Andy Wood

Sort of; I have been taking advantage of the free 7 day trial that they are offering. I don’t think that the game is for the hardcore gamer because they’ll just zip through all of the content that the game has to offer. DDO Isn’t for the casual gamer because it’s impossible to play on your own. Only time will tell for sure, but I have a feeling it’s a decision that will come back to haunt Turbine.

Now, If you have got a gang of regular online gamers you play with, then you and your crew should consider giving DDO a try. It’s got some interesting new elements that make it stand quite apart from most other Massive games. Don’t be surprised if you get bored of it sooner rather than later, but if you and your group are tired of raiding Molten Core for the hundredth time this should keep you out out of Azeroth for a month or two.

Hardcore gamers should stick to whatever they’re playing for now. They’ll eat this title for lunch and find themselves frustrated with the lack of endgame content. Casual players should just keep on moving. If you’re not willing to commit the time and energy to the constant search for a group, you won’t find anything to do here. At the end of the day, DDO is a game with a great deal of promise squandered by some very confusing design decisions.

I am curious if there is a DM rental service available?

I didn’t stop playing the game becauseI wasn’t having fun. I didn’t stop playing due to a billing issue, I didn’t stop playing because I was banned for farming or being a script monger. I stopped playing because of Blizzard’s willingness to violate my privacy with their master control program. (aka warden)

I truly understand why Blizzard did it and I agree with the philosophy, after all you need to preserve the investment before someone takes advantage of an exploit and ruins it for everyone. I don’t have anything to hide, I am an honest person and like togame to the max, but when you install something on my computer and you don’t explain. It is like coming into my home and installing a video camera.

Has Blizzard changed the way that they are doing things? Nope! Does this mean that I have come across a way to circumvent their little video camera? I am not saying, all I will say is that the Internet is full of a lot smart people.

Since I had basically a 6-8 month gap from playing WOW, my character has gone from 41 to 50 in two weeks. No, I was not cheating, just grinding and 5 of those levels I had a blue XP bar, do it was double the XP for me and most of the quests I have been soloing which means that I get all of the XP. I also was able to max out my Tailoring skill and get my Enchantment skill almost at maximum as well, just need to work on Cooking and Fishing a little more.

Needless to say that when the City of Villians / Heroes Issue #7 comes out, my WOW play time will drop again.

I watched a couple of movies over the few weeks. Most of them were pretty good, but there is a two that I want to point and thank Netflix for saving me from spending my hard earned green on.

Dead Alive (Braindead)
Before I get into this, let me just say that I am a fan post-disater and zombie flicks. I was pretty much raised on in the movie theater and when cable was born, there was many late nights lost watching my favorite creature feature, so I am no stranger to the art of the grue. Eventually you have to draw the line somewhere, and I drew it about an hour into “Dead Alive”.

“Dead Alive” started out as a lovely little example of Horror-Comedy, before taking a nose dive into what got to be the dopies, sickest, and slipperiest bloodbath in B-movie history. I don’t mind zombie fists going thorugh the backs of heads, zombie heads in the cuisinart, but this is where I have to just press the stop button: big piles of animated lower intenstines that chase our hero around the house, farting and squelching every inch of the way. I also tossed my “The Batman” Spaghettios up from the sheer anxiety want to get to the remote and press ’stop’.

Chronicles of Narnia
I’m going to assume that The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe follows the story of the book as closely as possible. If I’m wrong about that, then there will be egg on my face. The adventure took so long to begin. Every place they go, every friend or foe they find, they’re just getting told about the prophecy. There was no joy to the exploration if the only reward is more chit-chat at the next stop. This isn’t a mystery where the information is hard to come by. All the talking animals know it. They’re just waiting to share it, over and over again.

The film is so tame it’s boring. Even the monsters have soft edges and are lit so they won’t be too scary. A lot of the shots look like total rip-offs of Lord of the Rings, from the gang walking across the snow to hiding under a ledge from their pursuers above. Okay, walking across the snow is part of the story and there aren’t many ways to shoot that. But when there’s a trademark shot of modest heroes hiding under a ledge, couldn’t you steer clear of that? Finally, there’s was a fight scene that has a tid-bit of choreography in the end and there are some cool portions of the battle.

Again.. thank you NetFlix

Okay, that might be a little harsh, but each time I read Chris’ blog while he reports some of the latest and greatest gadgets that he gets, he spills the beans on the pros and cons and pulls no punches. After reading about the new digital camera that he got, it got me thinking that it might be time to get a new camera as well, so I did:

G3 & SD700 (face up)

G3 & SD700 (looking at you)

G3 & SD700 (looking left)

G3 & SD700 (back sides)

Right out of the box, this is easy to operate; good pick Chris!

I finally got around to upgrading my USB hub, not that I suffering from the speed of 1.1. Just that the hubs are so darn cheap and most of the gadgets that I have are USB, so why not!

There is a little story behind this though, I was looking around for a low profile, compact one because I just want to keep on the floor next to the gaming rig and I dont want this hug block thing with wires sticking out all over the place.

So, I was doing my ‘googles’ and I fist went with the D-Link QuickMedia DUB-H7 2.0. I got it in the mail, plugged it in and worked, but when I would reboot my computer. The post sceen just hung on “loading USB controllers”.

I did the next thing that most people would do. I called thier tech support, which was a toll free number and it didn’t take long to get to an agent whom of course was not located in the U.S., but did speak pretty good english and had average people skills.

Now, here is the kicker… according this gent and his solution base, the fix was for me to remove SP2 from XP!! What??!? You understand that it works okay.. once I am booted and in the OS, it is before the OS loads that I am having this problems. This was thier solution or to go with another product D-Link DFB-H7 USB 2.0/Firewire Combo Hub.

Instead of just blindly following thier advise I thought I would do the ‘google’ again and see what people were saying.. well… I decided to go with the belkin USB 2.0 7-Port hub, which should tell you how the reviews on the D-Links were stacking up.

Needless to say, this little item came today in the mail. Took it out of the box and it was plug and play!!

This isn’t something that you might have noticed in a Star Wars movie:

Thanks to Spinfist

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