Benie's Games Blog

Status on Roads
Before I start, I keep being asked “How’s A8?” “What’s the status of A8?”. I do apologize for not responding sooner, but the A8’s been done a week ago. I’ve been working on the A850, which got done yesterday.

With this, I am now officially (and will also be forever) done with frozen’s roads. I don’t mind the challenges, but what I do mind is the permission drama. I’m sick of it. Roads are really nothing more than drama bombs anymore.

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Should I move Soiled Solitude?
That being said, my idea to do a road from my island and connect it to A1, would had never worked. It clearly states in the new Road Standards; “Tunnels are allowed over small distances” for B-Class roads. And the distance between my island in the mainland isn’t ‘small’ by any measurement. Nor would it be realistic to have the tunnel end into an underground complex.

Anyway, with this being related to what I want to talk about, I’m thinking of going to the next rank level (Mayor). I’ve been Councillor for quite awhile now, and I thought maybe it’s time to work on it. But with my island being… what is supposed to be “private” (yet I’m allowing ferries and businesses to get on), it’s … challenging to get it.
Tom_Pairs told me that I had three options;
1. Continue working on my island to get the 20 building limit, get a Deputy Mayor.. yadda yadda yadda…
2. Make something that will blow the mod’s minds away. (Not happening)
3. Move my “town” somewhere else, so this way I might have road access. However, I’ll lose ferry access. And I have several ferries that connect to my island.

The first option is possible, but I’m going to have to throw away the whole “private island” idea. The second option.. yeah, that’s not happening in a million years.
And the 3rd… is very ‘risky’. Though I believe I know where I could move to; the Taiga line. The reason why it’s so risky, is I’ll have to abandon the island completely. Plus, Tulsi’s living next to me. If I move out, he’ll be all alone. And I can’t really do that to him.
So, if I do… do this, I’ll need to discuss it with him first. Maybe I could make him my Deputy Mayor, and he could help me.

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EDIT: Despite myself wanting to do the 3rd option, my common sense made me settle on the first one. I’m too far ‘dug into’ the island to just… move like that. It would be too harsh on everyone, having several ferries already established and running.
I now need five more nice-looking builds that fit the theme of the island. I already have one idea I can do, and lalaboy is helping me with the other one; an actual Town Hall.
I have also declared who will be my Deputy Mayor. Of course it’ll be Tulsi. So, he’ll have control of my island if something were to happen to me (hopefully nothing does).

So this means I’m now officially shifting from a “private” island. Though I also wondered if I should change the name ‘Soiled Solitude’ to something else. I haven’t come up with an idea yet, but it needs to fit the island/rustic theme of the island.
Though to be honest, maybe I should just leave it like that. This too would put unwanted stress on the mods, having to change all of those warp signs over a town name change. Not really worth it.

Besides, if/when I get Mayor, I’ll be able to build and own a second town and finally have that road access that I want. Though I won’t have ferry access(or even private ferry access with my boats).
What’s ironic, that road access might come from the same road that suppoe and I had been working on (A8). And even more so, how I said I was “done” with working on frozen’s roads. That is, when the town is at Councillor status. Yes, I too still have to have those ten builds and all of that other stuff (plus a secondary house/Town Hall to call my own).

But that’s all in the future. I still need to think of three more builds to place on the island, and wait patiently for lala to continue work on the Town Hall.

Due to having other things to do, I didn’t have time to check out yesterday’s PS+ games for the PS4. There’s three games this month.

This month’s games I will reviewing, are..
‘MAGICKA 2’
‘The Walking Dead Episode 2: A House Divided’
‘Dragon Fin Soup’

From what I’m hearing, this is “RPG Month”. Just perfect. This is exactly why I don’t want to buy Dragon Age: Inquisition on the PS4. I hate RPG games on consoles.. because I can’t cheat in them. 😛
What’s worse, I’m hearing some of them are … turn-based. UGH!! D:

The second game irks me. Only Episode 2 of The Walking Dead? Why not Episode 1? It almost feels like Sony trying to push people into this gory zombie game… even though Halloween is over.

Anyway, I’ll be recording Magicka 2 tonight, and the others either tomorrow or Friday. I still need to edit

Right… right now I would be prepping to record my latest ‘Benie Fails At’ videos. Instead, I’m forced to wait for a particular someone to come on, and explain to them what I did last night on the MRT Server. Depending on the outcome, this may or may not possibly cost me my title.

So I’ve been working on the A850. Suppoe finally got the interchange complete. He had to go before he could do a bridge for the road. I was bored, and decided to help to complete the A4; AP_Rednax’s road.

