It's a Bumpy Rebirth

Definitely a rough start. Peppered throughout the leveling and questing are instanced encounters. There are so many people leveling that the instance manager, "Duty Manager", has been crashing. They've taken the servers down twice for emergency maintenance to no avail.

They are posting things. There was a Tweet a few minutes ago:

Yet when you click on the link it gives you:

So yeah. It's feeling like an unofficial fifth beta at the moment. Would really like to at least get a chocobo mount yet that requires a number of instances... *sigh*

Still won't be subbing at this point. Considering cancelling the pre-order. Maybe it will be more ready in a month. Or maybe a bulk of people will be done with the lower levels so it's easier to get going.

Damn Engrish

Over the open-beta weekend I enjoyed Final Fantasy enough that I decided to at least "buy the box." Not sure that I'll subscribe at this point. Not really concerned with physical boxes so when I found Green Man Gaming had a -25% voucher available that's where my money went. Got an eMail with the pre-order code so I figured I'd get that registered. I went to the redemption site and selected English, only to get this:

I don't want to sound like a bigot but I suppose I deserve it. Playing an Asian MMO that has literally crashed and burned once already is asking for trouble. *snicker*

Going to post something on the forums to the effect of:

When the ennui sets in after three months I'm wondering what the Server Merger plans are for the NA/US servers. Would it be best to create a character on the original servers that are being carried forward from the prior fail or will the newer ones (like Behemoth) be the final resting place for whomever is left?

*lol* Why is trolling so fun?

Mainly for the Murloc

Got a few more games in with my 3v3 team last night but they haven't appeared on the ladder yet. So as of last week the team was at #262 of 559:

Not exactly a proud showing I know but frankly rather beyond out expectations. We only signed up to get the 50 games in for the Murloc. Each of us has a mildly competitive streak so we didn't want to just roll over. Surely there are a few pet-only teams we could dispatch. And it felt good to do so.

Unfortunately the rankings go up fast when winning so we quickly faced some of the more serious players. Once we neared a 1000 last night it got rough. Even in the struggle we still did okay. There was one team of a Warrior, Monk, and Hunter that beat us twice:

Yet the third time we faced them we won:

That felt pretty good. The recognition of potential as we learn to work as a team. Even though none of us even do Battlegrounds. So tonight I'm going to ask my teammates if they'd join me in a 3v3 back on Live. Nothing to serious, but just get in the ten games a week. Add a little spice to each lock out for now. Next season... maybe the title?

Secretly I'm sure all three of us wouldn't mind the Vanquisher title but … yeah. Little late now with zero preparation—which shows. We have yet to break 1000 and we have 40 games in. See what it's like after the 10 tonight. *snicker*

Muffle the Elemental

Trolling the forums I came across someone crying about the water elemental idle "glug glug" sound. A blue responded with steps on creating an empty override file:

Here's a way I just tested and it seems to work fine. I found it on an addon site but it doesn't require you to download anything. I have to warn you though to use it at your own risk of course. Here's what you do:

1. Open your World of Warcraft folder
2. Open the Data folder
3. Create a new folder inside called Sound
4. Open the Sound folder now
5. Create a new folder inside called Creature
6. Open the Creature folder
7. Create a new folder called Waterelemental
8. Open the Waterelemental folder
9. Create a new file called WaterElementalLoop.ogg and save it. It needs to be empty, 0 bytes
10. Play the game and test

Thought it was interesting that an official agent would pass on something from "an addon site" but I suppose this is pretty innocuous. If there's a way of mapping out contents of MPQ files this would work for a lot of things.

Unwanted Dubstep

For the past few days Warcraft has been giving me cycling latency spikes. As a tank this makes timed actions and active mitigation very difficult. Wiped my progression raid a few times and have been voluntarily (though annoyedly) sitting since.

Figured it was something on my provider's end that would clear up eventually but it persists. Decided to hit the forums and immediately saw others having the same issue, so I added my two cents:

At first it really pissed me off as suddenly the game would catch up to what I thought was happening five seconds earlier. Now I treat it as a mini-game to see if I can anticipate bullshit. *sigh* Need to figure this out soon.

MapTools Still Not Smiling

The group I play with recently upgraded to MapTools 1.3.b89. Naturally the GM didn't mention this beforehand so when I tried to connect I got a version error. I quickly downloaded the binaries and replaced the entire folder. Everything seemed fine until I used some of my macros. Everytime a variable was used it would repeat all text found inside a DIV before that variable. Using a TWF Rogue means a ton of variables so each attack spammed a wall of text.

