Whykay's happenings

WoW bride's dress same as in-game

This couple met in WoW and got married and the bride wore the same wedding dress as her in-game character's wedding dress!

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=12304210737&sid=1

FFXIII bus around San Fran

Following them on Twitter and the pics of all the people standing in line to catch a glimpse of FFXIII are getting longer. I can imagine a mass movement of FFXIII fans who can't get in will be following the FFXIII bus around town. :D

Another game-themed wedding

Man, those Zelda cufflinks look so cool, and that cakey! Check it out.

Mario - what to wear?

Mario's Closet design @ © SplitReason.com

New Super Mario Bros for the Wii

Fable 2

I quite enjoyed the game, it's a pretty laid-back RPG-style game. Out of curiousity, I got a female NPC to fall in love with my female character, and they got married! Quite open, isn't it? Heh, I was curious if they can have children, but from a bit of google searching, nope, it's not possible, although some other people did the surrogate parents as a workaround. You can have as many partners but if they cross paths, you are in trouble. My character is a one-person gal, lol. The main character can get fat as well, but after careful and plentiful munching of fruit, control of weight can be established again. And even PETA loves Fable 2 because you can choose to be a veggie in the game.

Although they really have to fix that glitch where the furniture shop stops stocking goods when the town's economy is at its best. At the moment, it's either kill the shop owner and screw the economy to get the furniture back and slowly build up the economy again. That's a crappy workaround. I really hope they fix it though, purty please, Lionhead!

When WoW and Coultan collide

re: Your Brains

Code Monkey

Mr. Fancy Pants

Creepy Doll

Flickr

More vids at Spiffworld.

PAX 2008 - More reminiscing

I'm happy with the swag we got at PAX this year. I queued up straight away when I got to the exhib halls on the first day of PAX. Lucky I did, they were out of PAX 08 tees and others stuff by Saturday evening.

The special PAX Razer mouse Mick got was cool:

And the collectors of Penny Arcade's first game, Precipice of Darkness:

(Both images from Kotaku.)

Most of our swag was bought or given on the 1st day:

And yes, we even got the Fallout 3's Vault Boy puppet as seen in http://www.joystiq.com/2008/08/31/pax-2008-the-vault-boy-puppet/.

A few people have been blogging how PAX can be improved (here and here and here for example). I hope the overlaps of certain events like demos, panels, Q&As as well as the long queues are resolved for next year. 5 hours queuing the first day was epic, and was not that enjoyable. Ok, people falling over themselves to get a blue band to get into the concert on Friday was funny:

Although in the end, we got our blue bands without doing anything. A few cosplayers were taking our attentions away from our tired and sore limbs from standing or sitting on the hard floor:

And not forgetting the Cookie Brigade who sold cookies and manage to raise $5000 for Child's Play.

There were good suggestions voiced out at PA's Q&A sessions, like having a Child's Play auction at future PAXis (apparently Tycho approves of the use of "PAXis suggested by a fan). And for all those dads who thinks that gaming is a waste of time, direct them to Child's Play (just re-iterating what Gabe said at the Q&A).

I don't think the smell was that bad, as mentioned by some bloggers, but I was lucky not being stuck with ones they mentioned. One other thing, they should have designated areas for charging DS', PSPs, laptops, etc. When over 50K (I mentioned 60K before, I was incorrect, I was guessing at the time as everyone was saying it was double the amount from last year's PAX) nerds attend a gaming festival, there are bound to be a lot of portable consoles and laptops. While we were queuing for an event in the main hall, it was announced that items will be confiscated if people were caught using the power outlets in the convention centre. Hours waiting in line, what did they expect, anyway, people honoured the announcement, and no more crowds of people around a power source that pocketed the convention centre. One thing I found funny, was the gun they were giving away (we did not get one as we were busy queuing) was not allowed to be used in the centre as they are a weapon. Sheesh, they should have asked the security in the place, give gamers a gun and hours of wait time, what did you think would happen?

And it sometimes feels good when photos taken (mainly by Mick) are good quality especially when you come across an article such as this one by Joystiq and compare to Mick's pic:

Again I cannot emphasise on the queuing side of PAX, at least we were having a nice dinner when these guys were in line at 10:30pm the night before PAX opened. We wandered in at 10'ish I think, after brekkie. We love PA, but there are limits. (Ok, Mick got sigs off Tycho and Gabe after their second Q&A, got to take a photo of that and put it up).

