"Okay!" and Wukong

“Okay!”

Alright, I finally got around to finding a good image hosting service as I previously used Photobucket but they have a “viewed” limit where if you exceed a certain amount of views from visitors, it replaces your pictures everywhere they're shown at with a small box saying basically to upgrade to see it again. I originally was going to use Photobucket anyway but then that came to mind and for the purpose of the blog and my current funds, I've decided to look for an alternative. I found one (by Adam's suggestion) in Imgur which I never really considered as all I see from the site are joke pictures. Not to my surprise, right on the front it also claims that it has the funniest pictures on the internet. However, while I haven't posted a picture yet, I have uploaded a few that I will be trying to show here in someway after I finish writing this, and basically it gives the same options as Photobucket does at least the ones that I used frequently such as providing links to put the picture into various formats on the web, and of course allowing you to sort the pictures into different albums.

So in short, I'll be able to get a album up for the blog soon which will make things a lot more exciting.

Wukong - Nimbus Striker

Today I spent pretty much all of my time trying Wukong out and trying to figure out how he plays, his strengths and weaknesses, and in general to see how he performs in Dominion.

In a Coop game that I started out with like usual for all of my new champions, I thought that Wukong was pretty strong actually, he has very strong harassment abilities and he's able to escape quickly afterward. Last hitting was also very easy with Wukong as after about.. I'd say level 4-5 and definitely higher than that, he has more than enough mana for any of his spells, so you're able to easily use his main strike to aid in last hits on minions without any mana problems at all. So from the laning phase my impression was that Wukong is very strong, he actually even gets better in team fights where he actually becomes more armored and resistant as more enemy champions are around him, and his ult is a AoE knock up as well as heavy damage leading to you basically being able to give your entire team free hits while the enemies are in the air. In summary, Wukong is very good in the classic mode, however the main goal of my experimentation was to find out just how well that holds up in Dominion.

Dominion simply put, is where his usefulness diminishes. His burst damage is still very strong in the early and mid game phases, but he simply can't hold a candle up to Champions with high auto attack end game potential such as Trynadamere or Jax. That isn't to say that he isn't good however, I personally have beaten many Trynadamere and Jax players 1v1 on Dominion through the use of hit and runs, however both of those champions are also capable of multikilling players, Wukong is not unless all of the enemies are at low health.

Onto more positive news about Wukong though, his burst potential does still shine through out the game, and he'll be able to dispose of low armored people very easily as he can out maneuver them and close in quickly to do burst then escape, repeating the process afterward. He can also beat most meleers in small group combat as well, although it requires a lot more mobility than simply running in and attacking, Wukong will always need to use hit and run tactics to be effective in Dominion. The last positive thing is that today is only my first day of actually playing him so I'm very new to him and I don't really know him well enough to create a solid min-max build for him that would possibly put him on the same level as Trynadamere or Jax. While I was also playing Wukong, I saw people playing champions who I normally consider weak such as Shaco, Twitch, and Miss Fortune, and they basically turned them into killing machines that could easily out kill Jax (I also fought a Ashe who did the same thing as Jax, but I was able to get rid of her quickly, but still she hurt quite a bit) so, I suppose more experience is the only way to tell for certain, but for now, Wukong is kind of not exactly a “pick up and get a decent score” champion, at least in Dominion.

Here's a few of the results of the games I played with Wukong, I don't really know if it was me performing poorly individually, or the enemy team was simply outplaying my team, but the results aren't exactly the most positive things around, but all in all, I'm happy with how I did in most of the games.

So in the end, I guess only time will tell, it'll also tell if I want to keep playing Wukong myself or move onto another champion. He's pretty fun honestly, and the fun did override the difficulty for a little bit, but there's only so much of getting one shot that I can take.

Jax in the Box

Well, today will be another short note day since I wanted to write about something but I couldn't really figure out what to write about, so without further delay, here's what comes to mind.

Dominion Released

As all of the League of Legends players know, and only after about... maybe a full week or so, of open public testing, the new game type Dominion has released, I wrote about it a few days ago and I enjoyed it a lot then. Since then, I've found myself wanting to play Dominion more than the Classic game type which I guess is apparently just called “Classic”, and I wanted to do that for a few but important reasons.

1. I'm okay at the early lane phases but I don't really enjoy them that much
2. I prefer the champion fighting
3. It's shorter which is kind of a half like and half dislike point for me as I was one of the people that enjoyed Alterac Valley when it was hours or even days long, however I believe the League of Legends community (generally speaking is very bad, so when getting random people, the duration for which you have to deal with undesirable people is lessened. Finally onto the last one
4. I am much better at Dominion

All of these reasons make Dominion a much more enjoyable experience for me, even though it's not the type of gameplay that the developers are used to. It definitely shows to an extent as Dominion isn't as balanced as it could be for certain champions (I'd also argue that Classic isn't either) . However at the same time Dominion is way more balanced than Capture and Hold game types in other titles such as World of Warcraft. In said game, usually a lot of the games are one sided in terms of which side wins because your team's total points still drained down as long as you held a base.In Dominion, even if you have one point left and the enemy has 300, you can still win so long as you don't allow them to control more bases. It basically creates a game type where as long as you have players, you have a chance of winning essentially even if the enemy team is a lot better at combat than your team is.

In summary, Dominion is fun for me, and while I do still like the Classic mode, right now Dominion is so much better at capturing my attention, and I don't see myself losing it for awhile.

Jax

I've recently been playing mostly melee champions in Dominion, and Tristana but that's another story, playing melee champions of course made me eventually run into Jax who I didn't really see played that much, but when I did run into him as Garen* or Trynadamere who both are auto attackers, I ended up usually losing to him unless I had a advantage somehow in player numbers or health-wise which made me curious about him. I honestly thought Trynadamere was overpowered but it's actually kind of hard to play him in Dominion because he's so item dependent and income is actually slower in Dominion I believe than in Classic, at least in terms of how it scales with level. Jax on the other hand is someone who I didn't think was that overpowered until I played against him, and I actually wanted to play as him because I knew he was strong but like Trynadamere, I was thinking that there would be some challenge to playing him. I found out that I wasn't wrong in a sense.

