Playing WoW… but not wowed yet.

I did decide to upgrade my account to Cataclysm, which means I also had to buy Wrath of the Lich King as well, and getting a month-at-a-time subscription.

As you can guess from the title above, even though I did decided to subscribe and (hopefully) play, I wasn’t very impressed with my 10-day trial experience. The first nine levels of the Dwarf zone were not as different as I expected. They have definitely been cleaned up and some of the more generic side-quests removed, but I expected more somehow.

So why did I end up spending the money? I was been back and forth about a dozen times over whether or not to subscribe. While I’m interested in seeing the Worgen starting zone, that’s not really worth the $60+ it cost to upgrade my account. I’m also not certain how much time I’ll really get to play in December, it is going to be very busy month for me between work and the Christmas holiday. I decided to go ahead now, rather than wait until January, because now is when most of the people that I know are playing and I expect that come January quite a few will have moved on to other games.

See you in Azeroth, or you will once I decide where I’m rolling.

Star Trek Online: Genesis

Season 3 is out!

I am super excited because I’ve been looking forward to the sector space update since the Pelia sector was released back in July with Season 2. While I didn’t hate the original sector space, I wasn’t much of a fan of it either. It was a bit too bright and made space feel small.

Besides sector space, there’s quite a few other improvements in this release:

  • Episode Replay – Go check out the console in your Ready Room, there’s now a reason to visit your bridge.
  • Memory Alpha – This is the second revamp for the crafting system and there’s a lot to it. Since he beat me to it, go check out Scott’s Craft-aclysm article at Pumping Irony for the details.
  • Klingons have begun raiding the Pi Canis sector.
  • New daily mission Emancipation available from the Deferi in the Orellius Sector.
  • Ships should now be able to pitch up to 60 degrees instead of 45.
  • You can now sit in your Captain’s Chair without having to stand in it and do an emote.
  • The remote contacts panel is better organized now.

To WoW? Or not.

I haven’t subscribed to WoW since March 2009, and that was just for two months, although I think I only played a week or two.

I haven’t seriously played WoW since 2006. I enjoyed Burning Crusade for the first 20 levels as a Draenei, but I skipped Lich King entirely.

I’ve been curious if Cataclysm would finally draw me back into the game, but I really hadn’t been excited by any of the news or announcements I’ve seen. I an interested in the idea of Worgens as a race, but having them belong to the Alliance seems odd to me.

I have actually been playing WoW a bit for the last week. I hadn’t planned to but I was curious about the new 1-20 experience after reading Pete’s thoughts, and I was eligible for a 10-day free trial. So I figured why not and rolled a Dwarven Hunter on Silvermoon. Quick digression: I agree with some of his points but so far I don’t think Blizzard’s new 1-10 experience holds your hand much more than the current LotRO tutorial, except that WoW’s might be longer.

Still, a free trial is a long way off from buying Cataclysm and actually resubscribing.

Seeing comments from friends on Twitter and blogs, has a couple of times taken me to the Battle.net site with the intent to buy in. But then I see long discussions about what plugins to use, tales of account hacks, or the news about GearScore, and I remember why I don’t play. I assume I’d also have to buy WotLK since Blizzard isn’t good about rolling up expansions like SOE has been. Even playing through the old dwarf started zones on the 10-day trial hasn’t awakened any feelings of nostalgia for me.

So will I play? I won’t say no yet, and I’m open to convincing, but if I do it’ll end up being an impulse buy. Besides I have dozens (literally) of other games that I can play.

NaNoWriMo – The End… Sort Of

National Novel Writing Month is over. My final word count was 22,346 words. I’m now 0 for 2 on NaNoWriMo attempts, but I couldn’t be happier with how November turned out.

So why am I so pleased if I didn’t win?

I learned a lot this year about what writing processes work for me. I know how many words I can do comfortably in an hour (about 500 once I get warmed up). I’ve gotten my fiction writing mental-muscles back in shape. I’ve learned how to shut off my inner editor and accepted that the first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. I’ve developed a writing support network.

I’m definitely planning on trying against next year. In general, I have between three and four hours a day for hobbies. That’s anything that’s not work or parenting related, which covers writing, reading, playing games, and watching TV. With an average of 500 words an hour, the best I can expect to do in a day is 2,000 words. Hopefully as I continue to write my average will go up, but assuming it doesn’t, I’ll need to be more consistent about WriMo next year if I want to win. If I can stay on schedule most days or stay within a few hundred words, I should be able to do it.

This year, I was pretty much behind from the start. I was better prepared than last year (not hard to do since I’d done no preparation), but I hadn’t expected to have so much trouble with the basic mechanics of fiction writing. For me, it’s a different set of mental gears than what I sue for blogging, and they were pretty rusty. Fortunately by week two I was getting into a good flow more quickly, but by then I was much too far behind to really catchup. Slacking off in week three didn’t help either.

Besides just the different mechanics of creative fiction writing, learning to recognize and combat some of my bad habits has been a real break-through. I always want the worlds my stories take place in to have depth and character. To accomplish that, I spend a lot of time coming with the history pf the world. Usually I spend so long on this that I never end up writing my original story idea. Doing WriMo has helped me learn to recognize and ignore that impulse. Now I’m able to just focus on getting the story down, leaving myself notes in square brackets as needed.

