Let's just say I had an idea; an idea that was so awesome it could possibly make the internet itself explode. What would I need to do to protect my interests and intellectual property, and what should I avoid?
As far as things I can do to protect IP and the like, are there specific things I'd need to file with organisations? Should I avoid mentioning the idea and all development of said idea to other people? Should I avoid using online things like Google documents for brainstorming?
I'm just interested in figuring out the process that people who come up with the new myspace or facebook or shacknews would need to undergo to ensure they maintain proper ownership of everything throughout the development and release process.
The return of Zombie-Matsuno is nigh! Repent!1UP: Over the years, you and Matsuno have collaborated on a lot of projects and seem pretty close. Do you still talk with him a lot, and do you think you might collaborate on something again in the future?
HS: Yeah, we're still friends, and I'm currently working on some stuff with him.
1UP: We're looking forward to it, since you guys are a good match.
HS: Personally, I've always wanted to work on games, and Matsuno is one of those guys who just loves creating games. I feel like we're a great team and great pals.
Like that sideboob? Well you shouldn't, because that's MY SIDEBOOB. Goodnight everyone!
Lack of sideboob aside, I've been making some steady progress on
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
bejar, trying my utmost to figure out what stories I can remember and more importantly, what stories I can remember and would actually be interesting. Sure, it may be supremely interesting to me to recount a wonderful day of cricket or some part of a level I got up to in whatever game, but those sorts of stories probably will never go down in literary circles as being "meaningful" or even "good". Then again, the point is just to tell entertaining stories, the content doesn't exactly have to be the most interesting, just as long as the journey (or narrative, if you will) is memorable, witty and/or creative. It's not quite the same as the classic Chopper quote "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story", but I like to think that he was thinking about my memories when he said it.I've managed to get the list up to about 35 stories, with about 30 being truly worthy of recounting. I'm sure over the coming weeks and months, I'll start to remember more and more about my childhood and adolescence, but this seems to be a fairly sizeable list. And there's some great stuff in there too, but these are stories that I've told so many times, they're almost automatic. The point is to get to those very obscure memories that I've kept locked away for ages and then get them down as best as possible, so there's something there for prosperity; my legacy, if you will.
Simon, Novak, if you read this and can think of stories that involved me that might be worthy, let me know; it might jog my memory a bit.
I was meaning to mention this earlier, but I got rear-ended the other day; it marks my official "first ever accident" while driving a car. I was driving along, minding my own business, probably rocking out to some sort of angry metal music when all of a sudden, I felt a very abrupt *nudge* from behind. It felt a little stronger than simply me hitting a curb or something (which is likely to happen when I'm headbanging), so I rounded the corner on St Georges Terrace and flicked my warning lights on. I jumped out of the car in peak-hour traffic to be confronted by a young lady (I forget her first name) who wasn't even sure if she'd hit me or not. I surveyed the damage and it all looked fairly innocent (even now, I can't even see any problems), so she gave me her name and number and said if I needed to do any repairs or anything, let her know.
I get home, check out what damage there is (not that there was any), and I decide to give her a call to let her know she's in the clear (I'm good like that!). It turns out that she was one of my good mates at high school's cousin. I guess with a name like LeSouef, and a city the size of Perth, these sorts of things aren't all that rare; but I thought it was pretty freaky indeed!
Almost as freaky as this guy.
I hate to leave an entry like that, but I guess it's just bad luck :)
It turns out that something I'd taken for granted for just about my entire life is actually true! Yes, parallel universes exist! I've always been fascinated with that stuff. Like, in a parallel universe, instead of being extremely tall and blonde, I could be bald! The possibilities are absolutely astounding when it comes to something like this. Somewhere, in the massive reaches of time and space, my wildest fantasies could be living themselves out. As heartening as this may be though, my worst fears could (and would if everything was equal) also be performed over, and over, and over again.
I'd often thought about writing stories about different things; parallel universes (although done to death) might be interesting. Some ideas that I've been slowly piecing together have been highly politically motivated, some resorting to horrific situations such as loss of memory, loss of recognition. I was watching the news last night and they were talking about things involving deaf-blind people. Can that not be the most horrific thing that anyone would ever have to go through? Being so hypersensitive to things like touch and temperature but not actually being able to communicate to an even moderate level? I'd want to be put out of my misery, I don't think anything could be anywhere near as horrific.
After chatting with a mate of mine who lives on the other coast of Australia this morning and finding out that she was extremely interested in authoring herself, I'm starting to get a taste for it. Of course my skeleton-outlines are not exactly what I'd call "compelling" just yet, I think they're kind of shaping up to be something that I'd like people to read. Perhaps someday, I'll actually get around to it!
