last.fm

I know, I know, it's been a while since I last posted. Just haven't had the muse and my current class doesn't have much work that would make sense to post.

So unrelated to video games, I started a last.fm account. I think I had one a long time ago, but I forgot the info so decided to make a new one.

Peruse my musical interests.

Gameplay Pitch

This is a quick pitch I wrote for an assignment today for a specific gameplay element within one of my own original game ideas. I might post the actual game idea on here, too, if there's enough interest. Let me know.

What is fun?

I was talking to Nin and it got me thinking about what is fun for me. The subject came up because, throughout my time playing World of Warcraft, I have been notorious for changing characters. Often. Sometimes, this isn't an issue. But when I want to raid, and I'm not feeling like playing the only character that is geared to do the content, this becomes an issue. So the discussion with Nin sparked some thought.

What is fun for me, in WoW, is playing with other people. Plain and simple, that's what I like to do. It really doesn't matter too much what character I'm on as long as I'm with my friends doing something. Soloing in WoW has gotten to be really, really boring for me. However, there is a certain point when a character also becomes boring for me. I have to discover where this point is, but it inevitably hits me with every new character. Why is that? Why can't I just stick with one character, or even one talent spec within a character? I don't know. It might be because I have ADD or because I just get bored of doing the same thing over and over again.

Unfortunately, this becomes a problem when I want to raid. I have one character geared for the upper level ICC content, but all my others are sitting down around ToC level. If my guild needs me to raid, they call on my druid because he's the only one that can do it. Healing on my druid is, occasionally, fun but mostly boring. DPS on my druid is stressful because if I make one mistake that can drop my dps my ridiculous amounts. I don't like that kind of pressure. Tanking I rarely get to do in a raid environment, so I can't really discuss that one. If I don't want to play my druid, but my guilds needs me, does the 'not-fun' of playing my druid get equaled out by the 'fun' of grouping with friends? Sometimes. But not always.

With Cataclysm coming up Soon™, the problem is only going to be compounded. All the new class changes make me incredibly excited and after doing some math, I figured out that I've made plans for having at least 10 characters at max level in Cataclysm. 10! Right now I have 6. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Do I continue this cycle of enjoying a character, gearing them, getting bored, and starting work on another character? Or will I decide, sometime between now and the start of Cataclysm, that I can and will focus on one character? I don't know. I'm eager to find out. What I have decided is that, as fun as it is to play all these characters and have something to move to when I get bored of my current character, it is very much 'not-fun' to not be able to play with friends on the character I want to play on. I'm going to have to work on finding a happy medium in there somewhere.

Hrm.

I had a really good idea for a post either last night before I went to bed or maybe it was in a dream. Either way, I can't remember what it was. Bummer.

Mumble. An alternative to Ventrilo.

http://mumble.sourceforge.net/

Pretty cool. When Cataclysm rolls around and I (maybe) start running a raiding guild. I'll definitely make use of this. Skype works for now for casual chatting, but it just doesn't make sense to use in a raiding environment.

Alien Swarm

www.alienswarm.com

Looking forward to this. Hope it comes out on Mac soon!

My Current School Project (Updated x3)

For my Design and Development class I have to do this big analysis project. This is what I have so far. It is, obviously, a work in progress.