I had a major test of my ability to ignore my inner editor just yesterday. I was writing a major scene that I didn’t have a clear mental picture of. I knew as I was writing it that it was not good, but I forced myself to continue writing, to not stop and look at what was on the screen. Eventually the scene became clearer me and I left some notes to myself for when I come back for the first rewrite, but I kept moving forward and that was the important part.

Having a writing support group isn’t something I’d ever given much thought too. I was really surprised about how good some of the feedback was that I got earlier in the month when I posted about messing up a scene and having to backup a bit. I’d really just posted it because I thought it was funny, but I got some excellent ideas from reader comments. Twitter has also been a good source of encouragement, enough that a group of us are forming a writer’s group to help provide critical feedback on projects. I’m very excited to see how much more I can learn from sharing my writing with the group and reading others.

All in all, NaNoWriMo has been an excellent experience this year. I’m not planning to stop though. I’m going to continue writing, and I’m setting a daily goal of 600 words for December. I intend to increase that in January, but I’m taking it easy for December.

Adventuring in Minecraft Multiplayer

Exciting times! With the implementation of the health system in Minecraft Survival Multiplayer, it’s finally possible to adventure with friends.

The current server is not changing. Instead, I’m making the second server, which used to host singleplayer showcase maps, into an adventuring server. This means health, animals, and monsters will all be on, but PvP will not. This server will use the same security as the builder server, so fell free to bounce back and forth between the two.

Everything’s ready to go, except for one thing: the map. I’ve generated three that I think look interesting. Leave a comment with your vote for one of the four options below.

Update: Voting is closed! Option 1 was the winner.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

They all suck, any more choices? Or, I just generated a cool one in single-player, can we use that one? Zip it up and send it to me, but only if it’s a brand new map, unexplored and no buildings.

Isengard Expansion Coming

Turbine announced today that Lord of the Rings Online is getting a new expansion, Rise of Isengard. The bad news is it’s going to be released fall of 2011.

Level cap is increasing another five levels to 70. It will feature a new region, Isengard, which will include Saruman’s tower Orthanc, and continue the epic quest line. Monster play is getting a major revamp, including opening it up to non-subscribers and adding a new PvMP region.

Nothing too surprising here really. I think everyone expected the game would head to Isengard next, with Rohan following after that. The level cap change along with new skills, traits, etc. is a mirror for what we saw in Mirkwood.

The monster play updates are interesting. I knew from Turbine comments on the forums that restricting free players from joining in was temporary (because of performance concerns, if I remember right). but the fact that they are doing a full revamp of the system sounds is really good. Turbine has an excellent track record in revamping Ered Luin, Bree, and Lone Lands, so I’m sure that the new PvMP will be an improvement. I probably still won’t participate, but I know some people who enjoy it.

Despite all that, I have to say I’m disappointed. This expansion is a full year out. Hopefully we’ll continue to get small content additions between now and then. My biggest concern is the size of the expansion. With a fall 2011 release date, I’m expecting a Moria-sized release for Isengard and not a Mirkwood one. Unfortunately the announcement makes it sound more like Mirkwood.

Still Buying Dead Trees

I haven’t done a post about my Kindle experience yet, well I have but I’m not ready to published it yet. The short version is: I like it. The tricky thing about owning one has been deciding whether to buy the electronic version of a book or the paper one.

The decision is easy for some books. Technical books, TV tie-ins, and the occasional non-fiction are all guaranteed Kindle buys. These are books I’ll either only read once, become outdated after a year or three, and/or are books that I’ll want to makes notes in and be able to search easily.

Fiction books are more difficult for me to decide on. There are some series that are no-brainers, like Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files and Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series. These are also books that I get in hardback if possible because they’ll last longer.

Other books aren’t as easy though. For instance, I love Glen Cook’s Garrett, P.I. series. I discovered the fantasy noir series a few years ago and have working on collecting the entire series. Gilded Latten Bones was recently released and I was standing in the bookstore yesterday trying to decide if I should buy it or go out to the parking lot and buy it on my Kindle or do both.

I am really really really resisting buying both editions of any book, even though I did make or exception to that rule recently (that’s a post for later though).

The bookstore copy will go on my shelf when I’m done and, unless there’s a fire or burglary, I know I’ll be able to take it down and read it again five or ten or more years from now. The Kindle copy won’t contribute to the epic clutter of my office or the overloading of my bookshelves, and it’s easier to sneak reading time in at the office too, since I can read on my phone or laptop in addition to the Kindle itself.

In the end, I decided to get the dead trees and am continuing to resist urges to go ahead with the Kindle version as well. Besides trying to figure out which location in the Kindle matches up to whatever page I’m on would be a pain. My decision came down to the fact that besides reading them, I’m also collecting them and I don’t want to have a gap in the series on my shelf.

Minecraft Multiplayer Bugs

Myself and other players have been noticing some bugginess lately in Minecraft. The most noticeable one has been having blocks reappear while mining. I’ve been trying to figure out if it was because our map’s gotten so large, the number of players online, a hardware resource on my (admittedly underpowered) server, or (most likely) a combination of all of the above.

Turns out it’s actually a known issue and one Notch is working on:

Today and tomorrow will be two days of solid work. I’m currently working on server-side health and some performance tweaks. It looks like I might want to rewrite (or at the very least refactor) parts of the lighting engine to get better control over it. For server-side health, the current issue is that the client is sending the wrong entity id for targets. I’m also looking into fixing a bunch of lag issues, specifically the returning blocks after mining them bug.

Of course, the difficult thing to do now is practice patience. It is alpha code after all, something I often forget because the single player version of the game is so solid.