Best game reviews I've ever seen on Youtube

In and out like a fart shadow! Check their channel page for a few more.

Steam sales Halloween 2011 (and Spiral Knights item)

Last thing I got to note today is the Steam sales.

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/scary_sale_2011

Most games on sale have a connections to Halloween in same way, the most ridiculous one being the train simulator 2012 with it's "trains vs zombies" thing going on.

I highly recommend having a look at it, lots of -75%, -66% and -50% in there.

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Edit: Don't wanna make a post for it, but thought i should mention this:

Killing floor Halloween event 2011

Don't think I'll even try out this one:

http://www.killingfloorthegame.com/halloween/

Basically, they're recycling the summer event, and giving players a chance to earn the "Steampunk Mr Foster" skin from the summer if they didn't earn it the first time.

In this event however, you have the chance to earn a chicken suit.

As usual, they reskinned all monsters and I think the event takes place in the bedlam map this time.

That's about it.

TF2 Halloween event 2011

I honestly don't give 2 fucks about it, so i'll b brief:

• New map is koth_viaduct_event.
• New boss is a giant eye. (I have Ommetaphobia, so i hate it).
  
• Gift boxes spawn again with random Halloween hats/misc items.
• 2 new achievements, 1 gives a eye hat and the other gives a misc item.
• Couple of new weaps, but they're reskins.

I already completed the achievements and, after the experience last year, I am NOT going to hunt those gift boxes.

The cosmetic items from the gift boxes have the Halloween restriction, which has been extended to include full moons (?????). Fact is, you won't be able to wear them most of the time so i see no point to it.

Excluding the cosmetic crap, The features are:

• None
• Nothing
• Ziltch
• Riens du tout
• Zero

Enjoy.

When people don't know wtf they're talking about

This kinda got under my skin:

http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/611

After stretching and modifying the lore so much, anything can really fit there.

Instead of ranting like I normally would, for this first one I'm simply gonna state some facts:

• Although Pandaren started as an April fools based on Samwise's obsession with panda people, They quickly became part of the official lore.
• Pandaren were part of the lore as early as WC3: TFT (July 1, 2003).
• Pandaren are also part of the lore in "Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game" (July 28, 2003) as seen on the Manual of Monsters.

Pandas aren't worse than Space Demons or Werewolves

Well, they're really not. Pandas were official lore, and the later 2 were pulled out of blizzard's ass on a spur of the moment.

will not advance the plot.

-WoW
-plot
-?????

WoW is notorious for having completely ruined the plot and lore of Warcraft forever. IT HAS NO PLOT! Plots go somewhere, there could b an underlying story in WoW but i assure you, it's not going to go anywhere cause it's not meant to.

Deathwing was a step on the right direction

Which direction would that even be? The original WoW sorta worked without raping lore too much, but by the Burning Crusade, you could just flip your desk and yell "Fuck it!" they killed it right there. But wait, then there was the Lich King expansion, where everyone got the Death Knight aids and again stabbing the lore in the heart.

If anything, Myst of Pandaria has the potential to be the expansion to do the LEAST damage to the Warcraft lore and actually fit in well. But every fucking idiot out there is having the opposite reaction they should be having to it.

All these idiots were fine with space goats and werevolves, when you bring in something from the actual lore, they rage.

Forsaken World Halloween event

FW events are neat, cause you can earn really good stuff sometimes.

Duration of the event:

• From 12:01 AM Pacific 10/25
• Through 12:00 Noon Pacific 11/1

How to qualify for the prize:

• Pray a minimum of 15 times
• Accumulate a total of 35 hours of logged in time

Prize:

• 1 Mortulor Drake box
  Containing the Mortulor Transformation item, 10 Lionheart Scrolls, and 10 World Flutes
• 5 x Edge Badges
  worth 8,000 reputation each

---

Prize is ok, but perhaps not that awesome. However, there's a sub event:

Duration:

• Halloween day
  From 10/31 from 12:01 AM Pacific through 11:59 PM Pacific

How to qualify for the prize:

• Just log in.

