By the power of Greyskull!

It has been a long time since my last diary post and in that time, I have raised from rank 23 to 30. That’s about a month for seven ranks. Most of the people I know can average one level every two or three play sessions, but not this guy… I found the last seven levels to really challenge my interest in the game, which you’ll have noticed if you’ve read any of my posts since the last journal entry.

The main reason I wasn’t writing WAR Diary posts for each or every few ranks was because nothing of much import actually happened. I didn’t find much of it interesting enough to report on, so I couldn’t imagine any of the readers finding it interesting either.

Here my highlights from ranks 23-30:

• Witching Night - This really got people interested in oRvR in T3 and every time I logged on I could find some pretty decent fights in Black Fire Pass. Yeah, some, if not most of it was zergy, it sure beat grinding out scenarios and quests over and over again.
• My gear finally got some new skins by rank 30 (T4 quests and RvR drops), which is a welcome change from the same boring textures I’ve been used to since the beginning of T3. Dyes are a great way to customize your character, but would it hurt to have more than two skins and weapon models per tier?
• My guild finally achieved rank 15, so we picked a background style for our heraldry. Once we hit rank 21 we can finally add an emblem to make us truly stand out. Unfortunately, there appears to be a graphical glitch that prevents me from actually seeing the heraldry on my cloak half the time. It’s about a 50/50 toss-up as to whether or not my cloak texture will show up every time I load into a new zone/scenario.
• I can finally join T4 scenarios and participate in T4 oRvR. Serpent’s Passage seems to load a lot and apparently Order heavily outranks Destruction on my server, so it’s usually five or six rank 36-40 Order guys with a couple of rank 39 and a ton of rank 28-33 Destruction guys.
• Rank 30 finally unlocked a new backpack and two more tactic slots. Woot.

I got vertigo... and I threw up a little.

Here are some of the lowlights from ranks 23-30:

• You’d think with all the morale abilities, career skills, and tactics I would actually learn something new and cool at each rank. This doesn’t seem to be the case. Often times I would gain a new rank and not be able to learn anything at all. Most of the time I would gain a new rank and be able to train some trash abilities (I still have about 8 untrained career skills/tactics/morales because I know I’ll never use them). I have only found a skill/morale/tactic worth training three times since rank 23.
• I am so damned sick of grinding away at Public Quests, solo or in a group. I have levelled a few alts lately and I really miss how quickly the influence bar seemed to move in chapter 1 and 2. Why must they make the latter PQs (chapter 15+) so brutal? It’s not like the rewards are itemized very well anyway… Half the time I don’t even want the junk they consider rewards.
• Kill ten rats. Collect five foozles. Go talk to this guy. And then go talk to that guy. Go scout this area. Mythic has shown some glimpses of brilliance with quests in earlier chapters, but it really starts to wear on you after doing it for so many ranks.  I like to balance my oRvR with scenarios and with PvE. The PvE just isn’t engaging at all anymore.
• Scenarios. There are six of them. Yet I only ever get into two or three with any frequency - Tor Anroc, Temple of Isha, and Doomfist Crater. All three are fairly fast-paced, but it is easy to get dominated early in them and become unable to recover. Mostly this is a PuG issue. Half the time people are running around like challenged folk with protective headgear and when you try bring a little organization via scenario chat you are either ignored or called an idiot. The remaining three unplayed scenarios are even worse in PuGs because people play them so defensively.
• Aside from Witching Night, T3 oRvR has been quite dead. Most of the time I log on we already own all the keeps and BOs, so there’s nothing to do but wait for something to go under siege. Unfortunately, I think the majority of Order is in T4, so T3 isn’t very important to them on my server these days.

What am I looking forward to?

• Heavy Metal - Depending on the daily tasks, this event might actually be quite fun. They did a great job with Witching Night even though there was no way I could possibly fill the Live Event influence bar on a casual schedule, even after maxing out on Lords, Crones, and Spirits and doing a ton of oRvR. I hope to fill the Heavy Metal Live Event influence bar and participate in the new scenario.
• A potential respec to Quick Shootin’ mastery. I’ve been training in Big Shootin’ since rank 10, so I welcome a change in playstyle, especially one that keeps me a moving target instead of a stationary pin cushion.
• The 1.06 Combat and Career patch that will finally address a number of my Squig Herder’s balance issues.

Cheating the system - going back to the chapter 1 PQ for a Daily unlock and a bit o' revenge.

Maybe the outlook isn’t so bleak afterall? The fact that I’m looking forward to a few things has to be good, right?

Related posts:

1. Day 1 (again): Secret Diaries of a Goblin Squig Herder And so starts a new blog category: WAR Diary....
2. Day 2/3: Squig Herder Confessions Last night I went from ranks 7-9 by doing...
3. 1.05 Squig Herder Buffs Delayed I want to say I’m shocked here, but that wouldn’t...

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In today’s (late!) excerpt from my spoiler-filled interview with “Gears of War 2” lead creator Cliff Bleszinski, we’re talking about Dom’s big decision and why he made it.

I can’t say more, except that you should not read this one unless you’ve reached Dom’s big moment in the game. If you have and, like me, you weren’t sold on why Dom did what he did, read on for Bleszinski’s explanation:

This interview was conducted by telephone a few days before the release of “Gears of War 2.” I finished playing the game’s campaign over online co-op with Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal a day earlier, a session I referred to throughout the interview. N’Gai had played as “Gears” hero Marcus Fenix. I played as sidekick Dom.

