Whee...
Hello again!
Few things of note since last we spoke. I suppose I'll go in order from least to most significant?
First, as I had intended, I bought Rock Band 2. Also, because I preordered, it came with a shirt(?). So that was unexpected and, I suppose, good. I've played it a fair bit, have been generally impressed with the song selection, though there are a few songs that just annoy me when they come up, and have managed to clear all but one song on guitar. I'm kind of surprised that they don't allow for one character to both play guitar - or bass, or drums I suppose - and sing at the same time. I guess they didn't want to waste the time they put into animating the characters? Meh.
Second, and entirely unintended, I bought Warhammer Online (WAR). The decision came from a couple of things: First, I got really tired of Lord of the Rings Online. It's a pretty game, and it's nice to have a plot running directly through everything, but so many of the game's design decisions seem to have been made for the direct purpose of annoying the hell out of the player. The mounts are the worst of it, designed so that if anything so much as looks at you funny you're on your ass waiting for it to catch up, but there are a lot of other little things that just resulted in me getting too frustrated with the game to keep playing it.
Second, I really don't want to go back to WoW. Not that it's a bad game; it does what it's designed for very well, and I'm not sure I'll ever get as much enjoyment from a game as I did leading raids with a bunch of skilled players at my back doing their thing and tearing bosses down. I just don't want to deal with all of the drama and bullshit that the loot-oriented system seems to bring out of people. I don't think I could keep playing on the server I was on, and I sure don't want to pay a $25 transfer fee for each character I wanted to progress, plus $60 for the next expansion, and then be stuck hoping that I could find a group of people to run with.
Finally, one of my friends started playing WAR, as did a lot of people on a couple of message boards I frequent. Between screenshots and a lot of discussion about the game mechanics - some of which are fun on a level that none of the other MMOs I've played even come close to - I was sold. Did some research to make sure I could run it, went out and bought it, and I've had a blast with it.
I started off playing a Chaos Magus, simply by virtue of how awesome the class is in concept. They summon daemons to fight for them, and wield - literally - the pure essences of chaos and change to destroy their enemies. High-end abilities include the ability to warp the opponent's flesh and bone, turning them into a daemon that fights for you if they die while it's affecting them. Badass.
Also, instead of walking, they get to float around on a disc made by warping human flesh and infusing it with the spirit of a daemon.
That's him, as of level 16 or so. Unfortunately, that's as high as I got him, as the class just feels really weak to play, especially given that the opposing side almost always has healers, even one of which can completely trivialize whatever damage you're dealing. Rather than beat my head against the wall, I decided to start a new character.
After looking at the class options for Destruction, I was left with the realization that nothing really appealed to me. Checking out order, one class really caught my eye - the Bright Wizard. In simplest terms, he's a fire mage. Instead of subtlety and change as weapons, he lights shit on fire or blows it up. I thought about it for a while, particularly given that the people I knew before the game are all playing Destruction, but in the end...
So yeah, ended up playing a pyromancer. And unlike the Magus, he definitely doesn't feel weak. Instead, he perfectly captures the essence of what I think a fire mage should be; a very powerful, very fragile glass cannon. My damage output, when I'm feeling reckless, is ridiculous. The downside is that, via an ever-increasing combustion mechanic, is that each of my spells has an increasing chance of blowing up and hurting me, too. Combined with the fact that dedicated attackers can tear me apart in a matter of seconds...well, let's just say I occasionally die. And, on *cough* rare instances, I may be the one exploding and dealing the final blow to myself (97 times and counting...).
Also, he likes to play with puppets.
In all seriousness, this is the class I've been wanting to play since I started looking at MMOs. This is what an offensive caster should be. And getting to breathe fire on a group of people, then stand back and watch them burn? Priceless.
The third thing that's happened, and one that really, really pisses me off, is that the graphics card in my laptop has seemingly burned itself out. I've been getting graphics-related issues pretty much since I first booted it up - an error message on my first boot complaining about a display driver, something that reoccurred for a while, combined with much rarer crashes, usually while playing games, that cited the same driver. Online support suggested updating the BIOS and drivers, which I did, and still ran into the same issues. In all honesty, it wasn't a big deal - I really expect the occasional crash when dealing with a computer, and while it was occasionally poorly timed (I ended up with one good story, crashing at the start of a boss fight in WoW and successfully 'tanking' him until I managed to get back in-game), it was bearable.
Of course, I can't exactly work through it when the laptop generally boots with graphical glitches, and fails entirely when I put any strain on it. The laptop is still under warranty, so it's really only an inconvenience for a couple of days, until a technician gets out to replace the motherboard. The anger in this situation comes from the fact that it's caused by a 'known issue' manufacturing defect in the card, causing, in Nvidia's phrasing, "higher than normal" failure rates. Dell's efforts to spare their customers the aggravation of a failed GPU? A BIOS update to make the fans run. Constantly.
Yes, really.
So not only am I stuck without a laptop for a few days, I can expect my defective hardware to be replaced with the exact same thing and then have the option of running the fans constantly and hoping that it prevents the issue from reoccurring, or accepting that this will happen again and hoping that it's before the warranty expires. Either way, I basically can't expect that the laptop will continue working for any length of time, which is bullshit for the amount of money I paid for it. And neither Dell nor Nvidia have any intention of doing anything to resolve it.
