Posts Tagged ‘pc’

Gaming
31 Oct 2011
31 Oct 2011 / 3:03 PM

Happy Halloween in Minecraft

What better way to celebrate this special night when things go bump and boo and rattle, than from the home of free-roaming skeletons, zombies and spiders?

Minecraft Halloween SkullThis skull on a spike recently appeared (okay, okay, I built it) in the river just outside town.

It was quite a large construction all in all, needing the assistance of many sheep, consisting as it does of over 500 white wool, 80 black, 50 light grey and 40 red. The spike it’s impaled on is smooth stone, rather than blocks of iron – I’m not made of money, you know.

You can just about make out from behind the bridge my other constructions, the fish and my home mentioned in this post. Off to the right of the skull is a friend’s residence, guarded by his retro Mario. It’s an odd, mixed-up place. :)

So from the monster-infested lands of our Minecraft server, I wish everyone a thoroughly enjoyable Happy Halloween!

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Tweets
25 Oct 2011
25 Oct 2011 / 11:43 PM

After the disappointing direct…

After the disappointing direction taken with GTA 4, this is the first time I’ve been not been fussed about a new GTA on the horizon.

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Tweets
07 Oct 2011
07 Oct 2011 / 5:05 PM

Use ‘crouch’ to sneak up on yo…

Use ‘crouch’ to sneak up on your enemies… except this throwback piece of shit game is 99% scripted so, well, I wouldn’t bother.

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Gaming
21 Sep 2011
21 Sep 2011 / 3:20 PM

Go Fish

Minecraft FishAs mentioned in my earlier post, here is a screenshot of that Minecraft fish I built on the multiplayer server I roam.

It’s a big bugger and I spent a fair while hunting down, dyeing and then shearing sheep to get all the wool to craft it. It might not look it but in total it needed about 500 pieces of wool for the whole structure and remember, this thing is hollow. Oh yes, there’s a ‘secret’ base inside, accessible by an underwater tunnel and a ‘hidden’ door. ‘Secret’ and ‘hidden’ in the sense that you didn’t know but the rest of the server guessed as much straight off the bat. My fish comes from the Blinky school of design, though with fewer eyes and the torches dotted all over him ensure he’s well-lit, day and night, free of pesky zombies and skeletons.

Minecraft DockOne of the first things I constructed on the server was a bridge leading from the main town to my little landmass. Swimming is such a pain so its construction was pretty much a no-brainer. I cooked up a whole batch of smooth stone (well, cobblestone looks a bit tacky) and set to work. Once that was done, I built a small dock just to the side of the bridge. There’s a chest on the dock full of boats and even a fishing rod, should the mood take you.

As you can see in the image to the left, the town is progressing quite nicely and yes, that is a gigantic sheep in the top-right, keeping vigil over everyone.

Minecraft HomeSince my last post, I’ve gotten around to revamping the cube I was at the time calling my home. I’ve now built a much more sprawling structure, an off-kilter keep with jutting towers. It’s still the cap on my to-the-bedrock mineshaft but now it looks a little more impressive than the dirt shack I built to save me from the roaming nasties at night.

At the bottom of the image, down near the little cove with the paddling sheep, you can just about make out my sugar cane farm, busily producing sugar and paper. I also have a mushroom farm and a cactus farm (none of them automated – I don’t really need that kind of quantity) built into my mineshaft.

The cactus farm sure came in handy when dyeing all that wool for my fish. Remember folks, dye the sheep, not the wool. You get more coloured wool and save dye shearing a dyed sheep than you would get colouring plain wool that you’ve just sheared. When you’re dealing with 500+ pieces of wool, that’s a big saving on dye.

Minecraft is a lot of fun and playing on a server with others is the icing on the cake. If you haven’t bought the game, go grab it, you won’t be disappointed.

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Gaming
22 Aug 2011
22 Aug 2011 / 10:03 PM

Skoardy in Minecraft

Minecraft SkoardyI’ve been messing around in Minecraft for almost exactly a year now and it really is great fun. Generated countless worlds and had pretty much all of them kick my ass in varying degrees. Swimming in lava, failing to swim in water, very brief flirtations with terminal velocities, punctured by the undead, bludgeoned by the undead, nudged off cliffs by passing sheep and of course, the ever faithful bowel-loosening ‘hug’ by over-friendly creepers. Yep, I’ve experienced almost ever death Minecraft has to offer over the past year.

These were all during single player games though. Minecraft also allows you to explore and build with friends, all together on one server and that too is also a real blast. Marvel at the structures others create and show off your own creative side. Or even your industrious side as you riddle the entire server with far too many tunnels, hoarding every resource available within the surrounding five square miles. There’s also many more opportunities to die but now through no fault of your own!

A slight issue on most multi-player servers is that everyone looks like ‘Steve‘. Thankfully, each player can replace their avatar’s texture with a new skin, either downloaded from the countless on offer from the interwebs or create their own using the existing template. As you might have guessed already from the image up there, I decided to go with a skin based on Skoardy. Hey, I never claimed to be very original!

So I have my own residence just off the beaten track – a rather modest abode not much more than a cap on the mineshaft that leads to a rather labyrinthine mass of tunnels, dead-ends and lava pools. I’ve built a bridge back to the town hub and a pleasant little dock, complete with boats for resource gathering expeditions. As a construction project, I’d been shearing huge quantities of wool (and dyeing sheep!) and that resulted a large lime-green fish appearing in the nearby river.

I’ll try to get some screenshots done, if… I’m not… um… too… busy… uh… building…

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GamingMMO
09 Jul 2011
09 Jul 2011 / 2:20 AM

Pet Me!

Voodoo FigurineSo you’ve just got the achievement ‘Can I Keep Him‘ for acquiring your first companion pet but you’re finding the prospect of hunting down another 149 for ‘Littlest Pet Shop‘ a touch daunting? Well, worry no more ‘cos Blizzard have your back! A new feature added to the character profiles on the World Of Warcraft website means that you can keep track of all the companion pets your persona currently owns but more importantly – also all the ones you have yet to collect! And to round it all off, they’ve done the same for mounts too! Yeah, ideal for all you peeps looking to grab ‘Mountain o’ Mounts‘.

