Initial World Hall of Fame Games

Just noticed a press release and subsequent hype for "2015 World Video Game Hall of Fame Inductees." Apparently "The Strong® welcomed six games into the inaugural class of its World Video Game Hall of Fame™"

• DOOM
• Pac-Man
• Pong
• Super Mario Bros.
• Tetris
• World of Warcraft

I completely agree with the recognition of all of these games except the final one. *lol* Despite my love of WoW it should not be the MMO representative. Ultima Online and EverQuest are far more deserving.

On a side note… who the hell is "The Strong®" and why are they qualified to hand out world titles?

Please Stand By

Finally! All of the hints and suppositions do get old so it was exciting to see this pop up on Twitter Tuesday. Fallout 4 is reality. About damn time too since the Skyrim team has been done for years (release was 3.5 years ago and Dragonborn was out 2.5 years ago).

Really enjoyed the initial trailer. Then learned more about it from the guy over at Curse.com. Fallout New Vegas was really novel since I know Vegas so well. Boston will be a completely foreign setting for fun and exploration.

I'll definitely be picking up the game on release. Hell, even considering using GMG's 23% voucher to pre-order. But I will try to ignore most of the hype. It's frustrating to have questions that won't be answered til day one:

• Will FO4 be a "mile wide inch deep" sandbox like Skyrim?
• Is the Papyrus scripting engine from Skyrim used in FO4?
• Does the engine still use the ancient Gamebryo meshes and textures?
• When will the G.E.C.K. be updated for FO4?
• Did you have time to implement V.A.T.S. or, as in Skyrim, are the data structures there but unused?
• Are you railroading any of the main quest-lines or are they all finished? (re: Skyrim Civil War)
• Are the number of gear slots reduced again?

*lol* I'm definitely not the typical gamer.

The Definition of Botting

Yesterday the ban-hammer was brought down on a number of accounts. I've heard numbers as high as 600,000. Also heard that some are temporary six-month bans while others are permanent. Blizzard themselves didn't release actual numbers or violators so I'm not sure how accurate they are.

Apparently is was largely prompted by abuse from a botting program called HonorBuddy:

I admit I have used a botting program before. It must have been five or six years ago now, but it was fun. A program called Glider. You could write fairly detailed programs to kill mobs, harvest reagents, etc. As a coder I found it amusing—yet I did get caught and lost two accounts. Glider was pretty underground though. Something as brazen as this Honor Buddy was bound to get busted.

Yesterday afternoon Bashiok tweeted something that caught my eye:

Botting is defined as automation of any action, not just character movement. If a program is pressing keys for you, you've violated the ToU.

— Bashiok (@Bashiok) May 13, 2015

Now that's interesting. That is not the publicly accepted definition of botting. Even recently I have loaded up two instances of WoW and uses AutoHotKey to do things. This is not botting. I am not leaving the computer unattended to automate activity in Azeroth. Yet from Bashiok's terse summary apparently I am—according to Blizzard.

Interesting. And they are apparently enforcing it this narrowly as the crazy boxer PreparedWOW has been banned...

I'm guessing Blizzard wants to make it look like they're serious about maintaining the integrity of their online world. Personally I think pushing content faster would be more effective.

Vanity Pet Ladder, Skin of Teeth

Spent a lot of time summoning vanity pet, clicking level stone, summon vanity pet, click level stone, ad infinitum. I'm sure others are, too. Managed to cover a lot of ground and I'm currently, barely, at #5 on the server. The dirty Ravenlight is gaining ground. *sigh*

Must say I have enjoyed the Twitter integration that 6.1 brought. There were a number of times that I would intend to tweet something. Procrastination coupled with distractions and those tweets went forgotten. Now I just crop an image the best I can then move on.

Apparently Nat Pagle is seriously available for the druid. #WoD #Warcraft pic.twitter.com/Eq672bhDe2
— Aenara (@aegamer) March 19, 2015

This was todays bit of fluff. None of these spontaneous tweets are that creative or amusing… but at least I'm actively contributing Internet flotsam.

Sid Meier, Lite

After my so-so interest in Civ: BE I didn't let myself get too interested in Spaceships. I did watch some of the initial stuff on Twitch but haven't made it back. Yet.

DId you miss yesterday's Sid Meier's Starships global launch livestream event? We have a YouTube playlist for you! https://t.co/kZEeg5JXT1
— Civilization (@CivGame) March 14, 2015

The biggest criticism I've heard is that there isn't much depth and the voice-overs are lack luster. That might not bother me. Might be fun to have a space experience that you can tackle in one sitting.

Warcraft Fan Art

I've seen a number of exceptional fan renditions of game art. But never something like this...

hey twitterverse, thought I'd come share my latest @Warcraft fanart - a redesign of the badass Alexstrasza! pic.twitter.com/sS6izF665J
— Sam Hogg (@Zephyri) March 13, 2015

Vanity Pet Ladder, Continued

After a week I've somehow managed to maintain my lead on the dreaded Ravenlight. *snicker* Was chatting with her over the weekend. She hasn't had a chance to level new things so I've widened the gap further. In fact, thanks to almost 1000 Pet Charms I'm now up to 6th on the server.

That set of charms I used to level. Buying Mystery Bags ended up getting me nearly twice the number of levels Flawless Battle-Training Stones would have. Still have over 2000 charms left which I intend to use on Rare Stones. Warcraft Pets says I have 17 Poor, 23 Common, and 54 Uncommon Pets. Ninety-four stones will cost 1410 Charms. That will be a lot of clicking. *sigh* 

Once done all that's left is the leveling from daily rewards. Wonder where I will peak.