Well, I just got back onto World of Warcraft this week. I began by leveling up a new undead character to level 13, and I got to see what it's like to be a warrior. Surprisingly, it was a very interesting endeavor, it turns out the Blizzard did right by the warriors in giving them a very interesting set of abilities. Unlike other games where being a warrior is just beating the living crap out of your enemies, WoW gives them a set of skills that make them perfect for taking damage and attracting enemy attention. But most of you already knew that.

Anyway, just today I decided to get back into playing my priest. I am still not sure about how I want to go about leveling him up, but I have a feeling that a large part of it will involve instances. These are dungeons that are predesigned for a small group to take, and they spawn for every group that enters one. If you are with a group in an instance, you never have to worry about running into another group, or having someone spring your boss before you can fight him. These instances are designed to be tackled by a group, so all the units are elite and therefore, very difficult. It would be suicide to go into one of these alone, even if you were a good 4 levels above the average mob.

So, my first instance run sucked. My group was terrible. The battles consisted of me saying "Alright, let the warrior pull" followed by watching the druid run headlong into the fray...freaking druids... There was no way I can heal that terrible of a pull, and we'd all die. We'd all apologize, and then the next two pulls would go great. The warrior would get the aggro, I'd keep her alive, everyone else would pick off the enemies. It's a beautiful thing. Then the druid would run headlong into the group, and we'd all die again. Eventually, the druid left, but by this time I was too fed up and signed off.

The next instance run was much better. This time we had a rag-tag group that looked terrible on paper, but worked great in action. It consisted of myself, a second priest, a mage, and a warlock. All magic users, two with relatively little offensive capabilities, all cloth wearers. For a moment I thought, "We're screwed without a tank..." then I came to a realization. I took charge and set up the system that we'd use to win. First, we'd have the mage pull, and pull from a distance. I would focus of healing the mage. The warlock would then join in on the beat down, the other priest would cover her. If either of us priests got any aggro, we'd cover EACHOTHER, not ourselves. This worked fantastically. We would immediately shield anyone who got aggro, which let them continue spellcasting unhindered, and then we would heal when necessary. When I had to leave, our group had only been wiped once. Far better than the routine problems I had with the other group. And to add to my awe, my second group was all lower leveled, and one player short in comparison to the other team. It turns out that great tactics are far better than stats that look good on paper.

Alrighty, that's it for my log today.

Ack! *cough cough* never play DDR while caffeinated!

Alright, I needed to talk about this, and my gaming journal seemed like the right place. For all of you who do not keep up on Mac news, which is probably a lot of you, they have recently announced a switch from their IBM made PowerPC chipset to an Intel based chipset. They have said that they will make the switch over the course of the next few years, with Intel based Macs arriving in early 2007 and IBM based Macs being discontinued by the end of that same year.

Many people would look at that and say "So?" while others will have many theories about what this will mean for Mac.

First off, a chipset change has a lot of programming implications. One of the joys of the Mac system is that all of the programs are designed to run specifically to run on Mac hardware. All of the software is a perfect fit, and any hardware changes that Apple makes are usually very sensitive to this, maintaining or strengthening this program/computer relationship. If you ever wondered why people say Macs are fast and reliable, it is for that reason. PCs, on the other hand, have to be designed with many different setups in mind. This leads to the programs not getting the full potential out of the hardware, however, the hardware is usually less expensive for the raw power it provides. Thus, Macs and PCs are hard to compare on paper.

That may seem unrelated to the change, but it isn't. With the program compatibility in mind, many applications are designed to take advantage of very specific processes native to the system. The new chip will be missing some of these processes and replace them with others. Therefore, many programs have to be redesigned in order to take advantage of these new processes, and repair the holes left by those taken out. They have two years to do this, but it will still be difficult, and many applications might just disappear from the already small Mac library out of an inability/lack of desire to go through this.

Though, switching to Intel processors is not all bad. Intel has been chosen because their processors have a bright future. Macs are known for taking advantage of all their hardware's potential, and I am sure that an Intel chipset will be no different. They will still have more power than the numbers seem to suggest, and now those numbers will probably look like PC numbers. Additionally, Mac computers will be able to run Windows, or at least it seems that way. Apple has said they won't support Windows running on a Mac, but they also said they won't stop it. The similarities between the processors also means that a Virtual PC type program will probably be faster, maybe even full speed, because it has less translation to do between the software and hardware. Although, even if Windows runs on an Apple computer, Apple has still stated that Mac OS X will not run on a PC. There will probably be a hack of some sort allowing such a thing, but you would lose a lot of what makes a Mac works so well, namely the hardware/software compatability.

