Your soul is MINE!

So, been playing around with Rift since the release and I'm really liking it so far, graphic style is far enough away from WoW that it doesn't feel too much like a rehash, despite Rift stealing with every limb and then some from WoW and other toolbar-style MMOs.

Rift is a bit short on unique features, but the 2 that are there, are exceptionally unique. Souls and Invasions/Rifts are both game features that can have a fairly drastic effect on your gameplay.
Souls create a very convincing illusion of freedom, by allowing you to design your own class, rather than selecting from a dozen pre-made ones. The concept goes that as you grow in power you gain access to the souls of masters of different ways of combat, from Paladins to Marksmen, Chloromancers and Bards. In total there are some 30 souls, spread over 4 classes. Warriors are melee, either tank or DPS, Rogues are either ranged DPS, tank (yes, really) or melee DPS, Clerics are healer/dps/tank, with mages focussing on DPS, but with a healer soul as well.
The concept is such that you can pick 3 souls at a time and then put your talents points in each as you please. This means you have far more choice in creating your character than most games, but in essence it turns out into the same few things, Melee DPS, Tank, ranged DPS or healer. Some are bows, some use 2-handers, some use 2 weapons at the same time, all stick pretty boringly to the old formular.
Most classes have a few abilities that show off their own speciality, Champion (my own spec) deals with 2-handed weapons and so have several abilities that take a while to fire off, but do a ton of damage in a very small space of time (so far I'm enjoying the combination of guaranteed crit + 6-target AOE (7-800 damage per target), with a follow up ability on attacks that crit. Very nice combo.

The game is good, mechanics work (although the current world event could have benefitted from another week or so of dedicated QA work) and the graphics, even on a relatively mediocre laptop like mine, are very nice indeed. I'm just a bit fed up with the WoW/EQ2 formular, especially with all the ranting regarding addons that WoW has caused.

I'll elaborate on my own position regarding add-ons soon, since we see so many discussions on the subject popping up in Rift, but next up for dissection - Rifts! Do they screw you over, or spice up the gameplay?

For now though, I'm off once again, fair travels and remember, shit may stink, but on the world wide web no one can smell you.

Character Bio: Aranen

Once again, here comes a character from my gaming past, this time from a long-dead MMO called The Matrix Online. MxO for short, this was the continuation of the story from the much-loved (and hated) Matrix triology.

Aranen was the first character I created in MxO and the only one I ever got to a decent level. He was a bit of an all-rounded, more than capable of beating anyone down, but also capable of using the MxO crafting system, giving him the ability to "code" new clothes, weapons and abilites as needed.

He died a sad death, cut down in his prime along with the rest of the servers population when MxO, one of the most unique MMOs out there, was eventually closed down.

As for his storyline? Here it comes, hope you enjoy it...

Martin never felt at ease in the city, always finding things he thought was wrong. He understood the differences between good and evil, but felt that somehow they should not apply in the ways that they did. In short, he was an anarchist. He rarely spent much time with others, preferring to stay indoors and learn the ways of computers. Eventually he stumbled on a secret word, a word hidden in the internet itself. The Matrix.

From there he sought out all references he could find and eventually came to the conclusion that the Matrix was something so vast he could never comprehend it alone.

During this time Zion had reached an agreement with the Machines and had been allowed to recruit those among the population that were ready to be awakened. Taken from his apartment in the dead of the night, Martin was given the chance to experience where good and evil no longer applied in the ways he was used to, a world where anything was possible... 

As the effects of the red pill rushed through his systems, he died and was reborn. The skilled systems hacker Martin died and the Zion freedom fighter, Aranen, was born. 

Why I play games

I am a bit of a loner in my family, being the only person I'd class as anywhere near "gamer", (although my sisters fiancée is close). So when I talk to them, it can be a tad hard to find a subject to discuss at times, since their hobbies rarely match mine.

One of the questions I've encountered, not just in my family, but from others as well is "Why do you play games so much?"