Prize:

• 1 blue quality Pumpkin Head pet
  
• 25 x Lolipop Candies
  regenerate your HP and MP

Though, it's unclear if you need to fulfill the requirements of the main event for the sub event.

Java Diva

"This'd better be important or profitable. I was enjoying myself watching the boys next door building that shed without any shirts on."

Belle spends her days off relaxing and pampering herself. That and flaunting her cougar status when the opportunity arises.

Combo is combo, you understand?

*Mind is blown!*

Wait, what? When did pandas happen on WoW?

I guess this was a reveal at this year's blizzcon, and since no one gives a crap about blizz anymore, I completely missed it:

Even though I don't play WoW, my comment is still "Fucking finally!", however... so many questions... such as:

• How do the females look?
• Which faction are they in? Whatever the response to that is, it won't make sense.
• How do the females look?
• Can they ONLY be monks? and please god tell me they can't be death knights!
• How do the females look?
• Will the inevitable nude skins for the females be extremely tasteless and terrible like they always are?

Gotta assume they're going for the furry demographic either way, which is clever i guess?

I always loved pandarens, but i fear how the hell this is going to be handled. I wonder how Samwise, the blizzard artist who came up with the pandaren in the first place, feels about this.

Speaking of which, here's his gallery on "Sons of the storm" if you're curious.

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Edit: Upon doing some research, there is a site for the expansion and some more info on it.

Found what classes the pandaren can be:

Also, Pandaren can be in EITHER faction, I guess they get to pick.

In that aspect, I guess it's the way that makes the most sense for the game (although them not being in either would make the most sense), but still seems wrong cause now you'll have pandaren fighting each other. plus, and it's sure to cause confusion at times.

Meanwhile, in mexico?

You know you like it!

I'm... so confused....

Quite a while ago, i linked to Spiderdub, a series of old spider-man cartoons re-dubbed and edited in a humorous way.

However, as the series go on, these just get weirder and weirder. And the latest one, I... I just dunno what to make of it:

I feel like he trolled all his subscribers. This is so different from what it used to be I don't think I can consider it the same thing anymore.

I mean, the guy wants to do different stuff, cool for him. But I honestly don't care for this.

A Bristol comic... Sort of

This was sorta fun to make...

If you don't know, Bristol is basically a hyper British version of Krystal, possibly with brain damage, that Zach made up. Last panel is a reference to Ashens, many people won't get it.

Most of the doodles I used to shop this were doodled by Zach.

Sorta wish I could come up with variations.

Who do you think you are?

I didn't think anyone could make being a virgin look so awesome...

Another couple of Forsaken World tips

This is not as commonly known about FW, especially for new players, but in addition to all the ingame features, FW also has site based point and reward system.

Ok, this may not make too much sense said like that, so I'll explain both of those systems:


Eyrda Rewards

http://fw.perfectworld.com/eyrdarewards

As you perform very simple tasks in FW, you earn points that can be spent in Eyrda Rewards.

The Points are account based, So the rewards can be sent to any of your characters. Perfect world entertainment (the company running FW) has added new reward on the list of the ones you can claim fairly recently. so expect future updates to that list.

Currently, items you can claim are:

• Shards - those can be exchanged for armor parts from item sets.
• Dim Star Debris/Recharging Star Shard - both are used to upgrade equipment.
• Glory Coin - Used to gain guild merit.
• Memory Lotus - Used to boost idling exp gain.
• Rising Sun Emblem - Boost reputation with a group.
• Magic food/drink - Sets a status on you that recovers HP/MP over time for 15mins.
• Alchemy recipes - enables you to learn how to make potions that give EXP.

There's a list of which tasks you can perform each day to earn points, it's rather simple stuff.


Token Shop

http://core.perfectworld.com/tokenshop/?game=fw

This is similar to the Eyrda Rewards, but points are harder to obtain. The token shop isn't specific to FW, it can be used with all perfect world games.

