Monthly Archives: March 2009

Sweet childish days, that were as long as twenty days are now.

Hello! How have you all been? For me it has been the case that mini-Melmoth has been most unwell over the past five days or so, and hence I’ve been a little preoccupied and unable to visit unseemly ramblings upon you at any length, but with a little backup healing from Mrs Melmoth and myself the blessed little nooblet is now tanking viruses like a professional. Alas, neither Mrs Melmoth nor myself managed to spot the random virus patrol that appeared from out of nowhere, as viruses are wont to do, and therefore we were both clobbered with the lurgi before you could say “Crap! Aggro!” Still, we’re all starting to feel a lot better, therefore I can return to you now with the voluble verbiage and puerile persiflage that you have come to expect.

And what better way than with poo? As my old granny used to say, before the nurses came along and took her off for a bath and change of clothes.

Mitch Benn’s tweet “All you do is insert the word ‘Poo’ into film titles. Reduced several of Britain’s finest satirists to sniggering eight year olds.” intrigued both Zoso and myself. I say intrigued, but I actually mean ‘reduced us to sniggering eight year olds’. And no I’m not saying we’re part of Britain’s finest satirists, it just had the same effect; good grief, I’m gone for five seconds and you’ve all gone all ‘Internet forum’ on me.

Anyway, we decided to go for game titles, the simple rule: swap one word in the title with the word ‘poo’. Feel free to add any of your own in the comments. It turns out that games are slightly more tricky than films, what with so many games having titles of only one word, but what follows are a few of our favourites:

Alone in the Poo – A game about you, a creek and your quest for a paddle.

Need for Speed: Poo Unleashed – Time to make a run for the toilet.

Jet Poo Willy – What men fear will happen on the day they have to ‘hold on’ for slightly too long.

Oh No! More Poo – Just when you thought your Jet Poo Willy was over.

Sensible Poo Spotting – Uh…

Poo Fantasy Tactics – Probably already an adult website.

Little Big Poo – You know, the rabbit dropping that took an hour of fist-clenching, teeth-baring agony to pass.

Mega Poo Star Force – That’s no rabbit dropping, that’s a space station.

Heavenly Poo – At the other end of the pain/pleasure spectrum…

Sid Meier’s Alpha Poo – Leader of the poo pack.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Poo – I guess it’s either very painful or a neat party trick.

The Way of the Exploding Poo – Is a good strong curry in a foreign country.

Poo of Conan – The mightiest poo in all of Hyboria.

Poo Tycoon – Work your way up to becoming the biggest effluent processor in the whole country!

I Have No Mouth And I Must Poo – This just scares me. Moving swiftly on.

Microsoft Combat Poo Simulator – The loser to America’s Army in the competition to provide the United States a realistic simulator of battlefield scenarios.

Unlike the Murphys…

… I’m Seriously Bitter. At least according to my latest title, for completing all ten of the Bitter Rivals tasks in WAR. I’d predicted, based on complex scientific reasoning, that there would be a lot of grind involved in Bitter Rivals and I was almost right, apart from being totally wrong in every respect. Bitter Rivals has involved almost no grind at all, a fairly familiar set of tasks (doing a PQ, killing a number of players, participating in the new Twisting Tower scenario and throwing a few pies there, /swearing at all the enemy careers etc.) being wrapped up in short order. The Twisting Tower is a slightly confusing scenario, I still haven’t really got my bearings in it (maybe that’s the idea), but a change is as good as a rest and all that. The event rewards aren’t wildly inspiring, a couple of titles and a new siege weapon, though of course there is the chance to roll a Choppa or Slayer a week early. All in all a little on the lightweight side purely as an event, but with all the other patch 1.2 changes plenty to be going on with before Day of the Slayerchoppas.

Ce n’est pas magnifique, mais c’est la guerre

The gates of the Inevitable City have been breached.

Before patch 1.2, the RvR campaign on Burlok was more or less at stalemate. Zones would sometimes flip, typically the Elf zones going back and forth, but the final push, to go from the last zone to a fortress, rarely succeeded. Either dedicated defenders would take a stand, or carefully orchestrated avoidance would deny the final few vital points needed to take the zone.