A fair question, and one that is kind of hard to answer in a short time.
Games, at their core, is the same as other forms of entertainment. Music, films, cartoons, books and so forth all strive to tell a story. To let the player experience a story from the viewpoint of one or more characters.
A well-written book or great film can move people, can induce emotions and explain things in ways that are difficult to do in conversations.

Games take this a step further. Games allow the player to create their own stories, through the medium. No game is ever truly the same. Even the simplest games have you ending up with a slightly different ammo count, or one more secret area. Maybe you did this and that in a different order.
Much like films, books and so on, games tell a story. But while a book will only ever tell the same story, and films will only truly surprise you once, games tell your story, not that of others. And it always changes, through your own actions.

Some games allow you to control everything, creating the world and your story however you want (Minecraft), while others have a limited place for you to move about in (Doom).
Either type of game is unique, and so each playthrough is slightly different than the others.

Games, to me, are a way of passing the time, of experiencing things I can never do in real life and, most crucially, of letting me create a story about myself that is unlike any other.


I am Changrey, I am a gamer.

See ya all on the bounce.

Darkness called, but I wasn't home so he left me a message

If you get the above quote, I salute you. If not, go play Warcraft.

It was nice to be back home for Christmas and spend some time with my family. Still unsure about this whole ireland thing due to the burglary, but I'll figure it out as time goes on, I'm in no rush yet.

I've recently discovered a wonderful gem due to the great people at strategycore, Jagged Alliance 2. Squad-based tactical top-down view games are as rare nowadays as a sensible politician so finding one of the old greats is truly a joy, thank you once again GoG. Story goes something like this; country is happy, king is alone. King finds wife.Wife turns evil and tries to kill king. King runs away with the help of underground resistance movement (yeah, cuz helping the king you are rebelling against makes sooo much sense) and flees to other country. Wife (ex-wife now) crowns herself queen and begins regime of horror, death and tyranny. King sits on his ass for a decade or two and then hires 4 idiots to go beat her 10.000 man strong army and kill her.

Yes, you play the 4 (or however many mercenaries you decide to hire) idiots. Great game. Storyline, not quite so much.

In other news, it turns out that I'm a complete idiot (like you didn't know that already). Playing around with knives is dangerous at best. Playing around with knives when other, less lethal, stuff would do the job more so. Playing around with knives you don't need while extremely tired at 3 in the morning on a weekend? Beyond stupid and way into moronic level. Took 2 hours of sitting on my ass with paper wrapped around my finger to stop the bleeding. Yay me.

Cataclysm Launch

Hope everyone out there enjoyed the Cataclysm launch. I was there at the midnight launch, which was pretty tame considering what I've seen in the past, just some 20 geeks lining up nice and orderly while waiting for their Collectors Edition.

What? Yes, of course I got the Collectors, why wouldn't I?

Did have one fun event, when they asked if anyone was there for a regular edition and one little voice in the back went "yes, I am" and then this stupidly cute little chick walks out of the crowd, pays and leaves the shop, with some 20 males staring at her butt (which, to be fair, was beyond amazing).

No pictures, this ain't that kind of blog guys, sorry to disappoint.


Unfortunately I have a very early start each morning so I didn't really have the chance to play except for when I came back from work. After waiting for 2 hours, I finally get in and see a horde of hordies (population on EU-Stormreaver is something on the order of 2-1 in favor of Horde). I then spend around 30min of the next hour running around in ghost form due to the gank-groups running around before I called it quits and logged off.

I'll try again in a few days, see if the new zones calm down a bit.

Character Bio: Kaylie Shianen

Kaylie Shianen was born on a NWN server called Sollice. Like so many others, Sollice was a RPPW - Role Playing persistent World. Think small-scale MMO based on a single server.

She grew quickly, the server being quite friendly to wizards and ended up as one of the most capable characters on the server.
Unfortunately Sollice was not meant to last, and eventually the server and community died out. I took a hiatus from NWN and relaxed until I one day discovered that a number of my old companions from Sollice had found a new home at The Fold, a server that still runs today. Finding a nice way to bring Kaylie into the world, she was ressurected once more, this time on a far more challenging server.

