Gamespy writer apologizes to fans of game he upset.

July 19 2012 by techgeekdad in Game Review, Gaming News, Mechwarrior Online, Online Gaming |Comments Off

An author for Gamespy wrote a quick little blog regarding Mechwarrior Online’s latest video featuring the Centurion and made a few comments that sent fans into an uproar.

 

Watch the video below.

 

First off I have been reading Gamespy recently so I wasn’t aware of the article except for the fact that someone had posted about it in the MWO Forums.  The fans had posted some of the article written on Gamespy and took offense to the authors comments calling the game boring and that the video was filled full of “Technobabble”.  I guess the author had issues understanding what a LRM-10 or Autocannon-10 is but of course many Mechwarrior fans knew and were quick to spell it out for the author.  The author later took to twitter to insult the fans by calling them “dumbos” but the link to that twitter is now dead and sadly I didn’t screen shot it.  I did however capture some of the other conversations from the editor of Gamespy to the author in an attempt to explain how Mechwarrior works.


In the Mechwarrior online forums some of the fans found other articles written by other websites such as PC Gamer which had a more positive outlook on the video.

Many fans left articles on the gamespy article with most against the author although there were some that agreed that some of technology in Mechwarrior confuses new players.  Some respondents felt that the author was more of a twitch response gamer in games like Call of Duty or Quake.  Others pointed out that Mechwarrior is more strategy based in its combat that one shot kills of some other first person shooters.

I’ve been a Mechwarrior fan for years and I have also played the twitchy games as well such as Call of Duty and I can enjoy both.  My son tends to like the quick shooting sniping games but he also does enjoy playing Mechwarrior 4 as well.   I’m looking forward to enjoying some multiplayer action with him and partnering up with him in a lance along with our friends.  If I look back at when I was first introduced to Mechwarrior back on AOL on a game called MPBT:Solaris I didn’t understand the lore to the game any of the weapons or mech chassis at first.  I did find a great community  though and they taught me quite a bit and then I started purchasing the table top game and became more familiar with the lore and technical aspects of the game.  So I can understand where the author may have been confused at first however when I play Call of Duty I am confused with some of the statistics of all the different weapons and understanding which one is best for my play style.  I know there are places to research it all but paper statistics and actually trying them out are different things.

 

In the end the Gamespy author has issued an apology to Mechwarrior fans and has even told them that he is now downloading the free version of Mechwarrior 4 to try it out.

To quote him exactly:

 

Hey guys, Taylor here.

Just a quick response to all the comments I’ve been getting on this article. You guys are absolutely right; I’ve never played a MechWarrior game for a significant amount of time. I’m pretty unsure as to what makes them click, and why people love them so much. But here’s the thing: I’m absolutely open to the idea that I might fall in love with them. In fact, I’m installing the free version of MechWarrior 4 as we speak.

My comments about the video above are in no way a reflection on my final opinions on the MechWarrior Online topic. I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet (obviously), and plan on giving it my full attention upon release. I was simply responding to the trailer that was the main focus of the news post. To an outsider who is unfamiliar with the intricacies of the MechWarrior series, it does look kind of boring! But that doesn’t mean I’m writing off the game as a whole or insulting the fans. Just stating a personal observation.

So there you go! :)

 

I hope he really does try out Mechwarrior 4 and then comes back and gives a review of it and his likes and dislikes of the game.  I think many of the fans were upset because they could tell he didn’t know the Mechwarrior line and wrote a bad review.  At least now we can look for an honest review even if he comes back and admits that he tried it and it wasn’t his cup of tea.  It’s true not everyone will like Mechwarrior some want to be able to one shot their opponents but that would take the fun out of piloting big giant robots that fight to the death.

So what do you think author next set of comments will be?

 

EDIT

Since this article was written the editor in chief at Gamespy has updated the post.