It was like the client was being launched in a diag mode or something. Remembered there was a fix for this yet couldn't remember what it was. Couldn't find the right words in Google so ended up browsing the RPTools forums manually. Thankfully I found the answer in the Macros section: disable the Insert Smilies option in the MapTool Preferences (Interactions tab, Chat box). *sigh* Would be nice it they'd fix that. I miss the emoticons. If I knew Java I'd fix it myself.

While I'm making note of that fix I might as well include the custom launch command I use too:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin\javaw" -Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true -Xmx1024M -Xss3m -jar maptool-1.3.b89.jar run

Sim til Emergence

Read a pretty good blog on simulation coding. I remember writing my own Life decades ago. Need to do that again as a mod or something.

Beautiful Rocks

Couple of days ago I noticed an upload on the Nexus entitled "Superior Rock Textures - Hiqh Quality HD 2K and 1K replacers." Seems like every play session there's some point where I notice how blocky and poorly textured the rocks are in numerous places. Was amazed at how good this plugin is! I only have a 1gb GTS 450 so I usually defer to 1k textures. And in my case both worked equally well.

Yet I immediately noticed they react poorly with however Skyrim renders water—creating an excessive shine thats especially visible at night but even during the day. They're such a terrific improvement I was loathe to leave any negative comments. So I took the time to phrase my findings constructively. Checking back a few minutes ago I was pleasantly surprised to find my name mentioned and a fix in place…

Going to go check it out now!

Your Penis Offends Me Greatly

The anonymity of the Internet makes it the last, great bastion of ignorance, bigotry, and petulance. Sure there are good things out there but the bad's got the same sanctuary. For instance there's a mod less than 24-hours old called Schlongs of Skyrim…

Naturally my comment isn't feedback germain to the mod itself, but rather my annoyance with other comments. There is an utter dearth of mods that give any attention to male actors or resources compared to the female explosion. So I feel motivated to use strong words in defense of whatever it released.

Hackle-raising aside it's appears to be quite an achievement as it adds new Havok'able parts without require new animation. Should be very compatible. And fun! *snicker*

Something Might Be On Fire

Looks the Xbox ONE fever has pitched. The specs appear to be substantial enough and there are a number of promises being made. See what happens. Just not on the Official website...

Another Switches

Just read a tweet from the RIFT people... they're going free-to-play on June 12. Paid for a number of months where I never bothered to log in so it's unlikely that I will play now. The hype around player-built home-spaces in the Storm Legion xpac did sound interesting. Hrm. Maybe?

That's That

Was saddened by the announcement a few weeks ago that active Skyrim development has ended. It makes marketing sense to move on from a game released a year-and-a-half ago. I am left with a feeling there could have been more. Dawnguard was too linear and Hearthfire lacked substance. Dragonborn really got it right. Guess it's good to end on a high-note. And a Legendary release of everything bundled together.

Modding will be easier I suppose. Hopefully some of the devs will still lurk.

Almost Done in There

Fairly productive week. Got the first nine bosses down on Wednesday, and Thursday with Tortos and Durumu being the only bother. Managed to get Iron Quon down tonight along with the Twin Consorts. This means we'll have a good four hours or so on Lei Shen tomorrow. Should be no problem. *snicker* The kills bumped us into 2nd on the server:

Iron Quon was kind enough to drop Shoulders of the Crackling Vanquisher so I now have the 2pc going. Might have to find a transmog that works with the shoulders… that tongue is pretty amusing:

Brought me up four iLevels so now I'm back in the top 10:

Good times!

Unwanted Membership

Players on Balnazzar must feel pretty special to get a client announcement all to themselves…

WoWProgress and Invisibility

We're working on the damn turtle tonight. Tried a few pulls last night. Some people had to leave last night so I filled in on the shaman. Was good to get a look at the fight but damn. The exact words of the healer on the first pull: "Is this for real?" We all got a laugh but damn. Going to take some coordination.

I'm sure our competitors are working on it too. Yet for now we're still at #3 on the server. The raid leader is going to have monk and paladin tanks for now. Says he'll get me in on the hydra.

