Friday, December 28, 2007

Gameriot HP Blackbird Contest Entry



Aside from having a cliche but fantastic story, this video proves that games are becoming more and more viable in media advertising. I wouldn't be surprised if more advertisements in future use Sims, Second Life, CoD etc to relay their messages.

In case you do not know what a Blackbird is, take a look here. Really overpowered and expensive PC right there.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Oh Holy Night



O holy night the stars are brightly shining
It is the night of our dear Savior's birth
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
Fall on your knees
O hear the angels' voices
O night divine
O night when Christ was born
O night divine, O night
O night divine

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
Fall on your knees
O hear the angels' voices
O night divine
O night when Christ was born
O night divine, O night divine
O yes it was
It is the night of our dear saviours birth
O night divine

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Sigurd's Suggestions

Siguard from Greymane made some fantastic suggestions that can seriously give Paladins an easier time in 2v2 and 3v3. You can view the post in its entirety here. Otherwise, I've done a memo of the key points thrown out.

• Purifying Power (2 Points):
Reduces the chance your Cleanse and Purify abilities will fail by 5%/10% and allows your Cleanse and Purify spells to dispell an additional poison and disease/poison, disease, and magic effect.

    Cleanse is becoming closer and closer to being worthless. With most classes that apply debuffs having talents that prevent us from dispelling them, our ability to remove them has diminished. Not to mention the additional misc. debuffs classes don't actively apply - Winter's Chill, Misery, Shadow Weaving, Shadow Embrace, Stacking Wound Poison, Snake Trap/Scorpid Poison. This talent gives Paladins a chance at actually removing debuffs again.

• Improved Judgement (2 Points):
Decreases the cooldown of your Judgement spell by 1/2 seconds. It also allows your Judgement spell to interrupt spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 1/2 sec.
    This change basically gives Retribution Paladins a spell interrupt similar to Earth Shock. This is actually less effective, because it requires a seal to be active and requires 7 points in Retribution. Holy Paladins wouldn't be able to pick this up unless they lose Improved Conc. Aura, Stoicism, and Imp Righteous Fury. This change also helps Protection Paladins.

• Improved Blessing of Might (5 Points):
Increases the Attack Power bonus of your Blessing of Might by 6%/12%/18%/24%/30%.
    Just giving Blessing of Might a little bit of love. Increased max additional AP from 44 to 66.

• Avenging Wrath:
Increases all damage caused by 30% and all healing done by 15% for 20 sec. Causes Forebearance, preventing the use of Divine Shield, Divine Protection, Blessing of Protection again for 1 min.
    Currently, Avenging Wrath is next to useless for a Healing Paladin, especially in a raid. Sacrificing survivability for extra healing power - just as other paladins do for extra damage, doesn't seem like an over-the-top idea.

• Sanctity Aura (1 Point):
Increases the critical strike damage of your party members by 5%.
    Here's our Raid Viability. Currently, Sanctity Aura effected us in the group, and only increased ~30% of our damage by 10% (Seals/Judgements/Consecration etc). Our damage shouldn't go down, and we've gained some useful group utility.

• Valorous Judgements (from Improved Seal of the Crusader):
In addition to the normal effects, your Judgements that leave a debuff will also increase the critical strike chance of all attacks made against that target by an additional 1%/2%/3%.
    I felt having the 3% crit tied just to JotC was harmful, especially with the change to Crusader Strike since the spell damage isn't as useful. That, coupled with the fact JotC isn't always the best Judgement to have up (an example is a 10-man, or farming/leveling if you want Wisdom).

• Seal of Command:
6% Base Mana (~177 mana at level 70). Gives the Paladin a chance to deal additional Holy damage equal to 80% of normal weapon damage. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Lasts 30 sec. Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing [AP*0.2] Holy damage, [AP*0.4] if the target is stunned or incapacitated.
    Judgement of Command now scales! Because of this, there are no longer different ranks of Seal of Command and the ability was changed to 6% Base Mana. Neither the proc nor the Judgement benefit from spell damage anymore.

• Repentance made Baseline. Duration reduced to 4 seconds:
    Let's face it - Repentance didn't work as the 31 point Protection Talent and it doesn't fit well as the 31 point Retribution Talent, especially when compared to other abilities of the same tier. Making it baseline helps all specs, mainly in PvP. The ranged, 1 minute cooldown gouge isn't incredibly powerful, but it could allow Holy Paladins a chance to get a heal off in smaller arenas.

• Fist of the Heavens (1 Point), to replace Repentence
10% of Base Mana (~295 at 70) 1 min cooldown. Calls down the power of the Light on a target you have Judged, granting an effect.
    Judgement of Wisdom - Grants [JudgementEffect*10] mana to your party members.

    Judgement of Light - Instantly heals party members for [JudgementEffect*10].

    Judgement of the Crusader - Increases your party's melee, ranged, and spell casting speed by 10% for 15 sec.