Looking back at PAX 2008

From the overwhelming amount of people attending PAX this year to my utter disgust at Freezepop's inability to perform without your ears bleeding to immense pleasure of witnessing Gabe's artistic talents at work in creating Monday's panel (which unfortunately won't be seen till Gabe's machine is fixed, but that's ok as I have a video of it to remind me what it was like, and you can check out the photo of the final image at the make-a-panel). Who can forget the many, many DS' and laptops shining out during the gig, and Jonathan Coultan's act was fantastic, the Portal song and the Zombies were my highlights. Audience participation is a must for full enjoyment.

From phrases like "Whooo-oo" to "Yea-aah!" to "Awesome" was the main vocab for some odd reason. It's not like nerds/geeks are not educated or anything, it felt like they are either rednecks or surfer dudes (and yes, dude was mentioned somewhere out there).

The moment of Jerry tying the mic chord around Mike's neck to get the Pacman watch given by a fan was funny, Mick did not get a shot of that, we'll need to wait for the PAX 08 DVD to come out to see that again. Another thing I've never experienced before (apart from it being my first time at a gamers convention) was the use of PictoChat on the DS. It's fantastic up to a point where people were populating it with wangs and arses. Although I was happy when I drew (or tried to) a stick figure version of the portal slide and got Portal responses from the people around.

And finally some pics from PAX can be found at here

Finally ordered the wiimote jackets...

... via Nintendo. One annoying thing though, even though the request form had the dropdown for 4 wiimotes, after I submitted the request form, it complained that I have exceeded the maximum of 3 wiimotes... WTF! Anyhoo, I can only order 3 jackets for the wiimotes. Oh well...

Halo 3 hype

Well, well, well, what' happened to the crowds that were expected for the Halo 3 launch? The Reg reported that it did not quite happen. Plus I was coming out of an exhibition last night, and saw some GAME shop assistants heading into Abakekabra for some dinner, to prepare themselves for the midnight launch. My friend got himself and another friend invites to the Microsoft Halo 3 launch party. It was a bit dull, loud music in one area, and a quieter area for older folks attending the launch. A supposed appearance by a Richard Dean Anderson did not materialise at all. The game on demo was shown on crappy, quite possible just HD-ready displays. And the music was so loud, my friend was unable to figure where to go as the prompts were sound-based, and there was no indication visually. So that was a bit of a letdown. And he left and walked past GAME on Dawson Street, and saw.... one person queuing outside the store! Gamestop was a little better at St. Stephen's Green Shopping Centre, as it's inside the complex and it was freezing outside.

So, to re-iterate, Halo 3 was just over-hyped.

Oh, and here are some pics I took one Saturday early afternoon outside St. Stephen's Green Centre that I've posted on my Flickr site :

Chore Wars

Ok, folks who know me, would know that I quite like to play a "little" WoW (World of Warcraft) now and again. Seriously, I wasn't playing for 2 months, just got back in, and I have not levelled a character to level 60, and I've been playing since it was released 2 years back (yeah, I have a few characters lying around dormant on different servers, all at various levels).

But I came across Chore Wars in BoingBoing and in the latest comic from Penny Arcade. I just bugged my WoW PVP fanatic of a brother about it, and he just laughed it off. I know it's sad, but would it entice people to do more house work?

You know when you are sick of the PSP when...

... you ditch it and run with your DS.

Wii Pachinko

All I see is blinking lights on the entrances to amusement arcades that are specifically for pachinkos. They are loud, and goes "ding ding ding..." and lots of other noises! It's the only place where people can smoke as well, while playing in amusement arcades.

But no more smoke or garish lights, as it's coming to the Wii (in Japan, of course). Wondering when they will release it here, but if I like it too much, next time I am in Japan, you might find me entranced by the evil panchinko machines!

WoW

So, Mick told me that WoW on the desktop (with its spiffy new graphics card) has been updated. Did the usual downloading and installing Cosmos. I see they have changed the way it's install itself now. Also noticed alot of b0rked plugins. \(;*A*)/

Plus when I logged in, my guildies remembered me. Woohoo, after 2 months absence.

But, wait for it, I checked my in-game mailbox, guess what was in it. It was spam from gold farmers! I coundn't believe it. Imagine if Blizz had to implement some kind of mail spam filter in-game.

One more thing I noticed, the WoW updater now kicks off in the background after you exit WoW. Pretty nifty.

And since the talent tree has been reset... yay! I have another chance to decide how I am going to assign all my talents. Woohoo!

