Sorry, no part 2 for Minecraft What I'm doing

Sorry, there will be no part 2 to this post about what I was building in Minecraft.  As the beta approaches for Minecraft, tomorrow actually, my friends and I decided it was time to go all TNT Armageddon on our server.  And, well, my house was first and is now nothing but a giant hole in the ground. 

Normally, a month of hard work lost in a few heartbeats would cause a rage inside me that most have never seen, but with Minecraft things grow stale.  Also survival multiplayer has been updated so much that when I started my project the game was immensely different than when I left off (players NEVER finish anything in Minecraft).  I'm looking forward to starting over with all the awesome knowledge I have now.  This time, I may actually fit my mine cart system in my initial building instead of some sort of Frankenstein building that I was building on the old world!

A new world dawns tomorrow at minecraft.gamesnacks.org.  Come on over and say hi.

First game of League of Legends

Here are the results from my first multi-player match in League of Legends?  I think I did fairly well.  We won the match even though we had one player AFK nearly the entire match.  I played as Ashe, who I am liking (following this guide).

Yes, I am playing League of Legends

NOTE: If you are interested in playing, please sign up via my referral link.

If you've been following my Raptr stream, you may have noticed that I've started playing League of Legends (LoL).  LoL is a strategy game based on the concepts of the Defense of the Ancients (DotA) map from Warcraft III.  Players pick a champion and battle an opposing team and their defense towers, NPC minions, and an NPC filled "jungle".

However, one sentence is not going to describe this game adequately.  It took a 48 minute long video for me to finally grasp the possibilities that lie within this game.  And there is nothing like a crazy British person to introduce you to a game with the acronym LoL:



With the video out of the way, here is my pertinent info:

Ingame name: heartlessgamer

Now, I've only played practice matches up to this point against AI bots. The community from all reports is unforgiving of newb players. The game is designed so that a bad player really hurts a team. A player that repeatedly dies without accomplishing anything is in reality "feeding" the other team and allowing them to increase their power and control of the game.

I suspect that I will be coming out of practice mode soon, because there are some things I won't learn until I am playing the real game. Also, I need to climb the leveling ladder to 30 which will never happen just running practice games. Leveling is a player's learning period, so I need to take it serious instead of just rushing to 30 because a level 30 newb has no excuses as to why they don't understand the game.

Oh and did I mention that the game is completely free to play?  No?  Well it is and most of the extra parts of the game can be unlocked for free as well by just playing.  The items that can be purchased in the cash shop are cosmetic or allow for players to skip past a bit of grinding in game points to unlock the various champions.

Part I: What I've been working on in #Minecraft

I am still helplessly addicted to Minecraft. I've given up on survival singleplayer now that survival multiplayer is alive and kicking with damage. I play on a small server with a few friends (but its down currently :( ) The game is definitely still alpha in many regards, but the quality of the core components makes it very playable.

Here is a few screenshots showing the evolution of my little spot on our server.  This covers my basic building.  I have a lot of progress past this which will come in another post.

This one is before I realized how to use F1 and F2 to take clean screenshots.

Putting the interior balconies up and finishing the ground floor walls.

Framing out the second floor and testing different roofing styles.

Dirt scaffolding to put on the roof.

Roof is finished.

Roof is complete and scaffolding is removed.

Black Friday Gaming Deals

Its that time of year again: Black Friday.
Onto the gaming deals o' the day:

Steam's daily deals: http://store.steampowered.com/

The Steam sale has been fairly underwhelming up to this point, but that may be due to the fact I own so many games from last years sale that I have yet to get around to playing that I'm afraid to buy anymore this year!  Dawn of War II Gold Edition is on sale now as of 1 PM EST for $13.60 (thats DoW II and DoWII Chaos Rising packaged together)






Amazon.com deals: Black Friday Video Game Deals

Amazon has been good if you are a console gamer.  A lot of Xbox360 titles.  Not much in the name of PC games or PC gaming gear.

A few choice picks:

Games:
Fable III (Xbox 360) - $29
Fallout: New Vegas (Xbox 360) - $29
Wii Bundle - $169
World of Warcraft Cataclysm (PC) - $39

Gear:
Microsoft SideWinder Gaming Mouse - $34 (save $45)
Sennheiser HD555 Professional Headphones - Check back shortly for deal
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard - $98 (save $3)

Happy Thanksgiving 2010!

Catch Up: September, October What I'm Playing/What I'm Paying

It sure has been quiet around here lately.  I missed out on EA Louse and the copy cats.  Work has been crazy and in my free time I've been settling down to watch the Green Bay Packers play, watching my son, or listening to the soothing sound of blocks being mined in Minecraft.

First, lets get the business out of the way.  I have embedded the new What I'm Playing/What I'm Paying spreadsheets for September and October below. The overall spreadsheet (includes previous months) can be found here.

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Game of the Month and /Played

To be honest, September and October were all about one game: Minecraft. Minecraft is a simple, yet brilliant game. Mine blocks, build stuff. The entire randomly generated world is made up of blocks that can be harvested either through tools or through the use of raw fist power. The blocks can then be used to build anything imaginable. Throw in flowing water (or lava), monsters, weapons and armor, and online play and you start to see why I am putting so much time into the game.

To best describe the game let me refer you to one of the video series that convinced me to buy the game:



Minecraft is addictive fun and nearly everything I've ever wanted in a game. Oh and its still in ALPHA. ALPHA! Now with the beta on the horizon and promises of better functioning multiplayer, I may have found the addiction... err game... I've been waiting for since giving up my addiction to World of Warcraft.

Best of all, I can run Minecraft on my work PC.  Good bye productivity (just kidding boss, I only play on break or on lunch).

Btw, you can get some sweet, sweet Minecraft music over on Amazon.

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/Paid

Total spent this Month: $13.47
My Value Rating: Excellent

Minecraft costs anywhere from $12 to $15 depending on the conversion rate at the time.  This purchase price includes all future updates for the game.  This is the best game purchase I've made in a very long time.

Please Ignore This #Minecraft Interlude

YOU are STILL wrong about Free 2 Play games

Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) has doubled, DOUBLED, their revenue since going Free 2 Play (F2P). Many people said this was the end of LotRO. Dungeon and Dragons Online's success changing to F2P was a fluke.  F2P does not work.

I suspect these same people will continue to tell us how terrible F2P is for MMO games. They will say "of course F2P versions of games make more money because all the crazy people have to spend more money now". These are the same people that will still be paying to play World of Warcraft or some old bastion of subscription gaming ten years from now.  The rest of us will be off enjoying the many new worlds opened to us with the F2P model.

Of course, these type of people are and continue to be WRONG about F2P.  MMOs are business propositions first, games second. This has always been the case. The business model that makes the most money is going to win. F2P works and makes money. Welcome to the real next generation; the free 2 play generaton.

Identify this freaky spider I found outside my house!

Thanks for the help!