 

Update: Note From the EditorWelcome, MWO forumites! This post was definitely a little more glib than we generally shoot for, so apologies for that. That said, we strive to give honest reactions to the PC gaming news, and Taylor, as one of many gamers who has sadly not yet had much experience with MechWarrior games, would’ve been lying to you if he’d said this trailer got his blood pumping. Even if you disagree with that impression (and somehow I’ve gotten the idea that you do) you’ve gotta respect that honesty — that’s how you know we’re giving you real opinions and not mindlessly saying that every game looks super-awesome. We’re gamers, not hype machines. But MechWarrior is a big part of PC gaming history, so to aid in Taylor’s personal journey of discovery, he’ll be accompanying us to the Nvidia MWO LAN event next Friday to see what it’s really like to drive one of these suckers. You can expect to see coverage of his first-timer reactions next to those of some more experienced hands.

- Dan Stapleton
Editor in Chief

PS: This news post is in no way a review of any kind. Every time a commenter calls something that’s not a review a review, a long-time game reviewer’s head a’splodes.

 

My answer to that is, yes not all gamers will like Mechwarrior and the mechwarriors out there are not disillusioned to think that everyone will like this game.  In fact we are betting that some will not and will avoid the game entirely because it is not their genre.  There are other games out there for the twitch happy and Mechwarrior is not a twitch happy game but a lot more strategic.  I will be interested to see what Taylor says after going to the Nvidia tournament and plays a few rounds.  If afterwards he says “hey this isn’t my cup of tea”  I think we can accept that as a much more reasonable response than his article was.

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Teen dies from Playing Diablo III for 40 hours straight

July 19 2012 by techgeekdad in Diablo 3, Video Games |Comments Off

Previously I had written about a young man who had died from playing xbox.  It appears that someone from else has died from playing Diablo III for 40 hours.  This time it’s a teenager from Taiwan who decided to go to an internet cafe and play a 40 hour marathon.   Workers at the cafe found the teenager passed out on a table.  It’s reported that he went without food or sleep for the 40 hours but some suspect that he died of blood clots but are awaiting an autopsy.  It was blood clots that had killed the young man who played Xbox for 12 hours and it’s possible that it’s a similar fate for the young man in Taiwan.

Earlier this year another Taiwan man was found dead after playing league of legends for over 9 hours.  Sadly no one noticed and reports are that this young man died from a heart attack and thought to be brought on by blood clots again.  The man did have prior issues with his heart and it’s believed that sitting for too many hours and not moving around caused the complications.

It makes  you wonder how someone could sit so long without moving.  You would think that someone would have to get up and use the restroom, stretch and go find something to eat.

The best advice is if you love to play video games make sure to take breaks and get plenty of food and rest.  I’m sure you can’t play as well while tired and hungry so why punish your body for sub-par play time?

I know I can’t sit around and play as long as I used to but then again I’m getting older and my legs do pain if I sit there too long.  What’s your longest video game marathon and have you had any problems from playing too long?

 

 

 

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The transition from teenager to man

December 18 2011 by techgeekdad in parenting, Teen |Comments Off

Many may not know this but I had some medical issues which kept me occupied for some time.  It eventually got to the point that I ended up needed heart surgery to fix an issue I”ve had since birth.  I remember the last few moments before I was wheeled down to surgery and I was getting a chance to get my hugs from family and getting my last bits of support from the family before the surgery.  It came time to hug my son and tell him that I loved him and it really hit me.  I really wanted to make it through this surgery because there is still so much I need to teach him for him to become a man.  In the past I feel I’ve been a good father and teaching him what’s right from wrong and he’s got a pretty good heart but as many kids in his generation they still have a few faults that need fixed before they become adults.  I started to get scared thinking of how much I need to teach him so he can later be on his own as he grows older.  Sure he’ll have my wife to help him along but I felt I needed to be there for him to teach him things that I felt a man should do.

