Well, there is a rumor floating around that STO is going Free-2-Play. While this isn’t a new rumor it has a few things backing it up this time.

On the STO Forums, a transcript from a meeting with the Perfect Worlds CEO (Cryptic’s new owner) showed up. In it there is the following quote:

Kelvin Lau (CFO)

….We have a bigger potential in US and also in China. And also Star Trek Online, after the acquisition, in fact Cryptic is working on the free-to-play model for Star Trek Online. This is going to be launched by the end of this year as well. So I think free-to-play model we have a bigger potential in US market and also in China market. Thank you.

Now, the the accuracy of this statement should be taken with a grain of salt. I don’t know anything about the originating website, so I can’t say how much this is likely to be completely made up, versus genuine.

Another thing that backs it up, is a post by the producer dstahl:

I can neither confirm nor deny anything (until given approval to).

Now, that is not a confirmation, but it’s not a denial either. In the past when these rumors have circulated, they have avidly denied them. They could just be messing with the forum goers. Or it could be a new Perfect World policy, to not confirm or deny things like this.

I’ve always assumed STO would go F2P at some point. As a Lifer, I assume I would get some kind of monthly Cryptic Point stipend, like Champions and LOTRO did when they went F2P. Then I could take my multi-month breaks and come back and buy all the new ships.

I’m not sure how well STO will do as a F2P game. LOTRO has done it the best that I’ve seen. There are so many things you can buy in the store, that are useful, but not required. I was not impressed with the Champions store. I played briefly, and subscribing was worth it, to get the customization of super-powers, instead of the templates. But none of the stuff for sale was really that interesting. The games weren’t as fully fleshed out as LOTRO was, to allow for such variety of small things to buy.

What could STO add that it doesn’t already have? More ships, obviously, but that’s nothing new. XP bonus items, already have some but they could add an Emblem enhancer, or a Dip XP one, or one for the Duty Officer. Warp speed boost? Maybe, but it wouldn’t really be worthwhile.

The itemization in the games seems to be lacking compared to LOTRO. When it shouldn’t be. Equipping a ship should allow for a lot of variety in things you could improve. But there are only like three stats on items. And aside from Damage, they don’t really feel like a buff. Unlike LOTRO, your character doesn’t really have traditional stats. And the ones that are there don’t feel like they do much.

Now, if they improved itemization and stats, those things shouldn’t be sold in the store, they aren’t in LOTRO, but they should be things you try and achieve in game. The store should be things to help make that easier or faster. Like the achievements in the game, forget what STO calls them. That interface needs to be drastically improve, so you know what you can get and what benefits they provide. Then you might want to go out and complete the “Kill 500 Klingons” deed.  Then you might want to by a buff, that makes each Klingon count as two for the deed. Those are things that are worthwhile in LOTRO.

And STO could benefit from a Legendary Item system. But instead, it should be a Legendary ship. That would fit the lore and give people something to work on. Have you ship earn XP and have special stats. But that’s going off into a ramble so I’ll leave it there.

Will be interesting to see if this rumor turns out to be true. And what STO F2P looks like. For me, probably not much different.

Share/Bookmark

I signed up for the Google Music Beta and got into it a few days ago. I’ve spent the last few days uploading all of my music and have been toying with it. I decided to do this, after the Amazon music cloud labeled half of my mp3′s as “Unknown Artist” and “Unknown Album”. That was annoying.

Pros

• Upload program works efficiently and seamlessly in the background
• Identifies all of my songs, no Unknowns
• Organizes the music just like iTunes
• Imports iTunes or Windows Media playlists
• Plays music from anywhere with an internet connection with good quality
• Doesn’t appear to have a limit on amount of songs (I have something like 60Gb)

Share/Bookmark

This will be the first of a random assortment of television reviews. Just because I feel like it.

I started Rescue Me a little over a month ago. I am now into season 5. This review will contain spoilers, but as I haven’t finished the show, I hope none are given beyond that point.

Rescue Me is about a group of NY firefighters. It primarily follows Tommy Gavin (Dennis Leary), is a veteran firefighter, alcoholic and survivor from 9/11. He sees and has many conversations with his cousin, who was also a firefighter and who died in the WTC. Throughout the show, it is implied his visions of dead people are connected to his alcoholism, though he sees things even once he gets sober.

