So I never thought that cyborgs would be people themselves and not the products of human creativity . Whats next? Matrix? New eye balls with internet/photo-camera-video/navigation integrated in them? Are we going to go ahead and know everything about any stranger on the street soon?
I have been reading and watching a lot lately about this new technological product and I already dislike it to the point of yikes.
Anthropologically speaking, tools have always been what set humans aside in this world. Our ability to use them and improve them led to our superiority. But I am not sure this included turning ourselves into gadgets and Google Glass my @$$ is the first step into this new world.
Human has always been dependent on tools. If it were not for the tools he could not have survived in the wild to begin with. But human until recently has not been dependent on technology. Technology has always been the means to entertainment and comfort; not survival. With the smart phones came the era of not memorizing any phone numbers. How many of us really remembers how many phone numbers? With the navigation came the loss of direction senses. Soon we will have no need to meet our friends face to face and will start living in contained white boxes because we will need no windows to look outside. Some might see this as a positive thing but I dont. And if you want to know why please read the short story "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster since we seem to be going headfirst there.
No asteroids, no orbit fails, no ice-age, no global warming, no sun exploding into a bigillion bits and leaving us without light. We will destroy ourselves pretty well by losing our self-reliance to survive. Oh yes that will do it alright.
Human has been using his brains less and less for quite some time now but soon he will use it least when he is spoon-fed every information, even the most worthless ones. He will be a nice little shell of a body, drooling as he makes rounds and sees the world behind the layers of letter covered glasses.
How different he will be than a robot is still up for grabs.
Seriously, read "The Machine Stops".
And one more thing: Google Glass looks stupid! Anyone who wears it looks idiotic! As idiotic as Inspector Gadget.
But that is its best feature when compared to the repercussions of a drooling humanity.
A humanity which is already drooling all over smartphones, computers and tablets. Sure why not hand him a pair of glasses too?
Here is a video I have been working on to wish the game I and so many of my friends love. This was my first attempt to edit a video apart from a few slide-shows I made long time ago. So I apologize for its flaws. It consists of so many a footage that can be found on the internet (apart from those I recorded myself in the game) and if you like you can check the main video on You Tube for a detailed list of links. For best quality set the video to HD. Without further ado I would just like to say: Happy Birthday LOTRO :)
The video below is for those who could not watch it through Youtube because of country regulations. The quality of this video is nowhere close to the original (actually the quality is despicable so dont watch it full screen) but I did not wish to leave anyone without options and so I am adding it here. However if you can view it in YouTube I strongly recommend that you watch that one and even make use of other means such as IP shield in order to watch the original and not the one below.
Quickly lets give a little info on the book: Fifty
Shades of Grey is a 2011 erotic romance by British author E. L. James.
Set largely in Seattle, it is the first installment in a trilogy that traces
the deepening relationship between a college graduate, Anastasia Steele, and a
young business magnate, Christian Grey. It is notable for its explicitly erotic
scenes featuring elements of sexual practices involving bondage/discipline,
dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism (BDSM).
My thoughts on the book in a nutshell: Twilight for grown-ups…
The protagonist Anastasia Steele is no different than the
famous Bella Swan of Twilight trilogies but instead of keeping friends with
vampires and werewolves she lives in a more realistic world and keeps company
of a seriously disturbed man Christian Grey, who has to go all the trouble with
making women sign a NDA before engaging in sexual intercourse with them.
Wanna go kinky boy? Put those papers down and go kinky!
It is the same washed up, tiresome story about a clumsy,
slightly idiotic woman meeting her better,
mysteriously-dangerous-to-an-acceptable-degree man. Supposedly she sees herself
as nothing special, the narration describes her as nothing special and yet the
superior guy sees her from a different angle and goes nuts over her. They make
a perfect couple. One is completely devoid of self-reliance whereas the other
relies on people to rely on them.