If you’ve never checked out your character’s profile on the World Of Warcraft site, you really should. It’s a handy out-of-game summary of your character statistics and traits, good for evaluating your strengths and weaknesses plus it’s great for all the braggers out there. Just type your character’s name into the WoW site search box, find your particular version of that character in among the thousand and one others with the same name and away you go. You’ll find the new feature, the Companions & Mounts page, listed on the left-hand-side menu.

You can tweak the pets/mounts it shows with a number of filters (quests, drops, etc.) and mouse-overing a specific item will pop-up a larger version, with some details on how you can go about getting your mitts on it. Sometimes that information will probably be enough – other times, a site like Wowhead might be needed to help with the finer points. Btw, click and hold you LMB on the pet/mount image and you can drag it left and right for a 360° turntable effect. Very swish, eh?

All-in-all, it’s a really nice check-list feature, perfect for players aiming to ‘catch-em-all‘.

Side-notes – the little dude up there is the Voodoo Figurine companion pet, a ‘rare’ troll find obtained using the new Archaeology profession. There’s been several new pets/mounts added to the game with and since Cataclysm and I really, really should make a proper post about them. I will, eventually. Also, you’ll notice this article’s title refers to the pet aspect of the feature rather than the mounts. It’s just that ‘Mount Me!’ sounded just a little bit creepy. Okay, okay ‘creepier’.

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Gaming
24 Jun 2011
24 Jun 2011 / 9:15 PM

Saints Row: The Third gameplay trailer

I never played the original Saints Row game when it came out but when Saints Row 2 appeared in a Steam sale, I snapped it up. People had mentioned that it was a bit of a buggy mess (it kinda is) but beyond that, they assured me that it was great fun and paid homage to a lot of the gameplay elements of the old GTA 3 series that GTA 4 had sadly lost somewhere in development. And indeed, SR2 was a blast to play if you could look past the odd glitch.

The third game in the series was hinted at shortly after the second came out and with the recent screenshots and cinematic trailers doing the rounds, I’m getting quite keen to play the full game. Helping to stoke my interest is a new trailer focussing on gameplay. Here it is.

I think the thing that really pleased me about the gameplay video is the comments about driving. It looks like there will be a focus on the more arcade style of handling rather than the type championed by GTA 4 (those out-of-control canal barges they call cars).

I do wonder about the game itself though. Most games in the genre tend to focus on the kind of ground-up challenge that comes from empire building but the video seems quite keen to point out that the Saints are at the top of the pile. Where will the struggle come from this time round if you’ve got the whole toy chest at your disposal?

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GamingRant
04 Jan 2011
04 Jan 2011 / 12:42 AM

DLC me?

CashSo the Steam Holiday Sale ended yesterday (6pm for GMT people round here) and during the event, my heart grew three sizes. And by heart, I mean games collection. It was bargains galore and I feasted, to a budget, which is probably the best kind of feasting to be had. I picked up some Indie classics that I’ve long overlooked, some on-the-fence AAA titles that I just wasn’t prepared to blow 40-quid on when they were first released, a strategy game I didn’t even realise had been made, a couple of FPS titles in the “don’t play them alone, with the lights off during a stormy night if you value your underwear!” variety and some DLC. That’s what I want to have a wibble about today – the DLC.

It’s no secret that I’m a little wary of the DLC bandwagon. Knowing the games industry and the people involved – I’ve always felt the prospect of withholding content that would have normally been part of the regular full-game release and later packaging it as a separate ‘added value’ release at an additional cost just seemed like it’d be too tempting. More money for the same work? Ka-as-they-say-Ching! Is it already happening? Always going to be difficult to say but we know the industry isn’t above trying it on (remember Oblivion’s Horse Armour?). Of course, not all DLC has this tainted vibe. Some of it will be honest-to-goodness extra effort, above and beyond, game expanding content. Of course, we have that murky grey area of proper DLC developed concurrently of the original game, using resources that could easily have been part of the full-game but let’s just stick our fingers in our ears and ‘la-la-la-la-not-listening-la-la’ that concept for now, shall we?

I recently purchased DLC for two of the games I own, both for slightly different reasons. The first game was Grand Theft Auto 4 which I have to say (and will probably annoy some blinkered zealots by doing so), I didn’t enjoy half as much as I did the games from the earlier GTA3 series. For all it’s shine, I felt the core was spinning slightly off-kilter. It just didn’t seem right. The main problem I’d cite would be that driving felt waaaaaaay too loose, as if I was directing barges across an ice-rink. Add to that a game design/mission layout that emphasised long-distance to-ing and fro-ing (drive across two islands to a mission hub, pick up the mission, back across two islands to the mission site, usually involving more driving). They even put toll-booths on the bridges! Throw in an over-reliance on scripted chases (“So, there was no point in me weaving about like a idiot, emptying my entire ammo supply into your vehicle for the past ten minutes – you were unrealistically invulnerable until you passed some completely arbitrary location?“). I know it’s more ‘dramatic’ to have scripted missions but if I have acquired the tools and the skill to complete the mission early, let me. It is a sandbox game, after all, FFS.

Anyway, I purchased ‘The Lost and Damned‘ and ‘The Ballad of Gay Tony‘ as every review I’d seen for them had emphasised how much they improved on the core game. I’ve already consumed the biker gang portion of the DLC but have yet to finish my night-clubbing escapades as Gay Tony’s bouncer/business partner. Of the two, I think I’m enjoying TBOGT more and for the same reason that blighted the main game for me – driving. But, I hear you cry, they tidied up the motorbike handling specifically due to all the ‘in-formation’ posturing you do in TLAD. Yeah, but the way I got around all that mind numbing commuter-sim business between missions in GTA4 was to taxi ride the entire game. Once I realised I didn’t have to endure that lousy snorefest aspect of the game, it was a revelation. One that TLAD stomped all over with it’s insistence that I needed to be staring at hairy biker arses for 90%  of the DLC. So TBOGT wins big time in that respect.

The other game I purchased DLC for was Borderlands, an MMO-esque FPS that I didn’t really think would be my cup of tea but turned out to be a game I thoroughly enjoyed (and would recommend). It has four pieces of DLC out and since I’d heard that ‘Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot‘ was a bit of a weak cash-in and people thought that ‘Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution‘ was a little ‘meh’, I decided to try out the other two – ‘The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned‘ and ‘The Secret Armory of General Knoxx‘.

