Last week was my fourth pass through the Game Developers Conference, having also gone up to San Francisco in 2007, 2008, and 2009.

This year my expo pass was provided by the fine people at FileCatalyst.  They were at the show to talk to companies about their accelerated and managed file transfer solutions.  While they asked for nothing in return, I figured I would put their logo up as a thank you.

GDC was considerably more compressed than previous years.  Gaming may ..read the full article

Today is the day.  Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver launch today.

The web site for HeartGold and SoulSilver has been updated with a lot of new information about the game, along with some hints of things to be revealed later.

We pre-ordered through Amazon.com, which means that a Sunday launch date guarantees that we won’t get the game for at least a day or two after launch.  Nintendo seems to be pretty strict about shipping early, since it looks like Amazon won’t even ..read the full article

I’ve been playing Star Trek Online at a rather relaxed pace so far.  It does seem to be designed to let you drop in for a quick mission or two.  But that does not mean I have not been paying attention to the game.

Still on the press release mailing list, this fell in my inbox today:

Season 1: Common Ground Fact Sheet

Our latest content update, Season 1: Common Ground, is releasing shortly. Here’s just a bit of the updates ..read the full article

Saturday afternoon found Potshot and I running around with alts on Lightninghoof.

I had Grungur, my healing shaman on and he had his pally on, who was only a couple levels ahead of Grungur, and also spec’d healing.

Thinking we might get some good, fast exp, he re-spec’d to protection and we hit the dungeon finder as a healer tank pair.  We got off to a bit of a slow start… working as a team we tend not to be the “gogogo!” ..read the full article

World of Tanks has released the American tank tree for their game.

The American Tank Tree

The American tank tree illustrates quite clearly the US position on tank development, which were largely influenced by General McNair, that the US Army didn’t need anything better than the Sherman, which should be used for infantry support and which should leave the enemy tanks to the tank destroyer units.

Because of this position, I thought perhaps they would combine the US and UK tank trees, ..read the full article

Hail, hail, fire and snow, call the angel, we will go, far away, for to see, friendly angel come to me

-Rhyme from the worst episode ever

There I was in another strange solar system checking on another Federation outpost.

Another planet to save!

There had been a distress signal.  Something strange was happening on the surface.  There was a request to beam down to the planet.

However, when I got there, this was the mission briefing.

I have, in a number of posts and comments, mentioned that ..read the full article

Back to my 2010 predictions, and one in particular.

One of the following companies will announce their first/next project, and it won’t be an MMO (5 points):

Aventurine Carbine Studios Red5 Studios Simutronics Turbine

Only, when I first made that list, I had 38 Studios on it.  It seemed logical.  I had lumped them together with Red 5 and Carbine last year.

Then I talked myself out of it.

They had already announced Copernicus.  Of course an MMO would be their first release.  I was thinking crazy thoughts.

Then there ..read the full article

What to do with all that ISK I have in my wallet?

A few weeks back I was sitting in EVE Online.  Star Trek Online was down and I had had all of the WoW I could take for the day.  So there I was in New Eden wondering what to do.

I started thinking about one of my predictions for 2010, that strategic cruisers would become a common sight.  Of course, some people objected to that right away, saying that they ..read the full article

I asked my daughter a few weeks back whether I should work on saving up cash for one of the mammoth mounts that can carry two passengers or if I should concentrate instead on the Mekgineer’s Chopper, an engineer created motorcycle mount that can carry one passenger.

My daughter immediately said, “The motorcycle!”

As a father, I should probably worry about that answer from my daughter.

Logically, this probably wasn’t the best choice.  One of the passenger carrying mammoth mounts was much cheaper ..read the full article

The contest has come to life, we now have one entry!  Sometimes a little bit of whining works.

The entry has been validated, accepted and has a good chance of winning even if somebody else enters.  I don’t want to give it away, but I’ll put out this hint.

As good as this entry is though, it is not insurmountable.  I actually saw a more amusing name/title combo playing last night.  So all is not lost.  Read the rules and enter the ..read the full article

The contest update is that there is no contest update, really.

There is no update really because nobody has entered yet.  So there is NO competition currently to win a code for a WoW in-game pet.

One of these could be yours

And if there is only one entry, I they will get the pet even if it is a variation on Leeroy with the title Jenkins.

So go read up on the contest and enter today to stop that from happening… or ..read the full article

A further indulgence in the Fitzcaeraldo-like effort of this fake Werner Herzog to establish his own oeuvre with the interpretation of childhood classics through the lens of Werner Herzog.

Like life, this continued effort will simply lead to disappointment after disappointment as the freshness of the original parody can never be recaptured.  This is of course symbolic of exactly what these videos are trying to capture, so we shall let things take their course, smug in our knowledge of the outcome.

“In ..read the full article

I have to come up with a new title scheme for these posts about revisiting instances, as I tend to fall back on “Return to N,” where N represents a dungeon we have done before on the alliance side of things.  See last week’s post, Return to Zul’Farrak.

This week the post is about Maraudon, and as you can see, I latched onto the “don” at the end of the name when looking for a title.  Other, alternative titles were:

I have at least two more tree headlines to go I think.

Over at World of Tanks they have put out their Soviet tank tree to show the progression through the armored vehicles of the Red Army.  You can compare this with the German Tank tree.

If you feel like going for the Red Army’s steel panzers, take a look at the Soviet tank tree. The tree will feature the vehicles that took part in epic WWII battles as ..read the full article

One of the problems starting out on a new server is you can never be sure which character you roll will end up being your main and who will get left behind.

At least that is one of the problems I have.  Some people just roll one character I hear.

So when we moved over the Lightninghoof for the great horde/RP/PvP experiment, I rolled up a few characters.  We didn’t know how things were going to shake out, so I wanted a ..read the full article

I tend to start thinking about April Fools way in advance.  I was tinkering with the an outline of the Graphite Realms posts about nine months in before the fact.

Not that I feel compelled to do an April Fools post, but I know if I am going to do something, I need to do it in advance.  This year I decided that I should have a humor contest, the winner to be announced on April 1st.

Okay, that really isn’t an ..read the full article

General

After an outstanding, record breaking January here, along came February.

There is a reason we tend to travel in February.  Even in California February tends to be a chilly, gray month.  Work also tends to ramp up as certain departments finally sober up from the holidays and start making demands, leading to long hours at the office.  Werner Herzog could no doubt express the feeling February sometimes has better than I can.

So things settled down to the normal routine here, with ..read the full article

I have been a Netflix subscriber for a number of years now.

I like to browse through their selection and add things to our queue that I might like to watch some day.  There are well over 100 titles on our list.

I try to keep at least some of the top of the queue dedicated to things both my wife and I will enjoy, but I do not farm the queue constantly, so once in a while something I put on ..read the full article