In becoming a man I feel I should teach him some responsibility.  This will hopefully become a driving force for him later as he normally is not-self motivated.  If you have a sense of responsibility it should be a good motivator to both work and take care of things that need to be done even if you don’t like doing them.  Currently either my wife or I have to be his motivator and tell him what needs to be done.  Again I still think he’s a great kid but needs to learn some responsiblity currently his only sense of responsibility would come from school such as doing school work or studying for a test but he needs to learn about other responsibilities.

I’m also hoping to teach him the value of money so he actually appreciates it more and understand how you have to earn it and how you should guard spending it.  Currently he normally get’s whatever he needs and sometimes wants as long as we have the necessary money and it’s not an outrageous request.  I don’t feel he’s spoiled but as an only child he does have the benefits of having us just spend on him and not a bunch of siblings.  I feel sometimes that he doesn’t really understand the value of money and he’s now old enough to actually work and could benefit from understanding the value before he starts earning his own money and can manage it better in the future.

I would also like to work with him on teamwork skills unfortunately being an only child he has been spoiled by attention and not used to sharing as much.  He will need teamwork skills more as he goes into college and when he’s out in the workforce.  He’s had some attitude problems before in the past that if things didn’t go his way he wouldn’t participate in the activity.  He needs to learn how in teamwork there is often compromise in order for the group to be happy as a whole.  This will of course help him in other aspects of his life as well.

There are many other things that I would like to help him with as well but this is what’s coming up as the first steps I’m going to work with him on.  As I work with him on these issues I plan on documenting what I’m trying, what is working and what struggles I will be working with.  I will update this article to link to the new articles to help with the navigation.  I will also appreciate any comments, suggestions or even support from everyone.

Wish me luck and I’m sure it will be fun.

 

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Teenager has identity stolen now has $700,000 in debt

November 6 2011 by techgeekdad in parenting, phising, Privacy, scammers, Teen |Comments Off

Back in August we  saw a local news story stating that a website ran by hackers had bragged that they had hacked one of the local school districts computer systems and accessed nearly 7000 students files.  Administrators were concerned that Social Security Numbers could have been at risk but were not sure.  They issued a statement giving parents information regarding the hack and a service that parents could sign up on to protect their child’s identity.

It wasn’t too long ago that the FBI told the school district that they felt that the data was not used in any fraudulent schemes.  While this may be good that nothing has happened yet, according to the FBI, I feel that parents should still continue to monitor their childs information.  I would suspect that criminals are aware that the identities is currently being monitored, especially after the hackers announced that they had succeeded in hacking the system.  I imagine the hackers could have sold off the identity information to third parties to be used at a later time.

Either way the potential damage to a childs credit could be pretty severe according to this story where a teenager is nearly $700,000 in debt after becoming a victim of identify theft.  It seems to me that parents should put up credit monitoring on their child’s indentity.  If you do find that your child or yourself is a victim of identify there is a link here that explains on what you can do to combat it.  Many of the credit monitoring services make it easier to dispute issues on your credit report even though you can manually dispute a charge on your credit report with the appropriate credit reporting service.  Either way disputing a charge as soon as possible is the best response since debt that stays on your record longer is harder to dispute.

 

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Qwikster is out – Netflix will keep DVD service

October 10 2011 by techgeekdad in Blu-Ray, DVD, Movies, PS3 |Comments Off

Looks like Netflix finally listened to their customers and have decided to abandon moving their DVD service out of Netflix and into Qwikster.  It appears they realize that having to use their service on two seperate websites is actually a bad thing.  This statement just comes a few weeks after announcing that they wanted to launch Qwikster which makes you wonder why they couldn’t figure this out the first time.  My boss always teaches us to put yourself in your customers shoes when dealing with them.  Had Netflix done this in the first place they would of realized this before announcing their change.  I wonder how many cancelations of their service that they received.

