It’s both been very busy and somewhat boring in our lives the last week.  We’ve been bad at writing posts here, but we’ve got a bunch of topics we want to cover and I have about half a dozen drafts in the queue that I just need to finish writing.  Anyway, what we’re up to:

Lord of the Rings Online - All four of us in our apartment are playing this, which I touched on last week.  We’re all in our teens (Sally and I just hit 17 on our characters) and exploring Bree.   Our roommates were out of town this weekend so we didn’t play too much, both because it’s more fun to play as a foursome but also because J (whom we will call J until he creates a nickname for himself) has been the main driver of play (which is funny to me that’s he so into the game, but that’s another story for another time).

Personally, I’m a little “meh” about LotRO.  I’m not a giant Lord of the Rings fan, so the lore and worlds aren’t captivating enough to pull me through all the time.  It is fun to be a dwarf and adventure in the Shire, which is beautiful with my new video card, but it just doesn’t feel like it has a lot more to offer than WoW.  In some areas, it definitely falls short - my main beef is with the user interface.  To avoid reiterating a lot of another post I’m writing, suffice it to say that non-moddable UIs are a pet peeve of mine, especially when managing the interface becomes a burden or when not enough data is exposed to me so that I can really understand what is going on with the mechanics of the game.

We also just need beefier machines to play the game at a level we expect.  I’m playing on High graphics at 1440×900 and it seems to stutter and lag all the time.  Now, we don’t have the most up-to-date machines (which is something that needs to be remedied), but scaling down the graphics takes so much away from the game.  In fact, the first time Sally and I played, we didn’t last long due to the fact that we weren’t done with WoW yet and the low graphics settings left a lot to be desired.

Rock Band continues unabated.  Sally and I finished got the Hall of Fame finished on hard which was pretty sweet.  We’ve been systematically working through the songs on expert, me on drums, her on guitar.  I definitely feel like the step from hard drums to expert drums is a bigger jump than on guitar.  The bass pedal sequences are far harder and just require a lot more footwork, period.   Those half beats are still killers, too.  But, it’s still a lot of fun and the only way we can get new fans in our main band.

I’ve been playing a little bit more EVE recently as well.  I started playing with exploration yesterday using my covops and astrometrics skills which I had trained up months ago but never gotten around to using.  I’ve only done a couple system scans but so far I’ve found exploration to be uncannily fun and interesting.  The game mechanic requires a lot of patience and a little bit of puzzle solving (mainly relating to where you put scan probes in the system).  It’s oddly satisfying though, even though so far I’ve only found one complex that was pretty crappy (just had some waves of drones, but I did have a reason to use my assault ship which is kind of fun).

I included “bored” in the subject to this post because that’s how Sally and I ended up a lot of the weekend.  J&T were out of town this weekend so we putzed around the apartment trying to find something to do.  We had a very hard time both finding any of the coop options interesting and spent most of the time trying to avoid picking.  This is partly a function of both of us being indecisive about figuring out what we want to do as well as us just not both finding the same game/activity as interesting as the other.  Rock Band is only playable for so long over a weekend before my leg or Sally’s hand gives out.

Last note is that I’m looking for a job now.  In a mutually agreeable decision between myself and my employer, I have left my position as a database developer and am looking for something back closer to my web development roots.   I’ve spent most of the last week working on my Resume, web portfolio, and have started writing cover letters and applying to various game companies in Boston.  Getting a job at a game-related company is the ideal goal right now but I’m not sure how likely it is, given that I have no real professional experience at a game company.  I’m hoping something might pop up though and I’ll keep you updated around here