I assume all Perfect world games have achievements, and each of those is worth a certain amount of points which are used in this shop. So unlike the previous one, these points can only be earned once per character. you can either make more characters to earn more or play other Perfect world games.

The reward on this shop will also get updated as time passes, currently, they are:

• A basic mount - They're not that hard to obtain ingame, i wouldn't advise spending hard to earn points on this.
• Rising Sun Emblem - Same as in previous shop, save your points.
• Stack of magic food - Same as in previous shop, save your points.
• Gem Flare Box - At level 40 you can earn one of these every day, save your points.
• Scroll of Sages - HUGE waste of points.
• Recharging Shard - Same as in previous shop, save your points.
• Pets - Either a green "Bubble Crab" or a blue "Cat Pet Egg".
  The crab is not all that worth it, the blue cat is easily the best thing you could claim in the shop though.

Again, content can change in the future.

Anyone know the sauce of these?

I was just wondering if anyone knew the source of that mod, never hurts to ask...

I was initially going to write something else, but for some reason I'm drawing a blank right now.

Yet another gaming related rant

I'm gonna save a lot of time by showing this:


Mostly because i can't play the damn game without crashing every 10 mins, imma rant a lil.

---

The manniversary content

First of all, this "manniversary" update brings no new content at all that isn't purely cosmetic (or working). There are no new weapons at all.

There are 2 things I like about it and both are thing i made topic about on the TF2 board in hope Valve would implement them:

• Foster's facade is now a misc item as it always should have been.
• There's Loadout presets.

Valve fucked up implementing both, but quickly patched foster's facade. The loadouts are still fucking up constantly though. Always resetting, almost never available, etc.

If your recall, the mannconomy update, it came along with the ability to craft shit, and that causes valve's item servers to just crap out constantly for quite a while. It only got better when the non regular players stopped playing again. NOT because valve's server got better.

Now a year later, let's do the same shit again but let's make the servers save 4x more data cause of the loadout presets + 1 more misc item in each, and see what happens. Server prolly popped a vein.

About the 2nd misc slot couldn't give 2 shits about it myself but doesn't bother me. However, allowing everyone to wear another item on top of them is just gonna make the game slower. Most won't notice it, but some will.

Tested the new features to the replay system, they fucked up the replay editor, good job.

---

Cosmetic bitching

When people complain about cosmetic items in TF2 and how they ruin the art style, there's always that one guy that sarcastically comments: "Oh noes, cosmetic items are preventing me to enjoy the gameplay!".

I always wanna go into a huge rant when i see one of those assholes on the TF2 board, because they think they're being really smart by completely missing the point of what's said.

First of all, Those are unrelated.

None of those people say "I can't enjoy the gameplay cause of the retarded cosmetic items", so right there the response is invalid, what people say is that they don't enjoy the GAME as much because of the cosmetic items. If you have to be explained the difference between a game and gameplay, you're fucking retarded and shouldn't be smartassing on gaming boards.

Just because gameplay has the word game in it doesn't make it the same thing. A game is an experience composed with visuals, sounds, gameplay. So yes, cosmetic items DO influence it. That's not to say there aren't more optional elements, like a story/plot.

For someone to like a game, they only need to enjoy 1 of those components, for example:

• Some people love Jet Set Radio for it's music.
• Some people love Okami for it's visuals.
• Some people love Guilty Gear XX for it's gameplay.
• Some people claim to like FF8 for it's plot, but they either have no taste or are trolling.

The original "Fuck da police!" game

When designing TF2, visuals were a HUGE part of the process, gameplay was and still is important, but visuals were crafted to help the gameplay.

From the layout of maps from silhouette recognition and aesthetics between RED and BLU buildings. If you listen to the commentary for TF2, there was a surprisingly vast amount of effort put into the visuals of the game, and visuals is still one of the things that make TF2 what it is.

After listening to the commentary of the artists and designers, and seeing what's happened to TF2, it's hard to not feel sad.

It's just nasty to look at a scout running around with a bright green gibus. You know the artist who designed the scout's default look died inside ever since they introduced hats in TF2.