After spending a whole day with Alice playing as Trynadamere and learning a ton about him, I was tempted into trying Jax out. We started off with a bot game to try out new characters as usual and I ended up thinking that Jax wasn't as strong as he seemed, that was before I started to get starting items however, and I was able to 1v1 most champions later on fairly easily. The results of that test however were kind of iffy and it didn't really seem that fun to play Jax, so I ended up trying him out in Dominion for a few games before I turned in for the night.

It was literally a different experience which by now I could expect, in fact I would argue that fighting bots in generally much harder if they didn't do stupid things on purpose. Back to the main point, what I found out that Jax's early game is stronger than Trynadamere's but he's by no means godly at this point, he does become that later on though with his opening ability (Leap Strike) and his powering up ability (Empower) being able to take most people without defenses down to 30-60% health letting him quickly finish them off with his auto attacks. Furthermore, he also has a defensive Counter Strike that when he dodges an attack, he is able to strike back, doing minor damage but more importantly stunning everything in a short distance around him, and his ultimate allows him to do extra damage every 4^th hit and it speeds up his attack speed passively, it can also be activated to provide magical resistance. Basically, he starts off somewhat weak but by no means the weakest, and then he starts to hit very hard. On the defensive side of things however, he can be countered by simply buying an item that prevents Jax from dodging the user's attacks, thus rendering counter strike unusable, while it's not the end of the world, and I personally have beaten someone using the item 1v1, it definitely hurts Jax quite a bit. The other part is that Jax is fairly vulnerable to ranged attacks, and melee attacks too for that matter as he's not the most durable character around, and like every character in the game, he can be killed very quickly when he's focused. So while Jax is strong, so are many of the other characters in the game, and he still has specific items, and skills that counter him very well.

Right now I'm kind of iffy about if I want to keep playing him or switch to another champion to try them out, I Still haven't really figured out a couple of champions that I want to play a lot, practice with them, and I guess in a sense “master” them.

*When I played Garen I followed a build that starts off with him being a “spinner” and then after he gains a Phantom Dancer, he relys on auto-attacks.

Dominion Early Trial

Today to my surprise when I logged on Alice and Adam told me that Riot allowed the public to play the new League of Legends game type Dominion for “a short time”, little did I know that this time was only for 2 hours but I was lucky enough to wake up early to play 2 matches of it, and in short, it left me wanting to do it a lot more.

As someone who read very little about Dominion but still enough to know that it was putting the focus on having champions engage in quick and fast battles, I was very surprised at how well Dominion has executed on it. For those that don't know, Dominion shifts the goal away from destroying towers to capturing towers instead, it does keep the 3 lane map scheme to an extent, but for the most part it's 2 groups splitting up at the start and then meeting the enemy's two groups at the middle of a node. With 5 nodes, it's capture and hold basically, however the placement of the towers is somewhat curious for me, instead of having 2 of each side and 1 in the middle or something similar it's basically 4 corners and then one at the top in between two more, I think this somewhat inspires people to focus more of their forces on the top lane instead of the bottom as it gives a bigger lead if you can manage to win the battle that'll ensue.

There are also random buffs placed around the map which are fairly easy to figure out, I personally didn't know buffs would take that form as I didn't read about it, however they're marked with boots and health icons, so someone with even one match-worth of experience will know what both of those indicate, boots being speed, and health being minor healing. Finally there is a third buff in the center of the map called a Storm Shield, there are two of them and they are reserved for their respective teams apparently, what the shield does is that it seems like a simple shield that absorbs a great amount of damage, much larger than most shields certain player characters are able to create. I only got the buff once, and that's the only effect that I saw, however the name Storm Shield almost makes me think that it would provide a offensive benefit as well. So, while the map is very interesting but fairly standard if you've played a lot of video games in the past, it's a huge change on the game play that one expects from League of Legends.

In my first match Alice and I took both of the bottom towers fairly easily against 3 players, I was playing Garen and she was Lux. Right off the bat I noticed that an item that I've become somewhat dependent on was unavailable, that being Doran's Blade, however I just decided to go for boots of speed and try to build up a Phage into Frozen Mallet as soon as possible as that was still around. When we got into combat, actually fighting players was a lot different as well as the overall feeling felt a lot more offensive rather than running away and doing small harassment to the enemy, the three that we fought against made no effort to harass at all until we killed 2 of them and only one was left, I also noticed that killing players affected the overall score which is called the Nexus Health in Dominion, so with controlling more towers affecting the Nexus Health, and killing players also affecting it, the goal of course was to still bring the enemy Nexus down before yours.

Despite having the excellent start, the midgame somewhat became a bit more iffy, while our team wasn't doing poorly by any means, I simply concentrated on offense too much, and there were many times when I did something I shouldn't have, simply because I didn't know about it, such as fighting around a enemy tower. As I was a fairly high level at the time, I didn't think the enemy tower would be that bad and the enemy I was targeting was at low health as it was, so, being used to the damage that normal towers in the classic game mode do, I rushed in of course. To my misfortune and surprise, the towers hit very hard, probably harder than most of all of the towers in the classic mode other than the spawn position towers. Furthermore, I later found out that the proper way to “rush” a node is to have someone channel a capture on the tower to prevent it from firing, at which point you can kill other players while at least one player is channeling without fear of the tower's wrath. Regardless of that however, I simply did not contribute to the team capturing nodes enough and our first game was a loss.

