Hurlshort

The Tillamook factory is really impressive, the gift store is more like a grocery with all the different types of food available. We bought milk, yogurt, ice cream, fudge, chocolate milk mix, and a few different types of cheese. And so far it's all a bit tastier than what you find on the store shelves, although maybe that's a mental thing!

Day 4 was rough, a long drive coupled by getting lost for about an hour and traffic near Tacoma. It was a very pretty drive though, we stuck on the coast through Oregon and Washington and passed over a very odd bridge. Here it is, I obviously didn't want to try and take a picture while we went over it. We pulled into a site that night around 8 PM, and it wasn't very level. But the next morning we got a better site and a new red jetta to get around town in. Day 5: We visited the Space Needle. It was up pretty high. I feel like I did something necessary to the trip, like an achievement in a video game, and now I can insert that into conversations. My wife wasn't comfortable with the height, my kids loved it. Logan looks mad because he wants to climb the rails and we won't let him. Here is Logan looking a bit happier in front of a large monitor. I have no idea where he gets that. Then we went to the Experience Music Project Museum, which was seriously the best museum I have ever been to. I bought a Firefly shirt, and they had a great exhibit for horror movies. My son went around growling at all the monsters, including a huge guy from Aliens. They had a feature on Evil Dead 2 as well. Definitely a recommended experience, the music exhibits were all great too.

Anyone voter for the magic carpet game?

My problem isn't the ultraviolence in games, it's the fact so few games don't have violence. I want some alternatives to blowing everybody away.

Day 3: Pretty big day, we are staying in Tillamook which is a very cool town. Our main destination is the Tillamook Cheese Factory, which is a huge operation. They make more than just cheese, the ice cream and fudge is phenomenal, and we picked up some yogurt there to try later. The self guided factory tour was pretty short, so we found ourselves with a lot of time left to wander. We were on the outskirts of town, so we walked a mile towards town to the Blue Heron French Company. We ate lunch there, it was fantastic. And you couldn't beat the view! It is a beautiful area. We picked up some salmon at a local fish market, and headed home for a nap and dinnertime.

If every generic fantasy game is a WoW clone, then that covers a pretty broad spectrum. What people are trying to tell you Morgoth is that Guild Wars is very different than WoW. In fact the original could hardly be classified as an MMO, given that it lacked any open adventure areas that characterize MMO's as massively multiplayer. Guild Wars 2 is much more traditional in the MMO sense, but the gameplay has little in common with a game like WoW.

"The whole point of MMOs is not to be a WOW clone?" What are you babbling around now? You don't seem to really know anything about Guild Wars.

The only real thing that can threaten TOR is itself, as in not fixing issues and failing to keep the subscribers engaged. There are always going to be folks hopping from MMO to MMO, those aren't really your target customers. That being said, TSW doesn't seem to have a lot of presence in the media. I'd say Guild Wars 2 will be much bigger, but it really is very different than TOR. Thankfully it has no subscription.

I wish TOR was easier to drop for a couple months and come back to, the huge amount of skills makes it hard to transition back to a character.

You can't tel from that angle, but it totally has all that, and retractable wings when I fly through space outsmarting Darth Helmet.

Day 2: Today was mostly spent on the road, getting from California to Tillamook, OR. We did make time to detour at the Rogue Brewery Farm. There are acres of different hops and hazelnut trees, as well as some other interesting crops like pumpkin patches. Unfortunately we were way too early for the tasting room, so we just walked around and explored. I had a bit of a scary moment when I almost ran out of gas. As we neared the coast, I was at about a quarter of a tank. We ended up on a road that went about 50 miles before a gas station, so I was down pretty low. We pulled in with about a gallon left in the tank, which only goes about 10 miles. Tomorrow we are off to do the Tillamook Factory tour. If you aren't familiar with the name, they are a huge cheese maker in the US, and they make their own Ice Cream as well. We are not driving tomorrow either, which will be nice after two long days on the road.

Hi folks, A few years back I chronicled my summer RV trip on here as we went through Colorado, Arizona, and Utah. This summer we are going through Oregon, Washington, and Nevada, so I thought I'd do another topic. I will be updating it once a day if I can with a picture from the trip. Day 1: We covered about 270 miles today and ended up in Yreka, California. We will head off early tomorrow for Oregon, so we aren't getting too settled in. These kids are happy to be off the road.

I'm pretty sure in the small countries, they all just know each other.

Bioware is rolling out server transfers for select servers. It looks like they are finally consolidating some of the more ghost town like ones, although it is still optional at this point.

You don't really need to be in shape to play Baseball either.

I had no idea you were a 12-year old, Gorgon. You made fun of my transformers. Maybe we can find a middle ground here. Can we be friends by agreeing that Lego's are still the best toys?

I had no idea you were a 12-year old, Gorgon.

Channing Tatum is awesome, btw. His last few movies have been fantastic, and he's pretty easy on the eyes.

Wow, Steve Bernier might have trouble getting a job next season. Where the heck did that King's powerplay come from, 3 goals in 5 minutes? I'm excited to see a new franchise win it, and I'm happy for the oldest Californian team.

Playing Mount & Blade: Fire and Sword - I've played the M&B games a lot, but Fire and Sword is hard! I've been captured numerous times over the first few levels. I think I need to invest in a few points to keep my speed on the map faster, I keep getting caught by larger groups of deserters. Firearms also change the nature of the game, a guy with a gun can really knock your health down with a good shot.

Hey, I funded a trip to America for a friends wedding by putting some of my old boxed Transformers on ebay a few years ago. (Technically, that was a year or two before Michael Bay released his film..) That's just because those lame kids grew up to have a lot of disposable income.

As I said, I'm just not sure how I feel about the real money market yet, I don't begrudge ArenaNet trying to make some money. One other negative was the leveling pace, or rather how it lined up with the individual storyline. There were quite a few times where I was supposed to rush off to to meet someone or save somebody, but when I reached the personal instance, I was a level or two behind the recommended. So I would turn around, go do some area quests, and then come back. It wasn't a huge issue, but i disrupted the flow. I get that it is difficult to balance, TOR pretty much made everything too easy so that players almost never need to leave the class storyline, which might not be much better. Overall I really enjoyed it though and look forward to release. It seems pretty polished, I wonder when they will set a release date?

It actually looked pretty good in the trailers, you've got Bruce Willis making a cameo and The Rock always puts on a decent performance. I liked the first movie, it was a fun action movie that didn't take itself too seriously. It's based on a toy line for goodness sakes, it doesn't have a real high bar set. Transformers suck, Gorgon. Only the lame kids played with them

GI Joe is awesome, only commies think otherwise.

Ok, had a good weekend playing, got a human engineer up to level 10 and a few other characters up to 4 and 5. There are a fair amount of things done differently than other MMO's, so the learning curve was decent. Here are my pros and cons: + Loved the exploration, which is rewarded nicely. + Easy to get into area quests and events, very similar to Rift. + Crafting allows for some nice experimenting and has some logic to it. + Individual stories are a nice touch - Auction House (Trading Post) seems a bit crazy...you can basically buy everything you need for crafting? It was a bit hard to understand. - Not sure how I feel about the real money marketplace, seemed to be giving a significant edge to players. - Combat for melee characters was tough for me to follow, there was a lot going on and I couldn't really see what I was doing in the crowds. I'm sure time and practice would help that, but it made me more comfortable with ranged classes. I haven't even seen the PvP or WvWvW stuff, so I will try to check them out in a future beta.