One thing I’ve noticed playing both these DLC and that’s the desire of the devs to pad out the experience somewhat. There are no fast-travel points within the DLC apart from the one you come in on. In the regular game, you’d wander off to a new zone, splatter whatever needed splattering and then hit the closest fast-travel point back to town to complete your mission. Since new missions would regularly send you back to those other zones, the fast travel points were also handy for skipping ahead to where you needed to be. In the DLC, they’ve tried to artificially extend the lifetime of the content by forcing you to traverse from point A to point Z and all the dreary letters in-between. I can see why they did it but they’re not really fooling anyone and all they managed to achieve is to introduce a major annoyance that hampers my enjoyment of the DLC. It’s more apparent in TSAOGK as it features highways to drive through (again… and again).

While on one mission, the happy little Claptrap announcer informed me that new missions were available to me back at the main hub, two zones away. So finishing up, off I drove. And drove and finally reached the hub, only to be told the new missions take place all the way back in the zone I’d just come from. Desire… to… finish… DLC… ebbing.

All-in-all, DLC can be fun and we’re only going to see more and more of it appearing. We buy it. If you ever get that niggling feeling that the game you just laid a wad of cash down on was a little short just as the devs announce a plethora of upcoming DLC, we’ve no-one but ourselves to blame. And padding? That’ll probably be with us forever too. Sure, there’ll be some stand-out examples of great DLC in the future but for every downloadable self-contained hunk of pure joy, there’ll be a mountain of flimsy, light-weight fluff strung out for much longer than the content can sustain. And we’ll buy that too.

By the way – Happy 2011! Hope it kicks your 2010 in the nuts like I’m hoping it’ll do to my past year.

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GamingMoviesTV
22 Dec 2010
22 Dec 2010 / 11:56 AM

…than a duck’s arse!

SteamI just wanted to expand on a tweet I made yesterday just a little way below this post and ‘big up’ the Steam Holiday Sale (and slightly smaller but still quite large ‘big up’ Apple’s 12 Days of Christmas promo). I came to Steam a little late in the game, to be honest. I didn’t realise that there was this great little service sat quietly in the corner, offering great bargains on a fairly regular basis. Up until lately, it was merely “where my Team Fortress 2 lives” and “that thing that usually needs updating every time I boot it” (which admittedly, wasn’t that often). I knew you could buy games from it – I just didn’t know they were quite regularly cheap games! Being a tight-fisted miser at heart, Steam is now my best friend and with all the bargains this new Holiday Sale brings, it should definitely be yours too.

Like I mentioned, you could call me a bit of a Steam newbie so I wasn’t aware of last year’s blow-out sale when it was actually occurring. Only later did I hear the wonderful tales of the rampant discounts – 50%, 66%, 75% and even 90% off a huge library of titles. I made a point of keeping an eye out for it this year though. But Steam has been good to me all year round, too. They often have a sale-ette running, discounting titles both for the weekend and during the mid-week. Pretty much everything I’ve been playing this year has been from those Steam offers and has saved me a fortune compared to the prices I’d be paying from brick-and-mortar alternatives (and even online stores).

There are pros and cons. The big pro one for me is, of course, the savings. When I can buy a stack of titles for the same price as one store bought game, I’m a happy chappy. That said, it’s weird and a little unsatisfying not to have a boxed copy in your hands with all the unpacking and that new-manual-smell. Sure, no-one ever reads it and it’s usually just chucked back in the box which itself is filling your home with more clutter but it’s there all the same. Waiting for your game to arrive in the post is swapped for downloading it, and Steam keeps it up-to-date with all the latest patches should they appear. And, oh yes, the CD/DVDs. The only reason why you ever see those game boxes again – the need to constantly hunt down a game disc because it won’t run without it being in your machine. So happy to not have that arse-ache to worry about.

But getting back to the Holiday Sale – between the 20th Dec (yes, I’m late with this) and the 2nd Jan, Steam are offering huge discounts across a whole range of titles, changing the primary offers daily and selling bundles at a fraction of what you’d pay for them otherwise. Every genre is catered for and there’s even a special section for the flavour-of-the-month sub-section – Indie Games, where you can pick up bundles of bite-sized fun for next to nothing. So take a look, you’re almost guaranteed to find a game you’ve overlooked, now with a price to tempt.

12 Days of ChristmasApple’s 12 Days of Christmas is a somewhat different beast. Firstly, it’s for their iWhatever hardware and secondly, it’s free. For a 12 day period (26th Dec – 6th Jan), Apple give away a bunch of iTunes ‘stuff’ (music, videos, movies, TV shows, apps) you can download for absolutely nothing. All you need to do is pop along to the appstore and download the free 12 Days of Christmas app. If that doesn’t appeal, you can even just sign up for email alerts. You’re not guaranteed find everything offered quite to your tastes but hopefully there’s at least one gem in the rough to make it worth it. And it’s free so stop whining ;)

Here’s a run down of what they offered last year just so you can get some perspective.

  • Day 1 – Music: Snow Patrol ‘An Olive Grove Facing The Sea (2009 Version).
  • Day 2 – TV Show: Alan Partridge ‘Knowing Me, Knowing Yule’.
  • Day 3 – Game: ‘Trivial Pursuit’.
  • Day 4 – Video: JLS ‘Everybody In Love’.
  • Day 5 – Video: Robbie Williams ‘Morning Sun’.
  • Day 6 – Film: ‘Lesbian Vampire Killers’.
  • Day 7 – TV Show: ‘Outnumbered’.
  • Day 8 – Game: ‘Labyrinth’.
  • Day 9 – Video: Leona Lewis ‘Happy’.
  • Day 10 – Film: ‘Peter and the Wolf’.
  • Day 11 – Game: ‘Let’s Golf!’.
  • Day 12 – Video: Foo Fighters ‘Wheels’.

So if you see anything up there that appeals, maybe it’s worth checking out this year’s promotion for similar ‘goodies’.

