West Karana

God, I miss Rock Band so much.

When I started working for Massively, my son had just joined the Marines, and nights were quiet and free of any family obligations or having to make dinner (I eat mostly steamed rice and vegetables when I’m by myself). Every evening while the rice was cooking, I’d sit down with Rock Band, go online, and duel people on drums on HARD. THAT was a workout. I bought a mike stand so I could two-box, singing and guitar.

Then my son got kicked out of the Marines. My son is a devoted Xbox Live fan, so suddenly quiet nights were shattered by yelling and cursing at all hours. I finally had to banish him and the Xbox from the living room into his bedroom. And that was the end of Rock Band for me.

Now he and his Xbox are going off to college, and I have a PS3 that I don’t play games on.

Dude, I’m getting the band back together.

Although, it’s just me.

Rock Band 2 this month, Guitar Hero World Tour next month, buy instruments for one and they will work with the other so of COURSE I’ll be getting both (but the instruments are going to be RB2, since it comes out first).

Giant Bomb has the complete set list for GHWT. There’s some good stuff on it. And some boring stuff.

· 311 - “Beautiful Disaster”
· 30 Seconds To Mars - “The Kill”
· Airbourne - “Too Much Too Young” — doesn’t really prevent colds, it turns out.
. The Allman Brothers Band - “Ramblin’ Man” — one of the songs the rock band I was in in college played. The lead guitarist had this thing for southern rock.
· Anouk - “Good God”
· The Answer - “Never Too Late”
· At The Drive-In - “One Armed Scissor”
· Beastie Boys - “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” — looking forward to this one.
· Beatsteaks - “Hail to the Freaks”
· Billy Idol - “Rebel Yell” — drunken frat boy fave
· Black Label Society - “Stillborn”
· Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - “Weapon of Choice”
· blink-182 - “Dammit”
· Blondie - “One Way or Another” — kind of a boring song. How about that one where Debbie Harry raps?
· Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - “Hollywood Nights” — *yawn*
· Bon Jovi - “Livin’ On A Prayer” — Memories of this from American Idol still too fresh, these scars take time to heal.
· Bullet For My Valentine - “Scream Aim Fire” — dunno the song but I like the band name and the title.
· Coldplay - “Shiver” — hey, one for the kiddies.
· Creedence Clearwater Revival - “Up Around The Bend” — hey, one for the old folks.
· The Cult - “Love Removal Machine” — hey, one for my sister.
· Dinosaur Jr. - “Feel The Pain” — hey, one for ME finally.
· The Doors - “Love Me Two Times” — scene of Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison singing this song while getting a bj in the movie, still too fresh in my mind.
· Dream Theater - “Pull Me Under” — OMG I LOVE THIS SONG! It always reminds me of Disneyland, because I first heard it on the radio while we were driving around Anaheim.
· The Eagles - “Hotel California” — *yawn*
· The Enemy - “Aggro” — needs to learn Aggro Management.
· Filter - “Hey Man, Nice Shot” — thanks, dude
· Fleetwood Mac - “Go Your Own Way” — finally, I get to be Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood and Lindsay Buckingham… all at once!
· Foo Fighters - “Everlong” — always fun to play the Foos
· The Guess Who - “American Woman” — omg fifth grade flashback
· Hush Puppies - “You’re Gonna Say Yeah!” — and clap my hands!
· Interpol - “Obstacle 1”
· Jane’s Addiction - “Mountain Song” — my fingers are already hurting
· Jimi Hendrix - “Purple Haze (Live)” — is this where I burn the guitar controller?
· Jimi Hendrix - “The Wind Cries Mary” — okay no cynicism. I like this song.
· Jimmy Eat World - “The Middle” — omg flashback to the Mirage EQ Memories video
· Joe Satriani - “Satch Boogie” — okay singer, here comes your tambourine solo
· Kent - “Vinternoll2”
· Korn - “Freak On A Leash”
· Lacuna Coil - “Our Truth”
· Lenny Kravitz - “Are You Gonna Go My Way” — no, you should go YOUR own way.
· Linkin Park - “What I’ve Done” — dunno the song, but I’m betting it sounds like the two I have heard.
· The Living End - “Prisoner of Society”
· Los Lobos - “La Bamba” — I liked these guys back when.
· Lost Prophets - “Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast)” — dunno this one but again, cool title
· Lynyrd Skynyrd - “Sweet Home Alabama (Live)” — somewhere, Neil Young is getting mad.
· Mars Volta - “L’Via L’Viaquez”
· MC5’s Wayne Kramer - “Kick Out The Jams” — I loved Blue Oyster Cult’s cover of this song. BTW, where’s BOC on this set list?
· Metallica - “Trapped Under Ice” — painful Jumper flashback
· Michael Jackson - “Beat It” — must be played standing at a 60 degree angle.
· Modest Mouse - “Float On” — cool, indie rock.
· Motörhead - “Overkill”
· Muse - “Assassin” — BTW, where’s Throwing Muses on this set list?
· Negramaro - “Nuvole e Lenzuola”
· Nirvana - “About a Girl (Unplugged)” — plug her back in
· No Doubt - “Spiderwebs” — they sound so dated these days
· NOFX - “Soul Doubt”
· Oasis - “Some Might Say” — which reminds me, why no Beatles? That’d REALLY rock.
· Ozzy Osbourne - “Crazy Train” — have to admit, getting tired of Oz on these games.
· Ozzy Osbourne - “Mr. Crowley”
· Paramore - “Misery Business” — LOVED their song “Crush” on DLC for RB. Looking forward to this.
· Pat Benatar - “Heartbreaker” — GHWT rocks the 80s!
· R.E.M. - “The One I Love” — and 90s!
· Radio Futura - “Escuela De Calor”
· Rise Against - “Re-Education Through Labor” — should be interesting
· Sex Pistols - “Pretty Vacant” — pretty easy
· Silversun Pickups - “Lazy Eye” — you think I like wearing glasses?
· Smashing Pumpkins - “Today” — only on Halloween
· Steely Dan - “Do It Again” — if they’re gonna mine my high school musical memories, could they at least do Dire Straits?
· Steve Miller Band - “The Joker” — another drunken frat boy song
· Sting - “Demolition Man (Live)”
· The Stone Roses - “Love Spreads”
· Stuck In The Sound - “Toy Boy”
· Sublime - “Santeria” — this is how you do ska without sounding dated
· Survivor - “Eye of the Tiger” — and this is how you do rock and sound incredibly dated
· System of a Down - “B.Y.O.B.”
· Ted Nugent - “Stranglehold” — played on the machine gun controller
· Ted Nugent’s Original Guitar Duel Recording — I hated GH3’s stupid duels
· Tokio Hotel - “Monsoon”
· Tool - “Parabola” — Tool set! My daughter rejoices.
· Tool - “Schism”
· Tool - “Vicarious”
· Trust - “Antisocial”
· Van Halen - “Hot For Teacher” — can anyone but David Lee Roth sing this without looking silly?
· Willie Nelson - “On The Road Again” — puff and pass, dude
· Wings - “Band on the Run” — now they’re really going back. Is this the oldest song they have ever had on Guitar Hero? No, I guess the Hendrix stuff is older. But see, Hendrix was before my time (amazingly). This song, I remember when it came out. Well, I guess Paul McCartney is as close as we’re gonna get to the Beatles.
· Zakk Wylde’s Original Guitar Duel Recording — hate duels.