    Judgement of Justice - Immobilizes the enemy for 5 sec.
    I wanted 4 different things from this talent, which I think I've succeeded in doing. First, I wanted it to be viable in PvE, which it is. Second, I wanted it to give group utility, which it does. Third, I wanted to make it useful for PvP, which it does. Lastly, and what I felt was a key thing, I wanted to make it useful for leveling. The mana back option really feels like I did it. The thing to remember is this ability requires a Judgement to be on the mob and has a 1 minute cooldown. You're not getting 740 mana, 950 healing, 10% speed increase, and an immobilize each minute - you have to choose. I don't feel any of the uses make the spell overpowered.

Bravo!

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Endless Love



My love
There's only you in my life
The only thing that's right

My first love
You're every breath that I take
You're every step I make

And I
I want to share
All my love with you
No one else will do
And your eyes
They tell me how much you care
Oh yes
You will always be
My endless love

Two hearts
Two hearts that beat as one
Our lives have just begun
And forever
I'll hold you close in my arms
I can't resist your charms

And love
I'll be the fool
For you
I'm sure
You know I don't mind
'Cause baby
You mean the world to me
I know I've found in you
My endless love

And love
I'll be that fool
For you
I'm sure
That you know I don't mind
No yeah yeah yes
You'll be the only one
'Cause no, no one can deny
This love I have inside
And I'll give it all to you
My love My love, my love
My endless love
My love

Monday, December 17, 2007

Sombre December

It's been a pretty scary start to the Christmas Holidays really. For a short period of time, I stopped caring about my internship because I kept getting rejected. Sometime last Tuesday, I went for an interview with Ksatria Gameworks. They are currently working on a single-player FPS RPG based on the world renowned gamebook Lonewolf. You can actually read the gamebook for free at ProjectAon.



Basically, my lecturer said they were looking for a Level Designer to replace someone who "quit" a while ago. So whoever gets the job not only needs to be as good as the previous guy, needs to pick-up from where the guy dropped and deal with easing into the production team. Very stressful situation there. It didn't take more than 10mins into the interview (including introduction) to realize that I was something they might not be looking for at all. But I played along with the interview nonetheless, tried to be as verbal as possible and tried to be creative. Well, after the interview I thought I did pretty well but the truth remains that I wasn't cut out to be a level designer for the industry, in part because Hubertus did not cover the necessary module components... As a note, I've been informed that Ksatria wasn't looking for level design interns *flame from Chi Yong inc.*

So I went to Jack's Place with Mike, Wei Song and Kang Ning that night and had a $180 meal that pretty much ate through all our pockets. During the meal Yitting SMSed us to check our emails. So I went to the nearest McDonalds to check my email (woo wireless@sg) and there it was, the undoable test. I wouldn't be surprised if people start asking me how I got the job, seeing that I was probably incapable of doing the test in every shape and form. No cocksucking was involved alright, just pure documentation. I love Microsoft Word tables, period. Fortunately, I've been contacted by Ksatria and I wouldn't be in the level design department. I haven't been told what design area I would be placed in, but I'm sure I have a lot to offer. Maybe I'll get to do lots of documentation, because I'm really good at that ;) Anyway, I do expect a lot of hard work to be put in because the company though being relatively new, aims to be a top game developer in Singapore.



I know this a long post, I've been trying to insert images here and there to excite your tired eyes. But can you please pity paladins? They are so bad for 3v3. I mean, playing warrior/lock/pal against RMP and RWP was an absolute nightmare. Granted the setup is considered to be above average, it simply accentuates the fact that Paladins are HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, did I say HORRIBLE oh my god. Do not even start about me being bad. I have 304 days played, 148k HKs and probably more duelling experience than ym. Let's just say, if you replace the Paladin with a Druid, not only are the problems with getting CCed solved it immediately makes the team one of the 2 best setups known to humankind. It's that gamebreaking; that much of a difference, that much contrast.

A lot can be done to fix Paladins in a situation like that. Being immune to most CC because of being able to bosac spam was overpowered at times, but look at Druids? 1min CD on bosac is ridiculous, 30s might still be bad bad. Put it this way, I usually haves mages on Focus. If they start casting poly on me I bosac a team member. That takes skill. In fact I've done it for so many years that I still bosac subconsciously even though I just casted it 10s ago and seeing it getting dispelled by a dwarf priest who has a cc called IF****YourCastWithARacial.

I could go on in melodramatic fashion, but I'll prolly put all my suggestions on a new upcoming post. I get some inspiration from the Paladin forums. Tbh it contains some good suggestions in its deep recesses. Like most forums, it's filled with holy tears. But hey I don't hate retribution paladins, in fact I've done quite a bit of research regarding the possibility of running ret. It's a huge transition in terms of playstyle if I do make a switch, but gear and talent wise it's actually quite playable now. Spell damage was poo, I still don't get why Deviate liked the Avenger 5/5 set bonus back in the AQ40 days. Either way, right now it's easy to get 430 or so resilience as Ret, and with Divine Purpose you can stack 30% crit damage mitigation.

Anyway I'm trying to setup Facebook. Myspace and its likes have certainly made significant contributions to social experimentation in the 21st century, and will very likely continue to do so. Having said that, virtual networks such as online games have and will continue to outperform web-based social networks.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Get Teddy Bear Muhammad today!

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