I suppose it appeals to the women out there who see
themselves as nothing special and they wait for their Christian NDAnuts and
Edward Whitefangs to save them from their mundane lives.
Cant really blame them on the one hand. In every woman there
is a little voice that keeps saying: “Oh he will take care of me and worry over
me. When I kick him out of the door he will come back from the window. He is my
superior, I adore him and for some dumb reason he adores me although I am
nothing special.” That voice must be killed…I murdered mine with a fire-poker!
Daddy issues? No thanks!
Funny how I heard
that a housewife of 15 years of marriage left her home after reading the book
claiming: “There is more to life!”. Have you ever tried BDSM sweetheart?
Because it hurts. Books are for reading, lives are for living. Some books are
less worth reading though…
And yet people kept mistaking me as they always do when I
finish a book way too quickly! “Oh you must have liked it a lot.” Once again: No
I did not like it, if I did like it, I would have savored every page, soaking
in philosophical debates, putting the book down for long periods of time to
think on it and maybe even take notes on the ideas it offers and sometimes even
go through revelations. If you see me finish a book in 1day-1week that means I
do not value it, if you see me read it for at least a month that means I like
it so much that I do not wish to finish it.
I did take notes on this book though. Some of the positions
mentioned were definitely interesting to carry into my private life with my
husband. And the only revelation it offered was: “Best Seller” means something
else to the popular culture than it does to me.
Still I love when I am proven right. I kept saying that it
was twilight for grown-ups and incidentally when I was doing a small research
to write this post I came across this tiny little bit of information on the
internet about how it was written by E.L. James firstly as a fan-base work of
twilight. Oh I just knew it!
Apparently Stephanie Meyer refuses to relate any of E.L.
James’ book to herself even as inspiration. I suppose it gets her down to think
how lousy her (and by that I mean both authors) characters are when subjected
to a real world setting. Well on the bright side Twilight Series were at least
meant for a much younger audience than Fifty Shades series and this by all
means is the only reason why it escapes my wrath. Much like Harry friggin' Potter series whose surname I suspect comes from the fact that he does a lot of pot hence imagines all his adventures...
I am not saying that one should not read love stories or get
gooey and romantic. But do you want to read a real love story full of torment,
written in the right way with full profiles of complex characters that go
beyond their times hence being rendered immortal? Read Wuthering Heights, read
Anna Karenina, read Madame Bovary, read Mrs Dalloway…
But don’t read this pop-corn and then claim it to be a great
book. If books of the classic literature are the equivalents of FIPRESCI award
winning movies then books like Fifty Shades are the equivalents of American
Cheerleader comedies with Rob Schneider starring in them. They will show you a
nice time but if you try to take them seriously people of intellect will simply
laugh at you.
Since my character is level capped I think I have a good
hold on whats going on in LOTRO’s latest expansion: Riders of Rohan.
Let me be frank: I had left LOTRO after what I deemed one
lousy and grindy addition to the game after the other. My qualms usually were
not about expansions in general but the updates that followed. I have to say
that Riders of Rohan has been an exception to that so far. Furthermore it has
been my return to the game. So I will give LOTRO a positive review for a
change. I know that till now there have been 2 reviews, one quite positive, the
other a little negative but you should have reviewed the posts in my head for
the expansions following Moria. They all added a new dimension to the meaning
of negative but thankfully and hopefully that’s behind us now.
Let us begin with the new Mounted Combat feature. I think
Rohan expansion would have been incomplete without an introduction into such a
feature so I am glad that they came up with it. Regardless of your class you
can go for three different kinds of Steeds: Light, Medium and Heavy. Unlike
what I thought it would be, those types do not necessarily go together with the
type of your armour. For example if you are a light armour wearing class this
does not mean that you “have to” go for a light horse. The type of the horse
and the skill trees they come with usually promote to endurance vs agility. The
light horse is highly agile and fast but what it makes up for in speed (and
through speed fury and momentum) it lacks in endurance. You can also always go
for a medium horse neither favoring nor lacking either one of these qualities. The
table system of skill and trait trees of the steeds, is very similar to that
of Star Wars online class proficiencies. You are able to see the entire table
of skills and traits to add or subtract points before you make a decision hence
you can more easily decide what to go for.
