Raithe

You also seem to have a whole bunch of the early access folks, who even though they had their registration codes, waited until today at the last minute to do the "oh crap, if I don't put it in right now I'm going to lose the character i've spent hte last x days working on." Even though bioware have been flashing the warning that the pre-order / early access code was not product registration and you had to have it put in for the last couple of days... I even saw someone come on, complain that bioware hadn't been clear that the pre-order code wasn't a product registration, that their stupid website had taken two hours to successfully register and subscribe, and that now he had vented he was going to quit and go back to WoW... Yeesh. I'm trying to understand what is not clear about a "Your pre-order early access code is not product registration code". And a lot of these folks had their CE's and such for several days. I'm betting Bioware was expecting all these folk to have actually registered before hand.. as part of the whole concept of rolling access.

I picked up the "Complete Cary Grant Collection" some months back. There's a time and a place for classic screwball comedy and dry lines delivered in an impeccable manner.

Hm, I haven't turned steam on since i started playing Tor last week.. My credit card is thanking me for avoiding the sales. Then poking me sharply because of the subscription...

On the upside, the capabilities of the actors were a lot better then the original. On the down side, they went with a "my name is conan, you killed my father, prepare to die!" storyline. I think thats what lost it a lot of points. The dialogue was the standard ropey sword & sandal type, but it looked fairly decent and they obviously worked at trying to deliver their lines with real intent. Some of the fight scenes got a bit messy and hectic. I'd have liked to have seen where they'd have taken it with a sequel, but that's kind of doubtful now.

I hate how they've set up datacrons. I'm not sure how it encourages exploration to put a datacron in the middle of an important area and then make you spend 30 minutes attempting to get to it via jumping, falling, and dying. I complained about this, but apparently people don't want getting datacrons to be 'easy.' The one on top of the bank in Mos Ila is a pain in the.. The thing is, they are just simple jumps you need to make, but at the same time they're bloody easy to just misaim by a little bit... Hm, so far any datacron hunting I've been involved in where I ended up falling, was only enough to take me down to about 1/5th to 1/8th total health. Never enough to kill me totally. Although thinking about that, the one on Tattooine sticking out of a cliffside could probably do that if you totally misaimed your drop..but damn, that would take effort to do. So far missing 3 from Nar Shadda, and 2 from Tattooine. I would have got those two, but you have to ride a hot air balloon for like 40 minutes as it passes over the Dune Sea.. and about 30 minutes into the trip it glitched, the balloon disapeared and I reappeared on the desert floor. It was late, I wasn't going to go back to waiting at the time. Woof. hit the 30 level, and now I've hit Alderaan. Pretty world, mountains, forests, snow and greenery... Still managing to keep walking the "grey" path without being schizophrenic. It actually works as a roleplaying character, treating your troops fine, being ruthless with your enemies but not being wantonly destructive/cruel for the sake of it. Just precisely violent and manipulative when it's aimed.

The closest I came was one of the few times I got black out drunk in public years ago. I later got told there were 13 tequilla shots, and someone thought it would be funny to switch the last one for a double rum on me when I wasn't noticing. I remember a very clear image of looking at my watch saying 10:13pm, and saying to the guys "no, I don't really have enough money on me tonight to go around several more places" Then it's blank. I stirred into consciousness at home, my parents looking at me rather disagreeably, letting me know that a> my friend graham had propped me up in the door at some point, and that b> it was 7am, and I had to go to work at the hospital for the morning shift. Which started at 7.30am, and went on till 2.30. Hospital kitchen porter. Among other things, pushing the hospital food trolleys out from the kitchen up to the wards and collecting them. That was... a fun day.

Edward Cullen - All the Twilight vampiers do this whole.. "Sparkle like diamonds" when exposed to the sunlight. So it's a "sparkley Vampires" thing.

Ah, have you seen George Takei's inspired "form an alliance of Star Wars and Star Trek fans to burn Twilight out from the collective consciousness of the world"? Edit: Although a quote I did like: "if Dracula was based in part on Vlad the Impaler, would that mean that Edward Cullen was based in part on Tony Blair?"

