January 27, 2012

A post about stuff

By Carla Harker

—

First, everyone go congratulate my friend Morgan Dempsey on being made Assistant Editor of Scape.

—

I haven’t played many different games lately. Mostly just Minecraft and SWTOR. My SWTOR subscription is up soon, and I won’t be renewing. Not a bad game, but like I’ve mentioned before, theme park games can only hold my interest in small doses. I tried a French MMO in open beta called Wakfu. It’s an intriguing title, far more complicated than the cutesy graphics would indicate. It’s going live in a few weeks, and they’re planning a server wipe, so I haven’t wanted to get too involved in it. Still, I’ll probably check it out again when it’s ready.

—

We’re going on vacation in Belize in a few weeks, so we’ve been upping our workout routine. I’ve added swimming to my weekly schedule, and I’m starting to get my endurance up. I’m up to a half mile, and now I’m working on needing fewer stops between laps. Our Belize vacation includes snorkeling, sea kayaking, caving, ziplines, rappelling, and hiking, so it should be a blast. Yeah, can you tell I’m not really a big fan of the whole “lounging on the beach with a book and a margarita” type of vacation?

—

I finished another round of revisions on my last book and started the first draft of another. Not willing to really say what it’s about yet, because I usually don’t know what it’s about until it’s done. But it’s coming along very well. Almost 20,000 words and I haven’t yet hit a drag point. I will eventually, of course, but I’m enjoying the ride as long as I can.

Leave a comment | posted in Miscellaneous

January 10, 2012

Star Wars: The Old Republic

By Carla Harker

I had no intention of getting into this game for months. Really. I just heard too many good things about it, though, and I finally gave in to the temptation. I’m not disappointed. It’s not unique. It’s not breaking the genre mold. But it is highly polished, and it does do a few new things well. It also has a few annoyances.

Let’s get those out of the way first. The big one is the UI. The only part of it you can move is the chat box. You can’t resize it; you can’t put your minimap where you want, or your companion bar elsewhere, or anything else. This is very annoying. The UI takes up way too much of my screen. I would shrink my icon buttons if I could, move my minimap to my preferred location (top right) and my chat box to the bottom left. This is the default setup of theme park UIs for the last ten years, but I guess Bioware thought switching all that up for no good reason was a great idea. They were wrong. I’m starting to think UI developers need to have the Sword of Damocles over their cubicles to get them to straighten up and fly right.

Another annoyance is that combat feels a wee bit sluggish. I wish instant attacks would reset just a little faster. I’m wielding a double-bladed lightsaber. I want to look badass with it, not like I’m still in training.

My overall experience with the game is good, though. The fully-voiced quests are fantastically done and add a very strong element of immersion. I thought it would be a gimmick, that I would want to hurry through them to get to the meat of the quest, but I enjoy them. I haven’t heard any weak voice acting yet. The interactivity and strong story-telling elements do a great job of disguising the standard nature of the quests. (It’s hard for MMOs to get away from kill/collect/deliver quests). Still, I’ve had very few quests that required me to kill [x] creatures. Most of those are bonus objectives. Extra XPs, sometimes extra rewards, but not required to finish the quest line. The class storylines are great, too. I’d like to see more games focus on personal stories.

My highest level character is 12, so I haven’t seen much of the game. I don’t expect to play this one more than a month or two, which is fine by me. Like I’ve mentioned before, it’s rare for me to stick with a theme park game for long. But I can easily see myself coming back to it every few months as new content is added, or when I’d like to try out another class.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , | posted in Games

December 30, 2011

Top 3 of 2011

By Carla Harker

Since everyone else is doing their Top [X] of 2011, why not? Some things didn’t come out in 2011, but that’s when I read/saw/played them.

Books

 

Since getting my iPad, I’ve read more books than I usually do in any given year, and I’m happy about that. These were all digital purchases.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them.

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Non-gamers might not find this one as interesting, but I absolutely loved every minute of it. I like the fact that the author knows games, and it’s obvious he holds a deep fondness for them. His OASIS is the perfect computer system, and anyone who loves MMOs will understand the appeal.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

In America’s Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota–and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it’s worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life.…

In this powerful novel, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a vivid and raw, uncertain future.