Speaking of being distracted, I stumbled across this little gem today at work (although not quite safe for work):
That's another thing I was going to start actually, I've got another journal set up
bejar that I've created with the sole purpose of chronicling my myriad stories of my childhood and life so far. There are just so many things floating around in my head that I really want to get down somewhere and maintain for prosperity that I couldn't not do something like this. Of course, maybe it'll happen when I get around to it."Yasumi Matsuno is a legendary developer in Japan. His games Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII have both got 40/40 scores from Famitsu. He has left Square Enix but after leaving nobody knew where he was.Now, apart from sounding like total Nintendo fanservice (fiction), it's actually an extremely interesting theory. It was a very sad day when we learned that Matsuno had to resign from his position as FFXII director, but when you look at it seriously, it makes sense. Going from Final Fantasy Tactics, which was basically an evolution of games he'd worked on for years previously; to Vagrant Story, which is admittedly an extremely introverted and incredibly tight gameplay experience with a much lesser scope; to Final Fantasy XII which was almost a redefining of the entire offline RPG genre with a ridiculously large scope; it's going to be too much for most people to bear the responsibility for.
He was later seen on a Wii promotion video at a Pre-Release Press event in Japan.
Well we have just heard from a trusted source where he is right now and what he's been up to since leaving Square Enix. First of all know that he is DEFINITELY working on Wii but he is much closer to Nintendo then you think.
You see since Satoru Iwata became President he has wanted Nintendo to excel more in the RPG field. He has pushed a lot of money into Fire Emblem since becoming President but he also always wanted to create a new First Party RPG owned by Nintendo that is as popular as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are in Japan.
Both Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto know Matsuno is the Director of two 40/40 scoring RPGs. Once word he left Square Enix reached Nintendo, Satoru Iwata contacted him and asked him to join Nintendo. He accepted and was allocated to Nintendo EAD Tokyo as it was closest to his current location.
At EAD Tokyo Matsuno got to play Super Mario Galaxy a lot and also got in-depth knowledge of the Wii hardware and controls from the developers there. Iwata wanted him to start planning on a new First Party RPG for Wii and allocated him a group of 4 developers to work with and get his vision presentable in some form. This process took around 8 months.
So Matsuno was at EAD Tokyo for 8 months. He joined around April 2006 and it was near the end of his stay there that his face was shown on the Wii promotion video at a Pre-Release Press event in Japan.
Here is what he said on the video:
"The Wii controller makes total sense when you think about FPS-like games, but my question was, will the controls fit other existing games? However, when I first tried Mario Galaxy, I realized that the controller fit the game almost scarily well. It allows you to intuitively feel the game and its atmosphere."
'Graphics (these days) have evolved, and there are many games claiming that this generates a more realistic atmosphere. However, there are very few games that have a control interface that lives up to this atmosphere. With the Wii controller you can actually feel like you're touching or living in this atmosphere."
Notice how he has played Super Mario Galaxy and has magically got the Nintendo mentality of Gameplay over Graphics even though Vagrant Story and FFXII pushed their respective consoles to the limits? Someone has been employed.
Matsuno showed his RPG for Wii and naturally it was impressive. Iwata wanted it to be fully realised in a game but they had no team to make it. Therefore Iwata started to look outside Nintendo for help.
They needed a development team that had experience with RPGs, and could produce graphics on par with the best in the genre such as Square Enix. Iwata then recalled Monolith working on Wii and that most of the Xenogears and Chrono Cross team were at that studio.
This is where Matsuno would make their First Party RPG. Matsuno returned to EAD Tokyo continuing the planning of the RPG while preparing for a development team to come available.
Iwata then eventually bought Monolith from Namco Bandai and Matsuno has already settled in the studio and has his own development team currently in the early stages of making our First Party Final Fantasy killer.
He has united with people that have made classics like Chrono Cross and Xenogears. Monolith is focusing on Disaster: Day of Crisis, a Survival game on Wii, but once complete Matsuno's RPG will take over completely and hopefully become a big RPG series in Japan.
Monolith to Nintendo now are what Square were to Nintendo back in the SNES era.
But, onto the story itself, it almost makes an eery sort of sense:
1. Nintendo buying MonolithSoft was fairly out of the blue; Pairing them up with someone who can actually coherently put a game together makes sense. Although some might argue that dev team 4 (ie: the Ogre Battle team, Sakimoto and Yoshida) is as important to Matsuno as he is to them.