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GamingMMO
24 Sep 2010
24 Sep 2010 / 1:38 AM

Brewfest Pets

WolpertingerThe World of Warcraft world event, Brewfest started earlier this week and if you’re there for the pets or just the achievements, you’re probably already busy collecting Brewfest Prize Tokens. Good show! You’ll need them. This post is about the two vanity pets you can pick up from this event, in very short order – the Wolpertinger and the Pint-Sized Pink Pachyderm. They’re so easy to get, you’ll probably be able to take them both home with you from just one day of the Brewfest event (in you’re looking for it, NPCs around the cities will point you in the right direction but it’s outside Ironforge for the Alliance and outside Orgrimmar for those heathens, the Horde).

One point of note if you’re keen to show off these two lovely pets – they’re only visible to others if they’re in an ‘alcoholically-enhanced’ state (completely smashed, that is) or they’re in your group. Well, this is Brewfest.

The Wolpertinger, the horned, razor-toothed, be-winged hare is available through a simple quest – Catch the Wild Wolpertinger! (Horde version), where you attempt to catch five Wolpertingers with the provided net. Of course, you need to be thoroughly blitzed to see them (or a big wuss wearing googles, that is). Hand in the stunned Wolpertingers and you receive a tankard for your troubles. Invisible pet ahoy!

Pint-Sized Pink PachydermThe second pet – the Pint-Sized Pink Pachyderm is a little more involved to obtain as it requires you to collect 100 Brewfest Prize Tokens and purchase it from either Belbi Quikswitch (Alliance) or Blix Fixwidget (Horde). There are a number of ways to earn tokens. The one-off quests such as using the racing ram to collect three barrels gets you a handful, as does travelling Azeroth gunning down Pink Elekks or throwing steins at a ‘robot’. Once those are polished off, the dailies should help too (more racing ram fun around the city or stopping one of the the regular Dark Iron dwarf attacks). People often overlook the ‘non-quest’ ram-racing you can do back at the ram racing master. Ask him about doing more deliveries and he’ll give you another ram. Each delivery you make nets you another 2 tokens. If you make good use of the apple barrels, you’ll never need to let off top-speed and should earn a fair bundle of tokens from the task. Apparently, this ‘non-quest’ is on an eighteen hour cool-down so grab it every time you go back for your dailies.

Of the two, I think I prefer the Wolpertinger. As cute as the baby Elekk is, I’ve already got a Peanut from the Children’s Week event some I’m good on that front. Right, now to start saving up for the Brewfest outfit, get smashed and start dancing in Dalaran.

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GamingMMO
09 Sep 2010
09 Sep 2010 / 6:58 AM

The Green Proto-Drake is mine!

I spoke last year about the other rewards you could obtain from the Mysterious Egg / Cracked Egg item purchased when you reached Revered reputation with the Oracles from Geen, the gorloc Quartermaster but like I said, I hadn’t managed to claim the Reins of the Green Proto-Drake, a rather nice (280% speed) flying mount. Well, six months ago, that all changed.

Of course, I’d been obsessively smashing open those eggs ever since I first posted back in February last year (and doing a wonderful Auction House trade in Tickbird Hatchlings, White Tickbird Hatchlings, Cobra Hatchings and Proto-Drake Whelps). Then work issues got all-up-in- my-face and I had to take a break from WoW. After a lengthy absence, I came back to my old characters, rooted around in their banks and sure enough, one of them had a Cracked Egg that had run it’s course after I quit. What did I find when I popped it open?

Green Proto-DrakeAs the vaguely un-hip kids still insist on saying… Boo-ya!

I know these things are probably decided when you open the egg but it’s funny instead to think of this beastie crammed in a tiny egg, hidden away in a darkened bank vault for months on end. Well, now he’s free and happily flapping those huge scaly wings carrying my sorry butt from A-to-B (and back to A again when I forget what I was going to B for when I reach it).

As you can see in the screenshot, my character is transformed by the new disguise on the block, the Gnomeregan Pride reward, a quest item you receive from completing the Words for Delivery quest as part of the ‘Operation Gnomeregan’ Cataclysm pre-amble. For 30 minutes, you get to look like Gnomeregan Infantry. Shame it has a 4hr cool-down though. The only other rewards from the ‘Operation Gnomeregan’ quest line (apart from cash/exp) are a nice looking cloak (the Gnomeregan Drape) and a Feat of Strength achievement called, appropriately enough, ‘Operation: Gnomeregan‘.

Obviously, that’s for the Alliance. The Horde scum get to recapture the Echo Isles, earning the Darkspear Pride (which transforms you into a Darkspear Warrior for 30mins on a 4hr cool-down), a Darkspear Shroud and the ‘Zalazane’s Fall‘ Feat of Strength.

Hopefully, Cataclysm will bring forth a whole slew of new mounts and vanity pets to collect and sure enough, if things don’t get too hectic with work, I’ll try posting about how and where to get hold of them. See you there.

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General
25 Feb 2010
25 Feb 2010 / 12:27 PM

Firefox tab position redux

FirefoxI heart Firefox. It’s quick, has a slew of add-ons that make my browsing a breeze and I’ve got it set-up just how I like it. But those crazy developer types think they know better and in the last 3.6 update, they decided that new tabs opened from a link should appear directly to the right of the parent tab instead of at the end of the list as in the past. Pretty logical but grumpy old me can’t get on with this change.

For a start, it’s not consistent. Opening a previous or next page in a new tab (by middle-clicking on the back or forward buttons) doesn’t follow the new to-the-right pattern but instead opens the new tab in the old place, right at the end of your current tab list. Also, if you open a child tab, click to view it and then close it, you’ll now be viewing the page to the right of the parent tab rather than the parent itself. It’s a small annoyance but one that doesn’t gel with my ‘how it should work’ world view. So rather than put up with these (admittedly tiny) niggles, I figured I’d just switch back to the old system.

After a little searching, I found the fix. Open a new tab and put this in the address bar…

about:config

…and tap <return>. Click past the “I promise not to go in like a bull in a china shop!” warning and you’ll be presented with a loonnngggg list of settings. This is basically all the stuff you can tweak in Firefox but the devs would rather you didn’t in case you bugger something up. Simply scroll down the list until you spot…

browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent

It’ll be set to ‘true’. Right click the entry and select toggle so it reads ‘false’. You can close that tab and now, when you open a new child tab, Firefox will respond as it used to. Of course, if you get sick of trawling to the end of your tabs for new pages then simply open the config again and toggle it back.

