Back into Azeroth, business as usual

(Disclaimer: I do apologize if I use any kind of WoW-related jargon or terminology in the post that is unknown to someone to does not play the game, I try to write these things as broadly as possible but sometimes it’s impossible to explain things without the proper names, usually these kinds of words are more game-related rather then WoW-related.)

 

Well it’s finally happened, I’m not exactly sure how it worked out this way, but now I seemed to have taken a break from Minecraft multiplayer and gone back into the so-called online crack addiction that is World of Warcraft, not that it’s ever been like that for me, but unsurprisingly coming back to the game after having a 5 month break hasn’t really overloaded my cognitive capacity. Though I do know the main reason for that is because I took a break from the game not too long after The Cataclysm expansion came out. This expansion was one of the most shall we say“planet shaking” (excuse the pun) of all of them, not so much for the introduction of new areas and content but for the changing of what was already there i.e. the old world (the first two original wow continents) has been changed completely, not to mention the changes to stats and various gameplay mechanics, so playing the expansion for a while (I did get a new character to level 50) then taking a long break and coming back, apart from a few content patches not much has changed, for me at least in contrast to someone who had taken a break before the latest expansion which would be quite an experience indeed.

World of Warcraft: this picture doesnt tell the half of it, and yes that is me as the human-looking bull

For those of you who don’t know (and yes there is actually people who don’t) World of Warcraft is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) which basically means you play as a character in a fantasy world where everyone else is represented as a character as well and you do (for lack of a better word) stuff yes stuff. I’ll leave it up to your imagination what you do in a medieval fantasy world where it’s sure to be more outrageous then it actually is, although in some cases it may not be too far from the truth.

Here is me riding my "Mechano-hog" some kind of steampunk/medieval motorcycle.. underwater. It's true that the game has gotten kind of silly with content over the years

I must say that I feel a renewed vigour to play again, even though I know that I’m going to be going through relatively the same content with almost my entire long list of characters (making sure I alternate between areas with each character of course). One of the things is once again replacing your old armor and weapons with new ones that greatly outclass the old ones in stats even though your old armor was very good at the end of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion (not too mention all the gems, enchantments and armor patches you had on them). This kind of thing happened in the first expansion The Burning Crusade but did not happen so quickly in Wrath of the Lich King, Wrath was quite annoying for the fact that sometimes it was very hard to work out if a new piece of armor was better then the one you had on currently which ended up with me doing a lot of standing around going hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm and asking guildies their opinion until I just told myself to replace the damn thing. 

Group questing, this is a particular situation between two groups of the same faction wanting the same thing to complete a quest, awkward indeed

I now have 9 characters that I rotate around, the only class I have not played is a priest, and I can say that although I do have a couple of favourites namely two (Druid & Paladin) that I can’t decide which I like more, my greatest problem I have in WoW is that I can’t stick to one class, I always seem to be switching between them every time I gain ten or so level or play them for a reasonable amount of time before moving on to the next. The reason for this is one of the problems that wow has had and continues to have with a lot of people who have played the game is that wow is too repetitive, I had several friends who have tried the game and said the exact same thing. It’s true that most of the time when you are levelling your character you always have a spell rotation that you seem to do every time you face a new enemy unless you like to fight multiple enemies at once but even then you still have a routine of dealing with that situation. The other thing is the various quests in WoW i.e the things you do most in WOW especially when levelling can be at times quite repetitive, due to the recent expansion this has changed quite a bit, all of the old world quests have been revamped and are no longer quite as simple as they used to be but mostly still have the same pick of roughly 4 or 5 quest types i.e. kill this many of these things or those people, collect this many of these, escort this person to here, create this using a profession or any mixture of the these 4. It’s not necessarily bad that it’s like this way, it makes it relatively easier when your not going to be bombarded with some over complicated instructions on what to do (perish the thought) and a game like WoW which has so much content, making everything you do in every zone in the world unique would be a very hard if not impossible job indeed.

Yes, you can ride an alligator, with six legs....

 So I have to say I do still enjoy WOW, even from coming back from a long break I believe that a large part of the excitement that comes from the game is what you bring to it, I confess when it comes down to the nitty gritty of things, I’m not the best player and wasn’t exactly the best end-game raider in the guild and I also can’t stick to one character for long but I still have fun, and that’s the main thing. I will continue to play WoW, though I’m dreading how many more expansions Blizzard Entertainment have in mind. Well at least until the quite large release of my next topic...

