Initial reactions to League of Legends

I love the art style of League of Legends and the gameplay seems pretty good. I was pretty excited about this RTS, right up to the point that I tried to join a player verses AI game.

After 10 minutes of waiting for a game to start, there were finally enough people to make a match and then after everybody accepted, nothing happened. At all. After a few minutes, I closed the client, restarted it, and it immediately prompted me to rejoin the game that I "abandoned." Presented with no other choice, so I clicked the "rejoin" button. The computer still shows that screen 30 minutes later. Ah well. The tutorial games are educational and the game looks really good.

My oldest son has been playing the second tutorial mission repeatedly for a few hours now and he's been having a great time. As my machine is simply stuck waiting, I've had plenty of opportunity to watch him duke it out with the AI. I think his Starcraft II micromanagement skills are shining through.

There do appear to be somewhere close to a billion choices you have to make when it comes to picking mastery points, skills, items, etc. It makes the game appear to have a lot of depth. I am a little concerned that my son is too young to really understand the repercussions of each of the myriad of decisions he's making at lightning speed, but maybe that's just because I'm too old and too cautious.

If you are looking to play this game, I recommend it. It's free, which is a pretty good price, and despite the fact that it hasn't worked very well for me with cooperative play, I think the game has a lot of potential. I'll warn you now that the install time is fairly long. I have a 50 megabit connection and it still takes a pretty long time to install and patch. I have friends who play PvP, so I know the game works, even if I have yet to experience it. I'll give it another try once the client allows me to play again.

The most expensive game I've ever played (other than EQ)

I can't even recall how many EverQuest expansions I've purchased. I lost track somewhere around Omens of War, but I've paid full price for most of them and then when I four-boxed, I had to purchase new copies. Hands down, I've spend more money on EverQuest than any other game. With the years of monthly subscription and in-game purchases of XP potions, I'm going to guess conservatively at over $1000.

However, I have a new runner-up. As I mentioned recently, I purchased copies of Torchlight II for my two boys, but the router kept crashing. Since the router worked for every other game we've played (and between the three of us, we have play a fair number of games), I was upset.  I ensured the firmware was up-to-date and checked the settings, but the best I could do was get two players in a group for ten minutes before the router crashed. If I tried to join their game, it would crash instantly.

Since my boys really wanted to play together, and I was planning on playing with them once I finished my manuscript, I bought a replacement router--the same near top-of-the-line $180 router (an Apple Airport Extreme) I had previously. (Why the same brand? Because it had always worked flawlessly in the past and it had the nice feature where I could transfer settings effortlessly. Hindsight being what it is, I should have known I was making a mistake.) Well, that didn't fix the situation for my boys and they were unable to play the game over the Internet. I was empathetic, but also busy trying to finish revisions on my story, so I didn't have enough time to really dedicate myself to solving the problem.

So, this weekend rolls around and my manuscript is at the editor leaving me with far more time than I've had since August 1st when I buckled down to finish that novel. I have plenty of work to do around marketing and distribution for my book, but I wanted to take a little time off and play games with my kids. Determined to solve the networking issue without resorting to Tunngle, I pulled out old routers from the cabinet where all discarded and extra computer parts go, waiting for that glorious day that they can be reused.  I don't think any of those spare parts ever get reused, but this was their chance. Pushing aside SIMM chips, I started with a 90s-style single-purpose 10/100mb switch, figuring that it would at least allow local play. By the time, I walked upstairs, I realized the flaw in my plan: Of the three computers only two actually had ethernet ports--the other one was wi-fi only. 

Irritated, but not to be deterred, I dug further into my cabinet of discarded toys, only to come up with a cable bridge and two ethernet-only routers. I must have recycled or given away past wi-fi routers, or my wife has been slowly and clandestinely clearing out the cabinet like Tim Robbins. 

Already $240+tax into the game (one router and three copies), I decided to buy a new router. So, I put another $180+ dollars down. The three of us played flawlessly for over an hour before the Major League Gaming Starcraft II matches sucked in my older son. Not that I mind. I love watching MLG.

I'm not sure if there is a moral to this $420+tax story. Maybe, don't buy the same router you already own if it didn't work the first time. Or maybe, put a lock on your computer-parts cabinet. However, now we should be able to get in some good, quality family time beating up monsters in Torchlight II. It was fun, even on the normal difficulty setting to just march around and slaughter hordes of monsters. With the blood splatters turned off, it reminded me of the original Diablo more than Diablo III.

Obligatory Easter Comic

I had a moment to whip up a comic for Easter and the day isn't even over. 

I played both EQ and WoW this weekend, which is quite a bit more than I can usually manage. I feel a little guilty because I should have been writing rather than playing games.

Regarding WoW: My dad and I went to Hellfire Peninsula with my boys and we managed to kill some 

bad guys in an instance.  We did wipe near the end of the instance and the kids were ready to call it a day.

Regarding EQ: I played my mage. My friend Mark and I went to Blackfeather Roost and beat up harpies. Lag was really bad at points. You'd think a 50 mbs connection would be enough to play a game from the '90s. I know that latency isn't the same as bandwidth, but there's an implied amount of performance when you pay extra for a connection of that size. At least my mercenary pulled her weight.

aggro management

I have found time to play some World of Warcraft with my kids and my father, but I haven't played EQ with my friend Mark in at least a week. Doing an instance with a 7-year-old, a 5-year-old, and your dad can be a lot of fun. I'm the healer, which can be a little hectic because the kids don't understand aggro management very well. They also have the highest level characters in the group, so they really pump out the damage. I'm the lowest level because I play the least, of course. Half of the time I play, I'm in the auction house helping the kids make money for their next mount. (They like to have a variety of different color mounts, despite the fact that they all fly/fun at the same rate and serve the same function.)

Sorry that I haven't been actively posting lately. I've been swamped trying to polish one book that is mostly written but needs a lot of T.L.C., and get traction on a new book that I started a few weeks ago. To make things more crazy, my wife and I have been interviewing remodelers to have our bathroom redone. Ugh!

I want to get a new comic up, but it might be a few days before I have time. Thanks for your patience.

In the meanwhile, if you work an office job and want to read a comic, check out snrky: http://www.snrky.com/