that male players prefer heavier armor types, with cloth being far below leather and mail and plate being far above. It's a bit more complicated for female players. We can certainly say that they don't play plate-wearing characters as often as the others, but otherwise there is an increasing trend from cloth up to mail.

So what is it? Is it that female players just don't like plate, but otherwise prefer heavier armor? Let's check something else out.

Breakdown by location in battle

Average Class Representation
	Male	Female
Melee	9.92%	6.45%
Mix	8.54%	9.40%
Ranged	9.03%	10.76%

From this chart, it would appear that women tend to prefer to prefer to stand at range as opposed to melee. Male players have a much more even distribution of preferences. But there may be something else at play here. Loot at the bottom four classes for the female respondents: Death Knight, warlock, rogue, and warrior. What separates them from the others? They have a different tone than the other classes. The Death Knight is dark, filled with necromantic energy. The warlock uses fel energy; it is literally demonic. The rogue is sneaky and ruthless. The warrior is often thought of as a barbarian. They have these harsh connotations to them. Maybe that's a source of their lack of representation.

Conclusion

I've just spent an awful large amount of time trying to figure out the motivations that give us the breakdown of classes played by the female respondents to my survey. This is because when we look at the breakdown by roles, their isn't a clear explanation. There was an increase from healer/dps hybrids to 3-way hybrids but a decrease from pure dps to tank/dps hybrids.

When looking at the decrease I saw that something else may have been at play. Both tank/dps hybrids are plate classes! But the paladin is also a plate class and has a quite favorable representation among the female respondents. Paladins can heal, warriors and Death Knights cannot. This means paladins can be at range. What happens if we bring rogues into this? They're melee only and also feature a low representation. When looking at the numbers it would seem that melee versus range seems to play a big role in the class choice of the female respondents. Lastly, when we bring another data point into the analysis, the representation of the warlock, we appears to be the classes with darker themes that feature the lowest representation. But the warlock has been unpopular this expansion in general and is receiving an overhaul in Mists of Pandaria to make is more appealing, so maybe bringing it into this analysis isn't going to help.

The problem that's at the heart of this is correlation, and it can be a big problem in statistics. If you've ever taken a statistics class, you've likely heard talk about independent random variables. When things are independent (unrelated to one another) it's easier to isolate the effect of each variable. In our case, the classes with harsh connotations tend towards melee DPS. Both of those groups tend towards plate wearers. Those groups all tend towards the having the role of tanking available. There is a relationship in how the classes are designed that obfuscates the motivations at hand here. Furthermore, I didn't collect information about specs (for reasons of it being difficult to parse the data that I would receive. I'm going to talk about all of that in a much later post.), but I did collect something else. I asked each person what their feelings were about different activities in a PVE scenario.

Difference From The Average Score by Gender
	Tanking	Healing	RDPS	MDPS
Male	-0.14	-0.17	0.3	0.01
Female	-0.54	0.2	0.62	-0.28

For that chart I had asked everyone to rate those activities on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 meaning that you loved participating in that activity. I split my respondents by gender and found the average score for each activity and then I took the average of those averages and subtracted it from original averages. This would let me see which activities a gender liked "more than average" and "less than average". From this, we can see that male respondents liked ranged DPS more than average and melee DPS slightly more than average. Female respondents liked healing and ranged DPS more than average and tanking and melee DPS less than average.
So maybe that's it. Maybe the female respondents just typically don't like melee DPS and tanking as much as they do healing and ranged DPS. This effect would cascade down and affect what armor types the female respondents wear, and what classes they play.
The only real way to get a handle on the motivations for why someone plays the classes they do is to ask. So, dear readers, what classes do you play and why do you play them? Of particular interest is if you made a conscious decision to switch from one class to another.

Dinner Tonight

2012-02-12T22:18:00.000-06:00

We went to IHOP for dinner tonight, because I owed Sarah breakfast for dinner, and some really interesting stuff was going on at the tables near us. At the table behind Sarah, the guy spent the whole time talking about Coke, as in Coca Cola. First he talked about the Coke Freestyle machines and how they're super cool and how they were designed by Ferrari (I don't actually know if that's true). Then he spent an inordinate amount of time talking about New Coke and about where it was a great or terrible business decision. He has apparently written at least 3 papers about Coke and, from what I could observe, was drinking a Coke during the meal. He was with a woman. I presume they were on a date, since I'd think that if you were in a relationship with someone you would have already released your Coke craziness on them before you managed to make it to that point.

At another table nearby, I first noticed that the guy was just staring at his phone and completely ignoring the woman he was with. As I paid more attention, things started to seem more unfortunate to me. I could tell that she was talking to him, but that he was hardly saying anything, if anything at all. She was leaned forward, staring at him directly, really trying to engage with him but he continued to ignore her. She was even holding his free hand across the table as she was trying to engage him in conversation. I only saw him make eye contact with her briefly. Even when their food came, phone.

It really seemed like she was trying to talk to him about something important. Sarah said it seemed like he felt guilty about something. I felt really bad for her. I wanted to go up to her and say something like, "Are you okay?" when he went to the bathroom. I wanted to tell her that he would probably always be a dick and that she shouldn't be with him, but I felt if I did so it wouldn't be well received and would be an incredibly awkward gesture. Now I kinda with I had said something to her. She deserves better.

The last weird thing was that at one point our waiter asked us if we would like to make a donation to the Arkansas Children's Hospital, which we did take the time to do. The weird part was that he told us that his manager isn't only making them ask patrons to do this, but that if they don't perform successfully at soliciting these donations from people that they will lose shifts, since the donations are a big tax writeoff for the company. I just thought that was horrible. I'm not at all surprised that a manager would do that, but I'm very disappointed that they would do that. I left a fairly nice tip for our waiter for having to put up with that kind of shit.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 18 - My favorite outfit

2012-02-12T11:10:00.001-06:00

Druid Tier 6

Since I only recently resubscribed and haven't been working to put any outfits together, I don't have any favorite outfits. I don't have old tier sets collected and I don't have any transmog outfits. But I do have favorite tier sets for each of the classes that I play.

For my druid, I particularly love tier 6. It has a very Tauren feeling, and the Tauren are one of my favorite races. Tier 6's simple look is very appealing to me. I'll take the Tauren themes over the Night Elf themes anyday. Night Elves are overdone. Less elves and orcs, give me the other races please.

Shaman Tier 8

My second favorite is for my shaman, who is the first character I ever had to reach the level cap. As I've said before, I raided Naxxramas with him and I eagerly anticipated the release of Ulduar. One of the things I was looking forward to about Ulduar was the tier set. Shaman Tier 8 has some of the most badass shoulders I've seen.

Shaman shoulders tend to be some of the best shoulders in the game, in my opinion. Big bright things with awesome stuff happening on them? Sign me up. The shaman tier 10 shoulders are also pretty nice, if just for the cool effect.

For my priest, I also enjoy tier 6, but for a different reason. Priest tier 6 fits a shadow priest magnificently. The shadow priest themes appeal to me, their psychic/psionic abilities are so mystical and cool. Since I don't have this, I'm making do with what things I end up picking up. The only piece of gear that I've gone out of my way to get for transmogrification was Whitemane's Chapeau, which I had when I was level appropriate for it and I loved the look when I was in shadow form.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 17 - My favorite spots

2012-02-11T14:00:00.000-06:00

LMAO if you don't love this music

In game
Ummm...I don't know if I have one. I don't think I have a place that is the one place that I just like to go hang out. If I had to pick a place that I particularly liked, it would be the Twilight Grove in Duskwood. I leveled through that zone a couple times before I ever actually explored it and was amazed at what I found when I went there. I definitely have some favorite zones.

For classic WoW, I definitely loved Ashenvale the most, even if I was initially afraid of it. The music and the locations are just my favorite. There are some fallen trees that you could get on that went over the road that I loved to climb on. I still haven't actually leveled there since Cataclysm came out (I'm way behind on things) and am eager to check it out, even if it will make me sad. Duskwood. For Outland, I love Nagrand with its scenic beauty the most. In Northrend, the Grizzly Hills were my favorite. I love the Furbolg. The music for the Grizzly Hills was what really got me excited for the zone before Wrath even came out. In the Cataclysm content, I'd have to say that I like Vash'jir the most. The zone has great history, views, and it's just so big and mysterious.

Out of game
My parent's house has this one room that I absolutely love. If you never looked in it you'd probably just think it was a closet. It's a narrow room, probably 5 ft wide by 7 ft long. It has a narrow entrance at one end and at the other end the room narrows into a little alcove that has window. On one wall there is an old desk with a couple shelves above it and a light attached to the bottom of the bottom shelf to light the desk. This cozy little room has always appealed to me, and I spent a good amount of time studying in there.

In the future, I'd like to live somewhere that had one room that was no more that 10 ft by 10 ft, with windows covering half the room and bookshelves covering the other half. There'd be a window seat in front of the windows with pillows on it, and possibly a small, simple desk somewhere. It would be my favorite room.

When I have a house someday, I want it to have a bunch of small, intimate, specifically designed rooms instead of a handful of large, general purpose rooms. It's probably because I'm such an introvert.

#FanfictionFriday: Karuun

2012-02-10T14:00:00.000-06:00

I've never really done creative writing before, so I won't pretend to be a quality writer. I never would have considered myself to be a fanfiction writer, but you know how it is. A story just pops into your head and then you can't stop thinking about it and developing it so you have to put it down somewhere. I can't really say if this will become a thing that I do regularly, but it's a thing I'm doing now, so have of it what you will.

A grizzled dwarf with a bald head, a bright red beard, and wearing everyday clothes leads the draenei to a chair in the middle of the room. The dwarf, leader of this group, asks him to sit. Seated at a long table in front of him were three figures: the dwarf, Kalin, who brought him here, a middle-aged gnome male, a young human woman, and to the side of the table was a rather large bear. The gnome is wearing blue robes with red accents he sports a somewhat disheveled blond hair and the look one might expect of an academic. The human woman is wearing priestess robes with the Gilnean symbology and has long, pulled back, brown hair. The bear is sitting next to the woman and has an attentive pose. Once everyone is settled, Kalin asks, "So, Karuun, tell us about yourself. What's your story?"

Karuun begins, "I was born on Oshu'gun, between the time when my people fled Argus but before we settled on Draenor. I grew up in the light of the Naaru and trained as a paladin when I became of age. When the Burning Legion came and turned the orcs against us, I defended against their vicious attacks. My people were among those that fled on the Exodar, and after we crashed on Azeroth and found refuge within the Alliance, I returned to Draenor to help liberate and cleanse it of the Legion's taint. After Illidan fell, I joined up with the Shattered Sun Offensive to help repay may debt to the people Azeroth."

"I was in Stormwind when the Lich King attacked and fell in battle against a frost wyrm. The next thing I knew I had been raised as a Death Knight in service to the Lich King. After our leader, Darion Mograine, liberated us from the Lich King's control I served in Northrend with the Ebon Blade. While there, I spent my time in Icecrown, pushing back the scourge threat so an attack on Icecrown Citadel could be made. After the Lich King fell, I was really confronted with the reality of my situation. I had been a paladin for thousands of years, and then I was stripped, not only of my life but of the Light. I felt directionless and left the Ebon Blade. I wandered for a while and now I'm here."

After Karun finishes his story, the human, Cassandra, speaks up, "So tell me, Karuun, why do you wish to join us in going back to Northrend?"

Karuun begins again, "After the death of the Lich King, I was not the only Death Knight who felt directionless. Many of them had trouble not only handling their undeath, but also their newfound immortality. Some killed themselves, others engaged in pointless bloodsport, many stayed with the Ebon Blade, and others joined guilds. None of these things initially appealed to me. As I said before, I wandered, exploring the world for a while; I had never really had a chance to take it all in after we arrived here. I was in Ironforge when I saw your flier advertising that you were going to Northrend. I knew that if I would find meaning to my life I would find it there, and so I contacted Kalin."

The bear suddenly spoke up and asked, "You know that we have been commisioned by the Argent Crusade to go to Northrend and aid in their efforts at containing and defeating the remaining Scourge?"

"Yes" replied Karuun.

The gnome looked at the others and then spoke, "Then let me be the first in welcoming you to The Kingdom's Glory!"

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 16 - Things I miss post-Cata

2012-02-10T10:00:00.000-06:00

Cataclysm brought many changes to World of Warcraft. Many of those changes were great!. Very few were bad. Some of them were unwelcome, but ultimately necessary. Here are some of the things that I miss.

Southshore
I would generally always make my way through Southshore on my Alliance characters, but I can't anymore. They've all been turned into goo.

The Wrathgate
I know that it's in the past now and wouldn't make sense to keep, but it was absolutely one of the coolest things they ever put in the game. I mean...damn that shit was cool.

Understanding Orgrimmar
There once was a time when I played a Horde character or two. I understood Orgrimmar very well. Then I spent a very long time playing Alliance characters and in the past couple weeks I logged back into my Horde characters and Orgrimmar is a foreign place now. I don't like it. Then again, I'm not a Horde player so I don't really have to deal with it.

Being in Northrend
I just liked Northrend, alright? Northrend didn't have fucking trees everywhere. Old world's got trees all over the damn place. Fuck trees. Outland is also good for this. No trees.

The potential for Uldum to be awesome
I was absolutely fascinated with Uldum. It was just this mysterious hole in a wall that you couldn't get through. After hearing/seeing all the cool stuff in Uldaman and Ulduar my mind was full of possibilities. I wanted more than almost anything to explore Uldum. Then, it wasn't really that cool and we spent half the zone in a joke. It was better as a mystery.

And some more things:

Magni Bronzebeard
Keys! I loved collecting keys. I actually had the achievement.
CoT: Stratholme drake runs. I remember my first successful run of that. We fought for it.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 15 - My desktop background

2012-02-09T12:00:00.000-06:00

My current desktop

I have this desktop because I abso-fucking-lutely love Shadow of the Colossus. There tons of really great SotC wallpapers out there that can be found just be doing a search for "shadow of the colossus wallpaper". That particular wallpaper is the first result if you search for that.

I keep strange things on my desktop. There's WoW, Starcraft II, and Dustforce (it's the one with the broken image). Then there's Google Refine, Mumble, Picasa. In my pinned items there's TeXnicCenter, Eclipse, and R. The folder in the top left holds reference documents for TeX and R.

I guess that's it. Bye! Come back real soon, ya'll!

WoW Survey Results: Gender and Race

2012-02-09T10:00:00.000-06:00

Cats are magic

How do men and women play World of Warcraft? We've all heard talk about the differences between male and female WoW players. Some of that might reflect truth, some of that may reflect enforced gender roles. But has anyone just gone out there and asked them? [Editors Note: Yes, others have. No I won't link you. -HMP]

About a year ago, shortly before patch 4.1 was released, I made a survey and tried to distribute it among several sources, but the only place where it took off was MMO-Champion. In the survey I asked players about their age, gender, their characters, and what they liked to do when playing.

This data was collected during patch late patch 4.0, and consisted only of people who frequent MMO-Champion. As such, it's hard to apply everything here directly to our current WoW population. Absolute results should be assumed to likely not apply, but comparative results should still be quite relevant. For example, I won't talk about the ratio of male to female players or the age distributions of players in my results because I have a unique subset of the WoW playing population.

Race Choices

Player/Character	Horde	Alliance
Male	51.21%	48.78%
Female	45.54%	54.46%

From this table we can see that female respondents tend to play Alliance characters slightly more than male respondents do. This does not mean that the Alliance has more female players than male players. The only way to do that would be a comprehensive survey of WoW players or an in-game random sampling of players. I wouldn't trust asking people in-game, they'd probably be weirded out by someone whispering them and asking them their age and gender.

Races played by male players
Human	Blood Elf	Night Elf	Tauren	Undead	Orc	Draenei	Troll	Worgen	Goblin	Dwarf	Gnome
14.89%	12.41%	9.00%	8.80%	8.27%	8.10%	7.51%	7.51%	7.19%	6.11%	5.51%	4.66%

Races played by female players
Blood Elf	Draenei	Night Elf	Human	Worgen	Tauren	Troll	Goblin	Gnome	Undead	Orc	Dwarf
17.13%	14.47%	13.09%	10.86%	8.07%	7.94%	7.52%	5.85%	5.01%	3.76%	3.34%	2.92%

Humans and elves are popular all around, but the popularity/percentage of play changes drastically depending upon the gender of the respondent. In the transition from male to female the human, undead, orc and dwarf representations drastically lowers while the draenei, blood elf, and night elf representations increase dramatically. If you consider the sexual dimorphism for each of the races and the comparative attractiveness between each race's genders it would appear that a large factor in this has to do with wanting one's character to be attractive/human. The more monstrous races tend toward the lower side of the scale, while the more attractive and human ones tend toward the higher side of the scale. In the case of the draenei, the males are large and strange, while their females are more human sized and proportioned. I can't really account for the loss of representation of humans in the transition except that their popularity may pale in comparison to the elves and the draenei.

It's important to remember that people play different races for a great variety of reasons and that the reasons listed above do not apply to everybody's decision. This merely reflects the overall trend. One reason to pick a race that actually went away quite a bit in Cataclysm was race/class combinations. They were far more restrictive prior to Cataclysm and were opened up significantly and now there are far fewer restrictions than there were.

In general, you find that the distribution of races is more even among the male players, while it is more skewed among the female players. I can't really account for what this means, though. Commenters are certainly welcome to speculate.

Next time the discussion will be about the gender of the player and the classes they play. That one is going to be a doozy.

Guide: Preserving macros when transferring servers

2012-02-08T14:00:00.000-06:00

He didn't have his macros. Do you want to end up like him?

As you may have noticed in my earlier blog posts, I've changed servers on a couple characters recently. Upon logging into both of those characters I realized something horrible. The worst thing possible had happened. All of my macros were gone. For the first character I transferred, my priest, this wasn't a big deal. However, when I transferred my druid, this was a massive deal. My bottom left action bar was filled with macros that changed the ability they displayed every time I changed form. Recreating all of those would have been an absolute mess to figure out.

I thought, "There must be a better way." Lo and behold, there was.

If you find yourself transferring servers and missing your macros, there is an easy fix. While logged off, go to your main World of Warcraft folder (for me in Windows 7, it's C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft), then go into the "WTF" folder, then "Account" and then into the folder for the account the character was on. Then go into the folder for your old server and into the character's personal folder. For example, the full path for the folder that I'm in is "C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\(account name)\(old server)\(character name)".

Once there, copy (or cut) both of the files named "macros-cache". One of them is a '.txt' file and the other is a '.old' file. I don't know if both are necessary, but I copied both and it worked. Now go to the folder for your character on the new server ("C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\(account name)\(new server)\(character name)")and paste these files into there, overwriting any version of these files that is already there. Once you've done that, all you have to do is log in and all your macros will be there, on your bars, where they belong.

This will definitely put all your macros in your macro book. If you have action bar addons, I don't know if they'll automatically be on your bars. I use the default UI for my action bars and all of my macros showed up there when I logged in.

In short:

Go to the folder for your character on the old server
Copy macros-cache.txt and macros-cache.old
Paste those files into the folder for your character on the new server

You have to be logged out of that character for this to work. World of Warcraft loads your macros when you log in, so if you do this when you're already logged in your macros won't show up. Then when you log out World of Warcraft writes what macros it has to those files. So if you put those files there while logged in, it won't load them and it will take what macros it has (none) and overwrite the files you just put there (with empty files).

I hope this helps!

A while back I wrote a guide on how to get your addons to stop talking to you, especially on log in. If you hate your addons welcoming you when you log in, go check it out.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 14 – This upsets me

2012-02-08T11:00:00.000-06:00

"You know what you did. Now get in the corner!"

I use that picture often, but it's only because I love it so much. The video below is actually relevant today.

