Thanks to my review of EA’s internships I’m actually on the first page of results for educating adventures. I think this is pretty cool, and goes down as the first time my blog might actually be useful to someone. I’ve noticed a few hits from similar google searches, it does appear that there’s very little in terms of actual experiences from people on EA internships out there on the web so my account is a rare thing. It’s nice to think that my post might help someone make a better decision about their future.

On a sillier note, I also come up quite a bit around Toy Commander related stuff which is quite sad in a way. It’s such a good game but so under appreciated. Shame I’m not famous enough to have the impact required to get a sequel, that would be so awesome. 8 player online multiplayer? Hells yeah.

A guy can dream…

Now the un-rebranded durka can be found over at tehdurka.info. This does have the possible bonus of past visitors coming through random searching or something. I can’t imagine anyone will still be hoping that it re-appears and regularly look for it but maybe there’s one guy. And one guy is all it takes! So long as he has friends…

My main concern with this little venture is the time it’ll take for traffic to really pick up, it was a long time after starting Durka that others outside of people I knew actually used the site. Word of mouth is a great propogator for something like this but it what it really takes is people searching deep into search engines for a site that they can actually play on. It’s this that really got visitors to it before and eventually caused it to somewhat explode in terms of popularity. Explode relatively that is.

I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to poke this along or whether it simply is a case of watching, waiting and hoping. Of course, please do tell your friends, it’s the caring sharing thing to do. With that I’m going to be over and out.

I can’t entirely remember why I shut it down, probably to do with the hassle of juggling free providers to keep my costs down to a minimum. In order not to run up massive bandwidth costs (my host, nearlyfreespeech.net, operates on a pay-what-you-use system with a high level of transparacy in their operation, I would reccomend them for anyone needing a cheap place to host a low bandwidth/storage site) I will be using free web hosting providers wherever I can, a slightly dubious practice but if they’ll let me hotlink then hotlink I shall. Most are very limited in terms of both space and bandwidth so it’s quite a bother juggling it all. But I’ll do it again, to keep myself occupied.

My new incarnation of Durka is named Malarky and is currently hosted as part of this website. Depending on what happens, I may give it it’s own subdomain or possibly get some unlimited bandwidth hosting for it. Of course, that’s a point where it gets worryingly popular and could possibly fail because of it. There’s also issues of copyright on the games I’m hosting, I have a very open takedown policy and I think most game makers are mostly interested in people playing their game rather than making money but I’m sure there are some out there who only want their game on a specific site and I’ll respect that provided that I’m aware. There are of course lots of ways for flash games to make money irrespective of what website is hosting them, mochi ads for one.

Hopefully my good faith will keep me clear of any trouble, and it should improve my programming skills as a by product which is always positive. So, if you’re in need of entertainment at school or work (obviously not during a lesson, wouldn’t want to ruin your education) then head on over to Malarky and get playing. I will be adding lots more games over the coming weeks to get it back up to the level that Durka had when I shut her down.

But that’s not really why I’m writing here, I’m writing because of a small but quite heart warming encounter I had whilst playing World of Warcraft (yeah, I resubscribed).

Earlier this year when I played for a couple of months I was keen to try out the Death Knight class, I’d been saving the gname I wanted for my gnome (because quite clearly gnomes are the most badass choice for a Death Knight) for a while, using my wee Grillywiggin as a banker until finally I could create his level 55 form. I had good fun with the starting Death Knight quests, I really like the way Blizzard handled it. But that’s not really the point, the point is that because I have a level 58 that I want to continue playing I have to get my professions going. I went for herbalism and inscription as this is the perfect shot to be try out the new profession.

Leveling herbalism means a lot of wandering around in low leveled areas, I’d already hit Westfall and the surround areas and was at about the level of the Wetlands so I was wandering around there whilst simultaneously playing some battlegrounds (it’s a lot of fun as a Death Knight and I’m usually top of the charts).

As I was doing this I took a herb from right next a level 20-something paladin who was fighting something of the local wildlife. Right as I was taking it I realised he was probably fighting that creature in order to get it but my herbing autopilot had just taken over. It hadn’t been my intention to take from the guy, I hate it when the same thing happens to me. My thoughts about what had happened were confirmed when he whispered me a few seconds later, just calling me a loser. This rather lame attempt at insult was deserved in a way, so I made note of his name.

Later, on my banker, I sent him an apology letter, complete with 1g to hopefully make up for it. I was really touched to recieve a reply the next day, returning the money and telling me not to worry about it as well as good luck for my herbalism levelling. It just goes to show that actually even people who would call someone a loser and call it a day there are actually just as human as anyone else underneath and will actually respond very well to honest apology.

So I’d urge anyone out there, any time you do something that you know was wrong accidentally, take a minute to say sorry and just see what happens. It might just make your day.

Toy Commander has a similar personal connection. I can’t remember where or when I got it, only that I had liked the idea behind it from when I first heard about it and was willing to pay the above average price for a Dreamcast game to get it. It certainly was worthwhile. As a single player game it held up very well,  the missions were interesting and varied, even if a few could get a bit frustrating. For a game of it’s time though, it was very well done.

But the real strength came in the multiplayer, me and my best friend played that game to death in two player battles. How we managed to remain interested in it for as long as we did is a complete mystery to me but really says something about what a fantastic multiplayer game Toy Commander was and still is.