I almost didn’t read this, because I tend to have a dislike for long paragraphs unbroken by dialog, and that makes up the first couple of pages. But the story significantly picks up the pace, and I could barely put it down once I got into it. I’ve read a lot of YA dystopian fiction this year, and this is my favorite by far.

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard

A charmingly gothic, fiendishly funny Faustian tale about a brilliant scientist who makes a deal with the Devil, twice.

Johannes Cabal sold his soul years ago in order to learn the laws of necromancy. Now he wants it back. Amused and slightly bored, Satan proposes a little wager: Johannes has to persuade one hundred people to sign over their souls or he will be damned forever. This time for real. Accepting the bargain, Jonathan is given one calendar year and a traveling carnival to complete his task. With little time to waste, Johannes raises a motley crew from the dead and enlists his brother, Horst, a charismatic vampire to help him run his nefarious road show, resulting in mayhem at every turn.

It’s hard to say how much I love this character. He’s completely amoral, highly sarcastic, and easily annoyed. Think Gregory House, if he could raise the dead and had fewer ethical qualms. I would gladly read any story he was in, and I hope the author is able to write many more Johannes Cabal books.

Runners Up: Divergent by Veronica Roth and Johannes Cabal the Detective by Jonathan L. Howard

Games

 

Minecraft

I avoided this game for a long time, even knowing millions loved it and friends raved about it. The graphics were a real turnoff to me. But a friend convinced me to try it, knowing my love of sandbox games, so I took the plunge. I came up for air the first night six hours later, bleary-eyed but eager to play more. I convinced Joe to play it, and now two months later, we’re still playing almost every night. We have a server with a handful of friends playing, have added some of the biggest and best multiplayer mods, and I’ve probably put more hours into our world than I have every game combined in the last six months. Oh, and I found a gorgeous texture pack to apply to the graphics.

Skyrim

If you know games at all you know this one. It’s the fifth installment of the Elder Scrolls series. It’s an open-ended roleplaying game set in a fantasy world of elves and dragons and magic. It’s easily one of the best-looking games out, but more importantly, it’s an exciting, sandbox world where you get to decide what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. I’ve only put in about three dozen hours (for the reason, see entry above), and I’ve only just touched the main quest line. Some days I just get in and read a few of the in-game books. Other times, I go out until I stumble upon a cave or dungeon or house and just see what’s inside. I put literally hundreds of hours into the previous Elder Scrolls game, and I expect to do the same with Skyrim.

Everquest 2

I’ve mentioned before that Everquest 2 is the best theme park MMO out, and I stand by that. Their latest expansion, Age of Discovery, is filled with content, including a new dungeon creator that allows players to make dungeons for others to complete. And the items for those dungeons are found from drops, giving you even more reason to go out questing. I’ll go back to this game in the future.

Runner Up: Fallen Earth

Movies/TV

 

I watch so little TV and movies that I’m lumping these together.

The Wire, Season 5

Finally finished the show up. This is quality TV the likes of which you rarely see on screen. It’s not always easy to watch. Characters you like often do terrible things. The good guys aren’t always easy to identify. But even when the focus is on the politicians, the show still holds your interest. It feels real in a way no show has ever felt before. Oh, and it’s surprisingly funny. Laugh-out-loud funny.

Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil

I heard about this one mentioned by Candace Havens on Twitter, so when we were looking for a movie to rent one night, we decided to give it a try. Watch the trailer and see for yourself. I’m always worried with comedies that all the funny parts are in the trailer, so I was pleasantly surprised to find this wasn’t the case with this movie. It was genuinely funny, and the two heroes are dumb but sweet.

Psych

I won’t pretend this is the greatest show in the world, but I enjoy watching James Roday and Dulé Hill as the heroes of this comedy detective series. The two work well together and have great comedic timing. I’ve been watching some episodes of The West Wing, and it’s funny to see how different Charlie Young is from Gus. I think Dulé Hill is an underrated actor, and I hope he keeps working for a long time.