2. Word on the street is that Matsuno and Sakaguchi haven't really talked to each other for a while, so the chances of him working with Mistwalker are fairly slim; the information on ASH is extremely sketchy though, and hearing that lovely Sakimoto soundtrack was getting my hopes up about an SRPG return for Matsuno under Sakaguchi's wing.
3. Nintendo have started to put a bit of weight behind their RPG series'. In particular things like Fire Emblem and the Crystal Chronicle series, it makes a bit of sense that Iwata would want to start pumping out some "quality" role playing games. Quality is of course a subjective notion.
Whatever the result, as long as Matsuno and his team are still involved in making games, I think it's win-win; no matter what console they develop for. The world needs more games from these guys, I need more games from these guys :)
Speaking of which, I may spend my day off from work playing FFXII :)
* Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
* People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
* At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
* Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog
( Long post here :P )
The 8 people I tag:
8 people is a bit much... so, maybe ajax_ionic, keisos, akiito, gracile, aethyas, makenshi if he still reads this crap.. umm, whoever else, go for your life :)
This was the statement that I disagreed with (and I apologise to the author if he/she reads this, it's not directed at you per se, it's more at the philosophy):
"Nintendo just left the real gamer market"
Nintendo just left the real gamer market? What, the 0.1% sub-subset of a diminished and diluted "hardcore" market isn't happy that games aren't being specifically tailored to their attention deficit-charged methods of gameplay?
If you look back at those game series you mentioned, I don't think there was a single instance in any of them that was built specifically for a "hardcore" or "real gamer" (or the pretense-ridden, bullshit "core gamer" tag that Vanguard developers use as mantra), they were all built with accessable elements and people made them hardcore. Speed runs, shortcuts, mechanic-bending, all those elements were discovered, developed and nurtured by this "hardcore" market and I would be unbelievably surprised if any of these were intended as a key component of any of these games. Sure there are elements that are specifically placed in games to make sure that people who want extra challenge can have them, but they're not necessarily how a developer has envisioned a gameplay experience.
Take a couple of examples; firstly look at Vanguard. For years this game was supposedly developed with their "core gamer" archetype in mind and anyone who didn't enjoy an almost masochistic gameplay experience were universally berated and panned by the community because they couldn't understand how in a game "like this", you needed to suffer to have any real achievement and enjoyment. I think the current subscription numbers, problems from release and whatever behind-the-scenes crap that happens is evidence enough to the point that these guys pretty much missed the mark, no matter what their original vision was.
Another game that comes to mind is Hoshigami (the original on the PS); now I was a MASSIVE fan of FFTactics, it's still one of my favourite games of all time, so I thought Hoshigami would be right down my alley. I was wrong. I'm not a "weak gamer" by any stretch of the imagination, but this game was hard to the point that it just wasn't enjoyable, more a ridiculously frustrating mess of mechanics and completely unforgiving gameplay. Now this game has its own "hardcore" community, but even they're separated into the the "softcore" and "hardcore" divisions; but in a game that is almost universally disliked because it's so difficult, is there any real point of challenge just for the sake of it?
Maybe I'm missing the mark here, but I'm of the frame of mind that games should be developed the way that Blizzard absolutely loves them to be. Simple to learn, difficult to master. This sort of formula has the accessable hooks that get people into the game and get them enjoying the experience, but it also has the underlying systems that enable those that really want to get into it, to learn the systems, to learn the mechanics and make that "hardcore" element rise to the surface. This is what separates alot of games from being flash-in-the-pan short-term experiences that are forgotten as quickly as they're started to being massive life-sucking, life-changing experiences that make you realise why you enjoy playing games.
Games should not be developed to fit a subset market, not from a business-sense, not from a game experience sense, not from any sense because if they are, they miss the mark and are forgotten so quickly that there's no real point in the amount of time that was put into them.
So, back to the original statement: "Nintendo just left the real gamer market", I'd argue that they're one of the only companies in the world that actually understand what being a real gamer is.
What it did right
- Difficulty
Now, I complained about tuning or the lack thereof in a previous post of this game, in that you can entirely steamroll 90% of the end-game content only to get your ass kicked by the final boss, and while I freely admit that I said that, the overall difficulty and pacing of the game as a whole has been pretty excellent. There's always a bit of grinding to do before you hit each dungeon and the ability to change jobs on the fly (albeit crippled for a set amount of battles) gives a nice layer of strategy to the game; I often found myself theorising how well a certain job roster would work in a given situation, and that's something I really enjoy, being able to sit down, outside the game and actually figure out on paper what could possibly be a good combination to beat a given encounter.
- Battle Presentation
Battles looked absolutely stunning; and I'm a massive fan of the older sprite-based battles, so that's saying alot. The migration from 2d to 3d was absolutely excellent.