And… if you’re still using that ramshackle stack of bugs commonly known as Internet Explorer, then please (insert stream of insults veiled as a recommendation to switch to another browser, here).

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General
12 Feb 2010
12 Feb 2010 / 9:04 PM

PNG me?

Wordpress 2.7I mentioned updating my theme in my last post and while lack of time is a pretty big hurdle for building a new front-end for Skoardy.com, another problem is an iffy design choice I made when I first created the site.

Originally, I wanted the images I used in posts to blend smoothly with the background. GIFs give a simple level of transparency but it’s an on/off deal – hardly what I was looking for. PNGs are the other option but when the format first appeared they were barely supported and even when they became more widespread, a few dopey hold-outs still handled them badly. So I created images with the background colour blended into them. Looked good, nice small file… but an absolute pain in the chuff to re-do any time you moved to a theme with a different background colour.

Hopefully, these days, browsers have come a little further and the chance of encountering some backward, hill-billy software that can’t handle a simple PNG image correctly should be pretty slim. By converting images on the site over time to PNGs, I at least remove that stumbling block for when I do have some time for a proper shuffle.

The images will be bigger, unfortunately, but that’s okay, right? You’re all on beefy bandwidth connections, yeah? No? Oh well, sucks to be you.

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GamingMMO
02 Apr 2009
02 Apr 2009 / 5:28 PM

Stinker, looking for love

StinkerAlthough the Valentine’s day inspired ‘Love is in the Air‘ world event in World of Warcraft may be a distant memory and even the crying on the forums about the random nature of the Be Mine meta achievement has died down, there is still one critter out there desperately trying to ‘get his groove on’… and failing.

I am of course talking about the mighty Stinker. Now, I’ve already managed to obtain this pet (as detailed here) but was quite amused to find the bods at Blizzard have given this critter a little extra oomph in the personality department. Quite clearly inspired by the legendary skunk philanderer Pepé Le Pew, it seems our little Stinker has a thing for the ladies. And by ‘ladies’, I mean cats. Specifically, the Bombay Cat and the Black Tabby Cat.

Whenever Stinker spots either of these felines, he falls instantly in love, chasing his prey around the area until he is finally scorned and his heart breaks. All together now… awwwww.

Don’t worry though, old Stinker has the memory of a goldfish and will again be pursuing the unobtainable within seconds.

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GamingMMO
25 Feb 2009
25 Feb 2009 / 12:16 AM

The Proto-Drake Whelp is mine!

Proto-Drake WhelpOkay, okay, I promise not to announce every single thing I acquire in World of Warcraft like this but this particular vanity pet has me more than a little pleased for the moment. Partly because it completes the ‘set’ and partly because it’s one of those long slog kind of rewards to get. Let me explain (and show you how to get your hands on the flying bundle of fun to the left)…

The Proto-Drake Whelp comes from the Cracked Egg, which comes from owning a Mysterious Egg for the alloted 7 days – after which, it transforms and the roulette of what you get can begin. The Mysterious Egg can be bought from Geen, the Oracles Quartermaster once you have Revered reputation with them (and 3 gold to spare). You’ll find this race of Gorlocs in their village at Rainspeaker Canopy, in Sholazar Basin, Northrend. Yep, you’ll need to be tootling around in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for this reward.

Now, building reputation with these beasties requires you to have finished the Oracles quest line, ending with ‘A Hero’s Burden‘. This quest has you taking down an elite mob, Artruis the Heartless (so maybe bring friends) but during the fight, you’ll be attacked by a Gorloc and a Wolvar (the Frenzyhart Tribe being the other warring faction in the Basin – by this point you’ll have met them already). Who you kill decides which faction’s daily quests you can take. If you’re going for the Oracles rewards, you’ll want to beat the puppy to a pulp. Complete the quest chain and you’ll be honoured with the Oracles but hated by the Frenzyhearts. Meh. Never liked those slave-driving morons much anyway.

Right, now just do the daily quests in the Basin to earn that Revered standing and you can purchase a Mysterious Egg. Stick it in the bank for a week and forget about it. When you come back, crack that sucker open and then cry because, chances are, you’ll just get some Aged Yolk for all your effort. Don’t worry, you can buy another egg but that means another seven days. Yay!

If you happen to get lucky, you’ll receive one of four possible vanity pets. In order of how common they apparently are, you could get either a Tickbird Hatchling, a White Tickbird Hatchling, a Cobra Hatching or our friend up there, the Proto-Drake Whelp. If you’re really, really lucky (2% drop rate according to Wowhead), you could wind up with the Reins of the Green Proto-Drake, a flying mount!

No. I haven’t got that yet. *mutter* *grumble* Note – you can get the same pet even if you’ve already learnt that one. Great for flogging on the auction house, not so great if you’re impatient for some other reward.

So there you have it. How to get your very own Proto-Drake Whelp. It’s not a hard process and not particularly expensive either, just time consuming. Yes, I’ll probably be swimming in Aged Yolks before I ever get the flying mount but I’ve got my mind set on it.

Oh, and if you do get everything and become Exalted with the Oracles, don’t forget to switch back to the Frenzyheart Tribe faction, complete their daily quests and become Exalted with them so that you can earn the Mercenary of Sholazar achievement!

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General
20 Jan 2009
20 Jan 2009 / 9:18 PM

Bleaurgh… IE

Pretty much just a follow-up to one of my earlier posts (‘Skoardy v3.0‘) where I unveiled/announced my revamp of the Skoardy.com theme. I was pretty happy with the results as I’d almost managed to achieve everything I set out to with the new look and also added some elements I’d overlooked the first time I switched everything over to WordPress.

Of course, I have little-to-no faith in my skills with CSS, hence the comments about not coughing. It’s a rickety set of stairs, the outer shell of Skoardy.com, and give it too much of a hammering and it’s likely to fall apart. But, it looked okay and everything was where it should be… or so I thought.

In comes Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with it’s size 9 clod-hoppers and its own unique take on what things should look like. Normally, I use Firefox as my default browser. It’s small, fast and best of all, with the right add-ons, you’ll never need to see another advert again. It looked fine on that. I even tried the site with Google’s Chrome – the new kid of the block that’s also small/fast. Also, looked fine. And with IE? Yeah…um, well, it was borked on IE.