Poked around for some ePeen only to find disappointment. For some reason my DK has disappeared from the rankings:

My in-game character sheet shows me at iLevel 504, which would mean I'm the 6th most geared DK on the server. The web portal also shows me at 504. Not sure what I can do but I will explore options! I want my name up there, dammit!! While it still can be…

Soule Symphony No. 1

Had no idea one man was behind so much of the music that's driven many of the games I have enjoyed. Thankfully an article I caught on Kotaku informed me. Really hope his KickStarter goes well.

Kalimdor Today, the World Next Week

I gave up on Minfernal around Christmas time. Figured it's been long enough that the camp might be less intense. So with today's restart I decided to get the three farmers in different shared realms into position.

Was tuning my macro so figured there was something wrong when it beeped. But it was not wrong! Swooped down on a spawn before the reset!! Naturally I was worried that the servers would hiccup before I finished but my insane luck held…

Wanted to call him Server Restart but the name was "reserved" or something. Tried a few variants until one worked.

This was truly fortuitous. With the Qiraji Guardling becoming available next week, I should be able to get Kalimdor Safari done which completes World Safari and gets me the Zookeeper title.

Our Processes Continue to Process

Another two hours of maintenance. *sigh* Or maybe more! *lol* Not really suprised—just anxious. Would like to get the new first ToT LFR done with the quality, hard-core people. The rest of the rabble will likely make it painful.

With Great Power Comes Great.... Trolling

It's unwise to admit this but supposedly confession is good for the soul. Last night I was doing some last-minute LFRs with various characters. On the Warlock for Spirit Kings I did a Shadowfury during Maddening Shout without even thinking… damned PvP reflex. Naturally people cried so I kept doing it. The third one I did seconds before a Flanking Orders where the tank hadn't moved so I killed at least eight people, possibly eleven.

So we wiped, six people left the raid, cries of outrage sprinkled raid chat, and I hid in the shadows, plotting. Stunning again would be too blatant so I took a different tack. As the shout cast went out I put up an empowered Seed of Corruption then threw out as many Unstable Afflictions as possible to silence the reliable healers. The results?

Top of the Friendly Fire charts! That hunter was right there with me though. *snicker*

The bad part was laughing so hard my sides hurt. Was also difficult to see through the tears. *sigh* Still, it felt good. I tank so often I'm constantly in fear of some asshole doing this type of thing to me. Occasionally it's good to be the asshole. *smirk*

Week One 5.2 Progress

Thanks to yesterday's last-minute before-reset hotfixes we managed to get Council down despite our lack of gear. This snuck us into third overall:

Our healers had some issues so we started two hours late. Everyone was tired though ecstatic to find the third ToT encounter so approachable. Got a few pulls in on Torta yet a healer had to pass out so we called it. It's very likely we'll get up to the birdie this week.

We don't raid today so I'll bet DR and Brotherhood sneak past us for a few days. Was funny to see them scrambling to get a kill or two in as well last night. Saw DR's Badmanwalkin asking for two DPS in Trade Chat even! *lol*

Audio Books ... in Skyrim?!

Gopher just tweeted about an interesting mod project: Read Books Aloud. It's a framework for trying audio to the books in-game made by Chesko (a great author famed for Frostfall). So great to see innovation still coming almost a year-and-a-half after release.

In other Skyrim news… patch 1.9 was announced. The beta is already available so I probably should look into using it. Will need to have a project or two updated possibly.

Similar to 1.6 it really only adds one major feature: Legendary Skills and difficulty. It is also the vehicle for a number of bug fixes. 

Renewed Battle Pet Interest

After getting the Jade Tentacle the epic trainers in Pandaria were too frustrating to bother with and I eventually lost interest in Battle Pets entirely. Yet without a fixed raiding schedule the boredom has renewed my attention.

Over the weekend I took an hour or two and finished up Pandaren Spirit Tamer with Taming the World shortly after. While handy the Safari Hat is rather insidious as it makes me want to level more pets.

I suppose the spark of interest originated from a friendly competition put on by The Anzacs. They hosted a competition that I managed to win. First prize was a Blizzard Store pet of my choice. From a battle perspective Lil' Ragnaros would have been optimal yet I decided on the damnably adorable Cinder Kitten:

Named him after the organizer of the contest. The real threat was from Raven though I managed to defeat her with Bizzlehops, Sizzletint, and Ookin Dooker. Pretty fun and less evil since it was only pets level 10-13. With WoWkemon we were even able to observe other matches when the addon didn't act up.