Few things of note since last we spoke. I suppose I'll go in order from least to most significant?
First, as I had intended, I bought Rock Band 2. Also, because I preordered, it came with a shirt(?). So that was unexpected and, I suppose, good. I've played it a fair bit, have been generally impressed with the song selection, though there are a few songs that just annoy me when they come up, and have managed to clear all but one song on guitar. I'm kind of surprised that they don't allow for one character to both play guitar - or bass, or drums I suppose - and sing at the same time. I guess they didn't want to waste the time they put into animating the characters? Meh.
Second, and entirely unintended, I bought Warhammer Online (WAR). The decision came from a couple of things: First, I got really tired of Lord of the Rings Online. It's a pretty game, and it's nice to have a plot running directly through everything, but so many of the game's design decisions seem to have been made for the direct purpose of annoying the hell out of the player. The mounts are the worst of it, designed so that if anything so much as looks at you funny you're on your ass waiting for it to catch up, but there are a lot of other little things that just resulted in me getting too frustrated with the game to keep playing it.
Second, I really don't want to go back to WoW. Not that it's a bad game; it does what it's designed for very well, and I'm not sure I'll ever get as much enjoyment from a game as I did leading raids with a bunch of skilled players at my back doing their thing and tearing bosses down. I just don't want to deal with all of the drama and bullshit that the loot-oriented system seems to bring out of people. I don't think I could keep playing on the server I was on, and I sure don't want to pay a $25 transfer fee for each character I wanted to progress, plus $60 for the next expansion, and then be stuck hoping that I could find a group of people to run with.
Finally, one of my friends started playing WAR, as did a lot of people on a couple of message boards I frequent. Between screenshots and a lot of discussion about the game mechanics - some of which are fun on a level that none of the other MMOs I've played even come close to - I was sold. Did some research to make sure I could run it, went out and bought it, and I've had a blast with it.
I started off playing a Chaos Magus, simply by virtue of how awesome the class is in concept. They summon daemons to fight for them, and wield - literally - the pure essences of chaos and change to destroy their enemies. High-end abilities include the ability to warp the opponent's flesh and bone, turning them into a daemon that fights for you if they die while it's affecting them. Badass.
Also, instead of walking, they get to float around on a disc made by warping human flesh and infusing it with the spirit of a daemon.
That's him, as of level 16 or so. Unfortunately, that's as high as I got him, as the class just feels really weak to play, especially given that the opposing side almost always has healers, even one of which can completely trivialize whatever damage you're dealing. Rather than beat my head against the wall, I decided to start a new character.
After looking at the class options for Destruction, I was left with the realization that nothing really appealed to me. Checking out order, one class really caught my eye - the Bright Wizard. In simplest terms, he's a fire mage. Instead of subtlety and change as weapons, he lights shit on fire or blows it up. I thought about it for a while, particularly given that the people I knew before the game are all playing Destruction, but in the end...
So yeah, ended up playing a pyromancer. And unlike the Magus, he definitely doesn't feel weak. Instead, he perfectly captures the essence of what I think a fire mage should be; a very powerful, very fragile glass cannon. My damage output, when I'm feeling reckless, is ridiculous. The downside is that, via an ever-increasing combustion mechanic, is that each of my spells has an increasing chance of blowing up and hurting me, too. Combined with the fact that dedicated attackers can tear me apart in a matter of seconds...well, let's just say I occasionally die. And, on *cough* rare instances, I may be the one exploding and dealing the final blow to myself (97 times and counting...).
Also, he likes to play with puppets.
In all seriousness, this is the class I've been wanting to play since I started looking at MMOs. This is what an offensive caster should be. And getting to breathe fire on a group of people, then stand back and watch them burn? Priceless.
The third thing that's happened, and one that really, really pisses me off, is that the graphics card in my laptop has seemingly burned itself out. I've been getting graphics-related issues pretty much since I first booted it up - an error message on my first boot complaining about a display driver, something that reoccurred for a while, combined with much rarer crashes, usually while playing games, that cited the same driver. Online support suggested updating the BIOS and drivers, which I did, and still ran into the same issues. In all honesty, it wasn't a big deal - I really expect the occasional crash when dealing with a computer, and while it was occasionally poorly timed (I ended up with one good story, crashing at the start of a boss fight in WoW and successfully 'tanking' him until I managed to get back in-game), it was bearable.
Of course, I can't exactly work through it when the laptop generally boots with graphical glitches, and fails entirely when I put any strain on it. The laptop is still under warranty, so it's really only an inconvenience for a couple of days, until a technician gets out to replace the motherboard. The anger in this situation comes from the fact that it's caused by a 'known issue' manufacturing defect in the card, causing, in Nvidia's phrasing, "higher than normal" failure rates. Dell's efforts to spare their customers the aggravation of a failed GPU? A BIOS update to make the fans run. Constantly.
Yes, really.
So not only am I stuck without a laptop for a few days, I can expect my defective hardware to be replaced with the exact same thing and then have the option of running the fans constantly and hoping that it prevents the issue from reoccurring, or accepting that this will happen again and hoping that it's before the warranty expires. Either way, I basically can't expect that the laptop will continue working for any length of time, which is bullshit for the amount of money I paid for it. And neither Dell nor Nvidia have any intention of doing anything to resolve it.