I don’t usually like booting IE up. These days it seems there’s always some kind of new exploit being reported and death from within for anyone foolish enough to take it for a spin on the intahwebs. Eventually, I worked up the nerve to have a look. Things were misplaced, oddly positioned and some bizarre gaps were appearing. One by one, I managed correct the flaws, writing in more specific code so that even IE couldn’t get creative with my instructions. Everything was fixed, except for some gaps in the sidebar. I know IE users take up the market share of web tourists (seriously guys, switch to a new browser already!) so I wanted to fix it but nothing I tried could get rid.

So every few days I’d get a new idea and try it out with the hope that it’d fix the problem without breaking the site for other browsers. Every time, same result. Nada.

Tonight, however, the new fix worked and everything fell into place. Better still, it’s something that other browsers appear to care little about. Of course, this is just with version 7 of IE. If it’s broken on older versions, screw you. Upgrade… or better still, switch to a new browser already!

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GamingMMO
12 Jan 2009
12 Jan 2009 / 4:45 PM

Meet Stinker!

StinkerYou probably already sussed from my first post talking about the new Achievements feature Blizzard added prior to the launch of the last expansion ‘Wrath Of The Lich King’, that I had my eye on the vanity pet collection achievements. Giving them their own tab and taking them out of your backpacks and bank slots, thereby ridding you of the space requirement certainly allowed even the most ardent pack-rat to enjoy the thrill of being followed around everywhere in game by a variety of pets.

So ever since that day, I’ve kept an eye out for new vanity pets. An auction purchase here, a quick quest or two there and a few trips to previously overlooked vendors, slowly adding to my collection until Sunday night when I hit the magic number – 50 and gained the achievement ‘Shop Smart, Shop Pet…Smart‘. Moments later, a letter from Breanni, the NPC pet-store owner in Dalaran, arrived commending me on my pet care and asking me to look after… Stinker, the vanity pet skunk.

So here I am with my collection of 51 vanity pets and of course I felt the urge to brag share the news of my accomplishment. It’s not such a tough feat all told – especially considering there are apparently over a hundred pets in game. But I’m still pleased. In fact, I thought I’d share with you my favourite ten pets… listed after the ‘jump’.

Click to continue…

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GamingMMO
04 Dec 2008
04 Dec 2008 / 10:28 PM

Step away from the Mechanostrider, lady!

Like a drunken adult trying to ride a child’s playground ‘springy’, I bring you this screenshot of my World of Warcraft character in full Frost Vrykul disguise sat on his (yes, the disguise changes your sex if you’re a fella) swift, green mechanostrider. Riding on mounts that are clearly waaaaay too small for you is one of the delights that await you in the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. The mount considered too tiny for anything but a Gnome or a Dwarf to ride is apparently strong enough to support the weight of a hulking, frozen warrior in full battle armour. It’s Gnome technology at it’s finest!
Frost Vrykul on a Swift Green Mechanostrider
You might be wondering, since WotLK came out almost a month ago, why beyond showing you this hilarious scene (seriously, my eyes were watering after seeing this giant zipping around on a tiny mechanostrider… but, hey, that’s just me) I’ve been strangely quiet on the expansion-related article front. The fact is, I’ve been playing WotLK during pretty much any free time I can muster. Work has been torture. Not the regular torture that it usually is but a special kind of torture you’d only wish upon your most successful friends.

Wrath of the Lich King is great fun. I’ve really been enjoying it. Of course, people are devouring the new content at a lightning speed and if that’s your thing, go at it. For everyone else, I’d recommend taking things at your own pace. Enjoy the sights, take in the lore and for God’s sake, read the damn quest instructions, you morons! Sorry… sorry. One of the returning plagues from the launch of The Burning Crusade (heck, even the start of World of Warcraft itself) is the dumbasses who think yelling out to everyone else in the area to give them a point-by-point breakdown of every step a quest entails is somehow quicker than simply reading four or so lines of text.

Still, before long you find yourself in the next area and well away from those knuckle-dragging bozos. People seem to be handling the change of scenery in WotLK a lot better than TBC and feel quite at home in the Dun Morogh-esque snowy landscapes it provides. The gap between end-game TBC player items and WotLK new greens seems to be less drastic than the first expansion, quietening some of the masses this time round though there are murmurs that Blizzard might have gone too far in the opposite direction – that people rarely find the quest rewards a worthwhile upgrade to anything they already had. What can I say – you can’t please everyone.

New game mechanics in the form of vehicles have been the occasional questing highlight while playing through the expansion and a new slew of recipes are sure to keep me and my alts busy (and financially secure) for a long time to come. I can’t say I’m too enthralled with the new Death Knight class. Some people are having a whale of a time, to be sure (and others are crying that they’re too over-powered), but for me the late 50s and very early 60s are a real drag for my alts so having a class dropped right at the foot of that particular mountain just doesn’t inspire. Maybe a month or two down the road I’ll have an itch for something different but in what roughly amounts to three levels of DK starter quests, I can’t muster the energy to put aside my main and embrace the traitorous DK lifestyle.

So WotLK is lovely and I’m looking forward to getting as much blood from this particular stone as I can, as is MMORPG tradition but looking ahead, I really think Blizzard have to step up their game and try to adhere to their statement of providing something close to one expansion a year. Two years is too long to wait, if you ask me. I have to wonder if the majority of WoW’s playerbase would wait another two years for the next one.

And of course, I can’t end an article mentioning drunken adults on a playground springy without linking to this webcomic from Cascade Failure.

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GamingMMO
28 Oct 2008
28 Oct 2008 / 1:03 AM

The Albino Drake is mine!

Following on from last week’s ‘Achievapalooza 2008!‘ post, where I basically admitted defeat and realised that Blizzard had added yet another hook in my gullet with their Achievements system (not that they really needed more hooks in there – I’m considering starting my own tackle shop with the collection they’ve bestowed on me already), I thought it was worth rah-rah’ing about a recent and more ‘tangible’ reward I’ve collected.

Since the patch went live, I’ve quickly racked up the achievements related to various daily quests, a bunch of the event themed achievements (this last week or so being ‘Hallow’s End‘, WoW’s Halloween-esque celebration of the Forsaken breaking free of the Lich King) and the rather easy fishing and cooking achievements. Being an all-rounder pays off as one of the cooking profession quests (‘The Cake Is Not A Lie‘ – a cute reference to Valve’s excellent game, Portal) requires you to prepare a Delicious Chocolate Cake, the recipe for which is a random drop reward from a Fishing daily quest in Outland.

