Nowhere Land

Been an odd sort of week.

Mild depression. Could be hormonal. That part of the monthly cycle and all.

Also, MMO withdrawal. After a month of dedicated play to one game and deciding to stop, there's this aimless "no avatar to improve" feeling.

Puttered around with Portal. Done. Endgame song is cute. Made by Jonathan Coulton, I hear. Have always been a fan of Code Monkey.

Speaking of which, they made a Portal spin-off song "The Device Has Been Modified" which got used in Ashcraft's CoX video about Freakshow and Nemesis - which only proves the geek world is a ridiculously small one. Half thinking of joining in the contest, but feeling lazy about it. Maybe this weekend.

Tinkered with Team Fortress 2. It was okay for a while, but I truly miss grenades. They've over-purified TF2, I think. The class roles are now too stratified to stay interesting for long. As an engineer, I'm now chained to my sentry gun since I have nothing but a shotgun to offer me a chance of killing anyone. As a medic, you are now a shadow with a healing gun to pump other teammates full of hitpoints, you can't conc jump and be a potent offensive force anymore.

Removing the VIP escort missions also took away some of the charm, I think. Now it's all "capture the flag" or "take control points" or "push a payload to some point" = attack/defend, attack/defend, attack/defend, ad nauseam.

It would probably be better once all of the updates for all classes are in, so that you could gain achievements and feel rewarded for what you're doing. At the moment, only the Heavy, the Medic and the Pyro has achievements to unlock, so those classes tend to be overplayed. Not to mention, I note some "achievement farm" maps that have sprung up like mushrooms. It sickens me. So these people just purposefully jump through hoops and fulfill all the criteria to unlock their nifty weapon - so they can fry me with more extra numbers.

The one positive is that they've done away with the kill/deaths number. It's all a "Score" now, so team focused activities can put you higher on the ranking than some kill-hungry sniper.

Ultimately, 3-4 days of repeating this felt a bit hollow. That makes me slightly concerned about WAR, since it's built around the same idea, but I figure that the lengthier pace will give a greater sense of accomplishment.

Lounged about in LOTRO since I was missing the MMO feel. I can still barely level, but I earned enough money to keep my house going, and did a few quests. Ran around in monster play a little bit. They have open groups too, in Monster Play, which is quite nice, though I always feel a bit inferior joining since I have zero infamy ranking, and the rest of them are like elite kill veterans.

Ironically, the enforced isolation did wonders for my creativity. Without an MMO avatar taking up the forefront of my mind, my imagination started spinning just enough for me to sit down and type out one or two pages of 'story' and did a bit of solo roleplaying for an hour or two.

Also read a few books.

Preview Weekend Plus for WAR is starting this weekend though. Heh heh heh heh heh.