Paladinsama & Friends'

I've thinking to post this here since about a couple of weeks, but never gave me the time to do it. I've commenting this on a couple of forums before but my blog is the most appropriate place to write about it and take it out of my head. I've been a Nokia user for almost 10 years, my first Nokia phone still works to this day so I cannot deny that Nokia makes good hardware, but they are horrible at Customer Service.

After the first N-Gage platform failed, Nokia decided to make a new platform and set it as a Digital Distribution service available to several devices. Since my phone was getting old (a N-Gage QD at the time), I decided to get a N95 8GB and try the new service. I was a little disappointed with the new service because most of the new games weren't like those from the old system, most of them were in fact just like regular mobile Java games with achievements. But the system was good enough and I was expecting the at some point better games could appear. But that was not the case, and eventually the service was phased out and replaced by the OVI store. The communication implied that games from the N-Gage system would be transferred to the OVI store at some point in the future. Eventually and after a year that day arrived, people said farewells in the forums and then the forum was gone for good, however the N-Gage service was still working, you couldn't buy games but you could activate and play those purchased in the past.

During 2010 I tried the Ovi store, and had one bad experience, on April I bought a game that refused to install and had to open a ticket with Nokia Support. They took four months to answer me and solve my problem. FOUR MONTHS! During that time I was really mad with Nokia, they showed me how horrible their support was. How could they compete against Apple or Google if their support is so horrible a simple problem with the store took 4 MONTHS to get fixed, instead of 4 days.

Yet the worst thing happened this year, on March 31st I received a communication that the N-Gage service was closing completely the next day. Since I hadn't reinstalled all the games I owned after the last time I reformatted my phone I tried to activate them back that same day, but it was useless, the service was not working already. Nothing was transferred to the Ovi Store and I had lost access to 21 games I purchased during 2008 and 2009. More than $100 in games that I payed to Nokia to be able to play on my N95 8GB. I was denied access to what I rightfully purchase from them.

I contacted support again, and they took several days to answer, and their answer was:

"A game MUST be bought with a year for support to be given"

Go to hell Nokia, you stole from me, you failed me as service provider, you don't care about your customers, you do not deserve to have customers,.

Well, I finally wrote it. It is out of my head now.

Comencé la maratón de Fallout, seguido de Fallout 2 (confieso que por causa de un bug en el juego tuve que hacer una pequeña trampa en una parte.. y luego otra por el final... bueno) El Fallout Tactics no me convenció su estilo y decidí postponerlo. Seguí con Fallout 3, pero luego ciertos eventos y juegos desviaron mi atención. Pero aún sigo en camino... Entre otros juegos que pasaron por mi PC (pallybonetrail) o Notebook (pallialibex) estos días estuvieron: Duke Nukem Manhattan Project (anticipando el Forever), el cual lo acabé también con todos los secretos y nukes y etc. Cargué un par de días el Audiosurf sólo para colaborar en el Glados@home. También le di un quick overlook al Fallout: New Vegas, a Borderline, Mortal Online después de un buen tiempo para ver como había estado progresando... (Quizás no mucho todavía). Un día que no tuve acceso a pallybonetrail me puse a jugar todos los niveles de Peggle Nights. Saqué unos achievents que tenía pendientes de Left 4 Dead desde hace años, y de paso le di una mirada al Left 4 Dead 2.

El último fin de semana estuve jugando Portal 2, que lo trajo mi hermano, pero el monitor de pallybonetrail falló (estuvo con bastantes problemas durante todo un mes, hoy lo llevamos a reparar) así que tuve seguir jugando en pallialibex (ya había acabado el Single Player, pero quería sacar algunos achievements más) Voy a probar la campaña coop ahora en la noche.

Bueno, eso es todo por ahora, estoy esperando que me llegue Brink, espero que me guste porque quisiera poderlo llevar a QuakeCon este año. Debido lo dificil y caro que se ha puesto traer cosas, la mayoría de mis compras las he mandado a casa de mi hermano y traerlas cuando vaya en Agosto.

A seguir con Fallout 3.

Juegos que están pendientes en mi lista...

Bastantes...

Ambos Dragon Age

Ambos Mass Effect

Ambos Bioshock

Ambos The Witcher

Terminar los Painkiller

Crysis, F.E.A.R 2, Todos los S.T.A.L.K.E.R. GTA4, ufff... lista interminable.