Our second however was much better as I was more knowledgeable about the game mode. We did a 3 top and 2 bottom start, where only one person went bottom against us on their team, so we disposed of them quickly and headed up top where our team was actually winning, in fact by the time I arrived most of the enemy team was dead and I only helped finish off one of the retreating players. The game was pretty one sided with a lot of memorable moments for me, at one point, and this is the point where I figured out how capturing a tower works, I was capturing a tower with an Irelia and a enemy came to try to stop us. She got off the tower and went to intercept them and they were literally fighting like 2 inches away, the fight was pretty even but I felt so bad knowing that I could just turn and kill them but then the tower might have posed a problem even in that short time, so I had to just watch without being able to do anything. She managed to win though, and afterward a enemy player that came to help him showed up, since the capture was done I was able to charge them gleefully.

Another moment that I really liked was when after I killed a enemy I was at pretty low health, but Singed was still around with roughly the same amount of health. Seeing that my ultimate was up, I ran into the bush with the plan to try to burst him down quickly, he came to try to finish me off and I quickly hit decisive strike and Demacian justice which managed to kill him, thankful that it worked I quickly recalled since I didn't want to get into any other fights before healing up. Finally while there were a lot of good awesome moments done by Alice and I, and the team in general, they weren't as funny or interesting as these, including this one. Alice was defending a tower from a Master Yi and was winning, since he was near a wall he tried to escape, however I showed up at that moment and then seeing me, he turned around, but then he also saw Alice there as well, so he was effectively cut off and of course we cut him down.

In short, Dominion is awesome if you're like me and not good at the farming part of classic Defense of the Ancients; it's arguably less strategic but I'm sure there will be parts where both teams group up and fight each other in normal league of legends fashion. In the end though, it's simply replacing minion farming with more PvP combat essentially, and I think that both champions and players that prefer to attack players instead of minions and towers will have a good place with League of Legends now.

Riven Opinion and Experimentation Results

As many people know, somewhat recently (although probably like months ago in “gamer time”) Riot Games released another new champion in a fairly short time after Talon, that new champion is Riven. I personally was excited to try her out but I at the time lacked the influence points to purchase her, so after playing a good amount of games I was able to afford a 6300 point champion. While there was a lot of champions that I wanted to buy like Renekton, Gangplank, Amumu, and even Talon after trying him out since he was on the free rotation for the week, I knew I could only get one and I was kind of tempted to see how Riven is. I did face my fair share of Rivens in a few PvP matches and noticed that they were always somewhat good at harass depending on the player early in the game, but near the end of the game is where they basically became a free kill, and I was curious about that, I could have easily chalked it up to “they didn't know what they were doing” but pretty much everyone fits in that category for now.

The first time I played Riven, I, like a lot of other players who were new to her, spammed her abilities like crazy but I noticed that this didn't do a lot of damage which dumb founded me. I did know about her passive at the time which creates extra auto-attack damage after doing any of her abilities, but I didn't know that her entire play style basically revolves around it. It wasn't until I was doing poorly in games, and I was forced to watch the Champion Overview of her from Riot Games, as well as reading a few player guides on Mobafire, that I found out. So, with that knowledge in mind along with a new build that mixed AD items and survivability items, I tried out Riven again in a few Coop matches against bots. It went fairly well actually, I was surprised at how much of a difference revolving everything around the passive made, and I was also really impressed with the item build so naturally like all of the other champions I've played on League of Legends, I wanted to see how she would function in PvP.

To put it simply, I've had vastly mixed results. The first match I tried out after practicing was one I did with Alice, we decided that our preferred characters weren't really compatible lane mates, so we just went with whoever seemed appropriate in our matched random group. I ended up going with a Maokai who kind of did reckless things, in any case however we were against a Master Yi, and a Ashe which worked out pretty well, I was able to get some kills when they overextended, and for the most part Maokai could harass on his own so I was rarely in danger while I harassed too. That continued onto the endgame, while I did notice that Riven was considerably weaker, and easily focused, I was able to do decently well. Unfortunately while I had high hopes after that match, they weren't destined around to stay for too long.

The next day when I wanted to practice Riven more, in the morning before Alice had to leave for work we did a quick Coop game for practice and points. I was laned with a Tristana and we did really well, I was surprised. On a side note, Adam joined us too for the game and he as Leona laned with Alice's Lux and did well. Back onto the main topic however, after everyone left for business elsewhere I decided to practice Riven more in PvP matches to get used to her, but it wasn't just practice that I ended up getting, it was more like a revelation. The games didn't go as well as they had the day before, I don't really remember my laning partners, but I do remember in one of the games I could hardly do anything against a Talon who was good at harassing. His rake just limited my mobility way too much and Riven is heavily dependent on mobility to do anything it seems like to me. I don't believe I was partnered with laning partners that synergized well with Riven either, although I can't remember which specific champions that I was partnered with.

As I always like to say though, in the end I still admit that I don't know Riven well enough to say that she's weaker than other champions who's players are probably at least 90% of the time are using an established build that works, where as Riven's builds are still in debate. However, there's a lot of problems that I personally have with her. She does not do the damage at mid and end game or even early game that other melee characters are able to do, and they're able to do it much easier as well with simple auto attacks or abilities. Gangplank or Garen are both other melee characters I've played and with DPS builds they have about the same survivability that she does, however they're able to kill much easier with Gangplanks Parrrley able to do 1k crits, and his melee attacks hitting for 400-600 easily. As for Garen, he's much easier to use than Riven and he's great early game a lot like Riven, endgame however I was hitting fairly quickly for almost nonstop crits of 600-700, I hit a Singed to death so that was fun.

All in all, I like Riven's backstory, and her as a character, however in a primarily competitive game, that to me is not exactly about winning although that helps, but at least giving a really good shot at winning, I don't believe I enjoy playing her when everyone else picks champions that have solid builds, and are proven to be very good at what their role is instead of just mediocre.

So for now, after reading a confirmation of it especially on a guide on Solomid, I've decided to still keep Riven in mind, but experiment with more champions for now. Specifically Garen.

