A Light from the Shadow

In the Presence of Sauron
In the Presence of Sauron

One of my goals for the remainder of the year is to finish Volumes 1 and 2 in Lord of the Rings Online on my main, Brynulf.  Thanks to Goldenstar and Meric from A Casual Stroll to Mordor, I’ve been able to make quite a bit of progress.  When the game launched, Volume 1 was eight Books although with content updates the finaly number is 15.  Well it’s taken me nearly two years, but last night I finally finished Book 8 with the help of the Casual Strollers and Azz from The Wizzard of Azz.  We did go past and complete Book 9 and Book 10 Chapter 1 as well.

I’m not sure how likely it’ll be that I finish Volume 2, but I am going to finish Volume 1.  Only 5 more Books to go.

Go check out Goldenstar’s writeup and screenshots.  She has a nice shot of her in front of a Palantír.

Jumping into NaNoWriMo

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was in grade school.  I’m pretty good at starting stories and creating backgrounds and characters, but I’ve rarely ever finished a story.

One of the few writing projects I’ve ever completed was a children’s play when I was in high school.  My favorite English teach asked me to write one for the drama club’s annual children’s play for the following school tyear.  I had the entire summer break to do the play and I remember spending a panicked two weeks towards the end of the summer cranking through it.

So with all the twittering from friends about National Novel Writing Month, I decided to see if this provides me with the same kind of motivation.  Of course November is a busy month already between family, holidays starting, and all of the big games coming out.  I’m not sure I’ll hit the 50k mark, but I wanted to at least try and see what I get out of it.

You can check in on my progress (or buddy me if you’re participating) here.

Windows 7 Upgraded

I got my copy of Windows 7 Home Premium (full install license) from Amazon on release day, via pre-order.  I wasn’t in a big hurry to upgrade since I’m already running the release candidate, which worked well since the last week has been pretty busy with family stuff (vacation, son’s first birthday).  Even though I wasn’t in a huge hurry, I didn’t want to wait too long, so when my evening freed up last night I decided it was time.  I didn’t technically upgrade, since I was already using the release candidate.

To start the process, I made a backup of my AppData and other user folders, then repartitioned and reformatted the drive.  The complete installation time from booting the PC with the DVD in the drive until the desktop came up was 25 minutes.  That of course was the easy part.  The next step was about 160 MB of downloads from Windows Update for security patches and driver updates for my keyboard, mouse, monitor, and graphics card.  This took about 20 minutes and required a reboot.

The only problem I had with Windows Update was the Nvidia drivers it installed.  It used the 191.07 Nvidia drivers which I found caused a stutter problem in Champions Online, but I was able to install the 190.62 drivers over the top of the existing 191.07 without any problems.

Installing software and games took another 5 hours, but I’m now back up and running on the Home Premium retail version.  I did backup my MMO program folders.  Instead of restoring them, I did re-run the installers but then I brought over the patched files before running the patcher.  This way I get the icons in the Games folder setup correctly but didn’t have to sit through hours of patch downloads.

The only major pain I had was fixing the 30 odd podcasts subscriptions I had in my Zune software.  There really should be a way to export those subscriptions as an XML to make it easier to move machines.

Since I was already on the release candidate, the upgrade really didn’t change much for me, but I’m still really enjoying the UI changes from XP to 7.  It may not be worth upgrading an existing machine, but if you’re building or buying a new box 7’s definitely the way to go.

On the 32- or 64-bit question, I recommend 64-bit.  You may have some compatibility issues on old peripherals, but most components should be fine and I’ve not had any software issues except for UAC.

Xfire and Steam in Win7

As a former XP user who skipped Vista, the UAC functionality is something new that I’m learning to deal with.

