Stopped by the comic store...

Stopped by Melrose Comics and Music today before work.


Picked up  Batman Detective Comics Vol. 1 and some GateCrash boosters.

Got a Mythic Rare.

This is the out side of the shop.

They have all the pins.

This is usually the spot I draft MTG at. Hopefully get you guys some more pics next time im there

Trying to get the high score on the Ms. PAC-man

Here's the shitty machine at my laundry mat

Quick PoE Update

Path of Exile:

Found a cave that just ways crawling with undead bugs and other creeps.

Murdered the shit out of these dudes.

New fav. item.

Blizzard and Sony Sittin' in a tree...

So apparently Sony and Blizzard have decided to enter a sort of civil union. I can only assume that this is the economic equivalent of crossing the streams which, as we all know, turns out just fine. It even makes a delicious confection out of an uptown New York high-rise. I'm not sure why anyone would be inclined to play Diablo 3 on machine that in most cases would be inferior to a moderately priced computer, but what the  hell. It didn't stop me from playing Brood War on a N64.
However, with all the of the hullabaloo surrounding the fate of the console industry, it seems like a brilliant move for Sony. (Sometimes I forget that sarcasm doesn't play well with text.) They're basically saying, "hey you remember that game that came out over a year ago? Our experimental prototype that we haven't even finished yet can totally, kinda, maybe play that... We hope."
But from the Bliz side, they just kinda get to hang out and transfer a game to console that they've already made successful, so that maybe they move a few more units and make a little extra doe. If not, oh well, they still got three more installments of Star Craft 2; a game that sold 4.5 million units in the first five months on market. Soooooo, this makes me wonder, "what's in it for Bliz?"
Probably not a whole lot considering their widespread success to date. To find the answer we might need to dig a little deeper and ask, "what's in for Activision?" Well, nothing. Activision is a sister company to Blizzard in subsidiary to Vivendi Games. You were stupid for even asking that. However, if we view the whole Activision Blizzard, Vivendi thing as one big happy (if not incestuous) family, then we might realize that while Blizzard is the successful Ivy League graduate that went on to become a billionaire philanthropist noble prize winner; Activision is the ditsy sister that squandered her take of grandma's inheritance on a Mexican tit job and has to work the night shift at Denny's just make ends meet for her three illegitimate bastard children.
Offensive run-on sentences with a lot of words and logic twists; I'm pretty sure that's quality writing.
But back to the task at hand. What we have is a business move that's beyond Blizzard or Sony. It's Vivendi saying, "hey Blizzard you're good at things. Do those things over here with these guys so I can make more money. Oh and Activision, go to your room."
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Call of Duty: Orc Ops is in the works.

Minecraft Farming and F2P

As I sit in the library, not going to class, I wrestle with a spotty WiFi connection.  Maybe I shouldn't complain, considering it is free.  That doesn't help curb my frustration.  Anyway, enough of my whining.  After neglecting this blog over my 4 day weekend, I thought I would throw out some words while sitting in work study.

I have been meaning to address some of the work we have been doing on our Minecraft server.  The first post on this blog is about our original server.  Since that post, I have reset the server.  The server is vanilla, no mods with the Glacier seed.  It has some interesting terrain and the starting point is at a three way junction of desert, jungle and taiga biomes.  I am really digging it.  I am only running a 5 slot server for me and some buddies due to the fact that, not all my friends play Minecraft and I am a poor college student.

I recently completed work on an automated farming setup.  It is a redstone powered, piston harvesting farm with a water flow system that gathers at a collection point.  At the moment it is set up for farming pumpkins, melon and sugarcane.  This is the layout of the farm itself.

Here is a pic of the mechanism that sends a timed pulse to the farm pistons.

It is a fairly easy system to build that was not too resource heavy, in my opinion.  Keep in mind that none of this is my own creation so I must give credit where it is due.

I have been looking into some other systems for farming but have not built anything more.  I will post with updates when I find, and build, more.

Blossle recently posted about Path of Exile, while Stunts recently posted about microtransactions in games.  Personally, I can not wait to play Path of Exile.  I recently read about it via Penny Arcade and it caught my interest.  I like the idea of F2P games.  Who wouldn't?  I think there is a fine line though and many games get it wrong.  Games, such as, The Old Republic leave me feeling like they have "stunted my growth." MMO's are already a time sink.  Now you are going to slow down progress and castrate the game of features because EA wants to claim F2P but, unless a user ponies up the dough, they are not getting a game worth putting time into.  There is also the "pay to win" scenario.  Buy the super sweet weapons/armor and pwn face.  Pass.  Now, Grinding Gear Games claims that Path of Exile "will never be pay to win."  I have heard that before and been disappointed but I have also heard good things about this game and my hopes remain high.