League of Legends - Negative Players

I have been playing quite a bit of League of Legends recently (or Leagends as Alice and I like to call it because we don't really like saying LoL for it) and while I primarily did Coop matches, Alice and I have started to get into playing PvP matches more often. This of course has led to finding people that aren't the greatest teammates ever fairly quickly and not in the skill department either, it's that they are simply negative jerks. The most recent one I've had was when I was practicing Amumu on my own while Alice wasn't around to play with and so I could be able to play well with her when she does have time, but that's getting offtrack, so back to the main point; the most recent and probably the inspiration of the post was someone did the following :

1. Arrogantly said “you're welcome” every time they helped with a kill
2. Complained about kill stealing
3. Didn't like that they weren't doing well and said that they were “sucking” which I normally don't have a problem with, however, they also wanted to surrender because of this (the fact that they weren't doing well), right after we killed the entire enemy team which made no sense at all to me.

We ended up winning the match anyway, but it still wasn't exactly the most enlightening thing to see, especially because in just the game before that, I also had a very similar teammate who did the exact same thing, I'm pretty sure they weren't the same person. While we're on a list mode, I've also seen people that :

-Have wanted to surrender after dying once

-Complained about kill stealing (of course)

-On the above point, also complained about kill stealing after winning (because of help) a losing duel between themselves and someone else

-Complained about others while not doing well themselves in a completely unrelated lane

-Not select a champion at the start and not leave the match setup, so they end up just AFKing/Idling the entire match or disconnecting while the game is in progress

-Purposely run in and die against the enemy team to level them up

-(I didn't personally see this one but Adam apparently has) Sit in the main friendly base and use wards to make smiley faces

-And many other things I haven't seen yet

Normally I would be used to this because of my World of Warcraft Battlegrounds experience, however it seems to be much more rampant here, and not only that but for sure, having a “bad” team mate impact the rest of the team much, much more in League of Legends. For those who haven't played the game (which I still recommend trying even if you don't like it to start off with), having a bad team mate I would say... increases the chance of a loss by at least 30% if not more, because if the enemy team is good, there are many more things a team with 5 team mates could do as opposed to one with 4.

In the end however, having bad team mates isn't that great for a non-social person like me who doesn't like communicating with strangers in the first place, but I try to do it as much as possible to be polite or to help the team, at the very least to help the team in any case. It's very disheartening, frustrating, and annoying to try to say something even like “garen mia, possibly going to mid” and then to get a dumb response in return. For me even, it's a huge deterrence to just see other people argue and complain to each other or make fun of each other when a team mate makes a mistake somewhere.

I suppose it's because League of Legends is a Free to Play game and from what I've seen a majority of the F2P (no offense to anyone of course) communities are very bad. World of Warcraft doesn't seem to be much of an improvement, but I've at least had reasonable conversations with WoW players now and then, whereas it almost feels like a lost cause for League of Legends.

However, I can't do much to change that, and the fun factor along with wanting to be better at League of Legends offsets the “dumb” players factor pretty well, in fact despite this entire post right after it I plan on playing another game with Amumu for even more practice, so overall I guess while it is annoying, it's just something that you have to deal with, and this isn't to say all League of Legends players are like that, it's just that a majority seem to be, but of course, only time will tell.

Update on streaming status

Well after about 3 days straight or possibly more days on working on setting up my computer to be able to stream with fairly clear resolution it became apparent to me that I'm unable to do that so long as I have the processor that I currently have. I figure this because right from the start Livestream's Procaster is appearently one of the least hardware demanding streams aviaible and I'm unable to do that, furthermore even though it's somewhat clear on my side, all of the other streams do put my CPU usage at 80-100% regularly, so in the end I'll just have to go about getting a new processor in order to stream to reasonable quality.

There's also the possibility that my internet connection isn't suitable for it, but I don't think that's the case as I was able to successfully stream on my past computer without too many issues, I don't think there was any stutter, and the resolution was somewhat good too. The main difference however is that it was on Xfire, and I did notice some stutter on my end, but it wasn't as bad as it is now, and there wasn't any problem with the audio at all.

So in short again, while I would like to have streams for the blog eventually, that isn't something that's possible right now, and I will be shifting my focus unto more reasonable things for the time being instad

The Ustream Audio Issue Resolution

Since I spent pretty much the entire day trying to figure that out, as well as going to a few other services before hand I decided I might as well write about it. It turned out to be quite a stressful experience that I'm glad I'm finished with.

The entire story of the experience is quite a long one, but it came down to that I was just looking for a streaming service that would allow me to stream in the first place and be fairly coherent with the hindrance of my not really great PC. The first thing that came to mind as usual was Procaster which Alice and I used frequently for other games, and it actually worked fairly well on my old PC too, but evidently that PC had more processing power than my current one, and I experienced more than a few problems. To start off with, I was trying out the new Procaster that completely shuts off when a computer is above using it's threshold of 80% or higher CPU processing power, so since my computer was constantly at that limit, I wasn't even able to get the stream to start. I didn't give up there however , I instead reverted to a old version of Procaster that Alice and I used to stream games that weren't enabled on Xfire in the past, however that didn't work too well either, the sound was stutter and it made my system lag to near in-playability, I also experienced stutters with the sound on my computer as well, so that wasn't exactly ideal. With all of that, it made me renew my quest to find out a new streaming service that would allow me to broadcast fairly easily.