There is a lot of comedy mixed in, which helps lessen the seriousness of the show down to a reasonable level. There are often rather hilarious situations the characters get into, not your typical over the top sitcom situations, or slapstick moments, but more realistic. The humor is entirely believable in a real life sense, as you can see real people in those situations, or making the jokes. Without the comedy, the show would be to heavy to watch. One of the reasons I couldn’t finish the Shield was because it was just to dark.

Despite it being a drama about firefighters, not much of that drama revolves around fires. There are usually a couple fires in each episodes, but most times these serve as backdrops. More as scenes in the office, just to emphasize what they do and that it’s dangerous. Occasionally, there are harrowing moments, and some examples of heroics.

Most of the drama centers around the characters lives. How they may be heroic in fires, especially Tommy, but don’t know how to live a normal life. They can be jerks, but not usually over the top TV jerks. They can do stupid things, but usually stupid things that you can see people doing, not just TV people.

While the way they handle the situations is well executed, the sheer number and level of situations can get a bit overwhelming, possibly due to the compressed nature of watching the show straight through, rather than once a week over the course of 5 years. They have even made fun of this themselves. At one point Tommy and his wife go to a marriage counselor and explain everything that has happened to them. The counselor thinks it’s a joke.

The seasons seem to follow a set pattern. In the beginning, Tommy is in a bad situation he needs to get out of, which normally happens in a few episodes. Some crazy stuff happens with the other characters, Tommy’s relationship with Janet (his ex-wife) see-saws, season ramps up to something bad happening, one or more people die.  Each season seems to follow that pattern.

The number of deaths of semi-main characters is one of the things that is over the top. Despite the dangerous jobs of firefighters, there has only been one death amongst the firefighter crew in a fire. Outside of fires, half of Tommy’s family plus a few others had died. His mother, his son, his brother, his father, Chief Rielly, Mike’s mom. Some were natural and should be expected, older parents die eventually. But mixed with the number of tragic deaths it becomes a little to much.

Now, with most of season 5 plus 6 and 7 to go, I predict two more bad situations await Tommy, which will disappear within a few episodes, and three more deaths. I will predict that it will be at least one of the main firefighter crew, possibly in a fire and one more of Tommy’s family members. The end of season 7 will see Tommy die, hopefully heroically in a fire, but I wouldn’t put it past him relapsing and dying while driving drunk or throwing himself off a bridge or something.

Share/Bookmark

With coming of college football season, I was eagerly anticipating watching the first Gator game this Saturday. With a new coach and a quarterback with a mixed record, it had the makings for a fun season. However, there doesn’t appear to any way for me to watch the game.

I was excited by the addition of ESPN content to the Xbox. I figured this would be a good way to get games that weren’t available on major networks. But it turns out, that what games are available this way don’t make any more sense than any other way. The Gator game is listed as being available on ESPNU, which is one of ESPN’s many networks. To get ESPNU, I would need to upgrade to a more expansive TV package, costing $20/month.

I’d happily bay $20 in order to watch a game, but I don’t want the expanded TV package. Especially since the game the following week will be available on FSN, a local Florida network, so it wouldn’t help me. The third game at least will be available on CBS.

Why is it that there isn’t a way to just get a tv/online package that just gives you the games you want? There was the one sports package we paid for the last few years, but it was hit or miss which games we would be able to pick up. The 2nd game on FSN would probably be available. But the first one on ESPNU wouldn’t. To get every game, you really need to subscribe to a dozen different plans.

This is the first time in a long time, I’ve considered some illegal method. I read about channelsurfing.net and looked into it. Turns down the site is shut down now for illegal streaming. But when you can’t get the service you want, legally, without paying out the wazoo and jumping through a bunch of hoops, illegal options become palatable.

I’d happily pay a reasonable amount for a service that provided me with exactly the games I wanted. But these sports packages only provide a little, unless you watch a lot, or are happy with a variety of games, instead of trying to follow a specific team. I’m sure the demand is there, so why isn’t the service?

Share/Bookmark

I’ve had this idea floating around in my head for a year now. Basically, I’m overweight and out of shape. I need to exercise, but I hate going to the gym or running. Both feel like pointless activities. I know they’re not, but they are just so boring.

