Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Games Workshop attacks blogs

So much for the free advertising theory behind empowering your fans. Today several blogger sites went offline and some research indicated that Games Workshop has gone after several fan sites for posting what they feel is illegal shots of White Dwarf magazine. 

Full information at the links below:





"I spoke to Larry Vela, the owner of Bell of Lost Souls and he said that he doesn't have a DMCA notice and Google hasn't told him why his site is down.  He is working the problem, and needless to say, not happy.  And considering how good BoLS is for Games Workshop, you would think they would be nice to him. You can still sign in to the BoLS Lounge where the discussion is on here."

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

RIFT expansion key giveaway


THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED DUE TO RECENT F2P ANNOUNCEMENT I HAD TO CUT IT SHORT


Expires:
05/19/13



If you want it for free and get all the goodies and HAVE NOT played play the free version and work up those hours and get to EXPERIENCED on RAPTR.

Giving away my +RIFT expansion code plus game time. Comment here if you would USE IT (like as in actually play the game). Then I will use a random number generator to pick a winner.


Make sure you have some way for me to email the code. 

http://stormlegion.riftgame.com/en/

Gamers ranked Experienced or above in RIFT on RAPTR (www.raptr.com) can earn a free copy of the original RIFT game, Storm Legion expansion, and 30-days of complimentary game time!

Existing RIFT gamers will receive the expansion! 


Work towards this reward by playing the free version of the game and begin logging hours immediately. Once you have reached Experienced the game is yours


This reward will grant you the following:
A free copy of the original RIFT game
Storm Legion expansion
30-days of complimentary game time

IF YOU ARE AN EXISTING RIFT PLAYER (as in currently SUBBED)

You will only unlock the Storm Legion Expansion. You will NOT be receiving a free 30 days.




Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Back to time in RIFT

So now I am down to two MMO's with a third coming up in the form of Neverwinter. Of course I am still playing Champions Online and then I am heading back to RIFT.

With my return to World of Warcraft done (see this post http://hudsonshideout.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-self-inflicted-torture-of-world-of.html) I decided to head back to RIFT for the first time since last October.

I had been an active raider in a raiding guild but when the new expansion launched I lost all will to level and see the new end game stuff. I leveled my Assassin so hard and fast that I burned out by the time the expansion went live and really didn't like raiding with him. In RIFT I like to tank or heal end of story. 

So I went back and decided to finally work on my level 23 cleric which is on another shard separate from the shard with the raiding guild. I'm over on Wolfsbane right now and the cleric is already level 31.

A steady dose of instant adventures and dungeon runnings plus a health swig of experience potions nets me 1-2 levels a day and that is very casual. 

I found a healing mod that offers click to heal ability so my responses are super fast but healing under the pure cleric soul I built can be a bit iffy since there is no real AOE heal. The build is based around SHIELDING damage. So if the group starts taking a lot of damage I can find myself in trouble. So far I have healed about 10-12 dungeon runs and have picked it up quite well. 

Along side this I am working my Alchemy and other trade skills during down time and when I just want to relax. For the most part I am back in RIFT to also check out the Dimensional Housing (I have the Chamber dimension) and because the people are more tolerable for the most part. Also RIFT does have a lot to offer for a hard core player if you so choose to go that route. I'll stick with it and see how healing goes at higher levels. At least I have the option of switching to DRUID if I need to. I am still looking for a more traditional style of healing equal to say a WoW Holy Priest.

Monday, April 15, 2013

Latest Heroclix additions

The latest models I got include a 105 point Dark Knight Rises Marquee Figure with a great pose as well as Antman and a veteran Reed Richards. Mixed among those are another 119 point Batman slinging batarangs and a 175 point Super Adaptoid who is a badass.

I have always liked the villain Batroc the Leaper (no idea why) and I try to order a mix of villains and heroes.







The self inflicted torture of World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft is not the same game we grew up with. It is a pale reminder of a pale reminder of what MMO's used to be. And even then it was a pale reminder. 

One thing has not changed. People have gotten ruder than they were about a year and a half ago. As if that was possible. You would think in this day and age of free raid loots and buffs for being bad players that the WoW community would somehow be enlightened. This is not the case. Now they just complain about more. They whine about more. They are usually more clueless and overall give an unpleasant experience. Some of them had never even heard of Leeroy Jenkins and asked me what that title was and where to get it. Yes I felt old and I felt like a WoW dinosaur.