Yeah, I couldn’t see how they could make a tour of four guys pretending to play plastic instruments on stage and charge for it. But Rock Band Live is actually a (fairly cheap, considering) concert by some of the bands who have supplied downloadable content for Rock Band — Panic at the Disco, Dashboard Confessional, Plain White T’s and CAB. They’re playing all over the place — here in Connecticut, they’re playing in Bridgeport, one of the priciest cities in the state. Might be fun :)

So, just saw on Engadget that Mad Catz is gonna take an actual real electric guitar and turn it into a Rock Band 2 controller for PS3 and Xbox 360. So, real guitar, real size, real weight… except, you know, it’s still a fake guitar.

Now, I’m really confused. Okay, you take a REAL GUITAR and make a FAKE GUITAR from it. Isn’t that… insane… a little?

Now you know what would be awesome… if it still could be used as a regular guitar — SIMULTANEOUSLY…

I wonder how I ever thought I would get out of buying Rock Band 2.

No such luck. That set list ROCKS.

Reserve my copy now, I guess….

We knew it was coming, and it’s here. Rock Band 2 will be out in September for the Xbox 360 and somewhat later for the PS3. Rock Band DLC will work with Rock Band 2, and vice versa. The old instruments will work, but the new ones will be better (it will be tough to be worse than the original guitar, at least for the 360).

Having abandoned my Xbox 360 Rock Band to my son, I’d love to pick up the stuff again anew for the PS3. Problem is, the drum set for Guitar Hero World Tour looks better and they have a generally nicer feature set.

Decisions, decisions. I would really like to get back into Rock Band, but GH4 looks great and I really don’t want to have multiple drum sets around. Snazfg mentioned in a comment that controller manufacturers should try to make their controllers work with all systems when possible. I know they probably can’t, but it would be nice. I love these GH-type games, but constantly buying controllers is making me ill. And broke.

Because my son’s domination of the television and, indeed, the entire living room by his 24/7, non-stop playing of Call of Duty 4, and his loud, loud, continual swearing, homophobia and racially-tinged epithets which is, of course, your standard Xbox Live experience really made it impossible to get anything done that required thought, I consigned him, the 360 and the TV to his bedroom, where he could belittle strangers with some doors between him and I.

This left an empty space in the living room where the TV used to be, and a rather lonely set of Rock Band drums. The only game I played on the 360 was Rock Band, but since CoD4 invaded the house, I’d gotten very little chance to play, anyway.

