Suffice to say with moving, new role at work, and the exciting launch of Warhammer Online, I’ve been very busy. Add two trips to California into the mix and make that VERY TIRED and VERY BUSY. On top of all that, my brother just had his daughter (see Ray’s website on my links list) Rachael Elizabeth Laurence on September 13th at around noon. Very happy things went smoothly and both of the proud parents are doing fine.
In regards to work, I have my Senior Software Engineer (Charles McAuley) hired and recently I’ve been interviewing perspective candidates for Technical Support and my other Software Engineer. Interestingly enough at least 2 people (that I know of) have looked up this website and other websites I’m sure of mine and done research about me prior to the interview. I of course have nothing to hide and am open person, it’s just not something I’m used to (although I should be almost expecting it these days). I think I’ve made my decision at this point about who I want to hire for support, but I’m still working out the details with Tony and corporate (paper work).
In regards to entertainment, Warhammer has been going very well. The guild is up to around 40 members again (plus around 10 alts). The game is great and it’s really awesome to be close to all my good friends again. As always trying manage a guild of 50+ people is challenging, but also rewarding and the members appreciate how I manage things.
In regards to home life and Kerrie… well things couldn’t be better. We’re *mostly* unpacked and have caught up a little bit on the garden. Me being out of town for two weeks in the last month hasn’t helped with the house progress, but even still things have been progressing nicely. We’re enjoying the new house and really settling in well with our lives together finally.
Those are the top events in the last month or so. Will hope to start getting back into the groove of blogging again for those who keep up with my goings on. Life has been busy and I hope all my readers out there have been doing well.
This weekend I was at PAX 2008 meeting Jeff Hickman, Paul Barnett, Josh Drescher, and James Nichols from Mythic Entertainment. I got my picture with Paul and Jeff (while wearing Paul’s signature shades), signatures from Paul, Jeff, & Josh, and an “Elder Beta Tester” T-Shirt from James. I was spending so much time at the Warhammer booth showing off the game to other people at the convention that Jeff even joked “Give this guy a job”. Some of the other people who were paid to be there to demo the game were learning things from me. When Warhammer had it’s official presentation at the event, it was SOOOOO packed and overflowing that they had to cut the presentation in half and do it twice back to back “in fear of a riot” if they didn’t.
Back in June, I blogged about seeing a preview on Paul’s video blog showing the new Lord of Change model. When I met Jeff and Paul this weekend, I asked them directly about the new model. Jeff assured me that while there are still several different Lords of Change in the game there is one which is the “impressive looking one” which I believed he said was in the Lost Veil. I was rather pleased to hear about this and went on my merry way. Later on in the day I was showing some people the Inevitable City. Well upon zoning into the Inevitable City, I ran into none other than the Lord of Change. This was expected, but unexpectidly, he looked truly amazing. Just like I would expect with huge wings, 3 stories high, white robes, golden staff, and all the little details. Later on in the day I told Jeff that I saw him and was impressed. He was glad to hear that.
Speaking of glad to hear about it, I showed Paul where he could put in another “plunger of the world”, a location near the chaos starting area that he didn’t know about. He was rather pleased that I found it and said he’d get one put in.
Overall it was a fantastic event. It was kinda “meh” for me though because I was so excited about WAR and talking with people about WAR that nothing other than the concerts were really all that interesting. Spore was pretty amazing though as well as the One Ups, Johnathan Coulton, and Will Weaton. The World of Warcraft and other Blizzard BOOTHS (yes plural) made me giggle. Tabula Rasa and Guild Wars booths also had a brief visit by me.
There will be WAR starting September 14th. Oh yes and HILYMI will reign again!
Between the Warhammer Beta, college, my car being broken into, changing job roles, possibly other opportunities, house hunting, preparing out household budget, moving finances, keeping my head screwed on, meeting with mortgage lenders to get pre-approved for a future home purchase, finding the PERFECT place, signing paperwork, working with a homeowner/landlord who’s not even in town, dealing with getting new teeth put in my mouth after fracturing two of them, and now packing and preparing to move by the 15th starting this weekend (wears me out just saying all that)…
Let’s just say I’ve been busy. More details forthcoming as I find the time to post.
Although this is a bit late it’s still important and worth mentioning. On June 15th, Hit it like you mean it, my guild and band of brothers hit their 2 year anniversary mark. I made another slide show style video showing off all the great times that have happened in the last year. Almost every single one of us now has the Collector’s Edition of Warhammer and we’re eagerly awaiting Open Beta and launch of the game.
It’s now been 3 full months since HILYMI committed to Warhammer. I know a lot of other guilds have been waiting a lot longer, but the suspense is killing us. We all have preordered the collector’s edition. We all are just randomly playing games until WAR comes out and we’re all hoping to have our names drawn in the next round of beta invites which should be coming very soon.
My random MMO of the week is Secret of the Solstice. Considering it’s just past the summer solstice, I figured it would be fitting. The game at first look seems like a simpler, but better looking Ragnarok Online with better UI and more group oriented play focus. Of all the MMO’s I’ve always gone back to from time to time, Ragnarok Online is one that always kept my interest. It will be interesting to see how this newer game based on the same engine plays out.
