Raithe

I have to admit, I've managed to put in a fair bit of time on my main character at the moment, I mean, probably silly time compared to the average mmo player. I haven't been doing it to power level up, but to explore the class story and explore as much as I could to see what its like. I can see myself exploring the other classes to see what those stories are like, but when I do, I'll be taking it slower, fitting in a few hours here and there rather then managing to get in multiple days in a row.. As it is, I don't have any compunction about getting the 6 months non-recurring subscription, and then re-evaluating at the end of that to see whether I want to stick around. There have been no game-breaking bugs for me, while there have been some cheesey dialogues and mild annoyances, no more then in a single player game (especially a bioware one). I mean, if I can get an hours worth of enjoyment for every

Having a brief moment of break from TOR, I went back to Saints Row the Third, and poked around at Genkibowl... I will say the Sad Panda Skyblazing was a bit annoying to get to grips with, but its a nice short little expansion of Genki related activities.. and the closing speech if you win is amusing enough.

Well, I have to replace my keyboard with a proper one soon.. and since until that pint of tea got splashed over, I was using a combined logitech wireless mouse & keyboard, I should probably replace the mouse. .. And my headphones broke so I need to get a decent pair. Damn it. that's going to eat up budget if I don't get cheap stuff that will need replacing in a few months. I'm actually looking at the Qpad Mk-80 Pro Gaming keyboard.. chunky, heavy, cherry mx blue mechanical switches and the usb hub and audio ports. But that is around

Oh the joys of trying to make some inquiries at the department of pensions and general government crud. The hoops you have to jump through to get a few simple questions answered.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing it Wals.

Heh, I've actually had a lot of positive commnets from women over those simple courtesies. Quite a few times when I've been out with a group of my friends, and I'm the one who does that for the various girlfriends of my mates and the gf's will say how rare it is, and that it is nice to see someone still knows how to do such. Usually with a few digs at my mates who forget to do so... So yeah, having a lady turn around and act all snarky over it was a touch of a surprise and out of the "normal" range of behaviour to it.

One of those random articles stumbled across.. American Thinker - The Abolition of Gender Which actually made me think, since I got accused of being all chauvenistic the other day for opening a door for a lady, and pretty much got slammed for not recognising equal rights and wotnot.. Going further on..

Heh, it's when you run into people you were at first and middle school with, and you see them married, carting 2.5 kids around, and putting shopping into a family wagon... I can never tell whether that makes me feel too damn old, or as if I've never actually gotten around to growing up....

Hm, I haven't played any PvP yet, but I haven't had any problems with fps when questing or in flashpoints. And I'm using an East Coast server..

And for that rather soulful piece from Clint Mansell and his soundtrack score to The Fountain

For some reason the last couple of nights something keeps waking me up around 5 or 6am.. so about 3 or 4 hours after I got to sleep in the first place. One of these days I'm going to turn off my alarms, and ignore the family and just see how long I can stay in bed for the day... Did manage to take a lazy monday with minimal work for my birthday, although having to spend a chunk of time dismantling the vacuum cleaner and repairing it didn't quite fall into the original plan. Got about 4 "electronic" happy birthdays, and a bottle of port from my gran. My immidiate family kind of dropped some loose cash on my computer desk and did the "well, I couldn't get a card for you, so here's some cash"

It would be nice if you could pass commendations over... I mean, I found my SI still has Korriban commendations .. Doh, I forgot to put the link in for that interview in my earlier post PC Interview - "We've already got people working on content that won't be out till 2013" Game Update 1:

Well, I've still got a chunk of my class storyline to finish off with my SI, even though I've hit 50. Heh, now all my xp earned is going directly to my "Legacy Bar"... I have got a couple of other characters I created just to have a short poke at, but I haven't really played them that much. I think my Bounty Hunter is about 7th level, a Jedi Knight at 11th just on Coruscant, a Smuggler who is about 5th, and Sith Warrior at about 4th. I have to admit, I do like the way they've blended the mechanics and they have those different feels to them.. Sith Inquisitors who have to regenerate Force, and then use it up , while Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors have to "build" up their force with certain attacks, and then have other attacks that use up force.. Versus Bounty Hunters who build up "heat" with their attacks and have to either vent it, or allow time for it to cool down naturally.. It does give a different feel to each class style. Edit: And further news time..

I had him wipe 4000hp in one hit. You got to use disruption/force choke/push etc, anything that stops his charge up attacks. Yeah, it's all about the interrupts with that guy. What I ended up doing was spending half an hour flying starship missions to get some cash, repaired all my equipment...and went back for more. Heh, actually ran into someone having exactly the same problem, so we just teamed up for the mission and wiped the guy in a minute. Just arrived on Correllia now, to start the "Kaggath" with Darth Thanaton, and hit level 50. That's where I called it a night. Although I now seem to have a ridiculous amount of new skills to buy.. so I'm probably going to have to get some more credits together....