Cya next time for The Old Republic! Thoughts and anticipation….

JD

I enjoy being a demon, even if it’s only for 30 seconds…

Minecraft Creations: The Grey Tower, singleplayer version

Hi all, just wanted to give you all a sneak peak of my grey tower that i'm re-creating in singleplayer. Sometimes when i re-create things in singleplayer they turn out slightly different then the originals, this one is no exception although the difference in size is very large indeed, here's a sneak peak.

You'll have to look at the larger picture, but see those black specs at the bottom? yes, thats bedrock.

Can't wait till i'm finished, course I gotta do the whole interior yet.

Cya after the break!


I am officially stoned out,
JD

Minecraft Adventures: Tribalfield Minecraft, the end of my era or so it seems (but not Minecraft’s)

Hi Folks, well I guess those of you who still (and I say still cause the number is dwindling) frequent the Tribalfield minecraft server much lately, I suppose after number of months, my fascination with Minecraft has finally run it’s course, this makes me quite sad as Minecraft was always the main focus of the blog (as the background would suggest) which I had created the first time the Tribalfield forum came down as I wanted somewhere to showcase my thoughts and namely screenshots I had taken of my various Minecraft creations.

I’m not exactly sure what has made me feel less and less enthusiastic about going online and creating, I think it may have been due to a number of factors;

The first would be the people the other beings that you communicate and interact with in the game, I know that now Tribalfield is not as populated as it once was and I also know that with all games having people to play and build with makes the whole experience a lot more fun and extends the longetivity, of course this does mean that you have to get along at least on the most minimal level with the other people who happen to be on the server and in a lot of cases you don’t, and then you soon have your own select few people who you like to play with. It’s this particular formula that has led to the creation of the Tribes as we know them being set up on the server and the tribal ‘claims’ set up as land only tribal members can access with (sometimes fortified) towns being set up with the adequate protective measures .

The formely named town of "Fiendfield". Thriving city of happy productive and law abiding citizens? or thieving cesspit of  crime and vandalism? You Decide!

This leads into the whole tribal claims thing, my good friend Dickdatson made quite an impressive area for himself, not to mention the aptly named “Cat Poo Mines” but he told me that he was discouraged from continuing his work on the server because of constantly being hampered by bumping into other people’s claims (namely Sherwood :D) while mining. I had also found this whole issue of claims difficult for myself, it's just annoying when your trying to mine or spread and you cant, I had a thought that we just forgo claims altogether and just have warps as with the old days, and the only difference the tribes would make is what special ability you have. I do know this is going to lead to more griefing, but frankly griefing happens anyway, even with claims if it’s not some random it’s other tribe members (or people with mod or admin power for that matter) and I think it would be more fun if you could build with anyone at anytime.  

Yes that is diamond there, and contrary to what you might think, Warpage and I managed to be civilized enough to divide the many wonderous blue treasures between us .

Of course, not everyone shares the same “we’re all buddies” relationship that I try to maintain with other players and would rather ambush their enemies and frenzily hack or bludgeon them to death with any kind of instrument possible and make off with their entire belongings both on their person and in their house while squealing with glee like crazed rodential scavengers. Instead this boiled down into some sort of political turmoil resulting in tribal wars which to be honest I found kind of odd if not laughable at first. Don’t get me wrong I don’t hate the whole tribe war thing, I do think it’s a way to make things more interesting but it’s very complicated as you can see from my post on the matter, all I could see it doing was to get people angry and cause trouble. Our chests can be locked, that’s the main thing I care about, if someone griefs my place, hey I have something to do at least by fixing it, or I can just make a whole new thing to live in. During my time on the AEF Minecraft server (or firefly as it was referred to by most of you) they had a chest locking system but no claims, and it worked, well for us it did, not so much for the people near spawn but what can you do, stuff just happens and getting angry or upset about it just makes things worse as with all games.

Another point is that a problem I’ve had with Minecraft was that I only seemed to like creating places to live for myself, a virtual dwelling and although I’m rarely part of a town (due to my inability to follow building restrictions) I tend to make my houses either on top of trees, in the sky, underground, or so heavily fortified that I don’t feel the need to build anything else around it, it’s sort of an ‘alone in the wilderness’thing that I like that being in a town doesn’t have the same feel. This wasn’t what I had always done in Minecraft though, when I first started playing singleplayer I would create whole networks of mines and mine tunnels and minecart tracks to go through them, but apart from the various structures that acted as secure ways to each natural mine that was all I had built. It wasn’t until I started rebuilding my multiplayer houses and creations in singleplayer as a way of keeping them forever that I actually had more then one major structure lying around the valley that my main house was in.

