I was making my usual rounds around the internet and came accross a very interesting article at Gamespy.com. At this year's 2005 DICE Summit Will Wright gave a presentation that has created some excitement in the video game industry. You may remember Will Wright as the creator of the Sim City series and also the creator of the insanely popular The Sims series.

What Wright presented to the audience was not only an awesome game, but a whole new way of creating video games. Instead of having hordes of artist and content designers Wright's new ideas put the focus on the gamer. Specifically letting the gamer creater his or her own content to enjoy. The engine Wright presented was very powerful and could handle anything a user could throw at it. Want to design a 3 legged monster with a hooked taiL? Go for it! The game's engine will figure out how a 3 legged monster walks and make it work.

Not only is the concept itself amazing but the technology behind it is very hardware efficient. The highly detailed and dynamic character models take up very few resources due to mathematical programming approaches.

Overall I find this concept to be very exciting. I've always wanted to be able to create a game with the level of detail described with Wright's concept. The problem is that I am not a good artist so anything I could muster up would look terrible. It seems that in the future you might not even have to be a programmer to create the game of your dreams. The article that describes Will Wright's presentation can be found at here at Gamespy.com. It is definitly worth a read.

Sweet fancy moses it's been a while since I've made a post. I mean I havn't done anything since my birthday. Damn, I suck. At least I am posting now though. That counts for something right?

Well I am not going to say a whole lot right now. I am busy browsing and such. Though I must say it is good to see my HTML again. It has been a while since I've programmed in a language I actually enjoy. None of that java crap they teach at school. Plus I miss the organized chaos that I like to call my code. Gotta love the hordes of /div's and all the tables nested within tables. They can preach about their so called 'organized code' all they want at school but I'm happy with what I have going.

Possibly I can type something tomorrow. Odds are I will ramble about World of Warcraft. After all, it is the main reason I havn't done anything to this site in forever. In reality I probably won't get around to it though. I have to get my car's breaks looked at (terrible screeching sound that pierces the skull), do some homework, and then my typical family computer repairs. We shall see.

Curse those teenagers and their rap music!

As of today I can get away with saying that and not be contradicting myself because as of today I am now 20 years old. Mwahahahaha! That's two decades if you wanna get fancy. If you say it like that it sounds like a really long time though. Anyhoo I guess now I am no longer one of those trouble making teenagers that all the old people complain about. Now I get to complain! w00t! Of course, I suppose I complain all the time about the general dumbassedness of people but now I can do it with more ease. Oh and the coolest thing happened when I checked my pockets this morning. I found a penny that was made in 1984, the same year I was born. How cool is that? It must be lucky.

Well this rambling seems to be going nowhere fast so I guess I'll go do some homework or maybe play some WOW. I'll prolly play WOW...

Well I'm at school and I have a little bit of time until next class so lets see if I can write something real quick about World of Warcraft.

I ramble about it all the time but my main character right now is a level 29 Human Warrior. I've tried a few other classes up until level sixish but I just love the warrior class. I suppose the first six levels really aren't enough to judge the other classes but I did. Anyhoo warrior are an absolute blast to play. I typically play a mage class but it is just so much fun being a meat shield. I can take all sorts of hits from monsters and dish out some major damage. I don't do as much damage as a mage can but then again a mage is as good as dead if they take more than a few hits.

The thing I love most about the warrior class in WOW though is the variety of play styles you can use. As a warrior you have an arsenal of different weapon choices you can train in. As you might have heard me say, I've tried out both two handed swords and dual wield. At first I thought dual wield was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Though it is pretty good, after further use I'm back to using my good old two handed sword. They may be slower but they dish out more damage and miss a lot less frequently. I may be crazy but I swear I get a lot more critical hits in with my two handed swords also. Throw in the fact that I maxed my two handed sword specialization talent which adds 8% damage to any of my attacks and you could say I am pretty darn happy with my damage output.

