Robot Claw – Page 383 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Probably Of Interest Only To The Bear

July 18, 2015

I haven’t made a World of Warcraft post in ages since I stopped played about 2 years ago (Sep 10, 2013 to be precise). Blizzard have been relentless in trying to get me to return, offering me free game time several times over the years. Mostly I ignore the offers, but yesterday I redeemed a free week and logged on to see what has changed.

Here’s what I saw upon login:

Of course there has been a new expansion added as well. I found it interesting they don’t mention that.

A couple of UI buttons were highlit with big glowing help arrows. One was the ‘collections’ button, that contains the pet, mount, toy and heirloom collections. Here’s a shot of the toy collection:

And here are the heirlooms:

There are so many mounts in the game now (>400 I think!) it’s just a bit crazy. The new ones added in the expansion are mostly boring reskinned wolves and pigs, but this guy caught my eye:

Look at the cost! Many of the new mounts seem excessively pricey. I guess Bliz wants to reduce player wealth.

Speaking of wealth, the other UI button they were directing me to was the in-game shop, where you can buy mounts and pets…

Or other things like game-time tokens ($20 each) that can be sold on the AH (~24k gold apiece) or even a $60 – sixty dollars! – level boost:

I wonder if they only priced it that high to make the additional cost of the expansion (which includes one boost) seem like a deal?

Anyway I had to see the new character models, which were billed as a big draw. For comparison, here’s a shot of Momomo (my main character) from back the days of the old models:

And here she was, all ready for some styling, immediately upon logging in today:

It’s not a massive difference is it? The short hair and weird face were not to my liking though, so I tried a few looks…

Before settling on this:

The fancy new character models are underwhelming. For starters the characters still look quite dated due to the limitations of the armor. And secondly the vast majority of characters have their faces covered by big bulky helmets (or shoulders) so you never see the new faces anyway. Not a selling point in my opinion.

Since I don’t have the expansion – and don’t intend to buy it now – playing the game stuck at level 90 is a bit like getting a free ticket to the movies but having to leave after the trailers. There wasn’t really anything to do that wasn’t available back when I quit, so I got bored very quickly.

I did have one quest I was always meaning to solve, so I went and beat up this dude:

They have added some sort of buff when it comes to fighting lower-level monsters (including raid bosses), which made Black Temple a faceroll. Which is good, since I’ve forgotten how to play and the class has changed so much I couldn’t really be bothered to relearn 🙂

Oh, and the game is dead. There wasn’t many people on at all (including in the capitals) and the guild seems to only have a dozen or so people that play:

So my free week didn’t keep my interest more than 24 hours. I parked Momo on her pretty sparkling horse (obtained from playing Hearthstone of all things) and said goodbye once again:

I’m sure one day I’ll buy the new expansion(s?) and return again. Just not today!

Intellitourney 2015

July 13, 2015

It was time once again for another TV game system tournament. The place: KLS’s parents house. The time: July 4 weekend. The entrants: KLS, Jim and myself.

Three experienced combatants would this time set sail into unfamiliar waters: Intellivision!

The (emulated) Intellivision system contains about 60 games and includes controllers modeled after the original as well as the plastic overlays. It’s nicely designed, and much better than the Atari one with its poorly working IR wireless controllers.

The usual rules applied: only play single player games with scores, no practicing and each games winner goes first on the next game (a disadvantage).

The graphics are stylish, with effective use of color and quite a bit more animation than I thought the system would have. Of course the games themselves have aged very poorly, and are probably best played these days in a tournament such as this.

We put our hearts and souls into the struggle, and it took us about 4.5 hours to play every game that fulfilled the requirements!

It was a hard fought battle, full of triumphant highs and terrible lows, craven bluster and stoic bravado, of cheers and of jeers and even a few tears. But by the end none of us doubted who had rightfully earned the title of ‘Ultimate TV Game King‘.

Here are the results:

The first plot shows the cumulative scores (2 pts for a win, 1 for second, 0 for last) and the second plot shows the score percentage per game.

With my usual humility, I’ll graciously accept your congratulations for my impressive victory 🙂

This last photo shows screenshots of the best game in the collection: a strange Pac-Man/RPG hybrid called Thunder Castle. It had three levels, of which we only saw two, and was perhaps the only game in the system I’d be interested in playing more…

…but that’s going to have to wait, since I’ve also acquired the Colecovision TV game system, and the early stages of Colecotourney 2015 have even begun!

However it will take months for the next ‘Ultimate TV Game King’ to be crowned. Stay tuned 😉

Blast From The Past

June 30, 2015

A few weeks ago, I visited Notre Dame in Paris. It was a spectacular place, and I remember it fondly.

On that trip I purchased the following papercraft kit of this very same cathedral:

This was originally intended as a gift for my brother, but as these things tend to happen, I decided it would be mine! Here’s the contents once opened:

The fact all the pieces are pre-cut and pre-scored is a big plus, since craft kits of this type that require you to cut the pieces out of a book are massive pains in the butt (which I know from personal experience). Even so, the kit was a bit tricky to put together, mostly because of the complexity of the curved surfaces (especially the steeple). Here it is completed:

Impressive isn’t it! It’s about 20 cm long and stands about 15 cm high, and is quite sturdy and a decent recreation of the original building. For a model made of paper, I was quite impressed.

But I thought I could improve on the kit with a little modification of my own…

…such as by making a few additions:

That’s five fireworks, 4 small guys and one ‘Mini Californian Rocket Fountain’ (from which I had snapped the stick to raise it from the ground). I put my considerable pyromantic skills to work and filled the empty space inside the Notre Dame model with these five bundles of fun:

If all went well, this would faithfully reproduce the great fire (that never actually happened) that caused irreparable damage to Notre Dame in 17XX (that never actually happened). A quick trip outside, and here’s the completed modified kit sitting peacefully on our ‘fireworks launching log’ waiting for the flame…

Three fuses. Five fireworks. Could I light them all and get to safety in time? What would actually happen? Would it fizzle out? Burn? Be spectacular? There was only one way to find out:

OMG! Just… omg! Here’s the aftermath:

My Notre Dame papercraft model: it lived fast, died young, and went out in a blaze of glory. What more could it have wanted?