Quotulatiousness

April 2, 2011

This week in Guild Wars 2 news

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:47

I’ve been accumulating news snippets about the as-yet-to-be-formally-scheduled release of Guild Wars 2 for an email newsletter I send out to my friends and acquaintances in the Guild Wars community.

A mix of real and “real” news this week.

Part 1: Discussion of previous news

  • Not technically Guild Wars-related, but the company from which ArenaNet’s founders started off: Blizzard, celebrates their 20th anniversary.
    “You’ll find commercials for console games stuffed into just about every 30-second nook and cranny in primetime TV. After all, the audience is sitting in front of the TV for entertainment, and if you’re a console game developer or publisher, these are your people. So when Blizzard announced that it would air an advertisement for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm during a nationally televised Dallas Cowboys vs. Minnesota Vikings game, it was unprecedented. WoW has become such a staggeringly big and widly accepted entertainment product that broadcasting the opening cinematic for Cataclysm to an audience traditionally more interested in lime-flavored beer and Madden games doesn’t sound crazy. In the PC gaming ecosystem, only Blizzard has the clout to pull that off.”
  • Another WoW news item, but one that may impact other MMO games: Canada’s biggest internet service provider, Rogers Communications, has been deliberately throttling the internet connections of WoW players. “Rogers said that it was Blizzard’s use of BitTorrent to deliver updates that triggered the throttling, and said that customers who disabled this setting — as well as any other peer-to-peer applications — would not see a slowdown in speed. “

Part 2: Guild Wars news

  • Creating the seven-hero vanquish team. “I run as an SoS ranger. If you’re a rit, even better. Most professions can run a decent SoS easy if you’ve got good energy management: necros, mesmers, eles, and rangers are your best bet. Dervs and Monks can pull it off with some major tweaking. You’ll struggle as a warrior, sin, or paragon, however. If you’re not an SoS, no worries. The team build I use allots for one.”
  • Game update including a sneak peak at the new Guild Wars 2 profession — the Commando.
  • The commandos are here. “Cpl. Bane will be stationed at Embark Beach until ~noon PDT on Monday. Speak to him before then — the very future depends on it! “

Part 3: Guild Wars 2 news

  • Elixabeth at TalkTyria looks at the recently introduced Hylek: “One word has changed. The nature of the hylek really hasn’t changed at all. They are a sentient people with which we as player characters may have peaceable relations or full-on warfare. We see that they still look very much like the frog-men we’ve all come to love stomping on. Their tribal culture seems relatively unaltered. They are still more or less behind on the technology curve, since they have to trade with other sentients for weapons and other goods. The hylek are in most ways indistinguishable from the heket — which leads many people to beg the question “why change the name at all?” What purpose does this serve?”
  • Another gameplay example from PAX East, this time in HD. The background crowd noise is a bit irritating, but this is a single player trying out a Guardian, so there’s some good views of individual and group combat, including recovering from the downed state and the use of chained skills.
  • ArenaNet announces their convention schedule for the summer, including Comic-Con — July 20-24, 2011, Gamescom — Aug 17-21, 2011, and PAX — Aug 26 -28, 2011.
  • Part 1 of an interview with Daniel Dociu, ArenaNet’s Art Director for Guild Wars 2. “The development team has grown a great deal, with the size of the art department having more than doubled. We’re currently in the mid 80s as far as number of artists on the team and that has lead to my role evolving into more of an oversight role. I still insist on art directing in a very hands-on fashion and still spend a fair amount of time getting my hands dirty creating concept art, but I also have to delegate a lot more. The lead artists and all artists in general are encouraged to contribute more of their own vision to the game. Growth is a mixed blessing as it creates a new set of difficulties: more structure is needed; more processes have to be implemented, policed, and massaged to fit our development culture. But it’s also more rewarding. The game we feel is going to be so much better. Bigger, better, and more beautiful.”
  • GW2Guru’s exclusive interview with ArenaNet. “How this information has not been leaked yet, I do not know. It’s big, folks. And when I say big, I mean game changing big. Today, ArenaNet has given the go-ahead to release this information, so here goes. Given that the GW2 beta is scheduled for late August 2012, ArenaNet wanted to give everyone a head start on purchasing their iPads. Wait, what did you just say? That’s right, folks. Guild Wars 2 will be releasing exclusively to the iPad!”
  • Revealing the seventh profession: the Shadowmancer! “The shadowmancer is a spell casting, scholar profession which is able to effectively prevent damage to itself by becoming invisible and invincible while at the same time dealing out considerable damage.”
  • Revealing the eighth profession: the Commando! “A master of the battlefield, this elite soldier is equally at home on the mean streets of Lion’s Arch, in the steamy Maguuma Jungle, or on the Orrian front. The multi-role commando is a combat medic, an infiltrator, and a tank. By land, sea, or air, the commando is a technological force to be reckoned with. Come get some.”
  • Interview with Jon Peters about the Commando. “Flamethrower is good in a variety of situations — you can create a basic flamethrower fire attack, but you can also air blast projectiles, create a burning area on the ground, or flame-jump around the map.”
  • Another look at the Commando.
    “PC Gamer: The Commando’s motto is “if it bleeds, I can kill it.” If it’s, say, undead, and it doesn’t bleed, then can he still kill it?
    “Jon Peters: The good thing is that everything in the game can be bled, so that lets the Commando pretty much kill everything, but in future we may introduce some none bleeding types to see if that has any balance impact for him.”
  • April Fool’s Day video from GuildMag.
  • Interview with Eric Flannum on the Commando.

