Seems that my WAR Renown Rank plugin was causing problems with my website today.  It was having problems connecting to Mythic's Realm War page and as such was bringing the rest of my site to its knees.  Obviously I need to do much better error-handling/connection-handling in the plugin so that if it cannot reliably connect and get the required character information in a reasonable time, it will timeout with a useful error message, rather than cause the entire website to throw a 500 Internal Server Error.

At least I eventually found out it wasn't a problem with my webserver.

~MikeR.

I have finished reading the second Gotrek & Felix Omnibus, a while ago actually.  Initially I had planned on moving on to The Ghost King, the third book in the Forgotten Realms Transitions trilogy, which I had received as a Christmas gift from my sister.  However, since it has been a while since I read book two, The Pirate King, I figured it wouldn't be any harm to move on to the third Gotrek & Felix Omnibus and save The Ghost King for when I was done.

I've already finished the first novel in the omnibus, Giantslayer, and moved on to Orcslayer which is where Nathan Long had picked up the series.  I have to say, even though I'm not even halfway through it, the difference between William King's writing and Nathan Long's is noticeable.  I can't complain about the difference though, as I'm finding that I actually seem to prefer Nathan Long's style.  You see, I'm very much weaned on fantasy fiction by starting out with much of the initial Dragonlance novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, then moving on to Forgotten Realms when I had consumed most of what was available in the Dragonlance "universe".  I found that I preferred Forgotten Realms, particularly R. A. Salvatore's writing style, and stuck with it never looking back.  While my love for the Forgotten Realms and Dungeons & Dragons in general has kept me waiting with baited breath for new novels to be released, I have ventured over to the Black Library to seek literary sustenance in their Warhammer Fantasy offerings (Warhammer 40k has never really caught my interest).

I started with Oathbreaker, given my love of all things Dwarf, then moved on to Defenders of Ulthuan which I had actually bought for my wife.  I also got Nagash the Sorceror because of the imminent release of the Land of the Dead live expansion for WAR, but found parts of it quite dry and tough to get through.  Ultimately I moved on to Gotrek & Felix and haven't read any other Warhammer novel since picking up the first Omnibus (or any other novel save The Infernal City).  The novels were exciting and enjoyable in their own right, but all along something felt a little bit "off" about them.  Up until now, having moved on to the novels written by Nathan Long, I know what it is.  Repetition.  William King, while a good writer, has a penchant for being very repetitious in his descriptions, particularly in how Felix feels about situations.  Honestly, there's only so many times I can read about how nauseous and scared he feels before a battle, or how unsure he is of his relationship with Ulrika prior to her "transformation".  I understand wanting to keep the reader apprised of the situation, but when you read basically the same thing about Felix and Ulrika and how they are ambivalent, unsure, torn about how they feel about each other in one or two chapters... well that just gets a bit old.

So far, I have not seen such in Orcslayer from Nathan Long.  As well, his writing style seems more in line with what I am used to, especially from R. A. Salvatore.  While I did like the first seven novels in the Gotrek & Felix series, I have a feeling I'll enjoy the rest with them under the pen of Nathan Long.

Speaking of Warhammer, patch 1.3.4 hit the other day bringing with it a complete change to the scenarios available as well as new RvR weapons obtained with currency earned through scenarios (and to a lesser extent Open RvR).  At first I was extremely annoyed to the point of doing nothing but grumbling in guild chat, having logged in and seeing virtually NO Open RvR occurring, just scenarios.  I played two; lost the first one pretty badly, then won the second one but not by much (it was actually a pretty fun, even fight).  I logged off completely outraged with what Mythic had done to their game.

Last night, Lannerea and I logged in figuring we'd give it a go together.  We ended up joining Miercoles and Zaccai and honestly, we had a blast.  Sure, we won every scenario we entered, but that's not even the reason since I have a feeling I would have had fun even if we consistently lost.  It was just the fact that we weren't alone in a sea of PuGs.  We had people to joke with and talk to in vent (the "dick buff" comments in Vent were bloody hilarious) and that made all the difference.

Sure, we won't be getting enough currency to buy even our Conqueror weapons any time soon, but the renown we gained was phenomenal (one scoreboard showed Lannerea earning over 11,000 renown!) and the fun we had with our guildmates was priceless.

~MikeR.