Rude People
In Zul'Aman on Sunday, we had a hunter in the group who was a 'go guy'. It seems now that he was urging us to get a speed run for the bears completed, but there was no way that was going to happen, especially since it's the first time that I've run the dungeon since...probably May or so. "Puuuuuuuuulllllll", "GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO", and other such things were all that he said. I once noticed that he had abandoned our current target to run forward just to wait at the next boss.

Why would you do this? Why would you be like this? We hadn't discussed going for a bear run, and we certainly weren't close to being able to do it. When we wiped on the third boss, he insulted the Death Knight in the group's gear and rage quit. This Death Knight actually had excellent gear. Maybe he was doing poor DPS, but I wouldn't know. As is customary, I called him an asshole after he had left the group.

People who just aren't even trying
I was in a Grim Batol NORMAL on my priest a while back and the group wiped several times on the first boss because they were just plain ignoring the fight mechanics. They would let the special trogg die right next to Umbriss, making him enrage and then the group would wipe. We wiped three or more times to this. I was very nearly ready to quit the group.

Offensive People
It should go without saying that I have no tolerance for those who use racist, sexist, homophobic, or other such offensive language. I will not pay fifteen dollars a month to put up with you and will call you out on it and attempt to have you kicked from the group, and failing such, will voluntarily leave that group.

I also don't care for vulgarity. I don't know you. You don't know me. Why would you say these things? Manners, people.

Trade Chat
One of the first things I tend to do is type '/leave Trade' so that I don't have to put up with that. It not only has to do with the stupid and awful stuff people will say there, but also because I just don't like to have all that text filling up my boxes. I'll selectively join Trade if I have a particular need to use it.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 13 - those that I admire

2012-02-07T14:00:00.000-06:00

My druid tries his best to make a heart.

Players that I admire. That's a tough question. There are definitely players that I recognize as being exceptional, whose skills I respect. But do I admire any of them? There are people that I admire who play World of Warcraft, but it's not necessarily because of how well they play.

I admire other bloggers for being able to do the types of things that I never would want to do such as leveling, loot, and boss guides. I admire theorycrafters for slogging through the mathematics of this game to help us find our optimal gearings and rotations. I admire the strategists who are the first to clear content for figuring out and disseminating the information about how to best tackle an encounter.

I admire several of the people that I follow on twitter for standing up for what they believe in and calling out the assholes who would dare challenge them or keep them down. I'm non-confrontational to a fault.

I admire my dad for his unwavering commitment to the jobs he's had. He's 71 and is only retiring this year. I admire my mom because her biggest flaw is caring too much. I admire my brother because he has never stopped trying to find that thing, that profession that will make him happy, even though he's had a difficult time of it.

I guess I lied when I said there aren't people that I admire for how well they play. For many years now, Sarah has been healing me and she's always done a fantastic job of both healing and working with fight mechanics. I've never once been dissatisfied with her performance as a healer. Just yesterday (Sunday) in Zul'Aman, when I let one of Jan'alai's bombs get me, she saved the attempt with a clutch Lay on Hands. When I've been healed by other healers in the past, I often find myself wishing it were her.

Lastly, I admire you all, dear readers. You're all attractive, funny and intelligent. RAWR.

WoW Survey Results: Data Collection

2012-02-07T11:00:00.003-06:00

A journey begins

Last April, shortly before patch 4.1 came out, I ran a survey for WoW players. It was basic information, such as their gender, age, their characters, and what they liked to do when playing. I submitted the survey to various places, but the only place that I got any information from was the MMO-Champion forums.

Now, because my information came from out-of-game resources and only 1 resource in particular, be very wary of taking things and applying them to the general World of Warcraft population. So if you see some result that says, "12% of characters played by the respondents were paladins" that doesn't mean that 12% of all characters are paladins. However, a result such as "Men tend to play warriors more often than women do" is one that could very well be applied to the general WoW population.

I had a total of 1591 respondents before I pulled the data for analysis. Out of that, 153 selected female as their gender and 1438 selected male as their gender. For the females, the average age was 24.38 years with a standard deviation of 5.89 years. For the males, the average age was 22.22 years with a standard deviation of 6.04 years.

If you went just by this, it would imply that the percentage of female WoW players is between 9% and 10%. Other studies have been done which strongly refute that claim. The likely factor here is that female WoW players just don't go to MMO-Champion as often as male WoW players do. In fact, in my other, previous study, only ~6% of the MMO-Champion respondents were female whereas other sources, such as WoW.com (as it was known at the time) had 22% female respondents and the official World of Warcraft forums had ~19% female respondents. Other studies have shown that the percentage of females in the WoW population is 30% or higher. What we see from this is that women tend to participate in the WoW community differently than men do, and may be a good source for a future study.

This would also seem to imply that the average of a female WoW player is higher than that of a male player. Again, you can't make that distinction because women participate in the WoW community differently than men do. You can say that the average age of a female MMO-Champion forum user is higher than that of a male MMO-Champion forum user.

From my information, the 153 female players listed of total of 652 characters played, for an average of 4.26 characters per respondent. The 1438 male respondents listed a total of 5284 characters played, for an average of 3.67 characters per respondent. This doesn't mean that women necessarily play more characters than men do, but may also reflect a difference in whether they felt a character was worth listing as a character they 'played'.

Over the course of the coming weeks, I will be detailing much more information that results from this data set. There's some really great stuff to come, so stay tuned to this blog. When new info is posted, an announcement will go out on my twitter.

I really look forward to getting all of this posted.

Leveling Θ: Origins

2012-02-06T15:00:00.000-06:00

I've wanted a max level warrior since before Wrath of the Lich King came out. My first real attempt at a warrior was an undead warrior which I mainly leveled solo. He's currently level 60, and was roughly that level before Wrath was released. At the time I envisioned him becoming my main character, since I thought warriors were so cool. So after Blizzcon 2007, when I still mainly played Horde characters, I put my murloc costume on my Horde server with him. Little did I know that I would eventually come to not play horde characters, and that I would hardly ever play characters on that server.

I've spent so many years without my beloved murloc costume because it's been trapped there. I've missed it so much. It's for that reason that I started to level Θ. I started her because I wanted a character that I could transfer off the server to bring the murloc costume to where I'm starting to play these days. She would need to be an Alliance character, so that I wouldn't have to pay for a race change. I made her a warrior, because I've always wanted a max-level warrior.

The name came from my love for Greek letters which itself came from my love for mathematics. The proper spelling of it, 'Theta', was already taken, so I used a phonetically similar misspelling. At first, the choice of the name was somewhat random, but it would soon prove to be very appropriate. I'd never use a Greek letter such as α ('alpha'), Ω ('omega'), or π ('pi) for names since they're too well known. It seems like a mathematically appropriate name for a warrior since 'Θ' is often used to represent angles, and warriors often find themselves concerned with angles.

Since you can't transfer low-level characters, I had to start leveling Θ. To Elwynn forest I went. Since I spent so much time focusing on my high-level Alliance characters before I stopped playing, I hadn't actually spent any time going through all the low-level content after it had been revised. I was quite pleased with the changes to the human starting area and quickly moved on to the Goldshire questing area.

Since I hadn't any high-level characters on this server, I didn't have access to any heirlooms for Θ. I suppose you could say that I was playing au naturale. It's just as well, I'd like to experience as much content as possible, not blow through it. As I was questing at around level 6 or 7, I was sent to the kobold cave in southern Elwynn. I'm a miner/blacksmith, so when questing in a cave I have to get every node that appears, because they're so hard to find elsewhere.

Those kobolds were monsters. They would just pull in groups of 3 or 4 and decimite my tiny lowbie-warrior self. I died 7 times in that cave trying to get all the ore out of it. I dinged more than once in there. I had to resort to pulling with my gray-quality bow to stay safe, and even that was no guarantee. I generally consider myself to be pretty good at this game, and I, as Θ, was humbled in that cave that day.

Finally having cleared the cave of it's precious minerals, I ran back to town. On the way there I killed a spider, and from its corpse I drew a strong one-handed axe. I equipped the axe immediately because, despite being one-handed, it was far better than my two-handed sword I was using, and when I returned to town I purchased the finest shield available to complement it. Then the name Θ seemed to fit, as it resembles a circular shield one might use. My next quest took me to kill murlocs. The murlocs, true to their tendencies, attacked me in a group of four. Between my new axe, shield, and Victory Rush I brought them all down. So when level 10 came around and I had to choose a spec, my choice was made for me. I would level as Θ, a protection warrior, the shield of Elwynn.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 12 - A day in the life

2012-02-06T11:00:00.001-06:00

Going to work.

For me a weekday starts at 6:35 AM, which is when my alarm goes off. I'll lay in bed and read twitter so that I can wake up my brain without getting out of bed. The amount of time spent doing so is highly variable, and depends on how much everyone that I follow's insomnia was acting up. I'm generally out of bed somewhere between 6:50 and 7:00 AM. The first thing I do is shower. After showering, I brush my teeth and shave before I return to the bedroom to get dressed. Once I'm dressed and have everything I need, I'm out the door to work somewhere around 7:30.

Work is nearby so I'm generally there, upstairs, and at my desk in 10 minutes. First, I check my work email and begin another day. My work consists of pulling reports for people out of our databases as well as fulfilling certain daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. I spend a good amount of time waiting for SQL queries to run, which affords me time to do things such as check the internet and twitter. I have a one hour lunch that I usually take at 11:00 and I leave work between 4:00 and 4:30, depending on when I arrived and if I really want to finish something before I leave that day.

Fred and George

When I get home I greet my cats and then I get to fully check my internet. There are many things that get blocked by our work filter that I can't check while I'm there. On some days, Sarah works until 8:00 so I'll spend that time writing blog posts and whatnot so I can spend time with her once she gets home. Throw in chores and dinner and TV watching and that's usually all I have time for in a day. I usually go to bed between 10:30 and 11:00.

I don't usually find time to play WoW on weekdays, but I'm finding more time to do so. In my free time I'll also do some statistics work for my upcoming blog posts. If I'm really in the mood, then I'll do some Java coding on various projects that I'm working on. I do spend most of my time relaxing.

Over the weekend, I try to get ahead of my blogging for the week, writing posts to be scheduled during the week. I'll also try to catch up on my WoW playing and my playing of other video games. Sometimes there will be other things on the internet that I'd previously failed to read, so I'll read those too. The weekend is mostly for relaxing. I finally get to sleep in, and that's wonderful.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 11 - Bad habits and flaws

2012-02-05T14:00:00.000-06:00

When I was younger, my worst flaw was shyness. I was always afraid to talk to new people, make friends, go somewhere where I didn't know anybody, etc. However, when I was young, I changed schools fairly often. I went to 2 different elementary schools, 2 different middle schools, and 1 high school. I was also sent to all manner of summer camps. So making new friends was something I had to do quite often. This wore away some of this shyness.

My sophomore year of college, I was forced to confront another fear, public speaking. I took a class called Introduction to Advanced Mathematics. This class wasn't taught in a lecture format, but rather in a slightly watered down Moore method. In Moore method teaching, the instructor lays out proofs that the students are to prove, and class time is spent with the students at the chalkboard presenting their proofs. My following math courses were all taught in this method. It was initially daunting, but I grew to absolutely love it. In fact, one of my chief complaints about grad school is that NONE of the classes were taught this way and I sorely missed it. Being lectured just isn't a good environment for me to learn.

Lastly, as a graduate student, I was require to teach two lower-level mathematics courses each semester. This wore off the rest of that public speaking fear to something that I can fully confront.

As I grew older and my shyness wore away, another flaw began to rear its ugly head, sloth. My lack of alacrity has posed many problems for me in my life. It's the reason, that I do poorly in language and history classes, despite the fact that I love language and history. It's the reason that I didn't go to as good of a graduate school as I could have. It's part of the reason that it took so long for me to get a full-time job. It's the reason that I'm so messy. It might be part of the reason that I keep this blog, I can both avoid work while convincing myself that I'm being productive.

Being in a relationship has helped to improve my sloth, since I have someone to be accountable to, but it's still pretty bad.

I'm afraid to go talk to this person that I need to talk to; I'll do it later.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 10 - My favorite Blogs and Sites

2012-02-04T14:00:00.000-06:00

Edit: WHAT THE ASS? I'll just have to upload this to YouTube instead of my G+. Will be fixed at some point. Ass.

This is my cat, Fred. This is what he does when I try to play the piano. He is a butt. Also, Google Video? This came in from my Google Plus account and whatttttttt? There is some outdated code out there.

I'll admit, I'm only starting to get into the extended WoW blogging community. For years I've read WoWInsider and I have followed it from its journey from wowinsider.com to wow.com to wow.joystiq.com. But I'm starting to gather a collection of WoW blogs and blogs of WoW'ers:

The Guardian Tank: Eldoric over here is a fantastic guy who loves to tank. He runs a podcast out of there that I've actually been on twice.
Apple Cider Mage: Come here for talk about mages and feminism.
The Border House: The Border House is a place for those who belong to marginalized groups and their allies. They have truly excellent articles that you won't find anywhere else.
A Sunnier Bear: I love bears. Bears Bears Bears Bears Bears.
And more: like I said, I'm just getting into the WoW blogging community, so if you don't see something here, it's either that I haven't gotten around to it, or I'm horrible at remembering things.

I also love twitter. I follow lots of people on twitter, all of whom I think are awesome. Some of those people have started blogging recently (or will), here are the spaces that I'm watching out for:

Corgi Island: This new blog comes from Elizabeth NOPE.JPG on twitter and is off to a great start.
Very Lemonade: From Kickflip Feminism on twitter. This blog currently has no entries, but if her twitter is any indication, I expect to enjoy what I will be reading here.

When it comes to non-gaming/non-WoW blogging, there are several things that I love to read. You should check these out as well:

Animals Being Dicks: Hilarious GIFs of animals. What more do you want?
Nedroid Picture Diary: Comics featuring a bear and a bird. Cute and hilarious.
Emmy Cicierega: She makes some of the cutest drawings...ever.
Chester 5000 XYV: Sexy comics. Victorian and has a sex robot but I wouldn't call it steampunk. Lots of boners. NSFW.
Oglaf: Hilarious and often pornographic. Raunchy fantasy humor.
My Milk Toof: This is so cute. Photocomics. Infrequent posting, but always worth the wait.

I like other things, of course, but I felt like I'd keep it to the lesser known stuff. Check all that stuff out, it's really great.

What other things should I check out? What am I missing out on? Let me know in the comments.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 9 - My First Blog Post

2012-02-03T13:00:00.000-06:00

Smile!

Day 9 of the 20 days challenge inquires about my first blog post. Oh lord. I was afraid of this. This was my first actual post on the blog. In it, I was considering watching a very visual anime without any English, as if it were an opera. That's pretty much it. You'll notice that it has absolutely nothing to do with World of Warcraft. It's not even really something that I can imagine someone would want to read. It's devastatingly short, and...I'm ashamed of it. This blog is the first real writing project that I've undertaken, so it's very understandable that the content towards the beginning would be, for the lack of a better word, awful.

My next post was my first WoW post and from the looks of it was about 6 months after that previous post. At the time, my shaman was my only level-capped character and I thought that maybe I could turn this into a shaman blog. So I started what I hoped would be a series of posts on what totems have niche uses in the heroic dungeons that were out at the time. I originally started by doing one dungeon at a time, with The Nexus having the inaugural post.

It's horribly formatted, contains no links to wowhead.com for any of abilities or bosses. It doesn't explain WHY the totems are useful. It's two paragraphs of blech. It contains so little information. Back then I just didn't know how to expand content. Writing papers in school was always tough for me because I couldn't expand the content out. I didn't elaborate on the things I was writing. I was awful. Awful, awful, awful.

The writing got slowly better from there forward. I wrote a 'how to enhancement' post and a few more editions of 'Totems of Note' before I changed to elemental. Later came a post about Shadow of the Colossus and a post about why it's mathematically optimal that the Deeprun Tram not wait for people very long at each of its stations. I'd like to say that I've really come quite a ways from where I was then, and I'm sure I have. I will always write niche content, it's just who I am. I just really need to find a way to frame it so that it's interesting to most people.

I'm really glad to have that stuff behind me. This all brings me to some good questions. What would you all actually like for me to write about? What do you like to read about? Is there anything about my math/statistics/programming background that you would like to hear about or see applied to World of Warcraft?

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 8 - 10 things you don't know about me

2012-02-02T13:00:00.000-06:00

Day eight of the 20 days of WoW Blogging challenge requires that it's participants reveal ten things that you don't know about me. So here we go.

In college I scored a 27 out of 100 on the Putnam mathematics exam. This actually a very good score. In a similar vein, myself and a teammate (Thomas Przybylinski, great name) won a statewide math competition despite the fact that all the other teams had four people. Enough bragging....
I just need to code a UI and I'll have a working desktop version of Thrill Digger.
I used to just lay my toys out and look at them. I'm told this is 'sad'.
Tremors and The Brave Little Toaster are counted among my favorite movies.
I once used a walkie talkie to listen in on a cordless phone conversation. What I heard was my mom talking about how her sons weren't into sports.
On my elementary school bus, I was called 'booger boy' by a couple girls older than me.
When I worked at a movie theater, I once slapped the manager (male) on the butt. A year later, a coworker (female) pinched my butt several times when I was leaning over the counter to look at the candy display. Also, when the assistant manager commented on how I had made friends with another coworker so quickly, the manager commented that I was "Doing her in the butt." This was not true. #lolbuttslol
I took judo one semester in college. It was really fun.
I once told a girl at a summer camp that I didn't have a crush on her because I was too anxious about what would happen if I told her I did like her.
My freshman year of high school, my parents (read "mom") called the school and asked if the principal would talk to me about why I never have friends over to the house to visit or wanted to go visit friends at their homes. One day, I was called out of math class to the office. I was really confused about what was going on, since I never got into trouble. I went into the principal's office and was greeted by the principal, an aged Monsignor by the name of Father George Tribou. We talked for a while and he asked me about why I never had friends over. I told him that I just never really felt like it and that I was perfectly happy just being at home, doing my home things. I explained that i did have friends at school, but I just kept them there, so to speak. He understood completely and told me that there were tons of other boys just like me and that I wasn't weird at all because of it, that I was perfectly normal. He relayed this information to my parents and we never really talked about. He died later that school year because of complications from a stroke. I've always cherished that talk we had.

Bonus item: Sarah and I have considered dancing to this song at our wedding.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 7 - Why the blog's name?

2012-02-01T13:00:00.000-06:00

The seventh day of the 20 days of WoW blogging challenge wants to know, "How did your blog get it's name?" Well, a long time ago, Sarah wanted a pet name. After much thought, I gave her the name of my favorite number, φ. φ, pronounced 'phi', is also called the golden ratio, the ratio of width to length that allegedly produces the most appealing rectangle. It's a Greek letter that produces the 'f' sound. Mathematically,

Some of the unique properties of φ is that

and

φ is a lovely number that shows up in many places, such as pentagons and the Fibonacci sequence, and it frequently appears in the natural world, too. For these reasons and more φ is my favorite number, so I made it my pet name for her.

Later, she wanted a pet name for me. She asked me if there were any other good Greek letters to use for my name. After some thought, I came up with τ, pronounced 'tau'. τ is another letter that is used for the golden ratio, although less frequently.

The first characters we leveled together, the paladin and the shaman, were named 'Phi' and 'Tau', respectively. When we transferred servers, those names weren't available so we changed then, and 'Tau' became 'Tauf'. My guildies started to call me 'Taufmonster' and so the name became my twitter handle and, eventually, the first part of the name of this blog.