The reason I’m writing this post is because recently the topic of retro games and old games that had a strong personal connection to us came up in conversation, I remembered Toy Commander and how awesome a game for multiplayer it had been but more I remembered how I had longed for another two controllers as I thought the fun would be multiplied greatly with two more people. So I went on eBay and had a little look around for Dreamcast controllers, they seemed pretty inexpensive and I picked up two of them for just £8.50 with free P&P.

When they arrived we immediately cracked out the old games, Toy Commander at the forefront and experienced the fun it brings.

What is so fantastic about it is that it’s a completely different game to any other of the games we’ve played local multiplayer on in the past. For one, it’s not a first person shooter. Mostly though, it comes from the pretty simple system combined with wonderfully intricate and detailed levels. The thing about normal flight combat in games is it takes place in massive areas which are all pretty much the same, there are no obstacles as you’re out in the open. Toy Commander brings the dog fights inside, into your living room or bedroom. Fights take place dodging behind chairs and curtains, into cupboards and under tables, around ceiling fans and through fire places. It is this aspect that really gives Toy Commander it’s wonderful originality and fun.

As with every great game, it’s easy to pickup and start playing but difficult to master. There is no other game like it. Which is really why I’m now imploring the game industry – someone please pick up the rights for a remake/sequel. This game would work so well on modern consoles and PCs. If it were done well, the levels would be expanded and more fun details added and the missions would retain their fun whilst hopefully losing some of their unclear instructions and frustration. Moreover, the game would work fantastically well online, with either Xbox Live or regular PC online gaming being perfect. I can just imagine the possible fun having a toy commander battle with 8 or even 16 players. The dog fights would be so tense, the battles could be raised to an epic scale. The fun would be multiplied even more.

I know the chances of remake or sequel are minute but it would be truly such a great game. It was a fantastic concept and I have no idea how it possibly dyed with the absolutely awful Toy Racer, what seems to be one of the most rushed games I’ve ever played. Even to just see it appear on the Xbox Live Arcade would be awesome, even in it’s original form. I’d love to see how my skills match up to others around the world.

Really, if you have a Dreamcast and don’t own this game you need to try and get your hands on a copy, it is THE most fun multiplayer experience on that console, if not any console ever made and probably the most original and fun multiplayer game you’ve ever played.

Nothing interesting dropped of course but the 3 badges are always nice.

This puts my personal raid progression at

• Kara – Cleared
• Gruul’s Lair – Cleared
• Magtheridon’s Lair – Cleared
• Zul’Aman – Cleared
• Serpentshrine Cavern – 1/6
• Tempest Keep – 1/4

When I first dreamt of how awesome raiding must be, I never even imagined that I would get into the 25 mans, never mind all the way in to Tier 5. As things happen, it may be that I don’t get to see another 25 man until wrath.  Unfortunate drama within the guild (which I wasn’t present for and don’t really know what happened) caused a chunk of the raiders to leave and summer brought about inactivity in more.  We do have a core set of raiders big enough to do 10 mans successfully but I know most of us would love to be killing the big targets in the 25 mans. Our active raiders are trickling away but they are also being replaced. Tonights raid had two trial members in it, the same classes as the two core raiders we recently lost, and both of them seemed to perform very well in their roles so there is still hope to get back on our feet.

I had an appointment but it still seemed to take a while.  It was quite busy.  Overall it was alright, not particularly painful or anything. It’s just one of those things that it’s important and it’s something I can do to help and there’s no reason for me not to do it.  Simple really.  A bit of time and discomfort once every 4 months is worth it for the lives it could save.

In other news, my druid hit 60 just now.  I sent over 515 gold (!) from my main to pay for epic mount training, the druid would have the money if it wasn’t for enchanting…

Still, it will pay for itself once I hit 70 and can farm a bit better.  I was looking at a gold making guide and paladins ranked last in farming ability. Last. And I’m the lowest damage spec. I have no idea how I’ll ever manage to get epic flyer, I’m down to belowe 1000g after maxing alchemy and this mount training. I think its gonna come down to some hardcore grind after my exams are finished.

The only problem now is that I don’t have the reputation with Sha’tar to get the recipe for the alchemists stone which I would then turn into this Uber trinket.  Looks like I’m in for a lot of Tempest Keep instance runs…

Doing some eBay based price research revealed that the cost of buying the parts to assemble myself came up to about the same amount as buying a computer of the spec I want but without the graphics card (or actually just with a not very good graphics card as all the ones I’ve seen have ones included), perhaps a little bit more. I figure that paying a bit more to get exactly what I want as well as the experience of putting it all together is worth it.

Todays raiding experience has highlighted the need for this new computer.

As I had not been experiencing the persistent crashes – the computer just restarts for no good reason, error report contains the most useless crap reason it pulled out of its “We dunno what happened so here is something random we noticed” bag – recently I kinda thought maybe they had fixed themselves, as these things sometimes do. Alas today I was shown this clearly wasn’t the case. Before the raid started I got the first restart, then again after releasing spirit after the first wipe and then a further time after just having got back into Serpentshrine Cavern (my first time in there, kinda cool, didn’t down any bosses but that’s the way it is sometimes) again after a wipe. This combined with the other graphics card bugs puts a level of urgency on a new computer.

Not to mention, <20fps looks fucking awful.