So I subscribed to ConsumerReports.org, put in my desired screen size and price, and got their top recommendation for a cheap, basic HDTV, an Insignia (who? yup.) 37 inch, 720p TV. It was even on sale at Best Buy. This last weekend, I completed the set with a Playstation 3.

I didn’t buy the PS3 for the games. It’s been out for how long? And I still have not seen even one game that would compel me to purchase it, aside from Rock Band, which I already own. For the past however long it’s been out, I have been waiting for that one PS3 game I could not live without, that would force me to buy it. Nothing, nothing and more nothing. I don’t play shooters or war games. I’m not really into killing games, my MMO hobby aside. I don’t feel like competing online with foul-mouthed boys. I do like family-friendly games, but then, I have a Wii. Oh yes. Unlike the PS3, the Wii WAS a system that compelled me to buy it.

I bought the PS3 as a DVD/Blu-Ray player, and a media server. First thing I did was watch some Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who episodes from my Linux server. Then I put in a DVD — Iron Giant — and watched as it looked sharper and clearer than I had ever seen. The PS3 is an amazing media/DVD player.

Anyway, the PS3 I bought came with Metal Gear Solid 4. Since I had less than zero interest in a game where you run around assassinating people (and I wonder how I will feel about the Agency when it comes out? Since it’s all about randomly assassinating people from what I understand), I handed it to my son.

We waited ten minutes while the game installed on the hard drive. I thought this odd. Can we toss the disk now? During those ten minutes, Snake smoked three cigarettes all the way through, and had started on a fourth. Yup, the LOADING… screen is just this old guy, chain-smoking. Early on in the game, in one of the game’s interminable cut-scenes, one of the other characters asks him why he looks so old. My guess: his smoking habit. After a hard day dragging the victims of your sniper-scope attack into the shade so they don’t attract attention, you can even select the cigarettes in his inventory, and he’ll light right up. Ahhhhh. Suddenly the fact that he’s been spotted and a leapfrogging robot is after him, just fades away, like a cool mountain breeze.

I had kicked the Xbox 360 away from polite company only to hand the PS3 and the living room right back to my son. The irony was crushing.

Anyway, now that I have both consoles, here’s the comparison, so far.

Playing media. Both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 can play most media files from their hard drives. The Xbox 360 can talk with Windows machines running the Media Center extenders to stream media; the PS3 can talk to any DLNA/UPnP media streamer, including Windows MCE. Both consoles can play DVDs. The controls work better (imo) on the PS3. Plus the PS3 controller does not need batteries or a rechargeable battery pack, since it gets its power from being plugged into the PS3 via USB cable for an hour. Built in wireless networking removes the need to buy an extra wireless card, as the 360 requires. Plus the PS3 upsamples DVDs amazingly so they look high-def, AND it plays the new high-def DVD format, Blu-Ray, out of the box. Advantage: PS3 by a long mile.

Games: I am going to have to disqualify myself. I don’t like any of the system-exclusive games for either system enough to actually fork out $60 to play them, aside from franchise games that appear on every platform. I’ll play Guitar Hero World Tour on PS3 when it comes out, and in fact I will probably buy franchise games for the PS3 now that I have it, but I didn’t buy a PS3 to play them. That said, Xbox 360 has all these achievements with which you can keep score with your friends. I don’t know if the PS3 has achievements. Their Playstation Network is free, while Xbox Live has a monthly fee. Since I don’t care particularly for the games on either system, I will have to consider this one a draw. My son has a clear preference for the Xbox 360, since all his friends have 360s and they can get together and call each other gay for twelve hours straight. So counting his vote, advantage: Xbox 360.

Hardware: The PS3 is a nice bit of machine. The controls, and in fact, the entire machine has heft, design wins, and cute little touches like the touch sensitive buttons. The Xbox feels light and cheap. The wireless controllers need a constant supply of batteries, or a recharger — sold seperately. The wireless adapter is sold separately. Because licensing fees for wireless controllers are apparently beyond the means of manufacturers, Rock Band forced people to use a messy, separately-powered USB hub to get all the instrumentes plugged in. Advantage: PS3.

Compatibility: The Xbox 360 is compatible with Xbox games. The current version of the PS3 has no backward compatibility with PS2 games. Advantage: Xbox 360 by a mile.

Variety: The PS3 comes only in the 40 GB edition. The Xbox 360 has a bunch of variations, depending on your needs and budget. Advantage: Xbox 360 again.

Final tally: If you want your next-gen console to live as the heart of your entertainment center, the PS3 is your obvious, easy and best choice. If all you care about is gaming, and especially gaming with people online, and calling someone a ****-****** ****** *** doesn’t bother you, head right down and get that Xbox 360 with your name on it.