The other part, 'log', came from "captain's log." I chose this because it identified the blog with myself, and I felt it scanned well. So that's how my blog got it's name. The subtitle, "More than you care to know.", comes from the obvious fact that I will often blog about stuff that seemingly nobody would ever possibly care about.

The images for this post were created by using the Online LaTeX Equation Editor, a fantastic tool for making images of equations.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 6 - My desk is awful

2012-01-31T13:00:00.000-06:00

My desk is almost permanently messy. I considered cleaning it up before taking the pictures for this post, but I felt that would be disingenuous. I do periodically set out to clean the thing, but that is rare. I think I'm going to do so after I finish writing this post.

My desk is in our 'guest bedroom'. It is called that because to the left of my desk there is a bed that nobody has ever slept on. I also have a comfy black office chair. In the corner (not pictured) are several board games. Also in the room, the cats' litter box, which often provides wonderful odors. Since my office (guest bedroom) is somewhat out of the way, I don't spend as much time in here as I might otherwise.

This is the main portion of my desk. On it you will see several items including

my monitor stacked upon some statistics books,
a coin jar,
an empty glass with an empty bag of baked Lays in it,
my wallet,
a pair of tweezers,
trash,
lots of stray papers,
a hand towel,
scissors,
plush microbes,
and Legos.

On this, the other portion of my desk you will find

more math books,
two ceramic things with assorted items in them,
bongos for DK Jungle Beat (best game ever!),
more math books,
LotR Pez dispensers,
more paper,
a cat bed with the tag still on it,
a lava lamp,
a clock radio,
Proto Man
a printer that isn't configured with a Star Wars poster that needs to be hung on top of it
and more trash.

This is gross, I need to fix this. The really sad thing is that it was much worse a couple days ago.

Note: I didn't actually end up cleaning this mess after I wrote this post. Shame.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 5 - My Favorite Items

2012-01-30T15:00:00.000-06:00

"I picked it up in Stranglethorn Vale"

Transmogrification is a popular new feature in World of Warcraft that let's players make their equipment look like other equipment. I'm interested in a different kind of transmogrification, the kind that Calvin would enjoy. I absolutely LOVE items that turn your character from one form into another. If it's possible for me to obtain one of these items, I absolutely go for it.

The Murloc Costume

The Murloc Costume is an item that was given out to those who attended BlizzCon 2007. As such, it has been one of my favorite items for a very long time. The costume wears off if you get into combat, but it's good for all out-of-combat functions, as best as I can tell. You can even wear it while mounted. It's bind on account, and I've transferred it across a couple characters. I'm currently attaching it to a new character so that I can bring it over to a new server. Cross-realm mail couldn't come faster, if you ask me. It lasts 1 hour and has no cooldown. Some animations, such as mining aren't supported.

There is a quest chain in the Borean Tundra which gives you a similar item. However, it only works within the questing area.

Dartol's Rod of Transformation

My favorite little furbolg suit. Dartol's Rod of Transformation item turns you into a furbolg for 3 minutes and has a 1 minute cooldown. It was part of an Alliance quest chain in Ashenvale, and you would lose the item if you completed the chain. However, many players like myself stopped partway through the quest chain in order to keep this item. It, unlike the Murloc Costume, doesn't disappear if you enter combat. It does, however, disappear if you take damage. Furthermore, you don't have access to many animations while running around as a furbolg, but you do have attack animations. This item is actually no longer in the game; it was removed with the quest that gave it. They did not remove it from players who still had it pre-Cataclysm. There is a new item, the Stave of Fur and Claw, that is exactly the same except it has a 1-hour cooldown and can be obtained from the Timbermaw Hold faction at exalted.

Frenzyheart Brew
Puppy men! The Frenzyheart Brew is available to those who achieve revered status with the Frenzyheart tribe in Scholozar Basin. Not many people have this wonderful item because they spent their time trying to get a proto-drake from the Oracle tribe. Like the Reins of the Green Proto-Drake, it is a random drop from an item that is purchasable at revered status. Unlike the proto-drake, this has a much higher (~23%) drop rate from the item it comes from (as opposed to 5%). In recent times, the ripening duration for these items has been reduced to 3 days to make them easier to farm from. The buff from the Frenzyheart Brew lasts 5 minutes. It doesn't break from combat, but does break if you mount. Combine it with the Curious Wolvar Pup from Northrend children's week for an adorable combination.

Iron Boot Flask

The Iron Boot Flask is obtainable from a vendor in the Storm Peaks for 20 Relics of Ulduar, which drop off of some mobs in the zone. Ten of the relics are used for a quest to open up the vendor, and the other ten actually buy the item. This item will turn you into an iron dwarf for 10 minutes and has a 1-hour cooldown. I'm not sure how this is affected by mounting but you can definitely fight while using it. There's even an achievement for beating the Iron Assembly fight in Ulduar while under it's affects! This form has all the dwarf animation, so it's a very robust transformation. With it's long duration, and combat viability, I love this one.

Gordok Ogre Suit
I don't have a picture of myself with this one :-(

This transformation is a very old one, like the furbolg suit, but it's not as old. The Gordok Ogre Suit is a crafted item that was introduced in the same patch as Dire Maul. The suit was used to complete the dungeon in a special way that gave you better loot. Doing such was called a Dire Maul tribute run. To craft the suit, you need a smattering of late classic WoW mats and an Ogre Tannin. The Ogre Tannin can be found in a basket within the Dire Maul North instance. There is an alternate means of crafting the suit from a quest inside the instance that only requires the tannin.

Since this item is consumed when used and is unique it can be slightly inconvenient to acquire. You'd have to acquire one, then mail or give it to another character so that you can make another one. Getting to Dire Maul isn't exactly easy either. The upside is that this one is very unique and, as an ogre, you can dance and fight, but cannot mount. Since you have to spread this around your alts or friends, this makes a good item for everybody to get dressed up in. It lasts 10 minutes.

There are tons more item like these, ones that I have even, but these are my favorites. I lovely wowhead.com commenter has actually compiled a list of all such items if you want to find more of these wonderful, fun additions to the game.

Time for more questionable YouTube choices!

My Macros and Me: Useful macros for all classes

2012-01-30T13:00:00.000-06:00

R Code

As a general rule, I don't like addons. I'll use them if they're particularly warranted, but otherwise I try to stay away from them. Generally, the only thing that I'll use will be recount (if I'm DPS), a bag addon that tracks items across my characters, and nothing else. For this very reason, I love macros. I like being able to modify my interface to make it cleaner, more powerful, and more intuitive. This is some of the macros that I use and how they can be modified to suit your needs.

The general purpose shift macro
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift] Inner Will; Inner Fire

This macro will cast Inner Will if you're holding down shift and it will cast Inner Fire if you aren't holding down shift. This is, by far, one of the most useful macros there is. Inner Will and Inner Fire could easily replaced with any other two spells to achieve the same effect. I also have one of these for Power Word: Fortitude and Shadow Protection. My shaman has one for Astral Recall and his hearthstone. This macro is really good for just cutting down on bar space and combining similar things that can't be used simultaneously. It can also be expanded, such as

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift] spell1; [mod:ctrl] spell2; [mod:alt] spell3; spell4

This macro would cast each spell if its corresponding modifier key was held down, and would cast spell4 if no modifier key was held down. These are also fun to put different mounts and pets on, so you don't have to go digging through your menus to find your favorites.

LaTeX code

Stance/Form Macros
#showtooltip
/cast [stance:1] Enrage; [stance:3] Tiger's Fury; [stance:5] Nature's Swiftness; Hibernate

This macro will show something different depending upon which form the Druid is in. Stance 1 is bear, 2 is aquatic, 3 is car, 4 is travel, 5 is moonkin or tree of life form, and in this case Hibernate would be shown in caster form. This one is currently very useful for feral druids in PVP because they tend to do a large amount of form changing. This macro is really great for cutting down on how much bar space is taken up on your screen. Now, this macro won't work on your main bar, because that bar changes every time you change form. This one can also be used for warriors and death knights, although it's probably far less useful for them.

The Atonement Macro
#showtooltip
/cast [@targettarget,harm] Smite; Smite

Every discipline priest who uses Atonement should have this macro. If I'm targeting a party member, then I will Smite their target. If I'm targeting and enemy, then I will Smite them. The macro would fail if a party member wasn't targeting and enemy. I use this macro so that I can keep my tank targeted but still use my Atonement healing. This way I don't have to change targets to switch from direct heals to Atonement heals. I actually have two of these, the other one has Holy Fire as the spell.

Java Code

Crowd Control
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [mod:shift, @mouseover] CCspell; CCspell

This macro will cast your crowd control spell at your mouseover target if you're holding down shift. If you aren't holding down shift, it will cast your crowd control at your regular target. The '/stopcasting' at the front will cause you to stop casting whatever spell you're already casting so you can crowd control faster, since it can be a time-sensitive action.

There are tons of things that can be done with macros, and wowpedia is a great place to start learning how. Their Making a macro page really helped me.

All code in the images comes from projects that I've worked on. Now, enjoy this opening from a 90s show!

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 4 - My Best WoW Memory

2012-01-29T11:00:00.000-06:00

If you haven't watched that video above before, I definitely recommend it.

For this, the fourth post in the 20 days challenge, I'm supposed to talk about my best World of Warcraft memory. I've talked before about how I started raiding in Naxxramas with my old guild. That was my absolute favorite time in the game. I never had raided before because Wrath of the Lich King was my first real expansion. After I joined my guild at the time was when they really got started with Wrath raiding. They had done pug Obsidian Sanctum and Vault of Archavon before, but delving into Naxxramas was something new for them.

The first time I raided with Animus wasn't as a guildie. We (Sarah and I) had already met Imaownu and Beartank and after our lovely night of running heroics we were told that we should join them in raids sometime. One night I received a whisper asking if I wanted to join them on their weekly raids they did. I accepted and ran Sartharion and the Vault of Archavon my very first time (my first raids ever) with them. I had an absolute blast running the dungeons that I knew that I wanted to be in this guild.

Shortly thereafter, we joined Animus and were on their raids every week. She became a star healer and I was one of the best DPS (go go elemental shaman). Over the following months, we all worked together to clear out that raid. Downing bosses, getting gear, and having a good time was our goal, and it was achieved. We progressed more slowly than other guilds did, but I didn't care. Progress was still being made.

Grobbulus was our biggest challenge. Week after week we would throw ourselves at Grobbulus and only do slightly better than we had on previous attempts. That fight was such a coordination fight that everyone just had to be on the exact same page. After trying him a few times each week we would work on some other wing.

The Four Horsepersons gave us trouble also. Eventually we settled on a strategy where Sarah and I took care of the rear horepersons. The battle would start with me Heroism'ing the front group and then promply running to the back to attend to Lady Blaumeux. Since I was an elemental shaman, I could heal myself pretty well except for the part where we would trade sides because I had no instant cast spells. Eventually we worked it out that Sarah should use Beacon of Light on me and then as we are running past each other she would Holy Shock herself so I would get the residual heals.

Eventually we got the four wings down and proceeded to work on Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad. Each boss gave us trouble but didn't take us more than a couple weeks at the most to take them both down. It was such an exciting time for me to be playing WoW. Progress was really being made and I was playing with a group of people who were fun to be with and could clear content.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 3 - My First Day Playing WoW

2012-01-28T11:00:00.000-06:00

Back in spring of 2007, all my friends were playing World of Warcraft. They kept trying to get me to play, and I kept resisting. I didn't want to succumb to its seductive magic; I felt I had better things to do. I was eventually sent a free trial, and the rest, as they say, is history. They all played Horde and so I deciding to play an orc warlock, who I named Orclocke (because I'm awesome).

I don't remember everything that happened on my first day playing WoW. It's not a distinct memory. I remember running around the orc starting area, doing warlocky things. A couple friends stood/sat around me and gave me tips about things I could/should do. I was playing solo so that I could get my bearings without relying on others' strength. I was so excited to get my first pet, the imp. Eventually I had to do that stupid level 10 Warlock quest to get my Voidwalker. For orcs, you had to go into this cave east of the entrance to Orgrimmar and kill some dudes. This quest was SO hard. I died at least 10 times while attempting it. I leveled up a few times from killing the mobs to try and get to the specific person that I needed to kill.

I hate that quest to this day.

With much effort, I got my voidwalker and I leveled up some more. The next zone that I went to was the Barrens, as that's where Hordies tend to do. My friends had all leveled up characters to play with me, and in our mid-teens we did Ragefire Chasm together. They taught me about aggro, that I should attack what the tank was attacking, and that if I get aggro I should run to the tank. We cleared the whole dungeon and a great time was had by all.

When I got close to my 20s it was time to move on to another zone. My roommate suggested that I go to Ashenvale next, but that I had to be careful because the monsters were much stronger, more aggressive, and I could be attacked by the Alliance there.

I was fucking terrified of going to Ashenvale. Despite the fact that I had died a million times already in that stupid cave east of Orgrimmar, I was terrified of going into Ashenvale. You might know that there are two entrances to Ashenvale from the south. There's the main entrance that follows the road. There are the orc guards there and everything. There's also that hole in that wooden defensive structure that Alliance characters can use to get through if they need to go the Barrens, also. Well, being terrified as I was, I decided to go through that hole, because it seemed more secretive. I guess I thought that if I took the road I'd get ambushed or something. I slowly inched my way into the zone, constantly looking around for threats of Alliance or aggressive monsters. I eventually got so scared that I turned around and left the zone.

I eventually returned to Ashenvale and leveled up to my late 20s before growing tired of it and rerolling a tauren shaman.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 2 - Why I Made a Blog

2012-01-27T11:00:00.000-06:00

I don't actually remember what caused me to start a blog. I had a livejournal back in late high school and in college, although I kinda want to forget about it. I hardly used it, and the stuff there wasn't substantive. I also didn't participate in any of the communities, so that's probably why I didn't use it very much. I started using twitter back when Sarah and I lived in our apartment and I started to blog at some point during that time as well.

Part of the reason that I started the blog is that I have this problem. I call it 'getting stuck inside my head'. Other people might call it 'normal'. If you've read a fair number of my entries (for any value of 'fair' > 1), they cover a wide range of topics. An idea will stick in my head and it is almost impossible to get out. I have an analytically-oriented mind that obsessively tears things apart and collates the information. I factor the numbers on mile marker signs when driving!

So I started this blog as a type of thought dump. I needed somewhere to expel these things that my mind get's far too obsessed with. Over two hundred posts later I'd say that I may have succeeded in that capacity. For my World of Warcraft posts, I think I tend to cover things that just aren't typically addressed in what I normally see going around. But we'll probably get to that later.

I suppose the final reason that I started to blog was because I've never really been a writer. I always preferred analytical courses in school as opposed to reading and writing oriented courses. I figured that blogging would help me develop better writing skill. I didn't want to just work on my grammar, I wanted to work on my ability to convey ideas with the written word.

Blogging wasn't ever really about getting famous, although I definitely welcome any and all readers. I've heard several times that if you start a blog strictly to get followers and be popular, you'll probably not succeed at it. You have to have an internal motivation to keep you going. All the bloggers I follow really seem to have that. I like to think that I do.

I miss you, Sons of Hodir dailies

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 1 - Introduction

2012-01-26T13:00:00.000-06:00

Best friends go to Northrend

Hello, my name is Henry. I'm a 25 year old statistician and I play World of Warcraft on the ~~Zangarmarsh~~ Cenarion Circle realm on the Alliance side. I've been playing WoW since summer-ish of 2007, but I've taken a few breaks here and there. My first character to reach the level cap was a draenei shaman. I leveled it with my (now) fiancée, who played a paladin.

When we reached the level cap, we kinda stopped playing. We were too afraid to try and get into the dungeons, so we played around on other characters for a while. Shortly before patch 3.0 we transferred to the server of some local friends and joined their guild. We were among the first to reach level 80 after Wrath came out and grew tired of waiting for everyone else to level. It was then that talk of our guild getting absorbed into a larger guild began.

This was all back before the dungeon finder existed. So we had to find dungeon groups in trade chat and then FLY there (crazy, I know). One fine day we grouped with a prot warrior named Imaownu and a moonkin (I think) druid named Beartank. They were both really good players and we made an excellent group together. As things were back then with good groups, we ran six or so dungeons together. Instead of being absorbed into this larger guild, we decided to join Imaownu and Beartank's guild.

After our first Naxx clear

We raided with Animus all throughout Naxxramas and the first week of Ulduar. We got Flame Leviathan down the first night we tried the raid. But 'real life' got in the way of us raiding because she had just finished college and we were going to move in together. Shortly after that our guild leader was shipped off to Afghanistan and things fell apart.

When we came back, the guild wasn't what it used to be. She and I leveled a bear druid/mage combo and I also leveled a priest. We left the game again from boredom and when we came back the guild was apparently running in pretty full steam. They had even done ToC. We powered up our druid and paladin and started in on ICC (post nerf) with the guild. As a guild we got through Rotface and Festergut. We were casual, as you might expect.

When Cataclysm came out all manner of leveling and dungeon running occurred. But the rest of the guild wasn't quite up to speed. They didn't run dungeons as diligently as they could have and the difficulty of the dungeons caused some of them to refuse to use the dungeon finder. Because raiding was so hard we were only able to down a couple bosses in BWD after 4.1 came out. We never really got Halfus.

Out of frustration, she and I both quit playing the game again. It's only been recently that we've come back to the game, and we don't play nearly as much as we used to. We've both transferred over to Cenarion Circle and are working on getting our characters into good, working order.

From me, you can expect blogging about all sorts of topics. I'm hoping that this blogging challenge will reignite my love for playing World of Warcraft and of blogging about it, too. I'm really excited to see where this goes.

The Graduate Assistants' Office

2012-01-21T13:00:00.000-06:00

Graduate school was a very weird time for me. I wasn't really sure if it was what I wanted to be doing, but I didn't really have anywhere else to go. So to grad school I went. I started by going for the Applied Mathematics program but after the first year I changed to Statistics and have not one regretted the decision even once. It was a happy time because I was with Sarah, but also not because I was separated from all my other friends. My friends in college were all either a year ahead of me or a year behind me. My two best high school friends that were in my grade went to different, far away schools. My college didn't have a grad school, so I went elsewhere.

The Door
If you didn't know what it was, you would think it was a closet. A single door between two side hallways that came off of the main hallway, you'd might never consider it as being anything of importance. The door contained no markers to indicate its belonging to the graduate students and no window so that you may peer at its contents. Once inside the locked door, you'd find a narrow, somewhat long room containing eight desks along it's long walls, a whiteboard on the wall facing the hallway, two high, narrow windows on the exterior wall, and shelves of mathematics texts from a time long past. There was also a filing cabinet, a refrigerator that was long overdue for a cleaning, and a single phone.

On each desk was a computer. These computers were the leftovers, the ones cast aside when professors or classrooms received upgrades. Their installations, programs, 'speed', and peripherals varied widely. There were 'good' computers and 'bad' computers, with the designation as to which was which changing as time went on. They were shit to the point of not being usable.

The room was so narrow that if the chairs weren't pushed in to the desks you couldn't traverse it. I surmise it was once a server closet that was re-purposed when the computer science department changed floors when they separated from the mathematics department.

As a graduate assistant who taught classes, I was supposed to keep office hours. I did for a while. After realizing that even if I specifically asked someone to come see me during my office hours they wouldn't come I stopped keeping them. Nobody ever complained about my absence.

Other people used the office, of course, so it was never lonely. Yet these were people I hardly knew at all, and scarcely associated with. We were on polite terms at the best. Most of them hailed from foreign countries, and their English, while serviceable, was flawed. They clung to each other, strangers in a strange land, which made me the outcast.

