Roderick

Yes. Life has become a balancing act of constraining my hunger to go online and of getting some work done. It's going pretty well actually. Usually if I've done something monumental (say, finishing an elite quest in a group like this afternoon) I have done enough to make it easy to quit and go work a bit, before hastily returning.

It was basically a huge cameo-fest of famous actors. Which is all I wanted from that movie. Also, I liked Sleepy Hollow, but I'm not reliable on this movie. I once had to analyse it for school and saw it too many times to really look at it objectively.

I'll judge it when I see the movie. Granted, I've always been wary that Gene Wilder would be hard to touch, but I'm willing to give Burton and Depp a chance because of what they did in the past. I'll see.

You have guessed correctly. The world is scheming against you.

I hope your appearance hasn't shifted more toward Bill's because of this. He grows scarier by the minute. Startled me, actually.

Haha, incredible! I went on until 4 o'clock in the night yesterday, long after the majority of the crowd had signed off. I was killing werewolves for hours on end, grew to level 15 and had a great time executing dangerous infiltration missions in enemycrowded areas. Also, it was great to play with Tanu, whom I fear to have left in the dust with this excessive playtime of mine. Not to worry, all is still roleplay and not powerplay. I hope to play with you today again, fellow undead! I'm off to Azeroth shortly!

You should. I've been busy for only two days and already it's destroying my life and work. It's fantastic.

Sorry, I don't have a clue what Dead Aim is then I thought it was another terrific Yufster prank in which you had oopsiedaisily changed the name of the game. My wrong

You mean, in a roleplaying game? Of course you can roleplay in any game you'd want, but it's ridiculously easy here. I'm really not sure if I understand you... it's just a matter of staying 'in character'. So you never chat like you would on msn, but everything you say you say it as if an undead warlock would say it. You make decisions based on what he would take, react on how you have designed his attitude. You are familiar with the concept of roleplaying? Well, imagine a whole server filled with people pretended they're really from Azeroth. Kind of heightens the experience, don't you think?

Are ye daft woman?! Resident Evil 4 is one of the finest and most thrilling games I've played in a long, long time! Maybe you expected too much of it, but Resi Evil is all about no holds barred thrashing shootouts with zombies and other monsters, and it does it gorgeously. And the voiceacting of Leon happens to be exquisite. Maybe there's an Irish localisation going on where they accidentally also fucked up the rest of the game?

I'm on the roleplayingserver Earthen Ring. I've played now for a good 10 hours, I'm a level 11 Undead Warlock named Korach (unfortunately my first pick name was already taken, so I went with a good alternative), and it's safe to say I love it. An amusing thing to see was: when I started with the game it was extremely choppy, there were huge problems with collision detection, the sky flickered, shadows were jittery, etc etc. It really gave a choppy experience. Then I downloaded the latest videcard drivers for my age-old NVidia, and everything turns to gold! I'm serious, all of a sudden the game runs liek crazy, everything looks gorgeous, wow! Aside from that, I teamed up with an English guy I didn't know, and we had a great roleplaying experience, staying in-character all the time. That was swell and scary at the same time. You know what this first day of World of Warcraft reminds me of? Morrowind. It's essentially Morrowind, with multiplayer. In fact, Everyone (including me) who ever lamented that Morrowind would be a great MMORPG, need look no further than WoW. It's, so far, almost exactly the smae; it's very freeroaming, but there are plenty of quests to do. It even feels the same. Which is a good thing. Last thing: I LOVE it when you die, and the sky has this giant inkblack vortex hanging dramatically over you, humming with vacuum. Whenever I'm dead I always take the long walk to my corpse and I set the camera angle so that I'm looking at my Warlock rising up against that swirling void. It gives me chills, it's really quite a magical experience. I don't know if there's lasting appeal yet, but so far it's quite good. Of course not exactly the brainfreezes brilliance I had in mind, but the RP-server I was on had nice enough people who were glad to heal you and stuff, and just make it a swell experience for everyone. I already had a few short talks with my teammember in-character about life and death and undeath (we ARE undead after all), but I intend to do that a lot more. Fuck leveling, I just want to have An Experience.

What the fuck is wrong with this?! The European website seems to be completely fucked up, leading me to all sorts of 404's! It continuously says my cd-key is invalid, technical service webforms are inaccessible and I am outraged! What am I to do!? A desperate man pleads! edit: I've made it. Now I'm downloading a huge patch. Damn I want to play! And damn those frilly erratic technical fuckups >_< They suck. Put now I want to start playing!

