Life is a bitch

Yep, life is a bitch. Why? It tends to hit hard when you least expect it. After assembly I haven't really felt like I want to play anything, losing my interest in to those games I've been playing for quite long time and just getting bored. Why? That's damn good question and I do not have answer for it.

I guess that's enough info for why I haven't been writing too much lately. And other is that I've been lacking inspiration to do that. And what happened to my plans of writing a lot from assembly? Well I got lot of things to do there, met a lot of new people and just hung around. I think I spent less than hour next to computer during those four days.

But in summary it was nice trip, even if I felt that the quality of said happening has gone downhill. Demo's weren't as great, people weren't as wacky and so forth. But as said I met a lot of new people, couple first evenings I hang around with some "dance gamers" and was it Saturday(?) when I tag along with piraattinuoret, will write more about em later as it's not that much gaming related.

But but swag bag?! Yep this year's swags were just pure win 2 full games and expansions and one expansion only (I guess they ran out of originals?), 2gb usb stick and lots of other stuff. Oh yeah and free energy drinks, nothing beats free energy drinks I tell you, N O T H I N G!

And then I met very interesting person from there, and yet I can't tell what exactly caused it. Was it her eyes, thoughts or a certain thing that I found cute (which shall remain unmentioned to not reveal too much). Most people had very unique personalities there and without a doubt so did I in their opinions. I kinda went over after being awake way too long with the power of ED *grin*.

I don't have anything else to write about at moment to be honest, simply because I can't keep my thoughts from wandering around in to way too many directions. Oh, and I am sorry if this includes less spelling mistakes than my usual text does. Even if this is almost meaningless ranting I still managed to keep my thoughts in text.

RetroGen – Over and out!

Pokémon, don't we all just love them.. 8D

I think that I have stated it before, but I have also been playing Pokémon in hardcore way in past, for many years actually.. But lately my passion for those game has been going down alot, as I kinda feel that the system would need huge improvement instead of the old "I hit you since I'm faster, then you hit me back"-system.. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that system in general and I have loved it since the day one, when I first played Pokémon during the christmas of year 1998..

That's right, it's over 11 years of Pokémon for me and still, somehow I'm bit attracted to those silly little creatures created by Satoshi Tajiri. Sometimes I just feel that the game should evolve bit, other than just giving some dual battles and random contests.. Nice idea could be to try something similar to the Final Fantasy battle system, which would make the fights lot more smoother.. Well I personally would love to play Pokémon more again if they did something to make the fights bit more lively and upgrade the system little..

But my latest hardcore Pokémon session doesn't actually involve the original games in at all.. So what is it then? Well it's a web site, dedicated to hatching and collecting Pokémons from their eggs together with a huge community, based around breeding Pokémons rather than fighting with them.. Basically you just go around hugging others eggs to warm them, and feeding their hatched Pokémons.. So in other words it's just alot of clicking and trying to get clicks in return.. So simple, yet so addictive - just like everything based on Pokémon tends to be.

Reason why I originally joined there, was mainly because my girlfriend likes that site quite alot, so I have been randomly just clicking through her eggs daily, but finally last evening I thought that I would give the site a shot and try it myself.. To find out what makes the site so good.. Because to me, it seemed just like another "Gotta catch 'em all" ripoff, and never have seen that before in the internet...

While checking how long actually I were there yesterday, I realized that I had spent total of over 10 hours running around clicking random Pokémon eggs and hoping to get some clicks on my party as return, just to get my first Pokémon to hatch there.. Took total of 7h 11min to achieve it, and during that time I had clicked ovet 1150 times others eggs and Pokémons..

By the way here's the link to my page there:
*Click for Del's party*
And here's the link to my girlfriend's page:
*Click for Lymi's party*..

Would appreciate if you took the 1-2 minute of your time to go click through what ever happens to be in those parties~

Was it fun then, clicking for over 10 hours?
Absolutely. I don't know why it's so fun even, since the system isn't really the best out there for clicking other people eggs and the site feels bit slow overall, but it's still fun to try get some more clicks for your own party and get together with other people sharing the same love for those cute creatures created by some crazy japanese, who liked playing with stones in a matchbox..

As for other Pokémon related stuff, I'd really hope to get to try out the DS versions of Pokémon soon, and really looking forward how the SoulSilver and HeartGold versions will turn out, since there has been lot of promises about them and well.. LeafGreen and FireRed versions just plain sucked. And as for more sad news, only bit over month ago, my Pokémon Crystal's cartridge battery ran out and I lost my save in it, which included also my very first Pokémon, Charizard named Charmy.. Which also happens to be my favorite Pokémon btw.. And also lost over 120 other lvl 100 Pokémons within that save, which included even some very rare ones like original Mew gotten from real life Pokémon event years ago (had ID number of 00100).. Also lost countless hours of memories of my old best friend who died few years ago - needless to say, that it was a very sad morning to find out what had happened~

Del signing out~

That was... EPIC...