I started using the mod SingleplayerCommands as a way of making it easier to rebuild my previous creations (which were sometimes rebuilt bigger and better), although this worked it has kind of ruined my singleplayer experience a bit as I seldom want to go back to obtaining items (especially hard to find ones) myself, I guess what Zero Punctuation's Ben“Yahtzee” Croshaw says is true about how the longer it takes you to obtain the items and build what you want to build the more you love it when it’s finished. In comparison to being able to spawn anything you want similar to Half-Life 2’s Gary’s Mod it’s only takes a few hours of spawning random objects and enough TNT barrels for the ensuing explosion to crash your system before you start getting kind of bored playing an all powerful being of “summoningness”.

 

Gary's Mod, love it or hate it, another true sandbox experience

 But by far the most common problem I would think most of us have had is what to do next? when faced with the opportunity to build anything after a while with no objective in mind we end up doing nothing, walking around our already perfected structures and with no way to perfect them. It’s this harrowing experience that many of us go through in sandbox games especially the Grand Theft Auto series where once finished with the story mode and a whole virtual city at your disposal you still end up getting bored quite quickly. It's the kind of thing that seems weird that you would get to that point when you start the game and everything seems massively overwhelming at first, but what is the answer? some prefer to move on, others like myself, tend to start the whole experience again and try to pretend we're as dumb and clueless as we were when we first started, which with Minecraft is no easy feat.

GTA4, thats the story mode down, now for a different perspective, after playing the 2 expansions, going in for a third run myself

 That said though Minecraft is amazingly still in BETA it sometimes may be hard to believe that the game has already achieved this much I have always said that we would be sick of it before it was even a full version, but this is the first time I think I have seen a game realeased in this fashion and it may be an example of many more games produced by "small time" studios to come. Minecraft is a game thats viewed and played in many different ways by many different people and it's that versatility and the sandbox style which makes it so popular, it's one of those games which you are glad you tried at the encouragement of your friends.

If you asked the people who made this 'was it worth it?' I think you'd know what the answer would be

As for me I hope to see Minecraft grow to the full product it should be and will continue play from time to time as my work and commiments (not to mention to other games) allows. I'm both sad and glad to say I will definately be going back to my one of the more prominent games in my life; World of Warcraft which took up a quite large amount of time in the 3 and a half years I spent playing it. As I do need to explore the rest of the Cataclysm expansion but take comfort in the fact that although it's gotten my attention for a much longer time then Minecraft and still has quite a friendly and helpful customer service (not to mention fixing my one major account comprimise) the difference is that Minecraft is more of a "game for the people" rather then the "massive corporate product" that Blizzard has created i don't know if that makes much sense but I guess that is how you can percieve it. 

So without further ado I'd like to thank everyone I've met in my time on the Tribalfield server and hope to play with you again whether on Minecraft, another game or just chatting on facebook, I have to admit I was kind of proud to be one of the 'older' players on the server as it has been a pleasure meeting and exploring and building with all of you,

With Thanks to; (in order of appearance :), and apologies if I miss anyone)

mystic_duck, Mickle, wagapm, chaote, angrathar, Carceous, lupidoo, harro223, Kieran_Cahill, Dr_Uhhhh, Da_Seano, jabbcore,  FletcherHD, PresidentFreeman, danielstiglec, elboomer, Jorobinson, captain_pugwash, Frewer, TheFiendish, Ventelation, rawrbleh

And of course; kakashi57, laver987654321, WarpageHD, Atomic_Sandwich, DickDatson and last but not least; NorC, whose hard work and dedication are what made the server so great.

See ya round...

JDman,

p.s I would be daff not to mention The Old Republic a Star Wars MMORPG?! who can resist it could be the WoW replacement I have been looking for, but if not I will play it nonetheless as Minecraft showed and still does show, we can't be stuck to the same game our whole lives.