If I seem biased, well, remember. I paid money for both these consoles. And the last time I wondered about this, I ended up buying the Xbox 360. Having lived with all its quirks and flaws for seven months, I have a better basis for comparison. I also complain a lot about Xbox Live. After using it for many sessions of online Rock Band, and listening to it for months as my son played it, I honestly don’t have a generally high opinion of the random strangers you meet online. They tend to be children or teens and they spout racist, homophobic language of such fervor that I really wonder how they will view the world as adults. That said, since I have no PS3 games, I have not used the Playstation Network. I have heard it’s not as bad as Xbox Live, but I have no personal experience with it. When I revisit this topic, maybe I’ll have found that PSN is just as bad or worse. As it is, Xbox Live is the only one with which I have experience, and if my son weren’t an adult, I wouldn’t let him use it. The one PS3 game I have seen opens with the main character chain-smoking for ten minutes, so I don’t have a high expectation for PS3 games, though obviously they look fantastic. Well, that one does, anyway. They had Heavenly Sword at the demo station at the store, and that looked fairly cool, but I know from reviews that it is a short play. The lack of compatibility with PS2 games is a severe downer for me.

Rock Band’s first complete album download is not… Nevermind or Who’s Next, as we’d been told. It’s Boston’s first album, Boston, which has pretty damn near all the best songs they ever did (I like “Cool the Engines” and “Amanda” off their third…)

Did I buy it? Um yeah kinda immediately. Back in high school, I loved Boston with a passion matched only by my severe, unrequited longing for Mike Oldfield. But unlike Mike, I never got to see Boston live.

We were just another band out of Boston…

I haven’t done even a tenth of the gaming I usually do in a given week. Between my sister Hillary getting hitched in Boston; my sister Genjer and niece Jazzmin coming up from NYC to spend Easter weekend here in Connecticut; and the siren’s call of Rock Band demanding the return of the (in)famous Buzzkillaz, well, that was pretty much it.

But though I didn’t get much gaming done, I did get a lot of writing done. I am absolutely delighted to announce that I’ve been hired on at Massively to do what I can to make Massively the number one destination for hot news and features about every single game in existence. I’ve patched Test and re-installed EQ1 because I can think immediately of three or four games which could use a lot more coverage, and I aim to see they get it.

I hope also to introduce Massively’s readers to all the amazing bloggers whose sites I read every day. If you have some news you want to share with the world, shoot me a note and I’ll do my best to see it on Massively.

Nobody was more shocked than I when my application was accepted :P I was giddy for hours…

This is such a rush :) You’ll notice a new “Me @ Massively” link on the sidebar; this will point to my latest posts there.

Wanderlust’s “I Walked” comes on the MP3 player and I think how wonderful that song would be with Rock Band. I should Audiosurf it.

Last night, I strapped a microphone to a broom handle with hair ties, took up plastic guitar and was a one-woman band for awhile; singing and playing guitar at the same time.

It definitely helps if you know the words to the song in advance. ALL the words. Trying to read lyrics as they sped past, keep my pitch correct AND keep the guitar going was a little harder than I expected, but it felt so good to finish a verse, lean back from the mike and go into a blistering guitar solo for a few moments… it was 10x more fun than either singing or guitar alone.

I can’t see singing while playing drums instead of the guitar. Not because drums are harder (though they are), but because playing the drums is almost Zen-like for me — singing would just cheapen it.

Especially *my* singing.

Cyanbane challenged me and other Rock Band-enabled bloggers to come up with our “Top 10″ songs we’d like to see on Rock Band.

I have way more than ten songs I’d like to play on rock band, but I came up with ten that all are built around guitar-bass-drum-vocals, should be challenging enough to be interesting but not so hard they can’t be played or sung, and cover a fairly wide range of years. I couldn’t find a lot of the newer things in my collection on “imeem”, but then, most of the newer stuff I listen to wouldn’t be interesting on Rock Band.

So; enjoy. And if you have Rock Band and a blog, post your list, too and link back here or to Cyanbane’s page.

I didn’t notice at first that Cyan or his wife had chosen a Veruca Salt song. I swear I did it by coincidence! Sure, it’s their big hit, but it’s a great song (and a cool video too).

Sneaker Pimps is one of those weird bands that transcend style. They have a bizarre history. “Sick” is one of their more normal songs.

I love the drumming in Steely Dan songs, so I had to have one in here. Most of their songs feature Donald Fagen’s keyboards; Reeling in the Years is heavy with Walter Becker’s guitar and is easy to sing besides.

Agent Orange’s “Everything Turns Grey” I won’t apologize for. It’s a good, fast, driving rock song. I first heard of Agent Orange through a Bowling for Soup song, looked them up and hey! They’re GOOD!

“I Don’t Believe in Love” wasn’t my first choice for a song off Queensryche’s “Operation: Mindcrime”, but it’s one of the few songs off the album that doesn’t deal with drugs, murder, sex or religion.

“What I Got” by Sublime — another song everyone can just sing along to. Every set list needs a song like that.

“The Boys of Summer” by The Ataris. The Ataris take this old Don Henley song and make it move.

What Tull song could I put here? I wanted “Heavy Horses”, but listening to it, I didn’t see how it could really work. “Teacher” is still famous enough that people will have heard it, easy enough to play, and a nice change.