Have heard that phrase before? Well it's by far the best way to describe my latest HoN match.. It was just so bloody epic fight, first of all.. We had a horrible start, and before I even knew, I had 0 kills , 8 deaths and 3 assists on kill.. In other words, I had awful stats to start the game besides opponents had gotten shitloads of experience and gold from killing me and few of my team mates..

We had only played for bit over 10 minutes of the game, and opponents had 28 - 6 lead in kills.. And people already started giving up and some guys already wanted to concede.. BUT, kills aren't all that there's into Heroes of Newerth and that's one of the best sides of the game..

Let me explain bit of the basics of the game.. I don't think we have yet talked much about the game itself but, basically the game is all about destroying opponents main building, that's the main goal instead of just killing your opponents until they give up.. And to help this, there's constant spawns of creeps from both towns walking in lanes and fighting against opponents creeps / defensive towers / heroes.. Eventually if you just let them fight, they will get their way to the base but to make it faster, you usually help them by slaying the opponent creeps and getting gold and experience that way..

BUT.. Those creeps aren't actually all just for grinding for gold and experience, no. Those creeps can also be huge tactical part of the whole game.

So, we had that 28 - 6 kill situation and obviously opponents started to be lot better geared from all those kills and so on.. Or were they? Actually, even if they killed alot they started lagging behind in levels and while our team constantly pushed back the creeps, they just focused on running around the map in packs, trying to find some random guys to gank, in other words.. They became TOO bloodthirsty, and forgot the main goal of the whole game. Sure, they did try to invade our base aswell, but they always got pushed back and most of the time, we also managed to kill 1 or 2 of them.. But they never got our "barracks" until the very end of the game and when you destroy the opponent barracks, your team creeps become stronger than theirs on THAT lane where the barrack was destroyed..

The ammount of lanes differ between maps, but on this "default" map that people usually tend to play, because it's the copy of the original DotA map(Defender of the Ancients, warcraft 3 custom map and pretty much it's own game inside another game, and the original idea for Heroes of Newerth becoming it's own game), there's 3 lanes in total. Middle (Mid), Bottom (Bot) and Top (Top, duh) and our opponents kept constantly pushing our Mid lane, but totally forgot the Bot and Top so.. I kept clearing opponent creeps from there constantly and what do you know..

Our bottom lane actually broke through opponent defenses just with the creeps, and I don't think that our opponent players even really noticed this.. And even now that the kill situation was like 42 - 20, both teams tought that our team was losing - exept me. I think that I was the only one in the whole game, who actually understood the whole situation here, that against all the odds.. We were actually winning.

And soon enought, I noticed a bar appearing on top of the screen, indicating that opponent main building was under attack, (it's health bar appears at top of the screen) and I didn't wait for a single second more, but I teleported to our team creep attacking that base.. And there was just ONE guy with decently low hp, trying get rid of those creeps.. Only one guy of the opponent team had noticed what was happening, and on top of that, I think that he had only gone to their base to heal.. Not to kill those creeps so, needless to say that I pretty much owned his sorry face in second or two.. Even tho my character isn't the "best killer class in game", because it's more of an creep tank and assist killer, but if opponents are low hp and can't jump away or vanish from me, they are doomed..

And so we won a game, that seemed like we were going to lose from the very start.. Too bad that you can't get extra style points from such "come back" game but, it just was bloody epic win, it wasn't one of my best games because I did die alot from their random ganks and my character is kinda slow to run away but.. Guess I proved that HoN is more than just a random PvP game where you just kill opponents to win, helping own creeps and killing opponent creeps can be a huge tactical element to the game. And even if I died most in that very game, I was still the highest level hero in the end and maybe even best geared.. Sorry for dragging this article for bit long, but I can't say it enought.. It was epic epic epic EPIC fight, actually.. More like Legendary tbh.

Del signing out~

Del taking it easy

As you might've noticed.. I haven't written much for some days and main reason for that? I'm just taking it easy right now, not worrying too much about anything and just relaxing while playing good games, watching some Anime, enjoying the company of my girlfriend, doing some work outs (that I have grown to like suprisingly much) etc etc.. In other words, I'm not busy or anything like that.. I'm just.. just.. uhm.. What the heck am I even doing these days? O_o

Oh well, in anycase.. I had such a good runs today in Heroes of Newerth, made meh happeeeh + I can't wait for my next computer to arrive, cheers again Ret for selling it for me and hope you enjoy your time at Assembly '09.. ;)

Oh yeah, good runs in HoN I said? 6 games, 6 wins and now raised my winning percent up to 46%.. My average deaths are going down nicely aswell and what's best.. Me and few other guys so totally owned a premade in HoN everyone of those guys had like over 1700 "pub rating" and winning percent close to 80% but... We.. Few 1550-1700 rated guys totally owned them, and I only died 2 times in total, once because I were just playing around in the enemy base but, gosh.. It was such a perfect game from us, "Pick up group owning premade" I have always loved the feeling after games like that..