Runner up: In Plain Sight

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in Games, Miscellaneous, Publishing

December 23, 2011

Protect a censorship-free Internet

By Carla Harker

Short post before the holiday weekend. SOPA is on hold for now, but it’s important for people to understand why it’s such a terrible idea. Watch this four-minute video to understand why if SOPA passes, a censorship-free Internet may become a thing of the past.

 

I have a suggestion for all the search engines and DNS providers: hold a week of protest in which you remove every site for every company and organization that supports SOPA. Remove them from search engines. Cut off their DNS. In other words, show them exactly how it would feel to be banned from the Internet.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , | posted in Miscellaneous

December 8, 2011

Has it really been so long?

By Carla Harker

I didn’t intend to go three weeks between blog posts, but two long vacations and a Minecraft addiction sort of made time run away. Yes, I’m still playing Minecraft. A lot. As in, I only have 30 hours in Skyrim since release because the rest of my time has been spent in our world. This is a game with so many endless possibilities, it redefines the phrase.

Several years ago, we visited the Great Sand Dunes National Park and climbed the dunes. In many parks, you’re expected (and sometimes required) to stay on designated trails, both for your safety and to protect the park’s resources. The Dunes aren’t like that. You’re free to go anywhere, take any route. It was exhilarating.

Do we take this really high dune now, since our ultimate goal is the highest dune in the park, or take that downward path, knowing it only means more ascending later? Do we travel along the top of this dune to that spot further from our goal and then ascend, or take this shorter path that requires more climbing? Sometimes we picked wrong (like in that picture, where we were sure it was a gentle rise when we headed for it. The sand really plays havoc with your depth perception).

Just as I love forging my own path in real life, I love doing it in games. Minecraft hands you the tools to do whatever you want and then steps back and says, “Go for it.”

Leave a comment   |  tags: , | posted in Games, Miscellaneous

November 17, 2011

Hooked

By Carla Harker

You might think this will be a blog post about Skyrim. After all, it’s the game I’ve been most looking forward to. It’s the only game in ages I actually preordered, and off Steam so I could play it the minute it unlocked. Except I didn’t. When Skyrim unlocked, I was playing my latest addiction, Minecraft.

For some of you, this is old news. Minecraft has been in beta for ages. People have been talking about how incredible the game is for months and months. Four million copies sold. Yadda yadda. But I couldn’t get past the dated graphics. I don’t require top notch graphics. I appreciate them, but I’ll gladly play games that are graphically unappealing if the gameplay is awesome. But I thought Minecraft’s graphics were beyond my threshold.

But the idea of the game was interesting. Then I saw a PC Gamer article on the Top 25 Minecraft Mods. My interest was piqued once more, but I had enough games to play. I had active MMO subscriptions. Skyrim’s release was just around the corner. I asked, begged, pleaded with Dempsey to talk me out of buying the game. She, being the black-hearted woman she is, did exactly the opposite. She even took to Twitter and rallied the troops. No fewer than six people told me I was insane for not playing Minecraft.

So I took the plunge.

I finally shut the game down six hours later that first night. About thirty minutes in, I told my husband, “I…I think I understand what all the fuss is about.” The next day I kept talking about it. He’d been as opposed to it as me, but he watched some videos. He, too, decided to try it out.

We probably played about 20 hours that weekend alone. I found the photo realism texture pack, which vastly improved on the graphics.

We got other people in it. Everyone seems to be thoroughly enjoying it. It dominates our game time. We’ve found an abandoned mine shaft deep in a cavern, a fortress in the Nether world, several small dungeons full of mobs and treasure chests. We’ve built castles and towers, and a skyway, and even a three-way-switching minecart rail beneath the earth.

I’ve started modding my single player game. Mods add so much more to the game. I want to mod the server, but with the imminent release of the final build this Friday, all the mod-makers are holding off on updating.

This is a game of extraordinary possibilities, a true sandbox. Not many games give you a dungeon to explore, and then let you take out not only the treasure, but the support beams, the walls, and then lets you carve your own path back to the surface (literally).