Weapon choices aside the abilities given to the warrior class set it high above the warriors in any other game. I have an entire toolbar (I think it is 12 slots maybe?) filled with abilities for various uses and I wish I could add another four slots onto the end of that. Each type of monster you encounter gives the possibility to use a different strategy. For example, humanoids are known to run away from a battle when low on health. To counter this you can use your hamstring skill which slows the enemy by 40% making it next to impossible for them to escape your wrath. Different strategies also come into play going off of the level of your oponent. As a warrior I can solo two enemies of equal level to myself and still have a comfortable amount of HP left after the battle. A battle like this take a different strategy than a single enemy battle since you need to switch between the enemies to inflict certain status ailments and use group effects to lower their attack speed and power. You may also want to save your high damage, high cooldown abilities for tougher fights as well.

Currently I consider my warrior a royal bad ass. In comparison to other warriors I may fall a little short since I spend more time goofing off than finding the best equipment but the fun I have more than outweighs it. I have no problem taking in multiple enemies and soloing. Soloing is what I like to do most of the time so it works for me. With World of Warcraft you can be anything you want to and not have to worry about comparing yourself to others. It is great.

Last night I finally made my way down to explore the pirate city of Booty Bay. Let me tell you it was amazing. Pirates all over with both Horde and Alliance members meeting to trade and fight. It was a dangerous trip for my level but well worth it. I'll try and post some screenshots later. I picked up a few goods only available there and found my holy grail of World of Warcraft items: the pointy mage hat.

Although I wasn't able to buy a pointy mage hat I did find a type that I can use within three levels. It is now my goal to find this hat on the auction house and trot around Stormwind proud to likely be the only warrior in the game who actually wears a pointy mage hat. I can honestly say that I've never seen any other class other that the caster classes that wear mage hats. I'll definitly be unique.

Anyhoo I think that is an ok rant for now. I'm running out of time and need to head to class. Post on the forums if there is anything you want me to talk about the next time I rant about WOW. Hopefully later I can post a few screenshots of my warrior and his trip to Booty bay along with a few other shots. It all depends on how much space they take up on Angelfire.

I know this isn't a real update but I just don't feel like it right now. I am really tired and unmotivated tonight much like I was on Monday and Tuesday. They are changing a bunch of crap around work and it is making things a real pain in the ass. Hence the reason I don't feel like doing anything. Maybe tomorrow will go better and I'll throw something up about WOW like I said I would. If not prod me to do it this weekend.

I had a fairly good accomplishment today. I finally beat Final Fantasy X. Now I guess it isn't anything major but it took me over 60 hours total gameplay to do so I am happy with it. I've been stuck on the last boss for a few months now so I finally sat down and devised a plan to beat him this weekend. It turned out that my plan worked really well.

The first thing I realized is that I needed to pick 3 characters and level them up. Throughout the game I had leveled all of my characters evenly and that turned out to be a bad idea. When I originally got to the main boss of the game he pwned me bad. I mean it wasn't even a fight. It was more like a massacre. Thus, I stategically picked Tidus, Yuna, and Lulu to be my ultimate fighting force. Yuna was selected for her healing abilities and summons along with her high magical ability. I chose Lulu simply because she is a frickin beast when it comes to casting magical spells. Tidus is there simply because he could cast Hastega. Aside from that he didn't do a whole lot.

To start with I gave both Yuna and Lulu the Doublecast ability along with the skill Flare. Flare is a nifty skill that does massive damage and counts as physical damage instead of elemental. That and the fact that, with Lulu and Yuna's high magic rating, it does 9999 damage each time I cast it helps justify its use as well. By using Doublecast with flare you can do 9999 x 2 per turn so that is a boat load of damage. Aside from flare I also started running Tidus and Lulu characters down Yuna's skills tree so that they could have healing spells.

