Gaming

Ways to Handle Beggars

March 3, 2007 By Gitr 10 Comments

I figured out a brilliant (IMHO) way to get rid of a beggar in a major city. I was crafting at the time when a level 13 rogue came up to me and asked if I could spare some change. I waiting until I was done crafting, /sat, and /afk’d. LOL. It took him about 2 seconds to turn away and run to the next 60+ to ask for money.

I relayed this incident to my wife, and she was astonished that “there are bums in WoW.” She doesn’t get it. Along the lines with people paying to get power leveled while they are at work, she doesn’t understand why someone would play to not play. If you are playing, why would you not want to get your own stuff? Her best quote was, “it’s not like they are homeless, right?” I followed that up with, “and I’ll bet their fingers aren’t broken.”

What do you do when you get a whisper and they are standing right there watching you?

First 10 People Get Free Gold

February 12, 2007 By Gitr 13 Comments

I want to always have people to run with on Burning Legion. As a casual gamer, that will take a few people. My guild, including my main are all over 60 in the Outlands now, and it’s hard to come by good pairing partners. I enjoyed playing with Kelthias last week, so I’d like to continue the trend.

Here is my offer: [Read more…] about First 10 People Get Free Gold

Gender Wars – Cross-gender Playing

February 9, 2007 By Gitr 9 Comments

I wrote some time ago about playing your opposite gender in-game and wanted to re-visit the topic now that I have rolled my first female toon in over 15 alts. Read this oldie in Cross-dressing WoWers, and get caught up with what I’ve said in the past.

I’ve been reading more and more about women playing WoW, and they have been commenting on their experiences playing a female character. One thing that they may not realize is what is different treatment from male treatment, as they are women in RL. As a guy playing a female toon, I will quickly notice anything out of norm for my normal playing from hundreds of hours of playing male toons.

Do You Invert Your Mouse Controls?

February 8, 2007 By Gitr 6 Comments

I got a huge spark in my brain when I read and commented on Wilhelm’s post on the control keys we use in games, in particular the WASD movement control. I found that to be a really stimulating post about his, and thus my, gaming history.

Now for the noodle-cooking: invert mouse or no? I have, since day one, inverted the mouse for one very simple reason: flight simulators. Some of the first games, and the ones that I undoubtedly played more of than any game pre-Doom/Duke Nukem 3D, I played were flight sims. I still remember the old Amiga and hearing “Pull up, Pull up!” from the cockpit’s female warning while in a dive too close to the ground in Falcon. You move the stick back to go up, and move it up to go down. I just can’t make my brain switch in first or third person games to reverse that directional control. [Read more…] about Do You Invert Your Mouse Controls?

Happiest Minimalistic UI in the World

January 29, 2007 By Gitr 11 Comments

I have finally found a UI that I love. The best part about it to me is that it’s my own creation, not a compilation. It has all the extra information that I crave, nothing is going to get in the way of clicking mobs in instances, and I keep guild/party/raid chat separate from system messages. The party portraits are set up to appear between the chat window and player/target portraits, making for VERY easy healing.

Everything you need is right there at the bottom of the screen where all of the action is happening, casting, spell buttons, the map, buffs/debuffs, and chat. It’s quite analogous to the dashboard in a car, which was my plan.

Edit: My biggest gripe about my system now is my framerate in WoW. It’s very poor: 9-12 fps in 1024×768 mode. I really have a hard time getting enough information on the screen at that resolution to boot, so that really makes me happy about this set-up, because everything is readable at 1024×768. I took this shot at 1600×1200, but nothing was going to kill me at the moment. 🙂

The only change I have made to this since the screenshot is that I made the buff area transparent instead of translucent, so it is less obtrusive when there aren’t any buffs filling the window. Here is the list of Addons:

UI-affecting:

Bongos
CT Core
CT BuffMod
CT MailMod
EnhTooltip
Informant
Titan Panel
vBagnon
VisualHeal
X-Perl

Great addons:

Auctioneer
Igor’s Mass Auction
EnhTooltip
Informant
Swatter

A New Blizzard MMO

January 26, 2007 By Gitr 12 Comments

Empire magazine interviewed Blizzard’s Vice President of Development, Itzik Ben Bassat, and got some juicy information for all of us drooling, game-thirsty geeks. Read the interview here: Empire Interview

Now that you’re back, or still here if you’ve already read it, I want to speculate. I saw the interview in RSS, and then had the benefit of seeing some links on other blogs today. I have a slightly different take on this. Does Blizzard have the kahones to break out with something completely new at this point?

To bust out with a Starcraft MMO game is not really fitting in with the claim of bringing “entertainment to another level.” Another level is something that hasn’t happened since MMOs went to graphics. To go from Ultima Online’s old 2D engine to what we play today is not as big of a jump as the leap from text to graphics.

[Read more…] about A New Blizzard MMO