First of all, I'm okay. My office shook really hard and long, but there's no damage and no injuries. From KTLA.com...
July 29, 2008, 11:56 AM PDT LOS ANGELES -- A 5.8 earthquake has just struck Southern California and was felt from Los Angeles to San Diego and slightly in Las Vegas.
Preliminary information indicates the epicenter was 29 miles east-southeast of downtown Los Angeles near Chino Hills in San Bernardino County, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The quake hit at 11:42 a.m. Buildings in Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles swayed for several seconds. Many residents report that the quake appeared to last 30 to 40 seconds.
Residents in the San Fernando Valley reported water from swimming pools swished from side to side and people ran out of their homes yelling "Earthquake!".
Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said there were not immediate reports of damage or injury in Los Angeles.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
i can has?
i has... *ahem* Today I adopted a new kitty. She doesn't have a name yet, but we'll work on that. :)
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
On VEATs
Okay, so to be honest, this'll mostly be about Blood/Night Widows, but in general, here's what I think so far:
Soldiers of Arachnos are awesome, and I wonder how we're able to defeat them as often and as handily as we do. :)
Seriously, if the NPC Soldiers of Arachnos had these powers, all working together, they should be handing our butts to us on a daily... no hourly basis. I love the concept of trained soldiers having powers that buff each other and/or the entire team. It does, however, make them pretty disgustingly powerful, especially when you've got several together.
My biggest problem? There are too many powers I want to take. Maybe it's the "ooh, shiny" of powers I've never seen before, but it seems like there are way more powers I'm going to want than are going to actually be available to me. Like Keen mentions in his blog, I haven't taken a travel power yet. So far, I'm sliding by on the temp power. Originally, I thought teleport would be the way to go, and I'd use Teleport Foe... but I think I used it three times since taking it. So I took advantage of the level 24 respec to get out of it and grab Hasten instead. I'm managing my endurance just fine and finding pauses in my attack chain, so between that and the Widow power that increases my attack rate, I think I'll be doing just fine now.
And ahh... Widow Smoke Grenade. Fyre mentioned this, and it's true: if this was the only Night Widow power I could ever take, I'd still play one. It recharges nice and fast, and having been the victim of this attack so often, I can imagine how frustrated and blind my enemies suddenly find themselves. Mean? Maybe. But they deserve it. >:)
RP-wise, I think I've got interesting story/concept with Sounds of Silence, but I'm running into the same problem I usually do RPing a villain: I'm not evil enough. Sure, when I'm running a role-playing game, I'm playing all the villains, but it's not long-term. Not really. They show, they do evil, they're defeated, new villains next week. They might come back again later, but it's not the same thing.
And the missions make it really hard to play a not-evil villain. I tried really hard with Will, and by the end... well, I was having to re-write mission plots or just run them OOC, knowing Will would never do such things.
I'm trying to make Silence a nice compromise. He's cold and vicious, not reluctant to kill to get to his goals. But deep down, he's still the person he was before Arachnos made him into a Widower, and that's mostly (so far) reflected in his long-term goals and the way he treats his team-mates/allies. I'm having a hard time getting a handle on the team-mates, though. I tried to jump-start us into it by playing off that the three had come to some sort of agreement or pact before they even got started. But that was just a quick and dirty way to get started, and to be fair, I didn't run it past Keen and Fyre before doing it. I'm trying to figure out what kind of people Karma Noir and Operative Lee really are so I can figure out what Silence really thinks of them, but I'm having trouble nailing it down.
Hopefully I'll get it figured out, though. I'm really loving being a Night Widower, but I don't want to be in it just to level a character. I play City of _____ to role-play and tell stories. Really get into a character, not just a "toon".
Soldiers of Arachnos are awesome, and I wonder how we're able to defeat them as often and as handily as we do. :)
Seriously, if the NPC Soldiers of Arachnos had these powers, all working together, they should be handing our butts to us on a daily... no hourly basis. I love the concept of trained soldiers having powers that buff each other and/or the entire team. It does, however, make them pretty disgustingly powerful, especially when you've got several together.
My biggest problem? There are too many powers I want to take. Maybe it's the "ooh, shiny" of powers I've never seen before, but it seems like there are way more powers I'm going to want than are going to actually be available to me. Like Keen mentions in his blog, I haven't taken a travel power yet. So far, I'm sliding by on the temp power. Originally, I thought teleport would be the way to go, and I'd use Teleport Foe... but I think I used it three times since taking it. So I took advantage of the level 24 respec to get out of it and grab Hasten instead. I'm managing my endurance just fine and finding pauses in my attack chain, so between that and the Widow power that increases my attack rate, I think I'll be doing just fine now.
