For this one, I’m going to go with “character you’d most like to punch in the nose”. And this one is a toughie for me. I mean, most antagonists in games are standard “ooo evillll” boss-types, and as such, they’re playing their character-type.

But Loghain from Dragon Age: Origins is someone I’d looooove to punch in the nose. Part of me gets where he’s coming from: he’s trying to do the best for his country. Problem is, he’s going about it all the wrong way. He’s like a more heavily armed version of J. Edgar Hoover, seeing enemies around every corner out to destroy the country, even when those “enemies” are actual allies trying to help you keep everyone alive. He keeps missing the forest for the trees, and when he finally decides you are of no use to him, or worse, a danger to his idea of how the country should be run, then you end up having a sudden case of “the deads”. His betrayal of his king right at the start of DA:O immediately put him on my “@#$%@ list”. I mean, sure Cailan was a twit, but he was a mostly harmless twit. And by the time you face off against him at the Landsmeet, he’s got a full on case of “I know what’s best and you’re ALL IDIOTS! I R TEH POWAH!” Dude, when your daughter starts looking at you like you’re a crazy man that is frothing at the mouth, then you might, just might, need to take a step back and rethink things.

Yep, for all of his “no, I’m right and everyone else is WRONG! WRONG! KILL THEM ALL!”, he’s earned the number one spot on my list of “most want to punch in the nose.” /golf clap

1. Voice-overs – DA2 has them for your character. DA:O doesn’t. After playing DA2 and going back to play DA:O, I didn’t realize how much I missed my character’s voice. Watching my character just stand there mute in DA:O just makes me want to start looking for a tube of superglue in the background.

2. Speech choices – In DA:O, you pick from a list of lines your character can say. In DA2, you pick from a radial menu of vague shortened options of what your character might say. Example: you might have the option of “No.” in DA2. If you pick it, your character might actually say “Are you insane? That is by far the worst idea you’ve ever had, and trust me, you’ve had some bad ones.”  After playing both games, I infinitely prefer the radial menu. It’s faster and gives my character a chance to talk instead of being a mute witness to everything.

3. Combat – In DA:O, combat is steady, with your characters trotting up to the enemy and systematically hammering away at them. You can pause and plan strategy before the killing begins. In DA2, it’s much more fast paced, your characters leaping to engage the enemy, abilities flailing all over the place at breakneck speed. Sure you can pause and plan like in DA:O, but most of the time, I find myself shrugging and just diving in. I can’t say I prefer one to the other, but sometimes I want that quick battle and sometimes I don’t.

4. Abilities – Dear god, I’d forgotten how many of the abilities sounded good in DA:O and I never used cos they were worthless. Thank you, DA2, for giving us the passive abilities and upgrades. Now if I didn’t have to swap between 5-8 different screens to see all the trees…

5. Motion – Thank you for making the characters no longer plod across the screen in what can be loosely termed a “jog”. The motion is a lot snappier and better flowing in DA2. However, that hip sway that my female character does when she walks is still ridiculous. My lower back hurts just looking at it.

6. Locations – Sorry, DA2, you’ve done a lot of improvements to the UI, etc., but I think DA:O still takes this. Kirkwall is interesting and all, at least for the first chapter, but then… that’s it? Kirkwall and 3-4 places outside the city? Meh. And I just keep revisiting all of those places over and over? Meh. Sorry, Kirkwall’s just not that fascinating to me.

Just a few thoughts.

LoTRO’s going well. I’m having a fun time, other friends are poking their noses in and checking it out, and while I still adore my hunter there, I’m having some amusement leveling a Guardian, which is a tank.

Yep, a TANK. You may now all feel free to pick yer collective jaws up off the floor.

Why? Cos someone had to do it and everyone else is too busy playing healers or DPS and giggling. That includes the “I’m a damned good tank!” boyfriend. He’s off either muttering “burgle burgle burgle” udner his breath before breaking out into giggles, or playing around on his Lore Master (think druid with animal pets instead of animal forms). His LM and my Guardian are the same level, so we’ve been leveing together. Which has lead to some interesting comments between the two of us.

“Grr.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just, if I’m going to try to, well, tank, it’d be nice to get aggro FIRST.”
“…::dies giggling and pulls the next mobs with a spell crit::”
“…::sighs and proceeds to hit every threat button I have::”

My muttered comment to him, since he’s insisting on being Aggro Whore, is I can manage to keep the mobs on me, and not on him, by end game, I’ll be a damned good tank and able to handle anything. His response? “…::gringigglenuke::”

…bastard.

And in a bit of good news, the problems that were plaguing me in LoTRO before, which was my keyboard/mouse would randomly disconnect with no notice, then reconnect at it’s leisure, unless I plugged and replugged the damned thing were fixed. Turns out, the mouse disconnection was strictly because it was plugged into the keyboard. The Apple keyboard was the issue in Windows. Whether it was from a faulty driver, or it was starting to develop a short in the line, it’s been fixed. How? I bought a G15 keyboard. Things are much, much better. ::grin::

So this weekend, I’m hoping that I can get a little more cleaning done on the apartment, fix bagels again, get some LoTRO time in, and play some more Dragon Age. Still haven’t finished it, but been distracted. Oh, and knit! Mmm… knitting. /purr

Yeah, there’s some stuff that irritates me, but it’s so minor, it feels like I’m trying to find something bad about it. The conversations that the rest of my party has with each other while we’re walking crack me up. These characters have personality, which can be lacking a lot of times in games. Bioware hasn’t let me down in the past, and they didn’t this time either.