The beauty of my plan starts with the Copycat skill however. I figured out that by using copycat I could save a boatload of Magic Points and deal massive amounts of damage. I gave Copycat to both Yuna and Lulu and that was all she wrote. Whenever Yuna would Doublecast Flare all I would have to do is have Lulu cast Copycat and she would copy Yuna for a fraction of the Magic cost. Then Yuna would use here Copycat and I could do that back and forth until either the boss or Tidus got a turn. Using that method I spanked the boss. He was down in no time at all and I was on my way to watching the ending cinematics.

Now that Final Fantasy X is done I guess I really should finish Final Fantasy X-2. I'm about a quarter way through that game so I suppose I better get started. Oh and if you havn't played Final Fantasy X you need to go out and buy it now! It is definitly worth the money.

The first annual Short-Media LAN is now over and it was a blast! It was a whole weekend full of playing games, photoshopping, and meeting people. Let me tell you, the people I met were probably the craziest group of people you'd ever want to run into it. I fit right in with em though so it all worked out. heh heh.

The main game we played was Unreal Tournament 2004. It was the game of choice all weekend and there was a tournament Saturday night. My team was put out in the first round but main because we went up against DogSoldier's team. DogSoldier and Sharky are probably the two greatest UT2K4 players on the face of the planet. I mean it is insane how good they are. Aside from those two pwning us all we also had a 60+ minute bombing run game. We had two big teams that went back and fourth for over an hour trying to score the overtime winning point. It was awesome.

In between UT2K4 a few of us managed to play a little bit of Desert Combat. VirtuesOfEvil was another guy is is too good for his own good. The way that guy flys a helicopter is more natural than walking. It is like the helicopter is an extension of his body or something. We was single handedly holding a team of 5 of us at our starting base and we couldn't get out. His 1337 piloting skillz are not to be trifled with. After he quit the game things got a bit more interesting. A few of us got on voice chat despite sitting a few feet from each other and started pure jibberish talk while we played. It was about 2 or 3 in the morning at that time so it made all the craziness just that much funnier. I think I am going to try and arrange a game for us over the internet some time so we can do it again.

Another popular game we had was photoshopping. People were taking pictures of each other left and right and editing them. It was frickin halarious. One particular target was a guy name Thrax who is one of the hugest AMD fans ever. He got photoshopped with a bunch of Intel stuff and it was halarious. Me and mmonnin drew a picture on the board making fun of him since we suck at photoshop. That picture is now my desktop and I laught every time I see it. I highly suggest that you check out the Official 1st Annual SM LAN picture thread. Some of the stuff we have up there is absolutely halarious.

Overall it was a really kick ass LAN. Hopefully we can get more members over to Short Media and get them interested for next year. There is already a lot of people itching for LAN '05 and I'm sure it'll be just as great.

In just 24 short hours I will be getting ready to leave for the first annual Short-Media LAN. Plans for the LAN have been going on since last year but with delays and such it got moved back to this weekend. There are going to be around 30 people there from various locations. There are some coming from Puerto Rico, Canada, the Carolinas, Ohio, and of course Michigan since Detroit is where it is all taking place. There are a few other places I am leaving out but I can't remember em all. Either way it is going to be awesome.

The main agenda contains several sessions of open gaming with various other activities like food and such with an UT2K4 tourny on Saturday. In between I think we are going to play some Battlefield 1942 and Halo. We will play some other games, I am sure, but those are the two and I really itching for. It has been a little while since I've played BF1942 but I am sure I'll be back into the groove after a few rounds. Halo has been my game of choice for the past few weeks so I'll be ready for that as well.

I can already taste it now. The pwnage is going to be immense. The poor saps have no idea what is coming. I know that I'll get curb stomped in UT2K4 but they all ph34r my 1337 Battlefield 1942 skillz. They just don't know it yet. ph34r t3h |\|0rg3! I know there are a few really good Battlefield players there but I think I should at least be able to make the top 3 on a pretty regular basis. I don't want to underestimate my foes though so I'll have to be on top of my game to make sure I frag em good.

Anyhoo they have put up a blog for all LAN attendies to write in once they get there. I don't know how much I'll actually use it since I'll prolly be playing games most of the time but if ya wanna check it out you can go here. Just go down the list of attendies and click my name (Norge) to see if I've written anything. Well I guess that is all for now. I suppose I should prolly stop typing and actually go to class now.