I’m sure a lot of people just turn it off, but I’m trying to find ways to work within the security setup.  I’m happy to click on a UAC prompt when I’m installing a program, that’s not something I do daily, but I don’t want to click on a prompt every time I launch Xfire or Steam.  Xfire requires it be run in admin mode.  Steam doesn’t have to be run that way, but Fallen Earth (which I bought through Steam) does.  If you run a game in Steam that requires it be in admin mode, but Steam is not, then you get this very unhelpful message.

Fallen Earth Steam ErrorOf course the game is actually available but you either have to run the program directly from the SteamApps folder in admin mode or you have to launch Steam in admin mode.  Either way you’ll get a UAC prompt.  Every time.

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Castle’s Heat Wave

I am a huge fan of the ABC show Castle. For those who don’t watch it: Nathan Fillion (of Firefly fame) plays Rick Castle a mystery writer who is following Kate Beckett (played by Stana Katic) while researching a new series of books.  In a recent episode, Castle’s first book is released.  I don’t remember if I was just curious or there was something at the end of the episode, but I ended up going to Amazon and ordering the book.

It is a quick read, at just under 200 pages, but it is very well paced and doesn’t feel rushed at all.  The wit, humor, and style are the same.  The characters in the book all have analogues to characters in the show.  Instead of Kate Beckett, we have Detective Nikki Heat, and instead of writer Castle doing research for a book it is journalist Jameson Rook doing research for an article on the NYPD.  The book is plotted similarly to an episode of the show, starting at a crime scene and following the investigation through several plot twists until the case is solved.  Most of the story is told from Heat’s point of view and includes a lot of her inner dialogue, I’ll be interested to see how much of the Heat character shows up in the Beckett character later in the show.

My only complaint is that for $20 the book wa a bit short.  Amazon has it on sale now for $10.99, so if you’re a fan of the show buy it.

Slight spoiler: the only major departure from the show are the romance elements included in the book with Heat.

Reprieve for Fallen Earth

I’ve changed my mind about letting Fallen Earth expire on the 22nd when my free month is up.  Partly based on the Patch 1.1.0 release, and partly from peer pressure.  I’m not committing myself to a multi-month subscription yet, but $15 is well below my impulse buy threshold.

My character name is Brian Kae.

2009 Q4

My plans for the remainder of the year are to continue with Champions, Lord of the Rings Online, and Eve as my primary games.  Which ones I play will depend on what I’m looking for out of a given session.

Eve is my pickup and drop game.  I can take 30 minutes and do a mission, or I can do a little mining as a background task while I catchup on podcasts.

LoTRO is the one game I’ve ever made to max level.  Despite that, I’ve not finished either Volume 1 or 2 of the epic quests, which is my current goal for hunter Brynulf of Dale.

Champions is my new experiences game.  Of the three games I imagine I’ll be playing this one the most, for how long I’m not sure, but at least through the end of the year before I take a break.  Taking a break is fine too, since it and LoTRO are lifetime subscriptions so I don’t feel that pressure to get my month’s worth.

It will have been a good MMO year if I can finish it with: a Drake in Eve, having completed Volume 1 in LoTRO, and a max level hero in Champions.

Nvidia Stutter

I recently updated the drivers for my Geforce GTX 275 from 190.62 to 191.07.  I was not having any performance problems.  I just updated because they were there.  Unfortunately there’s a problem with the 191.07 drivers and Champions Online.  Before the update, I was getting 45-50 FPS with all the settings maxed out.  After the update, I was seeing stutters where the FPS would drop to 10-12 for a few seconds at a time.  A few times the stuttering completely went away and a few times it was severe enough that I logged out of the game, but mostly it was just an annoyance.

After doing a few Google searches and checking the Champion forums, I decided to re-install the 190.62 drivers and hope that whatever was causing the problem rolled-back correctly.  I’ve been churning drivers so much recently with my new machine, that I even had the driver installation file still in my downloads folder.  There are a lot of detailed directions on the forums that include things like rebooting in safe mode and cleaner scans, but I didn’t do anything nearly so complicated.  All I did was rerun the 190.62 installation file and then go to the Nvidia control panel to verify the version number.  No reboot, no registry scan, and no uninstall of current drivers.  I’ve done a short play session in the same area of Canada where I was seeing fairly consistent stutters, and the problem appears gone.

