Weird: Rift is not even half as fun as Forsaken World.

Yes, a subs-based AAA fantasy MMO is not even half as fun (or IMO) even half as good as an asian F2P AAA fantasy MMO. (Not to say that I think there is anything wrong with F2P asian MMOs, just that the focus of their studios tends to be a little (ok a lot) different and the general perception of them seems to be bad.)

And this is despite these two being more or less polar opposites with where their studios and dev teams are coming from.

Rift just glows with love love love... in every aspect but its art direction, which is honestly, quite terrible.

Forsaken World just glows with love love love for profit... in every aspect, including its art direction, which is very strong.

Why do I think FW is better, and more fun?

FW has better combat mechanics.
The classes are better thought out, and combat flows more smoothly. Rift combat feels incredibly clunky and unwieldy for some reason. None of the souls I've played have really seemed to 'gel'. Be it from the press eleventy billion buttons builds that some mages have, to the press just two buttons builds that some ranged rogue builds are. FW classes, in contrast, have *flow*. Once you get into the groove, once you know what you are doing, they just *feel* right.

FW has better sound.
FW has great sound - with some classes showing it off better than others. If you have played a bard to a highish level in FW (60+), you'll KNOW the difference between how water/wind/light bards sound just by listening to them play (assuming proper play) - no need to even look at the screen. Contrast this with Rift, where everyone sounds the same. ._. Not just the players, even the mobs sound the same! As someone who usually turns off the music, but leaves the sound on, and who depends on the sound for cues on what to do next, the fact that everything in Rift sounds more or less the same is a big downer.

FW has better art direction.
FW is an attractive, vivid world. While there are some stylistic choices I may not personally like, (hrmm Stonemen), I cannot argue that they are beautiful in their own way. Whereas Rift is bland bland BLAND. And don't even get me started on mage gear. Good lord, I'm convinced Rift mages have the ugliest gear in the MMOverse, even when you discount rendering engines (of which Rift has a rather good one).

I would say those are the three main things that stand out for me. FW, while I played it, was an MMO where I looked forward to jumping into the game world. Rift is just kinda blaaaaah.

This makes me feel sad, because Trion so obviously loves its game and cares about its community. But that isn't enough to overcome the three points above. It's like eating a dish made with the finest ingredients and a great amount of love which has unfortunately, somehow turned out tasteless.

Needless to say, I won't be renewing Rift into month 3, though I wish Trion and the Rift community all the best.

...here's to hoping GW2 won't break my gameynugget heart.

WoW vs Rift: Cross-Server LFG/LFR isn't the only problem - Big Bear Butt Blogger » I Have Met the Asshat, and it is Dalra

Please note, there has been an update to be found at the bottom of this article on April 14th, 2012.

So, you know how I was amazed at how bad that LFR run in Dragon Soul was as a healer?

Yeah. Second round was even worse. I blame Red, I went in for more healer gear.

What we had tonight could have been a good run, except for one thing.

A single player held the fun of 24 other souls hostage… and that players name was Dalra.

Yes, that says Dalra of Icecrown US. 

Would you like to see a picture of Dalra, proud enhancement shaman, in action on the Spine of Deathwing?

Just in case that is difficult to make out, here, let me zoom out a bit.

There in the center you can see the raid group on the Hideous Amagamations in the center, up and down the line.

And there, up in the upper right hand corner, you can see Dalra, all on her own, killing a tentacle. As an Enhancement Shaman. All there, all alone, killing tentacles. Spawning adds. Lots and lots of adds.

You see that title she has? Destroyer’s End? Yep. Solid Enhancement Shaman DPS. Dual wielding, got 4 piece tier, yay.

Too bad she queued as a HEALER.

The whole Spine of Deathwing fight, Dalra did nothing except single-handedly destroy tentacles, spawning endless waves of Hideous Amalgamations and the bloods that follow.

And here is something I didn’t know. If all the tentacles are dead, a new tentacle spawns, so there is no chance of your ever accidentally killing every Hideous Amalgamation and being left with no way to nuclear blast the plates off to expose the tentacle.

I. Did. Not. Know. That.

But now I do, and I have Dalra to thank for that. So, thanks!