I’ve started an interesting side project recently which is why I haven’t blogged in a couple of days. It really has been bugging me about what I’ve been wanting to do with my blog. I don’t want my blog to loose too much focus on ME as a person because again as I’ve stated before, my blog is mostly for me and my internal thought processing. So the tone of this site will stay what it is, but I’ve been wanting to do something more… something… bigger. In all the years I’ve been making websites, running websites, and building things professionally in my career, I’ve never taken the time to start a personal project of major worth for myself.
So an idea hit me and I went with it. The website is still top secret as I continue work on putting it all together and getting starting content in there, but so far here is what people are saying. Who knows if you comment on this thread, maybe I just might give you a sneak peak. Here is what people are saying so far:
A very ambitious project, for which I will be the first to pledge my support! To my knowledge, this has never been done before, and innovation is something to be commended.
Wow! That’s an excellent idea for a website. I dont think anybody has ever done anything like that before.
“We made a couple of tough decisions. There will be no namby pamby healer-only classes. There is no sitting at the back going ‘And I heal! And I heal! And I heal! And I heal! And I heal!’ because it’s BORING! I’m really sorry, if you’re really one of those people who just like being a medic, who like sitting at the back not doing anything, going ‘And I heal! And I heal! And I heal!’ … go away. Stop watching. Click away. Don’t even leave a comment on the board going ‘I HATE THIS GAME BECAUSE IT HAS NO HEALERS’ because we’re telling you now… we’re not the game for you. We’re the game for the people who want to matter. Every single character can do damage. Every single character can make a significant attempt at beating the living snot out of people”
A quote from the mighty Paul Barnett. I’m kind of depressed now.
I’ve been blogging since 2005. Over the years I’ve run a personal blog, a professional blog, and some gaming blogs. I got tired of blogging in so many places that if you are a reader of my blog you know that about a month ago I merged everything “under one roof” so to speak. Now that I’ve merged so many of my different blogs into one place, I am now forced to ask myself… do I have an audience? Has the merging of my content into one blog helped or hurt my ability to advertise and get comments on some of the things I blog about?
I originally made my blog for my own memory keeping purposes, but I wonder if this has changed. Do people care about the things I’m blogging about? I’m sure my guild cares about some of the guild blogging I do, but does the general public care about some of the leadership blogging that I do or general gaming blogging. Should I blog about game reviews more? I’m not sure anymore.
So in an effort to answer the question “Do people care?”, I head out to WarhammerAlliance.Com to ask the writers out there for feedback. Maybe people do care and I just haven’t ever bothered to advertise my blog. Maybe I should. I await their comments.
So if you’re reading this. What’s your opinion of my blog and should I bother advertising it?
ESAK http://www.guildcafe.com/zQuest.php
ESAK players often see the game world as a great stage, full of things to see and people to meet. They love teaming up with people to get to the hard-to-see places, and they relish unique experiences. Achiever 20.00%, Explorer 86.67%,
Killer 20.00%, Socializer 73.33%
Funny because I’ve always through of myself a little more of an Achiever than this test rated me as. Although I believe the biggest achievements in an MMO at least revolve around exploration and building community (socializing). I really enjoyed the test, particularly the last question on my test which was Knowledge or Power. I of course chose Knowledge, for it is a stronger… more subtle power than direct power itself. There were many guild related questions and I continued to learn toward them. It really makes me proud of the group I’ve made and I am really enjoying gaming with them again. Can’t wait till Warhammer when we can all start playing the same game again though. Most of us are spread across several games.
In an MMO, guilds and players define themselves as either “hardcore” or “casual” and there seems to be very little middle ground between the two. The reason why guilds do this is to attract players that are like minded and have similar objectives to them. The reason why players do this is to define themselves when looking for a guild. Unfortunately, I believe that these terms have been bastardized over time. At one time I believed that “hardcore” when applied to MMOs meant that you invested 40+ hours a week to raiding minimum. Casual was a term given to guilds that raided but didn’t require attendance, at least not as much as the hardcore guilds.
These definitions of “hardcore” and “casual” have changed over the years from their MMO-centric definitions to now conform with the console and general gaming definitions of the words. As I’ve been told by others, hardcore means “skilled” and casual means “dumbass”. You see, when you are a console gamer and you play 1, maybe 2 hours a week (or less), you are a casual gamer. Gamers who usually play this little, generally suck and don’t play games very well in general. They rerely beat games and generally don’t compete in online play. Hardcore gamers on the other hand play games in general 20+ hours a week.
The thing that’s confusign is that MMOs require 20+ hours a week of general committment if you think you’re going to develop your character. Some weeks less, some weeks more. So as my friend puts it, the very fact that you play an MMO means that you are NOT a casual gamer. But there still needs to be a definition for a hardcore gamer that is not a HARDCORE raider.
I’m going to coin a new term, “midcore”. Midcore is a mix of hardcore and casual mentality. Midcore by my definition is a guild or player that requires or has Hardcore skill and pride in character development, but casual game play commitments and requirements. So there you have it. I am a midcore MMO player. Hit it like you mean it is a midcore guild.