I now possess the World of Warcraft Collector's Edition, and lo! Already I have put it my pants! A fine tradition that was inspired by Penny Arcade's Gabe putting Diablo 2 in his pants. I did it too, and since then, well, it has snuck in. Delicious, you should try it. Anyway, it's by far the most lush collector's edition I've ever seen. The purple-red velvet inside, the hardcover, beautiful artbook (far less ambitious than that Warcraft III artbook, but VASTLY better executed; consistent quality!), the gorgeous soundtrack, the notion that they thought of it to put the Frozen Throne cinematics on the DVD alongside WoW's... it's just all so pretty. And for only 20 euro's above the regular's price, it's an astounding bargain. I did get a little shock though, when the site said my key was invalid. After a frantic moment I realised I was on the US-site. I still had the US beta version installed and it linked directly to the US site. So I quickly de-installed it and am now installing the European version. Phew, that was a tense moment. Hopefully all will go well now! Listening to the great soundtrack now. Already it's way better than the Warcraft III soundtrack. Blizzard has really outdone themselves. They've provided such irresistable quality now. WoW!

Good grief! The portals are open! And I'm gonna go retrieve my copy in half an hour! YARR! Yesterday evening, just to get in the mood, I played and finished the Human campaign from Warcraft 3. Great stuff really. In the three years or so since I played it I had forgotten how great is was. It's the beginning of all the maddening demon-chaos, and right there it's still so simple, so easy to understand (as opposed to the convoluted entwining faiths of dozens of heroes near the end of Frozen Throne). And yet so epic. Arthas really is such an intruiging character. Maybe archetypical, but so lovingly painted. It's just a shame (and I've been saying this ever since I played the game) that Arthas' relationship with Jaina Proudmoore is never really used. It was set up in the earlier levels and it could have been masterfully used to show how far Arthas' madness really goes. Instead we have a few flirty scenes in the beginning, but then the game douses that flame and leaves me with unresolved expectation. One of the only mistakes, plotwise, that really jumped on me.

I'm gonna go for a Zergling. Diablo is just too much pastiche. It would break the spell. Whereas a Zergling isn't that much different from a Felbeast. And pity about the low amount of customization. I'd at least liked to have had different skin tones. That musn't have been too difficult to do for Blizzard; they already did that to great effect in Diablo 2, using different auras of colour over magical weapons to differentiate them. I don't want to look like Generic Punkrocker #9053 Ah well, I guess it will be the armour, clothing and gadgets that set you apart in the end. I'd like to get a monocle myself :"D

You mean there weren't that much customization options to begin with? I wasn't whining or anything -not hoping for more. I just don't know if there are many choices in the first place. Seems to me to make this thing work you need an extensive list of possibilities to choose from, otherwise everyone will kind of look the same. That'd be a big shame...!

Well I know a couple of thousands of people who will miss out on the Collector's Edition Oh man I can't wait! Tomorrow morning, half past 9 is the moment! My first character will be an Undead Warlock too, with a name I shall not disclose right now. I'm REALLY looking forward to customizing my avatar. Hopefully there are nigh endless possibilities, so that you don't HAVE to be a punk undead like I've seen so much so far.

I actually think WoW will be playable with minimal sight. The sound design will probably be awesome and intuitive so that you can hear from every chirp and click what you are doing and what's happening. I didn't preorder either, but because I work at the [soon-to-be] biggest mediachain Mediamarkt in the Netherlands, I'm guaranteed of one. In fact, actually, I'll probably get two. One of them I'll pass on a week afterwards on a dutch online marketplace to reap a higher price. It's the Netherlandic tradespirit I think. I guess it's not that aweful of me, it's only one copy. Not like I'm selling it in bulk or anything. It's highly adventurous of me. I'm scared. Am I a bad person?

Two more freaking days!! Why, if it weren't for the fact that I had just heard I could very well get kicked out of my house in a few weeks from now, I'd be giddy!

Your smoking avatarguy is getting creepier by the minute. Is it a sleight of mind, or has this guy all of a sudden donned lipstick and mascara? I shudder to think what's next.

So, anyone any idea when the servers will be online in Europe? When the bell tolls twelve thursdaynight mayhaps? Or somewhere arbitrarily on friday afternoon, when some guy in France or Germany feels like throwing the switch?

Ever since the Edge article I've been interested in Stranger's Wrath. COuldn't really be bothered before that, because everything anybody wrote about was this dualloaded crossbow with live ammo.

If I want to listen to music I'll use my radio!!1!

WOW! Sega is a very respectable company! Tell us more because this is of course high treason; telling us this and not letting us in on the rest.

For a television show in the Netherlands called 2 to 12 (it's a quiz), the Utrecht School of High Arts usually makes animations for some questions. I already made a few and this is my latest: http://www.captainaugust.com/abrahamlincoln.mov (quicktime movie, 17 MB) It's about the American founding fathers who met with terrible weather conditions and famine during their arrival on the newfound land and made friends with the native americans who helped them grow crops. It's a bit of a no-brainer question where the contestants have to guess which American traditional celebration is presented. I think it's a nice animation, a bit simplistic but still nice. And I got to add some good Electric Six references and phallic symbols in the process. So I certainly got my share of the fun.