Monte Carlo

That was actually reasonably witty.

Hmph Battle.net is down anyway for maintenance... will catch up next time I see you online. I can trade you a load of top end gems, 'tis only fair.

Yes please.

Level 48, Nightmare, Act III and into The Breach, dear friends. I'm noticing that mobs are getting easier, although I suspect that is down to my Vitality maxing and 150,000 gp spend in the auction house. I've found one weapon in-game that's better than anything else I've bought (with gems). The drops are getting notably more valuable, lots of blues and more yellows. Of course, 99% of stuff gets sold immediately because it's either rubbish or for other classes. Shall we start our own D3 'Obz Mart' where we can swap items? I'm after a high DPS 1-handed weapon.

Bah, terrible lag on US servers this afternoon (GMT) and my high level guy is on there. I got my second ever legendary drop fighting Belial on NM, a pretty neat piece of armour. I can soak up a lot of damage now, highly-runed revenge is good and that earthquake thing just gets better. Hammer of the Ancients is my other win button on mobs.

It's the toughest bit. I do plotting and research and characters and love it. The hard yards is writing the bloody thing. The good news is that I did 3000 words today so I am having a well-deserved drink.

That's pretty good - an 80,000 word script takes me about 3.5 months.

Sent family to beach. Played some Diablo. Started writing. Tried not to browse internet whilst writing. Failed. Am now going back to writing.

Danaerys' story also felt a bit disjointed... ok I know it's tough adapting a book but everybody else is fighting / plotting and advancing but she's stuck in Quarth with her kidnapped dragons getting all shouty and upset. She's one of the best characters for me, along with Tyrion (he could have his own book / show / tee-shirt imo, called "The Land of **** and wine") I just wonder if they could have accelerated her story arc? (Haven't read the book so mebbe not). Edit: so now the perfectly acceptable word **** is language filtered? FFS, from the company making a South Park game? LOL.

My DPS is now 1500-ish and my armour is great having spent 15000 in the AH on some plate with 3 sockets (all with ultra-strength rubies). Am now, if not cruising, making solid progress through act 2. What are people's views on 1H and shield / versus 2H versus DW for barbs?

Hello As you know, I'm a massive fan of Company of Heroes and am following the development of the sequel with interest. The game has a ferociously loyal community around it, and Relic has a good relationship with them (for example, the last patch was more or less fixed via fan testing on gamereplays.org). However, a very vocal part of the community (in fact the part that arguably kept CoH alive via replays and tournaments) are pushing the esport aspect of CoH2. They want mirror maps / mirror matches (yeuch) and more features that will turn the game into more of an esport. I can't think of anything worse. The whole SC2 scene makes me shiver, gaming turned into Rainman-style math (for example, CoH has a very unpredictable random crit / outcomes component which makes luck an infrequent, but interesting element of play - esporters hate it). So what do we think of esports? Do they add to the longevity and appeal of a game or merely consign it to geek-elite twitch ghettos? Cheers MC

Better than me, I managed about fifty yesterday. #lazybastard

Yes, I've got a high Vitality build because I'm using a two-handed weapon. It's seems to work, and making top tier Amethysts is a pretty cheap way of boosting my HP as opposed to the rubbish the blacksmith pumps out.

^ Yeah agreed, but funnily enough I'm finding the gem guy pretty useful.

My new rig arrives next week, I'm going to install it on that, crank up all the settings super maximum and have a bit of a go on it.

Thanks for the tip about gems, LadyC. I managed to get the Legendary Blind Faith gimp mask helmet, socketed, on Ah for a good price plus a 170 DPS halberd, so my overall DPS is up to 1179 or something. The AH can be cranky but yeah I found all my money hiding in there! Level 45 on Act II, about 3/4 of the way through (solo and with no follower) and it's becoming less of a slog. I seem to use the spear / drag ability with a rune-happy power / earthquake thing that is totally OP. I drag the mobs into my AoE ability and melt the suckers. It has a long cooldown but it's great.

I found a couple of new places I'd not seen before on Act 2 (Faud's cellar and the Rockworm caverns). My gimpy barbarian, at level 44 is starting to get a *BIT* better (I'm spamming perfect Amethysts into all socketed items for health apart from weapons, they get rubies). This means I get over 12000 hp or so but my DPS is still pretty poor. I've tried buy a 170 DPS weapon in the AH but it took my gold and... nothing happened. Balls.

I actually saw Iron Sky last night. Very, very strange, but watching SS men driving BMW motorcycle combinations on the moon was funny.

I like the way the maps randomize every time you re-start them. I've also found some small easter-egg type areas.

Yeah, but can you imagine Bioware being that candid about dreck like DA2 or ME3?

Apart from **** Francis, I'm struggling to think of another author ploughing this niche furrow. Although, allegedly, Mrs. Francis wrote them all. Since **** passed away, his son does them now. D.1ck Francis. FFS, the derivative of Richard is filtered. Bollocks.

That's because Sci-Fi and Fantasy fans are a broad church, and surprisingly tolerant. Also, the folks who read that teen vampire crap don't go to book shops much --- they *need* the signage.

:: shrugs :: Genres are genres. New ones evolve all the time, Science-Fantasy was seen as 1970's heresy by fantasy and sci-fi grognards, for example. It's easy to hate. I try not to. But when you get saturation of a genre it grates... and publishers (not surprisingly) want to jump on the next cash-cow and milk it to death. I'm hardly suffering for my art: I want to be a journeyman hack author... but I write thrillers and crime and that's my beat. It feels phoney doing something else because my heart ain't in it.

Only two have made it as far as publishers for consideration. I have an agent, though, which is great. The market is in a crazy place at the moment. Seeing as I don't write: soft SM porn for housewives, teen Post-Apoc emo fiction, Scandie crime or vampire romance I'm kinda out of fashion

Dude I'm on number six and waiting on the publisher (again) to roll the dice of fate! What's it about?