Star Wars: The Old Republic

I first went in with low expectations but excited to play a Star Ward based mmo. One thing I learned about mmo's is if you believe the hype, you are in for one big let down no matter what genre it is you love.

So when a new Star Wars mmo was announced, I was both excited and skeptical. There was after all Star Wars Galaxies, which started well in my opinion but went down a distorted path which didn't pan out.

Having played World of Warcraft, which was rich in lore, was easy to play and get used to, and at the time had great graphics, it was hard not to compare other mmo's to it. I tried out LOTRO, EQ2, Asheron's Call 2, SW Galaxies of course, D&D online, Lineage 2, Star Trek online, and most recently DC Universe. The only one different is DCU as it has the style of a console game as opposed to the traditional mmo gui and play style. 

None of them, and I realize this is my opinion, had the same feel that WOW had/has: your character looks and feels like its a part of the world. What I mean is most of the time a character wasn't floating, or feel like it was in a bubble, giving an odd disconnectedness from the land, scenery. In WOW, you walked touching the ground with the feel of the ground, of being in the world.

Enter Star Wars: The Old Republic, or SWTOR. I set my expectations low but was still excited as it was a fresh start after the failure of Galaxies. The first brilliant move was to not base it in the time period if the movies. Where Galaxies was based between (originally) A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, SWTOR is based on the BioWare games Knights of the Old Republic, 3000 years before the movies! During that time, if you know the lore, there were many Jedi and even a Sith Empire. Brilliant!

Having been used to the ease of WOW and it's fluidity, I was pleasantly surprised SWTOR had the same basic feel of being in the world, not floating and feeling a disconnect with the ground, a feeling of separateness. The GUI is fine, traditional in the mmo sense but might still need some tweaking, maybe. I may just be used to the WOW GUI is all. 

Now WOW is great in that there is a lot of lore and you feel you are playing in the whole storyline, so it's wonderful in that way which the other mmo's failed in imho. SWTOR takes it to a WHOLE new level! The npc's you talk to for missions, your character TALKS to them and they TALK back to you! And not a simple short go do this or that, but a conversation! That video I posted on Facebook is how it plays out everywhere you get missions! The voice work is excellent! 

In WOW, I mentioned how you get involved in the story arcs and you feel like you accomplished something that affects the world, and it was great. In SWTOR, not only does it do that, it goes further! Your choices affect who you talk to, you get a reputation for how you treat npc's! And it grows as time passes! So when you decide as a Jedi you're not going to be the most forgiving and patient Jedi, the noc's will talk to you knowing that, as far as the programmers have allowed of course. This is probably the greatest idea an mmo has ever done! Talk about feeling as if you are in the story!

I can tell you how great the graphics and sound are in detail, but I won't as it'll take too long. Trust me when I say they are awesome! And the music! Oh man, it's like being in Star Wars!

All in all, you really get pulled into the game because you really feel as if you are a part of what's going on in the world as an individual. The game as a whole is excellent and I look forward to playing it when I get the chance! I haven't gone into a lot of detail of course, but I can tell you guys about it later! it is very well made and worth playing if you have the time and don't mind spending $15 a month. I don't mind the monthly fee as I don't have the money to go out every week, so it's a good compromise as far as entertainment value is concerned.

I'm glad I got it and know I will have lots of fun!

New iMac

After months of having to use a Windows based PC for my home computing needs due to my broken G5 I finally pulled the trigger and bought a shiny new iMac.

I waited so long since I knew iMac's were due for a refresh based on the relatively new Sandy Bridge processors from Intel. Sure enough Apple updated them earlier this month and with the previously unreleased Intel Z68 chipset.

I ended up getting the base 21.5" model from Amazon for $1139 with free shipping since it seemed to offer the best bang-for-the-buck based on the latest MacWorld review. According to their testing it even outperformed the top of the line 27" model from last year.

The first application I installed was the Steam client and my initial results from Left 4 Dead 2 have been simply outstanding. Playing the game at the native 1920 x 1080 resolution with all the graphical goodies turned on runs at a super silky smooth frame rate. I can't believe how much better that game looks on my iMac than when running on my old Pentium 4 Dell with the Nvidia Geforce 6800 GPU. Portal is next on my download list and you can bet I will get Portal 2 during the next Steam sale even though I already have that game for my Xbox 360.

Although I've only used it for about an hour I can tell that I will need to replace the mouse with something more ergonomic than the Magic Mouse. I don't know what it is about mice that Apple can't seem to get right. It's a bit too flat for my large hands and the middle scroll gesture doesn't quite work as well as a real scroll wheel.

It's amazing the number of cables that are reduced with an all-in-one system. I ended up ditching the wireless in favor of a hard wired Ethernet cable since I still have a 802.11 G network and LfD2 was taking too long to download. Upgrading to a N wireless router is next on my shopping list.

