I logged in, put in my authenticator code, hopped into the super easy practice 1v1 ladder, and was shown exactly how SC:II works, and that I am awful at it.

I will say that I was proud of myself for surviving the first zerg rush thrown at me, but after that it was pretty much all down hill, I won’t be able to play tonight, but maybe i’ll assemble what’s left of my pride and give it another try tomorrow night.

I some months ago, I can’t remember exactly when, and well I’d rather not remember when,  my WoW account was hacked, twice. The first time was easy, keylogger grabbed my password, logged in, grabbed all my stuff and sold it, I actually logged in while they were doing it, and stopped them midway by changing my password. It then turned out that they had the password to my E-mail as well, and hacked me a second time, after I had gotten all my gear back, of course.

But, in no time I will have my chance to download and get stomped by people online. Soon.

So I end up playing as well.

The problem with that, is that I’ve never been a huge Raiding fan, so I’ve really taken out the 5-man content and now i just wait. I’m not even sure what I’m waiting for, Cataclysm maybe?

It just feels like i’m beating my head against the wall, If anyone read this I would ask for suggestions, but honestly, the closest thing to a competitor for my time at this point is WonderKing, the “This is totally not Maple Story” game (which is really fun actually).

So I’ve had some really intense game ADD lately, moving from Borderlands to AC:2 to Darksiders, and playing a ton of WoW and Star Trek: Online in between.

But if there is any one company that has the cure for my multi-game fever, it’s Bioware.

Mass Effect 2 is interesting in that it really tests the limits of what a company can do to a sequel and keep it’s core audience. It should first be noted, that from a strictly design perspective, Mass effect 2 is a better game in pretty much every front. No game is without it’s design stumbles, ME2 included, but the game is borderline design ballet.

That having been said, I find myself in a rough situation, I liked pretty much everything in the first Mass Effect, so to see things go wasn’t as much of a relief as it was for the majority of gaming press, armor customization is cool, but the lack of an inventory means I don’t get the little rush that comes with getting a new gun, and trying to decide if it’s better than my old one.  Not having the Mako means I don’t need to spend 45 minnutes to get across the map to get something that doesn’t really matter, but the system now implemented eliminates a lot of exploring.

It also breaks a habit in a lot of Role playing games, Stats.  I honestly don’t really know what my stats are in the game, I don’t need to manage them, and I only have 4-6 skills per character to pump advancement points into. I was really worried about this at first, I mean, I played D&D 3.5 I’m pretty sure there was a stat for how well you handled your stats in that game. But the system here lends itself more to story telling than micro managing, and more to actually playing a role than tying to munchkin an edge via stats (look up “munchkin” if you don’t know what I’m talking about, interesting concept design wise and great Steve Jackson game).

So the question Mass Effect 2 asks is: Can you make a story based, role playing game, that doesn’t have a focus on stat building?

The answer, though many won’t admit it, is a resounding yes, despite the lack of numbers, I feel in control of the story and who Shepherd is, which should really be the criteria of an RPG.

So, go play Mass effect 2, much like bacon it’s good for you.

But as my friends start splintering off into their own blogs I decided that for now, I’ll just use this as a general “discuss the news” blog.

I may also move this over to another one of my actual web sites, not that I don’t love WordPress, but considering I own actual hosting space, I should probably use it.

The other side to that coin however, is what I like to call the Halo effect, and is something I’m starting to see with BSG. The Halo effect happened back right around the release of Halo 2, The Halo series was never the pinnacle of first person shooters, but it was a very solid effort at giving console audiences an almost PC like FPS, somewhere along the line, the media and the mainstream crowd got a hold of the game, and started declaring it the best FPS in existence.  Those of use who had spent a lot of time playing games that were better than Halo 2, before Halo 2 came out, were a little confused, but the media does what it wants. Then came the Halo kids, this lowest common denominator of humanity managed to display all the proficiency of the standard hardcore Counterstrike player, with about 1/4 of the intelligence and manners, and we all hated the kids who played counterstrike to begin with.

I want to take a moment here, before the cries of “you’re pissed because your hobby became popular” come in. My issues with Halo, and as i’ll detail later, things like BSG, is that the people who are being considered as part of the whole nerd/geek/gaming community, refuse to be a part of the community, to the outside, they’re “gamers” and representative of entire community, but within the community, they’re racist bigots who still think of the actual community as the scum of the earth.

This is where BSG comes in, I have a few friends who watched the show, and were huge fans, and through them I end up seeing people who are specific BSG fans, and I see the same level of non respect to the rest of Sci-Fi, like somehow, they want to be called nerds, but don’t want to be associated with the rest of community, like it’s some type of badge they’re collecting, to differentiate themselves from their roommate, who no doubt plays Halo and talks about how he’s a gamer.

The point of this isn’t to rip on all people who play Halo and watch BSG, just those who do so without respect to the culture that bred the things you enjoy so much, even if respect just means not taking part in it all together, it’s still better than the mass disrespect that happens.

I have some mocked up HTML placeholders and a half configured Joomla site, but this wordpress.com account should work well for the moment.

Hello everyone, I’m Chris, I made this blog and the blog that will inevitably follow it to rant about things that bug me.

It will most likely come off as nerd elitism or being over analytical, but most of the time that’s not the case.

I’ll aim for a real post later, or tomorrow.

-Chris