Any RB set list from me will contain a BOC song. “Hot Rails to Hell” was my daughter’s favorite when she was 7. I warp my kids young. As a song, it moves well, has fun lyrics and it isn’t another Buck Dharma ballad. This is BOC at their hottest.

Played Rock Band last night, I seem locked at “True Skill” 32. I’d lost only one match the night before, and THAT was to those stupid freeform outros that reward those with the fastest kicks instead of those who can play musically. Rock Band keeps duels close so even if you’re way ahead, someone can destroy you if you lose the outro by just 200 points.

Last night, I got 100% in five songs and aced the outro duel in one song (unusual for slow me), and didn’t lose any matches at all. I can play any Rock Band song on medium drums with nearly 100% accuracy, unless my favorite RB song, The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, comes on. That song takes you ALL over the drum kit, probably as close as RB gets to playing a real set on medium.

I can play hard drums, but I’m not yet good enough for duels. I don’t want to be the loser sitting at “True Skill” 0 or 1. The problem isn’t so much the syncopation, though long passages with the snare/tom alternating with the kick drum sometimes lose me if the beat is too fast.

The problem is with the chair I’m sitting on. It’s too low, but it’s the tallest chair in the house. Fast kicking — and it’s always fast double or triple kicks in hard and expert it seems — is impossible with the angle my ankle is at, especially since the kit sits on two inches of padding so I don’t bug the downstairs neighbors. The best angle for the foot is straight, pressing from the straight to down an inch or two.

So yeah, I need a drum stool, and maybe while I’m at it, longer sticks than the stumpy ones that come with the set which I feel are about due to break (I REALLY get into the drumming) (All I can hear for hours after a really good session are drum beats in everything). This feels like when I was learning flute. It’s tough, and then you break through that into someplace new that you can explore, until you come to the next barrier and start pushing against that.

That’s where I’m at. Medium is easy, Hard is what I’m up against, and I can see Expert over on the horizon (I did the first couple sets of Expert, thinking — I can do this — until I realized that no, no, I could not. Not yet.)

The really, really tough thing about this is embarrassment. I’m going to have to go to a music store and get some drum sticks and a stool and look at all those REAL drums and know that as good as I might someday get at Rock Band, it means nothing until I can play beats on a real kit.

I need a place without neighbors.

—

Oh yeah — a note to other Rock Band duelists. DON’T HOARD THE OVERDRIVE. I could be playing perfectly, 100%, and saving my overdrive for a good fast note run for maximum effect and people would make mistakes but still be overtaking me! I figured out why — whenever I wasn’t taking the overdrive and just sitting back, I was not making points I could have been making. And my opponent usually was. I had this rule that as long as I was ahead, I’d hoard it until it was three or four fourths full, then wait for a good section and be on overdrive for a long time.

This was not a winning strategy. People could catch up when I did that. Now, I don’t mind things being equal in the beginning, but by the end of the song, especially one with a stupid freeform outro, I want to be way ahead. So use ‘em when you get ‘em unless you come to a sucker section — one where there is no drum part. It’s fun watching overdrive drain away while you’re playing no notes.

—

Last addendum, I promise. Tug of War and Score Duel are ranked separately, so if you’re grinding levels in one, you can practice without fear in the other. So since I rank in Tug of War, I’ll be practicing the hard duels in Score Duel.

My blog gets its share of people looking for llama sex videos and stuff, but most of the people who come here seem to be looking to have specific questions answered. So, I’ll do my best.

10. Playing Rock Band on Xbox Live I assume you already have an Xbox Live account, and can connect to it. Rock Band has many, many ways to play online. The one you’ll want to try first is the one where you form a band with people all over the world. From the main menu, choose Multiplayer > Quick Match and then log in with your instrument. The person whose Xbox Live account it is must log in first, then any other people locally, then you may invite friends over Xbox Live, and finally search for more players over Xbox Live. If a band is looking for the instruments you have in your band, you may be pulled into someone else’s band. Regardless, only one person will be able to select the songs, and everyone must have the downloadable songs before they will be selectable from the menu. All instruments for the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band support the headset, so make sure you’re wearing it, especially for the full band mode, so you can discuss which songs you’d like to play. I personally prefer doing random ranked Tug of War or Score Duels with people. Rock Band by yourself is only half a game.

9. The Mirror of Reflected Achievements This crafted item lets you store one achievement profile and switch between it and another at will, as long as it and you are both in your house. It can be crafted by any crafter of level 75 or better, with at least 40,000 faction (ally) with their tradeskill society. The only way to build faction with your tradeskill society is by doing writs — you will need to do a total of 267 writs, if you’re starting from nothing, to get the necessary faction. The recipe is sold at each city’s tradeskill faction merchant; in Freeport, it is in the Coalition of Tradesfolk crafting instance in West Freeport. The rare component is the Smoldering Reflective Shard, which drops in the non-instanced portion of Rise of Kunark dungeons, and reportedly in the Court of Korocust instance, though I have not seen it there. It is tradeable and sells for anywhere from 25p to 100p on my server. If you are on the Befallen server and need one made, my jeweler, Dorah, can do it for you. It has to be commissioned, as the mirror, when made, is not tradeable.

