Li'l Beef Moe's New Room

The results are in, and Li'l Beef Moe is ready to get his blunt on and go Beast Mode on Half Ounces AND hos!!!

Thanks to everyone that participated.

Poll - Beef Moe's New Room

Qaplah, yintaghs! The Mighty Feklahr is coming in at warp speed with a HOT new poll for the interwebs! The situation is simple, "Little Beef Moe" from Pet Society has a new room and is making an EXCLUSIVE offer to decorate his new room by letting YOU, the internet, decide. Look through the options, and choose your favourite.

What should the theme be for Beef Moe's new room?
	"Welcome to the Jungle"
	"Legalize It"
	"Space Oddity"
	"Grillz"
	"Like a Surgeon"
pollcode.com free polls

The selection will be made on or around December 1st, 2012 with the highest vote gainer being the "theme" for the room. Will YOUR favourite win? THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT, WEAKLING! VOTE NOW!!!

Collectibles Fun - Grune the Detroyer

As of this writing, I had found a Grune the Detroyer (a moderately obscure villain from the Thundercats cartoon, but one *I* think is really cool) action figure at an antique mall for $6. For a collector nerd like me, I was in full blown "Yippee!"

Grune was in pretty rough shape, though. A lot of the paint had worn off and he was sort of grungy/cruddy in some places. This led to my decision to clean him up, touch up his paint, and even add some artistic interpretation of my own. I will give just a brief rundown of the changes and updates I made for anyone that might be interested, but I sort of hope the picture speaks for itself.

• Filled in the blank spots of his silver armour on front and back.
• Filled in the blanks spots of his black gloves and shoulder gear.
• Freshened up the red on his leg plates.
• Freshened up black and silver on boots.
• I updated his helm with some silver on the studded areas.
• I sort of blanked/whited out his eyes for a sort of ethereal appearance.
• I frosted and variates streaks in his hair to give the appearance of age.

Finally, I offer a brief yet tremendously lulzy clip of Grune from the old Thundercats cartoon. I apologize, but the user that uploaded the clip disabled embedding, though. (???)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMD8Es8Cv0s&t=23s

Roots of Fangorn - Boss Strategy Strat

Please click on image to enlarge.

I realize it looks like there is a lot going on in this diagram, but once you understand what the components are and what function the play into this battle, you and your fellowship can beat this fight with little or no hassle and get some decent loot!

As you enter the room (yellow star) you will see a large cave-like room with six roots (brown circles) and a large spider standing in front of a waterfall (dark green star). The fight will not start until the tank gets close enough to the spider (very close). Make sure everyone is in the room, because webbing will close the entrance behind you!

Once the fight starts, there are a few things to be aware of that will make a break an attempt at this fight:

1. The boss does a strong frontal AOE attack.

2. Throughout the course of the fight, small spiders will descend (light green arrows) from the ceiling to poison the roots, and if they touch a member of the fellowship they will poison them so severely that it is virtually impossible to heal through.

3. Throughout the course of the fight, the boss will randomly spit a stacking poison DOT on a fellowship member. If you get 3 or more of these poisons, it becomes very difficult to heal. If you get more than 5 of these poisons, it is almost impossible to heal.

Here are the solutions for these obstacles:

1. Our good friend, the tank (red star) will need to grab the boss (large dark green spider) and drag him over to a wall (small yellow arrows) between two of the roots. The two nearest are a good choice. The tank puts his butt up against the wall, and (theoretically) no one else gets hit by the frontal AOE.

Our other good friend, the healer (signified by the heart),  will set up shop safely away from large spider and where the initial two small spiders drop. Being near the ranged DPS (or at least where they can easily see you) is a great idea.

2. To deal with the adds, we would preferably have a strong ranged dps class (Hunter or Rune Keeper, signified by large orange triangle) and a Crowd Controller (Lore Master or Burglar). Here are some important notes for dealing with the adds:

A. Early in the fight, the add that drops near the waterfall is the most dangerous and needs to die first. The add in the cave (it spawns from where your fellowship entered the room) can be mezzed until it can be nuked down)

B. Later in the fight (reason unestablished as of this writing) a THIRD add (signified by green, dotted arrow). When this add starts coming in, it becomes primary target, waterfall secondary, cavern add third. This new add will land very close members of the fellowship and it is imperative that it is dealt with immediately. If you have more than one CC class, assign one specifically to watch for this add and keep it mez locked until it can be nuked down.