That single room was like a distillation of much that I felt while I was there. It was a place, with things, but being of incredibly little worth. I hated being there and felt like I didn't belong. Really, I shouldn't have been there. I should have been somewhere better, but due to my own inaction (my greatest flaw) I was there. In retrospect, though, I'm glad I was where I was. It seems unlikely I would still be with Sarah had I not gone there.

Fun fact: part of the reason that I decided to change to statistics was because of a response Ghostcrawler had to a hunter forum thread. He talked about the analysis they did when balancing classes. It really struck me. I'm very thankful for that thread to this day. Also, Vi Hart is super cool. Watch this:

I don't want to tank or Getting back into WoW

2012-01-17T13:00:00.000-06:00

I want to tank. Tanking is my most preferred role in a group. If you'll pardon my bragging, I think I'm a fantastic tank. And yet, as I stated above, I don't want to tank. When I tank, I get fully wrapped up in what's going on. I keep an eye of everything that's going on. It's my element. I put the weight of the group on my shoulders and carry them as best as I can, so everything goes as smoothly as possible for them.

Yet I'm not playing my tank right now. I transferred my priest over to Cenarion Circle to play there. I've done 2 dungeon finder groups since I got there: one just myself and one with my fiancée. It's been horrible not tanking. I've seen all the mistakes that tanks can make in a group. I've seen running into a boss before the healer has mana, running in when the healer is far out of range, running in before the dungeon finder has given us a replacement DPS, ignoring boss mechanics with fatal consequences, failure to mark targets, skipping pats/groups only to be bitten by it later, failure to drag a pull away from a pat's path, failure to call for CC, and I suspect a lack of defensive cooldown usage. This was in Zul'Aman and Grim Batol, not even the new dungeons.

"I can't go back man. Go on without me."

It's been hell for me. I feel powerless from the healer position, like I don't have enough control over the group. I can't shore up their weaknesses. As the tank, I can direct the DPS, assist healers by taking less damage, and control the position of the pull. As a healer it's much more difficult for me to do those things.

But I don't want to go back to tanking. There have been several times in my life where I've played WoW too much. I don't want to go back to those times. I'm afraid that if I go back into tanking I'll fall back into my old pattern: playing too much, working too hard to help others, and neglecting my personal life and the things I have to do in it.

The last time I really played WoW I was running dungeons (the Troll ones had just come out), trying to help guildies get through the new dungeons, researching raid tactics, trying to dissect what could be impairing others' performance in raids, coming up with things I could do to make things smoother, worrying about raid scheduling, and being frustrated when literally zero bosses would go down. I can't go back to doing that, and I'm afraid that if I go back to tanking I'll be tempted to do that kind of stuff again, worrying about things that aren't my own.

I would love to go back to my tank. But I need to know that I can do that from a place of control. The frustration from not tanking will help keep me from playing too much. Although it may be a source of new frustration.

Shadowform makes for really great screenshots, doesn't it? SimCity 3000's music was great too. I absolutely love it. It's on my list with Starcraft's Terran themes for "Most Nostalgia Inducing PC Game Music." Enjoy Some!

Don't read this, it's boring and stupid.

2012-01-10T13:00:00.000-06:00

Oh, so you actually came in. Well, here it is.

Have you ever wondered why the two parties are split so evenly? In America we have the Democratic and the Republican parties and they are so evenly balanced. It seems bizarre almost that it should work out to be so close. There's a good reason it does, we want it to be.

There are a couple things in place that ensure that the two parties stay balanced.

The Middle of the Road
Despite what it may seem like, they are a very significant number of people whose political beliefs are a mixed bag of things from both 'Democratic' and 'Republican' beliefs. There are plenty of people who are fiscally liberal and morally conservative, people who are fiscally conservative and morally liberal, or so many other things.

These people are the key group in what keeps the parties balanced.

Parties don't like to be losing
Nobody likes to be the inferior party. So when a party finds itself to be the losing party, they adjust their stance on issues to reclaim people they lost and gain new followers they never had. They find an issue that they're really losing people on and swap their stance on it. It's very easy to do. Since a party is comprised of it's elected officials (or campaigning individuals), they just swap their stances over the course of an election season and the zeitgeist that comes out the other side is the new party stance. TADA!

This is what we call progress.

People don't like change
It's true. We all want change, but when you start to talk about the sacrifices necessary to affect that change, people recoil. The healthcare reform championed by President Obama is a perfect example of this (I refuse to use terms such as 'Obamacare and shudder at their utterance). When one party gains the majority, especially if it's in congress and the presidency, they will pass a great deal of legislation that aligns with their own beliefs. People are generally very moderate, and legislation will pass that they don't agree with. They will see this as being the fault of the party in power and will align themselves in opposition to compensate.

That's the game of it. It's the situation we find ourselves in and will forever find ourselves in unless we change something drastically. We live in a two party system and this 50/50 split is something that cannot be done away with under our current systems.

Is this good?
You might initially think that, because it would seem that it would cause legislation to need to be really good in order pass. However, I certainly don't think it is good. Because of our two party system, people must force themselves to vote for what they would often consider to be the lesser of two evils, the one they disagree with less.

Historically, third parties and independent have long struggled to gain any representation because they never gain 50% or greater representation in any area. For example, suppose 10% of the population supports the Green Party as their favorite, but the Green Party would still never get any seat in Congress because they'd never have greater than 50% favor in any district and people don't vote for them because they don't want 'waste' a vote on them when they could vote for the more-likely-to-win-seats Democratic party. Recently, the Republican Party has had to shift their values to be in line with the Tea Party so that there aren't two different conservative candidates fighting against each other and splitting the conservative vote.

Because third parties have struggled, voters have to vote for a party which doesn't represent their viewpoint as accurately as they would like. Congress is supposed to represent the views of the people in their respective districts and their are large swaths of people in this country whose viewpoints are not represented at all.

The worst part of all this is that because we only have two parties, they treat each other not just as competitors, but as enemies. If we had multiple parties, alliances could be made. Parties could compromise with each other, pledging to support each other on different legislation. They would be sometimes allies instead of perpetual enemies.

Because there are two parties and dominance alternates between them, every time control changes hands, they spend a ton of time undoing the work of previous congresses. This wastes time.

Why does this happen?
Our current voting system doesn't support multiple parties well. We've become entrenched in a two-party system which it just simply doesn't allow us to break out of. No third party ever gets any representation because people don't want to 'waste their vote'. If a portion of, say, the Democratic party started voting for the Green party, then neither Democratic of Green representatives would be elected. This is a problem.

A single-vote system only supports situations where a person supports a single candidate to the exclusion of all others. That's simply not how people work, we each like various candidates and parties to various degress. Our voting system only works perfectly in a two-choice system and that's simply not how elections should operate. I may like 'A' more than 'B' and 'B' more than 'C' but our current voting system doesn't allow our votes to reflect that.

Having a single-vote system was great...before we had computers and other devices which could automatically count votes. To do a more complicated voting style would have been near impossible and would have introduced a great amount of error to the process. But we have the means to do this now and we definitely should.

There are other ways to vote, and I've talked about them before. I plan on putting together an online survey to get some data and try out a way that I've devised.

I'm reading the Silmarillion right now, thus the videos.

Of Crendors and Whores

2012-01-04T07:56:00.001-06:00

This is my 200th blog post. I'd say that it's atypical of the types of thing that I'd normally post, but that doesn't make me less proud of posting it. I had a couple of choices with what to pick for my 200th post: this, the mathematics of party representation, a retrospective. I'm glad I get to do this one. Yes, I know that video has nothing to do with this, but the videos I post almost never do.

Yesterday Crendor (@wowcrendor) made a tweet to the effect of "Tip to girls: if you dress like a whore, you'll get treated like one. #commonsense" The original tweet has been deleted, but that's the message. This sparked a big twitter controversy wherein many people didn't get what was wrong with it.

The sexism that runs through our culture these days isn't the same sexism that there used to be. We aren't dealing with Mad Men'esque type sexism here, it's far more subtle. Thoughts and tweets like his and the subsequent ones he used to defend himself place the responsibility for the actions of others on the victim. It's saying that guy's can't be held accountable for their actions so if you're treated poorly it's because you baited them.

And you know what, people make mistakes like this all the time because they don't even realize that what they're saying is wrong. You could ask someone "Do you feel men and women are equals and should be treated as such?" and damn near everybody will say yes and damn near all of them aren't lying. The problem is that they don't realize that the things that they say don't actually follow through with that belief.

Here's why it's all wrong.
"Tip to girls: ... #commonsense"
A male commentor on MSNBC yesterday put it best when he said something to the effect of "I love it when men try to tell women what's best for them." Nobody is going to read Crendor's tweet and say "Ohhh, that's what I've been doing wrong." Not only is the message offensive, but the way that it's phrased it condescending. It implies that women are stupid and don't understand that the way you dress will have an effect on how you're treated (although it shouldn't).

"...if you dress like a whore,..."
We're off to a bad start already. Saying that somebody is 'dressed like a whore' is wrong. The same thing could be said if you say that they are dressed revealingly, and it wouldn't have the added implications. To say that someone is 'dressed like a whore' is not a statement of fact, it's meant to insult and put down the person being discussed. This isn't a thing that should be said.

"...you'll get treated like one..."
And the kicker. I suppose that I covered the problems with this statement above in my introduction, so I'll just quote a tweet of mine from last night. All people, regardless of their manner of dress (or lack thereof) deserve to be treated respectfully until their actions prove otherwise.

Tangential to this: is there an implication that whores should be treated poorly? I mean real whores a.k.a. sexworkers. Whores don't deserve to be treated poorly either. Sex work should be a respectable (and legal) profession. Whores are treated poorly not because they are vile creatures of the night, but because their clients can be (but are not always) scumbags. This is another example of victim blaming.

Perhaps the reason that whores are treated poorly is becaue they have bad clients and don't feel like they can turn to the law enforcement for protection because sex work is illegal most everywhere. If you've ever watched the show on HBO that takes place at a 'bunny ranch' where prostitution is legal, you'd never think that someone mistreats one of the women there and gets away with it. The reason for that is because it's legal and so a legitimate and safe business can be set up. Perhaps that's something lawmakers should consider.

The path to enlightenment
Like I said above, many people make these mistakes without realizing they are mistakes. There is a natural progression in how this get's fixed for a particular person.

The person must first be made aware of the problem. Either they will make the mistake and be corrected or will see someone else make the mistake. This is the most crucial part, because there are two paths from here. The first is that they will see the error of their ways and be on the road to becoming a better person. The second is that they won't. If this happens they will probably make these mistakes less, but that's only because they won't say these things in public. They will likely become bitter, defensive and further entrenched in their viewpoint. Unfortunately, a big role in this is played by what kind of response the mistake is met with. The more loud and critical the response, the more defensive the mistake maker is likely to become.

If someone goes on the first path, the next step is editing. They may still have those thoughts, but they will realize that they are wrong and choose not to voice them. Repeatedly editing onesself will eventually train them to not have those thoughts in the first place.

Truth be told, I've probably said something that would draw a similar ire if I were as popular as Crendor is on the internet. I've made over 6000 tweets, and I can't say for certain that I've been as good as I'd like to be. But recently I've started following some people on twitter who are very vocal about feminism and I've learned a thing or two myself. It's 2012, fuck the flying cars, people shouldn't be ignorant of these issues anymore.

No doubt there are things that can and should be said that I didn't say above. But I'm sure someone else will. In fact, AppleCiderMage beat me to the punch on posting something related to this controversy here. If you want to read more, I'd suggest you go there.

Of Oceans and Arcades: a punishment gone too far

2011-12-28T18:08:00.000-06:00

This Paul Christoforo/Avenger controller/Penny Arcade/Ocean Marketing business has really left a sour taste in my mouth. Paul Christoforo definitely should not have been the asshole that he was, but this is all too much. He definitely deserved to be fired. Nobody should ever act that way in a professional capacity, especially when that capacity is public relations. It doesn't matter what your excuse is or how much you apologize, his responses to Dave's concerns were inexcusable.

But Mike Krahulik did the wrong thing. He could have gotten Paul fired and banned from PAX all without turning him over to the internet. 'Gabe' holds the key to the cage for a beast which he is not powerful enough to control. He unleashed that monster upon Paul without regard for the consequences and delighted in its wrath. He knows full and well that when the internet--and especially the gaming-oriented internet--gets its sight on a target, they don't focus on it alone. From Paul's pleas to Mike:

"I have not slept yet dealing with all the spam and personal information intrusion as well as my family being smeared on the internet."

"If you can please accept my apology and anything you can do to help if not me my son and wife please do." -Paul Christofolo

A man prostrate before his torturer, given no mercy.

Callousness

Nemesis may be for retribution,
but she''s ultimately about balance

When the dickwolf controversy was going full tilt, Mike called for a truce because his family had been threatened. He had finally reached his limit. And yet, here we are, somebody else's family is harassed and Mike cares not. It took a day after publicly posting the emails containing those pleas before Mike asked people to leave the family alone. He also doubted their existence in the same sentence. When someone claims that their family is being attacked, you probably shouldn't doubt them. I think there are other situations where you shouldn't doubt someone unless you have very good reason too.

Surprisingly, all this comes from one of the founders of the Child's Play charity, which provides games for children who are in the hospital. You'd think he'd show more concern for the son of the man he attacked, especially considering that he too is a father. It becomes less surprising when you consider that Child's Play wasn't born out of an inherent need to do good, it was born out of a desire to prove that gamers weren't all bad people. I guess he kinda destroyed that idea, huh.

On bullies
"I have a real problem with bullies."

"Someday every bully meets and even bigger bully and maybe that’s me in this case."
-Mike Krahulik

There's a disturbing inconsistency there in that he has no problem with his actions.

Maybe that first statement lies at the core of this. Maybe when Mike sicced the internet upon Paul, he wasn't just attacking a bully. Maybe he was attacking all bullies. Years of pent up rage over being teased as a child and teen let out. Perhaps Mike should consider something when he does this. I know his son is growing up in a time that is more kind to those who'd rather spend their time inside than his father did, but all children are teased. What kind of example does he want to set for his son? Does he want a son who, when teased, responds by beating the teaser over the head with a chair?

The punishment did not fit the crime, and his actions caused innocent people to be dragged into all of this. The worst part, I don't think he gives a shit. If you're wondering which side I'm on, it's neither, they both acted out of line.

Playing with fire

"I will personally burn everything I’ve made to the fucking ground if I think I can catch them in the flames." -Mike Krahulik

But Mike did not make Penny Arcade alone, and the damage he does to it does not only affect him. Fire is dangerous and difficult to control, that's a lesson we've all learned from Avatar: The Last Airbender. What if he did something that did actually ruin Penny Arcade? How many jobs would be lost? How many children would have unemployed parents? How many people have already suffered from the flames he unleashed. One wife and one son so far. How many more?

Reading everything he wrote yesterday and what appeared in the comic today, I lost any respect I had for him. The principal of my high school during my freshman year, Monsignor George Tribou, was often attributed as saying "The measure of a man is how well he controls the animal within." It is here that I think Mike Krahulik truly failed.

-Henry out

Percy Jackson Review

2011-12-20T08:43:00.001-06:00

Percy Jackson and the Olypians is a fun series of books that base themselves around Greek mythology. The premise for the stories is that the Greek gods are real and their society and locations have been following western society as it has moved and are now located in the United States. For example, Olympus is now situated above New York City and is attached to the Empire State Building (floor 600).

The story revolves around a group of children of the gods who spend their summers at Camp Half-Blood, where they are protected and learn to harness their gifts and how to fight monsters. Camp Half-Blood has 12 cabins for each of the major gods who have a throne on Olympus. The gods maintain the laissez-faire attitude they've typically had towards their children, believing that maintaining a distance is better for them.

The books keep their Greek myths in place and respects the classic literature. It will take some liberty with things when it needs to to make things fit the book's premise. For example, monsters are never truly killed forever, they will eventually reappear. This is necessary so that the half-bloods get to encounter those famous Greek monsters despite the fact that other heroes in the past already killed them.

The books also take some liberty with the characterizations of the gods. Poseidon appears like a fisherman. Apollo appears as a late-teenager who drives around the sun chariot, which can transform between different vehicles. He prefers to drive some type of American muscle car. He's filled with bravado and has a tendency to spout out horrible haikus. Apollo is something of the hilarious edge case when it comes to godly representations. The others are not so extreme.

The books are writter for a young adult audience. So for those of you who are non-young adults, the writing may be somewhat juvenile. My biggest problem is that the foreshadowing was a little heavy handed. I never got one of those classic Harry Potter end-of-book reveals that ties everything. For example, one big question at the beginning of book one is "Who is Percy's father?" If you pay attention at all, you'll easily surmise who it is. This spoils the eventual reveal to an extent.

The books are quick reads. I read all five of them in the span of roughly ten days. If you like Greek mythology and are willing to take some small liberties with it and don't mind a writing style that isn't suited for your reading level, I think you'll enjoy these books.

There is a follow-up five book series called The Heroes of Olympus that is currently in progress. The reading level for these books is higher than the reading level for the original series. I've read both of them and they've been quite enjoyable so far. It will unfortunately be a long wait for the rest of that series to conclude. Furthermore, there is an Egyptian mythology themed trilogy called the Kane Chronicles that Riordan is also writing that I know very little about.

Thrill Digger: My New Obsession

2011-12-10T13:00:00.000-06:00

Mole Mitts by ShadowBoyRyu

It's like this, but different.

Thrill Digger is a minigame included in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. It is a minesweeper-esque game in that there are hazards scattered around a grid and the spots in the grid that don't contain a hazard give a clue as to how many hazards surround that spot on the grid. In minesweeper, there are bombs and numbers. A number tells you how many bombs are in the eight squares around the number. The board starts off with none of the squares revealed. Each click reveals a square's contents. Clicking on a bomb ends the game with a loss. To win the game you must reveal every non-bomb square. Versions of the game allow you to plant a flag on spots to mark them as containing a bomb so you don't make a mistake later.

Thrill Digger operates slightly differently. There are a couple different classifications of object:

Hazards

Bombs - When you dig up a bomb, the game ends and you take a heart of damage
Rupoors - A black rupee. You lose 20 rupees. These do not end the game.

Rupees - These indicate how many bombs surround that square and give you rupees.

Green - Indicates there are zero hazards in the surrounding squares and gives you 1 rupee.
Blue - Indicates there are one or two hazards in the surrounding squares and gives you 5 rupees.
Red - Indicates there are three or four hazards in the surrounding squares and gives you 20 rupees.
Silver - Indicates there are five or six hazards in the surrounding squares and gives you 100 rupees.
Gold - Indicates there are seven or eight hazards in the surrounding squares and gives you 300 rupees.

The goal is to collect as many rupees before you hit a bomb. In this game it is very hard to complete a board, and you aren't necessarily supposed to. The reason that it's so hard is because the rupees don't tell you exactly how many hazards surround them. That uncertainty greatly increases the difficulty. If you do manage to complete a board, you're rewarded with a high-quality crafting material.

There are three difficulties. Beginner costs 30 rupees to play. It is a 4x5 grid with 4 bombs and no rupoors. Intermediate costs 50 rupees and is 6x5 with 4 bombs and 4 rupoors. Expert costs 70 rupees is 8x5 with 8 bombs and 8 rupoors. So a particular play is a win if you dig up more rupees than you put into the game. I personally find intermediate to be the easiest to complete. There's a very good reason for this. Consider this chart.

*Summary information for the difficulties*
Difficulty	Width	Height	#Squares	#Bombs	#Rupoors	%Bombs	%Hazards
Beginner	5	4	20	4	0	20%	20%
Intermediate	6	5	30	4	4	13.3%	26.7%
Expert	8	5	40	8	8	20%	40%

Intermediate is the easiest to complete for me because it has the lowest percentage of bombs. There are more hazards overall, but they're less likely to end the game.