This week I’ve notices that my Netflix streaming on my PS3 did not actually work.  It looked like the PS3 had been removed from Netflix as a registered device.  I tried signing into my account with Netflix but it wasn’t working either.  I tried logging in to their website from my PC but after entering my sign-in information the website just locked up.  I had come to the conclusion that they were updating their site to move to Qwikster but now that I got this email today I wonder what the issue with their streaming services and website was all about.

Anyway here is a copy of the email sent to me:

Dear Kevin,

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

This means no change: one website, one account, one password…in other words, no Qwikster.

While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.

We’re constantly improving our streaming selection. We’ve recently added hundreds of movies from Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax. Plus, in the last couple of weeks alone, we’ve added over 3,500 TV episodes from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, USA, E!, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC Family, Discovery Channel, TLC, SyFy, A&E, History, and PBS.

We value you as a member, and we are committed to making Netflix the best place to get your movies & TV shows.

Respectfully,

The Netflix Team

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Diablo III delayed till 2012

September 27 2011 by techgeekdad in Blizzard, Diablo 3, Gaming News |Comments Off

Blizzard has been famous for pushing back their titles over and over.  I remember how long the wait was for Warcraft III and even Diablo II.  My friends and I would often be upset but we knew that meant that Blizzard would be pushing out a better product.  I had some belief that with Blizzard merging with Activision that we might see products get pushed out faster with less concern with the quality.   Turns out that may not be true after all.  Here’s a direct quote from Blizzard.

We commonly use the term “soon” when referring to Blizzard releases, because we know that no matter how hard we’re working to reach a target, we’re not going to compromise and launch a game before it’s ready. For Diablo III, we were aiming to launch by the end of 2011. As we’re announcing globally today, our new target for the game is early 2012.

While this news might not be a complete surprise, I know that many of you were hopeful that Diablo III would ship this year. We were too. However, this week we pulled together people from all of the teams involved with the game to decide whether we felt it would be ready before the end of December, and we grudgingly came to the conclusion that it would not. Ultimately, we feel that to deliver an awesome Diablo sequel that lives up to our expectations and yours as well, we should take a little more time and add further polish to a few different elements of the game.

The upside of today’s announcement is that we will be running the beta test longer than we initially planned, which will allow us to invite more of you who have opted in.

For those taking on the Diableard challenge, we salute you — and now fear for your well-being and personal hygiene. We hereby issue an official reprieve to all Diableard participants, including Blizzard employees, if you want to trim or otherwise manage the lower half of your face. We’d still love to see your beardly achievements, and we look forward to seeing more of your efforts as we move into 2012, but not to the detriment of your workplaces and significant others.

Thank you everyone for your support and anticipation for Diablo III. We’re still moving ahead at full pace, and we’ll be keeping you fully informed of any news and developments here at Diablo3.com, including the specific release date when the time comes, so stay tuned.

-Mike Morhaime

 

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Netflix plans to move DVD service into Qwikster

September 19 2011 by techgeekdad in DVD, Movies |6 Comments

 

I just got what I thought was a nice email from Reed Hastings who is the CEO and co-founder of Netflix.  It at first starts out as an apology for not communicating why they were separating the DVD and streaming prices. Hastings then goes on to say how he wants to grow the streaming business and feels that is the way he will define Netflix and set it apart. 

 Hastings states how important the DVD service Netflix provides is important due to DVD being a popular format for movie publishing.  He also acknowledges that many of Netflix members enjoy the DVD mailing service as well.   Once again he points out how many members including himself enjoy the streaming options as well.

 The email then shocked me by explaining that the two services will be split into two separate services and apparently businesses.  The DVD mail service will be renamed to Qwikster while Netflix will be purely for video streaming.  If you subscribe to both services you will have two separate entries on your credit card statement now.  The claim is that there will be no price increase for separating into the two different businesses but then again they did already go through a price increase already that got some heated reviews by members.

The good news that was actually mentioned is that the new service, Qwikster, will have an add-on option if you want to rent video games.  Hastings claims that many members have been asking for this option and he feels that with this new business model Qwikster can provide this.