24 people in a raid trying their best to win and move on, and those 24 people are subject to the whims of one person, a person who has the achievement and the title of having completed it on normal, who knows what it is they are doing, and who chooses to try and screw everyone else intentionally.

For fun, I guess.

And there is nothing anyone can do about it. that is the point of this post. Once the boss is pulled, that’s it. The group has no control in any way over the outcome from that point on.

You’re done. Wipe it or push on, beat it despite them, and give them their ‘fair’ chance at loot.

Once that boss is pulled, that player is free to do whatever the hell they want for the rest of the fight.

I want to be clear on this.

The issue is not Dalra. Dalra is nothing.

Nothing unusual or special or even especially irritiating went on tonight. If Dalra logged off with warm fuzzies knowing they got a second Deathwing Axe and relic drops tonight (according to the Armory) by queueing as a healer for insta-queues, doing enhance DPS while the group was down a healer, and even intentionally screwing people by trying to wipe the run if what she wanted didn’t drop… well, most people didn’t even notice.

Apathy and expectations are so low at this point that nobody really cared. It was just faceless, nameless asshat number 45862. As the picture shows, the tone of comments weren’t outrage, just tired acceptance. “No joke, I’m tired of morons in LFR.” That’s not nerd rage, that’s apathy and acceptance that stupid is just stupid.

We went on with some other faceless clown in LFR, and finished the run. Most people, I imagine, don’t even realize that it was on purpose. They are probably so used to stupid people by now, that if anything, they just pegged Dalra as being another in a long chain of incredibly stupid players, and went on with their lives.

I know better, because after Monday night I went into Spine looking at all the tentacles to see if I could identify another asshat and get some screenshots for my own fun. AND I DID. I watched while healing my whack-a-mole frames, as Dalra didn’t even start on the normal group tentacle. Right from the start, they went to an untouched one, destroyed it very fast, went to the next, destroyed it, and so on until all four were dead. Then kept killing tentacles as they respawned. Then, when the first plate lifted, killed more tentacles. As fast as they could pop.

There was no mistake, no confusion. It was a dedicated attempt by Dalra to wipe a raid from the second it triggered Spine. And I caught it early, notified everyone, began asking for Dalra to stop right away. There was nothing anyone could do to stop her. Just watch, and do our best to heal and kill.

If anything, anyone in the guild Shining Star Crusaders should feel ashamed that Dalra is carrying your torch, representing you. I don’t know anything about Shining Star Crusaders, maybe it’s a guild on Icecrown famous for shenanigans and being trolling asshats. Maybe it’s just some dude in a basement that is so ineffectual in real life that they have to do stuff like this to feel some kind of connection with someone else. Some kind of desperate bid for attention, any kind of attention, to rise out of the meaningless morass that is their pathetic excuse for a life, something to try and prevent themselves from feeling so cold and alone in a world that hates them. And they’ve got a personal guild full of their alts. I don’t really care.

My take is as likely to be accurate as anyones, and mine at least is based on personal experience seeing one of their guild members at play when they didn’t know they were being watched somewhere that it might turn up in public later.

Update: Some folks in reading this thought it was an actual slam on the guild mentioned. I thought I had stressed in the post, fairly bluntly, that I was speculating wildly on the kind of guild that had Dalra as a member, while at the same time knowing nothing whatsoever about the truth of the guild. That I was speculating like this or ‘musing aloud’ to prove the point that Dalra was serving as my only window on the kind of guild SSC might be, because in LFR cross-server activities, I didn’t have any way of knowing anyone in that guild prior to seeing one memeber in LFR be an asshat, which is entirely UNLIKE the old style single-server runs where guilds could form lasting recognizable reputations. In point of fact, after this post went live and word about Dalra got out, SSC took immediate action, removed Dalra from their roster, and took further action to make it clear that kind of behavior was not representative of their guild in real life. Clearly, in real life the guild SSC is not actually a single kid in a basement. Some of the responses (on each side) also showed me pretty clearly that a lot of people fail at reading comprehension. At least, they do where imagined insults and direct attacks are concerned. End of update, I now return you to the original post.