So going forward, I’ll be holding off on any more driver updates, unless I find that I need them.

MMO Triage

Last month I talked about the four MMO’s I was trying (Aion, Fallen Earth, Champions Online) or re-trying (Age of Conan).  Of the four, I’m only planning to continue playing Champions Online. Along with LoTRO and Eve, this leaves me with two lifetime and one monthly subscription (actually two 6-month subs since I have two accounts on Eve).

Age of Conan

I let Age of Conan expire last week, and this retry marks the least amount of progress I’ve ever made in the game.  Generally when I retry the game I create a new character and get about halfway through Tortage.  This time around, I barely got into Tortage.  I may go back if something huge changes with the game, but I’m not sure anything would make much of a difference.  The graphics are good and the combat is fun, but I just don’t have any interest in the world or the story.

Aion

I cancelled my Aion subscription yesterday.  Aion is still playable until the 29th, but I doubt I’ll spend any more time on it.  Every time I’ve sat down at my PC recently to play a game, I’ve found myself launching Champions Online instead.

I think the shine on Aion rubbed off during beta when I hit the mid-teens.  I was especially disappointed to find that flight was not intended for exploration or travel.  I’m aware of the lore reasons, but Aion is not based on a movie or book series, the lore is there to support the gameplay not vice versa.  The queues and faction locks just served to keep me from trying to rekindle my interest during the initial launch.  Even still, I might have spent more time with the game except that most of the people I know playing were scattered across different servers, and I found it difficult to decide where to roll.  One thing I know I didn’t want to do was reroll and go through the 1-10 experience multiple times.

Fallen Earth

Of the games I’m cutting, Fallen Earth was the most fun for me, and I seriously considered staying subscribed just to play off and on and support the developer.  In the end, I decided to let the subscription lapse because Fallen Earth and Eve both fulfill the same need for me and I’m much more invested in Eve.  I also prefer the slower pace of combat in Eve.

Of all of the games I’m dropping this month, Fallen Earth is the only one that I see myself coming back to at a later date.

Champions Online

Most of my playtime the last few weeks have been spent in Champions.  There are definitely some roughs edges in this game just like there are in Fallen Earth, but nothing that interferes with my fun, and having fun is my primary criteria for what I play.  I’m not planning to post a review of the game as its already been thoroughly discussed on other blogs.  If you want some links, the best overview is Syp’s Bio Break posts about the positives and negatives of the game.  I’d also recommend checking out A Ding World, Bullet Points, and NecroRogIcon for other bloggers who are playing the game.

First Anniversary!

Today marks the one year anniversary of the site.  It all started with rants about DRM and the RIAA.  Even though I’m not in Syp’s league for productivity, I have been happy that I’ve stayed with the site.  I’m at 50 articles published (including this one) and yes I did have to scramble a bit this week to hit that number.

When I started out last October I had 24 hits for the month.  January saw my first real jump with 62 hits and the blog stayed in that neighborhood until April when it jumped to 92.  Traffic jumped again in May to 132 and peaked in August at 142 with September on track for the 140+ range as well.  So right now I’m averaging 4-5 hits per day.  Not hugely popular, but not bad considering my sporadic posting rate.

So huge thanks to those of you who stop by regularly to see if I’ve gotten off my lazy butt and written anything new, and an extra huge thanks to those who’ve left comments.  While I don’t write here for anyone but myself, it’s always nice to get feedback and encouragement.

My goals for the blog for the next year are to post more regularly and more often.  This anniversary kind of snuck up on me and I did have to push a bit to hit the 50 post number.  So for this next blog year, I’m planning to double my output and hit the 150 post mark by this time next year.  So now that its on the internet, maybe I’ll have more motivation to make it happen.