I'm completely in love with this game, even though I really don't like how the game doesn't keep a reminder what was dug up in a particular spot. I can't play intermediate or expert for very long without needing graph paper on which to chart my progress. Despite that, I've played it incessantly.

Oh, and by the way, if you think this is all that I have to say about this super awesome minigame, you're wrong. I have much more to come, including strategies and much much more.

The chicken or the egg and the real question at hand

2011-12-02T06:57:00.000-06:00

There is the common question of "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" I hear that it's some sort of philosophical question. If you ever get asked this, I can tell you exactly how to ruin the fun to be had by the asker.

Answer with, "The egg." The chicken is not the first egg-laying animal. There were many other birds and reptiles that came before it, and they layed eggs. So there were clearly eggs before there were chickens.

Your questioner may counter with, "Fine. Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?" The proper response to this is, "Define 'chicken egg'." Is a chicken egg and egg that comes from a chicken or is it an egg that produces a chicken. If they come up with a response and actually answer the question, their response directly informs your answer. If they say that a chicken egg comes from a chicken, then the chicken came first. If they say that a chicken egg produces a chicken, then the egg comes first.

I don't really believe the proper response is either though, since those aren't the only two choices. I think we can all say, without doubt, that if an egg both comes from a chicken and produces a chicken then it is a chicken egg. In that case, the chicken must come first.

But what type of egg comes from something that isn't a chicken and yet produces a chicken? That's the real question.

This has been another entry in Henry's famous "Who gives a fuck?" series. If there is anything that you would never, ever want to read about, just leave a comment below and I'll make sure and spend my time writing about it.

Black Friday 2011: The Quest for the Legend of Zelda

2011-12-01T11:00:00.000-06:00

Sarah loves Black Friday. She has fond memories of standing outside a Wal-Mart at ungodly hours in the morning freezing her butt off with her dad and uncle. So when we can, we do Wal-Mart's Black Friday. This year, we mainly had one goal: buy the special edition Skyward Sword. It comes with a Wii Motion Plus Remote and the 25th anniversary edition music CD. All for a reasonable $60. This was especially important since we just had a Wii Remote die on us.

The Black Friday sale started at 10:00 pm Thursday, which really makes it a Black Thursday Night sale, but whatever. We arrived at 8:30 and tried to immediately determine where exactly in the covered videogame racks the game would be. Thanks to some helpful employees I found out exactly where the game would be and began the task of situating myself in the optimal position to grab the game immediately.

The crowd was still light at this point, but there were a couple people in a single row between me and the game. When the woman in front of me turned to talk to her daughter, I used the opportunity to insinuate myself closer to the rack, placing my leg in a more forward position. Over time, she moved to the left enough that I was able to place myself immediate against the racks. Once there I laid my hand on the tarp as if to say, "This is my spot, and nobody is going to take it from me. No crowd shall create a distance between me and my prize."

There was still a good hour between that moment and when the clock would strike frenzy. I passed the time by texting Sarah regarding our situation. She initially wanted to get some towels, but they were by the ridiculously cheap sheets and there was no way she could penetrate that crowd so she joined me in the games and DVD section.

Time passed and eventually 10:00 came. The tarps were swiftly removed and my quarry was spotted. I was the second person to grab one of their limited supply. My task was now to escape. The Skyward Sword copies were next to the display that featured games such as Battlefield 3, Madden, and Modern Warfare 3, so the crowd was generally pressing towards me. Escape was a hard fought battle. I pressed against the crowd, away from the shooters and football games towards the aisle. In the process I was squeezed up against all sorts of people. I'm sorry to any ladies which had my groin forced against them. I meant nothing by it, I swear.

In time, with much explaining that I was done and just wanted to escape, I was let out. I passed by a rack of Wii games which had several titles strewn across its top. I got out and called Sarah since I couldn't see her. She had apparently been the one who threw those Wii games on top of the rack to aid the poor mothers forced into this bedlam. She had gone by the DVD section and picked up several seasons of The Big Bang Theory and other shows and we made our way to the checkout. Upon getting there we realized she accidentally got two copies of season 1 and no copy of season 2. She went back to correct the error.

We paid and were out of the store at 10:13 pm. We essentially kick ass. No wounds suffered. No trampling. No pepper spray burns. It was a pretty good Black Friday experience.

Skyward Sword Impressions

2011-11-30T11:00:00.000-06:00

You start with six hearts. What. The. Hell. I’m just kidding, I don’t actually care about that, it did catch me off guard, though.

I’m one temple in on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. It’s a really great game so far, and I definitely look forward to completing it. This year is the 25th anniversary of the Legend of Zelda series, a fact which the game makes known within it. The motion controls are pretty great; choosing which way to swing my sword hasn’t been as tedious as I originally thought it was going to be. We’ll see if my opinion on that stays throughout the rest of the game.

New Systems
I’m finding myself really into the game's new questing system. Sidequests are more official now since villagers will have speech bubbles above their heads when they have something important to say to you. When you are asked to go on a sidequest, it is explicit and the you will have to select whether or not you want to take it.

The game also features an item upgrade system. There are various items that can be collected throughout the course of the game. So far I’ve found bugs and jewels of various sorts. They can be given to a particular NPC and he can use them to upgrade your items to have new powers. This varies from increasing the number of slots in your pellet pouch to making your slingshot fire a spray of pellets instead of a single pellet. Those are the ones that I’ve seen so far and I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing what other potential upgrades there are. These new features really give Skyward Sword some feeling of being a somewhat western-style RPG. This is an interesting decision that Nintendo has gone with the game and I approve of it wholeheartedly.

Also new to the game is a stamina gauge and, with it, running. No longer will intrepid adventurers feel that their fastest way to cross the land be by rolling everywhere. The stamina gauge is also used for climbing, carrying heavy objects, and particularly acrobatic sword maneuvers to allow them to be easily performed, but not spammable. If Link runs out of stamina, he fails at whatever the current action is and you have to wait while the stamina gauge recharges.

No Boats or Trains
A fairly prominent feature of the game is bird flying. It’s a much smoother feeling transportation feature than Wind Waker or Phantom Hourglass’s boat riding or Spirit Track’s train conducting. It features the three boosts mechanic that players will remember from Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess’s horse riding. If you swing the remote up and down, your bird will flap its wings and ascend without losing speed, allowing you to dive and move quickly without sacrificing speed on the ascent. The problem with this is that the rhythm and strength of flap needed for the game to register the motion is very finicky. The flailing that I have to perform to get it to work often sends me wildly off course, rendering the whole point of the exercise moot.

Gripes
I have never crossed a tightrope without Link tipping over and needing to climb back up on the rope. It took me forever to realize that to correct Link’s tilt you’re not supposed to tilt the remote, you’re supposed to point it in the opposite direction like a flashlight. Tilting the remote does nothing. Nintendo chose to eschew 4 years of Wii game design convention for some reason.

Speaking of eschewing game design conventions. When you’re playing a Zelda game, and there is a big eyeball on the wall, what you do you? You shoot it, right? The game gives you the slingshot not long before you go into the first dungeon. The first real puzzle of the dungeon has an eyeball on a wall above a door. However, when you pull out the slingshot, it shuts tight and is impervious to your pellets. Fi, the spirit of the sword or something and your Navi replacement for the game, notes that the eye follows the tip of your sword. I decided that I needed to make it dizzy. I swung my sword left and right and nothing happened. I swung my sword up and down and nothing happened. After trying to shoot the slingshot and get out my sword so maybe it’d open its eye in time to be hit I looked up the solution online. I was supposed to swing my sword in a circle to make it dizzy and open the door. So congratulations go to Nintendo for going against 20 years of Zelda game design tradition and making the first puzzle of the first dungeon an unintuitive use of motion controls.

Motion Minus
One of my biggest problems with playing the game doesn’t appear to be the games fault. It’s the Wii Motion Plus. While the technology is more sensitive that the standard Wii Remote controls, it seems to be prone to accumulating error. Over time its origin (how it’s oriented so that it thinks you’re pointing straight forward) seems to drift, making actions difficult to perform. In many cases you can press down on the D-Pad and it will recenter itself to its current orientation but there are times when you can’t do this and are forced to pause the game where you can recenter it. It can really break your immersion to have to do this, and it can really harm your gameplay if it happens at a critical moment. I’m just glad that since I bought the special edition at Wal-Mart’s Black Friday sale I didn’t have to pay extra for a Wii Motion Plus controller.

Right-Hand Bias
The games is only slight right-hand biased. I've had two issues with it so far: one is minor and the other is cosmetic. All weapon wielding enemies I've encountered hold it in their right hand. Since they hold the weapon mostly upright, this means that you cannot usually initiate your attack with a left-to-right swing, which is the most natural swing for a left-handed person. The game slightly favors right-handed people in this way. The other way that it favors right-handed people is that if you want to hold your sword in a cool way, such as pointed behind you, you can't do this and it will look really weird. Overall, I had worse fears and am not bothered by this.

I know that I complained quite a fair amount of the past 900 or so words, but I really do like the game. It’s still a very solid game and lives up to all my expectations about the quality of Zelda games. The graphics are, of course, not that great. The models all look very good, but the environments do leave quite a bit to be desired. As with Twilight Princess, the more stylized scenes do look absolutely gorgeous. If you like Zelda games, then I’ll bet that you’ll like this game. I love it so far.

Demos: Sonic 4 & Medieval Moves

2011-11-25T11:00:00.000-06:00

Sonic 4 It's different, but good.

Ah, Sonic 4. The game fans wanted. A return to that core Genesis-era gameplay that entranced a generation. A return that fans didn’t get.

Sonic 4 isn't what players wanted. There were many complaints about Sonic’s style and the gameplay. One of the paramount complaints was that the game featured the homing attack that was introduced in the 3D Sonic the Hedgehog games.

When I first tried the demo for Sonic 4 so long ago, I didn’t like it either. It was weird to me. Things didn’t look or feel right. Now that I’ve played, and enjoyed, Sonic Generations, I decided to give this game another try. I believed that my positive experience with the ‘new Sonic’ gameplay in Sonic Generations might have given me a new, more positive outlook and experience with Sonic 4. It did.

Sonic 4 doesn't play like Sonic 1, 2 and 3 (or CD) and that’s okay. Not every game in a series has to be the same. If gameplay doesn’t evolve within an established series, people become bored with it. If you’re willing to cast off your retro-tinted glasses you can see that this game is actually good. The speed has been lowered a bit, to where you can reasonably see obstacles coming and the homing attack adds significantly to the game. The demo level provided me with a fun experience and I definitely plan on buying the full product.

One complaint that I always had about the classic, and one that is fixed in Sonic Generations, is that the game wants you to go as fast as possible. For Sonic, this is very fast. The problem is that you’re going so fast you can’t see the obstacles ahead of you with enough time to react. This leads to the classic problem of running headlong into spikes because the game hates you. In Sonic Generations, you’ll often find the camera is either forward facing, so you can see everything ahead of you, or it pulls out during those particularly speedy segments to give you more warning.

The classic Sonic games couldn’t do either of these things, due to the strength of the hardware. To pull the camera out would require storing more objects in memory and drawing more object. Old console games were designed in such a way that they couldn’t afford to do that. The camera needed to have a fixed number of objects on screen to manage memory efficiently. Sonic 4 doesn't do this either, but the speed has been somewhat lowered to account for it.

I like this game, and I definitely suggest other people try it out to. Just try and cast off whatever expectations you have for it and evaluate independently.

Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest Really solid motion control gameplay.

I went into this game not expecting much. I got a ton out of it, however.

Medieval Moves is a on-rails medieval combat game targeted toward a younger crowd. This is a game designed to be played solely with the Playstation Move. I believe there was an option to also use the Navigation Controller, but I didn’t use that configuration. I believe there is also an option to use two Move controllers: one as a sword and one as a shield.

The combat was very enjoyable. The character swings his sword in tune with your own movements, with very little lag. You can also shoot a bow, block with a shield, use a grappling hook, and throw shuriken. All of this is done only utilizing the Move button and the Trigger button, which are analogous to the Wii’s A and B buttons.

And you know what? It was really fun. Surprisingly fun, really. The actions that I was making really felt like I was acting as the character on the screen. Unlike Twilight Princess, where the use of any item was predicated by pressing a button, the use of your shield, bow, grappling hook, and shuriken is predicated by a particular movement. No item selection, just do the proper movement to use it. To shoot the bow, raise your arm over your shoulder as if you’re drawing an arrow from your quiver. To throw a shuriken, make a motion like you’re throwing a Frisbee. To use the grappling hook, lower the controller and bring it up, like you’re lifting a crossbow from your belt and raising it to fire.

Within the scope of the demo, the battles were all easy. There were times when certain enemies required the use of your shield, so block or deflect attacks so that the enemy’s weakness was exposed. I suspect the gameplay becomes more complicated as the game progresses, since the tutorial area requires you to attack specific body parts.

Someday, if I work through enough of the other games that I need to play, or write them off as not being worth my time, I may buy this game. This was an excellent demo and I definitely recommend checking it out.

Demos: Skydrift and Hamilton's Great Adventure

2011-11-23T11:00:00.000-06:00

Skydrift Use the boost to chase!

What does one call a racing game that has weapons and power-ups, à la Mario Kart, but that only features airplanes? It can’t be a kart racer, the closest genre that I can relate it to. Kart flyer doesn’t make sense either. Arcade air-race? That seems closer. It's tough.

No matter. Skydrift is a racing game where you pilot a small WW2 era-esque aircraft and are assisted by power-ups which you fly through. The game also features a boost system which fills based upon the stunts that you perform, such as passing through narrow rock formations or flying close to the ground.

The power-ups are standard fare for this type of game. Guns, missiles, shields, repair, mines, and an EMP burst round out the arsenal available to players. Adding onto this is the fact that players can store two such items at a time, and if they collect a power-up they already have, the strength of it is increased. The storage/power-up system adds some nice touches to the item system.

The game feels very similar in execution to how Koei’s initial trailers for Fatal Inertia made me feel. Although this game isn’t nearly as fast as Fatal Inertia is, you do fly, which is more than Fatal Inertia can claim.

This was a very appealing demo, and I’d highly suggest you check it out if it seems like the sort of thing you'd be into.

Hamilton’s Great Adventure That's really just an opinion

I’m not sure what to label this game. I’m going to resort to the label of a puzzle game. You play as the eponymous Hamilton and you adventure through a tiled puzzle area, navigating towards the goal. The key to navigating to that goal is figuring out the particular trick to the level, which makes it a puzzle game.

Hamilton is joined by a bird companion who has complete and unrestrained movement. The bird can collect certain tokens that are scattered around the map and flip switches that are out of Hamilton’s reach. The tokens can only be picked up by the bird.

The tokens don’t seem to play any role that I was able to discern in the short time that I spent with the demo. As best as I could tell, they only served as some way to boost your score or have a completion percentage to goad gullible players into playing the game more.

The seemingly useless tokens actually irritated me so much that I turned off the demo. Since the bird’s movement was unconstrained, nothing prevented it from starting each level by collecting every token available. I had mindless collecting in games. I got tired of it during the Nintendo 64 era and I don’t wish to return to it.

I didn’t play the demo fully, which is a terrible thing. If I’m so irked by the demo that I don’t want to finish it, there is no way in hell that I’m going to spend money on the game itself. Maybe the bird gameplay fleshes out as the game develops, but I wasn’t motivated to stick around to see if it did.

I should probably give it a second chance to see if it fleshes out, but I just can't get motivated to.

On Platformers

2011-11-21T11:00:00.000-06:00

More please!

I'm persnickety about platformers. It's hands-down my favorite genre of videogames. It's the one that I've grown up with and have stuck with a all of my life. This doesn't mean that I automatically love all platformers that come out, though.

I tend to be far more critical of platformers than other games. Highly regarded games like Rochard fall flat on me. There is a very particular reason for this. Many so-called platformers actually aren't good at the things that define platformers. Those things are timing and precision.

Many developers and gamers seem to think that being a platformer means having a jump button. A true platformer is one where the player is tasked with moving from one place to another with the primary difficulty coming from the precise timing and execution of their actions, mostly movement actions. There are many games out there that call themselves platformers, or some type of platformer hybrid, that really are not.

Puzzle-Platformers
The puzzle-platformer is like a platformer, but with much more critical thinking involved. My most recent experience with this genre is when I played the demo for Rochard. Don't get me wrong, I do like puzzle-platformers, but not because they're platformers. In fact, I usually dislike the platforming, because it's often terrible.

Most puzzle-platformers spend far too much time developing the puzzles and no time developing the platforming. As a result, they'll often end up with a super floaty jump and nothing else. If there was a simple heuristic to measure how good the platforming in a game is, I'd have to go with the floatiness of the jump. The floatier the jump, the worse the platforming.

Action-Platformers
On the opposite end of the puzzle-platformer is the action-platformer. You can pretty much take everything from the previous section and replace 'puzzles' with 'killing things'.

There are two ends of this spectrum. At one end are your action games that have jump button. This would be like Devil May Cry. Yes, you jump. You're even sometimes asked to jump over or across things. However, jumping and movement are not your primary obstacle to progression.

On the other end, I'd place Mega Man or Ghosts n' Goblins. In these games, the enemies serve as timing/coordination challenges. While there are tons of enemies to kill, you also don't necessarily have to kill them. Uncharted 1 starts more towards the platformer side of the spectrum and becomes more of an action game as it goes on. This was one of my main complaints about the game.

I've found that a common way to measure where a game falls on this scale is how easy the enemies are to kill. If the enemies are easily killed, it falls more to the platformer side. If the enemies are harder to kill, it falls more to the action game side.

I love action-platformers, no matter where they fall on the spectrum. I'm playing Uncharted 3 right now and it's totally awesome. And really, when you get down to it, Uncharted 3 has action, platforming, puzzles, and a great story. It's the whole package.

Conclusion
The degree to which a game is a platformer comes from the timing and precision required for your movement actions. Enemies and puzzles can be added to the game to round out the gameplay, but can sometimes pull the focus away from the platforming. I'd really like it if more games were true platformers. I think many developers are afraid to do that, however, because of the obvious Mario comparison.

Gaming Miscellany: Uncharted 3 and Sonic Generations

2011-11-15T11:00:00.000-06:00

Uncharted 3 When his enemies see the half-tuck, they know to be afraid.

Another wonderful entry in the Uncharted series. I just finished chapter 10 (I think). I watched the opening scene for when they get to Syria. I'm also playing it on hard difficulty, because I just tend to play games on hard these days. There's a part of me that wants that challenge. I think it started with Devil May Cry 3. That reminds me, I need to buy Dark Souls.

Uncharted was a game that I had really high hopes for. It was a very good game, that's no doubt, but it wasn't as good as I would have liked. It, Mirror's Edge, and other games tend to fall into a similar patter. The pattern is that a new game promises interesting platforming, runs out of interesting platforming, and the game devolves into combat as the game progresses and loses its platforming.

I was Uncertain about Uncharted 2 because of my problems with the first one. However, the reviews and chatter started to roll in so I played it via Gamefly. It was a truly amazing game. The platforming didn't die out towards the end. The set pieces were beautiful. The story was amazing and the gameplay shined. I loved every minute of it.

Uncharted 3 isn't as many leaps and bounds better than Uncharted 2. I'm not even sure if it's better than Uncharted 2. So I'm not as impressed because my expectations were raised so high. That said, it's still an amazing game. The grenade throwback mechanic is really well done and adds some good depth to the gunplay. The platforming is solid but has mostly been climbing so far. The climbing in Uncharted is so easy it almost may as well be automated.

I really look forward to beating this game.

