Thursday, December 05, 2002

EQ - bunch of epic kills

Clan Silvermoon has been racking up the epic kills lately, clearing a bunch of 2-9 day spawns, sometimes within 40 minutes of their being spotted by scouts.


This is our first kill of Vessel Drozlin, one of the enchanter epic mobs. Ysolte spotted him up and available, but even with taking a bit over 20 minutes to get enough friends together to do the kill, we still managed to take him out within an hour.


Second kill of Vessel Drozlin, this time for Magdalen. This kill went even faster (40-45 minutes) because we could see other guild's scouts checking on the spawn, and even some advance guard from some other guilds started showing up in Field of Bone as we were preparing to run into Cabilis.


Granted, this isn't a uber kill, but it's a tough fight for a short-handed level 40s group. (That and we thought Tiggra might like to see her kittin dishing out some damage.)


Not an epic picture, but a fun post-kill snapshot of the mighty panda bear, Giang Yin, that Tiggra and Corish duo'd.


Well, took us two spawns to finally get the ol' frog in the Swamp of No Hope - but Tinben now has his frog kill finished. (First time we attempted Ulump Pujluk we got beat to the spawn by another guild.)


Castle Mistmoore raid for the mid-level players (and alternates of higher level players).

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 1:10 PM

Wednesday, December 04, 2002

EQ - Twink Away? or Is it Okay to eBay?

InkTank Forums :: View topic - My(not so)supersales? - Basically, the author of Angst Technology has managed to "step in it" (e.g. stir up a sensitive subject), not really knowing any better at the time when he posted his original "Twink Away" news item on his home page. It's turning into a very lively debate about intellectual property, EQ's EULA, and whether the selling/auctioning of items in EQ is really that gray of an area or not. I think what's setting everyone off is that monkly-business was just bought and paid for by the owner of the web-site that AT is opining (shilling? no just overly-enthusiastic I think) about. However, the author is being *very* open-minded about this sudden negative attention that he's receiving - so it's turning into an interesting debate and I think he's got a lot of class for that.

My bets are on SOE taking some action - I think the auction site in question has raised it's profile too far. The gauntlet has been thrown in SOE's face, and either they do something about it now, or basically condone it by doing nothing. You see, there's an interesting aspect to Intellectual Property law - you have to defend your IP when it is mis-used or risk losing control over it (it shifts into the common domain). Up until now I think they were willing to look the other way because it was kept on the fringes - polite society didn't talk about it. But between monkley-business, /gu, and now Angst Tech... (maybe other places), it's raised about 10 notches in publicity which means SOE has to take notice of it.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 9:22 PM

Business picks up again

Well, on a good note, we're gonna be really busy during December because a competitor of ours went out of business and the customer is giving us that work. So I've been asked *not* to take that 3rd week without pay. Um, sure, don't have to ask me twice!

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 8:57 PM

S I N

(sigh) Another anime with good promise, but seriously flawed execution. Star of the film is Colonel John Blade who needs to save a little girl named Elyse Stewart from a nasty lady named Elexis Sinclaire. It's a short movie, about 60 minutes, with good special effects and art design.

Okay... so why didn't I like it:

- Movie length was too short, little to no development of the characters. Basically you're shown John Blade, see a few flashbacks where his partner gets killed, his father gets killed, and finally something along the lines of "we can rebuild him, but we have to sacrifice the older one". Okay, so he's half cyborg - but you never really feel like bonding with this guy. Oh, but wait, he can instantly bond with the little girl Elyse who won't say a word after her ordeal until John hands her a teddy bear. He's got a rogue streak in him (classic good cop wants to go after bad guys, boss says he can't, good cop ignores direct orders and saves the day). Oh, and the girl who wants his butt on a legal platter at the beginning is of course in his arm (note the use of the non-plural form) at the end of the movie.

- John "JC" Armack looked like a great character; but instead he's killed off at the start of the movie in the first incident. Supposedly, he's this super great hacker (and his sister is a mere shadow until she proves she can break through a defense network) yet we're never shown his prowess and he comes across as a geek who gets killed solely to advance the storyline and provide some plausible explanation of why the lead character is allowed to be brooding and silent.

- Kait gets short-shrift the entire movie, she gets to shoot big guns, sob when Tim gets killed, and save Blade's butt when they get trapped in the air-tight chamber at the end (oh, and fly a helicopter to save the 3 of them as they fall).

- Somewhere about halfway through the movie, I stopped caring. (In fact, this is the second attempt to watch the entire thing - I popped it out after the first 30 minutes back in the spring.) As they're falling at the end - you *knew* they weren't going to die, as it was obvious that Kait would fly in and save them with some aerobatic maneuvar. Actually, there are a ton of places in the film where it's extremely predictable and forumlaic.

I guess if you were an avid reader of the manga (or whatever the movie was based on), this movie might not dissapoint you too much since you'd already know all the characters and their supposed motivations. I didn't have that information, and as a result came away from the movie not caring about the characters - which is mighty rare for an anime film. If you want to see it, go ahead, but don't expect it to be a stellar example of what the medium is capable of.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 8:16 PM

Sunday, December 01, 2002

Old unsolved EverQuest quests

I'm in heaven... found a message board dedicated to the riddles of EQ:

Old unsolved Quests in Everquest
http://pub8.ezboard.com/boldunsolvedquestsineverquest

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 8:20 PM

Ewwwwwwwww, withdrawal

Forgot to refill my medication on Friday... so have had a lovely weeknd full of withdrawal symptoms (very hard to explain, as the withdrawal symptoms get mixed in with the normal side-effects of the medicine).

Very different feeling then from when I quit smoking... I guess that withdrawal symptoms must vary depending on the addiction / dependancy substance.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 5:01 PM