The new ability to track low-level quests on the mini-map means that my pre-TBC character now has ‘exalted’ reputation with all the old Azerothian home factions and sports the impressive sounding Ambassador title displayed in front of his name. Post-TBC chars pretty much get free rep for sneezing so it was a little more work than new characters would be expected to do but I wanted the title and sailing through level 10-20 quests while you’re a level 70 character isn’t exactly what you’d call brain surgery.

The achievement I’m happiest with is the one called ‘Leading the Cavalry‘ and requires the player to obtain 50 unique mounts (ground based or flying). It really should be called ‘How much gold can you spare?’ as it’s basically an exercise in purchasing power, visiting various vendors and snapping up their entire range of mounts. Of course, one of the first things you need to do is make sure you can purchase other race’s mounts – which is where being exalted with their faction pays off.

Long story short, I’m now riding about on a huge albino drake… behold!

Albino Drake rewardTo fill out the impressive effect, my character is also sporting the latest in Hallow’s End couture… the ninja costume courtesy of trick of treating an inn keeper.

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GamingMMO
21 Oct 2008
21 Oct 2008 / 1:15 AM

Achievapalooza 2008!

“Just One More Achievement…”According to the rather disturbing countdown clock on WOW Insider, Blizzard’s second expansion for World Of Warcraft – Wrath Of The Lich King, is due in just under a month (okay, okay, 23 days, 3 hours, 56 minutes and 6 seconds at the time of writing. See, I told you it was rather disturbing… who needs to be that fixated on an expansion’s launch?). I have mixed feelings about the launch day. On the one hand, I’m excited by the prospect of exploring all new lands and running away from all new critters but I also remember the launch of The Burning Crusade, the last expansion. The starting areas were flooded with players just as excited and due to a tweak in respawn timers (to ensure people weren’t sat around waiting for mobs to reappear, or more likely, at each other’s throats for ‘kill stealing’), you could down a critter and before your attack animation had ceased, a replacement had spawned and already be kicking your ass. It was a little… um… hectic, those first few days.

One of the things that I was rather looking forward to and something I’d talked about in the past, was the achievements. Well, a few weeks (months?) ago they announced that they were rolling some things previously assumed to be part of WotLK forward (such as pet revamps/class revamps, vanity pet/mount interface shuffle and the incription profession). Well, in the Tue/Wed 3.0.2 patch last week, they all arrived along with the new achievements feature.

Achievements boil the game down to it’s most basic of tick-box orientated gameplay. Visited all the areas in Durotar? Well done, you earn some points. Beaten seven shades of shinola out of Edwin VanCleef? More points for you! These are just some of the easy-peasy achievements. They also combine into sets so your Durotar wanderings add to your overall Explorer achievement for East Kingdoms, Kalimdor, Outland and Northrend. Your dungeon boss killing spree counts towards your various ‘Dungeonmaster‘ achievements. Some of these achievements will even earn you some lightweight rewards like titles, tabards and vanity pets. There’s tougher achievements in the mix, some that require long-term commitments and some that acknowledge bouts of luck such as rare kills/drops. All in all, that’s one helluva list (750 achievements… currently) of boxes to tick.

Me, I’m going all OCD on the easy ones. I’ve decided that the rest are going to have to be happy accidents if I get them or I’ll end up driving myself batty like the dopes on the forums. I have to admit, it’s kinda nice going about your business, playing the game as usual then seeing the whoosh of an achievement occur. Even reviewing your ‘progress’ on some of the others tempts you into focusing your gameplay a little more.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to infiltrate an enemy faction city and spend countless hours trying to catch a rare fish, all the while getting my ass handed to me by players trying to earn that bizarre “kill-then-/hug-emote-the-corpse” achievement…

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Gaming
20 Aug 2008
20 Aug 2008 / 8:46 PM

‘The Sims 3′ dated

The Sims 3 at GCAnother show (this time the 2008 Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany), another ‘The Sim 3‘ snippet. Amongst the other blurb from their press conference, EA announced the release date for their bloated cash cow… a demonic, cthulhian beast sporting a million udders that produce an endless pungent stream of sickly green expansions, each one throttling your wallet until it’s a shrivelled, dried up old husk! Err… where was I? Oh, yes, release date!

No Christmas cash-in on the cards, it seems, as the (global, no less) release date stands at the 20th Feb 2009. As well as hitting the real-world shelves, it’ll also be arriving at online outlets in the shape of a digital download – although I can’t imagine it being a petite chunk of bandwidth you’d need to expend for a title like this. I guess those with internet connections from the stoneage should stick to their local highstreet if they want a Sims fix.

Along with the regular, run-of-the-mill version being sold that day, those of you with money to burn will be able to get your mitts on a Collector’s Edition release. What does the extra moolah buy you? A Plumbob USB Drive with matching Green Carabiner, in-game Italian-style sports car, a tips and hints guide (which I assume will be page after page of hot tips on what to do if your Sims have a tendency to urinate in every room of the house except the bathroom) and Plumbob stickers. Hmm, no artbook or soundtracks? Meh.

In case you’re wondering what the hell a Plumbob is, it’s the little green diamond thing you’ll have stared at for hours on end if you even dare call yourself a The Sims fan. Anyway, all the facts and a healthy dose of ‘sales pitch’ can be found in this press release.

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GamingMMO
23 Jul 2008
23 Jul 2008 / 2:21 AM

Gotta catch ‘em. All of ‘em

EgbertApologies for butchering the Pokémon catchphrase but this latest announcement by Blizzard Entertainment for the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion – ‘Wrath of the Lich King’, just puts me in mind of Nintendo’s obsessive collect-’em-up title.

I thought the hook was already buried deep within my cheek in regards to announced features for the expansion. Extensive new content? Yay! I want me some of that. Raise the level cap? Mmm-mmm! Loving that progression. Then they did it… They appealed to the brainless grinder in me. They announced their Achievements system.