Here, enjoy some of my christmas spirit..

And if you don't like the idea of dark side corruption aesthetics, it's possible to choose a preference button so that it isn't shown on your character. As to the datacrons, they're supposedly in-game to encourage exploration beyond the wandering you do on quests, so you poke around in the cubbyholes of the universe... Individually they're not really much of a boost (around +2 or +3) to individual stats, and you need to collect multiple shard datacrons before you can assemble a relic..

Arg. It was late at night.. pushing 2am.. and I just wanted to wrap up a quest and hit that level 30 mark. Then in the final sequence when I engage the Imprisoned One (yes, another one of those KoToR references) in dialogue..and as he greets me..I disconnect. Then, I get told it'll be a 40 minute queue to get back on the server. I think I'll just call it quits and get some form of sleep in. Oh, and when I say tricky, there's one datacron on Nar Shaddaa that involves heading towards a heroic instance, climbing up some crates to get to soem girders, jumping across girders, walking across them, jumping onto a catwalk, running around that, getting in a lift you would have no idea is there if you weren't exploring weirdly, run around another catwalk, jump onto a narrow ledge, follow said ledge around, jump across a canopy, then run across that to jump onto a pole that's actually above the area of a heroic instance. The one thats under the taxi ring looks confusing to get to..since it's hanging out there..but when you notice you can steal a taxi from another location.. then it's really simple.

No, there are specific datacrons. There's one on each world. And you get a "You find a Yellow Matrix Shard" rather then the "This datacron improves your Presence" blather. The Archeology ones are part of ingredients for artifice to built lightsaber stuff I believe.

It pretended to have OK science. There are all those codecs that explain how the tech work. The characters throw out technobabble that use a lot of real science. The Normandy is actually designed like how a real stealth vessel would be like. It's consistent space opera science. That doesn't mean anything bad, space opera science can be quite fun and well-thought out.

That would probably be the Artefact assembly chamber. If you note, there are datacrons that give you bonuses to your stats, and different datacrons that are <colour> shard matrix? Depending on the color shards you have, you can combine them in that chamber to form a "relic" that gives a major boost. So if you have a red shard, a yellow shard, and a green shard, you can get a relic that gives several assorted boosts while you have it equipped. And apart from the starter worlds (which only have 3 datacrons) all other worlds should have five in total waiting to be found...

So far I've managed 3 on Korriban, 5 on Dromund Kaas, 5 on Balmorra, I found 2 on Nar Shaddaa, and 1 on Tattooine. One on Nar Shaddaa is actually _under_ a taxi ring. That one takes a little bit. And the other one was.. a ridiculous amount of climbing, jumping, and falling.. The one on Tattooine wasn't so bad in figuring out the approach, but was bloody finnicky for the jumps you needed to do to traverse it.

Well, now tis the official release day. A whole slew of new servers have opened up as well. Of course, it seems that the server I've been running on suddenly has a queue of 200 to wait through... I'd made my way through the queue, got into the game, spent about 3 minutes and then my connection died. Note, not Bioware's problem, but my internet was then dead for the better part of 4 hours. Still, its just kicked back in, so here's hoping there's no more issues with that and I can enjoy some time waving a lightsaber around later... I will say this, Chapter 1 is bloody long. I mean, the prologue takes you from level 1, to around 16-20, and you'll have done your starter planet and capital world. Prologue ends when you get your starship. Chapter 1 takes you through (it looks like) another 4 worlds minimum. (with potential small stops at worlds you've already visited). My Sith Inquistor is nearly 28th level, and has added Balmorra, Nar Shaddaa, and Tattooine to worlds visited, a small trip back to Korriban, and heading on to Alderaan when I wrap things up on Tattooine. And I still haven't finished Chapter 1.... Been doing some of the datacron hunts, and they can be rather tricksy to get to in some cases...