• Since I am currently level 40, this will be my level 40 tree
• Level 50 tree
• Level 60 tree
• Level 70 (whenever I make this) tree

Wii Pre-ordered

So we have pre-ordered our Wii last Saturday, despite the €20 deposit , which is to cover the cost of the VAT! Hmm, apart from that, we have pre-ordered the Wii. So excited. The GAME's sales assistant assured us all (us and other customers instore), that there are enough Wiis to go around. We were a bit concerned that it does not secure us a Wii. At least it's better than some folks in US, GameStop not taking any pre-orders.

Dev kits

Whereas Sony failure to provide many developers with dev kits

Wii developers are getting theirs, and as engadget found out, it looks a bit different.

But a downer to hear that wii is not region-free anymore...I was so excited before when iI thought it was region-free.

Brain Training

Mick got me a copy of Brain Training for the DS. It's quite good, although I was not surprised my brain age was 70 or something, given that I was knackered from the week and it was past midnight when I decided to check it out. They advise you to play in the morning when you are not so tired. Oh well, I wanted to try out the game anyway. I saw an article in Kotoku, and I disagree with it, citing that it's useless IQ trainer. The game is to train your mind to be more alert, not increase IQ. I found memorising the hardest, although I have always been bad at this anyway (that is why I hate exams! ;) ). I enjoy the quick answering of simple maths question. Some of the other games are challenging, like keeping not of head counts when they enter and exit the house. I have always shunned Sudoku, but I decided to give it a go, since Brain Training bundles it with it. It's not too bad.

All in all, it's quite entertaining, plus it encourages you to do it daily, and not do these exercises throughout the day, allowing rest.

(You can discuss more in my IBC forum)

Printscreen on my Zboard

Well, I have been using the WoW keyset for Zboard for awhle now. I like it, the only annoying thing is that it does not have a printscreen. Well, a bit of searchng in the Zboard forums has my answer...

It's "Shift+1" (The button at the top of the Zboard). Could not even find that in the manuals! But it works, yay! I can screenshot again, espec now that I have been working on my new alt character... elf hunter called Whykee.

WoW switch

Heh ,you have seen the mac switch ads, well, here are some wow switch movies...

* Deity - Switcher

* Atkins - Switcher 2

This year's Leeeeroy!

So this is this year's Leeroy Jenkins. Oh boy, that is a lot of cussing! I don't find it as funny as Leeroy Jenkins though, maybe because it does not have a video, just the audio.

Opera for DS Lite and Wii

This looks sweet. I love my current DS, and I am so tempted to get the DS Lite...
Plus it's going to be for Wii as well. Wheeeeee!

From Kotaku : Opera on DS

Another misadventure in WoW

Not a good day yesterday for our party consisting of a human warrior, a gnome rogue and a human warlock. We decided to do the last of our quests in Uldaman. And we got our butts kicked. In the chamber we were at the alter, summoning the door to open, and all eyes peeled to run and charge at the giant boss that is to come. And boom, a stone gaurdian comes alive (well, it was pretty obvious that these 4 large stone gaurdians come alive somehow) and bashes Mick (warlock) and Juve (rogue). Another one came alive as we disposed of one. My mind screaming, "this is a joke, where is the boss?". Lo and behold, the four gaurdians were overcome by our strive to live to catch a glimpse of the end boss. The door opens to a group of elites, and that is where we bit down and plod onwards to doom (given prior encouters with similar group... this was about the fourth time, and at least one of us dies in each case). Well, guess what, we were so depleted in buffs, potions and food, we died. That was where I decided to call it a day, ressurected on the spot and soulstoned back to Ironforge. Ressurection sickness and armour so dented, a fly landing on it would cause me damage! So that is when I decided to go to bed.

Depeche mode in Simlish

I saw this strip from gucomics, and was wondering what the heck that was about. And tonight Mick pointed me to this video showing Depeche Mode's song "Suffer well" for Sims2.
Aaaah, now the comic makes sense! *lol.

Now combine PBJT and DDR

And you get this, if you don't get what I mean... Peanut Butter Jelly Time & Dance Dance Revolution. Oh yeah!!!!

DDR

You know, for some odd reason I wanted to check out vids on how folks really do DDR... best place to find them is at video.google.com and I have some favs... (yeah, I know my bro says it's sad, and Southpark even made fun of it in one of their eps, that one was funny, poor Butters!). But these guys really are fast!

• Kevin MegamanX completes the oni course Legend Road from DDR
• This freestyle is cool!
• I tell ya, these Japanese are crazy

And I suppose this is one of my most memorable ones (Kieran showed me this before).... the 1-legged DDR contestant, amazing!