Now many Netflix members are probably wondering what is the next step for them.  Qwikster, Netflix, both or perhaps this may be the last step and they choose neither.  There are already other services out there that provide DVD’s such as Redbox and there are plenty of other streaming companies as well that are trying to compete with Netflix.

I haven’t figured out what I plan on doing yet.  What are your comments?

 

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Bank Accounts Hacked using Information from Facebook

August 26 2011 by techgeekdad in Facebook, phising, Privacy, Social Media |Comments Off

There was news this month that a man in England was able to hack into his neighbors bank accounts using information he gathered on their Facebook accounts.  The man would spend up to 18 hours a day trying various banks and using the “forgot password” feature of their websites to recover the sign-in and password of the bank accounts.  Many banks use additional security measures such as asking you personal questions however much of this information is easily obtained from Facebook if you put this information there.

If you secure your personal information in Facebook note that many people whom you have “friended” may have access to that information as well.  The man from England was Facebook friends with his victims and therefore able to pull various information.

Some of the security questions that banks use are the following examples:

Which high school did you go too? What was your school mascot?  What is your mother’s maiden name?

Many people have this information easily accessible from their Facebook profile along with their email address which could possible be the same email address used to access the bank or credit card website.

So here is a little exercise that I’m assigning you.  Go check your bank website and find out what your additional security questions are.  Now go check Facebook and if those answers are there.  Now check to see how many people have access to that information.  Scary huh?

What you could do to counter some of this is one remove the information from Facebook of course.  Two make the information private to only you but then again if it’s only to you why have it there at all. A third option is to build lists of friends and modify your security settings based upon those lists.  Another option could be change your bank security questions to questions that don’t have anything listed on Facebook.  If none of these work then modify the answers and change them to something that means some specific to you such as a rival school.

For more information on Facebook privacy click here.

 

 

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Blizzard to allow appearance changes of WoW equipment

August 20 2011 by techgeekdad in Blizzard, Game Review, MMO, World of Warcraft |2 Comments

Blizzard announced Wednesday that they were going to add a new feature called transmogrification which basically alters the appears of armor or weapons on your character.  For years many players had complained that if they were finding the best itemized pieces for their characters they would normally have to break up sets of gear that were designed to work together which of course would make the character looked mismatched.  Blizzard said that this feature should be available in patch 4.3 along with some other features.

Now it appears that if a player earns a new piece of armor they can make it appear as the piece of equipment that it’s replacing which will allow the set to still look complete.  This will probably excite a lot of the raiders that like to proudly show their new gear in their hometowns.

This will also have some benefits in PvP as well know that you can make your character appear to be wearing pure PvE gear or perhaps even low quality gear to fake out your opponent.  Some PvP players have stated though that they judge a player’s quality of gear more on health than on what they look like.

According to Blizzard’s own website:

Placing an item into the Transmogrifier interface will offer a preview of how the item will appear once the change is applied. However, not all item pairings are compatible with Transmogrification. In general, only items that have stats can be used in the transmogrification process. You must also be able to wear both items when using this service. Ethereals don’t have much in the way of ethics, but allowing someone to appear as if they’re equipping unusable items crosses the line. Similarly, they won’t allow you to change weapon or armor types. Sneaky death knights can’t make that breastplate look like a cloth robe, and you can’t make a one-handed axe look like a two-handed axe, or transform a sword’s appearance into that of a mace. Guns, bows, and crossbows will be the exception to this rule. You will finally be able to retain your dwarf’s racial gun bonus while appearing with all the splendor and elegance of a bow wielder (or at least the relative silence of one).

Placing items into the Transmogrify interface will increase the gold cost of the process, and clicking the Transmogrify button (assuming you have the necessary funds) will put the appearance change into effect. The process can be reversed by clicking the undo icon on each item, and then hitting the Transmogrify button once more to save the changes. Any item that’s transmogrified will have text indicating it’s been altered by the process for all to see, similar to the item tooltip callout for reforged items.