So, after this quick IRL description, sit back and relax while you enjoy the story of Kaylie Shianen, half-elven Wizard in the world of Neverwinter Nights.


Kaylie was born in a forest far from civilization, the child of a human adventurer and one of the regions strongest elven mages. Growing up in a forest, Kaylie showed an appetite for learning and magic that surprised even her elven mother. Unfortunately, the idyllic life of the family was not to last. 


Shoren Erann, a young mage obsessed with obtaining power, sat in deep meditation in the forest. During the last several months he had been haunted by dreams of a monstrous demon, trying to make his way into his world. 
Seeing an opportunity, Shoren went deep into the forest and used his power to tear through reality, creating a rift for the demon lord to move through. Unfortunately, he was unable to contain the sheer power required and it flared out, ripping the physical form of the demon to pieces as it entered. 


Filled with the rage, the demons spirit roared through the forest, killing at random, closely followed by a corterie of demonic servants. In a glade not too far away, the spirit came upon the sleeping form of a half-elven girl, barely into her teens. Sensing the girls potential for power, the demon sent it's minions to capture her. 
Although she fought valiantly, a young girl was simply no match for the sheer speed and ferocity of the demonic hellhounds. Chained to a rock, the demons servants prepared her young form to accept their lords spirit. 


However, they did not get far. From the deepest part of the forest came a human, armored from head to toe, wielding a dual-bladed sword and his companion, a fair elven wizard, to the rescue of their only child. 
Even with the element of surprise however, the pair was unable to win. Sacrificing everything for their daughter, the two combined the power of their very souls and sent a massive blast of energy through the glade, utterly destroying the demons gathering around the young Kaylie. 


Seeing his only hope of survival fading away, the demon lord known only as the Shadow King, sent his own power surging through Kaylies body. Unable to fully possess the young girl, he forced his way and placed a small part of his consciousness deep in her soul. Deprived of all power, the demon hid inside the innocent soul of the young half-elf and waited. He would wait until he had his chance, as his kind had always done...


Several months later, a young woman left the forest and began wandering. Unable to recall her parents, or her age, the woman left the forests that had been her home for well over a decade and began the life of an adventurer. Inside her soul, a raging demon slowly began to influence the damaged mind of Kaylie Shianen. 
He had already grown her body in order to create a woman that men would find irresistible. As time passed, Kaylie would become aware of the demonic presence in her soul and a war unlike any others would be waged until her very death... 

S.T.A.L.K.E.R - No, it's not shorthand for something kinky...

Been having fun the last few days running around in a fresh game of Stalker - Call of Pripyat.
For those not in the know, STALKER is set around Chernobyl, after the nuclear incident. In this game, a 2nd disaster occured that created The Zone, a large area around the Chernobyl NPP in which the laws of physics are more or less told to go sit in the corner.

Call of Pripyat is the third game in the series, and is by far the best game so far. The number of zones is a tad too limited, but instead each zone feels larger than in the previous games.

With a fair weapon selection and a fair challenge, it's a solid choice for a FPS game with free-roam gameplay.

Oh, and a word of warning. Stay away from the Chimera.

Mental preparation

One of the things I've learned through my time in WoW is how much true mental preparation can matter.
Jong, from the Forbearance blog is the master of this art, just go read some random posts from his blog, he's a goddamn genius.

Right before doing something that you know is going to be insanely difficult, take a look in the mirror, smile and say to yourself "I know I can do this. Lets go!"

The above sentence can be diplomatically referred to as male cow leftovers.
The following is not.

I am the most fucking supremely awesome motherfucker this world has ever seen. Anyone even remotely unaware of this will this instant get stabbed by a hundred blind monkeys while angels will fly around them in a circle singing my praises so they understand their failure.

You can either choose from screaming this at the top of your lungs out the window or failing miserably.
Ok, that might have a bit excessive, but the point is that quietly telling yourself you are a good little boy/girl is useless and will never work. Belief, knowledge, moderation and understanding pale in comparison to simply boosting your ego to high heaven.

