LadyCrimson

I wish I could try that Neverwinter MMO everyone seems to be playing, but I still can't. So back to Path of Exile and grinding for those currency/gear-altering items with a blue frog for company, while still mostly wishing the Planet Explorers beta .6 was out already. Oh and I've decided the melee issue in PoE is mostly latency. I don't mean big jerky lag spikes, just the overall response time ... I don't know where their servers are compared to where I am, and it's not off by a lot/terrible, but definitely not as good/consistent as Diablo3 or even Diablo2. Another reason I don't like online games most of the time. I hate latency.

One thing I used to like about the internet was helping people when they had questions about ... whatever it is I might have some personal knowledge or experience with. But since I'm not a rocket scientist or encyclopedia, these days that occurs less and less often as most of the time the "just Google/wiki it" mentality kicks in and thus a lot of questions are rarely asked to begin with. Probably why I like gaming forums right after a game is released ... for a couple weeks at least, people can't "just google it" and info questing/help discussions still takes place.

Since you're posting here, I assume you're all right? Hope so. I had an accident similar to that once, except the other car was making a turn across traffic lanes (someone else in my directional lane had waved him on) and crashed into my driver's side as I was moving past. Impact smushed my little 70's Toyota, both side doors wouldn't open. I still drove it for a little while, tho, via crawling in from the other side. I was actually surprised how well that center beam/support between the driver/passenger door held up.

Had extra PoE points left over...so I got one of the blue frog pets. Isn't it cute. You can have it be visible or not visible and it "works" with all characters. And I still have enough points to buy 6 more stash tabs if I want, because I'm a lazy packrat.

Hey, Woldan stole my bunny! ...Peter was my "first pet" when I was a kid. Then I was allowed to have a cat. They liked to pal around. --@Raithe - that 1st dog pic is great because of the awesome "doggy smile." --@Hurlshot - I know little about hockey, but those are nice action shots. Did your wife take those?

While they may share some genetic traits or whatever, no one is ever going to convince me that sauropods were giant ducks or flamingos. I'd like some non-flying dragons. They can be tough skinned like a rhino if you want, instead of scaly. Charging rhino-dragon...I can see it.

Is that one of those mini-horses, or an actual pony?

Played some Path of Exile, my duelist. Got to Act2, found a portal spell gem (yay) and have a sword that makes me, for the moment, too powerful (yay). They definitely improved the game quite a bit since last I spent any good chunk of time with it. Enemies have higher damage tricks to make you be more cautious. The passive tree is still huge but easier to navigate...but also more restricting per class. Nice to have what feels like a full sell/buy routine now too...I remember when all you could do was buy basic stuff with ID scrolls. I still dislike the melee combat feel ... one of those where packs get clustered together/almost on top of each other (and move like lightning) so it's hard to click-aim. Feels like a bit o' latency too. Or just bad melee feedback, where you're never quite sure if you're hitting something or just chopping at air. eg, Diablo games do melee better than PoE ... PoE is basic aRPG fun but something is still missing.

What the? ... maybe it's the Dungeon Keeper hand-slap of doom ...

Well I tried everything browser cookie related I could think of. Still nothing. Tried searching their forums, see nothing similar. Only thing I can think of now is that they don't actually mean cookies...like network/port/firewall access errors or something instead. Not a problem with other online games I've played but y'never know. Bah. Guess I won't be playing, doesn't seem worth figuring it out. Just for reference, it looks like this when I login to the launcher.

Click Neverwinter desktop icon. Launcher window launches. Login. "You must enable cookies to use this website." Enable cookies for perfectworld and nw.perfectworld. Nothing. Go to their website, login there, allow all scripts/cookies, turn off browser pop-up blocker in case launcher is considered a browser popup window in some funky way, allow third party cookies, etc. Still says I need browser cookies enabled when I launch/login the launcher window. To play a game. I'm not pleased...is this a browser game? I didn't realize that. What cookies am I supposed to be allowing? Or am I supposed to be using Internet Explorer instead of Firefox, in which case I won't be playing this game?