This one just reminds me of a webcomic I came across years ago... called The 10K Commotion. Plus it really shows that the Japanese are really serious about their DDR!

WoW as an assignment

No, seriously... WOW was an assignment for some undergrads! How cool is that? Heh, I would have loved to have done the migration of contagious diseases throughout the realms of WoW.

Since there are no comments (sp@mmers fault) in my blog for now, you can discuss this at my IBC messageboard (unfortunately you will need to register, blame the sp@mmers again).

WoW r0cks

My guild, The Cuddly Vikings has created a roster. Thing is, playing WoW on and off means I concentrate more on quests then my skills as a blacksmith and a miner. And when I saw how I ranked in my chosen trade skills, I was a bit annoyed, so I have been upping the ante and been very good on boning up my skills. So yay, and all that, I have another blacksmithing quest to go on, and some of the weapons I can make from that is gonna be so sweet!

BTW, the roster is so cool... you can see my character's stats, and what I have in my bags, bank, what I know etc. And Mick pointed out that all that page is generated in CSS and JS! Neato stuff there. No wonder it is so fast to load up! Impressed I am, yes.

Omni-graffle a mario!

Heh, this dude has too much time on his hands! Mario theme done in Omnigraffle

Linked Auction Houses in Wow

Ok, in the upcoming patch.. but it's from the under development section.

Planned for launch in patch 1.9, players will discover that they can buy and sell goods with greater effectiveness using the highly anticipated Linked Auction House System. Horde players will find that the Auction Houses in Orgrimmar, Undercity, and Thunder Bluff will now share the same pool of player-created auctions. Similarly, Alliance players will find the same to be true when visiting Ironforge, Stormwind City, and Darnassus Auction Houses. This system has been expanded to support the neutral Auction Houses as well. Tanaris, Everlook, and Booty Bay will all be linked for players of both factions to access. In addition, the "Looking for Group" and "Trade" channels have been unified among the corresponding cities, meaning you can trade your goods or look for groups in Ironforge while in Stormwind!

I have been complaining about this for ages. Since I visited one of the towns, and it had an empty and crapp auction house, I was wondering.. "how hard is it to have the auction house items coming from one central place". It's bad enough that everything for Alliance is at Ironforge, and the lag is unbelievable.

This is going to be great!

WoW-madness

So I finally got my mount (for some piccies), and have been resting from playing it for awhile (busy work deadline... sigh). But good thing about WoW, it does not punish you for resting, it rewards you for resting (although, I am paying them, and if I don't play, I feel I don't get the value out of it.... I am never happy, am I? Heh.)

Saw some articles about China's 3 hour limit, which I think is a bit OTT. But at least they know there is some sort of problem with lots of folks over there who get so addicted, they become tardy, isolated from friends and families, bascially losing themselves in the game too much. I personally like the escape, but not that much. I would get tired, and would log off and go to sleep. It's the something to look forward to when I am not doing other stuff.

But I hope this won't happen to me!

I want my mount! I'm lvl 40!

You know... just hit level 40 for my Human Warrior in WoW, and this comic springs to mind. I feel so silly running around places without a mount ('cause I did not save up early enough). Well, I start saving just around level 39.. up to 34 gold pieces now. Heh, around 10G per level. Why, oh why did I leave it sooo late? It can be compared to real life, no? Yup... save when you are young... and you may get your car/house (or both). Heh, well the likelihood of getting a house in Dublin is impossible to young adults nowadays, no matter how much you save. Apart from broadening the band to more people getting 100% mortgages, now people can get 120% mortgages!!! Well, at least in virtual world, I get to pillage and loot my rewards to get to my initial mount. Lots of slashy, slashy.... ahhh, such stress relief!

Play Monkey Island on DS

Yup, you can play Monkey Island on your DS! Mick would love this.

Warlock bugs and killing one

Visiting WoW Europe and saw something that might be useful to Mick (as he is a warlock)... 3 bugs found wrt Warlocks and something which he would not be appreciative of... PVP - opening moves Vs warlocks .

[WoW] The schoolhouse

Given that I am now a level 28 warrior (yippee), Mick (level 27 warlock) and I plowed our way through all the baddies at Westfall's Moonbrook area. We were trying to locate the d4mn schoolhouse (the "Stalvan used to work at a schoolhouse" mission)! After meticalously searching through each permises and coming out empty-handed (well a few coppers and a sword here and there), nothing close to our quest item could be found. So I found this pic after google-seaching, yeah, got that bad.. ho-hum. And it was right under our noses! Argh, so told Mick and we will be heading back here quick time tomorrow. Heh! But I do like the comment below that pic though. Was my first impression when I looked. All the places of that layout look like townhalls to me.