While there are many helpful guides out there, Battle Pet Dailies was the best for me. I still need to write up my own guide for the pets I used for each boss since the "Use this Class" doesn't always work.

A Table of Drafting Doom

Been quite a weekend. Almost wish I played still since it wasn't too far away. The final draft table is going to be vicious…

My Own Kind of Help

Normally I try to enter a couple of helpful lines about where I was and what I was doing. But there have been a lot more crashes lately, so I'm done with all that…

Skyrim Main Forced Into Early Retirement

My "Main Character" Aenara has started crashing pretty regularly now that she's level 53. It's pretty frustrating since I've taken care to avoid adding mods to her saves. The file itself doesn't seem terribly bloated as it's up 13.3mb with all three DLCs going. Turned off all the auto-saves and made a clean save before Dragonborn downloaded.

The debug logs do show a repeating problem with "dunBluePalaceArenaSCRIPT". A Google search turned up a thread on Nexus that said they were having the same problem. That thread goes on to identify a number of different conflicts and mod issues. Since it's a Scripting error inside an OnUpdate() event there's nothing that can be done. The "solution" is to revert to a save before doing the Mind of Madness quest. *sigh*

This is the reason for my Papyrus rant earlier today. It's also prompting me to take a very active role in what mods are used and quests are completed on my next "Main." Not going to activate the DLCs until I'm ready for them. I may not use Hearthfire at all since it seems to be the source of many scripting errors and save game bloat.

Going to make my own esp for custom resources. Initially I'll have one of Apachii's male hairs and Krisan's glowing eyes. I've also built a custom blend of textures based on Vano89's Bethesda Hi-Res DLC Optimized. Going to get a game going with nothing else. Need to do reading and research before getting attached to another character again.

Griselbrand Brings the Cards

Been watching SCG's Legacy Open in Cincinatti. Saw an insane match in Round 6/9 with Caleb Durward playing something called Tin Fins destroying Ben Porter's Sneak & Show. Technically it was a turn two kill because of Emrakul but still. Wow. Haven't seen a deck like that play out so well in a while. Couple weeks back SCG did a deck tech on a variant Greg Mitchell calls Reanimator Tendrils. Same concept, not sure how I missed it.

Speaking of missing… they caught Justin Uppal on screen for a few minutes. I think he was playing Jund. Such a cute little guy and a great player.

Moving Forward On Skaky Ground

Skyrim is definitely a step forward from Morrowind and Oblivion in terms of story, game play, and technology. Yet sometimes the price of progress is pain. A good deal of pain.

I cannot count the times I've encountered this type of vitriol expressed in varying levels of rage:

NEVER AGAIN. Not starting another save.

F§CK OFF.
3rd f*cking save file, 70 hours played on each save.
F*cking wasted time.
EVERY DAMN TIME a bug, a glitch, or whaterver bulls*it this game has, it ruins my save file.
I'm ????ing tired of this s*it.
I even bought two dlcs and I never fuc*ing got to play them because my save file got ruined before even being able to spend some time on them.
I can't stand this.
a total of 200+ hours wasted on this game is enough time to understand that it is bad and I won't play it anymore.
I don't even use ANY mods, disabled the steam cloud system too, nothing helped.
How can people reach the f*ucking high levels in this game?
Once I was able to get to level 47, then the game decided to start crashing randomly, 10 seconds into the game.
The second time everyone got mad and started chasing me and trying to kill me (like vampirism lvl 4 but I didn't have vampirism.
This last time, my lakeview house DISAPPEARED, it vanished, just gone, for no reason, with all the stuff and the time I put into it.
I get blocked by bulls*it whenever i try to make any progress in this game.

ENOUGH.

If you are here looking for an advice, don't buy this game, it's a waste of time.

His last comment there is rather amusing. Aren't all games a waste of time? But I digress…

Though it's mostly a rant there was more conversation wherein some questionable mod usage came into play. In my estimation the source of all the save-game woes is Papyrus.

As a former software engineer I understand the desire to evolve. Revamping the old scripting engine must have been a sexy concept. It feels "right" to move from last century's functional coding into modern objects. There are plenty of gains in performance and efficiency to justify it. Yet the scope of Bethesda's scripting engine seems to fall short. Consider one of the dev's feedback on the forums:

Some clarification seems to be in order. :)

All instances of a script will have their variable values saved. If the game deletes the object the script is attached to, and there are NO variables or registrations pointing at that script object, and no currently running functions on that object, then the data will be cleaned up. (There is some very basic circular-reference checking, but it's safer to clear out the variables yourself by setting them to NONE) If the object is deleted in the editor or a mod is removed the data will NOT be cleaned (as Papyrus simply assumes the object is not loaded and will be loaded at some point in the future).

