Much work to get the meat out...

... is how I see QW:ET. I've been playing for about two weeks (?) now and only just beginning to get the hang of things. The strategy is quite deep but teamwork is so hard to come by. Hopefully that will change later today.

They are implementing a VOIP fire team chat channel. This will basically allow fireteams to communicate with each member without having to resort to TeamSpeak or Ventrilo. I'm hoping that it will foster more teamwork and a willingness to actually join a fireteam in the first place. I have yet to be invited to a fireteam or have someone accept my invitiation to join mine.

I remember when BF2142 was released and the integrated voice chat was really quite good. People started using it, tentatively at first, but later with much enthusiasm. You still had problems with people, mostly pre-pubescent boys of 13 or 14, swearing like sailors into their mics but for the most part it the problems weren't as widespread as, say, xbox live. I've vowed to never plug my headset into my xbox after seeing and hearing some of the r-tards (LOL I used r-tard in a sentance) screeching into their mics. Uh uh. Not gonna do it.

Anyways, I'm interested in seeing what happens tonight with the new VOIP solution in place. Will people embrace it or will it just become another useless feature tacked onto a very good game after release?

More Net Neutrality

Check this shit out. Just another 'possibility' if Net Neutrality isn't kept as is.

I must rescind, and rescind I shall

I gave it the old college try and came out with a better understanding.

The learning curve, in my opinion, is still insanely huge and if I didn't have as much experience in online FPS I would probably not be doing as well as I did tonight.

A lightbulb sort of went off during one of the rounds tonight. I picked up the engineer kit and took off towards a choke point I knew was going to get some action. I set up an anti-vehicle artillery that could cover the road and then moved towards the my team's first defense location, a generator surrounded by a few 2 story buildings.

Once there I planted tripwire mines in the alley ways the enemy would probably come through on their way to assault our generator. One in each of three alleyways. I took up a defensive position in one of the buildings on the other side of the area, waiting.

Needless to say I didn't need to wait very long before getting my first notifications that my traps had been placed decently. 3 tripwires, 4 dead Strogg! But they were still coming, hot and heavy. Eventually, due to some really poor team play, they had us all waiting on the re-spawn timer only to spawn 250M away where we would need to run back.

On the return trip we got notified that the enemy had managed to plant high explosives on our generator. Being an engineer I could get in there an defuse the bomb but needed the help of my team to cover me while I did that. The 4 or 5 members of my team moving towards the area with me moved in and used some decent tactics to clear out the enemy. I took the initiative, ran in under fire and defused the bomb.

Very cool scenario, don't you think? Now this is the interesting thing: since we were defending on that map, had the enemy pushed us back and succeeded in destroying our generator, we would have lost our foothold on the area for the rest of the round! No chance to get it back only an attempt to keep the enemy from digging in at the location we had just lost. Very cool gameplay.

Very different than BF2142 in that when you lose a control point in BF, you just gather your squad together and try to get it back with bullets and blood. Not in this game. If the point is gone, it's gone. You fall back to your next position and try to hold them off again, hopefully with more success.

So... I would like to say that it's done a 180 on me but I'm still not totally convinced. I'm just glad that I was able to have an 'a-ha!' moment before deciding that I'm too much of a lamer to be playing this one.

More will follow, good or bad.

Quake Wars: Enemy Territory Really, Really Sucks

Best Buy had a sale over the Thanksgiving Day weekend. Wife and I picked up a few things: couple seasons of Roseanne, season 6 of South Park and a copy of Quake Wars: Enemy Territory.

Sweet merciful Zeus, this game sucks. Now, I know what you're thinking: "Noob! You just got the game! You probably suck compared to the people who have been playing for the past several weeks before you in beta and demo!"

That's not it. I know there is a learning curve in every new game a person plays and you need to overcome that curve in order to be effective. The problem seems to be that I can't seem to get what I aim at to die. I just can't. It seems that there's a random chance of your rounds hitting your target assuming you can keep your reticle on that target. Stuff just won't die! Don't even get me started on the bunny hopping!

I'm a huge Battlefield fan, been playing since the first game, 1942. Really got into BF2 and BF2142. In these games you have to aim at something to kill it, not just spray and pray. It seems that most of what I'm seeing in this new game is simply that: spraying and praying. It's frustrating because the rest of the game is so damn good. Can be very tactical and when you are in a good group can be very satisfying. I haven't had that very often but I'm hoping. A man can hope can't he?

I'm going to spend the next week giving this game the benefit of the doubt and play it to see if I can get over that curve. If not, straight into the bin and I'll write it off as a learning experience.

Great White Gamer

I changed the name of this little site but I'm starting to think it was a bad idea. Great White Gamer? First thing that comes to mind is a shark. Second is a man in a Ku Klux Klan robe.

Perhaps a change is in order.

I'll think on it.

Net Neutrality and the (Gaming) Great White North

So I was Stumbling as I usually am these days and found this video on the net. I was very impressed with it's contents and I wanted to post something about it here. Though there is a bit of 'fear mongering' going on (what good cause doesn't have a wee bit of the fear mongering to back it?) it's quite informative for the lay-person.