3. As the poisons add up, the ONLY way to remove them is to wait for a white text to appear on the screen that tells that one of the roots is attempting to remove the poison. The root will be glowing softly green (see diagram in lower right hand corner). You have an incredibly short window of opportunity to run to the green light (which instantly removes all poison). if you miss it, you need to go back to where you belong and wait for your next opportunity (chug a heal pot if you need to).

Miscellanea by position/class:

Tank-the only thing you have to do is keep the boss faced towards a wall. Two other things you can do if it is seemingly safe is to clear your poisons if you notice one of the roots nearby are glowing AND interrupt the boss if you see an induction and are able.

Healer-this is a tough fight to heal. However, if everyone is doing their jobs, you should not get any adds on you from healing threat. Try really hard to clear the poisons on yourself as often as possible. Hopefully there will be some type of secondary healer to help out.

Ranged DPS-you guys are the real heroes of this fight and can determine if it goes well or if it sucks. Keep in mind how you want to utilize your DPS. We want slow inductions and Damage Over Time on the boss (we don't need to kill him quickly) we want ALL fast acting nukes available for when the adds descend. Killing the adds as fast as possible is a thousand times more important than DPS on the boss. When you do dps the boss, do only single target dps. AOEs are not needed and could compromise a mezzed target and that could wipe the group.

Melee DPS-you are only doing ONE thing, long term, sustainable SINGLE TARGET dps on the boss in the white area BEHIND the boss and out of his AOE. AOEs are not needed at all and can in fact mess up mezzed adds which can wipe the group. Single target DPS the boss, and interrupt the boss if you see an induction and are able to.

CC-you should be assigned to mezzing a dropping spider. Fortify that job at the cost of almost all else. The ranged dps should be picking up and killing the waterfall dropping spider first, so the CC should be "patrolling the area (signified by blue circle) to get any and all dropping spiders mezzed. These spiders come fast enough that burglars need to run in mischief regardless of how they are traited so that their mez is up as often as possible. CCs can throw debuffs, interrupts, and single target ranged dps on the main boss, bit not at the expense of letting any of them adds through.

Finally, there are really just two things to say that summarize just what the heck needs to be done to win this fight:

1. Mezzing and killing the adds as fast as possible is more important than DPSing the boss itself. If the adds are taken care of correctly, the boss will eventually just die.

2. Clearing your poisons when you are able will make the fight a million time more survivable and less stressful on your healer(s).

Good luck!

St. Patrick's Day Feast 2012

This is a simple chronicle of my wife's valiant effort for our feast on St. Patricks' Day of 2012. The main course was a meat pie stuffed with lamb! Here it is fresh out of the oven:

Doesn't it look scrumptious?
Now here is a supper! The lamb in the meat pie was roasted with garlic and rosemary and made into filling with chopped leeks. The mashed red potatoes are flavored with buttermilk and parsley and topped with shredded applewood-smoked cheddar. The kale chips are sprinkled with olive oil and salt and baked until crispy.

Now, let's see what is cooking for dessert!
What's this? Whole wheat Irish soda bread soaking in cream and sugar...
...sweetened berries...what can we do with this?

Oh, let's just bake a bread pudding! :D Here it is straight out of the oven.
And here we are served with a cream topping. BEST ST. PATRICK'S DAY EVER? Maybe!

Review-DC Universe Online

At a Glance-DC Universe Online

Being that I grew up as a comic book AND a video game enthusiast, it was easy to decide whether or not to give DCUO a tryout. What was more difficult was tempering high expectations for a game that I hoped would really deliver for me. DCUO is a rather large departure from my gaming preferences over the last decade that was dominated heavily by games like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Lord of the Rings Online. Would this flashy, pseudo-arcade-style-throwback of a super hero MMORPG be able to fill the void where swords and sorcery have dwelt so long?