Also yesterday I saw mostlikely one of the best players in whole HoN beta, he had rating of close to 1900 already and well.. It was just random game, and it was pretty clear that he would own that game and so he did.. He had like 10 kills already after 7-8 minutes of the game and he was lvl 17 with pretty sick gear when others were barely lvl 9, it had to be the fastest concede I have ever seen and maybe ever will.. Seriously, nerf those scouts.. xDD

Del signing out~

Assembly '09 1st beginnign of 1st evening

Ok, so at last I got time to sit down and grab my laptop to write something up. I've been watching this Memenot Mori or something like that trying to down Yog'Saron for quite few hours and they just plain suck. I just wonder how so crappy players can get sponsored? Or have they been paid to suck? I highly doubt.
But to some brighter things, 1st compo that I saw was of the decent quality. Gamedev, there ws nice entries and remake of classic Finnish game "Slicks 'n' slides" and surprisingly enough it was made by my friend and crew around him. For tomorrow, there will be loads of lil happnenings including street soccer that I apparently will be participating in. And lil fix for earlier statement they ar trying to get Yogg'saron HARDMODE down... So I guess I get to watch it for long time. And apaprently they are trying to be 5th in the world to get it down so yeah good luck have fun but stop dying in the voidzones!

RetroGen - over and out... for a moment

Yawn...

Ookkey, Heroes of Newerth is awesome game and WAY too "addictive" even if I get my ass handed to me too often... (Usually balls served as side dish) It's simple game mechanics makes it easy to pick up but god damn hard to get even on decent level. We were training today a lot, and we got a bit better (I don't die idiotically every secoond but can survive up to minute... (nah only couple death per match now)). And I am afraid that it will continue tomorrow too. So here we get again into roots of this blog "gaming as we think ti should be". We are gathering a lot of information and we have will to get better so we are newbies in this game so to speak, and I and most likely Del is quite much able notice difference in HoN already. But without further due I head to bed (great part of active gaming!).

RetroGen - Over and out.

So what exactly is hardcore gaming?

Like I said while ago, it's not nolifing or pro gaming. In simplest form you could say, hardcore gaming is passion for the games and learning the the games inside out. Well, just saying that doesn't explain much.. I could give an example of actual hardcore gaming, that me and RetroGen started few days ago out of curiosity/boredom.

Basically what we did, was that we started playing Evony again on completely different server that had been running for about bit over 1 month, and this time without any help of alliances and we decided to go on "solo" to see how fast we could build up cities from the scratch and we actually got pretty amazing results.

Because of our earlier experiences, researches and overall knowledge on the game system, we practically could build non-stop something without breaks. Always having something to build, selling and buying on markets and got the resources flowing. So already from the very start, we could play at max speed even if we just started on the server. And after we formed an alliance, just the 2 of us, in no time we started passing other alliances in ranking and after about 24 hours of play, we had already passed 50% of the alliances on the server, just the 2 of us.

Want to know how fast we were?
You can try it yourself, go to www.evony.com, create an account or if you already have one, start on a new server.. Try if you can achieve over 8000 prestige in just 24 hours, I personally got over 10k prestige at 25hours mark, because I had one longer research going so it went bit over my original goal but I were quite satisfied still.

So did we nolife much then?
Absolutely no. Like I already said, hardcore gaming isn't about spending every second with your computer. Sure, we did spend atleast 6-8 hours in evony, but we also did other stuff same time, like Ret went to store at some point, I had my workout while I got over 30min long buildings going and so on.. That's the good side of most browser games, you don't have to sit there at your computer 24/7 to be good at them. Sure, it helps to spend lot of times for games but.. I for one, dislike nolifing right now because of my girlfriend, so I try to avoid getting hooked too much into the games at the moment.

However, if this didn't yet explain you what's the basic idea of the hardcore gaming, I could try and say it in bit more simplier form:

Hardcore gaming is playing always on the edge of how good you can be. Basically you find what's the limits of the best possible way of playing a game, and try to reach them. In games like Evony it's easy to see, since you can build as much as your resources allow you to, so you have to spend them wisely and try not to run out of them, while still maintaining the fast building speed of your town same time. Trust me, it's harder than it sounds - especially if you don't know the game already. That's why forums and guides are always a good place to start a game, instead of through the "trial and error", like I did in Heroes of Newerth (HoN). Getting asskicked from the very start without even knowing how the game mechanics works, it's not something that I call fun..

Anyways, more in-depth article on how our "Hardcore Evony" project is proceeding, will come soon, perhaps even today, so look forward to it~

Del signing out~