Multiplayer: Dom knows he’s going into the underworld to rescue his wife. He discovers her. I really like how you did that scene, how she appears to be okay at first, and then you see how haggard and beaten down she is. But I didn’t understand why his impulse wasn’t to save her. What we see instead is a very powerful moment where he, essentially, is put in a position where he feels he has to kill her in order to take her out of her suffering. Why did you go that way and how come he didn’t just save her?

Cliff Bleszinski, Epic Games: It’s not black and white in regards to all of that. The entire set-up to that — and reading some of the things that are mentioned in the collectibles to Tai’s story arc — is that the Locust are breaking people irreversibly, to the point where they torture them, they isolate them, they turn them into mindless slaves and ultimately lobotomize them. We wanted to make sure that the scar was visible on her head in that cut-scene. She originally had a wrap on her head and people were like, “What’s the deal there?” And the other thing that sold that is that the eyes are cataracted over. It’s a dead stare. There’s nothing there. She is gone. So rather than have her live this life as the walking dead, [he shoots her.] There’s no way he could have gotten out of the underground carrying her because they would have fallen to the next batch of Locust that came [upon them] while he’s got this 80-pound sack of potatoes on his back.

The only humane thing to do was to just let it go and ultimately have that sense of closure in regard to what happened. Because if Tai, being the unkillable completely bad-ass guy — who actually has a very healthy outlook and everything — after a few hours would be broken enough to get to the point where he would take himself out, what chance did this woman stand who had been there for quite some time?

Multiplayer: So he would have been thinking that if he rescued her in better shape, he’s prepared to bring her back. It’s how badly broken she is at that point…

Bleszinski: It also re-establishes the Locust as — although there are things in the story that give you more of a clue as to why the Locust are bubbling up — it truly establishes them as evil and completely people you have absolutely no qualms about cutting in half and beating down and killing.

Related Posts:
Non-Spoiler Interview: Bleszinski Defends, Questions The ‘Rule Of Threes’
Spoiler Interview: Bleszinski Talks ‘Gears of War 2′ Bosses, Including That Last One
Spoiler Interview: Bleszinski Talks ‘Gears of War 2′ Driving Sequences

IH3SotW (short for Inappropriate Halo 3 Screenshot of the Week) places heavy emphasis on the inappropriate. While each featured screenshot will be delightfully distasteful, some may be more subtle than others. I won’t bother explaining them since figuring it out for yourself will be half the fun. Every one taken from my personal Halo pr0n collection, I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Author: x Sh4RP SHoT x

Valve has taken a crowbar to the price of the original Half-Life on Steam. Originally priced at $9.99, the award-winning, if-you-haven't-played-it-don't-talk-to-us FPS can now be had for $.98. No, that's not a typo - Ludwig checked.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the $99.99 Valve Complete Pack, which, as we reported earlier, contains all of Valve's games - even the newly released Left 4 Dead - plus Peggle Extreme. But seriously, if you haven't played the first Half-Life, do yourself a favor and spend 1/100th of that on the game. You won't regret it. We promise. (It's ninety-eight cents!)

PSA: Half-Life now available for $.98 on Steam originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You guys remember when Reddit decided to send a crowbar to CERN scientists in case a Half-Life-like resonance cascade came from the firing up of the Large Hadron Collider? We laughed, because funny things are funny. (Not resonance cascades; that's kind of scary.)

It gets better -- a Reddit had a CERN physicist deliver the crowbar personally to the real-life Gordon Freeman look-a-like CERN worker. Pictures were taken, and they were -- as you'd expect -- completely awesome. The fruits of this labor (an obvious attempt to protect mankind, in case of, er, complications) can be found here. 

So now it's contest and fun time. Time to bring out the big guns and put together some video, throw together some Photoshops, and YTMNDs in honor of this great success. The prizes? We're not sure, but they'll be good ... we promise. But are you really doing this for a prize? No, you're doing it for fun. And the good of mankind. 

Post your images, links to videos, and links to YTMNDs in the comments below. Go nuts with it. We'll accept submissions until you stop making them or we get bored (sometime next week), so keep 'em coming.

All of this is in order to celebrate the recent release of The Complete Masterworks 2 DVD.

Ripped from the Xbox.com page:

The new 2-disc DVD includes a full-length live concert of the band at the Moore Theatre in Seattle, a one-hour documentary about the making of their movie Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny and the (lack of) critical acclaim it received, and bonus features including music videos and the band's appearances on the MTV Awards, Saturday Night Live, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

For more information, check out:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/calendar/gamewithfame/2008/1110-tenaciousd.htm

Well that was pretty short lived wasn’t it? The search giant launched its answer to the hugely successful Second Life not six months ago but today announced via its corporate blog that it will be shutting down Lively.

The blog reads: “Despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we’ve decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.”

The plug will officially be pulled at the end of December. Lively, which is still being beta-tested, received an underwhelming response upon its launch in July and has since not been the runaway success Google may have hoped for, despite all its monetary and marketing muscle.

Google is encouraging current users to capture videos and screenshots of all their hard work before it is sucked up into the black singularity of the Internet.

Er… that’s all. How can I enliven this post. Oh, I know: I’ve still never completed Half-life 1. What enormous gaping holes are in your play-histories, readers?Related stories:

• Half-Life: The Lost Chapter
• Left 4 Dead Demo 11th Nov (6th For Pre-Orders)
• Half-Life Turns Ten Today

Posted by KieronGillen. | 24 comments | Donate or subscribe to RPS | Post tags: Half-Life, Kieron is a bad PC gamer, steam
This article is from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. If you're reading it on any other website, they're stealing it from us without permission.

Google Lively is dead ... ly originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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