- Addictiveness
I'm not sure if this is quantifiable, honestly. Certain games (and I imagine it's got something to do with being able to grind both experience levels and job levels and then go again, almost like an MMO) just have the ability to be compelling in a certain way. I found myself wanting to level my jobs to 99 so I could finish them off, get the reward at the end and then try something new, and even then, I never managed to try out a few of the jobs (mostly the magic-based ones, I'm not the biggest magic-fan in RPGs for some reason). Maybe that's the reason so many games come with ranking systems or collection systems, because people find that sort of thing completely addictive and are willing to put in ridiculous amounts of time to finish things off.
What it didn't do right
- Difficulty
I know I just said the difficulty was a good point of the game, but it really was its downfall towards the end. Once you'd hit level 45+, you could absolutely trivialise the final dungeons with the right set of jobs and equipment only to get completely destroyed by the cloud of darkness. This then forced you into a completely unnecessary extended level grind (I think I completed the game at lvl 56 on all my characters) to beat the final boss and receive your kudos, which were fairly stock-standard in an RPG sense; these weren't the days of the lead protagonist being killed, or going missing or the planet being destroyed/saved. These were the days of "Yay you killed the monster and saved us! Have some pie! Don't forget to take out the garbage!". Not that I'm complaining, it is pretty charming to have that sort of closure in a game these days rather than something completely shocking.
- Interface
Another "I know I said x was a good point" situation, but one thing I just didn't really get into was the game's overall interface and the fact that everything is completely hidden from the player apart from very rudimentary base stats on weapons and armor. Now I'm a fan of hiding complexity from players because the last thing you need is to be bogged down in statistics and abilities and other things like that. It's always a good idea to make things deep mechanically but make them seem simple to someone looking from the outside, but this is dumbing things down to a massive point, I literally had to look up a FAQ to find out what weapons gave which stats and what armour protected you from which status effects. I really don't think that's intuitive.
Also the interface in battle; and I'm not sure anyone has managed to get this 100% right (Although FFXII and FFT were done very elegantly, not so much Vagrant Story), but I think maybe due to hardware limitations, they had to go with the classic "white-text-overlay" interface for the battles. Surely, surely there's a way to make this stuff look nicer. I wish I knew what this hardware was capable of.
- Other bits
There are other bits I didn't like, the story was pretty bland/cliche/any other superlative one could think of, the music was average, although I did really like the boss battle music and some of the dungeon stuff and I didn't think each of the jobs really made themselves distinct enough. I mean, I had a Knight that I just guarded with, a devout (although I think the devout was definitely a good class), a ninja that was a throw-bot for the final boss (at about 65000 gil a pop mind you) and a generic melee for the rest and a Dark Knight who had a really cool AE sword skill that, even at lvl 99 didn't do nearly enough damage and did way too much reflected damage. I'm not entirely sure about the rest of the jobs because I didn't get too far into it.
Another thing leading on from the jobs was the fact that some jobs became redundant. Fair enough you want people to progress and use different jobs/more powerful jobs towards the end, but if that's the case, why make the early jobs absolutely crippled and practically force people to go onto a new or "upgraded" version of the class if you can level them to 99? Surely there should've been a thought that each class should be distinct and viable to level til the end game? Maybe I'm just stuck in MMO balance mode or something, but I don't think it's entirely fair to see my lvl99 ranger do 1/4 of the damage my lvl1 black belt does for a massive cost.
Alot of these complaints are remnants of an old game with tired mechanics, so while I do feel they're relevant enough to put into a post-mortem, I don't think they're relevant enough to give their own subjects because they all fall under the "this game is xx years old" category.
Overall
As much bitching as I've done about this game, I really have to say that I loved playing it, for all the balance issues and job problems and bland story, the game really was worth the time and effort and although I can't see myself picking it up ever again (I'm not really a completist), I do think the 20 or so hours I put into the game was time well spent.
Now what to play next... :)
Soundtracks
In particular, ever since I smashed through Final Fantasy Tactics (the original on PS1), I've fallen in love with Hitoshi Sakimoto's particular brand of bombastic and overtly pompous overtures (which I'm definitely attributing partially to Iwata, but I'm not entirely sure he's followed up with anything quite as memorable), rich with orchestral flurry and memorable hooks.
This is a love that I haven't managed to get over either with his follow-up work on FFT:A, which admittedly didn't have the same effect on me that the FFT soundtrack had (the entire game wasn't nearly as moving an experience as I'd hoped, although I played the absolute snot out of it) as well as the absolutely brilliant FFXII soundtrack; filled with some of the most beautifully melancholy pieces as well as some of the most brilliant battle overtures ("Battle with the Esper" and "Esper", itself). And recently, I've been listening through the soundtrack to one of the most unbelievable games I've ever played that seems to get a bit of a rough trot with people: Vagrant Story.