This dual booting ability for Mac hardware may cause Mac to lose some developers. For example, a game company like Atari might not make a Mac version of Unreal Tournament if the Mac user can run the Windows version on their system dual booting Windows XP. However, this is not for certain, and dual booting will probably be a rarity among the most tech savvy users.

All in all, we won't know how things turn out until it happens. But this change will rock the Mac world. A lot of recoding will have to occur to make the Apps work. In the end, the Macs will still have all the things they are known for: reliability, more power than their numbers suggest, less spyware and viruses than Windows, a unique user-friendly interface, and that spiffy Apple logo. But now that spiffy logo will be rubbing up against a little sticker proclaiming to the world "Intel Inside."

Alrighty, time to start posting on my gamin journal. First off, I haven't been buying as many new games as I used to. Near the end of the school year I started to get swamped, and seeing as video games are all play and no work, as opposed to music which is a bit of both, gaming got the cut for a while.

However, I did keep up with some DDR action, because the exercise is good for me. Although, it was starting to feel like I hard reached a plateau in my abilities. No matter how hard I tried the nine footers that were too hard for me remained impossible to pass, and the tens were all distant fears that would never be overcome. Therefore, I gave up, on passing those songs anyway. I decided that if I could not pass the hard songs, I may as well obliterate the easy ones. So, after getting DDRMax (The best home version, btw) and hooking up my Cobalt for a few hours, I managed to pass every songs, save Max 300, with a AA. By the end, my Perfect Attack started to get very good. Currently, I am working on getting AA's on all of the songs on standard. Just for fun, I played a few songs on Heavy and found that I was really ripping them apart in comparison to my old scores. I passed PARANOiA Evolution with an A, a very good score for me, but more importantly, I found that my stamina was hardly impacted by this. In fact, I felt as though I could have done the song several more times before feeling tired at all. The reason, I believe, is the fact that I was so used to my high PA style (Which conserves a lot of energy by being very very consistent) that it carried over into the more difficult songs. I think I'll be able to pass some songs I never thought I could, if I keep on this path of working my way up slowly and precisely.

After I moved into my house I started to have some free time again. So, I started playing Final Fantasy Tactics, just to enjoy one of my favorite games. Right off the bat, I discovered that my save files had been corrupted somehow, damn. So, I started a new game (No biggie, my best game at the time was stuck on the fight with Velius, I was pretty much screwed anyway.) This time, I used some cheap tactics to level up my characters. First, I used the JP cheat on the possible skillsets, a few exceptions exist, particularly on sets that I planned on having as part of my character's main skills. Next, I leveled up a lot before moving on with the story (still haven't even gotten in to Dorter :wink: ) Finally, I used a strategy known as Hazing. Pretty much, you just take a low level generic character, bring him into your party. During a random battle, you use skills to lower an enemy to 0 brave, they turn into a chicken, but the fight doesn't end. After you have a chicken on the field, you just beat the living crap out of the low-level generic. Because he is lower level, you gain very few EXP, however, you gain the normal amount of Job Points (Or extra, if you have the ability of Gained-JP Up.) This is how I got my party all of the best skills and abilities long before they were even level 20. With all of the abilities learned, I could focus on leveling them up in the classes that offered the best growth for them.

Well, that is all for my gaming log.

Video games are an entertainment form. They are like any other entertainment form in that they are a combination of art and marketing. Video games simply wouldn't exist if there was not a visionary person typing in the code, and building the framework for them. At the same time, games with no advertising, no way of informing the world that they exist, can drift into obscurity. Business is built on making a product that can generate profit. Video games therefore are a sound basis for a business. However, art does not lend itself to business easily, as it tend to change shape and form...and something that changes is hard to market consistently...and more importantly takes work.It is much like the movie industry...there are trailers for movies, that follow certain themes. They show a piece of the movie that works well out of context, that still gives the desire to add context. Some movies, there simply are no parts like...those movies don't get advertised. Those movies don't get seen, unless they are truly spectacular. In much the same way, sequels are easier to advertise than stand-alone movies...in that there is already a context that the audience has.Video games have the same sort of cheapening that occurs because of business. You get franchises, you even get companies like EA that do almost nothing but franchises. The problem here is that there is a growing rut because of these franchises. For example, this year the biggest titles being looked forward to are Halo 2, Grand Theft Auto, Half-life 2, The Sims 2, and Fable...only one of these titles is stand-alone, and it is made by a very independent company...an "Independent film studio" in the hollywood of gaming.Whatever, just wanted to point out that because of busines, games have become less artistic and more based on steady addition.