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New MMO Musings

Been awhile, eh?

So the other day I was reading how one of the major players in WoW, Game Director Jeff Kaplan, is moving off of WoW and onto an "unannounced MMO." Speculations abound, but I thought I'd throw an idea out I've had for some time about an MMO I'd really, really like to see.

Vampire: The Masquerade.

In 2004 developer Troika put together the excellent CRPG Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, a followup effort to Activision's 2000 Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption. While VtMB had many flaws and bugs at release, it was the first game along with Half-Life 2 to use Valve's Source engine, which allows the game to be played from either the first-person or third-person shooter perspective. Reviews were mixed, including "grand RPG but a flawed gem of a game" and "the best buggy game ever". It had tremendous promise, and remains playable still with after-market official and fan-based patches. Roaming Santa Monica, Hollywood, Chinatown and LA as a vampire, exploring the shady underground and vampire politics - I absolutely loved this game and replayed it for hours upon hours. Now, take this - and make it on a Massively Multiplayer scale, worldwide. Would that not rock?

VtM still has a following as a pen-and-paper RPG, with tremendous online resources including detailed rules, fansites, and lore.

I'd like to say you heard it here first - but perhaps my musings have only picked up on that which has been desired by many others... Seems White Wolf, the owner of VtM trademark and subsequent followups World of Darkness and Vampire: The Requiem, is working on an MMO called World of Darkness Online - I need to read further, but this sounds like my dream come true... of course, rough estimate release date is 2011, so I'll have plenty of time to enjoy WoW until then...

Anyone out there?

Hello, is this thing on?

Wow, been awhile since I've posted. Just haven't had the compulsion to do so lately.

That, and I've started playing WoW again. I know, I know, back on the wow-crack. I started out easy, played on some of the free servers. And got fed up with the lag, bugs and lack of features. So now I'm paying again. And, bonus, I get to play with my niece and her cool boyfriend, we started up a new round of characters on another server. Sweet!

And may I say, playing a Death Knight is awesome beyond words...

I'll have to blog more later, try to sum up some of the changes in WoW, and my personal life happenings.

Recommended Movies

Well it's been two months since I've posted. I'm not going to keep up with my blog much, but I'll try.

Two movies we've actually seen in the theater I want to pass along. One is Mamma Mia - it was a lot funnier than I expected it to be, a great date movie. Awesome Abba songs (for all those of you who grew up in the late 70's and early 80's). And hey, it's got Pierce Brosnan in it. You can't be a man without admitting to a man crush on Pierce. :-D

Second is Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated movie. I guess some people are bound to pan anything, for whatever reason, but I took the whole family to see it and we all enjoyed it. The very end was a little, well, staged (everybody strike a pose without saying a word) but it was great fun. And was it just me, or was that alien general's voice done by Sean Connery?

In other news, Donna finished up her CyberKnife treatment a couple of weeks ago. She's still a little sore, but we're moving ahead. School starts next week, and we'll do a new round of CAT/PET scans early next month, so nothing to do but get on with life in the meantime.

Slashdot GamingTech News

Couple of articles from Slashdot yesterday:

Intel Shows Off Quake Wars, Ray Traced

At the Research@Intel Day 2008, Intel showed a ray-traced version of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Compared to the original game, a water with reflections and refractions and a physically correct glass shader were added. Also, a camera portal with up to 200 recursions to itself has been demonstrated. To show off this ongoing research in the topic of real-time ray tracing, a four-socket system with quad cores has been used that allowed rendering the enhanced visual effects in 1280x720 at 14-29 fps. Just two years before, early versions of Quake 4: Ray Traced ran only at 256x256 with 17 fps. Even though Intel's upcoming Larrabee will be primarily a rasterizer, the capabilities for also doing ray tracing on it should deliver interesting opportunities.

Hands On With Nvidia's New GTX 280 Card

Maximum PC magazine has early benchmarks on Nvidia's newest GPU architecture — the GTX 200 series. Benchmarks on the smokin' fast processor reveal a graphics card that can finally tame Crysis at 1900x1200. 'The GTX 280 delivered real-world benchmark numbers nearly 50 percent faster than a single GeForce 9800 GTX running on Windows XP, and it was 23 percent faster than that card running on Vista. In fact, it looks as though a single GTX 280 will be comparable to — and in some cases beat — two 9800 GTX cards running in SLI, a fact that explains why Nvidia expects the 9800 GX2 to fade from the scene rather quickly.'