Premise (Minor Potential Spoilers)

When you begin DCUO, the inhabitants of the DC Universe are about to take an unforeseen evolutionary step. To avoid the potential devastation of Earth, future events unfold that sends super-powers to the past (our present) amongst recipients all over the world. Suddenly, normal, every day people like you and I are being imbued with these super-powers, and we must turn to Earth's greatest heroes (or villains) to learn how to harness and utilize these powers that we may help avoid the grim annihilation the future has in store for us.

Review

I would like to take a brief moment here to iterate that the scope of this review isn't a "top to bottom" look at DCUO. My intention is to give a stark look into what my first weekend with DCUO looked like, my initial impressions, and some of the things you can expect to see and do. I probably played about 8 hours in total over the weekend. So, even though it is an incomplete picture, it is a scrutinized look of what you get when you walk through the door.

Starting the Game: Character Creation

Other than strictly cosmetic choices, creating your character consists of four major choices:

I. Super-Powers
A. "Tanking" Subset-these powers inherently give your character tougher physical abilities so you can be on the front lines of battle.
1. Fire
2. Ice
B. "Control" Subset-a choice from these powers will enable you to incapacitate, knock-back, or otherwise stun your enemies. You will not be as sturdy as your tanking counterparts, but you will be able to defend yourself well.
3. Mental/Telekinesis
4. Gadgets/Technology
C. "Support/Heal" Subset-those that wield powers in this subset will be able to bolster and heal their companions as well as summon defenders to help in the fight.
5. Sorcery
6. Nature

II. Weapons
One of the great things about DCUO is that, regardless of your super-power choice or role, all classes get a weapon and can DPS. There are advantages and disadvantages to every weapon type, and one will want to consider their super power when making a weapon choice (for example, a melee weapon might be better for a tank type that can sustain more incoming damage from the fray).

As a whole, weapon choice is very balanced and there is no single weapon you can point to and say, "This does the most damage." In fact, you can choose the one that "sounds most fun" to you and feel confident you aren't being penalized because the uber leets are running "Weapon A".

For a complete list of weapons, please refer here:

http://www.dcuniverseonline.com/weapons.vm

III. Mode of Transportation
Now that we are ready to kick booty, how are we going to get there? DCUO offers the following for comic-inspired movement:
A. Flying
B. Fast Running (Think The Flash or Quicksilver) This includes the ability to run up walls at great speed.
C. Acrobatics-I have just been calling this "Spiderman" (Peter Parkour?), climb walls and jump from building to building.

IV. Mentor
Your choice of mentor will dictate the types of missions you get to start out with.
A. Heroes
1. Batman
2. Wonder Woman
3. Superman
B. Villains
1. Circe
2. Joker
3. Lex Luthor

For the record, I made a total of four toons and took them through the intro sequence. I subsequently chose a hero and finished up the initial Gotham/Scarecrow quest line (to about level 7), and started the initial villain quest line to about level 5. Here are the builds I toyed with:

Fire->2 Handed Weapon->Flying (This guy was so tough he was practically invincible in the intro.)

Sorcery->Martial Arts->Super Speed (A very exciting build, even if Sorcery wasn't necessarily the best choice for a melee fighter, a little squishy.)

Mental->Hand Blasters->Acrobat (I only had to play this build ten seconds to realize this is what I wanted. This became my main hero, "KidMasterBlaster".)

Gadgets->Rifle->Acrobat (Another really solid build, this became the villain I tested.)

Starting the Game-Intro Sequence

We all know the drill here, our n00b toon gets babysat through a Carebear solo instance and fights gingerbread men wielding lollipop weapons, right? WRONG! DCUO probably has one of the more interesting and visually-striking openings of any game I have played. Even though there are tutorial hints dropped in at certain times (like when you level up), it is not so didactic that you feel like the game is preaching to you as if you were an illiterate moran. (Intentional, I swear!)

(Potential Spoilers)

You start out on board a spaceship that you want to escape from. A communicator chimes in to help give you directions to get out. The catch? Just a bazillion of Terminator robots on steroids between you and the exit.

I was real pleased that DCUO decided to put so much initial quality in the intro area to really hook you into the setting and the story. The spaceship is beautiful and you get to explore it in all three dimensions up and down various corridors, maintenance chutes, and what have you.

The patrol mobs, for the most part, are pretty soft (a trend that continues until about level 6). Even when you seemingly get in over your head, you can usually button-mash your way out of bad spots. However, there is one pull about 3/4 through the intro that can be a little tricky if you aren't careful.