WoW woes

So, came home on Friday, thinking I can chill out, and escape to a more virtual world of bashing foes in World of Warcraft and when I logged in, it was downloading a patch. Fine, nothing wrong with that, until the Prepaid time had run out.... message appeared, and I could not log in! WTF? Well, I knew the 1 month free play, plus 3 days extension had expired, but I paid a month in advance when I registered my credit card! Well, their account management page was down and what is worse, there was no support replying to anyone! Well, thanks to Jessibell for pointing out a solution and that their account summary page was down, but their other account management pages, like registering credit card details etc were still ok. So many folks were able to enter their details (again), including Mick and I, and we were able to continue on with our quests on Sat morning (it's that addictive!) . Well, more of the fact I paid for it, so I am getting my monies worth out of it!

But Blizzard should be ashamed of themselves, leaving so many people in the dark with no support over the weekend. And saying but we currently have no ETA for when they will be functioning again. while other players manage to resolve the issue! Just not good enough. This is a 24/7 365 days live game. And many folks are on it at any one time on their many servers. So doing a maintenance job with a big risk to breaking the system on Fridays is such a bad move. Especially if they are buggering off for the weekend, and some folks like to relax at home after a hard slug at work, and play a few hours online to get rid of stress. That's what I do.

Memories, ol' skool style!

Yeah, retro gamers out there, check out this link to a site of this lucky guy who happen to go to the Classic Gaming Expo in San Jose .... I am sooo jealous. (I want my famicom sob sob)

Doom 3 so far

So my BF has been playing Doom 3 for the past week or so. When I first laid eyes on it, well... what I can see onscreen, I think Angst shows that perfectly.
Oh, and not forgetting MacHall encounters with Doom3 (scroll down, it's a funny read )
But it does look spankingly good! And with the rez turned up on whatever spec machine my BF has... it runs really well. Only upgrade this year, was RAM. Last I heard... he is in hell! But it's soo dark! But I still find this mod so funny. Wonder if anyone uses it?

Launch party at PB mansion!

Boing Boing: Playboy game launch party at Playboy Mansion, LA Man, this is unreal! This is games, geeky and stuff, and get to party at the launch party at the PB mansion! I can only imagine guys dreaming about this. ;)
And Wired article about the game at E3

Final Fantasy madness

Saw the screenshots. Quite nice, I must say. I have not played it since the early ones, more falling asleep while my brothers toil away to finish it, and only waking me up to watch the movie scenes in-between. ;) And on top, you can listen to its radio show as well on America Online!

DRAG-ON DRAGOON

Wonder what Neil thinks of this? DRAG-ON DRAGOON Official Website“ DRAG-ON DRAGOON Official Website

What games are popular in Japan?

Check this out Gamers.com : Chart Attack! Japanese Top 20, 8/11 - 8/17

My brother Will will like this - Gamers.com : Winning Eleven 7 Comes To PC. He has been a big fan of this game which use to be just console's only.

Oh, and on the side, Gamers.com : Sony Announces EyeToy game: Groove.

E-reader bundle

Hmm, really tempted to get one when I am over in Florida in September... See article for more info - Gamers.com : Nintendo Announces e-Reader Bundle

GBA SP

I really want this! - GBA SP from GamesTech. It looks so cute, and cool at the same time!

Crap! Another Sims Game!

The Sims SuperStar preview from gamers.com
Gigs of the machine down at home is just filled up with The Sims installs and saved games! No more pleeeeaaassse!

Miyamoto talks about...

...new GC Zelda, Pokemon, Donkey Kong and more! The article from gamers.com
(BTW, I find the site can be heavily overloaded, and hard to get to, but it is a good read, and a good site)

Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution trailer

Yes, Neil will be hopping up and down about this one! Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution Trailer

Final Fantasy X-2

Some shots from FF X-2 and further news of Final Fantasy X-2 CD-Single Planned

Sega takeover saga

Follow on from I wonder what Neil makes of this?, more information about the Sega take over from Home Lan Fed - More Sega news and rumours.

Wonder what Neil makes of this?

Microsoft, EA may make bid for Sega

And more updates to the above on the possible buyout : Sega Stock Jumps on Reported Microsoft, EA Bids