Feelin' Old

I get this way every now and then. 'Course, it seems to happen a bit more frequently nowadays. It was a surrealistic experience yesterday as I attended my niece's high school graduation, and later followed her car to meet up with her family to eat out. I remember when I first met her, she was maybe a few months old. I had just started dating Donna, and her sister-in-law visited college with her newborn. And fer her a McDonald's cheeseburger. (Yeah. I know.)

So 18 years later and she's an adult now. Wow.

Tonight I watched Grease with my family. I have two girls old enough to watch and understand a movie like Grease. I was thinking back to the last time I watched the movie... and I believe it was in college again. What was I thinking about when I watched it last? Could I have imagined having kids of my own, experiencing the sort of things I do with them? Living my life through them, with them, for them?

This summer it's been five years since Donna has been cancer-free. Went to her usual checkup, and they found a lump in her neck - seemed to be squishy enough to not be a cyst or anything serious, more likely sinus-related. But still, they did a biopsy, and Donna has to go in for a CAT scan next week. She called me at work to tell me, and the first thing through my head was "God, no, not again, how could we have the strength to go through that again..."

But we could, and we would. We did it once before, we're just hoping and praying that the doctor was right and it's no big deal.

I'm just feeling... old. And tired.

The SUV Is Dethroned

Posted on Slashdot, Tuesday June 10

Wired's Autopia blog documents what we all knew was coming: rising gas prices have killed off the SUV. Auto industry watchers had predicted that the gas guzzlers in the "light truck" category would lose the ascendancy by 2010; no one expected their reign to end in a month, in the spring of 2008. Toyota, GM, Ford, and now Nissan have announced they will scale back truck and SUV production and ramp up that of smaller passenger cars. Of course there will always be a market for this class of vehicle, but its days on the top of the sales charts are done.

'All of our previous assumptions on the full-size pickup truck segment are off the table,' Bob Carter, Toyota division sales chief said last week during a conference call with reporters. Translation — we have no idea how low they'll go.

Why did the chicken cross the road in 2008?

BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a change! The chicken wanted change!

JOHN MCCAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure right from Day One that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.

GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?

COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.

BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

AL GORE: I invented the chicken.

JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.

DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his current problems before adding new problems.

OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.

DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.

JERRY FALWELL: Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth? That's why they call it the other side. Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay, too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like the other side. That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.

GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.

ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

JOHN LENNON: Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.

BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2008, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken2008. This new platform is much more stable and will never cra#@&&^(C%..........reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

CHUCK NORRIS: I told the chicken to cross the road. Period.

COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?

Game Technology Helps Drive Military Training

Posted at SlashDot on Thursday May 29.

With the gaming industry now spending more to develop user interfaces than the Pentagon, the Army has begun putting all that R&D to good use in weaponry and training. Reversing the traditional role of games attempting to simulate real life killing machines, it is now the weapons makers using gaming technology to make their products more effective. Popular Mechanics notes, 'Already, [Mark Bigham, director of business development for Raytheon Tactical Intelligence Systems] says that Raytheon has been experimenting with Wii controllers to explore the possibilities for training simulators and other applications that require physical movement. Just think, one day, the R&D that Nintendo put into Wii bowling could end up influencing basic training.'

U.S. Economy: The Worst is Yet to Come

By Mark Weisbrot, Huffington Post
Posted on May 29, 2008 via AlterNet

Since the U.S. economy showed positive growth for the last quarter, some commentators in the business press are saying that we are not necessarily going to have a recession, or that if there is one it will be mild. This is a bit like the proverbial story of the man who jumped out of a window 60 floors up, and then said "so far, so good," as he passed the 30th floor.

The United States accumulated a massive, $8 trillion housing bubble during the decade from 1996-2006. Only about 40 percent of that bubble has now deflated. House prices are still falling at a 20 percent annual rate (over the last quarter). This means that the worst is yet to come, including another wave of mortgage defaults and write-downs. Even homeowners who are not in trouble will borrow increasingly less against their homes, reducing their spending.

President Bush says we are not in a recession. One commonly-used definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of declining output (GDP). The first quarter of 2008 came in at 0.6 percent, although it would have been negative if not for inventory accumulation. So by this definition we cannot say with certainty that the recession has started, although it could well have started this quarter. Of course, for most Americans it has felt like a recession hit some time ago, with real wages flat since the end of 2002, and household income not growing for most of the six-and-a-half year economic expansion.