Flypaper - Patrick Dempsey as a man caught up in a bank, when two seperate groups of bank robbers strike. Throw in Ashley Judd as the teller he starts to fall for, and events unwind in a rather twisty manner revealing that more then just two bank robberies are going on... Especially when dead bodies start hitting the floor. A nicely humerous crime comedy all in all, nicely structured and thought out.

Arg. Having a very irritating time right now. I've just got The Ritual quest of my class-storyline to the point where I'm facing the nightmare of Darth Andru, and the world quest of facing the Avatar of Sel-Makor.... and no matter what I'm doing, they both keep killing me within about 30-50 seconds. And somehow, I'm out of money. So my equipment is all trashed, I've done all the available quests... and of course there's only like 10 people on planet and no-one wants to do the heroics... And whats really bugging me, is that both of those two quests are classed as Level 47, and I've just turned fricking 49 - which is probably why I went broke so quickly after picking up the assorted class skills from the trainer. So I'm trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing wrong facing those guys... Meh, now I'm going to take a firm break and see if any of the stuff I've dumped on the Trade Network gets picked up over the next few hours.. then I might be able to repair something...

Wait until you get to the ending.. depending on just which choices you make.. there's going to be some really, really silly and overblown things happening.

And apparently to get a purple/amethyst lightsaber crystal is an end-content type of thing. With some rather serious effort to plug away at... Among the things you have to do, is defeat one of those "World boss" monsters, which will drop certain schematics needed to create the crystal.. That's not counting the efforts involved in getting the materials needed.

Not that specifically, I mean things like improvements to the Armor and level of the actual article itself. Not the direct "enhancement to stats" parts of it. Hm, and from Emmanuel Lusinchi, the Technical Design Director

Yeah.. I know my Sith Inquisitor is walking the grey path.. but I managed to get him matching robes and all (orange ones so I've been able to mod them) but dang it..they're all grey and a sort of "mint blue". Not exactly sharp Sith Assassin wear... Now if I want to take all the mods out, it'll cost a small fortune, and I won't be guaranteed that whatever I put them in will actually match/improve what I'm currently wearing. It would be really nice if you had some sort of function that would let you know what the overall stats would be in something if you do transfer all armor/mods/enhancements across. The "match to chest piece" option was in beta, but apparently there were some issues that cropped up when they had to change other things. So rather then have something broken, they took it out, and have mentioned that they do plan to reintroduce something in the same vein, but "improved". But so far, there have been no details on that...

My fresh copy of Skirmish - House Wars book 4 by Michelle West arrived. Heh, so look at it this way, many years ago (we're talking a couple of decades) an author writes a duology. What was intended as a minor character (a 15/16 year old girl with some untrained seer-talents) in the first book expands, and becomes much more significant but you don't really find much more about them. Approximately a decade or so later, the author then writes up a 6 book series (The Sun Sword series) which is set in the same world (and roughly 16 years after the events in the duology), and braids several storylines together, with the aforementioned minor character turning up (now a young 30 something, with some influence in a noble house) and having a quite extensive section throughout the story - again, seeming to support other events, but growing even more into a primary character with her own story arc. There seems to be a whole subplot to the Sun Sword series about how she might have to fight an "in-house political war" and assume control of it when her mentor dies - however that's always kept to the background of the primary story but its still pumped along.. then towards the end of the final book - boom. The character finds out her mentor dies, that its all coming to a head.. and she gets summoned back to the house in the middle of a war. The book continues with the war (which was the primary story) but never wraps up any of story of that character. Jump forward another decade of real world time, and the author writes the first book in the House War - which is set about 5 years _before_ the original duology that started it all off, and is the story of a 10 year old orphan girl on the streets and who happens to have an erratic and untrained seer-talent... (yes, this time that minor character gets the lead role from the beginning rather then huge sections from books that she was just "supporting"...). The first three books cover how she goes from street orphan to being "adopted" as it were into the leading noble house of the empire - book 3 actually redoes a lot of the original duology, but from the girls point of view. And ends with her being around the 15/16 year age... Book four starts ..and its the day after her mentor died. Picking up exactly where the girl teleported out of the war zone in the 6 book series... I have to admit, if you enjoy braided storylines and fantasy stories it's worth the effort of actually following the books. But I do find it quirky just how it all grew out and developed over time.

Well here's some of the info given out on the upcoming patches and updates..

Well, although there haven't been any in-game rewards, and I've not had access to the Light Side or Dark Side items.. my main character has pretty much walked the path of neutrality regardless. So at the moment it balances out around positive 450 points on the scale.. with a few thousand light side and dark side points.. But then I started the game with the idea of seeing how well a Sith Inquisitor could walk that route rather then go Light or Dark. Characterwise, you can pull it off without being schizophrenic. So I'll be looking forward to see what possibilities might open up in the future for people who poke at the grey path.

So in some of the latest news, they're planning on bringing in the neutral side to have benefits as well.. James Ohlen revealed: