Rant 498 / I Haz Teamspeak Server!

Added too much fruit into this batch of smoothie. One carrot and 3/4 of an apple. The first mug was almost all pulp because most of it floated to the top of the blender. It's rather like what I imagine baby food to be like, except tastier. The second mug is half pulp and half liquid. Next time I'll try with half a carrot and half an apple instead.













Metro 2033 is yet another Russian game that looks kind of like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., except on some sort of Hardcore mode. It's a first person shooter with no HUD (heads up display), ie the health bar, ammo, minimap and etc. There is a time limit whenever the person leaves the base (I think it's leaving the base but not sure) but there is no timer display, so the player has to set his own clock. No HP bar means you have to look at how bloody your screen is to tell how long you're going to last.

Basically, it means I'm rather turned off by this. Where's the fun in such insane hardcore difficulty? I'm not playing games to show how "pro" I am, that's not the point in playing anything.













Finally managed to set up my own Teamspeak server. Now it depends on whether the rest of the BC wants to install a TS3 client and get a mic.

It was so confusing, too much data everywhere. I got stuck after downloading the server and client files. Fortunately I found the following video. Really helped a lot.



Now I've created a few channels and just need to get a guinea pig to test it. You can download the client file here. No virus or spyware. Don't get the server files, they're for setting up TS servers. Will email the BC DotA players the required info for logging into my server.













Tried a bit of Allods Online, Open Beta. So far so good, except it's a little too crowded because everyone's starting a new character now.

The interesting thing about this game is that it encourages "casual" play. Apparently half the experience reward from quests are given in the form of "fatigue", which is changed into real exp by resting at the innkeeper.

This discourages hardcore play because fatigue is capped at a certain point and resets everyday. After you hit the cap, you don't gain fatigue anymore for the rest of the day. This effectively halves your exp income from quests (a major source, at least 80% of the usual exp gain of normal players) once you hit the limit.

Players at that point have 3 paths:

1) Stop turning in quests, stop gaining exp for that day. (Casual) <----- me
2) Stop turning in quests, grind on monsters until it's reset. (Hardcore)
3) Just turn them in and grind to make up for the lost exp. (Really Hardcore)

Stopped playing FoM until Allods gets boring.