8. The Weighted Companion Cube model Lots of 3D modelers were inspired to make models of the Weighted Companion Cube from Portal. Why? I don’t know! But I get a lot of people coming by asking about the one I made. I modeled mine with a freeware 3D modeler that produces files that run on the Persistence of Vision ray tracer (POVRay), of which I have been a devotee for at least a dozen years. I had to do a lot of hand tweaking to make it look right, and I could do it better. If I had to do it all over again, I would do it in Blender. I had this idea that I would start putting the WCC in various MMO scenes, just for fun. Anyway, not sure how much help it will be if you are not a POVRay modeler, but follow the link or go to the top of the main page of this blog and choose POVRay models and you’ll see it there.

7. The Crypt of Agony This is the Rise of Kunark’s easy “loot” instance. It has a bunch of nameds, most of them can drop masters and legendary set armor, and the final boss can drop all that plus some very nice items like the Carotid Cutter and the Nathsar Shortblade. You get to it by first going to the City of Sebilis, fighting in and taking the center path. There are two potential nameds outside the crypt; a wandering golem who will either be the named or a placeholder; and a static named in front of the instance itself. The second named drops bard pants and bard bracers so… bring a bard! The most notable thing about the instance, aside from the sheer number of mobs, is that each one can cast a group debuff called Curse of the Crypt (I believe) which makes all spells and combat arts consume twice as much power. This can be cured with any elemental cure, and it can be interrupted, which makes inquisitors with their group elemental cure combined with their stunning/knockbacking/interrupting melee attacks uniquely well suited for the Crypt. The last mob randomly strips buffs from people and has a fairly damaging AE at 50%, so healers and nukers should stay well out of range, and the fight will be no problem.

6. PS3 vs Xbox 360 I struggled over this, too. The PS3 has dropped precipitously in price recently, includes wireless or wired internet connections, connects seamlessly to the PSP, can be used as a standalone supercomputer or as a fairly high quality Blu-Ray HD DVD player. It doesn’t have many exclusive “must-have” games, but it has some. The Xbox 360 is prone to hardware malfunctions, is noisy, does not come standard with a HD DVD player or a wireless internet connection, but it DOES connect fairly seamlessly to home computers running Vista or Windows Media Center, and of course, has a superior selection of games. Its Xbox Live is by far the most popular online console match-making service, so what it comes down to, is superior hardware (PS3) or superior games (Xbox 360, for now). If gaming is all you want to do with the console, Xbox is likely the best choice.

5. Pawbuster Pawbuster is one of the three Tier 1 RoK raids. He’s a nasty drolvarg in an epic raid instance at the bottom of Karnor’s Castle. CoS probably doesn’t want their strats listed here, but I will say that he carries a huge hammer and he better watch out where he smashes it, because he just might break something if he does it in the wrong place.

4. The Overking Before you see the Overking, one of the two Tier 2 raids, you’ll have to fight through his legion of followers. The nameds drop fairly decent loot. I couldn’t even begin to describe the fight against the Overking himself. Well, I could, and it probably wouldn’t do any good because it’s all about shifting with the various tides and currents of the fight. It is exhilarating when it all goes well, though. The Overking lives in the Throne of Kor-Sha at the bottom of Chardok.

3. The Fate of Norrath This is the quest that takes you through the keying to Veeshan’s Peak. It’s widely thought that you need this quest to become keyed for VP, and that is not the case. In fact, if all you did was the bare minimum to progress the quest, you would not end up able to enter Veeshan’s Peak, as it only requires one of Venril Sathir or the Overking, but the keying requires them both. The Fate of Norrath can be gotten by examining some corpses behind the City of Mist in Kunzar Jungle. It is NOT needed to become keyed for VP, but you might as well do it at the same time, right? After you kill Leviathon — the Tier 3 raid — you’ll be attacked when you talk to the quest NPC. Bring friends.

2. Mythos Beta Invites Occasionally, Flagship gives all members of the beta more beta invites. They only give a couple out, and I always give them away here on this blog, and they always get snapped up almost immediately. I don’t currently have any beta invites. Flagship doesn’t know me from anyone, so I don’t get big bunches to give away (though if someone from Flagship WANTS me to give bunches away, just toss them in my account and they shall be given). Mythos is a fun but ultimately repetitive game without any particular plot other than to go to some randomly generated dungeon and put the hurt on all you find. If you only have fifteen minutes to spare, you could do worse than to spend it on a quick Mythos dungeon run. Emphasizing: I don’t have any beta invites. I had to close comments to my posts about Mythos because of this.