April 1, 2011

Tor Books announces John Scalzi’s next book series

Filed under: Books, Humour, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:33

For those of you not interested in fantasy, how can you possibly resist this:

Tor Books is proud to announce the launch of John Scalzi’s new fantasy trilogy The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, which kicks off with book one: The Dead City.

Night had come to the city of Skalandarharia, the sort of night with such a quality of black to it that it was as if black coal had been wrapped in blackest velvet, bathed in the purple-black ink of the demon squid Drindel and flung down a black well that descended toward the deepest, blackest crevasses of Drindelthengen, the netherworld ruled by Drindel, in which the sinful were punished, the black of which was so legendarily black that when the dreaded Drindelthengenflagen, the ravenous blind black badger trolls of Drindelthengen, would feast upon the uselessly dilated eyes of damned, the abandoned would cry out in joy as the Drindelthengenflagenmorden, the feared Black Spoons of the Drindelthengenflagen, pressed against their optic nerves, giving them one last sensation of light before the most absolute blackness fell upon them, made yet even blacker by the injury sustained from a falling lump of ink-bathed, velvet-wrapped coal.

With the night came a storm, the likes of which the eldest among the Skalandarharians would proclaim they had seen only once before, although none of them could agree which on which one time that was; some said it was like the fabled Scouring of Skalandarharia, in which the needle-sharp ice-rain flayed the skin from the unjust of the city, provided they were outside at the time, while sparing the just who had stayed indoors; others said it was very similar to the unforgettable Pounding of Skalandarharia, in which hailstones the size of melons destroyed the city’s melon harvest; still others compared it to the oft-commented-upon Moistening of Skalandarharia, in which the persistent humidity made everyone unbearably sticky for several weeks; at which point they were informed that this storm was really nothing like that at all, to which they replied perhaps not, but you had to admit that was a pretty damn miserable time.

Which is to say: It was a dark and stormy night.

XM-25 man-packable cannon moves into production

Filed under: Asia, Military, Technology, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:55

I’ve updated the earlier report.

Chinese Tiger Mom meets Irish Setter Dad

Filed under: Books, Humour, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:38

P.J. O’Rourke on Amy Chua’s recent book:

What’s all this bother about Chinese Tiger Moms? Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, has America’s female parents in a swivet. You’d have to take Sarah Palin to a NOW convention to see so many ladies mad at a fellow woman. Practically a third of the Atlantic’s April issue is taken up with Caitlin Flanagan and Sandra Tsing Loh giving Amy Chua the dickens in terms strong enough for Hillary Clinton’s private thoughts on Monica Lewinsky. My wife put it more succinctly: “This person is factory farming her kids.”

I gather Ms. Chua is a total bitch with her children, making them finish homework before it’s assigned, practice violin and piano 25 hours a day, maintain a grade point average higher than Obama budget numbers, and forbidding them from doing anything they might enjoy, such as exhale.

But being a male parent with a typical dad-like involvement in my children’s lives — ​I know all of their names​ — ​I thought Battle Hymn was great. That is, I thought it made me look great. Not that I read the dreadful book, but I did buy each of my children a copy and inscribed it, “So you think you’ve got it bad?”