It's at almost 70% now, so no point in starting over...sometimes it has bursts of almost 1500KB/sec. I'm guessing a couple hours total at this rate. *shrug*

I dunno...if a game is designed to have a fog of war, seems like turning it off would really ruin the discovery part of the game. But I suppose if one doesn't mind losing that, an option to turn it off could be fine. Myself, in such games I just prefer to uncover everything by actually exploring. But then, I'm not the sort who is annoyed by a little bit of fog of war left on map or mountain edges. You could have the type of fog that some games use for after you've uncovered area ... the filter affect where you can see trees and landscape through it, but not people/certain features....instead of a total black screen effect. You'd still lose some of the discovery/surprise tho, even if towns, cave entrances etc weren't initially visible (just land/trees/water features). P.S. If you're more concerned about how much is completely visible even after "discovering" it (view/light radius distance of party et al), that's a bit different. You could still do something similar, with no fog of war at all but people/creatures not showing up until a certain distance, but that might feel a bit odd if they just popped into the middle of the screen. So seems like you'd still want some kind of light/other filter past the view radius "circle."

One two three four I don't like to rhyme no more Five six seven eight Such is a path's ending fate Nine ten eleven twelve When our brain we store and shelve.

As much as I dislike Steam at times, at least they're usually, for me, consistent with their D/L speeds. 15% done! I might get to try the game out before dark.

The internet doesn't change your basic personality. If you're a non-social couch potato, you're likely going to be one with or without the internet in your life. The internet just gives you a reason to give to other people and to yourself. What I think the internet can do (to some people) is reduce their in-person social skills ... because of disuse. Use it or lose it, as they say. If one uses the internet too often as a substitute for in-person socialization, one starts to lose the skills of how to communicate in person, when there's no editing, no DEL key, no pause button, no "well I don't want to answer/deal with that so I'm leaving the page." Of course, this happens if you're just sitting at home reading books 24/7, too...but the 'net tends to give one the feeling that you're still working certain social skills, when you're not...or at least, it's a different kind of social skill. Kinda like how one can be the talker in a close relationship but fall silent during a party, because being talky in a comfortable/easy situation (spouse/friends or faceless 'net) isn't the same as being talky in a room full of strangers staring you in the face, waiting for you to speak. If you want to be a dynamo public speaker, you need to practice offline. So I don't find the guy's "findings" surprising at all. Like anything else, the internet is a tool, and how one uses it, and how "bad" (or good) it is to someone's psyche, lifestyle, etc. just depends on the individual.

Not a good sign... (a while later) Well at least it's getting faster... ( a bit later) ...nope, slowed way down again. Then up. Then down. It's going to be like that, eh.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of Tina - for the annoying factor, not for being racist - but my mind is conjuring up all kinds of Gearbox D&D humor for that DLC. I hope Claptrap is part of it. Hopefully it'll be good...and a bit longer than the last DLC.

Saw some Nat. Geo. film "The Last Lions" (African lions) - it was great, if a bit edit-heavy to create a cohesive story, but meh who cares. It's main aim was to inspire "us", I guess, about how few may be left now (maybe only 20k). And on that level it works. Majestic, and a couple spots of nature-can-be-cruel heart-breaking stuff. Time to watch something a bit cheerier before I go to sleep.

Kittahs! Luv that 2nd pic. Makes me wonder what the cat is thinking, heheh. Probably "no, no, I'm the cute one, bring that camera back over here!"

YES! YES! OH YES!

Well I'll ask my usual question....how much can you solo this MMO? Their website makes it sound kinda interesting. Being free/open beta, I might check it out a bit this weekend, assuming I can get on the servers etc.

I'm relieved to know that America at least still thinks shows like "Ready For Love" are garbage, causing such low ratings that it was cancelled in 3 episodes and replaced with Grimm. It'll be interesting to see how Grimm fares in that day/time slot vs. Friday. I liked Grimm at first but haven't kept up with it this year.

Still listening to BB King vids while hubby naps. Also, for comparison, here's the 0 score look. Which if I stare at long enough, still starts to look not so perfect. Monitors...

I've seen others with complaints about the offline mode doing that sort of stuff...I'd assume it's a bug of some kind since it doesn't seem to be universal. The only time Steam gets cranky (for me) is if you go online and it starts to download stuff and you don't stop it fast enough, then when you go back offline, if you try to play it'll tell you the game isn't ready to be played in offline mode (even if the patch didn't fully DL/install). That's inconsistent in that some games you can stop downalod/installs and still play in offline, some you can't. Patch differences I assume. I used to remove the Steam on startup via the msconfig but I haven't had to with recent versions of Steam...the toggle works just fine for me. The "don't update this game" still doesn't work, however, since that only seems to stop Steam updates ... not the game patch updates, if that makes sense. I don't think they'll ever change that aspect.