The National Bureau of Economic Research will eventually decide on the official onset of the recession, but even its definition is arbitrary. All the indicators of a serious recession are swirling around us. The economy has lost jobs for four months in a row, which has never happened without a recession. Consumer confidence has dropped to a 28 year low -- a level not seen since Jimmy Carter was president. Home foreclosure filings are up 65 percent over last year. And now commercial real estate prices are heading south, dropping 6.2 percent in the first quarter.

With oil prices hitting record highs, and the Fed beginning to worry more about inflation, more restrictive lending practices and other fallout from the credit crunch, the near-term economic future looks even dimmer.

Some look to exports to lead the recovery, but these are only 11 percent of GDP, and consumption is about 70 percent. Still, the fall in the dollar over the last six years is helping -- making our exports more competitive and reducing the subsidy that we have been giving to imports for many years. In a sign of how economic illiteracy prevails in the United States, most people (thanks largely to what they hear and read in the media) see the dollar's decline as bad economic news.

We are facing the prospect of millions losing their homes, their jobs, their retirement savings, their health insurance, and their livelihoods.

This serious economic situation greatly raises the stakes of the 2008 election. What will the government do to help the victims of economic mismanagement, to provide health insurance, and to restart the economy? Is it really more important to spend billions each week on the occupation of Iraq?

So far the government hasn't done much. The stimulus package now taking effect, at about one percent of GDP and much of it likely to be saved, is quite small. The major legislation that Congress is considering for the housing crisis would mainly bail out lenders and investors while doing little for most underwater homeowners.

The voice of the people has yet to be heard on these questions in the halls of power. It had better get a lot louder, soon.

"Nightlife" Harnesses Idle Fedora Nodes For Research

Posted on Slashdot, Thursday May 29:

If you've given up on SETI, now you can let your idle computer help with other kinds of scientific research. Red Hat employee Bryan Che started a project called Nightlife. He wants people to 'donate idle capacity from their own computers to an open, general-purpose Fedora-run grid for processing socially beneficial work and scientific research that requires access to large amounts of computing power.'

Che hopes to have more than a million Fedora nodes running as part of this project.

McCain vs. Obama on Tech Issues

Haven't posted in awhile again. I'm going to try and catch up (if I can stay off Facebook long enough - curse you addictive game app programmers! I cannot stay away from Mobwars or Knighthood!).

So this piece was posted yesterday afternoon on Slashdot:

Ars is running a brief article that looks at stances from Chuck Fish of McCain's campaign and Daniel Weitzner from Obama's in regards to technical issues that may cause us geeks to vote one way or the other. From openness vs. bandwidth in the net neutrality issue to those pesky National Security Letters, there's some key differences that just might play at least a small part in your vote. You may also remember our discussions on who is best for geeks.

I'm an affirmed Obama supporter - it's easy enough to see why from a tech standpoint for anyone who knows me. Just peruse his whitepaper on the subject.

The most telling comment made from the article is this:

Politics can get pretty shallow, but there's more to it than being a bitch for the polls. I think this little Q&A is a case in point. Not the answers themselves, but the people chosen to deliver them. McCain chose a lawyer with strong connections to a major media conglomerate that many of us have reason to loathe. Obama chose a computer scientist with connections to a university that played a big role in creating the Internet. That, by itself, should tell you where there respective priorities are.

And just one final point to leave you with, in response to another post expressing interest in paying more in taxes for the manned space program:

Wouldn't that be a neat option on your tax forms? It would be cool if you could designate x% of your tax dollars to go to some government program (education, military, NASA, CDC, etc). Whatever you are most concerned with would get a boost come tax time. The dollars would go to where we as a nation really want them to go.

I know that there are a lot of problems with distributed government plans, but the reason we have elected representatives as we do is because 200 years ago it was the only feasible way for everyone to have a semblance of a voice. With tech growing as it has (wikis, dBs), the possibility of getting everyone who cares to chime in is no longer an impossibility.

Wikilaws.gov? Congressional budgets via W-4s? I know it would be a disaster, but maybe some hybrid of our current system with a distributed system could work.

Pipe dream? Perhaps. But like he said, wouldn't that be cool if it were implemented?

The Guild - Episode 10: Boss Fight

Season finale: The Guild tries to take down the scariest boss of all time, Zaboo's mom!