On the rare occasions one side would get to a fortress, killing the Lord was all but impossible. I’m only aware of a single successful attempt, when I believe a bug prevented Destruction players directly reinforcing the fortress, and a server crash halted the attempt on a second fortress that might have lead to the Inevitable City. The Infamous Tank Wall of Doom takes a heck of a beating, especially when backed up with a fortress lord and The Chaos Gods of Lag.

Patch 1.2 changed the zone control system so that holding the objectives and keeps in a zone for two hours is enough to take it, no faffing around with scenarios or public quests needed. It’s not exactly a Sun Tzu-esque leap from seeing that to working out that an alarm clock raid is possible, starting an attack very late at night or very early in the morning to ensure minimal defence. Some Order guilds got together and decided, 5am on Saturday, we’d make an attack. I wasn’t planning to join in from the start, Saturday mornings are usually time for a lie-in. As it turned out, I was having a weird dream, I think I was a substitute in some big rugby match, got called to go on the pitch, but I had to pull my jersey on, only the sleeves were incredibly long, and there weren’t any holes in the end, and I was madly flailing around, and… woke up. At 5am. I think my subconscious must’ve had plans… Seeing I was awake, I staggered downstairs, made coffee, and logged in to find 40-50 Order players hanging around Black Crag, with about half an hour on the Keep timers until we took control of the zone. It locked without incident, we took the fortress without too much trouble, and we carried on to Caledor for a repeat performance. A couple of Destruction players had noticed what was going on but not enough for a tank wall, not even a tank speed bump, the second fortress fell, and the gates of the Inevitable City beckoned! We had enough to get three instances of the City going (maximum of 48 per instance), and started on a public quest in there: a fair amount of preamble in Phase I, killing defenders, starting fires and holding a couple of control points, then in Phase II a Lord spawned, accompanied by four Heroes. In one instance it sounded like a couple of organised warbands were getting on with it. In a second, the few Destruction defenders had gathered, and though they couldn’t stop the us completing the first phase a couple of times the Lord and Heroes were more than enough of a handful, let alone with other players joining in, and their numbers were steadily growing until they reached parity, and started completing the first public quest stage themselves. At that point a few of us switched to the third instance, where there were no defenders, but less than a single warband of attackers, and though completing the first public quest stage was no problem, the Lord and Heroes were too much again for our smaller numbers, without well-warded tanks. Frustratingly we seemed to just about have the hang of the encounter (with a slow trickle of reinforcements helping) when the timer ticked down on our last attempt, and the attack petered out before we could get sacking the city properly.

The attack certainly shook things up. Firstly on the Warhammer Alliance forums, where, unsurprisingly, a full and frank exchange of views commenced. Alarm clock raids are a bit of a contentious issue, plenty of people on both sides feeling they’re not particularly honourable (fair enough), that they’re not in the spirit of the game (more debatable), and that anyone who takes part is worse than Hitler (as, by page 2, the thread plummeted past reasonable debate into usual forum territory). Actually I’m not sure Godwin’s Law actually kicked in, but someone really, genuinely invoked the war in Iraq. More relevant in the game itself, Destruction struck back, and were within minutes of flipping Reikland and attacking the Empire fortress when the server crashed, though I believe they managed a second attempt when it came back up.

Personally I’m not particularly proud of the attack, but unless something changes in fortresses I reckon it’s the only way either side will see a capital city, and if it’s shaken the campaign up slightly so much the better. It’s not magnificent, but it’s WAR.

Have I Got MMOnews For You

Host: And the final round is “Continue the Prime Minister’s Question”. This week, teams, Keith Vaz has been calling for tough game ratings: “Given the fact that there is increasing availability of these games on the internet exhibiting scenes of graphic and gratuitous violence, when is the government proposing to implement the Bryon Report in full?”

Melmoth: … to which the leader of the opposition replied by leaping across the floor, punching Mr Vaz in the face and then teabagging him over the seat of the speaker of the house.

Zoso: “… specifically, the bit about not letting nasty people gank other people in Darkfall and call them bad names and nick their stuff”, continued Mr Vaz who had earlier lost his prized Bronze Claymore.

Host: Goodnight!

Studio lights dim, theme tune plays.

More tea, vicar?