Yet it is diving into this cesspool of PUGS and moronic raiders that somehow makes me feel the most at home. I actually like getting into it with these people. While the game brings a modicum of frustration it also fulfills the basic need of grouping and doing dungeons in a manner that I find the most satisfying after all these years. And it has grown into years now hasn't it? About 10 of them. Longer than I stayed in EQ1 so I guess that makes WoW the MMO I have played the most in my lifetime. Which is scary and cool all at once.

To share a story this weekend is to remember that in order to succeed at this game you have to throw good will, sharing and overall pleasantness out the window. People in WoW are in it for one thing and one thing only: themselves.

I now have 6 level 85's but cannot bring myself to push into Pandaria. I am more interested at this point in rounding out my account with an 85 of every class possible. I have some scattered about on the Horde side and some scattered about on the Alliance side but no matter what the side I am on always loses PVP. No matter the server or the battlegroup. 

The only classes to date I have NOT raided with are a druid and a warlock. In fact those are the only that are not 85. Unless of course you count the Monk which at this point I am working on. On the Horde side I have a Pandaren Tank Brewmaster. On the Alliance side I have a Pandaren Healer Monk. 


The story goes as follows while playing my 82 Paladin:

My 82 paladin is TOTALLY naked. I sold all his gear about a year ago to lump my gold for a server move. In order to gear up I decide to run some older Lich King Heroics. One to practice and one to just get some easy greens or blues.

First dungeon I get into some asshat starts complaining: "Just wondering why level 81+'s Q for Lich King heroics when the gear is better in Cata?"

Right away I'm thinking "wait what?" 

This guy is complaining about a 82 tank for his heroic when he has it easy? I'm TOTALLY baffled by this. Not only is the wait time for a tank about 15-20 minutes but no longer than a year ago people would love an 82 tank on their heroics to help them just blow through it. Then he got to the crux of the matter.

He starts bitching that he wont get full Justice Points. Says "it fucks us over for Justice Points" and in that regard I have no idea what he means. I have been out of the game so long that I am not even sure what he is talking about in terms of nerfed Justice Points.

It was a sad thing too. This group was good. The healer was dead on begging me to pull bigger and everyone was happy except this one guy. Constantly ragging me for being in a dungeon below my level. When all he had to do was use common sense and inspect me to see my green AH plate and mail I was wearing to tank in.

Finally I had had enough. Then I go: "You wanna know what really fucks you over? Being a asshole and whining about Justice Points when we could have easily run these all afternoon. Have a good day" 

I put him on ignore, pull two entire rooms and leave the group mid pull. I had mentioned I was going to do this to everyone else in the group but this individual of course. I got several "LOL's" later when we reformed but none of us know if he perished or not amid a sea of mobs. Much more fulfilling than just group kicking him in my opinion. 

I went on to hit 83 and get Northrend Dungeonmaster with that Paladin. Obviously not the first time for that achievement but I had to wonder what caused me to shelve him and not play him anymore so that he did NOT have that particular accomplishment.

Probably the players. Who knows. 

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Heroclix Online Fight: Shield vs Random Villains


So last nights #Heroclix Online game came down to two survivors: A Doombot and Captain America. Eliminated already were : Black Widow, Nick Fury, Agent Coulson, Red Skull, Sin and Harley Quinn. 

Doombat had one click left and Captain America was on 6 clicks of damage. Cap had the next turn so I had to do something as he was rested and would be allowed to act.

I activated the Doombot's self destruct mechanism and blew up the room doing one damage to Captain America but it was not enough. He still had one HP left even after taking a total of 7 damage in the fight. Doombot blew up and my opponent won the game. That Cap is one tough SOB. 

The game also featured Harley Quinn mind controlling Black Widow to attack Coulson with a Flurry move. The Red Skull took out Nick Fury with a poison attack.

Sin was demolished by Cap's shield and Coulson later knocked himself out by over exerting.




Saturday, April 6, 2013

Over 9 hours of Heroclix

Friday was a busy day of heroes for me and Crabby Old Gamer.

We started by playing some small games of Heroclix to learn the system and then visited 3 stores in his area to check out the stock of the Clix. Surprisingly the local stores do not stock a lot of starter sets. The selection was slim at many of the places we went. Even the big known stores in the area. EBAY and Troll and Toad still remain our best source of Heroclix merchandise.