Sonic Generations "Let's fly away together, Sonic." said Sonic. "I can't, Sonic. They don't have that mechanic in my levels." Sonic replied. -my personal fanfic collection

I wouldn't have bought this game if it weren't for the demo station set up at GameStop. The music for Green Hill Zone just captured me and wouldn't let me go. So, that was sneaky clever shit they pulled. Damn nostalgia. I'd played the demo previously and been unimpressed, but that changed when I got the full game. I don't really know why.

For the first three level, which pulled from Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 2, and Sonic 3 for inspiration, I enjoyed the classic sonic versions. However, as the levels have progressed, I've been enjoying the new Sonic versions of the levels more and more, to where my enjoyment of new Sonic has overcome my enjoyment of the classic Sonic versions.

I'm six levels deep now, so we'll see how the rest of the game pans out. All things considered, this game has me reconsidering checking out Sonic 4 again. This game has probably been a great success for Sega and I think they deserve it.

I have about a billion other games that I have bought recently and need to play. Expect more in the future as I slowly make my way through playing all of them.

Well, I Won't Be Working There Much Longer

2011-11-10T11:00:00.000-06:00

Piggy

Probably. Yesterday, I found out that my work had approved me to work full-time instead of as a contractor. Same pay, and I'll get benefits and time off. There's a problem though. Today at 3:00 we had a company-wide meeting. At the meeting we found out that we had lost the bid for the Medicare contracts we have. So by July at the earliest, we won't have that work any more. The process may be delayed a bit, but it will eventually happen.

I'm still going to be picked up for full-time. There was actually an ulterior motive to making me full-time. As a full-time employee I'll have first dibs on any jobs that show up at Blue Cross. Even still, the company isn't necessarily going away. They are, and have been, looking into new business that they can take on. So the company isn't dead, they may not need me in the future, but they aren't dead. Like I said before, I'll still be doing this particular job at least until July.

Aside from that, if I'm let go around then that opens up the possibility of moving somewhere and doing something else. I have experience under my belt now and could probably get a real job much easier now than it was for me before.

Overall, I'm not at all bummed about this. It's a weird thing to say, but I'm very fine with it. Medicare wasn't something that I wanted to spend my life doing. I see this as a way to transition to bigger and better things. Also, as compensation, we get to wear jeans for the rest of our time. Casual Friday is now everyday! YAY.

In a final bit of potpourri news, we got a rice cooker, and it's awesome.

I love me some rice.

Advocating the New Talent System: Necessary Conditions for its Success

2011-11-05T10:03:00.000-05:00

At Blizzcon, Blizzard announced their changes to the new talent system and their hopes that it would be the end of cookie cutter specs. Smart people realized that this wouldn't be so, that as long as there were choices, people would sim/calculate out which choices would produce optimal DPS. Smarter people realized/made mention that this would just mean we'd have to come up with a cookie cutter spec for each fight. The particular article that I read was Mists of Pandaria: The Myth of the talent tree choice by my personal superhero Fox Van Allen (who has the best name ever).

Let me just say first that I agree with most of what he says in the article. I just don't necessarily agree with the doom-saying. I feel that there is more to be said on the topic. There is a theorem in mathematics that is relevant to this situation. It doesn't have a special name, but it goes like this:

Given any finite set of numbers, that set has a maximum value and attains that value.

In calculus this is true given any function and a closed set on which that function is continuous (or piecewise continuous), but that's not important. Here, a maximum value is one that is greater than or equal to each value in the set. In our case, these numbers are the DPS (or HPS, or relate to damage mitigated) produced on a particular fight by a particular set of talent choices. So on any fight, there will be some spec that is optimal. And since these talent choices are so different, it's unlikely that any two of them will be equal, except in rare cases, so there will almost always be a single optimal spec for any given fight.

Is this okay? Yes it is, under certain conditions. Blizzard has said that they want talent choices to be simpler, more understandable, and more meaningful. They've certainly achieved the meaningful aspect. The choices you make now are actually fairly significant from one another, but how can they make it simpler and more understandable?

I said that this system will be fine under certain conditions, what do I mean by that? What are those conditions? As I see it this system will be a success if

It is clear when (for what bosses/situations) one talent choice is better than another. For example, Divine Star (priest tier 3) would be very good for a movement heavy fight with AOE damage and possibly adds.
If there isn't an obviously superior talent for a particular fight, the talents should produce roughly equal results. The results should be equal enough that your familiarity with a play style should be more important than the simulated results.
Talent choices should not have a significant effect on gearing. I should be able to change talents without feeling like I need to change my gear. I'm worried about enhancement shaman in their tier 4 talents in this regard.
For DPS and tanks, the choices shouldn't change your rotation. You shouldn't have to relearn your class.

With this new system I want to be able to go into a heroic with whatever talent set I want to use and perform well. I shouldn't feel the need to change my spec from fight to fight unless I'm undergeared for the dungeon. During progression raiding, I fully expect for me and my fellow raiders to change their talent set from fight to fight. However, if we overgear the raid, I expect my talent choices to not matter nearly as much.

In the end, I'd argue that the cookie cutter spec IS gone. Cookie cutter, while it actually refers to the homogeneity between characters, seems to imply to me that the spec is optimal for every fight. We have now created a situation where the optimal spec changes from fight to fight. We've eliminated cookie cutter specs, just not optimal specs, and that's okay, because that's impossible.

Picky Math Word Nerd Side Note: These aren't talent trees anymore. They're talent sets. Truthfully, mathematically, they weren't technically trees before. The difference between the old system and the new system is that you have fewer choices, the choices aren't dependent upon one another (no talent requires another talent), they are more exclusive, and they are shared between specs. Diablo II's talent system was more tree-like, though it was really more like a forest (a collection of trees). Even then, it doesn't perfectly fit the description of a forest. I'd say it was more of a set of directed graphs.

Fact: There are No Lesbians in WoW

2011-11-03T13:00:00.000-05:00

He's hiding something, I know it!

A young orc comes home from a day of battle.

Father: Lok'tar! Son!

Son: Lok'tar father.

Father: What's wrong? Were you not able to crush the Alliance beneath your mighty blade?

Son: My blade and technique are fine, father; it is my heart.

Father: Your heart, does it ache? Are you ill? Did they strike at your breast? Do you need to see a shaman?

Son: I am not ill, father, yet my heart aches. I fear there is no balm to ease my pain. You see father, I need to tell you something.

Father: Spit it out, then. What is it?

Son: Father, I'm...Wait, what am I?

...and I don't think there are any homosexuals either. I attest, that title is a bit of a troll, but it raises an interesting point.What I mean when I say those things is that I don't think these words would make sense for a WoW character to use.

'Lesbian' was a reference to the denizens of the isle of Lesbos (now usually translated as 'Lesvos'). Azeroth has no isle of Lesbos, so the word 'lesbian' wouldn't make sense for them to use. In a similar fashion, 'homosexual' is something of a clinical term, one that I wouldn't expect for any Azerothian race to have a word quite like it. Also, 'homosexual' is a pseudo-Latin word, made my Latin scholars to describe people who are attracted to those of the same sex. Latin doesn't appear to exist in Azeroth.

In World of Warcraft, there are several different races who, when interacting with the player, speak English (or whatever the language that copy of the game is localized into, I'll keep saying English for simplicity). We understand as players that this isn't actually their native tongue. We know it isn't, because we often hear them speak in their native tongue for some small things. Aka'Magosh, a blessing on you and yours, is a perfect example of this from Orcish. We know that Common (the language of the humans in WoW) isn't written with English characters, we see that in game. However, we never hear the humans speak anything but English.

The humans may also have an unknown "real language," but we have no reason to believe that the humans speak anything but English (or whatever the localized language is), just with a different character set for writing. Yet, there are still words that we use that wouldn't make sense for them to use. I mentioned 'lesbian' earlier, but there are more. What about loanwords from other languages? It would certainly be weird to hear a character order a croque-monsieur or to slip "Je ne sais quoi" into a conversation because those are very definitely French, even though they are used in English conversations. However, 'gay' (as in happy) is a French-derived word that is very much English. 'Gay' has actually taken on extra meaning since it came to English, meanings other than 'homosexual.' Where's the line between the two? Where would 'baguette' fall? Would it make sense for them to say 'homosexual' even if Latin doesn't exist in WoW?

In the end, the significant majority of words we have come from, are derived from, or are somehow constructed from pieces of other languages. The question is about how thoroughly assimilated into English these words are, and if it would make sense to hear them in World of Warcraft. If humans speak English, then these words wouldn't make sense for them to have. If they don't speak English, then it matters for the reason of player immersion.

Returning to our original question posed by our young orc friend. I think the right word would be 'gay'. I've chosen 'gay' because it's meaning of 'homosexual' came from society's collective agreement and use of it for that meaning. But that opens a whole can of worms about how homosexuality is viewed and treated in orc culture. Do orcs view homosexuality as a weakness? Would that be allowed in Garrosh's Horde? Or would homosexual sex be okay but someone still wouldn't have a lifelong homosexual relationship in the same way that one would have a lifelong heterosexual relationship? What would each race's views on homosexuality be? Would that be communicated in game? Would it make the most sense for orcs to be homophobic but to avoid the issue in-game to keep ammunition out of the hands of homophobic players?

I think the issue of how the orc and other cultures perceives homosexuality is one that's best not touched upon in World of Warcraft. Homosexuality is something that many players use as an insult and as a means of discrimination, and the realistic answers to how many of the in-game cultures would perceive homosexuals probably wouldn't help the matter. I still think there should be homosexual characters and that they should be received well by their friends and family, but that the larger, cultural issue should be left alone.

NatOctoBlogMo in Retrospect

2011-11-01T11:00:00.000-05:00

This is one of my favorite videos ever.

Well, I did it. A full month with blog posts each day. I've actually been cranking out daily posts since September 21st and some days have had two posts. It's been a pretty wild ride, one that I took alone. But despite the fact that nobody joined me (sniff), I certainly enjoyed doing it myself, and that's what matters. What all did I talk about over this past month? What did I learn? Where will I be going from here (jump to the bottom for that)?

I started the month off with me talking about Dr. Who and our problems with out AT&T TV receiver in Yesterday, I Just Wanted To Kill Hitler. Then I changed gears entirely and talked about my problems with our congressional electoral system with The Congressional Elections.

I talked about how I wanted to do some Sexuality & Gender Surveys, which continued into a slightly related topic of using custom designed interactive media as a alternative to surveys for data collection.

Changing gears more than a race car I pondered an RPG idea for a game involving Time-Traveling Gnomes who correct the events of history, which doesn't at all segue into a discussion of things happening in my life with Potpourri. Real life talk continued in Work Frustration+3 videos! and then the boat turned back around to Voting: The Algorithm, where I talked about the algorithm I developed to replace the standard electoral system for congressional elections. It turned back to real life topics when I discussed the afternoon Sarah and I spent at The Symphony and some ideas I had for Tattoos.

Having not much to talk about I wrote Random Stuff 2: With Frontalot! and switched to heavier topics with Violence and Gender Norms and Population Growth. I wrote about some books we had recently bought in Books Galore before going off the deep end into game territory in The Plight of the Colorblind Gamer, BlizzCon Speculation, Pandemic!, Donkey Kong Country Returns Finale, and Rant: Skyward Sword's Right-Handed Bias.

I've shared ideas that I've had for Tutoring Websites and the problems that result because I'm Bad at Refrigerator. Then it was Blizzcon weekend and I wrote Blizzcon Monk Impressions and Concerns, Blizzcon - Heart of the Swarm New Units. I shared My Embarassing Story because my Blizzcon predictions were wrong, and talked about LGBT Representation in WoW Lore Characters.

The last week was a bit difficult, but I powered through starting with Questionable Content's Questionable Characterization, Gaming Update: Donkey Kong Country Returns in Bullshit (because I wasn't done apparently), Fighting Back: Getting Revenge for the Loss of Theramore, Shaman Abilities and Other Changes, Adventures in Amateur Games Design part 15. Then my love for long titles took a break with Demo Roundup.

Carrying me through the final stretch was a discussion of tax code in The Stupidity of 9-9-9 Tax Plan (I guess I was tired when I wrote that title). I talked more WoW with Preliminary Talent Builds for Mists of Pandaria. The longest title award went to Demo Roundup Part 2: From Dust, Payday: The Heist, BloodRayne: Betrayal, and Sideway: New York (SEO Ahoy!). My last post for the month was Big Orange Burgers: The Best I've Ever Had.

I learned that people are interested in video games, WoW, and my personal life. I learned that people aren't interested in the mathematical stuff that I post. Well, too bad, if it interests me, I'm going to post it here. You don't have to read it, after all.

This past month, I really tried to keep the topics varied and to be broadly interesting (that's right, I said it, even though everything I talked about was quite niche interest). I'll probably be making the topics more niche interest though, talking about my WoW thoughts more, and my gaming more. I'll definitely be talking about programming and statistics.

I'm going to love every post I make and not post anything that I don't like or don't think is complete. I had to make some concessions this past month regarding quality that I didn't like. I'm not going to fret if I can't get a post out each and every day. I think that pausing for quality is a good thing.

I've also been working on some fiction that I may or may not post here, it will really depend on how satisfied with it. I'm very protective of it because fiction feels more personal to me than nonfiction. Nonfiction is my way of opening my mind up to you, but fiction is a way of opening up my heart.

I've made 34 posts over the past 31 days and I'm pretty proud of myself. I think I've learned tons about writing and writing good blog posts. I hope my quality only gets better.

This post will be my 186th published blog post here. I can't wait to hit number 200!

Big Orange Burgers: The Best I've Ever Had

2011-10-31T11:00:00.000-05:00

I'm not really one to brag about food I've eaten, but this is too good to pass up. It will make for something different to round out this month of blogging. There's a new burger place in Little Rock, and it's called Big Orange. I've eaten there a total of three times now, and each time has been absolutely wonderful. The restaurant itself has a very modern aesthetic. Lovely bold colors adorn the walls with some interesting Americana-esque pop art. It also has exterior seating.

The first time we went there we both got their classic burger and shared a side of fries and a chocolate shake. All the toppings are on the side so you can decide what and how much of something you want. The cheese was on there and I added the lettuce and a touch of ketchup. It was the best burger that I've ever had in my life. The bun was so wonderful. The beef, perfectly shaped, seasoned, and cooked. The toppings were wonderful. The fries were so absolutely good and the chocolate shake was divine.

The second time we went, I got their hickory smoke burger. I had it with the barbecue sauce, cheese, and fried onion strings. This was also a very good burger. This last time I got their atom bomb. I didn't put the peppers or the mayo on it. Since it was something very new to me I want to step my way up to the full thing. This was a really great burger and I look forward to experiencing the full thing.

The real winner that last time I went was what I drank. I had a J.K. Scrumpy Orchard Gate Gold Cider. This was the most delicious alcoholic beverage I've ever had. It was 22 oz of 6% alcohol for $8 of absolute deliciousness. The saddest thing is that I can't find it anywhere else so that I can consume it at home. For other sample of their amazing drink selection, check it out here.

This is absolutely one of the best places I've been, and I definitely plan on going there many more times in the future. If you aren't into beef, they also have turkey burgers, burgers made with a veggie/bean patty, and salads. This restaurant comes form the same people who run Zaza's, a local pizza and salad place. Would definitely recommend.

Demo Roundup Part 2: From Dust, Payday: The Heist, BloodRayne: Betrayal, and Sideway: New York

2011-10-30T13:00:00.000-05:00

I really wasn't expecting for all of these to be downloaded, but apparently signing up for Playstation Plus has perks I didn't realize. I logged in and it had updated my firmware, downloaded patches for games, and finished downloading all these demos (and more) during the previous night. Very Nice.

From Dust
I've heard several complaints about this game, but I actually enjoyed it. I think I'll go ahead and purchase the full version. The graphics are nice and the terraforming gameplay is unlike anything I've done before, and I'm always looking for new play experiences.

The controls are a little sensitive and the camera could be a bit better, but I imagine that I'll overcome those difficulties in time.

Man, does anyone else remember how awesome Populous was? I only had a demo for it that came with SimCity 3000 and it was fantastic.

Payday: The Heist
I'm not normally one for first-person shooters, but this was sufficiently different to hold my interest. It's a 4-player cooperative objective based shooter.

The demo level had me robbing a bank and breaking into the vault. It was actually quite interesting. The shooting was solid and the game features non-linear levels and solid action. Overall the experience was very fun.

The levels are apparently somewhat random so you get a different experience each time you play it .

BloodRayne: Betrayal

Does this image interest you in it? I bet it doesn't.

The demo actually reminded me of Shank, except it seems to be much better than Shank was. The art is repetitive and somewhat low quality, but the gameplay is actually really solid.

The thing that's great about it is that it seems to fully embrace the campiness of the series. From the gameplay videos I'm seeing, the levels get much better later in the game. I'm definitely interested in this game now.

With an excellent combat system and good encounter design, this get's my recommendation.

Sideway: New York
Hmmm...a visually innovative platformer with a shallow gimmick. Yep, it's not very good. The idea of this game is that you've been transformed into a graffito and are platforming around with graffiti powers on the side of buildings. You'll go around the corners of buildings and walk on their roofs. If you approach a roof from a different wall, the gravity while on the roof will be different than if you approached form a different wall.

The problem with making a platformer is that an interesting gimmick isn't good enough. If the baseline platforming isn't solid enough the whole game just falls apart. The most important part of a platformer is the jump. If you don't have a good jump, it's over. And overall, I'd say that the jump in Sideway is just too floaty. It'd be like Halo platforming, and that's definitely a bad thing.

They couldn't have all been winners today.

Preliminary Talent Builds for Mists of Pandaria

2011-10-29T15:57:00.002-05:00

There are some preview versions of the revised talents system for Mists of Pandaria at Wowhead. I've taken the liberty of putting together some preliminary builds for my current max level characters.

Guardian Druid (aka, the new 4th Druid spec for Bears)

Bears are getting their own specialization now, making the druid the only class with four. I'm really looking forward to what new abilities this will afford us since we won't be sharing with cats anymore. There are, of course, some holes in the descriptions for these abilities, so I'm excitedly waiting to see how those turn out.

Displacer Beast - because as a tank if I'm turning into a cat, I need to do it after I'm put distance between me and what's attacking me. Good for getting out of effects that are happening right on top of you.
Renewal - You can't argue with 30% of your health being restored.
Typhoon - something about the idea of opening my mouth and knocking away all the enemies with a wave of water is very appealing to me.
Incarnation - You become a better bear. I'm mostly waiting to see how this one pans out. I'm also very interested in the new Force of Nature. Typhoons and Treants and Bears oh my!
Ursol's Vortex - This is for more NPC control. We bears have trouble with that. :-(
Disentanglement - There are spare moments in boss battles where you can shape shift (especially combined with Displacer Beast) that should make this a very interesting choice.

The theme here is mobility and mob control. I'm really looking forward to playing a new bear. RAWR!

Discipline Priest

Atonement is probably going to become baseline for discipline, which is something that I'm particularly looking forward to. Many of my choices here are about increasing discipline's AOE healing potential.

Psyfiend - This was a tough call, as none of them particularly appealed to me. This seemed better than Psychic Scream, because it seems less chaotic.
Body and Soul - I use shields often, so this seems like a no-brainer. Although it can often be disorienting for the affected person to be suddenly running very fast, if you have a dedicated group, they'll get used to it. This will also call for more situational awareness on my part, which will be an enjoyable challenge.
Divine Star - An AOE heal? Sure, let's see how it goes. I'm also a big fan of From Darkness, Comes Light.
Angelic Bulwark - I'll take stronger shields on my self to prevent me from needing a 30% heal or an auto-shield.
Serendipity - Combine this with From Darkness, Comes Light to make your spells have this great positive feedback loop.
This is a tough tier. I'd pick Vampiric Dominance but there's no way that's going to come through exactly the way it is. If it doesn't get nerfed, then it's definitely the one I'm picking. I'm also interested in Vow of Unity, but I'll have to see how it works out in a practical setting.