I'm up-to-date on the issue at hand but I was thinking about how it might affect those of us North of the 49th. Realistically, most of our web traffic heads south at some point or another before heading overseas. I'm not sure of the actual percentage but I would bet it's at least 75%. Watching all this occur South of the border really does make me worry.

Hopefully you've watched the video? You haven't? Go ahead, I'll wait.

...

Done? What did you think? Scared? You should be. The Internet has always been about net neutrality, each segment of the network allowing all traffic equal access and throughput to get where it needs to go. With these new laws being considered, you can kiss that goodbye.

I'm sure you watched the video but let me give you a gamer's point of view.

You're hunkered down, getting ready to play a bit of BF 2142. You're on Telus or Shaw. Doesn't matter, take your pick. You're taking a look at the servers available, trying to find one that's not full but has a good population so you can get in there and kill the hell out of a few pixelated humanoids. Of course, the other thing you need to worry about is latency. No point in joining a laggy server; that's just asking for trouble and to get your ass handed to you, repeatedly.

So as you're going through the server list you start to notice something: a few of the really popular servers down in the states have some serious ping issues. We're talking 500-600 ms+. You've played on those servers before and know they have a kick ass connection so why the lag all of a sudden?

Enter our fictitious situation: it seems the internet backbone that your traffic would normally go through to get to that server is owned by AT&T. Your internet provider, Telus or Shaw, doesn't have a network agreement with AT&T so your packets get slowed up at the 'gateway'. Let's also say that the only company that has a network agreement with AT&T is Bell/Sympatico. So as you're jerking your way across the screen because your Internet provider wasn't willing to cave and get into an agreement with AT&T, your buddy down the street who uses Bell/Sympatico is having a great time kicking your ass on that very same server with a simply fantastic ping.

Ok so perhaps I'm being overly-dramatic but I'm sure you get the point. How can we possibly think that whatever happens in the States over Net Neutrality will not affect us? We are connected to the US in all ways. Socially. Economically. Culturally. And yes, whatever happens to their Net Neutrality laws, or lack thereof, will most definitely affect us as well.

What can you do? As a Canuck, I'm well aware of the elephant we sleep beside. This is only one of so many issues that we, as Canadians, can do little but watch and hope sanity reigns. Anyone, anyone, with half a brain should be able to see why the Internet must remain neutral. It must! Do not allow the lobbyists to control the fate of the one true platform, the one true voice each of us can take advantage of, for good for for bad. Let us grow this place beyond what it currently is. If you allow them to remove neutrality, everything that we've spent the last 10 years working towards is lost.

Then all you have is sponsored websites from AT&T. With commercials.

And little, if any, choice on how you use the Internet.

Well What now?

Another year, another blog left to rot.

Initially I had thought to use this as an 'online diary'. Not so much a 'guess what me and mary jane did behind the old well last night!' and more of a 'my life sucks, my wife rules, things are basically the same' sort of place. An area where I would get the opportunity to vent, if I felt the need, if I wanted to.

Let me touch on that word italicized above: blog. Whoops I did it again. I hate that fncking word. Let me shed some light.

I've discovered StumbleUpon recently and have basically fallen in love with the application. I've never really been a 'web surfer' so to speak. I have a list of 20-30 websites that I visit regularly. Of course that list changes depending on what I'm interested in or what MMO I'm playing at that time in my life. But that has really changed now that I'm 'stumbling' around the internet. I can sit in front of my computer for hours on end hitting that little green button and finding all sorts of interesting things to view.

Anyways, for whatever reason, I have been getting a lot of blogs popping up in my daily stumbles. And. They. Are. All. The. Fucking. Same.

Monetize your blog today! How to optimize your SEO! Finding an audience, what you need to know to make money today!

And, honestly, I have no interest in these sorts of sites. Basically because I think the whole idea of 'blogging' as a 'job' seems... lazy. I'm not sure if that's the right word but it's the only one I've got at the moment. There was a huge explosion of blogs about a year ago. They popped up because the media were espousing this as a new form of citizen 'journalism'.

With this new attention came more traffic. For some websites (the Huffington Post comes to mind) the extra traffic was nice but not a necessity. However, these new visitors saw what kind of money could be made via advertisements and the dollar signs lit up in their eyes. They ran over to blogger or some other service and started punching keys, hoping to find their easy route to fast cash.

'But.. but Zaal! You are doing the same thing, mon ami! Why is it you shit on all your blogging brothers and sisters?'

I am not a blogger. I'm not an online diarist, journal keeper or any other cutesy term you can dream up that would be synonymous to 'blogger'. I jump on here from time to time to blather on about whatever it is that comes to mind. I have no illusions of grandeur nor do I think, for even a moment, that someone, anyone, out there would have a single neuron flare in interest about what I might have to regurgitate from my gargantuan mouth-piece.

And it honestly pains me to see these others try. All they seem to do is participate in a circle jerk of cross linking each other in the hopes of building their Google Page Rank. That is if they got to the section on SEO in their 'Blogging for Dummies' book.

Anyways, I just wanted to vent.