Just like the game, the soundtrack is a gritty, claustrophobic masterpiece that showcases some of Sakimoto's percussive strengths. The absolutely epic battle themes such as "Minotaur", "Wyvern" and "Ifrit" fit in perfectly in what is quite likely the most wonderful game ever created (That's my opinion of course :). It's funny really, because when I heard team Matsuno was working on a game that could be completed in "6-7 hours", my heart sank because I was absolutely sure that they couldn't follow up the brilliant FFT with any sort of relevance. Funny how almost a dozen playthroughs, constant spins of the soundtrack and rose-tinted memory works on you.
Future Gaming Plans
So, after I've managed to finish FF3 (that's a definite work in progress, although I did just get the Ultima weapon and changed my viking and black belt to knight and ninja respectively and am working on grinding out some levels), I'll be going back and playing through both FF6 (the SNES one, I couldn't get my GBA emulator to work too well on the PSP) and VS, all in preparation for the re-release of FFT (although I do hear that it's plagued with some pretty bad slow-down at times) and the re-experience of some of the timeless classics of the last (and before last) generation of gaming. I hate the way Square have become, if only they would get back into the business of making good games instead of continuing to ride the coat-tails of past succes.
And what the hell is Matsuno doing with himself now? I need to know he still does games :(
Pacing of Content (or lack thereof)
I've been playing my way through Final Fantasy III for the DS over the past say 3 weeks or so, and find myself right at the end and constantly, infuriatingly smashing my head against the final brick wall, aka Dark Clouds (If I remember correctly). I'm not sure who was in charge of pacing or balancing towards the end of the game but the general ebb-and-flow of difficulty versus level versus time just totally went out the window. I'm not sure I've ever played a game before where you can simply steamroll the entire last dungeon, using your Devout to "attack" for the majority of it (read: not heal at all) and then get your ass handed to you by the final boss; and by all accounts, this final boss has been tuned down from the original FF3.
I'll give some background, and I will freely admit that the reason I'm having such an easy time of it in the final dungeon is because I have some pretty power-packed melee and a very tough tank:
Exp : Hovering around 54, each character has about 3000 hp
Jobs : 92 Viking (tank), 32 Devout, 20 Black Belt, 93 Dark Knight
It's a bit of a funny lineup I have to admit, but what I've been doing (probably to my absolute detriment) is having my Viking sitting in the back row with crystal armour and 2 shields (1 crystal, 1 aegis) and provoking every turn, this in turn gives my devout absolutely nothing to heal (Vikings with a full defensive loadout are harder to kill than anything) and my melee dps the chance to basically go all out. This of course comes unstuck in the battle against Dark Clouds when there are 3 targets (not sure which attack, I think they just do support magic and cast lightning) and DC gets 3 attacks a turn which may or may not include the most stupid attack known to mankind: Photon Beam.
I just can't soak the damage from it, my 2 damage dealers (even with one in full crystal armor; or as much crystal as they can) get insta-gibbed by this attack, and even if they didn't, lightning pretty much finishes them off; it's a source of massive frustration because when I'm left with my Devout (who basically spams Curaja) and my Viking, I have absolutely no damage coming out to supplement the damage coming in. This of course leads me to believe that I am _totally_ fucking up this battle with the lineup I have and I need to switch my tactics (and spend about 10 hours in Eureka leveling them up of course).
My proposed party consists of the following:
Jobs: Knight (in place of my Viking), not sure what weapon, but I'll probably go 2 weapons before DC, Devout (hopefully a much higher level), Ninja (back row shuriken spamming seems like the way to go) and Dark Knight (I have to admit I'm at a bit of a loss with this one; my DK is almost lvl 99, so I'd want to swap it out for something else for a while; but I'm not entirely sure what, I'd possibly go a summoner just because I have all of the extra summons).
If it gets down to it, at least this loadout will give me some added attack and some much needed support. If it gets down to it, it's possible I may even swap the Viking for a Bard just for the pure support and healing. I'll see how it goes.
