- It pains me to admit that this is the very first time that I've read Jeff Smith's Bone from beginning to end. I collected single issues for awhile and bought a few of the trades, but my interest just died away at some point. It might have been during the annual culling of the comic pull list. Eventually when the series came out in the one volume edition I knew it was time to read. Several months later I overcame the sticker shock and bought a copy for myself.
- Bone is the story of three Bones (short, white cartoony creatures with large noses and no hair), Fone Bone, Smiley Bone, and Phoney Bone. They've been run out of Boneville because of Phoney's latest failed scheme and they find themselves crossing a vast desert. Within moments of the story's opening, the trio are separated because of a plague of locusts, but each eventually find their way into a forested valley right out of a fantasy novel. Fone Bone, the main character in the novel, soon runs into Thorn and her Gran'ma Ben. And through them the main story of the book arrives. Rat creatures are threatening to overrun the valley and the Bones will have to aid the inhabitants as they fight against the tide of destruction.
- What starts as a light-hearted tale turns darker and darker as the story progresses, much like the fantasy epic. The villains are dastardly, the heroes brave, and their obstacles seem overwhelming. When the book starts, you might not be aware of what you're getting into. But neither are the Bones, so you end up experiencing the same growing sense of dread that they do.
- Jeff Smith is a master cartoonist and rarely hits a false note here. As a matter of fact even though I've left myself a little wiggle room with that statement, I can't think of a single instance where I thought there was any flaw in the art. The black and white is handled perfectly. (You can find colorized versions of the individual books released by Scholastic that is still great.) The Bones are very cartoony, but eminently believable in the world they inhabit. And each of the human characters is easily distinguish able. You won't mistake one for another, a failing I've found in lesser cartoonists.
- Although Bone might not be the first book I recommend to someone first exploring graphic novels, it might well be a good second. Anyone who enjoyed fantasy even a little will enjoy this story.
© 2010 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.
- I originally wrote this as a comment on Righteous Orbs, a blog I only discovered today. Good stuff if you like WoW-centric blogs. Anyway, I thought this was too good not to share with the three of you who read my blog. Enjoy.
- Funny story (I hope). On a recent trip to Shadowfang Keep with my new priest alt, the PUG was running with a very new Hunter. He told us this was his first time in SFK. We all reassured him that everything would be okay. That was not correct. Just past the locked door leading to the courtyard, he and his pet started chain pulling mobs. It was not pretty. We ran back, told the hunter to take it slower, and tried again. Amazingly, we got through without incident. Right up until he pulled Arugal from across the room.
- The paladin tank ran in and the other DPSers tried to do their best against the Sons down below, but I didn't have enough mana to keep everyone alive. And during the whole short fight, the hunter is asking for a rez. After the inevitable wipe, everyone started to run back accept the hunter.
- I asked him, "You wiped our group and you want a rez?"
- He called me a jerk and quit. The rest of us four-personned Arugal. I don't think I was wrong.
- Syp, that rabble rouser from Bio Break, decided to ask his many, many readers what we thought about the recently added incentive loot bags for World of Warcraft's The Oculus. Although I commented on his post, I wanted to tell a little story of my relationship with The Oculus. I like to call it "A Self-Fulfilling Prophesy."
- As I leveled up during Wrath of the Lich King, I rode the wave of players tackling the leveling instances. There were several people available to take on Utgarde Keep, The Nexus, Azjol-Nerub, Ahn-Kahet, Drak'Tharon Keep, Violet Hold.... you get the picture. I never had to wait long to get an invite, even though I was leveling my mage. But then I burned out and the wave passed me by.
- When I came back, I was surprised that it wasn't impossible to find groups for the level 80 dungeons. And the daily heroic quests always gave me a way into the instances. All except The Oculus. No one, even when the daily heroic quest was available, ran The Oculus. I heard all the horror stories about how terrible it was, but I just wrote the place off.
- Then Patch 3.3 hit and the Dungeon Finder had everyone running instances like crazy. After a very successful first run (I think it was ToC), I queued up a second instance. At this point, you can tell where the story is going. When we first zoned in, there was some grumbling. "Oh no, not Oculus." But one of the players (a blood elf paladin) explained that they recent nerfs to the instance had made the place super easy.
- And you know what? He was right. The Oculus is not all that hard. The worst part is learning your way around, dealing with the vertical space, and learning how to control the dragons. Heck, since I didn't know exactly what I was doing, grabbed the wrong dragon. We had three tanks, one healer, and one DPS and we still beat the final boss.
- On my most recent trip, the random tank left the group as soon as we zoned in. We requeue and the second tank left as soon as he showed up too. Wanting to get the thing over with, the druid in the group decided to switch to bear form and tank the instance himself while we searched for a DPSer instead. And he did a great job, even with the wrong spec.
- The Oculus is not hard. It's not even that long of an instance. People have just bought into the fact that the place is terrible without applying any thought to issue. If an extra loot bag convinces people to overcome their prejudice, I would consider their quick fix a success.
