Monday, February 18. 2019
Review: Middle Earth Shadows of Mordor
Friday, February 15. 2019
So Just What the Fuck Is Going on Here?
So as most of you know several years ago we ran AURA Gaming and that evolved into Aura Unveiled and that evolved into "Fuck this Shit" which finally evolved into "Aura: After Darkfall."
After Darkfall is a tabletop version of the old LARP detailing what happened after Matt Bailey's character, Ragnorok accidentally started...well Ragnorok. I worked on it for a while then it got to be REALLY unhealthy. I mean EXCEPTIONALLY unhealthy. I was completely reliving the old anger of running the LARP without the fun of beating the hell out of someone with a boffer sword. So yeah, I had to abandon it for a while and I started writing a lot of Ravenloft games and somewhere I got to thinking it was time to restart After Darkfall. I found an AMAZING sight called Scabard and I began to build everything there because it enabled me to be super-organized. If you want to have a look around it (assuming you haven't already) Check out: Aura: After Darkfall on Scabard. If you were an Aura player back in the old days and want to see yourself immortalized in After Darkfall as an NPC give me a shout; I'd love to complete the data.
If you want a HUGE wave of nostalgia check this out. Yes, that's right: Almost the entirety of the old website still exists. I killed the message board but the rest IS still there.
I'll also start migrating my game reviews here. I always preferred to do shit on my own and while I'll keep the Facebook Page and the Destructoid blog this will probably become the new home to the gaming reviews...because it is mine.
What do I want from here? Hopefully a little more interactivity than Facebook provides. You get lost in the crowd pretty damn easily on Facebook Destructoid is better but as I believe I mentioned: I own this. It is mine.
If I can get that old community feel I'll keep it around, otherwise come November the domain and this website will cease to exist. I'm going to give it the old "college" try but with a lot more try than I put into College.
I have a lot I want to learn how to do here, including using the website proper to host videos and other stuff. This could be a brave new world. It could be a huge fucking flop. But so far this feels right
See 'ya soon!
Almost Six Years
Yeah. So it has been almost six years since I've had access to this. The new SQL manager my web company installed FINALLY allowed me to see what I was fucking up when trying to load it.
Now the question is: What the fuck do I do with it?
Thursday, March 14. 2013
Powers for Good
I've decided to use my powers for good. Today we present to you, an example of Customer Service Fail as delivered by Verizon Wireless.
aurachad?@aurachad
@vzwsupport I cannot believe you are going to let a guaranteed sale of 2 Droid 4s go cause you want to change our plan. #CSFail
VZW Support?@VZWSupport
@aurachad We don't want to let that sale go! You can pay the full retail price and keep your current plan. http://bit.ly/nD0WuY ^CM
aurachad?@aurachad
@VZWSupport Not much of a deal there. I guarantee I can get an equiv phone on Sprint with unlmt data. You will lose the sale and customers.
VZW Support?@VZWSupport
@aurachad 1 of 2 We want to give you the best deal! How much data are you using now http://bit.ly/xB4iTc ? 95% of VZW customer use ^PF
VZW Support?@VZWSupport
@aurachad 2 of 2 less than 2GB of data. Are you in this group? Compare our blazing fast 4G LTE coverage http://bit.ly/ymXLCI .^PF
aurachad?@aurachad
@VZWSupport Anything less than my current plan is not a deal. I've been a customer for almost 20 years. This is ridiculous. #CSFail
VZW Support?@VZWSupport
@aurachad 20 years of loyalty is fantastic! We want to continue to provide u great services. Were u able to view how much data u average?^PF
aurachad?@aurachad
@VZWSupport If I say 23 will you let me keep my unlimited plan?
No response after this - but I'll keep you updated. Honestly, it's not this poor guys fault. He's reading from a script but when you got someone saying they want two smart phones and I've been a customer for 20 years and I don't want to leave but I'm ready to you bend over backwards and do the right thing.
Monday, September 24. 2012
Nuggin Futz Thinks I'm Lazy!
I've been very quiet of late for which I apologize...well not really. I was laid off in June and then was very lucky to have had the opportunity to spend the summer with my children before returning to the work force, surrounded by fellow gaming geeks, on August 13th.
What else is new?
We've resumed the Ravenloft tabletopping. They're a lot of fun and with our new modified "we stop at midnight" rule for us old folks they don't ramble on. I'll have to expand on the campaign later but I'm happy to say the party has already had their "oh shit" moment involving black-eyed children (go ahead, google that) and The Raw man. Huge thanks to Darkness Radio (http://www.darknessradio.com) for the inspirations for the monsters.
Finally abandandoned SWTOR last week. Not due to content or story but due to the way our server was treated and the fact that I had to rename three characters because of the merger. I lost three character names to people half my level and likely who haven't played in months. Names I've had since headstart. Oh well...fuck that shit. I'll just have to give my time to Guild Wars 2.
On that subject, GW2 is every bit as technologically advanced as TOR but just is better put together and feels more alive. TOR was fun, it just never felt like Star Wars. I think I am wholly done with the Star Wars IP now; they've disappointed me enough for a lifetime.
Oh - I do have more of the tour of middle earth to post but it's a pain in the ass and I'm lazy. Otherwise on the LOTRO front, we're still greatly enjoying it. The Hobbit just had it's birthday so that was a huge nostalgic event for me.
Thanks to Alan & Richard I got into Mass Effect and just finished 3 last night. That's going to get a whole separate entry and if you're one of those fuckers who whined about the end you won't want to read it unless you think you can troll me. I promise you a lot of name calling and making fun of you for not understanding classic storytelling and confusing it with Hollywood endings. Big difference.