I’ve been helping with this road, and Red even added me to the list of helpers. In my head, this gave me perms to work on it even when he’s not on.
So Red was offline all of the time of this, so it was just me doing the work at the time. It was so close to the curve, and I felt shockingly confident enough to say “let me handle the curve”.
I managed to get a few others to help me to get the A4 close enough to the curve. I just wanted to copy it over, and so I started to. However before I could finish, one of the other members took over and messed it all up for me.

Then I notice the center line, how it goes from (Gravel) (Grass) (Center Line) (Grass) (Gravel), to (Gravel) (Center Line) (Gravel). In other words, it goes from five wide to three wide. This really… really bugged the hell out of me. I wanted to completely redo the entire curve. And… I did. Even though this isn’t my road. Even though I didn’t even get perms from Red to do so.. I still did it.
Though the results, I’m still not happy with it. I screwed up in my counting, because I knew I didn’t have time to make it good. And I still didn’t even fix the transition. I was really trying to undo what the other member did, but… I went to way bit too far.

The way I look at this, I did Red a favor. I was the ONLY one that actually wanted to see the A4 done (to the point to actually work on it). And the curve just looked… rushed to me. I don’t know if it was actually Red or not who initially did the first curve, but whoever did.. didn’t care what it looked like.
But Red might see it differently instead of “doing you a favor”, as I never asked for his permission to redo the curve. Yet one can’t really call this as “griefing”. Plus, I fixed all the terrain and everything. And really, it’s not that big of a deal if you look at it.

But if this does cost me my title. Well… you guys will probably know what happens after. If you said “a break from the server until the warning clears”.. you would not be incorrect. The thing is, the Mods there last night, they didn’t say a THING about it. Though I feel it’s pretty obvious, they all thought Red had given me perms.
*sigh* Well… I will accept the consequences of my actions.

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EDIT: About 7 minutes after publishing this post and getting on the server, Red pops up. I ask him to tp to me, and he does. I have him read the book I placed.. around 9:30am this morning (I really couldn’t sleep because of it).
And the reaction? …. It was in my favor! 😀 Red saw I was trying to help him, not grief him. He thanked me so much. And now I feel SOOOOO much better. With this, I was able to re-redo the curve (all by myself), and it looks much better than it did last night. And with that, the A4 is done. Very happy to have contributed the way I did.
I feel more of an asset to the server now, than I did before. I can actually help people with their curves! Of course, to make sure I have their permission first.

And with this done, I can begin my video recordings.

This is of course, WoW-related. The Q3 numbers are finally in! So.. heelz thought LAST month at this time, the Q3 numbers were going to come in. Instead, it turned into THIS month.
10 seconds into the video, he has a chart of the current numbers. It seems… the WoW Token, the news about Legion, or the promise of “Valor coming back” helped to majorly stabilize the hard decline… to 5.5 million subscribers. That’s still a far cry from what it was when WoD launched.

This means WoW has pretty much lost half of its subscriber base. Half. These are numbers back in 2006, when WoW was in Vanilla…
If you were to calculate how many they lost between Q2 to Q3, they’re only gone down 100,000. Yet that’s not really anything compared of Q1 to Q2.
Some people feel these numbers could had possibly been made up by Blizzard themselves, to make us think they aren’t hurting. To be honest, I’m a bit surprised of them. Whatever Blizzard did, definitely helped with that sharp decline.

However, there is a really bad, childish thing they’re going to be doing. They will no longer reveal the subscription numbers after this. The reason is even worse than the announcement of this. It’s the same bullshit that’s happened since the beginning; not able to defend their product. Not able to give us non-Apexis soloable content. And now they do this.
They no longer see you as a customer.. they see you as a dollar bill who’s desperate enough to get their WoW fix. This is the SAME thing I ranted about earlier. And now it seems what I said, is sadly coming out.

Point is.. Blizzard have pretty much said “Fuck WoD, we gave up. We did it to shut the whiny kids up about MoP and Pandas. Legion now!” And who’s to say that Legion isn’t going to turn into a pile of shit as well?
The fact we’ll never again see their subscription numbers (instead hearing them lie to the stockholders), this is pretty much hammering the final nail in the coffin for WoW. Yet I also refuse to say “WoW is DEAD!” It’s dying on its hospital bed, not dead.

MRT Server Downtime
Don’t think you’re going to be coming on the MRT today. It was around 12:05pm when I was viewing the Dynmap (was off the server). See, I had no reason to come on as A8 is pretty much “done” (for now).
Basically, we’re reached the A8/850 interchange. Frozen said that A8 is “done”. He has to get the other half of A8 approved before it can go further. He also planned out the A850. I started wondering “Wait… you want me to also do the A850?”, and he said “if you want”.
So, wow. To also do that as well? I told him that I would need to talk it over with suppoe and RedBear first. But I have already, and I agreed to do it. But before I can start, suppoe must finish construction of the ramps of the interchange. And he’s got them marked in such a way that no one but himself can understand what is to be done.
So until he does, I’m pretty much out of a job.