Enhancement Shaman

I love playing an enhancement shaman. I also love playing a restoration shaman. One of my favorite things about being an enhancement shaman is being able to contribute heals when they're really needed, so I'm putting some effort into that.

Earthgrab Totem - I'm honestly not a fan of any of these. When I tank I hate it when the DPS manipulate the mobs like this, because it makes it hard to build threat/rage. If called for as part of the strategy, these things can be very helpful. Any choice here is good. Frozen Power would be my second choice.
Stone Bulwark Totem - I like to defend myself from incoming damage,don't you? Astral Shift also seems like a good choice. It will come down to how each one of them plays.
Improved Ghost Wolf - I had to go with the selfish choice on this one.
Ancestral Guidance - I also really like Healing Tide Totem. However, I'm kinda expecting this one to scale better for enhancement shaman. I also think it will be a good way to save one particular person who is taking too much damage, whereas Healing Tide Totem is more of a helper, not meant to save anyone in an immediate fashion.
Nature's Swiftness - I'm hoping the haste will make up for the damage loss from not taking Echo of the Elements. Throwing down an instant Chain Heal or Healing Rain is a favorite pastime of mine. Will Enhancement Shaman even have Healing Rain in Mists of Pandaria, though? Who knows? Echo of the Elements may very well end up being the better choice.
Totemic Restoration - I don't often end up moving my totems. If I PVP'd more, I probably would. I don't know how valuable being able to have multiple totems of the same type will be, but being able to cut down the cooldown of my totems seems very valuable.

One thing I noticed is that the various shield spell aren't mentioned here. Will they go on the chopping block in Mists? It seems like they will since they aren't very interesting, just fire-and-forget.

Overall I'm very excited for these talent changes. They've also stated that they want talent changing to be relatively easy, like glyphs. We might be able to alter our talent builds between boss battles easily, which would be wonderful for me, since I love to min-max for each circumstance that way.

The Stupidity of 9-9-9 Tax Plan

2011-10-28T23:27:00.000-05:00

May I rant for a second?

The 9-9-9 tax plan is the dumbest shit I've ever heard. I'd really like to see Herman Cain go to the presidential election trying to convince poor people that they'll be losing a little less than 20% of their money to taxes. If you're sufficiently poor, you're going to lose 9% of your income to federal taxes, and then everything you buy will cost an additional 9%. You know that $400 dollar XBox 360 bundle you want. Well, it's not really that much any more. Add on, let's say, 15% combined sales taxes and it's now, $460. Have fun with that. Try adding another 9% sales tax to your car purchase and lose a couple thousand dollars.

People allegedly like this idea because it's simple. Guess what, simple usually isn't good. Tax code is a reflection of what we think people owe back to the government. Things such as donating to charity are considered to absolve you of some of your tax burden. Life, income, and economics are complicated, so it makes sense for the tax code to be too.

In statistics, the most accurate systems are also the most complicated. Adding more variables to your analysis can only increase the accuracy of your model. That's why our tax structure is complicated, but it's also good that it is. The only real problem with it is that there are these complicated loopholes that allow the wealthy to avoid paying taxes. The tax loopholes for businesses also need to be sealed up.

By the way, this isn't just bad for the poor. What about the elderly? The elderly have no income, and thus no income tax burden. However, they'll become saddled with additional sales tax burden. This will throw off the retirement plans of people who've had everything set up for 30 or 40 years. This would also add to the price of medicines, which our country already has a million problems with. Oh, and with a business tax, you can bet your ass that pharmaceutical companies are going to increase the cost of their products, further compounding the problem of sales tax on medications. You could, of course, always exempt medications from sales tax.

So what would the government do to correct the problem of sales tax burden on the elderly? They could either a) increase social security benefits or b) let the elderly suffer. If they increase social security benefits they'd either have to increase the social security contribution of income earners or businesses (increasing tax) or let some of the sales tax feed back into social security. They could also create exceptions where the elderly don't pay the sales tax.

It seems, just from this cursory analysis, that the 9-9-9 tax plan creates several problems. These could be fixed with exceptions to the rule, but that kinda defeats the point of it's simplicity, doesn't it?

Demo Roundup

2011-10-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

I love the echochrome music

Rochard
This is a fairly acclaimed puzzle platformer which features a gravity gun as the major mechanic. I just couldn't get into it. I just didn't like it. As a platformer, it's too slow. For a puzzle game, it's too inaccurate. For an action game, I don't have enough control. It okay at three different things which means that I don't feel pulled towards any one of them.

Sonic Generations: New Sonic Type
I guess I just don't care about this type of Sonic gameplay.

Killzone 3 w/ Move
I bought a Playstation Move on the cheap recently, with the gun attachment. I decided to try out several demos with it. One of those demos was Killzone 3. The sharpshooter is the gun attachment that man Wii players have wanted for a long time. It's so well designed and made, it's crazy.

That said, controlling a shooter with a motion controller instead of a traditional controller is still incredibly difficult. Killzone 3 is an early attempt at Move controls for a shooter and I really hope that later games will have better Move controls.

I'm not sure if it was easier playing with the Move with or without the Sharpshooter. Both forms had their own difficulties. That said, the game was very fun, and although I didn't try it with a traditional controller I know it would have been a very smooth experience with one.

echochrome ii
Shine the light to make the shadows to get the guy to the goal. Fun, but not as fun for me as the original Echochrome.

Mercury Hg
I had trouble telling the yellow from the green in the original Mercury. It reassuring to know that no steps were taken to improve color distinguishing for color blind players. Also, controller Mercury with a PS3 analog stick was much harder than doing so with a PSP analog stick.

Ape Escape Move
This was pretty much shit.

Playstation Move Heroes
I couldn't play it. I started up one of the minigames and my character couldn't move. Oops.

Dungeon Defenders
An Action RPG/Tower Defense game. I tried this with the Playstation Move controls, which were terrible. The camera was also far too close to the character and there was no map. This meant that I had no way to know when an enemy was sneaking up on my defenses or on the crystal that I'm supposed to protect. It's not an instant loss if an enemy gets there but it's very frustrating nonetheless.

Shaman Abilities and Other Changes, Adventures in Amateur Games Design part 15

2011-10-26T14:00:00.000-05:00

Get it? Get it? Get it?

It's been a hell of a long time since I worked on this at all, other things began to occupy my brain spheres. Also, my mind encountered a bit of a road block when working on this so I took a detour through other topics, like voting.

It's been forever since I actually talked about this class (or this project). I don't even think it was called the shaman until just now. Earlier it was the priest. I think the word 'shaman' better fits the kit that I'm going with, though. Life/Death has been replace with a nature based tree.

Nature:

Given Ability: Draining Ivy - Vines fire from your arm, attaching to the opponent and draining their life, giving it to you.

Vine Wall
Vine Whip - A vine comes from you and whips the opponent, lacerating them.
Some type of heal that does instant healing with a heal-over-time component. Plants grow in the wound.
Meadow - an area-of-effect heal
Log Throw - log appears and fwops the opponent
Tangle - Creeping vines grow from the ground and trap the opponent
Wild Mushroom - a mushroom grows on the opponent and eventually detonates. Upgrades to add spores that will make more mushrooms.
Decay - Weakens the opponent
Poison Bolt - deals damage-over-time
Summon Treants

Fire/Ice:

Given Ability: Antipode - A fire projectile and an ice projectile that can target separate targets.

Fire Wall
Flame Jet - cone of fire damage
Hot Steel - heats a weapon to deal extra damage
Healing Waters - a direct heal
Fireball - boom
Tidal Wave - a wall of water pushes the opponents
Water Cut - a blade of water slices at the opponent
Freeze - locks down a body part of the enemy
Engulf - sets the foe on fire, dealing damage-over-time
Undecided water/ice ability

Earth/Wind

Given Ability: Undecided

Rock Wall
Rock Armor
Rock Shoot
Earthquake
Shackle - manacles of rock hold down the opponent
Buffet - push back
Speed of Wind
Lightning - The shaman separates the charge in a pocket of air, releasing it to electrify everyone in the area. Not a lightning bolt.
Cyclone
Asphyxiate

The recent changes to how the World of Warcraft progression systems work has given me some question as to whether I should change how my progression systems work. I'm wondering if I should change how abilities are learned and customized. I'll definitely admit that my current idea how character customization has completely daunted me and is really keeping me from moving forward with my idea. I think I'm going to do it. I just need to find out what way will work best.

Fighting Back: Getting Revenge for the Loss of Theramore

2011-10-26T11:00:00.000-05:00

I know I used this recently, but it's just so damn good.

It's come to light recently that in a pre-Mists of Pandaria event that Theramore, in Dustwallow Marsh, will be destroyed in a Horde attack. This is meant to ignite the preexisting Alliance/Horde tensions to launch us into the story for MoP. To be clear, it hasn't been clarified/indicated if the Alliance will be losing Dustwallow Marsh as a question area or if Theramore will just be rubbled. Regardless, many people are crying out over this, claiming the Alliance lost enough in the transition into Cataclysm and calling for similar Horde losses. If it's done, though, then where?

It wouldn't suffice to just say that I have ideas.

Grom'Gol Base Camp
Grom'Gol has stood conveniently in the middle of Stranglethorn Vale for too long. It's given the Horde a convenient hold into the zone that the Alliance cannot rival. It needs to burn. Like Theramore, it doesn't need to go away, but it needs to go down.

Crossroads
Crossroads, the jewel of the northern Barrens, has stood undisturbed for too long. Seated in the middle of Horde territory (literally), striking it down would send a message to the Horde that they are safe nowhere. Crossroads was a frequent target of Alliance raiding parties before duty called us into space. I had a former roommate who would frequently lead assaults on it, while blasting Eric Clapton's song of the same name.

Hammerfall
The Forsaken are making ground in the northern Eastern Kingdoms. Where will the Alliance meet them in battle? The Alliance should retake Hammerfall and make it their major base in the fight against the aggressing Forsaken. The Gilneans could retake the area as a first step towards reclaiming Gilneas.

Perhaps even a unified group of survivors from Theramore, Gilneans, men of Arathor, and the Lordaeronians displaced by the Scourge and Forsaken could pull together a force dedicated to retaking the northern Eastern Kingdoms.

Metagaming for a moment, this would be a wonderful moment for Blizzard to revamp Arathi Highlands, which they didn't get to do in Cataclysm. A Forsaken base on the west and a Gilnean base in the east would make for some compelling war story.

There are, of course, several places where the Alliance could make their attack, choosing the right one will be the key. I actually really like the idea that with each expansion, Blizzard could redraw the lines and advance the Alliance/Horde war on several fronts. Or, as Blizzard is so fond of saying, putting the 'war' back in Warcraft.

Gaming Update: Donkey Kong Country Returns is Bullshit and More

2011-10-25T11:00:00.000-05:00

I just want to quit....

I beat Donkey Kong Country Returns a while back but I went back to do these secret dungeons that unlock a final secret level. The secret dungeons were pretty cool, even if sometimes unnecessarily hard. There were high concept levels, which was nice. The final secret level, however, was bullshit.

It was just a stupid gimmick level where are the platforms were various fruits. The platforming was hard, but in the lame, erratic movements, kind of way. And the reward for doing all of this? Mirror Mode. The levels are reversed and you don't get Diddy Kong, items, and only 1 health. Like I'm going to play an even more bullshit version of a game I already thought was hard in an incredibly lame way.

Screw that.

I'm about 270 pages into REAMDE and it seems like it's reaching towards a conclusion. This is weird for me because it's an almost 1,100 page book. Then I realized that it's broken into separate parts and I'm still on the first part. This makes me feel better, as it makes me feel better about my reading pace.

In other news, I'm probably going to start playing WoW again. I don't plan on doing the endgame stuff, at least not right away. The changes for Mists of Pandaria really excite me. Also, buying a year's subscription gets me Diablo III for free, so that's pretty damn cool. I'm going to level a Tauren paladin.

My Gamefly sale games came in, so I'm looking forward to playing Naughty Bear, 3D Dot Game Heroes, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, and (possibly) Metroid: Other M. Where I shall find the time I have no idea.

Questionable Content's Questionable Characterizations

2011-10-24T18:02:00.002-05:00

First World Problems

Something dawned on me recently about Questionable Content. The female characters are all essentially defined by their issues. The male characters mostly seem to be 'bros' without major issues. Let's begin with the ladies.

Faye Whitaker - she witnessed her dad commit suicide and has severe relationship and drinking problems likely because of it.
Dora Bianci - anxiety and trust issues ended her relationship with Marten
Hannelore Ellicott - Chatham: Has OCD. Although, this doesn't actually seem to affect her much, other than making her a neat freak, good at math, and out of touch. I don't feel that she has truly had a serious problem because of her OCD and it mainly seems to get trotted so she can be quirky and lonely internet boys can develop moe-esque feelings for her.
Raven Pritchard - Ditzy
Penelope Gaines - She and her boyfriend Wil are both lit/artsy people. However, she's the one who comes off snobby about it.
Tai - Has lesbian issues
Marigold Louise Farmer - has weight, nerdiness and social anxiety issues.
Cossette - is clumsy
Padma - has a kid, a sick grandmother, and must move away
Momo - Marigold's Anthro PC who just got a human-like body and is dealing with those issues

Now for the boys.

Marten Reed - former indie music snob and current dubstep snob whose only issue would have been that his mother was (is?) a dominatrix but he seems to have dealt with it remarkably well. He seems to be a somewhat empty shell, somewhat Bella Swan-esque in his lack of characterization. Seems to serve almost as a foil for the other characters.
Steve - a bro through and through.
Sven Bianci - he does have man-whore issues that ruined a relationship he had with Faye. Sven is, however, a tertiary character at best.
Angus - Faye's current boyfriend who doesn't seem to have any issues.
Wil - similar to Penelope, just not snobby about it
Eliot - in really into Padma

This really came to light recently. Jeph Jacques (the creator) was coming up with a new character. He wanted to know what gender the people would like. The overwhelming response was to make it a male character (being sick of female characters, since the dudes are almost never around). He made the character male, he appeared in a handful of strips (less than 10) and has disappeared. In the interim we have been introduced to Padma and Momo got her human-like body.

Is it because, as a man, he views men and women in different lights? Does he break down women by their issues and men by their bro-ness? It's hard to tell. Is this a problem for male writers in general? I don't know, but it was something interesting that I noticed and has really affected my ability to enjoy the comic.

LGBT Representation in WoW Lore Characters

2011-10-23T20:29:00.000-05:00

It's actually relevant.

During the World of Warcraft Lore Q&A panel at Blizzcon, a young woman came up to ask a question on behalf of her girlfriend. The question was regarding the lack of representation of LGBT characters in WoW. Chris Metzen, Senior Vice President President of Story and Franchise Development, fielded the response. He said that they would certainly like to do an LGBT character, but just needed the right time to do it. Here is a paraphrasing provided by mmo-champion:

Everything is gravy as long as its just a great character. There is the possiblity of adding them, as long as the story is compelling, might see it in the future.

That isn't a direct quote. His actual words more more eloquent.

I think it's great that Blizzard wants to do an LGBT character justice. It'd be very easy to add one in and it be a poor representation. I also think that maybe they shouldn't wait for it to just happen. I think it'd be possible to deliberately add one without it seeming forced.

But let's play devil's advocate for a bit and talk some stuff. How many characters in WoW actually exhibit heterosexuality and gender normativity? Truthfully, 99% of characters don't exhibit any sexuality at all. Is a character only LGBT if they outwardly show it?

And how would a character show they sexuality? Other than professing a desire for a particular person or gender, it's through their actions. Other ways would be through speech and manners of dress. Many WoW NPCs have no voice. And the manners of dress for all WoW characters is pretty outlandish. That being said, there are medium-level characters that do have speaking/acting roles in the game where it could be done in a way that is respectful. There are also major characters who appear in cutscenes and throughout the game where it could be done.

With regards to a transgender character, how would that be signified? You could either have a character explain that they used to be of the opposite gender, which would seem forced. You could have an NPC of one gender that is always referred to as being the opposite gender, which might come off as a bug. Perhaps the character would always appear as one gender because of a magical transformation they've undergone, but the spell occasionally wears off and the have to reapply it, showing their birth gender. It's a very tricky issue.

In conclusion, there aren't any clear LGBT characters in WoW right now. But with the majority of NPCs in the game it's impossible to identify anything with regards to their gender/sexuality. Even if they do make a character that is LGBT, it's very easy to get it wrong. However, none of this means that Blizzard shouldn't go out of their way to do it, and do it properly.

My Embarrassing Story

2011-10-22T13:00:00.000-05:00

As I said before, if I got my BlizzCon predictions wrong. I'd tell an embarrassing story from my past. I was right about getting a World of Warcraft expansion, and the Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm news, but we didn't get a Diablo III release date (we did get the box art and collectors edition details). I'll tell the story of how I tried to make a webpage.

When I was younger, I used the computer and the internet all the time, but I didn't actually know anything in depth about computers. I wanted to make a webpage but I had no idea how to do it. I knew nothing about servers, DNS, etc. I also didn't bother trying to learn how to do it. No Google searches for me. So how did I do it?

I opened up Microsoft Word and I typed out everything that I would want on the webpage exactly the way that I wanted it. I added pictures. All sorts of stuff. When I finished and everything was exactly the way that I wanted, what would I do? How would I make this a webpage?

It's simple you see. You save and tell Word that you want to save it a html. I typed in the URL I wanted into the 'filename' box and hit save. I then opened up Internet Explorer and typed in the URL to see if it worked. It, of course, didn't. So I deleted the file from the computer and just left the room, ashamed at my loss.

You might think, awww....that's so cute. It's really not. You see, I was probably in seventh grade or so at the time. And the webpage, it was about Pokemon. I even had a picture of Charizard in it. It was so great. It was so sad.

That is my story. That is my shame.

Blizzcon - Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm New Units

2011-10-22T11:00:00.001-05:00

Heart of the Swarm 2011 Trailer

In my second batch of Blizzcon impressions, I'll be talking about Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm. There are lots of new units for Heart of the Swarm for each race. Let's see about it.

Terran

Battle Hellion: A transformation for the Hellion that gives is more defense in exchange for speed. It's attack also becomes stronger and the attack becomes a slight cone instead of a line.
Warhound: A mini-Thor with an AOE anti-air attack and an anti-mech ground attack.
Shredder: a mechanical unit that emits a radiation field that damages any non-Shredder units, including your own.
The Thor will become a much stronger unit that you can only have one of. It also requires a Fusion Core.

My biggest complaint about the Terrans is that the factory level tech was quite underwhelming. Siege Tanks are very good, but the others are very situational. This gives the factory some much needed variety. I'm really looking forward to the Battle Hellions.

Zerg

The Ultralisk is gaining a burrow charge to help it deal with its bulkiness
Viper: a flying caster that's replacing the Overseer. Has Dark Swarm and a Death Grip like ability that pulls a unit towards the Viper.
Swarm Host: A ground unit that releases waves of timer-controlled small zerg units when burrowed. Used for siege.

Zerg mid-game has had big issues and these are meant to address that problem. The Swarm Host will hopefully be the Lurker without being the Lurker. The Viper may be hard to adjust to where it's useful, but not too useful.

Protoss

Tempest: An large air unit with and AOE air attack and a non-AOE ground attack. This replaces the carrier.
Oracle: A caster air unit designed for harassment w/o damage. Can shut down buildings and cover up mineral patches to stop mining. No attack. Mothership removed for this unit.
Replicant: A ground unit that can transform into any non-massive unit that's in vision, including enemy units. Expensive.

