Saturday 14 March 2015

nighttime shenanigans - Educating Rita

I don't know why, but every night I tend to prioritize escaping over sleep. Not work. No socializing. Some form of calm. Movies. Random tracks of music. Something that lets my mind fly.

Today I ended up stumbling upon Educating Rita. I won't spoil it for you, it's a great movie. But it got me thinking about all the fragile relationships that we set, that end up making the memories so dear to us and so bittersweet when they end. All of those people that we remember fondly, that end up being nothing but passerby's in the bigger picture. The fragility is what makes it so important. Half the people I know today, we will never run into each other years later. I wish I could get a follow up on what happened to quite a few that I used to know. Yet I wonder if I did get a follow up would it make it any less special?

I remember playing Perfect World at a particularly tough time in my life. Yet it was people that made it special for me. I remember meeting a person while leveling who decided to stick around because both of us had 5 letters in our name. The thing is, his wasn't even supposed to be spelled that way. He misspelled his, I chose the one that I normally hide behind. I remember the first guild that I was in crumbling down. I remember choosing a guild name. I remember doing all the boring leveling and eventually being flown over the higher level areas, because I was bored and they looked so pretty. People even took me dungeoning. Though I don't think that I understood what a dungeon was, but I tagged along anyway. I stopped playing shortly after those people stopped. The game lost taste. I knew some of their names on facebook but I decided to throw those away. I wonder how did they get on with their lives. Did they fix what was broken? Where did they end up going? Who did they become?

I wonder same for those few friends that I had in my primary school. About the first boy to have a crush on me. About the one that just didn't show up for a date one day. I wonder who they became to be. What is their worldview. Who are their loved ones. What things do they enjoy now. Yet I remember them. And perhaps those memories are made better by the fact that we don't reconnect with them.

They came. They gave us something to remember. We all separated paths as better beings. And unknowingly we will do it again and again. With some we'll part ways willingly. With others we won't know that they chose to until they're already gone. Yet it makes all the memories that you make even more precious.

Friday 13 March 2015

Wildstar: the denial of the death of an MMO

watch this video

And now tell me does it seem normal for you for one out of two servers to only have 17 people in the middle of the day? To have no economy?

Of course it's not! And there's suggestions. "change your payment model", "close the server down". Nope. Nothing is done for 5 months now. And the best thing is that when people see this and then leave (mostly because Wildstar launched free trials) they get badmouthed.

for example:

"I swear someone is paying people to make ludicrous statements like this post.I am having such a blast in WS every day. "

from Feyline

after I uploaded that video, I was told "oh what a jerk you are!", "you're on at the wrong time!". Now I'm sorry, but even private servers of MMOs have more than 17 people playing on a megaserver at 1pm GMT+0. I will record some more at 6 pm just for them, but still... The fact that the game is dying is sad. The fact that Carbine is doing nothing about it is sad. But the fact that people will call you a jerk for just pointing out that this is not normal is the most frustrating part.

Tuesday 3 March 2015

What's BloodLust Shadowhunter and why you should get it

I played the demo of this gem 3 years ago. The game was under a different name at that point but already had potential.

Part one of the demo if anyone is interested

And just today it appeared on steam as early access! The sad part is that this game will be drowned by such as Five Nights At Freddy's 3, even though a lot more thought has been put into it and all the reviews are positive. Why? Mostly because nobody knows that it exists.

Do you like vampire games? More notably Vampire the Masquerade Redemption or Bloodlines? Then please look into Bloodlust. You don't have to buy it. But watch a few broadcasts of it. Maybe pick up the demo to play. Because this is the first good vampire game in years! And made by only one person that seems to be super cooperative on the forums.

want to hear more?

-In the game you have 3 classes (Witch, thief and warrior) and two races - vampire and half human.
- campaign can last anywhere between 10 to 30 hours, though it could be 100+ if you get lost in dungeon exploration.
- lots of secret rooms and random elements. I've seem to have found completely different places to other people that played it.
- minion system! Make yourself a vampire buddy! They're dumb as rocks, but quite useful!

and most importantly, it's bringing the vampire RPG game sub genre back. So adopt a vampire game developer today and ensure that one day more games like Bloodlines come!