The first one that I came across and I had tried to set up in the past was Ustream, and as I understand, Ustream is a pretty popular streaming service for non-gamers, but some gamers did find out a way anyway to use it for our purpose. A very long time ago I followed a guide about setting it up for gaming and I completed the process about halfway until it gets to a part where it literally says to buy a external program to allow sound to come through onto the broadcast. I didn't want to do that of course so I stopped there, coming back to the Ustream service after all of this time, I still encountered that problem of course, and it was a headache to solve, in fact it took pretty much all day. I read many different guides saying to try out different programs, and some even said to enable microphones but I found out that was more for enabling chat programs such as Skype, Ventrilo, and Team Speak rather than what I was trying to get, so I ignored many of those guides and I really couldn't find any hints on what to do. This resulted in me giving up on Ustream once again and trying to go to another service, since I've played a lot of League of Legends recently I've heard of Own3d streaming, so of course that was my next stop. When I got there I literally registered once and then it said to download a streaming program that is in beta at which point I had to register again, however every time I tried to register it didn't process and I did try almost every possible alternative such as changing my password or user name but it still didn't go through, to make it even more annoying it didn't actually give me a reason why my action didn't happen. So of course, I gave up on that, last but not least we have Justin.tv, again, I heard a lot of good things about the service however, I don't like that it uses it's own program for desktop and game streaming that gives 10 free uses and then forces a charge. It also offers free webcam streaming like Ustream, but that didn't help as it led me back to my soundless problem, and I decided I prefer Ustream to Justin.tv anyway so I left that idea behind.

That brings us back to Ustream, after doing some tests on Procaster again and deciding that it was just too unstable and more annoying than fun, Ustream was basically the only option I could think of, so I just had to get sound working. To my luck I did a few more searches and finally came upon a answer that seemed pretty good, it was on a post from someone having the same problem as I was, and it was answered by a moderator, it of course said to go to another page where the question was already answered but the mod's answered in a very helpful fashion. While they did say to go to another page they did identify the problem, and on the other page the problem was finally fixed as I found out I had to enable a disabled device that prevented my computer audio devices to be selected. So for future reference and for anyone that reads my blogs, I would like to point this part out because it was very helpful, and just in general, while the process of getting computer streaming on Ustream to begin with is a hassle, I think if Procaster or some other stream isn't working out for you, Ustream can be a fairly good alternative.

1.)You need a video device that would allow redirection of the desktop to the broadcast, I personally use Manycam which is a webcam with desktop footage options. Ustream has also thought of this problem and has released it's own desktop viewer called Ustream Producer, and while it's not only for the desktop or it's primary purpose might not be that at all, it definitely would allow you to stream your Desktop.

2.)As for audio this part is the part that really confused me, unlike what some guides say, you don’t really need to do anything special. In order to literally get computer audio (not microphone or anything like that audio) you need to do this : go onto the sound window in control panel then go into recording and make sure “Show disabled devices” is enabled, afterward all that's left to do is enable “Stereo mix”, and that solved the problem easily. It's a simple thing but it for the untechnical savvy such as myself, it was probably one of the things I would try in a couple of years rather than now.

After that you should be good to go, I believe enabling a microphone goes through the same process as enabling the stereo mix but instead it just is through different ports.

In conclusion, I haven't tried to broadcast what I wanted to do yet, but so far Ustream is far more compatible with a low end computer like mine than Xfire, or Procaster, and it allows me to stream where I wouldn't be able to, to begin with, so for that I'm thankful, and while I'm sure the stream won't be the best quality in the world, I'm just happy to finally be able to have audio on Ustream.

Small Notes - September 9th, 2011

Just a few small posts today because I can't figure out how to transform them into larger,more drawn out topics.

Front Mission 3 vs Front Mission 4

As a fan of Front Mission 3 when I heard that there was going to be continuation of the series on the PS2 I was really excited. That didn't last for long however, after buying the game at release I found myself disappointed for some reason, I can't exactly remember the exact reason, but I know for sure I didn't really like the main characters. I also can't really remember having a fondness for the combat animations in it either like I did for Front Mission 3. Thinking back on it now however, I regret getting a refund for the game before giving it more of a chance.

PlayStation Portable Streaming

While I've seen a lot of guides that show how to do things like putting a computer screen onto a PSP, I've never found a very clear one on how to do it the opposite way around. I've recently been trying to find out a way to be able to stream my PSP screen to my PC, but so far the only way I've found that works for sure, requires custom firmware, which my PSP does not have. I have not found any alternatives since, and I have done some asking around, due to how difficult the ordeal has been so far, when I do find out how exactly to get the idea working, I'll probably make a guide for it on Singularity.

Front Mission 3 Progress

It's been a few days since I last wrote about Front Mission 3 but I haven't gotten much further in the game. While I'm happy that it's not over, I can't help but acknowledge that the game does a very good job of setting up a point where a ending should be, and then continuing onwards; that fact is also aided by the entire point of Front Mission 3 being a very long game. To make things somewhat more drawn out but not in a bad way, which ever part I'm at right now is extremely challenging, but not in a hard way, every time I make a mistake I'm able to recognize it after the AI punishes me for making that mistake. However on that same note, the game is ruthless about punishing mistakes, and usually the only way to recover from it is to reload your last save. With that said, I still find the game very fun, I haven't been playing it much in favor of doing other things, but I am still as excited as ever to see the conclusion of the game I've never beat for years now.

My problem with Real ID (World of Warcraft)

I'll start off by saying that I know saying something about the real ID system is months late, but when that system first came around I wasn't blogging to begin with, I did have considerable problems with it however even then. This post will also ramp up later about the things that I think about the new World of Warcraft patch so far, but there hasn't really been too many previews released about it, nevertheless I do have a good amount of thoughts on the matter. Plus also on that matter, there was a recent update to the Real ID system that allowed players to join instance groups with each other regardless of what server they're on initially, while I do think this is a good feature and I think it's neat, it also brings back the issues with Real ID that I had to begin with.

Starting from the top, when I first heard about Real ID a very long time ago I thought it was a neat system, I didn't know at the time of course much about it, I don't even remember it having a actual title other than “the system Blizzard is working on that will let people from different servers communicate” and it was especially effective when thought of with Blizzard's other multi-server feature, the cross-realm Looking For Group tool. With all of that said, things have backfired since the days when Real ID was just a unimplemented system, when it first came to light that the system would use your real named tied to the account, I personally was very distraught about that because it required the sacrifice of one of the main reasons why people like the internet (this is of course, not the only reason) the reason of having constant anonymity unless desired otherwise, to make things worse apparently the system forced people to use their real names on the forums when posting as well. While both aspects of using real names with the system was met with heavy opposition by the player base, Blizzard intervened and got rid of the forced real name on forums, however the requirement for using real names on the in-game service is still there.