Pic of the Week 20080522

Been awhile since I've posted, I meant to catch up on the past weekend's events. Crazy busy though. Just to tide you over, here's how to pay your next Verizon bill:

Washington, DC - Welcome to our Nation's Capital

Read and drive at your own risk!

For those who plan to visit our area...

First, you must learn to call it by its rightful name. It is DC or "the District" - only tourists call it Washington.

Next, if your road map of Montgomery County is more than a few weeks old, throw it out and buy a new one. It's obsolete. If in Loudoun or Fairfax County and your map is one day old, it's already obsolete.

There is no such thing as a dangerous high speed chase in D.C. It's just another chase, usually on the BW Parkway.

All directions start with "The Beltway"... which has no beginning and no end, just one continuous loop that locals believe is somehow clarified by an "inner" and "outer loop" designation. This makes no sense to ANYONE outside the area.

The morning rush hour is from 5 to 11 AM. The evening rush hour is from 1 to 8 PM. Friday's rush hour starts Thursday morning, especially during the summer on Route 50 eastbound.

If there is a game at the Redskins stadium, there is no point in driving anywhere near PG County. (Bonus Tip: Never say PG County to anyone from Mitchellville, Upper Marlboro or Fort Washington - it's Prince Georges County. Otherwise they'll blow a vessel in their neck and go into a seizure.)

If you actually stop at a yellow light, you will be rear-ended and shot at. If you run the red light, be sure to smile for the $100 "picture" you will receive courtesy of DMV. (However, if you don't go as soon as the light turns green, you will get cussed out in 382 languages.

Rain causes an immediate 50 point drop of IQ in drivers. Snow causes an immediate 100 point drop in IQ and a rush to the nearest Giant for toilet paper and milk.

Construction on I-270 is a way of life and a permanent source of scorn and cynical entertainment. It's ironic that it's called an "Interstate," but runs only from Bethesda to Frederick. (Unless you consider Frederick County another state, which some do). Opening in the 60's, it has been torn up and under reconstruction ever since. Also, it has a "Spur" section which is even more confusing.

All unexplained sights are explained by the phrase, "Oh, we're in Takoma Park".

If someone actually has their turn signal on, they are by definition, a tourist. Car horns are actually "Road Rage" indicators. Heed the warning.

All old ladies in Buicks have the right of way in the area of Leisure World.

Many roads mysteriously change their names as you cross intersections. Don't ask why, no one knows.

If asking directions in Arlington, Langley Park, Wheaton or Adams Morgan, Spanish helps. In Annandale, Cambodian or Vietnamese will come in handy. If on Dupont Circle, Capital Hill or U Street, tolerance for same sex helps. If you stop to ask directions in Southeast... well, just don't.

A taxi ride across town will cost you $12.50. A taxi ride two blocks will cost you 16.75. (It's a zone thing, you wouldn't understand - but not for long now!)

Traveling south out of DC on Interstate 395/95 is the most dangerous, scariest thing you will ever do. Second most would be driving Route 4 in rush hour.

There is nothing more comforting then seven lanes of traffic cruising along at 85 mph, BUMPER TO BUMPER!!! (Truer words have never been written!)

The minimum acceptable speed on the Beltway is 85. Anything less is considered downright sissy.

The open lane for passing on all Maryland interstates is the far right lane because no self-respecting Marylander would ever be caught driving in the "slow" lane. Unofficially, both shoulders are fair game also. The far left lanes on all Maryland interstates are official "chat" lanes reserved for drivers who wish to talk on their cell phones. Note: All SUVs have priority clearance to use the far left at whatever speed the driver feels most comfortable multi-tasking in.

The Beltway is our daily version of a NASCAR reality show. Strap up and collect points as you go.

Pic of the Week 20080502

The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment

Posted 28 Apr 2008 on nixCraft via Slashdot

Finally someone is doing Ubuntu Linux usability testing with a girlfriend. The new user was given a couple of common tasks over a default installation of Ubuntu. I hope, the Linux distributions can learn a lot from this article and improve Linux user experience on a desktop computer. From the post:

Erin's knowledge of computers is limited to word processors, spreadsheets, Photoshop and a reasonable amount of browsing on the Web. Fairly standard stuff for a university philosophy student. All I did to the system (before leaving Erin at the log-in screen) was to install it and create a user account for her. She had no problems logging in, and loved the stylised heron background. Then I gave her one by one the tasks I'd set her. I didn’t give her any help at all.