Dalra is not important. This post isn’t really about Dalra.

I am simply USING Dalra as my little bitch to make a point about an extremely serious issue in live LFR.

via thebigbearbutt.com

Just over a month of Rift has convinced me that it *isn't* just random cross-server LFG that has made the WoW PUGging community so toxic. (Went back 1 month for Cataclysm, levelled AGAIN from 1-85, unsubbed and never want to go back blah de blah.)

I used to think that cross-server LFG which was 'after my time' (I first unsubbed for 2+ years at the end of TBC), was the main reason for the utterly horrible experience of the WoW community that confronted me on my short stint back for Cata. It was so bad I started trying psych experiments on my PUGs. =P Results, inconclusive due to sample size, but still kinda interesting, detailed here:
http://nugget.posterous.com/priming-consistency-cheating-and-being-a-jerk

Other folks are welcome to try it!

But the thing is, Rift has almost exactly the same mechanic and people are so damn POLITE! At the very *least* they are civil 95% of the time. On good runs, they are kind, considerate, and sometimes even funny and charming.

Even though they've more or less duplicated WoW's LFG system.

This in turn convinces me that the horror that is the WoW community (PUGwise) is a lot more to do with a) evolution of that community, and b) existing culture influencing the behaviour of new folks.

Or rather, of turds seeing other turds act like turds and thereby feeling happy in knowing that their turdiness is the acceptable norm.

From what I can see, there's no reason Rift PUGging shouldn't be the cesspit that WoW's is - but it just isn't.

Same with the arena-based PvP and general PvP culture in Guild Wars. Yes there is a certain degree of elitism, some might even say a lot of it. But I will say that as a scrub PvPer, Guild Wars PvPers are in general incredibly civil. GW was the first place I ever saw the opposing team thank their opponents for the match. See them say 'GG (Good Game / Good Going)' and not have it be sarcastic.

More studios need to see that the culture of their community matters, and address it throughout the life-cycle of their games.

Cataclysm was *beautiful*. Sylvanas never looked so hot. Blizzard obviously put so much love into it. And despite that, I'll never touch WoW again with a 10-foot pole now. I left TBC thinking I could go back someday and maybe, maybe like it, if I had a fresh start. Cata made me realise that for me, in WoW, there's nothing to go back to.

Rift: Inventory Issues

You know you have a problem when you renew a subscription to a game you're not all that taken with, simply because you've stuffed your alts mailboxes with too much crap and need time to clear it all.

P.S. Rift is very generous with bag space, it's me that's the issue. *mourn*

How I wish more IT security people considered the SOCIAL aspect of their policies. =P

Onto the second rule – regularly changing the password.  Let me first say that this is a rule I hate.  Not only does it not meet the goal of protecting an account, it actually makes things worse when combined with the first rule.  Let me explain.

The reaction most users have when you tell them their password has to be (for example) at least 8 characters long and contain uppercase, lowercase, and numbers is not entirely positive.  It’s not always easy to think of a password that meets all of these requirements as well as the unspoken one; you have to remember it.  For obvious reasons, unless they’re instructed otherwise most people will choose something easy to remember like their surname followed by their birthday.  It meets the requirements and they can remember it.  To combat this, sensible administrators will explain how important it is that the password can’t be guessed and encourage another method of choosing a password.  They might suggest turning a sentence into a string of characters.  For example, the sentence “I’m going to try to remember this password” could become “ImG2t2RthP@ss”.  That’s a pretty good password – it meets all the rules, it looks very random, it will survive a dictionary attack, and most importantly it can be remembered.  Basically, it’s going to take a very long brute-force attack to guess.

Now, what if they know they’ll have to choose a new one to remember every month? Are they going to pick a hard password then?  I’d suggest that it’s far less likely that they’ll go through this process of turning a sentence into a password every month.  Even though it’s easier to remember than a random string of characters, it’s won’t stick instantly.  It might take them a few days before they can type it without thinking.  And if they have to do this every 30 days, it becomes that much harder to properly cement it in.

via blog.damianbrady.com.au

This is so true, and it doesn't even list all the other ways users 'game' a pword system that annoys them.