And yes, there’s a romance section. I went for the easy obvious choice for a human woman character: Alistair. He’s irreverent, cocky, cracks jokes at the worst times, and you can almost see him poking and prodding those people that irritate him til they explode, where upon he would run off giggling. At the same time he’s fiercely loyal, honest, brave, and while not ambitious, he’d do whatever it takes to ensure peace, and god help you if you hurt those he cares for. Add in that he’s been sheltered his whole life and has NO clue how to deal with the opposite sex, so he keep trying to not trip over himself and screw things up.

Did I ever mention I have a very large soft spot for sarcastic-yet-sweet knight errants? Yeah, thanks Bioware. I got to hear growling from the other end of the couch while playing this and grinning my head off at Alistair’s profession of love to my character. At least cookies calm the Jared-beast.

The voice acting is amazing (and a little odd when I blink at the screen and yelp “Hey! That’s Shishio!” at a random dwarf), and the storyline is compelling. The only real problems I’ve had are:
1. I’m not at home still playing this and,
2. The Fade makes my eyes hurt from constantly trying to focus.

So all in all, not too bad of a use of my time off last week, as far as I was concerned. Especially since my guild has effectively ended in WoW. Jared and I both sighed and got to evaluating our options. We could either move to another guild for end content, move to another server, stay where we are and accept we’re not even going to do 5-mans within the guild, or say “So long and thanks for all the fish.” Well as of right now, neither of us has cancelled our accounts, but he’s handing the leadership over to another guild member.

We’ve both reactivated Lord of the Rings Online, and have been playing that this week, when we haven’t been playing DA:O. I have so many group quests in there on my main character, it’s insane. Right now, I’m waiting to see if the couple of guildies that are exploring LoTRO with us continue, and if they do, then when they’re at that level, we can do the quests together. Siarian is now level 30, and I’m starting to sweat the gold gathering for a mount at level 35. It costs 4 gold and 220 silver. I have 2 gold, barely.  Did I mention that one gold is 1,000 silver? /faint

So how do I feel about the guild all going their seperate ways? To be honest, not too badly. I keep in contact with a good chunk of them via Facebook and emails, so I’m not exactly losing many of them. And weirdly, when I got the Hallowed title on Wrenn, I thought to myself “Okay, WoW can blow up tomorrow. I’m good.” Would I like to see more of the game? Sure. I’d love to see what the end of Uldar looks like, or any of ToC other than the 5-man stuff. But most of what I was doing in WoW these days was fluff bits – hunting for more achievements and pets. Things that didn’t really advance the game for me. So while I’ve not cancelled my account yet, I most likely will at some point. I’ll be a little sad, but I still have the friends that I made in it, and that’s really what matters.

And what happens after I get the achievement? I suddenly remember I haven’t picked up the two pets in Blackrock forWrenn yet. /facepalm So at some point, I’ll be going back in to BRS to get them, as well as do a few more quests in there, just for giggles.

Also last night, I managed to finish the last piece to a project I’d been working on for almost 8 months now. I’d put it at the end of the list because I don’t have a sewing machine readily available to help finish it, and I had gotten amazingly tired of knitting one big line of stitches over and over. After the shawl and the baby blanket, though, finishing one last strap was cake. And since we’re going to visit my mom tomorrow, and she DOES have a readily available sewing machine, I’m going to finish out that project hopefully this weekend.

Of course, I’m hoping I’ll actually HAVE the spare time. When we get up there tomorrow around lunch, Mom and I have to go over stuff for the stores, go over stuff for the house she’s building (apparently, she had me so she could have free tech support and design/decorating services) since they’re finally putting in the foundation this week and will start framing next week, meet with her builder on other things with the house, and just chat in general. Saturday is taken up mostly with the Ole Miss/Arkansas football game, and this will be Exar’s first time at an Ole Miss game, with all it’s insanity and weirdness. Sure it’s the normal college football insanity, but then there’s the Grove, and tailgating in the Grove needs to be seen to be believed. And Sunday we drive home, hopefully early enough that I can get laundry done before hopping into game for a while.

Yeah, that’s right, I said “into game”. I still have Kalimdor to clear! A girl’s gotta have goals.

But yeah, it’s gonna be a busy weekend, and one that’s gonna leave me wanting to flop over dead at the end. I’d give anything for a real vacation, where I don’t think about the store, and don’t worry about phone calls, and don’t run around like an insane woman. Dragon*Con is lovely, but I’m so tired by the end of it, I need a vacation from the vacation! So for Christmas this year, I’d like Santa to bring me the following:

1. 10 skiens for Noro Silk Garden in 252 colorway. I have a project for all of that and want to get started nao!

2. A small beach cottage with a good internet connection, one week rental.

3. One week off to pack up Exar and I, and all of our stuff, and go to said rented cottage. I can go say hi to the beach in between knitting and gaming and he can read and game.

4. Oh wait, can I add reading to my list? Yes, reading must be added, kthxbai.

5. I’d also like a 40″+ HDTV at this mythical beach cottage so we can bring the PS3 for console gaming. Oh and I’d like a second PS3 so we don’t have to fight over who gets to play single player games on the one we have right now. I’M LOOKING AT YOU, MADDEN FRANCHISE! /sulks with my Katamari Forever disk

6. (I’m somewhat kidding about the fights over the PS3. I’m just waiting on Dragon Age: Origins right now before I start using the claws and teeth.)

7. And last but not least, a new home to come home to when this vacation-of-my-dreams is over. One without neighbors below me that we can hear talking loudly at 2am, or with neighbors next to us that have a dogs that is howling and/or screaming at 2am, making me think someone’s getting beaten and making the cats completely spaz.

… oh yeah, I could use some sleep about now. -.-