The price of free

I don't know if it's the economy (are we still in a recession? I can't tell anymore), but there seems to be a certain  amount of frugality in the video game market. It manifests itself in the form of "free" video games. Now, my feelings for this business model have been mixed since Dungeons and Dragons Online. I was really excited when it came out. After an hour or more of waiting for it to download, I was finally able to roll my character (a half-elf rogue by the way) and go kill some shit. It didn't take long for to me realize that rest of the server was populated almost entirely by dual wielding dark elf rangers. Apparently these guys and gals paid real money to pretend to be Drizzt Do'Urden in a digital space.
And so began my love hate relationship with micro-transactions.
CCP has launched an opened beta of a MMOFPS that can be found here. It's an EVE Online tie in. Even though I never played Eve a little research made me wish I had. The universe is rich with lore and exciting systems are in place to govern battles, diplomacy, skill advancement and so forth. Apparently, CCP plans to tie Dust 514 in to this world. Not just in terms of story telling, but in actual game play. Such that, Eve Online corporations will be hiring Dust 514 players to do battle on their behalf in order to favorably alter the playable landscape.
This amounts to something that is conceptually amazing, provided Dust holds its end of the bargain. But that's a big "if" and it scares the shit out of me. Mostly because of the micro-transaction stuff.  But so far the beta has everything that I would want in a game, even despite the fact that I'm not a huge fan of the FPS genre. So let's take a look:
Skill based advancement system- Check
Sweet sci-fi stuff like spaceships and clones- Check
Gain skill points even when you aren't playing- Check
Super deep customization of equipment load out- Check
Assholes that spend their allowance to get gear that owns you- Double Check
Well, that last one kind of sucks, unless of course you don't mind throwing down the coinage to be one of those A-holes then it's probably pretty awesome.
But despite the beta being relatively fun in and of itself you're left with the feeling that something significant is being left out. Because, well, it's a beta test. So despite a bit of herky jerky camera work here and there, and some latency issues, this might shape up to be a great game. Just jump on it quick because the skills take so long to level that you run the serious risk of senior players being permanently better than you just because they started first or paid for skill point boosts.

Getting ready for the weekend.

After some swimming on the internets I discovered this weekend/rest of this month gaming.Saml started another seed on our server hes running. Ill be putting some time in that for sure.Ill let you guys know how this all works out. Hopefully with some screen grabs for your eyes.Here are the links if you want to check out the games. Maybe a better write up will follow. Path of Exile -------> HERE!Actual Sunlight -------> HERE!!-bLOSSLE



UPDATE:
Already started

And in the process slowing down my computer so I can't play minecraft while it down loads.
Really need to wipe my pc and reinstall my OS.


So I finally got on minecraft. Died in middle of nowhere. Screen grabbed my cords.

Buuuuuttt I did get Actual Sunlight going.
Shit is already depressing. Just going to handle this coming week.

Got Path of Exile going. Went with being a Witch. Idk why. 40 min in and pretty pumped.

So it looks like the rest of my month wll just be minecraft, dune 2 and Path of Exile.

New magic set just came out online really hoping to get a few draft rounds.
I really try to play only constructed on mtgo. I haven't done it yet with RatR so I'm hoping that I can start diving into that. I will be drafting with the new set out soon. Keep you guys posted. I think that's all for today. Game on my friends.

Take me down to the Video City

Since my friends have recruited me into this faceless army of slanderous neophyte bloggers, I feel compelled to attempt to take over the entirety of the interwebs with a single vicious but profound statement. However, that probably won’t happen. Mostly because I have too many things to say, and unfortunately I have only one mouth with which to say them (or in this case I have one keyboard that, for reasons better left unsaid, has too many sticky buttons). But also because anything I say will most likely fall short of “profound”. Be that as it may, I think I’ll start by bitching about something that most people might bitch about people bitching about.

It seems that in civilization hell bent on instant gratification there would be very few things less “instant” and less “gratifying” than walking into a structure with various items of interest hanging from the walls, taking one or more of those items and walking out with said items on the implied contract that you will bring them back when you've had your way with them. I’m talking about video rental stores and how they're steadily going the way of the buffalo. For those of you who missed the better part of the eighties and nineties, think of these places as like libraries (no wait, bad example. Who goes to libraries anymore?). Think of these places as like Netflix but with real life objects made out of matter that exist outside of this relatively new digitized parallel reality.

It’s possible that I’m just some kind of strange throw back from an earlier time, like a living, breathing Otzi the Iceman. Only instead of an axe and bearskin cap, I’m rocking a Blockbuster card and some serious nostalgia. I get why video rental stores might not be optimal in every scenario. After all, you can only fit a finite amount of “things” into a finite amount of space. So, clearly the selection isn’t going to be as good as ordering whatever you want out of the infinite ether that is the Internet. But, never the less, waiting two to four days for something to show up in the mail seems like a ruinous business model that runs counter to a society that values instant gratification.

Unless there is a caveat.

Essentially, what this tells me is that people are saying, “hey, I want it. And I want it now. Unless I have to leave my house or interact with other human beings, in which case I will gladly take it later.”

Now, hopefully this little bit of social commentary does something more than just crudely mask the fact that I don’t like waiting for things to download or show up in the mail. But if it doesn’t, oh well, I’ll be cramming in a marathon session of James Bond movies so I can have them back at the store before I incur any late fees. 

made an awesome oasis strong hold out of a pyramid I found in Minecraft

AND YES THAT'S A SKY BRIDGE -bLOSSLE

Dune 2

So over the last few days I've "discovered" Dune II. Westwood made it and I always dug Command and Conquer. You can play it in your browser, which I'm pretty sure is the this Open Dune thing. So you can pick your clan based on Dune characters. And you collect resources and blah blah blah. (linked wiki and to play below) I think these graphics are killing it. Good shit. This is what the game play looks like. When you play it in the browser you get the epic back ground BTW. So Ill post screen shots when i get further in. I would recommend you check it out if you've havn't played it yet. I wasnt playing computer games in 92. Just Super Nintento. SHIT CAME OUT WHEN I WAS 7. #GODSEND Links below. ------>Wiki ------>Open Dune PLAY IT!!!! -------> HERE!! -BLOSSLE

Automation and the Future of My Castle

I have been looking at a bunch of automated farms on YouTube.  I am going to start building some of them.  I may tear down my current farming setup and start over.  I may post some videos of different ideas later.

I have also been looking at different castles that people have built.  I am now not satisfied with mine.  I don't hate it but I like some of the epic creations I have seen online.  I may just add to my current setup and make a complex rather than start a whole new building.  I haven't decided yet.

I have also thought about connecting my area with the ocean via water ways but I have a feeling that would be WAY to work intensive and the water would probably wind up freezing in the area I am based.