Leave a comment | posted in Games

November 14, 2011

APB: Reloaded live action trailer

By Carla Harker

Got a press release about the APB Reloaded live action trailer and wanted to share it. It’s pretty cool, if a bit heavy on the slow motion. The song kicks ass. Check it out.

The release of the video trailer marks the launch of a unique Facebook campaign for APB Reloaded.  [a]list games and GamersFirst have partnered with Fanrank, the Facebook app designed to track and reward influential fans, to invite new players and encourage existing ones to spread the word about the game.  The campaign begins by awarding in-game prizes for those who share the live action trailer and get their friends to join in the Free2Play fun in APB Reloaded.  Later stages will introduce bigger prizes, new trailers, and ultimately a player museum of in-game and user generated content.

For the APB Reloaded Fanrank campaign, please visit: http://tinyurl.com/7rcuhr8.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , | posted in Games

November 11, 2011

Delaney

By Carla Harker

She came from a no-kill animal shelter, the only cat in the cage actively looking around, examining her surroundings. She caught my attention immediately, and when I held her, I knew she was the perfect cat. After I signed the paperwork and paid the adoption fee, the woman who had cared for her all but cried when she handed her over. I could tell she was going to miss her, and it soon became obvious why.

She’s so sweet and loving. When she was young, she was awake and active more than any other cat I’d ever seen. Her favorite toy was the string from a pair of sweatpants. She carried it with her everywhere. She would drag it into one room, play with it, then carry it somewhere else to play with. I found it in a different place all the time.

She isn’t the smartest cat in the world. In fact, I think she might be one of the dumbest. When she climbs on the kitchen counters, virtually the only place in the house she isn’t allowed, she meows loudly, letting us know very clearly what she’s doing. She used to do somersaults and try to look cute when she did something wrong, in the hopes the cute would make us forget what she did. Sometimes it worked.

She’s perfectly content sitting in our laps, or sleeping under the blankets in bed, curled between my arm and side. She loves having her belly rubbed. When we put a pet door in the door to the attached garage for the litter box, she discovered heaven in the form of an un-air conditioned garage during a Texas summer.

She’s almost 15, and she’s been with us for 13 years. She’s in a lot of pain, having a lot of problems, and it’s only going to get worse. We don’t like seeing her suffer. Tomorrow morning we take her to the vet. She won’t be coming back.

I wish it could have lasted longer, but I’m glad I got to know her.

2 comments   |  tags: , | posted in Miscellaneous

November 3, 2011

New short story

By Carla Harker

I posted a new short story, “Best Wishes” in the fiction section. Be careful what you ask for.

Leave a comment | posted in Writing

October 24, 2011

Why Everquest 2 is better than World of Warcraft

By Carla Harker

Everquest II and World of Warcraft came out around the same time. EQ2 was released in October 2004. WoW was released in November 2004. And yet EQ2 has never garnered the numbers that WoW has. I didn’t play EQ2 on release (I was playing WoW like everyone else). In fact, I didn’t start playing EQ2 until early 2010. But I’d heard a lot of fan ravings about the game, and as I’m prone to do, I decided to check out the game.

I was blown away.

First, let me get the bad out of the way. EQ2′s graphics are not terrific. Unlike WoW, which holds up better with its cartoony style, EQ2′s art is showing its age.

OK, now that I have that out of the way, let me tell you what EQ2 does better than WoW. (I should note that everything I’m talking about is as a subscriber. I have no idea what the F2P limitations are for the game).

Housing: Five years later, WoW has yet to implement housing. EQ2, on the other hand, has one of the best housing systems in any MMO. Tens of thousands of objects, with the ability to place hundreds of them in a house using almost any layout you wish. The carpenter tradeskill class exists to craft housing objects. Holiday events almost always give housing object rewards, and many quests do the same. You can have more houses than you’ll likely ever need.

Quests: Admittedly, most of the quests follow the standard formulas of kill, collect, or deliver. But you can interact with the quest givers with back-and-forth dialog, rather than an NPC who simply gives you the quest in a box and an option to accept or reject. Your quest log can have, I believe, 75 quests at once.