Sick of MMOs (maybe)
This is another cyclical thing that happens to me, after going total gangbusters for the last 9 months or so in WoW, I've decided to hang up my boots again. At the release of TBC, I decided to abandom my warrior and pick up a blood elf paladin just so I could give my guild a leg-up in the healer stakes and hopefully guarantee myself a spot in the raiding hierarchy, and while I must admit, I'm hardly ever left out of a raid, I do have a very large feeling of underappreciation for the massive amount of hard work I had to go through on my road to lvl 70, when my intentions were purely to help my friends out (as it turns out, I'm a little more selfish than that). I'm just purely lacking motivation to try to log in when I can (which is increasingly difficult these days with work and girlfriend) and just help other people out with no apparent personal gain. I'll say again, it is a selfish outlook, but I feel like being selfish at the moment, and so I cancelled my subscription.
I know I'll be back for the next expansion or when the bug bites me again, but right now, I just need an extended break.
I'm going to continue to post on here; I wanted to make it a software/graphic/game design/implementation-centric blog but I'm in the middle of setting up a new web-based project, so that may have to wait for another time, so for the time being, it's probably just going to be game-related (and RL if I feel saucy).
Please squareenix, keep my favourite series going :(
Edit: Ok, just read an interview with Nomura, who reckons that "part" of the KH2:FM+ secret trailer pertains to the "new series" and that this series will definitely not be Kingdom Hearts 3. Bit of a shame I have to say, but as long as the universe remains intact, I can probably handle it ;)
Well, look at what we have here, a journal update - who'da'thunk? I spent quite a while thinking about what I wanted to put in this update and believe-you-me, it was going to be something absolutely stupendous and awesome and another random superlative, but then I got bored and decided I was just going to update my gaming progress amongst other things. You know, just for shits 'n giggles.
World of Raidcraft
So, my guild on Frostmourne's been doing reasonably well over the last little while, we began our raiding careers with a full clear of MC up to Rag who we wiped on for about 3 days or so (the best effort we had at the start was a 1% wipe with 35 people). In this first clear, we managed to get ourselves a left binding and a whole bunch of druid shi.. erm.. loot, so it was a good start we found. Since then, we've managed to one-shot MC consistently and even manage to get Rag down to about 24-ish% before sons, so we're doing fairly well.
One thing we're not doing so well on is BWL and Razorgore. We've been banging our heads up against this encounter for the best part of a month now and, with average attendance as well as constantly changing strats, we're just not making any headway into the encounter. Recently though, we've managed to decide upon a strat (kite dragons, dps down humanoids) and that's been working pretty nicely so far with our best attempt (literally our 2nd attempt at the strat) managing to get to 9 eggs before our tanks get wtfpwnedbbqetc by too many dragons and not enough healing. We have found that the humanoids aren't the problem here, it's our shortage of healers; unfortunately this number is dwindling even further now as the healers bitch about "itemisation" and how if a priest wanted to get a +damage set instead of a +healing set then they'd have to wait for all mages and all warlocks to get the gear before they could. I like to say "cry me a river" and note that if you wanted to do loldps in raids, they should've rolled another character, like a warrior. Speaking of which...
I'm currently the guild's #1 dps warrior (and #1 dps'er in general) after I managed to spend many, many weeks gearing myself up to be DW fury and then getting thrown a curveball and being the only eligible warrior in an MC raid to pick up a Bonereaver's Edge (our guild prioritises armor and items based on class and role, so tanks will get tank gear over dps warriors). And herein lies a bit of a problem; This guild has just not had any sort of luck getting high-end weapons for dps characters that are dedicated to playing alot. Sure we've been getting our share of CHT's and OEB's (so much so that all of our warriors now currently have an OEB, regardless of role, and we've de'd 3 aswell) but we've only had one BRE, one perdition's blade (which unfortunately went to a rogue who hardly ever turns up, and when he does he leaves early and then is surprised how high he is on the damage meters when he's only been in the raid for half the run (he must be afk for half the run if that's the case, because he sure as shit is sitting in the instance with us)) and no other weapons of note. Where we've excelled is in our caster weapon and caster armor drops; we've been absolutely swimming in this shit and we're getting to the point where almost every one of our 10 mages has an azuresong mageblade and/or a toep. This is absolutely ridiculous and much to the disgust of the guild and the other top DPS warrior (somehow, the two of us are consistently 100k damage over everyone else in the raid), a big 2h simple just will not drop for him (he's still using a TUF after like 3 months in MC). We keep saying one will drop for him but knowing this guild, the chances of getting a spinal reaper, zin'rokh or bre are exceedingly small. In other related news, we haven't had a single brutality blade drop either, which has caused one of our top rogues no end of emotional pain.