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Paintball – The Real Life First Person Shooter Game

August 7 2011 by techgeekdad in reviews, Teen, Working Out |1 Comment

I’ve been playing some first person shooter games with my son recently such as Black Ops and enjoying the Player vs Player atmosphere once again that I had enjoyed in other games.  It’s also good to find more things to do outside and my son has been playing paintball but I decided to try another round with him.  I’ve played once with him before the second time he actually played so I could get a feel of what he was experiencing and to see if it’s something that I would approve of him to continue doing.

The object of paintball is pretty simple you try to shoot the opposing player while avoiding being shot.  If you get shot you are out for the rest of the match so not being shot is pretty crucial.  A lot of video game first person shooters you are able to respawn after being killed off and get right back into the game which allows players to be somewhat careless in how they play.  I know when I’m playing objective based games I’ll sacrifice my body if it means I secure an objective before dying since I know I’m helping out the team and I’ll be right back after my character respawns.  That isn’t the case in paintball though so if you are knocked out you are actually hurting your team so avoiding being shot is pretty important but you still need to take out the other players.  Normally the field in paintball will have many bunkers and other obstacles to hide behind and get some cover while attempting to get your opponents.  Many times you will need to move forward and try to flank the other team or just catch them off guard while your teammates keep them occupied.  Which ever team has knocks out all of the other teams players wins the match.  Team sizes can vary as well as the size of the fields.

 

This weekend we ended up at our local paintball field called WinkyDoodles which has been in business for 11 years and the staff there is just excellent.  If you have any questions or concerns they are always happy to answer them and they really gave me a good feeling about my son actually playing there.  They have quite a few rules in place to make sure that the fun is kept safe and it’s a great place to play if you are just starting out or having been playing for some time.

I wanted to get a few shots of my son playing this time and the staff offered to lend me a helmet so I could get on field and get some shots of my son playing.  I was much appreciated and got on the field and was able to get a few camera shots in but I was on the large field where there were a ton of players so paint balls were flying all around me.  One player was knocked out and stood by me and while we were talking he ended up taking another shot from a stray paintball.  I could see my son but he was on the other side of the field in fact he was shooting some of the paint balls my way trying to get some players that were hiding behind a bunker that was near by.  I figured I had snapped enough photos for the time being and exited the field.

 

I saw some other players renting some equipment and some of the staff asked me if I was planning on playing today and I decided to go ahead and give it a go.  Perhaps if I get in field I’ll get some better shots.  I signed up for my rental gear and sat in on the field orientation which is given out for each player before they are allowed to play that day.  It’s basically the rules of the field and a safety explanation that will keep you and other players safe.  I was sitting in orientation with some other players and they were asking questions which led me to believe that they hadn’t played before.  I told them that I would go with them on a smaller field on a private match to help show them the ropes.   I had my son join us along with a referee to allow us to play a private match.  Private matches are great when you are starting out as a new player you can pick who you are going to play against and you can keep the group small to a comfortable size.  I started to move up in our match and try hit them from one direction as my son came around the other side.  I hadn’t played in so long and I was pretty much out of shape that I started gasping for air after the match was over.  Wow I could tell I was out of shape and had forgotten how much exercise you really do get while playing paintball.  I quickly recovered though and soon saw that the more I played that day the better I actually felt.  After playing for several hours I felt actually good getting some decent exercise, meeting new people and helping them learn the game.

The great thing about paintball is that it can be enjoyed by people of many different ages.  This weekend I saw many young kids playing either private matches and sometimes joining the big groups. Saw many of the young adults enjoying themselves on the field but I also saw parents out of the field enjoying spending time with their kids.  It gives you the opportunity to work with them as a team or even play against them by challenging them to a private match.  If you want to try it out your local paintball field should have rental equipment for you to try out which should have everything you need to get started.

 

 

 

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