Last night, trying to make up for the not-so-bad-but-not-so-good Red Curry Beef dish that I cooked last week, I decided to try my hand at Curried Chicken.  I had it all ready to go; chicken breasts, onion, lots of garlic, mushrooms (instead of green pepper), thyme, and curry powder.  I was sure I had the makings of a hit dish that couldn't fail.

It was so bland, I almost cried out of sheer boredom eating it.

Now, I'm no culinary master or a food critic that can taste the subtle hints of esoteric spices in some unique dish.  However, while the smell of curry filled the kitchen, the thyme completely overpowered it in flavour despite me using less of it than I should have.  I effectively tasted zero curry in my Curried Chicken.

I spoke with a lady here at work who cooks with curry often to find out what I did wrong.  She is suspects that I simply used a very mild curry powder, which would make sense since I got it from the Caucasian spice section of the grocery store, rather than the East Indian aisle.  I have a couple of ideas on how to fix this; I can either go back and get some curry powder from the aisle with ethnic foods, or go to a food mart behind a local hotel brought to my attention by a friend of mine.  Either option should work, and at least I can safely assume that my next attempt at a more authentic East Indian dish will be met with more praise and less snores.

Does anyone else have any hints they can give me on cooking with curry?

~MikeR.

Dinner last night was, in my opinion, a success.  I had to improvise a fair amount because some of what I bought for ingredients just weren't the right stuff (ie. it called for red curry base and I bought a red curry Tandoori paste), but in the end it was quite tasty.  I put in a lot more vegetables than the recipe called for, which was nice.  The beef was a little too well done but that's because I kept futzing with the heat on the element to get it to simmer.  At least I know I can be a bit creative with food and just throw a bunch of stuff together and make it work.  Lann thought it was a bit sweet and not quite spicy enough, but said it was alright.

Next up, curried chicken and vegetables.

~MikeR.

This weekend marks a momentous occasion for me.  I was actually able to convince a good friend of mine to come back to WAR, despite numerous protestations from him against it.  About a week ago his hard drive failed, then he had to take off on an out of town trip.  He was back this weekend and replaced his hard drive (as well as obtaining a nice OEM copy of Windows 7), so I mentioned it would be a great time to reinstall WAR to come back and play with Lannerea and myself.  He grudgingly inserted the CD and began the install, complaining about how long it was taking the entire way (which increased tenfold come patch time).  Luckily we were still able to transfer his Engineer, Hammerstorm, from Phoenix Throne to Badlands but had to rename him to Hawktalon in the process.  Now to get him some badly needed gear, which shouldn't be too hard.

Tonight I'm trying out a new recipe; Red Curry Beef.  Yesterday we went grocery shopping and had a hard time finding some of the ingredients, but a friendly couple in the Asian/Indian aisle helped us fine the red curry base that we were looking for.  I'm not completely convinced that we have the right stuff, as it's a red Tandoori curry paste, but whatever, I'm sure it will do.  Hawk is coming over to try it out as well, so at least Lannerea and I won't be the only ones suffering if it doesn't go well.  Plus I get to watch Death Comes To Town again, since Hawk hasn't seen the premiere episode yet.

~MikeR.

Last night, Lannerea was in the Inevitable City with Feared, attempting to push the city siege to Stage 2.  From what I saw, this was a server-wide effort on the part of Order which is incredible in itself, given that it tends to be the case that you can never actually get anyone to work together coherently.  Entire instances were doing their best to push back and demoralize Destruction, as well as actually kill Adell the Conqueror.  Feared was able to get in three kills (unfortunately in an empty instance, but it seems that's potentially the only effective way to do it) before the timer ran out, and infuriatingly enough the final kill didn't seem to count toward the Victory Point total.  It happened with roughly 30 seconds to go, and some people in Vent even stated they saw the VP meter lock to Order, but in the end the city went back to rebuilding/safe status with a total of 64 VPs (65 needed to flip).

Highside, prior to logging out, congratulated everyone in the server-wide Tier 4 ORvR channel, guaranteeing that another push will be forthcoming Saturday night.  I intend on being there.

On another note, earlier this week I was able to not only fill up my High Elf T4 influence, thereby gaining me the Mallet of Remembrance, but I also was able to earn two more Silver Ankhs in Land of the Dead which was more than enough to buy my Shroud of Nehekharan Assassins.  Lannerea also earned two more along with me, allowing her to purchase the Shawl of Nehekharan Priests.  Now to just get her into some Lost Vale runs with plenty of luck so that she can gear out in her Dark Promise set.