The above, as well as any script referenced by any of the above scripts will also have some basic type information saved (which lets the save game load process patch up the object's memory if you add/remove/change variables between save/load). This is what usually will throw the "missing script" errors as it's trying to compare the save game's type information with the type information on disk.

Any running event/function gets its byte code saved as well. (As well as all other functions/events in the same call stack)

Non-running functions at the time of save do not get any byte code saved.

Event registrations and inventory filters are saved. (Again, if a form is removed in the editor or a mod removed, Papyrus assumes the form is simply not loaded, and so will not clean up registrations)

As Arathmoor pointed out - uninstallation of mods is not official supported. Updating of mods is supported, within the guidelines specified on the wiki.

Wiki Page on Papyrus and Save Games

The dev points out the source of much pain: "If the object is deleted in the editor or a mod is removed the data will NOT be cleaned (as Papyrus simply assumes the object is not loaded and will be loaded at some point in the future)." Absolutely horrible design.

It's really an excuse or rationalization. The save game's file header tracks all mods that were active when the save was made. At run-time the Papyrus engine know all of the mods that are running. The environment thus exists to then remove any forms/scripts that no longer have parents. That is not being done.

Papyrus is external to the game engine so perhaps it can't look at what mods are currently active. Perhaps it doesn't track the source of forms/scripts that it is running. Maybe Papyrus has it's own development team and it's an internal product that will be used on multiple titles. Being on the outside I don't know what's "really" going on. I can only guess at why Papyrus isn't being clean and responsible.

The result of this? Bethesda support asserts as the dev above did: "uninstallation of mods is not (officially) supported." Yet a basic design question can be asked: if un-installation is not supported, why is it allowed? The only warning the user ever gets is:

There's no mention of what content is missing. There's no understanding of what the impact of "Some objects may no longer be available." is. And this message will no longer be displayed once a new save is made.

The responsible course here would be a message that says, "This save requires content from 'Mod Title' and cannot be safely loaded without it." Sure it might be frustrating to the player but it will save the product from repeated PR attacks like the one above.

The next step would be responsible object handling in Papyrus. So "Papyrus simply assumes the object is not loaded and will be loaded at some point in the future." That's understandable. But after about the 50th attempt to access a form it might be safe to say it isn't going to be loaded. Remove the code, stack, and memory allocated to it.

The next step would be a file analyzer that could clean up fragments outside the game in hopes of  circumventing CTDs. This is what the community will end up providing.

Morrowind and Oblivion were such fun games to mod—yet creating a clean save to remove mods was incredibly easy. My heart goes out to Bethseda as they are tarnishing this legacy. If they're going to improve their technology, they need to improve the support for that technology. Otherwise they need to change the modular paradigm they no longer intend to support.

Of course all of this speaks to the PC platform and its save game bloat. Not sure what the hell is going on with the console folks. Just glad I don't try to play on a PS3. *lol*

Your Destiny Looms

The first wave of official Destiny information has been unleashed. Now there's a flood of points and impressions. There's even a Pre-Order button on the site… which seems pretty aggressive for a game that isn't due to release for more than a year.

What I found most amusing was their attempt to distance themselves from being an MMO:

"These are living, open worlds with evolving stories, changing time of day…and every one is full of players," says engineering lead Chris Butcher. "Destiny is an always online experience, but it's not an MMO."

It's certainly been a fun fifteen plus years since Ultima Online started going so it is time to make MMO a dirty word. But ... it's an MMO. *lol*

I've been largely impressed with everything brought to life in the Halo universe. From what's out there now this will addition will not disappoint.

Remember... It's Okay to Steal

I hate when people in groups need on things that are offspec without asking or even caring. I always wait for mainspec people to roll or ask if they're taking a while. Make me expect the same courtesy.

Been leveling the warrior and hit 89 last night, so I've been queue'd while questing. Takes anywhere from 10-25 minutes a pop. So on the 19th attempt it was a relief when the Choker of the Pure Heart finally dropped. Unfortunately the healer was paladin and he rolled:

Amazingly the next queue it dropped again. Sadly the tank was a DK. *sigh* Annoyed enough to post and tweet.