Damn, might have to change my blog wallpaper methinks,
JD

Red Dead Redemption, another win for Rockstar, GTA4 revised

Rockstar Games has done it once again for me, this time in the form of a Wild West Style RPG if you can call it that, I spose you can. For those of you who don't know Red Dead Redemption is third person style RPG where you play as John Marsden a Rancher/Cowboy/Bounty hunter who is on a government mission to capture or kill his former gang members and save his family from government clutches and start up his own ranch and goes on an adventure through the Wild US West and also Mexico etc. Being made by Rockstar, you can probably guess this is practically a Wild West version of Grand Theft Auto 4, which with all the main parts ie. big place to roam around, npc's doing random things, side missions, story missons, etc, I think the main difference between the two is the huge amount of untamed landscape teeming with dozens of different kinds of animals/plants places in which you can meet anyone and anything and where certain random events take place (people being chased by wolves, stolen carriage etc) in which you have to decide whats the right (or the wrong whichever you prefer, to do).

What the hell are those damn posts sticking out of the mexican buildings for?

Maybe it's cause I'm playing this on the PS3, or maybe it's because it's set mainly in the wilderness rather then the city, but Red Dead just seems to work, compared to GTA4 which is polished but seems to be awkward. I think the PC is the problem in that regard, I play GTA3 on the PC in order to use a mod called 'simpletrainer' which allows you to do a large amount of fun and useful things which would be unavailable on the PS3 version, that said my brother does have the PS3 version at the moment and I suppose I should have a go of it.sometime. I can't use my PS2 style controller for driving in GTA on the PC so that does have an effect, while running and shooting is much easier with a keyboard and mouse. Maybe whats missing from GTA is the ways you can make money, you do things like skin animals and collect herbs in the field and sell them at the general store.Maybe it's the various costumes you can unlock and wear rather then buying your own clothes in GTA4 or maybe it's the ambient challenges i.e. sharpshooter/hunter/survivalist that are an addition for you to do as well as the basic story missions one major flaw with the game as the outfits you unlock do not carry over between saves, there is one very cool looking outfit which I was only able to obtain pretty much once I'd completed the whole game and was kind of annoyed when I could not use it in a new save.

Scenery is awesome to look at, the world is quite large cause i can't exactly remember where this is.

Red Dead Redemption also has a few multiplayer feature packs and an expansion entitled "The Undead Nightmare" which you can pretty much guess what it's about it introduces zombies to the game and allows you to play through a fictional storyline as John sets out once again this time to find a cure for his family who have turned into zombies, visiting and meeting up with familiar faces along the way, doing the original storyline is an absolute must for this as it won't make much sense if you haven't done it.

Whatever the difference is both are very good and deserve a place on my list of favorite games. I have currently started Red Dead over again and can say that I look forward to going home and playing it each day.

Bears, Boars and Wolves! aaaaargh!
JD

Tribalfield update: PvP & "Tribal Wars" in Minecraft

Life on Tribalfield is becoming quite busy, my good friend Richard Datson (aka dickdatson) has joined the server and is currently with us in the League and there has been quite an influx of new players which are more or less building up the numbers and the rivalry between the Rebel Alliance and the League Tribes, though to be honest the rivalry is mainly the animosity between certain players on the server.

I have never been a supporter of PvP (Player vs Player) in Minecraft, for the rather large fact that when you are killed, you have to respawn at the spawn point again and all of your belongings on you at the time are strewn across the place of your death and are often unable to be picked up again (which is most definately the case when dying in Lava). I recently forgot to log out of the server when walking away from my pc and subsequently was killed by a zombie and as I had been auto-dced by the server was unable to get my belongings.This made me annoyed, but only with myself, but what would it be like if another player came up and killed you and subsequently stole your belongings? would you be more or less mad? If you ask me it's a nerd rage drama waiting to happen and what if some of these players were actually server moderators? There's also some talk on our server about buildings being regenerated but not player inventory items.

Go near my items and I'll chop your f**king head off! thats right I will! arrgh! errgh!

This is one of the things I've found so unappealing of PvP in minecraft, to be honest I never PvP'd in World of Warcraft cause as far as I was concerned that was not my main interest in it and it was what I thought not what the game was about, the principle is the same with Minecraft, I enjoy building, mining and fighting monsters with other people, I don't enjoy fighting them or them fighting me though this thought of war does excite a few people as per the below from the powers that be of my tribe as evident below:


This was taken off the League's facebook page, yes we have a facebook page for the tribe

From the Office of the Council:
~ THE WAR PREPARATION ACT ~

Under this charter, which passed unanimously in the Council, 6 votes recorded out of 9 (with 3 votes not made), The League will go into a state of readiness, defined as a State in which The League can successfully conduct warfare, or defend itself, without being in a State of War.
This bill has been passed under the awareness of certain political events unfolding around the league; the annexing of SWM and TC; the regrouping of their members into RA - "The Rebel Alliance", and the analysis of their intentions according to intelligence gathered via the tribalfieldies Facebook page among other sources.
THIS BILL DOES NOT STATE WE ARE AT WAR.