The games we played were small test games.

In no particular order we play Dark Knight Rises Bane vs. 3 SWAT troopers. You can figure how that ended. One trooper was killed with Bane's rocket launcher and the other two were hit so hard they went through a truck.

We played Union Jack vs Moleman and a Skrull Commando. Union Jack easily handled the villains with well  placed shots from his pistol. We played a Green Lanter vs Cat Woman one off match. Cat Woman was on Hal Jordan rather quickly but two uppercuts to her jaw put her down.

Our best battle of the day was an epic streetfight involving Annihilus and the Wrecker vs Ironman and Human Torch.

Annihilus went down early but the Wrecker got into hand to hand with Iron Man and pounded him so hard Tony Stark was forced to reboot his armor systems twice and regenerate himself. The final blow was a series of lucky rolls by myself involving Iron Mans boot repulsors. I manged to get to the part of his dial that activated the repulse power and the Wrecker was sent flying 6 squares back. This opened up the place for the Human Torch to blast the wrecker and he rolled 2 sixes which is a crit and a knock back. With the 3 damage the Wrecker was KO'd and knocked into the nearby office building and that was that.

Later that night when I got home I hopped online and fought a 200 point battle in Heroclix Online with Sue Storm and the Human Torch.

A pretty good day of comic book nerdery if I do say so myself.







Thursday, April 4, 2013

Heroclix beginnings

Crabby Old Gamer and I are taking care of our Superhero fix by going the Clix route. At first we were going to try and go the SuperFigs rules system route but I ended up not liking it too much. Also I wanted to play Marvel characters and why bother going to a site that has "generic" Marvel stats when we can just buy pre painted Clix figures and battle it out?

Also Clix has a wide following and buying into the system would mean we could find others if we were so inclined.

Crabby had a large box of Clix already but it was a mess. I took it upon myself to separate this box by Universe (Marvel, DC, Indies) and then further sort it out by sets. There was a lot of Horrorclix mixed in so we had to set those aside.



Then we each went to the local Graham Crackers Comic Store and bought some basic starter sets. I then got the Marvel Avengers Movie starter set off of Troll and Toad and he got some FF sets. We were then underway. Tomorrow is our first test game to learn the rules.


You can find all the rules for Heroclix and the character cards on the official site here:


If you want even deeper reference points head over to HC Realms and check out their lists of figures for all sets. 


There are some good beginner videos on the web as well:



Tuesday, April 2, 2013

First Sentinels of the Multiverse games end in disaster


I managed to get in two games of Sentinels of the Universe this weekend.

The first game was Tachyon, Bunker, Fanatic and Visionary vs Plague Rat. The battle took place in Rook City.

Plague Rat turned out to be a little too much for us to handle. Though we managed to put some damage on him I dont think the heroes ever got him halfway down. With the infections and his regeneration we realized we just had the wrong set of heroes for the job. By the time Bunker got into full swing (and I learned how to use him) it was way too late and the entire super hero crew was badly beat up.

At this point we decided to call the first game and then moved on to game two. The second battle was fought between our intrepid heroes on the Mars Base. This involved Baron Blade and Haka, Fanatic, Tachyon and Tempest.

On the very last card flip of the game, with 14 cards in the Baron's discard pile and him about to pull the Moon into the Earth, Tempest did JUST enough damage to cause the Baron's card to flip over and save the universe. This caused his discard pile to be reshuffled and we had a minor victory. However this new robot version of Baron Blade did in the heroes. Not only did we diffuse ONE bomb, we had another Mars Base Self Destruct bomb come up near the end. With Tempest down and out and Haka badly wounded we just did not have enough left in the tank to beat Baron Blades second card side.

Still the games had epic moments and this was by FAR the most fun I had playing a card game since my first Game of Thrones game back last year. The stories that you can tell and the things that happen are a blast and feel like a Hero movie. We knew that next time we face Baron Blade we had to go at him directly and ignore his minions. We did a TON of damage as a team but a lot of it was soaked up by his damn machines and force fields and scads of minions.

As for game one. Well we just got slaughtered. Until we are more familiar with the heroes and what they do against certain villains its best for us to keep the complexity as low as possible. The Plague Rat was a bad choice for a first game. We honestly thought "He's a rat, how hard can he be?" but I reckon it pays to look at a villains deck to see what he can do. Or maybe not. Surprise make it all the more fun.

NEXT TIME!