The author, contentconsumer, left a note at the top of his blog posting:

Hello all you many, many slashdotters, redditors (?) and diggers. There are a lot of comments of a similar vein which argue that I am “dissing” linux and that I think linux should just be a copy of windows. No. I love linux, and want it to be succesful. for it to be succesful, it needs to make the transition from windows to itself smooth. if someone invented a new type of car, the training would have to involve how it is different to the old type of car - we can’t expect people to rely on their “intuition”, because it really doesn’t seem to work, that’s the point of this article. i don’t want to sacrifice linux’s good points so that it becomes closer to windows, i just want windows users to be able to learn it themselves without their own research on the internet or by searching through manual pages. END RANT. P.S. Thanks for the lots and lots of positive feedback, Erin says she loves you too but it’s kinda creepy that the only image you’re all clicking on is her one.

=> The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment

Ubuntu Linux 8.04 is out!!

Posted: 24 Apr 2008 on nixCraft

Ubuntu Linux version 8.04 has been released and available for download. Canonical Ltd. announced the availability of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition for free download. In related news, Canonical also announced the simultaneous release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition.

Visit official web site http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download to grab desktop edition!

Western Digital's VelociRaptor 10K RPM SATA Drive

Sweet, sweet story from Slashdot yesterday about my very favorite HD (I have two small Raptors in my gaming rig, set up as RAID0 which makes them blindingly fast...):

Western Digital's Raptor line of Hard Drives has been very popular with performance enthusiasts, as a desktop drive with enterprise-class performance. Today WD has launched a new line of high-performance desktop drives dubbed the VelociRaptor, and the product finally scales in capacity as well. The new SATA-based VelociRaptor weighs in at 300GB with the same 10K RPM spindle speed, but with one other major difference — it's based on 2.5" technology. Its smaller two-platter, four-head design affords the VelociRaptor random access and data transfer rates significantly faster than competing desktop SATA offerings. Areal density per platter has increased significantly as well, which contributes to solid performance gains versus the legacy WD Raptor series.

D&D 4th Ed vs. Open Gaming

Slashdot posted a story yesterday concerning the issues affecting open gaming and the upcoming release of 4th Edition D&D. The open licensing associated with the 3rd Edition spawned a number of successful 3rd parties and add-ons that made the system far greater than it might have been otherwise. I'm attaching the story from mxyzplk in its entirety as it's pretty comprehensive.


Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast shocked the role-playing game industry today by announcing that anyone wanting to publish material for the new Fourth Edition of D&D, expected out in June of this year, must forgo open licensing entirely as part of their new Game System License.

With the launch of the third edition of the popular game eight years ago, Wizards had sponsored an open licensing scheme. This license, called the Open Gaming License, or OGL, was a kind of open source license designed for game publishers. The result was an explosion of third party game companies supporting D&D and establishing their own game lines. Many of these companies became quite large and successful, notably Paizo Publishing, Green Ronin Publishing, and others.

Now, however, Wizards has stated that any company hoping to publish products for their new edition must agree to discontinue any currently open licensed products and produce no further open products at all — Dungeons & Dragons related or not. A number of companies had leveraged the OGL for their independent games, for example the pulp game Spirit of the Century.

In response to questions about this policy, Scott Rouse, D&D Brand Manager for Wizards of the Coast, says that "We have invested multiple 7 figures in the development of 4e so can you tell me why we would want publishers to support a system that we have moved away from?"

It seems to me that this is the equivalent of Microsoft telling people "If you want to make and sell software for Windows Vista, you can't make and sell any Linux/open source software!" Since this is a small niche market without the visibility of a Microsoft, this play to muscle out competition by making them choose "between us and open licensing" will probably succeed. Some other game companies are rebelling; Paizo Publishing, for example, has declared their intent to move forward with the open-licensed previous version, essentially 'forking' the Dungeons & Dragons code base. But small gaming companies are small indeed, and Wizards of the Coast is owned by Hasbro (a recent development likely not unrelated to this change of heart).


Kind of an idiotic move on their part, IMHO. Pen & paper RPGs have just begun to come back into fashion again, and a move like this could alienate Wizard's audience and supporters.

Than again, I was dumbfounded by the news when they released their OGL. Wizards of the Coast hasn't been known as the most altruistic of companies...