El día de ayer me encontraba yo pacientemente... er... enfurecidamente tratando de acabar el Acto III de Titan Quest, la pelea contra Typhon era ridículamente dificil (siendo el mío un personaje básicamente melee) para luego descubrir que después de cierto parche Iron Lore cambió la dinámica de la pelea e hizo ciertas estatuas originalmente destructibles, indestructibles rompiendo el balance original. Estaba ya a punto de usar un Trainer para acabar con esa maldita parte, pero felizmente leí de cierta estrategia que me sirvió de mucha ayuda para acabar con Typhon antes de acabar el día. Alegremente, luego de haber vencido al Titán, y de irme a dormir leo la noticia de que un verdadero Titán nos dejó el día de ayer. Leslie Nielsen a quien siempre recordaré en Airplane! y Naked Gun, uno de los actores que hubiese querido no muriese nunca, nos dejo. Te extrañaremos Sargento Frank Drebin Teniente Detective, y prometeremos evitar llamarte Shirley.

... and why some gamers should be ashamed of themselves.

On Monday I read the news about the GoG site closing and I felt bad because there were some games that I had bought and that I hadn't downloaded yet (procrastinating...), but then a few minutes later I read the rumor that it was just a publicity stunt and that they were actually migrating their service to end the Beta phase, after reading the message on their site again made me realize it didn't say they were actually closing, and that downloads were coming back in the future. So fortunately it was true, the site came back today and my games were still there (however this worked as a wake up call, these kind of things may happen so I took the precaution to download these games I had been postponing for to long... I have 14 games purchased there... well make it 16, I will be buying a couple more tonight)

Now, I don't know why I'm writing this... I won't say anything new... but.. I think I have to take it out of my head. On several sites I visited: [H], Shacknews, Voodoo Extreme, Slashdot, etc, there were a lot of comments of people telling they had never heard of this place before, and a big percentage of them were angry for their stunt and mentioned they would never use their site. (Even Kyle Bennett from [H] made a really aggressive comment on the matter, yet I kind of remember somebody telling me before he gets angry easily.)

I know it's not possible to know about everything, and ignorance of certain things may happen, but if somebody considers a topic his/her "hobbie", then at least he/she should try to be informed. Even though I only play PC games I'm usually aware of game releases of platforms I will never use. I know about like 10 digital distribution services. I know about game subscriptions/rentals/streaming services that may never operate in my country, and I'm aware of a lot of MMORPGs I don't even want to play. Yet it is common to read comments from people that call themselves Gamers things like: "This game is closing, yet it is the first time I have ever heard of it" or "I thought it was dead already". There may be a pattern, these might be the same people telling all the time how proud they are about all the ad-blocking software they have installed, and then they wonder "Why I never knew about this?". My GoG account is 726 days old, their site has been mentioned countless of times on these same gaming sites these people are now posting today, and they have never heard about it before? Probably they are not really frequent visitors, or have some reading problems.

And the second thing, the Nerdrage... "haters gonna hate", I guess. Most of these people didn't even know of the place before, and know they hate it (looking for whatever excuse to hate a new thing). I was a user, and didn't even feel affected. I guess this may be another strategy of GoG? To get rid of the all angry, whiny people. This world has some messed up people that a business may find they are not even worthy to have as a customer, probably to repel them was a good idea, after all.

Ok, it is out of my head now, so I guess its time to play something.

¿Ya es junio? como vuela el tiempo...

Bueno con respecto a Neverwinter Nights 2, no sólo acabé con Storm of Zehir, sino que hoy (a pesar de los incidentes)  también con Mysteries of Westgate; con lo que finalmente ya me puedo despedir por el momento de las aventuras en Faerûn, bueno, hasta que algo nuevo ocurra...

Durante estos casi cuatro meses también llegué a la era galáctica en Spore, celebrando el 4 de Mayo jugué Force Unleashed hasta terminarlo, también el episodio 2 de Penny Arcade, empecé la expansión de Age of Conan, he estado Jugando Saints Row 2 también (para probarlo) y bueno, acabé Painkiller, pero no puedo decir los mismo de Battle out of Hell, ya que cierto nivel que requiere ser completado en un tiempo límite me hace la tarea algo dificil.

Oh, verdad, también por un tiempo avancé algo en Guildwars que no jugaba en años. Durante mi viaje en Marzo a USA compre una pequeña netbook y ese juego al menos era jugable en esa pequeña PC, y aproveché para visitar el inicio de cada una de las campañas. Debería volverlo a retomar...

Y por el momento así andan mis aventuras en otros mundos... ¿que seguirá?