I really like being anonymous to people unless desired otherwise and even then only known by my in-game name except by a few people because I personally am very anti-social and I just like leaving those details behind when it comes to enjoying video games. To that end, requiring real names basically cut off all of my intentions to use the system, and left it in the dust. While I don't mind the way Blizzard shaped it out to be, I feel like if it was simply a more advanced friends list with all of the features that it had inside of it, it would have been more widely achieved. On the other hand, in a more aggressive stance, I don't really understand why you would need a social network for a singular company's video games; other companies such as Xfire, or even Valve with Steam are more set up to do that because they don't limit themselves to their own games. The Real ID method only serves and benefits people while they're playing one of two games and possibly three soon, and while it does do a good job at connecting people who play that, it won't have the longevity that normal social networking systems do such as Facebook.

With that aside, the system ended up being used in two ways, either people started to just add as much people as possible similar to most people's usage of Facebook, or they used it for people that they are close to them such as family members, which is more aligned to Blizzard's original statement on the system. I believe in fact, one of the first things that the system notifies you of is that you should be sure that you trust the people that you add to Real ID, but even when it's used that way it's not reaching it's full potential that it could have had if it were simply again, a normal in-game friend's list with more advanced features.

Front Mission 3 - Introduction and what I've been doing

I played Front Mission 3 a very long time ago when I was little; I believe it was around 1999 or 2000 as that was when it released, but I can't pinpoint the actual date. What I do remember is that it was one of my first turn based strategy games ever, and one of the most memorable other than Final Fantasy Tactics, and of course also that I enjoyed Front Mission 3 immensely.

Bringing us back to the present, it wasn't too long ago, maybe a year, that I bought my PlayStation Portable but I only somewhat recently, about a few months ago, browsed the PlayStation Network Shop, there I saw that it had PlayStation 1 imports for sale. At first sight I thought that was interesting, interesting enough to warrant it a look anyways and I saw plenty of games that I remember just from going to places in like Hollywood Video or Blockbuster and seeing the rows of PS1 games that I wanted to try out. However it wasn't too long until I spotted games that I really remember namely Final Fantasy Tactics again, and Front Mission 3, along with others that don't come to mind right now (I believe I saw Wild Arms but I can't say for sure); it didn't have Vanguard Bandits which is another turned based strategy game that I never finished but I wanted to, but in any case, the real meat of the shopping experience for me was Front Mission 3.

After seeing the game I knew I had to play it again just to see what it was like, but it wasn't until a few weeks later that I got around to purchasing it. When I did I felt slightly disappointed because it seemed like I pretty much already played most of the game even if I didn't beat it, and I generally don't like replaying games. However again, as soon as I loaded it up and I saw the title screen I was immediately sucked in, it reminded me so much of playing the game on a normal TV screen. Speaking of that, the default perspective for PS1 import games was really disappointing at first, as it was confined into a small screen to make it look better even on the PSP's already small screen. Good thing for me though that after messing around with the buttons on the PSP I found out an option that had things for the PS1 imports specifically that I didn't see while playing Persona 3 or Metal Gear Solid : Peace Walker. It had things like the manual, reset button, but most important of all, different view settings. So, I was able to get to play FM3 in a normal view which at first looked kind of disappointing because of the outdated graphics but I got used to the wide screen feel and it felt perfectly natural soon afterward.

I've been playing the game now and then for awhile now and I've gotten about 30 hours on my save file, it was simply a blast to experience a game from childhood in the now. From remembering things that happened when I played it the first time, to almost having it be a completely brand new experience that I had enough experience and memory of to execute well without having to explore or fumble around with things, to finally understanding and exploring more aspects that I found unnecessary or boring when I was younger; playing the game was not only a trip in memory lane but just a fun gaming experience in general. So with that said, and like I said, I haven't ever finished the game completely in my life. I plan on doing so this time however, and then afterward I still have the second story I could play for an entire new experience, but in any case, I will be writing more about Front Mission 3 in the future, I've just about reached the point where I can't remember proceeding any farther than I did in the past, so seeing all of those new things will undoubtedly be exciting.

What I can say is this, if you like sci-fi with modern industry in it (which I heard some people call “Hard” Sci-fi, I didn't look it up or know if that's true, but there's that), as well as a good story, interesting characters, fun but somewhat difficult combat, and finally of course Mechs, I'm sure you'll enjoy playing Front Mission 3, and I'll write more about my experiences playing it soon.

The possible effects of "if" Star Wars : The Old Republic doesn't do well

I'll admit that there is a fairly large segment of the SWTOR community that have very unrealistic demands of the game in the first place. The people that expect things like the game to get rid of looting because none of the characters looted corpses in the movies, or get rid of class roles in the game and let people have more customization in that regard, will probably and most likely end up disappointed. However for everyone else there is a game that is one of the few MMORPGs set in the Star Wars universe, and not only carries that banner on it's shoulders but also the test of if story has a big enough hold in the genre for it to be focused upon.

Both of those reasons are extremely big responsibilities for The Old Republic to undertake but so far it gladly does so, and while I don't have any expectations of the game's failure, I do believe that if in the event that it does not do well there could be some serious repercussions.

The first is of course the loss of money, from what I've read SWTOR has been a huge money sink for Bioware and it's supporters, and while I don't believe there has been an official release on how much money the game has cost so far, I have seen more than a few articles putting it as 300 million. This also makes it one of the most expensive games ever made, and definitely the most expensive game that Electronic Arts has been tied to. All of the money being put into this either leads to that the game will be as astounding as most people want it to be, or it could be a severe loss of money for the companies involved but even then assuming that the game does in fact not do as well, the sheer amount of pre-orders and copies that will be sold upon the game's release will possibly make the money impact less consequential. Nevertheless though, 300 million dollars is a huge sum to put into a game, and even if the funds are evened out, if the game doesn't do well future companies might be more skeptical or even in general less willing to shell out that kind of money for development, this could potentially affect the future of Bioware games if they need the money that would be lost.

