Pictures from the Fifth Anniversary

The announcement said "CHAOS" and that's what it was. But, in a good way.

I Don't Like Issue 14

Don't say that out loud, and please don't spread it around. Mobs with torches and pitchforks will show up. The Mission Architect is sacred and the best thing ever to happen to the game, if you read the forums. I'm... just not impressed. Or maybe just not interested, or both.

But, there's like a hundred new badges you can get! Yeah? Well, I could not care less about badges. I think you have to have some sort of collector gene to "get it," and I don't.

But you can earn tickets to save and get what you want! Oh, yeah? I thought that's what merits were for? And before that, it was just influence, which worked fine for me. Have you looked at the market lately? I mean, really? The market's always been... a little shaky, but right now* it's just ridiculous. Sure, selling common salvage is great. But wait until you try to buy something or, worse, wait until you try to sell some of that rare salvage you had saved to finance alts.

But there's unlimited new content! Think of the creativity! There are thousands of missions available. That's very true. Last I looked, the MA numbers were over 50,000. Part of that has either been removed by GMs and some have been unpublished by players. A HUGE part of that is farms. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate farming. I've participated in it before, and I probably will again. It's boring, but it can be effective. In fact, I was trying to get Tresa some XP last week, and came across a farm MA mission where the lieutenants were called "Tickets" and the bosses were called "MOAR Tickets." I finished the mission, and plan to never go back to it. I was on a PuG with Mo in Peregrine, and we ran a farm MA mission where the enemies were called "Meat." Mo got half a level off of that, and I hardly had to do anything. So, it served its purpose. It was effective, but boring.

Not all the MA missions are farm missions, though. A lot people actually tried to create actual missions. Like the person who tried a tribute "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Or the arc that I was on yesterday with a team where the missions were meant to resemble "Snakes on a Plane," "Shaun of the Dead" (which had the title character's name misspelled as "Shawn," not to mention other spelling and grammatical errors), and the Austin Powers movies. Aside from the fact that the devs have forbidden even parodying copyrighted material, they were awful. "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" tribute was at best boring and pointless. The other was just terrible.

I've seen more than a few missions that someone wrote featuring their supergroups. That's very nice for those people and their supergroups. I haven't bothered attempting any of those.

Some people tried to write missions that fit into the game world. I've run into a couple of those that were are comparable to anything you might find in the game outside of the MA.

Here's the thing, though, for the people that actually tried. Some people write very well. Some people write pretty good. Some people should not be allowed to form written words. Most people, though, are mediocre writers. Once you wade though all the farms, the missions with (TEST) after the title, the ones with such "questionable content" that you know just by looking at the title that it'll be pulled within the hour, and the ones that have spelling and grammar mistakes just within the title, chances are you're going to end up with a sort of okay mission.

Of course, there are exceptions. But first you have to get past the 49,650 missions and arcs that are not.



* "right now" because that will likely change in the next couple of weeks for better or worse. It will either settle into a more predictable pattern which will become accepted as the norm OR something new will be introduced, again, and the market will change accordingly, again.

What I'm Doing While I Wait For i14

In the tradition of "What I'm Doing While I Wait For i13":

Brute Fights

Way Off Topic -- The World Is Ending, and All I Got Was This Lousy Bear

This has absolutely nothing to do with the game, but it could be the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.



That's right. The world is ending. But we have bears, so it's cool.

Oh, Right...

I was going to post this like two weeks ago, but I kept forgetting, and now it's not new anymore... But I was reading a post on the forums, which made me remember, and maybe not everyone's seen it already, so...
Leaked Magic Super Booster Costumes

Knocking on Wood

I really, really hate to jinx myself after all the problems I had with the computer, so I hate to even make this post, but I'm back. And have been for over a week. But after all the problems, I kept waiting for a "Kaboom!" and a tiny puff of smoke. So far, that hasn't happened. So far.

To get the virus cleaned, everything had to be wiped out of my computer. Everything. Pictures, programs, music, screenshots, chatlogs, everything. (I backed it all up on my laptop first, but I'll get to that in a minute... ) Even though that process cost more than I was happy about, I was happy to have the computer back, working, and not shutting itself off every five or ten minutes. Until I went to load the game and got all kinds of error messages and/or a black screen. Apparently the new drivers made my combo video card incompatible with the game. It went back to the computer shop for a couple of days, but they couldn't find the old version or a new version that worked, so my only other option was a new video card, which again cost more than made me happy. But, I got it back and it worked great, except for a couple of very, very small oddities that I never thought anything about. For example:



The bricks were weird colors. (Top is Peregrine Island, bottom is Cap Au Diable) But, so what, right? Everything else looked great.

For a day and a half. Then, in the middle of a Statesman's TF, the screen went black. I shut the game down in Task Manager, and restarted. Screen went black, and I couldn't get the Task Manager to come up. Manually restarted the computer, got error messages when I tried to enter the game. Restarted the regular way, got error messages. Restarted again, and got nothing but a black screen for anything. I finished the STF on my laptop, which made me all but useless. The laptop runs the game just fine, as long as you don't want to move, use powers, or see details. (There was a lot of sit-in-the-base-and-RP in the on-and-off 2 weeks that I didn't have my desktop.)

That was Saturday. I took the computer back to the shop on Monday, and they couldn't find anything wrong with it. Tuesday, they still couldn't find anything wrong with it. Wednesday, they gave up and put yet another new video card in it. And everything still seems to be working with that one. At the moment.

In the meantime, though, the fan blew out on my laptop, and the laptop overheats about 10 minutes into the game, or about a half hour into watching something on Hulu. I haven't tried to transfer anything back to the desktop, because I'm afraid it will melt into a large, vaguely laptop shaped puddle, although playing the game without my music is... different. I've heard game sounds that I didn't know existed, and some that I can live without, but I also seem to have more trouble concentrating, probably because those pesky RL noises intrude.

I've had trouble picking in-game settings for the new card, and I'm probably being overly cautious, but it still looks way better than it used to look. Costumes... wow. Like I didn't already spend enough time at Icon? In real-life, I'm un-stereo-typical, and I do not have a shoe obsession... much. But in the game, the shoes suddenly fascinate me. At least, way more than they did. I can read all those goofy little warning signs and things now, too. And Nemesis Warhulks and Fake Nemesis? I had no idea those things were so cool looking.

The police van is shiny. And the writing is legible.

Blaster-Jez in the base. Look at her shoes!

Scrapper Jez and Marauder.

Nemesis robots are pretty. Who knew?

Prehistoric Positron is pre-- Okay, interesting.

Super Bowl

Just in case you missed it last night:

Best Night Ever: 2-1-09 - Super Bowl Sunday! @ Yahoo! Video

Note that the Steelers won the game with 35 seconds left.

Also, Top 10 Super Bowl Commercials

And, finally (The "narrator" does use the f-word, so not entirely SFW):

Note the use of the word "riot" in the video title. That's the only kind of riots Pittsburgh has.