Anyway, back to now. As I said, I was viewing the Dynmap. I noticed the Northwest section of the Taiga line has gotten some really interesting development that I want to check out. However, I started noticing the dynmap getting sluggish of being able to load the map. Then it was to the point it just stopped trying.
The downtime has pretty much affected all server services. The main site, the wiki, Mumble.. everything.
Though in Mumble, I was able to connect OK. No one else was on, which I found really odd.
Time passed and a few people managed to get on, with one being a Mod. The Mod said that Frumple knows about the problem, but.. can’t do anything about it. The issue is with the hoster having trouble sending packets to the server.
This felt initially, the same issue that angry and I had before we migrated to another server with Arvixe. But no, that one was completely different. And like Arvixe’s server alerts, we’re all being kept in the dark by how they’re still working on the problem.

It’s been about three hours now from the time I started writing this. Occasionally, the server might stay up for a minute or two to let a few people in, only to crash again. To be honest, I feel people that are joining is actually making the issue worse.

Really wish I could have an update, or something instead of staring at the Play Multiplayer screen, occasionally refreshing the server list and praying the server pops back up again.
I do have a feeling the server’s going to be offline ’till possibly tonight or tomorrow. Whatever’s happening up in Canada, seems pretty serious.

EDIT: Yay, finally something. It seems Frumple has linked the hoster’s Twitter account. From what I’ve seeing, they are hard working on the issue. Something about a “main line cut” affecting Montreal. Hopefully it’ll be fixed soon.

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My reactions to Dan’s channel reboot
So if you haven’t been following Dan’s news feeds (such as his Subreddit), he’s been working on a reboot of his entire Youtube channel.
First off, no more “HELLO PROCRASTINATORS!!!” The reason he’s getting rid of it is simply, it’s getting old on him. A lot of people have been appalled by this, saying how it will “kill Dan” and “it’s the end of NerdCubed!!” I personally, don’t care. Change is good (depending on what has to be changed).
He mentioned the other changes, such as no more “NerdCubed Mass Debates” (lolol it sounds like Masturbate!!!!111!!!1111″ -Typical Youtube comment). Now it’s going to be called “NerdCubed Fustercluck”. I like this change.

His IRL channel is now going to be nothing but him fapping over LEGO sets. :/ And on the Gaming side, he’s getting rid of his “FW” thing as it never really made any sense. He’s also now going to have a new “Hates” section, of… you guessed it, games he absolutely… positively dispises. These will likely be how the video game industry has shifted to microtransactions, shit-made “simulator” games, and 5 minute worked on Steam games that cost a lot of money. These are the games to watch out for.

But to counteract the bias attitude that people have often criticized him over, he will have a new “Loves” section. These will be games you MUST buy and will NOT be a buyer beware. I believe most of my own game reviews will be based off of his (as most already are, by saying “I saw Dan play this game” in the beginning of my review sections).
And at the end, he said something that… shocked the hell out of me. Something he NEVER announced before. He said he was…retiring his voice, letting someone else do it for him. No other big time Youtube channel has ever done this.
And when he reveled his “mystery voice”…. it was Ashens; a channel I’ve never watched but I’ve seen his channel pop up here and there. He always had such a nice couch.
When the reveal was made, I thought “Oh no. This is really happening. I… no! This can’t be true! Ashens REPLACING DAN?!?!”, and actually felt upset. But I thought “*sigh* You know.. if this is what Dan wants, we should support him. Good luck, Ashens.”

However… as the video went on and Dan was explaining the pure hell he has been having to talk about, it seemed like Ashens was having second thoughts. Especially when Dan was talking about how Ashens would have to review “Wood Cutting Simulator” and “Bungee Rope Simulator”. But what really got Ashens to be all ‘fuck this’ is when Dan mentioned how “there’s also a lot of Early Access and broken Steam releases as well”.
That’s when I was all “WAIT a minute….. holy FUCK Dan, you fucking troll!!” and just busted out laughing. Ohh man. Every day is April Fools to Dan. Ahahahahahah… I should had KNOWN that this was a lie! Dan LOVES to lie!
Just…wow. That probably took several edits until it sounded believable, without himself busting out laughing.
Soooooo yeah. Ashens isn’t going to be replacing Dan. It was all a prank. A brilliant prank from a brilliant bastard. Dan, I tip my hat for making me believe you, sir.