The intro finishes with a cool rumble in the spaceship where a "friend" will show up to help you battle through several waves of patrol robots. It's a very therapeutic and exciting fight, mash them metal freaks into scrap!

Starting the Game-Settling In Back On Earth

Now that you are free, you will find yourself in "headquarters". The tutorial will have you look around the shop and the mail room, and then send you out into the real world to start the questing! Good luck!

A More Pragmatic Look At Things

So, now that you have a better idea of what this game is about, I am just going to point out a series of pros and cons regarding anything from forums and UI to quest lines and server activity.

Cons (since I would like to end on a positive note, I will start with the negatives)

-My one biggest beef, that is really just a personal preference but it bothered me all the same, is that my first mission as a villain in Gotham was to go kill cops. I just didn't like it. I doubt I will ever play villain much (if at all) anyway, but it chagrined me that it was an option.

-Controller vs. keyboard: I have seen on the forums many criticisms of the player controls, and have had unbiased third party testimony to the same. Even though I personally do not find the UI difficult at all, I can understand how people could feel limited. There isn't a whole lot that can be done to meaningfully remap the keyboard, and I wasn't able to do anything worthwhile to set up my controller the way I would have preferred.

-One minor aspect that was also a bit of a disappointment was how...chesty they decided to make all the female character models. I mean, I understand it's comic books, but there are a lot of interesting female comic characters (past and present) that have more to offer than their busts.

-As of this writing, the game has been live for barely six days. They have experienced some rather predictable server downtime. Some people deal with this better than others. Which leads me to...

-Forum whiners: Same dime a dozen crap you see on any MMO forum. Switch out the name of the game/company and the arguments are identical. I wish there was something constructive that could be done to change the culture on MMO forums, but as long as there are raged out, entitled, pampered, snotty, idiotic lolkids, there is going to be unfortunate ignorant garbage spewed on the forums. However, this sort of works as a good segue into the "Pros"...

Pros

-Aside from the whiners, there was a really great Beta community. They put up a ton of great stuff on the forums and had a vault of useful information they passed along. They had a really upbeat and gung-ho attitude and are a great asset to the community.

-I was taken away by the ability to customize your appearance. This game offers the kind of choices I used to dream about for character customization. It is a really brilliant design, and I love it.

-The game plays SMOOTH. I personally experienced no lag at any point, or even skipping in the most rudimentary sense.

-Simply put, the game is cool. Just really cool. It looks great, plays exciting, and is just flat out fun.

In Conclusion

In case it hasn't been made obvious in the course of discussion here, I generally view DC Universe Online favourably...very favourably. It has been a refreshing departure from the more "classic style" MMOs, and the DC/Warner Brothers product is one that has been very interesting the past ten years (movies/cartoons/games).

I feel a little silly trying to score this game when I have such a superficial experience with it at this point, but if someone put a hand blaster to my head and made me scribble down a score, it would look something like this:

8.75/10.0 - If you are interested in comics in even the most pedestrian sense and enjoy video games, you will have a hard time NOT enjoying DC Universe Online. Once they get over some of the "growing pains" of a new game going live, this title has all the potential in the world to become more than just a niche game. I have not encountered anything that has made me regret spending the $50 to get going. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Please click on any of the screenshots below to enlarge them.

Tech specs (my rig):

Alienware M15x

Intel Core i3-330M 2.13GHz (3M cache)

4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHz 2 x 2048MB

1GB DDR3 ATI Radeon Mobility HD 5730

250GB SATAII 7,200RPM

3 Things In Movies I Cannot Do

Darn movies and their cliffhangers! There are three movie cliffhangers that I am neurotic about leaving unresolved. They are:

1. Leaving Spock dead on Planet Genesis-If I don't watch STIII within 24 hours of STII, I go nuts. YOU CAN'T LEAVE SPOCK DEAD!!!
2. Leaving Han Solo encased in carbonite-Luke, Leia, Chewy and the gang totally have to rescue him from Jabba. Period.
3. Leaving Gandalf in Moria with the Balrog-if nothing else, you have to watch the most epic beatdown as Gandalf solos a Balrog. Solos. A. Balrog.