Rating Vikings drafts in the last decade

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:09

Bleacher Report ranks the 2000-2009 drafts for Minnesota:

  1. 2007: Adrian Peterson, Sidney Rice, Marcus McCauley, Brian Robison, Aundrae Allison, Rufus Alexander, Tyler Thigpen, Chandler Williams. Without a doubt, the best draft of the decade: Adrian Peterson by himself would make it, but add in Sidney Rice and Brian Robison and this was an excellent draft. Thigpen might have been a contributor, but he was grabbed off waivers and never played a game for the Vikings.
  2. 2006: Chad Greenway, Cedric Griffin, Ryan Cook, Tavaris Jackson, Ray Edwards, Greg Blue. A very good draft, by anyone’s standards. Both Greenway and Edwards have been great contributors, while Cedric Griffin has been very good when not battling injury. Jackson showed flashes of brilliance at QB, but never could beat the consistency problem.
  3. 2003: Kevin Williams, E.J. Henderson, Nate Burleson, Onterrio Smith, Eddie Johnson, Michael Nattiel, Keenan Howry. Williams and Henderson were great draft choices. Burleson and Smith were good contributors, but Burleson was lured away to Seattle, while Smith left the league after the “Whizzinator” incident.
  4. 2009: Percy Harvin, Phil Loadhalt, Asher Allen, Jasper Brinkley, Jamarca Sanford. It’s too soon to make a permanent judgement about such a recent draft, but Harvin and Loadholt were both major contributors in their rookie seasons, while the others have been good in backup or situational roles.
  5. 2002: Bryant McKinnie, Raonall Smith, Willie Offord, Brian Williams, Ed Ta’amu, Nick Rogers, Chad Beasley. Other than McKinnie, the rest of this draft class fade quickly out of memory.
  6. 2008: Tyrell Johnson, John David Booty, Letroy Guion, John Sullivan, Jaymar Johnson. The best part of this draft was trading the first-round pick to obtain Jared Allen. Tyrell Johnson and Jaymar Johnson are both still with the team, although neither has really made a name for himself. Guion has played well and should be a bigger contributor this year.
  7. 2004: Kenechi Udeze, Dontarrious Thomas, Darrion Scott, Nat Dorsey, Mewelde Moore, Rod Davis, Deandre’ Eiland, Jeff Dugan. Moore and Dugan were good picks, but the rest were forgettable. Moore still does good work . . . for the Steelers.
  8. 2000: Chris Hovan, Fred Robbins, Michael Boireau, Doug Chapman, Antonio Wilson, Tyrone Carter, Troy Walters, Mike Malano, Giles Cole, Lewis Kelly. Hovan was a player who seemed to be a legend in his own mind. Robbins did some good work, but not for the Vikings.
  9. 2001: Michael Bennett, Willie Howard, Eric Kelly, Shawn Worthen, Cedric James, Patrick Chukwurah, Carey Scott, Brian Crawford. The best that could be said of this draft class was that Michael Bennet, when healthy, could be good. The key words there were “when healthy”.
  10. 2005: Troy Williamson, Erasmas James, Marcus Johnson, Dustin Fox, Ciatrick Fason, C.J. Mosely, Adrian Ward. A flat-out terrible draft on any level. Two first-round picks, both wasted.

Google introduces “Gmail Motion”

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:35

Erasing your (digital) past

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:08

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google said: “I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable, and recorded by everyone all the time.” Privacy is dying, if not already clinically dead, in the online world. If you really want (or need) to airbrush yourself out of the picture, here are some suggestions on how to go about doing it.

The Internet has made our world a lot smaller. It has also made our histories a lot better-catalogued and more-searchable, and those developments — coupled with the weird phenomenon that people’s common sense tends to fly out the window when it comes to posting information and pictures — aren’t always beneficial to us.

[. . .]

Instead of popping you into a Witness Protection program — or changing your name — let us show you five steps on how to disappear from the Internet.

Step 1: Know Thine Enemy

Before you take any action, you need to know what you’re trying to get rid of. So first, do a search for your name — don’t just search Google, though, search online people search aggregation sites such as ZabaSearch, Intelius, Pipl, and Spokeo.

Here’s how to run an online background check (on yourself) for free.

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