This will get you the confidence to succeed in just about anything - IF you have the goddamn skillz!
Just my 2 cents for the day.


See ya all on the far side boys and girls!

AoW

Old classics are always fun and to me, Age of Wonders is a beatiful example of a really good classic RTS. Top-down view of your kingdom, lots of fantasy creatures, a slightly cheesy story and a completely brain-dead AI. I recently discovered that Steam had the entire series up for grabs and decided to go for it, so far I haven't regretted it one bit, playing a classic like that again always puts a smile on my face, even if newer players would frown and go "where iz my pl4sm4 sw0rd!" or somesuch.

I'm just happy being able to steamroll a dozen enemy soldiers with a bunch of ballistas again. And some magic.


Oh, and as an aside, a 6x2 stone bridge elevated 15 blocks over sea level in Minecraft looks awesome and ohmygoddoestakesforevertobuild.

Health phail and addiction phail :(

I did it. I reopened my WoW account after more than a year. I feel soiled, but...

Those godforsaken shit eaters have hacked my account!!
Rottengoodfornothingbitchylittleass *grumble grumble*

Apparently lots of fun stuff have been going on, because now I have blizzard riding my ass about selling the account, likely done by whomever hacked it in the first place, most of my gathered crafting materials are gone, but at least Blizzard restored my gear...
Before I opened my account..

No, don't ask. I got no clue either.

Oh yeah, my allergies are acting up at the same time as I've been struggling with a mild dose of "I'm ill, but not ill enough to justifty staying at home", good times all around as you can tell.
Aaaand my roommate is moving back to denmark, so I'm stuck in ireland with a 2-bedroom apartment for one person.



Isn't life great? *runs off to kill something in uncontrolled rage*

Venting!

What is it with people and DM-style multiplayer? What is the fun in rushing some hapless new player 45 seconds after the game has begun? How can anyone seriously derive amusement from that?
I can understand a harrasment tactic, draining the opponents resources and slowing their progress, but amassing a gazillion zerglings/light tanks/infantry and charging in before you've even said hello?

Where is the fun in that?

I rarely bother with online multiplayer against humans because, quite frankly, most humans can kiss my ass. If I'm playing a strategy game the last thing I want to experience is some pre-pubescent little brat scream at me through their headset while rushing my workers with a bajillion scouts (and then proceed to trash-talk my mother), after 5min of playtime.

I mean, I understand that it's a viable strategy, but how can anyone seriously gain any enjoyment from that? All you get is a shallow idea of "Ha, I built my worker 0.002 microseconds before he did". How can anyone seriously translate that into being skilled at a game? If you let me amass a huge army, reach the population cap and then proceed to ambush and utterly annihilate my army without loosing a single unir, then kudos to you and thank you for a good game.

If you race your starting units and a couple of soldiers into my base before I've loaded the game? Go die in a fire. Repeatedly. Until you are forever gone, along with your entire genetic heritage.

WoW: Cataclysm

How many out there are WoW players? I know there are about 12 million active subscribers right now, but even so.
How many follows the new talent trees? I quit the game close to a year ago and was actually pretty sure I was done with it, but some of new retribution stuff has me intrigued. The idea of loosing Consecration is not quite the big point that it seems to be for some. Most WotLK fights required too much movement for it to be truly awesome anyway, even if it was a decent DPS boost.

As you can probably imagine, I used to be a retri player and likely will always be so, one of the few that would welcome a more thought-based rotation rather than the prio we had. More power to the Holy Power I say, as long as it proves balanced.
One of the biggest troubles with Retri has always been the combination of bubbleburst, the act of demolishing one player with a huge level of burst, Holy Power seems to play to that strength (the idea of Templars Verdict at 3 holy power with AW active scares the crap out of me).

I'm not currently playing, but I may end up rebooting my account, just to see what it's like. Not too keen on Cataclysm still, but maybe playing through the patches until it's released will give me a better impression, we'll see.
Cant really say I had any real point to make here, just thought i'd throw it into the world.

