Today, 4 toons and over a month of gameplay later, I’ve decided to suspend my account. Here’s why…

Reason 1: Lack of People
WoW for me was all about the community; the group of friends. A collection of lovely people with similar interests who you could chat to while gaming. Over the past 6 months or so, we’ve seen fewer and fewer people online. Not only are people just not logging on these days, but our guild leader recently quit due to unfair (and poorly documented) changes in an achievement he’d spent months grinding for. It appears people are losing faith/interest in the game/Blizzard and as such, it is now rare that anyone is online at the same.

Perhaps when Cataclysm is unleashed, we’ll see a month or two where the numbers pick up; where people will be interested again.

Reason 2: There’s a Big World of Awesome Games Out There!
Over a month of gameplay; replaying the same game but with different characters; repeating the same old quests (”Kill 10 of X”, “Gather 20 of Y”) just with slightly varying mechanics. Recently, I’ve asked myself: Why? In a month of gameplay, I could have played so many other games and built up more of a friend base on other platforms (PSN, Steam etc). There would be less grind, less repetitiveness, more fun.

Recently I’ve played Red Dead Redemption on the PS3, and it’s the first game in ages that made me rethink *how* I game. I don’t want to spend my entire gaming time trapped in the pull of one single game. A day or so of gametime, and the game is *complete* (to a satisfactory level). I’ll still dip in there from time to time to gather more trophies (as it’s fun), but I don’t have to dedicate hours and hours to it. I can move on…to Singularity!

So that’s it. I’ve suspended my account! I may pop back onto Nordrassil briefly once Catacylsm is released, but for now, I’ll be on my PS3 or Steam (id: catburton), shooting zombies and hogtie-ing bandits.

It’s been fun year or so, WoW, but I think it’s time we break up…

“The registry is in use by another process, timeout expired”

For anyone else who has this problem, it’s due to background processes interfering with Steam.

There are a fair few pointless processes running when you boot into Windows 7. To fix this (and hopefully resolve the Steam issue), click run msconfig and select the services tab. Check the “Hide all Microsoft Services” button, then hit “Disable All”. This should stop any non-essential services running on startup, and should enable you to run Steam.

For more info, visit the Steam support page!

After lots of searching in forums and trying numerous suggested solutions (running the .exe in Vista/XP compatibility modes etc), I’ve found the solution that works on my PC. The issue appears to be that Stereo Mixing was disabled by default.

Here’s a link to a support page with instructions on how to fix this:

http://support.take2games.com/help/take2/take2_games/q632

Hope that is of some help to someone!

*Mumbles something about why I switched to console gaming for many years*

[Edit: I had massive issues with audio in GTA IV a while back too. Incredibly stuttery/crackly sound in game, making it completely unplayable. This fix appears to have resolved that issue too.]

When I heard about the ultimate MMO gaming mouse, the Razer Naga, I simply had to get hold of one. I mean, it has 17 buttons. SEVENTEEN! What with that and the addons they’ve made for WoW, I just couldn’t resist. That’s just what my belf DK needs! Plus, I (foolishly) had been using an Apple “mighty” mouse for the last year, which has stopped scrolling and you can’t right click. Definitely time to purchase a decent gaming mouse!

So, I eagerly entered my details into play.com, and preordered this most awesome of mice…a month before it was due to be released. A little keen, perhaps, but with two weeks off work starting on the release date, this seemed like a logical thing to do! Time to sit bak and await the mouse of awesome…

…and wait…

…and wait some more…

The mouse was released on 28th October, which means by now, I should have had it for 11 days. That’s a lot of Wintergrasp action, a lot of dungeons…hell, it’s a lot of levelling my poor lvl62 rogue who’s still sat in Zangarmarsh!

So where is this illusive mouse, this awesome gadget of incredible button count? Since a couple of days after the release date, my order status on play.com has been set to “Awaiting stock”. Fine, I thought, I’ll be patient. What’s a couple of days to a gamer geek with 2 weeks off work…

I phoned play.com this morning to see what the status of this farce was. The response? “It’s not in stock. If you look at your order, you’ll see that.”. Well, thanks for that, genius. I know it’s not in stock, which is why I’m complaining to you first thing in the morning on a Sunday.

I grit my teeth, take a deep breath and calmly ask when it will be in stock. I mean, I’ve waited almost 2 weeks, what’s a few more days? “Well, it could take up to 28 days for it to come into stock…”. Wait. 28 days? I preordered a mouse at the start of October and you want me to wait until December for it? I think not.

I’ve now cancelled my play.com order as they are utterly useless. I shall not be ordering anything from them again. The super awesome mouse has now been ordered via EBuyer, who seem to have it in stock, hurrah! They’ve even confirmed it will arrive tomorrow! Double hurrah!

Now all I need is for my new PC to arrive tomorrow, and I’ll never need to leave my geek room again. Well, except to answer the door to the pizza delivery guy!

Full review of the mouse, and probably a Windows 7 one (I’ve been a Mac user for the last 2 years) will appear here soon!

I think a change should be put in place so that no enemy is allowed within their opponents’ re-spawn zone.

Back to UT3 me thinks…

This version has 5 levels. The code has been massively re-written so the level configuration is stored in xml. This means that the game below is coded in around 200 lines!

There’s only the one level. Control the egg using the left/right cursors. You’ll need to click inside the movie to activate it…

The aim of the game is to get the egg into the basket. Be careful not to break it!

So now I’m level 3 and thought – let’s go and sort out that Oblivion Gate…

Firstly, those stunted scamps are a right pain! Luckily my Flare spell seems to help kill them. I’ve managed to get up to the tower…so far so good.

And now I’m stuck. In the “Blood Feast”, there’s a fiery pit thing in the first room and 2 stunted scamps (easy to kill when there’s just 1, but 2 are trickier). Then – out of one of the passages to the east/west pops out what I believe to be a Dremora Churl…and it’s game over:

This dude seems invincible to all my weapons, he seems to be resistant to fire, and manages to kill me in 2/3 blows. I’ve tried and failed numerous times to kill him!

I’m playing as a wood elf. My available weapons are rather simple/weak: bows, long/short swords, a large hammer etc. I do not have any useful spells (only Flare, or moonshadow – which i can only use once per day).

Suggestions I’ve had from two Oblivion playing mates are:
a) reload from the last save game and practice conjuring beings to help
b) reload from the last save game and acquire a staff which is much more powerful at killing beings than my current measly arsenal!

I’d really like to not reload from the save if possible – so if anyone has any other ideas on how to defeat the above Dremora, please let me know!