So I had an idea, what if exercise was fun? How can it be fun? Well, if you’re doing something that gives you a work out, but isn’t just about working out. I first thought about sports, but usually hate playing in organized leagues because I’m so out of shape and uncoordinated. Plus, it seems to be pretty hard to find a team for some reason. You’d think it would be easy but the only thing I’ve ever found is groups in down town Houston. Nothing more local.

I started thinking about geek stuff. As a kid, how did we all use to get exercise? Playing. What did we play? We swung anything we could find and called it a lightsaber or a sword. We ran away from monsters chasing us. What do we do now? Play video games. What’s fun about video games? Gaining levels, completing achievements, completing quests. What if these things could be combined?

What if there was an organized group of people, that got together on a regular basic (3+ times a week) to do some fun activities, that required some physical exertion, and you could earn levels, ranks, awards, etc? So, say every Mon, Wed and Fri you met with this group, and each day you did something different. Maybe Monday, was weapon training. Use some foam swords and try to best each other. Wed, was a Zombie run, where you had to out run a zombie horde.

The longer you were with the group, the more you participated, you could earn ranks with them. Beating certain challenges got you an award (out run the zombies for 5min, win a 5min duel against two opponents, etc).

There are a lot of problems with this idea. First being, need to find people. Second, it’s very silly, geeky, and most people would find it stupid. Third, organizing it and getting whatever equipment was needed. It could even be some kind of business. But that would add a whole other level of complexity.

Would something like this be possible? Are there things like this out there (in Houston especially) that I just don’t know about? Have I crossed the line from Geek into Nerd?

Share/Bookmark

I’ve got a bit of a storage problem. Both in the physical and the digital worlds but we won’t go into the physical world right now. Unlike the problems I had for most of my computer lifetime, the storage problem has nothing to do with hard drive space. I have a terabyte drive that is only a third full, much of that being taken up by Windows and other software. My personal files probably only account for 100 or so gigabytes.

But 100 gigabytes of music, pictures and documents is a lot of files. And I’ve managed to completely lose track of everything. My personal files are spread across dozens of different and unorganized folders. I’ve got Dropbox as a back up for my writing and a few other things, but haven’t been regularly backing up the rest of it. There is an old portable HD that I haven’t updated in at least a year.

My pictures are an ugly mess. I’ve downloaded stuff from my camera sporadically. Some stuff is on my wife’s computer, some on mine, none of it organized beyond the folder it was copied over from the camera. Hundreds of unnamed files. And I also have hundreds of pictures my family and friends have sent me sitting in emails on my gmail account.

My music is the most organized, but it is also an ugly mess. I have dozens of files from my days of illegal music downloading. And then dozens more from CD’s I’ve copied to my computer. But iTunes has an annoying way of organizing files. I have one Santana CD that has been split into a dozen different files. I can’t play the album together because of the stupid way iTunes labels it.

How to organize and back up all of this? I recently renewed my anti-virus and went with Norton’s 360 suite. It allowed for 25Gb of online backup. That sounded good. But the way you have to choose what to back up is annoying. It selects everything, and since everything is way more than 25Gb, you need to select things not to backup. It breaks things down by file or folder. But you can’t select a single top level folder, you have to choose every sub folder. Which, due to my crazy organizational system, is damn annoying and time consuming.

Amazon has just informed me that I have unlimited music storage on their cloud player. This is a good thing because my music takes up far to much space to put on the Norton backup. It will also allow me to play my songs from any computer. But with things like Pandora and Spotify, do I really need to set this up? Do I need to bother buying new songs and saving them to Amazon? 50Gb of music takes a long time to upload.

As for my pictures, how to organize them and store them? There is the back up hard drive and Norton as a storage back up, but what about things like Picasa Web Album, Shutterfly and Flickr? I’ve given Picasa a try and it might be the best way to get the files on my computer organized, but I’ve never used the web album feature (mainly because I’ve not yet organized the files). It seems you get 1Gb free and the costs for more seem reasonable. But I don’t know anything about Flickr but see people using it all the time.

And then all of this comes down to the upload limitations. 100Gb to upload will take a long time. To get just the music to Amazon will take 10hrs. I tried to run the Norton back up over night twice now, only 14Gb, and it has run into problems.

I’m already at a point, that should my HD fail, I will not really lose anything. I’ve got back ups of my files (mostly) and most of my games are downloadable, so the only thing that requires set up is Windows and then copying my favorites back into the web browser (which was saved by Google since I was using Chrome, but then two step sign in broke it).