Of course, while we've been unlucky in certain areas, we've been amazingly lucky in another with the guild managing to get 3 bindings (2 left and last night, our first right) and get our inaugural thunderfury. Knowing that some guilds manage to play the game for 1.5 years straight in MC on a single binding and we've managed to get ours after 3 months of MC. I would say that was fairly lucky and after alot of asking around the big guilds on the server, we managed to get the 50 arcanite bars we needed and then hammersmashed thunderran in the face. So tonight, we get to have our first thunderfury raid and I for one am really looking forward to it (especially considering it's so hard to open up on even trash mobs because of threat issues).
Hopefully we can get a fair chunk of BWL progression in the bag before the expansion, although I've heard a rumour that we're going to be attempting the big dungeons like AQ40 and BWL and Naxx post expansion anyways, just for the experience.
Final Fantasy XII
Can't say too much about this game without absolutely swooning. This game is awesome and absolutely reeks of Matsuno and co's brilliance and I can't wait to get further into the game. If you haven't managed to get the game, grab it because it rocks your face :)
I think that's all for now, I've spent way too long typing when I should be working :) So Adios Amigos!
I'm looking for a decent dw fury warrior build and equipment set for someone in a guild that is up to (and likely to down) Ragnaros in the next week. I realise I may be barking up the wrong tree on this sort of matter, but, thought I'd give it a go. Here's my current setup on ctprofiles: http://ctprofiles.net/1285329
A bit of background, I'm currently the 2nd ranked dkp warrior in the guild, complete zg, aq20, most of mc and ony and I'm just pretty sick of the cookie cutter ms build. I got myself a frostbite and lobotomizer from AV on the PTR and gave that a go and was very pleasantly surprised at how much of a change it was from simply MSing and WWing forever (well with a slam or two chucked in there). I realise my gear is subpar for BT, but HS was critting for almost 1K against mobs in AV (I realise that's not the best test around, I'll need to test some more), and well, no other warrior has picked up the fury warrior baton in our guild, so I thought I'd be the one to give it a crack :) Thanks in advance if you can help out :)
So, like, I have one of those super cool (not that I've actually even ever used a DS before) DS Lite things coming my way on Thursday night hopefully, and I'm still a bit vexed over which games to pick up straight away. I don't know anyone else that has a DS, so I'm not sure that picking up a game like metriod hunters is the best thing to do until I can find people to play against locally. I've sort of narrowed it down to between new super mario bros, that brain age thing and something like metroid hunters or nintendogs or something equally as fruity. I really want to get into the multiplayer thing, so games like mario kart and tetris aren't out of the question at all. Any advice? I'd appreciate it! :)
I'm back baby
I caved, reactivated WoW and am doing that whole thing once again (for the 3rd time). This time, rolling an orc warrior on the Frostmourne server and overall it seems fairly good. Joined an up and coming guild with a whole bunch of real life mates so that's great. They're still working on ZG until they get their numbers up (getting towards 40ish members, about half of which are 60) and get keyed up for different things, but it's exciting to be part of a guild that seem to want to progress through the game at their own pace and learn everything on their own rather than zerg the shit out of the content. They have good guild policies set up, a bank system, merit points and dkp and all that fun stuff, so no arguments over gear and shit, everything's perfectly transparent and the guild leader - who is the guild main tank, is that a prerequisite or something? - seems like a decent sort of person unlike the last decently sized guild I was in, so I'm enjoying myself. Also, I have to say that it's fucking awesome to be back on the horde side, I always felt like I was betraying myself rolling alliance on proudmoore all those months ago, but I guess it's something I had to try out for a while; but now, I'm back with the group that actually have a bit of character and attitude, no more mangina fun :)
This brings me to my next question/advice request - and this is placed squarely at keisos, so hopefully he reads this. After watching hulksmash and sonic and your (spritzer) fury warrior videos, I'm freaking amped to try it out (the first time I played warrior on BR, I was 31/20 (ms/enrage) all the way), so i was wondering what a decent levelling up fury build would be. I'm pretty sure I know what to do and I'm looking at 20/31/0 to get bloodthirst and other fun stuff in arms (impale/tm etc) but I was wondering if it was worth investing more into fury, like having a 17/34 build just to get impale on arms side and have a bit more flexibility on the fury side. Also in a 20/31 build, i'm putting 4/5 into quite a few talents which I'm not too fond of.. Any advice? Talent build links I can check out?
That's all for now :)
Don't have an ex, so I couldn't really say anything about that...
2. WHAT KIND OF SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
Apple green Van Heusen business shirt.
3. HAVE YOU KISSED ANYONE ON YOUR FRIENDS LIST?
Nope.
4. DO YOU HAVE "A THING" FOR ANYONE ON YOUR FRIENDS LIST?
Maybe a couple ;)
5. HOW MANY PEOPLE ON YOUR LIST DO YOU KNOW IN REAL LIFE?
One I think, depends if he actually still uses his LJ though.