Because, let's be objective here: If the default scout look was the gibus, the lil cap with headset would easily be one of the top hats in the game, especially if it was paintable. Very few hats fit the scout better than his normal one, why? because it was designed for that purpose. The artist did a good job and no one can see that.

People just want to look different, even if it's like complete retards, and it's obvious to everyone.

---

Butthurt

Yes, I'm fucking butthurt at this point. cause I submitted 2 items to valve, and neither got picked, and they look better than some of the shit ingame.

Ok, maybe I'm biased, but have a look:

The first is a Jester hat for the pyro, with jiggle bones. the 2nd was meant as a misc item for the sniper, medic and spy.

Now let's look at other hats that have been picked since I submitted my pyro hat:

Are you kidding me? I am so detached with general taste that those are better?

To be honest I'm not even sure i should resubmit the items i made in the workshop, cause they always pick what looks the shittiest.

Some stills from the new One Piece intro

I've been trying to play TF2 for the last hour but am growing frustrated how valve broke the fuck out of the game and crashes after every single match.

I've been meaning to post these pics i took from the new One Piece intro for a few days, might as well do it now:

Fuck yes! Finally something to look forward to

It looks like a good one too! granted, there's been real bad Lupin movies/OAVs in the past ("Return of the Magician" springs to mind), but those are rare and few.

The newer movies have in fact been really good, I'm hoping this will be as good as "Episode 0: First Contact", a special from 2002 which was rather well done.

Back at the camp

By Bitten:

Seems to be a running theme for pandas in fantasy to love alcohol. They sure are friendly when they're tipsy.

There once was a lil Pandawa

By Bitten:

Ages ago me and Bitten played Wakfu, it was a disappointing experience and for me to list the reasons why would take too long.

However, we both still find the Pandawas in the game to be charming. Recently, Bitten decided to give Wakfu another go, and although he says it's a lil better, it's still pretty bad in general.

Which is a shame, cause them pandas are adorable.

The Bard Class. PART 1

WHY THE BARD CLASS ?

I know what you're thinking. The bard class is pretty useless I would rather be a thief or perhaps a warrior of some sort. They do not get the best weapons (typically a musical instrument) or armor. They do not have the highest levels of magic. What's the point of being a bard? Well, being a bard has many perks. The first is that you are not dependent on your party, they are dependent on you. A bard is more or less a support in your party. In general they just hang out in the back and effect the status of everyone and everything around them. That's right, they do a whole lot of shit by doing very little. In fact while your defense grunts and knight warriors are taking the blunt force of the attacks the bard is chilling out in the back checking out the hot mage in her skin tight towel magical robe and occasionally throwing a tune here or there to lower an enemy's stat or increase the party's own stat. Depending on the bard's skills they may even heal you with music/magic. Generally, the bard waits until the last possible moment to do anything because they love to remind you of how important they really are. And if you don't believe that, they will leave you to die and will just join another party or hit on other characters at the bar.

KNOW THY BARD

Now that you understand the general concept of a bard, it can be confusing to know exactly the types of bards that exists. There are generally three categories that a bard can be in Useful, Entertaining, or Useless. The bards can switch between all three of these categories with ease.

THE USEFUL BARD

The useful bard are the ones that actually does what they are suppose to do, be your support for your party. These are the ones that are awesome because they effect the stats of everyone on the field. Is that boss ridiculously difficult? The bard can lower their defense and raise your attack. It's a win situation for the bard and you! The warrior gets the satisfaction of killing something, and the bard survives to tell the tale of how they managed to save their fellow party to some foul beast they won by taming it with their sheer sexiness.

While it is not required, some bards are equipped with a form of weaponry that is not their instrument to physically battle. A few have opted to fused the two items together, but those bards tend to be self-sufficient and are just using you for the time being. They will help you live, but only because you are currently much more useful to them alive then dead...for the time being.

