Archive for December, 2007

Xbox Live: Speak No Evil!

Published at December 14, 2007 in General Gaming and Offtopic. 0 Comments

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A 19 year old was arrested recently after making threats to “shoot up his school” over Xbox Live.

Apparently, during a Call of Duty 4 game, Allieu Shaw threatened to shoot up his school and detailed how he was going to do it.

Understandably this worried another player in the game, who proceeded to report Shaw to the local police department. Authorities arrested Shaw the following day at his school.

Although Shaw has insisted he was joking about the threat, and a search of his house resulted in no weapons found, he has been suspended by Frostburg State University and faces a maximum of one year in jail and a five thousand dollar fine if convicted…

Firstly, good on the guy who reported him in the first place.. You cant take chances these days and Id hate to have that on my conscience had the kid carried out his threat. Secondly, what kind of socially inept asshole makes threats like that? The racism, xenophobia, and mother jokes on Live are almost tolerable.. mass shooting threats just don’t fly at all..

This is exactly Lives problem right now.. idiots and com’s ruin your experience. Thank god for the preferred player system because without it online play would be a nightmare.

Team Fortress 2: Video Tools, New Maps, Fixes Incoming

Published at December 14, 2007 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Tf2logoThe latest news on Valves plans for TF:2 is circulating the blogosphere at the moment and I’m impressed with what I’ve heard so far..

Firstly the patch will fix "several game-play exploits, improves bandwidth usage, improves stats reporting, and fixes some menu bugs." Secondly the patch will add Valves own video tools (the ones used to make the trailers for the characters) to the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game which really is brilliant for me as I enjoy filming my antics and messing around editing the footage, but the best is yet to come..

Valve also confirmed they are working on new maps for downloadable content! No details on release dates or any info on the maps as yet, but just knowing they have plans to continue support for this great game is info enough for me.. really, go buy it if you haven’t already.. Doesn’t matter what platform, its all good!

Debunking the BS

Published at December 13, 2007 in General Gaming and Rant. 0 Comments

If games are addictive than so is couching out in front of the TV night after night for hours on end..

If violent games encourage violent behaviour, why are members or the English football team saying that we’d have better footballers if the kids weren’t all playing video game football? If there so influential to kids then we would have tons of kids flocking to sports, skateboarding, the police force, the army, exploring space, raiding tombs, wielding swords in supermarkets shouting about the Frozen Tentacles of Iceland and the epics it drops when killed…. or is it only GTA that’s influential to the kids?

..if Violent games are so bad for children regardless of content, why do games like Americas Army not only exist, but are used as tools to recruit underage kids to join the armed forces?

Why is it, movies like Hostel and Saw featuring realistic scenes of intense violence and gore in full high definition quality, are considered more acceptable to adults than Manhunt 2 with its blurry, not-so photo realistic graphics?

Yeah I don’t get it either…

Kara Update

Published at December 10, 2007 in Kara, Online Diary, PC and World of Warcraft. 0 Comments

Another Kara update. I actually got to go in, saw the first boss go down and had a few attempts at Maiden this time!

We were scheduled to raid it last Sunday but our MT and one DPS class had gone in with a PuG and were saved to another groups ID so we had to call it.. last night, despite missing our off tank we managed to find a replacement and get everyone inside Kara within an hour of the start time. First attempt at the trash clear leading to Attumen, an unlucky aggro on a patrol led to a wipe, then again on the last set of mobs and when we ran back and zoned in.. trash had respawned.

Half of us zoned out and headed for Stoneard for a repair, the other half stayed for summons.

Once we got back in there, we cleared the Attumen trash on the first attempt, then dropped Attumen without any deaths, neither healer went /oom, no-one pulled aggro from the tanks.. for our troubles, 2 epic healing bracers dropped. One for the Shammy MH, one for the Pally offhealer! Very pleased with the performance, had a lot of fun, and progressed the healers kit a little which is great..

From there we decided we would try Maiden next as for some reason people thought Moroes might be too much trouble. After losing our way at first (and clearing out a lot of spider trash mobs) we return to the entrance hall and go up the stairs for Maiden.

Trash pulls were easy and caused us little problems. Maiden was a little different :-)

First attempt, someone got too close while the kill strat was being explained, starting the event before we were ready.. everyone wipes, rezz’s and runs back. Second attempt, as the kill strats are being finalised in chat, someone else gets too close and starts the event. Some people try to run out of the room to reset the encounter but not everyone sees the call for reset go up in chat. Third times a charm, strats laid out, positions taken, we start the encounter.. everything was going well at first but then repentance knocks out ranged, I Ice Block out of it and nuke, pull aggro and wipe hard. Meanwhile, both healers are silenced, the pally didn’t get chance to BoS anyone to break the stun effect, offtank goes down to the Holy Ground thing, main tank goes down soon after.

We tried it twice more after that but couldn’t get the rhythm of going up a step so Holy Ground broke Repentance, then back down again, so called it right as the spawns came back.

All in all, great run, I had a lot of fun plus saw Kara for the first time, and pleased with our Attumen kill. Wont be long till we get Maiden dropped with any luck..