Dave wanted some unboxing pics but since Rob still refuses to open a FaceBook account, I'll need to setup something on Flicker later on.

The 7th Guest for iOS

I just recently found out that the The 7th Guest has been ported to the iOS platform last week. Of course I immediately downloaded it and found out it's mostly a faithful port of the 1993 classic game that was originally made for the PC.

There are some technical quirks that are explained in this review and it's missing three puzzles (including the infamous and incredibly difficult microscope puzzle) that were in the original game but its still fun to play. The animations play way too fast on my iPhone 4 so it appears Trilobyte didn't' account for the speed differences between the A4 and 486 processors but despite these flaws I'm throughly enjoying the game again.

During my research for this blog I found out that Graeme Devine (the co-creator of The 7th Guest and former id Software developer) has left Apple recently and went back to developing games again. I hope to see some good titles from him soon.

Riven: The Sequel to Myst for iOS

I took me four months of commuting time but I recently finished Myst for the iPhone in late October. I did narrowly miss my goal of not looking up any hints as I was stuck and growing impatient near the end of the game.

Knowing that Riven would be the next logical release for Cyan, I would occasionally check gaming news sites for any updates only to find that they were "working on it". Well my wait is no longer as Cyan released Riven for iOS on the 15th of this month. I promptly purchased this after quickly reading the humorous "warning" in regards to the whopping 1GB file size:

Because of the large size it's HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you download Riven on your computer using iTunes, and then sync with your iOS device. Downloading directly to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch is theoretically possible via a wireless connection, but...uh...well...you really don't want to.

I've only played it for a few minutes but was able to enjoy some nice iOS enhancements like pinch to zoom and shake to reveal Hot Spot hints. Unlike the original release of Myst for the PC, I was never able to finish Riven for various reasons (difficulty of the puzzles being one of them), even after purchasing the official strategy guide, which I still own. I'm certain this game will take a lot longer than Myst to finish but I'll promise to be patient and savor the experience this time around.

You can learn more about the painstaking, pioneering work that went into the development of Riven (and all things Myst) at the excellent fansite, MYSTerium.

End of the Power Mac G5

So my beloved Power Mac G5 stopped working right before the Thanksgiving holiday. There were a few warning signs a few days leading up to the failure. At first there was a noticeable slow down, followed by the fans getting louder than normal. Then on the last day it would go to sleep every few seconds. After powering it off it wouldn't turn back on with any video (the fans and the power light would turn on). I also noticed these red LED's inside the case which turned out to be diagnostics lights.

I ended up taking it to the Apple Store Genius Bar who after performing a few simple tests told me they could take it in but the service costs would be very expensive since the computer was considered "vintage". They recommended I take it to a local Apple Authorized Repair center who would charge less so I called a few around the area. One guy wanted $75 just to look at it and the other guy charged $150 per hour just for labor.

I ended up declining both options since I knew the value of the G5 was only worth about $200 on eBay. After googling the problem I came across this article which described the issues as being a result of the G5 liquid cooling leaking out. I ended up giving the internals a closer examination and sure enough there was evidence of corrosion below the CPU's and a tiny bit if coolant leaking out the back of the case.

It's been a good run considering I bought this computer the day it was released in June of 2004 which makes it over 6 years old. I always said I would keep using it until the tires fell off so apparently that day has come. The only thing I regret is that the failure wasn't due to the computer simply getting old but rather a failed cooling system that wasn't even designed by Apple but rather Delphi Corporation (the old GM spinoff). What makes me a sad is that I specifically bought this model G5 since it was the only Apple product at the time that used liquid cooling (I thought that was a geek bragging point). The irony is that if I stuck with a slower model that was air cooled most likely I would still be using it today.

So the wife and kids still needed a computer for running their educational software and paying bills and such so I first put the old iMac G3 back into use. Unfortunately its too slow (maxed out at 1GB of memory and can only run Tiger) to run just about anything so I had to resurrect my old Dell Dimension XPS that I planned on selling. It seems to work fine and with Rob's old Nvidia 7800 card it even runs Left For Dead 2 at a great frame rate. This will hold me over until after the holiday's when I plan on replacing it with a Mac Mini.

The only other question I have is what to do with my G5. It's such a beautiful computer, both inside and out, and I would hate to trash it. I suppose I could recycle the case since its made of a lot of aluminum, use the case as a mod for a PC or sell it online for parts.

Duke Nukem Forever...Again

The Duke is back! Rob should be happy.

Are Blogs Dead?

Dave made a comment today that blogs are so 2009. I have to admit it's much easier to post something on FaceBook. I came across this Wired article written back in Oct 2008 (that's about 10 years ago in Internet years) that comes to the same conclusion.

What do you guys think, are blogs dead? It is a struggle to write new stuff since I tend to spend a lot of time making sure the article is readable. I still haven't finished my MacWorld blog from earlier this year.

Is anybody even reading this?