Sneaky White Chocolate Cranberry Pancackles

For some reason, no one on the interwebs seems to make white chocolate pancackles that are entirely white-choccy suffused (or is that infused hrm). There are lots of recipes for making blondies, and even a few for white chocolate pancackles, but in both cases, the white chocolate is always chopped up, then folded in, not melted throughout the whole lot.

>.> And so here we have, in another late night nugget crafting spree...

Sneaky White Chocolate Cranberry Pancackles

Why are they sneaky? They're sneaky because you can't (or I can't anyway) tell that these pancackles contain a ridiculous amount of white chocolate.

They are wonderfully rich, crisp and fluffy on the outside, and shading to soft, almost mochi-like moistness on the inside.

The melted white chocolate comes through in two surprisingly different ways. Flavour-wise, it delicately scents the whole pancackle with a mixture of vanilla and white chocolate; mouth-feel-wise, it makes the pancackle seem incredibly buttery, with a luxurious sweetness that intensifies with every bite, without getting cloying. O.O Add in the chewy sweet tartness of the dried cranberries and, OoOoOoh... um. Let's just say I gobbled one while I was waiting for the others to cook, and I don't normally do that. XD

And since the Interwebs doesn't easily turn up any recipe for these evil things, if you wanna try them yourself, here's what goes in 'em.

220g Dream white chocolate bar
5 sachets of white sugar
2 heaped dollops of ghee
2 eggs
Milk (yes, sorry, sorry, vague, you'll see)
1 tablespoon baking powder
Flour (woot vague again!)
Dried cranberries

  1. Dump sugar, chocolate, and the 2 heaped tablespoons of ghee into a bowl
  2. Plop bowl into rice cooker, set to bake (or just press down the button for single button rice cookers
  3. Ignore for 15-30 minutes (15 will do it, 30 is fine if you're... gaming...)
  4. Remove bowl from cooker
  5. Whisk the melty mess until smooth
  6. Add 2 eggs, whisk until smooth again
  7. Add and whisk milk until everything is a melty milkshake consistency (vs a freezy milkshake)
  8. In go the 1 tbs of baking powder and as many dried cranberries as you like, more whisking!
  9. Add and whisk flour until the mixture is so thick and gloopy you can barely move your whisk. It should look like the first piccy in the series up dere. You need it really really thick, because otherwise once it goes in the pan, it runs and melts everywhere and is generally sad.
  10. Grease pan (more ghee, wheeee!) and cook on very low heat (pic 2). If you have a cast iron pan, you probably want to cook on very high heat instead. >.> I dunno this, I've never owned a cast iron pan, so this is just what I've been told.
  11. When the pancackle goo looks mostly done at the edges but is still gooey in the centre (pic 3), flip it! Flip it naaaaaaoooo! It should take about 6-8 minutes to get from goo to this state. Yes, that's an awfully long time, but since we're essentially baking in a pan...
  12. Wait about 2 minutes before boffing the pancackle around and checking the bottom. To be honest, I have no idea how I know when the bottom side is done, I just do. But each pancackle took me roughly 10 minutes to cook, so 2 minutes should be just about right.
  13. Plop pancackle on plate, then try not to burn fingers and tongue while gobbling.

Makes roughly 8 sneaky white chocolate cranberry pancackles. Of doom.

Easter Weekend Food Orgy! (of Doom)

A mad three-day weekend of eating... yaaaaaay! (There were also two, yes TWO meals of chilli crab at my favourite neighbourhood family restaurant, but alas, too busy eating to take photos.)

Brownie Pancackles Topped with Bacon and Slathered with Haxx Chocolate-Baileys Sauce

The chocolate-Baileys sauce sets off the brownie pancackles amazingly - somehow the chocolate sauce on top of the chocolate brownie pancackle doesn't result in an overwhelming sameness of chocolate. The zingy choccy-Baileys sauce makes the brownie pancackle taste even more decadently chocolatey, and it's somehow made even better by the savoury baconny goodness in the middle.

._. I don't have a recipe for this since I (lol) don't use recipes. But what I did take away from making brownie pancackles is that unsweetened chocolate requires roughly half its weight in sugar in order to make it barely sweet enough, more if you like it sweeter.