WE ARE NOT AT WAR.

With this in mind, certain legislation has come into place stating:

1) War facilities must be established; an Armoury in every town, and a defence Fort in the centre of Fiendfield (a house must be removed to make way for this) an a defence Fort in Skyreach (probably the First Battalion Camp).

Blah, blah, blah, sections 2-6 etc etc

7) If war occurs, and loss of all claims is inevitable, The League must remain as an organisational body to guide us all to the formation of a new State and Claim at the soonest date after.

Thank you for reading, and may ~L~ Guide us all.

The COMPLETE BILL as passed by Council, may be made accessible to this page at a later date, at the discretion of a Council Vote.

~Wags


Well holy shizzle dizzle thats some serious shit right there


The original bill was about 1000 words, I mean well done to wagapm for putting in the effort but isn't this a making things overly complicated for a game which is made of blocks and you destroy and stack blocks and make them into other blocks? But who am I to judge, not everyone enjoys the 'we're all a happy family building and surviving together' type of play that I prefer, there are entire servers of who thrive on PvP and live for the danger of being ambushed by something much more dangerous then a creeper.

I ain't no traitor, I'm just statin' the facts yo

JD

Minecraft Creations: The Skyreach Plateau Fortress

Since I've had relatively nothing to do recently I was assigned by wagapm to build a fortress in Skyreach, in case of invasion, It wasn't  too hard to decide that the best place for it would be at the top of the plateau in Skyreach.

This was mainly a joint project with my fellow tribesman lupidoo I built the outer wall, the main fortress and the middle tower & lupidoo made the southern fort & stairs. I didn't really know the whole point of the fort, supposedly it was supposed to be some sort of refuge when we are 'attacked' by a rival tribe, which brings me to my next post.... (which I decided to make an entirely seperate post for)

On another note my real-life friend dickdatson has been busy it seems, and has  a rather impressive setup just a meander away from Skyreach as these shots show

A man's home is a castle, but it doesn't have to be a fortress, I now have both :D

JD

Magicka: Why I never liked it, and now even less

 

A little while ago I was persuaded to  buy and download the action rpg game Magicka  which I was told was a great game and fun to play with friends, but after doing that, and a bit of singleplayer as well I was still relatively unimpressed and found it hard to explain why.

For those of who who don't know about Magicka here's a little idea from the Steam description which has a few videos and pictures

Magicka is a satirical action-adventure game set in a rich fantasy world based on Norse mythology. The player assumes the role of a wizard from a sacred order tasked with stopping an evil sorcerer who has thrown the world into turmoil, his foul creations besieging the forces of good.

Players will be able to combine the elements to cast spells, wreaking havoc and devastation on the minions of darkness. They will also be able to team up with friends and fight their way through the campaign, or test their skills in the magickal arts through other challenging modes.

In Magicka, up to four players take on a grand adventure to save their world from certain doom using a fully dynamic spell system. The adventure mode takes the players across three different levels, ranging from the lush forests of mountain valleys to the frozen halls of the Mountain King where wits and creative thinking are the keys to victory.

Now all this seemed to be well and good but the main problem I had was that we were ALL wizards and we could all do the same thing, I've grown to like the idea of parties or groups where every member is different and can do different things i.e the warrior, the healer, the long rang archer etc it's just disheartening that everyone could do the exact same things as me and always better in some way of course which took out what I feel makes me different, also It just feels so hectic and linear it's what ruined the Spyro series with the introduction of round based combat, go there fight these guys off, go to another place but i guess some games are the same that way. The other thing was you actually know all the spells from the beginning so it's a fairly steep learning curve and you can't sort of play in favor of whats coming.

All in all Magicka is a rather small game and fun in it's own right it's just not my cup of tea. 

That said though there's a new DLC thats kind of lessened my respect for the game even more

 

 

Ah Magicka Vietnam indeed, complete with the Trashmen - Surfin Bird remix, I mean I know this game is satirical but this is just ridiculous in my opinion there's just some genres you don't mix with one another.

I'm a cow, I'm a cow, I'm a Magicow

JD.