If you were a fan of any Origin Systems product (Ultima, Wing Commander, etc), or are simply interested in gaming nostalgia, read on...

When EA acquired Mythic Entertainment, Mythic inherited Ultima Online. As a result, Mythic got a whole bunch of stuff. Well the guys from WCNews were invited to come document it all. I personally think this is a pretty cool thing.

This is easily one of the strangest videos I have ever seen. Not only is there A MERMAID SKELETON in it, the owners are trying to teach their cats to not mess with it.

I picked up Fallout 3 (CE of course) two weeks ago or so. Nearly all my free time is spent playing it. I just reached level 6. It's a great game and I am enthusiastic about continuing it. I haven't even tried Red Alert 3 yet. I'll get to that game eventually. Heck, I haven't even finished Oblivion (which this game resembles in so much as it uses the same engine and is made by the same company, Bethesda). I highly reccommend Fallout 3. It might become one of my all-time favorite games. Ratings and reviews are very high. Sales are through a very high roof. I'm happy my new system runs it like a charm.

I just found out that Amazon is offering a "Survival Edition". Same as the CE, but includes a life size Pipboy 3000. GAH! Now I wish I had known that prior to getting the CE. Tis Boo.

Well, I guess I know why we didn't get many trick or treaters.
Apparently, it's ILLEGAL in the commonwealth of Virginia. How do stupid laws like these still exist? Do the people who are elected/appointed to do this stuff just sit around plotting how to get more political power instead of doing their jobs? (See stupid law #1)

http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/united-states/virginia

Check out some of these winners:

• There is a state law prohibiting “corrupt practices of bribery by any person other than candidates.
• You may not engage in business on Sundays, with the exception of almost every industry.
• Citizens must honk their horn while passing other cars.
• Children are not to go trick-or-treating on Halloween.
• It is illegal to tickle women.

Some of the city laws are even dumber...

• The city of Culpepper, VA:
  A person of color may not be outside or within the city limits after 7 pm.
• Norfolk, VA
  Spitting on a sea gull is not tolerated.
  A man may face 60 days in jail for patting a woman’s derriere.
  Women must wear a corsette after sundown and be in the company of male chaperone.

I bought a bunch of candy for trick or treaters and decorated the front of the house with lights, a lit cauldron, and some hanging decorations. I even left work early so we wouldn't miss any early trick or treaters. Only 2 families came. The first was a guy with a white kitchen trash bag, A woman I presume was his wife, and 3 kids. They were all wearing sweats and casual clothes. NO costume effort whatsoever. Very dissapointing. I already had the snack size Kit Kat's in my hand though, so I gave each kid one. I didn't give the adults any. Then we waited. And waited. And Waited. No one came. Very dissapointing. I also later found a kit kat wrapper on our sidewalk. Bastages littered our yard with our candy that they didn't even earn. Very irksome. I personally think that the dad took a Kit Kat from one of the kids and ate it right there, and then littered the warpper in our yard. Grrrr.

Since the outside lights are tied to the same switch as the frontroom light, around 9pm the outside lights were still on. There was a knock on the door. It was a little late to trick or treat, but at least the family that was at the door were in costume. Not good ones, mind you, but some effort was applied. I checked to make sure it wasn't the same family that had visited earlier.

And that's it. 2+ hours of waiting and only 2 groups of 3 kids showed up, and then only half were in costume. As a result, I ended up eating an entire bag of snack-size reese peanut butter cups(Bad week to go back on my diet) as I played the Witching Event in Warhammer Online...



Which leads to my second complaint. The Warhammer Online Live Event, Witching Night, sucked. Just like the rest of the game, its heavily dependant on people. Since people suck, the event sucked. I got a whole bunch of Gobbo masks, but due to the design flaw of requiring everyone in the rvr area to also be in the PQ area to get kill points towards the Lord boss, I was unable to complete that particular Halloween achievement. The bad guys would typically just run out of the PQ area. As a result, it took hours and hours to get 100 enemy kills. The Lord that spawned in the 2nd stage of the PQ died in a matter of seconds. Since so many people were in our warband, I ranked #24 and got no loot whatsoever for my 3-4 hours of dedication. Figuring I just got a bad roll, I tried the same thing Sunday evening, but once again, after hours of PQing, the enemy just kept running back out of the PQ. I came up with the idea to have everyone in our warband hide behind the hills, out of line of sight, so the enemy would advance, and then we could flank/ambush them. It would have worked but as I mentioned earlier, people are stupid. Guys on our side kept going up towards the bad guys, giving them kills or killing enemies that didn't count towards the PQ kill count. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry. Just know that people suck.

While it was cool to actually RvR, take Battlefield Objectives, defend a Keep, and be part of a max size warband, I worry for Warhammer sometimes, espeically as I read the Warhammer Alliance forums.

Bottom Line: A lot of effort was spent this weekend for very little reward because people suck.