The chocolate-Baileys sauce is total haxx. It looks so difficult and restauranty and all that, but it actually takes no work at all. All you have to do is stir it for less than 30 seconds. Really! XD

Chocolate Baileys Haxx Sauce for Dummies
Dump this stuff in a bowl in a 1:1 ratio for everything
Sugar
Chocolate, unsweetened
Ghee (butter will do, who cares if it's salted or not)

  1. Plop bowl in rice cooker.
  2. Do not put ANYTHING else in the cooker. Not even water.
  3. Set cooker either to cook (one-button), or bake (if you have it).
  4. Ignore for 15-20 min.
  5. Take bowl out (carefully)!
  6. Whisk together the whole melty mess, don't worry if it isn't all melted, by the time you're done whisking, which should take less than 30 seconds, it'll be a nice smooth sauce.
  7. Add Baileys (or whatever alcohol) to taste, whisk. The alcohol should immediately turn your sauce much darker and gluey-er, don't worry about it.
  8. Add milk or cream, whisking until it's of a thinness/consistency you like. Go slow, it only needs a tiny bit.
  9. Go mad pouring it all over everything!

If you use good semi-sweet chocolate, you can omit the sugar. I'd advise using a good chocolate for this (I used Ghirardelli's the second time round), because you can really taste the difference. Using Ghirardelli's gave the sauce that luxurious zomg-I'm-paying-a-lot-for-this-meal-but-it's-worth-it kinda mouthfeel. XD

 

Pomegranate & Brandy-Butter Icecream Filled Lemon Peels

This was kinda hard to set up initially, the lemon halves kept falling over! (I cut them in half along the middle of the lemon). Then I figured out I could stand the pointy bottoms on an empty icecube tray, and it all went smashingly after that.

Very cute presentation-wise, but I was a bit unsatisfied by how the lemon peels weren't edible...

 

Fish-Head Curry of TASTY DOOM @ Segar Restaurant

Some of the best fish-head curry in Singapore, in the nugget's book. Before I discovered this place (so near my place yay), I had to go all the way down to Amoy Street to have something comparably good. I could drink this rich, tamarindy, creamy curry sauce in a glass. >.>

 

Jelly-Filled Candied Lemon Peels, Sprinkled with Sugar

Having been disappointed with the inedibility of the lemon peels in the icecream version of this, I decided to candy the things before filling them with jelly! I used some cheap brand from my childhood called Tortally, but really, any jelly will do.

I also discovered that ice-cream scoops make amazing juicers. cut the lemon in half, then abuse it with the icecream scoop, and all the juice squishes out wonderfully.

  1. Juice lemon (or as many lemons as you want to make).
  2. Stab lemons once on each of their four sides, between their pith and pulp.
  3. Insert thumb into the stab wounds, and yank on the pulp. It should all come out cleanly, and you should end up with neatly gutted lemons.
  4. Scrape the insides with a knife to remove as much pith as you can - but try not to make any holes!
  5. Boil the lemon halves 5 times, simmering for 10 minutes each time (total 50 minutes).
  6. Melt an equal portion of sugar in hot water, dump your lemon peels in the mixture.
  7. Put the bowl of lemon peels in sugar water in the rice cooker, add enough water OUTSIDE of the bowl, in the rice cooker pot itself, to cook for 1h45min.
  8. Fish out lemon peels, turn them hollow side down on a plate, plop in the fridge to dry for half a day or more.
  9. Make jelly mix.
  10. Stand lemon peels, pointy end down, in empty icecube tray.
  11. Put empty lemon peels in fridge.
  12. Ladle jelly mix into lemon peels. You have to do this in the fridge, otherwise it'll slosh and slop everywhere. XD Or maybe you just need more points in dexterity than me.
  13. Ignore for 2-3 hours / till jelly sets.
  14. Take lemon peels outta fridge, slice down the middle.
  15. Sprinkle liberally with white sugar.
  16. NOM!

In hindsight, I should have coated the lemon peels themselves in white sugar before they dried, THEN filled them with jelly for a better effect, but oh well. Next time!