There is of course, also Bioware's reputation at stake. Bioware has always been known for making really good games and that is what makes them one of the most known names in the video game industry. From very early games for the PC such as Baulder's Gate to the recent Mass Effect and Dragon Age series, all of the games released from Bioware have been quality single player games. This is not entirely good however as with fame in general if you're doing anything and you're famous, the world has it's eyes on you, this especially poses a problem when wanting to chart out in the unfamiliar territory that would be Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games. All of Bioware's successes have been from mainly single player based games, or non-massively multiplayer games such as Neverwinter Nights, and while even then it was possible to play NWN online, it was just an option given to players; other than making it compatible online, and providing a great tool set for it, the normal campaigns really didn't have any astounding features that made people want to play it with others, and in fact the last expansion released for NWN was very buggy when it came to playing it online. With that said, Bioware did do things that made it a great online experience in general such as making multiple forms of communication easy, implementing grouping systems, PvP systems, DM tools, the ability to trade items, and of course the ability to make entire new modules or worlds with the Aurora Toolset that it provided. With just these few things, players since the release of NWN (including myself) have enjoyed the online game play immensely which does prove that Bioware does know what people want in an online game, but even then it still is a whole new world when actually designing content made to be played with others, and having many other elements of being massively multiplayer within it.

Besides having little experience in making Online games, there's also the issue for some that SWTOR is being developed by Bioware Austin which is a fairly young studio giving people the belief that it doesn't have the “veterans” who worked on titles like Mass Effect and thus wouldn't result in a good game just from that. The fact that it's done by a fairly new studio within Bioware could possibly save the company from some general grief if things don't work out but generally many people also don't distinguish different studios from one another, and while I personally don't believe simply being a new studio would result in failure, if it does in fact do just that, the results may impact Bioware's reputation more than just a little bit.

Last but not least, and the thought that started this entire post to begin with is the game being basically the banner carrier for story in MMORPGs. Right from the start representatives of the company have said that the game seeks to add a new pillar to MMORPG fundamentals, that being story. This also essentially means players that like story in MMORPGs games shouldn't have to look farther at all, this is the game to be playing for that element in the genre, however at the same time with that very idea, this is the game that will put story in MMORPGs to the test. I somewhat recently saw one of Yahtzee's videos on F.E.A.R. 3 and in it he mentions that usually it isn't “fun” to read a story with another person which I think can be true for some people. The reason for this is how fun experiencing a story is with someone else depends on the people involved generally, in that if they like stories to begin with, and if they're comfortable enough to enjoy watching or reading something with someone else. While I personally have a small group of friends that I would enjoy ToR's story with, there's more than a few people that aren't in similar situations and I believe that the effect of story on them will be far minimized. Again however none of this is proven, there hasn't been a MMORPG out with a similar system of dialog or individual story in history. On the other hand however, there have been MMORPGs with good stories but for the most part their stories are fairly linear or uninvolved such as in Lord of the Rings Online for the linear aspect, or World of Warcraft for uninvolved. So that brings me to my point finally, while there are a lot of factors for and against story in MMORPGs, this will be the first true test of if the Bioware level of story telling has a place within MMORPGs or if it will be shot off into the distance. In the case that it doesn't do well, that'll probably be the end of any deep story involvement in MMORPGs for quite awhile if ever which is somewhat of a grim outcome, but if SWTOR does do well we could possibly look forward to even more similar games with different settings or features, however they still would have a degree of Bioware's depth and involvement in storytelling.

So with all of that said, there's a lot riding on the success of ToR, both for Bioware and possibly the future of the MMORPG genre. Of course all of it is speculation, it is entirely possible that the game could not do well and things could keep on getting better anyways, or another company takes the role of story on it's shoulders and proceeds that way. However the one thing that is for certain is that story has never had a bigger role in any MMORPG before SWTOR, and for that aspect alone, while I realize that this entire post was somewhat negative, I for one, don't want SWTOR to fail in any way.

Singilized Experiences - My first MMORPG main character (World of Warcraft - Stormwind and Deadmines)

Finally at last after a few days of being unable to write for personal reasons, I have part two of my first experiences playing an MMORPG seriously. If interested part one can be found here. With that said and without further ado, here's part two.

As World of Warcraft was my first MMORPG there were a lot of things that I now know are pretty standard fare for MMORPGs that I didn't know at the time, such as large captial cities where players could socialize at, and do other things that they wouldn't find in other places. In World of Warcraft's case, use the auction house, use the flight hub that connected to basically everywhere else, and it was also the main area where most people purchased extra skills for their character at, there were a few other class trainers but only the Captial cities had them in all together at once, in a easy location to get to. Of course to house all of that, the city is very big, and that was my first realization of when I stepped into Stormwind.

When I went onto the Stormwind bridge and I heard the music change from the normal ambiance to a very human-like heroic theme I liked it immensely, that coupled with walking through giant statues of historic lore characters who I didn't really know at the time but I found out more about later on, and who were also apparently in past Warcraft games that I've never played, was just an unbelievable experience. Another thing that probably helped that was that I really liked playing the humans in Warcraft 3 and the architecture of Stormwind City. While it obviously looked much more impressive than a Town Hall in WC3, it still had the same feeling of it, on a much larger scale. In any case however, after I stopped enjoying the scenery I pretty much immediately got lost. Despite that I still enjoyed wandering around the city to even just find out where the exit was and finding out the city had places like “The Park” where it was very nature oriented to accommodate the Night Elves, to the Dwarven District which was considerably darker than other parts of the city and of course, made for the Dwarves and Gnomes. I ended up spending most of my time at the dwarven district when I eventually became a Engineer and Miner later on. Eventually however I got used to the map, and the districts of the city to easily find out where I needed to go, but getting lost the first time and basically stumbling on unique parts of the area was still one of the most memorable experiences of World of Warcraft for me.