Dungeons: I haven’t run many dungeons, since they tend to require groups, but I have run a couple. But one thing I noticed is that you find more quests once you’re inside than you grabbed outside. You don’t grab 10 quests and then run in with a group and complete them. You grab 3 and then run in and find 10 more. You know how you start a dungeon with as many empty bags as possible? You should also empty your quest journal as much as you can, too. Other games, including WoW, do this, but not to the same degree. I’ve run many more dungeons in WoW than I’ve run in EQ2, but I think I might have come across more quests within a single EQ2 dungeon than I ever did in every WoW dungeon combined.

Collectibles: EQ2 has objects scattered around the world for you to find. When you have an entire set, a special collector NPC will give you a quest reward (like a piece of jewelry or a housing object or even a new collectible). You can make good money selling your extra collectibles to other players. I have no idea how many collectible sets exist, but I’ve completed several dozen and have several dozen more in an incomplete state.

Exploration: I mentioned earlier that many dungeon quests are available within the dungeon. Dungeons aren’t alone. Objects inside buildings or out in the world will often highlight. When you click on them, they provide yet another quest. These could be anything from a sack of grain inside a mill that has a note tucked inside it to a book on a shelf (and you might be able to take the book and store it in your house when you’re done) to a section of destroyed wall. The game truly rewards you for taking the time to look around. I have yet to play an MMO that gives you as many quests outside the standard quest givers.

Bag space: I have yet to see an MMO that offers the amount of bag space as EQ2. I have six personal bag slots, each of which can hold a bag of whatever size I choose; my personal bank has 12 slots, plus another 8 shared slots to share gear amongst all the characters of the same faction. Each of those can store a bag, too. The largest bags I’ve seen have been 48-slot, though I don’t know if those are really the largest. You also have space in a housing vault, which can hold bags to store stuff, and the market’s available slots. It’s a pack rat’s dream.

Market: I don’t know who came up with the idea that auction houses were the way to go with MMOs, but I’m glad EQ2 got away from that. Instead of an AH, they use a market. You can buy partial quantities from a single seller instead of being forced to compute the per unit price of one seller over another. Also, each of your six slots can hold their own bags, so you can sell dozens of items at once. Plus, there’s no time limit on sales, and you don’t even have to activate an item once you put it on the market, so you can throw everything you plan to sell into your market bags and then come back later and set their prices.

Legends of Norrath: Even before EQ2 went F2P, subscribers received five free packs of LoN cards each month for maintaining an active subscription. Five packs of cards, at $3.00 a pack purchased normally. LoN is a very fun, very strategic collectible card game that is plenty great in its own right. (IIRC, new EQ2 players also receive a starter set to learn how to play the game). You don’t have to play EQ2 to play LoN, though you can play the card game from within EQ2. LoN packs will also sometimes have Everquest/Everquest 2 items that can be redeemed in-game. These might be housing objects, potions that provide XP buffs, or even mounts or house deeds. (My main has a really nice house that I got from a LoN pack).

This last feature I want to mention is one that isn’t even out yet. The winter 2011 expansion plans to introduce a Design Your Own Dungeon feature. And even cooler than just creating dungeons for other players to run (as cool as that is), the objects you will use to design them have to be found in the game. It’s housing with mobs. I think it’ll be very popular.

If I don’t stop here, this could easily turn into a 5,000-word article. I haven’t even touched on the unique races, the dozens of classes, the open world PvP (on PvP servers), the sheer size of the world, the lore, the gorgeous spell effects, guilds, and more. Needless to say, it’s a truly superior MMO well worth the $15/month. I play a lot of MMOs. Dozens of them. I won’t pretend I’m not likely to move on to another game in a few weeks, simply because that’s what I do (and also, Skyrim comes out in three weeks). But when I started EQ2 in March 2010, I told my friends it might well have been the best theme park MMO I’ve ever played. Getting back into it has only reconfirmed that belief. EQ2 should be the one talking about its 10 million subscribers. WoW, for all its polish and humor, simply isn’t in the same league.


2 comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Games, Review

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.