indeed why? it seems that the answer is too much obvious for those who are really into 3D modelling: because it's free, and only because it's free, as it seems that Blender is not yet better then other similar tools on anything, but it does everything that you need (modeling, rigging, animation, rendering, composing, etc.) and it is cross-platform (!).

Anyway, for noob starters, as myself, it has more than i can handle. After 14 hours of Blender training i manage to make a somewhat simple house and a chess piece (and i am quite happy with that!):

Kudos for Pedro Amado, the guy who teached me how to do this.

World of Warcraft servers go down. Some servers don't. Players start to nerdrage on the Technical Support forums where threads go up to hundreds of posts. Blizzard finnaly replies and says they are trying to fix the problem ASAP (even on sunday nights - wtf lol). Nerds go even more nerdraging on posts saying that they will finally quit wow after 5 years. Meanwhile they log in on some working servers and create level 1 characters. They realise they are hundreds of other playeres doing the samething. They play those characters doing something fun for the first time in months. And then the problem is fixed and everyone gets back to the raids or whatever they were doing forgetting about all the QQ "i will finally quit wow" and such.

This occurs every now and then. I have experienced several of these level 1 massive character creation, but only yesterday i finally recorded one:

 

I'll say! Fking kids doing nice music ;o

Its over. Mass Effect 2 finale has simply blown me away. Through the hole game i never did a reload for any decision, good or bad, i just had to live with my choices, until the very end! So i killed half of my team, Miranda was angry with me for half of the game until the very end where she died! (so my plans for sex with miranda failed big time) ;( I turned rogue on the illusive man and destroyed the Collector's base... which made me think it was a mistake in the end, in the very end where you realise there will be (of course) a Mass Effect 3. Omg, can't wait.

Fun part is to realise what did i miss.... i didn't had any sex not even with Tali or Jack... what the hell ;( !!!!

I wonder how much i missed on the game. But then again, i like the idea that you play a game where u are free to make any decisions you want to make, and then live with them (even if it leaves you blue balls so that you need to steal someone else's porn, like Joker's).

I now consider myself a fan of Yvonne Strahovski (chikipedia has a different domain - wtf?).

I have been a fun of Chuck for some time now. The idea of a geek with a double life where he is some sort of spy is appealing to me, although it is not portrayed as geekly as it should be, but maybe that is exactly why the series has been so successful until now. Or is it because of the not-so-ugly Yvonne playing as the CIA agent Sarah Walker? Of course not (lol). The characters are very consistent and you can't help but to sympathize with almost all of them, the action shots have a standard have-hot-girls-fighting-in-sexy-outfits cliché that works perfectly in my opinion ;) In summary, the series feels very enjoyable.

Anyway! Yvonne already had me on Chuck, but now i got blasted away, well, me and all the Strahovski MassEffect2-geek-fans out there: she is part of the cast for the game, giving voice (and face + body, by the looks of it) to Miranda, a kind of perfect woman that is one of your team mates in the game. And yes! she is incredibly hot in her virtual character as well! <3 Miranda <3. So now I will direct my efforts into role playing a lesbian hot case with her. This is pure geek happiness! And I am not ashamed of it! (oh yeah, started playing ME2 some days ago)

...is allways a World of Warcraft player. What are the odds of that? So i worked in 2 different places before working where i am now. All places shared some caracteristics such as, all were IT companies, the offices were allways open spaces, and i allways had 1 guy sitting next to me. And guess what? First one was a geek who one day watch me on some WoW forum and poped the question "Oh you play wow?". Nothing more to be said, after 5 years we are still friends and still play together! ;) Second one was this fat 18 year old intern sitting next to me, who talked a lot about wow. So we discovered each other since day 1 (hey - both fat geeks and wow players - perfect) and well, we spent countless hours talking about wow in our own language that nobody else could understand. Pitty that he left the job after some weeks... there was no time to make eternal bonds! ;P And finally, im working for 2 weeks on this new job. Today in the moring i was checking in on my usal WoW forums and guess what, the guy next to me arrives late, stops just behind me, gazing at my screen and pops the question... that question... the one question that seems to make instant friends no matter what or where you are ;) "Oh you also play wow?" "OMG same realm as me" "what are the odds of that???".. High enough i would say... :)

Following up the first about of how to run a casual guild where i just exposed some of the related problems, here goes some ideas i took from my own experience while running Contempt of EU-Burning Steppes.