THE ENTERTAINING BARD

The entertaining bards are typically NPC characters because they are either currently not working in a party, or had the unfortunate event of impregnating 3 out of the females in their previous parties. What can I say? Shit happens.

Female bards are currently just trying to find a better and prettier group to be with. Or are currently in the state of "experimenting" with their various party members.

These bards are typically found in bars and in town away from danger. They often secretly advertise themselves when they sing about tales and legends. De-cyphering them is pretty easy, one who sings of tales of where a wicked beast has slain all are ones who have abandoned their party to some deadly faith, but at least they know where the good loots are. If they are singing about themselves they are likely to be a useless bard. If they are singing to the opposite sex, they will strum their lute for you in your bed chambers...for free! The ones who sing of a their successful journey are ones who will help you for the right price. The ones who are slurring are currently drunk and about to piss in their clothes.

Be forewarn, the other party member's reputation are often affected by what the bard sings about you. If you're going to be a douche to the bard, don't be surprise if he or she sonnet some of your "secrets" to the world.

THE USELESS BARD

The useless bards are the ones that join your party after you have paid their "fee" and you expect them to do shit for you since you paid them, but they end up becoming more of a burden on you and your party. These bards end up using all your items, they raise stats at inappropriate times, or they just down right refuse to battle when you need them most. Some even have useless stat effector like raising basket weaving skills.

Typically these bards are full of themselves and gloat about how great they are, but when the battle begins they typically are not around and most of the time they have a high level in finding hiding places. If your party somehow survives and you confront the bard about their where-about they will often claim to be either scouting ahead for their enemies back-up or had to take a shit. They are often found eating some fruit after the battle even though your party have not eaten in the past two days because they have "lost" their rations.

NEXT TIME: The sub-classes of bards

Neat TF2 movie: "Heavy's Revelation"

MisterMild's new movie, he says in the description it's an experiment in storytelling.


Gotta say, I thought it was well done.

Heavy sort of represents the mentality I've been preaching about lately. That "max dmg is all you need" mentality that's oddly popular in team based games.

It's nice to see a nice lil story like this.

Maybe I'll Wear My Other Scarf

One of these days I'll get around to making more original pointless palette swaps for fun.

My alias gets more mail than I do

Somehow, my Facebook alias got snail mail. I can't imagine how though, the address on it is wrong, close, but wrong.

I love the fact it says "Senhor Tof" on the front, I'm going to save this just for that. Ain't even gonna open it.

FW: Tales of inadequate MMO players

This is a couple of stories of what NOT to do in a MMORPG, these are a couple of experiences i've had in Forsaken World with people:

This is something I've seen lately in forsaken world more and more: People who don't know wtf their roles is.

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Example 1: Right idea, wrong equipment.

My mage, Mishie, did her first level 60 instance in FW today. We had a fairly balanced party: 2 healers, 1 tank, and 3 DPS (1 of them being me).

Very early the healers immediately felt something was wrong: His health was going down strangely fast.

I decided then to inspect the Stoneman's armor. The equipment was all good quality (all blue stuff) but, nearly NONE of it had defense bonuses. I asked what build he was, and he replied marble (The tanking/defensive build) and how much defense he had, he replied 600.

We weren't gonna get far. As reference a DPS class would have around 480 def, which is low.

I told him that my level 56 stoneman has 744 defense without any buffs on, Which i don't think he believed seeing as he was level 62 with his mere 600 or so def. We did the rest of the instance, and by that i mean we got brutally murdered on account that he again got 8+ mobs to attack him at once.

After the instance, he PM'd me, and we had a convo that went like this:

Note: for the sake of readability, i shall write his part of the convo in a more... proper english than the one he used.

• Idiot: what's the nick of your protector?
• Me: AzureSlate
• Idiot: Get him here
• Me: Now? why?
• Idiot: I wanna see his armor

*I go and switch*

• Idiot: Lol, you have green equips
• Me: I go for defense bonuses, especially on upper equips.
• Me: Upper body armor does not have any defense as a base stat, only attack and health, I aim for equipment that has def  bonuses on everything.
• Me: Also, all the gems I put into my armor are defense ones
• Idiot: But level 1 defense gems only give +10 defense

*I facepalm and reply*

• Me: Every lil bit helps, all the level 1 gems i got on give me +40, that's quite a bit.