6. HOW MANY KIDS DO YOU WANT TO HAVE?
2, but that's not a bridge I want to cross for a long time.
7. DO YOU HAVE A GOOD RELATIONSHIP WITH BOTH YOUR PARENTS?
I do now that they've split up heh.
8. DO YOU MAKE OVER 40K A YEAR
After benefits, yes!
9. WHAT NAME WOULD YOU WANT TO HAVE BESIDES THE ONE YOU HAVE?
Michael I think, don't know why though.
10. WOULD YOU EVER MAKE OUT WITH SOMEONE OF THE SAME SEX?
Nah, girls do it for me.
12. WHAT DID YOU DO FOR YOUR LAST BDAY?
Last bday.. Good question, I think I went out to dinner with my family, 24 isn't exactly the most monumental birthday.
13. WHAT'S YOUR MAIN RINGTONE ON YOUR PHONE?
J-E-N-O-V-A, OST version. Love it :)
14. WHAT TIME DID YOU WAKE UP?
7:00am, to be at work by 8:30am.
15.WHAT WERE YOU DOING AT MIDNIGHT TWO NIGHTS AGO?
Midnite, was watching Big Brother Up Late and flossing before going to sleep.
16. HOW MANY OF YOUR EX'S ARE ON YOUR FRIENDS LIST?
No exes.
17. DO YOU LIKE HAVING YOUR HAIR PULLED?
Stupid question :P
18. NAME SOMETHING YOU CAN'T WAIT TO DO?
Spend the weekend with my girlfriend down in Margaret River in 2 weeks, can't wait at all!
19. LAST TIME YOU SAW YOUR MOM?
This morning
20. DO YOU GET ALONG WITH YOUR SIBLING(S)?
Yeah, I only have a brother and we get along really well.
21. WHAT IS ONE THING YOU WISH YOU COULD CHANGE ABOUT YOURSELF?
My teeth actually, I'm pretty happy with everything else.
22. IF YOU HAD $250,000...HOW WOULD YOU SPEND IT?
Probably look into property.. Geeze that makes me sound old :(
23. HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN AT YOUR CURRENT JOB?
7 weeks (+6 weeks contract)
24. HAVE YOU EVER TALKED TO TOM
WTF.
25. WHAT COLOR UNDERWEAR ARE YOU WEARING?
White bonds briefs, very comfortable
26. LAST THING YOU ATE?
Toast with vegemite mate
27. WHATS YOUR FAVORITE MONTH?
December, easily.
28. YOUR LEAST FAVORITE Month:::
June :(
29. WHAT'S THE LAST PIECE OF CLOTHING YOU BORROWED FROM ANYONE?
Can't remember at all :P
30. WHO IS GETTING ON YOUR NERVES RIGHT NOW?
Noone, I'm doing ok :)
31. MOST VISITED WEBPAGE
shacknews.com
32. LAST PERSON YOU TEXT MESSAGED?
Sarah :)
33. LAST PERSON TO MAKE YOU SAD?
My brother I think.. He can be a real jerk sometimes
34. WOULD YOU TAKE A BULLET FOR YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Yeah, I would, although I'd want to take it somewhere non life-threatening.
35. FAVORITE KIND OF DRINK?
Coke Zero?
36. FAVORITE FOOD?
Chicken hehe, I dunno :P
37. FAVORITE DESSERT?
Chocolate bar or something
38. HAVE YOU BEEN TO EUROPE?
Nope
39. IF SOMEONE YOU HATED DIED, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
That's happened before, I hated him for fairly decent reasons though. I still felt bad about it and that's probably the difference between the two of us, if it were the other way around, he wouldn't have felt bad about me dying.
40. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
Date Movie I think.. Can't really remember...
Ghost of Perdition
White Cluster (holy shit)
Amen Corner (holy shit x2)
Baying of the Hounds
Under the Weeping Moon (power went out halfway through, crushed the mood a bit)
The Grand Conjuration (worst Opeth song ever)
The Leper Affinity
Encore - Deliverance
Great set, had a couple of big big surprises which were the absolute highlight, and after the power went out in UtWM the mood didn't really return until about halfway through Leper Affinity for me, I really have to say taht TGC is the worst Opeth song ever, why did they ever even bother writing that pile of shit, it's just so un-Opeth it's not funny :( It had to come though considering it's their one and only single, so, it was probably best that it came after the mood was completely shattered because honestly, nothing can save that song :(
Really enjoyed it, my new earplugs were absolutely great too ;)
( Memories of ... )
- Music:Yoko Shimomura - Waltz of the Diamond