Having installed Empire: Total War (or “Reinstalled” it, thanks to slightly weird menu options), I jumped straight into a Grand Campaign. I’ve played the three previous games, after all, piece of cake. In those you start off owning one little bit of territory, the capital of which is a couple of hovels, you build some farms and barracks and stuff, recruit a few peasants with pitchforks and go off and invade the neighbours. Easy. So I chose to play Britain (of course), the campaign loads up, and…

Crikey. There’s more than a couple of hovels to manage. There are towns, and ports, and industry; there are colonies in America to establish, and the Indian subcontinent to exploit; Isaac Newton was wandering around southern England muttering something about apples. I did a bit of building, exhausted the national coffers, and within a couple of turns there were some really quite scathing pamphlets circulating the coffee houses of Fleet Street decrying my rule, including unflattering woodcuts. (OK, I might have imagined that last bit after reading Stephenson’s Baroque cycle again.)

Plan B, then: the “Road to Independence” campaign, a more story driven introduction to the new mechanics. Sure enough, you start with a single village and a couple of military units, and a helpful advisor telling you exactly what to do, a much easier way of getting into the swing of things. Part 1 is killing natives and stealing their land; not a problem, they didn’t even have a flag. Part 2, the dastardly French have arrived and started building forts. Well, I’m not having that, is there anything more natural than going to war with the French? Course not, so I’m currently laying siege to their strongholds. I’m not sure about the final part of the campaign, though. Declaring independence? Sounds a bit hasty to me. Let’s all sit down, and talk it over with a nice cup of te… oh dear.

Thought for the day.

Zoso pointed out to me today that Guitar Hero World Tour is having some new bands added to its downloadable content in the near future, including none other than those legends of British rock, Queen.

Of course, initial excitement somewhat fizzles away when you look at the list of tracks being released: Fat Bottomed Girls is fair enough, but We Are the Champions? C-whatthebloodyhell-lebrity? Where’s One Vision, Flash Gordon or Bohemian Rhapsody? How about, oh, We Will Rock You? I mean, the clue is in the song title.

I don’t know; for me these band games are like hiring a prostitute, only to find out when they turn up that they’re an inflatable doll; I mean, it’s sex, but you can’t help but think of all the myriad better experiences that you’re missing out on.

Phoney WAR

Our Warhammer server seemed to have settled into something of a Phoney War in the run-up to Patch 1.2. It’s not a terribly populous server (there isn’t a giant hand from above that raises and flattens the landscape or a giant ankh that everyone gravitates towards), we get a decent turnout for big RvR pushes but it’s fairly quiet apart from that, and it seems to have been even quieter still over the last couple of weeks. With all the goodies coming in 1.2 and shortly after I imagine some people are over on the test server, and others are waiting for the opportunity to roll up their Slayer or Choppa. Personally I’ve been stockpiling cheap items to salvage, as gold dust (a component required in talisman making) has recently been like… er… something that’s unusual and desirable and difficult to get hold of, I’m sure there must be an appropriate simile. Patch 1.2 includes a fairly major crafting overhaul, though, so I’m hoping to churn out a few more talismans after that.

The guild has also been quiet, to the point that in the last week we merged with another guild; it was a shame to hit the “Leave” button, Insult to Injury have been a great bunch, but as one door closes, another opens. If you tie them together with a bit of string. And they both open the right way; I mean, obviously if they both open inwards then it won’t work, and if they both open outwards then neither will open and you’ll be trapped, but, assuming one opens in, one opens out, and other conditions are met, then that second door definitely opens. Or you’re going through an airlock! That’s a better example. Forget the string, as one door of the airlock closes, the other opens. Well, slightly after, once the pressure has equalised and everything. So long as HAL can’t lip read. Anyway! New guild is looking good, and busier, with a bit of luck we might be able to revisit the halcyon days of a full guild warband tromping around and smiting Destruction.

Speaking of Destruction, I guess they decided to hold a Last Day Of 1.1 party, as logging in last night for a quick auction check before bed found Dragonwake under heavy attack, Destruction locking the zone not long after I got there; for some reason, the carefully honed Order tactics of “rush out from the warcamp into overwhelming numbers of the enemy” failed to prevent zone capture (in fact they were probably instrumental in giving Destruction the final few VPs they needed), but it was rather fun. Racing back to Eataine we all piled into a keep and mounted some magnificently spirited resistance, though they broke the doors down our tank wall held firm, Bright Wizard AoE spells being particularly effective in the confined spaces. All rather enjoyable and boding well for some Bitter Rivalry in today’s (or tomorrow’s, presuming we’re following the usual day-after-the-US timing) Bitter Rivals event.