There was a pause, like he realized how stupid he'd been. See, his equipement was expensive, full of high level expensive gems, but they were attack and crit related, which on a tank, makes no sense.

If you're a tank with low defense, you're really not furfilling your role are you?

But I felt a lil bad, so i told him:

• Me: Your build is probably better to solo mobs, but as i said, I'm going for pure tanking. I don't care about any other stat at all.

Just trying to make myself sound like I'm weird for wanting a lot of defense as a tank so he feels a lil better about his poor choices.

As much as I may think someone is stupid, if they aren't mean or insulting me, I don't wanna make them feel bad. It's the way I am.

There was another pause, and then he replied

• Idiot: I'm going to get level 60-62 armor now
• Me: Hopefully you will have higher def

So many things I could had said to the guy, but I didn't wanna be a dick.

Note: 29 def  + 8 def  + 10 def out of a piece of armor that gives 0 base def, yea, it's green, but no blue one had def even close to this.

---

Example 2: Wrong idea, equipment is irrelevant.

Mishie was once in a party for God's Trial instance where the group had no healer except a bard. Now, all bards after a certain level can heal, no matter what talent tree they pick. So we assumed we'd be ok.

The run was a disaster, the bard never healed anyone for the entire 30mins, it was terrible and slow.

After that run, I did another one, and as luck would have it, i got paired up with the same fucker again. I couldn't stand it and confronted the bard about it.

He replied: "I am a Wind Bard".

Here's what the different talent tress for bard do:

• Water - Offensive skill improvement, additional and longer lasting buffs, increases defensive capability of the bard.
• Light - Enhance ability to heal, gain ability to resurrect others. focuses on defense support. greatly increases the survivability of the party
• Wind - Increases party movement speed, increases bard's DPS. Yea, that's about it.

Who the fuck would play a bard as a DPS class? I didn't even care about the bard's build since ALL bards can heal, but that was his excuse.

Here's how the convo went:

• Fag: use potions, I can't heal you guys all the time.
• Me: what's the cooldown on your fucking healing spell? 2 mins? cause that's how long we needed healing before we died.
• Helpful mage: it's 6 secs.
• Fag: are you too poor to buy potions?
• Me: THERE'S AN INFINITE SOURCE OF MANA RIGHT NEXT TO YOU! JUST HEAL US FUCKER! WHY WOULD YOU PLAY A SUPPORT CLASS AND NOT SUPPORT!
• Fag: Get a life, i play for fun!
• Me: how does what you've said make any sense? you're as high leveled as i am, except you've been playing your class wrong the entire time! how is being useless and a handicap for your teammates any fun?
• Me: You can't do decent DPS, you can't revive anyone, you heal poorly, you buffs suck compared to other bards, what ARE you good for? running?
• Me: If you want to do DPS, play vampire, mage or even marksman! your existence makes no sense!

There was a long pause, after which he left. I like to think he went to make a marksman.

In essence, a Bard is an AWESOME party class: Provides multiple buffs and AoE healing. So why would you throw all of that away to make a bellow average DPS class?

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The Most common problem i see with MMORPG players is that, EVERYONE wants to be DPS. but, why?

Think about it, what the most basic thing you need in a party? a healer and a tank. everything else is accessory. As a DPS class you're not only replaceable, you're not even necessary to begin with. Especially in FW, because it seems that during the closed beta it was determined that 1 defense is worth 3 attack.


You don't even have to limit this fact to MMOs, even a FPS like TF2, if a team has a medic or 2, and they're up against a team of equal numbers and skill with no healing, the team with healing will win most of the time.

Both the players i mentioned in my examples made the same mistake, they ignored their role of their class and went for damage. Best players are always the ones that know their role, and work towards improving it.