Back to the actual gameplay, after making my way out of Elwynn Forest and doing the end quests of Elwynn such as Hogger, and Princess, I went over to Westfall. Much like Elwynn I was quickly astounded by the landscape and how different it was compared to being in a forest, honestly I much prefer drier places in reality and in-game so I was much more drawn to Westfall than being in a forest, and it was a pleasant surprise for me. The not so pleasant parts of it came to me quickly as well however, in that Westfall's enemies seemed abnormally hard for me, even killing something at the same level as me usually involved me having to eat some food to recover. Looking back at it now, I can't remember the exact cause of my weakness other than I was using a shield and a 1 handed sword but even now thinking about it, I think the damage should have evened out that way. There were more than a few parts of Westfall that presented this problem, the ones that come to mind are the Harvest Reapers on most farmlands, the Boars that did a ton of damage upon a charge, and the Gnolls who by themselves, weren't that hard to kill, but usually they in close proximity to another Gnoll meaning engaging them usually resulted in a 1 against 2 or more fight quickly, not to mention they also used ranged attacks, making it even harder to get them in a position to kill easily. All of that however was nothing compared to yet another aspect of MMORPGs that was standard but I didn't know about yet.

That leads us to the Deadmines, one of the most famous instances in World of Warcraft was my, a lot like many other people's, first instance in the game. It was here that I also came to the realization that MMORPGs were not just action oriented and they had to have a full group composition as well as full group in the first place. I was really excited when I first came across the barnhouse that housed the deadmines and went in it somewhat to explore, when I got down into the mines part I really didn't think it was that bad after I was able to kill a nonelite miner, so I got my friends such as Vedelken, and the Paladin who liked the RP, and we tried it out. Evidently with no offense to them of course , none of us actually knew how play in a group based MMORPG scenario, as we tried to do it with just us 3 instead of a full five that's far from the real problems that occurred however.

Due to my lack of knowledge perhaps or the fact that the Warrior class quest wasn't very clear, I never actually went ahead and did the Warrior class quest, and because of that I never got defensive stance, I didn't even know it was possible to obtain at my level. That of course led to big problems, while I did use a shield, my only real threat generation was heroic strike, and with neither of my accomplices knowing how to play their class well either, it was very hard to take down even the first few enemies in Deadmines. We did manage however, and while it felt like a near impossible task I was glad that we did, it felt impossible enough for me to hope that the Deadmines wasn't very long, and when we did get to the first boss Rhak'zor he of course, destroyed us. All of that was very demoralizing because we literally spent hours getting to him only to find out that we couldn't beat him. We ended up stopping our incursion there for awhile until we were a few levels higher then we came back, I believe we also came back with a full group this time. I was surprised and happy to see how easier things were even though I was still the Warrior with a shield and without defensive stance but I still managed to hold aggro enough to keep them off people and for us to do our job. It took us a long time but we did manage to proceed deep into the instance which amazed me in not only how difficult it was but also in it's environments. I really enjoyed going into goblin shredder area and having to fight goblins that were considerably harder than the Defias bandits that we previously killed, and moving onto the boss itself which I was really scared of aggroing constantly while we pulled the enemies back. That of course led to the boss fight with Sneed who was a lot more intimidating in appearance than he was in combat, I was surprised to find out how easy he died, and I was also happy to be able to complete a quest I found in Stormwind, while it was out of the way, I thought it was neat being able to have a quest that most people wouldn't find unless they also went to the Dwarven District beforehand, which I know isn't that rare to do before Deadmines but I still felt that way about it.

In any case, after downing Sneed we went into the foundry which I loved simply for it's ramp, it was also the part where I realized a lot of wipes could happen very easily if noone did something about the goblins who summon additional golems. The trip went fairly uneventfully from then on until we got to the hanger area where Van Cleef was creating his ship. I generally like all parts where we fight on wooden docks in any games, so this part was especially fun for me, from being on the docks in the first place to having abit of trouble with Mister Smite who was my first glimpse of a Tauren in World of Warcraft, so seeing that was neat in that regard as well as him being a fun boss overall. All of that led to of course fighting on the ship itself, while the pulls were abit glitchy and we did wipe more than once because of pulling enemies that were out of our line of sight but still in range, namely Captain Greenskin's group. Speaking of his group, they were actually fairly difficult to take down because we had a lack of CC, lack of all CC infact except for a fear which I quickly learned was bad to do in instances, but we did it anyway for the sake of surviving. After taking care of him we finally got to Van Cleef himself, he wasn't so easy with his summoned guards that he brought in making our survivability and mana management difficult, I can't remember the specifics but we did end up killing him which led us to the first blue drop that I liked in all of the instance, that was the Cruel Barb, and while I didn't win the roll, it did inspire me to run VC again even more at higher levels just to dual wield Cruel Barbs, and it was also leagues ahead of any items that I saw so far.

In summary, while I did do a lot of “noobish” things while first starting out with World of Warcraft they made me a better player and definitely a more knowledgeable one. When I first started out I didn't even know terms such as CC, DPS, Tank even meant and like I mentioned I also didn't know about the defensive stance that a Warrior could obtain , I did however pick those up after the ordeal, and also did the quest for my defensive stance. So, while the entire experience was a challenge to overcome, it was a very fun and memorable one, and while I did forget the specifics of my first Deadmines run such as who did what or how many times we wiped (which was a lot so I'll settle for vague quantity), I'll never forget how it was my first instance run ever.

That'll sum up the main thing I did want to write about when I started thinking about my first experiences in World of Warcraft, there are quite a few more I could write about but I will also be spreading out my subjects for now. However, I will eventually write about more of my experiences like these, and I hope you'll look forward to them.