Diablo 3

So. 

Thing's are heating up at work while the things are the house are cooling down (good for the power bill, yes).  For those not in the now, I work in a all-year garden center in a major home improvement store.  I will not provide many details, since I have little interest in creating a problem in my professional life with my inane fribblings; don't expect me to name names, ever.

 However, I will say that we sell fresh Christmas Trees ever year, which is great because I get to use a chainsaw in public and be destructive with a crazy grin.  The kids like to watch the Great Christmas Chainsaw Massacre!  Don't worry, we have a lot of safety procedures in place, and I'm viciously obsessive about rules regarding sharp objects.  The downside to all of this is that we have to tear down and rebuild part of the shop to accommodate things, and 'tis not fun.

But now is the time of year I can focus on things not work-related for a while.  Right now I'm working out the engineering on a minor quasi-craft project, harassing the internet, and drowing my sorrows in Diablo 3.

Damn, that game is fun.  I'm currently running a Demon Hunter, and frankly I think this is as close as we're gonna get to a Mordheim video game.  I'm tearing about with an arsenal of whacky kickass devices designed to cleanse dungeons of demonic freaks and heretics, all the while looking for cash and gear to help me in my quest to hand out colonic arrowtherapy sessions to evildoers.

I've forgotten how much fun an old-style hack-n-slash RPG could really be; I haven't really played one like this since...well damn, Legend of friggin' Mana or Seiken Densetsu 3.  I have done modern style ones, like the shooter variant paragon of pillage that is Borderlands 2 (all hail Salvador and Krieg!), and the somewhat more traditional Dragon's Dogma.  But there's no substitute for a good old-school dungeon crawl.

Anyway, if you're looking for a good looting session and don't have an older console, go ahead and try this sucker out.  It's not perfect, but it's as close to perfect as I've seen for a very long time.

Wreckonomics - First Post

Wreckonomics

Welcome to the first Wreckonomics post, where I babble on about a video game, and give the best solutions I can to snag yourself lots of plunder.  As is this is the first one, I explain some ground rules and personal terms I'll be using.

Theoretically Unlimited Wealth:  At its essence, this is the idea that enough grinding, farming, and suchlike, a player can get unlimited cash and/or resources.  There is literally an unending amount of respawning or random enemy encounters, chests (or equivalents), and therefore drops.  Almost all games with a currency/loot system have this, and most games that do this also don't have the nasty economic impact of some gang of crazies showing up in town with a few million gold pieces and an urge to splurge every other hour.

Limitations:  Exactly what is says on the tin.  These are the obstacles set in place that keep the Theoretically Unlimited Wealth theoretical and limited.  First off, the very real fact that one can never have infinite currency or items.  Even if one could do so in real life (which is impossible), a computer program like a video game could not be able to hand that.  Limited memory and coding means limited wealth.  However, time and technology has made it to where this limit has become effectively meaningless in modern games.  Cases can also be made for bugs and exploits making things infinite in practice in some games. 

But the limitations I will be mentioning are the reason I'm making these posts in the first place.  A lot of games, particularly RPGS, have artificial barriers to wealth building.  These can often to lead to lots of frustration and controller slinging, and plenty of nerd rage and forum flames.  Some of the nastier ones include ridiculously low cash limits and drops, restrictive inventory sizes, and the more draconian anti-grinding mechanics out there.  A lot of these are done in the name of realism; others, so players will actually finish the game instead of tearing about slaughtering critters and bandits for weeks while the king is dying and the hot princess is dealing with the attentions of various monstrosities.  Some are done in the name of simple sadism.  The really maddening ones are typically just designers not thinking things through, or leaving out wealth building mechanics that were either helpful or downright vital in the finished game.  Another layer is the whole 'lost in translation' problem, where for one reason or another, a set of features and/or mechanics were removed when a game was imported and localized.  A variant is where features were added, but people stuck with original versions couldn't benefit from them.

TL; DR:  The game designers were jackasses and this is why.  Here there be rants

Gas Pedals:  The good news.  These will be things a player can do to really make cash and item acquisition go much easier.  A lot of these seem to be put in place by designers to get needed stuff without all the fuss of grinding, but requiring a lot of experience with the game mechanics or exploring (or GameFAQs) to find.  Others are things that were missed or made by mistake.  Still others are things that were meant to accelerate the process to a degree, but you usually don't have to step off the pedal until you get what you wanted.

A note:  I will typically not discuss glitches and bug exploits unless they are either well-known and deemed acceptable by many players, or are the only way to get your hands on enough stuff to actually ease the horrible Dickens-style cruelty going in some games. 

I signed on to rampage about, smack the legions of doom, and woo damsels, not be the heroic fantasy version of Oliver freaking Twist.

Anyway, these are the things I'll be going on about in Wreckonomics posts.  Stay tuned for all sorts of nerdity involving the slaughter of cutesy monsters and playing a game that is nothing but sidequests in Legend of Mana.  Kill the Rabite!

Colonel's Desk - First Colonel's Desk

Hello again The People That I Pretend Read This,

This is my first true general post.  Tonight I suppose I shall explain the name here. 

No, I'm not in the military, not is this a military-centric, or even truly military related blog, unless you count any mad natterings about tanks and guns and the best way to conquer freaks.  That said, I am also very much not anti-military in any way.  I do support our men and women in uniform, and the only reason I didn't join the family tradition of jumping out of airplanes is that they didn't want me for medical reasons (damn you faulty lungs).

The reason for the name is simply that 90% of my scribblings from my tender years was about Colonel Wulfe Luer, planeswalking asskicker and his merry band of societal leavings and health hazards.  The whole concept of the character has been so ingrained into my brain that Colonel X Y of the Z is the first thing that pops into my head whenever I'm cooking something up for a new setting, and Wulfe Luer is the first thing to be tried when I'm naming a character in a video game.  This is pretty much an evolution of my weird weird psyche trying to express itself, so please just play along.  Or not; in that case I'll so suck my thumb and play Diablo III in that corner over there.

Speaking of which, if you like RPGs with hack'n'slash elements, go play that game.  You can play a friggin' Mordheim character that slays demons with ninja stars, crossbows, grenades, and a sentry gun.  And that's one class out of five (soon to be six).

Thanks for reading!

Obligatory First Post

Hello the Five People That Might Read This,

Welcome to the first post of my (currently experimental) blog!  This is where I will post various inanities and babble about nerdy stuff and rant and so forth. 

I plan to have three primary categories of posts:

1.  Colonel's Desk (ain't that redundant):  This will be most of my posts, which be general topics and whatever is on my mind, including going on about personal stuff, babbling about games and whatever randomness I like to delve into.

2.  Wreckonomics:  More detailed gaming goodness will go here, especially too-long-to-be-practical posts about how to get all sorts of mad loot from the vidja games.  While I will talk some about mainstream games, I plan to go on more about games more off the beaten path, and ones with economic systems that will be more difficult within to accumulate and/or get the nice goodies.

3.  Brain Barf:  This is where I will let my inner weirdness out to roam about and terrorize good taste.  Usually this will be things that pop into my head and won't stop making me laugh, no manner how pointless, useless, and obscure it may be.  I will promise that I will strive mightily to keep it PG13 and mostly SFW.  You will most likely see some serious juxtaposition of sophisticated syntax and vulgar babblings.  Really sesquipedalian horseshit.

In any case, welcome to the desk; please stay and bring me some coffee and nerdity!