And ahh... Widow Smoke Grenade. Fyre mentioned this, and it's true: if this was the only Night Widow power I could ever take, I'd still play one. It recharges nice and fast, and having been the victim of this attack so often, I can imagine how frustrated and blind my enemies suddenly find themselves. Mean? Maybe. But they deserve it. >:)
RP-wise, I think I've got interesting story/concept with Sounds of Silence, but I'm running into the same problem I usually do RPing a villain: I'm not evil enough. Sure, when I'm running a role-playing game, I'm playing all the villains, but it's not long-term. Not really. They show, they do evil, they're defeated, new villains next week. They might come back again later, but it's not the same thing.
And the missions make it really hard to play a not-evil villain. I tried really hard with Will, and by the end... well, I was having to re-write mission plots or just run them OOC, knowing Will would never do such things.
I'm trying to make Silence a nice compromise. He's cold and vicious, not reluctant to kill to get to his goals. But deep down, he's still the person he was before Arachnos made him into a Widower, and that's mostly (so far) reflected in his long-term goals and the way he treats his team-mates/allies. I'm having a hard time getting a handle on the team-mates, though. I tried to jump-start us into it by playing off that the three had come to some sort of agreement or pact before they even got started. But that was just a quick and dirty way to get started, and to be fair, I didn't run it past Keen and Fyre before doing it. I'm trying to figure out what kind of people Karma Noir and Operative Lee really are so I can figure out what Silence really thinks of them, but I'm having trouble nailing it down.
Hopefully I'll get it figured out, though. I'm really loving being a Night Widower, but I don't want to be in it just to level a character. I play City of _____ to role-play and tell stories. Really get into a character, not just a "toon".
Monday, July 21, 2008
Double XP Weekend - recap
First off, I've been meaning to post on the VEATs. And I will. Promise. But this isn't that post.
Blood Crucible 44 -> 45
Derick Darklight 23 -> 30 (almost 31)
Sounds of Silence 17 -> 25
So that's 16, almost 17 levels gained in one weekend. And BC gained his level in just the couple hours Fyre and I played Friday night.
I only had one moment where I was unable to get into Virtue, and that's when I signed on a bit early for Altitis Sunday. Ended up logging on Sleetsquall, of all people, dropping a mission, and then logging out... and I was able to get into Virtue. So no sweat. Had some lag, some rubber-banding, and some mapserver issues. Also minor.
The one big beef I had with the weekend was the constant dropping of Global. I've come to expect it on busy weekends and with new issue launches. But realizing that I've come to expect it suddenly ticked me off. This happens every time there's a busy weekend or an issue launch. Why haven't they figured out why it happens and fixed it? Why are some of these bugs/errors/problems/annoyances still issues?
Enh. Anyway. Very productive and fun 2xXP weekend, but I'll be glad to see things settle back to normal. :)
Blood Crucible 44 -> 45
Derick Darklight 23 -> 30 (almost 31)
Sounds of Silence 17 -> 25
So that's 16, almost 17 levels gained in one weekend. And BC gained his level in just the couple hours Fyre and I played Friday night.
I only had one moment where I was unable to get into Virtue, and that's when I signed on a bit early for Altitis Sunday. Ended up logging on Sleetsquall, of all people, dropping a mission, and then logging out... and I was able to get into Virtue. So no sweat. Had some lag, some rubber-banding, and some mapserver issues. Also minor.
The one big beef I had with the weekend was the constant dropping of Global. I've come to expect it on busy weekends and with new issue launches. But realizing that I've come to expect it suddenly ticked me off. This happens every time there's a busy weekend or an issue launch. Why haven't they figured out why it happens and fixed it? Why are some of these bugs/errors/problems/annoyances still issues?
Enh. Anyway. Very productive and fun 2xXP weekend, but I'll be glad to see things settle back to normal. :)
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Friday, July 4, 2008
Happy Fourth of July!
Yes, here in the United States, today is Independence Day. The day we celebrate the birth of our nation by blowing up small portions of it. In honor of the day, I present you with something patriotic and cheesy...
Yes, friends, it's a rendering of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, carved out of a 1,000 lb. block of cheese. I'm a strange person, I know. :D
Happy birthday, America.
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