~MikeR.

The WAR Renown Rank plugin that I wrote was officially accepted by WordPress.org Plugins.  It's now available here, and can also be found in your WordPress dashboard under Plugins -> Add New.

~MikeR.

Last night, despite us agreeing to having a quiet TV night, Lisa and I logged in to see if there was any good RvR action in WAR.  Within 10 minutes, she was visibly annoyed but stuck it out because Feared was running a guild-only warband and getting shit done.  However, the conversations in Ventrilo had little to do with what was going on in the RvR lakes and tended to be loud enough that anyone calling out for help or giving locations for some hotspots for fighting were drowned out.  Lisa died numerous times because of this, causing her to miss out on most Objective caps and a fair bit of the non-lopsided fighting between Feared and Destruction.  I can see why she was annoyed, but she at least got the renown and influence from capping Praag, Kadrin Valley, and finally Chaos Wastes.

Speaking of Chaos Wastes, what a blitzkrieg.  After waiting around for a domination cap in KV we figured that if we sped off to CW and nailed the BO's and keeps as fast as we could, we would get an easy VP lock.  After hitting both northern Objectives we dropped Zimmeron's Hold like a bad habit (I don't think I've ever seen doors drop that fast) then moved south.  Whatever Destruction there was earlier in the night must have either taken off to Land of the Dead prior to us hitting CW or left in frustration after the pounding they took in Praag and KV, because the southern half of CW didn't take much longer.  As soon as the south keep fell everyone gathered round in the courtyard and the lock happened, giving each member of Feared around 18,000 renown.  Not only did I hit Renown Rank 50 (gaining the title Grudge Guard) but I also had the good fortune of finishing off my Empire Tier 4 ORvR influence, getting me the War Shroud of the Fist of Repose as a reward. Before logging off, I slotted my Invader Chargers with a +23 Strength talisman and made sure I stuck those suckers on my feet, salvaging my old Conqueror Chargers for a nice +3% melee crit talisman.

Now to help Lisa get Lannerea to RR50.  Too bad her Invader set is DPS-centric.

~MikeR.

I just read that there is an expansion to Dragon Age: Origins coming in March, called Awakening.  I bought Dragon Age earnestly hoping to play it almost exclusively, as we weren't playing WAR anymore at the time.  That went by the wayside once the server transfers happened and the RvR action started picking up again (ie. the game became fun again).  I think I will have to take it a bit easier again and move back to Dragon Age in hopes of completing it before March rolls around (yeah right).  The expansion will allow the importing of a character from the main game, presumably regardless of whether they finished it or not.  There is a trailer available, along with more information at the official site (haven't checked it out yet since I'm at work), as well as information about the release of the Return to Ostagar DLC which was delayed from its January 5, 2010 release date.

Last night in WAR, Destruction was out in full bloody force; an estimated 4 or 5 warbands worth.  I was able to join up with an organized warband, but the rest of Order seemed a bit disorganized and there simply wasn't enough to put up much resistance.  We were able to lock Reikland, but that was the most damage we could do to Destruction's campaign as afterwards they rolled us no matter where we went.  However, I was lucky enough to see a Sovereign Warclasp of the Unbreakable drop when we wiped a force of Destro at the Graveyard in Praag.  Congrats to Jaros on that one.  I ended up logging out around 10pm about 30% renown ahead, and less than 1900 influence to go in finishing up my High Elf Tier 4 ORvR influence.  Not too bad, I'm hoping to have my Mallet of Remembrance and the ability to wear at least some of my Invader pieces by the end of this weekend.

~MikeR.

I wrote my very first WordPress plugin the other day!

WAR Renown Rank

It lets a user specify their character ID and server of their Warhammer: Age of Reckoning character, then it will simply connect to the Realm War website and display their character's name, renown rank, and a nice progress bar showing how much further they have to go until the next renown rank.  Two examples are in the sidebar to the right; Baelgur and Lannerea (my character and my wife's).

While it's not much, like I said it's my first plugin and I think it's pretty neat.  There's still some things I need to fix up, such as gracefully handling the inability to connect to the Realm War page (happens more often than I thought, even though a page refresh usually fixes it).  I wonder if anyone other than myself will ever use it...

~MikeR.