More soon (hopefully).
Saturday, May 26. 2012
Ride of the Nerd
About a week ago I came up with the random thought of riding my little digital horse manually from the north western most city in the game (Thorin’s Hall) to the south eastern territories around the Great River just to see how long it would take. I mentioned something to our friend Bridget who decided she wanted to go along, too. Suddenly the whole thing ballooned. I was going to manually ride through every region currently in the game in a circuit that became known as the “Because We Can Tour.”
Why on Earth would we want to do this? That’s a pretty easy question to answer. We, as gamers, get very consumed with completing the quest. We rush to our destination, kill the bad guy, and rush back. In LotrO especially with the Hunter class, it’s easy to rush around because we can get just about anywhere we want with no travel time. In essence, we forget to enjoy the game and since I’m always belly aching about people who rush to max level in a month without actually looking around I figured it was time to put my time where my ideals were.
I quickly began to calculate destinations that would give us a maximum amount of coverage in each region. I came up with a pretty hefty 27 point travel plan that was going to take more than one night. Hell, it’ll probably take several. I decided I was going to take screenshots of my favorite places along the way.
What took me by a very pleasant surprise was four other guild members who said, “Hey, this kinda sounds fun – we’ll come, too.” Two of them weren’t able to join us last night but two others were.
I’m going to attempt to put together a photo gallery of the screens I took throughout the four regions we went through. I’m quite pleased in that not only did we see some fantastic scenery and relive moments in the game from our earliest days playing, but we managed to kill two bosses we’ve never killed before!
Monday, May 21. 2012
Brutal
Even with a decent sleep I'm not sure where to begin this little "journey" so I'm starting it here. I've become such a child of the information glut that the last decade has given us. I have a facebook, a twitter, a livejournal, and this (I REFUSED to have a Myspace!). What do I write where? God knows I haven't so much as loaded Livejournal since I stopped advertising Aura games so no worries there but that leaves the unholy trinity of Twitter, Facebook, and Blog.
What's the difference?
Well, aside from the obvious (being that Twitter is 140 characters at a time) there isn't much. I barely use the Twitter except to read Wil Wheaton and Brent Spiner's tweets and occasionally offer up a smart-ass comment of my own here and there so I think it's safe to say if it's a quick snarky comment I can save it for Twitter.
Facebook is for gathering folks and getting the word out in a hurry so that?s easy.
That leaves blogging for..oh yeah! Long winded rants! I can do that.
What's our first burning question? Our first real look into the squishy bits of me?
"Chad, just what have you been doing since consigning Aura Unveiled to doom?"
The answer:
Whatever the fuck I want. Yeah, that's right. Whatever. I. Want. And I'll be damned if it doesn't feel good. On more than one occasion a former customer/friend has approached Diane or I and said it was amazing how much calmer and happier I was. The first couple of times I heard it I thought they were being smart then I realized, as time went on, they were right.
Why?
Well, for one thing, I'm no longer worried about dropping a few hundred dollars every few weeks that I may or may not see again (usually not but hey, I knew that risk). I'm also not stressing over putting my time into writing something that may or may not work depending on variables such as cast members showing up, adventurers showing up, cast members doing as they needed to without me hovering over every frickin' scene (that got old around season 4).
I'm also no longer worried about scrambling out of work to get home to scramble the family to make the long-ass drive to whatever site we were at. I loved our sites (except for Mensch and BMC toward the end) but man did I hate the drives. Brutal.
And last (and not by any means least) is this rather nasty little piece of my psyche. Most of the customers of A.U. were or became my friends. Most. There was a handful of folks who were not and will not be and I really am enjoying the prospect of never seeing their parasitic, ungrateful, whiny-bitch asses ever again. Yeah, that's right. I'm that kind of dick.
My best advice to people who are interested in LARPing?
Be a customer! Have fun! Find an environment comfortable for you with pricing that doesn't suck and you can handle and go have fun!
If you want to start a LARP? Do this first. Take the entirety of your bank account, put enough money back into your account to pay your minimum bills and an occasional visit to Wendy's. Take the rest and give it to the Salvation Army and a local camp for kids. Take your free time and donate it to a charity or EMS/Fire at one of those busy-ass companies that want you there for every call no matter if you have to be up for work or if you're sick or if you're 300 miles away on vacation. Take anything left and learn to herd cats. Once you are done all that, take a shit ton of your friends and realize that they're going to let you down in a big way and you won?t be friends with them anymore in a year. You'll make new ones but hey, who needs the people you came of age with? Be ready to be fucked over by anyone at any time (but hey, that's a requirement for being a human). Realize that at least one of your friends will go insane. Then plan on going insane yourself. Do this for about two years. If at the end of the two years you're okay with this--start a LARP. You'll do fine.
Bitter? Fuck yeah.
Free? Fuck yeah.
A few people tried to warn me. Did I listen? Nope. Thankfully they've been gracious enough to not be assholes and say "I told you so."
PvP philosophy in MMO's
What Comes Next
What comes next? I've been asking myself that for months now and I think what I want to primarily say is that as far as LARPing is concerned, I am happily retired. While the decision was crippling at times for both Diane & I, in order to move into the next stage of our lives it had to be done.
What is the next stage? No fucking clue--not for sure, anyway.
The last (and possibly the hardest) stage of the old world was made tonight when I cleared the webpage and made it into this blog. That ... was surprisingly difficult but here we are.
It's late, I just got this done, and tomorrow I may be more coherent.
Talk to you soon.
Chad