- Were I any more of a narcissist, I would suspect that Damion Shubert's recent post at his excellent Zen of Design blog was aimed directly at me. It wasn't, of course. He's actually taking on Brian "Psychochild" Green's Trinity article which you really should read if you haven't. But no one minds if I stick my nose in, do they?
- The reason I want to dive back into this is because of Damion's contention that breaking up the trinity means homogenizing character classes. I call that a failure of imagination. But let's explain my personal feelings about the trinity before we try to fix it.
- I don't have trouble with healers, personally. My most recent WoW alt is a recently-respecked Holy Priest just so I can heal more effectively for random dungeons. And I really enjoyed playing a Monk during my Guild Wars days, back when the Prot Boon Healer was a decent build. My problem is that, of all gaming tropes, healing has the least fidelity to the fantasy genre. Or to any genre, really. How many movies have you seen where someone spends the entire time bandaging people up in the middle of a fight? How many books have you read where one person's entire job is to make holy light rain on people? Not very many, I'm sure.
- Healing is required in video games because developers have been doing it wrong for a long, long time.
This is where I go down the rabbit hole. If you can't follow me, I don't blame you. It's filthy down here.
- Damage should be a pressure mechanic in the game. It should be there to tell you that you're doing something wrong. If you're doing everything right and luck goes your way, your character should not be in jeopardy of dying. You should only take damage if you are going too slow or you make a mistake. That's why games like Mirror's Edge feel so weird. Your character is a bullet sponge. What should be happening is that your opponents attacks only hit if you're not doing what you should be.
- For all the crap that it was given, the morale system from Lord of the Rings Online actually fits better than health and healing. Having the characters' spirits bolstered during the battle makes sense. Having characters beat up and magically healed? Not so much. Of course, if you go back to the grandfather of RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons, hit points were about more than just how much punishment your character takes before they die. But healing was also not something the cleric spent every turn focused on. They were there to save your ass when something went very wrong, not because you were expected to expend five times your total hit points every battle.
- All that said, it's safe to say now that World of Warcraft has made the entire argument moot with its Dungeon Finder. As Darren from Common Sense Gamer (Welcome back! Now start podcasting again!) says, Blizzard has changed the MMO genre again. The trinity works when it's not getting in the way of grouping. By taking all of the friction of the system, grouping is fun and you can toss out all of my complaints and suggestions. I'm not disappointed about that. The beauty of game development (and MMO development in particular) is that there are so many ways to tackle a problem. This is why I love the genre so much. There is so much innovation still going on. It's just very easier to get jaded and forget how much fun there is to be had.
© 2010 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.
- Inspired by Blue Kae (that man has a lot to say all of the sudden), I thought I'd take a look at what's coming in the year ahead and tell you what you should be excited about. If you weren't aware that I had that much control over your emotional states, you should have read the fine print on this blog. Suckers.
- World of Warcraft: Cataclysm - The only thing on the MMO scene I'm excited about is "Yet Another WoW Expansion." No one expects this to set the world on fire. (Wait, that's exactly what the expansion is about, right? Anyway, I'm sticking with the metaphor.) But Blizzard knows how to release good, polished content with just enough of a new spin to keep things interesting.
- Diablo III - After enjoying the heck our of Torchlight, I'm really interested to see how Diablo looks. Okay, this won't be coming out in 2010. But I'm allowed to hope Blizzard gets it out early, right? No? Okay. See you in 2011, D3.
- Mass Effect 2 - If there is one game that will drive me back to my 360, it will be ME2. And for no other reason than so I can carry forward my ME1 save game. I liked my Shepard and I can't wait to see what more the universe has in store for her.
- Red Dead Redemption - I'm one of the few people who enjoyed Neversoft's Gun and wished that they would make a sequel. Since that's not likely to happen, who better to make a new Western than the company they were emulating in the first place: Rockstar.
- And because I like to act the contrarian sometimes, here are a few game I'm not looking forward to at all.
- Other MMOs. Any of them. - You name it, I having trouble getting interested about it. SWTOR? STO? DUCO? Not a one. Maybe something will come out of left field and blow everyone away, but I would be surprised based on the current crop of games on the horizon. (Allods Online is getting a lot of beta love, but I maintain a healthy detachment.) The only possible MMO I would look forward to is Guild Wars 2 and no one expects that until the following year. Okay, that and the forthcoming Torchlight MMO. Gee, can we just skip ahead to 2011?
- Starcraft 2 - I don't have anything against SC2, per se. It's just another RTS that I'm never going to play. But there's a part of me, deep down in a place I don't want to admit to, that blames this for delaying everything else Blizzard has coming out. Completely untrue, but there you go. I hope all the rest of you enjoy it for me.
- Not a huge list on either side. It's hard for me to get worked up for anything at all this year. I promise to focus more on the positive list than on the negative one, however. I'm in full support of Yeebo Fernbottom's blogging philosophy: there is too much good stuff out there to dwell on the negative. So I'm dumping negative blogs and I'll try to set a good example for 2010. Unless it's really, really funny.