Everyone knows that guild happiness comes from diferent aspects, but the most important one, is progress. Even for a casual guild! If you don't have any progress you guildies will become frustrated in time and tend to look for another guild. It makes even more sense if you are casual, you want to make the most of the small amount of time you have available to play. So progress is needed! ;) Nowadays is easier to accomplish progress as the game has been break down into normal and hard modes. Normal modes in 10 man raids are very much possible to accomplish to almost all the casual guilds out there. ICC 10 man, or Hardmodes on ulduar, ToC are not so much.

Anyway there a couple of rules we follow in order to keep the guild happy.

1. Promoting the community! Casual and mature people have jobs. They have access to internet on the work most of the time, so having an active forum, is a must in order to create a more united raiding community. Recording the fights, making funny videos, polls, posting pictures, achievments, etc. it all adds to the same feeling that you are part of something special and unique!

2. Not enforcing guild attendance in any way! Everyone must know that if raid ends ad 00h, it must end no matter what, even if the last try on the last boss of some dungeon was a wipe at 1%. If there is a guy that needs to wake up early, make it a raid over and dont even think about extending it! ;) In addition, no one should need to raid any % of the weekly raids. Anyone can come then they can. Period.

3. Enforcing a fair rotation on players and make early selection of players. Its obvious that the player pool is allways larger then the raid spots. How to choose who attends a raid and who is left out? Priority goes to having a good setup for the raid's objectives, but next in line is assuring that no one is raiding more then anyone else on the guild! If a guy is left out, he must have a spot on the next raid and so on. And when leaving people out on any raid, they should be warned about it (using ingame calendar confimations is a good option).

4. Although the guild is casual the raids must not be! This doesn't mean that players will be stressed on raids, it just means that the fights / strategies / consumables must be prepared in the same way (or almost) as a hardcore guild ;) Casuals raid less time then hardcores, so we need to make the most of the limited time we have! This also means that you will be progressing more, and therefore, more hapiness overall ;D

5. Make sure you are continously recruiting new people with the exact profile that you need (most guys looking for a guild dont know exactly what casual 10 man raiding means, and some dont even know what they want). So make sure the inviting process has an interview and/or an application form where you can make sure the player you are inviting, is really casual, mature, only intends to raid 10 man, understands the concept of fair rotation on raids, and the possibility of being left out on some! In alternative, casuals can also be invited if they are simply casual and want to be part of the community. Mature, friendly and casual people are allways welcome and the are an added value to the guild, so they should never be left out!

So that all makes for a happy 10 man casual raiding guild. I still have questions if a casual guild with two different 10 man teams would work. Or if these rules would apply to a 25 man casual guild. 10 man casual is easier to manage in the sense that you can easily spot problems/issues/underperformances and fix them, aswell as lack of attendency. 25 man adds a lot of complexity to those factores. Maybe i will figure that out one day ;)

My guild of World of Warcraft has been around for 5 months with some success i must say. But still we have lots of unsolved issues and had survived all the classic guild problems along the way, like lacking progress, leaving members, not having enough people to raid, etc etc.


Despite all the long and hard path we had, we are now a stable core of 13-14 players who are good and well geared up for the current content on the game. But we are casual. Being casual for us means that people may go missing for entire months and when they get back they may raid with the guild. How do you accomplish this with success? How can u take a spot out of a member which is allways there, so a long forgotten uber-casual guy steps in even without knowing recent tactics and strategies for the current guild encounters. The purpose is to have everyone happy and having fun within their own casualness (omg love words with 'casual' on them). But that is not easy! Some guys are there for every raid, some are playing for 2 weeks then are 2 weeks offline. Some are 1 month offline then come back for 2 months; some just come to 2 of our 3 weekly raids. So how do u manage to keep progress going and, at the same time, keep everyone happy? Answers to come on next post.

The fact is: running a hardcore guild is easier

So i just found out that i own 4 games out of the top 5 most selled games on 2009. Funny, since i consider myself a hardcore gamer and most of these games are casual ones ;)

It has been so long since i gave my first steps which ended on library selection only..

Well i never know when i will start, or if i will ever start or finish something. Playing wow is a big part of this constant feeling which is no surprise for anyone and well.. it happens to the best ;)

Anyway here is the main idea: To make my first steps in Java instead of c++. I know lots of stuff about java, so why not start there? Better yet, i have been developping applications in Eclipse RCP so what if i just use that knowledge and start exactly with the technology with which i am most experient?

It tooked only 2 minutes to find something interesting to followup: a tutorial on how to make a simple game within the Eclipse RCP plugin dev environemnt. Its not exactly what i am looking for, but it is a great start!

So what? Yes, i have a wii. Yes i play Mario games! Well it can be embarrassing to admit, in certain social circles.

Anyway it makes me feel better to see someone writting about it :) specially when he defends that mario games are for older people. Is it? well maybe..