There are issues to the warsteed system for sure, rubberband
being one however it doesn’t bother me all that much. Lag can be a huge problem
but it is manageable in my opinion. Besides it actually did make me laugh out
loud when I saw my horse get stuck on the screen for almost a minute at the end
of which I found myself defeated at the bottom of a precipice.
For me the biggest and severest problem would be how I do
not get my melee class feel. Ranged classes are great on horseback. In fact
they are the funnest thing Turbine has come up with ever. I only wish that I
could get a better feel of my class from close range as well though. What I
mean mainly concerns my guardian. In order to inflict more damage you need Fury
which works like momentum in mounted combat. In order to build fury you have to
run. This philosophy does not work perfectly well on my tank though because I
am used to staying and fighting multiple foes without giving an inch. If I am
honest this is the only thing that I did not go crazy about in mounted combat.
Tank doesn’t feel like tank. Of course all this, is my personal opinion.
Moving on from the mounted combat lets see what other
changes were brought to the game. Let us begin with a new feature which I found
so extremely helpful and fun to do. Warbands!
They are the haven of solo
adventurers. They are fun, fast, rewarding for what they are. Mainly the idea
must have come to Turbine from Guilwars 2 where you do not need to be in a
group to do a group quest. Now that the mobs are common and lootable to
everyone and there is no “you stole my mob” discussion anymore, warbands are an
excellent addition to expand this new style of adventuring in the wilds. I just
wish that they would change shard droppers in the rest of the world to warbands
as well. So mainly this feature entails daily mobs which spawn around the same
spot on the map (they respawn every 15-20 minutes the most but are doable only
once a day per character) and drop different boxes with random gifts in them.
Most of the times what they drop are common and repeated, filling your
inventory with useless cosmetic banners but once every while they drop something
to surprise you, a cosmetic for your war steed perhaps or Rohan rings and many
other small things. As for me I find the marks and medallions they drop most
useful. I am sick of skirmishes and I do not wish to visit the instance finder
and go for a random skirmish in order to attain like for 4 medallions per run
during my solo questing. I much rather go and kill Bugud in 5 minutes with
other adventurers I do not know and on my beautiful steed. Besides it is much
more exciting to have a silver box sitting in your inventory full of
possibilities instead of doing a run which you have done like a 1000 times (and
that is no hyperbole) and you know what will come out of it every single time
you go for it(although they must have revamped skirmishes as well since the
last time I went for a skirmish the boss dropped surprisingly good little
gifts) . So yea! Thumbs up for the Warbands of Rohan.
Pending-loot was yet another positive addition to the game in
my opinion. The fact that you do not have to go and click on the corpse every
time you defeat something especially works perfectly well when mounted on your
horse or while you are grinding for traits. It saves a lot of time and space
and it goes easy on your eyes as well. I cannot tell how many times I felt
dizzy trying to loot a mob during fellowships or raiding. Another thumbs up for
this expansion with only one minor setback. Extremely rare items such as loot boxes
should have been subjected to a die roll when in a fellowship. When not it is
ok.
The end game solo content is the best I have ever seen in
LOTRO. It is very refreshing to see Turbine admitting by deeds that solo-play
is an aspect of preference in the game whether it fits their philosophy of an
MMO or not. Finally there is something else to grind in the game other than
Marks in Skirmishes (which was impossible to do solo if you like some sanity
left in you. You had to group up at one point or another to get marks and beat
the impossible drop numbers of solo-skirming). And they have fit that grind in
a perfect little scenario of rebuilding Hytbold. I must admit the Hytbold
dailies could have been a little more than 5 quests per day but I have got
absolutely no major complaints concerning the end game solo content. All I can
say is: Thank you Turbine for giving a set of armour to the solo players out
there for a change.