Basically they’re borrowing the system Microsoft have made popular with their XBox Live ‘experience’, and bolting it into the perfect casing for such a devious set of enticements – a Massively Multiplayer Online game. With it they’ll be awarding points for completing various chores and attaining specific conditions (from the bizarre; getting your hair cut in a new WotLK barbershop… to the obsessive; raising your reputation with 40 factions to ‘Exalted’).

And what do points make? Prizes! (sorry, Brucie). And by prizes, I mean some fairly innocuous little rewards in the shape of titles, vanity pets and tabards. “More pets?” I hear you scream, “But I’ve got pets coming out of my ears! I can’t possibly devote yet more bank space to all these cute little critters!”. Worry not, that’s where Blizzard’s announcement comes in (you did click the link before, right?).

Blizzard CM, Wryxian, revealed that in WotLK, players won’t need to forever juggle bag & bank space due to their insane need to collect each and every mount and vanity pet in the game. You’ll simply ‘learn’ the pet/mount as you would a spell and it’ll appear in a new tab in your character info window to be called up whenever desired. Cool huh? Yeah. That’s me tied up until the expansion after WotLK comes out desperately trying to catch ‘em all, too.

Oh, crapcakes!

ps. Almost forgot to mention – if you are planning on expanding your critter collection to near-legendary status, the website with all the information you could ever want is ‘WarcraftPets.com’. Consider it a to-do list as well as a how-to guide.

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Gaming
15 Jul 2008
15 Jul 2008 / 7:28 PM

The Sims 3 E3 trailer

The Sims 3 at E3So E3 is upon us again with it’s usual glut of high hopes and crushing disappointments. Maybe I’m just bitter that the best I can manage is watching the various game site feeds showing the announcements and key notes by industry giants instead of being there in person, but it does seem we build E3 up to be some amazing font of new information and sneak peeks. Instead, it’s usually a lot of worthless posturing, statistics massaging and information that we’ve had for weeks.

As much is true of this new trailer for The Sims 3 that EA pimped during their little showcase. Still a long way off (2009 – I guess they’ve got a couple of expansions they want to wring from the stone that is The Sims 2), it’s claim-to-fame is the boast that The Sims 3 opens the doors for your little ‘digital you’ and allows them to explore their surroundings. Given your Sim’s need to ‘go bathroom’ every 14.7 seconds, hopefully the surroundings are full of W.Cs or, at the very least, that the very first store you encounter on your journey sells adult diapers.

I’m still looking at The Sims 3 with some suspicion, though. The open-world feature is basically just taking the training wheels off of the earlier outings – removing the loading screens and allowing you to explore other ‘lots’. Sure, linking them all together into one streamed world would be nice but does it merit a ’3′? The fact they’re not plugging any other features at this point also makes me worry that they’re simply going to drip-feed them to the public when they inevitably reset the expansions counter back to zero upon launch.

Probably being cynical but after showing their hand twice now, I’d be a fool to expect EA intends anything else – especially when we’ve already proved we’re ready to snap it up and ask for seconds (or even thirds). The new trailer can be found on the official The Sims 3 site.

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Gaming
31 May 2008
31 May 2008 / 2:32 PM

Skoardy in the wild

OSD SkoardyOkay, so Googling (or Egosurfing) yourself is a pretty sad but commonplace activity in the modern world. We can’t help it. The desire for recognition and validation drives us to seek out any mention of our names and internet personae through popular search engines – often with disappointing results.

While I myself have made my mark on the internet, so have a few others who share my name. Good for them, I say. But I’d also like to point out that I do not, contrary to what Google might suggest, enjoy stripping naked and parading around British caravan sites, nor am I a Labour candidate or a Detective Inspector of a police drug unit. I don’t know whether the police man or the politician are the ones who get their jollies waving their bits in the fresh air but I can assure you it isn’t me!

One hit I’ve always meant to mention on my page was a sighting of my “Skoardy” Gameboy Colour homebrew title. Not only am I a (pretty average?) graphic artist, but I can also lay claim to being a decidedly sub-par programmer and ‘back-in-the-day’ I entered an amateur programming competition run by BUNG, an accessories supplier from Hong Kong. I think it was their way of trying to convince everyone that the products they sold weren’t simply the domain of the games pirates. Needless to say, Nintendo didn’t see it that way and they were shut down.

Anyhoo, “Skoardy” was my entry. It was a simple maze game based off of a title I’d created in my school days on the computer department’s BBC Micros. It kept my schoolmates amused but that was probably more to do with the only alternative being school work. So I updated it for the competition and didn’t win. I got a commendation (best thought of as 3rd place) but there was a shed load of entries so I was happy with my prizes.

Back to the self-Googling though. This sighting appears to be for a Gameboy Colour plugin that allows you to play Gameboy titles on an on-screen display for one of those PC Digital TV packages. I’ve seen stuff like this before where on top of providing you functionality to record/timeshift from your TV Tuner and access to scheduling reference, they also add extra features like on-screen Tetris and CD cataloguing. Looks like playing GBC games was this plugin’s aim and “Skoardy” was the title they grabbed for the screenshot. I’m so proud *sniff*

If your German isn’t up to scratch and for some bizarre reason you’re still interested in finding out what the page said, Google also do a good job of translating the site into English and here is that link.

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GamingMMO
22 Apr 2008
22 Apr 2008 / 5:33 PM

Sunwell Mailbox Watch 2008

Sunwell MailboxI guess, seeing as it’s the second most popular search bringing people to my awesome humble site (as mentioned before, the first happens to be George Hamilton), it behoves me to post an update to my previous article – Patch 2.4 – Fury of the Mailbox.

The server which houses the majority of my most impressive characters (read as : some of their stuff actually glows!) just today unlocked Phase 4 on the Isle of Quel’Danas and with it… the mighty mailbox! (pictured). So yes, there is a mailbox on Sunwell Isle / Isle of Quel’Danas but it doesn’t appear until your server has plowed through all the other quests and started Phase 4. Chances are, at the time of this posting, your server will either be very close or have already done it.

The mailbox can be found before the entrance to the large building (now an inn) at the northern end of the Isle, in the area referred to as Sun’s Reach Harbor.

I suppose I should also mention that only the other day I managed to check up on the long overdue ‘correction’ in Darnassus and can confirm there is now a mailbox back outside the inn there too. So all in all, great new if you have a mailbox fetish. Not that I do, I’m just providing a service here… for all you freaks enthusiasts.

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