1. Venril Sathir My number one search term for the past month: Venril Sathir. He lives at the very back of the basement of the City of Sebilis, in an instance guarded by Warlord Kotiz or something like that. The Warlord is a level 84 single group encounter needed for at least one Outer Sebilis quest and drops fairly nice loot, so definitely break off a group from the raid and kill him for the loot if he’s up. Like the other raid mobs, it’s not my place to explain how Clan of Shadows kills him. He is a fun fight. Most Rise of Kunark raids are fairly fun — some are quite reminiscent of EQ1 raids, but few people, I imagine, have done those.

Well, that’s it for tonight, I think. If the info about these search terms helped you at all, then I’m happy. That’s what I want them to do.

I finally hit 31 in Rock Band last night after about a dozen duels of which I lost two.

Huh? Levels? Grinding? PvP?

Yeah, this is Rock Band. If you start exploring the Multiplayer menu in Rock Band, and avoid the unsatisfying “Band” player matching, where you and three random strangers from Xbox Live slowly come to understand why people suck, you’ll come to Tug of War and Score Duel. Score Duel was unsatisfying. Tug of War is surprisingly strategic.

You’ll rise the first few levels quickly — I was 27 after my first couple of hours. But it’s been a grind since then. I’d thought 30 was the level cap until I played someone who was 36. And so I grind. Some days it’s hard to find a group, but last night, I was getting them almost immediately, leaving me very little time to practice the quick stick twirl, which I find I am liking a lot more than the standard big spin. I saw a commercial for that new teleporting teenager movie, Jumper, and Samuel Jackson was using a big spin with this little grapple thing they use to stop people from teleporting.

So I’m a MMO player, so I guess I’ll be grinding to 50…. in Rock Band….

Vanguard: This is like Beta all over for me. In Beta, I played one day, meant to play again, never got around to it. Here, I bought the game, played one day, meant to play again, never got around to it. It’s not the bugs or lack of players or performance. It’s just TOO SIMILAR to what’s out there now. I was telling Genda the other night that I can’t see how Copernicus (from 38 Studios) can possibly succeed if they give us anything like what we already have. And that, I think, was Vanguard’s most damning failure. So, I’ll be uninstalling it. I can always reinstall it later. I just never have a free hour and figure it could best be spent playing Vanguard.

Pirates of the Burning Sea: My son got this over the weekend, he’s having a blast. He’s level sixteen or something now? Back in his level 1 ship, he can’t keep anything afloat. The lag is horrendous, but even with that, he’s having fun. He’s actually off the Xbox for hours at a time. He’s a pirate, of course, and he groups with other pirates and sails around sinking the French.

Naturally, if I play, I will have to choose the French. I have a great name: Bois Embrouille, but then I was thinking I could be Blanche DuBois, because I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers.

No particular movement with my EQ2 characters: Winterwing became a 28 bruiser after doing the Nektulos Beach questline, then heading to Butcherblock to complete some of those quests. The quests are moving toward the higher level part of Butcherblock, near the Lesser Faydark zone. Soon she’ll be starting in Steamfont as I continue bringing my very first character through EoF. Dorah, my necromancer, reached level 67 as she worked through the lower Kylong Plains quests — and got her Sokokar, of course. Every single quest reward has been an enormous upgrade for her.

Well, if you insist upon knowing the truth, I spent the weekend learning to twirl drumsticks. Yes, really. Poring over Youtube videos, dropping sticks onto cats, sending them helicoptering across the room. I can do it, though. I can twirl drumsticks the standard (what some call, boring) way. There’s variations so you can do little quick twirls while playing that I have to work on now. And of course, the double twirl is still beyond me. Someday, maybe years from now, it will be as important to know, RIGHT THEN, how to twirl drumsticks, as it was when I taught myself the one-handed card shuffle. Well, actually, that STILL hasn’t really been all that useful (which reminds me: must practice one-handed card shuffle.)

A friend from EQ1, who now plays on WoW, started a new character on my EQ2 server (dizzying, isn’t it.) I met up with her and OMG TWINSSSSSS! Well, I had to quickly do the quest for that spotless white gi so we could be even MORE alike. We tore through Darklight Woods, pulling hundreds of undead in all their throngs until the stupid, lazy named finally showed.

My insatiable hunger for dps had me spending most of the weekend in Solusek’s Eye, trying out different AA and weapon selections. The answers were surprising to me — turns out if you spec correctly, sword and shield is very viable for troubadors, and with my current choice of weapons, and respeccing for maximum benefit to shield arts, was able to get my tanking dps (so attacking mostly from the front) from about 990 to about 1150. Unfortunately, that’s not a spec I can use on raids.

Dera’s wondering if she heard a noise…

I was testing out Dera’s dps, and heard over channel someone asking for a healer for the Halls of Fate. It had been forever since I’d been there, so I volunteered. There was a time I would never have been able to solo heal the place… but it wasn’t a problem now. I guess all those levels help. All that RoK +healing jewelry doesn’t hurt, either.