The Cloud has made losing a hard drive an inconvenience, rather than a killer event. But the vast amounts of storage and files, has made organizing and keeping track of stuff almost impossible. Dropbox, Amazon Cloud, Picasa, Flickr, Norton, etc etc etc.

Share/Bookmark

I have just finished reading (listening to) the twelfth book in the Wheel of Time series. There is still one more to go before I catch up, and then one more that is supposed to come out last year. This is a really long series. It is actually my second attempt at getting through it.

I tried reading it several years ago, right around when Knife of Dreams came out I think, but definitely before Robert Jordan died. I flew through the first several and really enjoyed them. I made it to book 8, Path of Daggers, before I stopped. Things really slowed down with that one, and from what I heard the next few were really slow. Knife of Dreams was supposed to be better, but that would be three really long books to slog through.

Then Robert Jordan died. I gave up completely for several years. I came back to them in 2009 after Brandon Sandersons first book came out and I heard about the idea of listening to them via Audible. I was doing a lot of commuting for work at the time. 45-60min in the car each way twice a day. I couldn’t listen to the radio that much and I was burning through podcasts faster than I could find new ones to listen too.

So I once again plowed through the books. I listened through at least book 9 before I quit my job. So, at least 10 days of solid book if you added it up over the course of a year. Since then, I’ve listened to three. Books 10 and 11 were about 60hrs and took me until July. Gathering Storm has only taken me a month, as I’ve taken to listening to it before bed.

It is amazing how things really turned around with the last book and a half. Nothing happened for like three books, but the end of Knife of Dreams and then Gathering Storm really started to wrap up some plot lines. Things actually happened.

The series as a whole has been great. There is so much there in this world. Listening to the books, rather than reading them, has given me an appreciation for the level of detail. Normally when I read, I skip over lots of stuff. Listening, you don’t have that option.

I’m eager to listen to the last one and then will eagerly anticipate the release of the final book, along with everyone else.

Share/Bookmark

I’m in kind of an unusual rut right now with my novels. I “finished” the first book in my planned series a few months ago. Since then I’ve been working on book 2, and have written about half of its projected overall length. Unfortunately, that half is the beginning, which is confusing and spotty, and the end, which is inconsistent with the beginning. I’m missing the entire middle half of the book.

Since working on the second one, I’ve also come to think the first book is crap and needs some hefty work done on it. This might just be me being negative, but I want my books to be genuinely good, not just good enough. Unfortunately, I’m comparing myself to great writers.

With the recent purchase of the Kindle, I’ve sampled some self-published e-books. The first one I’ve looked at was terrible. Okay story, but it read like it was written by a high schooler. That is what I fear producing. I think my writing was significantly better, and my wife backed me up. Ironically, feeling my writing was better than a relatively successful e-book (I’ve talked to the author and he’s sold a few thousand copies), just made me feel worse about the overall state of the book. I want it to be perfect, which is the worst trap a writer can fall into.

One thing this has done, is gotten me thinking about short stories. I wrote one a month ago that I submitted to some sci-fi magazines. It got rejected from one and no response yet from the other. But this week I’ve written two more. I’m considering either submitting those, or doing an short story anthology as an e-book while I continue to work on the novels. Something to get my name out there, and see how well an unknown can sell.

I’ve got three stories so far, and figure I need at least 10 to give it a try. But part of me thinks I’m just avoiding working on my novels. In away I am. But maybe this will be a good thing.

Share/Bookmark

I recently picked up Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 on Steam. My brother-in-law was playing the free trial that was available on PSN when we were visiting last month and it was fun. It has been a long time since I’ve played Magic, played in 6th and 7th grade, so I don’t remember much. The basic concepts I still remembered, but there are so many cards and rules now that it’s a learning experience.

This computer game is different than the regular TCG in that it comes with pre-built decks that you can only modify slightly. There is no deck building. That was a disappointment, as I assumed that the game with a set of cards and you would be able to build decks yourself from among those cards. I also purchased the complete package, rather than just the base game, thinking it would come with more cards to play with. Turns out, it just unlocks all the cards and decks that you are able to earn by playing the campaign. Though, it might come with more than that, hard to tell.

One of the things I enjoyed about the Star Wars Galaxies: TCG was the deck building. Being able to build multiple decks on the computer and use them whenever you want, was much nicer than the physical decks. With those, you had to tear apart decks to share cards. Not conducive to trying different play styles.