I'm really not sure about the Replicant. It seems like the only way they really have to tune this unit is to change the cost. It will either be too expensive to be useful, or too cheap and too useful. I don't imagine this one will make it to the live game. It seems like a really cool idea that they really love, but it just doesn't seem viable. I really like the Tempest, I felt that the Carrier was too powerful. The Oracle will make an interesting addition for the Protoss.

In general, I worry about them adding too many units. Will they be able to add units again for the second expansion, Legacy of the Void? I was really imagining one new unit and one transformation ability or unit replacement/unit redesign. The Protoss are getting a pretty even trade, but I worry that the Terrans and Zerg are getting too much with not enough lost.

I'm still SUPER psyched for Heart of the Swarm, particularly the single-player campaign. I loved Wings of Liberty's campaign mode.

Blizzcon Monk Impressions and Concerns

2011-10-21T20:34:00.000-05:00

The monk seems like it's going to be a very compelling class to play. It's a hybrid tank/healer/DPS class with a unique resource system. My current understanding of its function is that it doesn't have an autoattack. Certain moves generate Light Force or Dark Force. This is then used to use special abilities. The concept, even for healing, is that you'll be in melee range and doing damage.

I'm really not sure how this is going to work for healing. Targeting seems like it will be an issue because you'll have to target an enemy to stack force up and target a player to use your heals. You'll have to be in melee range which is very problematic if you have to run to switch targets. This could be easily fixed by having basic heals that still operate at range and give force.

There is one problem that can't be fixed by that change though. A big mechanic for healers is mana management. Healers can spend large amounts of mana to get lots of healing done quickly and they can spend very small amounts of healing in low stress situations. The current operating description of the monk's abilities implies that he has no mana, even when healing, so he can't choose to go heavy or light on the heals. He'll just have a baseline level of healing and have to deal with it.

The ability to manage one's mana is something that really distinguishes healers of different skill. And the threat of running out of mana because a fight is too hard is a way that Blizzard balances healers and fights. If they don't run the risk of running out of resources, the other healers will either have to stop worrying about mana or the monk will have to be weaker than the other healers. Both of these solutions would never really work for World of Warcraft.

I'm very excited for the monk, I want to make a tank and Sarah wants to make a healer. I think that the monk, at least for healing, is going to have to have mana as a resource. At least to back up the Light/Dark Force system. It's a good thing we have betas.

Update: The class Q&A panel updated us that the Monk will have mana and Light/Dark force when healing.

I'm Bad at Refrigerator

2011-10-20T11:00:00.000-05:00

I <3 U U-1

Ever since I started this full-time job, I've had problems properly using the refrigerator. It's been pretty bad, we've lost food because of it. Allow me to regale you with storied of my troubles.

It started out in the morning, I'd make my cereal, pour a glass of milk and then not properly handle the milk afterward. The first time I left it out on the counter. Where it warmed up and went bad. The second time was a bit more interesting. You see, I keep my cereal on top of the refrigerator. Well, that day I decided that the top of the refrigerator was where the milk goes and that my cereal should remain on the stove.

Then there was a long period where I didn't fail at using the refrigerator. We moved, things were different. Our refrigerator is now the type with two side-by-side doors with the freezer on the left. My problem has since changed. It's no longer milk that I'm ruining. Twice now I have gotten out the ice-cream, put some in a bowl, and put it back, not in the freezer, but in the refrigerator. I put it in the top part of the refrigerator, where most freezers are, but not where it belongs. It doesn't get discovered until the next morning, where it has melted and is no longer any good.

I seriously have no idea why I'm having so much trouble with this. This hasn't happened ever before in my life. I'm worried about where this is going to go. Sarah is thinking about revoking my refrigerator rights.

Potpourri: I bought 5 games from Gamefly's clearance sale. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, Metroid: Other M (I'm a sucker, I know), Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Naughty Bear, and 3D Dot Game Heroes. Because I clearly don't already have plenty of things to play.

I was thinking about writing a blog post about tea dissolving in hot water and why it gets so bitter in those last few drinks. I then realized that it was a completely stupid thing to write about, even for me. I mean, I write about some shit that wouldn't interest most people but that crosses a line.

STAY TUNED FOR A POST CONTAINING A PROOF THAT THE ALGORITHM I CAME UP WITH TO DISTRIBUTE SEATS IN MY CONGRESSIONAL VOTING SYSTEM SATISFIES THE FAIRNESS CRITERION THAT I DEVISED.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Tutoring Website

2011-10-19T11:00:00.000-05:00

Kingdom Animalia, 'cause boobies, we got em.

Sometime I have great ideas for websites, my last one was Congressman Drinking Bird, a website where you can see just how well your congresspersons match you on the issues by pitting them up against a randomly voting drinking bird. My latest one is a tutoring website. I don't have a catchy name for it, but I do have some great ideas.

The genesis of the idea was for an official website for clients to find tutors. Furthermore, if the tutor set it up to work this way, they could auction off their sessions to the highest bidder. This would work well for a tutor who worked out of a public area, like a library. It could also just work as a place for a tutor to post their schedule and their subjects so that clients can find someone who works for them. Another way to connect clients and tutors would be that if a client couldn't find someone to suit their needs and schedule, they could post a bounty for tutors to find. The last way I can imagine would be to hold a webcam tutoring session.

The site would have a rating system, so that people would know if a tutor was bad. Furthermore, the tutors would also (secretly) rate the students to know if the student was trouble or not. They could also post comments about the student's problem areas and progress that would be visible by the other tutors.

As with anything like this, there are issues. Warnings would have to be posted and reminded about regarding safety, such as meeting in public places or at your own residence and having adult supervision.

There is the issue of monetization. Ads are a definite way to monetize. Centralized tutoring services (such as Sylvan) could advertise on the site. Textbook/ebook sales are another definite way to generate revenue. The other way would be to have payment be handled by the website and have a commission for each session plus maybe a monthly fee for the tutors (only if they book a session that month, to remove the barrier to entry).

The risk with handling the money is that now the site becomes responsible for it. If the tutor doesn't show up, they should be paid. If the student doesn't show up (without canceling ahead of time) then the tutor should still be paid. A system would have to be put into place to verify that the tutoring session happened/didn't happen and why. My best idea would be to have an email be sent to the tutor that, when opened, would have a link to the site. Once there, the student or parent would have to enter a special code/password to verify their attendance. I still don't have the logistics of it worked out so that it's foolproof. Another is to have some sort of geolocation tied to IP addresses or maybe a smartphone app tied to the GPS to verify locations. It's rough idea.

Rant: Skyward Sword's Right-Handed Bias

2011-10-18T22:01:00.001-05:00

Oh god her elbow!

When Twilight Princess came out for the Wii, I was disappointed that they changed Link to be right-handed for the game. I understood the decision, more people are right-handed, and I understood that since Twilight Princess was a late-game addition to the Wii's lineup that left-handed support (in the form of a left-handed Link) would probably have been a difficult addition. Quite frankly, many other people felt the same way.

You'd think that since Skyward Sword was built from the ground up as a Wii game, and because of the knowledge that many people wanted a left-handed mode for Twilight Princess that such a mode would have been included for Skyward Sword. This is unfortunately not the case. I'm really disappointed by this.

Why am I so disappointed by this? It reflects a lack of caring on Nintendo's part. I know that it's not a big deal for to include left-handed support because left-handed people can still play the game just fine. It would have been a really nice gesture toward left-handed players, however.

Link had, until Twilight Princess, been left-handed. It had actually been an error, at first, but Nintendo rolled with it and kept him left-handed for all subsequent releases. I have always loved Zelda games and when I realized that Link was left-handed like me I only felt more attached to him. Then I realized that we were born at nearly the same time, so to speak.

I was born at 6:00 AM on February 20, 1986. When you account for the time difference between America and Japan, it was 8:00 PM on February 20, 1986. The Legend of Zelda was released four hours later in Japan, in February 21. This proximity of births made me feel even closer to Link.

What's funny is that normally, languages have a built in bias against leftness. 'Right' implies correctness, freedom, moral goodness, and immediacy. 'Left' is also the past tense of 'to leave'. In other languages it's worse. In French, 'adroit' means right and skillful whereas 'gauche' means left and clumsy. In Latin, 'dexter' means right and skillful whereas 'sinister' means left and unskillful or even harmful. In English, 'sinister' means evil.

When I played Twilight Princess, I stubbornly played it with the remote in my left hand. The hardest part was actually learning how to use an analog stick to move with my right hand. I will continue this tradition forward into Skyward Sword. Quite frankly, if I'm impaired by this in some way, such as a left-to-right swing functioning differently from a right-to-left swing, I might just stop playing.

In German, 'links' means left. If only he would have stayed that way.

Donkey Kong Country Returns Finale

2011-10-17T11:00:00.000-05:00

Bramble Scramble

I finished Donkey Kong Country Returns today. By 'finished' I mean beat the final boss. There is still secret level to unlock (more on that later). Overall, I'd say I enjoyed the game, but I definitely have complaints.

My first complaint is regarding the difficulty. It seems to be aligned along the path of "This is hard, and not in the 'Oh! I figured it out!' sort of way, but we're going to give you plenty of lives to deal with it." This means that you'll often get stuck in sections that have precise timing requirements and die repeatedly. I really wouldn't expect kids to beat this, they'd get frustrated far too easily.

Secondly, there are these sections where you fly a rocket barrel (no doubt borrowed from Donkey Kong Barrel Blast. There are particularly frustrating since you go from taking 2-4 hits to die to just 1. They have finicky controls and ask the player to make some fairly precision movements.

Health and DK barrels come too few and too far between in many of the more frustrating levels. You'll go for very long times without your little buddy. All the boss stages start with a DK barrel, but none of the boss battles do. So the first time you try a boss, you'll have full (4) health, but if you die and retry the boss battle you won't.

One distinct praise that I would like to have for it. Each level has 4 K.O.N.G. letters and a certain number of puzzle pieces. Collecting all of one of those groups for a stage gets you a medal. This is integral to unlocking the final super bonus level. However, you (thankfully) don't have to collect all of them. If you collect enough of them in a 'world' you unlock a secret level for that world. Beat all those secret levels and you unlock the final super bonus level. I hate having to collect all of something in a game, because some of them are particularly hard to collect. I really like having the flexibility to not collect all of them.

I'd have to say this game was enjoyable, but I it's a very tenuous enjoyment.

Pandemic!

2011-10-16T23:35:00.000-05:00

Sarah and I bought Pandemic at Barnes & Noble today and tried it out this evening. It was a really fun game and we really enjoyed the two games that we played. In short, Pandemic is a cooperative board game for two to four players.

In Pandemic, the players travel around the Risk-like board, treat infections and discover cures for diseases. The goal of the game (and its win condition) is to discover the cures for all the diseases. Every turn, the diseases build up on the cities where they are, and if the infection in the city becomes too large an outbreak occurs and it spreads to neighboring cities. The players have to move around the map and lower the infection levels while they try to discover the cures for the diseases.

Discovering a cure for a disease allows the player to more easily treat infections of that type. Diseases are cured by discarding 5 cards of that color while at a research stations (which are established throughout play). Each player gains two cards at the end of each turn. Each card has a color and a city. Cards allow the player to move to that city, establish a research station at that city, or can be discarded in groups of 5 to cure that disease.

Occasionally, a drawn card will be an Epidemic card, for which Sarah and I like to yell, "Crisis Alert!" (see video above). An Epidemic causes an immediate rise in infection and increases the rate at which the infection spreads.

There are 5 classes that the players can be, each with various abilities. The researcher only needs 4 cards to cure a disease, the medic treats diseases more easily, etc.

It was an incredibly fun time. I highly recommend it.

Bonus Potpourri: REAMDE is consistently getting better. Sarah has finished the first Percy Jackson novel and really enjoyed it.

BlizzCon Speculation

2011-10-15T15:00:00.000-05:00

Sarah and I attended Blizzcons '07 and '08, but haven't attended one since. We have watched it online, just not the gone. What's funny is that now that we don't play WoW, we wish we were attending more than in past years. Next weekend is Blizzcon, so it's well past time to wonder what it going to happen at the show.

It's pretty much a given that Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm details will come out at the show. They've been teasing silhouettes of units on the official twitter account for a while now. The show would be a really great followup to the reveal that happened a couple months back.

Not as much of a given but definitely my prediction, I think we'll get a Diablo III release date. The game is in beta right now and all of its secrets have been spilled. Furthermore, Blizzard hasn't had any big reveals at foreign events in a while, so if there ever was a time to dramatically do this, it would be now. I don't think we'll be getting any new information about the game. I'm pegging it for a holiday release for this year.

This one is a bit of a wildcard and could definitely not go this way, but I'm sticking with it. I thin we'll hear about a new WoW expansion at Blizzcon. Why?

The last patch for the Cataclysm expansion is currently being tested on the public test realms. No new info could possibly be revealed about it that hasn't already been.
This means that a new expansion shouldn't actually be that far away.
There have been a lot of good things about this past expansion, but staying in old Azeroth hasn't been one of them. People want to explore new lands. Blizzard seems eager to get the players out of here.
A trademark filing for something called "Mists of Pandaria" was filed by Blizzard a while back that includes it as a trademark for game software. It isn't conclusive, but it doesn't take away from my point either. I don't necessarily believe that this will be the title of the expansion.
There's a ton in this schedule that hints at a new expansion announcement. There are several generically labeled 'World of Warcraft' panels that take place before the 'World of Warcraft: 4.3 Raid and Deathwing' panel at 5 pm on the opening day.

Tell you what, if I'm wrong about any of this, I will publish an incredibly embarrassing story. Believe me, it's really embarrassing and, to this day, only one person knows it.

The Plight of a Colorblind Gamer

2011-10-15T10:59:00.000-05:00

(This was an article that I had originally had published on Nitpixels on June 28th, 2011)

A recent College Humor roundtable discussed the topic of enabling disable gamers. In the video, they featured a quadriplegic gamer who plays Call of Duty multiplayer (rather successfully) with just his face. This gamer, Chuck Bittner, is petitioning game developers for one simple thing: custom button remapping. If the button layout for a game is a certain way, he can't play it. So he wants the ability to change the layouts to something that works for him.

I can't play Aquaria because I can't tell the differentiate the colors for the different songs well enough. I didn't buy Super Puzzle Figher II Turbo HD Remix because I couldn't tell the difference between some of the blocks. I have massive trouble with Zuma because my eyes have trouble telling the difference between the blue and purple balls and the green and yellow balls. When I play Risk: Factions I can't tell the difference between the green and yellow territories and have to ask my fiancée which ones are which color.

That's four statements that I shouldn't really have to make, but I have to because I'm red-green color blind. Normally, my colorblindness doesn't affect my gaming. For example, I have never had problems in World of Warcraft because of it, apart from the fact that I didn't know that the experience bar is a different color depending on if you're rested or not. However, when it does affect my game playing, it usually does so in a very significant way.

I firmly believe that making the design choices or putting in the options to accommodate color blind gamers wouldn't be hard. Several games already have colorblind modes where they will place patterns over the colored objects to help the player tell the difference. But not all color-dependent games have features like this. My appeal to game developers everywhere is to allow us to edit the colors, to have or allow us to turn on easily distinguishable patterns, or be more considerate and thoughtful with color choices. It would really make a difference for those of us who have this problem

For Chuck, he is arguing that we should be fighting the game and not it's controls. For me, I argue that I should be fighting the game and not struggling with my eyes' ability to see color. These changes aren't going to give the disabled a competitive edge. Even if they did, then everybody could elect to use them. It's two small things that would really improve the quality of gaming for many people.

Books Galore

2011-10-14T22:55:00.001-05:00

A couple weeks ago Sarah and I went to the local Barnes and Noble to pick up some book, because we like books. We weren't planning on getting much while there, just one thing. We left with much more.

Sarah's Picks:

The Night Circus
She had initially dismissed this book because of all the hype that it was receiving. She had since read a sample portion online and decided that she had to get it. She devoured the book in the week after we got it and she loved it. I really don't know much about it's plot, because I intend to read it and I HATE spoilers. I like to go into a book knowing as little as possible.

The Lightning Thief
This novel is easily summarized as Harry Potter but with Greek mythology and stuff. I don't really know much about it. Sarah's started reading it. She doesn't have much to say about it yet. It certainly hasn't grabbed her as well as The Night Circus and Harry Potter have.

Fray
This is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic book set in the future, with a new Slayer. I don't know anything about this one, because she hasn't started reading it.

Henry's Picks:

REAMDE
This novel was my first pack and has been really interesting so far. I'm 120ish pages in already and I can't wait to get trough the other 900 or so. I central feature of the book is the fictional MMO of T'Rain, which wasn't just designed to be a compelling game, it has certain, other special features that make it incredibly interesting. There's also a plot separate from the game. Weird, I know.

Starcraft: Ghost -- Spectres
Do you enjoy psychic, sci-fi space assassins? Now, would you enjoy them more if there were even more dark? That's my understanding going into Starcraft: Ghost -- Spectres (Which I had originally thought I should write as Starcraft: Ghost: Spectres. I chose the way Amazon and Blizzard's site has it. The Starcraft wiki has it the double colon way.). I haven't started this book yet, but I will once I finish REAMDE in a couple months. I have a secret love for Starcraft novels. I've read far more than I'd like to admit. This leads me to...

Starcraft Frontline: Volume 3
A collection of short stories in graphic novel format. Again, I love Starcraft, so why not buy a short story collection set in that universe? Exactly.

Gnomes
A coffee table book about the fictional gnomes upon which garden gnomes are based. It also details the garden gnome's many relatives, such as dune gnomes. It's a pretty strange book, but I like much of the artwork, and I have strange affinity for gnomes. One page features gnome boobs, so that was pretty traumatizing.

Population Growth

2011-10-13T11:00:00.000-05:00

It's big issues week on my blog apparently. So here, have another.

There is a certain problem that we, citizens of the world, face. There's too many damn people. There's only so much farm-able land, and thus only so many people can be supported by the world's ecosystem. If we reach that tipping point, where there is literally not enough usable land to feed the population, things will be disastrous. I feel like massive uprisings and revolts would result, with the poor and hungry rising up against the wealthy and fed. This will compound on the fact that as the population gets larger, disease spreads more easily.

So how do we combat population growth? Let's start with the United States first. Maybe we can set an example and be progressive for once (that's right, I went there).

Remove the child tax credit. Simple enough. Why reward procreation? That will only encourage it. This would also help that whole deficit problem. Granted, you couldn't just remove it wholesale, that's ruin people. Gradually step it down over the course of 18 years.
Take some of that new money from removing the child tax credit and fund conception preventing. Fund Planned Parenthood, fund non-abstinence only education, give away condoms, add birth control as a government subsidized pharmaceutical.
Fund education in general. I'd be willing to bet that there are studies that show that more highly educated people have fewer children, and they have them at an older age. Both of these things will decrease the population growth rate.
Address the issue of gender equality. Women need to feel more confident to refuse men. They need to be able to say 'no' to sex, say 'you have to' to him wearing protection, and say 'no' to having children.
Work to reduce the rigidity of gender roles. Women should be allowed to work if they want to, no questions asked. Encourage them to. Let them say 'no' to men who wouldn't let them.
Stop funding abstinence-only education. It doesn't work.
Make/Keep abortion legal. (I have very mixed feelings about abortion in general, but in the end I support its existence)
This last one is probably very minimal in effect but it's there. Support homosexuals and homosexual rights. We don't need closeted/shamed homosexuals entering into heterosexual relationships and having children. Quite frankly, having more homosexuals would do wonders for the population growth issue.

This list attacks the population growth issue from multiple angles. Because of it, not only should people be having fewer children, but they should be having them later in life. Both of these factors will slow population growth. Maybe for once we could address something before it becomes a really big problem.