As for the designs of East Rohan. As usual Turbine has done
its top notch job while designing the terrain and the locations. It actually
feels like being in Rohan. The epic line and quests were more than satisfactory.
Some of the armour sets were not as impressive as they could have been but hey,
one cannot really ask any more than the great work and effort they have put
into this expansion.
All in all Riders of Rohan did more than just surprising me.
It impressed me greatly. I did not expect the content of one expansion to
change the entirety of the game altogether and putting a fantastic spin to it.
This has not happened since Moria and Legendary weapons (its randomness
prevented it from being fantastic though and still does) and Mirkwood expansion
when they introduced the Skirmishes. But this time they seemed to have gotten
it right. As a returning player I am especially happy because LOTRO has always
had a special place in my gaming life with its story, community, artistic
graphics which sets the game apart from other MMOs out there. I am glad to be
back home.
It doesn’t matter if you are a girl or a boy, it doesn’t matter
where you are from, it doesn’t matter if you are clever or not. The new craze
that has been going on for like the last 5 years now, is to self-take pictures
of you posing in front of the most mundane places imaginable. Most of the
profile pictures in places such as Facebook, google plus, tweeter and even
avatars in various sites are those ridiculous images one tends to take of
him/herself. On Facebook, if it is not the profile picture, you are sure to
find at least an album of a smart phone originated faces and an arm extending
to the invisible phone its invisible hand holds.
I suppose having a camera in your pocket has become such a
trusted habit that it is meaningless to ask 500 strangers a day to take a picture
of you for you to use as a profile picture or an avatar. Besides how ridiculous
would you look if you asked someone in the public restroom to take a picture of
you right there? I can hear the conversation.
You: Hello, hi. Could
you take a picture of me please?
Stranger: Here?
Y: Yes, yes here
S: Why?
Y: I look kind of pretty/handsome today.
You wouldn’t do that would you? Well the next time you have
got a smart phone camera in your hand try playing out this scenario to yourself and
abstain from doing it! The conversation with an actual stranger may not have
taken place but from the photographs it is obvious that you had the
conversation in your head with your inner stranger. Next time try saying it out
loud. You will find that you sound absolutely ridiculous.
If you do not wish to hear the voice of reason please then
at least learn how to crop images so that you don’t look silly with that phone
holding arm. Seriously…
So we are in the year 2013 and next year holds a special promise for me... Supposedly Dragon Age III Inquisition will come out. As I rub my hands like a greedy dwarf and smirk like a blood mage who has been promised something amazing by a desire demon, I try to keep up with the annoncements of bioware so as to see what they are planning on doing.
I understand that this 3rd series of Dragon Age games will be likely to take place in "Somewhere French" which I can only assume would be Orlais. I dont know where that leaves us with the previous games though. Because:
!!!!SPOILERS!!!!!!!!! (Do not watch the video or read the paragraph below)
At the end of the Dragon Age II we see Lelliana telling Cassandra -the seeker of the Chantry whose surname escapes me though I believe it was something like Pentagust or something- that Hawke is gone just like the Warden. It is so very obvious that they were thinking of a sequel when Lelliana says: "That is no coincidence". You can observe that in the video. According to Bioware it is likely that we will have a new protagonist and so the story of Hawke may be done. If it is true that leaves DAII's ending hanging in the air a little bit. The end of DAO is pretty decided when compared to DAII and so you get a better closure whereas in DAII one would think that they should have gone for a sequel. Oh well we will see. I suppose what we will see next is the open war between mages and the templars. Either way I believe Bioware is capable of producing great games. Besides it will be fun to explore a whole new area.
!!!! END OF SPOILERS!!!!!!!