Someone was working on a quest that in the end, turned everything left alive in HoF non-aggro. So I hatched all the drake eggs and took some screenshots with my new friends :)

And later on, I soloed the second floor of Veeshan’s Peak :P

There’s a lot of discussion about PvP in upcoming MMOs. How hardcore will it be, will it interest non-PvPers… It can. If the penalty for losing is not that great, I feel people will embrace it. By slowly removing the PvE experience as you level, as Warhammer is said to be contemplating, you end up in PvP quite naturally. That’s certainly how I went from a PvE EQ1 player to a RvR DAoC player.

Most popular games in history have been PvP — team sports are nearly all that way; board games are all like that; card games… games can be a certain amount of fun by themselves, but add someone else across the field or across the table and it becomes a true experience.

Guitar Hero is a fun single player game. It got a lot more fun when Genj and I were dueling last time she was up — her on Medium and me on Expert, so we were evenly matched. Actually, I think she won… but I was trying a lot harder to play well than if I had just been going through the game by myself.

PvP makes you *want* to play better.

Rock Band is a fun cooperative game — you and three friends make a band and play songs together. But it gets a lot more fun when you challenge people online. Sure, you’re the top dawg in your living room… but you’re a small puppy in the pound.

Last weekend, I terrified noobs by completely destroying them in the Tug of War duels on drums. One guy — “choke u” — sent me terrified messages afterward begging me to go play Hard duels instead of sitting around camping him on Medium. Well, I can’t play all songs on Hard, that’s why. Anyway, “choke u” is one of the Motorcycle Fotographers that quit when they’re losing to protect their ranking. So who cares what he thinks. And besides, with his low rank, he’s not swimming with the sharks that lurk in the deep, dark corners.

Tug of War is strategic, in the sense that every few bars the other person plays; sometimes you play together but mostly, you have a few seconds to watch their play, get a sense for how you should use (or save) your Overdrive. For instance, if the other player just started a long roll, you can see, for example, if they can even DO long rolls — noob players don’t have the precision. And if they do do them, well, at least you know that’s an excellent time for an Overdrive, since you get max points for them AND long rolls usually include another Overdrive to extend it even further.

That sort of thing. It’s kind of a bloodless PvP, aside from the huge damage to your rank if you lose.

Last night, I decided to go really hardcore and do Score Duel — both players play the whole song through, you can’t really see what the other player is doing, it’s like a 100m dash compared to a relay race.

I was lucky to get some casual duelists to start that let me break my habit of watching the other player before losing could damage my new rank. I was between rank 0 and 1 for at least four songs.

Then came Metallica’s “Blackened”. This is a DLC content — we both had to have bought it for it to appear as an option. So I was dealing with a real rocker. Blackened has long sections of quartets where it goes ’snare-kick-snare-rest’ mixed in with ’snare-(kick+tom)-snare-rest’, and it does so very fast.

I’d played Blackened before, but never in a duel, so I’d forgotten about them. Usually it’s not a problem, I learn the new pattern and then I’m fine. This time, it was like being neck and neck with another runner — and then tripping. He zoomed ahead. I came close, but never caught up after that — whereas I might have been able to in Tug of War with good Overdrive control.

Things went well until Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” — a song I’m usually pretty good at, since it is Jazz’s favorite (and also the song that opens the game). This is a song that is pretty easy, except where it’s not. There’s one spot, easy to miss, where they syncopate the snare for ONE beat. And they have BUNCHES of of grace notes followed by a kick+cymbal hit which take really good timing (they often have four or more in a row) and often contain an Overdrive as well. So it’s IMPORTANT to take those.

Every song has a different strategy, with its own high and low points and zones of control. Of course, playing perfectly would be a pretty good offense, but even the best players make mistakes.

I do love the PvP, and I’m working up to playing on Hard mode — playing the real demons. Medium is about as far as you can go without some sort of special affinity for the drums. After that, you’re beginning to play for real — a totally new world. Real drummers syncopate EVERYTHING, drop out drums randomly, never kick once where two would do.

I’m going to be severely beaten when I get there. But I’ll probably, perversely, enjoy it. And I’ll wallop some other newbie later on.

That’s the whole PvP thing, right?

One difference, one really important difference, between this and MMO PvP: in Rock Band, everyone has the same gear. The only thing that separates you from the other player is skill. You can’t fake it. You can’t get around it. You *can* use strategy to get around it, but that is another part of skill. MMOs only get you to keep playing because they promise that good enough gear means you can get by without as much skill.

This is what confuses me about MMO PvP. The *real* PvPers play shooters or real-time strategy games; they know the names of their opponents and they win or lose on their own skill. I just can’t see how grinding levels for gear so skill doesn’t matter even qualifies. What the heck is PvP even doing on MMOs?

It’s pretty broken on EQ2 and WoW — gear and levels trumps skill — and since WAR has both gear and levels, I guess it will have the same crutches. The last thing a MMO PvPer wants, is a fair fight. If they were all about both sides being equal and winning on skill alone — they’d go play Halo or something.

MMO PvP is therefore a niche, only a shadow of the real thing. All the real PvP has moved to other genres.