Still playing City of Heroes. I’ve been playing mostly in the mornings with my healer bot (action shots below). I only played with my friend (the newb) once last weekend. I figured out one mystery. I would send him tells in game when I saw him online and never get any responses back from him. As I found out he plays with the chat window minimized. Because it’s in the way of seeing whats going on. That is the reason he gave. From his newb point of view I guess I understand. There is a lot of stuff on the screen. It is probably a lot to deal with all at once.

For those of you that keep track of these things or are just curious (or bored even) here are two shots of Gawain’s good guy. The first one shows his bio (here is his badguy bio). The second is just a heroic pose.

I also joined the guild that Gawain’s hero is in. They are role players. The server we play on (Virtue) is the unofficial role playing server. But I wasn’t quite ready for this role playing thing.

Turk is now a member of League of Misfits!
[Team]Turk: do I need to say anything?
[Team]Turk: can I just say thanks
[Team]Turk: not a lot of chatter
[Team]Lowblow: yeah go ahead.
[SuperGroup]Turk: Thank you for the invite into the team.
[SuperGroup]Acorn Avenger: Hi Turk!
[SuperGroup]Acorn Avenger: I’m the Acorn Avenger!
[SuperGroup]Lowblow: ((they’re rude, turk, don’t worry. except for acorn avenger who is not rude but awesome instead.))
[Team]Turk: jesus their talking to me
[SuperGroup]Acorn Avenger: [[naw, I’;m rude OOC, AA is just nuts]]
[SuperGroup]Lowblow: ((ok, I take back what I said then.))

I have a number of problems about role playing my character. First and foremost is the fact my hero is based on my old high school era comic book. So granted there is not a lot of character there to play with. I guess I’ll have to come up with something or use the crazy angle G uses. Some of it is just weird. To speak ooc (out of character for the newbs) you use double brackets at the beginning and end of the ooc text.

[[This is dumb.]]

Which to me is dumb. For now I guess I’ll just not say much in the guild chat channel. I think I’ll talk DarkIzer into joining up too and then make him open up his damn chat window.

Played some more with DarkIzer the newb, While me and his son drank Diet Pepsi at my house he was enjoying Coors Lite at his house. Here is the highlight of yesterdays City of Heroes session:

Important lesson learned. Don’t drink and play mmorpg’s.

Gawain tries retail Hellgate: London. Below is his e-mails to me detailing how it went.

From: Gawain
To: Turk
Date: 04/21/08 6:56 PM
Subject: And now a report.

7:00 – Hellgate Installed.
7:10 – Startup. Hellgate Begins autopatching.
7:20 – Patching Complete. ERROR: You must download the patch from the website.
7:45 – Patch Downloaded. Patch Installed. ERROR: Game is already patched with the latest version.
7:46 – Startup. Hellgate Begins autopatching.
7:55 – Game startup complete. Loading. Game is running.
***HURRAY FOR HELLGATE!**
7:55 – Character Creation
7:56 – Character Creation Complete.

Chat window still borked.

This doesn’t surprise me. I hope he got some screen shots of it. Here is the post from the beta when he first had the chat window problem.

From: Gawain
To: Turk
Date: 04/21/08 7:06 PM
Subject: Further Reporting

Visit to knowledge base on hellgatelondon.com = useless
Visit to forums = useless.

sigh.

Again not surprised he didn’t find any help in the Hellgate forums. Not one Hellgate Dev responded to Gawain’s forum post when this stuff happened in the beta.

From: Gawain
To: Turk
Date: 04/21/08 7:21 PM
Subject: Update

8:21 – Uninstalled.

I’m not surprised Gawain lasted as long as he did. If the bugs didn’t get him, the souless Hellgate gameplay would. The game had so much potential. It’s a shame the Hellgate Devs all had their heads stuck up their own asses.

This below is an instant message I got from an old DAoC guildie (take note of the name of said guildie) regarding my activities in City of Heroes.

[12:25] Antiroleplay: so i hear you’re a roleplayer!!!1111
[12:25] *** Auto-response sent to Antiroleplay: Playing City of Heroes. My global chat handle is @Turk
[12:26] Antiroleplay: it’s true!

Next I have a screenshot. Nothing special about it. Unless you zoom in to the full size image and read the text in yellow.

I wonder where Anti heard this information? Below is an in game chat log from the guild chat channel that is mandatory you stay in character.

[SuperGroup]Sofie La Mystere: No wonder no one eever finds this guy, living in ze sewers for 200 years, I wouldn’t want to find ‘im either.
[SuperGroup]Nick Wicked: Oi don’ know what you wuz expectin. It’s the bloody sewers after all, eh?
[SuperGroup]Sofie La Mystere: eh? Another english?
[SuperGroup]Sofie La Mystere: sounds more…canadian.
[SuperGroup]Nick Wicked: Pfft.
[SuperGroup]Sofie La Mystere: Your canadian eh?
[SuperGroup]Nick Wicked: Oim Nick Wicked, an’ Oim a bleedin Rock star, mate.
[SuperGroup]Sofie La Mystere: hm..
[SuperGroup]Nick Wicked: Canada! Oi nevah ‘erd such a thing.
[SuperGroup]Sofie La Mystere: ah’ve never ‘eard of you.

And here is my in game tell to this “Nick Wicked” person.

[Tell]–>Nick Wicked: your such a putz
[Tell]Nick Wicked: hahahahahaha

So you see I’m not the roleplayer here. I just don’t swing that way. Unlike Nick Wicked.

It’s time for a new computer. I used the Tech Report 2008 system guide The Grand Experiment as a blueprint. Here are the parts and Newegg prices:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 $199.99
• Asus P5N-E SLI $119.99
• Mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2-800 $75.99
• XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB $229.99
• Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB $89.99
• Samsung SH-S203B $26.99
• Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer $90.99
• Antec Sonata III w/500W PSU $129.95
• Grand Total Spent: $963.88

I’ve been wanting to get a duo core processor for a while. Also Age of Conan is coming up and I had concerns if my current pc could handle it. Luckily I came into some money and I had a $1000 buck budget to build a new computer. I lack the initiative to select my own items so I usually find some tech site that has this kind of info put together before hand. I had some worry about getting the processor from Newegg, as it has been out of stock. It seems to go fast. Hopefully this build will last me for a while. I also hope to be able to play Crysis on this machine as I would like to see what all the hype is about. Now I sit back and wait for UPS to get my stuff to me. And hurray for being able to spend hundreds of dollars in a matter of seconds. What a rush.

At the bar with my buddy the old bellman of the worst hotel ever. We are enjoying happy hour at Suds O’Hananans.

Update. We have downed beers one and are halfway into beer two. Beer three sits waiting for us to drink.

Update 2. Beer three is drunken. We wait for the waiter guy to get his ass over to our table for beer four.

Update 3. We finished beer four and wait for waiter guy to cash us out.

Domain renewal is another purchase I’ve been putting off. Like buying the parts for a new pc, ordering five more years of Hotelblues.com is a satisfying purchase. Now the domain expires in September 2013. 2013! That is the future man. Shit like that still blows my mind.