According to wikipedia here is what the combat will be like:
"Combat is expected to differ somewhat from its predecessors and
focus more on a player's ability to prepare, position, and form a
cohesive team with his or her party members, requiring fewer repetitive finger strikes but better thinking."
Reminds me of Baldur's Gate a little. An improved BG style combat. I am not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand I do like the idea of being challenged in a fight but my major qualms about having way too many fights in a game which I play for the plot itself is that it prevents me from playing it repeatedly hence preventing me from exploring all the outcomes of various storylines. I guess I wil have to wait and see how much I like or dislike it within the game itself.
What I really liked hearing was how they are thinking of opening the world map for exploring since they liked what they saw in Skyrim and have said so on so many occasions. If there is one thing I miss in other games whilst playing Dragon Age series is the jump button. I am glad to hear that I might get my spacebar back as jump. hehe
No recycled dungeons. That is one more thing they are correcting...permission to go for a high pitched yaaaay...
One of the things which is confirmed is that we will be able to transfer our save files from previous games to DAIII, well I was kind of depending on that anyway.
But above everything else I am jumping up and down in joy because it has been confirmed that the character will be fully voiced and they will make use of the dialogue wheel from DAII. Guilty as charged, as I mentioned it in previous posts, I loved that about DA2 and if there was one thing I really wanted to see in DAIII it was that. So for me what I hear for now really suits the phrase: "So far so good".
Wish I could hibernate till DAIII came out...but thats not an option I guess...
Now that I have levelled my first character to 50, I have got a pretty good opinion on how Star Wars Online works and among the mmorpgs I have tried so far it is the second in line that captured me enough time to care to level my characters and it still does.
Just to be clear though this is not a discussion on whether the game is worth playing or not because in my honest opinion it is a game very well worth purchasing.
But it is it Free to play?
Lately a lot of companies have been playing fast and loose with the term free to play and Bioware/ Lucas Arts' Star Wars has recently become one of them. It is a lovely little marketing trick to lure in more players and earn from quantity rather than quality both game and content wise. My most beloved game LOTRO had been periodically destroyed after it had gone free to play because the company did not care about keeping loyal players satisfied any longer but rather adopted a corporate philosophy of "dont look back and keep 'em coming". But we are not discussing LOTRO here.
The same worries do not apply to Star Wars however because it aint free to play. Guild Wars 2? It is Free to Play, you purchase the game once and then play for free with all essentials and quests intact in the package.
Star Wars? Not so much...
When you have to buy the "hide helmet" option it aint free to play.
When you have to buy skill bars so that you can use your damn skills it aint free to play...
When you have to pay for each and every essential point that allows you to play a game, that game aint free to play.
Unless what you mean by free to play is make rounds to do some sightseeing in your helmet....
So what is it:
It is a delusional lie to excite the expectations and try to entice new customers if you can.
But then again I knew that it would not have been free to play from the beginning; the very beginning when I first purchased the game and for the first time in my gaming life was I subjected to extra 2 months payment to log in to the content I had just purchased. Now that was very very very cheap on Bioware's part. Shame!
Did I do it though? Hell yeah! Their philosophy might be cheap but the game they came up with is simply superb. Lets face it, it is much better than not getting your money's worth. That was the reason why I quit LOTRO and I was not even paying for it due to my lifetime subscription. I was not getting even my imaginary money's worth.
So my point? Game time card or monthly payment in Star Wars, kicks free to play in the crotch.
Human has always been dependent on tools. If it were not for the tools he could not have survived in the wild to begin with. But human until recently has not been dependent on technology. Technology has always been the means to entertainment and comfort; not survival. With the smart phones came the era of not memorizing any phone numbers. How many of us really remembers how many phone numbers? With the navigation came the loss of direction senses. Soon we will have no need to meet our friends face to face and will start living in contained white boxes because we will need no windows to look outside. Some might see this as a positive thing but I dont. And if you want to know why please read the short story "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster since we seem to be going headfirst there.