The game itself is a much nicer experience than playing it with real cards. At least with all of the counters and bonus cards and rules you need to keep track of. It is nice having all of that taken care of by the computer. Especially since I don’t understand most of the rules. There are a lot of intricacies about when things can occur that is not at all obvious.

In the campaign, there are several challenges of various difficulties. The easy ones were straight forward, learn about this card feature, play it, win. The hard ones were tricky, but just a matter of figuring out the only way to win from a bunch of different options. It took awhile, but I solved those. The medium ones, however, I never could figure out. They were all about knowing to play a card at a certain time to cause something else to happen. There was even one, where if you didn’t play a certain card immediately, you would lose the challenge in like 10 seconds. That one was particularly annoying.

Aside from the lack of deck building, the set decks do make for a nice balanced game experience. I’m able to beat the decks in the challenges if I play right, but I never dominate or get dominated, aside from just the bad luck of getting a terrible draw hand. Each deck has a unique feel to it so provides a different set of game play. Some decks are about building up creatures, others about doing damage directly to the enemy, some about healing and stealing creatures, etc.

It’s a fun game, and makes me wish that the SWG:TCG weren’t going away. When I sold my account, I lost access to the game. And Fantasy Flight sounds like they are putting out a new SW:TCG, but as a physical card game. The problem with a physical card game, aside from the deck building and rule tracking, is needing someone else to play with. Now, that is a fun part of the game, but it’s hard to meet up and play with people as an adult with a kid on the way. The computer allows for a quick game, against a person or the computer, whenever you want with no set up. So here’s hoping Fantasy Flights game gets a computer version.

Share/Bookmark

Some new information about crafting as appeared on the SWTOR website in the last few days. Check out any of those links for the full details.

My understanding from reading it is that each player will have three “Crew Skill Slots”. Those slots can be filled with the skills Gathering, Crafting, or Mission branches. Gathering has 4 branches, Crafting 6, and Missions 4. So of 14 total choices, each player can only pick 3. From those, you can take any number of Gathering or Mission skills, but only 1 can be a Crafting skill.

That leaves a lot of interdependence in the crafting system.  Items will come from 6 different branches so one person can not produce everything they will need without having 6 different characters. Since there is no info on how many characters per server someone can have, hard to say how likely that will be.

The hardest part is going to be deciding which crafting track to take. Unless Bioware has create the perfect crafting system, a feat no one has come close to doing, some of the crafting trees will be essentially useless.

• Armormech – the ability to work with hard metals and electronic shielding to construct all types of personal armor
• Armstech – the skill of constructing blasters, blaster rifles and upgrades
• Artifice – the delicate work of constructing Jedi and Sith artifacts
• Biochem –the engineering of performance-enhancing chemical serums and biological implants
• Cybertech – the technical expertise to construct gadgets and components for Droids and high-tech armors
• Synthweaving – the art of creating lighter outfits and armors that are imbued with supernatural qualities

With my lack of knowledge of the game I’m going to say that Armormech is useless for Smugglers and Consulars, Armstech is useless for Jedi, Artifice is useless for non-Jedi, Biochem is needed for everyone, Cybertech is only useful for Troopers/BH and maybe smugglers, and Synthweaving is for useless for Jedi Knight and Trooper.

The big question then becomes, which of these things are useful at the end game? Will the only good armor and weapons come from raids? If so, Armormech, Armstech, Synthweaving become useless at endgame. Maybe even Artifice and Cybertech.  It would be like Weaponsmiths and Woodsmiths in LOTRO once Legendary weapons were added. They had nothing anyone wanted to use. Is Cybertech useful to anyone other than a Trooper/BH or someone with  Droid companion?

However, if the items are more about upgrades than particular items, then the crafting professions could have a use. Some upgrades are drops, some are crafted, some are crafted but require parts that are dropped, or get better with parts that are dropped (Krayt tissue anyone?).

This could be an interesting concept, especially since everyone can do it, but Missions and Gathering allows them to forgot crafting. That might help make the market more vibrant, rather than stagnate in many games. A lot will have to do with the resources needed for crafting. Are they tiered like LOTRO, where the low level stuff is useless to anyone but a newbie? Or are the types of things you need the same throughout, so that a newbie can go gather, and has stuff a level 50 needs?

Share/Bookmark