Chopsticks dollar tree

So in the past I have talked about how our middle cat, Kenzie…  loves to play fetch.  This originally started with her stealing the rubber bands that occasionally bind together bundles of hangers when we get dry cleaning.  This escalated to her swiping the elastic string that holds together shoes sometimes when you buy a pair at the store.  One day while roaming Dollar Tree we noticed these hair bands and thought…  this is a thing that Kenzie would love and would also be easier to tell when she has dropped one on our head.  So we picked up a package of them and at the same time my wife swiped one for herself to use as a binding strap for one of her notebooks.  Over the weekend Kenzie found this hairband…  and pulled the notebook off of my wife’s desk in her office…  somehow figured out how to get the band off the notebook… and by the time we got up that day was playing with it downstairs. She has a special … [Read more...] about Pirate Booty

Good morning folks.  It’s Sunday and I am already beginning to dread the start of another work week.  I did in fact get drug out into the world kicking and screaming yesterday.  Somehow my wife talked me into a trip to the ghetto for school supplies.  However luckily it was over almost as quickly as it began, as the one Dollar Tree we went to actually had everything she had on her list for her classroom.  I will admit that after Albany, the ghettos of Tulsa feel quite a bit more posh. Viva Summerfest It’s Summerfest time again in Rift and with it comes the scavenger hunts, that have now been updated to include the Storm Legion content.  This is my first year participating, and while I have not spent a ton of time working on them yet, it is my goal for today.  I have to admit that there are so many different quest lines and scavenger hunts that it is a little bit weighty to try and wade in as a first timer.  Thankfully yesterday Rift … [Read more...] about Viva Summerfest

For every one thing I learn about SOTA, four more things come up that I do not know, do not understand, or could not figure out. You will journey into a world built on The Three Principles and Eight Virtues used in the Ultima franchise (displayed here, with thanks to the Digital Antiquarian). Each major town is tied to one of these, and this is important to the story. Each of the three main possible starting areas has their own tragedy and horror occurring, and it’s up to you to figure out who is right and who is wrong. But before you delve into the land, you make a character. You have two genders and some fairly basic character customization options, where you can adjust the face, but not the body. Start on the Isle of Storms, where you do your character customization, and reach the Oracle. She’s a giant mechanical face that will ask you questions where you tell her how honest/courageous/loving you will be in your answers. These determine your fate, but again, you can … [Read more...] about Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues Review

When you work in video games, you often get asked what new titles you are looking forward to. While experience has been teaching me to temper my enthusiasm, I do have one that I’m excited to play. I first got to experience Dual Universe in-person at PAX West last September, and since then I’ve been eagerly anticipating its release! Why? That title pretty summed it up well: It’s a persistent, seamless, sandbox universe. More than that even, it is a hotbed of creativity thanks to its voxel foundation. So I’ve had a taste of what can happen in a world that customizable, and I hunger for more! That meeting with Jean-Christophe Baillie, the president and founder of NovaQuark, was seven months ago. How has development been coming along since then? How does the game look today? I got to sit down with Baillie for an update on progress and a new tour through the universe a few weeks ago. In my first demo, I saw promise. This time, I saw more of that promise … [Read more...] about Massively OP Interview: Dual Universe demo shows off advances in city building, space travel

Do you believe that time travel is possible? It most certain is in the realm of fantasy virtual worlds. Legacy servers from many early MMORPGs are popping up all over the world. Recently, I had the privilege to take a time machine and travel back to Azeroth exactly the way it was back in November of 2004 on the Elysium vanilla WoW server. Since then I have been enchanted and captivated yet again by the enthralling World of Warcraft MMORPG. This was all made possible by the hard work and dedication of the Elysium vanilla WoW team. Why are legacy servers so popular? It’s very simple. After years of bad design decisions made more out of concern for growing the demographic to increase profits than for the good of the game, the current version of World of Warcraft comes off as a pitiful shadow of its former self. Like a cheap knockoff of a Rolex watch sold by a street vendor, the WoW of today is WoW in name only. Over the years, WoW has been continually dumbed down and degraded … [Read more...] about The Majesty of Elysium’s Vanilla World of Warcraft