See ya on the bounce boys and girls.

Living abroad

It's funny how two countries that are, basically, part the same european culture can be so radically different and yet similar.

Ireland are basically what you would expect from a european country, with all the "civilized" concepts (stores, electricity etc.) well within reach. And at the same time, the roads are absolutely tiny, fast food is like a religion, people are preaching on the street and getting a decent boradband connection is like getting to third base with a supermodel, exciting to talk about and well worth bragging about when you actually get it, but completely unrealistic for 99.9% of your life.

Living here is an interesting experience. Even though I'm used to the language and it's not a major cultural difference, it's kinda interesting as time passes and you spot all the little differences.
The roads here are terrible, and yet if you see more than 2-3 bikes in a single day you can consider yourself lucky, no one uses them here. Compare that to Denmark where if you see less than 20 it's a slow day.
Food is much the same, but with a few tiny differences, such as the availability of certain ingredients - Ireland imports like 80% of everything it consumes so seasons and such don't apply in quite the same manner, everything has been frozen and thawed a dozen times over by the time it gets to the stores here anyway.


That's my weekly observation done with, I'll see you guys on the far side.

Who needs friends when you have Minecraft?

I recently dug an old friend out of the big ol' world of the interwebz called Minecraft (http://www.minecraft.net/).

This game is, in all it's simplicity, the best outlet for creative gameplay that you will find anywhere. Gameplay is quite simple, you use your hands to beat down a tree, which you turn into sticks that can be turned into a wooden axe which can then be used to gather rocks, earth and so on, ending with you sitting a billion miles underground desperately trying to mine that last block of diamond before the zombies find a way around your cunningly crafted trap filled with lava. And then your pickaxe breaks leaving you alone in the darkness with monsters coming from every hole.

Sounds simple doesn't it? Would it help if I told you that people have used the system to create everything from the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower and a frickin' Star Destroyer. To Scale.

Me? I'm busy building my 3-story wooden house with built-in lava heating system under the floor, should be an interesting challenge. For starters anyways.

However, before embarking on a journey of self-discovery through the world of Minecraft, be warned...

This game is the destroyer of social lives

So what's up with Ireland?

So I'm sitting here at work and figured I would talk a little about life here in Ireland.

For those few that have stayed in Denmark and Ireland, the differences should be obvious, but to others it might not.

1: Driving.
Taxis, busses and other vehicular forms of transportation is scary as hell here in Ireland. This is not so much due to the drivers, but more the roads. In denmark, a polite way of describing the size of irish roads would be "limited". A less polite way to describe them could be goddamn fucking tiny.

I'm not kidding either, on major roads, two busses passing each other by is like threading a needle. While wearing steel gauntlets. That are on fire.
Frickin' terrifying it is.

2:  Stores.
In Denmark, you have these tiny little kiosks all over the place, it's rare in a city be more than 15min walk from at least one of them. And then 20min from the nearest day-to-day store.

In Ireland the stores are kiosks, there are twice as many of them and you can buy hot food in each of them. And the big stores/malls? Are the size of regular stores in Denmark. Weird shit.

3: Personality:
Personality-wise it isn't actually all that different. Some people in Ireland are more inclined to exchange a polite greeting, but that's it. The vaunted irish hospitality is a legend I have yet to encounter.


That's it for me for now, see ya all on the bounce!

First post!

First off, if you are reading this then you are likely a friend or family member curious about this whole Venting Plasma thing, if not then I gotz no clue what you are doing here, but thanks for showing up anyway.

On to the blog!
I started Venting Plasma October 6th, 2010 as you can no doubt see and will probably mostly be using this place to vent my plasma, hence the name. If you are easily offended, then I suggest you go sit in a closet until someone shuts off your PC, since spam and flames won't be allowed.

If you want to know about me, Changrey, then I suggest you go look at the About page or ask me, use the adress Changrey@gmail.com please, it's the only gmail account I check regularily.


That's it for my first post, I got about 20min left until my shift ends and I go home, so I should probably get some work done!