Para resumir los últimos 45 días... luego que convencí a Luis Miguel de jugar Age of Conan, no he tenido tiempo para estar jugando otras cosas.

What Wikipedia is not:

Useful.

A place where I would feel welcome.

And if I forget, I have to read this text I wrote the other day to a moderator:

Well, I guess you really are not trying to be mean, however you have confirmed that the impression I was having lately about Wikipedia is true. You may think you were helping me; however it was me trying to help Wikipedia. I really don’t care if there is an article about that company written here, chance (and curiosity) got me into looking for information about that company, and when I found there was no article about it on Wikipedia, I thought it was foolish that two software products developed by this company where notable enough to have their own articles, but the developer itself was not (even though it is also referenced in nine more articles), and I wanted to help at least writing a brief description of it. Right now both articles: Gunbound and Rakion have a red link and no article that link them together. People reading those articles will have to leave Wikipedia to find more information about what other products were made by the same maker. It is obvious that Wikipedia is changed; it is no longer the old Wikipedia from 2005 that encouraged contribution for filling the gaps of all the red links. Now most moderators in their noble effort to fight against spam, self-promotion and inaccurate information have lost vision and common sense and are making their own twisted interpretation of what is notable or what is a reliable source. I didn’t contact the other moderator because I thought he may have his reasons to distrust Gamespot and Neoseeker as sources (even though they are online publications who specialize on the topic), so I wasted almost an hour of my time before resubmitting looking for a more traditional source: a newspaper. However let’s face it, an U.S. newspaper won’t cover an article about a South Korean game developer that has no branches operating in the U.S. unless there is a suicide or a mass murder involved in the story. My best possibility to find a better reliable source was to find a South Korean newspaper, and I had to rely on online translators to check that the facts of the only sentence I wrote were truth (date of foundation, founder and some products developed by them). Yet it seems that wasn’t good enough either. So I realized it’s hopeless and the English Wikipedia is already beyond salvation, hopefully a new alternative will come and will last some more years until it gets spoiled too. However I don’t blame you for your actions, as you are just another automaton that belong to the same twisted minded collective that rule over Wikipedia, and you just act accordingly for fear of your peers that will ban you if you show any sign of individual thinking. But since you are in the helpful mood maybe I should point you to this list [[List_of_south_korean_companies]] several of the companies listed there also lack good sources, just be careful when deleting them you may delete the whole Country by mistake. For now I will just check more frequently the Spanish Wikipedia which looks less spoiled. Probably Softnyx will get its own article the day it gets mentioned on a South Park episode, an XKCD comic or whatever you guys are into these days…

And so after 4 years The Matrix Online ended... The final moments were quite like those from Hellgate London and Tabula Rasa. (*sigh*, I've been in three End of the World events this year). Well this time however the guys from giantbomb.com made also a live straming of the final moments on the Vector-Hostile server...

During this month I took some time passing some more levels from Plants vs Zombies, Eets and Flock. Played and finished Sherlock Holmes: Mystery of the Mummy (with a massive help of a walkthrough, *sigh*, difficult game, and kind of frustrating). Playing some Sims Stories and Spore during the last week. Hopefully I can start working on my Neverwinter contest for Bloodzone this week.

Now some things going on in my head...

ATI still sucks in OpenGL, Catalyst 9.6 brought a lot of bluescreens 0x116 on OpenGL games. Latest one was Enemy Territory Quake Wars. At least Catalyst 9.7 seem to be working O.K. so far.  (I wonder if Second Life got fixed too)

Windows still eats files. After one bluescreen, I noticed that my xfireuser.ini and history.dat went missing (or at least were reduced to 0 bytes). Fortunately these times Shadow Copies are good for damage control. However I wonder if there were more files I lost and I'm not aware of the fact. There should be a tool that could be run after a bluescreen that can check Shadow Copies vs Disk and detect possible lost files. (Is Microsoft listening?)

Wikipedia. Read about some game yesterday that is seems to be getting popular around here. Even though I was not interested into playing it, I got curious and tried to get some info about it, and tried Wikipedia. There wasn't an article neither about the game nor the company that developed it, both articles were deleted some time ago. (Both were marked for speedy deletion because of "lack of notoriety"). It's sad to be reminded that one of the persistent flaws of Wikipedia is that sometimes it seems that some parts of it are administered by a group of smug people living in small boxes and whose concept of "notoriety" is "whatever they are interested into".

This is all for now.