While it's frustrating it's not unexpected. It really wouldn't bother me if the timing weren't so bad. A 480 neck would be a helpful iLevel boost as I'm about to hit 90—making heroics and LFR that much easier to get into. Well that and I've been repeating Shadowfang Keep so many damn times for nothing.

So the next time I feel like rolling on something, I will. Spread the karma.

You Picked a Bad Time to Patch, Friend

Spent a little time over on the new Island then came back to Skyrim to wrap up some minor quests and store all my new reagents/armor. Had a couple of crashes so decided to restart the computer. Trying to launch the game I was just greeted with:

The Update News button was useless. Just a link to the Skyrim newsfeed where the official announcement was up along with a "63 days later here we go PC users!" blurb. Nosing around the folders there was nothing new except in the Data folder. There's another 1gb texture file: HighResTexturePack03. Yay!

Erm… maybe. Starting to wonder if all these crashes are due to my video card getting max'd out. Might be time to upgrade the old GeForce 450.

Yay for Real... Maybe

There we go. Something a little more beefy. Nothing's changed in the game folder so poked around some. Found Dragonborn.esm and Dragonborn.bsa downloading to C:\steam\steamapps\downloading\72850\Data. Weeee!

Something Just Happened.... but What?

Yay! Well kinda…

It went really fast. The TESV executable is the same. And there's no new ESM. Will try launching the game and restarting Steam. Maybe do a verify files…

Tick-Tock, Dragonborn

Ended up pre-ordering Dragonborn from Green Man Gaming since they had it for $16. While it's only four dollars less it's the principle of the thing. I hate how the DLC concept drives the industry. Bethesda hasn't milked it like Capcom or most EA game yet it I'm loathe to contribute. Usually I'm fine waiting a couple of months until they go on sale. But … yeah. This is Skyrim.

Got an eMail from GMG about an hour ago with the key. According to Steam it unlocks in less than two hours. I spent some time last night clearing up my main character's file. Finished the Dawnguard story line, dismissed Serana, sold of some junk, did some Smithing, et cetera. Also got the Skyrim directory cleared out. I actually have ten different characters so it took time to get their saves compressed and add-ons organized.

Then there was the Clean Save process. I've been pretty good about trying out mods with the other toons while keeping few on Aenara. Currently she's attached only to the official DLCs, the Portal 2 mod, and the Shadow Striping Fix. I like the SSF since it doesn't use scripts or have any resources. I attached my own BSA to it with custom meshes and textures. I hate loose files. All of this made it easy to clean-up and prepare for Dragonborn.

It's going to be difficult to play without SkyUI and Categorized Favorites Menu. The geniuses at SKSE code so fast hopefully it will be back soon. And I really, really hope this doesn't break Wrye Bash for too long. Then there's the CK... how long will it be til it gets updated? And what new functions and resources will be available to mod with?! *excitement*

That's a Damn Lot of Nerds

Just watched MarineKing lose 0-3 against NeasTea in the Iron Squid 2 Finals. The games were so decisive what I found more interesting was the crowd shots. There are a ton of people packed into the Le Palais des Congrès. It makes me shake my head. I would never consider traveling and buying tickets to something like this.

Guess I'm old now and out of the demographic. *sigh*

ESO Beta Access Sign-Up'age

Getting closer to reality…

Laid it on pretty thick in the "Why should you get Beta access?" section:

I'm the type of gamer that will look at every aspect of a game and, given the chance, will provide positive and negative feedback to developers. As a software engineer I can provide specific, technical details. I've been playing MMOs since 1999 (in EverQuest) so I can be pretty opinionated. I enjoy solo play but also raid lead along with running regular group content with friends and random PUGs, which means hours and hours of playing each week. :)

It would be great to get access but I also wouldn't mind waiting. I'm going to buy/play it for a least a month no matter what.

Every Phone a Library

Thanks to a heads up on Episode 50 of Skyrim Off the Record I've just downloaded The Elder Scrolls Books. Supposedly it includes all of the books from Daggerfall through Skyrim. Not sure if Bethesda will allow it to stick around but while they do… yay!

Edit: This app has been around for over six months. How did I miss it?

Warframe

Found out about beta keys going out for Warframe, thanks to ColloseusXReturns. Another F2P FPS. Doesn't seem ground-breaking but it looks nice. Will have to see what's up.