Ever since I first saw a World of Warcraft screenshot of a player wearing a pointy mage hat I knew that I had to have one. For months I have been ranting and raving about how cool it would be to have a pointy mage hat on my warrior. Now, after being in the beta test for only a couple of months I have reached my goal. I have a pointy mage hat!

Isn't it just the coolest thing you've ever seen? It is so awesome. I caught a lot of flak from one of the other warriors in my group when I looted the hat though. He griped at me for over half an hour because I refused to give the hat to a priest in our group. The priest didn't even know I looted the hat until the warrior told him and even then he only wanted it cause it was a mage hat. Instead I offered to give him one of my other mage hats that I'm not high enough level to wear. He seemed happy enough with the deal. I mean sure, the hat adds 20 to mana and 4 to intellect, two stats absolutely worthless to a warrior, but others just don't understand.

You see, not only was this hat a pointy mage hat but it was the precise mage hat I had been seeking. I have two other mage hats but I am still two levels away from being able to wear them. That and they are purple. The hat I got, officially know as the Silk Wizard Hat, is blue and I was able to wear it as soon as I got it. The requirements are five levels lower than the purple hats and the blue just looks a lot cooler. On top of that the hat is pretty darn rare. There is only one enemy in the game that drops it and even then they only drop the hat 1.7% of the time. On top of that looting was set to round robin so I had a 1 in 5 chance of it being my turn to loot the mod. Pretty darn lucky of you ask me.

According to www.thottbot.com only 10 other people in the game have this hat, three of which are on another server than I am. The website also shows that there are no other warriors in the game that wear a mage hat aside from me. I'm not listed as of yet though since the site hasn't updated.

The main argument from the other warrior in my group is that warriors have no use for a cloth hat. They are not supposed to use cloth and are therefore supposed to use chain. Personally, I'm not a big fan of this narrow-minded approach. In these kind of games people tend to always play towards the optimal character. They try to choose all of the best stats, buy all of the best equipment, and only use the so called 'best' skills. The result of this at higher levels is a bunch of players who are exactly alike each other. In gaming they are commonly referred to as 'cookie cutter' characters. There is no originality involved and you are looked at as wrong for doing anything else.

Why not be different though? With my warrior I have done everything that I wanted to do. I have gone against the grain and made the choices that make me happy. What is the end result? The end result is a character that is an absolute joy to play. Sure the stance I choose in battle is not the one preferred, sure I take more damage than other warriors due to my low armor rating, sure my choice in trade skills is a bit odd, but my character was not made for others. It was made for me and I don't have a problem with any of those so called 'flaws'.

The pointy mage hat is the ultimate item to help me set myself apart from other warriors. Most warriors walk around in their heavy armor with some plated helmed with dazzling markings or horns sticking out. I too walk around in heavy armor but instead of a plated helm I have a blue pointy mage hat made of cloth. I want to be the warrior that stands out in the crowd and that people remember the second time around. People run in and out of the capital city of Stormwind all of the time so it is very easy to overlook someone. I do it all the time. The people I do remember though are the ones with distinguising features such as a rare item or a cool pet. When I go into Stormwind I want people to look and say, 'Hey look, it's that wacky warrior that wears a mage hat. What kind of warrior wears a mage hat. And is that a goat he is riding?' That's the kind of stuff that makes these online games fun.

In the end I am extremely happy the have found my mage hat. I am now unique and not just another face in the crowd around over populated Stormwind Auction House. My next step in maknig my warrior unique is my choice of mount which, at level 35, I am only 5 levels away from getting. Right now I am kind of leaning towards riding a dwarven ram. Human horses are pretty plain so I want something with some zing. A human warrior in full armor, wearing a pointy mage hat, while riding a goat would just be hilarious to see. I gotta try it. My warrior is going to be anything but cookie cutter.