Pokening up the Cape

These little critters have been popping up on my radar the last few weeks.
Cute aren't they. But you ask what are they for?

To put it simply these are electronic business cards. But what they offer us as individuals is just so much more. How often have you come to a gathering and met a few awesome people and spent the next 10 minutes collecting their twitter, facebook and other social networking details? If you are me this happens on a regular basis. With a Poken you set up your information you want to share with people online which is linked to the serial key that you will share with the people that you will ^4 with your poken (touch 2 pokens' hands together). When you get back home simply connect the poken to your pc and upload the serials keys you got from ^4ing others and instantly you are connected with them. Easy fast nice.

Now you can spend more time socializing than scrambling about getting each others details.

For more details on the products you can follow the following link: pokencape

Splitting the Second

Oh deary me. So much to do so little time.

Once again I have somehow gotten my hours each day filled up.
I committed to reading 1 book each week of this year. Normally I read more than 52 books a year anyway so this is not that difficult normally. Yet I am struggling currently to make time for it and if I do make time for it I find myself falling asleep.

I am currently playing 3 MMOs namely World Of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online and DC Universe Online. Normally this is not so bad since I put a few hours into each of them. Unfortunately 2 of them have become very active lately and raids happen almost every night. Trying to avoid clashes of times between these raids of different games are becoming very difficult. I don't want to drop either cause I have good friends in both of them. Yet it is getting to that point. Then there are the other MMOs betas that are starting shortly. (Yes I am fully aware these are all self caused problems and that I am an MMO addict) If this was all gaming going on this could still be somehow manageable but besides these MMOs some of my friends have started playing L4D2 and DoW2 again and invite me to join them often enough. Thing is I want to join them and I feel bad when I tell them I can't come because of other demands on my time so I end up pushing these into my schedule.

Once a week is movies night with the Cape Town movie group (gathering of awesome geeks) I enjoy these outings since they seem to be the only thing I leave my PC for these days. On the other hand since I live an hours drive from Cape Town which has turned into a 2 hour trip thanks to road works going on on the N7. So I basically leave work, dress drive through grab something to drink with them watch the movie get back home and try to get 4 hours sleep in before I have to go back into work.

Then there is work. I feel no motivation to do my work at the moment at all. It is boring and frustrating. I'm pretty sure my work at the moment is to sit at my desk and just be there for when fingers need to be pointed. I am a system administrator of a very bad system which the company does not want to move from. The system would probably work for a small business that would be willing to change to fit the system, My company wants to change and manipulate the systems in such ways that it ends up breaking everything. To say I am a little fed up with being the scapegoat is putting it mildly.

Beside all of the above. Next month my Monday and Friday Dungeons and Dragons games are probably going to start again which will destroy what little time I have left for myself.

Roles in Groups

After reading a few articles today about people complaining about the dps of their classes I am once again reminded why I prefer the certain games more than others. Games like WoW limit classes to three roles DPS, Tank and Healer. Even though WoW has a lot of classes with interesting abilities you are shoved into those 3. You are constantly reminded by a DPS meter either one you have installed or someone linking the the DPS stats in chat. You are rated at how good or bad your DPS is. No matter what class you are or spec if you are signed on as DPS you are expected to have close to the same DPS as the others classes specs. The way dungeons and raids are designed in WoW it is rare that it would be expected anything more of you than how high you are on the DPS meter.

This is why I prefer games like LOTRO where dungeons and raids are designed more around roles and abilities. Besides the standard 3 roles mentioned above you have the Crowd Controller and the Group Buffer/Debuffer. It is not just the work of the tank anymore to do all the crowd control and it is suddenly not just about the dps meter but how useful you are to the group. Take for example the captain class it's damage is so so but look what it brings to the party. As it fights it gives buffs or short heal over times which eases the stress on the healer. He also comes handy with those ever useful combat rezzes. You get the Loremaster who is able to Crowd Control large amounts of enemies. Allowing you take on smaller groups at the time which eases the stress on the tank. She is also able to provide some much needed power to classes running out of power like a minstrel. And so the list goes on.

This in my opinion makes a game more fun to me.

Spring Cleaning

Last week week my kin (Guardians of Hope on the Gilrain server) decided that it was time for a change. We had been living in our cluttered hobbit holes for a few years now and it just didn't fit us anymore. We had fun times at Yarrowbank our old neighborhood. We had parties and mystery detective games though the years here.



Our new home away from home is in the Elf neighborhood of Eithel Ivrin. For hours after the initial move you could see hobbits, elves, dwarves and humans scurrying from the escrow person to their houses and back again. I think in the future when we move again I will buy a house closer to the escrow person XD

A toast to Guardians of Hope and our new neighborhood. May we build new fun memories in our new home.

I'm holding out for a hero till the end of the night

he's gotta be strong and he's gotta be fast and gotta be fresh from the fight... *cough*

Right, now that I have gotten that out of my system... End of last week I procured a copy of DC Universe Online (Damn you steam and the ease of purchase you make games) and after a lengthy download and then update I finally got to try the game. My over all impression is that I love the game so far. I get to fight along side iconic superheroes like superman and it feels like what I do actually matters.


(Dark Ember my heroine in the game)

Firstly those who are looking for a massive dose of customization you won't find it at the start of the game. You have a choice of 3 body types for each gender. the starting costume pieces you can choose from is also a bit limited. This does not mean you can not create a unique character from the get go that looks awesome. As you play the game you collect new costume pieces with stats. You can add these pieces to your costume list. It is good to note at this point that you can have a different appearance to the armour you wear. You can change your appearance as well as colour scheme at any time with out any in-game or out-game cost.



Playing the game it self feels like you are playing an action game rather than an MMO which is pretty awesome imho. You really feel much more involved while fighting than most MMOs I have played. I have been playing the game with my 360 controller which works excellently with the game. You can also play the game with keyboard and mouse but I can't imagine playing it without my controller now.

Now for the bad. The chat box is very basic and league (aka guild) chat is very rarely working. We have been told by the developers that this is being worked on and will soon be improved (see interview on Massively.com)

I have also moved from the EU servers over to the US (game allows you to play on both server groups) mostly because I got tired of going into instances and not understanding a word people are saying cause they refuse or can't speak English.