There's some nice art and "in-game" lore in the Journal of Master Gnos-Dural (or however you spell/pronounce it). The box itself is incredibly shiney and cubey. I'm not sure if I've got anywhere safe to actually assemble the statue and place it. The in-game speeder is actually quite nice visually, and saves you an 8k expenditure in-game. The rest of the digital items aren't really much worth writing about, and you get most of them with the digital deluxe anyhow don't you? The security key is nice enough once you get it attached to your account. Haven't given a serious check-in on what the VIP or CE store has. The Security key store has some extra "companion visual switch" ktis. Edit: Also, I was totally thrown when Julian Sands voice came out when talking to a low-level Imperial Spy guy.

Achmed the Dead Terrorist - Christmas Song

Ah, they did say they have it so the roll is potentially modified if the majority of a group all choose the same option, but I guess it's still possible for even the standout to win the roll. I have to admit, my SI did Talon twice. Once where they went with the "kill the captain, kill the prisoner, be dark side jerks" and once where it was more.. "we're dark side, but we're kind of sensible in what we do". And on a total side note, it is amazing how satisfying it can feel to punch a Hutt. Nar Shadda is so much smoother when you have access to a speeder... I'm trying to take the view that you need to be loyal to your troops and such - ie, you have to maintain and clean your tools, equipment and guns if you expect them to work in battle , you should treat the troops in the same manner. Twisting them up and breaking them leaves them useless... but it's kind of funny how that can hit you with light side points. Or when you have to undermine a Sith Lord's cult.. you can take the bloody and violent route, wiping out some gangs in the area to build strictly short term popularity with the people who make up the cult. Or you can take the more methodical, long term results one, by infiltrating a company, stealing some chemicals and using those to cure a disease amongst the population. Which provides you with a much more secure base of power - but yes, again that turns out to be light side. Still, I'm mostly walking the grey path, have about 1,450 light side points..and 1,450 dark side points.. It would be nice if they actually introduced rewards for neatral folks as well as if you go full light or dark....

Hm, still trying to stir the christmas cheer like I usually manage. However, waking up with a stomach ache, the edge of a headache, and having manage to wrench/sprain my wrist somehow last night when doing push-ups.. I'm getting a not-so good feel about the start of this christmas week... While I'm balancing the fact that I'm sure I've forgotten something I should have done, I'm also aware I really have large amounts of escapism available in ToR. Dang it, thats totally satisfying my inner-geek at the moment. Still, I think a fresh cup of tea, and maybe a plain digestive or two and see how that settles my stomach.

My christmas cheer resides in the 7 foot christmas tree festooned with lights and decorations. I have to admit, when half the family have no seasonal cheer or desire to enjoy the decorations, it can be a wee bit of a problem getting that general mood going for yourself..

Would it suprise anyone if I said that at the moment I'm playing TOR? I'll probably have some momentary returns to Saints Row 3 to change the pact at times, but I can't really see anything else jumping out at me until ME3 is released. Batman is on my "wait until its really cheap" to get list, and I'm really unconcerned with the latest Assassin's Creed. Can't think of much else that's really on the horizon.... o O (but lots and lots of TOR..)

Urf, it is cold and miserable outside. And I have boxes that need to go back up in the attic. Instead I'm drinking hot tea, hugging the radiator, and forgetting family while I play Tor...

I did the heroic on Tython, and that was already quite a bit of fun. My jedi knight has done everything on Tython but the heroic... I really need to get that done before I leave planet. I seem to have picked up the habit of focusing on all the class-story and world-quests.. I pick up the Heroics..but I don't actually focus on doing them. I'll join a group if I notice people asking for extras, and I'm not engaged elsewhere, but I keep forgetting about them and suddenly realising I'm about to leave the world with this mass of heroic missions left on my log... Found my fourth datacron on Balmorra, and then took a side trip to build my first "matrix shard cube". Think I'll start todays gameplay with some space missions though, just for that arcadey feel...

It only seems to kick in like that for me in that time frame.. so it's not like it's too much of a hassle normally. Well, at least not yet it isn't.