LootBot3000

February 20, 2009

Ch-ch-changes…

Filed under: EQ2, Life — Exeter @ 10:24 pm

I’m experimenting with themes and, of course, the name of the blog has changed.  Why?  The little inside joke in the old title “Expletive Deleted” (hint: I cuss a lot) didn’t make a whole lot of sense to people that didn’t know me and, to be honest, as witty as I thought that it was when I first started, it just comes off as lame now.  The new title, “LootBot” just seems a little more game-related and it’s still relevant to me personally as it comes from the name that my old EQ2 guild-mates gave to my impression of Ned from South Park that became a semi-regular gag in voice chat during raids and dungeon runs.

Speaking of which, I’ve renewed my subscription to EverQuest 2 this week.  Try as I might, I just can’t help but think that a part of me will always be faithful to my first MMO.  I’ve joined, left and rejoined four times now and no matter how much I try to tell myself that I want to try something else, I play another game and think “Boy, I liked this system better in EQ2″. So instead of fighting it, forcing myself to like something different for its own sake, for better or for worse, I’ve succumbed to my unhealthy affection for the game.  I’m not expecting to jump right into things like I did before when I’d spend roughly 15-20 hours per week running dungeons, grinding out quests and raiding, but I hope to experience some of what I’ve been looking for in the other games that I’ve played (AoC and LOTRO) since I last played.

That said though, this weekend is certainly not going to be spent goofing off in-game because I’m going to be slogging it out ferrying box after box of things from my apartment to the new house that my wife and I bought last month.  It’s amazing just how quickly the day has come and while I’m ridiculously excited about getting into our new home, I wish that I’d had another weekend to pack all this stuff.  A couple of weeks simply wasn’t enough.  I’m not looking forward to the 45 minute to 1 hour long commute each morning.  However, one upside to the crawl is that I’ll finally have enough time in the car to listen to all the podcasts and audio books that I’ve let pile up over the last little while.

So it’s a week of new starts and old classics.  Here’s to coming out of it with my brain intact!

Cheers!

EDIT: I should also take the chance to recognize how awesome a job my wife has done in packing practically everything we own! **You get better at being a kiss-ass 323/350**

February 10, 2009

The Medium Matters

Filed under: Life, Nerdiness — Exeter @ 11:07 am

After renting the same apartment for nearly a decade, my wife and I are in the middle of moving to our first house.  So, needless to say, we’re busying ourselves with packing all of our stuff and I’ve got a considerable collection of DVD’s, video games, books and miniatures to move. Definining a genre is largely subjective — trying to categorize Star Wars always made for long distractions during the old pen & paper RPG nights — but I like to think that I’m a well-rounded nerd, able to enjoy them all.  However, I find that my own level of enjoyment of a particular genre is dependent on the medium in which it is presented.

Take video games as an example.  There’re no two bones about it, I’m an MMO addict.  However, no matter how much I like the idea of playing a sci-fi MMO, they don’t tickle my no-no spot.  It could be just the current offerings, but science fiction (Anarchy Online, EVE, Tabla Rasa) hasn’t translated well  into an MMO for me.  Also, despite my nostalgia for the days when a friend and I used to pool our allowance to get the most out of our comic book purchases, the superhero setting doesn’t do it for me either.  No, when it comes to getting my groove on in a virtual world, a high fantasty setting (EverQuest 2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online) is my opiate of choice.  Single-player games, on the other hand, run the gammut from shooters (Call of Duty 4) to sci-fi and fantasy RPGs (Mass Effect and Planscape: Torment) to 4X-games (Civilization 4).

When it comes to the written word, however, I find myself completely turned off by novels in the high fantasy genre.  I couldn’t get into Lord of the Rings (though I enjoyed the films and the MMO), I wince at the thought of reading anything based on Dungeons & Dragons and I daydream about suing Robert Jordan for all the time I wasted turning pages in his Wheel of Time series.  In fact, with the exception of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, I have yet to enjoy, and now make it a point to avoid, books that prominently feature magic, the supernatural or fantastic races.  When I read, I generally turn to either alternate history or historical fiction.

Film and television is a different beast entirely and with  Lord of the Rings being an exception, I find once more that I’m uninterested in fantasy as a genre. This is where the various shades of science-fiction truly shines in my opinion.  From the drama and techno-babble of Star Trek, to the gun-slinging space-cowboys of Firefly/Serenity, I’m a total junkie for all things science-fiction.  My DVD library is stuffed with geek-approved flicks like Star Wars and Alien(s) as well as seasons of Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 with scant offerings when it comes to anything involving swords or sorcery.

So while some, including friends of mine, can consume anything even the slightest bit related to science-fiction and fantasy, for me the medium definitely plays a role in shaping the nerdy aspects of my personality.  And the moral of this story? Blogging is a great way to reflect on your hobbies and a fantastic way to avoid having to actually pack it all into boxes.

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